It was great being with an old friend, Jonathan Puddle to discuss the new book and the practice of Companioning. Find all the audio, video and transcript links here: https://jonathanpuddle.com/puddcast/2025/141-what-happened-to-our-elders-with-david-tensen You can...
This may be the strangest opening to a post about the destructive use of generative AI that you have read. I am in the presence of the dead and dying regularly. I work part-time as an aged-care chaplain, providing spiritual care to those in the very last season of...
I don’t know many Christians who can name and number the Ten Commandments. However, when we hear one, most of us know where it comes from. The Ninth Commandment is Do Not Bear False Witness, and research supports that people break this all the time, especially...
A good descent can be just a hard as a climb. We live in an age where the race to the top of careers, status, wealth, success is celebrated, supported and The cost of living in an era depleted of authentic elders is high. Authors including Plotkin, Jenkinson, Wilder,...
Where did the elders go? It’s complex. A perfect century-long storm of wars and progress has transformed ageing in the West into some kind of endless summer for the soul. Now, as we live longer than any generation in history, we’ve inherited a cultural...
Doctoral students are turning towards AI to compete in the academic landscape and complete their PhD degrees (Krumsvik, 2024; Nature, 2025). And why not? Completing a PhD by research can be very stressful and difficult; particularly, the first part. In their...
Before you answer that, consider the following comparative questions: What do I need to do to ensure life after death? vs. What can I accept that is a given reality? How do I need to behave in order to belong? vs. How does always belonging effect my behaviour? Do I...
You will not perfectly possess God. Not in this life of poorly lit pathways. Besides, what would you do if you captured God? You could not tell the world, that would be prideful. You could not sell God, that would be greedy. You could not keep God, that would be...
I don’t know where he got the phrase ‘Boomer Brain’ from, but I do recall the hint of regret in his voice. This late Millennial-aged white guy confessed, “I sometimes think, by my age, and with my income I should have a number of properties to my name… but you know,...
What you (and I) think about God, isn’t God. In other words, what we think about God, or believe about God, or say about God doesn’t determine who or what God is. In the same way, you must know: what I think about you, isn’t you. You are you. Now, of...
just wrapped up an incredible weekend as resident poet at a men’s camp with Centre for Men Australia. The highlight? Running a workshop on eldering and selling advance copies of my upcoming book. The response to this book has been overwhelming, with generous...
This past week a resident died during one of my day shifts. If you work in residential aged care, working among the dead and dying is hardly uncommon. What is rare, however, are deaths (onsite) during the day. Most often, people die at night during the early morning...
Worldwide Stockists: (Please contact me direct for bulk order 5+ pricing. I can ship worldwide direct from the printers.) USA:Kindle ebook USPaperback US (Amazon)Paperback USÂ (B&N)Paperback US (Walmart)Paperback US (Thriftbooks) USA Independant...
I’ll be joining keynote speaker and peace activist, Jarrod McKenna at The Gathering 2025. Please join us! The Gathering is a weekend event for men of all ages run by the Centre for Men and Families Australia. A lot has been said about toxic masculinity and the...
We’re living around 30 years longer than our ancestors did, in the West, just 120 years ago. We haven’t been here before as a species – meaning, living this long, and able-bodied, on average. As I write, in 2025, Australia and other Western countries have fallen into...
This is an audio extract from an interview/converation that I (David) had with Tara boothby on her Youtube channel “Sojourn Psychology With Tara Boothby” The first 17 minutes we talk about the Collective Wisdom Academy and local church, then at around...
My good friend Gary Grant and I have been sitting on an exciting new initiative called The Collective Wisdom Academy for a while. I’m so excited to be inviting you to be part of it. We are partnering with subject matter experts across fields of spirtuality,...
I believe most parents will agree that regardless of how much knowledge and theory they gained before their parenting journey, the praxis, the practicality, the outworking of being a parent was largely developed during the parenting process. We learn by doing because...
In a kind of spoken silence, I sat with Felicia Murrell this week for the podcast. Our chat brought forth something rare in our noisy age – the sacred art of listening. Felicia shared how she found her strength in being unseen, reading books in quiet corners....
The elders have left the village, and we hardly noticed their departure. This exodus wasn’t marked by ceremony or collective grief—it happened gradually, invisibly, as the perfect century-long storm of wars and progress transformed the landscape of ageing in the...
