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.

Ezekiel | Dem dry colonial bones

It is tempting to reflect on the bones. The massacre site that is now a fast food restaurant just a couple of blocks from Sanctuary. The bones which still wash up from time to time on the beach near Peterborough. The babies’ bones buried six feet under at the missions. The bones which were scattered throughout the landscape, left to rot in every lake, valley and hollow, left lying in the paddocks to dry out in the sun. It’s tempting to focus on the bones: because our history and geography are studded with other people’s bones ...

A reflection for white settlers living on stolen land. Read here or listen here.

John | Trans/forming

John 9: It could be the story of a trans person becoming integrated. ‘It’s still me,’ she says, ‘in fact, this is who I really am, who I was all along.’ But nobody is listening. Instead, they argue about her; they drag in the parents; they try to apportion blame. 

Read here or listen here.

Matthew | Like, are you kidding?

It was strange and countercultural and thoroughly unimpressive, not what was expected from the Messiah at all ... Read here or listen here.

Luke | Martha made whole

Inviting Christ into your dwelling means being renovated from the inside out. (Listen, or watch on YouTube.)

Luke | The Good Samaritan: A guided meditation

A meditation in which we use sacred imagination to inhabit various viewpoints, and receive healing at the hands of an enemy. Read here, or listen here.

Luke | The level playing field

“Blessed are you who are on JobSeeker or NDIS: for yours is the culture of God.” What?! As anyone who’s on one of these schemes knows, this means being constantly humiliated. It means being treated with suspicion and turning up to pointless interviews and jumping through arbitrary hoops and filing endless paperwork—and periodically having your benefits cut anyway. How could this be God’s culture? How could this be blessed? 

Read here or listen here.

Bartimaeus | Rejected by the worshipping community, commended for his faith

He was slumped outside the city gates: because he wasn’t allowed inside anymore. He used to be there. But for his blindness or diffability or autism or trauma or gayness or questions or outspokenness or doubt or some other issue, he was criticized, then judged, then driven away, then erased. He was ordered not to mingle with the inside folk: and they were warned. Hanging out with him would taint them, might even lead to them being thrown out, too: so they carefully avoided him; they never returned his calls ...

Read here or listen here.

Biblical wisdom, cultural knowledge, and healing

Biblical wisdom leads to understanding the particularities of place and the interconnectedness of all things, and is a source of hope for the healing of the earth. Read here, or listen here.

The bitch slaps back

Bitch. It’s a vicious taunt. Every time I hear it, I’m left enraged, gutted, and gasping, which is exactly what the taunter wants. It’s meant to silence: and mostly, it works. It tells me that the speaker doesn’t see me as fully human. There seems no point in continuing the relationship: so I shut my mouth, and move away ...

Read here or listen  here.

Menstruation, miscarriage and the multitude robed in white

Like me, my mother was an ordained Baptist minister; but unlike me, she had endometriosis. Among other things, this meant that her menstrual periods were excruciatingly painful, and came upon her suddenly, in great floods. And so my childhood is studded with high stress memories of her period suddenly starting while we were out. There'd be an intake of breath, then a quick hissed exchange between my parents, then a frantic search for a public toilet before disaster struck ... 

Read here or listen here.

The strongest one

When I first introduced the man who was to become my husband to my extended family, not one but two different people said to me, “Wow! We never thought you’d meet anyone, let alone a Collins Street lawyer.” Never mind that my husband’s office was on Queen Street; the message was clear. All my life I’d been told by family, church and society that no man wanted an outspoken wife ...

Read here, or listen here.

Human violence, and the foolishness of the cross

To those reeling from another week in the patriarchy, the cross offers only foolishness: but in that foolishness we find healing and companionship. Read here or listen to an earlier version here.

The simple cure

We like to make things complicated, but the faith which heals is simple. A word for our graduates moving away to university. 

Read here, or listen to an earlier version here.

Jesus-centred ministry: Spontaneous, behind-the-scenes, domestic

Just as the first recognized minister in Mark's gospel is an unnamed woman in a private home, most ministry today continues to be spontaneous, behind-the-scenes, domestic. 

Read here or listen here.

 

Teachers like Jesus

Good teachers use what they know to show you a bigger, bolder, more expansive world. They help you find your right place in it, and they build you up in love. 

Read here, or listen here.

Even scars become gift in God's hands

The children of the COVID-19 lockdown will bear scars of this time for the rest of their lives; yet even scars become gift in God’s hands.

Read here, or listen here.

The uses and abuses of salt

Some of my mother’s health kicks were worse than others. I could cope with brown bread, more lentils, less cordial; and we’d never been allowed lollies or chips. But when she decided to eliminate salt, meals became unbearably bland. Flavours no longer melded together, but jostled up against each other; everything lost its savour. “You’ll get used to it,” she’d say. “You just need to retrain your tastebuds.” ...

Read here, or listen here.

This 26 January, pray for an invasion of light

Once upon a time, the land was fertile and good. Sparkling rivers threaded through it; lakes teeming with birds dotted it; and on its edge the sea thundered, shimmering with fish. The people of the land tended it for millennia, creating intricate patchworks of forest and field. They enriched the soil and made it friable; they selected plants for abundance and ease. The people caught fish; they hunted and traded; they tended their crops. They built houses and raised children; they passed on law through story and song.

Read here, or listen here.

Touching the untouchable in you and me

When I was fourteen, our family moved to Washington, DC. I will never forget the day we arrived. We drove downtown, and everywhere I looked, I saw tents and tarpaulins, refrigerator boxes and flapping plastic sheets. ‘What’s happening?’ I asked, ‘I mean, what’s with all the tents?’ I had never seen a homeless person before, and I didn’t understand that this is how many people live. And I never became accustomed to it: that, in the capital city of the richest country in the world, thousands of people live on the streets ...

Read here, or listen here.