Reflections on life and work from Aotearoa New Zealand
If you have been around Christian churches long enough, you will know there is often both subtle and not-so-subtle pressures to conform to a certain understanding of Christianity — whatever that might be in your tradition. There is no small amount of anxiety that one might not be a ‘proper’ Christian, believing the ‘right’ things... Continue Reading →
This is re-post of a piece co-authored with Stephen Healy for The Daily Marinade , first published July 15th 2017. In a post circulating on facebook from 2016, a woman describes her struggle with giving up alcohol in a society that seems to require women to drink to just get through life. Giving up drinking... Continue Reading →
I am about three chapters in to Maria Puig de la Bellacasa's book Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds. In the same way that Richard Rohr seems to express my thoughts before I even am conscious of having them in the area of spiritual practice and belief, Puig de la Bellacasa seems to... Continue Reading →
Another re-blog from The Daily Marinade, a daily devotional I contribute to regularly. This is the time of waiting, the time of not-knowing, the time of awkward looks and sniffles, and 'maybe we got it all wrong'. Jesus - the Messiah - dead and in a tomb. The scriptures don't say much about what happened... Continue Reading →
Many of you will know I am an avid amateur people reader - that is, I often try to work out people's temperaments and sometimes even full blown personality profiles out of interest. What you may not know is that before I discovered systematic personality profiling, I used to keep an imaginary collection of 'beautiful... Continue Reading →
The following is an 'interlude' that will appear between two chapters of my book, provisionally titled: Guarding Life: A Postcapitalist Politics of Hygiene. The excerpt focuses on the presence of an awkward object in the life of one Chinese Christian migrant worker. The awkward object was the controversial American parenting book 'Babywise', which had recently been... Continue Reading →
Well, you know it is a major Christian festival when the academic and social media sites I frequent put out yet another 'expose' of Christianity. I yawned at another article this morning exposing the fact that easter eggs are actually not Christian symbols! Are there any Christians out there that actually do not know this?... Continue Reading →
My life seems to be a juxtaposition of multiple contradictions, which I am constantly trying to reconcile. One such apparent contradiction is my commitments to both Christianity and feminism. Now, feminist theologians will say this isn't necessarily a contradiction, and I tend to agree. But the reality is, in both Christian and feminist circles you... Continue Reading →
Throwntogetherness 