Recently a new retail grocery store opened near my house. As part of the opening celebrations the store offered some significant reductions on the usual prices of everyday items. One of the most popular items, I am told, was half price toilet paper - about a three dollar reduction on the usual price. I understand that individual customers were scrambling over each other for two, four, six, eight and ten packs at a time. Store staff-members were being abused because stock wasn't immediately available on the floor. All of this was happening at a grocery store in the midst of one of Melbourne's (and indeed Australia's) most well-off communities.

On the same day that the grocery store opened, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation showed its gritty television piece about youth homelessness and the struggles of one Salvation Army Officer (The Oasis). After that I found myself thinking that no matter how many coins we throw in the Salvo's plate, we won't address issues of social exclusion whilst mainstream society sees "three dollars off" as an issue worth squabbling over.

I am not trying to be self-righteous here, for I struggle everyday with how to best embody generosity. But I need the help of my community to ensure I keep "three dollars off" in perspective.

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I have found myself in three recent but very different conversations about how Christians connect with others in their community. Each of these has left me a little uneasy. On reflection I realise that in each case I had quite different views from my conversation partners, about how validly we can relate to those not identified as Christian.

The first scenario related to a rural congregation that was "working very hard" to "build community" by connecting with "denomination XYZ" up the road. But despite this hard work the leadership of "denomination XYZ" were uneasy about the relationship. "Why do you persist?" I asked. "We're all on about telling the story of Jesus" they said, "We think ecumenism is important." Meanwhile a couple of other great community development activities going on in the town, were collectively eschewed by the congregation. "They're not specifically Christian" they told me.

The second scenario related to a congregation in an area of rapid population growth in the city. There were myriad opportunities for growing community connections with local groups in creative ways. Yet the main interest of local congregation members for connection was a congregation four suburbs away. This was a congregation of another denomination, that had grown rapidly and now had a "fantastic set of buildings." The clear implication was "let's do what they did."

The third scenario related to a thoughtful and open-minded Christian who I have personally witnessed modelling that thoughtfulness and open-mindedness. Yet in one conversation with him he spoke of his daughter's attempts to find a partner. The hope he had was that the partner would be a "Christian." No mention of "love" or even "respect" - just "Christian" as if that label ensures all the traits of a good partner.

The assumption in these scenarios is that a broad label like "Christian" can be a universal guarantee of an authentic godly connection. Yet as I walk the streets around my home and my workplace I see godliness flourishing in myriad places. Christianity has something special to bring to that reality by pointing to it and making it known. Yet it is not the only way to make it know, and in some of the ways it is practised, it may even make it harder to see god.

Reactions to my last post in various forums have been interesting. Mostly the assumption has been that I was making a point about the English language and approporaite grammar. My metaphor was obviously a little too subtle. Someone who responded to my thoughts made the comment that as god was a name applied to "the being" God it is appropriate to give him/her a capital. They went on to say "what is the big deal?" and "that's an easy one." I offered the following reflection in response:

Your thoughts and question have helped me reflect more on my own thoughts, which - as always - is a gift. Thank you.

Maybe I can use your thoughts, without undermining them in any way, to offer a little more of the backgound to my thoughts.

a) In your comments you refer to 'proper names,''there is God,''out of respect' and 'Him (Her).'
b) The view that these terms reflect (and don't in any way hear me say this is wrong, as that would defeat my argument) is a theistic view of god. It expresses an understanding of god as "a being"  Not "being"  in a broader sense but "a being" as I might look at you, another person, and understand the term "being."
c) Taking that view of god - a personification of god - means that I can give god a name "God" - that that name is a proper noun and that according to the rules of English, should hence be capitalised.
d) Under these views and assumptions, the answer is, as you say "an easy one."
e)....but....
f) I increasingly speak to people who are energised by the mystery behind Christian faith but who seek a broader definition of "being" or think of God beyond any definition of "being" and are reluctant to apply personifications.
g) So this "capital g/small g" thing is not so much a reflection on capitalisation at all as it is a metaphor (a very bad one, I am sure).
h) Hence what I am concerned about is the argument that takes place like this:
"God is a being named God" (the capital G person)
"I am not sure I see it that way" (the small g person)
"But it just is that way. Our faith demands it"
....and so on....
As such we can become definitive about something which is a mystery. Our finger pointing to the moon becomes our moon .....and our field of vision becomes a little shorter.

I wonder what our communities could be like if we thought anew about tradition?

Recently I was involved in a conversation about a website universal resource locator (URL) with the word "god" in it. The discussion was about the convention in URLs to avoid capital letters. It was argued by some present that a reference to god as a Christian notion must be capitalised. But like all words, the use of the word "god" by Christian community is just that community's attempt to represent an entity that it perceives. So under what circumstances should "god" be capitalised?

I imagine capitalisation is a tradition established in English-speaking Christian communities (and communities of some other languages, with their equivalent term for "god") to treat with deference the "transcendent other." That is, "god" is a sense of wholeness that rightly deserves our deference. In this sense the tradition is important. Yet capitalisation is just one human attempt to make meaning. It is one way that humans might try to show deference. And as such it is a human construction. And indeed as a construction it might be meaningful to me as a way to show deference but not to you. So insisting that "god" must be capitalised is like deifying my human construction rather than the notion ("god") to which I am trying to point. It is creating an idol out of a particular word form. It is worshipping an idol in the form of capital G.

Might that be inherently un-humble, un-meek, un-godly in the way Christians really understand "god?"

I was toggling through radio stations as I drove recently and came across the local Christian station. As is often the case with Christian media this station adopts more of a "belief centred" Christian paradigm rather than a "transformative values" paradigm. As I listened a short syndicated program, presented by an Australian "belief paradigm" Christian group, was playing. The program offered a reasonably narrow interpretation of a Markan Gospel reading, a promotion for how the group was "changing lives" around the World and then, as usually seems to be the case with these things, an opportunity to contribute financially to "life changing ministry."

Whilst listening to this was not a particularly comfortable experience for me, there was nothing necessarily out of the ordinary in any of it. The real challenge foe me came next when the representative of the organisation proclaimed that "contributions to our organisation are tax deductible." Now in Australia, unlike some other jurisdictions, donations to specifically religious activities cannot be tax deductible. Knowing a little about donation tax deductibility I am struggling to understand how a quite narrow Christian activity like this could have deductibility applied.

Of course, I am trying to keep my feelings about this in perspective. I'm taking a deep breath and realising it won't make or break anything. Yet my dis-ease at this continues to unfold on two fronts:

• 1) Most organisations, Christian or otherwise, who offer a more holistic spiritual message can't attract tax deductible donations.
• 2) Whilst people can claim a deduction for their donation to this narrowly focussed organisation, the tax impost on others is increased.

More deep breaths Adrian.

When are tax donations for religious donations justified?

I found myself ruminating on this question after listening to the apology to the stolen generation of indigenous children in Australia.

I am certainly not suggesting that the church's lack of spiritual oversight to "the flock" is in the same league as the horror of forced family break-up. But the events of 13 February 2008 raise interesting questions about past acts which lead to future dire consequences.....and whether the simple act of saying sorry may open doors to resolution like nothing else ever will.

The specific dire consequence I am referring to here is a sense of spiritual bankruptcy that seems to exist, certainly in many Uniting Churches if not in most mainline denominational churches in Australia. In these environments we see many wonderful people, often deeply involved in their wider communities, but in no way able to connect their stage-managed, don't-talk-about-it-after-the-service, only-on-Sunday church experience to anything that is going on in their Monday to Saturday living. It's no great surprise of course. Those who study the sociology of the Australian church tell us that most people above fifty have been taught to regard faith as private and their faith experience as something delivered in steady measure by an expert. Some have broken that mould, some are breaking out of it but still many more never will. It's a travesty and although I had no direct part in causing it I am sorry about it.

Those who did cause it, of course, were the councils of the church and the clergy who participated in a limiting, top down approach to spiritual development. Don't get me wrong. This is not a finger pointing exercise. These were the great faithful and the saints of the church who had no idea that their approach would lead us to the place of eventual spiritual poverty.

I once attended a lecture by an eminent, liberal, mainline theologian from the USA. He said something to the effect that we should not disparage old methods of faith development, no matter how flawed they may now seem. His reason was that these were the methods of the church, so somehow God must have been in them. Part of me hoped I misheard him. Part of me thought, "Now I know what liberal, mainline triumphalism looks like."

But part of me wondered whether, broadly interpreted, there was a deeper truth in his words. Maybe, in the way this world works; in the way God works in the world; in a way we may never really understand, we needed to be that sort of church so that we might realise there was another place to go. And maybe saying sorry that we were that sort of church, and we had that sort of affect on people's spiritual lives, may give us permission to let go of that church, and be more at ease in finding that other place.

Recently, driving on a major freeway, I saw a billboard advertisement for a major oil company. Referring to the company's record on climate change issues, the billboard proudly trumpeted "Talk stopped long ago." The implication of course is that this is a company that has:

• stopped the talk (which is by further implication, unproductive)
  
  
• rolled up its metaphorical sleeves and

In our society it seems that talk has got a bad name. And that is not only the case in the heady world of corporate productivity. I've noticed around church spaces too that one often hears, "Oh no. It's going to be another talk fest?"

Is talk the villain we seem to have made it or could it have a very important place in building a new societal reality? Personally I sense that, while much of our talk - superficial talk - will never build something new, a new type of conversation is possible.

Speaking of such conversations, Laura Chasin of the Boston Public Conversations Project said:

"(It) reminds me of something I learned two years ago, when my husband had a terrible accident. He was swimming in a lake and a motorboat ran over him. The propeller cut a gaping gash in his leg. We rushed him to the hospital, but the doctor said that the wound was too large to be sewn up. The only thing we could do was keep the area clean and dry. ‘The two sides of the wound will reach out to each other,' the doctor said. ‘The wound wants to be whole.'

"(These conversations) are like that. The participants and the human system they are part of what want to be whole. Our job as facilitators and leaders is simply to help create a clean, safe space. Then the healing will occur."

The challenge is to create the safe spaces where the conversation can get deep. Or, from a slightly different perspective, spaces where we will risk asking deeper questions. So often conversations are the stuff of "what we think about the coffee and who will win the football game this afternoon" write authors William Avery and Beth Ann Gaede. And conversations in faith communities seem to be no exception to this rule. Scared of the answers we might receive, we stick to the quality of the beverage and the sporting prophecy. But reaching out to create wholeness demands of us that we overcome our fear - that we risk asking "How are you - really?"

Do we dare to ask such a simple question that might take us so much deeper?