For all who knew and loved her it is saddening to hear of Pauline’s moving from this world to the next. But, at the age of 86, it was her time: after a life of love and service, a life that she loved to live fully and share richly, she was ready for this last step as part of the human pilgrimage to fullness.
I met her in the 1980’s in Australia and her friendship, wisdom and shared vision soon began to bless and support me and the ever-developing community as it was needed in many diverse ways. Pauline was a deeply committed member of The World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM) with a spiritual connection that led her to becoming a Benedictine Oblate within it and for many years to serve in several vital leadership capacities. In all these, she shared her innate wisdom and compassion as a wife and mother, a meditator and follower of Jesus within a church, about which she had no illusions but was able all the more to serve locally and globally with deep and informed faith.
Leadership and Roles in WCCM
Pauline held significant international leadership positions within the community. She began her journey locally, describing finding a weekly meditation group as a ‘coming home.’ Her service grew from the Australian National Council and as a founding member of the WCCM School for Teachers to the international Guiding Board:
- Chair of the Guiding Board: She served in this role from 2003 to 2008. As Chair, she represented the community at high-level events, such as accompanying His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Fr Laurence Freeman during the 2005 Way of Peace visit to Northern Ireland and at several other of their dialogues.
- International Liaison for National Communities: Following her term as Chair, her role transitioned to being the International Liaison to the WCCM National Coordinators. She in effect began and shaped this role and with her gift for team-building as she mentored her successors. She was instrumental in organizing and reporting on regional meetings of National Coordinators, such as the series of seven regional meetings held in 2011 to mark the community’s 20th anniversary. Throughout her tenure, Pauline’s leadership was wisely connected to its organisational development but never lost the personal touch or forgot that we are essentially, imperfectly and yet faithfully a contemplative community.
Her work embraced interreligious peacebuilding, meditation with children, retreats, priestly formation and the growth of Christian meditation across Asia and globally community.
Personal and Spiritual Life
Pauline described herself as a “Wife, Mother, Meditator – and Oblate”.
- Spiritual Beginnings: Her connection to the wider meditation community was sparked when her husband, Graeme, encouraged her to attend a retreat led by Fr Laurence in Melbourne. She worked for many years as a Parish Pastoral Associate, where Graeme provided significant support for her ministry. Her local parish community were proud to have her and always supported her global role in the Community
- Commitment: She often expressed deep gratitude for the transformative gift of meditation that touched her through the teaching of John Main, always conscious of how it nourished and sustained her alongside Word and Sacrament.
- Meditatio and Outreach: Pauline’s practical wisdom and leadership gifts helped launch the development of the Meditatio programme, WCCM’s outreach to the secular world. As a woman, she had a sensitive, non-threatening concern for the challenges often faced by priests and bishops. This led her to introduce many, like Bishop Michael Putney, who had a long friendship with her and Graeme and eventually launched the first diocesan-wide introduction to Christian meditation for Catholic schools. She conceived the idea for the book Prayer and the Priest. She also shared her observations on children’s natural aptitude for silence, often noting how they would remain “deep in meditation” even after the last chime rang.
Experience of Illness and Last years
In 2009, Pauline wrote about her ‘Experience of Meditation and Illness’ while she was home recovering from a health problem. She revealed the heart of her practice as holding to the mantra ‘like a lifeline,’ living in the present moment and learning to rejoice in being rather than doing.
She unfailingly supported Graeme in his last years and was ever-present to her sons Andrew and Tim and beloved grandchildren. During this time of convalescence, and later as age made her less active, she reflected on the grace of “being” rather than “doing,” finding peace in the winter sun, music, and the support of her family, her close friend Fr Laurence and her many friends in the community. She noted that even these closing chapters of her life were a ‘graced time’ by which she felt ‘richly blessed’.
And she was ever able to bless. May she rest in the peace of Christ and continue to support and inspire our community and its mission that she loved.
Her funeral will be celebrated on 14th August, Queensland, at 10,30am Sacred heart Church, Ipswich, Queensland.
