Dear Inner Circle,
It’s funny how the gift of seeing someone out of their usual context can completely throw you sideways.
Walking the dog, catching the train or shopping locally are all great ways that we can break out of our narrowly defined boxes. There is something marvellous in the mundane, and yet it is often avoided because it is, well, mundane. Marketers spruik the latest time-saving, life-changing, must-have product to make our life easier, but it shrinks us. It’s a spiritual discipline to hide the car keys and walk around expecting the unexpected.
The last few weeks have been more challenging than usual, and the strain must be showing on my face. One of my Wayside Aunties ordered me to take a day off, so I do what I always do in the face of an older woman ordering me to do something—I immediately obey. Small acts flow in all directions, and it’s another spiritual discipline to receive them.
So I took the train the next day to meet up with some mates to watch the footy, sitting with my head bowed, wrapped in a hoodie and wearing headphones that weren’t playing anything. I slumped my shoulders and sunk my head into a book (brand new, as it has been for two years now, with a pile of similarly neglected bedside table mates). As I found where I was, someone leant in deeply, “I thought it was you!”
Before me was the face of a stranger, a beautiful young man, with life and light in his eyes. I danced around the conversation, until slowly it dawned who he was. “I’ve been sober for nearly a year now!” he said. Not long ago this man was doing his best to poison himself, such was the pain and shame he held in his heart. “I keep wracking my brain for what made me want to change, and you know what? Every time I come up with an answer, it is different to the last one.”
If everyone who comes into Wayside walks away feeling met rather than worked on, then it has been a good day. Often in their pain they can’t see the gift that is right in front of them—the power of a loving presence. Thankfully our beautiful staff and volunteers are always prepared to wait. Sometimes the miracle occurs, and the beheld realise that no one here is judging them, rather our people are here with them and for them. They are seen through the eyes of humanity rather than judgment. In small acts and gestures—coffees, chats, fresh socks and undies— they have glimpsed the marvellous in the mundane, and they begin to expand once again.
Take it from me, one of the most stubborn people I’ve ever met, being seen restores even the weariest soul. It is the only way our fragile mission of creating community with no ‘us and them’ can ever hope to break through.
Thank you for being part of the Inner Circle,
Jon
Rev. Jon Owen
CEO & Pastor
Wayside Chapel
