I am picking up sodden scraps of decomposing plastic, from a gutter, by the side of the road. It is the middle of the day, hot now, and I still have my bike helmet on and my headphones in. I am a little
overwhelmed.

I have just come from a shift as an emergency chaplain with the Victorian Council of Churches Emergencies Ministry. I am on my way home. But then I see them – the flowers, wrapped with ribbons. Beautiful and bright, laid on the footpath where the boy was shot.

Flowers left in Fitzroy, to remember a boy killed on the street.Credit: Wayne Taylor

It is a narrow street, like a thin artery shooting out from the main vein of the road, and there is not much on it but the sides of buildings, a bluestone church and the flowers, all bright and beautiful and lying in filth.

An hour earlier, I had been sitting with another chaplain – a large man with a flowing beard, a member of the God Squad who has spent his life........

© The Sydney Morning Herald