Holding the Light – ecumenical service of lament
Holding the Light is an ecumenical service, welcome to all, to remember victims and survivors of family and domestic violence, with the aim to stand in solidarity with victims and survivors of domestic violence, and to remember those who have been killed as a result of domestic violence in Australia.
Held Sunday 28th November 2021 at 2.30pm and hosted by St Peter’s Eastern Hill Anglican Church (15 Gisborne St, East Melbourne VIC 3002). Nicole Rotaru RSM, who is on Catholic Social Services Victoria’s (CSSV) Council and Domestic Violence Working Group officiated the service with Rev. Denise Liersch, Moderator of the Uniting Church in Australia, Synod of Victoria and Tasmania.
VCC is part of the planning team.
(more photos here)
8 hour day Memorial – 13th March 2022
Pictured above are Church leaders on the 8 Hour Day Memorial steps at Cnr Lygon and Victoria Streets, Carlton include from left: Dr Gordon Preece, Senior Policy Officer, CSSV; Rev Denise Liersch, Moderator of the Victorian and Tasmanian Uniting Churches; Rev Canon Dr Stephen Ames, St Paul’s Cathedral, Mrs Joy Friere (a relative of an original marcher), and Archbishop Philip Friere, Anglican Archbishop of Melbourne. Sponsored by Victorian Council of Churches and Ethos Centre for Christianity & Society.
The 8 Hours Movement in Australia led labour reform and other social justice movements. A stonemasons and building trades strike and march on 21st April 1856 to Parliament House was a great success. The government granted an eight-hour day (with no lost pay). Behind this was a concept of a balanced life of 8 hours of: Labor, Leisure, and Sleep. It recalls how ‘people were not made for the Sabbath but the Sabbath for people’.
People are not made for the economy; the economy is made for people. Why remember? Because such significant social justice events are ‘dangerous memories’ that can re-shape our ‘social imagination’ in more just, humane and liveable ways.
What a balanced life looks like today is up to us. It may include a four-day week or a universal basic income.
(VCC promotes the 8 hours movement)
Palm Sunday Walk for Justice and Freedom for Refugees 2pm, 10th April 2022
Began at State Library of Victoria and then participants walked to the Park Hotel Swanston Street where refugees were held for two years.(VCC is one of the planning team for the event)
