Last week I received an email asking if I would be a guest speaker at the chapel service at St Aidan’s School early in the school year. This confused me for a moment, until I saw the email address (that ended in “.ca”), and I realised the email had not only gone to the wrong person, but the wrong country. Figuring that a school would probably love to hear from another country, I thought I’d send them a letter in reply. This is what I wrote:
Greetings from St Aidan’s Uniting Church in Perth Western Australia!
The email asking for coming as a guest speaker accidentally came to me, and given I am the other side of the world, it’s a bit far to come for a 10 – 15 minute slot in your chapel service. But I thought being a school, you might like to hear from me anyway as we build relationships and share God’s hope around the world.
You probably know a bit about Australia – koalas, kangaroos and the Sydney Opera House are usually foremost in the minds of people when they hear “Australia.” The younger members of your community probably know “Bluey” and some of the older members may remember hearing in the news about our terrible summer of bushfires in 2019-2020. When we hear of your bushfires in the news, we can relate and often send you our prayers (as well as our firefighters for support).
Perth is the opposite side of Australia to all of that (though we do have kangaroos). It’s 4,000km (2,500mi) from here to Sydney. That is like going from your school to Mexico City! Perth is still the most isolated city in the world – our closest neighbour is Adelaide, and that’s about the same distance from you to Washington DC.
I think it’s a beautiful city to live in. We have a very shallow but wide river, which in English is called the Swan River and in Nyungar, the indigenous language of this area, it is called Derbal Yerrigan. I am lucky to live near the river, not far from Matagarup – the meeting place where the waters are shallow enough for people to wade across.
My favourite native flower is called Nooringa, or the Sturt Desert Pea. This is a special flower to me because we find it in some of the driest parts of Australia. It grows where the soil has little food and the land gets few days of rain. Because of this, it reminds me about God’s hope.
Sometimes our life feels like a desert. Things go wrong. We might have an argument with our best friend, or our parents are fighting and we don’t feel safe. There might be all sorts of reasons why life is like a desert. But in that desert there can still be flowers that grow. We can still find moments of beauty or times that give us hope for the future.
I have learnt many times – both through my study and through my own life – that if I am open to God when bad things happen, God can help me use them. I’m not saying that God made them happen, but God can help me be a better, kinder, more compassionate person, because I can grow from my experiences Sometimes it is hard to trust this will happen – especially when things are going wrong. Sometimes I even get a bit angry with God and say “God, I’ve had enough learning about this! Make it go away!” But as I practice trust and reflect on past experiences, I know it to be true. Like the flower that blooms in the desert, I know there is hope to be found.
My prayer for you all, as you start this new school year, is that you too may experience God’s hope. Life gives us all sorts of unexpected surprises, and not all of them are good. May you gradually see those flowers that bloom in the desert spaces of your lives and may those flowers sustain and support you throughout your good times and bad.
With love and prayers from a very different St Aidan’s to yours.
Dr Elaine Ledgerwood.
