Confessions of an Author

Are Women Possessions? 4 I have been reading through the Bible, from start to finish, and trying to blog about what I read as honestly as I can.  Obviously I am partly a product of my upbringing (not necessarily bad) but I wanted to look with fresh eyes, to try and take the words written and understand them. I ran into problems fairly early on. There was lots I didn’t understand, and then, in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, I came across things that just seemed wrong. Completely wrong. Which caused bit of a problem. How could I challenge the words, spoken by a prophet of God, as a direct quotation from God? Either I wasn’t understanding something fundamental, or the words of God were not something I felt was fair. It did not reflect my own understanding of God, a God who is just, loving, fair. The words reflected a God who I did not want to know. Let me give you some examples. Now, I am a woman, but actually, this isn’t about female issues. I would think the laws were u...

The Red Light District of Mumbai 3 So, deciding to be brave, I went to the red-light district of a Mumbai slum. Husband was working, so I contacted Tearfund, and they arranged for me to visit one of their projects. Beforehand, I was very nervous about going on my own, but I am so glad I did it. I was met by Max, who is the director of Sahaara. We’ve never met, so it was a little like a spy story -“I will be under the arch with a pink carnation in my buttonhole” (Well, actually, he just told reception who he was and we met in the hotel lobby, but you get the idea.) We then got a taxi to Turbhe, the area of the slum he works in. We chatted in the car, and I could check on a few things I’ve included in my latest novel (which is set partly in the slums of Delhi). As we walked through the slums, it was all very familiar to places I saw in Delhi. Homes made from scavenged materials -uneven walls, unglazed windows, corrugated iron roofs. The hard mud paths were litter strewn...