Pilgrims Post #5

Weekly Newsletter 26 August 2025

The Healing Tears of Protest

Feeling and connection bring us into the world and into relationship with one another. Some things seem too big to be felt alone because they are. They require the collective to hold the space for big feeling, for it to move through, and to remind us that we’re not alone…. This is why we meet in the streets. As much as mass protests and direct action are about putting strategic pressure on opposition, they are often a gathering space for our grief and pain because they are too big to feel alone. Protests don’t get reported on this way, as an eruption of collective grief; on the news they are riots, and we begin the cycle of minimizing the feelings that bring people to the streets, and ultimately we miss the message. We need those spaces and others, too, where our grief can swell, where feeling for feeling’s sake can reconstitute us, where our empathy for one another can build. A community, a society, becomes one, remains one, I think, through sharing feeling.

Reference:
Prentis Hemphill, What It Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World (Random House, 2024), 63–66.

Sunday’s massive protests for Palestine were cathartic for all whose eyes have been seared by the vision of starving children and bombed Gaza landscapes. The disempowerment of helplessness is experienced by many who are frustrated by governments who, trapped by political alliances and military contracts, can only gesture.

Our worship yesterday was led by a Ukrainian mother whose displaced family is housed by the church. Dressed in national costume on the 33rd anniversary of Ukraine’s independance, she shared her story and led communion. An able translator, she rises early to do hospital rounds, assisting patients and medical staff. As she gathers and communicates their stories, I see this as a form of protest, expressing in her service a vision of what life together is meant to be - community that is safe, caring and creative - the shalom of the reign of God. Our preacher was overcome, not so much by the pain of suffering but the beauty of what happened when Jesus healed a woman bent double with her affliction over eighteen years. “… immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.” (Luke 13:13). The tears of protest are indeed beautiful when inspired by the vision of what might be - of what actually is - for the reign of God is among us. May our protests similarly work towards a standing up straight and praising God!

Footy Protests

Believe it or not, the AFL has once again immersed itself in controversy. I share some thoughts on the Australian FootBall League’s Grand Final conundrum here . My own football career is a bit of a fizzer. The ony goal I kicked was paid as 1 point because it was the opposditions goal post - I had just been switched from forward to back pocket. However, I am on top of the family tipping ladder as the minor round comes to a close. My competion will protest that the unpredictability of the season has much to do with this!

Pilgrim’s Protest - Walking with the Saints - Peg Eaton

At the age of 101, Peg Eaton—a cherished member of our community—passed to her eternal reward. The overflow crowd at her funeral bore witness to the profound impact of her life: alert, feisty, and practically compassionate to the very end.

I first met Peg when I arrived in Western Australia, freshly minted from the eastern states, to begin my first ministry post at Fremantle Church of Christ. It was around the time Darwin was reeling from the devastation of Cyclone Tracy, and Perth was receiving a wave of evacuees. The call went out for clothes, household essentials, and listening ears for traumatised survivors.

Peg was at the heart of the response, running the bustling welfare centre in the basement of Beaufort Street Christian Centre. I quickly came to know her as a dynamo of care and coordination. Her clients often became her collaborators, drawn into the work by her fierce compassion and unrelenting energy.

She was a tireless advocate for those on society’s margins, a trailblazer in women’s leadership, and a wise companion among Aboriginal communities. In 1999, Peg sat down with John Bannister from the National Library of Australia to reflect on her fifty years of dedicated engagement with Aboriginal peoples. You can listen to it here.

Peg lived and laboured within the vision of God’s shalom. Her life was a protest against all that denied it, a quiet, persistent resistance to injustice, and a radiant embodiment of grace.