Things that only Grandmothers know

A very long time ago I heard a sermon on Matthew 16.24. “If anyone would be my disciple let him take up his cross and follow me.” The preacher began with the tale of the child who, after listening intently to the Rector’s sermon queried her mother about the Rector’s poor teddy-bear called Gladly who was cross-eyed. More recently I re-read a Jungian writer on spirituality suggesting In his view, “To be mortal means to be limited…

These days people don’t have children simply because that is what happens often when two people of opposite genders sleep together. Children are generally, at least in our society, planned for, therefore desired, their beingness is celebrated even in utero and their entry into the world is the fulfilment of the anticipated joy. This is so different from how it used to be […]

As I have said before, I believe that there is value in understanding our past, the models and motivations that formed where we are now. There were ways of understanding the human situation, interpreting what was necessary and good which have changed so much that only the older generation know that they were ever ‘normal […]

This continues my tribute to a dying breed, a generation of women of sixty odd years ago whose contribution to the world has never been applauded neither has their pain, striving and sacrifice been acknowledged. They are the women who by their ordinary effortful lives facilitated the momentous shifts in human consciousness that allows the […]

For many years I have been aware that my generation, today’s elderly grand-mothers, are an historical curiosity, a kind of bridge generation such as had never been seen before. Our childhood was spent under a firmly patriarchal regime then, when we had barely reached adulthood, everything changed. We found ourselves with one foot in our […]