Our Happy Places.
It was about 1969 when we moved to the family farm at Sheep-hills just outside of Warracknabeal. Christ Church was our parish church, as the Sheep-hills Church had become defunct and had subsequently moved to Halls Gap, where it continues a faithful, welcoming ministry to tourists and locals alike.
I was baptised and confirmed at Christ Church Warracknabeal. My father and his parents were all buried from this church. I learnt to serve at the altar there, and I believe the flickering of a vocation was sparked there. The sanctuary where I floundered and flounced felt like a warm, secure and safe place, and I wanted every moment of my life to feel like this.
So when I returned there for an ordination earlier this year, I found myself once again in that same sacred space, with the same windows, the same carpet and a doona experience of nostalgia and longing. Like fluttering autumn leaves, memories came to mind. It was almost as if I had just slipped into the dimension of my former life and there I was, as if I had never left.
I should not have been surprised about the potency and possibility of this ‘telescoping of time’. Whenever I am at the altar, I am also at that very first/last supper whilst simultaneously I am at the end of time at the heavenly banquet with angels and archangels. The party that knows no hangovers or ending.
I didn’t drive up to the ordination expecting such a humbling and delicious experience. The sense of otherness always finds me.
Where I have come from and who I was is the stuff of who I am. It is not something to be shirked or recoiled from but something to be rejoiced in. It was, is and will be, my happy place. And yours is…?