I’m single. I live in Sydney’s east with my two flatmates and my cat. (The crazy-cat-lady litmus test is that you know you’ve become one and you don’t care.) I’m in my late thirties. Many of the struggles that surround singleness are my struggles too: tossing up between living on my own (and being lonely and possibly broke) or living with flatmates (and regularly having to find and get used to new ones); turning up to things on my own all the time; feeling the unvoiced wonderings of friends, who think I’m too fussy, or gay, or weird; feeling surprised and disappointed that I’m not married by now, and wondering what’s wrong with me. I tire of all of those things. (more…)
Archives: emma-thornett
Child-bearing for the uninitiated
Resource Talk
Last time I wrote something for this column, I wrote about a book that deals with problems and questions I face in my own life (God’s Good Design). This time I’m writing about a book that’s not really for me. In Fearfully and Wonderfully Made: Ethics and the beginning of human life, Dr Megan Best writes about the stuff that married (or about-to-get married) people need to know—things like contraception, pregnancy, infertility and IVF. She wrote the book “in response to many requests from Christians who are struggling to find the information they need to think clearly about the morality of reproductive technology” (p. 9). I’m not married and I have no children. I’m hardly the target audience for this book, yet it fascinated me. (more…)
Worth the wait
Resource Talk
Should I decline to co-lead a Bible study if there are men in the group? Should I cover my head (and if so, would an old towel do)? Should I keep silent during the public question time in church at the end of the Bible talk? To whom am I to submit, since I don’t have a husband—to all men? In everything? (more…)
The Travel Bug
Interchange, Life
Emma Thornett’s short piece on the pleasures and pitfalls of travel generated much discussion about how, whether and why Christians travel. Read responses from
The trouble with travel
Life
I’ve just spent a few weeks travelling and I’ve made a discovery: travelling and church-going don’t mix well. I found that it involved about 45,000 times more effort on my part to go to any church … let alone a church with good teaching! It wasn’t just a problem with my own motivation, either, or the distractions around me. I stayed with people who don’t go to church. I found it physically difficult to get around in some cities. There were obstacles at every turn.