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The quality of Niall’s writing is evident in An Accidental Career, though easily unnoticed. It lies in the clarity of her thought, her exact choice of words, the alternation of anecdote and reflection and the self-effacement that creates a direct link between the reader and the work itself. Her writing has the rare gift of simplicity. The precision of the title is characteristic of the book as a whole.
The lives of migrants often consist of divisions and collisions at the border between the old life and the new. But sometimes both lives come together in unexpected ways, and one such conjunction is about to happen to me. On Anzac Day my granddaughter will join the great flow of Orthodoxy, but I hope one day she will know about her little trickle of Australian blood.
Is resurrection the ‘theme’ of 2022? Politicians want to resurrect the fortunes of CBD cafes, film studios are resurrecting old movie franchises, and we’re all doing our best to revive flagging spirits after two years (at least?) of bad news. And here we are at Easter weekend, the resurrection story: Jesus crucified and buried on Good Friday, raised from the dead come Easter Sunday.
In our culture, Easter celebrates the benignity of the ordinary. It is a time for getting together with family, for going away to bush or beach, and in southern states a time of mild weather ideal for watching big football matches and other sport. The important question raised now by Easter is whether the meanings of Australian Easter, and indeed those available to our secular society, have the depth needed to handle our present predicaments.
Palm Sunday alternates between March and April. When, as this year, it is celebrated in April it keeps company with a number of days that provoke us to ask what and who matter, what and whom can you trust. If it is a cruel month, it is so because it tests, even mocks, our comfortable assumptions. In a year overshadowed by manifestations of climate change, of persistence of Covid and of the horrors of war, it is not a bad month to endure an election.
Part of what makes community is what distinguishes community, what sets it apart. It might be an interest in music, or sport, a neighbourhood or a set of values or practices. Initially, at least, the extent to which we identify with the community will depend upon the extent to which those things that define or characterise it are important to us.
While Australia has developed into a multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan state based on immigration and humanitarian intakes, the country has never gotten away from the sense that some are simply more welcome than others. Be they migrants, refugees, or asylum seekers, preferential treatment abounds.
Even as he sustains the papacy’s now traditional opposition to all forms of war and its emphasis on the extreme suffering war brings, especially to the innocent, Pope Francis has, in recent weeks, taken a different, more partisan approach which he and others must feel is justified.
One of the most memorable scenes in Russian literature relates the thoughts of a man lying on the ground staring at the sky in the middle of a major European battle. Prince Andrei Bolkonsky is wounded. He is placed in a situation where, instead of running, fighting, and thinking every moment might be his last, he is suddenly met with silence, grandeur, tranquillity.
President Putin of Russia has embarked on an unprecedented military campaign in Ukraine without direct provocation or justification. In the West, there is a feeling of disbelief and confusion. How can Putin do this? And how can the Russian people accept this invasion?
A local event in the United States Catholic Church has recently aroused interest in Australia. A Bishop declared to be invalid (non-existent and without effect) baptisms celebrated over twenty years by a priest of his diocese. As a result people baptised by the priest will have to be properly baptised. Although the issues raised by this event are specific to the Catholic Church it raises broader questions of how any group should respond to behaviour considered deviant.
At a time when the Catholic Church is being invited to greater humility by the Plenary Council and greater synodality by Pope Francis it may be prudent to acknowledge both the richness and limitations of human knowing, especially when it comes to matters concerning ultimate reality.
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