MAGAZINE NO. 164 [Dec 2025]

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

EDITORIAL 3
HOPE (LUKE 6. 17–26) by Sarah Bachelard 5
EDEN IN THE CITY by Ross Keating 9
WHERE THERE IS LIFE, NURTURE IT
by Toni Hassan 10
WHEN AN AUSTRALIAN BANJO BREAKS THE ALGORITHM: HOW AN UNLIKELY COVER SONG
REVEALS WHAT WE ARE REALLY SEARCHING FOR
by James Iliffe 12
RINGING THE BELL FOR COP25 by Linda Chapman 17
UNBLOCKING THE HEART by Roland Ashby 19
SACRED STORIES AND WELCOMING EMBRACE
by Kate Scholl 24
SPIRITUAL DIRECTION: BRINGING
TRANSFORMATION TO AN AGE OF SHALLOW
CHANGE by Alison Tye 28
FERGUS McGINLEY’S ‘THE GOD WHO DOESN’T
EXIST’ reviewed by John Foulcher 32
EREMOS INFORMATION AND MEMBERSHIP 35

EDITORIAL

When my wife Jane and I stayed in Paris for six months in 2020-11, we regularly attended vespers at St Gervais-St Protais in the Marais (4th Arrondissement), where we rarely understood much of the service. The ineffable beauty of its services drew us in, and it helped me understand how words can get in the way of God. Even so, we also attended the Episcopalian American Cathedral in the flashy 7th Arrondissement (think the Arc de Triomphe) mainly to get our weekly dose of the English language in a city where our school-level French made the simple act of ordering a cup of coffee a traumatic experience.

Soon after we arrived at the Cathedral, Jane introduced herself as an Anglican priest to the Dean of the Cathedral, who immediately enlisted her to lead services and preach. Then one snowy Sunday night in December, he contacted Jane and asked her if she could consider taking a funeral in Montparnasse Cemetery for a man who was insisting that a woman officiate at his mother’s burial. The Dean tolf us this man (let’s call him Pierre) was convinced that evil had overcome his mother before she died and he had very specific conditions about the way the funeral should go. He was, the Dean informed us, quite a noted photographer. 

Jane agreed, but it all sounded a bit nutty, and we feared this ‘photographer’ may turn out to be a religious extremist. We looked him up online and found that he was, indeed, a very ‘noted’ photographer: he was one of the world’s most famous war photographers. We felt daunted but invited Pierre and his wife for dinner on the night before the funeral, in what proved to be one of the most memorable nights of my life. Pierre was generous and reserved, more interested in what we were doing in Paris than telling us exploits of his own life. Soon we got onto matters of religion and belief, and we found that he was a committed Christian. Then Pierre told us about some of the theatres of war he had photographed, some of the most horrific conflicts of the twentieth century – Rwanda, Kosovo, Northern Ireland.

‘Never let anyone tell you that human being beings are good,’ he told us. ‘When you’ve seen what I’ve seen, you know the evil that lurks in the human soul. Human beings are incapable of goodness.’

‘Why do you believe in God, then?’ I asked tentatively.

He was quiet for a moment. ‘Because,’ he said at last, ‘I’ve also seen acts of selfless love in the face of such brutality, and I don’t know where it comes from. I know it doesn’t come from us, so it must have a source outside us. I think it can only have come from God.’

This really resonated with me. It’s a way of turning the ‘problem of evil’ on its head. You know how the argument goes: if God is all good and all powerful, where does evil come from? Why does God allow it? For Pierre, it was not so much ‘where does evil come from’ (he knew that), but why is there ‘good’, why is there ‘love’, when human nature was not capable of producing it. For Pierre, it was proof enough of a saving force of love that held deep compassion for our broken species. For anyone who has searched the darkness of their own soul, such a proposition has the ring of truth.

*

Love in the face of darkness and injustice seems a theme throughout this issue of EREMOS. Fergus McGinley expresses a foundational variation of Pierre’s beliefs in his ebullient and challenging book, The God who Doesn’t Exist: God in an Evolutionary World, reviewed on page 32, while James Iliffe looks at the transformative power of authenticity and vulnerability in his engaging article, ‘When an Australian Banjo Breaks the Algorithm: How an Unlikely Cover Song Reveals What We Are Searching For’. Alison Tye astutely outlines and explores the essence of spiritual direction in her ‘Spiritual Direction: Bringing Transformation to an Age of Shallow Change’, while Toni Hassan’s sensitive observation of the first buds of her son’s interest in the joys of gardening in ‘Where Life is, Nurture It’ shows a young man growing beyond the vacuousness of modern culture. Linda Chapman and her congregants on the south coast of NSW stand defiant in the face of a warming world in ‘Ringing the Bell for Cop 25’ while Sarah Bachelard and Roland Ashby explore, in different contexts, the place of hope and love in defiance of social and personal pain. 

Where does love come from? In the end, probably all that matters.
 
John Foulcher
Editor