Tag: family
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The Best $45 We Ever Spent
What is the best purchase you have ever made? The best purchase I ever made was our first dog. We were newly married and living in Lismore on the Northern Rivers. One day we looked through the local paper and saw an advertisement for border collie puppies on a farm near Kyogle. We drove out…
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Being Needed and Being Whole
What’s a chapter of your life you’d title “The Hard Years”— and what got you through it? People often say that a person’s forties can be the hardest years of their life. That was true for me. I would call that chapter The Hard Years. Not because everything collapsed, but because I came face to…
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Practical Compassion
What is one way you have grown this year? One way I have grown this year is by learning that compassion has to become practical. Over the years I have become increasingly aware of how much pressure some students carry. International students can carry loneliness, financial stress, uncertainty about accommodation, worries about family, the need…
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Recognising the Thread
What is something you wish you could tell your 20-year-old self? At 20, I thought life was a linear progression. You chose your path, dedicated yourself to it, and then walked it. The challenge was to make the right decision early, commit to it, and stay faithful. At 20, I knew what my passions were.…
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The Cost of Being Always Available
Write your guide to setting healthy boundaries in relationships. I am not sure I am qualified to write a guide to healthy boundaries, except as someone who learned them too slowly. For 20 years I was a parish minister. That meant working in a caring profession. People had real needs. Crises happened. There were weddings,…
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Toussaint
What’s a cultural tradition from another countrythat you wish existed in yours? The tradition I wish we had more strongly in Australia is not really Halloween. It is what sits behind it. In France, All Saints’ Day, or Toussaint, is still marked as a public holiday. Families visit cemeteries. They clean graves, place flowers, light…
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The Wealth of Less
What are the biggest benefits of minimalist living? My father started each day with a cup of tea. The cup was huge. Not quite a mixing bowl, but close. On it were the words: I’m not greedy, but I want enough. I never knew the story behind that cup, but I understood the joke. It…
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The Mystery of Grace
What’s a mystery from your own life that you’ve never solved? My father is ninety-six and still does not know why his mother left. He was seven years old. There was an argument in the kitchen. Plates and condiments went flying. His mother stormed out the door and walked up the road to stay with…
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When I Should Have Said No
Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently? When I was in theological college, I worked on weekends as a student minister in a church. My senior minister was very conservative, authoritarian, and very forceful in his opinions. At the time, we were building a…
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Letting the Day Wear Off
How do you unwind after a demanding day? First, I come home and take the dog to the local forest for a while. It is not really a forest. It is a park. But people call it The Forest, which makes it sound much more impressive. I throw the ball for her to catch. Not…
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Respect
Describe a positive thing a family member has done for you. About fifteen years ago, my siblings and I persuaded my parents to write down the story of their lives. Not memoirs. Not for publication. Just the memories and family truths that would otherwise disappear with them. They were reluctant, but they did it. What…
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What I Wanted at Five
When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up? When I was five, I do not remember wanting to be anything in particular. No fireman, no astronaut, no train driver. What I do remember is wanting to be out of school. I can still remember walking to school with a…
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Modes of Encounter
You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, car, or bike? Every trip says something about the person taking it. That’s what I think. Not in a grand psychological sense. Just in the small way choices reveal us. The pragmatist books the plane. The romantic takes the train. The free spirit wants the car…
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The Question on Repeat
What is one question you hate to be asked? Explain. My current most-hated question is, “So—when are you going to retire?” My father asks it every time I see him. He’s ninety-six, and he asks it with the casual confidence of a man who thinks this is a normal question, like commenting on the weather.…
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What He Needed Wasn’t a Lecture
What advice would I give my teenage self? I don’t think I’d give him a grand speech. I’d try to be a person he could trust. Older me: You don’t need a lecture.Teenage me: Then what do I need?Older me: People who will listen properly. People with wisdom. People who take you seriously and help…
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The Gift I Didn’t Expect
Share one of the best gifts you’ve ever received. My grandfather died when I was seventeen. It was an industrial accident, and it came out of the blue. One minute he was there, the next minute he wasn’t. He died the day before I stared university, so the next few weeks were hard. Grieving on…
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P Plates, No Plates
Have you ever unintentionally broken the law? At seventeen I spent a summer working in a used car yard. I’d only just got my licence, so I was on my P plates—back when they were wired onto the number plate, long before magnetic ones made life easy. The boss told me I could take whatever…
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The Shape of a Conventional Life
What were your parents doing at your age? At my age, my father had been retired for about eight years. He’d spent decades as a civilian in the Australian Navy—dockyard work, public service, a steady and conventional path. But he didn’t retire because he ran out of things to do. He retired because he ran…
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Dream Home
Write about your dream home. I have never really dreamed about a home. Maybe that’s because I value other things. Maybe it’s because I’ve been out of the market for most of my life. More likely it’s because a home, for me, isn’t meant to carry the weight of aspiration. A home embodies values. It…
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The Day Radio Beat Homework
You get some great, amazingly fantastic news. What’s the first thing you do? I tell the right person first. Not by email. Not by text. No social media announcements. If it’s truly great news, it deserves a voice. It deserves someone on the other end who can hear it properly — and share the moment…
The Afterword 