An Accidental Atheist

By John Kelly

Australian author, John Kelly gives us this delightfully funny, yet poignant, bittersweet account of life in Australia both past and present as he confronts the challenges he faces and tackles his demons both real and imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Kelly
• Release date: Dec 2, 2009
• ISBN: 9781452301747

John Kelly

John Kelly, who holds a graduate degree in European history, is the author and coauthor of ten books on science, medicine, and human behavior, including Three on the Edge, which Publishers Weekly called the work of "an expert storyteller." He lives in New York City.

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Prologue

My story begins in the 1950's, but its origins go back to the 1860's in what was then the village of Glanmire, in County Cork, Ireland, located just a few minutes by car from the city of Cork. It was from here that Mark and Julia Kelly, departed with two young children, and sailed to Australia in search of a new life; a search that would set them free from the post-famine Ireland of the 1860's, an Ireland still coming to terms with a million deaths from starvation. They were leaving because such conditions, which undoubtedly contributed to their harsh and stubborn character, prevented them from establishing anything that remotely resembled a dignified way of life. Putting it bluntly, Ireland was a basket case of mismanagement.

Mark and Julia were also leaving without the blessing of their parents; they ran off and secretly married two years earlier. What particular hardship they faced together as a consequence of that choice, have been lost in the minds of family members now departed, but it was sufficient for them to sail half way round the world to escape. It was a journey that took four months to complete. What they brought with them in material goods is not known in any detail, but it would have been fairly meagre; like most of the Irish, they had little to call their own. The one thing they did bring was their religion, their Catholic faith, their Irish-Catholic faith.

One example of the intensity of that faith, and the lengths that such people will go to express their beliefs can be found as one travels along the road toward Glanmire today. On the outskirts of the village, a large grotto dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary stands by the roadside opposite a murky creek. The grotto commemorates the apparitions near the town of Lourdes, France. Spread across the entire length of the grotto, probably some 20 to 30 feet, in large white letters an inscription reads, ‘I am the Immaculate Conception.’ Such a monument to Mary, in today's very materialistic world, says a lot for a community's faith in Mary and the God of their understanding. That faith no doubt extends back in time to include the 1860's, even if the grotto was a more recent construction.

Mark and Julia made their journey to Australia, hazards notwithstanding, confident in the knowledge that wherever they went, their God went with them. One can only wonder at how their thoughts must have seesawed with the waves as their ship the ` White Star ' sailed out of Liverpool Harbour in the spring of 1867. For Mark, it was an even more powerful experience having already said farewell to his two older brothers, James and Patrick who only months beforehand had also chosen to leave their homeland for the promise of a new life in America. Why he chose not to follow them no one knows, but speaking as a third generation relative, I’m grateful that he did.

At the time though, they were sailing to a country where the Catholic Church itself was undergoing its own political struggle. The first Catholic Bishop of Sydney was John Bede Polding, an English Benedictine, whose Christian charity and dedication to his appointment was unquestioned, but who was not well supported by an infra-structure that was practically all Irish; Irish regional Bishops, Irish priests, Irish Brothers and Nuns, a vocal Irish laity and perhaps most telling of all, Irish nationalism. He tried to create a Benedictine Diocese in this new land but it failed under the weight of this Irish nationalism, and an ever growing sectarian tension between Catholics and Protestants. The Irish Catholics wanted strong Irish leadership and that meant rule by Roman Canon Law, not religious tolerance. Polding was too lenient (a whimp, one might say). What they wanted they finally got, in the person of one Cardinal Patrick Francis Moran, a strong willed Irishman, (is there any other kind?) who stamped his special brand of authority on the lives of the Catholics of early Australia, including that of Mark and Julia Kelly and their children, in a way that would carry its weight through three subsequent generations.

So, the scene was set, the actors were on stage, the audience seated and the orchestra ready to play, just like it was back in Ireland, only here they had something to eat. With plenty of food in their bellies and being good Catholics, they continued to have children, lots of them. After docking at the Port of Melbourne, in August 1867, they settled in the expanding town of Geelong, 60 kilometres to the south west. Mark worked as a labourer, Julia kept house and cared for the children. By December of 1876, they had seven children, Julia was pregnant yet again, and one could but admire the resolve that these two people had shown in their new country. Then, it all went pear shaped.

On Christmas day, of that year on a very warm afternoon, Mark decided to go swimming in the nearby river. He was seen by several people that afternoon, as he swam up and down the river parallel to the bank and none who were there that day, noticed anything amiss. Whether it was a case of being in the water too long which may have induced cramp, or whether he just became entangled in river weed, and was dragged under, is not clear. But somehow the silly old bugger got into difficulties, disappeared into the depths and drowned. Julia was suddenly a widow, with seven children to care for, another on the way and no means of support.

She placed some of the children in orphanages, run by the nuns; the rest lived at home with her, and learnt out of sheer necessity to pull together, to grow up ahead of their years, and make sacrifices not expected of those so young. There was no talk of returning to Ireland, of giving up. Throughout her life Julia displayed the same strength and determination she and Mark had shared together. She raised her children and set them on course to continue the journey the family had begun ten years earlier and in the process infused in their hearts and minds a degree of independence and self reliance that has carried through to the present day.

Mark and Julia Kelly were my great-grandparents. Julia’s unborn baby who came into the world seven months later was Joseph Kelly, my grandfather. This was where it all began and often when I along with my brothers and sisters needed answers to help us through the tough times, we looked to the past and the quality of the people who were our great-grand-parents knowing that if they were able to overcome the difficulties of their time, then we could do the same in our time.

And difficulties came in many shapes and sizes.

1.

Fourteen years ago at the age of fifty, I noticed some thick scaly patches appearing on my partly bald scalp. Unable to resist picking at them, and occasionally causing them to bleed, I decided to stop this foolishness and seek medical advice.

They’re actinic keratosis, my doctor told me.

Too much sun, he said. We’ll freeze them off with liquid nitrogen.

Good, I replied.

But there will probably be more to come, he said.

What do you mean?

You’ll find out, he replied and added, I think I’m going to make a lot of money out of you.

Am I dying, I asked?

No, not yet, but we all have to go sometime.

My doctor’s quirky sense of humour was my introduction to the world of skin cancer. It was something I feared greatly listening as medical authorities discussed it when I was younger, but then, as the years passed, it somehow slipped off the radar. Other things got in the way, like career, marriage, mortgages and children. But career, mortgages and children are behind me now and finally that much longed for utopia of this work weary provider is within reach. The only quandary is that skin cancer is back on the radar.

But first things first! Today is my birthday. It’s 2009 and I’m 64. In exactly 12 months time, I will be eligible for the aged pension, and after working for the last forty-six years, I’m starting to get excited about the prospect of doing what I want at the nation’s expense. There were times I thought I might not make it to retirement, that the wretched sun might have the last say after all those years of foolish exposure. But retirement is just about within my grasp. I can almost reach out and touch it. You are probably thinking, ‘How does he expect to live on the pension?’ Well, my friends, not to put too fine a point on it, I have spent my entire working life aspiring to be poor, and overall, I think I’ve done a pretty good job.

So here I sit at my computer, ready to tell all. The vast scope of a life lived, the highs, the lows, the pain and sorrow, along with great joy and happiness. Well, not really. Actually it’s not that exciting. I’ll keep some of the more juicy bits to myself, but I promise it will be entertaining…..for some. I grew up in East Kew in Melbourne’s east; there’s probably a plaque there somewhere to mark the event. Back then, the world of actinic keratosis, basal cell carcinomas, squamous cell carcinomas, malignant cutaneous fibrous histiocytomas and melanomas were a lifetime away.

Back then there was just the Sun.

I was born in Caulfield, but the story goes back a bit further than that. You see, my father’s twin brother Frank, married Ita Skinner whose father was a wealthy beachfront property owner who gave his daughter a house to rent.  My father wanted to stay close to Frank, or was it Ita? I’m not sure, but when he and my mother married, they found a house close-by. It was in Parkdale, situated on the north side of the railway line.  Aunty Ita and Uncle Frank lived on the south side, the beachfront side.  Their house was so beautiful – Tudor style, money style. Some people had money in those days, but my mother and father weren’t among them. My father’s side of the family came from County Cork in Ireland. There was no money in County Cork, so they left and came to Australia. But there was no money here either and when Mark Kelly, my great-grandfather drowned in the Barwon River in Geelong in 1876, my grandfather, who at that stage was still inside my grandmother’s womb, later decided to drown his sorrow’s working as a barman in a hotel for thirty-seven years. So you can probably guess how my father Jim and his twin brother Frank developed a preference for alcohol and where they practiced their preferred recreational habits.

My mother’s side came from County Armagh in the north. They were Protestants. They didn’t have any money either, but they worked very hard, kept off the bottle and did well in transport and sheepskins. Then they lost it all in the depression. My grand-father on the Protestants’ side, whose name was Frederick Capper, married Kitty O’ Connor who was Catholic. So we became Catholic through the back door and my mother started giving birth to the first of what would be eight children. I was the fifth child born in 1945, and just like my brothers and sister before me, born into modest circumstances. I was also born into an Irish-Catholic mentality, where ‘guilt and punishment’ was the mindset, where the local parish priest was the arbitrator of sin, the intermediary of forgiveness, the negotiator of punishment, the conciliator of reunion with God, and an earthly Judge who had no compunction in declaring you damned to eternal Hellfire and serves you right, if he felt like it. The subject of religion held all the power of the Sun in our house. It controlled the human temperature, set the conversation flowing like the rivers, evaporated the oceans of dissent, and burned through the clouds of doubt, intractable, indomitable, and indisputable and in some bizarre twisted way, it all appeared totally logical. All this I learned before my 7th Birthday. Not bad for a slow learner.

I was also a trite confused. It was the Latin that threw me. We were suffocated with Latin phrases. I grew up on ‘Dominus Vobiscum’, ‘Ave Maria’, and ‘Kyrie Eleison’ which as a child sounded more like, ‘keep away a lazy one.’ But the one I hung my hope on every Sunday was, ‘Ita Missa est’, ‘Go, the mass is over.’ Hearing that, I whispered, ‘You ripper.’ It meant I could leave and go home. The response was, ‘Deo grátias.’ ‘Thanks be to God’ which is probably the genesis of ‘Thank Christ’ in modern day blasphemy, but I was already half way down the aisle heading for the door by the time they said that.

By any reasonable measure, growing up Catholic was not a good way to start a life.

2.

It was dark, wet and cold at 5.30 this morning. That’s the downside of being born in the middle of winter; it’s always like this on my birthday. Anyway, the news had just filtered through that Farah Fawcett and Ed (here’s Johnny) McMahon had passed away. That’s sad. I liked both of them, for quite different reasons obviously, but Farah was two years younger than me, so that makes her passing all the more tragic. Mercifully, the media might give some attention to them today instead of the never-ending saga going on in Canberra with Malcolm Turnbull and some weird story about a fake email. I like Malcolm Turnbull. I’d never vote for him; he joined the wrong party. But he does have a certain presidential flair about him. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. I get fake emails everyday, mostly from enterprising fakers in Nigeria and Botswana offering me millions to give them access to my bank account. Dickheads!

I left the house wrapped in my polo coat, an item left in the taxi eighteen years ago. I have worn that polo every winter. Technically I should have handed it in to the lost property department at our local police station, but there you are…I didn’t. It has since been my friend travelling with me to several countries around the world; England, Europe, USA. I have photos to prove it. Standing in St Mark’s Square in Venice; on the observation deck of the Empire State building in New York: on the banks of Loch Lomond in Scotland, it’s all there. It has kept me warm where ever I have gone. The customer, who left it in my taxi, was returning home to somewhere, I don’t know where, but I dropped him and his son off at the airport one day and when I got home there it was sitting on the back seat, so there. I didn’t steal it, I just didn’t return it. I didn’t know where to return it, and as the owner was from interstate I figured he wouldn’t be coming back to look for it.

So, this morning I was on my way to pick up Frank Brody wearing my polo. Frank was on his way to the airport to fly to Sydney. Frank is a relative of sorts. He’s my brother’s brother-in-law. Work it out for yourself. He’s a partner in the law firm Mallesons and someone. He calls me when he needs a cab in the morning. He’s been doing it for years. I use him as a sounding board for any legal questions I might have; it’s in lieu of a tip which he never gives. Today is my birthday but I won’t tell Frank. He might feel obliged to tip me. I don’t want to put him under any pressure. He’s a delicate fellow.

I delivered him safely to the airport and began the long trip back to collect my permanent clients most of whom are people with intellectual disabilities. My first pick-up is Tiffany, a pretty blue eyed blonde who never stops talking. She was born with a mild intellectual disability that leaves her unable to read or write or tackle anything complicated such as spelling or basic arithmetic. While delightfully engaging in conversation she can be manipulative and not beyond straight out trickery. She also likes to tickle me which as you can imagine is not the smartest thing to do to someone roaring down a busy freeway at 100kph. I take her along with three other girls to a sheltered workshop in Kew. Each afternoon I return to take them home. Yesterday when I came to take them home Tiffany told me I was to take her to her parents’ house rather than the unit where she lives with two other girls. Mum told me to tell you, she says. She pulls this trick regularly but usually I see through it. This time she sounded very convincing so I took her at her word. Bad mistake! I discovered this morning she had taken me for a ride. Mum wasn’t happy, and had to call Tiffany’s older sister, Nicole to drive her back to her unit so she could attend a regular weekly meeting with a case-worker. That won’t happen again.

The intellectually disabled have been a regular part of my day for the last fifteen years. I enjoy working with them; they are responsive, often very funny, and most importantly, they don’t answer back. Given the choice, I would prefer to work with these people who appreciate the care, attention and understanding they receive, not to mention compassion. It’s better than putting up with, as I do, the ordinary person in the street, the majority of whom are tolerable, but among whom lurk that evil element who seem to make it their mission in life to be as difficult as they can. I’m talking about drunks, junkies, women who think they know everything, intellectual know-alls, and political fools, as well as uninformed dickheads who rely on obtaining their general knowledge from radio and television presenters because they’re too lazy to properly research their subjects before opening their mouths. I tell them that talk-back radio hosts, these so-called fountains of knowledge do little more than manipulate and mislead a gullible public. If they have a personal preference they will never say so, rather, they will argue their case all very innocently as they try to persuade their listeners. Never, I tell my passengers, never believe what you hear as an ‘exclusive report’ from anybody. Wait, I warn, wait until the third or fourth report surfaces, because that’s more likely to contain some element of truth that the ‘exclusive’ report didn’t include because the media outlet that reported it, was more interested in being the first to report the matter rather than being the most accurate. Ho-hum, why do I bother? Nobody’s listening.

Anyway, my next clients are also intellectually disabled and live in a supervised residential house in Box Hill. They spend their day at ONEMDA, an adult community service in East Doncaster that provides programs for adults with intellectual disability. Elizabeth would talk you to death if you allowed her. She asks the same questions every day, complains of the same problems, (Wendy hit me), rats on the same ‘inmates’, and begs me to buy her French fries as we pass by the McDonald’s restaurant on the way to ‘work’. Sometimes I do stop at McDonald’s and she gets really excited at the prospect of having French fries. But I only stop to go to the toilet. It is a small problem I have had ever since I started taking anti-depressants. By contrast, Muriel, her travelling companion, whose whole body shakes continuously from some genetic condition, sits in the front seat with me and says nothing. But, by-the-Jesus, does she know how to slam a car door?

ONEMDA is a wonderful place. It offers these people a better education and better life skills than I received at school in the 1950’s and early 60’s, but more about that later. What? The radio is reporting that Michael Jackson has died. Really? I’m shocked but deep down not all that surprised. It sounds like Elvis all over again. Los Angeles will go into lockdown. Crowds will gather at any location remotely connected to Jackson. There will be weeping and wailing, mostly from women. I guess the television will be full of it by nightfall. Remind me to go to the DVD store; it could be a long night.

If a week is a long time for a politician, for the taxi driver, it is a cavalcade of mediocrity, indifference, rudeness, humour and eccentricities. The early morning call to pick up the ambitious young business executive and take him out to the airport often sets the tone for the day. Even as early as six o’ clock he has no time to chat, except of course to the voice on the other end of the mobile phone. But as I listen in on the conversation, it becomes apparent that it's a nothing call.

Hi there, how are ya…pause...how was your weekend...pause…yeah, did you fuck her....pause. ..fantastic mate ...pause .... I'm in a cab on my way to the airport...pause…Sydney...pause. . .okay man catch up with you, gotta few calls to make. He makes two or three more calls, each one sliding further and further into an intellectual abyss and I cannot help but lament that this moron is being paid probably five times my income but in reality is worth only half of it. By contrast his female equivalent generally upholds the dignity of her gender and her employer's confidence with a bright engaging conversation on pretty much any subject. Sadly though, not even she can resist at least one call on the mobile. Her call will be to another female and they will discuss relationships and shopping, but on a totally different intellectual plane from the male of the species.

Indifference to cabbies is rare among women, rife with men. Maybe it is their natural instinct to be wary of getting into a car with a stranger no matter what the circumstances, but women will generally sit in the back seat, offer a courteous hello, give fairly precise directions and then spend a minute or two assessing the driver, before striking up a conversation. Men often don't even bother with the hello, mumble some vague destination which generally requires a further more expanded explanation and from then on say very little as if this is their time for deep personal reflection on how they will approach their day’s work. Men are moodier, and ruder, more likely to abuse, but strangely less likely to challenge your choice of route.

It is only later in the morning around ten or so when the humour and eccentricities show their hand. It is generally with the blue-rinse set, the elderly and their daily parade to the seemingly enormous variety of hair salons, medical centres, day care centres, bingo halls, supermarkets, and visiting Doris who isn't feeling very well. I have come across literally hundreds of old folks spanning early seventies to late nineties, but never yet, am I to find one who likes being old. The elderly spend a lot of time complaining. They complain about how difficult it is to get around, why they can't do this and that, why they don't want to be late for their appointment, why the kids of today don't know how lucky they are, why they forgot to go to the post office yesterday and could I post their letters for them because it's so hard getting in and out of the car.

Beyond the blue-rinse set, sit the mentally handicapped and physically disabled; they are a special category of passenger who contrast in the mind so strongly because they are so far removed from both the frantic nature that is the business world and the comparable selfishness of the elderly.

On a huge expanse of prime real estate in upper class Kew, once stood Kew cottages, a location that had for over one hundred years provided in one form or another, a home for those poor unfortunates of this world who through no fault of their own were so born as not to be able to enjoy a state of conscious living, that most of us so called normal people take for granted.

For me, transporting the mentally ill became a regular event gradually over several years, and for most of that time I was never moved to ask myself why it was that God so permitted such a cruel circumstance of events to result in these people being born this way. It was only after my association with Charismatic Renewal that I began to query this extraordinary addendum to the ‘why’ of life, and the ‘How can this be allowed to happen,’ syndrome. It is the question that so many of us have felt compelled to ask of ourselves, and of our clergy, from time to time, but unfortunately never seem to receive a satisfactory answer.

One morning back in 1995, answering a call to pick up four residents of the cottages, I was surprised to be asked by one of the supervisors if