LIMINAL

The idea of lament feels strange as it is ancient. There are images of it in biblical times, of people wailing and gnashing their teeth. It feels like the season for wailing now: wailing about the demise of positive politics, about political strategy trumping real solutions and about the early death of human rights. Haven't there always been things to wail about? Yes, but now we live with unceasing streams of media exposing us to the world's pain as never before and an ugly kind of tribal politics that makes resolving differences seem impossible. Song is a place to go, to sit with lament and to release it. Canberra's Chorus of Women sprang out of a deep lament in 2003 as prime minister John Howard took Australia to war in Iraq, despite an overwhelming majority of Australians opposing it. About 150 women, not then a formal group, broke into song in the marble foyer of Parliament House. They cried in unaccompanied song for the people of Iraq, the inevitability of deat...

A cartoon about President Donald Trump's America seen on Twitter shows a large Trump-like woman draped in the US flag holding a Bible in one hand while pointing menacingly into the face of a ragged and unconscious coloured child. "All lives matter!" she says. "Now stay the hell out of my country." A majority of evangelical Christians and Catholics may have backed Trump, but in the wake of the attempt to ban refugees and immigrants from majority Muslim countries, many Christians have swung against him. "We're a church that welcomes all people and so we will continue to do that. That's who we are," Washington DC pastor Dave Schmidgall told Australia's ABC. His congregation runs a refugee responder team. They are among millions appalled by the ban, stunned by Trump's indifference. Ann Voskamp, a Christian author with a large conservative audience, boycotted the recent national prayer breakfast to protest against the immigration exe...

With a fraction of the population of truly global cities Sydney and Melbourne, Canberra is suddenly aiming for the sky. International flights to Singapore and Wellington are just part of it. Every edition of The Canberra Times seems to report a new development that tests expectations of what the city is or should be. The latest controversy is a six-storey apartment block planned to replace the single-storey shops at Curtin, shading the community square. We're told high-density living is needed if we are to sustainably grow. Besides, it was in Walter Burley Griffin's plan. But the Griffin legacy, as with the vision of Charles Weston (who pioneered the greening of Canberra), means different things to different people. Let's look at the residential complex that takes its name from the island that houses New York. Manhattan on the Park shadows Civic's Glebe Park. It and other buildings like it in Woden and Belconnen are being sold as designer luxury living "close...

As the media gears up to cover what will be a tumultuous year in federal and international politics, it's worthwhile taking stock to examine what's happening in other very local politics: the one inside our homes. In the little Australian book Kids' View of the World, five-year old Sam says "mums do cooking for us after a hard day". Six-year old Brooke says "dads just eat junk and are always at work". It's harsh, but not far removed from what happens at my place. The latest Bureau of Statistics time-use survey (budget cuts mean it actually took place in 2006) found Australian women spent two hours 27 minutes per day on housework and men 43 minutes. Women spent two hours 39 minutes per day on childcare and men, less than half that (one hour six minutes). Analysis of a more recent French survey by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research finds that even where women dedicate themselves to their careers more than their part...

Here's a radical idea this Christmas. Don't buy just more stuff for your loved ones. Give them your time. Time is the ultimate non-renewable resource. The irony of giving your time to others, mindfully, involves being less time-obsessed. Each of doesn't really have more or less time. We have the same amount. You may have heard the one about the bloke who was asked, "If you had only 48 hours left to live, how would you spend them?" One hour at a time, he replied. We live in an intriguing period of human history, in which we are more connected around the clock. I can be in touch with my teenage children by phone all day. Texts offer discrete bits of information. But e-communication is limited for understanding and learning from each other. Instead, it can fracture communication and make us more impatient, more disengaged. In her 2014 snapshot of Australian children, social capital and communities, Australian National University Professor Sharon Bessell found t...

As we head into the festive season, one of the most religious times of the calendar year, ABC management has axed an important program that seriously explores the meaning of the season. Axing the religion and ethics program Sunday Nights with John Cleary makes little sense from either an ABC charter or a ratings perspective. It's heard on the local radio network. Still going strong after three decades with a number of hosts, it rates its socks off, especially in Canberra. Its nationwide audience is between 300,000 and 400,000 - quite something for a program on between 10 at night and 2 in the morning. Whereas most local radio programs deal with news, sport and lifestyle topics, this one deals with faith and the challenge of what I call 'living life together'. It is increasingly relevant in a culture that is becoming more narcissistic, gadget-oriented and anxiety-riddled. Rather than preach – anything, it provides a canvas for thoughtful conversations that go deeper than...

"It takes a village..." was perhaps Hillary Clinton's most memorable line. It was given a macabre twist in the Academy award-winning movie Spotlight, about the cover-up of sexual abuse by Catholic Church clergy in Boston. One of the actors observed that "if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one". We are about to learn more about the NSW "village" of Newcastle, in which an extraordinary number of respected citizens appear, through action or inaction, to have helped cover up allegations of sexual abuse. Four years after Julia Gillard announced the royal commission into institutional responses to abuse, the Anglican Bishop of Newcastle, Greg Thompson, is due to take the stand on Wednesday in Sydney when the commission reconvenes for case study 42. He has already given evidence privately, as perhaps the most senior clergyman to do so. He grew up in the Hunter Valley and was sexually abused while a university student in Ne...