CONNECTIONS CONNECTIONS c onnections CONNECTIONS CONNECTIONS Connections ConnectionsOct – Nov 20 Bicentenary 2019-2024 CONNECTIONS CONNECTIONS Connections Caring for the disadvantaged in the community Graham Long p3 Why Care? Andrew Sempell p5 INSIDEConnectionsHearing Women’s Voices Nicky Lock p8 + MUCH MORE Connections CONNECTIONS CONNECTIONS c onnections CONNECTIONS CONNECTIONS Connections Connections Oct – Nov 20 Bicentenary 2019-2024 CONNECTIONSCONTENTS Caring for the disadvantaged in the community Graham Long ...................p3 Why Care? Andrew Sempell ........................................................................p5 Colin's Corner Colin Middleton ...................................................................p7 Hearing Women'sCONNECTIONS Voices Nicky Lock ..........................................................p8 A Response to ‘Hearing Women’s Voices’ Sue Mackenzie ........................p11 A Priest meets a Gentleman Convict Friend Robert Willson ......................p12 Parishioner Profile: Richard Willgoss Brooke Shelley ...............................p15 Stoke Newington, London & Olney Michael Horsburgh ............................p16 Bell News Jackie Dettmann .......................................................................p19 Sr Freda Mission ConnectionsRobyn & David Carver ...................................................p20 Ready, Steady, Flow! Tony Naake .............................................................p22 St Laurence House: The Road Ahead Alan Soutar .....................................p26 St James’ Institute Update Christopher Waterhouse .................................p28 CONNECTIONS CONNECTIONS Dobson Pipe Organ Builders at Work Alistair Nelson ................................p30 Music Notes Alistair Nelson ......................................................................p33 c onnections CONNECTIONSConnections Friends of Music at St James’: Digital Concert Lincoln Law ......................p34 St Raphael icon painted by St James’ Parishioner, Nanette Danks. CONNECTIONSMusic at St James’ ....................................................................................Connections p35 Photo: Brooke Shelley ConnectionsOct – Nov 20 Bicentenary 2019-2024 St James’ Connections CONNECTIONS on paper CONNECTIONS Prefer to read this on paper and Connectcan’t getio in tons the city? Connections Go to sjks.org.au/shop and buy a printed copy for $4. Caring for the disadvantaged in the community Graham Long p3 Why care? Andrew Sempell p5 INSIDEConnectionsHearing Women’s Voices Nicky Lock p8 + MUCH MORE The cost includes postage. Cover Image: Manuscript Leaf with Scenes from the Life of Saint Francis of Assisi, ca. 1320–42; ConnePublic Domainctio - https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/466277.ns The church celebrates the Feast of St Francis of Assisi on 4 October. October-November 2020 Caring for the disadvantaged in the community Graham Long The Rev’d Graham Long AM was Pastor new staff joined our team at Wayside, my failing culture and, no matter the amount and CEO of the Wayside Chapel for view was that their formal training was an of pain we feel, the answer is always to fourteen years. St James’ Connections impediment; that took about two years to make our machine bigger. The expense invited Graham to share his thoughts on overcome. Beyond this, the training began of running our ‘helping machines’ is eye- pastoral care and social justice, the themes to yield some utility. watering and yet the answer always seems of this edition. to be more hospitals, more professionals, Every collective noun, every label, every more funding. The greatest impairment to caring is the cliché, effectively pushes people away. It impulse to solve problems. To read and amounts to, “You are a thing”, “You are The truth is that when someone is ‘met’ comprehend this warning is to swim a problem”. Where there is a thing, there they move toward health under their against the rushing cultural tide of our day. must be another thing; where there is a own steam. Perhaps more accurately, The urge to solve problems can come from problem, there must be a problem-solver; they become unstuck and move because a good heart or a malevolent one, and in where there is a client, there must be an their own steam is added to the steam the long run, the outcomes are much the expert; where there is a customer, there of others—people find they are part of same—isolation increases and community must be a salesperson, and so on goes the something that is bigger than themselves. is diminished. In the foundations of our duality. We’ve turned the activity of caring Their driving question moves from “What culture, formed over hundreds of years into something that depletes the soul of can you give me?” to “How can I help?”. and rarely understood, is a tangle of forces the caregiver and adds to the total burden It’s a sign that a process of transformation that combine to create lonely individuals. of mental illness in our community. Surely has begun. This really is how it works: caring must be understood as a mutual The issue is so deeply ingrained that most It takes wisdom to see, but in plain sight, action so that two people become more of us spend most of our time solving when this driving question changes, a whole, rather than being depleted. problems. But people are not problems to fundamental shift has taken place. Crudely, be solved; they are people to be met. The The issue I aim to identity here is not just a person was aiming down and now they’re mighty desire to make the world a better about caring for people who have some aiming up. Ahead was only fate, and now place generally assumes that problems disadvantage, it is about caring for those there is a sense of destiny. Destiny doesn’t should be solved. It’s possible, even likely, close to us. It would do us well to ponder need any understanding. No cognitive that all our days can be spent solving how much time we relate to partners, process needs to necessarily take place problems, unknowingly pushing people spouses, children or colleagues as that calculates a future and a goal. Instead, away with perhaps a hint of martyrdom. problems to be solved rather than people all that is required is to understand there is It’s shallow comfort to be able to talk to be met. How much time and life are lost a future and that it vaguely ‘calls’. A vague about the fine effort we are making. It’s like playing “I think you’re the problem” or “I’ll sense that the destiny is there is all that sunbaking under the warmth of a forty- show you my problem can’t be solved”? is needed: the destiny is not born of will watt light globe. power, nor is it a decision; it is born as an One of the greatest deprivations of our accident of community. In time it becomes Problem-solving comes with its own age is community. What once used increasingly obvious that the present language, and disadvantaged people are to be an activity of hanging over the moment is an artifact of the future. well used to the game. People who are fence and talking to a neighbour now stuck can talk endlessly about how they seems to require professional help. Pills, In the real world, we solve problems, right? feel, and they are comfortable with well- programmes and pamphlets abound, Here is a distinction that is important to meaning people leading a discussion about but there is a serious lack of community. understand: you can meet someone in options and pressing for decision. When We’ve created a machine to cope with our order to solve a problem or you can solve 3 Bicentenary 2019-2024 CONNECTIONS CHURCH Music Life & Learning a problem in order to meet someone. The the point of the meeting. The meeting no harshest judge of themselves. Friendship distinctionCHURCH is stark. IfM ussolvingic aLife problem& Learning doubt led to community if those funds and community can be too hard to believe is the goal of the exercise, the outcome were repaid, but an added result was for many, and so it’s natural that suspicion may CHURCHdeliver some satisfaction,Music butLife & it Learning won’t that the tax collector, a man well-used to is a first response. Therefore, I recommend create community. It is a transaction serving himself, was transformed because a ‘no rush’ approach to guide your caring whichCHURCH essentially confirmsMusic Lifethat & Learning each he met Jesus. The good Samaritan wasn’t contacts (meetings) with others. You person is alone. If we solve problems in running an ambulance service, but he was can’t, by your own volition, turn lives orderCHURCH to meet someone,Music it mightLife &happen. Learning a good man who saw a brother in someone around anyway. But you can help to carry Meeting between people is a rare event normally thought of as an enemy. Because and acknowledge their sadness. When I CHURCH Music Life & Learning in our culture, especially these days, but of what the Samaritan saw, an example walked through Auschwitz, we came to a it can happen at times when problem- was set for the sake of his natural enemies, room full to the roof of human hair. Most solving becomes an accident of caring, not and everyone in the story, and anyone who of the other tourists were jostling to keep the goal of caring. really hears the story, is transformed. their place in the group and in some ways, you’d think we were in Disneyland, not Thank God for all the psychiatrists, social So this word is good news and bad the site of unspeakable inhumanity. As we workers, psychologists and all variety of news. In order