Category: Andrew Lansdown

Benefits of saying goodbye

by Andrew Lansdown

A fortnight ago I conducted a funeral for a friend. It was a graveside service and I stood at a lectern at the head of the coffin in which my friend’s body lay. The coffin rested on three chromed bars bridging the two-metre drop of the grave.

At the conclusion of the service, I spoke the words of committal: “Forasmuch as it has pleased almighty God in His great mercy to take out of this world the soul of our dear brother … we therefore commit his body to the elements, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust …” As I spoke these words, the six pallbearers lowered the coffin into the grave and out of sight.

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Delivered from bondage

by Andrew Lansdown

ANZAC Day offers an opportunity to reflect on the wars that our nation has participated in. One war that deserves to be remembered is the first war that America and its allies (including Australia) fought against Saddam Hussein, the Butcher of Baghdad.

On 2 August 1990, Iraq invaded the small Arab nation of Kuwait. The international community responded by placing a trade embargo on Iraq, and issued ultimatums through the United Nations for Iraq to withdraw. Iraq ignored all economic and diplomatic pressure, took hundreds of innocent Westerners hostage, and dug its troops in to the occupied territory.

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Sons laid down their lives

by Andrew Lansdown

Something heartbreaking happened to a family at Black Point one Easter.

Black Point is an isolated place, accessible only by four-wheel-drive, on the south coast of Western Australia, and the Stallard family travelled there to fish.

The parents, Ron and Debbie, lived in the south-west of the state, but their two sons, 25-year-old Paul and 19-year-old Andrew, lived in Perth. So the fishing trip was something of a family reunion, too.

But it all went terribly wrong that Easter Saturday while the family was fishing from the rocks.

Debbie slipped and fell into the sea, and a wave swept her out.

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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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