A life of lost sleep - Rosie Hoban

Michael McGirr stifles a yawn as our discussion turns to sleep. In fairness it’s late in the evening and the author, teacher and father has just helped settle three small children. They are tucked in and ready for a night’s sleep. Michael on the other hand is settling in for a couple of hours of schoolwork, correcting students’ essays. Life has certainly changed for him in the past nine years since he left the Jesuit order after two decades. Madonna readers will be familiar with many of his twists and turns and wistfully regret his departure as a Madonna columnist a few months ago. He too, wishes he could fit that column, ironically titled, Roadside Rest, into his already tight schedule.

Michael’s career changes have been widely chronicled and they still create a murmur of interest. Priest leaves a religious order, falls in love, marries, moves to small country town, becomes a successful author and fathers three children in quick succession, moves back to Melbourne and takes up job as head of faith and mission at St Kevin’s College. But such chronicles do not do justice to all that has happened to date and the people who have become part of his life.

‘Leaving the order was not easy and it was a step into the unknown. But I am so blessed and I am very grateful,’ he said. The blessings include meeting his wife, Jenny, and the births of their three children Ben (5) and twins Clare and Jacob (3).

‘At every stage in my life, even in the Jesuits, I put out the begging bowl for God to fill and it is amazing what I have been given.’

Whatever else is said about his recent life, it has been busy. Throw into the mix his chronic sleep disorders and you end up with a tired man, but one driven to write about sleep and restlessness. The Lost Art of Sleep was published recently and earnt Michael a seat at the 2009 Melbourne Writers Festival.

The book came from three directions. Having three kids under the age of two; learning through them the mysteries of sleep and my own sleep story,’ Michael said. His own sleep story is about sleep apnoea and fathering his children, which of course means no opportunity for sleep or rest for several years. It is a story privately familiar to many, though his has had a public ‘outing’.

I once fell asleep during one of my own sermons. It wasn’t hard to do. One day I asked people to stop for a moment of silent reflection while I tried to think of the next thing to say. I then dozed off. When I looked up everyone was laughing,’ he said.

The seeds for the current book, The Lost Art of Sleep, were planted as he researched his second book, Bypass, published in 2004. He was riding his bike along the Hume Highway and was at a rest stop talking to one of the thousands of truck drivers who continually ferry goods around the country. Michael was struck by the crazy frenetic world he inhabited. A world suffering fatigue. And here was a world longing for rest.

You only have to look at coffee sales to realise how hard we try to stay awake. Coffee is the world’s second most valuable commodity after oil,’ Michael said.

The book is also about the restlessness of our entire culture and one suspects Michael could deliver an insightful homily on the topic these days. But who has the time and space to listen to such reflections or for that matter, to find a place to listen to God? Our busy lives remind him of Florence Nightingale who spent fifty years in bed, trying to control the world. She was so busy she never got to meet the God she thought she was serving.

We seem to have a need to stay in the driver’s seat in our life, to be in control. This is what stops us getting to know God. It is only when we hand over control that we can find “rest for our souls”,’ he said. According to the Bible story, God rested on the seventh day. This was the crowning achievement of creation.

I think that being always busy is a way of claiming the territory of being a serious human being. What is lacking from a busy life is surrender and acceptance that I will not get everything done in this life’.

Michael says his most spiritual experiences in recent years have come from his children who have refreshed his connection with God. Listening to his son say The Lord’s Prayer for the first time filled him with a deep sense of God. He generously shared those stories with Madonna readers in his column, Roadside Rest.

As one of those Roadside Rest readers I was moved by his column earlier this year, which provided a colourful recount of the family’s visit to St Francis’ Church in Melbourne after viewing the famous Myer Christmas window. The children received, as they often do, a holy card from an elderly Italian man.

We pray often that our children will find a home for themselves in the Christian community, and we know that the people they meet at church, such as the gentleman at St Francis’, play a big part in this. We don’t want them to think of the church as a place where they can look but not touch. We’d love it to be as full of God’s humanity as a Sunday train,’ he wrote. I too miss reading how, through his children, God is not just present, but in your face.

Michael’s faith in God’s love is shared not just with his own children, but also with the boys he teaches at St Kevin’s. He believes they too are keen to discover something deeper and his vision for his work is rooted in the Gospel.

Life is too full and hectic right now to consider a fourth book, but he continues to write as a way of exploring and understanding his inner life. Those who have followed Michael through books and columns have had the pleasure of observing, laughing and sometimes crying with him. We have felt that we are a part of a moment in his world, along the highway on his bike; in Europe with his Mother (Things You Get For Freepublished in 2000) or more recently at St Francis’ with Ben, Clare and Jacob.

The Lost Art of Sleep by Michael McGirr (Picador Australia, $32.99).