It has finally arrived, that moment where I reluctantly admit that my body will no longer allow me to operate at the pace I had grown to love nor to do all the things I have loved to do. The last two weeks saw me at three back-to-back conferences: the Beyond Justice Festival in Canberra;...
When the House fell silent. Question time, political theatre and the rights of vulnerable children
Question time in the Australian Parliament is political theatre at its best. The chamber is packed as each side tries to land a telling blow upon its opponent. Politicians jeer across the aisle; the Speaker tries to maintain a semblance of order; government members use questions as an excuse to...
It’s all uphill from here. Old people are the happiest of all
Everybody wants to be happy and we often assume that the younger you are the happier you are. But the truth seems to be that happiness increases with age. In the last couple of decades happiness has been studied by researchers across the world.The results are striking. Four variables seem to impact...
The pain of the first peoples. When will enough be enough?
Pain inhabits her words, her tone, her posture. Raw. Visceral. Some pain is intense but short-lived, but not hers. This is a deep sorrow decades in the making. The pain of one who has been terribly wronged, whose loss has been incalculable, but whose pleas for redress fall upon deaf ears. There is...
We are wanted. A beautiful thought to brighten your day
I recently came across this quote by the German theologian Juergen Moltmann. It is theology at its best, taking the profundity of the gospel and speaking to the depths of the human heart. Enjoy. “But the ultimate reason for our hope is not to be found at all in what we want, wish for and wait for;...
Why Today is the Most Important Day of the Last Ten Years
It’s a cloudy Sunday afternoon that threatens to become uncomfortably cold. I sit in a lounge outside the Honeysuckle Hotel in Newcastle’s tourist precinct. Twenty metres away a one man band is playing Chuck Berry songs to which a group of five fifty-somethings from the Eagle Rock Dance Club are...
If God is too pure to behold sin, how is it Jesus seemed so comfortable around sinners?
On Sunday, 8 July 1741, in Enfield Connecticut, Jonathan Edwards delivered one of the most famous sermons of history. “Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God” painted a vivid picture of the unending and unbearable torments of hell. It is said that as Edwards preached the members of the...
How do I live the good life when my physical health is on a slow descent to total disability?
Just about everybody I know wants to lead the good life, but what does that mean when your body is slowly deteriorating and making you increasingly disabled? I have found the writing of Miroslav Volf helpful. In the book A Public Faith, Volf, a Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School...
I Don’t Want to Be A Customer of Bastards Inc
Are we really this greedy? Fact 1. The people who make our clothing are paid so poorly that they cannot put food on the table or pay their rent or send their kids to school. The chart below, using data from the clean clothes campaign, shows the minimum wage for garment workers across Asia compared...
Wanted. Leaders with vision
In the past few years Australian foreign policy has been marked by an increasing isolationism when it comes to the exercise of “soft” power. We have opted out of our obligations to accept asylum seekers; slashed our foreign aid budget; and have proposed some of the weakest greenhouse...