Hi readers! Happy Saturday. We hope that you’re having a great weekend. Lindsey has had an awesome week getting into the full swing of things at the new job. We’re looking forward to spending a long weekend together. Today, we have plans to visit some of the critters at a nearby wildlife center.
Here’s our new Saturday Symposium question:
How this works: It’s very simple. We ask a multi-part question related to a topic we’ve blogged about during the past week or are considering blogging about in the near future, and you, our readers, share your responses in the comments section. Feel free to be open, reflective, and vulnerable…and to challenge us. But as always, be mindful of the comment policy that ends each of our posts. Usually, we respond fairly quickly to each comment, but in order to give you time to think, come back, add more later if you want, and discuss with other readers, we will wait until after Monday to respond to comments on Saturday Symposium questions.
This week’s Saturday Symposium question: As we reviewed our archives, we noted that we have been talking about a lot of LGBT topics in recent weeks. Some people have given us feedback that they wish we were talking more about celibacy and vocation. We do our best to give our readers input on the posts we write and would love to hear your thoughts: What questions do you have about celibacy and vocation? Have you been inspired by the example of a particular celibate person? Do you have questions you have wanted to ask us about celibate partnership?
We look forward to reading your responses. If you’re concerned about having your comment publicly associated with your name, please consider using the Contact Us page to submit your comment. We can post it under a pseudonym (i.e. John says, “your comment”) or summarize your comment in our own words (i.e. One person observed…). Participating in this kind of public dialogue can be risky, and we want to do what we can to protect you even if that means we preserve your anonymity. Have a wonderful weekend!
Blessings,
Sarah and Lindsey
Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.
Dear Sarah and Lindsey,
I would very much like for you to write either a post or at least a comment on any thoughts you may have on the PBS/BBC TV show ‘Call the Midwife’. It’s about lay nurse-midwives
working with and living with nun-midwives in an Anglican convent in the East End of London in the 1950’s. The East End was just one big slum. They deliver babies in slum-tenements, in cramped, filthy conditions.
One patient already had 24 children and was expecting a 25th.
One patient had syphilis while pregnant, and also had an older baby who peed on chairs
and floors because they didn’t have either diapers or pants for him.
One nurse delivered babies in prison for just a few days and came home with lice.
One patient had pelvic deformity because of having rickets as a child (malnutrition).
She could not have a baby without surgery.
Many people didn’t have enough food for the children. That’s why so many people had rickets.
They also cared for elderly patients in the area. Some elderly men still had ulcerating wounds from years-ago wars. Some elderly people were emotionally damaged or even insane from having been forced to live for many years (in the past) in the Workhouse.
And it’s a true story. Or at least mostly true, based on the memoirs of Jennifer Lee Worth.
She wrote books titled ‘Call the Midwife’, and ‘Shadows of the Workhouse’, plus at least
two other books.
And the workhouses were real, as described by Charles Dickens. Apparently they were
functioning until at least 1935.
The nurses worked long hours, sometimes all night, delivering babies. And as the narrator says ‘No matter what, the nuns always rose at 4:30 am for morning prayer, sung in Gregorian chant.’
The nurses mostly make house calls. They must ride bicycles up to 10 miles a day to do so. They had no cars or motorcycles.
This really seems to be an example of extreme Radical Hospitality. Okay, that’s probably
a redundancy.
It does seem to be a clear example of a vocation.
Well, I just really like this show. Have you seen it? I invite any of your readers to comment on this. I would really like to have a conversation about some of this with a group of thoughtful Christians. Netflix and IMDB do have comment sections about this show, but most of their viewers are not coming at it from a Christian perspective.
Thank you for your always thoughtful writing.
We’ve never heard of this, but we will consider it. Thanks for the suggestion!
Please forgive my funky typing, indentation, and paragraph spacing above. I really don’t have much experience or skill writing in comment boxes.
No worries 🙂