1.             Due Reverence

Queensland

After Chermside, the church sent me to Townsville Central Circuit. I was a Reverend. I was placed under the ‘care’ of Alan Wilson. This was the same Alan who had fallen out with Cyril at the MTC. I soon found out why they fell out.

They called Alan the builder. He was sent to churches to start schemes which could finance rebuilding churches. He was good at it. He would have made a fantastic real estate developer. We clashed from day one.

One of his money making schemes was to knock down the old house behind the church — guess where I lived? — and build flats. The previous minister (Ron Smith) had set it up as a hostel for country boys who were working in the city. The idea was that, under the tender pastoral care of the assistant minister (me), they would not go astray while so far from home and subjected to the sinful temptations of big city life.

We played football together and on Saturday went swimming in the Tobruk Public Pool, activities of which Alan did not approve. Public pools were health hazards while football resulted in disfiguring facial injuries and worse still, was played on Sunday!

‘Look at those Catholics. They go to mass in the morning and then go and play football! Sinful!’

‘But at least they go to church, which is more than our young people do,’ I protested.

He fixed me with a glare designed to melt my Methodist marrow.

Back to the hostel! Mrs Logan and her teenage son Andrew, stayed in one room. A divorcee, she cleaned house and cooked in return for board and lodging.

Maybe she contributed to my downfall. She reported what she saw as my misdemeanors to Alan. In turn, these reports were passed on to Uncle Joe, Uncle Norm et al. Others in the flock were asked to keep an eye on me and report on the positive and negative aspects of my performance.

And I sinned! My sins? Amongst others, I sometimes smoked. This was an absolute no-no to Alan. To hide the evidence of my ‘sin’, I hid the butts in my football boots. Came Saturday morning and football called. Where was my ashtray, sorry, my football boots? Alan called me over to the parsonage. His long-suffering wife nodded meekly as I entered through the back door of the parsonage.

‘He wants to see you in the study.’

That was always a bad sign.

‘I am not happy,’ said the Reverend Alan.

I said nothing. So what else was new?

Alan held up my football boots.

‘What are you doing with my football boots?’

‘Mrs Logan brought these to me. There are cigarette butts in them. Can you explain?’

‘I can’t afford an ashtray!’

He threw a boot at me, accused me of insolence and warned that this would not be the last of the matter. I just looked at him; I took the boots, turned and left. I played football. Did he think I was going to have any rapport with my charges if I spent the time discussing bible stories with them? Football provided a camaraderie and that proved the starting point for their eventual involvement in the church — at least for some of them.

My fag felony was just the beginning. As had happened in Chermside, I was considered fair game for most mothers with unmarried daughters. One in particular whose name I have forgotten (suppressed?) had a daughter with protruding teeth and halitosis. I remember them as Mrs Horse and her foul fanged filly, a sister at the city hospital.

I was a frequent invitee to Sunday lunch at the Horse trough. The fare: cold cuts with salad (lots of beetroot), followed by jelly and custard. I hate beetroot. To avoid such invitations or to get out of escorting an eligible maiden to a Ladies Guild meeting, church fete or the like, I sometimes dissimulated. 

‘Add that to the list of his evil ways, your honor!’

But something else brought me undone.

Alan: ‘There’s a Mr. Thomas in hospital who claims to be a Methodist. He is not expected to live. Go see him.’

As fate would have it, Mr. Thomas

was in Sister Filly’s ward. I walked into the ward.

Mr. Thomas (Doug) lay in a coma. Mrs Thomas (Edith) was weeping. She grabbed my hand.

‘Thank you! Thank you for coming. He is going to die. I am afraid he will go to hell.’

‘Why do you think that?’

‘He has not been baptised.’

I was about to launch into an in depth argument on the sacrament of baptism and its meaning in Methodism. This was not the Catholic Church, my dear! We believe in choice and decisions and so on. I looked at Mrs Thomas. I looked at Doug. Doug’s as good as dead. She lives. Who needs this most? She does.

I called Sister Filly. She panted up.

‘Could you please fetch me a saucer and some water?’ I beamed.

She trotted off. She returned, obsequiousness oozing from every pore. I took the saucer.

‘Please make a sign of the cross on him,’ said Mrs Thomas.

Again, I was about to remonstrate, but decided against it. I dipped my finger in the bowl and, a little hesitantly, began to make the sign of the cross on his forehead. A gasp from Sister Filly. I touched Doug’s forehead. He opened his eyes. He looked at me. He looked at his wife. He smiled. She threw her arms around him weeping tears of joy.

‘Father,’ she said (now I knew she was no real Methodist!), ‘you have performed a miracle.’

The relief that now swathed Mrs. Thomas’ whole being was a delight to behold. Sister Filly harrumphed from the doorway.

I returned next day. Doug was still in intensive care, but he was weak. He reached out his hand.

‘Yesterday, when I opened my eyes and saw you, I thought I was in heaven.’

That’s the first time anyone ever said that to me! (Was it the last? That would be telling!) We chatted about this and that.  He reminisced about his life, about Edith, about the farm, about death. He was not afraid. He subscribed to the Banjo Patterson philosophy of the great drover in the sky, watching woolly lambs gamboling in fleecy clouds by lush billabongs, whilst relaxing with Edith on some green veranda without flies and being entertained by harp playing wallabies. Doug’s view was pretty close to the popular Methodist view of heaven.

‘Edith thinks you are wonderful. She intends to go to church every Sunday’, he whispered. Even if she did not, I would still be happy.

Doug died three weeks later. I buried him, Edith at my side, a peaceful sad smile proclaiming to all that Doug was in heaven. Edith arranged for her son to take over the property and moved to Townsville, where she became a regular worshipper.

‘What he did that day, your honor, was a major sin! Very un-Methodist, theologically unsound and akin to Popery.’

‘Thank you, Sister Filly.’ Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Especially when you use a saucer.

Next sin. Communion day at Belgian Gardens, a leafy northern suburb of Townsville. The lady tasked with preparing the ‘wine’ had forgotten to buy any raspberry cordial. Disaster. Ever inventive, she prepared the ‘wine’ from raspberry jelly crystals, pouring the red gunk into the tiny glasses that the faithful drank while kneeling at the communion rail.

‘This is my blood which is given for you. Drink this in remembrance of me,’ I intoned, reverently.

The first row of faithful raised their glasses. The blood stayed put. It had turned to jelly. Had my sermon been too long? Twelve tongues tried to tuck in to the quivering red globules. None budged. Confused, they shuffled back to their pews, eyes downcast. The raspberry vintner sobbed in the second row.

The second twelve had even more trouble. By this time, the vintner was quivering more than her holy jellies. As the faithful left the service, no one said anything. I was trying to hold back my mirth. Unsuccessfully.

‘Can’t you see the funny side of it?’ I asked.

No one could. The Reverend Alan, Uncle Joe et al also heard about it, and about my levity. They added it to the other sins. Was excommunication on the cards?

Townsville cemetery backed on to the airport runway. It also served as the RAAF base. I was burying another unknown Methodist. The soil was piled up on each side of the grave ready to be shoveled in. A green carpet covered the soil and served as a dais for the Reverend Me to stand on. Two jets taxied out, engines screaming. They gunned their engines. I raised my voice but could not compete.

Intoning comforting words fifty metres from two jet engines at full thrust is a lost cause. The attendants began to lower the coffin into the hole. I glanced at the jets as they screamed down the runway, lost my footing and fell on top of the coffin.

The additional 80 kilograms on top of the coffin was too much. Coffin, me and ropes crashed to the bottom of the grave. Consternation. Scrambling hands yanked me out by my robes. The mourners fidgeted and looked as if devils were at play. Some masked sniggers. Others wailed. I was laughing inside!

‘That was a grave slip,’ I quipped.

Some saw the joke. Filly’s mum (she attended) didn’t. The Reverend Alan, Uncle Joe and Uncle Tom Cobbley et al did not. Was it possible I was unsuitable for ordination? With my genes?

The shortcomings continued. I had begun to read books on ‘modern’ theology. I became intrigued with the idea that the miraculous was not the starting point of faith. ‘To love one another as I have loved you’ summed up the essentials. Virgin births, trinities, resurrections? The greatest miracle? Love.

I preached a sermon along those lines. Some expressed appreciation. Elsewhere, all hell broke loose. Jowls quivering, Alan listed my shortcomings in impressive detail. He came to the bit about my heretical sermon. He picked out a tome from his library, called ‘The Faith of the Christian Church’ by Gustaf Audain.

‘Preach what is in here,’ he roared.

‘I thought we were to preach what was in the Bible,’ said I.

Wrong move. He threw Gustaf at me, hitting me on the chin. His aim was getting better. He had missed me with the football boots. Now books! What next?

‘Get out of here,’ he said.

I got out.  At the tender age of twenty-one I had been thrown into the deep end of dealing with those on the periphery of faith who had to deal with the death of their children, sons sent to jail, suicide, divorce, despair: the full gamut of the tragedies of life. And what life experience did I bring to help people deal with these?

None. My background was one of daily bible study leading me to view the world through the rose colored comfort of platitudes, reinforced with thousands of cups of tea, Mynor cordial and pastries in pious preachers’ parsonages, all based on a faith into which I was born; not one that I had chosen. 

Platitudes mean little to those facing tragedy. Actions do. But if those actions are not based on the platitudes that pass for faith, even if, as with Mrs. Thomas, they do comfort the broken hearted, they are specious and those who dare to differ are branded as heretics.

On my twenty-second birthday, I stood alone on a stage in front of my ordained betters. Uncle Everybody sat in the front row looking at me as if they were godfathers in a Methodist Mafia.

‘Do you think it appropriate for you to continue?’ intoned Uncle Joe.

I looked at him. ‘I wish to leave.’

Uncle Joe raised his hand, pointed a quivering finger stage left and thundered: ‘So be it. Remember this, he who puts his hand to the plough and turns his back on it is not worthy of the kingdom of heaven. Be gone!’

Exit left. I was not defrocked. I was unsuited.