St Johns Darlinghurst: Sydney

St Johns Darlinghurst: 28 May 2000

Situated in the middle of Kings Cross and Darlinghurst, St Johns Anglican Church sought to be a reconciling presence in East Sydney. Quite a few Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples were part of our congregations and Rough Edges community, connections in the Northern Territory and friendship with Aunty Jean Phillips. So our decision as clergy to encourage our congregations to join the walk for reconciliation across the Harbour bridge after the morning service was an easy one. The Sunday School made a large banner with everyone’s handprints in red, black or yellow. A group of about 25 of us joined the largest march in Sydney. It was quite an event.

The deeper significance of that day emerged that evening. Many of the 25 who walked across the bridge gathered for our evening service. CMS missionaries from Grooyte Island Rob and Leanna Haynes were present. We listened, discussed and prayed about reconciliation. The most memorable part of our liturgy – for me personally the entire day – was the liturgy of tears we participated in as a congregation which is reproduced below.

May 28, 2000 was the day many of us began to ‘walk the talk’ of reconciliation.

The congregation gathers around the stand with basin of water.

Let us remember a deep suffering hidden behind our history. Let us recall a story we cannot forget but we seek to heal through our remembering and prayers in Christ.

On the 31^st March 1998 a striking stone monument was dedicated at the site of the former Colebrook Home where stolen Aboriginal children were institutionalised until 1971. The tragic story of how Aboriginal children were forcibly removed – stolen – from their parents and placed in public institutions or private homes is recorded in Bringing Them Home. This report was released in 1997 and records the painful experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people subjected to a misguided government policy of racial assimilation. The stone monument dedicated on that Sunday in 1998 is entitled ‘Fountain of Tears’ and symbolises in a dramatic way the sorrow of the Aboriginal parents who lost their children. The water from the fountain flows down, from a coolamon, over the faces of six Aboriginal people into a pool of tears below. The water from that pool was used in a healing ritual for those present at the dedication of the fountain.

As we travel across this land, searching for our soul,

we hear wailing, deep-down wailing.

The policemen came unannounced, they said,

and we had no time to hide our little girl,

no time to say goodbye.

They tore her from my breast! They tore her from my breast!

They tore my breast! They tore my soul!

She screamed and screamed as they took her off

down the long dirt track to a ‘white’ prison somewhere.

In that prison, night after night the voices of torn parents

seeped into their memories to comfort the stolen children –

but they could not.

Day after day

the voices of their teachers crushed their hopes.

You can be white!’ the tears flowed

and the years flowed until a nation heard the stolen story

and tears of healing began to flow over many white faces,.

The tears still flow over the black faces on the monument

where Colebrook Home once stood

and kept Aboriginal ‘orphans’ apart,

‘safe’ from their culture.

And that is what the soldiers did.

Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home. [John 19:25-27]