Author: Jody Bennett

Looking through a window at the world

Tips for Life

by Alan Bailey

You can see a great deal from a window. At times, things you are not meant to see. It is a means of spying on others. But then, a better use of a window is to look at the natural world around you and appreciate it. A pleasant view is worth a lot.

From where I sit the view is pleasant indeed with brilliant flowers grow profusely. Wide variety and rich colour are on every hand. Masses of red Bougainvillea seem to set the place alight. Then swathes of green reach to folded hills that lead up to towering blue mountains. Above the mountains huge plumes of shining white cloud sit, reaching way up to the heavens. Yes, a very pleasant view.Continue reading

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Stay close to your friend

Tips for Life

by Alan Bailey

One of the greatest things in life is to relate to a special person who is very near and dear. For some, it will be just one friend or loved one, for others, several of that kind. Whatever it is for us, we treasure them as people and cherish their closeness.

But all too often we hear of breakdown. Husband leaves wife, or wife leaves husband. Sons, daughters fall out with parents or in-laws. Relationships have soured. Surely it must be one of the most common personal traumas faced by people today.

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We can’t live without it

Tips for Life

by Alan Bailey

Every day of our lives we use it. In fact, we are mostly made of it. I believe elephants consist of 70% of it. Yes, we are talking about water. Where it’s plentiful, we wash everything including ourselves in it, drink it, and grow our crops with it. And you can think of many other uses we make of water.

Where it is not plentiful, life is made harder. In fact, as we all know, without water we die. Earth has plenty, considering the size of the oceans. Other planets that we know of don’t seem to have any.

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Keeping your head above water

Tips for Life

by Alan Bailey

Having made several flights to overseas destinations over the past few weeks, I have been powerfully confronted with one of humanity’s basic instincts: survival. As soon as you board an aircraft the crew are letting you know how to survive if the plane comes to grief. They even tell you that you could find yourself up to your neck in sea water. Yes, you may be reduced from sitting comfortably in a multi-million dollar plane to bobbing about on the ocean waves. But you will have a whistle with you to attract attention! How comforting!Continue reading

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Judging ourselves truly

by Andrew Lansdown

Although my family’s interest in Australian Idol has increased over recent months, my own interest has lessened a little. For the truth is that my favourite part of the whole affair was the audition process.

I only caught two of the audition programs on television, but I very much enjoyed them. I liked watching how the judges dealt with the vastly different contestants who came before them. I soon realised that Mark Holden was sometimes sarcastic in his judgments, while Kyle Sandilands was often brutal and Marcia Hines was always kind.

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What we eat

by Andrew Lansdown

 

Some time ago I worked as a journalist on a country newspaper. One of the numerous articles I wrote was titled “A taste for rats!” It began:
In many schools they dissect rats, but at the X High School the students eat them! Indeed such is the students’ taste for the rodents that they consumed over 200 during one lunch period last week.

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The purpose of the Passion

by Andrew Lansdown

Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ opens with Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. It is here, the historical records agree, that Jesus suffered unspeakable anguish as He contemplated His imminent death.

In Mel’s version of events, Satan comes to taunt and test Jesus in the garden. Like many other scenes in the film, this scene has no historical basis. Such a thing could perhaps have happened, but the eyewitnesses make no mention of it. (From this scene onwards, viewers should be alert to the fact that they are watching not an historian’s account of the Passion, but a filmmaker’s account. While much of the film “is as it was”, much of it is as Mel imagines.)

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Learning from the samurai

by Andrew Lansdown

Anyone who has seen The Last Samurai can easily understand why it has been nominated for four Academy Awards (best art direction, best costume design, best sound and best supporting actor). It is an outstanding film about a disillusioned American soldier, Captain Algren (played by Tom Cruise), who goes to Japan in 1876 to help modernise and train an army for the Emperor. He knows nothing of the samurai, the enemy he is about to face. Then in his first battle against them he is taken captive. Thus begins his (and our) discovery of the samurai and their way of life.

And what a discovery it is! I doubt that anyone could watch the film without feeling a sense of admiration for those warriors of ancient Japan.

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Are you suffering through Christmas?

Published Christmas 2018

Most people are familiar with the basics of the Christmas story and the manger scene of baby Jesus in the hay; however, they might think ‘well so what? Even if that is the historical basis for Christmas, it is irrelevant to me now in the 21st century.’

Christmas, to most Aussies, has come to mean presents, food and maybe some time off.

For some, though, it is not even a festive holiday but a hard time. Christmas may bring with it unnecessary debt, unwanted expectations, demanding social engagements and painful memories of family members who are no longer with us or relationships that have broken down.

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Zach and Lily

Written for the children’s page

Hey Lily, are you on Insta?

No I’m reading on my phone.

What are you reading?

The Bible.

The Bible! Why would you read that? It is so full of rules! Doesn’t it tell you not to swear, to obey your parents and never to smoke or drink or have fun? I wouldn’t read a book that bossed me around so much!

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