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Dear Inner Circle,
Does
it worry you that mental illness appears to be so prevalent in our day?
Are you surprised to find that many of your friends and work colleagues
have been diagnosed and are medicated for some mental condition? Does
it cause you concern that most deviant behaviour is explained by some
mental condition?
There is no doubt that there are angels in our midst
who see our culture straining and
spend their time lobbying for
Governments to increase spending on psychological
support and
psychiatric services; they become caseworkers and helpers in some form
and they give their all to support the maximum number of people through
hard times.
I love such people but I wonder when we will ever ask
larger, higher level questions
about the cultural drifts at work amongst
us. I'm all for asking "R U OK?" and I think
it's time to ask the same
question collectively, of our whole culture.
This
generation is paying a high price for the privatisation of the self.
The priority
of the self on the one hand is the loss of community on the
other. The power of
one has become our bedrock. We stress the
achievement of success for our
young by placing them in competition with
everyone else. It's a lonely
road to a lonely destination. A primary
school teacher told me recently that well
over half of her class was
medicated for psychological issues. I'm wondering
if we'll wait till
100% of our babies are medicated before we ask if there
is not something
fundamentally misdirected about the way we live. The one
thing that
most people who visit Wayside have in common is a deep knowing
that they
are on their own. You don't have to be homeless to live with a sense
that no matter what it is that you're going through, that you're
travelling alone.
Most of our cultural responses to human need actually
maintain the underlying
disconnection of the self. I'm sure we don't
think about this much, but our
answer usually involves helping people to
cope better, to function more
adequately, to feel better, in the lonely
journey to the abyss. Perhaps my time
has not come but it's on the way,
when we will see that to be more comfortable,
more functional, or
feeling better is an endless and insanely expensive journey.
One day we
will see that we need to call people out of their lonely spot and into
the difficult but life giving task of belonging; to community.
Given
our obsession with the power of one, it's hardly surprising that so
many
individuals find comfort only in injecting or ingesting substances
into the body.
We are victims of a philosophy that life and happiness is
an "inner" matter.
It's not so much what you do but how you feel that
matters. This is an anti human
stance and it is little wonder that it
generates all manner of mental illnesses.
This generation is paying a
high price but God help the next generation.
A thirteen year old girl
said to me recently, "Just because you sleep with a
lot of boys, it
doesn't mean that you're a sl*t." This dear baby was trying to
tell me
that it didn't matter what she did with her body as long as her inner
attitude was right. If she could have expressed her thoughts, she would
have said, "Values are only inner things, projected outwards. There are
no values really,
just your idea and my idea."
The
fabulous string quartet, Enigma, came to Wayside again this week.
What a
breathtaking gift was made to our people. These four fine musicians
played their hearts out in our cafe for about an hour. Some of us (me
included)
were paralysed by the generosity with which this gift was
given.
Some sat close and stopped talking! There was one fellow for whom
talking
carries no meaning in the normal human sense. I think his talk
is a kind of
sonar system whose echo in the room somehow comforts him
that others are present.
I saw him sit in silence. To witness such a
miracle caused me to fall in love
with these dear bearers of heavenly
music. Some people carried on talking as
usual. One fellow insisted on
telling me how he went to a concert in the 1960s
with his family and how
he heard Tchaikovsky played and what a clever fellow
he must have been
to write such complex music and how his father didn't enjoy
it etc etc
etc. He was only six feet away from this priceless gift offered to him
in this present moment and he couldn't see it and he didn't hear it. I
guess in
his own annoying way, he's a bit of an angel too.
Spring
has brought an abundance of life and colour to our rooftop garden and
it's a sight that has to be seen. As part of Crave Sydney, our wonderful
ambassador Indira Naidoo is hosting an urban food safari around Potts
Point
on Sunday, October 21. You'll get to visit Indira's edible balcony
and
The Wayside Chapel’s rooftop garden. Profits from the tour will go
back to Wayside.
Thanks for taking time to read about life here in Kings Cross and thanks
for being part of our inner circle.
Graham
Rev Graham Long
Pastor and CEO
The Wayside Chapel
Kings Cross
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