Sophia Network

Fabulous 40 for Lent from Claire Alcock

Claire is a curate in Oxfordshire and during Lent she is blogging each day about a faithful female from the Bible. She says: 'Here's a challenge - can you name 40 faithful females from the bible? On the first attempt without looking anything up I ground to a halt at 29....Come on ladies, there must be more of you! Eventually I came up with a FABULOUS 40 - one for each day of Lent. So here goes...', and kicks off the series with Eve. You can follow her posts on her blog here: www.parttimepriest.blogspot.com

I've added Claire's blog to members' blog role here. Browsing through these blogs is a great way to get to know other women, and I'm sure we're missing quite a few. So if you're a member of the Sophia Network and write a blog, leave details in the comments below and I'll add you to our blog roll.

words of wisdom - have a read

I'm off to Spring Harvest later this week to lead the creative Bible readings at Minehead week 2, so my focus has been on preparing for that rather than updating this blog - apologies. But thankfuly there's plenty of wisdom and good writing about, so I wanted to point you towards three excellent blog posts:

• Jody Stowell writes about YHWH as Mother on her blog, saying 'I have to say that i've never really found the concept of God as Mother particularly inspiring', but then explaining how her perspective has changed.
• Ruth Wells does a fantastic response to David Willett's view that feminists are to blame for a lack of social mobility. She says, 'I must admit reading his comments I have been convicted of my own heinous crimes in seeking an education, securing work, hoping to be a positive influence within my community and bringing up my children in partnership with my husband.  I now know that the young people I meet who are faced with a continued bleak future without work, debilitated by lack of prospects and left feeling hopeless, are in that position because I am a feminist.'
• And then Dave Westlake shares his thoughts on bathrooms and childcare, after being praised for looking after his own children and cleaning his own home. He says, 'We certainly need to do much better at gender equality in the workplace. The casual put downs, exclusions and need to perform better that many women still face is a sin and calls for repentance. But maybe as men we also need to take seriously the other side of the creation mandate. Men and women were together called to family and work. Maybe part of the key for women taking up their full authority in the workplace is for men to take up their full responsibility at home.'