The disclaimers and hedges can wait. I just feel like saying how much I like my job as SBJ’s mama. Here are six things I love about my job. 1. He loves me It’s really nice to work for someone who likes having you around. There’s nothing quite like hearing a heartfelt ‘Mama!’ from another […]
Many thanks to Dr Tim Bulkeley who today wraps up his series based on his book, Not Only A Father, looking at gendered language for God. For more on Tim’s background, see the first post. Theology is only real when we live it. So chapter 6 of Not Only a Father tries to suggest ways we can […]
‘The short answer to how to raise a child in the faith is to live it out openly in front of them.’ By popular demand, today Rod Robson opens a new series of insights from parents on how to present God to our kids. Rod is a Baptist minister (and was my youth pastor!) in Christchurch, […]
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 […]
It is a legal right in New Zealand for all children to have free education that meets their needs. This includes the right to ‘special education’ for people under 21 years old who need extra support, or something different from the usual classroom teaching. The vision statement of the Ministry of Education, in relation to […]
She’s a Mighty Girl and Mighty Commenter and Alex is also one of the patron saints of music for SBJ. She very kindly put together a couple of compilations of songs for his christening in England last year, and they’ve been on high rotate in our house (though SBJ has now learned how to turn […]
I came across two good news stories today, and I thought I would share them, to balance out all the bad news that slurries around. Here are two people to be inspired by. I read today about Mighty Girl Tiana, who saved the lives of three babies in a house-fire last night: A 12-year-old bundled […]
A warm welcome back to Dr Tim Bulkeley who is posting this series based on his book, Not Only A Father, looking at gendered language for God. For more on Tim’s background, see the first post. Speaking the unspeakable: mother-language before the reformation People I talk with about using motherly language and pictures to talk about God […]
‘The Second Shift’ has persisted through the several decades that women have been working outside the home in large numbers. It’s the name authors Arlie Russell Hochschild and Anne Machung gave to the phenomenon of working women coming home and doing another whole shift of house-based work. Also known as the double burden, the problem […]
I first encountered Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty a few years ago with this striking video showing the (tenuous) relationship between a billboard photo of a woman and her face without the hours of work on her and her photograph. The neck-stretching is particularly astonishing. Dove’s recent addition to this series is doing the rounds […]