thought for tonight

Fred Phelps - pastor of westboro baptist in Kansas America... delluded, preaching a message of hate which has absolutley nothing in common with the message of Jesus Christ.

Sadly the message of Fred Phelps will be what some equate with Christianity.

how offenisve that is to me.

How offensive that must be to God.

Can you believe it...

In the past two weeks New Zealanders have been sickened to hear the abuse and torture endured by 3yr old Nia Glassie. Used as a wrestling toy, tied to the clothesline and spun till she flew off, placed in a tumble drier and other awful things at the hands of her extended family. My own tears streamed as I watched and listened to the news reports. Her broken body gave up on Friday just gone when she died in Aucklands Starship hospital.

Lobby groups For the Sake of Our Children and Family First organised a 3min silent protest today at 12:12pm (read about it here...) Family First spokesman Bob McCoskrie said the three minutes represented "the three short years" of Nia's life, and the time mirrored the 12 children who died from child abuse each year in New Zealand.

...But Awa said engaging in korero (talk) and singing songs was a more appropriate approach. "The silence proposed by a coalition of non-Maori organisations is counter-productive," Mr Tautoko said. Awa is advocating "whanau-based solutions" to violence in Maori communities and said people who made noise would send a clearer message of support to those communities. "We have had many non-Maori broadcasting what they think is wrong with Maori people and whanau in the last week," Mr Tautoko said.

"While we appreciate their concern, non-Maori need to recognise the following fundamentals: this is not a Maori problem, so much as it is a colonisation problem, and Maori communities must lead the development of solutions."

quote taken from NZ Herald (same article as above link) 8/8/07

I shook my head and rolled my eyes at Awa's response. Get it together - your both trying to highlight the same issue! Silence or noise - be united! Its not a fight of Maori vs non-Maori anti abuse groups - Its a fight against child abuse in the interests of saving more of our children from suffering such abuse as Nia endured. Its not only Maori children who suffer child abuse.

Sigh

please pray for Willow's family

Reuben went to work on Monday morning to hear news that the grand daughter of his big boss was killed on Sunday.

Willow turned three in December. On Sunday, Willow, went to visit her grandparents house along with her 7-yr and baby siblings. Her dad got out of the car to check if they were home which they weren't. Without his knowledge, Willow got out of the car and walked around behind it. He then got back in the car and without realising she wasn't there reversed the car, running her over.

Willow died at the scene.

please pray for her dad who not only has lost his baby girl, but will forever live with the knowledge of what happened 2 days ago.

please pray for her mum and the indescribable pain she must be experiencing.

please pray for their marriage...

please pray for her siblings, especially Willow's 7-yr old sister who has told her parents it is her fault beacuse she didn't tell daddy that Willow had gotten out of the car.

please pray for Willow as (I believe) she is in the arms of the Father as I write this.

I never met Willow, or her parents, or any of her family, but I continue to cry for her yesterday and today.

And so I just ask you to pray.

advocating for homebirth

interesting article in the NZ herald today about Britian urging mothers-to-be to give birth at home. Caught my eye...

midwives & the media

Have been thinking about the way midwives are getting trashed in the media at the moment in NZ. I was pretty frustrated after watching 60 minutes on TV3 last monday at the biased & factually incorrect information that was being relayed to mr & ms general public. They had two tragic cases of babies who had died during childbirth and whom had midwives as their LMC's (that's lead maternity carers). 60mins angle was that midwifery care is insufficient, unsafe and that women should be birthing in hospitals with obstetricians (that's baby/mum doctors) running the show. Sad how the tragic, isolated cases call into question the whole system. I guess it is the longing to be able to place blame at the foot of someone or something. Completely understandable although possibly misguided. Just as my experience shouldn't dictate how others should choose to birth, neither should theirs. The program talked about how by medicalising birth (think early 20th century) they made it so much safer for women and how perhaps we should revisit doctors having control over pregnancy, labour and birth. (see note at the bottom...)

During my first pregnancy, i did a whole lot of reading about labour etc trying to get myself prepared. (check out http://www.homebirth.org.uk/) What I found is a whole lot of evidence that giving birth in hospital is not necessarily safer (for someone sho has a normal healthy pregnancy) and can actually be less safe than birthing at home! (yes I know, heresy isn't it!) We (me and Reuben) meet our midwife Rhonda when we were 24wks pregnant (had to dump the first one as it just wasn't working, but that's another story). As the weeks passed and we got to know her, we become more and more confident in her ability to care for us as a family and most importantly to ensure a healthy baby & mummy at the end of it all. She gave me confidence in my ability to do what billions of women before me have done.

And yes, we did it - twice now! Without the need for doctors, drugs & sterile rooms. So here's to midwives, who work long unreliable hours, who are on call 24/7 and who on the whole do an amazing job.

note... when we started telling people we were considering home birth, naturally we had significant numbers of less than favourable opinions handed to us, including from my mother and grandmother. not that suprising given their birth experiences. Both experienced highly medicalised births. My mums 5 deliveries (1970's & 80's) including high forceps x 2, caesareans x 2, epidurals, inductions, being shaved, enemas etc, nice... My Grandmas 3 births (1950's) under general anaesthetic (one can only imagine how they got those babies out!). The funny thing was when Grandma realised that her mother (my gt grandma) who gave birth in the 1920's had two successful births at... home - with a midwife! oh how things come about...

Time to start...

Well, everybody seems to be doing it, so here I am. here i go, my first blog... who really knows how long i will keep it up. amongst, washing, dishes, nappies and everything else i do, keeping this may just be the distraction i need (or time waster!)

My first thoughts are to get out my real thoughts about a discussion Frank Ritchie held in the green room on Life FM a couple of sundays ago. I rang in and this is something I normally just don't do. The fact that I didn't get my thoughts out coherently has been bugging me, so I guess this is as good a forum as any.

The topic was abortion. Being a Christian radio station and all, the majority of callers voiced the view that abortion is wrong and that it ends the life of a little human that God has created. Lots of people coined the term murder. I myself have always been a black and white kind of person, and in essence agree with what they were saying. To me that is the truth. Those callers were calling it exactly as they (and I) see it. I truly believe that Jesus wouldn't want any one of those babies to die in that manner. I also believe Jesus wouldn't want any woman to suffer through the trauma of having an abortion.

The problem I have with their hardline, hardnosed attitude is as follows...

Being a Christian, I want to become more and more like Jesus Christ. I want to emulate him, be like him. As much as Jesus was full of truth (In fact he is the truth), he was also full of grace. The woman who has been raped, falls pregnant and has an abortion, the woman in difficult circumstances who feels that she has no other option, I can't see the Jesus I know turning his back on them. In fact he would be the one to offer grace and love (with the truth) when the "religious" people turned their backs.

Grace... thats underserved favour and acceptance...

We live constantly with the consequences of our actions. Women and their families need the grace that Jesus Christ offers (whether post-abortion or not), and who better to offer it than those of us who know Gods grace already. So perhaps Christians who are full of truth and like to share that truth around (with much sensitivity... not!) need to think about becoming a little more "full of grace"...

So hows that for a first... very cathartic!

now off to lunch and some Dr Phil on TV before my beautiful babies are once again awake!