A man sits on an ash-heap, scratching at his sores with a broken shard of a clay pot. He looks up at the sky and demands answers. What happens next will amaze you!
Author: Alister Pate
I'm a minister in the Uniting Church in Australia, with two congregations: one in Northcote / Chalice, which now includes Cafechurch Melbourne, and one up the road in Reservoir, confusingly known as Preston High Street. I am
In difficult times, our simplistic answers stop working. What is life all about? What big story am I part of?
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Preparation
What do my battered trainers have to do with Paul’s stirring words about putting on the full armour of God?
Our experience of life is such a mxi of joy and sorrow, pleasure and suffering. How can we be grateful when the world is so full of suffering? Can we be grateful for, rather than to, the universe?
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Freedom
Some nights, I dream about freedom. About walking out the door without a mask, or having friends over to my house to have dinner together. To booking a plane ticket to, well, anywhere really, and being confident that I wouldn’t have to cancel it and add it to my enormous mountain of flight credit vouchers. But what does it mean to be really free – free in a way which lockdowns don’t touch?
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Swallows and Amazons and the Church
Is our experience of church more like an untutored 12 year old on the verge of capsizing a catamaran? Or is it more like the skilful competence of the children of Swallows and Amazons? And what on earth does this have to do with the Letter to the Ephesians?
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Ephesians – Glory and Grace
Who is this God person and what does he want from us? The beginning of Ephesians gives us a place to start.
What does suffering mean? What sort of universe is it that allows the suffering of a good person like Job? Are we better off just abandoning the whole idea of a good God?
What does Jesus have to say about Masterchef, my nonna’s favourite recipe, and the “sin against the Holy Spirit”?
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Tools for the Job
I’d never really thought about the events of 24th of May AD 33 from an outsiders perspective. What must it have been like? And is there something particular an engineering mindset might bring to the story?
Alister Pate 