Dear Friends,

The call of St. John to change our ways is ever new!  In some translations it is also recorded as a powerful voice within our souls, demanding of us to change our thinking, or to transform our habits of thought.  Even though this was not the conscious thought, the Australian New Zealand Synod of priests threw the normal agenda and meeting format to the wind and asked ourselves;
'what are we doing and what do we need to do differently’?'
We spent five days talking, and looking at our tired answers, as to how and why we do things the way we do, and suspending the good old solutions to issues.  We went on a journey of listening to each other, and an image emerged for us.  This imagination was about a completely different approach to how we perceive our work here in the region.  At first I laughed out loud, as after five days of deep contemplation we found the image of: "One Cloth!"

It seemed so simple, but as we worked with it we realised that this was the driving imagination of the founding of the work here twenty one years ago.  We wanted to live The Christian Community as one community with several expressions in various cities.  We were to be the one expression of the sacraments around the sacred sites of our region with common wealth of resources.  We realized with deep pain how this picture had become fractured and that we had all been isolated in our all-one-ness.  Each community had become the one expression for itself and the atomisation of financial rationalism drove us to further extremes.  We found it very moving that this picture emerged and made a commitment to building this imagination of the one community, the one cloth, as a palpable experience.

We don't have the answers as to how that will happen.  We will move through the Australia Council and the local communities and national delegates’ conferences.  Together we will work on ideas of what can be done differently to maintain the viability and resources of one community with a diversity of expression.

This also means that there was a very sharp shift in focus as to where the 'problem' lies.  We could all acknowledge that each community is struggling to maintain its viability.  Suddenly Adelaide was not the only one not 'up to scratch'.  However, the mood of mutual resourcing to nourish and maintain the communities we do have came into focus and a sense of relief entered the space.  An experience of well-being and health, returned to our tired souls at the realisation that we were not contracting ever further.

I came back from Synod and the Australia Council feeling that we have now broken through to a new level of understanding.  Our Community had asked for things to be re-thought and time given to finding a new gesture.  This was done in such a way that gives us here, in Adelaide, a sense of being within the one cloth again, rather than being watched and analysed.

I hope you can join in with the various events over the next six months as we work towards finding ways to integrate this idea into our lived experience.

Yours
Martin Samson