Life & Faith

Christine Caine explores how her own challenges ignited a passion for justice for the voiceless and exploited.

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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.”

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https://www.a21.org/

https://christinecaine.com/content/books/gk14sg

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Clinical psychologist Jonathan Andrews explains how, in the right circumstances, relationships can heal our broken hearts, and salve our growing loneliness. 

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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.”

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The Reconnected Heart: How Relationships Can Help Us Heal by Jonathan Andrews

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The award-winning novelist talks about navigating cultural diversity, representation, and Buddhism. 

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“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.

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Explore:

One Hundred Days by Alice Pung

Tony Rinaudo has uncovered some surprising sources of hope for a warming planet.

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“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.”

Benjamin Gilmour reflects on 26 years as a paramedic, a poet, and a filmmaker - including in Afghanistan.

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Benjamin Gilmour’s book The Gap recounts a very intense summer working as a paramedic out of Bondi Ambulance station in Sydney. He comes face to face with violence, drugs, domestic disputes, brawls, heart attacks, emergency births. There’s even a kidnapping!

The trauma, death and distress inevitably take their toll on Benjamin and his colleagues. The gallows humour can only take you so far.

Benjamin describes his love for the job, his patients, and his deep empathy for humans and their fallibility. 

That same empathy has taken him to far away places of danger, conflict and also searing beauty, where Ben’s compassionate eye as a poet and filmmaker have provided him with extraordinary stories and experiences.

His film Jirga, filmed in Afghanistan, explores the complexities of war, guilt and the pursuit of forgiveness. The film reflects Benjamin’s own spiritual journey and search for the best of humanity in all its messiness and glory.

Scott Stephens, editor of ABC’s Religion & Ethics website, shares his own fascinating backstory.

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As editor of the ABC’s Religion & Ethics website, Scott Stephens spends his days trawling through the best of contemporary theological and ethical thinking. But the story of his life proves just as intriguing as the material he daily immerses himself in.

In this episode of Life & Faith, Scott talks about being the son of a staunchly Republican father and a peacenik mother who instilled in him a love of art and literature, and an upbringing that set Scott on his current course in life.

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Scott will be delivering the 2021 Richard Johnson Lecture. Tickets for this livestreamed event are available here: https://bit.ly/3lqkNwg

ABC’s Religion & Ethics website: www.abc.net.au/religion

Dr Jenny Brown explains wellbeing and maturity in the context of your “family system”. 

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“One of the distinctives about Bowen family systems theory is, it isn't about people who have mental illness and people who don't. It's about all of us humans struggling with very similar issues. … There's not really this distinction between the expert who's got her life together and the client who is seeking help.”

Dr Jenny Brown is the founder of the Family Systems Institute and the author of several books, including Growing Yourself Up: How to Bring Your Best to All of Life’s Relationships. She is an enthusiastic proponent of Bowen family systems theory - a theory of human behaviour that focuses on how our identity and wellbeing as individuals is a function of the relationship webs we are embedded within.

Drawing on her clinical experience, research, family background, and personal faith, Jenny joins Simon Smart and Natasha Moore for a conversation about adulting, birth order, responsibility, dysfunction, intensity, and the process of change.

“We grow our resilience and our responsibility and our coping mechanisms within the laboratory of our important relationships - even the difficult relationships. But if we avoid difficulty, if we avoid learning to hold our boundaries, manage our reactivity, our emotions getting stirred up … if we can do that in our original family, then we can do it anywhere. That's the real place of a good workout for growing the capacity to be a flourishing human in the world.”

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Explore: 

2021 New College Lectures, “Nurture: Confronting a Crisis”

Family Systems Institute

Growing Yourself Up: How to Bring Your Best to All of Life’s Relationships

Confident Parenting: Restoring Your Confidence as a Parent By Making Yourself the Project and Not Trying to Change Your Child

Bowen Family Systems Theory in Christian Ministry

The Parent Hope Project

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Need help? Call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Sociologist John Carroll unpacks the ongoing appeal of the Harry Potter series.

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Nearly a quarter of a century after the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J. K. Rowling’s story of the “boy who lived” continues to capture the imaginations of children - and adults. 

The Harry Potter effect, it’s claimed, got kids reading again, got kids’ books selling at greater volumes, and made it possible for writers to produce longer novels for younger readers. 

John Carroll, Emeritus Professor of sociology at La Trobe University, makes a bigger claim: that Harry Potter makes Rowling the greatest contributor to the public good of the last 20 years. 

In this episode, he makes his case to Simon Smart. This conversation is for you if you’re a Harry Potter fan - but also if you’re not! It ranges from the materialism of our age and our death avoidance to the difference between a hero and a saviour, the importance of vocation, and our deep desire to live in an enchanted world.

“That's quite explicit in the Harry Potter books. I mean, the ordinary people, everyone knows, are called Muggles, and they’re mugs. Their lives are boring. Harry’s forced adopted family for the first 11 years of his life is terrified by basically the meaningless of its own existence. And in a sense, I think what's going on here is a warning to children: adulthood is at risk of being just like that, beware! The magic, the enchantment is in danger of going out of life.”

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Links:

John Carroll, “Harry Potter & the teller of truth”, The Australian, 10 July 2021

Wizarding World, Kids React to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

Unwinnable wars, fear, discrimination: we sift the long-term impact of the September 11 attacks.

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It’s been twenty years since the attacks of September 11, 2001, when terrorist group Al-Qaeda flew two passenger jets into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City. Another plane hit the Pentagon in Washington DC, while a fourth plane – headed, it is thought, for the US Capitol – instead crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.

The attacks stunned the US and shook the myth of American invincibility. Military strikes on Afghanistan followed in October 2001 as then-US President George W. Bush demanded the Taliban, the country’s de facto ruling power, hand over Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the attacks. 

The US-led ‘war on terror’ expanded to include Iraq in 2003, in search of its reputed weapons of mass destruction.

In August 2021, the Taliban reasserted control over Afghanistan just as the last American troops withdrew from the region.

As we mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11 on Life & Faith, we speak to Mark Maclennan, an Australian tourist who found himself at the World Trade Centre right after it had been hit. 

David Smith, Associate Professor at the United States Studies Centre and the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney, summarises the impact of the event and its aftermath on the United States and beyond.

Christian ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, artist Makoto Fujimura, and the work of Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, also feature in this episode.

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Explore:

Rowan Williams’ Writing in the Dust: Reflections on 11th September and its Aftermath

Interview with Makoto Fujimura

Interview with David Smith on US Politics and Religion

Andrew McUtchen on the challenge and joy of the most important job he’ll ever have.

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Andrew McUtchen is the co-creator of The Father Hood, an online community that supports Dads to take on the challenge of being the best Dad they can be. Father to three girls aged 6,7 and 8, along with an older stepdaughter, Andrew believes this is the best time in history to be a Dad. 

Expectations of fathers have radically changed in recent decades. Andrew tells Life & Faith why that change is such a good thing. And why he wouldn’t have it any other way.

In this episode Andrew and Simon share some common threads in their respective upbringings, both being one of three boys with a Dad who was a minister. This leads to a discussion of the spirituality of parenting and the things to be gained by having your life turned upside down. And along the way they touch on wonder, awe and the power of appealing to our better instincts. 

"There's an opportunity to reconnect with spirituality through parenthood because ... suddenly your drives are self less instead of selfish and they're giving instead of taking and suddenly you just rediscover all this goodness in yourself."

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https://www.the-father-hood.com/