The
Catholic Weekly
Online
Sydney
18 January 2004
Home
Archive
Subscribe
Links
Contact
Pharmacists
saying ‘no’ to sale of pill
Organ donor plea
Irish festival
aids kids
29 die for Church
‘Powerful’ program
centres on Lenten themes
Marists on move
In
the pink (or baby blue?)
Wilde
times at Genesian
Lunch at the Talbot
Lord of the Rings
Historian who defied
adversity
Fr John ‘helped
thousands of souls’
Year to remember
Letters
Life without a
mask
The fear of disapproval
A
year of celebration
The Catholic Weekly
Goose bumps from
nuns’ Ave Maria
A
feast of faith
A hero at Glenrowan
Defence the key to Terra Sancta’s strategy
Nicola’s search for the perfect wave . . . at Bronte
College put George in volleyball’s courta
Life without a mask
A MOMENT OF REVELATION changed Andrew Howie’s life forever. This is his personal testimony
A REVELATION: ‘I found myself standing outside Westminster Cathedral. Before I knew it, I was inside ...’
I was born in Sydney in 1951 to nominally Presbyterian parents. My over riding impression of my childhood is of being alone a great deal. Religious matters were never discussed. I had inklings that there was something “other”, but these had to be shut away.
My elder brother had a confidence and assuredness that escaped me. My world became increasingly one of wonder and mystery. It was the ordinary things of life that seemed to capture my imagination. As a little boy, I would spend hours looking at bugs, blades of grass or flowers. Books had a particular fascination.
But all this was about to change dramatically. At the age of nine, I was torn from my safe, comfortable surroundings and thrust into the rough and tumble of a boys’ boarding school. It was a nightmare. There was nowhere to hide. The slightest vulnerability was pounced upon by the older boys. Painful and demeaning initiations were common. Sport was considered to be the measure by which you were judged and therefore accepted – and I was hopeless at it, and only marginally better in the classroom.
During my early teenage years, I realised that I would have to survive in this alien environment. I believe many of us come to such a point, either consciously or unconsciously: what do I have to do? … how do I have to behave? … how high do I have to jump, in order to be accepted? So this 13-year-old boy started to develop the appropriate personality. I learned to wear a mask. In so doing I started a split, that would eventually become a chasm, between who I really was and who I thought I was expected to be.
After school and as the years rolled by, I worked hard at perfecting this mask. I learned how to use charm and humour to inveigle my way into or out of most situations. I became adept at being whomever and whatever others wanted as I relentlessly pursued what I believed to be the only life worth living: the pursuit of exterior achievement and success. After my short but glittering career in stockbroking vanished in the wake of the collapse of the mining boom, I fell quite by accident into the television industry and found myself to be perfectly at home in this world of make-believe. The cult of personality reigned supreme both in front of and behind the camera, and I slid into this like a hand into a well-worn glove.
I loved working with actors, writers and creative people. I progressed quickly up the ladder. Life was good and I thought it would remain so.
But even in that stockbrokers’ office I had had a glimpse about what was really happening. I remember one day looking out of the office window. The taller buildings around framed the sky and it seemed to me for the briefest of moments that they were somehow “squeezing” it. The symbolism is obvious: I myself was being squeezed by the pressure of expectations and obligation. Over the years, I was to have many such glimpses, and all would be ignored. The mask that had started to take shape all those years ago at boarding school was becoming my reality.
By the time I was in my late 30s, however, I became aware of a weariness
that went far beyond the normal feelings of tiredness brought about by
burning the candle at both ends.
At first I tried to deal with this by getting some extra sleep, but the
malaise started to become all-pervasive. My concentration lapsed and,
worse still, I gradually began to lose interest in my work. This was
frightening, as by this stage I was totally and absolutely defined by
my career. I started to realise there must be something wrong with me,
but what it was I did not know. I was simply aware of a sense of extreme
unease bordering on panic.
Then I was told that the network wanted to send me on a trip to Europe at the end of the year by way of saying “thank you” for the work I had done. My heart sank. The prospect of spending Christmas in a bleak European winter did nothing for me. When I arrived in London, the dull grey leaden sky seemed to hang low overhead, it was freezing, the wind had a bitter chill and the grim faces on the people did nothing to gladden the heart. Even a fancy Park Lane hotel did not help.
Then one Sunday I found myself standing outside Westminster Cathedral. Before I knew it, I was inside, standing at the back, mesmerised by the awareness that something extremely important was happening here. I was so dumbstruck by what I would later come to know as the Mass that I almost had to remind myself to continue breathing, as if the very act of breathing would in some way detract from the experience.
I was consumed by the overwhelming sense that what I was witnessing was in some way a revelation of what had been going on within me all my life – and it was this that I had spent all my life suppressing and repressing. The shell I had grown was shattering in the face of what I was experiencing internally. It was almost as if I had spent all my time up to that point in trying to keep a secret. And now, up there in the sanctuary of Westminster Cathedral, something was happening that was causing this secret to be exposed for the whole world to see. What was happening up there? I had no idea, and at last I fled into the square outside and tried to get as far away from that place as I could. I was gripped by terror. I found myself almost running. One thing was absolutely clear: I knew beyond any doubt whatsoever that I was a changed person – I could never go back to being who or what I had been.
After a few days, I became aware that a huge weight was beginning to lift from me. But at the same time I felt afraid at the thought of going back home and to work. How could I possibly go back to living a life that seemed light years from where I was now?
I tried for about five years to cling to the old ways, the old relationships, the old lifestyle. I suffered as I tried to lead two lives concurrently.
I started going to Mass on a Sunday and also during the week, very tentatively at first, aware of the need to be careful about whom I should reveal myself to. Gradually, however, a couple of people came into my life who gently steered me in some wonderful directions. I started to read voraciously: St John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Merton and William Johnston became trusted friends. Bede Griffiths’ accounts of his contemplative experience in India held a particular sway over me at this time, and they still do. I started going on retreats and also embarked on a very necessary three years of intensive psychotherapy. Finally, after a couple of attempts to leave my job, I made the break in 1999.
So, at the ripe old age of 52, I am living my life for the very first time, realising the preciousness of the sacrament of the present moment: I am learning to live without being preoccupied with what is to come or with regret at what has passed.
My baptism and reception into the Catholic Church have become
the foundation of the second half of my life, and my profession as a
Camaldolese
Benedictine Oblate witnesses to my contemplative calling. But when
the mist descends
and the road ahead darkens, which at times it still does, the psalmist
reassures me when he says:
And I will lead the blind
in a way that they know not;
in paths that they have not known I will guide them.
I will turn the darkness before them into light,
The rough places into level ground
Reprinted courtesy of The Tablet.
http://www.thetablet.co.uk/