The final voyage PLUS new blog: Alison and the whale!

To my beautiful faithful shipmates who still turn up here from time to time and wonder if there will be ever be another voyage:

Now Sanctuary's finished up, I'm finally admitting the blogger platform is a decade past its use-by day.

So I've moved across to a new site, to alisonandthewhale.com (here).

There you'll find you'll find ... not much at all yet! But I've kicked things off with a conversation with Simon Holt at Collins Street Baptist about one of my favourite topics, Jonah, and will slowly add posts. Some will be old and barnacle encrusted; others, fresh as a new-bubbling spring. I'm thinking prayers, sermons, thoughts, conversations: whatever gets caught in the net. 

But I won't be cross-posting here anymore.

May you have fair winds and following seas. 

Love, alison x

Farewell Sanctuary, my beautiful beloveds

Once upon a time, nearly eight years ago, some of us did something very foolish. A bunch of people who had mostly drifted away from church or were burned by church or had been rejected by church bumped into a quirky minister on holiday, and wondered if they might try again ... Read here or listen here.

Matthew | Who profits? Who pays?

Once upon a time, there was a billionaire who was rather fond of cage fighting. But what with the collapse of an overseas stock market, and a royal commission, and a great deal of lobbying to protect his interests, he’d had a hard year. He needed to take some me-time, and chillax. But before he went away, he called in his chief investors ... a story and a hermeneutic. Read here or listen here.

Matthew | Ten foolish bridesmaids, embraced

Ten bridesmaids. We may hear this story as a Boy Scout lesson: Be prepared! Then we find some sick hungry homeless people, in order to earn our service badge and win the approval of our scoutmaster-king. But some of us are less confident about our belonging, and hear the story differently. Tonight from Sanctuary ... read here or listen here.

Matthew | Authority in the church

Look for leaders who love. Beware any setting, structure or dynamic where pastors don’t have external supervision, power is unchecked, accountability is opaque, or judgement, fear or shame are being deployed. Jesus came to bring truth and transparency, healing and wholeness, love, life and peace: so seek out those who radiate these qualities with good humour, humility and grace ... Read here or listen here.

Matthew | The demands of love

Perhaps you’ve seen About a Boy, which is really about two boys, or maybe more. One is twelve-year-old Marcus, growing up in precarious circumstances. The other is the beautifully named Will Freeman. Will is a man-child whose wealth has insulated him from other people, and from life itself. Yet through one of his most selfish decisions, he’s thrown into the path of young Marcus; and Marcus begins to make demands on him ...

Read here or listen here.

Philippians | In the depths of anguish, joy

In these days of terror and sadness, in this time of myriad personal and public griefs, in the bleak and terrible NO from the Australian electorate, in the anguish of many First Nations people, in the wounds of the earth and the worries about climate and the cries from Israel and Palestine and everywhere else, we can still know joy.

Read here or listen here.

Matthew | Called to be custodians

In a world racked by climate change, we need the wisdom of custodians. Read here or listen here.

Matthew, Exodus | Seventy-seven leads to hell or heaven

 

When we are wounded, our work is to interrupt the cycles of hurt and trauma and violence. And when we say "I forgive you" and "This stops with me", we are declaring our own freedom. We become part of something new and healing, life-giving, good; we become citizens of the commonwealth of heaven ...

Read here or listen here.

Matthew | The rigours and joys of love

 

Turning towards one another inevitably leads to conflict, and that means work. Read here or listen here.

Exodus | The god of freedom

We worship an intimate, responsive, changing God who gets involved in the mess of human history and calls us to shape the future by our choices. Some choices are better than others, sure. But because the future is not yet set, there is no single path ...

Read here or listen here.

Exodus | Agents of joyful rebellion

The story of exodus points to the joy-filled possibilities of civil disobedience.

Read here, or listen here.

Matthew | Redeeming Joshua

‘I’m from one of the oldest families,’ he said. ‘We’ve been here since the beginning.’ And with that he effectively erased 60,000 years of continuous living culture, just as his Irish ancestors had tried to erase the people from the land. He’s a lovely guy, straightforward and well-meaning, and totally oblivious to what he had just done ...

Read here, or listen here.

Jesus, now lead on

 

It takes a special sort of energy to plant something new; now it’s time for me to move on. I’ve been listening to the fields, and they’re telling me to lie fallow for a while. I’ve been listening to the birds, and they’re pointing me back to Melbourne and our little flock of family and friends. And I’ve been listening to the beautiful rivers which flow through this region, and they’re assuring me that the water of life will never run out – but that which wells up in me must soon be redirected ...

Read here.

Genesis | Striving with God and men

 A few weeks ago, I organised and hosted a ministers’ gathering. Near the end of the session, one of the ministers suddenly went on a rant about the failings of the church in the West. The church is collapsing, he said, because of the blurring of gender roles that began in the 1960’s and continues to this day. And there was I, sitting in a room full of men with my boots and jeans, close cropped hair, zero make up, and not a floral in sight—and all the authority which was conferred upon me through the rite of ordination.

Read here or listen here.

Romans | While Rhodes burns

An homage to Targum, reading Romans 8 through an ecological lens this hottest month on record. Read here or listen here. 

Genesis | The god of betwixt and between

God meets us in liminal spaces, when all our defences are down. Read here or listen here.

Genesis | Alt*red state: A text of terror brings good news

The usual interpretation of the binding of Isaac is that God may require us to sacrifice everything, even, if asked, our own children: but a contextual awareness changes everything. 

Read here or listen here.

Romans | Practice resurrection

In the face of sin, death and injustice, we are called to walk in newness of life.  A Wendell Berry / Apostle Paul mashup. Read here or listen here.

Genesis | Abram: Our ancestor-colonizer

Leave your country, your kin, and your ancestral home, you poverty-stricken Cornishfolk, for a land which I will show you. It’s the colony of South Australia ... the story of Abram points to a more just settlement, paving the way to Voice and Treaty.

Read here or listen here.