In 2021, Lent begins Wednesday, 17Â February What do you need if you’re interested in Lent this year? Do you want to do some kind of traditional or modern fasting? Do you want to try a new spiritual practice for six weeks, or do a new kind of change-the-world activity? Is there some aspect of Jesus’ […]
Yay! Advent is my favourite season in the church calendar, and it’s almost here! Actually, Lent was pretty cool this year, too, with our superduper Lent with Kids series, but the inspiration for that came from all the fun and surprisingly helpful things we did at home during Advent. So here we are! I […]
As you can tell, I’m really enjoying exploring Lent on the blog this year. To help you navigate the labyrinth of posts coming from different angles, here’s a quick reference guide. Sacraparental Lent for Kids (and adults!) 2014 These are the posts I have written or plan to write, with links to the ones that […]
We’d better start with a couple of Disclaimers, with capital Ds. 1: I write as an enthusiastic student of the art of home organising, not in any way as an accomplished expert. My bedroom floor is Exhibit A. 2: My house is pretty messy, most of the time. But it’s a much more organised messy […]
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 […]
Some of us just don’t get around to clearing out our junk. But most hoarders are shackled to mountains of stuff because of one of two sentences. #1 ‘But it’s bound to come in handy one day!’ #2 ‘But it has a lot of sentimental value…’ If you’ve got the headspace and storage space, I […]
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 […]
My lovely cousin Scott recently visited the grave of my great-great-great-grandfather, the last of my Drysdale ancestors to be buried in Scotland, before his widow and children emigrated to New Zealand in the 19th century. A cousin of my Dad’s had done the sleuthing to find the unmarked grave in the 1970s and wrote […]
It’s the first day of school for lots of people in the Southern Hemisphere this week, if they haven’t already headed back. I am among the hundreds of thousands of people who read and were moved by Glennon Doyle Melton’s yearly talk to her son about what’s important at school: Chase – When I was […]
Richie McCaw, the All Black captain some call the best rugby player ever, has a plan for winning the next World Cup. It involves a long holiday from rugby. What a wise and counter-cultural choice. In a society that is not only getting busier, but feeling prouder of the acceleration, the relentlessness of our activity, rest […]