David Oldfield Testimonial

Friends gathered at Kauai, midway in the Pacific,
to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the
Midway Centre for Creative Imagination
and the work and achievements of David Oldfield.
July 19 to 23, 2005

by Dally Messenger III, Civil Celebrant from Australia
Principal of the International College of Celebrancy

To friends gathered

Let’s get one thing straight. David Oldfield is a good operator. He is also a good human being. He is also moral, ethical, human, humane and personable. In his chosen work he is effective. He is also a magnificent communicator. He is a clear and superb writer of English.

We first met through a book called Crossroads. Let me put you in the picture. Let me explain. In Australia in 1973 we had a visionary Attorney-General, Lionel Murphy, who acted on the conviction that civil marriage ceremonies i.e. for non-church people, should not just be the signing of a legal contract. It should be an occasion of dignity, substance and meaning.

To ensure authenticity, he went further and advocated that the couple should choose and / or totally approve their own ceremony.Thus the dignity he advocated was to be enhanced by authenticity and honesty. For non-church people it was a world first. He asked a small group of us, myself included, to progress his vision.

In time, as you can imagine, Wedding ceremonies led to Funeral ceremonies, led to Naming ceremonies, led to all the ceremonies that should mark the milestones in human life.

The Reform was a marvellous success – but did we understand what we were doing?

Not really –

Then we discovered David Oldfield, a man who had cut his teeth at the coalface with Rites of Passage for adolescents. David found that the his Rite of Passage for the young person worked. They were asked to change their lives for better. This was symbolised in a Rite of transition. The Rite culminated in a ceremony, wherein a commitment was made or denied.

This, as I say, was the way, the only effective way, David Oldfield found, of achieving any progress at all with delinquent, depressed and drug-addicted youngsters. And later it became clear to him that this Rite could be adapted for all adolescents, every one of whom has to handle the crisis of growth and change. In the midst of all this, and no doubt from his study of Divinity at Yale, he gained a refined understanding of the nature of ceremony, which is what we, in Australia, were on about.

One of our leading celebrants, my close friend John Hill, quotes David Oldfield in almost every ceremony at which he officiates. This is the Oldfield quote he uses (Slightly adapted)

Rituals and ceremonies are an essential and basic means
for human beings to give themselves
and others, the necessary messages
which enable the individual to stay human.
They communicate acceptance,
love, a sense of identity, esteem,
shared beliefs, solemnity and memorable events.

Every ritual contains a tender and sacred moment.
That moment of tenderness and sensitivity
brings us out of the normal flow of life.
We, in fact, step out of our routines.
We touch an event
that is truly precious and sacred.
In ritual we are participating in something
that is profoundly symbolic.
We allow the depth of what we feel to shine through
and we enter into a myth
that touches deep into the human spirit.
That moves us to the heart.

So having met him in his book, we sought to bring him to Australia. This we did for a watershed conference at the Pallotti Conference Centre at Millgrove in a country atmosphere — an hour and half’s drive from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. This was in July 99. It was a wonderful event.

We gained a much deeper understanding of what we were doing. We went into new depths. We gained a new appreciation of the importance of our work. This understanding motivated us to improve our ceremonies and lift our game in all sorts of ways.

David (pronounced, as he likes to tell me, “Doivid” in Oz) came again in April 2002 and did it again with a new group of people. This time we focused on Adolescent Ceremonies. Many good things have followed with my colleagues in Australia — Carol Astbury, Dorothy Shorne, Maureen Burdett, Margaret Fitzpatrick – to name a few.

I have visited him in Washington several times and developed our personal friendship. My fiancée, Remi Bosseau, accompanied me on the last occasion.

At the personal level, every time I share a glass of red with David Oldfield, I feel validated and strengthened – just like you all do. I feel validated too in the work I do – which is perhaps more important.

I hope our gathering in the Midway of the Pacific will make him and his family feel validated and strengthened too. He deserves it, don’t you think? Twenty-five years of doing good for people, assisting them to lead a happier, more fulfilled, and more authentic life is a volcano and an ocean worth celebrating.

© Dally Messenger