One of the biggest joys in my life right now is a Facebook group called BRILLIANT + AMAZING + WRITERS + MOTHERS. It is what it says on the tin. We’re all people juggling motherhood with writing, and being brilliant and amazing while we do it. Today I wanted to introduce you to one of […]
Rest like an All Black: take a sabbatical Richie McCaw, the All Black captain some call the best rugby player ever, has a plan for winning the next World Cup. It has included a long holiday from rugby. What a wise and counter-cultural choice. In a society that is not only getting busier, but feeling prouder of […]
A warm welcome to Stacey, who wrote this excellent guest post – thanks so much! Stacey is a meat-eating, raw-milk advocating, pro-vaccine-ing, long-haired, homeschooling, MSc-degree-holding, quilting, left-voting, mystery-novel-loving, arm-chair-permaculturing, chicken-owning, fair-trade-chocolate-eating, hippie-ish Christian mother of 3 (going on 4), who just had fish and chips for dinner and whose children are, (right now as I […]
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, […]
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 […]
On the Thursday night of the first Easter week, an unnamed woman had a dream about Jesus: While Pilate was sitting in the judgment hall, his wife sent him a message: “Have nothing to do with that innocent man, because in a dream last night, I suffered much on account of him.” Matthew 27:19 […]
We’re now in Holy Week, where Lent morphs into Easter. In my house we’ll continue lighting our Lenten candles and saying the sentences about Jesus that go with them, but there are plenty of other special things coming along this week that can take their own place in household spirituality. So here’s a bunch of […]
This is an all-in-one post for Week 6 of our Lent with Kids plan. To fill in some background, start here. You can also see the series index here. Charles Dickens could have been writing about Palm Sunday: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of […]
This is an all-in-one post for Week 5 of our Lent with Kids plan. To fill in some background, start here. You can also see the series index here. Let’s start with a prayer: We give you all thanks and praise, O God, for yours is the power of life that even death cannot hold back. You […]
This is an all-in-one post for Week 4 of our Lent with Kids plan. To fill in some background, start here. You can also see the series index here. The collection of Lectionary texts for the fourth Sunday of Lent includes these three Gospel readings: John 9, where Jesus heals a man who has been blind his […]