Soul Search

The Horn of Africa is one of the hottest and poorest regions on earth, and it’s home to a semi-nomadic community, the Afar. Valerie Browning is an Australian nurse who has given up her own way of life to live and work with Afar people for over 30 years.

War in the horn of Africa has had a devastating impact on the Afar. Tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes just in the last two years – a small number of Afar now live in Australia as refugees.

Valerie Browning AM is an Australian nurse who has lived and worked with Afar nomads in northern Ethiopia for more than 31 years. She is one of the founders of the Afar Pastoralists Development Association and was awarded an Order of Australia in 1999 for service to international humanitarian aid.

Mohammed Salih is president of the Afar Community of Queensland, a group of nearly 60 people living in the greater Brisbane region. He grew up in Eritrea before moving to Australia as a refugee.

Do you have an enemy? Even if you do, you might not want to admit it, or say who!

Melissa Florer-Bixler has thought a lot about enemies, especially in the political context of Donald Trump’s presidency. It gets complicated for her, because she is a pacifist Christian. How do you deal with enmity, when Jesus commands you to love your enemies?

The solution isn’t always understanding and reconciliation.

Melissa Florer-Bixler is pastor of Raleigh Mennonite Church in North Carolina. She is the author of Fire by Night and How to Have an Enemy: Righteous Anger and the Work of Peace.

At the beginning of 2022, flooding in South-East Queensland and the Northern Rivers of New South Wales upended the lives of thousands, including the area’s diverse religious communities. Hear how the area’s Sikhs provide aid even though their own gurdwara was inundated, and how the Jewish community practices hospitality as best they can in the lead-up to Pesach.

Watch Fire, Flood and Resilience on iView.

Guests

Amar Singh is founder of Turbans 4 Australia, a Sikh charity that was among the first organisations to deliver outside help to flood victims.

Neville Singh is a retired banana grower in Murwillumbah and member of the local gurdwara which was flooded last month.

Daniel Harris is administrator of the Facebook group Shevet (Tribe)

With the latest round of UN climate talks wrapping up recently, it’s a good time to ask a fundamental question: Who are we, in relation to nature? What kinds of relationships bind us to other beings, like trees?

Maybe even amid climate change we can approach nature with celebration – even veneration?

Dr Mahesh White Radhakrishnan is a musician, an ethnomusicologist and anthropological linguist at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and a member of the group Hindus for Human Rights – Australia and New Zealand. They are also part of the ABC’s Top Five Arts media residency program. Their music can be found on YouTube.

Louise Fowler-Smith is the founder of the Tree Veneration Society in Australia and author of the book Sacred Trees of India: Adornment and Adoration as an Alternative to the Commodification of Nature.

Where are you going? Journeys take many forms: Moving away from your parents’ house, being a tourist in a foreign land, or going on a pilgrimage to a site of profound spiritual significance – and all have a transformative effect on our lives.

Dr Giselle Bader has a PhD in religious studies from Sydney University. Her research looked at fourth century pilgrimage to the holy land, including the pilgrimages of women like Egeria and Paula, and how accounts of their journeys have been received over the years.

Sarah Malik is an award-winning journalist and author of Safar, a new collection of Muslim women’s travel stories.

How important is music to you? Does it have a sacred quality in your life? From contemporary Catholic theology to the goth icon Nick Cave, music speaks to the soul in ways other media does not.

Dr Lyn McCredden is emeritus professor of literary studies at Deakin university in Melbourne. Read her essay about Nick Cave’s book Faith, Hope and Carnage in The Conversation.

Dr Greg Clarke is a former CEO of the Australian Institute of Music, and before that, of the Bible Society of Australia.

Dr Maeve Heaney is a consecrated missionary of the Verbum Dei community and director of the Xavier Centre of Theology at the Australian Catholic University in Brisbane. She’s also a singer songwriter and the author of a new book called Suspended God: Music and a Theology of Doubt.

Frank Wilczek is a Nobel Prize winner, and earlier this year he was named the 2022 Templeton laureate as well – a recognition of his spiritual as well as scientific curiosity.

He’s a scientist, renowned for theorising the strong force in atomic nuclei, but more basically he sees beauty as perhaps our best guide to truth.

Frank Wilczek is Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at MIT, the 2022 Templeton Laureate, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize and author of several popular books including A Beautiful Question and The Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality.

The Flinders Ranges in the semi-arid outback of South Australia is one of the oldest places on earth and the cradle of Adnyamathanha culture, ceremony and language.

In addition to being an ancient place of cultural and spiritual significance, it’s the site of a recent archaeological discovery that rewrites Western understandings of the history of human habitation of the area.

Terrence Coulthard is a senior custodian of Adnyamathanha culture and language who compiled the first Adnyamathanha dictionary, published in 2020. He is administrator of Iga Warta.

Dr Giles Hamm is one of the key researchers working on the Warratyi Rock Shelter, and the lead author of the Nature article Cultural innovation and megafauna interaction in the early settlement of arid Australia.

The ABC published a report when the Warratyi Rock Shelter was first rediscovered.Read more about the Warratyi Rock Shelter on the Flinders University website.

Women, where they speak and what they say, has been a hot topic for nearly 2000 years of Christian history. Modern moves to empower women to teach and preach in churches can seem opposed to ancient Christian texts, but the early church was far from unified about “a woman’s place”.

One-hundred years on from the landmark decision to licence Anglican women to preach, and 30 years on from the first ordination of Australian women as Anglican priests, how easily can women raise their voices in the church? And what happens when they’re prevented?

In this messy old world, we all find ourselves on the receiving end of harm. But then – sometimes it’s us, we’re the one in the wrong. How do we face it?