So how about the head of ASIO saying that one of our former politicians was a foreign government asset? It was one of those announcements, in an otherwise routine speech that landed like a dead possum onto a picnic table – it had to be disposed of, but even when it’s gone its presence at all still puts you off your meal.
This week I attended the funeral of Joe Mullins. Joe died old and full of years (103 of them). He and his wife Edith (who died in 2009) had six children, and what seems to me like a bajillion grand-children and great grand-children.
1. I’m struck as I read the New Testament just how much of it is concerned with finding unity across distance.
Be it cultural distance (Jewish and non-Jewish Christians); confidence to live as a distinctive Christian minority who, nevertheless, are intelligible to the cultures around them (the so-called “stronger” and “weaker” Christians); and, of course, the mountains of passages about how to handle conflict, disagreement and sin.
A surprising thought rings out through these texts – unity within the body of Christ is deeply precious, it is worth contending for and is more important than being right. This thought is easier or harder to believe based on what’s going on around us.
Winning Games, a Hasbro subsidiary, has this week announced that they’ll be releasing a Canberra version of Monopoly. They are presently open to suggestions about what goes on there.
I imagine they’ll go the boring route and major on the institutions (the War Memorial, Questacon, the NGA, etc.) but all of that is too obvious for locals. The figurines should be a Kingsley’s chip, a parked car with two wheels on the curb, an APS lanyard, a bus stop, and a hailstone.
I was saddened this morning to wake to the news about the discovery of the Oceangate submersible near the site of the Titanic and its catastrophic implosion which killed everyone on board. I, like a lot of people, was hoping for an Apollo 13 kind of situation where, against impossible odds, the crew would be saved by a small group of plucky scientists.
Tonight, Canberra’s monuments will be coloured light pink and blue to mark International Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. Each day in Australia, approximately six unborn babies over 20 weeks gestation pass away. One in four Australian women will face miscarriage or stillbirth at some point. Thinking about losing a baby can make us fear for our future and drag up old sorrows.
Britney Spears has been in the news and in the courts this week – the culmination of the #FreeBritney efforts to have her conservatorship (what we call guardianship in Australia) overturned. What was initially imposed as a temporary measure after a very public breakdown in 2008 has continued now for 13 years.
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