Prayer shawl helps healing

By Marina Williams

Kate Thompson was driving when she first heard about an attack at Bondi Beach in Sydney on December 14 last year.

“I was a bit shell-shocked,” says Kate, who has Jewish heritage.

Two gunmen had opened fire on a public gathering marking the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, allegedly killing 15 people, including a 10-year-old child.

As details emerged, it was the public response that stayed with Kate.

Some blamed the government for failing to prevent it. Others framed it as antisemitic or linked it to events overseas.

“That frustrated me – the way people immediately tried to turn it into something else,” Kate says. “It was an act of violence.”

Her response is shaped in part by family history. Her parents fled Nazi Germany before the Second World War, eventually settling in Melbourne in 1939.

That history of displacement, survival and rebuilding was part of the environment in which Kate grew up, not as a single story, but as an ongoing awareness.

At school in the 1950s, she experienced antisemitism, but as a child did not question it.

“As a child, you accept what comes in,” Kate says.

Although she was baptised as a Christian at 15, religious practice was not part of her upbringing. Her connection to Judaism remained cultural rather than observant, informed more by history and identity than by belief.

For the past 20 years, Kate has lived near Aireys Inlet with her husband David, a retired Uniting Church minister. She is actively involved in community sport and, in 2024, was awarded the Order of Australia for her service.

While she does not describe herself as a person of faith, she occasionally attends services at the Surf Coast Uniting Church in support of David.

“I’ve never practised the faith,” Kate says. “People will say I don’t have a faith – but I have a strong commitment to values.”

When people ask how she can be married to a minister and not share his faith, her answer is direct.

“Our marriage is based on mutual respect and trust,” she says. “We have very, very similar values.”

Kate believes people should be able to live without fear.

“I have a very strong belief that violence in the community is just not on,” she says.

While the Bondi attack left her shaken and feeling unsafe, she was angered by what she describes as an “it serves them right” response from some within the community.

“There was a sense of ‘here we go again’,” she says.

At the same time, she drew some reassurance from the actions of a Muslim man who intervened to disarm one of the alleged gunmen – a moment that stood in contrast to the assumptions that quickly followed.

After hearing how the attack had affected Kate, Rev Tina Lyndon Ng, minister of the Surf Coast Uniting Church group of churches, reached out to ask whether she would accept a hand-knitted prayer shawl.

Kate hesitated.

“I didn’t feel particularly deserving,” she says. “There are more people in the world who are worse off than I am.”

David encouraged her to accept the shawl.

Marilyn Wendt, a member of the church’s small prayer shawl group, was asked to knit the shawl – a task she immediately accepted.

Like Kate, Marilyn is not originally from Aireys Inlet. She and her husband settled in the area about 20 years ago. Of Lutheran faith, she chose to attend the local Uniting Church rather than travel to Geelong for a Lutheran church, to meet people and become involved in the community.

Working from a request to include a candle rather than the group’s usual cross motif, Marilyn developed the design as she knitted, using blues and whites with orange for the flame.

“I was honoured to be asked,” Marilyn says. “I was thinking about how to tell a story through the shawl. With faith, together with this candle, we could get through all our hardships.”

Marilyn says the candle represents the light of God in the world. Lighter strands emerge through the darker base, reflecting the spread of light.

“The light of the candle was repeated through the shawl until the stripes are stronger than the blue.”

For Marilyn, the work is not only about the finished object, but what it carries.

“We feel they need a hug or some love and protection,” she says.

When the shawl was finished, it was presented to Kate at a church service. The two women had not met before that day.

Afterwards, they sat together and spoke.

“When I met Kate, she had a beautiful smile. She seemed peaceful and accepting – it made it easy,” Marilyn says.

What began after an act of violence has developed into a friendship.

“We just clicked,” Kate says.

For Kate, the significance of the shawl lies not in the object itself, but in the act behind it.

“It shows what strangers can do for each other,” she says. “Without compassion and hope, you’re just surviving.”