Sometimes a throw away line strikes us to the very core of our hearts, and we remember it for the rest of our life.  Such was my own experience when I once heard an old shearer from outback Queensland remark in an interview with Caroline Jones, “Anything perfect is never beautiful.” It was a remarkable statement which in its very simplicity spoke of an unmistakable wisdom and humanity.  A statement of remarkable acceptance, it undid a certain instinct in me that at the time demanded perfection in both me and others.  Happily, that instinct has now long retreated into the background, in no small way helped by that shearer whose name I could…

In the mid 1990s, Arthur W. Frank published a landmark and fascinating study on people’s response to illness, entitled, The Wounded Storyteller. As a professor of sociology at the University of Calgary, Frank considered the various ways we respond to our illness, particularly the illnesses that are chronic in their character. He identified a number of responses that we make to our experience of such illness ranging from denial through to resignation – none of which were especially helpful in learning how to live in the fullest way in the face of our illness.  What he suggested as the most redemptive or transformative pathway was what he termed as being the wounded storyteller:…

One of the maxims that we learn in our life is that when we are in a hole we should stop digging.  It is remarkable, however, just how difficult a thing this is to learn.  From time to time we see the difficulty in the publicity surrounding a public figure who has got themselves into a hole and does not know when to stop digging.  We tend to cringe at such situations but all of us know, in some form or other, what it is to dig a hole for ourselves, or to paint ourselves into a corner.  It happens in our work life and it happens in our relationships.  We try to cover our…

I shall always remember my visit, now many years ago, to a young 21 year old woman dying of AIDS.  Jeanine’s life had been a broken one of childhood abuse, drug use and prostitution. Yet, in the midst of all this she could say just before she died: “I sit here dreaming that I would like to work with other people who have AIDS who are not as well as I am, and write more poetry. I try and treat each day as a precious gift. I want to write about my life because it is a good story . . .  I also dream of my three beautiful nieces who I…

Some years ago, the actor Sean Penn produced one of the most extraordinary films I have ever watched, “Into the Wild.”  The film is based on the true story of 22-year-old Christopher McCandless who leaves his family and journeys as an itinerant across the United States, finally achieving his aspiration to experience the vastness of the Alaskan wilderness. The journey was not simply an exercise of the American pioneering spirit, as it was an exploration of the experience of isolation.  The geographical isolation in which McCandless immerses himself is a mirror of the psychological isolation in which he is entrapped. For Christopher, the isolation becomes toxic.  There is, however, a fragile moment of…

One of the most curious aspects of the ministry of Jesus is both the place that it begins and the message with which it begins.  It begins in Galilee, the territory of great oppression by the Romans.  As the writer, Miroslav Volf identifies, when Jesus begins his ministry, the Palestinian population “was suffering under the loss of national sovereignty to the Romans, as well as under a tense relationship between the Jewish aristocracy and the Herodian monarchy.  Economically, the majority were caught between the Roman and the domestic elites, both of which were competing with the other to expand their fortune, especially through taxation.  Dominated, taken advantage of, and threatened in their cultural identity,…

Pope Francis continually calls to reflect deeply on our call to become missionaries. To be a missionary we do not have to travel to a far-away land. Rather, it means entering what we are doing with soul, as the pope writes, to do what we do with purpose and passion. Then we become a missionary wherever we are: we become missionaries as mothers, as fathers; we become missionaries in our professional life. “Let us go forth, then, let us go forth to offer everyone the life of Jesus Christ.”[1] We are to re-engage in what he calls “a missionary dynamism which will bring salt and light to the world” – the same call…

It is not an uncommon story to hear people who have visited countries where poverty is visibly overwhelming, coming home and saying how happy the people whom they encountered. It confuses us. How can people who have so little, have so much? How can we who have so much, through our systems of education, health and law, have such little happiness? Our thinking identifies happiness with what we have, with what we have achieved; and yet, often enough, it seems that those who have very little are the happiest people in the world.  How can it be that happiness seems to be in proportion to what one doesn’t have?    These kinds of…