Leonard Cohen once penned a great line: There is a crack in everything…that’s how the light gets in. I wonder whether social movements start with an almost unnoticeable crack. When the crack is noticed, the first inclination is to put a bandaid on it. There are no end of cracks appearing in the world today. …
Oasis in the City – Update
It is always difficult to introduce new ideas that necessarily involve creating new structures across existing organisations. However, conversations I have had with various people about the idea of an Oasis in the City, building on Oasis at Flinders, have been positive and have contributed to sharpening up the proposal. Here’s the latest version: Oasis in the City …
Harmony
Happy Hearts Hub organised a lovely Harmony Day event last Sunday afternoon. It was great to sit around and meet people of all ages and backgrounds, sharing our stories and passion for multicultural harmony. I had been asked to make a ten minute presentation of “The True Meaning of Hospitality”. I decided to create a …
Some responses to ‘Oasis in the City’
Ideas like Oasis in the City require a long gestation, but it has been good to get some feedback so soon after putting it out there. It took nearly twenty years to get Oasis at Flinders to where it was when I retired; it has been relatively easy to extend what I learnt at Flinders …
Oasis in the City?
I keep running into people who have ideas for human flourishing that seem to be obstructed because the vision they want to contribute is not valued by the institutions in which they work. Does that ring any bells? Last week I had lunch with a good friend of mine, Leillie McLachlan. Getting two activists together is always …
Organisation for Wellness
On the evening of Thursday February 16, I presented a one hour workshop to the Urban Mission Network of the Uniting Church at their invitation, introducing an awareness of the work of Frederic Laloux. (above right). Frederic Laloux, author of Reinventing Organisations, has recently produced some research about the way we humans have organised ourselves to …
Good News from Syria?
Posted on August 24, 2016 by Phil Tanis http://wcrc.ch/news/syrian-christians-create-space-for-hope In war-torn Syria, hope is fading for many. After five years of civil war, there are few who have not lost family members or close friends, but life needs to go on for those who are alive, for those who have stayed. They struggle to continue …
A Lesson in Hospitality
I really enjoyed this extraordinary film: Florence Foster Jenkins (Trailer 2016). In many ways it is a story of true hospitality – the creation, and in this case, the maintenance, of space for the other – not to change the other but to release the other to be who they are, no matter how flawed. Such hospitality …
A One and Different World
On the Sunday before I was to meet with the Vice-Chancellor, Christians across the world were reflecting on the Biblical story we call ‘The Temptations of Jesus’. Before beginning the ministry that would lead to his arrest and execution that Christians remember each year at Easter, Jesus goes out into the desert ‘for forty days’ …
Easter message from Jerusalem