Tribute to Elizabeth Rendall

Elizabeth Rendall

The following tribute was delivered at the funeral in Wanstead of Elizabeth Rendall on 1 December 2011 by Ellen Teague.

What a long and rich life Elizabeth has had. And not only as Elizabeth - her favourite name - but also as Sr Mary Philip and, even earlier, as Betty.

It was Betty who was born in Kensington, London, a few months after the return of her mother, Edith Alcamia Rendall, from China, with her three other children, Jack, Colin and Jean. She was educated at the Ursuline Convent in Forest Gate. In 1939, the school was first evacuated to Norfolk - where she wrote an article on 'Peace' for the school magazine which showed inclinations developed during her life. Amidst the Second World War she talks about peace in the Sunday evening service in a Thetford church lit by candlight, "reflected in the brass of the eagle's wings of the lecturn and in the burnished wood of the pews" and the walk towards Brandon where "peace was to be found in the evening when the birds settled down to their rest with the sun setting in all its glory". The school then moved to Cliffdene Hotel in Newquay. Betty was head girl and classmates watched with awe when she asked the army sergeant drilling troops behind the hotel to invite the men to the school nativity play. She would have been so touched to see friends from her childhood here today and they have stayed in contact all these years.

At 18 she joined the Ursuline Sisters - where again she made lifelong friends - and was known as Sr Mary Philip for over 40 years. As a novice, she read History at Queen Mary College of the University of London. In those years her family and early friends saw little of her but several generations of young women knew her as their teacher. Several of her pupils here attest that she was a kind and inspirational teacher who taught at Ursuline convents in Ilford and Chester, becoming headmistress at the Ursuline Convent in Wimbledon for nine years. She left there in 1968 to become a lecturer in the Divinity Department of Christ's College of Education in Liverpool and it was here that she developed an interest in world development issues. Indeed, being asked to deliver a course in Liberation Theology set her on a path that became her life's work. Throughout the 1970s she was involved in Justice and Peace work at diocesan and national level and sat on the Churches World Development Committee.

The early 80s saw her at the Ursuline Sisters Community in Shotton, North Wales, but this time embedded in a local community - living in an ordinary street with families as immediate neighbours. She was involved in many programmes with the local parish, visiting housebound and vulnerable people and a project with abused women.

Ecumenical initiatives became very dear to her - lay people regularly met at the house for Lenten ecumenical prayer groups. A history of the Shotton community records of Sr Mary Philip that: "She kept the values of J&P at the heart of the mission. Her knowledge of issues great and small and her willingness to take up action where required was exemplary. Known locally as 'the tall sister' she offered friendship and help to those she met and was always deeply committed to helping agencies such as CAFOD, Pax Christi, and the Catholic Institute for International Relations, now known as Progressio. She was always welcoming to anyone who came to the house and was sadly missed when she moved from the community to London where she continued in her chosen work, now in the offices of CAFOD."

For, in her own words, around 1983, she had "reached a stage when the urge to make action for justice a profound reality in my life has become dominant". She had also decided to seek reconsecration as a 'consecrated woman' living a simple lifestyle away from the Ursulines, with freedom to campaign more actively on justice issues. It was on 23 June 1984 that Archbishop Worlock visited the small chapel in the woods of Ince Benet, near Liverpool - at Tom Cullinan's simple monastery - to consecrate Elizabeth. A friend records that Tom's monastery, "became a haven for many people such as Elizabeth and myself, where we could sit on the chapel floor and chant psalms in the early morning darkness with Tom, tend his vegetables as we prayed, and talk with him about our lives and our futures, together with the future of the Church and the world". For the rest of her life she met with other consecrated women every six months, even this past summer when her health was in serious decline, and they meant a great deal to her. It was as Elizabeth - which she called her 'going forward' name - that she moved to London, to a flat in South Woodford and to work for CAFOD.

Well 1984 stands out for me too. It was the year I met Elizabeth in CAFOD's Development Education Department and it was the year of the Ethiopian famine and liveaid. Development agencies were beginning to notice the environmental context of food security, and CAFOD prepared a ground-breaking education campaign called 'Renewing the Earth', looking at the links between development and environment.

Elizabeth looked after CAFOD's library of periodicals and newspapers and became a key researcher on that campaign. Over our shared lunches each day - where Elizabeth always provided the brown bread - Brian Davies, Pat Gaffney, Denise Carter, Elizabeth and myself would discuss key issues such as sustainable food and agriculture, water and impacts of rainforest destruction.

When Brian brought Columban Father and eco-theologian Sean McDonagh in as a consultant to that campaign, things really got exciting. He would have been here except that he is attending the UN Climate Conference in South Africa, and Elizabeth would have approved of that. In fact, she greatly admired all the Columbans for their mission regarding environmental justice. I can remember Elizabeth and myself reading Sean's first book 'To Care for the Earth' and reflecting that pieces in a jigsaw were being fitted together in our minds. The campaign was under-pinned by creation-centred theology, and Elizabeth became a great expert in this country. When I visited her flat the week before she died I was struck by her extensive library on the topic…. not only Sean's more recent books, but publications by Thomas Berry, Edward Echlin, Sallie McFague, Mary Grey, Celia-Deane-Drummond, Matthew Fox, David Toolan, the inspirational Teilhard de Chardin and others.

Elizabeth and I became close collaborators and every morning when I arrived at my desk there would be a photocopies of relevant articles waiting, placed there by Elizabeth who had monitored the press since arriving in at 8am.

Research was much more of a slog then in those days before the internet. In fact, the reason Elizabeth asked that I give this tribute is because we grew together in a new understanding of the world and humanity's place in it. Justice and Peace now involved the Integrity of Creation, seeking justice not only for today's marginalised, but intergenerational justice for future generations who might have to cope with an environment polluted and diminished in terms of biodiversity, fresh water and climate change. Peacemaking now included making peace with the planet. When Elizabeth left CAFOD around 1994 we continued our collaboration. She had a wealth of knowledge on earth-inclusive liturgy materials which I drew on for publications I worked on such as 'Between the Flood and the Rainbow'. Many of the resources in the 'Prayers and Liturgies' section of this 2008 publication on Climate Change and the Church's Social Teaching came from Elizabeth.

Elizabeth could appear as an academic but reserved person but let me tell you that she was an intensely passionate woman where God's creation was concerned. She was critical of Catholic Social Teaching if it was not accompanied by action, and indeed organised religion where it refused to engage with environmental realities or gave excessive attention to what she felt were fringe issues.

She was intensely spiritual, even mystical. After leaving CAFOD in the mid 1990s she threw herself into promoting the mission of ecumenical environmental initiatives, particularly Christian Ecology Link and Operation Noah, a Christian organisation focusing on climate change. She was an active member of the National Justice and Peace Environment Working Party, helping to plan events and produce resources. She was in regular contact with theologians who also believed passionately in cherishing planet earth. As one friend observed - in her quiet way she "had her finger on the pulse of the Church of the future".

Elizabeth hoped her understanding of the Cosmic Christ would shine through at her funeral, or, as she put it: "What I am hoping is that my funeral should open the door on this other way of seeing which is bubbling up all around…. the cosmic story".

Consider passages marked in her papers:

Daniel O'Leary, writing in The Tablet in July 2010: 'The incarnation of God did not only happen in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. The Incarnation actually began 14 billion years ago with a moment we now call The Big Bang. Two thousand years ago, the human Incarnation of God in Jesus happened, but before that, in the original incarnation of the amazing story of evolution, God had already begun the mysterious process of becoming flesh by first becoming Creation itself.'

Elizabeth agreed with St Thomas Aquinas that Creation is the primary and most perfect revelation of the Divine and realising this helps us to understand God.

And a quote from Thomas Berry's essays - 'We need to experience the divine revelation presented in the natural world'.

I was surprised to learn that Elizabeth was 87 years old when she died - on a Saturday when two of her best loved groups were meeting in London - Christian Ecology Link and the National Justice and Peace Network quarterly meeting. She was warmly remembered and prayed for at both. Of course I could have worked out her age - she was in her 60s when I first met her 27 years ago. Yet she always seemed to me to be ageless, such was her energy and enthusiasm - Elizabeth serving on the Refugee and Ethical Investment groups of Brentwood Justice and Peace Commission; supporting ecumenical initiatives on the environment in Redbridge, Elizabeth on the planning group for the July 2010 NJPN Conference at Swanwick on 'Our Daily Bread - Food Security, People and Planet', Elizabeth at the annual climate service.

Before she was ill she never missed an NJPN network meeting, a CAFOD lecture, a Christian Ecology Link Retreat, an Operation Noah event. And she supported so many good causes financially, giving regular donations to around 35 charities and organisations. She was always concerned for the homeless and she would carry around with her a list of places which she would give out to anyone sleeping rough. She affirmed the goodness and talents of young people at every opportunity. A friend has said, "she was a person who gave her life to the service of others and did so discreetly and without fanfare".

It is so fitting that Elizabeth will have a woodland burial tomorrow and that this will be essentially a family celebration. She knew her death would mark the end of a chapter in the family history - with her sister and two brothers gone, she is the last of that generation. In her 80s, Elizabeth pursued a quest about her identity that vexed her all her life. She found out more about her father - George Crofts - whose name is connected today with Chinese collections in museums around the world. After spending much of his life in China he died here in London a year after her birth, but his Catholic faith and love for her were keenly felt lifelong through educational and financial provision. She fancied he may have met her hero Teilhard de Chardin who was also in China in the early 1920s since both men shared an interest in Chinese antiquities and were based in Tientsin. She will certainly be with many of us in spirit at the July 2012 NJPN conference which focuses on China.

Elizabeth was so proud of her Rendall family. Her three nieces - Jane, Vanessa and Diana - were especially close to her in recent years and very particularly through her illness. She regarded them as a great blessing and was immensely grateful for their attentiveness. How touched she would have been to see their care over planning the funeral she wanted. In the last 15 years she greatly enjoyed family weddings and christenings, taking great delight in welcoming the latest generation into the world.

But it is a world whose health and sustainability troubled her.

When I visited her a week before she died her first words were, "O dear Ellen, our poor planet!" But she cheered up when I sang her favourite hymn 'Here I am Lord' to her. In fact, she smiled and did actions to the chorus with her hands and picked out the words, 'I will go Lord if you lead me'. When former CAFOD director, Julian Filochowski, visited the following day and asked her to say 'Hi' to Archbishop Romero when they met up in heaven, she promised that she would. She had a constant stream of visitors, especially dear friends like Des, Kay and Catherine who joined her family in accompanying her to the end.

Elizabeth would urge us to think of her in her garden, perhaps talking over composting with her gardener Susan. Of course gardens have a special place in Christian experience, prompting us to on-going reflection on the importance of God's creation and care for the environment. If only all of us could develop Elizabeth's sensitivity. She told me some months ago that: "While in hospital I was allowed to keep some fresh daffodils by my bed although this was forbidden. Why? The staff had come to realise that I desperately needed this living presence in the midst of so much mechanised man-made harshness. Personally I have always experienced God's living presence more truly in the clouds, the trees, the blossom, the birds than in any purely liturgical ceremony."

Let us remember her by taking on her allergy to exclusiveness and prejudice, finding joy in everyday things, truly cherishing our planet, living simply, listening to women and to prophets, and building ecumenical partnerships in our work for justice, peace and the integrity of creation. In fact, a bit more concretely, go to the climate service and march on Saturday, praying for successful outcomes from the Durban climate
conference: 11.30am at St. Mary le Bow in Cheapside. Elizabeth was at this service last year even as her illness was taking hold.

Dear Elizabeth, we will all miss your wisdom, kindness and solidarity. As a longer-standing friend than I has said, "I have rarely met a person of such integrity, with such a large heart". You were in fact a person with enormous power, but it was a gentle influence - not of power OVER but power WITH. You accompanied so many of us on our mission regarding justice, peace and ecology and that is why so many have travelled from around England and Wales to bid farewell to you today. You loved that quote from Tom Cullinan where he talks about the staying power needed to hang on to a vision and work towards it. He calls it 'patient endurance' and says "that staying power calls on deep spiritual resources, on a deep peace within ourselves". Well Elizabeth you had these in abundance and we give thanks to God for your life.

Elizabeth Rendall
10 March 1924 - 19 November 2011
Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, Wanstead
Main celebrant Fr Frank Nally SSC