A fresh perspective on faith, church and life
In the church, we talk a lot about loving and caring. It is core to the message of the gospel.
God cares, Jesus modelled compassionate care, and we are called to follow his example.
In recent months, after the death of my daughter, I have been reflecting on the care I have received and the carelessness of some forms of caring and non-caring. It seems to be that sometimes when we think we are caring we are in fact bruising people. Caring is an art; let me give a few examples. Continue Reading
As some of our readers may already know, there have been many changes in staffing at the Uniting Church Centre over the last few months, with a number of redundancies.
The Media and Communications Team will, sadly, farewell Andy Reavell as our Production Officer at the end of April. Andy has been working at the Uniting Church WA for more than ten years and has been instrumental in the production of Revive, as well as loads of other Uniting Church WA publications and design work. Continue Reading
Morningstar Press, 2018.
Rev John Queripel is a retired Uniting Church minister in NSW with a varied career in congregations and chaplaincies. He is known for his social justice concerns and his scholarly approach to understanding Christianity today.
His latest book is informed by scholarly understanding of the differences between factual writing about what happened and the power of metaphor and myth to convey deep meaning. For many modern readers it will be a new experience to read the chapters that describe conditions in Judea when the
gospels were written and which show the very different agendas of the only two New Testament writers who provide more than passing reference to the birth of Jesus.
The chapters guide the reader through the strange world of first century story and myth to an appreciation of the meaning of the stories about Jesus’ birth for us today. We may also reflect, sadly, on the way many churches celebrate Christmas giving prominence to magical stories of a baby, but little focus on the transformative life and teachings of the man who gave rise to such stories.
For more about other publications by John Queripel at www.facebook.com/JohnHenryQueripel/
David Merritt
Pan Macmillan Australia, 2018
No Friend but the Mountains is a piece of literary genius, calling all Australians to account for the atrocities done in our name. The very way it was written, smuggled out of the Manus Island detention centre through text and Whatsapp messages, then painstakingly translated from Farsi to English, is astounding.
Written by Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani who has been incarcerated in Manus Island detention since 2013 and translated by Omid Tofighian, it is a first-hand witness account of – and an act of resistance to – our nation’s policies of detention and deterrence.
Behrouz Boochani tells his own story – and that of his friends – with empathy, respect and vivid descriptions bringing them to life through the pages. He mentions by name only those who have died on Manus Island, referring to others by nicknames and monikers. For those of us familiar with the men who have sadly lost their lives; The Smiling Youth (Hamid Khazaei) and The Gentle Giant (Reza Barati), his storytelling brings back the grief and anger we experienced when these avoidable tragedies occurred.
Each story is heartbreaking, personal and political.Continue Reading
Heather Dowling, Revive editor, shares some useful tips for surviving the Christmas and New Year season.Continue Reading
Good Samaritan Industries (GSI) is one of my favourite parts of the Uniting Church.
I’ve grown up shopping at Good Sammy stores, not only for the bargain but because my mum always taught us to be thoughtful about what we were buying, and that re-using second-hand clothes was better than piling them up in landfill. Continue Reading
The Nobel Peace prize winner Alexandr Solzhenitsyn knew first-hand the harsh realities of suffering.
He spent over ten years imprisoned in a Soviet gulag. It seems that the daily deprivations of prison life were somehow able to stimulate a creative genius in him. His books are now literary classics. His novel, One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, the book Solzhenitsyn considered his best, focuses on a prisoner, Shukov. This remarkable man accepted horror, pain and suffering as normative. A typical day would consist of forced labour, tiny rations and brutal guards, with disease and death never far away. Continue Reading
