The well-known anthropologist of the mid–twentieth century, Joseph Campbell, who became quite popularised in recent times, was once asked what was the one piece of advice he would give to someone setting out in life.  His reply was simple:  “Follow your bliss!”  Regretfully, a good deal of Campbell’s work has been commandeered by exponents in New Age Spirituality, and this little saying “Follow your bliss” has got interpreted at the service of a kind of self-enhancement where the self is the arbiter of all that is right.  But what Campbell was really getting at was that our vocation in life is known through that which gives us a sense of life, of enthusiasm, of…

As we appreciate, our Parish community has been on a remarkable journey in these recent years as we consider what it means to be Church in the city. We have developed our Parish Mission – Bringing the Light of Christ to the City:  We Love, We Serve, We Grow – and now together as a Parish-in-Council we have begun to reflect on how we might put this into practice going forward. When we talk about being Church in the city we are, of course, not simply talking about this magnificent building. We are talking about Church as a living community of faith. And yet, our church building is not incidental.  It is…

From time to time in life, disillusionment can really settle upon us.  Why can’t we and others live up to the ideals that are important to us? Why can’t things just be as they should be? Why can’t people live as we want them to?  We can be left wondering, are our ideals ever possible?  Are they ever able to be realised?  However, one of the most radical truths we will ever learn in life is that which is expressed by the Australian novelist, Les Murray, “The mystery of life is not solved by success, but by failure, a perpetual becoming.” We can spend our whole life learning the meaning of this.  It confuses…

Anxiety about identity may, in the future, well be observed as one of the defining characteristics of our own age.  The curious paradox is that whilst, on the one hand, perhaps as never before, we have the opportunity to celebrate individuality and diversity perhaps as never before have we been less sure about who we are. In the musical The Gondaliers Gilbert and Sullivan once suggested ‑ rather prophetically I think of our own time ‑ when, “everybody is somebody, nobody is anybody; if everybody is abnormal, we don’t need to worry about anybody.”  And so, we have fallen into the story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and…

In his novel, The Great World, the Australian writer, David Malouf talks of ‘the little sacraments of daily existence – “all those unique and repeatable events, . . . movements of the heart and intimations of the close but inexpressible grandeur and terror of things, that is our other history, the one that goes on, in a quiet way, under the noise and chatter of events and is the major part of what happens each day in the life of the planet, and has been from the beginning.”[1]  Malouf is alluding to the flow of life that goes on underneath the façade of life, under all the things that occur through the exercise of…

Once upon a time there was an old man who lived on the outskirts of a town.[1]  He had lived there so long that no one knew who he was or where he had come from.  Some said that once he had been very powerful, a king, but that was long ago.  Others said no, he was once very wealthy and generous, but without much now.  Others said, no, he was wise and influential, and some even said he was holy.  But the children just thought he was a stupid old man and they made his life miserable.  They threw stones at his windows, left dead cats on his doorstep, ripped up the garden, and shouted…

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…