Reflections on a human experience that’s at once routine and exceptional; both very costly and very good.
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Life & Faith has covered many stories relating to birth over the years – incredible stories of courage and heartbreak, difficult decisions, life and death – but we’ve never done an episode on birth itself: what’s amazing about this process, what’s so hard about it, what makes it so meaningful for so many people.
This year Simon Smart is celebrating a once-every-four-years occasion (yes, he was born on 29 February!) and Natasha Moore is due to head off on maternity leave soon, so Justine Toh joins them for a conversation about birthdays – that is, birth ... days. And midwife Jodie McIver, author of Bringing Forth Life: God’s Purposes in Pregnancy and Birth, offers some insights on the journey to becoming a parent, including how surprisingly frequently pregnancy and birth – in story and as metaphor – feature in the Bible.
“I think the fact that God chooses birth to help us understand deep spiritual realities about his character and work in the world really gives honour to women’s bodies, and to these human experiences as well, as we kind of share in the cost of bringing forth life in our own little way.”
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EXPLORE
Jodie McIver, Bringing Forth Life: God’s Purposes in Pregnancy and Birth
A few other Life & Faith episodes related to birth, touching on disability, loss, infertility, and fostering:
Speak Up, Show Up
Intensive Care
When Life Doesn’t Go to Plan
Home Extension
Life & Faith: Serving those serving their country
Life & Faith: Faith in Art
Life & Faith: In praise of friendship
Life & Faith: Are the kids alright?
Life and Faith: Wise Science
Life & Faith: The Missionary Effect
Life and Faith: Portrait of an Editor (part 2)
Life and Faith: Portrait of an Editor (part 1)
Life and Faith: Believers Besieged
Life and Faith: Religious Repression in the former Soviet Union
Pleasure, Meaning and the Death of God
Life and Faith: Ending Extreme Poverty
Life and Faith: Working for lasting change
Life and Faith: Faith behind bars (Part 2)
Life and Faith: Faith behind bars (Part 1)
Life and Faith: Living with the other
Life and Faith: The Ethical Imagination
Life and Faith: Multiculturalism, actually
Life and Faith: Economics for the people
Life and Faith: A Reasonable Faith?
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