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Keywords: Ashes

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Haiku for JNB

    • Joan Grant
    • 11 June 2013
    5 Comments

    You planted gum trees / For every family member / Some grew, some faltered. You shuddered at crows / Their cawings a foretolling / Of endings to come. You smiled and whispered / 'I may be gone for some time' / Skin like polar ice ...

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  • RELIGION

    Francis right to break the rules

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 11 April 2013
    36 Comments

    Pope Francis' Holy Thursday expedition to the juvenile justice centre to wash the feet of young people, male and female, Christian and Muslim, breached liturgical rules. But he was right to do so. Church and state laws are securely grounded only when there is a shared sense of the importance of human flourishing.

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  • RELIGION

    A pope for hard seasons

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 18 February 2013
    27 Comments

    One of the major challenges facing the new pope will be to find creative and compassionate ways of addressing the issue of clergy sexual abuse. A proper response will require a change in heart and mind, to see the world through the eyes of the suffering and humiliated. Can we expect anything less from the next pope?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Music rising from the ashes of abuse

    • Frank O'Shea
    • 24 October 2012
    8 Comments

    In their stylish red and blue uniforms, they were a central part of big football games. They played before the game and at half time, led the teams in a formal march, 60 or more kids blowing brass and beating drums. The thousands in the stands were unaware of the harshness that these boys faced every day.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Hearing God in Soviet Russia

    • Michael Sariban
    • 23 October 2012
    4 Comments

    When ideology smashed the cathedrals, turned icons into rubble, congregation into crime, religion fell down in a heap, or seemed to ... Most people believed they knew better: countless lips kept doggedly whispering the fine-print headlines of saints. If the State was a rock, religion flowed round it.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Life in the Ramadan fasting lane

    • Pat Walsh
    • 05 September 2012
    2 Comments

    The fasting rule is interpreted flexibly. You are free not to fast if you have to travel, are pregnant, old, little, sick, or basically have a good excuse. Ironically, Ramadan can also involve an enormous amount of cooking, late night and pre-dawn binges. Households buy up. Restaurants offer discounts. One hotel lobby was decked out like Mecca.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Traversing grief on the Camino

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 03 May 2012
    5 Comments

    Irishman Jack's cynicism has its roots in his hurt and betrayal over the clergy sex abuse scandal within his country. Snide American Sarah's abrasive personality masks numerous hurts. The most extraordinary aspect of religious pilgrimages is the ordinary humanity of the pilgrims themselves.

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  • RELIGION

    A Catholic Social Teaching perspective on the Intervention

    • Frank Brennan
    • 22 November 2011
    1 Comment

    Text from the 4th Annual Gerald Ward Lecture 'How do we design a dignified welfare safety net without becoming a Nanny State? — Lessons from Catholic Social Teaching', presented  by Fr Frank Brennan SJ at the National Library of Australia, 18 November 2011.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Sun blast Eucharist

    • Rory Harris
    • 06 September 2011

    the coast is jagged like a weeping cut .. the high end of town, pizza beer dusk ... it is here we have staked a life, counted off the steps and measured what it is we need ... hands dissolve in prayer.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Doubting democracy in Muslim Turkey

    • William Gourlay
    • 22 June 2011
    7 Comments

    Much has been made of Turkey as a model for reform and democratisation in the Muslim world. If the Turkish experience is indicative, then the process of establishing robust and viable democracies in the Middle East will be long and slow.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Kinglake undone

    • Jordie Albiston
    • 21 June 2011
    5 Comments

    Prayer has not prevailed. She sits silent without lover or friend: she slumps in her blackened skirts: she slumps in black dust: she slumps in her black that was green.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Ricky Ponting's dignity

    • Tony Smith
    • 01 April 2011

    As some recent Australian elections have shown, leaders do not always let go in time to avoid embarrassment. Retiring Australian cricket captian Ricky Ponting usually behaved with dignity. But there are moments he'd no doubt prefer to expunge from the record.

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