Is it getting harder for you to find things to celebrate? Not me. This is the time when the crema of being human rises – rich and strong. We remember we need each other to survive. People are reaching out to their neighbours, sharing what they have, sharing small graces. I hope this pandemic changes everything and the new world order is a kinder, more considerate and generous place. Where’s the party at when we beat this?
#onward #whakahari #celebrate
Some out-of-towners are in the Big Smoke for the game, a Mum with two boys visiting their city Aunty. Exclamations such as: “Wow, look at that big building!” (3 storeys) give them away. They turn their attention to the inside of the train and ask for an explanation of the priority seating sticker.
“Well, that’s to say that if anyone comes along who is blind or on crutches or in a wheelchair, you will have to give this seat up for them because they need it more. It’s also polite to offer your seat to anyone who might be older than you”
“Oh. Do you want this seat Mum?”
“No. Thank you.”
#fastlearners #stories #Footscray #preciousorprecocious
I walk home from Metrowest, shopping bags swinging. Over a low fence to my left, I see 3 people working to get a car rolling off the lawn – maybe with these bouts of heavy rain its sunk down on the grass. “Another pair of hands make a difference?” I call. “Yeah? Maybe?” they answer. So I put things down and join the line up at the hood. “On 3, 1…2…3…”. It takes a few swings to get momentum on it but then the car rolls smoothly onto the driveway. We don’t even exchange names but, for a brief moment, we have shared common ground. #stopscanbestarts #commonground
#walkingmyneighbourhood
Leviticus 19:33-34 New International Version (NIV)
33 “‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. 34 The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”
Leader Hear our cries of frustration, guilt, and anger, O God
As the voices of refugees are silenced by fear and the pursuit of power
Voices of lament
1 Hear our cries in despair – we cannot find our way home from here!
2 We seek a way to solve this
3 We seek a way to speak truthfully
4 We seek a way to bring change
1 Hear our cries in confusion as the issue is complex, the solutions are slow and the answers are never simple
2 The debate is loud and vicious as people seek to score points for power while detaining and compounding damage on vulnerable people
3 Why can we not see the public leaders who have compassion?
4 Why can we not find the public dreamers of justice?
1 Why can we not hear the public proclaimers of hope?
2 Hear our cries in despair at the powerlessness we feel,
3 To make the story turn out right
4 To overturn the actions done in our name
1 To inspire our neighbourhoods to renewed minds
2 To infect the public discourse with grace
be converted
to the otherness
of the other
they do not talk like you
or silence like you
they do not move like you
or do still like you
they do not think like you
or do thoughtless like you
you cannot assign your meaning
to another’s actions
they are other
and their meaning is other
Talitha Fraser
A hollow grief, a hallow grief
We light candles in defiance of the darkness
raising our lights high to honour those voices silenced and stories untold
mine goes out.
A small enough gesture and mine is snuffed out before
it can transmit its’, however fragile, beacon of hope.
Discouraged, I lower my arm and my head but
a hand, bearing a lighter, comes into my view.
We each have that power – to share the light we have.
I had forgotten but this stranger reminds me:
the fellowship isn’t only with the Other but each other too.
Touched by grief, I don’t immediately move away following the vigil
a Chinese international student approaches to ask in broken English:
“Why do these people gather here this way?”
I try to explain but realise asylum “seeker” evokes Potteresque imagery
I let it lie – elusive to gain, as much to do with luck as skill,
glittering just out of reach… there are worse metaphors.
“You all show much courage”, she says.
“How’s that?” I ask.
“In China, this would never be allowed.”
What seems little enough… not nearly enough…
is to this person unthinkable
and I am confronted by my privilege to be here.
She moves off and a man joins me on the library lawn
“The powers you must overcome…
they would keep you from expanding.”
He lights a cigarette.
“They are going backwards, except,
it seemed backward even the first time”
he sighs looking around, “It is little enough”.
It is little enough.
Tonight on the anniversary of the “Regional Resettlement” initiative 55 vigils are taking place across Australia. It is little enough. It is something…
| 19 July 2013: | Then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announces a new “Regional Resettlement Arrangement” with Papua New Guinea (PNG) so Australia can buy its way out of its ethical responsibilities. From this day forward anyone seeking protection and safety in Australia who arrive by boat will be forcibly transferred to PNG for processing and, if they are found to be refugees, be permanently settled there. |
| 19 July 2013: | The announcement causes distress amongst the people warehoused in detention in Nauru with peaceful protests escalating into violence. |
| 3 August 2013: | The Australian Government signs a new memorandum of understanding with Nauru similar to its Regional Resettlement Arrangement with Papua New Guinea. |
| 17 February 2014: | 23-year-old Reza Berati is murdered, and over 60 others injured, some of them seriously, on Manus Island. Numerous witness reports state Reza Berati was attacked by a group of G4S staff and at least one local staff member employed by The Salvation Army. Several eyewitnesses reported that one attacker picked up a large rock and hit Reza Berati on the head with it several times. |
| 5September 2014: | Hamid Khazaei, who was only 24 years old dies from a sepsis infection three weeks after he cut his foot at the detention centre on Manus Island. Inadequate medical care and delayed medical evacuation were later reported to have let to to Mr Khazaei’s death. |
| 26 September 2014: | The Australian and Cambodian governments sign a deal under which people on Nauru who are found to be refugees are to be resettled in Cambodia. This second deal again allows Australia to buy its way out of its ethical responsibilities. |
| 18 November 2014: | Then Immigration Minister Scott Morrison announces that asylum seekers who have registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Indonesia after 1 July 2014 will no longer be able to be resettled under Australia’s humanitarian program. |
| 5 December 2014: | A bill passes both Houses providing the Immigration Minister with the power to detain people at sea (including outside Australia’s jurisdiction) and send them to other countries or vessels, even without the permission or knowledge of those countries. |
| 20 March 2015: | The report from independent review into allegations of sexual abuse on Nauru is released detailing reports of women being raped and allegations of children being sexually assaulted. |
| 20 March 2015: | A boat carrying 46 Vietnamese asylum seekers is intercepted by Australia. Its passengers are held at sea for nearly a month and undergo “enhanced screening” before being returned to Vietnam on 18 April. |
| 28 May 2015: | Thousands of men, women and children seeking protection are abandoned at sea in what is now known as the Andaman Sea ‘boat crisis’. Regional governments eventually agree to allow the boats to land but then Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s callous response to Australia offering safety is “nope, nope, nope”. |
| 4 June 2015: | Nine months after the $55 million Cambodia deal, four refugeesarrive in Phnom Penh from Nauru. All of these people subsequently choose to return to their countries of origin, despite the fact that all four were found to have well-founded fears of persecution. |
| 1 July 2015: | The Australian Border Force Act takes effect making it a crime punishable by two years’ imprisonment for medical professionals, educators and others contracted by the Australian Government to speak about what they see in offshore detention. |
| 5 October 2015: | The Nauruan Government announces that the Regional Processing Centre will operate under an open centre arrangement. |
| 29 October 2015: | Amnesty International Australia publishes a report revealing evidence that Australian officials paid boat crews to return peopleseeking asylum to Indonesia. |
| 8 November 2015: | Fazel Chegeni, an Iranian refugee detained in Christmas Island Detention Centre, is found dead after escaping the centre. |
| 19 February 2016: | Australia again rejects the standing offer from New Zealand to accept 150 people from Nauru or Manus Island, failing to provide sensible, durable solutions for the people trapped there. |
| 21 February 2016: | Baby Asha, a one-year old who was transferred along with her family from Nauru to Brisbane Lady Cilento Children’s hospital for medical treatment is released into community detention. This came after the doctors at the hospital refused to discharge Asha after the completion of her treatment, fearing she would be transferred back to Nauru. |
| 23 March 2016: | At the Ministerial Bali Process meeting a declaration was released (the Bali Declaration) which for the first time identified the need toprovide protection to refugees in the region. |
| 15 April 2016: | A refugee in Nauru is convicted of attempted suicide, which was recognised as a crime in Nauru at the time. |
| 26 April 2016: | PNG’s Supreme Court rules that the transfer and detention of asylum seekers on Manus Island is illegal. |
| 26 April 2016: | Omid Masoumali, a refugee living in Nauru for three years sets himself on fire. After more than 24 hours he is medically evacuated to Australia where he dies in a hospital in Brisbane on Friday 29 April 2016. |
| 2 May 2016: | A young Somali refugee living in Nauru sets herself on fire. She is later flown to Australia by air ambulance suffering burns to 70% of her body. |
| 5 May 2016: | A boat with 12 Sri Lankan people seeking asylum who were intercepted by Australian authorities earlier in the week are screened at sea before being returned to Sri Lanka. They were reportedly arrested on arrival at Colombo airport. |
| 10 May 2016: | The Federal Court rules the Government must provide a woman,raped on Nauru, access to a safe and legal termination. |
| July 2016: | Amnesty International’s Senior Director for research visits Nauru where she finds a system of deliberate abuse hidden behind wall of secrecy. |
| 10 August 2016: | The Guardian releases the Nauru files – thousands of leaked incident reports from Nauru detail assaults, sexual abuse and child abuse. |
| 19 September: | UN Global Summit for Refugees and Migrants in New York misses opportunity to find solutions to the global refugee crisis. |
| 17 October 2016: | In a new report ‘Island of Despair’: Australia’s “processing” of refugees on Nauru Amnesty International find that the conditions to which refugees and people seeking asylum on Nauru are subjected amounts to torture. |
| 30 October 2016: | Immigration Minister Peter Dutton tries to introduce legislation to ensure anyone taken to Nauru and Manus and then resettled anywhere in the world, would never be able to come to Australia. |
| 13 November 2016: | The Government takes an extreme step in shirking responsibility byannouncing an agreement with the United States for some of the refugees in offshore detention to be settled in the US via a process administered by the UNHCR. |
| 25 November 2016: | Malaysia begins work on a pilot scheme to allow refugees from Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya minority to work in the country, which in turn reduces number of people forced to take dangerous journeys in search for a safe place to rebuild their lives. |
| 24 December 2016: | Faysal Ishak Ahmed collapses at the Manus detention centre. He dies on Christmas Eve. |
| 31 December 2016: | The Indonesian President issues a Presidential Decree for refugees which for the first time provides people seeking asylum and refugees in Indonesia with a more formal legal status. |
| 14 April 2017: | PNG Soldiers fire directly into the Manus Island detention centre putting lives at risk. 9 people are injured. No one is held accountable. |
On the weekend of 24-25 September Whitley College hosted a conference called Constitutions and Treaties: Law, Justice, Spirituality – these are notes from session 7 of 9. We acknowledge that this gathering, listening and learning occurred of the land of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nations and offer our respects to their elders past and present, and all visiting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island visitors present.
TOWARD A NEW TABLE FELLOWSHIP
Proud of my aboriginal heritage and being a part of the church.
Chasm (barriers to hospitality):
Bringing people together:
Join in moments of sorrow and celebration. Spent all our budget on food. Need to create spaces that bring people together and give them a chance to say, “Well, actually, I’ve been wondering about this…”
Hospitality across all cultures and all faiths.
Let us learn from you, instead you come and learn from us.
People started demanding and expecting hospitality… anxiety, misguided enthusiasm, on own terms/time, urgency, desire to ‘fix’… our elders are fragile and tired… who cares for the carers?
It’s not that we don’t want to talk/engage but we need time. Reconciliation can’t work by a drive-through approach.
Indigenous Unit is told ‘this is your job’ – it can often be overwhelming. People aren’t aware of what else is going on for our community.
We need good and sustainable gatherings.
A time for everything – Ecclesiastes 3:1-14
Need to meet and share – get hospitality right.
Why binaries not working/helpful? Why working on Strong Spirit? Losing heart and tired.
“You don’t look Aboriginal, what kind of food is this? why aren’t there more chairs? you aren’t dressed very aboriginally…”
People bound up in their own needs, expectations and demands.
N.B. this story contains offensive language and swear words
The streets of Melbourne speak. Buskers busk, beggars beg and people hand out pieces of paper offering good deals on diamonds, discounted burgers or advocating for autonomy of Tibet – everyone has something to say. Mostly we veer round them, but not me. I have started a new job working with a Christian community development organisation supporting the homeless in Melbourne CBD – these people out on the street are my neighbours, my friends, and I am going to help them and I will make a difference in their lives.
Speak Melbourne, I am listening.
I hop on the 57 tram at Collins St. As it is standing room only, I loiter near the rear door and sitting side-on to me is a man holding a bottle in a paper bag already quite drunk. He looks old but probably isn’t. A face weathered by life’s experiences and dirt. He clears people to the other end of the tram by being, loudly, verbally offensive to everyone around us.
To the Indian couple opposite chatting softly, “Can’t you speak English? Speak English! F-ing come to our country, you can speak our f-ing language.”
To the Chinese woman beside him, “I can speak your language, sushi! Chopsticks! Kamakaze! Karate!”
To a young Middle Eastern girl, “You’re quite pretty… how much would it cost to buy you? That’s what you do where you come from, right?”
Everyone on the tram pretends to ignore him and looks away – whatever you do, don’t make eye contact with the crazy guy. I felt angry, and ashamed, worried that all these people might think that by staying silent we agree as I find I look away too. Eventually, a young white guy halfway up the tram calls out, “Keep your peace mate, no one wants to hear what you have to say.”
Crazy Guy stands quickly, “You trying to be a f-ing hero? Showing off for your girlfriend? None of your f-ing business.”
He has pulled a broken bottle out of his bag and is waving it threateningly. Collectively everyone on the tram holds their breath, still not sure where to look. Eventually Crazy Guy sits back down again but the ‘hero’ turns to say something to the guy behind him and he’s up again throwing candles at him from his bag shouting, “Shut up! I’m going to burn your f-ing eyes out you c-!”
All of this over a surreal twenty minute ride. I arrive at my stop in North Melbourne and hop off, relieved, so very relieved, the Crazy Guy does not. I have done nothing, said nothing, and feel upset and guilty. “Aren’t I meant to know how to do this?”
I ask a colleague Gin the next day, “What I could have done differently?”
“What was his name?”
“Uh, I didn’t exactly introduce myself….” my tone quavering somewhere between sarcasm and incredulity.
“…next time, try and find out what his name is, it really helps to connect with people if you know their name.”
Oo0oO
Some weeks later I am hosting dinner at my place unwinding with others from work. The share house I’m in doesn’t have much of a backyard and we have improvised with fish and chips in the middle of the 5-way roundabout where Haines, Dryburgh and Shiel Sts intersect. It’s a beautiful Melbourne summer evening and we jockey for the minimal shade offered by the three yet-young eucalypts as summer light fades into dusk. We’ve been there a while when a man crosses the road to ask us, “You got anything to eat?” and we share what we have.
He hangs with us a bit under the darkening sky, asks if we’re Aboriginal, if we’re sitting here because the land is significant to us, and asks my friends Christop and Mehrin when they are getting married, “I can just tell…” though they were only dating then.
Gin asks “What’s your name?”
“Gordy.”
“Where are you staying?”
He points to the flats across the road.
Crazy Tram guy is my neighbour, and now I know his name.
I wait till Gordy leaves to tell the others the connection. My workmates have been helping me process the experience I had on the tram and it’s almost hard to credit this could be the same person. Calm, softly spoken, clean-shaven, friendly, interesting and interested in who we are.
Gordy is my neighbour, and now I know his name.
Oo0oO
I go to the 10th Annual Homeless Memorial. Once a year a motley community gathers to remember those ‘streeties’ or ‘parkies’ who have passed away. You can get hot soup, a hot dog, and warm clothes are available to take away but it is about more than that. It offers an opportunity to reflect on those people with whom we create connections, those with whom we feel ‘at home’, regardless of any material shelter. We remember those who now, or have in the past, offered light or warmth to our lives. Voice is given to the pain of separation from parents, siblings, children, society. Voice is given to the pain of decisions that cannot be unmade, things which cannot be unsaid and knowledge that we cannot go back – only forward. A humble gratitude is offered to ‘the people from the organisations represented here’, supported with warm applause from the crowd in and around the marquee.
We sing. Songs we all know the words to, or hum, or make up. There are no song sheets. You don’t have to have learned to read to belong here. Our hands are free to cradle lit candles and sprigs of rosemary.
Please swallow your pride
If I have things you need to borrow
For no one can fill those of your needs
That you don’t let show
For it won’t be long
‘Til I’m gonna need
Somebody to lean on
—
They say we stand for nothing and
There’s no way we ever could
Now we see everything that’s going wrong
With the world and those who lead it
We just feel like we don’t have the means
To rise above and beat it
So we keep waiting
Waiting on the world to change
It’s hard to beat the system
When we’re standing at a distance
So we keep waiting
Waiting on the world to change
—
We hold a minute’s silence, and it is deep and rich and full.
There are names unspoken…tears unshed…and hope unlooked for. We only need to look around to know we are not alone in this grief. We only need to look around to have more than our hunger fed, our coldness clothed… instead we know the truth.
We are not strangers to one another as we thought when we arrived.
And a last a cappella chorus rings out…
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost but now am found
Was blind but now I see
Oo0oO
Another pleasant Melbourne evening, my housemate Freya and I are walking her gentle dog Nala to the oval for a play. We have an Ultra Grip Ball Launcher and even with both of us humans to the one of her we know well who will get tired of the game first.
We meet up with Gordy as we cross the road, he is heading home as we head out: “What kind of dog is that? Bitch looks like a dingo. I’ve killed two dogs with my bare hands, they were coming at me and I just grabbed their front legs and ripped ‘em apart.”
Once he’s gone I try and explain how I don’t think he’s a risk to our pet but I think I make a bad job of it and there’s heightened awareness and extra company on walks in the weeks that follow. I know enough to know now that Gordy was pretty level tonight. Eyes clear and cleaned up, he must be in a good place. He’s just making conversation. Speaking his truth. Why do we think about what we need to do to protect our dog and not think about what happened to Gordy that he’s in a situation somehow where he’s defending himself, his life, with his bare hands?
I used to look for the right answers once. Now I look for the right questions.
Oo0oO
A stranger stops my friend Lyn and I, as we are walking down Swanston Street, to ask an inane question. She and I do lunch now and then to catch up since I dropped off the corporate ladder. I say something harsh and unkind about him once he leaves. Gormless.
My friend smiles and says, “Sometimes you are very Christian, and sometimes you are so not.” My smile twists and becomes wry, “No. I’m a Christian all the time,” I say, “…sometimes I’m better at it than others.”
I used to think that helping the poor would make me holy somehow. But I am as holy, and as human, as I have ever been. Riding that 57 tram home later that day, I see Gordy again. He stands up to let a lady sit down and, when other women get on board, chastises other guys into giving up their seats too. He flirts with a few girls and makes general conversation, “Hot ain’t it? Where you goin’?”
He says hello to me and I reply “Hi, Gordy, how are you?”
Confused, he answers “I don’t know you, I don’t know you”
I explain about meeting a few times, a long time ago and far apart but he just repeats, again and again, “I don’t know you”. I get off at the stop after ours, cut home through the park, following the path that winds back and forth instead of cutting across the grass directly like I usually would. It’s slower. I hold Gordy in my mind. I hold scared Gordy in my mind and slowly make my way home, hoping he’s made it ok to his.
Oo0oO
[Five years later…]
I am making my way to Coles to pick up some ingredients for dinner on the way home from work when I see Gordy sitting on the corner of Flinders and Elizabeth St with the cutest puppy sleeping on a blanket at his feet. My momentum carries me past before my brain catches up and my spirit stirs. I hesitate, and go back. “Hey Gordy, I’m just heading into the Coles here, have you eaten? Can I pick up anything for you or the puppy?”
He says, “Nothing for me” proudly, “but some biscuits for the puppy would be great.”
I head in and dither over what to buy: puppy vs. adult food, large dog vs. small dog food, how big a bag if Gordy has to carry it around vs not being generous. I finally get clear and head to the corner and… I can’t see them… oh.
My mind starts running, Gordy had sort of flinched when I used his name. He never remembers me. Maybe he felt suspicious of my motives, paranoid? I check all directions from the intersection, check out the tram stops hoping to catch sight of him. Damn it. I just spent $15 on dog food I don’t have a use for. Should I leave it here at the corner in case he comes back? Did I take too long? Did he assume I wasn’t coming back? Sigh. The reasons for stopping in the first place were right. It doesn’t matter that he isn’t here.
But it does.
I am disappointed by the ‘squandered’ generosity that goes unappreciated.
Oh well, Ray and Ben’s dogs will have a litter of puppies soon – it will be used eventually…
I cross to Flinders St Station and wait on the platform for the train. Last I know he lived in North Melbourne – I’m heading to Footscray where I live now – same line so I’m still scanning the platforms hoping to catch sight of him. Nothing. No sign. I find an empty seat on the train when it pulls up and slump down in the keep-to-myself-don’t-talk-to-me mode I generally assume on public transport. The train moves off, the doors at the back of the carriage open and I idly muse on what it is people are looking for when they move down through the train while it’s moving when there are free seats everywhere? As I stare blankly at the dark tunnel walls slipping past. The group, two guys and a girl, sit down across the aisle from me, and… beside me. One of them is Gordy.
I very casually say, “Oh, could you pass this over for me?’
I see the surprise. Surprise I see them? That I will talk to them? That I will recognise Gordy without his hand out? That I actually came through with the dog biscuits? Gordy moves to sit next to me with the puppy so ‘he’ (the puppy) can thank me, he is soft and adorable. We chat all the way to Footscray, one of his mates eats the Snickers I threw in. Gordy says “I’ll definitely remember you this time.” I have my doubts and sitting together, sharing together, it feels entirely unimportant. Though I have hope.
I’m still not holy. Gordy isn’t a hero in this story, nor am I. We’re pretty much still the people we were at the start. Still living. I have learned that I can’t wait on the world to change. I have to start with myself. Our conversation falls into silence, and it is deep and rich and full.
I don’t need Gordy to remember my name; that might be too hard or asking too much. What I want him to remember is being reached out to, the mutuality of our exchanges. Equal parts in the same whole… it humbles and humiliates me. I hope he feels looked for, I hope he feels found – as I have been.
The streets of Melbourne speak. Buskers busk, beggars beg and people hand out pieces of paper offering good deals on diamonds, discounted burgers or advocating for autonomy of Tibet – everyone has something to say. Mostly we veer round them, but not me. I’m in a different job these days, these are still my neighbours though and my friends – I know better now. We help each other sometimes and our lives are different, better, for the knowing of each other. Listen Melbourne, I am speaking…
“What’s your name?”
Talitha Fraser
I wrote this piece a short story entry for the inaugural Brotherhood of St Lawrence Hope Prize “to encourage writing that transcends stereotypes of ‘the poor’ and reflects the resilience we know that people show in the face of poverty and testing times”. I didn’t win or anything so I can share my piece here – the years that I worked with the homeless community (largely through Seeds and Urban Seed) in Melbourne were transformative and it feels good to have an opportunity/ excuse to reflect on and share some learnings from that time. Thanks to Katherine, Susan and Sally for handholding me through the writing and editing process – this is noticeably tighter than my usual work thanks to you!
I am sitting in the local supermarket collecting for Red Shield Appeal. A pensioner has just given generously and thanks me for my generosity taking the time to sit there.
I come home and look up the word “salvation”.
From the latin salvatio – being saved or protected from harm or being saved or delivered from some dire situation.
Imagine for a moment an army, a large number of people, committed to saving and protecting people from harm, an army of people committed to saving and protecting those who find themselves in some dire situation… religion aside – that still might be something to believe in.
I might sometimes worry that collecting takes me away from my core work – it is good to have this reminder that it provides an opportunity for others to participate in it.
Christop Booth sharing a workshop on making a cup of tea -“at the Indigenous Hospitality House we’ve found that sharing tea can help to make space for the stranger and can be an opportunity for reconciliation”.
Make a cup of tea…
What are your associations?
What do we know about its origins and history?
When we reflect on any every day activity, we might consider…
itellyouarise 