We have come to the time of football finals.  For the teams and the supporters they have one thing in mind, and everything else falls in accordingly.  Single mindedness is a quality we often associate with sport.  It’s the very attribute that brings excellence of performance and success. Some call sport the religion of Australians but of course sport is a very different experience than faith.  In sport we get what we put into it.  Our skill grows in proportion to the amount of dedicated training we apply.  In sport we master a range of techniques and then through the continual exercise of those skills we perfect them and have…

It is often lamented today that the rites of initiation into adulthood have been lost.  We no longer have those rituals which mark the passage from childhood or adolescence into maturity.  However, it has been suggested, not without merit, that perhaps one of the principal rites of passage today is overseas travel.  We often hear of young people taking time away.  With few resources they head off to distant places where for six months, twelve months or more, they move from country to country, culture to culture, working and touring.  Often enough they return home then with a new sense of identity and ready for a commitment to work, or…

One of the privileges of our life is to be able to sit with someone else and to listen to their story and to hold their struggle to find meaning in their life.  Sometimes those people with whom we might sit may have been struggling a long time, and alone. Sometimes they may have given up any struggle, and, rather, given in to the emotional or spiritual impasse they reached many years before.  And sometimes they may have only just set out on a deeper search for themselves and for who God might be for them. Often, of course, we have no word to give, and the silence is hard to bear.  On…