When I was just a young father, I asked my own father once, “Can you love your children too much?” My Dad loved questions that gave him opportunity to give a bit of a speech. Dad was pretty good at putting questions into a context so that the question could be refined and then he’d often give a lecture about the history of the words we were using at the time and then finally he almost always found a way to cite bible passages and give a theological punch at the end of his speech. I recall there being a long, rather awkward pause as Dad gathered his thoughts. Finally, he said, “No”. I was so stunned that it felt like follow up questions would only prove I hadn’t listened to his single word answer.

I enjoyed being a father more than any other man I’ve met and now I’m a grandfather, I still worry a little that my love for my grandchildren might feel at times for them like I’m trying to pour the ocean into a thimble. It looks a bit like they accept that their grandfather is a bit mushy and pragmatically, they know well how to use this to their advantage. My 9 year old suggested recently that she might like a T shirt that said, “My grandfather never says ‘No’”. It’s a quality esteemed by my girl to the extent that she would like to advertise on her shirt yet she knows her Grandmother and her Mother are not so deliriously keen.

“How come it turned out that the world’s most beautiful kids became my granddaughters”, I asked my 7 year old while she was busy organizing the next bit of fun. The only way to talk to this girl is in middle of action. She would normally ignore my soppy rhetorical questions but this time, without even turning her head toward me, she said, “Cause you loved James.”

Listen to this little girl. For those of you with little kids, I promise you that every bit of love you pour into your children is forming your grandchildren and your great grandchildren. You may never meet these children and yet their life...[read more]

If ever a cluster of errors combined to make a bad policy, it must be the provision of religious chaplains to Public schools. The mere provision of money only guarantees the creation of vested interest making rational consideration of the issues difficult. There is a real danger that we have witnessed a deal that will go badly for the Federal government in the longer term and also for the church and Christianity.

The key issue in the provision of any service into our schools must be the question of minimum qualifications required. If a person has the appropriate degree and experience to deal with the complexities of a modern school environment, the question of religion or lack thereof, would be of little interest.

What purpose could be served for the funding government by favouring the appointment of people of a religious commitment? Whatever the answer to that question, it seems to be way outside of the concern of education. If no particular purpose can be identified, the exercise looks a like a vote buying exercise, aimed at the fundamentalist end of the Christian church. Religious chaplaincy in Public schools began as an initiative of the Howard Government that in its last term made an art form of vote buying.

The church too has made an error. It has been bought cheaply. The program remunerates the chaplains at about half the rate the church itself would pay for an ordained person and at about half the rate a psychologist would cost the State. Not withstanding that there may be many stories of well intentioned, good people making a worthwhile contribution to particular schools; a policy to pay peanuts is a policy to employ monkeys. If government really believe in this program, they should fund it properly. If the church believed in the program, they should insist that it be funded properly. It looks like a quick fix from every angle.

Even if you believe the State should fund some kind of religious presence in schools, there can be little to justify...[read more]

Intimacy is not a state of being so much as it is an event. It happens. It has a beginning, middle and an end. All intimacy must end. The idea that intimacy can be achieved and sustained is a popular myth more attuned to the impulse of an addict than to real life.

Real life has a rhythm to it. Day and night; hot and cold; sleep and awake; breathing in and breathing out. Maturity tunes into the rhythms of life and finds the wisdom of movement. Imagine someone who thought their last intake of air was so good that they choose not to exhale. We’d recognize immediately the folly and yet we persist in the idea that a marriage can last longer than a day.

Intimacy comes when it is not invited and the harder we hang on to it, the quicker it evaporates.

The hardest people to meet are those we know best. The only hope for monogamy is the calm acceptance of intimacy’s loss and a readiness to see the partner as if for the first time. The other plan would be to have a new partner every day. Having been married to the same person for 43 years, I hold that its possible to meet a long term partner as if for the first time.

In the course of our normal relationships, we get to know things. We learn the history of the other and we learn what food they like and what toothpaste they use. The more we know the more we become experts. We form clear ideas about the other. The trouble is that what we know is an impediment to our next meeting. I have a clear idea about the person I’ve been married to for 43 years but it has always been true and is at this moment, that she is always greater than my idea of her. The only way I can meet her is to forsake my ideas and turn toward the real person.

My ideas are all located in me but the real person is over there, beside me, outside of me. Her very presence invites me to intimacy although generally I’m too busy to notice the invitation. In the world of my own ideas, where I am always the smartest person in the room, I can...[read more]