Humans for the long haul. Jon Owen, Wayside Chapel

<p>Bringing Community Back Together | Episode  8  | Jon Owen  | Wayside Chapel</p><p>&quot;At <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-wayside-chapel/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer"><strong>Wayside Chapel</strong></a> ... when people realise that they&#39;re in a place where they&#39;re being held, they often start to move forward on their own two feet and with their own energy and momentum, which is a beautiful gift we can give ...because we don&#39;t need to be experts... we just need to be humans who can who can be there for the long haul...</p><p>Join us as we explore the profound insights of Reverend John Owen from Wayside Chapel, delving into community, mental health, and the power of story sharing to foster connection and healing. </p><p>In this episode, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/samanthaheron/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Samantha Heron</a> sits down with <a href="https://www.waysidechapel.org.au/our-team/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Reverend Jon Owen</a>, Pastor and CEO of <a href="https://www.waysidechapel.org.au/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Wayside Chapel</a> in Sydney&#39;s Kings Cross &amp; Bondi , for a deeply moving conversation about what it really means to build community with &quot;no us and them.&quot;</p><p>Jon shares the philosophy at the heart of Wayside&#39;s Love over Hate work </p><p>* that no person is a problem to be solved, but a person to be met </p><p>* he reflects on the roots of community fragmentation, the stories we tell ourselves, and why connection across generations and difference matters now more than ever. </p><p>* he shares powerful, personal stories of transformation, such as a volunteer whose son died while sleeping rough. She told him: </p><p>&quot;This isn&#39;t the end of my mother&#39;s heart. This isn&#39;t the end of my mother&#39;s story. I have so much love still to give. So everyone who walks through those doors, I treat as if he were my boy.&quot; ... grief transformed into purpose rather than ending</p><p>* He closes with a beautiful piece of wisdom: &quot;we just need to be humans who can be there for the long haul.&quot; and what keeps him believing in the possibility of no us and them is the daily examples he sees of humanity and who we can be at our best... and the <a href="https://grateful.org/resource/the-peace-of-wild-things/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">poem by Wendell Berry &quot;The Peace of Wild Things&quot; </a> </p><p>A conversation about love over hate, the courage to stay present with people in pain, and what it takes to truly walk alongside someone. This conversation feels like a natural continuation of where Bringing Community Back Together has been heading all year... from rethinking how we live, to rethinking how we measure progress, to rebuilding community from the ground up. </p><p>Jon&#39;s work at Wayside Chapel takes those ideas and grounds them in the rawest, most human terms: what does it actually look like to remove the labels, sit beside someone in their pain, and choose connection over judgement? It&#39;s perhaps the clearest distillation yet of what this whole series has been emphasising ...that community isn&#39;t a concept, it&#39;s a daily practice of showing up for each other. </p><p><br></p><p>🎧 Listen now and if you enjoy pls subscribe/ follow along as it helps more of these stories reach more people</p><p>To learn more, become a volunteer or support Wayside Chapel&#39;s work, visit <a href="waysidechapel.org.au" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">waysidechapel.org.au</a><br><strong>Subscribe to</strong> <a href="https://www.waysidechapel.org.au/inner-circle/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">Jon&#39;s weekly Inner Circle email</a> for stories from the Wayside <strong>Connect with host Samantha Heron:</strong> <a href="https://heartandsoulstory.com/podcast/" target="_blank" rel="ugc noopener noreferrer">⁠heartandsou