We all need special places and spaces that speak deeply to our essence, to who we really are, deep down. I’m drawn to rivers. Always have been. The Birrarung, Yarra River, in Melbourne has long been an essential part of my life. As children we loved prancing along its banks and splashing about. In recent years, my strolls along its banks, or just being still and watching its flow, are akin to a daily meditation.
Majestic red river gums and towering eucalypts line the banks. Corellas and galahs are never far away, while the yellow-tail black cockatoos let out their shrieking screams in the distance. The water flows along its course, long carved out by flow and floods, churning and gurgling over riffles.
Many years ago, I wrote in my journal: ‘It is possible to enjoy a river as one does a good friend, watching its current, its flow and its many moods. It’s a paradox – stillness in an ever-changing, always flowing river.’
A PLACE OF MEDITATION
That river was the place I regularly spent hours, after returning from living in the small Central American country of El Salvador. I’d been there towards the end of that country’s decade-long civil war, and its so-called ‘post-war reconstruction’. (Buildings might be reconstructed, but how are people who have been killed, maimed or tortured – and their families – reconstructed?)
Back in Australia, it was extremely difficult to try to explain to anyone how I felt, what I’d experienced, and all the personal stories I’d listened to – harrowing tales of loss and shattered lives. Media reports from war zones tend to list the number of people killed, show evidence of bombs and rockets, and a short grab of combat. But war is so much more than that.
In her book, The Sewing Circles of Herat, British foreign correspondent Christina Lamb wrote about being a young journalist in Afghanistan, desperate to get close to the front line. In her determination to achieve that goal, she had not stopped to assist a mother desperately pleading for help. The woman’s daughter, Lela, was cradled in her mother’s arms. She’d been hit by a rocket, and hovered between life and death. The woman’s husband had already been killed. She hadn’t seen her sons for days. Lela was all the pleading mother had. This she told the journalist. But Lamb had her own priorities . . . She pushed on.
Years later, the foreign correspondent concluded that, ‘The real story of war wasn’t about the firing and the fighting. . .’. It was about the people – ‘the sons and daughters, the mothers and fathers’. And all their losses.
In The Sewing Circles of Herat, (published in 2002), Lamb reflects on her personal experiences, unflinchingly. ‘I had let someone die and I knew however far away I went, there would be no forgetting.’
Soon after the book’s publication, the author spoke to a small audience at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival. As she told the tale of Lela and her mother, the audience fell silent. That story pierced our hearts. Stories can do that. It also stirred memories for me.
STORIES THAT STAY WITH YOU
I was only in El Salvador for four months during the civil war, and for two years in the post-war aftermath, but once you connect with el pueblo – the people – you can never forget.
Returning to Australia, the swag of el pueblo’s stories I carried was a far more burdensome weight than the suitcases I dragged through Customs. But what was I to do with these tales that made little, if any, sense to people in Australia? I’d returned to Australia, but home no longer felt like home.
Worse still, one of my most sacred places, one which had become as important to me in El Salvador, as the Birrarung is to me in Melbourne, was now thousands of kilometres away.
That place is the Rose Garden and the chapel at the José Simeón Cañas Central American University, known affectionately as the UCA.
In my memoir, 700 Days in El Salvador, written a decade after returning to Australia, (I finally did something with all those stories), I wrote: ‘In El Salvador, sacred places are often the places where people used to be, before they were killed. Now what’s left is a gap. The Rose Garden at the UCA is one such place, but the Salvadoran people know many others. This Rose Garden is where the bloodied bodies of the Jesuits were found, with Julia Elba and Celina close by. The garden touches you deeply. Visitors reverently place their feet upon this special piece of earth.
In the chapel beside the Rose Garden, there are sketches of people. They depict the contortions of suffering; images of daily life in El Salvador – torture, rape and obscene brutality. A body slumps over a wooden beam, burn marks extend along the legs, the buttocks, up the back and onto the face and hands. These images are harsh, modern-day Stations of the Cross. They sit high on the back wall watching over visitors. At the front of the chapel lay the bodies of the Jesuits; entombed. There’s a large painting of Monseñor Romero too.’
(Even after becoming archbishop, Oscar Romero was affectionately called Monseñor by the Ecclesial Base Communities, poor communities with whom I worked. Monseñor Romero became the voice of the voiceless during the war. For that he paid the ultimate price, gunned down while saying Mass.)
THE ROSE GARDEN
My reflection continued. ‘People come from all over the world to visit the Rose Garden and the chapel at the UCA. They pay their respects and say a quiet prayer. For me, there’s a sacredness; the powerful memory of spilt blood and broken bodies, and the natural beauty of the roses.’
Sometimes I plonked myself on the ground by those roses, head bowed. Afterwards, I’d find a pew at the back of the chapel, under those modern-day Stations of the Cross. As sunlight streamed in, I’d just sit there. No words required.
That’s the thing about my special places and spaces – the sacredness in the silence. What’s yours?
Michele Gierck is the author of several books. Her latest is Gladys and Stripey: Two little fish on one BIG adventure.
Image above: The Birrarung, Yarra River, in Melbourne provides a place of peace and sanctuary.
A SPECIAL CROSS
I have a special cross in my house. Wooden. Hand-made and hand painted. From El Salvador. After having spent years travelling between Australia and that very small Central American country, (some years ago), it’s a reminder. Not of the country, but of the lives of the people.
As in the Easter story, the people of El Salvador, like millions of others from war-torn hot-spots around the globe, have known, or continue to know, all too well the story of spilt blood and broken bodies. The crucifixion. Know it intimately. Not from the outside, as a narration. From the inside, living it.
The western interpretation of Good Friday tends towards the pristine. But people who live in war zones could plant your feet back on the earth about what Calvary means.
My cross, however, this special Salvadoran cross, is not filled with a broken body. Rather with life. Life in abundance can be seen radiating out from the heart, the feminine, to the villages. For me, it’s symbolic of the redemptive force of love in action.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS AND ACTIVITIES
Nurturing peace on Anzac Day – questions and activities
This comprehensive guide offers teachers a structured approach to exploring essential Catholic values of love, justice, forgiveness, and reconciliation within the context of peacebuilding.