Thomas Merton, Preface to the Vietnamese Edition of No Man Is an Island

Let us pause for a moment and remember Van Nguyen, his mother and his brother, his friends…..and all those whose lives are affected by illicit drugs….let us acknowledge the need to hug and to be hugged…to love and to be loved…. “if I love my brother, then my love benefits my own life as well, and if I hate my brother and seek to destroy him, I destroy myself also”.

From Reflections – e’news from St Paul’s Ethics Centre, Adelaide, December 2005.

NEW ZEALAND

The keynote speaker for the New Zealand Chaplains Conference that I attended last week was Assoc. Prof. Dr David Tacey (Latrobe University, author of The Spirituality Revolution)
A survey in one NZ campus confirms the finding of a survey conducted at ANU this year that about 75% of students want to engage in finding out more about spirituality. This also confirms David Tacey’s work over a number of years in his first year class on spirituality at Latrobe. This opens up an interesting discussion about the relationship between spirituality, religion, faith and reason – one of the themes David Tacey was addressing at the conference.
On the other hand New Zealand seems to be well behind Australia in recognising the shift toward an inclusive multifaith environment. My (formal) contribution to the conference was a workshop on multifaith chaplaincy; I also had a number of significant conversations with individual NZ chaplains about developing a chaplaincy that is open to religious diversity.
I also had an opportunity to spend an afternoon with theologian Keith Rowe, who has been one of the main architects of the Uniting Church’s understanding about its relations with other faiths.