Dear Inner Circle,

Wayside’s leadership is passing into good hands. Jon Owen and I were in Mount Druitt this week, helping to make a documentary about our succession. We stopped at multiple locations and always someone recognised Jon, embraced him and tried to catch him up on as much news as they could in a few minutes. Each time we jumped back into the car to head to the next location, Jon shared something of the story of the journey he’d shared with the person we just met. After the first couple of these, I was impressed by the compassion of a man who’d shared the worst of human tragedies with people, without for a moment thinking he’s achieved anything special. In one location, we stopped long enough to hear raised, cranky voices. A woman jumped into a car and before our eyes, ran it into the bloke at whom she was yelling. The car knocked the man to the ground and I’d wondered if he might have broken a leg. He quickly jumped up to his feet in time to kick the bonnet of the car before it sped off down the street. I was momentarily in shock. “In this part of the world,” Jon said, “that was just a negotiation.”

Mark your diaries for Sunday, 26 August 2018, 2pm to 5pm. That is the date set aside for Wayside to celebrate my fourteen years in leadership and to anticipate the next fourteen. This event is primarily for you, our inner circle. Maybe you’ve been reading these notes for years and we’ve never met – what a great time for us to meet face to face. It will be a celebration. It will be fun. It’s been an astonishing time for me and at every point and in every achievement, you, our inner circle have been involved and sharing it all. How fitting that we should attempt a get together and celebrate. More details to come as the time approaches.

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Dear Inner Circle,

Life has its own rhythm and learning that is more fundamental to well-being than fostering an attitude of success. Think about how we give ourselves over to sleep at the end of every day. How like death is sleep! If you could see yourself asleep, it would look just like death. In sleep your temperature is different than in death but your conscious self is not present. Is it not amazing that life comes looking for us each morning! Life beckons us to move. To enter life requires us to get up, move our feet to the coffee machine and into life. Our attitude is of no relevance in the matter. Isn’t it more than odd that few greet the stunning invitation into life with joy? We’re comfortable in this death-like state. What a conundrum that our waking moments aren’t always bursting with anticipation.

Wayside’s mission is for the sleeping. We understand that sleeping is needed for those who are tired. Our role is to invite people into life. We’re not much interested in what people think but rather we’re interested in getting people moving. Salvation comes through the feet not through the head. We know well that our invitation is rarely greeted with joy. Most often our early work is with people who are annoyed because we’ve invited them into life and community while they have constructed a dream world in which they are the hero, the only one in the right in a world of evil. In dream life we are all rock stars and professors because there is no real person present to contradict us. How unromantic to move into a world where there are others, who come complete with their own dramas and who can laugh at us as well as love us. Wayside’s mission is in the real. Love never grows in a state of sleep. It’s why none of our ‘success stories’ are a simple matter of flicking a switch to fix someone or make them new. All of our successes are stories of three steps forward, two steps back.

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Dear Inner Circle,

As the finish line looms closer, I’m noticing things that I’ve always seen. A tall, skinny bloke in his thirties, made a direct and quick approach this morning as I walked into Wayside. His hand was stretched out from about four metres away. As he came closer I noticed he wasn’t smiling, so this wasn’t a “farewell” or “well done” but something more serious. In one of this world’s longest hand-shakes, he told me that yesterday a mate had told him of a free feed that was on offer in another part of the city. He described a generous meal that was set before him, “But”, and here came the weighty part of his news, “They began preaching at us.” Still in the one hand-shake he told me that he was humiliated. “Why couldn’t this Christian just make a gift? Why did they have to preach at us?” The final part of the speech was, “I’ve come to Wayside for years and I’ve been helped, I’ve showered and I’ve eaten here many times and no-one has ever preached at me. I just want to thank you!”

I’m noticing that tiny comments are sometimes acts of love. This morning I carried a coffee that I’d bought in the street and a Wayside regular said as I walked past, “There is an ingredient in that stuff called, ‘productivity’”. It made me remember that years ago this same fellow was part of a crowd that witnessed us giving some of our Wayside honey to a Premier of NSW. As the Premier graciously accepted the jar of honey, this fellow yelled out, “Be careful, there is truth serum in it!”
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Dear Inner Circle,

Since Professor Stephen Hawking died, I’ve been reading his most famous book. I’m loving it because it’s a bit of a head spin. It has made me realise that my education in philosophy is so thorough that my foundational understanding of science is fundamentally inadequate. It’s both a shock and a good adventure to have to rethink fundamental things. It wouldn’t matter how vivid your imagination is; no idea, no scheme, no construction could be as fantastic as the real world.

Some weeks here are particularly tough. Three unexpected deaths of young people have caused some of us to struggle this week. Two of these were well connected to Wayside and one only known to me. Gosh, the pain of a Mum and Dad who’ve just lost their child or a sister who just lost her brother or a wife who just lost her husband! I’m not sure there is a shock more brutal than this. When these things happen there are staff here who love and care for those concerned and the sadness can be seen, heard and felt. Many of our staff have lost close family members to tragic events and in such times their own raw nerves wake up. The greatest task for me is to fight the urge to appear wise. There are no wise words and telling people it’s not their fault when they haven’t even heard their own self accusations fully, amounts to telling people not to feel what they feel. I stood on holy ground this week. I didn’t manage anything. If anyone expected me to fix anything, I was a monumental disappointment. One person asked me to pray and I prayed the psalm, “Out of the depths I cry to you O Lord…” Although I feel rather useless, I realise that sadness is an important, even beautiful human state and we can meet each other to some extent in such moments. As I’ve seen the tears of our staff, I’ve fallen in love with them and want to thank them for making this world not just loving but real, and really human.

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Dear Inner Circle,

A young girl from South Sudan was separated from her father when one of the armed militias that roamed the country beat and imprisoned him. The girl thought that her father was dead. She and her mother and siblings had to do all they could to survive without their father. They found shelter in a derelict house that had no roof and because the mother couldn’t feed all her children, the little girl and her big brother were sent into Nairobi to beg or to eat as best they could from rubbish bins. The little girl was only ten years old at that time. While she was doing her best to survive, so too was her father. After he was captured, he was put in a hole in the ground with a steel grate across the top. He shared that hole with twenty other men for six months! In due course another militia invaded this area and set him and the others free. Running as fast as he could, he headed straight into the arms of a third militia who were suspicious of his story and locked him up again in another hole in the ground. After months of unspeakable punishment and abuse, this man was eventually released. He walked across two countries with no shoes, sleeping in trees at night time to avoid lions. He had no idea if his wife and kids were still alive but he kept going and sought asylum. He was granted entrance into Australia in 1998 and I was part of the team who welcomed him into the community. It took two years and a superhuman effort, but we were able to locate this man’s wife and kids and reunite them with their father. A beautiful African face captured my heart this week in the crowd of people who came to register at Wayside as volunteers. It was this same little girl, now a beautiful woman. Today she is a registered nurse, giving professional and compassionate care in the medical system of this country and soon to be a volunteer at Wayside.

A good life isn’t necessarily a lucky life. Our chapel this week, filled up with people who spilled out of the...[read more]