Dear Inner Circle,

A huddle of three men in our café invited me to join their table while they solved all the world’s problems in thirty minutes. Each of these fellows were either sleeping rough or in a less than ideal boarding house. Each had more than their fair share of issues coming from difficult histories. I stepped into a discussion about the American presidential race. We were four old wise men who really knew that our opinion counted for nothing but who never-the-less were genuinely concerned. Two of the three were surprisingly well informed. All three thought that Donald Trump was a buffoon and yet all three were convinced that he will be elected to the high office. One fellow could articulate a sense of “ordinary people don’t trust government any more”. I think it is the heart of the issue.

In 1247 an English noble established a priory (a place of prayer) and called it Saint Mary’s of Bethlehem. The idea was that someone would be praying for the nobleman while he was off fighting battles. Over a couple of hundred years, the priory became a place that cared for the mentally ill. In all of London there were never more than about 20 people who were mentally ill to the extent of needing residential care. When Henry VIII declared himself to be the head of the church and abolished all the monasteries around England, a deep cultural shake took place. It was said in those days that a peasant could walk a day in any direction and find a monastery that would give them shelter and minister to them some soup (hence ‘minestrone soup’). Within just a few years, all the monasteries were gone, sold to the English rich and making Henry the wealthiest monarch in Europe. Saint Mary’s of Bethlehem started to burst at the seams as hundreds of people could no longer cope in a world where the foundations had eroded. Saint Mary’s of Bethlehem became, “Bethlehem”, which became “Bethlem”, which finally became “Bedlam”, which is where this word...[read more]

Dear Inner Circle,

Time for some straight talking. Some religions have demonstrated a propensity for violence. All religions long for peace but some have a history, so consistently violent, that it’s hard to deny an inboard inclination to torture and slaughter. In most cases, the fiercest violence was inflicted not upon other religions but upon sects and groups of people from within their own religion. I speak of course, of Christianity.

For three hundred years, Christianity had no power to persecute anyone. They were an irritant around the Roman Empire and were themselves the object of persecution. Everything changed when the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, believing this God had delivered for him victory in a battle at Milvian Bridge. Suddenly it was cool to be Christian if you wanted to do business in the Roman Empire. In due course it was not just cool, but compulsory. From this moment on, the Church showed great interest in correcting those with flawed understanding. Enthusiasm for the correcting process may have been fuelled by the constant confiscation of the land and goods of the “corrected”.

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Dear Inner Circle,

Someone tapped me on the shoulder and pointed out a bloke in the café who was keen to talk to me. My hearing is not good and when there is a lot of background noise, my hearing is dreadful. Just to make things most complex, the man who wanted to talk to me had a speech impediment. We had a whole conversation where my contribution was almost entirely based on non-verbal indicators. He wouldn’t have been 40 years old but I looked into a face that had lived about 80 hard years. It was a rather beautiful face and he smiled a lot, revealing yellow teeth, stained from years of smoking and less than ideal oral hygiene. Using all my capacity to read grunts and husky noises that looked like language, it seems the man is Brisbane based. He had spent most of his life on the streets of Sydney and had returned this week because two of his old mates from the street had died in the one week. His move to Brisbane had enabled him to stop drinking altogether. An amazing feat. The man was clearly sober although I think he formed his words like he was drunk. Perhaps years without any sober moments had actually given him his speech defect. The whole time we were talking, he formed a pile of tobacco out of a pouch and carefully pulled it apart, I think to eliminate lumps. The process happened over and over again and not one single strand of tobacco was lost while we were talking. Many years ago when I was a chaplain at Parramatta Prison, I smoked a pipe with plumb flavoured tobacco. I thought at the time that it smelled rather nice. I can’t remember anything smelling as vile as this tobacco yesterday. At the end of our conversation, I was ready for a shower. After about 20 minutes, I hugged the man and said, “Well, your two mates are dead and you’re alive and sober. Whatever you’re doing, I think you should keep doing it.” As I walked away, the smile on the man’s face was worth a million dollars. I’m so glad to have met him even though most of my...[read more]

Dear Inner Circle,

On the footpath yesterday as I approached our building, a young man and woman welcomed me into their conversation. Although the man is homeless, you’d be hard pressed to find a more positive person among the entrepreneurs and “go getting” young business people anywhere in this city. The young woman is an arrestingly beautiful yet shy person. We were then joined by a fourth person, a woman not known to me or to either of the young people. The young fellow shared his name and then the young woman said, “Hi, my name is Gretel – as in Hansel and Gretel.” The lovable bloke said, “Yeah, I’ve been leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for Gretel but she won’t follow me.” “Yeah,” she said quietly and with wisdom beyond her years, “That’s because I’m not living in a fairy tale”.

Robyn and I had the joy of two of our grandchildren for the weekend. Grandma and Aunty took Miss 11 to a crochet class while Miss 9 spent some time with me. We ended up at Luna Park where I went on a pile of rides that a bloke my age should not have to endure. My beautiful girl had a lot of fun and I finished the day with a sore neck and back. Naturally, I’d do it again in a heartbeat because a grandparent’s job is nothing other than to create a happy memory. Next time I’m with Miss 9 however, I’m going to take her somewhere where we can get mugged and robbed. It would achieve a similar outcome without the need to wait in queues.

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