How do you define youth? Is it an attitude? An age? A generation?
Often ‘yoof’s’ have a hopeful look in their eye. It’s a wide eyed demeanor, unsullied by disappointment or situations too difficult to easily categorize. Youth is still fresh and tender.
You can spy youth in the little kids who tear around fountains in their undies, tweens awkwardly tripping over themselves while smiling in their braces, the teenager looking scornfully at those who went before and plan how they’re like, totally going to do it differently and those in their twenties start building their new lives on their own on their first solo trips to Ikea.
Less obviously, you can also get a whiff of youth from the Grandma with the cheeky attitude, the Dad who gets down on the floor to play with his kids and when grown ups let their dignity drop for a brief moment to have some fun.
If we can identify and appreciate a young attitude maybe we’ll be able to do what the songs says and stay forever young.
Scott Pilgrim (played by Michael Cera) is a 22 year old slacker living in Toronto and occasionally rocking out in his band ‘Sex Bob-omb’. Scott is dating (in a platonic way) high-schooler Knives Chou while nursing his broken heart – cruelly crushed by Envy Adams, a local girl made good.
His relatively tranquil existence is disturbed by the arrival of the fascinating Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). If Scott wishes to date Ramona he must defeat her seven evil exes. Fortunately Scott is a totally awesome fighter rolls with this unusal proviso in seven utterly over the top fight scenes, complete with ‘KAPOWS!’, demon hipster chicks and K.O.s.
The Uniting Church in South Australia has a new prayer room – the Quiet Space.
As the good folk behind the prayer room thought about how to explain what it means to be the Uniting Church to people outside the church, it became apparent that the UCA is a tad on the word-heavy side. If they wanted to stand out they had to be bold. They had to be different.
The Quiet Space is both these things because it is the UCA’s first online prayer space, created by South Australian digital media company, I Love Biscuits.
Foundational documents are important. The American Declaration of Independence captures the essence of who the young nation was but also who they wanted to be. In times of confusion or turmoil, Americans like to turn back to their beloved document to keep them on the path set out before them by the ‘founders’. The sentence “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” have entered the public consciousness and are the perfect summation of what this new nation stood for. In Melbourne, 9-11 July 2010, the Uniting Church’s own foundational document and it’s theological commitments and responsibilities were explored at a conference reengaging the Basis of Union (BOU), titled: Engaging the Basis: Theological Directions of the Uniting Church in Australia (UCA). Caryn Rogers attended and reports back from the conference.
Caryn Rogers asks what broader purpose is served by South Australia's high incarceration rates.
Prison. We’re brought up believing it’s the place where bad people go. And to some extent that is true. But prison is a lot of things, and not necessarily always what we think, or hope, it is. The actuality of the prison system paints a complex picture, one which is often masked by political, frenzy-mongering rhetoric.
In June, 2010, Tony Abbott looked set to learn a thing or two about the plight of asylum seekers first hand as he, in turn, agreed to teach a former refugee how to surf.
What a political pickle we find ourselves in. We learnt the Prime Minister we once so adored is foul mouthed (rat-%&*#s? really?), overtired and exceptionally cranky and then before we knew it, he was overthrown. The Opposition Leader has asked the voting public not to take anything he says as ‘gospel’, steadfastly refused to don clothing preferring instead to talk endlessly of things he finds ‘confronting’ while splashing about in his budgie smugglers. It’s enough to drive you to vote Green.
There has been a simmering debate about burqa-wearing women in Australia over the last few months, following on from bans in some European countries. The issue has popped up again over the last couple of days because a woman has asked to be able to wear it while giving evidence in court. The question is, what is it about a woman in a veil that is making everyone so hot and bothered?
Scott Pilgrim (played by Michael Cera) is a 22 year old slacker living in 
The Uniting Church in South Australia has a new prayer room – the Quiet Space.
Heather Dowling
Alison Atkinson-Philips
