The Easter message isn’t just about one religion or suffering. New life has left many old vehicles at the side of the road as the community finds Easter meaning in community service.
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Life in unexpected places is a shared reality and it is that is celebrated at St Matthews at Easter.
We kick-off with the donkeys on Palm Sunday reminding us that we are one community with common hopes and we think about all that needs to be worked on to make our community a more inclusive place.
On Wednesday March 28 at 10.30am we celebrate the message of Easter with our senior citizens. Maundy Thursday in our partnership with Carevan and volunteers celebrates our service to the community in which every person is important and no-one is invisible.
Good Friday speaks about common themes of loss and injustice, disappointment and pain, rejection and isolation. And Easter Day with chicks, a mother alpaca and its baby celebrates the hope that is discovered when many have given up.
The over subscription to the Easter Egg hunt at the Botanical Gardens shows that parents still want a message of real life and hope for their children. Much institutional religion is past its useby date as a vehicle for a message that has broken out of the wrapper restricting it for centuries.
The great community spirit evident in the Relay for Life, marriage equality, concern for refugees, indigenous recognition, hay run, care of the homeless and mental and suicide action demonstrates the sort of hope and surprise of the first Easter a story that has transformed individuals and communities.
The census and responses to marriage equality and the Royal Commission highlight a community that has switched to a digital age while much of the church continues analogue messages of suffering, guilt, obligation and control.
Thanks to all who do so much to surprise neighbours and strangers with acts of kindness and compassion; you might just find the real message of Easter this year in places you don’t expect and you might find it at St Matthews Albury in a welcome that includes the whole community.
Peter MacLeod-Miller, Archdeacon of Albury and the Hume St Matthew's Anglican Church Albury
Paracetamol still an issue
There has been a public out cry around the tightening up of the way codeine-based drugs are dispensed. To put it simply it is a response to codeine-based addiction and sadly deaths that overlaps the three main principles of the National Drug Strategy 2017-26.
The NDS however failed to tackle a bigger issue then the codeine-based drugs. Paracetamol; (stealth drug ) the leading drug in overdoses in both Australia and the UK; some 8000 overdoses annually (conservative) in Australia. Yet we still sell over the counter Paracetamol 20 tabs per box in retail and 100 tabs per box in pharmacies; and bottomless boxes of the same.
The UK tightened up the amount per box implemented a register and dispensed purely at the discretion of the pharmacist. It has resulted in a massive decline in the UK in overdoses, hospital ED presentations and liver transplants.
For the medically inclined the median overdose was 12.5 grams. How much do we value our vulnerable young Australians.