Dear Inner Circle,

A lovely man who has a bit of a gift for finding the hard way to do anything, really owes his life to Alcoholics Anonymous. The man was born into alcoholism, literally, on a park bench because his mum couldn’t get herself to hospital. All his life, the foetal alcohol spectrum disorder made everything hard. Schooling was impossible and so now as an adult any reading and writing is a major obstacle. Thanks to AA, this fellow has been dry for at least 10 years and he’s undertaken a lot of coaching to try and gain some of the opportunities lost to him because of an alcoholic daze that lasted from birth until about 30 years of age. I’m a big fan of AA because I’ve known many people, like this bloke, for whom it was just the right answer. People who are immersed in it tend to develop a language all of their own. Often in a conversation, this beautiful man will launch into “Rule 5” or some other aspect of AA. He’s inclined to quote “the big book” quite often. Yesterday he was talking about a situation that is really testing him. “Like the big book says,” he told me, “Patience is a virtue”. We talked about what he might do to help move his situation forward a bit and at one point he reminded me about, “A stitch in time… like it says in the big book”. We talked about how so many things lately had not worked out as planned and I chipped in, “Well, like it says in the big book, ‘shit happens.’” He looked a bit surprised and asked me where such a thing was said in the big book. Having misquoted the bible a half dozen times now he asks me for references! “Well,” I said, “I think the big book says that ‘shit happens’ from cover to cover.’” There was an embarrassing pause before a joke was detected.

Walking into the building this morning I recognised a vaguely familiar face. We stood face to face before I realised that I knew the man quite well. “My Lord,” I said. “I couldn’t recognise you...[read more]

Dear Inner Circle,

To sit in my office is sometimes an act of significant courage. A big strapping man sat with me this week and struggled to tell me of his childhood. He was brought up in a string of religious children’s institutions where fear and brutality were constantly present. Over the years he’s hated anything that had the mildest sniff of religion because it just wakes up memories of loathing. An ocean of resentful feelings filled the room and yet he was bewildered that he had come to a minister to talk and seek understanding. He told me at one point that in those years, most of the beltings he received were from ministers. He told me how he had come to a church service once with his socks turned down. It was against the rules and the minister thrashed him and sent him to spend the morning in the toilet. My heart broke. I could see the little boy as I was hearing the story.

I once would have tried to explain away the violence against children perpetrated in our culture and especially that of religious institutions. I used to tell myself that those who ran such places meant well or that the world was different then. But brutality is brutality no matter the ideology or theology of the brute. We’ve been shocked in recent years by a Royal Commission exposing our blindness to the sexual abuse of children, but as hard as it might be to contemplate, all of this was a subset of a more brutal history.

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Dear Inner Circle,

Anzac Day was a special one for me this year. I spent several days moving around the various battlefields on the Western Front where thousands of Australian soldiers lost their lives and where thousands were so traumatised that they spent the rest of their lives suffering from what we would now call, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. My father used to visit old soldiers at Concord Hospital when I was just a school boy. I saw men in the 1960s still hiding under beds and shaking uncontrollably. That was when Dad first explained "shell shock" to me and it was my first attempt to understand the phenomenon that still today causes me to struggle.

At Fromelles I found the headstone of Private C Myers who enlisted at 15 years. After failing his first attempt to enlist, he applied again as C Morgan, this time successfully. Fromelles was his first taste of battle and at 16 years, the end of his life. There are more than 2,000 cemeteries dotted over France and Belgium as a result of World War I and in one place I visited, there were over 45,000 mostly young men buried.

Keep reading here.

Dear Inner Circle,

Last week I lived for a few days in the old Jewish quarter of Krakow in Poland and spent a day walking through Auschwitz-Birkenau. There is no sense in which you could say this visit was enjoyable even though years of reading came to life for me. It's one thing to learn history and another to walk the ground, to climb the steps, to feel the barbed wire and to stand in the torture chambers of Block 11.

I walked from the Judenramp to the gas chambers. It's a tough thing to learn that children were judged to have no utility so most of them were sent to death without delay. It could be argued that death was a greater mercy than the life suffered by those whose labour was considered to have some value. I went to the building where Dr Mengele did his work. I remembered reading how this man scolded an assistant because he had smudged a record that Mengele, "had constructed with such love". Ponder how a person could murder infant twins without a thought but be concerned about a smudge on his beloved records. I looked into the rooms where Sonderkommandos lived. It was prisoners who did most of the work that made this camp run. A fate much worse than death.

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Dear Inner Circle,

Have you ever listened to three entirely unrelated conversations, all directed at you, at the same time? This is my occupational hazard. Such moments are most disarmingly absurd when one of the discussions reaches a point where some question is asked and I’m expected to make a response. Although all three men were sitting at the same table and all three were talking at top speed, no one was even vaguely aware that two other conversations were taking place at the same moment and all directed toward the one person, me. It seemed like this stream of disconnect could go on for a long time when suddenly I was shocked to hear one of these men directly address another, “You stole my phone you low life c***”. As the first bit of direct communication to happen at this table in thirty minutes, I was surprised. I wondered what kind of response person A could possibly be expecting from person B to whom he directed his allegation. Perhaps he was expecting, “Golly gosh you’re right. I stole your phone. Here it is.” Perhaps some direct communication that was a little less accusatory may have made a more useful approach. Alas, the response came back, “Don’t you call me a c***, you c***.”

You’ll be surprised to know that the above conversation escalated into a parallel universe of human contradiction. Both young men stood up and the volume rose as the content of the language sunk ever lower. You might not think there was much room for the tenor of the language to go down, but trust me, it did. “You’re accusing me of taking your phone, so let’s take this outside.” One man’s embodied contradiction was so profound that his arms extended backwards as if he was showing restraint while his chest was puffed forwards and used to confront and attack Mr A. In the complete miscommunication that followed, there was one moment revealing a capacity to think and be coherent. Mr A said, “And if we go outside and you beat my head in, it will...[read more]

Dear Inner Circle,

Rarely do I write poetry and never have I shared a poem with you.
I wrote this poem for a man who breaks my heart.

The Prodigal

There is no such thing as a single human being
We are saved or lost together
We’d rather be lost with you than saved without you
There is no such thing as a private act
Every human act is witnessed

Come home
The Universe didn’t abandon you
You abandoned it
Come home
When we meet
Your eyes show you are in a faraway country
Excessive comfort has emptied you, dissipated you
Now you beg me for coins, the pods upon which pigs feed
So come home
Our neck is craning in hope of your return
The magnolia that shades you is standing up straight
Hoping you’ll notice
The breeze that lightly kisses your face
The sun that warms your bones
We’re all waiting, looking, hoping

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Dear Inner Circle,

Walking down toward Circular Quay the other day, hand in hand with my 10-year-old granddaughter, filled me with a sense of wellbeing like no other time and no other situation. There were people everywhere which caused us to duck and dash just to make progress. Suddenly my beautiful girl said, “Step on a line, break your spine. Step on a crack, break your Mum’s back”. I didn’t want to be responsible for anyone getting a serious injury so the both of us started to take sideways jumps; tiny steps or huge leaps in an effort to ensure our feet landed right in the middle of the squares in the footpath. No doubt those around us thought this was inconvenient and perhaps antisocial but we were both laughing so much, neither of us cared. I guess people don’t mind much when 10-year-old girls behave like 10-year-old girls but they probably mind a bit when an old grandfather behaves like a 10-year-old kid.

Quite a young man yesterday asked if he could see me and assured me that it would just take 5 minutes of my time. We stepped away from the crowd in order that we could hear each other. “I can hardly believe I’ve got a few minutes for us to have this conversation” he said. “Well,” I said, “I apologise that I’m really pushed for time but that is the kind of day I’m having.” A few awkward moments passed while I thought he must be wrestling with express whatever it was that was bothering him. “Can you tell me a joke?” he asked. I started to gather that this man was not very well. I told him a Dad joke! He told me it was the worst joke he’d heard ever! I was looking for a way to get on with my day so I explained that I was hoping to get away on a short holiday but that there were many little jobs for me to squash into the next few days. He looked quite concerned and said, “I suspect I’m not really old enough to fill in for you while you’re away.” I thanked him for the kind offer but explained that telling dreadful...[read more]

Dear Inner Circle,

As a young man, I liked to think I was pretty bright. In my mid-twenties my head was awash with Freud, Ellis, Berne and the like. I wanted to serve people well but in the process I ran a solo commentary on how the world worked. I look back in horror and embarrassment at my pretentious twenty-something self. Knowledge comes through books but wisdom comes through pain.

In the little town of Waikerie, South Australia, I ran a visiting service for a government department whose primary responsibility was child protection. The office I used had no receptionist and no telephone; just a sign on the door to say that I’d be there on Fridays. No one had thought of mobile phones in those days. I started each visit with a full waiting room and I’d work until everyone had gone. They were often long days with no way for me to make enquiries for people or ask for help when my way got difficult.

Keep reading here.

Dear Inner Circle,

The hard and hilarious belong together. Humour is born from suffering which is why comics are often genuinely funny and sad at the same time. When my son was first diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, I stayed by his side for nine days and nights in hospital. It’s a tough thing for a little kid to figure out that the rest of his life will be a constant round of injections. It’s a tough thing for a parent. If I could have injected myself to make him live, I’d have done so with joy. I kept putting off facing the day when it would be me giving the injections. One day after witnessing a nurse with little sensitivity and in a hurry, inject my boy, I thought to myself, “I could hardly do a worse job than this nurse”. The day came. Poor James had to endure a speech from his heartbroken Dad about how he’d inject himself if it would give life back to my darling six-year-old boy. Finally, I pinched the skin on his leg and pushed the needle into his leg. I pushed the plunger all the way in. Finally, I withdrew the needle and threw my arms around my boy – stabbing him in the back! I was trying to be the best father that I could be and I just mucked it all up. James just knew and in due course when there were no needles in sight, we sat together for a long time with our arms around each other. We were together.

In a funeral for one of our dear visitors this week, a declaration was made that is not often heard in a church. We were told that our dear visitor would proudly say, “I’m a whore! Hallelujah!” This story was received without judgement. We didn’t have to debate the good or evil of sex work. What we knew is that we loved this person no matter what. We heard how a precious woman had nothing but was grateful to call one part of the footpath in Woolloomooloo her bedroom, and another near area, her lounge room. We saw in front of our faces that those who have nothing are the most generous people of all. We heard constant expressions...[read more]

Dear Inner Circle,

A seething ball of anger sat with me yesterday. Often if you listen long enough, some of the steam dissipates and it becomes possible to look at things from more than one angle. Not this time. The longer we spent together, the more the pressure built. If I could have given a month to this bloke, he’d have gladly told me how the world dished to him injustice from the moment of his birth. He spent all of his time telling me how alone he was and how bad people never seem to face justice. The man had no sense that I was with him. The conversation presupposed that I would not understand and if given long enough, I too would become one of the many who would dish out injustice and never have to face consequences for my behaviour. We didn’t meet. I witnessed a monumental mistake from close range. Somewhere the man had decided he was on his own. He couldn’t begin to see that his act denied the intimacy of everything! I tried to tell him that I was patiently waiting to meet him but that he’d have to step out of his solitary cell (‘the self’) and come to meet me. It is not just I who wait, but the whole universe. The magnolia tree at the front of our building is waiting patiently for him. The sky, the ocean, the wind and perhaps many people in this world, are patiently waiting. I wondered if he had ever stared in wonder at the stars or the vastness of an ocean or the beauty of a child, long enough for the universe to compete with, or perhaps temporarily crowd out, his solo commentary. To feel abandoned may be the worst of all crimes because it constructs a ‘self’ that doesn’t exist. How can we do battle with a ghost?

Another meeting on the same day had a better outcome. The cranky man had plenty of money and assets. He had a family although he saw them as aligned with everyone else in the world except himself. The second fellow owned nothing and had no money. He’d wasted an inheritance on indulgence on a grand scale. It’s hard to...[read more]