living as people of grace in a conflicted church & world
Forgive me, Lord, for I have neglected so much this past year.
On too many days, I—and maybe those reading this as well—have forgotten to pray and be and do as we ought, out of the gifts we have been given, out of simple gratitude for the privileges we have that come with breathing.
As a midwife, I regularly have the privilege of being involved with the birth of a baby. At the last such occasion, I watched through the dimly lit room as a newborn boy lay against his mother’s chest for the very first time. His parents pored over his every feature: the shape of his ears, were they the same as his Dad’s? Were his toes long like his mother’s? Did this also happen with Jesus?
Photo: Photo of Bondi Beach by Alex Wong on Unsplash Rev Dr Michael Jensen, one half of the WADR Team, is the rector of St Marks Anglican Church Darling Point, a parish very close to Bondi Beach in Sydney which he visits most days. Here is his prayer written just hours after the 14th December mass shooting at BondiContinue reading “Prayer for 15th December 2025, by Michael Jensen”
I have had occasion recently to reflect on good fatherhood. Two years ago, I woke up to a world without my darling father. After a long and brave battle with cancer, he went home to be with his heavenly Father on October 3, 2023. Though doctors told us we would not have him past Easter, by God’s grace we shared another six months: time for light rail adventures with his granddaughter, maths homework with his grandson, and even one last whisky with me on Father’s Day.
The world reacted strongly last month when US President Donald Trump took an adventurous step into the world of pregnancy advice, recommending women limit their use of acetaminophen (paracetamol) during pregnancy due to concerns about links with childhood autism.
Dame Sarah Mullally, the Bishop of London, has been appointed as the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury, making history as the first woman to hold this ancient office in the 1,400-year existence of the English episcopate. Her appointment was approved by King Charles III, the supreme governor of the Church of England, following the recommendation of the Crown Nominations Commission, and she will be installed at Canterbury Cathedral in March 2026.
I’ve spent the last three months researching the experience of the Taylor Swift fandom through the lenses of philosopher Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age and affect theorist Lauren Berlant’s “intimate publics.” I have decided they’re two sides of the same coin. They describe the experience of transcendence from two different perspectives.
Charlie Kirk’s death is a tragedy. It is particularly tragic that he was shot and killed in a place built for the free exchange of ideas, while promoting the idea that political difference should be approached through conversation.
My teenage daughter came home from school and asked me if I’d heard the news that “Charlie Kirk was killed.” I was taken aback that this tragedy was occupying the mind of a grade 8 girl in Brisbane. I myself had barely heard of Charlie Kirk. This article is not going to focus on him but rather on our responses to this tragedy.
I’ve been watching outpourings of grief for this man I didn’t know and had barely heard of, thinking through why so many Australians are so engaged with politics and violence a world away.
And the truth is this: if you ask a person of Indigenous or Asian background whether they have experienced racism in Australia, their answer will be pretty much yes. Sometimes even in church.
With gracious permission from the author Stephen Driscoll and the publisher Matthias Media, we are pleased to bring you an excerpt from the winning book of SparkLit’s Australian Christian Book of the Year Award for 2025. Our warmest congratulations to both! If you would like to buy the book, it is available from good bookshops and can be bought directly from the publisher here. The excerpt is from a chapter about how an understanding of sin relates to our understanding of AI.
thewadrproject.com