One gift I love to share

It’s simple really: God loves you. He loves you as you are. And when you know this, can begin to build the best relationship of your life.

Picture: Dylan Ferreira/Unsplash

God loves you, me, and every individual in the whole world. His love is deeper than the ocean and higher than the sky. And when we try to understand God and His whole height and depth, we are out there with the theologians, and the scholars, and the great people. But we don’t have to be.  

God keeps it simple. He loves you

This doesn’t make your life perfect. We still have to go through the ‘mountain-top’ moments and the rotten times when we feel we are lost in darkness.

But we are never alone

And when we develop a relationship with God - through prayer, reading His word and talking with others - then we have the strength to be resilient in our trials. God helps us make sound decisions in the good times, too.

God helps you sort through what is worthwhile and what isn’t

You don’t have to prove yourself to him. You don’t need botox and lasering, you don’t need that great job or a latest model car to impress God.

God wants to walk with you

Pray to him every day, and listen for His answers – that come silently in your heart.

We rush around so much. We’re time-poor and information-overloaded. We don’t have time to think things through. But we gain a stronghold for our lives when we turn to God in prayer.

How do we find God?

Online is good: you can call up the Bible; you can find daily prayers; you can listen to Christian talks and songs.

Of course you can buy a Bible, and lots of good books by Christian writers – as long as you are lucky enough to live in a free democracy.  Not everybody is so fortunate.

In fact, it may be those unfortunate enough to be denied freedom of worship and freedom to buy a Bible who most treasure that gift, that secret and immense knowledge: God loves me.

Join us for coffee and friendship, we especially invite young mums to get in touch through the website or at helen125@ozemail.com.au

'Yes' to respect; 'no' to violance

Today we've seen a victory for respect. Violence against women has received a set-back. That's happened with the just-released news that a campaigner for Real Social Dynamics who was touring in Australia has just had his visa cancelled. Real Social Dynamics promotes the humiliation of women. Its followers are young men with no respect for women.

I was among thousands who signed the Change.org petition calling for the Real Social Dynamics visit to end. Now, its representative's visa has been cancelled.

Respect for others is the basis of a civilised society. When we lose respect for other people we are throwing decency out the window. If we lose our basic values, how can we look in the mirror and face ourselves, respect ourselves?

Human beings have such a capacity for good, for generosity, kindness and being thoughtful for others. Let’s nourish these good characteristics. Let’s be our best selves and show respect, care and thoughtfulness in our relationships.

Thank you Matt Jowett for organising the Change.org petition that has brought about this good result.  

The Suffering Season

In the lead-up to Christmas just past, I signed an online petition asking Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to establish life-saving funding for domestic violence refuges. The petition came to me through Change.org and by then some 7,000 people had also signed it. I know Malcolm Turnbull cares about domestic violence – he said so. But action is needed urgently.

We need more refuges. The writer of the petition I signed said that one in every two women who seek shelter in a refuge is turned away because of lack of space. That is shocking.

Many who have studied the subject know that attempting to leave a violent partner creates escalated danger for the victims. Violent partners want control: they want their woman and children in their power, to do with them as their aggressive mood dictates. To attempt to leave is to risk shocking retribution.

To then be unable to leave because there just isn’t a safe place to go is also shocking. Timely, safe help is an absolute priority in these crisis situations. There’s no use receiving a message to say ‘try again in business hours and you can talk to a counsellor’ if someone is about to bash you for simply picking up your phone! Yet if one in two victims can’t find shelter, then that grim scenario is the reality.

Please Premier (of my state of NSW) Mike Baird; please Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull put additional refuges for victims of violence at the very top of your funding priorities. This is a national emergency, just like the sort of natural disasters we have seen over these past weeks: the bush fires and the floods that have taken lives and destroyed livelihoods.

Domestic violence destroys lives too. Our news coverage has been full of domestic violence tragedies these past few weeks. Women – it nearly always is women, though there are men victims too – suffer physical and psychological abuse. But so do the children, who will suffer the psychological scars probably life-long – and sometimes be killed, as Luke Batty was.

Meanwhile, the perpetrators themselves are victim too, in a way. Violent people not only lack empathy, they are locked out of decent, kind, loving relationships with the people they most need.

The problems of domestic violence are many and complex. But providing safe shelters for women and children fleeing from terrifying situations is surely something we can put at the very top of our priorities list. Please.

My novel ‘Finding Felicity’, which takes an in-depth look at domestic violence and dealing with troubled relationships, will be published early this year.

Simple Summer Salads

These two easy salads are colourful enough to make any simple meal look festive. Plus they take little time to prepare. Each would make an excellent lunch served with takeaway barbecued chicken (or sliced, left-over ham) and some sourdough or olive bread. 

The one thing that does take time is roasting the kumara (see below) in advance; dice it and pop it in a 200 degree oven while you prepare the table, the drinks and other ingredients. Of course, you can increase the listed ingredients to serve extra people.

Melon and Ruby Grapefruit Salad
Serves 2

1 handful fresh green beans

1/3 rock melon
1 ruby grapefruit
½ stalk celery
several slices of red onion

¼ iceberg lettuce
handful radicchio leaves
Dressing
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
¼ teaspoon sugar
tiny drop prepared mustard

Top and tail beans, cut into 2cm lengths; drop into boiling water and cook 2 or 3 minutes until al dente. Drain water from beans; rinse beans in cold water and set aside to cool.
Remove seeds from rockmelon; slice rockmelon into slivers and then into small wedges. Using a sharp knife peel grapefruit, removing all pith; carefully cut into segments, removing membrane between segments. Chop celery crosswise. Cut thin slices of onion.
Arrange lettuce leaves on platter. Scatter over rockmelon, grapefruit, celery, cooled beans, rings of onion and radicchio leaves. Add a light drizzle of dressing just before serving.
Dressing: Combine all ingredients in a screw-top glass jar with lid. Put lid on; shake jar vigorously; dressing is ready to serve. 

Beetroot and Kumara Salad

Serves 2
½ large kumara (sweet potato)
a little cooking oil spray
2 whole cooked beetroots
10g (1/2 packet) feta
½ baby cos lettuce
handful of pine nuts
Balsamic dressing
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
½ teaspoon sugar
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 200°. Peel and dice kumara; place kumara on baking dish lined with baking paper; spray kumara with a little oil. Roast kumara half an hour or until soft. Remove and cool.
Dice beetroot; wash hands, then dice feta. (Beetroot juice on the feta can spoil the look.) 
Arrange lettuce leaves on platter. Scatter over kumara, beetroot, feta and pine nuts. Drizzle with dressing just before serving.
Balsamic dressing: Combine all ingredients in a screw-top glass jar with lid. Put lid on; shake jar vigorously; dressing is ready to serve. 

Domestic violence: we need some circuit breakers

A look at the progress; and what about circuit breakers?

It is very heartening to see domestic violence being taken seriously at last. I thank Rosie Batty, Australian of the Year, for this; and also Sarah Ferguson and the ABC team who produced ‘Hitting Home’ for television. Thank you Rosie; thank you Sarah and all on the ABC team. And thank you to all the other dedicated people working in this cause.

We need domestic violence on the ‘front burner’ of our consciousness. If this many deaths came about from terrorism, we’d declare a national emergency! 

And as long as domestic violence is swept under the rug, we are all prevented from seeing it as a whole-of-society problem. It is; because and it embroils the women victims, their children and the male perpetrators – and nearly all perpetrators are men.

For the women victims, life becomes a nightmare from which all too many never escape. Even those who do escape to make a new life will find that recovery takes a very long time.

Children are also the victims. The home is humanity’s biggest training ground. How tragic if the lessons learned there are fear, insecurity and that violence is a normal response to any of life’s problems. It is not; it should never be. Children from violent families can suffer trauma that lasts a lifetime. And children from violent families are more likely to become the perpetrators of tomorrow. What a poisoned chalice.  

However I ask you to consider, too, that male perpetrators are also victims of a kind. They are men who are locked out of rich and good relationships with women. They are locked out of emotional growth, and they are destroying their own families.

Most of the men I saw on ‘Hitting Home’ appeared to be in denial, refusing to see that what they had done was wrong – as if the break-up of their homes was due to some mysterious whim of their battered partners. Enough of this nonsense: violence is wrong.

So what circuit breakers can we put in place?

Surely one is teaching respect within families. This is where dads can step up and show by example that violence is never right. And respect needs to be on two sides: girls need to respect their fathers and brothers just as much as boys need to respect women and girls.

Then there is recognition: how can a young woman recognise the danger signs from a man? This needs to take place very early, long before a relationship develops and settles into a downward spiral. Such knowledge should be part of public education, perhaps in schools or through selected social media.  

What to watch out for are signs of controlling behaviour. They can be hard to spot. A throw-away remark such as, ‘Why can’t you be like that?’; a sneering, ‘So you reckon you can do that?’, or ‘What would you know?’ may seem innocent enough. But these are designed to undermine the hearer. Taken over time, they can mount into a negative campaign that will sap the confidence of the intended victim and leave her vulnerable to further abuse.

So women, if you meet a man (however charming) who makes controlling remarks, move away very fast. These seemingly incidental signs are the tip of the iceberg, If there are one or two of them, know that there will be more to come; nothing will get better. Indeed things could become very much worse.

My novel ‘Finding Felicity’, due out in 2016, is about a family dealing with domestic violence.

Angkor Wat – an exuberance of creativity in stone

Yes, I’ve been there at last. I’ve joined the throngs of visitors from around the world coming to admire the impressive evidence in stone of Angkor Wat’s ‘golden period’ of temple building. Such expressions of artistic and architectural brilliance are rare in world history. And this is one of them. I’m sure you’ve seen the marvellous photos, just as I had, but I found that actually going there was really awe-inspiring.

The ‘golden period’ of temple building at Angkor – experts date the ‘Angkor period’ from about 802 to 1431 AD – saw a flowering of creative brilliance as, under royal direction, architects, artisans, builders and sculptors created abodes on earth, firstly for the Hindu gods, and later dedicated to Buddha, when the people embraced Mahayana Buddhism. 

Please take my advice and plan to spend some time there. Angkor is really a series of temple complexes over quite a large area of land. I felt sorry for the people who went on one-day visits. That’s really not enough time to take it all in.

I went with my Marisa, my daughter, and her husband, Kovit (see photo left, at the Bayon temple), and we stayed for three days and two nights. We found that about the right amount of time. The nights were spent at the Tara Angkor Hotel in Siem Reap, the modern small city close to the ancient sites. The city is clean, orderly and easy to get about, and you can take the local version of the samlor around town. We even saw a party of visitors going out to a temple in a convoy of samlors.

There are plenty of good hotels in Siem Reap, and more being built. The Tara Angkor had very comfortable, attractive rooms and everything you could want – and more – for breakfast. However, tired after walking and sightseeing on the second day, we paid an after-lunch visit to Raffles hotel to fortify ourselves with tea in their lovely Colonial-style establishment. They served us excellent tea and there were even cucumber sandwiches on their refreshments platter.

For sightseeing in Siem Reap, there’s the bright hurly-burly of Pub Street and the quieter elegance of the small French quarter. We found an excellent bookshop with both Angkor-period and modern history books. The food offerings for lunch and dinner were of uneven quality. But I do have one strong recommendation: dinner at Palate Restaurant & Bar at Lyn Naya (www.lynnaya.com). Every course of our dinner was delicious and meticulously prepared as, our waiter said, their chef has worked for 20 years in a five-star hotel. Very believable claim.

We were lucky to have a wonderful guide in Mr Keo (one of their registered guides) who was very thoughtful and kind, as well as knowledgeable. And having hired our own car was a real bonus, giving us the option of both getting about conveniently and avoiding ‘the rush’ of other visitors (most of the time). Do consider this ‘guide and car’ option. It really is a good investment.

Dr Beat ‘Beatocello’ Richner, a medical ‘saint’ for Cambodia

On Saturday nights in Siem Reap, Cambodia, there’s a cello concert of real note. It’s given by the remarkable Swiss doctor Beat Richner who, over the past 23 years, has performed medical ‘miracles’ to benefit the ordinary people of Cambodia. Over that time, 13 million outpatients have been treated at the Kantha Bopha hospitals he established and runs, and 1.56 million seriously ill children requiring hospitalisation have been cared for.

A considerable amount of the money required has come from government, NGO and other donations. Some has, and does, come from Dr Richner’s Beatocello performances on Saturday nights.

What an inspiring story. Dr Richner first came to Cambodia as a young medico sent by the Swiss Red Cross in 1974/75. That visit came to a swift halt when the Khmer Rouge took over. Dr Richner returned to work in Zurich Children’s Hospital, and he also developed his Beatocello performances as a poetic and musical entertainer.

In 1991, the Cambodian government invited Dr Richner to return to Cambodia to rebuild and manage Kantha Bopha Children’s Hospital. In March 1992, he set up a foundation in Zurich to provide funding for this project and moved to Phnom Penh. The Kantha Bopha Children’s Hospital opened in November 1992.

That was the first one. A second hospital opened in 1995, and today there are five hospitals, including one in Siem Reap, opened as an extension of the Jayavarman VII hospital. The needy of Cambodia – especially children suffering diseases or who have stepped on a landmine – have a wonderful champion and devoted carer in Dr Beat Richner. (It’s tragic to know that there are still unexploded landmines in the country, often in remote fields where children play!)

Much information about Dr Richner and his work is available online and donations can be made via his website www.beat-richner.ch