Blog

by Dr Max Lawson

The Adventures of Don Quixote was written in two parts: the first part published in December 1604 or January 1605 and the second part was not published till 1615 – not long before Cervantes’ death.
Not only is The Adventures of Don Quixote considered the first novel but is often considered the greatest comic novel. At the simple plot level it is a series of adventures and episodes involving the delusions of the madman Don Quixote and his so-called squire “The rustic” Sancho Panza. The second part of the
novel is more serious with Don Quixote becoming more lucid and Sancho Panza becoming as mad as his master.
Don Quixote became mad by reading himself into insanity immersing himself in his veritable library of books about chivalry and knight errantry. Part of the ironic drollery of the novel is that Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are “absurdly unsuited for their roles(1) – in fact in the romances, books on chivalry, knights-errants were always rich young men of high birth and their squires of similar  background were serving their apprenticeship before coming knights-errant themselves.  Unlike the models in the romances, Don Quixote, with his broken down Rosinale, his horse, and his patch-work thread-bare armour and
the pot-bellied Sancho Panza riding on his ass are parodies of the chivalric tradition. The fun of the novel is all, the absurd situations the decrepit pair get into – the famous, indeed archtypal episode being that of tilting at windmills, thinking them enemies.

Dr Lawson discusses the relevance of this story to the modern world. The complete talk can be found here.

by the Rev Geoffrey Usher.

I feel a bit uncomfortable when people who have  been Christians for years insist on telling their
conversion experiences. It’s not the stories that make me uncomfortable, but the thought that they
ought to have something much more recent to communicate about their Christian life. A poet
commented:
Your holy hearsay is not evidence:
Give me the good news in the present tense.
The living truth is what I long to see. I cannot lean upon what used to be.
Show me how
The Christ you talk about Is living now.

Click here to read the full address.

An address given by Reverend Geoffrey Usher to the Spirit of Life Unitarian Fellowship.

Do you have a cardboard box of “good stuff”? Do you have a box which is what you’ll grab to take with you if your house ever catches on fire? Do you have a worn paper bag of bits and pieces – “love in a paper sack”?
Think back over the years. Are you aware of any sins of omission – of failures to seize opportunities which you might now be ready to grasp – failures to see what was really there – what was really being offered to you in the equivalent of Robert Fulghum’s daughter’s tattered lunchbag?
Are you aware – or prepared to admit – that you may have rejected, through sheer insensitivity, goodness only knows how many tentative offerings of open-hearted trust?

Click here to read the full address.

 

by the Rev. Daniel Jantos, given at the Spirit of Life Fellowship, Kirrabilli.

Some of us may identify philosophically, politically, spiritually as progressives but generally, in Australia or the United States, we know that there is a line, of sorts, to our left that one crosses with caution. The clearest way to cross that line is to start talking about Karl Marx and Marxism …..or to throw around the words colonialist and imperialist. We may be progressive but many are wary of that leftist Marxist fringe whom we suspect are mostly idealogues gone too far – university students or academics who don’t really know enough about the practical world.
Well today I would like to bring up some Marxist critique and some colonialist conspiracies as a part of a reflection. This in connection to a term that has captured my imagination over the past few weeks and I hope might be of interest to you also. It is a term from the writer Peter Hershcock. It is the term “the colonization of consciousness.” I am using it this morning as a way to reflect on just how much information technology has invaded our lives and is plundering our attention. To use a Marxist phrase: it has made a commodity of our attention.

The full address can be found here.

“The universes underpins and permits life,
of which we are a local manifestation”
(Paul R. Fleischman)

‘A pinch and a punch for the first of the month’.
‘Rabbits. Rabbits. Rabbits’.
Or if you are Irish: ‘White Rabbits’.

Today is a ‘first of the month’ day.
It is 1st April—April Fool’s Day—sometimes called All Fool’s Day.
One of the most light-hearted days of the year.

The rest of this Rev. Rex Hunt address can be read here.