Grief
The greatest proof that we intrinsically need community is grief. Grief defies logic. We might live 1,000 kilometres from a loved one. Only talk to them once a month. PICTURE: Ben White/Unsplash When they pass away, your life may hardly change at all. Yet grief can then descend and obliterate your life. I know why […]
Abandoning community?
Numerous studies have begun to point out the seismic shift happening across Western society. It’s being noticed in all our once great cultural icons – Rotary, scouts, sporting groups and churches: the abandonment of community. PICTURE:Nilotpal Kalita/Unsplash That leaves me in a cold sweat. Westerners are abandoning community!? We are a human species, we only […]
Community
Are we losing the ability to live in community? PICTURE: Kylie Lugo/Unsplash Once we were forced to live together. Small houses, large families. You had to make it work, there was no-where else to go. Now we don’t join communities. We look for people who are the same as us online, and hang out with them. […]
Sight-Seeing: Jesus and mental health
In an article marking World Mental Health Day, NILS VON KALM says the church is “slowly catching up to the rest of society in treating mental health seriously” – but there’s more work to be done…
Anxiety
How are you? It seems with pandemics, global climate, political divisions, and social media we are living in the era of anxiety. Anxious? PICTURE: Joice Kelly/Unsplash By most measures we are living at perhaps the best time in history. Yet the uncertainty that is amplified through global media sure does pull the rug from under […]
Designed to carry
As humans we are pack animals. We’re designed to carry a pack, a burden, or a responsibility. PICTURE: Dmytro Matsiuk/Unsplash We crave for something to do that will give our life meaning and sustain us through suffering. Our base nature misleads us into thinking that avoiding responsibility or effort, is the easy path, the sure way to […]
Sight-Seeing: My week with the Bruderhof
NILS VON KALM reflects on his recent sojourn among the Bruderhof community in northern New South Wales, Australia…
Destructive or constructive?
In life it’s much easier to be destructive, than constructive. Are your conversations destructive or constructive? PICTURE: Etienne Boulanger/Unsplash Everyone’s a critic. We delight in pulling something apart. In fact, it makes us feel bigger and superior than the thing we dismiss. But few movie critics go on to be make critically acclaimed movies. It’s […]
Big stories
Why are we not as unified as we seemed in the past? What is your ‘big story’? PICTURE: Samantha Sophia/Unsplash French sociologist Émile Durkheim argued it is a community’s shared overarching stories that defined a society; quite literally the stories constructed society. If we all have the same story – The Exodus, Dreamtime or Easter […]
Isolation antidote
During these current times loneliness and isolation have been a big danger, but they are at any time. PICTURE: Sean Quillen/Unsplash What if you could be part of a community that got you out of bed once or twice a week? Invited you to serve others and care for the stranger. Gave you a purpose […]