Martha's Marvellous Munchies

One of the things that characterised 2019 for me was the feeling that I was suddenly hearing from a lot of viewpoints that I'd never heard before.   I realised that most of the people I know are a lot like me, and that other people have a very different way of seeing the world. Put like that, it seems dumb not to have realised that before.  But most of these books have been published in the last 4 years ( Americanah is oldest, from 2013), so maybe, too, these are voices that just wouldn't have been heard, and experiences that wouldn't have been talked about, a decade or more ago. I feel like these books have made me think more about prejudice, identity, and my assumptions about them.  But more than that, they've taken me to new places and helped me to see the world through different eyes.  And that's what books, at their best, are there for. Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging by Afua Hirsch Afua Hirsch was born in the same year as I was, and gre...

January is whizzing by, and Christmas was almost a month ago!  It's far too late to be writing a Christmas post really, but the blog has got cobwebbed and dusty from neglect again, and it's an easy place to start.  So let's go. Carol singing Toby and Theo had an outdoor carol concert at school, in the absolute falling-down rain.  The parents peered out from under a multi-coloured array of umbrellas, the kids sang their hearts out from underneath dripping gazebos, a live donkey and horse made their appearance during Little Donkey , and the teachers did a flash-mob style rendition of Snow is Falling at the end, to much applause.  It was great. Graham joined the church Christmas choir and spent two months booming, "Rise up, shepherd, and follow!" at odd intervals.  We finally got to hear the complete carol on the Sunday before Christmas, which was packed with a nativity service in the morning and two carol services in the afternoon. Lights and other sh...

No one becomes a Christian because they love washing up teacups. Credit: Lisarlena via Wikimedia Commons Not many people become a Christian because of their passion for meetings about church budgets, either, or their desire to lift 50 padded chairs every Sunday morning, or because they have a strong opinion about the colour of the church carpet. And even those of us who enjoy a bit of robust intellectual debate once in a while, didn't become Christians in order to pick apart the finer points of doctrine. If you have become a Christian, and moreover continued to be a Christian, I would hope and suggest that it is for two reasons.  Firstly, because you believed that God had done and is doing something which demanded a response from you.  Secondly, because you found a community that also believed that God had done and is doing something, and invited you to be part of it. And you found yourself washing up teacups. But if it becomes all about the teacups, and even t...

We boarded the plane to Gran Canaria with 2 suitcases, a rucksack apiece, and a few loads of expectation swinging from our shoulders.  It was the first holiday abroad since Toby had started school, and Graham and I were hoping it would be worth the extra hassle and expense.  We were looking forward to seeing a different part of the world, but aware that family holidays are never quite the oasis of rest and relaxation that we still, somehow, found ourselves hoping for.  Meanwhile, the boys had learned the Spanish for ice cream, and were happily chanting, " Helado, helado por favor. " ...and we're off! Perhaps fittingly, the holiday lived up to those mixed feelings.  We had days where we were seriously considering booking an early flight home, and days where we were very glad we'd come.  And of course, we had plenty of helado! The good bits The sea Well, we do like a bit of sea.  Graham went scuba diving, the boys paddled, and I swam and got spl...

A recent report by the UK Methodist Church, entitled God in Love Unites Us , has generated a lot of debate about same-sex marriage in the church.  There are already dozens of articles putting forward the views from each side.  But in such a divisive issue, I felt like it was important to remember what we do agree on. These are six things that I've heard from both sides of the debate.  We may doubt that others believe them.  We may disagree drastically on how to live them out.  But if we can at least assume that everyone believes them, then they may just give us a tiny piece of common ground to build on. We want to be welcoming and loving At their best, churches can be places where everyone feels welcome - where lonely people find a family, the unloved find love, and the outsiders find a community to belong to. At their worst, churches are places where everyone who doesn't live up to our ideals is made to feel excluded, ashamed, and even hated by God. ...

The rest of my eco-Lent flopped badly, I'm afraid.  Life has an annoying way of not stopping so that you can concentrate; in fact, it usually gets busier!  However, saving the environment was always going to take more than 40 days, so at least there is more incentive now to carry on. But for all our failures, and our fears for the future, we still need hope; and for that, there is Easter. And we did manage to do Easter! Here's our decorated mantelpiece: crafts by the boys, banner by me, flowers from the Co-Op and foliage from the garden. I made a Simnel cake (11 marzipan balls for the disciples, omitting Judas), and some 'empty tomb' bread rolls (a marshmallow inside melts in the oven, leaving an empty hole - ta-daa!) On Good Friday we did one of the Cadbury/National Trust Easter egg hunts at Calke Abbey.  It focused on looking for signs of spring rather than following clues, which disappointed Toby ("an egg hunt ought to have proper answer...