21/11/2017
Finding God in Australian Literature (Article)
A.D. Hope wrote, in his famous poem Australia, that he hoped that it was ‘still from the deserts that the prophets do come’. I love this line because it speaks of biblical prophets raising their ‘voices in the desert’: Moses, Elijah, Jesus, John the Baptist, and Paul in the Arabian desert, and it speaks of St Anthony and the wisdom of all the desert fathers and mothers…but, it also speaks of Australia, a land which has been understood as hard soil to the seeds of Christianity. Hope’s vision suggests we might look to those who live in the difficult places in our country for wisdom. To the deserts, to the detainees, to the deep wisdom of aboriginal people; to learn from those who have, ahead of us, learned some of the lessons that this land has to teach us.
In a related literary move, Peter Carey’s novel Oscar and Lucinda tries Christianity out in colonial Australia. In this novel it comes to Australia in the unlikely hands of an awkward couple. Oscar, the young minister, made his way through his studies on the proceeds of gambling and this is also his truth and faith. Quoting the theology of Pascal, Oscar tells Lucinda, ‘We bet that there is a God. We bet our life on it.’ In one poignant scene from the film based on the novel, Oscar is transported along a river inside a glass church the couple are taking inland. They are ‘betting’ on there being a God, they are living with the precariousness of faith and even life itself in outback Australia. There is also an idea here of the Christian person being seen, being vulnerable, and being what people look at in Australia, even as traditional church buildings become transparent in the harsh Australian light.
Les Murray, one of Australia’s finest poets also knows this Australian taste for authenticity, especially in matters relating to religion. He knows that it’s the person inside the ritual and the theoretical which matters here, perhaps, more than anywhere on earth. Murray offers us many insights, among them — ‘God is the poetry caught in any religion’ and ‘on the end wall hangs the gospel before he was a book.’
— these and many more insights about what it means to be a person of faith in Australia can be explored through reading Australian literature together.
