***Please note this event has been postponed. Further details will be available shortly. 

We are pleased to invite you to our CLC Big Day Out in Geelong! This year it is an interfaith event in association with the Uniting Care Wesley Life Enrichment Centre. Be sure to rsvp early as the invitation will also be open to those in the Wesley network.

This year CLC has invited a speaker who can offer a perspective on current issues perhaps outside our own experience such as Islam, refugees, creating community, building resilience in women and we are very happy to have MIRIAM ISSA as our guest speaker. 

''I had feelings of shame,'' Issa says, recalling how she felt unable to talk to her children's teachers.
Looking for a kindergarten for her daughter, she remembers getting a frosty reception from one place. Her four-year-old later asked, ''Mum, did they not want me because I'm black?''

Today, there is not a trace of resentment or bitterness as she talks about those early days in Brighton.
''I had to learn to trust, and to trust myself, before I could do anything,'' she says. ''I realised that when I was going out I was projecting. When I went out feeling fearful I saw fear, when I went out feeling judged I saw that. I had to start with me, and then things began to change.''

A little over two years ago Issa started the group RAW - Resilient, Aspiring Women - with the aim of building connections, particularly between women, and creating a sense of community.

Mariam has appeared on SBS, Channel 7, ABC Radio, Community Radio, in the Herald Sun, The Australian, local press and RACV magazine and was recently awarded the Ambassador of Peace award from the Universal Peace Federation - in recognition of her ongoing work as a tireless community worker promoting peace and harmony in Melbourne’s culturally diverse population.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/black-in-brighton

CLC take as our inspiration the leadership of Pope Francis' in his Encyclical Laudato Si.

"I urgently appeal, then, for a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet. We need a conversation that includes everyone, since the environment challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all" (#14).

Fr Andrew Hamilton SJ has described the distinctive contribution of the Pope Francis' Encyclical Laudato Si, as being to make 'respect for the environment a priority in Catholic life, and to justify that place by making it centrally in Catholic reflection on the human condition'.

Fr Hamilton said the Pope's primary argument 'rests on the conviction that the world faces a crisis caused by global warming and the dire consequences that will follow if it is not addressed by concerted action'.

'The evidence he offers reflects the general consensus of scientists who have studied the matter carefully. Not all Catholics will agree with him, but this has now become the Catholic default position.'

Fr Hamilton continued: the Pope's 'critical move is to emphasise the interdependence of human beings with one another and with the natural world. We do not have an environment but are part of the environment.

'This approach differs from the conventional Catholic approach to moral issues', he said, 'which begins with individuals and their unique dignity, moves to personal relationships, their relationships to society, and then to the natural world as an outrider.'
(Province Express, October 16, 2016)