In ancient times it was the sacred task of the women in Aboriginal tribes during the gray, wet winter months to carry the fire.  Fire meant life.  In the drizzle and the damp that we associate with the winter months, it was, of course, not possible to start fires at every new campsite.  The fire had to be carried.  This was achieved by maintaining hot coals in shell cones bartered from the coastal people. Upon setting up camp the coals could be enflamed into life. It is not difficult to imagine what a vital and important duty it was to carry those shells with the coals inside them, carefully and with a great sense…

Is one lifetime enough?  Well, some of us I am sure would answer, “Absolutely!”  Others of us would not be so sure.  To some people immortality is at its best a doubtful blessing.  Others find it downright undesirable.  There was one man who wrote his own epitaph.  It said, “Don’t bother me now; don’t bother me ever.  I want to be dead forever and ever.”  Clearly, in the minds of some people this one life is enough.  They do not want, nor do they see, the necessity for another. That attitude may seem strange to us, even repugnant. Yet perhaps all of us have had moments where we have thought…

Throughout the season of Easter, we reflect through the Liturgy of the Word the various ways by which the Risen Christ is present in our midst. The question put before us is, “How do we experience the Resurrected Life of Jesus? How does the One who is Risen continue to greet us and draw us into his life?” From our Catholic perspective, we affirm that Jesus lives now sacramentally: his life becomes present as “we re-read the Scriptures with him in mind, repeat his gestures in memory of him, and in our fellowship with one another” (Chauvet).   Over this last week we have reflected in our liturgy on the way…

When I was a young boy growing up in Tasmania, where my family have lived now for 8 generations, it would be common for us to take the drive from Launceston to Devonport, the home of my mother’s family.  Apart from visiting my grandparents there we would often call into my great aunt Sarah. My memories of her and her home are very vivid.  One of my central memories of great Aunty-Sarah’s home was the portrait in the living room.  It was a striking photo of my great uncle Gordon Isles.  Gordon had been killed in action on the 5th April 1918 behind Millencourt, on the Somme, and his loss…

The late English writer Daniel O’Leary once related a striking moment of epiphany narrated by the Irish mystic John Moriarty.  Moriarty was walking through muddy patches in the meadow near his Kerry home, wondering how those ‘hints of heaven’ could emerge from such a drab place.  “How could something so yellow as a buttercup come up out of soggy brown earth?” he asked.  “How could something so purple as an orchid and so perfect as a cowslip come out of it?  Where does the colour and perfection come from?”[1] As were the first disciples, we are surprised by the power of life when it appears, and often in the most unlikely of places and…

There is an old African parable about how best to catch a lion.  When looking for a lion never go hunting for it, says the parable.  The lion will always elude you.  To catch a lion it is necessary to stop still, to light a fire and to wait for the lion to find you.[1]  The parable is perhaps a good description of one of the important characteristics of a way of living which is the outcome of our affirmation of the Resurrection.  In our very affirmation that Jesus lives, like the African warrior, our task now is to live in a continuous expectancy, in ever increasing sensitivity, to the Divine Lion’s approach, watchful for…