I had a nightmare recently, where my husband and I were both sent to prison – separate prisons. I don’t remember what we were convicted of or whether we’d done it. I just remember the horror of realising that our punishment was the break-up of our family. How appalling. I did a criminology paper at […]
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 […]
‘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, […]
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 […]
Welcome back to our guest poster Dr Tim Bulkeley, and welcome, readers, to perhaps the most controversial bit of this series (see the debate on today’s subject in the comments on the previous post)! I’ve argued that we need to talk about God as motherly if we are to speak in pictures about God at all, and […]
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. In the previous post I started with an assumption: …[t]he One True God is beyond human understanding. God is […]
Introducing Dr Tim Bulkeley, who taught me everything I know about the Old Testament! Tim has been a social worker in Belfast during ‘The Troubles’, Father Christmas in a department store, pastor of a Baptist church, missionary in darkest Africa, refugee for a couple of days, Bible teacher in universities and seminaries in five countries […]
When I was little, my internal picture of God was nothing like the white-bearded-old-man clichĂ©s. I’d never had any exposure to that idea. If you’d asked my six-year-old self, I’d have said God looks rather like Sam the Eagle from the Muppets. Sort of stern. And definitely male. I could articulate from young adulthood that […]
This is the first in an occasional series on our experience of co-sleeping with our baby (and toddler, as he becomes later on!). You can see the series list here. We didn’t intend to become ‘attachment parents.’ We don’t tick all the boxes, but we could certainly sneak into an AP Christmas party and fit […]
We have a dog addict in the house. One of SBJ’s first words was do’, (sounds like dog but without the g) usually repeated with gusto and accompanied by excited pointing. His favourite moment of our recent holiday in the South Island was meeting this big, fluffy, boisterous white dog at the Kingston Flyer railway […]