'Social work is hard if you are trying to fix people. I don't fix people. I make them feel seen, feel known. Thats wonderful work. I come home feeling more alive than I did when I woke up in the morning.'
- Graham Long, heard today over lunch.
Reverend Graham Long was for many years the minister at the Wayside Chapel, right in the center of Sydney's Kings Cross. Kings Cross is a place for parties and meeting and exciement. In Kings Cross there is also suffering, los-tness. It congregates around the edges and pavements. There are people who have hard day after hard day, and never get to say 'I'm going home now' as night falls. Theres another kind of lostness that we have when we loose being boss-lady or boss-man of our bodies and our minds, our other home. Every one of us knows how that feels. Sometimes we have a say in what gets let into us, what food, what thoughts, what kind of breathing. Sometimes we loose that power. Somtimes we get overcome, and there is worry and obsessive thinking, clenching up. There is a slipperyslide when we get less and less say in where the outer forces and inner impulses take us. For some of us, natural fun stopps happening, and chemical fun is all there is left. Kings Cross is a place to go for buying the stuff that will get you high, get you salvation, for a little bit.
Graham's life was turning up each day to be with people who got clenched up, who got too near the edge of steep slipery slides, and things went down for them.
Graham brings light and care to whoever needs it, people get lit up. He hatches visions of lovely things, and gathers good people around to make them real. The edible rooftop garden of the Wayside Chapel was once just a wish, a vision he had. Now its a favourite place to meet and connect with people who are having a hard time. He said that its when you both have your hands in the soil that you can have your best conversations. Maybe thats because you are remembering that you are part of nature, you are a flower in God's garden.
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Today I got to have lunch with Graham, in a beautiful dappled garden, by St. Mary's cathedral. Its called Bodhi restuarant, and its festive Vegan food.
Because Graham reads a lot of books, and thinks about things carefully, it was a super-fun lunch for me. What a wonderful thing to happen.
Here is another wonderful thing he said over lunch today:
'I tell people I'd rather be lost with you, than saved without you'.
We are all one, after all. Your fate is mine. Some people like Graham live like thats true.