Aunty Ive’s funeral reflection

Ivey Winifred Wengel [nee Savage]

7.12.16-20.1.10

Delivered Saturday January 23, 2010

Gayndah Wesleyan Methodist Chapel

If this was your funeral or mine today, what would you like said about your life?

What would I like said about my life…by

My …
Family
Children
Spouse
Grandchildren
Siblings
Neighbours
Friends
Work colleagues
Church

What would like our eulogy to be?

What difference would we like to have made in others lives?

I would like to be an effective person – someone who makes some kind of positive difference in people’s lives, in the world.

As Stephen Covey says writes in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: We may be very busy, we may be very efficient but we will also be truly effective only when we begin with the end in mind. [p98]

Aunty Ive has come to her end and a lot has been said and stories have been told.

A couple of stories from Stan and Coral who I see regularly are:
1. The lucid conversations they had with Ivy at the end of November last year.
2. For Stan his memories are of sitting at the lunch table at H.E.Savage’s [what is now the Fruit Growers building] with Aunty Ive when he was at High School [he was boarding there] listening to Blue Hills by Gwen Merideth on ABC radio.

Let’s picture the blue hills around the Glen, around Gayndah, Binjour, coming into Ban Ban.

We are watching a little grey Morris minor Ute or a while Toyota van weaving its way in and around those hills. Aunty Ive is at the wheel or as you say out here under the wheel.!!

Over the years of those thousands of kilometers I wonder – what did she think about? What did she feel? What plans did she make? What sudden insights did she get? How did she plan to become an effective person?

In particular I would like to know:
Were there moments in her travels when life made sense just for a few seconds, when the deeper questions were answered? I will never know because sadly I never had that kind of conversation with her.

There are regular moments in every person’s life when an awareness arrives that clarifies life’s questions for that moment in time.

Most of us miss those moments.

Most of us in the more developed, technological and/or industrialized nations are too anxious, fearful, preoccupied, efficiency focused and busy to notice these moments, these visits, these wafts of the spirit.

John Wesley the founder of Methodism was too anxious, fearful, efficiency focused and busy for the first half of his life. But on a boat in a storm as he feared for his life he watched a group of people at peace in themselves in he storm. It led him to find another dimension, another way of being.

Without that awareness and knowing, Methodism would been just another cold, efficient religion.. [ Ed:I am not saying it lives in Wesley’s discovery now]

Taking time for and giving time to that other dimension may been part of Aunty Ive’s experience as she puttered around in her car. Who knows?

Yesterday – my border collie – Pilgrim – was lying on the cool tiles outside my study eyeing me off as I walked back and forth. No movement. At one point I bent down and said hello to him: - Hello Pilgrim - I said. I gave him some attention with warmth in my voice. His tail started flicking around the floor, he eyes opened wide. He responded.

When we give time and attention to the other unseen dimension, we get a response.

This is for everyone - not just the church or religious people because all humanity and spirit and nature and the universe are interconnected, related.

As the good book says: God is not far from every one of us.

God is in all of us and all of us is in god. Whether it feels like god or seems like god is not the point as much as giving attention to the other dimension. Something happens when we do.

If we don’t cultivate the other mysterious dimension in life there will always be something missing because we are all meant to experience it. It is part of the human and living being gene code. Life will become a backlog of unanswered questions buried under anxiety, fear, busyness and efficiency.

In all my years of knowing Aunty Ive when she was well I never felt excluded by her. In fact there were many times I experienced her welcome and her generosity.

Effective people are welcoming and generous. There’s a lot of debate about how much money and wealth and land is enough. Everybody has their opinion, particularly if they are wealthy, particularly if they want to win lotto, particularly if they are wanting to set up their children for life.

How much is enough?

The good book says: A person’s life does NOT consist in the accumulation of property, wealth, money or things.

All these things we accumulate we leave behind when we leave.

Though John Wesley made, in todays terms, millions of dollars through his writings and entrepreneurial ventures, when he died he only owned a silver spoon, such was his generosity and smart philanthropic benevolence.

As I get older and try to resist becoming a grumpy old man, I am appalled at the self-preoccupation of the Y- Generation. Born 1982 and 1995.


In Aunty Ive’s world, in your world as farmers in general, it is normal to put family and community first. Welcome is a way of being, of living.

But there is a sting in the tail of that paradigm. The community and family can become ingrown, exclusive, closed. Churches are like that, clubs are like that. The only place that isn’t like that is the emergency department in the hospital where I work.

It’s pretty hard to be welcoming to those who are not like us, but opening our hearts and homes and going further than we feel like or have been used to changes us, changes the world and makes a difference.

The meal table is probably the best symbol and activity that describes welcome and generosity. Not the only one but the one we can all be part of .

Maybe that’s why Jesus is attributed as saying: The people who are welcome in heaven are those who feed the hungry, clothe the naked and visit prisoners.

The uncertainty of life and certainty of death can be motivation enough for some of us to make some changes.

- to keep the long view of making a difference in our life plans
-to take time to cultivate awareness of that other dimension we can all experience
-and to build welcome and generosity into our lives towards those who aren’t like us.

Life ends in a flash,
Death creeps up on us and steals;
Steals away our breath.

What is left? What is?
Moments never shared, make us.
Actions define us.

In a moment see,
See with clarity what is!
Live in that light now!

The generous thrive
The welcoming melt our ice
And cold hearts are warmed.

You, me, live in god
God is now in all of us!
Let god be who god is!!

Peter Breen©2010






Respond to When we die.