Dear Inner Circle,

“Hey Rev, I haven’t used a needle in four days!” We were standing on the main drag of Kings Cross. “Wow”, I said, “Congratulations! It must be an hour-by-hour battle.” “More like, minute-by-minute,” he said. He told me that Wayside was the only place he felt safe because everywhere he was surrounded by people who look like friends but who only use him for their own purposes. “My goal is to become a volunteer at Wayside and one day maybe, find myself on staff.” We hugged in the middle of the street and as I hailed a cab he said, “Rob was a drunk and he’s dry and alive and on your team. Andrew was helpless with heroin but he’s clean and on your team. If they did it, I can do it!” As I shut the door on the cab, I just said, “I’m cheering for you.”

Today, just a few minutes ago, the Hon Malcolm Turnbull MP, Prime Minister of Australia, officially launched our iconic new book, Wayside. A crowd of 100 people gathered on the Wayside rooftop to get their first peak at a book which reaches right into the soul of Sydney and celebrates the diverse characters that call Kings Cross home. Media mingled with rough sleepers and Wayside donors in a community event that couldn’t capture the essence of Wayside more. Few have the capacity or stamina to be a PM but most in the country think they could do a better job. The PM’s love and passion for our vision and our work is 100% real. There are not many books launched by a PM and there have not been many PM’s who would launch such a book. We’re proud of how much love, sweat and tears have gone into making this book what it is, and we hope that you will love it too. You can get your copy here. The official launch will be followed by a party for all comers. Every street person who appears in the book will be given a framed, individual portrait, David Wenham will cut a cake and there...[read more]

Dear Inner Circle,

It is a great honour to announce that Monday marked the official release of Wayside – our iconic new coffee-table book that reaches into the soul of Sydney and showcases the depth and diversity of the people who call this city home. Wayside is a beautifully curated portrait of our community; it’s a book where everyone is a person to be met, not a problem to be solved. The stunning photography is by Gary Heery and the book is lovingly designed by Andrew Henderson. It features stories from the streets of Kings Cross, along with four letters I’ve written to people who have transformed in front of my eyes. Wayside has long been a place where love famously meets hate. We operate at the pointy end of humanity with some of the most difficult souls in the world but there is beauty to be found if you have the eyes to see it. Buy this book and drink it in. It is kindness, captured in a book and it shows on every page that there is a better way. We have a special offer for our dear Inner Circle readers - the first 100 copies ordered online here will be signed by yours truly. The book is also available in our Wayside Op Shops in Kings Cross and North Bondi and would make the perfect gift for Christmas.

We are witnesses to something of a seismic cultural shift. Overnight, many of you have become prophets. A prophet is a person who fights with a feather, calling things by their real name. Prophets are often seen as odd and even at times, disagreeable. America has declared something of a rebellion against a system that enriches the few and squeezes the many. America has shifted in the attitude that has, for many years, made them something of a global policeman. Given their dismal performance in this role, it might be a good thing. America has a rare opportunity to think and act differently about the biggest issues of our day. Whether the new President is up to this task, no-one knows. What we can say with certainty is that the world has changed,...[read more]

Dear Inner Circle,

“Hey Rev, I found my Mum.” I was looking into a face that couldn’t have been forty yet. It was what I call a “high mileage” face but with unmistakable beauty and character. Our eyes engaged from the first second of our meeting. This was a man who had looked for his mother for most of his life, having been given for adoption as a baby. Although he’d recently found her, she is dying. He discovered that he had three sisters. “She never gave any of them away. Just me!” he said. Every word seemed to hold both the joy of finding his Mum as well as the pain of her imminent loss. He couldn’t yet begin to understand why he was given up when there were other children who grew up with their mother. He was busting to ask her about how this all happened but instead he just asked if there was anything he could do for her. Her reply was that all she needed was to know that he would always be in the life of his own son. Her greatest fear would be that she’d caused injury that might sustain for generations.

How life is unleashed when we are not central to the story. The young fellow asked me to pray for his Mum. I have no idea what I said nor does it matter. We spent a moment where what mattered was, Mum. He knew I had no magic but he had freedom to be with me in a space without answers. There wasn’t an outcome in sight. I felt no necessity to find a prayer that would, “work” but bare hearts groaned together for life lost, for ground impossible to regain and for a lifetime of longing and love unexpressed and unfulfilled yet alive, fluttering and awake.

Keep reading here.

Dear Inner Circle,

More nourishing than a hot plate of food, more refreshing than a dip in the ocean on a sticky day, is a conversation whose theme is, “Wow! Look how far you’ve come!” Every week, perhaps most days, I have a conversation with someone where we look back in wonder in order to appreciate a life now opening up and beginning to bloom.

A gentle, sensitive fellow was sharing something of his present struggle. Unthinkable early damage in his life has left something like a parcel of infection, a bit like a boil that needs to be lanced every now and then. Like many, perhaps most, his radar was permanently on the lookout for wrongdoers. He has a need of enemies. Luckily, when you look for evil, it’s everywhere to be found. So a lifetime of refining his ability to judge and condemn is beginning to look like a wasted life. Many times now we’ve sat together to discover that people are just people. The only way you can hate a person is to take a snap shot and call it the whole movie. I’ve witnessed his need of enemies diminish in recent years and proportionately, I’ve seen him take up new interests, including a love of reading and history in particular. What a joy to be able to say, “Wow! Look how far you’ve come.”

Keep reading here.

Dear Inner Circle,

Thank you so much for the outpouring of love and support in this past week. I try to respond to most of your emails but this week it was well north of six hundred emails and I need to be content to express my deepest gratitude here. We buried Mum in the same grave as Dad. At the moment of lowering the casket, I asked my siblings to sing an old hymn that we’d heard our parents sing together hundreds of times. When we were young, we sang pretty well together with strong harmonies. Last week we sounded a bit like someone was trying to drown kittens. It was a lovely, even powerful moment and my siblings will forgive me in just a few short years.

If you’ve ever attended our Sunday Church service in Kings Cross, you’ll be aware of a little lady up the front who we’ve lovingly named, Saint Interruptus. Our dear little saint died this week and we’re very sad to part with her. She’s been a regular at Wayside since 1967. She told me how previous ministers would be annoyed by her interruptions and at times, make her sit at the back of the chapel. In this past 12 years, Saint Interruptus and I had become something of a double act. I loved her and she loved me. I’ll have to rely on someone else in the community for Sunday interruptions. I’m pretty confident that our community won’t fail me.

Keep reading here.

Dear Inner Circle,

An old lady died this week. She was born into an Australia that knew a lot about economic depression and next to nothing about government support. It was a world of hard work. As the eldest daughter in a large family, her lot was about raising younger children and endless domestic duties. Her education finished at primary school because there were many brothers and they needed to be fed and their clothes washed. An old wood stove seemed to perpetually burn with soup for strangers and a kettle constantly ready for a cup of tea. There was no entertainment in the house except for when the family sang together or laughed together. After the lady got married she was amazed at how her parents could suddenly afford some labour-saving devices like a washing machine.

The lady’s mother had agoraphobia before anyone knew the word and so as a little girl as young as seven years, she would toddle up to the bank to bring home wages for the men in her father’s joinery. Her mother was sharp, all the prices for timber and quotes for building jobs were at the top of her head. Her father was a big burley builder. She adored her father who once every night would walk into a room full of children that ought to be asleep and say a prayer. One night she asked her father to pray for their pet dog who had taken ill. The father hesitated and she knew that he thought perhaps prayers for dogs were not in order. He prayed for the dog.

Keep reading here.

Dear Inner Circle,

Walking to the office this morning, a young bloke who had obviously slept on the footpath greeted me. I’ve known this fellow for a few months and I’ve never heard him complain about anything. If mental outlook was the only requirement for a satisfying life, this bloke would be Australian of the Year. “What have you got in front of you today, Rev?” he asked. “My diary is so full today it scares me,” I replied. “You can have the day off, Rev. I’m prepared to give that to you!” I love this bloke. We exchanged a hug but he looked mystified when I headed to the office anyway.

A woman walked into our front door yesterday to make a donation of $30. She told us that she’d been filling her car with petrol just a short time before and when she went to pay, the card she always uses was rejected. She tried another card but it was mysteriously rejected too. She began to get quite flustered because she had no cash and other customers were waiting to pay for their purchases and get on with their days. Not addressing anyone in particular, the woman explained that she was embarrassed but had no way of paying her bill. The fellow behind her in the line quickly established that the bill was for $30 and paid it himself. The woman thanked her rescuer and he dismissed his generous act by saying, “What goes around, comes around.” The woman went home and immediately found $30 and gave it to us so that we could pass on this blessing to someone who needed it more than she did. What a lovely moment!

Keep reading here.

Dear Inner Circle,

Our hall filled with mostly young Aboriginal people this week. We’re supporting the formation of an Aboriginal women’s football team. Once a year the biggest gathering of Aboriginal people in the State happens at an annual rugby knockout competition. For the past couple of years, a private sponsor has funded a Wayside Aboriginal men’s team for the competition. Other donors have stepped forward to sponsor the men’s team again this year, but our Aboriginal Project Manager, Mon, is passionate about forming a women’s team. To see our hall filled with young Aboriginal women, excited to play football and proud to be playing as a community, was enough to melt anyone’s heart. It looks like I’ll be on the sidelines this weekend, understanding nothing about the game but cheering for this fabulous act of community making.

Thirty years ago a woman and nine kids landed on my doorstep. They had all been living in a small caravan with an annex. The Mum was the roughest of diamonds. Hygiene in such circumstances was difficult and although everyone appeared to be fed and clothed, the diet was determined entirely by price and no one’s clothing was either fashionable nor new. Yet, everyone got fed and everyone got loved. I don’t doubt for a second that if Government authorities had become involved, the children would have been separated from their mother. We found housing for the family in due course. It wasn’t ideal and soon to all these kids was added a bunch of animals. There were so many issues that were less than ideal but I recognised goodness and love. As the clan grew I baptised children, and performed weddings. Yesterday, twenty-five years on, there was a reunion here at Wayside. A daughter that I married now has nine children of her own and five grandchildren. Not unlike her Mum, this woman is amazing. Twenty-five years later, the marriage is strong and there is an earthy wisdom that comes from pure struggle. The husband and wife...[read more]

Dear Inner Circle,

Sometimes these notes come from a heart that is overwhelmed by beauty. Sometimes the heights to which the human spirit can soar fill me with hope and in my own feeble way, I seek to create a note that points and bears witness to that which is hidden in plain view. To the extent that I have ever felt like I’ve succeeded, I probably blasphemed. Sometimes it feels like I’ve reluctantly received the gift of stigmata and blood pours through my hands, all over my keyboard and into my text. Sometimes, perhaps often, both events occur in the same note.

So I stood in silence this week with a woman, one of her hands in mine and the other on her son’s coffin. How she had fought for him. How she had believed in him when all others gave up. How she saw beauty and potential even when her son couldn’t see it in himself. It had all come to this moment. There were no words, just one hand in mine and one on the coffin. There were no words. Perhaps for this lady it was a moment of defeat but I suspect not. I suspect this was numb love. I held in my hand a beauty beyond imagination. Some things cannot be squashed even by death. I know something today that I didn’t know on the day when I had one hand on my son’s coffin and one arm around his daughter. Love is not diminished. Pain sharpens and dulls and sharpens again but love remains real and deep. I can’t begin to explain it really but the pain of love refines me and renews me. It’s a pain that has loosened the grip of many stupid things that once loomed large. It’s a pain that helps me see what truly matters. It’s a pain that helps me name things for what they really are. It’s a pain that causes me to talk back to the TV and empowers me to switch things off. The pain of love empowers me to yell, “empty” to many things that present themselves to us as full. The pain of love empowers me to whisper, “absence” to many things that appear to promise presence. Mostly, the pain of love...[read more]

Dear Inner Circle,

Increasingly, I find myself talking in board rooms or before work-teams or to middle and senior managers about Wayside’s mission and how it lives in our work and organisation. I have a growing sense of disquiet, knowing that our mission doesn’t live in a formula nor a set of values. The danger for Wayside and especially for our senior leaders, is in believing that our mission lives in a set of words. Generally, we Waysiders like our words and our values. “To create community with no ‘us and them’” are words that point to the awesome. Paradoxically, I suspect the more we cherish the words, the faster we fossilize the mission itself. The more we believe we master our mission, the faster the mission itself evaporates through our fingers. Our mission cannot be preserved in formulas of any kind. It can only be proved true. It can only be “done”. We can only begin each day as beginners and begin each day as if it is our last opportunity to live our mission.

To “create community with no ‘us and them’” is not an act of reflection. Our mission is not made real when it is pondered nor preached about. It can only be done. Our choice is to be beginners, or idolators. Our mission only lives when it is in front and while we are on our way. Oddly, to be on our way requires of us endless unromantic acts. Front line workers take people for showers and do battle with the systems that exclude poor people. Front line workers confront people who constantly seek to break our rules or gain some advantage. Front line workers constantly hope for meeting. Maybe today someone will realise that there are people here with them and for them. Managers manage staff who can’t always see that order and rather uninteresting arrangements in an organisation are important if the organisation is to avoid digging its own grave. Sometimes people so believe that they are alone, that they come through our front doors insisting that they be treated as a...[read more]