Father Michael Bransfield, Redux!

Realised it was wrong of me to only post Tony's memories of my good friend Father Michael Bransfield. My life is indeed the lesser with his passing, and I owe him, at the very least, that I give him my time to put my thoughts and my celebration of his life into some sort of order.

Father Bransfield.

True gifts! Father Bransfield had those in abundance: A gorgeous, huge, infectious laugh. An impish grin. A profound understanding and love of people. A childlike enjoyment of 'naughty'. A gentle spirit. A happiness with life in general. And let's not forget his love of gadgets. His love of ideas. His love of simplicity. And, wow, that outstanding ability to talk to everyone at their own level.

And then there was always the gift of his time ... the time he'd take to talk with you, to talk through problems with you, to enjoy your life with you, to genuinely BE with you.

He even got on with my father, and that was no mean feat because dad always disliked people in general, and most frequently found reasons to despise them. Highly intelligent and astute, dad always saw through folks, saw through to their flaws and their meanness, their pettiness and their weaknesses ... but there was nothing he could find in Father Bransfield to earn his enmity: Father was the real thing; an authentic and true soul with a genuine greatness of spirit. Despite knowing him for decades, there was nothing in him dad could ever find that wasn't kind, gentle, courageous, strong and good.

Father Bransfield did all sorts of great and important things in the church during his life as a priest, clever-clever stuff involving Liturgy and Doctrine and blah, blah, blah - all the things that most of his obituaries are concentrating on and making him sound all sorts of YAWN!!! - but that wasn't who he ever was within my family. With us, it was never about articles of faith or doctrine because dad would never have permitted it, so it was all about fun and laughter and big discussions over meals about big picture things like "doing right" and "being true to yourself", and just spending time together.

Father Bransfield was always part of the fabric of my life. He and dad met back in 1953, in Suva, Fiji, when Father was a newly-arrived priest and dad had just recently been brought in by The British Colonial Service to fight the tuberculous epidemic that was then rampaging through the Pacific, and the friendship lasted until dad's death three years ago. Thus I was born into having Father around as a fact in my life, but never one I took for granted because, as a grim little child and - oops! - definitely my father's daughter, I didn't much care for most adults.

It was an odd friendship, Father and dad, what with dad being so anti the church, the "papish", anything to do with priests and religion, and also because dad was so very tall and Father a foot shorter, and dad so arrogant and larger-than-life and Father so mild and gentle.

But they always interacted as equals and what I learned most from the pair of them is that there are different ways of "being a strong man"!

Initially, I think the friendship was simply that they were "people of the same ilk"; two very intelligent, learned men from Northern Ireland who shared a knowledge of their history of oppression, considered so unimportant in this alien land and culture at the farthest ends of the earth, and so who always got together on those "Traditional Days of Irish Catholic Resentment" - the Anniversary of The Battle of the Boine being the only one I remember - to drink whiskey and sing the songs, talk the talk and seethe with historical outraged resentment, keeping alive the anger in that special way that the Irish have always excelled at.

But then it grew into something far greater; grew when Father himself became something far, far greater. Yes, I think, by the end, what Father achieved was A True Greatness of Soul, in capital letters with all that entails! I would even support him being put him forward for Beatification, even Sainthood, and I'm not kidding about that!

Father Michael Bransfield: Fiji's first saint. Mmm, I LIKE that!

To really understand what The Good Father eventually was all about, here's a story I heard from my brother:

Big Brother Gerald has always been given to great ... ummm ... originality of purpose, so decided one day to hike from Deuba to Tavua, across the jungled mountain range of central Viti Levu, for no other reason than he'd never done it, no one else had ever done it, and because he felt he needed the exercise and adventure.

So there he was, hacking his way through the jungle up the side of an enormous and rugged mountain, when he came across a narrow, barely-used mountain path ... and in the distance heard the clop of a very tired horse. He couldn't imagine who it would be, so far from anywhere, in the deepest darkest wilderness, so decided to wait to find out ... and eventually ... coming into view, up through the jungle, alone and riding an old horse, was ... Father Bransfield.

Total astonishment on both sides! Turned out that, unbeknown to anyone, Father Michael Bransfield used his rare days off - only two a month - to ride the length of the mountain range visiting all the neglected villages of Central Viti Levu's highlands: visiting the Colo people who Fiji ignored and reviled as punishment for killing and eating, in 1867, the London Missionary Society's Reverend Baker.

So these ignored, neglected and remote people, overlooked by everyone else, living in a heavily jungled region without services or amenities, believing the crime they'd committed over a century earlier had given them "a jinx" that meant they deserved all that had not happened for them since, had become Father's special friends. Yes, Father Bransfield for decades had taken the long and perilous journey every month to visit them. Alone! And, although he said mass when requested, he didn't go as a priest, just as their friend. And no one ever knew about this.

And what makes it particularly astonishing is that, when Gerald met him that day on the jungle path, Father was in his 70s AND that he had Multiple Sclerosis.

Although they had been good friends for years, this discovery gave Gerald the deepest and most heartfelt respect for the man, and it was Gerald who first suggested that Father Bransfield was a living saint.

But did you notice what I said earlier? That Father Bransfield had Multiple Sclerosis? It's important because I suspect that's the key to understanding that Transcendence, Inner Grace and Outer Glow of Goodness and Benevolence that Father eventually developed:

Although I was extremely young at the time, maybe only three years old, I remember all the drama surrounding his diagnosis. For years, he hadn't said anything about inexplicably losing any movement and feeling in his little finger on his right hand, but when it spread to the next two fingers he asked dad about it: "It's nothing ordinary!" dad said after examining him. "You need to have it checked out properly." and so Father reported it to the head of his Marist Order and was sent to the best doctors in England to find out what caused it.

When it turned out to be M.S., oh boy, what a crisis of faith it was for Father! "Why? Why ME!? Why has God done this to me?" he asked my mum over and over. Mum, strangely, was always the person priests came to whenever they experienced that classic "long, dark night of the soul", and Father was indeed living through "the night", so they spent weeks closeted, talking it through from every angle ...

... and the conclusion they reached? That auto-immune diseases were the ultimate expression of the SELF gone haywire: an enormous and crippling expression of Ego-Rampant ...

... and that managing the disease was simply a matter of putting aside THE SELF and devoting all your time and effort to the needs of other people!

So that's the regime the two of them put together: ignore medical treatment, swim for two hours each morning, eat simply and organically, have faith in the benevolence and abundance of God, and spend the rest of each day living "outside the self"; living for and within the lives of other people; people who need you and what you bring with you; working with "the poorest of the poor" and making a real and measurable difference in their lives.

Mum knew what she was on about here because she herself was "blessed" with a supposedly life-threatening and crippling affliction: a congenitally deformed heart. Because of this, she spent the first sixteen years of her life as a bed-ridden cripple, until, while reading a biography of Haile Selassie, had a profound epiphany which changed everything for her: that, given the severity of her problem, she really shouldn't be alive which meant the fact she was still around was both a miracle and a gift and therefore she should be making something of it; that she should really be making her time on earth actually COUNT for something.

And that's when she decided to never be sick again so, as an act of will, forced herself out of bed and worked hard to become fit and healthy. Then, because her parents didn't agree with what she was doing, she ran away from home, changed her surname, put herself through high school to get qualifications in order to get into Nursing School in order to become a nurse, with the aim of eventually going somewhere in the Third World to do SOMETHING great and meaningful with whatever time was given to her! And that's indeed what she did!

Mum too came to Fiji because of the tuberculous epidemic, but, whereas dad was sent by The British Colonial Service, mum volunteered. The death toll in the Pacific back then was staggering because it was a previously unknown bacteria and no one had any immunity, so mum decided to put herself in the centre of it all, where it was needed most, to see if she could perhaps make a difference.

She did. Fiji put her to work as the "handling-infectious-diseases teacher" for the hospital's nursing staff and while, prior to her taking on the job, all the nurses at Tamavua Hospital, on average, lived for only six weeks after taking a job there, from the moment mum did her stuff, not one nurse ever died from the disease again.

But then, about two years later, dad arrived in Fiji and, always disarmed by good, courageous, kindly, gentle-spirited authentic people, promptly fell in love with mum, who was all this in abundance, so they married and had waayyy too many children and this became all our lives!

Mum was an amazing woman, but the main thing of note here is that she suggested Father adopt the same attitude to his illness that she had to hers! That he should turn his affliction into a blessing and just revel in the joy of each day he was still alive and to do something BIG, meaningful and necessary with what time remained to him, devoting everything he was to the needs of other people.

And, hard to believe, from that moment onwards - from the moment he decided to live without ego - Father Bransfield lost no more faculties! Nearly 50 years with M.S. and it was only those three fingers that remained useless. Over the years, as it became obvious what was happening, or rather NOT happening, the pair of them adopted the mantra, originally by St Augustine, "Miracles don't happen in contradiction to nature, but only in contradiction to that which we think of as nature."

Amazing, huh! And, yes, medical science took note and Father's experience led directly to the discovery of T-cells, and to the development of a new and revolutionary drug-free Pain Management Program, and maybe even to a new way of viewing M.S., only the A.M.A., after 30 years without more symptoms, got all snarky and snarly about it and claimed that, since it wasn't possible for M.S. to go into such a long remission, that it clearly wasn't M.S. but couldn't suggest any other alternative.

Thinking about all this now, maybe it's the ultimate expression of selfishness to attempt to escape the effects of a debilitating illness by devoting your life to other peoples needs, but remember that neither mum nor Father knew this miracle was going to happen. It was really, at the start, just about using your time on earth in a better, more kindly and more courageously productive way ...

... and the fact that it took on a life of it's own and spiralled into Genuine and Transcendent Greatness, wherein, as Tony mentioned, people of all faiths and walks of life crossed streets to receive his blessing, was all down to Father Bransfield's own nature and personality. He never stopped being the funny, laughing, impish, naughty person he'd always been, it was just that, through his selflessness, he simply evolved into His Best Self!

But, living saint or not, we Murphys still fought with him, and, oddly, it was most frequently over Our Good Father's knee-jerk sense of equality and social justice; commendable, yes, but very frequently "too, too much".

The biggest fight? Oh yeah! Remember that one?

Do you recall the time, back in about 1985, when Aunty Irene died leaving her entire Fiji estate to Father Bransfield? That gorgeous villa, all that land, all those seriously, seriously priceless antiques and that serious collection of Serious Art, all, for insurance purposes, valued at US$2.3 million? Yup, all this came to Father Bransfield, to be owned by him personally and with some caveat that the Church was to get none of it, EVER!

In retrospect, I think Aunty Irene did it to be cruel. Father took his vows of poverty very seriously, and I suspect she wanted to undermine that along with everything else he was. She was an angry, hate-filled woman, a mean-spirited, greedy, acquisitive atheist, a friend of folks like Leni Riefenstahl et al, and with a past that didn't bear scrutiny. Although she wasn't a Catholic, when she reached 90, Father befriended her "for the sake of her immortal soul" he said, and spent her last years spending long hours talking with her, trying to make her see that she needed to let it all go, materially and emotionally, to make her peace with her past, with the world and with a higher power in order to regain her soul and a place in the Afterlife.

Father ultimately failed and the legacy, I suspect, was meant as revenge for his attempt. Irene had no faith in Virtue, and, no doubt doing what Jung calls "Shadowing", saw Father's "doing right" as merely as the lack of opportunity to "do whatever he wanted."

Thus this legacy! If ever there was something that was seriously life-changing and life-style challenging; to undermine goodness; to invite Father Bransfield to become something other than who he was, it was this: The Temptations of Christ, indeed, with Aunty Irene providing "The Devil".

In this cynical age, I guess you'd see it as a better story if he did indeed succumb and, I don't know, run off to Vegas to marry a stripper and gamble it all away ... but then, if that happened, we'd NOT be talking about a man like Father Bransfield.

Do you remember what he did with it all?

Yup, he merely held hauled everything into the front garden and held a garage sale to raise money for yet another charity he was involved in! Unspeakably fabulous stuff all went for pocket change. Mum was so furious with him! And when she turned up early to the sale and saw he'd priced Aunty Irene's Picassos for $30.00 each - "It's stupid to pay thousands of dollars for trifles!" he told her - she lost her temper, railed at him that "Great Art is World Heritage and should only belong to people who can take care of it!" and pulled everything "Special Southeby's Sale"-worthy off the front lawn, and, because she realised she was out of her league here, stormed off to ring an art dealer she knew in New York to ask his advice! Mmmm, yes, remember that? Remember how the Kindly Fellow, as soon as he realised what mum was talking about, instantly dropped everything, flew to Fiji, crated it all up and shipped out of the country before you could say "Yee ha! I'm rich! I'm rich! I'm rich!! So long SUCKERS!!"

But Kind-Hearted Fellow did deal with them mostly fairly and Father was eventually grateful to mum because he could then use that resulting influx of serious-money for building that low-cost housing in Samabula or Nasinu or wherever it was, for his latest list of "the poorest of the poor"!

But, as for the rest of what went in that sale that day, mum was helpless in the face of it all, because there was just so much, so she could save nothing else! Remember Aunty Irene's priceless antique bed she was so proud to sleep in because it was made for King Louis XII of France? Did you ever see it? Knuckle-bitingly beautiful and enough to make you fall to your knees crying "I'm not worthy! I'm not worthy!" Truly that was a great World Heritage treasure; a giant ebony four-poster that, with a trundle bed underneath, could sleep 16 in comfort and was all precious wood and carvings so luscious and sensuous they were enough to make you weep, and spiked with exquisitely carved pineapples, a French symbol for kingship.

You recall who he sold it to?

A Navua rice farmer! Yup! Indeed he did! And he only asked $80.00 for it too because "It's all he could afford." I remember being as furious as mum was. "How could you! He wouldn't even know how to care for it!" I railed at him. He replied "The man has a huge family and they all slept on a dirt floor. Why shouldn't they have as much right to comfort as Irene?" and then he gave that impish "Me so naughty!" laugh and said "Besides, I LIKE that a poor farmer now owns the King of France's bed."

Yes, I get it! But, nonetheless, I STILL think it was irresponsible. I mean, that bed was a gem beyond price and it floods in Navua!

But still, that was Father Bransfield! That's what he was all about. Aunty Irene and her Demon Legacy never stood a chance!

What a man! What a good, decent, genuine, authentic, beautiful, amazing, special man!

Truly, truly a life worth celebrating!

Father Michael Bransfield, thank you for being you. Thank you for being my friend. I love you. Rest in Peace!

And a Sainthood! That would be nice too!