Joining the Diocesan Synod was a full circle moment, coming for me as it did 20 years since I found a home in this Diocese. I was 21 and starting as Coordinator for the Young Christian Students, five years after I started going to Church. Since then, I’ve spent two decades in social justice ministry, including 15 years as a relational community organiser.
Relational community organising is about developing leaders who build relationships that lead to action. It’s the methodology of the Sydney Alliance, the civil society coalition that I now co-lead. While the Alliance brings the Church into collaboration with people of all faiths and none, for me organising has always been a way to follow Christ – to build up God’s Reign of justice and love.
So when I came to the Synod in October, I came as parishioner, a mother, a second-generation Filipino – and an organiser. As I reflect on the Synod, my organising experience helps me articulate why, and how, it meant so much.
“Chasing the Spirit”
In the Alliance’s early years, I remember reading an article about relational meetings. This organising practice is a one-to-one conversation where people share stories about what motivates them, as the foundation for public action. The author of the article referred to this as “Chasing the Spirit.”
That phrase has always suggested to me the joy of listening, because God’s Spirit is at work in people, and we can uncover that Spirit through conversation. It’s a phrase that could equally be applied to synodality, as it embodied in the practice of spiritual conversations over two days at Parramatta.
“The meeting matters and you matter to the meeting”
Leaders organise when they bring their communities together to act. Often it starts with a meeting, and we all know how hard it can be to get people to come to meetings in their precious time. We teach that people come to a meeting because they believe the meeting matters, and they matter to the meeting.
The Synod epitomised this. The meeting mattered to every person in that room. You could count its significance in people’s tears; in voices that cracked as they addressed the Synod floor, or those who wept quietly when the conversation touched on their deepest aspirations or disappointments. No one was there to kill time.
The meeting mattered – but so did each person. The process of spiritual conversations recognised this, making space for every voice to be heard – but I think the tone for this was set much earlier. We first gathered as a community three weeks prior, and I remember walking into that hall unsure, a voice in my head asking, “Who are you to be here?” Even with a Masters in Theology and a lifetime of commitment, my frailties came to the surface – after all, I can’t even keep my kids quiet in Mass! Did I deserve to be at this table? I’ve heard other delegates voice similar feelings since, of self-consciousness, and not-belonging.
That night, the consoling voice of Qwayne Guevara, Lead Facilitator of the Diocesan Synod, spoke into that self-doubt. She said, “Look around. There is no one here that is a surprise to God.”
It’s good organising for people to know that they, personally and particularly, make a difference to the action. It’s also very, very good spirituality. It reminds me of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius. Through the exercises, like in the Synod, people of faith seek to discern God’s will. For Ignatius, before you can even start the Exercises, you need the Foundation: a lived understanding that God loves you passionately, unconditionally, creatively. You need to know it deeply, in your bones, to hear God speak.
Tension
Christ is the Prince of Peace, but not, I sometimes remind myself, a Prince of Conflict Avoidance. I want to be liked, I want everyone to like each other, thank you very much.
Organising stretches me. Tension is creative and productive in organising. It’s necessary for change.
That’s hard to remember when your heart beats faster at the suggestion of conflict; when your face feels as hot as mine must have during some moments. Tension is hard, but we need it, if we ever want to get to the heart of things. We need honest discussions about the Church of our experience and God’s dream for it – and the gap we see sometimes, between those two realities.
If we want people to step up and shape our Church’s future, we need to create spaces where tension is allowed, even appreciated – while being held with civility and respect. The Synod was the best I’ve seen so far of this in the Church, having witnessed my share of polarisation. It could be an antidote to an increasingly uncivil space.
“An action is a diagnosis”
This organising phrase is one we use a lot after a major event, like a big assembly with a politician. An event like that tells you a lot about your organisation, how its going in its mission – and what it has to do now.
The Church I witnessed at the Synod has a lot of be proud of, even more to be grateful for – and of course, a lot of work to do. Really, it couldn’t be any other way, since the Church is, in the end an ad hoc committee for the Kingdom of God. If there is energy that emerges from the tension of the Synod, this is it – the conviction that this community of faith really does matter and that its mission needs us all.
Chantelle Ogilvie-Ellis is the Co-Lead Organiser with the Sydney Alliance and a parishioner at Our Lady of the Way Parish, Emu Plains.
The Diocesan Synod Report will be released on 1 December 2023. The report will include a summary of the Synod and its outcomes. For future updates, visit the Synod website: https://parracatholic.org/synod2023/
