Oh, the shame! I love the days when my 2.5 year old son gets mistaken for a girl (Yus! No arbitrary gendered fashion advice for us, thanks!), when he plays with a tea-set, or when he says his favourite colour is pink (just the once, and I’ve seen no actual evidence of this, but it’s […]
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, […]
The latest booklovers’ chain-letter going around Facebook seems to be a challenge to list (without too much agonising) your ten most ‘influential’ books. Heavens. To stay in the spirit of the challenge I’ve tried to write this in one sitting, presumably missing a lot of worthy contenders, but hopefully capturing some kind of truth. And […]
It’s not that this ‘health and safety’ advice from Wellington’s Massey University isn’t sensible, it’s just that it is absolutely insane that we live in a world where the solution to rape is female university students being advised to carry a whistle and wear running shoes. University spokesman James Gardiner said … “If students don’t wish […]
You might remember wedding celebrant, community worker and all-round high-quality human being Laura Giddey from this cool post about buying locally-made Christmas presents. We’re lucky to have her back with some reflections on being single. Please make her welcome in the comments below! I’m 26 and single and this has many great perks. I’ve learnt […]
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, […]
A warm welcome to a special guest! Jess Berentson-Shaw lives in on the side of a windswept Wellington hill. Jess has two kids, is a part time researcher and scientist, and runs (and blogs about) her social enterprise called muka kids. Muka kids is her plan to bring about a sustainability revolution in the […]
I loathe and detest it when people call a brave or audacious action ‘ballsy’. Courage doesn’t come from testicles. The human race would be in trouble if it did. A professional colleague said in a meeting recently ‘don’t they say your vision is only as big as your balls?’ Lucky for all the congregations and […]
At the moment in my corner of the church world (I’m a Kiwi Baptist), the number of our 250-odd churches in New Zealand led by a woman (as the sole or senior pastor) is in single figures. Low single figures. It seems likely that by the end of the year there will be only two such churches […]
The story starts here, if you want to read the three posts in order. Here’s the thing: we’re not saying no one should ever wear a bikini, nor that my toddler should never see anyone in one. We’re saying that using women wearing bikinis and prancing (I checked the dictionary definition to be sure that was […]