If you’re on the verge of developing diabetes, you’re “pre-diabetic.” You’ve got “pre-hypertension” if you’re about to be diagnosed with high blood pressure, “pre-anxiety” before getting anxiety, and and “pre-dementia” before dementia. As if actual diseases weren’t frightening enough, we now have what seems like a whole encyclopedia of pre-diseases to fear. What’s with our Read more
Jim’s Easterpreneur cartoon made me smile. For a split second I thought I knew what it meant, momentarily forgetting that no creative work about the crucifixion is likely to be that easily tamed. Hoping for inspiration I carried it around in my diary but the wretched thing just kept slipping out of my grasp. Sometimes Read more
Nicole Foss’s interview on Kim Hill’s on Saturday 1 April opened up so many possibilities for remedying the dysfunctional world we currently inhabit, that I made a point of going to her Wellington talk and workshop on Wed 4 April. She did not disappoint the packed meeting. Her economic analysis was far ranging, supported by Read more
Know your enemy, ran the headline in a recent editorial of New Scientist: “To rule out God, first get to know him.” God, New Scientist seems surprised to find, is still everywhere. Try as we might to reduce the Almighty to the small “god” promoted by secularists, we can’t seem to rid ourselves of Him. Read more
The Christian faith faces many challenges – but that is what it is for. Easter is a unique expression of hope, of regeneration and of the triumph of life over death. It is not necessary to be an active Christian to gain some measure of inspiration and reassurance from this great festival that, for two Read more
Good storytellers are people of few words. Ample space is left for the imagination of the listener or reader to make connections with the story. If the storyteller talks too much, there is no room for the listener or reader to enter into the story. They must have the space to relate to the story. Read more
Perhaps no period of the year — not even when Christmas is reduced to XMAS — tells us better how impoverished are the sad, searching celebrations presented as stand-ins for Passover and Holy Week. Like a journeyman basketball player who lacks the magic of Michael Jordan in his prime, these events, sent in as subs, Read more
Economist and journalist Rod Oram has issued a challenge to Christians who advocate for social justice — that they update their message in contemporary, practical, new and exciting terms. Mr Oram, a lay canon of the Anglican Church and a member of the Holy Trinity Cathedral chapter in Auckland, gave a talk entitled “Opportunity for all” Read more
If it were not for Mary Magdalene, we never would have heard about the Resurrection. The men would still be in the Upper Room, trying to figure how to get out of town. Do you sometimes wonder if things have changed? I don’t think they have. Men are careful. Men are circumspect. Men, after all, Read more
It says a lot about the opinion-forming classes that pretty much the only right they get excited about these days is the “right to die”. They treat the right to free speech as a negotiable commodity which may be snatched away from un-PC people. They have given the nod to the watering down of other Read more