The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world Matthew Arnold On Dover Beach […]
When we look outwards, we see the wheeling, uncaring universe. When we look within we are stirred by the call to self sacrifice of ANZAC day. How do we make sense of our lives in a way that joins the little picture of my life to the big picture of the universe?
In a video on the Oprah Winfrey Network, Brene Brown talks about how she “fell in love with the faith and the mystery piece.” However, over time her experience of church, “became less about faith and mystery, and more about politics and certainty.”
What does it mean for a church to live in “faith and mystery” rather than certainty? What is the relationship between “certainty” and “mystery” in a community of faith? Is the preacher really quite as certain as she or he seems? What lies behind the drive to certainty, and is there another way for a church to live with faith and well-honouring the mystery at the heart of life?
What is the Gospel? This is a harder question to answer than you might think. Especially when you’re put on the spot. And especially when you have been studying theology for most of the last ten years like I have. It’s actually not a question that comes up much in one’s life in such a […]
I’ve been very preoccupied by my CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) unit these last few months, which has put paid to my desire to blog. However, at college this week we did a sequence on public theology. This is what I had to say. Life, said the Buddha, is difficult. This seems like a very basic […]
I’ve been reading about Effectuation recently. It’s a way of reasoning characteristic of entrepreneurs, discovered by academic Saras Sarasvathy’s research into how a number of successful entrepreneurs got where they were. You can read about her research here. The top level way to understand this is to distinguish effectual reasoning from what she terms “causal reasoning”. […]
This video is something I made a few weeks ago for a worship event at college chapel focussing on Acts 17:16-34. Paul called the Athenians “extremely religious… in every way” The question that occured to me: What would Paul make of Melbourne? What gods would he observe? So I went on an anthropological expedition through […]
People claim we live in a secular society, from whence the gods have fled. But, on the contrary, the gods walk among us.
In Carlton, where I work and spend a lot of my time “studying” (aka drinking coffee in cafes, occasionally adding a little cake, (purely for my health’s sake)), the local government has built a beautiful library called the Kathleen Syme Centre. It is a state of the art facility, including a space for the senior […]
I recently listened to Rob Bell’s podcast, the Robcast, and was struck by the story he told about his a very unsuccessful book tour which he made. The context was that he had recently written his very controversial book Love Wins – see here and here for a few sample reviews. In his previous book tours […]
Alister Pate