Status Updates From Streets of hope: Finding Go...

"It is too easy to give into the social cynicism that declares we are powerless to resist globalisation, wealth inequality and fragmenting communities. Sadly, cynics are usually disillusioned idealists. ... It corrodes both hope and the birthing of fresh ideas and possibilities. I want to keep hope alive and mutuel the belief that we can build a truly civil and just society."

"In a society which regards inefficiency as blasphemy, it is important to protest that the things our culture values most involve stupendous inefficiency. ... When management promises ha efficiency in removing democracy and identity, we sense that it will be a bland, smooth, tasteless community."

If it is God's world gifted to us, then it comes with an obligation of stewardship in its cultivation for the benefit of all. It is obscenity to award it to the private profiteers."

"The myth proclaims that [the private] sector is the real creator of wealth, whereas public service creates nothing. This fashion forgets its limits. Private wealth can only be created out of resources that belong to everyone because they first belong to God. The Hebrew scriptures assert that the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. -

"Council represented a forum where such civic discourse that shaped the social and physical realities of our place, our suburb and our lives could occur. Civic discourse is an endangered dialogue. It takes hours of unpaid work to be on council and a great deal of commitment by one's family or partner."

"The democratic system only works if clear alternate policies and visions are put up for choice. The fudging and mumbling in order to stay uncommitted for electoral advantage compromises the process."

"The lady holding the scales of justice is blindfolded to remind us that the law is utterly impartial. Sometimes the law is simply blind and cannot recognise morality when hit in the face by it."

"The lady holding the scales of justice is blindfolded to remind us that the law is utterly impartial. Sometimes the law is simply blind and cannot recognise morality when hit in the face by it."

"I have no doubt that, where there is an icy destructiveness in a marriage, it is best to move to termination. But every death of a marriage is a blow to our ideal that committed human love can free us to change and conquer our own demons and personal problems."

"If Christian faith is to be truly Christian it must eschew the cultural gods of convenience and self-fulfilment to engage with the powers of death that confronted Jesus. By naming and disclosing the illusory nature of those powers that promise respectability, comfort and legitimacy in the name of the dominant culture, there is authenticity and a free space in which to live."

"Salvation in this culture is no longer about overcoming alienation from self, neighbour or God. ... Salvation is reinterpreted as being sufficiently focused to release all the gifts within and realise that potential."

"A community which embodies mutual rights and duties, privileges and obligations is the context for finding true security. ... Only in engagement with others whom you allow to speak into your life can growth take place. This sort of community is a gift of grace. It permits enough security to be real because you are known, warts and all."

"The house was to be treated as a special place that called for special behaviour and that allowed them the possibility of acting differently and, perhaps, even becoming different people."

"Professionalism, as a way of harnessing expertise, has its place. But when it comes to empowering people to control their own lives, it also had its clear limitations."

"Few individuals seem to have a cause large enough to motivate them. Most settle into passive mediocrity, satisfied to be trivialised to death by the lure of the latest consumer gadget."

"If you want to change society, then you must tell an alternate story."

"It is becoming apparent that we are breeding a rootless society whose members have exchanged the rich right of citizenship for the mess of pottage called customership. Citizenship takes local duties, and particularly neighbourliness, seriously. But if one is always on the move, it becomes increasingly difficult to attend to those duties."

"Commitment has to be learnt. ... The voice that constantly whispers to forget helping others because you cannot make a difference is louder today than a generation ago. A counter-culture resistance nursed in communities of hope is needed."

"I vacillate between anger and understanding in my relationship with the wider church. The anger rises when I see how the choices Christians make are just as self-seeking and self-promoting as those of others. ... The number who gravitate to the comfortable eastern suburbs and Bible belt suggests self-comfort rather than the call of God."

"But the notion of user pays - the user naturally being the more affluent who can afford quality teaching - is a strange doctrine on the lips of Jesus' followers."

"Inner-city kids breathe the lead deposit of the motorists' refusal to submit to public transport."

"It is an inexorable rule that dreams which anticipate so much also wreak the most havoc if they go wrong."