Welcome! This is a reworking of an earlier post, from March 2013 (just so I’m not soliciting undue sympathy: I’m fine now!). Being a woman equals being in community. The same might feel true for men (I hope it does), but I can’t write that blog post, being in possession, as I am, of two […]
Nah, don’t worry, I’m not going to launch into a breastfeeding campaign using biblical texts to convince you of anything. I just thought this was a nice point made by someone on the Dulce de Leche blog. Peter writes in his first New Testament letter: Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, […]
We don’t know for sure that Mary was a breastfeeding mother, but it seems a reasonable inference. In a time before formula and modern medical care, she would have had few other options, and if she or someone else hadn’t breastfed Jesus he would almost certainly have died in infancy, from malnourishment or water-borne disease, […]
Breastfeeding is a team sport. One of the delights of breastfeeding a toddler is how our communication about feeding has developed. SBJ has gone from saying ‘Brr!’ to ‘Bee!’ to ‘Feed!’ Now we’re in the land of full-ish sentences, though the syntax is often, shall we say, idiosyncratic. Tonight, here was our conversation: Me: Honey, […]
‘That’s going straight to the blog!’ Miriam predicted as we walked out of the church service on Sunday. We had the lucky experience of hanging out at Archbishop Justin‘s place this weekend, staying with SBJ’s English godfather, who lives in Canterbury. It’s a pretty nice church. Since the first, self-conscious time I breastfed […]
Breastfeeding as a spiritual practice: yes. I appreciated this article by American minister Courtney Belcher Ellis. Like, dare I say, many of us here, before she had her son, Courtney was a high-achieving, overworking professional who found it hard to slow down. There’s nothing like breast-feeding a baby to enforce slowness. Over time, the time […]
Why a ‘sacrament’? The church has long taught that there are certain special moments where God is particularly present in our world. The ritual of baptism, the sharing of a communion meal. Different church traditions have argued about how many there are, but that seems to me to be a nonsensical question. God is particularly […]
‘It’s always easier to write someone else’s sermon’ is the motto of my preaching group. On a Friday morning, all five of us might be squeezing one word at a time out onto the pages of our own sermons, but when an email comes through asking for a movie clip showing non-conformist children, a song […]
Sure, kids don’t belong everywhere. They’re not a symphony orchestra’s target audience (except when they are). The tense whispers of snooker commentators suggest that toddlers wouldn’t be welcome at tournament finals. But babies and children are legally entitled to be all sorts of places that aren’t always built with them in mind, including, say, courthouses […]
A very warm welcome to Lindy Jacomb who is introducing us to her social media project to open our eyes to the many women in the Bible. Whether or not you’re a fan of the Bible, I think you’ll find this worth a read. Huldah. Salome. Junia. Our eyes slip past their names without registering […]