Br Walter Smith was my high school principal from 1984 to 1988. In the early years we knew him only as the principal, the Marist brother, the crusty old guy you shouldn’t cross if you don’t want to get into trouble. As we matured we grew to know him as a guy with principles, with strong convictions, with a passion for changing the world (even if it means one kid at a time), and with a lot of love for us. He was inspired by Joseph Cardijn, who said “together we can change the world”. He made us believe it was true.
The year I left school was the year he left too. He set up a school in a poor remote village in Pakistan, then did the same thing in Afghanistan, then trained new members to the brotherhood in Sri Lanka. We’d see him from time to time when he took a break and came back down under. My parents had become good friends with him. Then when I left Adelaide for Melbourne I would see him there too, his old home town. Even at 75 he had more energy, more rebellious angst and more work ahead of him than I did. I would relish in the stories he had of the poverty, the insecurity, the violence, the solidarity and freedom that he lived in after he left our little suburban world.
In those times I felt like I was sitting next to a saint, a real-live Joan of Arc or San Antonio or Mother Teresa. He had a humility about him that was masked by a 6′4″ stature and those clenched fists that he held up against corruption in the countries he worked in, and the complacencies in our own white lifestyles. But while we wanted to know everything, hear all the stories as if we could live saintly vicariously through him, his only interest was in us. He wanted to know everything in my own little first-world life, to see how I’ve grown, to show me that I was still as important to him as an adult as I was as his teenage-student.
Yesterday morning, in a small Pakistani village hospital, Br Walter left the world changed. There are hundreds of people like me, scattered all over the globe, who’ve been fed by this man. We’ve felt his fire, been uplifted by his love. We’ve believed we can change the world, as if it’s as easy as changing shoes. We’ve believed this because we’ve seen him do it.
I’m so sad right now. In my tears swims the hope that he knows how much we, I, love him. In my head is the image of a man dying, half a world away, taking with him the thought that he was adored, admired, respected by everyone his life touched. In me is the idea, is the prayer, that all his accomplishments are complete, over and over a million times.
Because in my heart I know that everything I have ever done that has made me proud of who I am, is because he made me believe I could do them.
My mentor, my friend, my saint, your energy will never be spent.
