Soul Search

Join Meredith Lake as she meets two remarkable women who beat the odds. Lisa Jackson Pulver was once a runaway teen. Today, she is a leading figure in the field of Indigenous health and education; and Kamala Sharma Wing was once the only female - and Hindu - in her trainee cohort. Today, she is a Lieutenant in the Navy.

The medieval mystic Meister Eckhart once said, “If the only prayer you said in life was ‘thank you’, that would be enough.” It sounds simple, doesn’t it? But there’s more to gratitude than it seems. In this episode, Professor Mona Siddiqui – one of Britain's most influential public intellectuals – tells RN’s Meredith Lake about her project on Christian and Muslim approaches to gratitude. 

What monks knew about the emotions of isolation.

Today on the show we’ll take a look back on the year that was with writer and storyteller, Julie Perrin, whose journey of faith and doubt infuses the way she writes about the world around her. And, former chef-turned-Christian pastor, Simon Holt, on the way Collins Street Baptist Church will celebrate Christmas this year.

Have you got a holiday reading list already on the make? Or perhaps, in light of Hanukkah or Christmas, it’s a time to dwell with profound stories of faith? Literary critic Tali Lavi and award-winning biographer Jacqueline Kent join Meredith Lake to discuss the stories at the heart of Hanukkah, and the story of suffragist and feminist, Vida Goldstein.

On Soul Search today, we're marking the International Day of People with Disability. According to the UN, about one billion people around the world live with a disability — that includes 1 in 5 people in Australia. In this episode, we'll hear from Abdulah Hamimi, a young Muslim man from Melbourne who suffered a spinal injury when he was only eighteen, and Dr Louise Gosbell, a scholar at the forefront of a new area of Biblical Studies - reading the Christian gospels from a disability perspective.

Today on Soul Search, we encounter meditation and stillness in unexpected places. From the streets in the U.S. at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, to the third floor of Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art. We meet U.S. activist and Dharma practitioner Dr Rima Vesely-Flad and Lindy Lee, one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists whose work is saturated in Zen philosophy.

One of the biggest religious trends of the century thus far has been the rise of Pentecostalism around the globe — and our Prime Minister Scott Morrison is just one of its 650 million adherents. So what is Pentecostalism, who represents it, and what's its story here in Australia?

Ursula Rakova's home in the Carteret Islands of Papua New Guinea is in danger of being washed away. The Catholic community organizer reflects on the challenges of relocating the Islanders, and the role faith plays in her life. And, Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad on Europe's first eco-mosque, combining Islamic ideas of nature with green technologies.

Dr Rose Elu, an elder from Saibai Island, reflects on the impact of climate change on the Torres Strait, and the role faith plays in fostering her connection to the land. And, what does the recovery of Aboriginal place names for Dyarubbin (the Hawkesbury River) mean about how we remember the past, and think about the future?