An Anglican minister, a Catholic nun and a Buddhist philosopher walk into a café
Which God has the answers? And no, I'm not talking about Keanu Reeves.
After some strange intrusion of Keanu Reeves into my life, in a stream of existential angst, I wrote a letter to said man – he is just a man after all – asking him how he came to the decision that at fifty-two it was too late, he was too old to have children. Fifty-two was only 4 weeks away. I had that in my mind, a deadline, the sort of deadline you set as a worst case scenario, that you know will never happen, like having a child on your own if you get really old, like 40.
The first time I talked to my parents about having a child alone I was 35. These are my very religious, Very Asian parents – well Mum is religious enough for two or four. It took them a couple of minutes but Dad said “As long as you’re not having a child out of wedlock, if you adopt, you could help a child out of poverty.” This was said in much the same it-will-never-happen spirit that forms the basis of most absolutes; I will never have an affair with a married man, I will never marry my adopted daughter – too Soon-Yi?
Dad had died two years ago– how could it be two years already? – less than a month after my son Phoenix was born, beautiful but still. Mum was in a nursing home and too focused on her own pain to consider mine. No-one I knew was still wondering if their future held children. That decision had been made a decade or two before. It was only me that seemed to be cheerfully holding on by my bleeding fingernails.
I wasn’t sleeping well, which is when I googled Keanu Reeves to see the latest fascinating article. Sandra Bullock when interviewed said “Keanu doesn’t need anybody’s help” to find a girlfriend. That made me laugh out loud, the kind of barking laugh that wakes the neighbours. It was 3am and there’s only so much Words with Friends you can play. My body, my soul needed a laugh and the rabid love surrounding Keanu Reeves provided it.
Keanu hadn’t as yet written back to tell me the meaning of life, so I took the next logical step and turned to religion. I mean really, how can you float on a sea (yes I upgraded) of existential angst without religion in the boat?
But what religion to pick? I can’t settle on any one religion as offering the definitive truth, the meaning of life. I take something from all religions; well mainstream, not Scientology. Is Scientology considered mainstream in Hollywood?
Religion No 1 The Anglicans
I had dinner with one of my closest friend from my university days, Luke who is now the Minister of the Anglican church closest to my Mum’s house – he even has his name on the board out front. I suggested to Juzzy – my best friend from uni – that we should go one of his sermons and heckle, but she wouldn’t have it, not even a polite standing ovation. Luke, Juzzy and I went to Bali in our 20s with some of his mates and spent the days as Australians in their 20s do – in cheap hotels, getting drunk on cheap drinks, dancing all night, getting sun burned all day and buying cheap neon clothes that you think look fabulous. Luke escaped with his virginity intact and found religion, much to the concern of his parents who owned the local butcher and thought he’d joined a cult. Luke and Laura have 5 children (10 – 22) and it is amusing to see the perpetually smiling Luke looking worn and harried by children and worries about his eldest who stays out doing what he himself did in his 20s. Whilst the kids were banished to homework and showers, over wine, Luke and Laura listened. Luke said that we don’t know God’s purpose, that He has a plan and we need to trust in His plan; perhaps children would come to me another way. If I had married when I was in my 20s I would never have done the work I have done, led the life I have lived. Perhaps that was His plan for me and we can’t see now the purpose of what we are going through but it will be clear in time.
Certainly, if I had married the man I felt was my soulmate at 18 to 38, I would be married to a doctor with 3 children in the suburbs talking about the benefits of a Thermomix. Would that have been so bad? I would not have known any better. Or would there have been a creeping dissatisfaction?
Later, when Laura and I were seeing a production of Lord of the Flies, she told me that Luke had said “I don’t know how she’s going to make this decision.” They prayed for me. Lots of people pray for me – even my Jewish physiotherapist.
If all these people are praying for me, and this is the best that God can come up with, perhaps I’m doomed. I’ve been pretty good – I mean I’ve tried. Okay, yes, I’ve allowed a certain moral elasticity to various situations. On the whole, most of the harm I’ve done to myself rather than others. Still no-one seems to be listening to these fervent prayers being uttered. Perhaps God really is a man and he’s too busy watching sport on TV.
I consider myself Catholic by guilt, Buddhist by philosophy, so Buddhism and Catholicism were my natural choices for supernal opinions.
Religion No 2 Catholicism
Sister Anne is a Catholic nun. I worked for her for 6 months editing stories about children in detention, child abuse in the Church, writing about my past life. We met at a local café for a cup of tea.
She was deep in a moment of outrage about Australian immigration policy. I love nuns, the original feminist activists. She said “If I had a gun I would shoot Peter Dutton” (the Minister of Home Affairs). I asked her if she believed in fate; perhaps I was not meant to have a child.
Sister Anne said “I don’t know if I believe in God, at least not God as some man with a white beard. I joined when I was young. It’s easy to believe when you’re young. But now that I’m older, old, I don’t know that I believe in a divine plan.”
Did you hear my brain exploding? If my church-three-times-a-week mother heard that she’d have a fatal stroke.
“I do believe in God, that the world could do with more empathy and compassion. It’s more about what you believe at this point,” she said.
“I know I don’t want to take my instructions from a book written by men hundreds of years ago. No offence.”
“None taken. We have a place we put all the directives from Cardinal George Pell” and she grabbed an imaginary missive, crumpled it up and threw a jump shot through an invisible hoop into a bin. “The circular drawer is full of them.”
I laughed. Then sighed.
“What do I believe? … I believe that we should try and go through the world with a kind and generous and open heart and be of service to others, help people where we can. I don’t know what I’m meant to do, if I’m meant to do anything, what’s at the end, if there’s an end. I just know how I’m meant to move through the world.”
“Well” she said “That sounds pretty good to me. You don’t mind if I pray for you though do you?”
“May as well cover all the bases.” We chuckled and continued talking about politics, family and the state of the world, like any other two friends would do.
Religion No 3 Buddhism
I met with my preternaturally chilled and beaming friend Kay from high school. This is the same Kay who made me, made me, skip history class and go to the beach instead and sunbathe topless. Scandalous I know. I was such a goody-two-shoes I’ve no idea how I got dragged along in her wake or why someone so cool took any interest in me at all. People would have described me as “nice”. I was though. Placid and nice. I never said a bad thing about anyone and jumped to the defense of others. Years of conditioning perhaps, all those years of having to be dependent on the kindness of strangers. I was mostly oblivious to the dynamics of teenage girls who had all been big fish in their own little ponds, top of their schools, in the opportunity classes.
When I look back on highschool it is with little fondness, save for those days escaping to the beach and sunbaking. There is the predominant sense of struggling. My epilepsy was at its worst at that time. I had my first fit on the first day of school and for the remainder I was doped up to the eyeballs, giving me the equivalent of a learning disability and no eye-hand coordination. That’s not easy in a selective girls school. Still, there are 5 writers from my English class so all that Shakespeare must have done something. That includes Kay, who has been writing for 20 years, still waiting for her first book to get published.
Kay is also a teacher of Buddhist philosophy, married to the same man she met at 16, who picked her up in the back alley of some club we’d talked our way into. She drove off on the back of a motorbike with the bad boy in a leather jacket and married him 4 years later. It was the only wedding I’ve been to where the groom looked happier than the bride. She had a blowfly trapped under her veil, buzzing loudly in the silent church and we were all close to hysterical as we tried to free it.
Kay and I talked about attachment. It seemed the right sort of thing to discuss with a Buddhist. I talked about trying to determine my true motivation. Did I want to have a child for me, so I wouldn’t grow old alone? Did I feel some biological imperative to nurture another human being?
I knew that wasn’t it. I had started off needing my child, but the need had turned into a want. The yearning had become less desperate, less possessive, less about me.
There were 11 other families – couples with healthier bank balances, big houses in the suburbs – on the whiteboard next to the desk of the Manager of the Foster-to-Adoption program. If I took myself off that list there would just be one less person with whom those couples had to compete. The child that might come to me, if I hung in long enough, would not languish in care. Someone else, a couple, could provide as much love and a better home, more opportunities than I could. I could take myself off the list with a clear conscience. It’s not as if there was one child that was specifically meant for me, a Lilliputian soulmate.
There were other things to do than be a mother. I could write, not just in the spaces between school drop off and pick up. Write with conviction, with a purpose, with a wellspring of time; it could be a life.
We talked about whether being creative was selfish, writing something, doing something, that did not have the purpose of changing the world, with no ethical, moral value. Something that was just fun. Kay said “if it comes from you it can’t help but bring some part of you and that part has something to say.”
Kay, in her zen-like voice, with those sky-blue eyes said “if you accept the concept of fate, that there is karma, that we have no control over the life we are given, then it is freeing. There is no point trying to control what you cannot control. You can only choose how you respond to the circumstances you are given. If the agency called and said “we have a child for you” what would you say?”
“I would feel conflicted. I keep saying to myself ‘please don’t call, please don’t call’ so I can get to my birthday and there will be no decision to make.”
Kay put her hand on mine. “Then take yourself off the list.”
Wishing you love and all good things x
Be a patron of the arts – oh that sounds fancy
You don’t have to own a castle to be a benefactor or patron of a writer and it sounds fancy doesn’t it? You can be a patron for the cost of a coffee. You can say stuff at parties, like “Yes I support a new writer and her foster child. Can’t have them all starving in garrets writing by candlelight can we? How much does a garret go for these days?” Seriously, thank you for supporting me, my muse, and my son in our daily lives.
Wishing you love and all good things x
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