An Essay on Lent

I. It’s the time of year when we awake from the drowsy hedonism of summer and jump to our feet, only to glimpse our plans and projects getting away from us. The year is getting into swing. There is a rhythm, like a Dave Brubeck time signature, but you…

Words Between Us

For Nat, turning 2. I. It seems to me that, given the course of things, years will come when words will be no obstacle but catching each others’  meaning more than ever will elude. That’s my intuition anyway and I believe it has some claim to a foundation in…

Worn Leather

I have a leather satchel that’s getting a little worse for wear. It’s sitting here on the bench beside me. It goes with me. I wear jeans most days, and most of the pairs of jeans I have outlasted in these past years have perished because the fabric…

Reliable Love

Indeed, fully reliable love can only be the resurrected life of one who has died for the beloved ones. Contemporary society speaks much of ‘unconditional’ love, and is always disappointed. If I commit myself in love, I may die of it. If I do not, my love remains uncertain; if…

Remember Lot's Wife.

Do you remember the story in Genesis 19 of the family of the righteous man Lot who lives in the wicked city of Sodom? Angels visit, as the evening draws down, coming to Lot in the gate of the city and finding hospitality in his home. In the night the…

Words for a New Beginning

I remember the grainy start of a day, the light rotating on the clouds from the bottom-lit night orange to the dirty pink tops and faces, arranged behind the city silhouette somewhere near the origin of Parramatta road: the most primeval of Australian ways, the first of our journeys. Leaving…

Coffee and Freedom

Final Step Cafe, Melbourne. Murphy Street, Toorak. Double Ristretto. I only risk the double rist when great rewards are offered. Probably the best I’ve ever had – the real deal. It refused to be relegated to the background, to quietly shuffle to the corner of my consciousness behind the smells,…