Dear Inner Circle,

It's funny how when a new little person comes into your life, you don’t have to redistribute your reservoir of love but rather your heart enlarges and you discover reserves of love you never dreamed about. This week Liz, who has worked with Wayside in a most effective way as our Partnerships Manager, brought in her new baby, Juliette. There is suddenly more to Liz now. There is more to us now too. My heart has also enlarged to include a little boy named Flynn. He’s only four weeks old but he and I were deep in discussion last week. He began to make a little expression of discomfort and so his three-year-old big sister walked up close to me and said in a confidential manner, “He doesn’t like you!”

When I conduct a wedding, I usually try to evaporate briskly and discretely after the ceremony. Often, however, I get caught by people who want to thank me for the ceremony or simply say, “hi”. I think weddings are beautiful, sacred things but can also be quite fun. After an enjoyable ceremony last week I was soon in a huddle with people. An immaculately groomed elderly man shook my hand and said, “I used to be a devout Christian and now I’m agnostic”. I said, “I bet you’re a nicer man as an agnostic than as a devout believer”. It wasn’t what he expected me to say. “Well,” I said, responding to his shocked expression, “real faith has a large dose of ’not knowing’. If ‘devout believer’ means that you were part of a ‘God franchise’ then God, you, me and the world are better served by your agnosticism.” The pursuit of certainty and especially the illusory possession of certainty works against our humanity. In recent days my social media is full of people spitting chips about religion. Lots of people revert to a kind of ‘my little pony’ type philosophy, leaping to the nearest piano to sing, “Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try…” But we’re all being damaged not so much by people...[read more]

Dear Inner Circle,

At the front door this morning, a woman stopped me and asked, “Have you got time to speak with me?” Unthinkingly, I opened my eyes wide and said, “I wouldn’t say I have time but let’s sit here and talk for a bit.” Soon I’d forgotten that people were waiting for me because the beautiful face locked with mine. She knew she had my attention and she poured out something that she said she’d been hanging onto for some time. “I want to thank you for loving us. I saw you on the tele just recently and I just knew I had to find you and thank you for loving us. You probably don’t think we’re religious but lots of us pray for you. We think of you as our father. I think of you as “Dad”. Tell me that you’re doing OK because if you need anything, I have friends and we’ll do anything to protect you and help you.” Imagine if I’d have missed this moment by being too busy! What an amazing outpouring of love and what a gush of affection. I thanked her for the love and said, “You are a wonderful lady”. She opened her eyes wide and said, “Oh, I wouldn’t say I was a lady”.

An extraordinary success story sat in my office this week. He was dux of his various schools and prefect or captain. He’d won various university medals. He has studied in the best schools around the world and would be considered a world leader in his field. There ought to be a stronger word than “focus” for the manner in which this person sets goals and then achieves them, no matter the cost of the commitment. It was an honour and inspiring for me to sit with such towering intellect. He came to see me because, “I don’t know who I am” and “everything seems so empty and a waste.” I was not shocked. The only source of information about ourselves comes from others. None of us invented anything about ourselves. We wouldn’t even have the power of speech if we weren’t first spoken to by someone else. If you only relate to competitors, it...[read more]

Dear Inner Circle,

Kings Cross is a great community. I decided this week to walk up to the main drag and write this note from a spot near the fountain. Already I’ve been stopped by numerous people. One was a dear old lady who looks to be at least mid-seventies, with a high mileage face and looking a bit the worse for wear even at this hour, but nevertheless with a kindness in her face. She’s a short little lady whose hair has been set in a way that would remain still in a cyclone. She looks like she’s spent all her life telling someone off and giving lectures about how the world was once perfectly ordered when the world was a tougher place. Oddly, she knew who I was and asked, “Do you drink carver, farver?” It’s a funny question I know. “Makes you sleep like a baby” she said.

Directly across the road is a woman plying her trade. Quite a large girl with almost everything on show. It looks like she’s wearing a blond wig and she has large sunglasses on, making it clear that it’s the body that’s for sale rather than the person. This mind/body schism works for men and women in the sex trade, and for most of us at the moment of death, but generally we find it problematic to divide psyche and body. She’s just been joined by a rival or mate who is working the same spot just near me. The second young woman is known to me. She has a trim body and the dress she’s wearing is her method of keeping potential customers' attention away from the face and the person. This second woman is intelligent and comes from a good home. She has an addiction and this work is her only real option for funding her habit. There is nothing easy about earning a living in this way.

Keep reading here.

My heart sank yesterday when I read of a man who was put off a bus because he wouldn’t or couldn’t speak English. Ignorance and fear abound. Speaking English is the most multicultural act possible. To speak racism in English must the contradiction of the century.

Still in English there is evidence of the ancient Celtic tongues. Irish, Scottish and Welsh languages all survive to some extent in today’s spoken English. The most unwelcome invasions of the Vikings who eventually settled in England added greatly to the culture and the spoken word. The old Norse words such as "bug, bull, wing, dirt, dregs, muck, mire, rotten, bark, call, blunder, choose, crawl, clip, want, whirl, ball, bag, knot, cake, link, sly, ugly, weak, fellow, guest, kid, lad, anger, awe and happy”. These and many more are proof that our language was invaded and then enriched by the Vikings. To spend any time in England is to be puzzled by how many accents exist and how many locations, quite close to one another, have their own distinctive accent. Around York, the language of the Vikings remains strong in spoken English.

Nearly half of all English words are French. You can’t speak English without affirming an amalgam of cultures. As French was the official language in London for about 300 years, it is no surprise that the languages merged. There isn’t an area of life or interest that you can speak in English without inadvertently speaking French. “Government, peasant, bailiff, council, mayor, minister, parliament, mass, dame, duke, prince, sir, infantry, army, pistol, squad, platoon, surveillance, rendezvous, siege, terrain, camouflage, morale, money, commerce, finance, tax, plebiscite, state, federal, bureaucracy, constitution, justice, jury, attorney, court and case” Need I go on? We can’t speak English without asserting a cultural amalgam with the French people.

You can’t speak English without thinking Greek. The only way to understand Western culture is to understand...[read more]

Dear Inner Circle,

Yesterday a woman sat in front of me and poured her heart out. It was one of the most difficult and agonising conversations I’ve ever had in my life. It took her a while to tell her story and she was at pains to soberly relate the worst without over or understating the case. Time stood still as together we paused to gaze at the unthinkable. After a long pause and when it seemed like the worst had been said, she said, “So what’s the Graham Long great wisdom in response to this?” “Oh” I said, “Did you get the impression that I aimed to be useful? My aim is to be gloriously useless!” I think it is a mistake to want to “resolve” things. Often to “resolve” something, a massive exercise in forgetting is required. Some of the most unwell people I’ve met have resolved their psychological conflicts quite well but they have done so by shutting down history and shutting down a part of themselves. It’s better to enable the inner conflict so that a way is found for the various parts of the self to all engage in life, without obliterating anyone or anything. What is true for the psyche is true for communities. We don’t need to “resolve” the tensions between Muslim and Christian; atheist and religious; sick and well. We just need to find a way of enabling a conversation between both. A healthy community is not one free of conflict. Stability is a form of death. Homogeneity only ensures that communities will fight over lesser issues rather than important issues. Beware of ‘oneness’; beware of ‘unity’; it’s a trap! All real living is meeting.

A nearby church held a concert to raise funds for Wayside last Sunday. How could I not go? On the program I noticed 17 acts and every act did multiple items. In addition to the printed program, some neighbour had written a novel and they decided he would read a portion of it. A lady who was to play the flute was on the program for six songs. I saw her on the way in and she...[read more]

Dear Inner Circle,

While our city painfully mourns the loss of Curtis Cheng and wonders how a 15-year-old boy could take the life of a stranger, we find bewilderment and fear levels have lifted in our cultural atmosphere. Also bewildering is the number of people who suddenly appear as experts in terrorism and chat away on radio or TV as if we all accept some common understanding of the phenomenon. Surely this is not so. “Terrorism” has to be one of the clumsiest words in the English language. “Terror” describes a feeling. It gives no information about the cause of the feeling. It’s little wonder that every combatant in every struggle, calls the other side, “terrorists”. The clumsy nature of this language means that everyone is using the word correctly.

We pay a price for using clumsy language, not least is that we fail to recognise the grounds on which some resort to violence. We’re left thinking that there is a peculiar set of people who enjoy inflicting suffering on others for no reason. Thus we have no ground on which to criticise the actions of our own
government nor recognise overreach on our part.

Keep reading here.

Dear Inner Circle,

Chatting to a fellow at the front of our Op Shop I suddenly noticed some colourful flowers. I’m not the most observant person in the world, but I was pretty sure that the flowers must have been planted overnight. We don’t have volunteers who tend the garden overnight and this was a mystery. I didn’t mention the flowers but my face must have communicated some confusion. “Do you know Clover Moore?” the man asked. “Sure I do,” I replied. “Well, you should ring her and thank her for the flowers” he said. “Gosh,” I said with an ever increasing sense of mystery, “Why would Clover donate a single little bed of flowers like that?” “Oh,” said the man, “She doesn’t know she made the donation!” It suddenly occurred to me that the City of Sydney has had rather wonderful flower displays erected in the main street. If Clover or anyone from the City of Sydney is reading this, I offer my apology for your “donation”.

A weedy little bloke approached me just a moment ago. “Graham! I haven’t seen you in a year!” I was wondering if we had ever met, when he helped me by saying that I had officiated at his wedding ceremony. Slowly his face seemed approximately familiar, although the woman at his side seemed not to fit with my memory of the bloke. He quickly explained, in front of the woman, that his marriage had lasted only weeks. The necks and shoulders and arms of both people looked like they were covered with what we used to call “hickies” when I was young. Either these two had been involved in some extreme kissing or both of them had fallen into a pit of set rabbit traps. To my astonishment and still without introducing me to the woman at his side, he explained how many women had fallen pregnant to him in the past year. I stopped the conversation in order to introduce myself to the woman and to learn her name. It turns out this relationship was just days old and yet I could see its end looming. I walked away...[read more]

Dear Inner Circle,

A 13-year-old boy came to Wayside with his Mum yesterday. He had just completed his Bar Mitzvah and had chosen to give the money raised on the occasion to Wayside. Not only so but he had managed to get a lot of toiletries and other things that we love here and I had the honour of meeting him and accepting this gift. I really enjoyed sharing something of how important a Bar Mitzvah is to a Jewish family and I was keen to hear all that was required of him for the event and what it meant to him. Religious or not, you have to admit that the Jewish people know how to do this rite of passage placing both a burden and a large parcel of dignity onto young, developing shoulders. Thank you Benjamin, “Son of my right hand”. If you keep your faith married to your sense of compassion for humanity, you will indeed be a blessing to your religious community and to Australia.

A rare breed of man sat in my office this morning. I have his permission to tell this story. This is a man with a superior intellect who has made much wealth because of his ability to analyse a situation and then act according to reason. Rare indeed. Most of us use our intellect to rationalise what we have already done. So this fellow has a younger brother who married a woman who is by any measure, narcissistic. He has watched his brother collapse from being a fun-loving fellow to a hollowed-out shell as he attempts to meet the impossible demands of his wife. The brother has gone without many things while the wife has a shoe collection that requires its own room. The bottom line is that my friend, after careful analysis, had decided that his brother should leave his wife. He expressed his view to his brother, and as a result the relationship with the brother is close to collapse. The older brother cannot understand why his younger brother wouldn’t be responsive to the application of his considerable intellect. Once the analysis is made, what possible cause could there be not to...[read more]

Dear Inner Circle,

Standing on the footpath and talking to some of our visitors, a well-dressed man walked up with a warm smile and said, “Do you remember me?” I replied, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before in my life.” He gave me a friendly punch on my upper arm and said, “You’re a character!” Apparently I’m a character, with dementia.

It was dark when I left last night and there were a lot of people around. Our Twilight Team had their hands full. It took me a while, as it always does, to be out of the front door and walking up the road. A young, fit looking man who has been around Wayside for a couple of months came up to me. He’s a friendly, likeable bloke, and although we have greeted each other several times, I know nothing of his back story. In passing I said, “Are you sleeping rough tonight?” “Yeah,” he said and a wave of despair came over him. He put his arms around me. In my arms his voice broke and he said so that only I could hear, “I’m so sick of waking up.”

Keep reading here.

Dear Inner Circle,

The Governor of NSW, General David Hurley, put a medal on my chest last Friday afternoon and proclaimed it official – I have Amazing Mates. I requested that I be allowed 15,000 guests at the ceremony but was strictly limited to three. Having Robyn, my daughter, Mandy, and my eldest granddaughter, Paityn at my side meant the world to me. I made one mistake on the day. I told my daughter to book us into the kind of restaurant I would normally avoid so that for this one occasion, we wouldn’t worry about the cost. My daughter took us to a place that was not only a cultural shock, but I may need counselling for some months yet. The menu on one side had a lot of choices, none of which I understood. The other side of the menu was called “Devastation” or something similar. It’s the only time I’ve seen a menu that anticipates the moment when you get the bill. With this choice, you are served everything on the page. A couple of times I was served a large plate with what looked like a small pile of bird seed with a few squirts of something that didn’t look like food. I asked our waiter what it was that was on my plate but he answered me in French. I don’t speak French but I’m pretty sure he told me that my plate had been put into a bird cage for an hour and then the contents were arranged by their star chef. He then said, “Bon Appetite” which being translated from French means, “Our bird wasn’t very well today”.

In the morning on the same day I went to the intensive care unit at Prince of Wales Hospital where one of our dearest Aboriginal friends was dying. Our Senior Aboriginal Worker, Mon, was already at his bedside. Mon’s tenderness with our brother stopped me in my tracks. I’d already had a busy day with quite a big day ahead but I stopped, captured by the awesome sight of love. Our dear brother was a dark-skinned, handsome-faced man who somehow carried thousands of years of pride, hurt and wisdom in his face. He...[read more]