Making Waste Things Into Great Things

Re-Utilise a local organisation makes ‘waste things into great things’. Unwanted materials are transformed into works of art. The ‘Scrap Store’ is full of  fabric, vinyl, plastic… they take in unused paint…

Numerous workshops for children and adults include pottery, jewellery making, scrapbooking… There’s support for the unemployed and people struggling with their mental health… ambitious and exciting plans for future growth and development…  

Yesterday’s Lowestoft Journal says that Re-Utilise is to Re-Locate to new premises…

Aladdin, an old Arabian folk-tale, is told in many different versions… but there’s always a lamp.

Aladdin discovers an old and useless lamp in a cave; he encounters the genie. The lamp has supernatural powers. The waste thing is a great thing.

The wicked sorcerer, realising that the waste thing is a great thing, goes to Aladdin’s house offering ‘new lamps for old’. Aladdin’s servant, is confused between waste things and great things, and the sorcerer steals the lamp…

Ivan Illich, an Austrian Roman Catholic priest, theologian and philosopher said:

‘Neither revolution nor reformation can ultimately change a society, rather you must tell a new powerful tale, one so persuasive that it sweeps away the old myths and becomes the preferred story, one so inclusive that it gathers all the bits of our past and our present into a coherent whole, one that even shines some light into the future so that we can take the next step forward. If you want to change a society, then you have to tell an alternative story.’

Jesus, a village carpenter, told and lived out such a ‘new powerful tale’.It’s the Re-Utilise reality – that waste people can become great people. It’s the Aladdin story – the potential of the apparently valueless through supernatural power.   

It ‘gathers all the bits of our past and present into a coherent whole’ of following the Jesus way in a radically different life of love, humility and service. It ‘shines some light into the future’  with the hope-full promises for this world and the next.