Tim Costello - Hope: Moments of inspiration in a challenging world

Published in 2012 by Hardie Grant Books

Hardie Grant Books (Australia)

Ground Floor, Building 1

658 Church Street

Richmond, Victoria 3121

www.hardiegrant.com.au

Hardie Grant Books (UK)

Dudley House, North Suite

3435 Southampton Street

London WC2E 7HF

www.hardiegrant.co.uk

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

Copyright Tim Costello 2012

Cataloguing-in-Publication data is available from the National Library of Australia.

Hope

eISBN 978 1 74273 845 1

Cover design by LANZ+MARTIN

To my parents
Russell and Anne Costello,
and my children
Claire, Elliot and Martin

All are central to my experience of hope

Hope is what sits by a window and waits for one more dawn, despite the fact that there isnt an ounce of proof in tonights black, black sky that it can possibly come.

Joan D. Chittister, Scarred by Struggle,
Transformed by Hope

Contents

There are many people named in the anecdotes I have included in this book. People who have helped to make these stories what they are, and have worked beside or with me in all sorts of places. For their part in my life I am grateful.

But there are also many unnamed who have made these experiences possible. And to them I want to express my deep appreciation. They range from the loyal staff at World Vision Australia and colleagues in other organisations or spheres of life, that work towards making the world a better and more just place, to good friends and family who have nourished and grounded me.

Of course my most important acknowledgement is to Merridie, my wife. She has worked on the text of this book helping me shape what was a stream of consciousness. Her eye for detail helped as we talked over the experiences I have had, as well as some that she has shared with me. Considering together the topic of hope has focussed our minds in the light of the stage of life we are in, and the challenges we continue to face in our journey together. Lifes best gift to us has been a marriage of minds, hearts and core values.

My thanks too go to Pam Brewster as the patient publisher from Hardie Grant who kept believing in it even when I had produced little.

Tim Costello

We had the experience but missed the meaning.

T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

I grew up with stories. Some were fairytales where the like of Red Riding Hood was gobbled up by a big bad wolf. Others were of little children who would be put in ovens and cooked. Thoroughly gruesome, I know, but I now realise that, told in the presence of a trusted and loved adult, they were needed to mediate a worldview that even as a child I could absorb. Namely, that there is evil in the world and I will only be safe if I take it seriously. In this book, I will tell stories and personal anecdotes that give me hope to challenge evil and big problems.

Stories are the way we make sense of experience. I loved the ones about brave cowboys saving the day, and stories of resilient and courageous pioneers. Others were flights of imagination, read to me on the lap of my mother and grandmother, both of whom loved Dr Dolittle, Winnie the Pooh and Peter Pan.

But the stories that mostly captured me from a young age came from the Bible. They were told to me in reverent tones to emphasise their authority and sacredness. The Hebrew Scriptures are replete with champions like the boy David fighting the giant Goliath, leaders like Moses who stuttered and felt scared, and King Saul who battled his jealousy. I noticed, however, that it was the stories of the New Testament that were given the highest regard stories told by or about Jesus. They were usually about everyday things that Jesus saw in the way of life around him. He used things that were hardly regarded as especially religious in his day: farming stories, housekeeping stories and family stories. They resonated with the lives he lived amongst. But they were open to be interpreted at deeper levels.

As an adult I still love stories. I recall very little of what I hear in a speech or a sermon, but a story if told well will stick with me, often for years to come. I generally find that on each trip I take, and often on each day of the trip, there will be something memorable that happens that illustrates my experience poignantly. Sometimes it will be in witnessing the struggle to survive that I will see and recognise something that I know is gold something that needs to be shared beyond that moment and that place, that will inspire or challenge other people in other places because it inspired or challenged me.

I know that when I speak in public, which I do a lot in Australia, and am often asked to do in my travels, I can say hundreds of words and may even make some clever points, but it will be my stories that are most remembered. People love stories, so if, midway through a speech, I announce that I am reminded of a story, I see eyes light up even eyes open up on occasions! Perhaps it is the child within all of us knowing that, with a story, we can take it as we are able. It is there for us to interpret or respond to as we can. It opens our imagination to possibilities.

In this book are anecdotes that come from where I have travelled with my work or impressions I have gathered as I reflect on my lived experience. I have used some of these stories over the years in various times and places. They have formed part of the tapestry of my life over the last twenty years. I see a few threads that run through the tapestry. A dominant thread is that of hope, for essentially I am a hopeful person who believes that life can and does have a way of giving us the impetus to keep going in hard times, and to keep working for what might otherwise seem like a hopeless cause.

I am not a fatalist or one given to fanciful answers. I know that most of life is difficult and can be fraught with struggle. The symphony of anyones life can have some loud and calamitous parts. It takes discernment, patience and deep listening to hear the soothing refrain of hope return.

If there is no hope, we as humans can become fatalistic with despair or cynicism. The Bible says that if there is no hope, the people perish. So simple, yet so profoundly true.

The stories in this book illustrate my hope and come with the convictions I have gathered as I have reflected on my experience.

Young people often seek me out for advice about their careers. They usually start the conversation saying something flattering like they have followed me in the media or liked my stance on something. Some even say that one day they would love to be a CEO of an organisation like World Vision Australia and ask me to tell them how I got there. I find it a perplexing question to answer from an orthodox career-development point of view.

I was a suburban lawyer in Melbourne for two years. In 1980 I turned down an offer to enter a lucrative legal partnership to head off and study theology at a Baptist seminary for almost four years in Switzerland. Then, on returning home, I practised poverty law part-time and worked simultaneously as a Baptist pastor and preacher for a small inner-suburban church. After some years, I was caught up in some local issues related to housing for the poor in our area, so I was elected to the local council of St Kilda. A short time later I was elected as mayor, but my term was truncated a year later by the state governments decision to sack many local councils in order to amalgamate them.