Nostalgia and memory

The process of memory is such a complex field of human existence that it is difficult to know where to begin in trying to grasp its conceptual slipperiness. And yet it is hard to find a more basic element in our lives than they way the past is present to us in the here and now

Lion and flowers

n Melbourne, in Carlton’s Lygon Street, come across the usual run of urban resources: the restaurants, the supermarket, the butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers. And if you did this some time late in 2003, you might have noticed, on the narrow divider in the middle of Lygon Street, a very simple fountain, which, several days running, had fresh flowers in its bowl.

Founder of a place of healing

Dom Rosendo Salvado's community at New Norcia supported the local aboriginal community in numerous ways.

The secret ministry of frost

Coleridge’s poem Frost at Midnight is one of my favourite poems, and I love the turning of the seasons that brings me to my battered old paperback each year to rediscover it

An Aboriginal voice crying in the wilderness

William Barak was born around 1824, becoming the last chief of the Yarra Yarra Tribe. He was often called ‘King William’, or ‘Beruk’ (meaning white grub in a gum tree, and he belonged to the Wurundjeri-willam people. Their country lay along the Yarra and Plenty Rivers

What we all have in common

What we all have in commonNostra Aetate is the Vatican II Declaration on the Church’s Relationship to Non-Christian Religions (1965) was one of the most influential and celebrated documents issued by the Council

The sun is God'

‘The sun is God’, artist J. M. W. Turner is said to have uttered on his deathbed. Whatever he might have meant by these words, they indicate the importance of colour and light in his work: he has been hailed the ‘painter of light’.

Mass for the fallen

Most of us know composer Christopher Willcock. We may not be on speaking terms, but if you have been to Mass in the past three decades you are probably on singing terms with him

Singing the journey

Merlyn Quaife started walking and didn’t stop for thirty-six days. She found a sense of peace and healing along the 800 kilometres of road stretching from France to Santiago in Spain and in small, often isolated places of worship in villages along the way. 

Tender moments

Our lives are full of tender moments. Recently, I was listening to our Province Treasurer and long-time school friend, Father Des Dwyer—better known as ‘Dialogue Des’—and I asked him about the health of one of our mutual school companions. 

To enter the extraordinary

Our Community of Prayer - September, October, November