Faith, family, and the home

Mother Guilt and the Dissolution of Standards

June 01, 2017

Mothering in the current epoch feels a lot like making your way along a narrow ledge with the sheer face of a cliff on the one hand and a steep precipice on the other. The cliff is our society’s obsession with risk-elimination and man’s scientific self-perfection; far from the threat of war and subsistence living, we’re free to obsess about minute chemicals, self-esteem and self-actualization. We’ll secure a perfect future for our child (and thus all of humanity) through perfect parenting. The scramble up the side is the impossible hubris of the tower of Babel.

spring

May 11, 2017

Blessed Eastertide! What a glorious, springy Easter we had this year! It reminded me of photos we took when I was a child, in our Easter dresses by the daffodils and crocuses in our front yard. I grew up in a church that didn't make much of Easter, but since becoming an Anglican it's become more and more meaningful to me every year. Everyone always seems to be trying to find new ways to experience things like Easter in a meaningful way, but we don't need to reinvent the wheel. The work has already been done for us; it's all there in the liturgy and the church calendar, the great tradition of two millennia of faith. We just need to step into the river and get caught in the current.

sickness, weather, lenten quietude

March 24, 2017

In February, an awful cold virus was going around and took us all out one by one (perhaps it was going around where you live, too? The one with the residual cough that lasted for like three or four weeks). Ephraim had it the worst, making my gradual night-weaning attempts fly out the window (hello all night nursing sessions!) Poor baby.

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