Social

In the search for deeper meanings of interpersonal relationships, we have discovered the life stories of simple, dignified people, willing to share from the abundance of their joy. Thus, these are the seasons of friendship, through the eyes of special grandparents.

In my humble but literary-educated opinion, Tim Winton is Australia’s finest living novelist. Since winning publication of his first novel in a competition for young writers in 1981, he has had 10 more novels published, as well as collections of stories, plays, books for younger readers and a handful of non-fiction works. Winton has won Australia’s top literary prize—the Miles Franklin Award—on four...

In A History of Young People in the West, Giovanni Levi and Jean-Claude Schmitt posit that, in the West, adolescence is first and foremost a social-cultural construction, and therefore a cultural product. They considered it at most subsidiarily as a stage in the physiological process of growing up.

Young love can be intoxicating, exhilarating and filled with passion. While many young relationships are healthy and positive, some can take a concerning turn. 

The Flight from God describes the experience of distancing oneself from God. When we are under the impression that we are running away and that we reach a space where God is absent, we discover that God is already there, inviting us to believe.

Our moral problem is man’s indifference to himself… We experience and treat ourselves as commodities, and [as if] our own powers have become alienated from ourselves… We are a herd believing that the road we follow must lead to a goal since we see everybody else on the same road. We are in the dark and keep up our courage because we hear...

A common source of jokes and stories with subtext, the relationship between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law appears to be characterised by particular sensitivities.

“We shrivel when we are not able to interact. We depend on the other in order for us to be fully who we are” (Desmond Tutu).

I’m a walking contradiction when it comes to technology. I spend far too much time on the internet—some productive, such as paying bills, researching for my work and reading the news, but mostly wasted time on one-too-many funny cat videos—but I’m still using a Nokia E71 mobile phone bought in 2009. (Don’t laugh! It did win Mobile Choice’s phone of the year in...

In 1867, when Edson White was 18 years old and working at the Adventist type-room in Battle Creek, Michigan, he had a transformative conversation with Mr Bell.

The book written by John Ortberg, All the Places to Go... How Will You Know? invites us to reflect on the discerning of God’s will for our lives.

I am 33 years old, married and have a two-year-old daughter. It is great to be a mother and see how beautifully we were created. I was fascinated by pregnancy, I am still interested in the subject of natural births and I try to research as thoroughly as possible each stage we are going through.

The face muscles relax, and the eyes become empty before boredom urges them to seek another centre of interest. The restlessness culminates with some leaving and others immersing themselves in the exploration of their phones. Others seek to divert the discussion with a joke or hasten its end through a detached or ostentatious silence.

Two recent stories in Australian media shocked me to my core. Two 12-year-olds in different states took their own lives after being bullied at school. 

I have always loved family photographs, especially old ones. They allow you to wander freely through the stories of times and lives that are little known yet also familiar.