One of the birthday constants in my family growing up was Dad writing a poem – usually rhyming couplets, but sometimes a haiku – in each birthday card. I wish I had kept more of them. You can tell families apart by how they celebrate birthdays. What’s important in your household? Must there be presents? […]
Set in 1930s Mississippi, in the year that Cassie realises being black can be a liability, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D Taylor is one of my favourite children’s novels. It’s packed with Mighty people I’d love SBJ to get to know. Cassie is lucky to have been born into one of […]
38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to […]
Michael Pollan advocates abattoirs with glass walls: Sometimes I think that all it would take to clarify our feelings about eating meat, and in the process begin to redeem animal agriculture, would be to simply pass a law requiring all the sheet-metal walls of all the CAFOs, and even the concrete walls of slaughterhouses, to […]
Hands up if you had a favourite teacher. You can read about some of mine in an earlier post in this series, and plenty of yours are celebrated in the comments below the post. A passionate teacher is gold. Gold. Rita Pierson was one, and in this 7-minute TED talk, she rouses her audience of […]
Page Five is almost the same as Page Three, but only one breast at a time is on show. SBJ and I are in this week’s Cook Strait News, along with a bunch of other fabulous breastfeeders, gathered for the Big Latch On. Around the world, 14,536 people were breastfeeding a baby at a registered […]
Here’s a tiny thing I do that helps my marriage, most days of the year. My WordPress and Facebook passwords are based on sentences that remind me of how much I love my husband and our commitment to each other. Some long-lost clever article introduced me to a handy way of making up multiple, ‘strong’ […]
‘It’s always easier to write someone else’s sermon’ is the motto of my preaching group. On a Friday morning, all five of us might be squeezing one word at a time out onto the pages of our own sermons, but when an email comes through asking for a movie clip showing non-conformist children, a song […]
A warm welcome and heartfelt thanks to Stephanie, a Dunedin mother, lawyer and regular commenter here, who is generously telling some of her story of baby loss today. She is available to talk further in the comments, so do feel free to ask questions and share your experiences. I always feel uncomfortable when a stranger […]