Fr McKelson used to speak of coming home to Melbourne, and did not like me pointing out that he had spent twice as long at Bidyadanga as here! In there lies a great truth, because for all the years he was away he carried a lot of the local church and his family with him.
After hearing and answering God’s call he was sent to Rome where his inner linguist emerged. He lived in a German speaking house, in an Italian speaking city, attending lectures in Latin and spent his holidays in France. He loved being able to smuggle newspapers and cigarettes to other Australian students who lived under stricter regimes.
In 1954, the newly ordained 24 year old Kevin McKelson arrived in Broome to assist the legendary Fr Worms, the Pallottine missionary anthropologist. Worms taught him to tread very gently on the Kimberley earth, as it belonged to another people, many of whom had had their spirit broken. Kevin listened and then was able to learn, live and teach the art of reconciliation. This required a great humility so that he would be able to say, with Isaiah “See, this is our God in whom we hoped.”
In Broome he implemented the tried and true pastoral strategies of his youth. He built a faith community with lots of social activities and sport. With Donnelly McKenzie he started the basketball competition in 1955, building a court by crushing ant bed retrieved from the bush. Later they collaborated and started the Broome Saints Football Club. He encouraged marriages between local women and the Malay or Japanese pearlers. He taught the men English, learning Japanese and Malay on the way, and blessed their marriages. A relationship with God started with relationship with others.
Lagrange Mission became his home in 1961. He would remain through joys and frustrations for 34 years. Not long after his arrival Cyclone Bessie destroyed the Mission. Madelene Jadai, here with us today, was born during that cyclone, as is Margot Toohey, the nurse who delivered her. Fr McKelson rescued her and her mother from the collapsing hospital during the eye of the storm. He was far from being an adventurer, but history made his life a huge adventure. Lagrange taught him the primacy of relationship, of connecting people with each other and God. Many a dinner at Lagrange ended with the salt, pepper, knife and fork being used to teach the ‘skins’ (the aboriginal kinship system). If you don’t know the skins, he would say, you will never understand local people. It is all about relationships.
A key to relationship is language, enabling is to relate to God and each other in a context of mutual respect. After the Mission was rebuilt, Kevin concentrated his efforts on inculturation, the translation of the Christian message into forms and idiom accessible to the people of the five local language groups. This necessitated the learning, recording and understanding of languages and culture, which became the work and love of his life centred on the Missa Bidyadanga and Aboriginal Our Father. He was trusted by the senior men, who shared their cultural secrets with him and acknowledged that he understood more about the aboriginal law than most local people.
Lagrange was fully staffed by lay missionaries. Fr Kevin was the father figure, holding the mainly young lay missionaries in a family unit. He treated all with respect, and tried to understand, with varying degrees of success, the issues of young men and women a long way from home and family. He always looked for ways to make connections between people and groups of people, with, of course, God at the centre.
One of the greatest tests of our Christianity is forgiveness. If we can’t forgive then our faith is not deeply rooted. Fr McKelson often spoke about the cultural right to payback, and the Christian response of forgoing retribution. In 1994 I witnessed a person come to Fathers place, and he welcomed him with open arms, made him a cup of tea and spoke genially of old times. I later discovered that some years before this person had done his best to destroy the mission and Kevin’s reputation, even threatening Kevin’s life. It has been a terrible time for him yet in this he kept the faith, as St Paul wrote to Timothy, even to the end, and all of Bidyadanga were witnesses.
Kevin made courtesy an art form. Whether he was greeting visitors or growling wrongdoers, he spoke and acted with respect. Martina Badal told me: We would milk the goats, drinking the half the milk and filling the bucket with water. Japulu found out and just told me:” Martina, you know not to do that. Don’t put water in the milk. Do you understand? He was strong but gentle.” The same day, at the markets on Broome I was told: As a green young girl many years ago, living beyond the Spinifex Horizon, Fr Mac was my Light in the Wilderness whenever he came to Frazier Downs for dinner. (Jenny Di Marchi)
Last Monday my phone was running hot all day. Charlie Wright reminded me that when Hail Mary Bell rang Father had taught everyone to freeze with their head down to say the Hail Mary quietly. You could hear the bell from Blackrock, 3kn away! Each person ringing had a story, but at the end of each story was the quip: he really loved us, each one of us. Kevin lived, with more success than most, the Beatitudes we just heard proclaimed.
As age and health caught up with him, a move south was necessitated. The McKelson family gave one of their own for the missions, so that others may come to know God. He returned after a long life well lived, but he was now living behind the veil of dementia. He trusted in God but was never presumptuous, so would want us to pray that his experience of purgatory be freeing as he hurries toward our heavenly resting place.
Nyamu nyina ngayu Japulu!
Homily, Requiem Mass for Fr Kevin McKelson SAC, St Brendan's, Flemington, VIC, 6th December 2011.
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