A friend in college cooed over every stopped stroller. A group of women bemoaned the gender ratio overseas and researched freezing their eggs. I rolled my eyes at their talk of biological clocks. It sounded like they wanted to use a man to get what they really wanted: a baby.
My mother and I were recently talking about what our family plans to eat for Christmas dinner. We choose a different theme every year, and my mom isn’t thrilled about this year’s dinner theme, but she’s willing to go along. My mother also has a rather dry sense of humor, and when I said we could suggest a change, she quipped, “But they don’t care what I want. . . . You know women of a certain age are invisible.”
Editor’s Note: This is one of the Top 15 2020 CBE Writing Contest winners. Enjoy!
Editor’s Note: This is one of the Top 15 2020 CBE Writing Contest winners.
[Trigger warning: sexual harassment, spiritual abuse]
Editor’s Note: This is one of the Top 15 2020 CBE Writing Contest winners. Enjoy!
Editor’s Note: This is one of the Top 15 2020 CBE Writing Contest winners.
[Trigger warning: themes related to verbal and spiritual abuse]
Holiday engagement season is upon us and although the pandemic may have postponed or altered some couples’ plans to marry, others are still making plans to tie the knot soon. Previously I wrote a guide to egalitarian engagements and weddings, but I left out one big question many egalitarian couples face: how to navigate deciding whether to change last names.
I remember the first and, incidentally, the last time I saw my grandfather cry.
I remember it the way a teen remembers their first kiss or their first day of school. I remember it like a couple remembers their first dance or their first date. I remember it the way the country remembers when Neil Armstrong first stepped foot on the moon.
I remember it vividly because it was everything to me.
On the eve of the US election, how many of us laid in bed awaiting results with knots in our stomachs? Who among us can hide our concerns for the future as significant differences divide our country and also the church? We have articulate and passionate spokespersons (but not necessarily saints) on every side. Their rhetoric too often feeds presumption, misrepresentation, and algorithms instead of holiness. Who has not prayed for leaders who depolarize, unite, and heal around a deep identity and purpose?
Editor’s note: This is one of the Top 15 2020 CBE Writing Contest winners. Enjoy!
When I was very young, I once heard adults talking about a couple who had left a church because they felt that the church was no longer being faithful to the Bible. The only detail I remember about the supposedly unfaithful church was this comment, made in a shocked and disdainful tone of voice: “They were calling God ‘Mother’!”