Day: March 27, 2013

Easter Away?…


For the first time in years, we are thinking to go away for the Good Friday and Easter Sunday weekend. A major event in the church calendar, we have always stuck around at this time for church matters. Typically there will be Good Friday services and Easter Sunday baptisms with a big lunch to follow.

Back in Malaysia there were also Maundy Thursday prayer meetings as well as sunrise services on Easter Sunday. Special Sunday school events abound too. Too many things happen at this time for us to be planning to get away.

All this busy-ness at this time was underpinned – anchored – by a fundamentally stable relationship with the local church. Absent this relationship it becomes a bit detached and these activities suddenly dissipate in terms of significance or importance. No doubt the Lord’s suffering, death and resurrection continues to be significant and important but the commemoration and celebration are meaningful only in the context of a community.

We don’t presently have that community and so we’re thinking of plans to go away. At least let the getaway – the road trip, the hideaway, the beach perhaps, the discovery of cafes, restaurants and wineries maybe – pale as they are in comparison, hopefully they will be salves for the ugly bits.

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Media Quirks


I was flipping through the new look tabloid version of The Age newspaper at the tea room. As usual, I like the letters to the editor section so I went straight to those pages.

A lady from South Australia wrote a featured letter, which had a go at Tony Abbott for not being as brave as Julia Gillard. Apparently Julia was brave for showing up in the ABC programs of Q&A and Fran Kelly.

I suppose The Age would consider such a letter worth a feature letter status. And I suppose a letter which thought Abbott a coward for not showing up on Q&A and Fran Kelly’s radio show, could be taken seriously only in The Age.

On the other end of the spectrum, I think Julia Gillard can be termed a coward for not showing up in Andrew Bolt‘s tv show on Channel 10. After all, a show which regularly featured Peter Costello could hardly be a domain the poor imitation would want to front up.

Media bias is a given. That ABC would give the Left and Labor a constant stream of free kicks is a given.

I cringed but I accepted the lady’s right to vent her feelings. I cringed but I cannot accept how a supposedly serious and mainstream media like The Age can have that letter as a feature letter. Media bias may be a given but such poor judgment is cringe worthy and unacceptable. In my mind anyway.

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