flashes
-
July 9 – July 15, 2025
True forgiveness doesn’t erase pain—it transforms it. Across these reflections, grace emerges not in triumph but in vulnerability, memory and mercy. Healing comes through presence, not resolution. Reconciliation requires the courage to see with softened hearts and to let love write a new ending.
-
Integrating Catholic and Native beliefs
Leaning behind the altar are twelve cross-shaped fruit-picking poles, fashioned from saguaro ribs. These tools reflect both the harvest and the cross — symbols of physical labour and spiritual connection deeply embedded in O’odham Catholic life.
-
July 2 – July 8
In the heartbreak of wilderness and rejection, God does not turn away—God draws near. The abandoned are seen, the outcast heard. Desolation becomes the soil of promise. Divine love defies human systems, choosing the overlooked and wounded to carry hope. In every forsaken place, grace is already at work.
-
June 25 – July 1, 2025
Peter and Paul reveal that true discipleship is not about flawless beginnings, but faithful endings. Their lives were shaped by failure, refined by grace, and defined by the fruit they bore. Called beyond words, they lived the gospel with integrity, courage, and love that endured to the end.
-
June 18 – June 24, 2025
The Church is a Field Hospital and Christ’s Body and Blood are not rewards for the worthy, but gifts offered through weakness, suffering, and surrender.
-
June 11 – June 17, 2025
In Antioch, discipleship thrives where faith is embodied, not imposed. Rooted in worship and fasting, mission emerges not as strategy, but surrender. Barnabas leads by encouragement, not authority. The Spirit shapes a diverse, praying Church that listens, discerns, and sends—redefining “Christian” as a way of life, not a label.
-
About Flashes
A flash of insight is a comment or analysis piece about an event or point in time that invites readers to process information and maybe ‘think twice’—to stop or disrupt people in their everyday lives. “Life is not simply a bare succession of events, but a history, a story waiting to be told through the…
-
Deacons – the diaconate – women deacons
Dr Phyllis Zagano and Dr Joe Grayland discuss the diaconate and the actual need for deacons and women deacons. When we talk about the diaconate, we’re talking about many, many different things. What good is the diaconate? Why would anybody want to be a deacon, particularly a woman? Why would a woman want to be…
-
Priesthood and power while in the dentist’s chair
Recently recently attended a personal development session in New Zealand designed for diocesan priests, where the person leading the training said that in every relationship, the priest has power over everyone else. Grayland thinks the analysis is a little limiting. “I actually thought it was a little bit clericalist list as well. “But apparently, even…
-
Restorative justice and sexual abuse
This Flashes of Insight conversation looks at the sexual abuse crisis from the perspective of restorative justice. It asks whether the experience for Church ministers is an opportunity for the theology of reconciliation to grow into change? It considers whether restorative justice a matter of putting things back together as they were, as it were…
Get Flashes of Insight
Donate
All services bringing Flashes of Insight are donated.
Significant costs, such as those associated with site hosting, site design, and email delivery, mount up.
Flashes of Insight will shortly look for donations.