A Farewell for Robyn Reynolds OLSH, Yarra Theological Union and Heart of Life Centre

This week Robyn is finishing her teaching at YTU and Heart of Life – and a farewell from each centre. Robyn spent many years in the Northern Territory, did academic studies in Mission Theology.

In Aiming for Excellence, the book on 50 years of the Yarra Theological Union, Robyn has written: over the years – and in the years since I have been at Y to you, different and new roads have been taken, adaptations made, exciting initiatives taken – some have been isolated “events”, others longer term. So, what are you through the years: respectful engaging with all (especially surely, without First Peoples), and making spaces for genuine conversations, for significant learning and teaching and for life-giving, life-growing experiences. When the heart is open, the Spirit breathes.

Heart of Life Centre, Malvern

Asked to contribute a tribute to Robyn for the YTU Alumni Digest, Peter Malone has written:

I am happy to acknowledge Robyn as a sister, a Daughter of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. We share a motto, “May the Sacred Heart of Jesus be everywhere loved”. This is what Robyn has done through her life and ministry.

She has brought this life to YTU and to Heart of Life.

For many years, Robyn lived, as they say, among are indigenous people. Or, as they should say, with them, sharing lives, spirit and spirituality. Robyn speaks and teaches from this experience.

And this has stood her in good and substantial stead in her work at Nungalinya College, Darwin, reflecting on the encounter between the long centuries, millennia, of indigenous sacred stories and vision, symbolic, interpreting their world, and the stories and experience of Christianity.

Yarra Theological Union

And this is what Robyn brought south, to Melbourne, sharing that wisdom and experience with the multinational and multicultural community that is YTU. And she has shared in the spirituality courses at Heart of Life, and wonderful personal contacts.

She has maintained her friendships, connections, and taking stands. And she has been invited to take this beyond Australia to workshops, retreats, in Papua New Guinea, in the Philippines…

Robyn has served YTU and Heart of Life so well.