They’ll tell you you’re BRILLIANT and AMAZING. They’ll remind you that you made a whole human person out of the thinnest of air out of misted dreams you didn’t know were there out of back-ache and heart-ache and nausea out of oh-so-little sleep This human person, this bag of bones, this snuggly bundle of […]
No one is too young to make the world a better place! Malala Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace Prize when she was only seventeen. She began her public life as an activist for girls’ education in Pakistan when she was just eleven years old, blogging about life under the Taliban. She’s proof that ordinary young people can have genuine influence […]
‘If they’re not being assessed and tested, how will you know if they’re learning?’ ‘What do they do all day?’ Today I’m not meaning to go into why ‘testing’ can be counter-productive to learning (but if that catches your eye, please do read Jolisa Gracewood’s bleak report of US testing terror and read or listen to […]
A little visitor came to our house for the first time recently. This was the conversation between the visitor and my four-year-old son, SBJ: Visitor: Whose bike is that? SBJ: Mine! V: It can’t be yours. It’s pink. Pink is a girl colour. SBJ: No, colours are for everyone. Pink is one of my favourite colours. […]
Parenting is flipping hard work, yes? You’re responsible for, as my friend Jess says, tiny sociopaths. They’re cute, sure, but they have little in the way of empathy, self-control, or social graces. You get no sick leave. You’re operating on so little sleep that serious reading now means clicking ‘see more’ on Facebook. Communities like […]
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 […]
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 […]
This is a reworking of an earlier post that was part of the Generous Lent series, just to make it more widely applicable. Feel free to share it around if you think it’s helpful. A good listener is never short of friends. Some people are naturals at this popular skill, and you might be lucky […]
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 […]