Reflections from the belly
Today we marked an early All Saints/All Souls, giving thanks for those who have gone before us, sharing stories about them, and naming some losses almost too painful to bear – including miscarried and stillborn children.
Loving God, we bring to you those
truly unacclaimed by earthly powers,
yet whose lives have indeed hallowed ours:
those who died in the womb;
those who died during birth. Continue reading “A prayer for miscarried and stillborn children”
Small ghosts trail behind so many families, invisible to the naked eye or the quick hello.
Rena bustles around her son’s birthday party, passing food and welcoming guests. During a lull, we chat. ‘Did you ever think of having another child?’ I ask. ‘Oh, we did,’ she says, voice suddenly rough, ‘but he died. He was eight weeks old. He got an infection, it entered his heart, and he died.’ I place my hand on her shoulder; there are no words. Continue reading “Saints | Small ghosts, and how we remember them”
It’s been another Sunday with a few, but not many, kids; since COVID, most Sundays have been like that. Like so many churches around the world, over the last fifteen months the number of children and families attending services has collapsed. We’ve struggled to hold kids through a long year of Zoom; and now that we are meeting in person each fortnight, families are out of the habit of piling into the car and coming to church. And there are other obstacles. Once, a kid with a sniffle would still come; now, a kid with a sniffle means a family stays home. Continue reading “Will our kids have faith?”
So kids are back at school and yet at home; and parents are at work and yet at home. Parents are now expected to supervise and support their children as they learn online, even while doing their own work – which in itself has become more challenging due to all the changes. Any plans we might have had for juggling work and kids through the school holidays are now being extended indefinitely by the COVID-19 shutdown; while for others, work has suddenly dried up. And so, one way or another, stress levels are heading through the roof. Continue reading “Like the child who bursts into a Zoom call”
To suggest victims of family violence should ‘turn the other cheek’ is a toxic distortion of Jesus’ teaching. A look at the context of these words, and how they are an invitation to challenge all forms of violence and control, including within the family. (Listen.)
It has been a terrible week. Those of us who keep an eye on the news know that, yet again, a family has been destroyed by violence. Hannah Clarke and her children are only the most recent victims of a culture which infects our nation. For while this event is at the extreme end, family violence is very common. Some of us have been personally scarred by family violence; many of us work with victim-survivors of family violence; and most of us have friends and loved ones for whom family violence is a lived experience. Continue reading “Matthew | It’s about family violence, but not as you might think”
Hell is the location of human violence, not God’s; “indeed, it did not even enter my mind.” (Jeremiah 7:31) (Listen.)
Some of us grew up with threats of hell, that burning lake of fire and brimstone into which the sinful will be cast at death to their everlasting fiery torment. Given how regularly hell comes up in many a church’s preaching and in popular culture, and given how graphically it is described, you might wonder why I never mention it. Am I avoiding all the nasty bits of the Bible? Well, no—but I think it’s time we had that little chat: we need to talk about hell. Continue reading “Matthew | We need to talk about hell”
Do you know the child who spends every service lolling on the floor, or chatting quietly to herself at the dolls house, or snipping paper into a thousand little triangles? The child who rarely speaks, never sings and shakes her head violently when invited to participate? The child whose back is to the congregation and who seems oblivious to everything that goes on around her? Continue reading “Brahminy’s prayer, and tips for welcoming children”
Welcome children! That’s the directive for Day 35 of Lent, this Monday just gone. The phrase of course assumes that ‘we’ are adults, and ‘children’ are the ones ‘we’ need to welcome. But as the fifteen-year-old who wrote a reflection on the passage pointed out, the children who participate at Sanctuary “will continue to learn and see church as something for them, not for their parents and elders.” (Read the rest of her reflection here). Continue reading “Church | Children welcoming children”
Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you.
You are gentle with us as a mother with her children.
Often you weep over our sins and our pride;
you tenderly draw us from hatred and judgement;
you comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds;
you nurse us in sickness and feed us with pure milk. Continue reading “Mothering Jesus”
Listen here.
Here we are, forty-one days after the hype of Christmas and just beginning another year at kinder or school. We are a group of lovely ordinary people with lots of children among us, and we are gathered tonight to worship God and receive a blessing, just as, two thousand years ago, like every other ordinary Jewish family, Mary and Joseph went to the Temple forty days after their firstborn son’s birth to worship God and receive a blessing. Continue reading “Luke | Seeing through God’s eyes takes practice”
Alison and the whale 