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Keywords: Earthquakes

  • MEDIA

    Reality trumps Japanese horror stories

    • Stephen Alomes
    • 23 August 2011
    7 Comments

    All too often anxiety trumps reality. In Melbourne in recent years, we received emails from friends overseas worried that we might be affected by the Queensland floods or NSW bushfires, hundreds of kilometres away. Japan has problems, but Japan it is not a disaster zone.

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  • RELIGION

    Uncomfortable Easter and Anzac Day

    • Andrew Hamilon
    • 21 April 2011
    10 Comments

    Good intentions are not sufficient to give life meaning. Easter's significance comes not from Jesus' choice to die, but in God's gift of raising him from the dead. In the Anzac story, it may be comforting to say young soldiers died that others may live, but the comfort is too easy.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Rebuilding Japan

    • Jack de Groot
    • 23 March 2011
    2 Comments

    As airstrikes are launched against Libya, controversy grows around Australia's detention centres, and NSW prepares for its election, Japan will inevitably slip off our news radar. The rebuilding work of grassroots agencies will continue for years to come.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Earthquakes, poets and God

    • Michael Mullins
    • 21 March 2011
    13 Comments

    Most of us vehemently reject claims such as that made by FoxNews' Glen Beck, that the Japan earthquake was the work of a vengeful God. In his Quarterly Essay last week, David Malouf gives a nuanced reading of the position that Beck has bastardised.

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  • RELIGION

    Japan's gods of nature

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 21 March 2011
    5 Comments

    In Japan's relief centres and obliterated streets, there is no news of looting or violence, no shouts of blame, no demands for immediate evacuation and coronial inquests. 'Shinto is a nature religion,' says my guide Yoshiko. 'We give thanks to everything we have.'

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  • RELIGION

    A truce between science and religion

    • Ashleigh Green
    • 06 March 2011
    17 Comments

    Renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking's book The Grand Design purported to explain why a creator is unnecessary. John Polkinghorne, a Cambridge University theologian and scientist, has shed light on a new complementary model of science and religion.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Christchurch's reasonable hope

    • Sande Ramage
    • 23 February 2011
    5 Comments

    Unreasonable hope is when we think God will save Christchurch, or that anything is going to be the same again. Reasonable hope means we become realistic, sensible and moderate, directing our attention to what is within reach.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Making flood reconstruction fair and sustainable

    • Lin Hatfield Dodds
    • 28 January 2011
    18 Comments

    The levy announced yesterday is progressive, precisely the type of approach that social justice principles and practicality dictate. But it is a one off response and another example of why we need to fix Australia’s taxation system for the long term.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Thirty years of Jesuit Refugee Service

    • Mark Raper
    • 17 November 2010
    3 Comments

    May I tell you about one refugee whom I met during the 20 years I lived and worked JRS? The story has no happy outcome, indeed far from it. But it may help to communicate some of the feelings that inspire many who accompany the refugees.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Iceland's ash cloud of the apocalypse

    • Brian Matthews
    • 19 May 2010
    9 Comments

    If Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano erruption was disruptive, its cousin Katla may have worse in store. Volcanoes, emanating a kind of preternatural, primal, patience, are landlords whose unchanging message is: you are renting; you haven't bought.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Chile's tremble

    • Antonio Castillo
    • 04 March 2010
    7 Comments

    Concepción, the second largest city in Chile, was worst affected by the weekend's earthquake. I was there little more than a month ago, visiting old comrades and my sister and her family. At the moment of writing I have been unable to contact them.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Haiti faces the best and worst of Christianity

    • Beth Doherty
    • 20 January 2010
    4 Comments

    Pat Robertson's comments about Haiti's 'pact with the devil' are unhelpful, when deeply religious Haitians are themselves wondering about God's role in the earthquake. A more welcome image of Christianity is visible in the aid agencies that are assisting in the relief efforts.

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