All around us now here in Wahroonga the leaves have changed colour and are beginning to drop to the ground. As the writer Joyce Rupp observes, “some people tell me that they don’t like autumn because it reminds them too much of the inevitability of death. The leaves falling from the trees onto the barren, brown earth makes them feel sad and lonely. The leaves are subtle reminders that we are asked to let go of many things throughout our life.  Every time we surrender something, we connect with our death, with the ultimate moment of letting go.”[1] Indeed, as this same writer recognizes, “Seeing death in any form – autumn leaves…

Though we live our life on them today – and especially now during this time of pandemic during which we are almost completely reliant on them and cannot imagine how we would operate without them – I will never forget the first time I accessed a computer and went online – which, amazingly, was only some thirty years ago. I remember the sense of awe as my laptop hooked into the computers of institutions around the world for the first time.  Suddenly, I was part of the communication revolution and with it the information revolution.  Whatever of our ambivalence about this revolution in the past, through this current period of social…

The late English writer Daniel O’Leary 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 experiences.  As…

On the evening of the Easter Vigil, the greatest moment in our Christian year, we light the Easter Candle and proclaim the Risen Christ. Its soft glow celebrates the victory of Christ’s life over death, the conquest of love over fear. This year we do so in a climate of national and international anxiety. It is a time of shadows – the shadow of irrational panic-buying, hoarding and public brawls; the shadow of unemployment and financial insecurity; the shadow of profiteering; the shadow of disconnection from our community of faith and its sacramental life; the shadow of concern about our health and the health of our families. We have come to live…

“Take up your cross and follow me.”  These words are at the very heart of the Gospel. They are there so that these same words might be at the very heart of our discipleship.  Perhaps we have become so used to these words.  Yet, they are some of the most confronting words we will ever hear:  “Take up your cross and follow me.”   For the significance of the words to remain fresh we have to keep putting ourselves back into the time of Jesus and wonder at how the first disciples would have heard these words. The cross was a familiar sight in first century Palestine.  Crucifixion was the preferred method of the Romans of…

Throughout the 20th century worked a famous anthropologist, Margaret Mead.  It is hard to imagine another anthropologist who has taught us as much about the nature of human community. Mead was once asked what sign we had about when civilisation began.  The expectation was that her reply would concern the discovery of some ancient artefact such as a tool, or a weapon, or a segment of art.  Instead, she simply replied, “a healed femur.” A healed femur bone is the sign we have of the beginnings of civilisation.   Why did this famous anthropologist claim this?  She claimed this because for the first time we had an indication that a community had cared for someone.  Previously, there would…

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:…

Last Friday evening in Rome, Pope Francis presided over what was named, An Extraordinary Moment of Prayer in which he blessed the city and the world, a gesture ordinarily reserved for Easter Sunday and Christmas and the election of a new pope. In so doing, he reflected on the situation that has now gripped the world. “The storm [in which we find ourselves] exposes our vulnerability and uncovers those false and superfluous certainties around which we have constructed our daily schedules, our projects, our habits and priorities. It shows us how we have allowed to become dull and feeble the very things that nourish, sustain and strengthen our lives and…

There was an ancient tribe of people and the old leader of the tribe was dying. Summoning three of the younger members of the community, the leader spoke of the future. “When I die, one of you must succeed me as the leader of our people.  I want each of you to go out into the world and bring back something of beauty.  The one whose gift is most outstanding will succeed me.” The young people departed, walking through the city and countryside where their people lived and worked.  Some days later they returned from their travels.  The first brought a flower from the parklands, rare and beautiful and delicate with a preciousness that…

I shall always remember my visit once 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 love more than…