Life & Faith

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 made my family stronger, happier … and less American

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. Forgiveness has given us the freedom from anger and resentment and bitterness.” (Leila Abdallah)https://www.i4give.com/

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 asked of you as you join and it's Quid petis, what are you seeking? What are you seeking? What is your life for? And I'm trying to get this question back into the heart of our spiritual and theological reflection, whether or not you believe in God.”---Explore: The New Asceticism: Sexuality, Gender, and the Quest for God

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 PaperTim’s July 2021 op-ed in The Sydney Morning Herald---Life & Faith Survey: We love making this podcast and would value your thoughts about what we do and how we could do it better. Please consider taking 5 minutes to do this short survey – https://bit.ly/3082yW9. Thanks.

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: Born in the USA, Patricia Lockwood’s memoir Priest Daddy, and the latest TV adaptation of Stephen King’s The StandMillennial Malaise: Life & Faith interview with Guardian journalist Bridie Jabour, author of Trivial Grievances: On the myths, miseries, and contradictions of your 30sMiroslav Volf’s CPX lecture Pleasure, Meaning and the Death of GodSandra Newman’s article: "Every house is a haunted house"---Life & Faith Survey: We love making this podcast and would value your thoughts about what we do and how we could do it better. Please consider taking 5 minutes to do this short survey – https://bit.ly/3082yW9. Thanks.

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 missing child to seeing what could have been my own daughter.”------https://www.a21.org/https://christinecaine.com/content/books/gk14sg---Life & Faith Survey: We love making this podcast and would value your thoughts about what we do and how we could do it better. Please consider taking 5 minutes to do this short survey – https://bit.ly/3082yW9. Thanks.

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 impact that we can bring to other people's lives. And we also … w entertain this idea that I'm the only one who's suffering like this and that's simply not true. One in four Australians are suffering from significant amounts of loneliness. So the lonely people aren't alone, Lonely people are experiencing things that many, many Australians are experiencing.”------The Reconnected Heart: How Relationships Can Help Us Heal by Jonathan Andrews------Life & Faith Survey: We love making this podcast and would value your thoughts about what we do and how we could do it better. Please consider taking 5 minutes to do this short survey - https://bit.ly/3082yW9. Thanks.

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 ensues between Karuna and her mother, who confines Karuna to their apartment to protect her. The novel depicts a claustrophobic and controlling relationship between mother and daughter and, as with much of Pung’s work, offers a glimpse into the challenges of living between cultures in modern Australia.Pung also opens up about up her experience of Buddhism, and the challenge of depicting the lived religious experience of her characters without reinforcing crude stereotypes of race or religion.If nothing else, this conversation will invite you to consider what life looks like from the perspective of people you may never meet, but with whom you share multicultural Australia.------Explore:One Hundred Days by Alice Pung

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 world. The practice he has helped spread is called FMNR: Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration. According to one observer who’s worked closely with him, “It is no exaggeration to say that Tony Rinaudo may save the planet.”Climate anxiety is on the rise for young people in particular. In this episode, Tony tells his own story of wanting to make a difference, explains what FMNR is and does, describes a hidden underground forest, and shares his sources of hope for the future.“I like to encourage them and say it’s never too late. Do what you can within your means, within your circle of influence. And then, when you get to that level, you’ll always be able to see further and do more. And what’s more, what’s amazing is when you take a step in the right direction, others will come to your aid, others will join you.”