Connections

As a bit of a square peg in a round hole I often feel alone. Today I had a couple of warm fuzzy encounters which made me feel less alone. 

• I am wanting to try to start street footy for "excluded" people in Dunedin so I have been visiting a Thursday morning soccer group that a local Trust runs. There some of my drop-in centre guys play soccer and I have joined them on occasion. I turned up 5 minutes late today and was surprised by the warmth of the greetings by some of the guys. They were openly, genuinely pleased to see me. One guy I had never met before said, "Oh you're David Brown, I know all about you!" These excluded guys liked me being there.
• I went out to tea with a couple of people on a Trust Board that I am on, then we continued to talk in my office afterward. They are very different than I am in their life circumstances, but in our hearts we "connect". We had serious business to talk about but spent some relaxed time while eating and indeed while talking business. It was just sooo nice to spend time with such genuinely beautiful, caring and giving people. While it was "work" it was also refreshment, and renewal. I recall at an ecumenical youth convention with 1500 young people in 1966 singing with great gusto, "We will walk with each other we will walk hand in hand....We will work with each other, we will work side by side." etc etc. It was powerful stuff then, but tonight I experienced the depth and truth of those words. We were different people from very different denominations, but at heart going in the same direction together. There were three of us, we did nothing "religious" but in some ways there was the feeling that there were four in the room.

I am not alone, and I need to remember that.