The Transit Lounge

Since the events of September 11 and the Iraq war, we have been fearful. But our fear is nothing new; Australia has a fairly long history of being suspicious of and unwelcoming to the stranger. Think of the White Australia policy and the Dictation Test of last century. We explore our fears in this edition.

This edition is about community. More specifically, it's about what attracts us to a group or groups and how we define ourselves by the company that we keep. What is your experience of community? Who do you choose to take on life's journey?

Australia is the lucky country. In recent years we've experienced a boom in the resources market. And yet there remain significant numbers of people living below the poverty line. How, then, do we measure our wealth - both on a domestic level and in the international arena?

Confession is a core spiritual discipline of Christianity. But it is also an accepted social practice; we confess through therapy and counselling, through meditation and prayer, through conversations with friends. This edition of The Transit Lounge explores the many means of confessing (and confronting) our true selves.

Welcome to the first edition of The Transit Lounge, a new e-zine designed for you to explore issues of faith, spirituality, Christianity and social justice. In this issue we look at what it means to get back to basics, away from the materialism of the modern world.