Reflections

Reflections

Weapons, Peace and Gaza

Empathy is painful. As we watch what is happening in Palestine and don t turn away, we deeply mourn, and the mourning goes on and on. In the midst of this mourning we realise that we are not alone in our mourning. This mourning reaches across cultures, and languages and ethnicities. It goes deep, into the fabric of life itself. It is deep calling to deep. And there is a flame that burns, which both destroys and creates. And out of this mourning comes a renewed commitment to justice.

By Len Baglow / 28 August 2024
Podcast Reflections

Sharing Conversations on the Way

“Am I actually allowed to ask that?” is a question I asked often in the first couple of years of the podcast. In every instance, often to my great surprise, “yes” was the answer. The roof did not cave. The sky did not fall. Whatever we mean when we use the word God, it seems that it is a mystery large enough, loving enough, and safe enough to handle a question or two. With that freedom fuelling us, the journey has been an extraordinary one.

By Dom Fay / 23 August 2024
Reflections

Neither Last Supper or Olympics are Politically Neutral

Having drag performers centre stage at the Olympics, on one of the biggest stages in world theatre, is not a politically neutral act. Being able to have that act understood as referring to Jesus and the twelve apostles is not a politically neutral act. Doing this in France, with the ascendancy of the Far Right and its alliance with conservative Christianity, is not a politically neutral act. It is about taking sides. The side of broadening the boundaries of inclusion.

By Glynn Cardy / 6 August 2024
Reflections

Why do we assume religion and science are in conflict?

Misunderstandings as to the true nature of Galileo’s battle with the church, for example, along with beliefs such as the church banning the number zero, the excommunication of Halley’s comet, or that the church believed for centuries that the earth was flat, are urban myths peddled, in the main, by Draper and White’s writings.

By Selina McMahon / 22 July 2024
Reflections

Inclusion for Change: How dare you meet without us!

Choosing not to include those who are seeking to change the demons of inequality, exclusion, abuse, oppression, tyranny and power, means no change will occur. Such change will always require all parties to be involved and everyone to cede changes for which everyone can become invested and it must be worked through together with a shared vision. Otherwise, we will go on repeating what we’ve always done, with violence, and will get what we’ve always got, with violence, momentary peace that never lasts.

By Lucy Morris / 13 July 2024
Reflections

Grief as a Response to History

Many of us have been taught that grief and sadness are something to repress, deny or avoid…the experience of grief is different than the fixing, explaining, or controlling mode. It is the experience of feeling the tragedy of things, the sadness of things.

By Ray Barraclough / 13 July 2024
Reflections

Religious Freedoms: Faith Invites, Not Excludes

It is estimated that more than 70,000 students in non-government schools are LGBTIQA+, and there is a convincing body of evidence that discriminatory policies and practices in schools impact the well-being of these students. A survey of over one thousand LGBTIQA+ students in Australia found that those who attended religious schools were more likely to feel shunned, unaccepted, unsupported, and punished compared to students attending government schools. These feelings have long-term impacts on a young person’s mental health and sense of self-worth.

By Daniel Vujcich , Chris Bedding / 10 July 2024
Reflections

We are beautiful ideas, not ideology

People who understand themselves to be transexual, asexual, non-binary, bisexual, gay or lesbian are not making an ideological statement but seeking simply to express who they understand themselves to be. They have not made a choice driven by an ideological principle. They are simply honoring the fact that they are part of the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God…

By Peter Catt / 7 July 2024
featured Reflections

Death of Peace – Standing at the Crossroads

Paul talks about the body of Christ as a communion of different gifts. But it is also a communion of differing politics, strong options and perceptions for things about which people care deeply, and diverse cultural backgrounds and assumptions about race, sexualities and genders, about faiths and nationalities. Rabbi Johathan Sacks reminds us God has gifted us with the dignity of difference.

By Lucy Morris / 25 June 2024
Reflections

The Joyful Being of God’s Love: A sermon by the Rev’d Kaye Pitman for the consecration of Sarah Plowman

I hope the Church that will benefit from the work of our new bishop will be more like the Australian River Red Gums. Sometimes their life-giving water cannot even be seen – only a track of rough, gnarled shady sentinels indicating secret channels winding across our outback landscapes. Their roots delve to the depths for the huge created sea below. Their foliage has supplied shelter, material, food, and medicine for many thousands of years for our first inhabitants. Those ‘red gum churches’ shared God’s love, long before the ‘God boxes’ arrived!

By Kaye Pitman / 21 June 2024
featured Reflections

Being a Disturber of the Peace: On female power and powerlessness

“.. the liberating goal of all the woman theologies is not reached by simply integrating women into a society and a church where patriarchal structures, androcentric theory and privileging prevail as the norm.  This ‘add woman and stir’ recipe isn’t working, it has never worked and will not work while women are taught to disregard their gifts to try to fit into the male defined world.”

By Lucy Morris / 16 June 2024
Reflections

Restorative Practice in the Church

“Christians are nothing if not a narrative people. We engage with story each and every time we meet for worship and whenever we go to Scripture. The story becomes the bedrock for healing and ‘setting relationships right’. Story moves the people from individual experiences to shared experiences; from individual guilt to shared guilt; from individual responsibility to shared responsibility. This movement empowers those storytellers to move from hurt to solutions. Out of the shared story and the shared embrace of the issues emerges shared commitment to new ways of being. Forgiveness emerges. Restoration emerges.”

By John Rolley / 10 June 2024