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The Rev'd Professor Sarah Coakley's first volume of  her projected four volume systematic theology is not overly huge, at 388 pages, but it took me a while to read. Professor Coakley's style is accessible, and she uses an intriguingly eclectic range of sources to make her case, but I couldn't rush it: she faced me with such new and such big ideas in every chapter. Recognising that the idea of a systematic theology is itself problematic, particularly to many feminists, in that it seeks to impose reductionist, prescribed system on our conception of the divine, she has set out to construct a Theologie Totale , a drawing together of a number of sources to recast theology not so much within the strictures of rationality but within the surrender which is the basis of her own contemplative practice. She is academically and Biblically rigorous, but manages to talk to a wider audience than the academy.  The book is an extended essay on the Trinity, which she explores from a ...

This week past, Bridget and Scott moved house and I went North for a couple of days to help them. My job was to watch the kids while the boxes of stuff were taken out of the old house and transported about 30 km to the new one. So, Friday I loaded Ada (1) and Noah (3) into the car and took them off for a few hours. It's not the first time I've ever spent an extended period alone with a couple of toddlers, but the last time was thirty something years ago. This time won't be the last, so I'd better get in some training. A surprising amount of time was spent lifting a 12 kg weight and a 22 kg one, not so much dead weight as live, and sometimes willfully opposed weight. And the amount of continuous attention  required made it a very rewarding day for my spiritual development. We went shopping. To Michael 10 - that's the big orange place quite near to Rolleston which has got lots of bits of wood and sticks and stuff. We went to parks. Noah walked along the top of ...