Stay in the loop with Phil's work and the latest happenings at The Inside Job!
The Examen Exercise
Ever find yourself lost in thought while driving, only to snap back to reality? In this post, we explore this common experience and how it reflects on being present in life. Discover the "Examen of Consciousness," an ancient practice to awaken awareness and notice the divine in our daily routines.
The Transforming Power of Naming
The relationships in our personal and work lives can go along for years and never tap into the potential sitting just beneath the surface. There are also difficult issues, both personal and organisational, that affect the environment and culture of a workplace.
The practice of healthy and compassionate naming of these issues has the power to set us on the path towards stronger interconnectedness as a team and greater peace and fulfilment in our lives and work.
Ecclesiastes 8 – an Exegesis: Exploring the limits of personal and political power.
Perhaps there is no text from the Hebrew Bible that better speaks to our world’s current situation more than that of Ecclesiastes. The passage considered in this exegesis (Ecclesiastes 8) dives directly into a critique of the political, the powerful, and the limits of knowledge. For pandemics, protests, misuse of power, and the exposing of frail systems once thought to be sound and secure, the ancient Hebrew book of Ecclesiastes, through its alternative wisdom, exposes the cracks in Divine causality and “this or that” thinking by offering a “third way” of seeing the world.
Red Dirt Nation Podcast
I recently had the opportunity to sit down for a chat with Warren Crank on his new podcast, Red Dirt Nation. Red Dirt Church is a network of what he calls 'Simple Churches' throughout Australia. I loved getting to talk with him for a few minutes.
This was my first time being interviewed on a podcast - So much fun!!
Click to check out the interview.
An Introduction to the Series
What can spiritual life and growth look like in seasons of crisis? How do we pray, or serve, or worship, or grow in moments like COVID-19? This series will seek to respond to these questions by exploring a few time-honoured practices of prayer, worship, and acts of service and love.
The Prayer of Lament
In moments of crisis, we can have reservoirs of emotions, grief, fear, sorrow, and loss sitting unnamed just beneath the surface. The prayer of lament gives us the space to name what needs to be named in the hope that true change can occur in us and in our world. Rather than being seen as a deficiency in our faith, lament, according to the ancient wisdom of the Hebrew people, is rooted in a worldview that the Creator and creation are abundant and good. Lament stands in protest against the systems that bring about chaos in the Creator's good world.
The Welcome Prayer
In the middle of the twentieth century, German American philosopher and theologian, Paul Tillich wrote of what he called, “the three types of anxiety”. He identified these primary anxieties as the anxiety of “fate and death”, “meaninglessness and emptiness”, and “guilt and condemnation”. Tillich argued that while...
The Prayer of Silence
Silence has been said to be "God's first language" and yet, how few have explored the cavernous depths of this ancient and timely practice. Approaching this practice through the writing of words seems both ironic and counterintuitive. Still,...
Spiritual Life with Children
A few days ago, I was working in my study when my seven-year-old daughter came in to talk. I put my arm around her, and we started talking about our day. When she finished telling me about all of her schoolwork (great job by the way, Mum!), I asked her, "Where did you see Jesus today?" Without so much as a second thought, she said, "He was with me on the swings."...
Rainbow Spirit and the Cosmic Christ
The work of Rainbow Spirit Theology attempts to hold to the profound truths of the Christian story while removing it from its imported white-European casing, allowing the Good News of Christ to exist in an entirely Aboriginal form. It unearths a calling and vocation for Aboriginal people through a connection with the land from which they came, and to which they belong. This paper is an attempt to wade into the continuing conversation of much of the Indigenous people of Australia, asking ‘does the good news of Christ limit its truth to certain stories, terminology, or cultural frameworks?’ Also considered is what Paul distinguishes as ‘treasure and vessel’, and how the conflation of the two can bring about spiritual superiority, division, and a blindness to the God-likeness in those who are ‘other’.