Let a thousand ideas bloom.

“We’ve opened the windows of our democracy to let in a bit of fresh air!”
Thus spake Kevin as he opened the 2020 Summit.
And verily did I fall about in wonder and amazement, for they are famous words!!

You probably have to be a Catholic, old enough (not to mention interested enough) to remember the election of Pope John XXIII and what happened shortly afterwards, to get this one. Being such, I want to share it with you. You see, very shortly after the JXXIII’s election there was a gathering of the big guns of the church at which the question was put to the new Pope: What is the agenda for your papacy? The jolly Pope smiled for a moment, got up, walked to the nearest window and opened it. He then turned to the assembled princes and said: I want to open the windows of the church to let in a bit of fresh air.

It just goes to show… when a Pope can anticipate the actions of an Australian Prime Minister the world must be in Go(o)d Hands. Just kidding of course. But there is metaphoric value in the coincidence – if that’s what it is – that I’d like to draw out a bit.

Let’s start with the suggestion that the Venerable Kevin’s choice of words was not a coincidence. We all know that Kevin is a practicing Christian. We see him on TV going to Anglican churches. But what many may not know is that he grew up as a Catholic. He’s not old enough (born 1957)to personally remember the news reports of the Pope’s breath taking words and action. But his vital years of personal formation (you know the saying attributed to the Jesuits – Give me a child until the age of seven and I will give you the man) coincided with the most exciting transformation in the life of the church since… well, since the first Pentecost. Kevin may not even be aware of the fact that his words echoed JXXIII, but it is not too much to suggest that there may be, for him, a deep unconscious connection between the potential of the 2020 Summit and the most astounding event of the era of his youth.

The Second Vatican Council galvanised people on a mass scale to recreate the face of the earth. There was near universal optimism among Catholics of the time about the future. And it wasn’t just Catholics. Protestants and Orthodox in great numbers watched in amazement and rejoiced as the Catholic church took unprecedented initiatives in ecumenism and engagement with the world. In its own internal life the transformation was almost like the emergence of a new religion, except that it was in fact the recovery in contemporary form of what had always been it’s essential inner life.

It is this manifest model of transformation that may be the root of Kevin’s motivation and vision. Being a root it is deep in the soil and therefore out of sight. But if it’s there we may be able to discern the pattern of a future that takes as its point of departure the 2020 Summit – a future that was already unfolding even before today. You may have noticed that people all over Australia have been at it for months – holding forums and testing means of “thinking outside the square”, and even daring to hope!! Reminding themselves that the past is not the only predictor of the future; dusting off the model of thinking that anticipates and therefore to a significant degree facilitates change; cutting through the definitions of what it means to be Australian, created by vested interests, to a vision of a just society in right relationship not only with itself but with the rest of the world and above all with the planet itself; taking the opportunity to absorb in advance as much of the agenda of the Summit as technology and willingness will enable, so that in the event they act disinterestedly (sic) on behalf of the greater good, the nature of which they can only glimpse partially as if in a glass darkly. If time permitted I could list a dozen more ways in which people of good will have flocked to this event on behalf of a sustainable and exciting future. But it is enough to draw attention to the discernable pattern of events.

If I am right about this we can expect not only good ideas from the Summit, but a vision of the future whose substance will take the whole country by surprise. People everywhere will meet in small groups to examine the implications of the documents that come from the Summit for their daily lives. People will see connections between issues they had never previously imagined and change the way do things. People will look to others they have never considered worthy of attention for clues about how to build relationships they never previously wanted. Sacred cows, such as “the bottom line” and “the inviolable rights of shareholders”, will be put out to pasture – not deprives of their rights, but stripped of undue influence. Courageous and innovative ways of creating sustainable prosperity will emerge in unlikely places and be adapted widely and rapidly. And people will make the connections between those new forms and those of earlier times that brought them forth as aspiring champions of the Fair Go.

People will ignore the few who say it can’t be done – like the politician who said: There are a thousand ideas, there are 660 minutes of discussion on the summit program, which means that for every idea there are 39.6 seconds put aside for discussing that particular idea.

To be continued…