Thoughts on women...

Every year on the 25th November is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against women. This date sees the beginning of 16 days of activism and raising awareness of the systemic misogyny faced by women and girls globally every single day. On the 16th day, the event culminates in Human Rights Day on 10th December 2021. The event is now 30 years old and the theme this year is centred around the issue of femicide or the gender related killing of women. Femicide is defined as a hate crime, whereby a woman is killed as a result of her gender usually by a man or men. In 2017, 87,000 women were murdered, of which 50,000 were killed by either an ex-partner or a member of their family.  This is 137 women killed daily or 6 women every single hours of every single day by people they should be able to trust not to harm them.  In the UK a man kills a woman he 'loves' or cared for, every three days. This statistic has remained the same for the past 10 years. “Men’s violence...

I have recently fallen in love all over again with the story of creation in Genesis. It appeals to my inner optimist on such a primal level and I can feel the joy as God brought his beautiful creation into being. I can almost see his eyes twinkle as he fashioned creature after creature, plant after plant, wove the seasons into being and established circadian rhythms into time and declared them all "good". When God made us though he declared we were "very good" and of course this was true because he made us in his image and he is, of course, VERY good. " Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in...