Dear Inner Circle,

Our morning began with tears today. One of our visitors, an intelligent young man, full of promise, met a sudden end. We don’t know the full circumstances around his death, although we knew of a difficult struggle with mental health and substance abuse. On hearing the news this morning, a couple of our senior people stood in our lift quietly, weeping. Our lift was an awesome place this morning. I assured our people that their contribution to Wayside and to life was not just made by what they do but by who they are. These two didn’t just lose a client. The young man wasn’t an interesting “case”. The tears came because they had lost a brother. Precious tears. Precious people.

If you’re in Sydney you might be interested to pop into Wayside tonight. The Gyuto Monks of Tibet will be visiting with us. The monks are world famous and they keep a tradition that is more than 600 years old. They will lead us in a guided meditation and blessing with a chanting ceremony. There will be a session of Q&A that I will lead. Everyone is welcome although we will ask for a donation that will be split between the monks and Wayside. Seating is limited to the number we can safely sit in our hall so I’d appreciate it if you could email maxine.schellhorn@thewaysidechapel.com to let us know you’re coming.

Keep reading here.

Dear Inner Circle,

A lovely man who has a bit of a gift for finding the hard way to do anything, really owes his life to Alcoholics Anonymous. The man was born into alcoholism, literally, on a park bench because his mum couldn’t get herself to hospital. All his life, the foetal alcohol spectrum disorder made everything hard. Schooling was impossible and so now as an adult any reading and writing is a major obstacle. Thanks to AA, this fellow has been dry for at least 10 years and he’s undertaken a lot of coaching to try and gain some of the opportunities lost to him because of an alcoholic daze that lasted from birth until about 30 years of age. I’m a big fan of AA because I’ve known many people, like this bloke, for whom it was just the right answer. People who are immersed in it tend to develop a language all of their own. Often in a conversation, this beautiful man will launch into “Rule 5” or some other aspect of AA. He’s inclined to quote “the big book” quite often. Yesterday he was talking about a situation that is really testing him. “Like the big book says,” he told me, “Patience is a virtue”. We talked about what he might do to help move his situation forward a bit and at one point he reminded me about, “A stitch in time… like it says in the big book”. We talked about how so many things lately had not worked out as planned and I chipped in, “Well, like it says in the big book, ‘shit happens.’” He looked a bit surprised and asked me where such a thing was said in the big book. Having misquoted the bible a half dozen times now he asks me for references! “Well,” I said, “I think the big book says that ‘shit happens’ from cover to cover.’” There was an embarrassing pause before a joke was detected.

Walking into the building this morning I recognised a vaguely familiar face. We stood face to face before I realised that I knew the man quite well. “My Lord,” I said. “I couldn’t recognise you...[read more]

Dear Inner Circle,

To sit in my office is sometimes an act of significant courage. A big strapping man sat with me this week and struggled to tell me of his childhood. He was brought up in a string of religious children’s institutions where fear and brutality were constantly present. Over the years he’s hated anything that had the mildest sniff of religion because it just wakes up memories of loathing. An ocean of resentful feelings filled the room and yet he was bewildered that he had come to a minister to talk and seek understanding. He told me at one point that in those years, most of the beltings he received were from ministers. He told me how he had come to a church service once with his socks turned down. It was against the rules and the minister thrashed him and sent him to spend the morning in the toilet. My heart broke. I could see the little boy as I was hearing the story.

I once would have tried to explain away the violence against children perpetrated in our culture and especially that of religious institutions. I used to tell myself that those who ran such places meant well or that the world was different then. But brutality is brutality no matter the ideology or theology of the brute. We’ve been shocked in recent years by a Royal Commission exposing our blindness to the sexual abuse of children, but as hard as it might be to contemplate, all of this was a subset of a more brutal history.

Keep reading here.