Not all of us will be able to pack up our bags and join a team in New Delhi, Kolkata, Bangkok, Manila, or Phnom Penh. In which case my next story – of ‘Peter and Adrienne and the Cabramatta Gardens’ – is the story just for you.

Peter, and his wife Adrienne, wanted to go to work in Vietnam. But, as often happens, things didn’t work out the way they had hoped they would. So, instead of moving to Hanoi, this Kiwi couple decided that they would move to Sydney and work with the Vietnamese community in Cabramatta.

When they arrived in Cabramatta, Peter and Adrienne joined Urban Concern, a faith community that was supportive of Servants work – not just overseas, but  back home- encouraging people to practice the Be-Attitudes in our own backyard.

Through Urban Concern Peter and Adrienne were introduced to Cabramatta and soon got to know not only the Vietnamese but also the Cambodians – and refugees from Former Yugoslavia as well. The whole world was on their doorstep!

In late 1999 Peter and his friends began to discuss the idea of ‘doing some-thing together’ in the community. By January 2000 the idea of ‘doing some-thing together’ in the community had resolved itself into the idea of ‘a community garden’. In February 2000 the Hughes Street Playground had been identified as the preferred site. And in April 2000 a formal proposal was submitted to lease a portion of Hughes Street Playground as the site.

Now the Hughes Street Playground was a notorious place. It had been taken over by the ‘smack squad’ a long time ago. But Peter and his friend Jeremy thought it was the perfect place for local people to begin to take back some of their space and put it to good sustainable community use.

They not only got permission to use Hughes Street, but also a grant from the Fairfield City Council of $10,000 to fund the initial set-up of the garden. And they got together with a group of local representatives over a twelve-month period to work out the details as to how to proceed with the project.

The group came up the idea of having an ‘Open Day’, to share the dream of the garden with the community, and to invite people of various ethnic backgrounds – especially those people on the ‘margins’ – to join in and work on the project together. Invitations were given out in seven different languages through community radio and a letter-box drop, and about two hundred people turned up for the ‘Open Day’ in March 2001. Ninety filled in forms with their suggestions.

In June there was an excursion to other community gardens round town. In August there was a training day on ‘organic gardening’. And in October there was the first on-site work-day. So by December 2001 the first eight plots were planted – and by January 2002 the first crops were harvested. And by July 2002 all twenty-three plots had been completed and allocated.

The construction of the garden has been dependent on the people in the project who are prepared to work for benefit of the whole garden, not just their own patch. And a committee of three people has been elected from each of the three language groups represented to manage the project.

The garden has been a great success on a number of significant levels. It has restored the park. The play area that had fallen into disuse is now being used again by families. The plots are fully subscribed and well maintained and people can gather fresh herbs and vegetables on a daily basis. Moreover, the garden provides a productive therapeutic occupation for a group of retired, unemployed or underemployed Cabramatta migrants and refugees. And it also provides a safe place for people to forge reciprocal  relationships of acceptance and respect across the cross-cultural divide – a symbol of what many of us believe is the ‘community of heaven on earth’.

Peter and Adrienne show us that we don’t need to be stars in order to be light, all we need to do is to reflect the light of God’s love in our lives. We need to simply think of the ‘good things’ we can do that can bring some ‘light into the darkness’, and keep on doing them come what may. It doesn’t matter whether the ‘good things’ we do are big or small, what matters is they embody the Be-Attitudes.

As they say – lighting a candle is a much better option than cursing the dark!

Dave Andrews

From Hey, Be And See (Authentic)