Dear Inner Circle,

OK, who stole 2015? This is my last note for the year as next Thursday will be Christmas Eve and Wayside will be running on adrenaline by then as we gear up for our street party. Perhaps it’s a feature of old age or perhaps it’s a characteristic of having fun, but time appears to accelerate. Get a bit of a feel for the year we’ve had by checking out our recent Annual Report.

Our awesome mission, to create community with no ‘us and them’, has set a path for our feet and the more we’ve moved toward our destiny, the more others have jumped alongside, contributing what they can and watching the impossible unfold in front of us. It’s not in the realm of ideas that our mission unfolds. I think it was Kierkegaard who said you can only “understand” your life backwards but you can only “live” your life going forwards. Our mission has lived this year in teaching people with mental health issues to surf down at Bondi; it's lived in moments of celebration when one of our visitors gets off the streets; it's lived in acting classes, in choirs, in music jams, in celebrations of countless things. It’s lived in the life of our little café, a place of meeting or refuge, of conversations or of no words at all.

Keep reading here.