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Keywords: Divine

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Near life experiences

    • Barry Gittins
    • 18 April 2023

    Near-death experiences can serve as stark reminders of the fragility of life, prompting us to cherish the moments that transcend routine and monotony. Whether it's the wit of a child, the intimacy with a partner, or the tranquility of nature, these moments awaken us to the gift of life. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Intimations of immortality

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 06 December 2022
    8 Comments

    The child, Wordsworth thought, is able to witness the divine in nature, but gradually this ability fades. Whereas once everything seemed apparelled in celestial light/ the glory and the freshness of a dream, four stanzas end with the questions Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream? We know this development happens to us all.

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  • PODCAST

    Jesus as female divine

    • Podcast
    • 17 May 2018
    3 Comments

    In Hebrew traditions and in the Old Testament, the personification of wisdom was always that of a woman, known as Sophia. This carried to early Christian texts in which Jesus was held as female divine. Uniting Church minister Rev. Dr Sally Douglas talks about the qualities that made Jesus compatible with Woman Wisdom.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Women's divine rights

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 23 March 2018

    We know how this is going to turn out historically: the 1971 referendum is successful. There is a certain quaintness to the film that makes it feel off the pace of the current conversation around women's rights. But there is an engaging frankness to its attention to the sexual liberative dimension of women's self-agency.

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  • RELIGION

    The government should stop marrying people

    • Rachel Woodlock
    • 07 September 2017
    32 Comments

    The state doesn't have an opinion on whether God approves of the union because theocracy went out of fashion in the West, along with the Divine Right of Kings. These days in Australia, the state doesn't even care to enforce sexual exclusivity of partners, although once upon a time that was a major element of marital law. Divorce is all about distribution of assets and establishing proper care of the kids. So why the brouhaha over marriage for gay people?

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  • RELIGION

    The problem with heroes

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 16 February 2016
    5 Comments

    Periods of anxiety are times for dreaming of heroes. We contemplate our own pedestrian lives and pedestrian politicians, and long for someone who can lead us out of the wilderness into the promised land. Yet although heroes invite us to dismount from our couches, breathe the open air and take on the world as they do, they also persuade us that they are a different breed, urging us to keep within our divinely given limitations and leave the business of change to those sown as lions' teeth.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Atheist Clive James' hymn to God

    • Philip Harvey
    • 10 June 2014
    8 Comments

    Rumours of his death are greatly exaggerated, but Clive James has since 2010 made a public art of dying. It is in this intense moment of re-evaluation of life that we read his translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. Possibly no great poem is so immersed in the connections between our life here and now with life after death. It's striking that an avowed atheist produces the best poetry in Paradiso.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Flawed humanity of a police shooting martyr

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 01 August 2013
    3 Comments

    On 1 January 2009, police in Oakland, California shot dead an unarmed African-American man, 22-year-old Oscar Grant. The event sparked riots, and renewed tensions around race and debates about police procedure. Underlying this politicised context is the story of a young father and former drug dealer who was trying, with mixed success, to turn his life around.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Grace and intimacy in Les Miserables

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 13 December 2012
    5 Comments

    Valjean betrays a priest who has been kind to him, and the persistence of that man's mercy despite this betrayal sets the tone for Valjean's journey. The compassion and generosity to which he aspires contrasts with the Old Testament sternness of Javert, who is both driven and tortured by a dedication to divinely ordered justice.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Banning Dante's Divine Comedy is a human tragedy

    • Benedict Coleridge
    • 19 March 2012
    17 Comments

    The 17th century Ottoman traveller Evliya Celebi's Book of Travels describes Christians as pigs for slaughter. Yet its beautifully imagined world is open to Christian readers who can forgive the comparison. In the same way Dante has much to offer beyond derogatory depictions of gays, Jews and Muslims.

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  • INFORMATION

    Frank Brennan responds to Paul Keating

    • Frank Brennan
    • 02 June 2011
    1 Comment

    I will happily commend Labor and the Greens should they follow Keating's challenge to further improve the native title package passed by the Howard Government. I don't claim any divine guidance for this. It's called politics.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Life as a game show

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 18 December 2008
    1 Comment

    Having grown up an orphan in a Mumbai slum, Jamal is an unlikely candidate for Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. A sense of the divine pervades the film, but while Jamal seems destined for good fortune, his brother Salim diverges towards corruption.

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