July 2013
Russell and Kaye Hayes were assigned to work around the northern part of Australia around Darwin and to some of the Aboriginal Mission stations. Russell used to wear sandals that he had made out of used tires. Russell always wore a very simple grey ‘safari suit’ he had made it himself. He wore his dark, wavy hair shoulder length. When he was assigned to the children’s structures, the children always did interesting and different activities- e.g..,climbing trees.
When Russell was living in the Sydney House, he composed both the Contemplation song- ‘ Come walk with Francis’ and the Being song. The music would be blaring out loudly most of the day while he wrote his poetry.
Grace and peace,
~~ Isobel Bishop
BEING
Tune: Theme from “Black Orpheus”
My life is as Vast as the sea
No boundaries no
Floor beneath me.
Yet as I look within
No man has greater sin.
I am the least of all
I daily fall.
But it’s then when
I Doubt that I can
I choose to be nothing
For man.
To die is my lot
I live as if not
With Paul I merge with all.
I see then as
Never before
The secrets of
heaven my store.
With wisdom twice my age
My life an open page
Though with each insight
Gain a deeper pain.
Yet I live with the Lord on my side
And wild intuition My guide.
I’m sent as a sign
The bread and the wine
My form And virgin born.
Then I act seeing
Action is vain
And accomplishments
Never as gain.
To only do is less
Than forming humanness
So mission I must be
To set men free.
Called to burn as an Undying flame
Each word and each Gesture the Name.
I must through life-loss
An exalted cross
My place
Reveal his face
Then the Lord through
My life prays a prayer
And my being is
Filled being there.
I can invent anew what
All the saints once knew
By being who I am
I create man.
And it’s no longer I who is seen
But the Lord standing
There in between.
Finished as I die
Held there between
Sky and sod
To save our God.
Yes, it’s there on the limbs of the worm eaten tree
where the All and the Nothing can BE.