Note to self: stop treadmill, forget about private school
Thank you for William McKeith’s timely article ("Families pay the price in a world that never stops”, May 6). However, extended shopping hours and longer working days are the tip of the iceberg. Your article focusing on the Saville family in Strathfield reveals another aspect to the dilemma of parents and children spending little time together. As parents, we make choices. The Savilles have identified two choices they have made: to send their children from an early age to a private school and to invest in a large mortgage. They could have made other choices - their local public school, a smaller mortgage.
Spending two hours each evening trying to encourage children to do homework when everyone is tired and grumpy and you are trying to get a meal on the table cannot be described as quality time.
I have never managed quality time with my children over homework.
Quality time happens when you least expect it. It happens when you are just hanging out together or you have shared an experience such as taking a walk, playing in the park, reading a book, laughing together over a joke. You can’t really put these things on a “to do” list and tick them off like other chores.
It’s during these “hanging out” times that our children pick up our values as they get to know us and we get to know them. They experience a richness to life that no amount of scheduled activities or private schooling or a beautiful home can replace.
Sarah Condie, Newtown
The Condies are a terrific family. Keith lectures at Moore. This letter is very much based on personal experience.
RECENT experience leads me to affirm Peter Jensen’s call for ``spending a lot more time and energy thinking about the moral meaning of marriage between a man and a woman’’.
Two months ago I married my first couple, and attending the wedding were people from all sorts of backgrounds. After the ceremony, I was struck by the number of people commenting on how revelatory the teaching from the Bible was. One woman who had been married for many years had never realised how prudent the Bible’s teaching is on the relationship between a husband and wife. This wedding confirmed what I already held in principle, that is, sometimes to progress as a society we need to return to basics, and that involves accepting the Bible’s framework for human relationships.
Murray Campbell
Mentone, Vic
Murray’s the minister at Mentone Baptist, and trained at Moore College.
Mine:
PETER Jensen is right. Defining ``white’’ as ``grey’’ doesn’t change the way light works, it just brings confusion. In the same way, redefining marriage as anything other than a voluntary union between one man and one woman can only bring confusion, and also pain, as experiments with alternatives show.
Peter Fyfe (Letters, May 12) is wide of the mark in equating Kevin Rudd’s understanding of human rights with the PM’s “mates in Beijing”. Since when is the right to marry anyone you want a human right? Parents can’t marry their children. Siblings can’t marry each other. One person can’t simultaneously marry several others. These restrictions protect individuals and our society, and are consistent with the historical and legal definition of marriage. They are not a denial of human rights.
Being able to enter a same-sex union may be a human right; removing financial and welfare discrimination against that union may also be a human right; but it is not a denial of human rights to deny that union the legal status of marriage. It is not a marriage and should never be.
Chris McGillion believes the Catholic Church should change its teaching by asking lapsed Catholics what they want ("Papal pill remains a Mass turnoff”, May 23). It is an odd thought that church doctrine should be changed by a vote of those who don’t really belong any more. What the church should do is continue to teach what it thinks is right and check the Bible to make sure it really is right.
This Column 8 entry from SydAng, Diocesan Reader, lovely person and my one time boss Ken Bock. (My daughter always claims that an entry in Column 8 is worth at least 2 or 3 letters to the editor!)
“Years ago it used to be said that the ultimate example of self-control was the person who could take just one peanut from a bowl and not have any more,” writes Ken Bock, of Carlingford. “Well, I have found the modern form of ultimate self-control - it’s the person who, sitting at their computer with a few minutes to spare, can play one game only of solitaire and then move on to their next task. It’s very tempting having played one game, and not have it resolve, to then play a second, and a third, and a …” Column 8, while making no admissions, can report that we know people who have fallen into this trap, and never been heard from again.
As the Olympic Games get closer I suppose we will hear more about back-to-back gold medals and other backs to back which don’t mean back to back at all. At least they don’t have three-legged races, so we won’t hear of athletes winning side to side back to back. My great fear is that a spokesman for a Games sponsor might reply, “We will continue to say back to back, going forward.”
This letter on the schools debate in today’s SMH raised a good argument (not dissimilar to Phillip Jensen’s argument in support of hospitality for World Catholic Youth Day):
School debate taxes the true believers
A number of the arguments advanced by Allan Lewis (Letters, June 2), which lead him to “seriously question the existence of religious schools altogether”, can just as easily provide support for the preservation of religious schools. For example, his claim that “taxpayers should not fund personal belief systems with which they disagree” supports the argument that those with religious beliefs should not have to fund schools dedicated to a secular belief system. It follows that such taxpayers have the right to claim that the portion of their tax dedicated to education should go to schools that uphold their religious beliefs. Otherwise, so long as education is taxpayer-funded and compulsory, it would amount to unequal treatment of its citizens and a tyrannic dictation of the kind of education children should receive.
Paul Borg, East Burwood (Victoria)
It would be worth writing in today (before midday) on this issue, it’s possible that it will come up again tomorrow given the amount of correspondence that was received.
Richard McBurnie (Letters, June 4) may be right to say that “a lack of belief in something is not a belief in itself”. But it does not follow that atheism is a system of lack of belief. The definition of atheism (given by the atheist petitioners) in the celebrated US case Murray v Curlett (1963) includes: “An atheist believes that heaven is something for which we should work now - here on earth for all men together to enjoy … An atheist believes that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfilment.”
All systems of thought have their assumptions, necessary postulates and “beliefs”. Mr McBurnie seeks to deconstruct atheism in such a way as to put it beyond the judgment of reason - something that thinking people should resist.
Reverend Brian Tung, West Pymble
Richard McBurnie overlooks the obvious fact that denial of God implies a supreme belief in the capacity of the atheist’s own intellect. Whatever religion may claim, whatever the evidence may be, the atheist already knows the answer. No mystery or future discovery will ever cloud this confidence. In any other belief system this level of confidence would be called fundamentalism.
Does anyone remember my father Harry Seidler’s 1953 “Igloo” house on Parriwi Road, Mosman? In early 2001, a friend told me he had seen a demolition notice out front - that led to much media and community discussion and its eventual state heritage listing. Alas, under the new system, the house would have been immediately demolished.
Karen Jackson (Letters, June 6) bases support for abortion on the assertion that “morality is up to the individual”. Surely no one can honestly believe that. Am I free to decide that I can steal, rape, murder, rob and view child pornography? Of course not. We need common moral codes to protect people, especially the weak and defenceless. Abortion is a vexed issue, but the key question is: do we believe a mother’s rights are more important than the right to life of an unborn child? I would argue that almost always they are not. If you disagree, debate the issue rather than presenting spurious arguments you would not apply to any other moral dilemma.
Whilst not a letter, this media release ( from 20 minutes ago ) about our own Steve Carlisle is worthy of promotion. It will probably be in tomorrow’s Daily Telegraph. ( Letter writers can start preparing letters to the editor now. ) The link even has a photo :
I was a Footy Show nuffy too
By John Rolfe
June 16, 2008 02:41pm
A CHURCH minister has come forward to reveal that he too was targeted as a so-called “nuffy” by The Footy Show.
Reverend Steve Carlisle, of Sydney’s St Matthew’s Anglican Church in West Pymble, contacted The Daily Telegraph after we reported an allegation by 2GB broadcaster Ray Hadley.
Hadley claimed that last Thursday’s embarrassing pre-recorded segment ridiculing a disabled man was often a deliberate aim of the show.
What’s a nuffy? The Urban Dictionary says it’s Australian slang for people who are “mentally retarded”.
Rev Carlisle today told The Telegraph that while he was training as a minister in Dapto, near Wollongong, he was interviewed by The Footy Show.
Rev Carlisle said that he saw many others interviewed over “three or four hours”.
“They looked all day and found the resident drunk, the homeless guy, one other and me,” Rev Carlisle recalled.
“If it wasn’t for my shaggy dreadlocks, coloured green and orange, and my belly-button-length beard, maybe I would never have made it on the show.”
Rev Carlisle said the segment screened in 2000 and that he was interviewed by Terry Hill, the former Australian rugby league centre.
He said that he didn’t believe Hill was deliberately targeting “nuffies”.
Rather, he suspected it occurred in the production process.
As the picture (right) here shows, he looks quite different now.
“They take the nuffies into the ministry as well,” Rev Carlisle remarked.
In today’s Sun-Herald there is a “Moral Maze” article on the church’s view on homosexuality by Dr Leslie Cannold who is a feminist ethicist from Melbourne. She puts her case in a rather strident fashion. Becuase ther is a week between issues it can give people time to craft a response. Do give it a good read; one or two thoughtful letters in next week’s Sun-Herald would make a good response.
Those who are able to write, this would be a good week for paying attention to what is going on with the Anglican churches worldwide. You might pray that people get to hear about the truths of the gospel because of the divisions happening between liberal and evangelical Christians, and write accordingly.
WHAT a deliciously ironic week for faith. On the one hand, we are worried about how many Catholics are coming to the garden party and the impact of it all. On the other, Anglicans are worried about how many are boycotting their garden party and the impact of it all. I reckon, if we all stopped worrying about pomp and ceremony and just did what Jesus said, we would be better off. His words were simple: love God, love your neighbour. It’s not rocket science.
Quite a few on WYD regulations in SMH today, including:
Richard Spear claims that World Youth Day and the reaction to it shows how divisive religions are (Letters, July 3). But of all the participants in this rather troubling event, the State Government is causing the most problems for everyone, and the event’s organisers are almost invisible. Perhaps it shows how wickedly politicians use religions to cause division.
Reverend Peter Green, Marrickville
So after 2000 years of praying for relief from persecution by the state, we now have to pray for the state to stop hamfistedly trying to help. Who says God hasn’t got a sense of humour?
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The winning short film in the 2008 Ignite Short Film Festival.
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