Twice a week, a member of the CPX team "thinks out loud" in public - offering not conclusions, but launching-off points for conversation about what's going on in the news right now, or in our cultural "moment".
As with everything CPX does, the goal is to reframe things - to edge our way together towards a more expansive public imagination when it comes to Christian faith and the contribution it has to make to our shared life.
Here's a collection of these columns. They are usually posted each Tuesday and Friday on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Justine Toh on harsh parenting, abusive coaching, and the benefits of the Ted Lasso approach to success.
Anna Grummitt on the latest COVID lockdowns across Australia – and what might be a better response than blaming others.
Not the Amazon virtual assistant – I don’t mean to herald the singularity here – but kids and teenagers called Alexa, as well as their parents, who last year complained to Amazon that their daughters were being bullied.
“Denzel said to me, ‘Be careful. At your highest moment, that’s when the devil comes for you.’” So said Will Smith upon receiving the Best Actor Oscar, right after he slapped comedian Chris Rock for making an insensitive joke about his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. 1/8
I’ve been avoiding reading stories about Ukraine. It just feels like there’s too much bad news going around to be absorbed in any healthy manner. But yesterday I allowed myself to read a bunch of stories from the New York Times about women and children fleeing their homes in the face of the Russian onslaught, and overnight, becoming refugees.
As brutal dictators go, Russian President Vladimir Putin is up there with some of the worst, and for cynical bare-faced lying – about the provocation that “forced” him to invade Ukraine and about what has happened since – he is perhaps unparalleled. He is in the process of destroying two countries: Ukraine and his own, as Russia’s economy crashes, and the sanctions should not be lifted until Russia pays reparations.
We all felt like we knew him.
The death of Shane Warne felt so personal it was as if, for a few days, the nation was in a state of collective shock. The tsunami of commentary included those who described it as their “Lady Di moment.”
The language of floods is visceral, and frightening – like the real thing. Floodwaters ‘rage’. An ‘angry’ river rises. Bridges, homes, streets are ‘swallowed up’.
In June 2020, a few months into the pandemic, my wife and I moved in with 28 men. They were a diverse group of people doing life together in a home run by Servants Community Housing – an organisation supporting people on low incomes to experience safe, affordable housing.
just took part in the National Pleasure Audit which – perhaps improbably, given the name – turned out to be a pleasurable experience. It’s a survey from Southern Cross University that invites Australians to share about the circumstances in which they feel the varieties of pleasure: gratitude, love, sexual desire, awe, hope, contentment, pride, and joy.
I recently interviewed Danny and Leila Abdallah for our Life & Faith podcast and I can’t stop thinking about them. They came in to talk about i4give day. This is their initiative honouring three of their children, Antony, aged 13, Angelina, 12, and Sienna, 8, who were killed, along with the children’s 11-year-old cousin Veronique when a drunk driver ploughed into the group as they walked along a suburban footpath in Sydney’s West two years ago this week.
Are you familiar with the 100 page rule? Life is short and books are many, so rather than persevering with a book you’re not enjoying, you should give it 100 pages minus your age, and if it hasn’t grabbed you … cut your losses and move on.
CPX intern Emily Anderson has been taking her lockdown walks in Sydney’s most densely populated suburb: Rookwood. Yep, the cemetery.
Barney Zwartz, in quintessentially Melbourne fashion, wonders: why do we hang on every word of the weather forecast, when it’s so often wrong?
