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
Pandemic Fatigue
REBROADCAST: Space for the Sacred
Seen & Heard: The Third
How chronic distrust became a way of life
For the love of dog
Mid-Life Crisis: A Guidebook
Daniel Principe takes on Porn Culture
Making Peace with our Limitations
A Bigger Story of Us
The Pastor Politician
REBROADCAST: The Cost of Sacrifice
A Good Look in the Mirror
Poetic License
Throne and Altar
Burnout
Architecture and the Soul of the City
Murder, mayhem and the road to redemption
Full House
Sink or Swim? An American family in Australia
Forgiving the unforgivable
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