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Keywords: Wilderness

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Undoubting Thomas

    • Paul Scully
    • 27 May 2019

    I closed my eyes to draw new thought. When I reopened them an empty stone slab lay before me in a cavern rough-hollowed but flooded with a light that had penetrated its roof. Mary hovered in the light, as a gull is both sea and air, in a flowing robe, her outstretched hand bearing the cincture I would need to recount the mystery to the others.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Sudanese Lost Boy's long walk comes to life

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 30 April 2019
    5 Comments

    When refugees write accounts of their lives they usually express gratitude to the nation that has received them. A Child Escapes, in which Francis Deng describes his life from Lost Boy of Sudan to refugee in Kenya to bank employee in Australia, is no exception. Left unsaid, but equally important, is the gift he and other immigrants are to Australia.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The wake

    • Wally Swist
    • 25 March 2019
    4 Comments

    A child approaches the casket, reaches within to try to lift my folded hands, to make sure, as she tells her mother later, that I am not just sleeping.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Whisper in the wilderness

    • Elizabeth Young
    • 12 March 2019
    5 Comments

    The answer came well before the question. Something hidden in the undergrowth of my heart; unearthing it was an art form meant for the most determined bugs. Those petty thoughts that bugged me waited for the whoosh to be scattered to the winds. Out here in the bush nothing is predictable and nothing nearly happened.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Election year hope and hijinks

    • Eliza Berlage
    • 18 January 2019
    10 Comments

    Entering an election year is like coming home for the holiday season. It's full of hope and hijinks but also promises and pain. And like every family, each party has its quirks. Hopefully a post-election Parliament will green light some meaningful reform to improve people's lives rather than always culture warring. But don't hold your breath.

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  • RELIGION

    Religious freedom in schools

    • Frank Brennan
    • 15 January 2019
    40 Comments

    When Parliament resumes, one outstanding item of business will be Penny Wong's bill dealing with religious schools' capacity to discriminate against students on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. I support the bill subject to the proviso that religious schools should remain free to teach their doctrine respectfully and reasonably.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Prior to Christ

    • Aaron Lembo
    • 15 October 2018
    3 Comments

    He wandered through wilderness, dined on locust thorax and cuticle, slurped from jugs of honey and preached; to his following he said, 'The end is nigh.' He dunked their heads in rivers. At broods of vipers he screamed. He sang of another man ...

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Scenes from Tamborine Mountain

    • Jena Woodhouse
    • 08 October 2018
    1 Comment

    Here on pristine Tamborine, the rainforest became the haunt of avian ventriloquists, birds more often heard than seen, whose raised tail plumes would simulate the contours of an ancient lyre, companion to the poet's voice when Sappho lent words to desire in lyrics of such eloquence that hearts of listeners caught fire.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Climate champion SA Labor's dark stain

    • Greg Foyster
    • 16 March 2018
    5 Comments

    The complexity of environmental policy in SA echoes a broader trend in environment issues: climate change has monopolised the debate, squeezing out local conservation concerns. The upshot is a Left-leaning government can be progressive on clean energy, while holding a regressive stance on less prominent topics.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Now that you're 12 I can't keep up

    • Jena Woodhouse
    • 19 February 2018
    1 Comment

    Fondly I remember Evie, aged approximately one, pumping her short, sturdy legs along the shore at Watson's Bay ... Now that you're 12 you lope on long, lithe legs, bronzed by the northern sun; you leap across the ballet stage in grands jetes, you dive and swim; on sports days, fleet as Atalanta, yours is the athletics track ...

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Subversive pilgrimage in the shoes of St Anthony

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 01 November 2017
    1 Comment

    Fernando is an avatar for the 13th century saint. He is seen encamped on the bank of a river in the Portuguese wilderness, clad in a brown hoodie that emulates the robes of the Franciscan order of which Anthony was a member. The act of bird-watching evokes St Francis of Assisi, the order's founder (and the present Pope's namesake). But things get rather more surreal from there.

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  • RELIGION

    It is time to stop equivocating about domestic violence

    • Sean Lau
    • 01 August 2017
    17 Comments

    As the responses poured in to the ABC’s story on domestic violence in evangelical churches, I was reminded of the discomfort Saint Augustine showed, in The Confessions, towards his father beating his mother. But he still praised his mother for placating her husband to avoid beatings, and for criticising wives who were beaten. Augustine, then, while possibly opposing domestic violence, had no idea what to do about it, and endorsed behaviour that made it worse.

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