Dear Inner Circle,

“Would it be corrupt if I gave one of your staff a present?” It’s a funny opening line to a conversation, but just now I spoke with a big tall man whose face beamed like he was four years old and just found out that it was Christmas morning. He explained to me that our Pathways Officer, Mandy, has patiently walked alongside him for some time now and as a result, he starts a full-time paying job next week. He will be a traffic controller and he’s on top of the world because it’s a job he feels confident to do and he loves to think he could do something that will assist to keep the traveling public safe. I’ll bet anything that just one look into this beaming face is all the thanks Mandy would ever need, and I was delighted this morning to bask in her reflected glory.

Another beautiful face that captured me this week belonged to a long-time member of this inner circle. Listening to this voice and beholding this spirit, delivered in the accent and colloquial of her original culture, held me spellbound and eventually left me with something I couldn’t name. I guess the something was, presence. She described one moment of growth by saying, “I didn’t even know I was in a birth canal but nevertheless, I got pushed out of a comfortable darkness into an unknown, impossibly difficult and challenging space that was, ‘life’”. At one stage this person said of me that, “I was the pea on the end of a fork.” I have not the remotest idea what that expression might mean but I hope it’s good. Like all moments of revelation, I wished it could have lasted longer. Thankfully, I learned years ago that the more you try to hang onto such beauty, the quicker it evaporates.

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Dear Inner Circle,

In the café yesterday I saw a young fellow, who had cooked his brain, walk around aimlessly picking up items that clearly didn’t belong to him. It didn’t look like his intention was to steal but rather it looked like he had no idea what he was picking up or why. Eventually, someone noticed that their coat was in the possession of this kid who seemed to be laying it out on a table as if to iron it perhaps. Naturally, all hell broke loose. Our staff were on it quickly but it provided a genuinely distressing few moments. I was sitting with a bloke who I’d not seen in some time but our conversation had to end in such an anxious atmosphere. Everything settled and the bloke next to me said, “I love Wayside because you get dinner and a show”.

Rarely am I in a state of shock but the revelations from the church about sexual crimes against children have caught me off balance. The world that I knew changed this week as it was revealed by the church that up to 40% of people in one religious Order could be considered to be predators. In other religious Orders the estimate was 20%. I just can’t seem to regain my balance. I’ve been inclined to defend the church because I’ve known hundreds of nuns and priests who have served humanity with their whole selves, embodying all that is finest and inspiring in their roles of teachers, philosophers, social workers and chaplains. I have two academic degrees from Catholic institutions and I will be forever grateful for the depth of love and the incalculable gift of philosophy, theology and history poured into me by masters in their fields.

Keep reading here.

Dear Inner Circle,

A couple came to see me a few months ago. They’d had a stable marriage and seemed to have found a way to work together, maximizing the opportunities life offered and building a successful life. A sudden revelation brought all of this crashing to the ground in the speed of a text message. I’ll never forget the look on their faces in my office as each one looked at the other as if they were alien. I think the problem was that the two had become one. They seemed to know each other so well that each was utterly predictable to the other. Each could count on the other and there was little, if any, mystery. Oh, the joy of not knowing. Oh, the misery of knowing someone so well that they become invisible. They saw me again this week. Again, the look on their faces rendered me speechless. The change is hard to explain. Wonder and not knowing had returned. They each looked at the other as if waiting for a revelation. I asked how they could explain this turnaround; half-hoping I might have said something wise that might have helped. They told me that the only real change they could observe is that they no longer let the television run in the evenings, and at an agreed time, they turn their phones off. For months now, they listen to the news and then for the rest of the evening they talk to one another. This week, neither one offered me any observations to help me understand the other. The only pronouns they used were, “We, us and our”. Talking is a miracle. By talking they had discovered that there was much they didn’t know about the other and each was relieved of the burden of being the “smart” one in the relationship. I could barely believe I was talking with the same couple. Stability is not always a sign of health or life. Many years ago, I did a placement at a psychiatric hospital and I almost worshipped my supervising psychiatrist. In those days, the prevailing language in that world was Freudian and I lapped it up. At the end of the...[read more]