In 2023, Lent begins Wednesday, 22 February We’re spoilt by the church calendar at this time of year! We’ve just had four weeks of candle-lighting at Advent, culminating, in our household, with this delightful moment on Christmas Day: Now we’re coming to the end of the two-week Christmas season, and then it’s only a month […]
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 […]
This is the third in a mini-series looking at how different traditions celebrate Lent. You might like to start with the first post on Old Testament fasting and catch up on the second on Jesus and the Early Church. It wasn’t until I moved to New Plymouth, next door to a lovely Egyptian family, that I […]
This is a mini-series leading up to Lent, which begins in 2014 on March 5. You might like to catch up on the first part, looking at fasting in the Old Testament, before reading this one. In the Old Testament, fasting is usually portrayed as a spontaneous response to what Scot McKnight calls a ‘sacred, […]
No one can be right or wrong about how to celebrate Lent, I realised the other day. Lent is a church tradition, not something instituted by Jesus or the apostles. So we’re all in the same boat, theologically speaking, of needing to figure out how Lenten practices might sensibly and meaningfully connect us to God […]
Indulge me in a little linky celebrating. This is the 200th post on Sacraparental, and I’m sitting in Bristol feeling pretty good about that. Thank you, all. A gaggle of guest writers, a civility of commenters and a quietness of readers (like my collective nouns?) combine to make a welcoming lounge conversation. If you’re a […]
I considered procuring a sackcloth onesie recently. A couple of months ago, SBJ began to add sit-down-in-the-street protests to his repertoire of new behaviours. If he wanted to run off independently in a carpark but was restrained, or, maddeningly, if we wanted him to walk but he wanted to be carried, then all in an […]
I attribute my brilliant and amazing parallel parking skills to all the Lego I played with as a kid. I’m good at reading maps, too. Here’s a step up, though, if you want to encourage not just spatial development, but the kinds of skills in technology and design that lay the groundwork for an engineering […]
Remember Susan Cain? You may have seen her fabulous TED talk that I posted a week or two ago, based on her book, Quiet: the Power of Introverts. The guru on introverts in an extraverted world, she gives ten tips for parenting introverts on her website. For me (an extravert pretending to be an introvert at […]