In his recent book Die Wise, Stephen Jenkinson makes the point that, “Dying is not what happens to you, it is something that you do.” In other words, dying is an action, a process that calls forth our participation and considered decision-making.
In the light of the proposed assisted dying legislation, which the Victorian state ...
FRIDAY FORUM
PENNY MULVEY
There was some lively debate last Sunday afternoon when some Uniting Church future-gazers were urged to ask, “Why should there be a Church in the first place?” rather than “how can we be Church in new ways?”
Rev Dr Geoff Thompson told the 50 plus participants gathered at Melbourne’s Centre for Theology & Ministry for a public forum that the first ...
Participating in the Culture of Safety training and listening to the discussion around it, I am two people.
One is the experienced minister, analysing the changes being made and thinking about how best to introduce them to a congregation.
The other is the small child experiencing abuse, the one who still lives inside the ...
HELEN STAGOLL
When I visited a Melbourne asylum seeker detention centre recently, I was not allowed to take in a bunch of flowers for my friend’s birthday. No reason given except ‘it’s policy’. So instead, I sent her a photo of the flowers.
At Easter, the small chocolate eggs I wanted to give her were refused: ...
CATH JAMES
The United States has never been one for collective global agreements. Last Friday, the US government pulled out of the Paris Accord – the global agreement by countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to stop climate change.
The US did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol – the agreement prior to Paris – and has not ...
UnitingCare ReGen, the lead alcohol and other drug treatment and education agency of UnitingCare Victoria & Tasmania, has responded to claims made in last Friday’s Herald Sun that a change in the Victorian government’s opposition to the establishment of a pilot Medically Supervised Injecting Centre (MSIC) in Richmond, “would enrage Christian groups” (‘Services back injecting room’, 02/06/17).
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It’s Reconciliation Week again. This year we’re remembering some big milestones.
Fifty years since the referendum that included First Australians in the census. Twenty-five years since the Mabo decision which overturned the legal fiction that Australia was a land without people when it was stolen by the British. Twenty years since the Bringing Them Home ...
A good friend of mine died recently. We hadn’t seen each other for more than five years. But there are people that you meet in life whose wisdom you come to value and to rely on, irrespective of whether you actually get to spend much time together.
What do Pope Francis, and actor Andrew Garfield, who plays a lead role as a Jesuit priest in Martin Scorsese’s latest film, Silence, have in common? Answer: they have both undergone the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, who founded the Jesuits in 1539, and whose Exercises are at the core of Jesuit spirituality.
This piece by UnitingCare ReGen CEO Laurence Alvis originally appeared on social health policy site Croakey.
The release of the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission’s first National Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program report has unleashed the latest round of hyperbolic media coverage about illicit drug use in Australia, predominantly focussed on methamphetamine.
In November last year I was invited by the Evangelical Theological Association to present a paper at their annual conference in San Antonio on same-sex relations. I was one of a team of four, brought together by Zondervan Publishing House to write a book, which has since been published: Two Views on Homosexuality, the Bible, and the ...
FRIDAY FORUM
From Thursday next week the public can make submissions on the City of Melbourne Council’s move to virtually ban homeless people from living in the CBD.
The proposed laws, which were endorsed by a narrowly carried vote of councillors this week in a heated public session, will allow authorised officers to more readily move people ...
