Angela Young
Angela Young was one of our Directors, is now an Associate Member, and is also a volunteer in our Narooma Education Support Team (NEST).
Without a vision, the people perished.’ Prov 29.18
The Elm Grove Sanctuary Trust has a timeless (strategic) vision: for Human Rights, Social Justice, Our Environment and the Care of all People.
Hi I’m Angela Young who lives in Central Tilba on djiringanj country at the foot of Gulaga. I had met Ed and Laurel during Open Sanctuary Tilba Tilba gatherings years ago. Then in May 2021 Kate Nirlipta and Denise Perroux invited David Oliphant (my husband) and me, Ed and Laurel to a luncheon on Kate’s verandah to celebrate Mothers’ Day. We had a wonderful time together. It was there I learned Ed and Laurel were about to publish a book on their lives, the spiritually unfolding story of the Elm Grove Sanctuary Trust.
It was a surprise to me to find that, what I later discovered to be in their typical generous spirit, Laurel and Ed gave David and me a copy of their book! I couldn’t put it down.
A while later Laurel rang me and specifically asked would I be interested in joining their Board. “We need more women, and I’ve been shown you to be prayerful.” I said no, yet I would like to be supportive.
Then Laurel and Ed began a meditation group for the purpose of hearing people’s own spiritual experiences stimulated by having read the Elm Grove Story. This was attractive to David and me. We began meeting each month with them and Michael and Rita for a shared meal followed by a time of stillness, silence and openly receiving. This group has included other visitors over time. Trish Delaney and Caroline Leach come regularly.
At first we have conversation over the meal. Then a meditative time of silence with reflections after.
I began occasionally giving the Elm Grove Story book to various friends whom I knew might be interested. This included the extraordinarily gifted musical educator of all kinds of people all over the world, Judy Clingan, when she came to stay with David and me one Christmas. She is a multi musician, composer, artist and theatre producer. She read the Elm Grove book immediately. Soon she and her daughter Jess came back from Canberra with performers in the school holidays. Judy shared at meals with Laurel and Ed and has since written for this newsletter. Judy is passionate for working with children and young people to draw out their gifts. I have been the receiver of her openhearted inclusive welcome and invitation to sing with her musical people at what was a ‘down’ time in my life. Her choir lifted my spirit and poured healing balm into my soul.
Laurel was guided to set up a sub committee of the Board after the 2023 Referendum, in order to capture momentum after the ‘Yes’ campaign had ended. She asked if I’d be interested to join a practical, locally formed team who would support the education of all young people including aboriginal youth who were living in circumstances making study and sticking at school difficult. We would continue an already existing partnership between the Elm Grove Sanctuary Trust and Narooma High School. That committee became known as NEST. The stars aligned at this point and I joined. Before long I became a regular volunteer at Breakfast Club there. As Kevin Bird points out, we’re like the clock in the background going “Tick Tick Tick,” consistently there. And my completely retired partner David even joined me at Breakfast Club at that time in spite of bodily issues. Later, when Tony Agnew suddenly needed to move to Sydney, David graciously agreed to exercise his gift in writing minutes on the NEST committee, and he and I have, this year, joined the Board to support Laurel and Ed amid their own health challenges. All this has seemed natural and right. Moreover it is a joy for me to be visiting the school, and a relief to be involved very locally to where I live. It is amazing what becomes possible through mutual relationship and a shared vision, where there is also openness to be spiritually guided, and the willingness first to be still, to really listen and receive.
As to my background, I’m a follower of Christ with a profound awareness of that same Spirit of kindness and loving Presence in everything and for all that is good, if only I can recognise that it is indeed, always there, amid suffering. I find it takes mindfulness to focus upon that which is beautiful, lovely and of good report. It is a work for me to recognise and accept my own experience and that of others in the here and now, whatever that may be, and to fill my heart with trust in that Good, even in the face of that which at times is undoubtedly in some places horrendously evil. To me nothing is black and white as there are so many complex and grey areas of life. My mother used to say, “People are acting according to their light at the time”.
I’m grateful to have had a broad education both formally and informally. I was brought up with nature, plants and animals on a farm with a stream of visitors (usually various missionaries and their families) coming to stay for refreshment in our hospitable home. I fed and played with animals, climbed trees and milked a cow before breakfast. My parents were older, my father born in 1894 and my mother in 1915. They were survivors of two world wars. I have experienced displacement, death, abuse, leading youth groups, caring for dangerously sick children, midwifery and giving birth at home myself, nursing the dying in hospitals or their homes, marriages, divorce and bushfires to name but a few within my private or public life. I have been an apprentice nurse as well as educated in a University or various Institutes and Associations.
My current work centres on learning how to listen, and how to love those who hold different views to my own. I am a professional Psychodramatist. J L Moreno who founded that method always advocated “reversing roles with the other.” Within such encounters, if two people see the world with each other’s eyes, this usually becomes transformational. However in order to be able to do that, the person needs a sense of self. We all need companions along the way who will accurately mirror our experiences and become auxiliaries for us to get to know our own true selves and what each one of us is uniquely here for.
In recent times I am grateful to have discovered through the professional supervision world, Clean Language arising from the work of the extraordinary counselling psychologist, David Grove, of Maori background. This gives me simple questions and a structure to help me stay out of the way of another’s process in finding their own way forward and getting to know what is good for them. I’ve been running a little programme on the far south coast called Spiritual Care for Life which offers development and reflective practice to largely volunteer Spiritual and Pastoral Care practitioners in expanding their capacities for visiting in Hospitals, Aged Care Facilities, Disaster Recovery, Palliative Care, parishes or other community settings. Keeping up this practice helps me to learn. We are all lifelong learners. Spiritual Care for Life, as in the Elm Grove Trust best functions to achieve things by us being co-creators together.
I was shown this picture by Marcia Karp while doing a Tele’Drama course online during the pandemic with people from all over the world. It is the note on which I would like to close this Bio. I’m not sure who told the story below or who took the photo. It captures for me what is needed as an alternative to a culture where greed divides and enmity thrives. I pray that our chaotic divided world will find peace through mutual love and cooperation. I loved singing a song called ‘Ubuntu’ Judy Clingan taught us in her Wayfarers choir.
An anthropologist proposed a game to the kids in an African tribe. He put a basket full of fruit near a tree and told them that whoever got there first won the sweet fruits. When he gave them the signal to run they all took each other’s hands and ran together, then sat in a circle enjoying their treats. When he asked them why they chose to run as a group when they could have had more fruit individually, one child spoke up and said: “UBUNTU, how can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad?”
‘UBUNTU’ in the Xhosa culture means: “I am because we are”