Our homing instinct
Chris Gleeson, SJ. 01 December 2017
While travelling with my young brother and sister-in-law in North Cornwall in early 2003 on a bitterly cold January day, I went into a shop in the beautiful little fishing village of Padstow to look at some antiques.
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Grace trumps control
Chris Gleeson
During one day in the July school holidays of 1998, I was standing on the 1st tee at the beautiful Bonville International Golf Club just south of Coffs Harbour. I was nervously waiting to hit off with a group of players which included a retired psychiatrist, a pediatrician, and the Manager of the local private hospital.
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Making music with what remains
Chris Gleeson SJ
Readers of the Melbourne Herald Sun might remember the very moving interview journalist Hamish McLachlan conducted with Angie Cunningham over a five-month period. Angie was a young woman who was afflicted in 2012 with a terrible motor neurone disease. She was also a friend of mine, and recently I wrote something on the theme of ‘connection’ which centred around her story.
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Soul Matters
Chris Gleeson SJ. 10 March 2017
As I pen this from Hong Kong on the last day of October, the feast day of famous Jesuit brother, St Alphonsus Rodriguez, I realise that I am not only a long way from home but also a substantial time from the publication of this Autumn edition
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Tender moments
Chris Gleeson SJ. 10 March 2017
Our lives are full of tender moments. Recently, I was listening to our Province Treasurer and long-time school friend, Father Des Dwyer—better known as ‘Dialogue Des’—and I asked him about the health of one of our mutual school companions.
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A balancing act
Chris Gleeson SJ. 10 March 2017
I pen this editorial on a superb day at Sevenhill where, as one retreatant has quipped, the Australian Jesuits’ DNA resides. As so often happens, I am writing with the light of some inspiration I have just received on the Combined Jesuit School Councils’ Retreat
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Education: Giving Wings To the Soul
Chris Gleeson SJ. 10 March 2017
In early July this year, I listened to some moving stories about education.
We were hosting some guests from Jesuit Commons: Higher Education at the Margins – a consortium of Jesuit universities and colleges established in 2006 – which now offers higher education to camp-based refugees in ten different sites around the worl
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Everything is connected
Chris Gleeson SJ. 09 March 2017
One of the qualities I most appreciate about Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si’ , is his commitment to the very Ignatian belief that everything is connected. Everything belongs. Unsurprisingly, the Pope reveals his Jesuit connection by linking all of us to creation: ‘We are part of nature, included in it, and thus in constant interaction with it (LS 139).
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God is my GPS
Chris Gleeson SJ. 09 March 2017
In early September I was reading the Weekend Australian magazine over breakfast when I came across an article on Israel Folau, the much acclaimed fullback for the Australian Wallabies Rugby Union team. A very religious man, he declared unambiguously to the columnist: ‘God is my GPS’
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