2011 - Theses - Flinders University

comes, he struggles to preach in mute mime. Iris prays God Himself will translate. And Will,who had little time for learning, just beams and opened his arms wide to embrace any whocame close, calling out his one phrase which he said—or at least he hoped— meant:‘Welcome friend’ however much a stranger he is in their country. 93 They come to him,holding up children with running sores, elderly women with broken arms, the blind, the lame,the hungry. Neither Will, Iris nor Jim know more than first aid, but they clean wounds, applysalves, set bandages and most of all, pray. Will’s favourite quote and only teaching he giveshis probationer, is:And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown”.And he replied “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God.That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.” 94Druid Vale Station, 2003Minnie Louise Haskin’s famous poem ‘The Desert’ was read at the Queen Mother’s funeral,as it had been read by her husband on the eve of World War II. I imagined Jim repeating thesaying to himself, standing alone in the cooling night, beyond the campfire light. I have hisreport, reflecting that ‘This shatters the mirage of romance, and we are face to face with theactual.’ Then his report becomes a string of Christian acclamations: wrestling against‘principalities and powers’, where only the ‘Precious Blood of Christ’ can cleanse these poorsouls; where the enemy roars at the message of the ‘Cross of Christ’ and the ‘Lion of Judah’roars back, pleading the ‘Victory of Calvary.’ 95 Jim’s dark night is full of noisy and fearfulbattle. I wish for him that Will Wade had been a man of letters, and that he might haverecited the rest of the poem:So I went forth and finding the Hand of God57