Foreword

Maureen Flood is admired and deeply loved by so many people around the world,

that we feel immeasurably privileged to be invited to write the opening to her important

and beautiful essay. Instead of giving any of our own reflections about Maureen or her

essay, which speaks so clearly for itself, we have decided simply to introduce both in

her own words. We think she will approve of this decision, since it will spare her from

embarrassing praise. The words we have drawn on come from a two page curriculum

vitae she gave us when, in 2005, we were able to present this essay to a wider public

at the Braidwood Two Fires Festival, held in memory of Judith Wright, and we asked

Maureen what she wanted us to say.

A Blessed Sacrament sister, Maureen has had many years of experience in areas of

human spiritual development. She has worked as a group facilitator and spiritual

director. Her published works include articles on 'The role of the contemplative in

an unjust world' and 'A journey through the death of the Father'. During her years in

Rome, she worked regularly for the English Department of Vatican Radio as panellist,

commentator and as writer-broadcaster of reflections and meditations.

In 1988 Maureen researched, produced and presented a series of thirteen twenty-five

minute specialist radio programmes entitled 'Women's work". This project was

funded by the International Women's Development Agency and was first broadcast

through Station 2NSB FM Chatswood and subsequently through numerous regional

stations. Maureen has featured in a number of ABC Radio programmes over the

years, including Radio National's Encounter and 'The Words to say it'. In 1996, she

was invited back to Vatican Radio to write and record eight short programmes on

human sexuality (a first for Vatican Radio!).

From a lifetime of observation and experience of human spiritual need, Maureen

has distilled this essay as a contribution to the development of a new language for

speaking about God, religion and spiritual life. Poetry, she believes, opens a door

to such a language. It has the capacity, in common with other forms of art, to go

"beyond the point where the purely rational exhausts its possibilities and ... to hold

in creative tension what the rational may see as contradiction." In the poems of Judith

Wright, Maureen found words and images that met her own longing to express

realities beyond the grasp of rational explanation. Reflecting on her essay, she wrote:

I wrote Born of Fire, Possessed by Darkness because I wanted to

say what I've seen through my life, that is, that religious teaching

and religious practice often leave out the simple fact that human

beings are in bodies, are earthed, and that we are constantly

engaged in what Judith Wright calls 'the play of opposites, their

interpenetration'.

We move constantly between love and death, life and destruction,

truth and darkness. My religious formation did not give me a way

of seeing these apparently opposing forces as belonging inextricably

together. Poetry did. In poetry, and especially in the poetry of Judith

Wright, life and death are seen and said without dogma or final

definition but in a way that opens a space for the heart and for the

questing imagination.  I wrote this essay as a way of moving beyond

the boundaries of a minefield of dualities, dichotomies, laws and

hierarchies into something more wholesome, something freer.

Maureen's essay was written in 1997 as part of her work for a Masters Degree

at Sydney University. In March 2005, the essay was presented at the Two Fires

Festival in Braidwood NSW. The festival celebrates Judith Wright's contributions

to literature, the protection of the environment and the wellbeing of indigenous

people in Australia. With a similar insight to Judith Wright's, Maureen reveals the

spiritual awareness that is the foundation of this poet's gifts to us.

Catherine Garrett and Jeremy Nelson

Braidwood, November 2005