Phill Sacre

Category: Personal

Miscellaneous ramblings about my personal life. Unfortunately, the most common entry on this blog. Also the most boring / useless. But hey, you never know…

  • Head Above Water

    Just a quick post again to say that I am keeping my head above the water! Lydia is now ten days old, I can’t believe how fast the time has gone. This week I’ve been gently trying to ease my way back into college life, which has gone fairly well.

    Lydia is beginning to get into a routine and, I hope, sleeping a little better than she used to. Phil’s Mum – who was staying with us – has now gone home, so it’s just us and Lydia in the house! That’s a scary thought but also a nice one.

    Anyway, I just wanted to post a quick update to say that things are going well and returning to ‘normal’ (well, the new normality, if that makes sense). I still don’t know if I’ll be able to do much blogging any time soon, but I will do when I can. Probably when the next big religious media storm hits, if not before…

  • Waiting Over

    Baby LydiaJust a very quick update to announce that the baby we have been waiting for… has finally arrived! Our daughter, Lydia Jean Sacre, was born yesterday at 9:26AM weighing 7lb11oz. We can’t believe how blessed we are to have such a beautiful baby girl, what a gift! Praise God.

    At some point I may write a post in a little bit more detail about the birth, but suffice it to say everything is going well so far and we can’t wait to get to know our little girl. Even if we are completely exhausted at the moment!

    This probably signifies a break in any kind of regular blogging from me for, say, the next 18 years or so. Probably no bad thing. Thanks to everyone who has sent good wishes and kind words!

  • The New Term… and the waiting game

    As I think I mentioned last time, term started at Oak Hill last week. The first three days were spent doing various intro events, meeting lots of people and generally being busy! As of tomorrow evening we will have completed one full week of lectures.

    This term I am studying the Doctrine of God; General Epistles (1 Peter and Hebrews in Greek); Christian Spirituality; and Wisdom Literature. I’m also auditing Pastoral Counselling (six hours a week, quite a commitment, but worth it I think).

    In general, it’s shaping up to be a great year in terms of teaching. There are a few modules which I wanted to do this year but didn’t have the space to do, but you can’t do everything.

    The baby is due on Sunday – any day now. It’s strange to think that our lives will look very different within the next couple of weeks! We’ve got the hospital bags packed, we’ve got everything we needed to pre-birth… it’s just a matter of waiting now to see what happens. And in the meantime, I’ve got plenty of college work to be going on with.

    Oh, and there’s a final special episode of the IT Crowd on Friday, plus a few other bits and pieces we like (I won’t admit that I like the Great British Bake-Off…) So, you know, priorities and all that.

  • Before the Storm…

    The last three weekends have been pretty busy for us – we’ve been up in Colchester (or thereabouts) for various reasons! We had a great time seeing friends and family and generally catching up with people.

    However, as of yesterday Mrs Phil is 37 weeks pregnant – which means that, if the baby is born any time from now on, it will be considered full term. We have now acquired everything we need for the baby (thanks in large part to the generosity of friends) – just one or two non-essentials we need to get for the hospital bag and we’re all set. It’s a weird feeling to say to people “the next time we see you… we’ll have a baby!”

    Add to this the fact that the first term of my final year at Oak Hill starts next week, and you’ll understand that I may not have very much time for blogging in the coming weeks and months!

    So this is an advance warning that things may get pretty quiet around here for a while, but for good reasons 🙂 I’ll at least try to post up when the baby is born and occasional progress updates, with maybe something more controversial now and then…

  • Just what is a ‘babygrow’, anyway?

    As I mentioned a few months ago, Mrs Phil and I are expecting a baby at the end of September. Phil has now finished work (scary!) and so this week we have finally got round to actually thinking about the kind of things we will have to get for the baby, as well as sorting out the clothes and assorted bits and pieces we’ve already been given.

    I spent a cheerful afternoon at the weekend sorting through a few boxes/bags of baby clothes that we’ve been given. I’m still not entirely sure I understand the terminology – ‘babygrow’, ‘sleepsuit’, ‘onesie’… what the heck are all these things anyway? My vision of a ‘babygrow’ is something like the gro-bags you can buy for plants. Maybe if you put a baby in a babygrow and water it occasionally, it will be just fine?! (Note: I won’t really do that. Please don’t report me to the authorities…)

    On Monday morning we went to Kiddicare in Enfield to shop for pushchairs. This was probably one of the more enjoyable aspects of preparing for the baby’s arrival: it involves technology (well, sort of – the pushchairs didn’t generally have flashing lights on them, but they were still fun.) We bought a car seat as well, the kind which attaches to the top of the pushchair if necessary, as well as an ISOFIX connector in the car. All very convenient and more high-tech than anything my parents would have had for me.

    We also now have a list of things to get which is impressively long and includes things not normally discussed in polite company such as ‘nipple cream’ and ‘breast pads’. Apparently childbirth is not for the squeamish.

    I do feel more generally like I’m beginning to look forward to the birth of our little baby though. I’m beginning to look forward to being a daddy, and meeting our daughter who has been growing steadily for the past seven months or so. It’s really strange to feel Mrs Phil’s tummy and feel the kicks and bumps – strange to think there is a whole other little person growing inside her right now. Childbirth, for all its pains and frustrations and … shopping lists, really is a miracle. Watch this space to see if I still think so in a few months / years 😉

  • Richard Dawkins on the ethics of Stuart Broad

    If you haven’t been following the Ashes over the past few days, you may not have heard about the mini furore created by Stuart Broad last week. Broad is a batsman for England who was caught out fairly and squarely, but refused to ‘walk’, leaving the decision down to the umpire. There has been a storm in an internet-cup about this – some siding with Broad, and others… not so much.

    Richard Dawkins fell down in the ‘not so much’ camp. This is what he put on Twitter on Friday night:

    For Dawkins, it was a non-issue. Ethics is ethics, cheating is cheating. There is no grey area.

    He posted up subsequently:

    And then:

    He closed off by saying:

    I’m sorry for quoting at length here, but I’d just like to pose the question: is Richard Dawkins being consistent here? Is it consistent on the one hand to say that we are basically gene reproduction machines with everything formed from within an evolutionary framework, and then to say we need to “rise above” Darwinism? What are the logical steps? I believe he has said in an interview that he is a passionate Darwinian when it comes to science, but passionately not Darwinian when it comes to ethics. I just can’t see how that follows.

    In an interview with Peter Singer, it seems to me that the discussion on ethics is rooted around how humans are essentially animals. They may be a particularly advanced kind of animal, but basically humans are animals. That is our evolutionary heritage, therefore this is how we should be. Where this gets interesting is his views on infanticide (starting at 24:11). Dawkins states, unequivocally, that in certain circumstances he could see no moral objection to infanticide (if, for example, the child had an incurable disease and was going to die in pain).

    So it seems that Dawkins likes to talk evolutionary ethics when it suits him, but when it doesn’t we need to “rise above” Darwinism. I just cannot comprehend the mindset of someone who, when faced with the question of infanticide says “I can see no moral objection”, but when faced with the question of a cheating cricketer thumps his hand on the table and says, “Come on, we have STANDARDS here people!!!”

    I’m not sure what the evolutionary ethical perspective on what Stuart Broad did actually is, but Dawkins seems to be seeing ‘cheating’ as an absolute whereas human life is not.

    I should make clear at this point (after learning from a discussion had on Twitter a few weeks ago) that I am not making the accusation that someone “can’t be good without God”. I’d just question whether it’s possible to define ‘good’ in a meaningful way without God.

    If you enjoyed this post you might also like my post on Godless Ethics and Egoism.

  • Quick Life Update

    It’s been a funny old month. Quick a lot seems to have gone on over the past month or so:

    • Phil and I had our 20-week scan.
    • My Mum died, and the funeral was last Friday.
    • On top of all that, I’ve had a ridiculous amount of work to do college-wise.

    At the moment I’m feeling pretty exhausted, hence the lack of blogging recently!

    I just wanted to say, a big thank you to everyone who has sent supportive messages over the past few weeks. It’s been really appreciated, although I haven’t been able to reply to all of them. The funeral itself went well, so far as it’s possible for a funeral to go well – lots of people attended, and the hope of the resurrection was clearly proclaimed. Because of that, I think it helped to draw a line in my mind to some extent, and will help us as a family to begin to move on.

    There are one or two things I’d like to post up here. In particular, I did a seminar on John 19 a couple of weeks ago which I’d like to post up (or at least, the edited highlights); I’m also preaching on 30th June (on the resurrection, strangely enough) which will also find its way here. But in the meantime, thanks for bearing with me.

  • Mum [1945-2013] – A Tribute

    As some of you  may have seen on Twitter and Facebook, my Mum died yesterday. She lost her battle with lung cancer, which I’d written about previously. The picture on the left was taken at Christmas last year; it’s probably one of my favourite pictures of her. It’s amazing to think how much things changed in the five months following that. Some of it I have written about in the post I linked to, after that things went downhill pretty rapidly. About two months ago, Mum had an infection that was so bad she had to go into a hospice in Ipswich. We thought at the time it might be the end, but it turned out not to be the case: she came out of the hospice two weeks later.

    After that, she remained at home with some help from NHS carers and Marie Curie nurses, who helped Dad to care for her and keep her comfortable. She was rarely able to leave the bed after coming back home, but nonetheless she had a steady stream of visitors and despite finding it difficult to talk was able to keep them all amused with her little witticisms.

    (more…)

  • Not dead!

    That’s right. Just wanted to post up to say, I’m not actually dead! I’m just working very hard. Things have been pretty mental at Oak Hill this last term.

    I’m working on a seminar for John 19 at the moment (well, not right at this moment, obviously. Not today, even. But you get what I mean.) It’s fantastic to get stuck into John’s Gospel this year, there’s so much to think about. I think it’s probably been my favourite course of the year. I will hopefully post up the seminar paper when it’s all done, or the edited highlights at least.

    Anyway, it’s all from me, and it’s all from me. Goodnight, etc.

  • A time of Expecting…

    20 Week Scan After all the heavy stuff I’ve been talking about over the past few weeks and months, it gives me great pleasure to announce… we’re expecting a baby! 🙂

    We had the 20-week scan today at the hospital. Everything was fine, the baby seemed to be doing well, the heart is beating fine, and it was moving around in there. They told us that the baby is most probably a girl – I say most probably because they are less sure for girls than boys for obvious reasons.

    The baby (or ‘she’) is due at the end of September, which will be a couple of weeks into term time for me – not the most convenient time ever! But unfortunately you can’t just fit babies around your schedule.

    We’ve both been feeling a mixture of excitement and dread to be honest – it will be amazing to have a child but at the time time it scares the heck out of me! But hopefully everything will go normally and we’ll take each day as it comes. And I’m sure God will help us 🙂