My favourite lunchbox treat as a little girl was my Mum’s chocolate slice. I’ve re-discovered it here, partly because I miss chocolate, and partly because coconut is so cheap and readily available. Our house mama grates it for me straight out of the shell because Arthur banned me from using […]
Motherhood as Spiritual Practice is the second in Seedbed‘s ‘Spirituality for the Streets’ series. This short collection of reflections took me less than an hour to read and I take it that’s intentional – it’s aimed at the busy mum. The premise of the book is that on top of […]
Recently I blogged on how language is about rhythm and flow, not just words and grammar. Another aspect of language learning, and one which seems so distant at the moment, is expression and nuance. When someone raises their voice, are they angry or excited? Sometimes it’s hard to tell. We […]
In the previous two posts, I’ve raised some issues to do with dependence. In an attempt to avoid fostering dependence, we may too easily become task focused, treating people as projects rather than, well, people. But avoiding dependence is motivated by recognising the full dignity of other believers. So where […]
Australia has such a rich variety of cuisine and we especially miss the fresh Asian foods, so I undertook to learn how to make my own Chinese noodles. As it turns out, it is super easy and ‘egg noodles’ contain no egg! They get their yellow colour from a chemical […]
Yesterday, I observed that the opposite of dependence is not isolation but having something to offer. In our case, that means recognising that national church leaders are often far more effective in mission and ministry in their national context than missionaries. (We are expensive, for a start, and often have […]
The question of dependence is a critical one for engaging in any sort of cross-cultural partnership. In the nineteenth century, CMS’s Henry Venn came up with three marks of a mature church: self-supporting, self-propagating and self-governing. Though he planted churches in west Africa, he believed that autonomy was key to treating […]
Meet Jesus at uni 