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Important and devastating: Lessons from the summit
By The Revd Dr Christopher Newell*
May 30, 2008
The Revd Dr Christopher Newell
Looking back at the 2020 summit, Christopher Newell* finds important lessons in the event's missed spiritual and religious opportunities.
In his April column of Market-Place Wayne Brighton critiques the idea of " 1000 of the brightest people ...planning Australia's future." He makes a good point. He also observes the importance of having lovers rather than thinkers at the 2020 Summit.
I think we needed both, and indeed a representation of all of the virtues. I am however intrigued that I largely owe my selection to my "professio
I teach medical ethics at the University of Tasmania and am also Canon Theologian at Saint David's Cathedral Hobart as a non-stipendiary priest.
Here is how I introduced myself to participants on the 2020 website:
I grew up in Queensland as a person with multiple and life threatening disabilities, failed at school and had the formative experience of working in a sheltered workshop. I have spent years of my life, from childhood onwards, in a variety of institutional settings. I was dealing with my own mortality from a very young age. Having moved with my family to Tasmania I still remember being refused entrance to a degree program at the University of Tasmania, the same institution at which I am now Associate Professor of Medical Ethics!
I know that my nomination- by someone else- was along similar lines.
Certainly it did stress competence but I like to think I have a breadth of engagement and competence.
Taking the example of Jesus Christ I sought to empty myself of any claim to professional importance in the 2020 summit.
It is the virtue of love that informed what I did.
Important and Devastating
The 2020 Summit was an important and devastating experience.
Its importance lay in the bringing together of 1000 people of good will to imagine the future.
An opportunity for citizens to seek to engage in the activities of the polis, reminiscent of its early Greek origins.
It's inspiration clearly drew upon the 1990s activities and ideals of New Labor in the UK in the Blair years.
Famous, powerful and ordinary rubbed shoulders in imagining the future.
Perhaps most importantly, indigenous voices spoke of important steps in healing our nation.
My quiet times with two wise people of Christian vocations will be forever cherished, especially as we admired each other's work. Such moments are nourishing and build connection.
My devastation lay in struggling to translate my words and life experiences of daily being dependant upon the health system into a future scenario to which others without that experience related.
I must say that as I sat there in my wheelchair with my nasal prongs inserted in the requisite "days of our lives" manner I did not feel very important, but was increasingly aware of how such life experience is needed in the areas of health and welfare- and how such powerlessness may paradoxically be so valuable.
It is only with deep listening and space that we can really DO public policy and dream of the future can be done.
Yet the hurried focus on outcomes when we had not built relationship was devastating.
How can I dream with someone I do not know well and had not broken bread with?
How can I dream when so much of our shared time had blaring music rather than the Wisdom found in shared quiet and reflection?
How can I feel valued when so much of our imagining together was built upon a Cult of Celebrity and a desire for fame?
The front-page photos of the body-beautiful Jackman and Blanchett (with baby!) reflected the central role given to celebrity.
At one stage I imagined a country where in 2020 each person knows they are loved and have a valued place in society, yet this was dismissed as not fitting into a discussion focussed on generating a few jingoistic words.
Fame and position was in, as journos jockeyed for the right shot and power interview.
None seemed interested in the mum who over a boxed breakfast told me of her beautiful son with multiple disabilities who had died in her arms recently.
We shed a tear quietly together as around us others told stories to each other, also unrecorded in the media and official outcomes.
Such wisdom, such beauty!
Lessons for the Church
There were important lessons and I would suggest missed opportunities for us as Church.
Special consultation was held prior to the event with the Jewish community because of the Passover, yet on Sunday morning we as Christians needed to witness together and pray collectively.
On Sunday very early morning I said the Office alone and reflected on where is God in all this?
Is God so unimportant we could not find time in our busy schedule to stop and be nurtured?
It would have been so powerful for the Christians at the Summit to have recognised and proclaimed God in our midst.
In addition, I think Wayne Brighton is right to have suggested that there is little perception in the secular society of the value of the Church.
Perhaps part of the problem may be the way in which the Church lives out its theology.
Theology teaches us of the importance Christ placed on the poor and dispossessed.
We needed more of those voices, silence, and then corporate action.
My suggestion is that the Church still has a significant opportunity to listen to the spiritual cries found in each suggestion recorded, and the many that did not make it to the official record, and to engage with the spiritual yearning.
All of us yearn for a valued place, to know we are loved and to be all that we can be. It is not just the religious, but indeed the spiritual dimension to the Summit needs to be made explicit.
There is no doubt that the missed spiritual and religious dimensions to the 2020 summit's life and possibilities are important.
For me it raises the challenge of how we as a Church, live out our theology.
To be thinkers full of love, and embrace all of the Christian virtues requires us to listen and then act.
I am not certain we ended up planning Australia's public policy at 2020 but I do know the Church needs to engage with such a process and the aspirations present.
Will we be prepared to do so when the movers and shakers of the Anglican church were largely not present?
* One of three Anglican clergy at the 2020 Summit, the Revd Dr Christopher Newell is Associate Professor in Medical Ethics within the University of Tasmania's School of Medicine.
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