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There are many gems and reflections on ‘fathering’ in Pope Francis’s apostolic letter, Patris Corde ‘With a Father’s Heart’, in which he nominates 2021 as the year to honour the fatherhood of St Joseph. Francis’s letter is inclusive, encompassing the scope of fatherhood and the responsibilities fathering entails. ‘Fathers are not born, but made’, Francis says.
We recently celebrated World Poetry Day, which gives poets, both public and private, a day in the sun. It also renews old conversations about why poetry might be important and whether all poems should rhyme.
Of my three sons, two have tattoos. Not all-over body-as-art ones, but tattoos, nonetheless, with my army son leading the way. When he rang to tell me about this new venture, I sarcastically remarked that the only way I could cope with a tattoo was that if it depicted a heart, an arrow and the message MUM. Needless to say, a guffaw greeted this remark.
Many people are still doing it tough. And the many organisations who are tasked with trying to support them share a sense of dismay as we see Federal Government assistance being wound back fast. We need to increase decent work opportunities and ensure a reasonable safety net for those out of work if we want to get through this and still claim the ‘fair go’.
We need to encourage parents to have these conversations with their children, and earlier, around Years 8 and 9, rather than later. And I suspect we need to encourage boys to talk more with sisters, girlfriends, friends who are girls and good mates about consent.
When I was small we spent Christmas camping by a river in NE Victoria. The festivities began on Christmas Eve, when campers and residents of the township of Bright gathered for carols by candlelight. During the singing of my favourite ‘Good King Wenceslas,’ I never wondered about the absence of snow ‘deep and crisp and even.’ I don’t imagine anyone else did, either
Such a profound lack of action from our own government on an existential issue of this magnitude certainly doesn’t inspire hope. So when it comes to climate anxiety as a clinical issue, this is not only a risk factor, but also a barrier to treatment.
It would be really easy to ‘both-sides’ these debates, but that would present a false equivalence. Surely, if we have learned anything from this year’s lockdowns, we should have gained a far greater appreciation of the importance of community access to outdoor space — and, therefore, of spatial justice?
I stare out the bus window, my eyes chasing raindrops down the glass. They jiggle in unison as we jolt over speed bumps. I imagine they’re dancing along with the songs belting through my tangled earphones. A Carla Geneve lyric catches my attention: It's raining on Tuesday, got my Doc Martens wet. I glance down and smile at my soggy docs.
I have been thinking for several months about fathering and wisdom. To my surprise, I found some of Marcus Aurelius’ truisms to be reflected, if erratically, by the pronouncements of my own pater familias, Kenneth Hugh Gittins.
What then, does the case for full employment look like? This is not just an economic question, but too of having access to a decent wage that allows all people to live a decent life.
Donations flooded the centre. Volunteers from across Melbourne arrived ready to support any way they could. Key volunteers came from Carlton and surrounding suburbs, mostly young African people were on the frontlines. They had used social media to reach out to friends, relatives and others locked in the housing estates to ask what they needed and then got to work.