The Parliament of the World’s Religions has left Melbourne to reassemble somewhere else in five years time.

Some Melbourne young Buddhists asked if they could help with feeding/comforting poor people in contact with the South Melbourne parish, where I currently live.

That was reassuring. There’s plenty of generous young people willing to volunteer. My problem is that I’m not equipped to deal with them.

That’s one problem associated with being on active service, under both hostile and friendly fire, in harm’s way, for over 30 years.

You become able to function, even excel, only in a crisis. You may not be much help when things return to normal, more or less.

You get only a skeleton “staff”. People want to come and see what you do, join in, even. You know that’s desirable, but your infrastructure’s not up to it.

You send all enquirers off to St. Vincent de Paul or the Brotherhood, or Sacred Heart Mission. The local “first aid post” becomes possessive and self protective.

So you really need someone to emerge who’s good at recruiting, training and deploying volunteers.

That’s if we’re to maintain neighbourhood level community centres, hubs, village greens, call them what you will.

They would be local versions of the Parliament of World’s Religions. All local faiths would be invited to participate by sharing their existing resources of real estate and personnel.

Homeless and hungry people are now visible, thank God, in most Australian cities, urban and rural.

Even a previously shunned, because frightening, group has become embarrassingly visible – the sad and lonely. A lot of “Hello, brother/sister, have you got a spare dollar?” petitioning on the street where you live is a pitiful plea for a simple human exchange, not of coins but of words.

Lots of locals, yours as well as mine, go hungry for the bare essentials of human chatter, all day, every day.

I remember a couple of funerals recently when the speeches made a feature of just that.

“Jack was a great help in this neighbourhood. He was well known on the streets, especially on the shopping strip. He always stopped for a chat. Newcomers to the area were made to feel at home.” Jack wasn’t one of the lonely people himself. He was a retired working class man, He was gifted with the ability to make anyone and everyone feel at home right here, right now.

Neighbourhoods are like that. That’s why busy executives, electronically wired for every eventuality, so long as there’s even a glimpse of humanity left in their robotic lives, breath a sigh of relief as they drive into their neighbourhood/their home!

Corner stores are mini parliaments of the world’s religions (not IGA or Seven 11 – prehistoric cornershops!)

Banter at the counter, that’s what we need, to offset the toxic imprint of local freezing.

Again, at the risk of boring you dear reader, I invite local faith communities to offer their hope and love capabilities at the service of their neighbourhoods. That goes for Christmas Island as well!

RJM