I recently asked my friend Dave Tims to come and talk to one of my classes at Laidlaw College about the work that he does among the “urban poor” in Manurewa, South Auckland. Dave has given more than 20 years of his life to working with the poor and the marginalised, so I knew that what he would say would be both real and challenging. But what most surprised me was the link that Dave made between friendship and poverty. Read More...

Life, Above All, a German-South African production, is a movie (recently released on DVD) about suffering, shame, community and redemption. The “hero” is a 12 year old girl, Chanda, who shows us what it means to be truly “pro-life” in the midst of suffering and shame.  Read More...

A recent story doing the rounds through Facebook is that Facebook itself makes people more dissatisfied with their lives. Research carried out by Utah Valley University sociologists shows that, “looking at happy pictures of others on Facebook gives people an impression that others are ‘always’ happy and having good lives”. Perception and how we interpret reality deeply affects us. And much of the time we bring this on ourselves by constructing, consciously and unconsciously, a set of rules by which we judge ourselves and others. Through this “way of knowing” we interpret the world and in many instances feel that we are not only losing out, but we ourselves might even be losers. What we need, is another way of seeing reality. Read More...