Sat down in the shocking broad sunlight recently, at the edge of a dense copse of trees, and fell into riveting conversation with the estimable Father Frank Brennan, of the Society of Jesus and of the Order of Australia.
But this delicious sunlight was in Oregon, not Canberra, the usual Brennanesque haunt, and the trees were Douglas firs, not gums and wattles, so you would think Frank would be out of his element, but this was not so, which seems worthy of note for Eureka Street readers, who may not have heard Frank in full flow, which I have, and which I do not think I will forget in this life.
So here is some of what we talked about, for entertainment and perhaps inspiration and meditation.
He talked about George Cardinal Pell's absolute personal charm being wedded harrumphingly to a peculiarly confrontational public style, and I talked about how the best spiritual leaders I have met are either remarkably liable to humour, such as the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, or absolutely devoted to working for others and not talking about it, such as Australia's first saint, Mary MacKillop, and the Congregation of Holy Cross's first saint, Brother Andre Bessette of Montreal, who couldn't read and was a door porter his whole career.
He talked about Australia's history with assisted suicide, and his quiet worry about the looming possibility of euthanasia in his native land in the near future, and I talked about Oregon's history with assisted suicide, which was voted into law in 1994, reaffirmed in 1997, and affirmed as legal by the United States Supreme Court in 2007, although only 460 terminally ill Oregonians have killed themselves by physician-prescribed medications since 1997, an average of 34 annually.
He talked about not being a particularly fanatic footy fan, despite the Collingwood Magpies cap he carried with him, as he had been a Brisbane boy before football invaded from the south and tried to impinge on rugby's sway in Queensland, and I talked about having been dragooned into being a Geelong Cats fan by none other than the late Senator John Button, by whose side I chanced to see my very first footy game ever, and so was lured into the blue and