A challenging question, which over the last twelve months, has been commonly asked of me.
Why would I leave Tathra with its regular passing pods of whales, it’s beautifully restored hotel incorporating a small theatre, regular live entertainment and a mini brewery? Tathra’s wonderful bush walks and majestic views. Its proud indigenous heritage and engrossing stories of bravery and tragedy.
It’s all a history of ‘leaving the shore’! (Although with our floods last year, I thought I had discovered a new one).
My family history, which I researched and wrote, was titled ‘Leaving the Shore’, based on a longer sentence written by André Paul Guillaume Gide - Nobel Prize in Literature 1947. He wrote ‘Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore’ Equally applicable to women.
I began to ‘leave the shore’ early in my life, when at 10, I decided to attend a school that was quite a few Sydney suburbs distant from where I lived. At 11, I was travelling four hours a day to get to and from school. In retrospect, I was already distancing myself from my family. My parents took on fostering and later adopting other children into the family. I admired their Christian charity but found myself on the fringe and in my last year of high school, when my family moved to Port Macquarie, I boarded in Sydney to finish my final year.
The easy answer to my opening question is that I left Tathra to be closer to my eldest son and his family in Melbourne.
Yet I recognize, as I welcome my mid seventies, that there are deeper and more complex reasons.
I am indeed learning to love Benalla. The lake, the gallery and the botanic gardens restore my soul. The street art, the silo trail and Winton Wetlands feed my pride and my joy in sharing why I live where I live. Not least also is the nurturing and supportive U3A family and the community service, engagement and spiritual journeying through the local Uniting Church.
Most significant though, is that Benalla has provided me with an opportunity to explore my inner life.
Recently two sentences have guided my reflections. Firstly, ‘life is a tapestry with various threads running through’. By looking at our personal history, significant threads will emerge.
Secondly from a book titled ‘Songlines’, these words. ‘When you look behind you, you see the future in your footprints’. Suggestion for a ATGB theme next year?
Now I haven’t come to Benalla to seek out the next great adventure, or the next ocean shore. Yet in fact a personal journey inwards, through contemplative prayer, perhaps is offering the greatest adventure of all. In fact, I am finding that the quiet and solitude with which I am privileged, envelops me and invites me to acknowledge a thread through the history of my life.
I am feeling drawn to a role as an end of life friend or perhaps, an end of life chaplain.
My son observed wisely that perhaps I needed to be this old to fulfill such a calling.
Indeed, in my reflections, this calling would honor a recognised thread through my life, and can be seen retrospectively in my, sometimes meandering footsteps.
Graham Jensen
May 2023
Why would I leave Tathra with its regular passing pods of whales, it’s beautifully restored hotel incorporating a small theatre, regular live entertainment and a mini brewery? Tathra’s wonderful bush walks and majestic views. Its proud indigenous heritage and engrossing stories of bravery and tragedy.
It’s all a history of ‘leaving the shore’! (Although with our floods last year, I thought I had discovered a new one).
My family history, which I researched and wrote, was titled ‘Leaving the Shore’, based on a longer sentence written by André Paul Guillaume Gide - Nobel Prize in Literature 1947. He wrote ‘Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore’ Equally applicable to women.
I began to ‘leave the shore’ early in my life, when at 10, I decided to attend a school that was quite a few Sydney suburbs distant from where I lived. At 11, I was travelling four hours a day to get to and from school. In retrospect, I was already distancing myself from my family. My parents took on fostering and later adopting other children into the family. I admired their Christian charity but found myself on the fringe and in my last year of high school, when my family moved to Port Macquarie, I boarded in Sydney to finish my final year.
The easy answer to my opening question is that I left Tathra to be closer to my eldest son and his family in Melbourne.
Yet I recognize, as I welcome my mid seventies, that there are deeper and more complex reasons.
I am indeed learning to love Benalla. The lake, the gallery and the botanic gardens restore my soul. The street art, the silo trail and Winton Wetlands feed my pride and my joy in sharing why I live where I live. Not least also is the nurturing and supportive U3A family and the community service, engagement and spiritual journeying through the local Uniting Church.
Most significant though, is that Benalla has provided me with an opportunity to explore my inner life.
Recently two sentences have guided my reflections. Firstly, ‘life is a tapestry with various threads running through’. By looking at our personal history, significant threads will emerge.
Secondly from a book titled ‘Songlines’, these words. ‘When you look behind you, you see the future in your footprints’. Suggestion for a ATGB theme next year?
Now I haven’t come to Benalla to seek out the next great adventure, or the next ocean shore. Yet in fact a personal journey inwards, through contemplative prayer, perhaps is offering the greatest adventure of all. In fact, I am finding that the quiet and solitude with which I am privileged, envelops me and invites me to acknowledge a thread through the history of my life.
I am feeling drawn to a role as an end of life friend or perhaps, an end of life chaplain.
My son observed wisely that perhaps I needed to be this old to fulfill such a calling.
Indeed, in my reflections, this calling would honor a recognised thread through my life, and can be seen retrospectively in my, sometimes meandering footsteps.
Graham Jensen
May 2023