Life & Faith

A plumber, a pastor, and a pilgrim forge poems out of what’s right in front of them. --- She will keep you like she keeps the Sabbath.     Did you know that 21 March is World Poetry Day? Do you … care? In this episode of Life & Faith, we speak to three poets about why they write poetry, and find out how intimately linked to real life their words actually are. Sit back and enjoy a feast for your ears as Erin Martine Sessions, Drew Jackson, and Jonathan McKeown bring you poems they’ve written about (respectively) an ancient city; about mass incarceration and the fight for justice; about mushrooms and motherhood.  From very different starting points, all three wrestle to give words to the realities of the world around them - however beautiful, overwhelming, devastating, infuriating, or even repulsive. “Plumbing has really given me a physical connection to both work and my own body that has forced me to come to some kind of reconciliation between this flighty mental side that just wants to remove itself from

From Roman emperors to modern PMs, Life & Faith tackles the fraught relationship between church and state. --- “At the end of the day I am quite happy that the throne-and-altar accommodation was shattered, and that the church does not wield that kind of power.” Dust-ups between religion and government are rarely out of the news for long. Sometimes church and state seem too cosy, sometimes they’re fiercely at odds. What has this relationship looked like, and how should it look? In this episode of Life & Faith, Simon Smart and Natasha Moore trek back to the dramatic beginnings of the church-and-state relationship in the West with Emperor Constantine, make a brief stop among the medieval heights of Christendom, and consider some wisdom for all of us living in a post-Christendom world. All brought to you from some of our favourite and most eminent voices on the topic: Miroslav Volf (Yale), Teresa Morgan (Oxford), Nick Spencer (Theos), David Bentley Hart, and more. Along with cameo appearances from the per

Feel exhausted, cynical, and utterly ineffective at work? There’s a cure for what ails you.  --- Jonathan Malesic had always dreamed of being a college professor. The reality, however, didn’t match up to his expectations. It got to the point where he found it difficult to drag himself out of bed to teach a class. Nothing seemed to help: therapy, medication, even extended leave.  So he quit.  Obviously, that’s not the solution for everyone. But in his new book The End of Burnout: Why work drains us and how to build better lives, Malesic reflects on his own experience as well as our “burnout culture” that primes us for exhaustion.  In this interview on Life & Faith, Malesic describes that culture as a toxic combination of deteriorating working conditions – think stagnant wages, the gig economy, the decline of union membership – as well as our overinvestment in work as a source of meaning and purpose (“do what you love”). Then there’s the “badge of honour” in being a “work martyr” – someone so committed to w

Buildings and public spaces tell a story about what our culture values and who belongs. --- This week, Life & Faith channels popular TV program Grand Designs through its focus on the built environment and how our public spaces express ideals and aspirations for our life together.  Our guest is Kamila Soh, who is pursuing a Masters in architectural history at the University of New South Wales.  Kamila recently contributed a column to The Catholic Weekly about 111 Castlereagh, a luxury apartment development in Sydney boasting pristine views of Sydney Harbour, Hyde Park, and St Mary’s Cathedral. She contrasts the cathedral with the glamorous high-rise – where an off the plan penthouse sold for A$35 million in 2021 – and suggests that the church is a genuinely public space while the exclusive development is not. We also discuss the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral, which revealed the emotional and spiritual connections people feel to place. Then there’s the growing recognition that we navigate public space via

The story of the Hilton Bombing, Evan Pederick, and the Ananda Marga.  ---- On Feb 13 1978 a bomb exploded at the front of the Hilton Hotel in Sydney. It had been planted in a garbage bin and as a truck emptied the bin it exploded, killing two garbage collectors and a police officer guarding the entrance to the hotel lounge. Ten years later, Evan Pederick turned up to a Brisbane Police station and confessed to the bombing. What followed was an incredible tale of conspiracy theories, trials, appeals, re-trials, claims of false convictions and the extraordinary situation of Pederick having to try to prove his guilt! Evan Pederick’s journey to prison and beyond involved an attempt to come to terms with his crimes and culminated in him becoming an Anglican Priest. --- Imre Salusinszky's book: The Hilton Bombing: Evan Pederick and the Ananda Marga

Young, married, and living in community housing with 28 men. --- When the pandemic hit, plenty of us reassessed our lives: changing jobs, leaving relationships, taking up a new hobby.  Jayden and Mikyla Battey, a married couple in their 20s, did their own soul-searching and, as a result, decided to move into community housing with 28 men who are at risk of homelessness and face mental health issues and challenging life circumstances. They were looking for a deeper way of living alongside others. They’ve found that as House Managers at Hamer Court, an affordable housing initiative run by the group Servants. In this Life & Faith episode, Jayden and Mikyla talk about the joys and the difficulties of living with vulnerable people, and what it’s like for those on the margins to find a home with each other. We also get a glimpse of what extended lockdowns meant for the residents of Hamer Court who were already socially isolated to begin with.  For Jayden, this way of life is a calling. “My understanding of the

New York Times Australian Bureau Chief Damien Cave on learning to live like an Australian. --- Damien Cave has been the New York Times Australian Bureau chief in Australia since 2017. In that time he has thrown himself into life here, embracing (and being embraced by) the Surf Life Saving community and all the vulnerability and humility required to do that. He says he has learnt extremely important life lessons he didn’t know he needed and has come to love and appreciate his adopted home. With a journalist’s sharp eye, Cave analyses Australia's attitude to risk, community and identity and finds some insights that he says have made his life immeasurably better. This is not the voice of an idealistic tourist, but someone who, by immersing himself in the Australian way of life, has come to recognise its strengths and shortcomings and ultimately, what makes it special.   Here Cave speaks to Life & Faith about risk, community, vulnerability and humility. --- Book: Into the Rip: How the Australian way of risk m

Leila and Danny Abdallah explain how they found a way to forgive the driver who killed their three children.   --- For i4give week, we bring you a conversation with Danny and Leila Abdallah. On Feb 1st 2020 the Abdullahs experienced an unspeakable tragedy when three of their children, Antony (13), Angelina (12), and Sienna (8), along with their cousin Veronique Sakr (11), were killed when a drunk and drug-affected driver lost control of his vehicle and crashed into the group of children.  The Abdallahs shocked the world when they declared their forgiveness for the driver and refusal to hate him.  The i4give initiative, taking place each year on the anniversary of the tragedy,  encourages people to search their hearts and find someone to forgive. For Life & Faith Simon Smart talks to Leila and Danny about where they found the strength to forgive, the power of forgiveness and what they hope to achieve by urging us all to forgive. “Forgiveness has allowed us to heal and to grow together as a family. Forgiven

People have very different ideas of what Christmas is “really about”. Life & Faith weighs the options. --- “This is pure joy … but this is infused with truffle.” What makes this time of year so magical for so many?  In this final episode of Life & Faith for 2021, the team talk about the food, the gifts, the traditions, the family time … and what any of it has to do with the original story. Tim Costello joins Simon, Justine, and Natasha to tell a remarkable story of the most memorable Christmas present he ever received, and Rev Bill Crews talks about the 50+ years he’s been hosting a Christmas lunch for those who don’t have anyone to spend this time of year with.  “Out of the sadness and the destructiveness of this world, new hope is being born every second. Every second. All you have to do is look and listen, and you’ll see it. Over and over and over again, I’ve found that.”    Explore: 2021 Waitrose Christmas ad  Exodus Foundation Christmas lunch for the needy

Theologian Sarah Coakley interrogates our relationship to sex, food, money, the body, and God. --- “I see desire as a central human phenomenon … We see desire in the newborn baby, for physical and psychological needs. We see desire in the dying person, even if they’ve lost the capacity for speech. We see desire in people who are very severely brain damaged or physically damaged. Desire is always there, from the moment of birth to the last gasp of our breath.” Where do our desires come from? How do we adjudicate between competing desires? And what are our lives really about, what do we most long for? Professor Sarah Coakley brings a keen and compassionate eye to our difficulties as a culture with sex, eating and drinking, wealth, and more. Her short but profound book The New Asceticism: Sexuality, Gender, and the Quest for God invites us into a lifelong sorting of desire that might allow us to prioritise what truly matters. “If you join a religious community within Christianity, there is one question that's as

Tim Costello on the spiritual hold gambling exerts over Australian politics, culture, and identity. --- Tim Costello knows a thing or two about how to fight social justice battles on multiple fronts simultaneously. The ex-World Vision CEO, lawyer, Baptist preacher, spokesperson for the End Covid For All campaign, and Senior Fellow of CPX has also campaigned against gambling and the pervasiveness of pokies in our pubs and clubs for 25 years. In October, the Victorian Royal Commission into Crown Casinos found that Crown’s illegal, unethical, and exploitative conduct made it “unfit” to operate a casino. And yet the organisation was still given two years to clean up its act. Tim has been a strident critic of Crown since its inception. In this Life & Faith, he reflects on why and how Crown became “too big to fail”, the impact of gambling addiction on people’s lives, and the national myth Australia tells about itself – that it’s a nation of gamblers. --- Explore: Tim’s article in The Saturday Paper Tim’s July 2

We talk Ted Lasso, Sally Rooney’s latest novel, and get sentimental about our stuff with Unpacking. ---  Simon, Natasha, and Justine download on Apple TV’s Ted Lasso, celebrating the infectious kindness of its hero, the power of pastoral care in general, and the ways the hit show brightened the days of many Australian viewers in lockdown this year. Justine introduces the team to the surprisingly emotional experience of playing Unpacking, an award-winning video game in which you put away your character’s belongings and, in the process, reflect on how our material possessions connect us to immaterial realities like memory and emotions.  Lastly, what happens when the twenty-something characters populating Sally Rooney’s fiction turn 30? Natasha meditates on their angst, disappointments, relationships, and conflicted spiritual longings in Rooney’s latest book Beautiful World, Where Are You. --- Explore: Seen & Heard: Simon, Natasha, and Justine talk about Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen’s podcast Renegades

Christine Caine explores how her own challenges ignited a passion for justice for the voiceless and exploited. ------ Author, speaker, and advocate Christine Cain tells Life & Faith about her personal journey that led her to co-found anti-slavery organisation--A21. She explains her shock when she discovered not only the scale of human trafficking in the world today, but that it existed at all. Christine’s personal story is inextricably linked to the reason she took this challenge on, and her faith explains why she thinks audacious goals are achievable in the fight to end slavery today. “We have a statement Um at A:21, it says let's abolish slavery everywhere forever. Some people roll their eyes, but I'm like, ‘This is not rocket science, there's 7.8 billion people and 40 million slaves do the math!’ If we awaken enough people to this and then we are prepared to change our lives a little bit, I think we can actually get this job done.” “I looked and I went in that moment from looking at someone else's miss

Clinical psychologist Jonathan Andrews explains how, in the right circumstances, relationships can heal our broken hearts, and salve our growing loneliness.  ------ Jonathan Andrews’ book The Reconnected Heart: How Relationships Can Help Us Heal is born out of his experience as a clinical psychologist where he has witnessed the powerful healing potential in connection with ourselves, other people and with God.  Andrews believes that there are significant benefits from cultivating healthy relationships that can help us overcome even significant trauma and loss. “And this is a thing I think to remember about loneliness, loneliness isn't just about the quantity of connection, it's about the quality of connection. To put it succinctly would say something like it's about the lack of understanding. So you can be lonely in a crowd, you can be lonely at a party. So there's lots of people around, but really if you want to overcome loneliness, you have to be properly understood.” “... we underestimate the positive impa

The award-winning novelist talks about navigating cultural diversity, representation, and Buddhism.  ------ “Books don’t change people. I think people change people.” Alice Pung’s novels are beloved by readers, but she has a bone to pick with those who mostly encounter people with various backgrounds through fiction. “Why don’t you have any Asian friends or black friends or poor friends or friends from the other side of the river in the western suburbs? Why do you need me to open up your eyes?” “My biggest readers are woke people and I would think it would be a wonderful thing if they brought less of my books. And you know, catch the bus across to Footscray and play basketball with some of the kids atnd the commission flats or something. It’s my biggest gripe that some people think you can become a good person just by reading books,” she said. Pung’s latest novel One Hundred Days tells the story of Karuna, a half Chinese-Filipino, half white-Australian teenager. After she falls pregnant, a battle of wills ens

Tony Rinaudo has uncovered some surprising sources of hope for a warming planet. ------ “In that moment, for me, everything changed. I wasn't fighting the Sahara desert … Everything that I needed was literally at my feet. And the real battle was, if people had reduced the environment to this point – it's on its knees, it’s struggling to provide for anybody, nature or humankind – if it was people’s beliefs and actions about trees and nature that destroyed it, then that’s where the battle was. And if I can convince people to work with nature instead of destroying it, then the rest would be relatively easy. So that was the big turning point, the big revelation.” In a world of rising temperatures, land degradation, and biodiversity loss, where can we find hope for the earth? Tony Rinaudo is Principal Climate Action Adviser for World Vision, and he has spent more than four decades on reforestation – initially as a missionary and agronomist in desertified Niger, and since then in more and more countries around the

Benjamin Gilmour reflects on 26 years as a paramedic, a poet, and a filmmaker - including in Afghanistan. ------ Benjamin Gilmour’s book The Gap recounts a very intense summer working as a paramedic out of Bondi Ambulance station in Sydney. He comes face to face with violence, drugs, domestic disputes, brawls, heart attacks, emergency births. There’s even a kidnapping!   The trauma, death and distress inevitably take their toll on Benjamin and his colleagues. The gallows humour can only take you so far.   Benjamin describes his love for the job, his patients, and his deep empathy for humans and their fallibility.    That same empathy has taken him to far away places of danger, conflict and also searing beauty, where Ben’s compassionate eye as a poet and filmmaker have provided him with extraordinary stories and experiences. His film Jirga, filmed in Afghanistan, explores the complexities of war, guilt and the pursuit of forgiveness. The film reflects Benjamin’s own spiritual journey and search for the best o

Scott Stephens, editor of ABC’s Religion & Ethics website, shares his own fascinating backstory. ------ As editor of the ABC’s Religion & Ethics website, Scott Stephens spends his days trawling through the best of contemporary theological and ethical thinking. But the story of his life proves just as intriguing as the material he daily immerses himself in. In this episode of Life & Faith, Scott talks about being the son of a staunchly Republican father and a peacenik mother who instilled in him a love of art and literature, and an upbringing that set Scott on his current course in life. ------ Scott will be delivering the 2021 Richard Johnson Lecture. Tickets for this livestreamed event are available here: https://bit.ly/3lqkNwg   ABC’s Religion & Ethics website: www.abc.net.au/religion

Dr Jenny Brown explains wellbeing and maturity in the context of your “family system”.  --- “One of the distinctives about Bowen family systems theory is, it isn't about people who have mental illness and people who don't. It's about all of us humans struggling with very similar issues. … There's not really this distinction between the expert who's got her life together and the client who is seeking help.” Dr Jenny Brown is the founder of the Family Systems Institute and the author of several books, including Growing Yourself Up: How to Bring Your Best to All of Life’s Relationships. She is an enthusiastic proponent of Bowen family systems theory - a theory of human behaviour that focuses on how our identity and wellbeing as individuals is a function of the relationship webs we are embedded within. Drawing on her clinical experience, research, family background, and personal faith, Jenny joins Simon Smart and Natasha Moore for a conversation about adulting, birth order, responsibility, dysfunction, intensity,

Sociologist John Carroll unpacks the ongoing appeal of the Harry Potter series. ------- Nearly a quarter of a century after the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J. K. Rowling’s story of the “boy who lived” continues to capture the imaginations of children - and adults.  The Harry Potter effect, it’s claimed, got kids reading again, got kids’ books selling at greater volumes, and made it possible for writers to produce longer novels for younger readers.  John Carroll, Emeritus Professor of sociology at La Trobe University, makes a bigger claim: that Harry Potter makes Rowling the greatest contributor to the public good of the last 20 years.  In this episode, he makes his case to Simon Smart. This conversation is for you if you’re a Harry Potter fan - but also if you’re not! It ranges from the materialism of our age and our death avoidance to the difference between a hero and a saviour, the importance of vocation, and our deep desire to live in an enchanted world. “That's quite explicit