Challenge Literature Fellowship - AustraliaI have been watching interior design shows on Netflix recently. I’m inspired by the creativity and cleverness of those who take nice but ordinary rooms and turn them into works of art.
What I have noticed though is that, without fail, those rooms always look worse before they look better. The day before the big reveal, you couldn’t possibly imagine how it is all going to come together.
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“If I were to name the emotional condition accompanying the aura created by this pandemic, it would be disillusionment. It wasn’t caused by Covid-19, but it has been highlighted amidst a culture rooted in the kind of expectations impregnated with disappointment. Long before Covid-19 came along, this intimidating truth has lurked: Life doesn’t work the way we think it does. Covid-19 simply forced us to confront some suspicions that we already contended with:
Sometimes the hardest working person doesn’t get their dream
Sometimes the most loving person doesn’t keep their family together
Sometimes the best faith community doesn’t survive
The only difference now is that we have something to blame: Covid. But I know from my experience, blaming Covid doesn’t meet my internal need for justice, because who can we blame for Covid? This question isn’t intended to take you down the usual rabbit hole of conspiracies. It is to demonstrate this: assigning blame doesn’t resolve the internal loose ends that can’t work out why things didn’t happen the way I thought they would, or should…the way that makes sense.”
So says Melanie Saward, who has recently written a book on the subject¹. Continue reading
Let us imagine that this Christmas a Covid vaccine was released that was not only free but that those that took it said was 100% effective and lasted your whole lifetime. If you took it, you would never test positive and you would never sicken or die of Covid-19. You might get a few symptoms – a cough or a bit of chest pain – but you would never get the disease.
Would you take it?Continue reading
On TV recently was a show where a family, who live in a chateau in France, celebrated Christmas in the most elaborate and beautiful way. Homemade decorations, sumptuous food, loving extended family, huge sacks full of presents and lots of laughter and candlelight. It looked idyllic.
And yet, I wondered if, when they were washing up the dishes in the cold light of day with a food hangover the next morning, whether they thought, “What was the point? Why did we do it?”Continue reading
People might think that being a Christian is easy, a crutch that gets you through your traumas, a Father Christmas in the sky to pray to, a list of dos and don’ts that you do your best to follow but get forgiveness for when you fail.
However, as a Christian of several decades, I can tell you Christianity is not for cowards; being a Christian requires you to do some very, very hard stuff. Some of the things I find hardest are: forgiving over and over again, submitting to authority, waiting with patience and coping with suffering.Continue reading
Have you heard people say ‘I like the Jesus of the New Testament but I don’t like the angry God of the Old Testament?’
Are they two different people and, if not, then why is the Bible even divided into the Old and New Testament?Continue reading
This last week our sausage dog got parvo virus, a gastro-intestional disease that can easily kill a dog through dehydration or secondary infection.
Carrie was very ill and the vet warned me that should she not improve with treatment at home, she may have to be hospitalised, for which they would require a $3 000 deposit!
Having a dog is very good for one’s ego. To have a creature greet you like a celebrity every time you come home, look at you with slavish devotion and follow you “doggedly” around as if they are afraid you will disappear at any moment, is healing balm in a world of criticism and disappointments.
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One Sunday afternoon my husband, myself, our three children and the dog were all on our queen-size bed and Adrian was rough-housing with the kids and they were all screaming and rolling about fighting and tickling. I was sitting propped up against the headboard and Carrie – the dachshund – became so upset with the noise and mayhem that she crawled behind me between me and the headboard. On one side of me you could just see her tail and on the other her nose.Continue reading
The other day my husband was cutting up beef to make jerky and Carrie, our little sausage dog was dancing around the kitchen begging for scraps.
She must have been very confused when we wouldn’t give her any. She knows we often give her scraps, she could tell from the smell that these would taste good and she was begging in her most adorable way. So why were no delicacies falling to the floor?Continue reading