Me and Stella saw that on the way to the market this morning, and thought it looked pretty silly. The Herald Sun's article's not that bad though.
'Homeless have familiar faces' - Herald Sun
'Famous faces in the soup - for charity' - The Age
Today they've been filming an ad for the Lord Mayor's Charitable Fund in our laneway, because they give us money to help run Credo. It's a bit weird because there's all these extras dressed up as 'homeless' people.
At about midnight a few days ago, I was heading through the laneway on my way to the Den to drop some stuff off there, and this guy asked me for a smoke. I said I didn't have any. He said he'd seen me smoking the other day, and I said he couldn't have because I hadn't smoked for ages, and he admitted that he'd just reckoned I looked like someone who'd smoked. Anyway, it turned out it was this guy me and Gin looked after for a few hours about a year ago, because he'd had too much heroin. (He liked Hillsong, so we'd been getting him to sing Hillsong stuff so that he'd stay awake.)
Once I'd convinced him I didn't have any tobacco, he said he reckoned someone was watching him. I said I couldn't see anyone. He said he heard someone move, and I said I hadn't noticed it. He asked me to keep a look out while he injected though. Once he'd finished injecting he asked me if I liked vitamins. I said I sometimes use vitamin C if I was sick or people around me are sick, and he got out this jar of fish oil pills, and asked if I wanted any. He said they were meant to be good for your brain. So we had some fish oil pills.
He said he's into Planetshakers now.
This week we're taking a week off from running Credo, so that we can do some training and team-building stuff.
On Monday we went down to Sue's place at Ocean Grove, and in the afternoon we shared a bit about our faith journies. I started off the session by sharing a bit about two passages from the gospels, where Jesus says,
'Anyone who is not for me is really against me,'and,
(Matthew 12:22-30)
'whoever is not against you is for you.'I find it a bit confusing that Luke and Matthew put it different ways, but in both cases it seems like he's got a problem with people demonising people who aren't part of their group. (I think that's important to remember when we share about our experiences of different spiritual movements and ideas.)
(Luke 9:46-50)
I saw this a while back, in La Trobe Lane (Chinatown) but was fairly hestitant to share it anywhere, thinking it was a bit shallow and clichéd. I wonder if that's actually an indication of the shallowness of my understanding of love?
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
(1 Corinthians 13:4-7)
So Gemma arrived from Sydney at about twelve o'clock Sunday night, and we got her moved in. We didn't get to head down to Airys Inlet till pretty late on Monday though, because her friend Cliff who drove down from Sydney with her and all her stuff couldn't get his car started, and it took us a couple of hours to get it started.
Anyway, the seven of us Urban Seed resis had a good couple of days down at Aireys Inlet getting to know each other (a few of us had only just met), hanging out, reading the novelisation of Getting Even with Dad and visiting Eskerine Falls.
Wednesday night the rest of the staff turned up, and we spent most of yesterday talking about the Big Fat Important Things that I mentioned before we left. After dinner at the pub last night some of us stayed up pretty late singing and playing stuff by Smashing Pumpkins, Paul Kelly, Guns & Roses, U2 and such.
We ended up coming back to Melbourne early, so that some of us could make it to a funeral this morning.
Here's some pictures:
We actually spent most of the time inside, because it was really wet and cold, but most of the inside photos came out all blurry, like this, because it was to dark:
Last night I was at Justin's 18th. One of his friends said, 'Oh, it's Justin's brother! The one and only!' and shook my hand and told his girlfriend, 'He's known as Justin the First!' I had a Twisties sandwich. There was much talk of Clockface.
We have new resis moving in this weekend. Andy started moving up from Geelong yesterday, and Gemma is getting here from Sydney late tonight. Tomorrow the seven of us are going down to Aireys Inlet for resi retreat, and on Wednesday the rest of the staff will be coming down for staff retreat, so we can talk about many Big Fat Important Things.
On Saturday I rearranged my televisions:
Yesterday I made a special lunch for Uncle Smithamsy again:
Pain in the Arts is back in Credo. We'd been trying to have it on level 3, because we're setting up a studio there so that people can come and do art on their own when Pain in the Arts isn't on. There's not really enough space up there to have Pain in the Arts there though, and it feels too much like an office. Paul modified a library trolley that we got from Green Collect into an art trolley, so that we can bring some of the art materials down to Credo after Wednesday lunches, for Pain in the Arts:
(More modified library trolleys here.)
This morning Grendelyn (one of our lizards) was cold and not moving. She's died.
Afterwards I found out that Ben's ducks were caught by a fox last night, because he wasn't home to lock them up for the night, because he was here helping us with Grendelyn.
I got Grendelyn (one of our lizards) out of the tank this afternoon, and she basically started having a fit. Ray said that she'd had fits a couple of other times recently, but not as bad. This time it seemed for a while like she couldn't move her back legs, and like she was having difficulty breathing. Ray and Ben took her to see a vet who specialises in reptiles, and he reckoned it's calcium deficiency, because apparently her limbs are bowed. So we have some special food to give her, and hopefully that will help.
I took these pictures this morning, after cleaning the laneway:
(Our back laneway is the main place in Melbourne CBD for injecting heroin, so we try and keep it clean so that it's a bit safer. It's called harm minimisation.)
Mark finished moving out today. It's really crap that he's leaving after three and a half years here. (He's going to be back in Australia for Black Stump Festival though.)
Mark's heading to Alice Springs to visit Uluru and Kata-Tjuta, and then going back to Auckland.
The official blurb is here.
As regular readers of this blog will be aware, a couple of weeks back some of my friends got arrested for trespassing into a military training zone near Rockhampton, in order to play peace games with Australian and US soldiers. Simon Reeves has posted some stuff on his blog about what they did and why. 'Arrested for peace' is of particular interest. My colleague, Reverend Simon Moyle, has also posted some stuff on his blog about the action.
