Do the what-comes-naturally

Posted on 24/08/2013 by Rambling Rector

This week’s New Scientist has an article debunking some widely held notions about nutrition. Here are four of them.

1. It is not necessary to drink eight glasses of water a day. It is not necessary to drink pure water at all. It just isn’t true that by the time we are thirsty we are already dehydrated. ‘So relax and trust your body.’ If you visit any primary school, chances are you’ll see children clutching their water bottles like comforters (well, I hope it’s water). Are these for the comfort of the children or the parents, I wonder?

2. Sugar does not make children hyperactive. Children go to parties where (A) they eat sugary things and (B) are excited. It does not follow that A causes B. Sugar rots the teeth though.

3. Being a bit overweight is—wait for it, wait for it—good for you and will stave off the grim reaper for a bit! Deo gratias. Yes, yes, I know I’m more than a bit overweight, but still ….

4. The notion that we should eat like cavemen is bunkum. Crops and animals then were quite different from crops and animals now. There is no evidence that cavemen were healthier than we are. Evolution ‘doesn’t care if we drop dead once we’ve raised our children and grandchildren’.

Why does it give me such joy that these are debunked? I suppose because I find zealots tiresome. The nanny state goes too far. People tell us what to eat, what to drink, how to eat and drink, when to eat and drink, how to sit, how to stand, how to exercise, how to walk, what to think … and more. Do-gooders used to tell us that eggs were bad. Eggs are now good. I heard a whisper recently that salt wasn’t the satanic substance that we had been led to believe, and that maybe if I think I need salt it’s because my body is telling me I do (or perhaps I’m addicted to it).

When I was in my 30s I became fascinated by the Mitford sisters (novelist, farmer, fascists, communist, writers) and remember that their mother, Lady Redesdale, believed that ‘the good body’ would heal itself more effectively without the intervention of doctors or medicine. Was she barmy? She took this to the point of having the doctor remove a child’s appendix on the kitchen table. Maybe a bit barmy. I think I’m remembering right that in my early days as a clinical medical student, an eminent surgeon told us that in his opinion people should let the body do the what-comes-naturally. Amen, amen!

Registering intersex

Posted on 24/08/2013 by Rambling Rector

What sex would you say the baptismal candidate was?

Very soon in Germany it will be possible to register a child as being of indeterminate gender—neither male nor female, but indeterminate.

Off you go to the Register Office. You have to say whether the little darling is male or female. No problem usually. But occasionally it’s fraught: the little darling’s gender is ambiguous because the anatomy of the nether regions is neither one thing nor the other. Usually, surgery is soon done to ‘regularize’ the situation. Making the baby look like a female is the easiest thing to do for the obvious reason that it’s easier to chop things off than stick things on. (This can lead to psychological problems later when, for example, the person grows up feeling like a male, yet having no dangly bits.)

Being neither one thing nor the other, or having bits of both, means intersex. This is a natural phenomenon. It’s not something the baby chooses, and certainly not something parents choose. They are, doubtless, in shock and perplexity. But the fact is that sometimes, more often than we recognize or admit, nature goes awry.

I know, I’ve blogged about this stuff before, here and here. The German initiative means I’m doing it again. There will be some delicious issues for the institutional church. It’s full of rules. If we say marriage is between man and woman, then we have to define man and woman. If we say ordinands have to be heterosexual, then we have to lay down criteria of maleness and femaleness. If only men may be ordained, how will manhood be assessed? Is it an absence of some things or a presence of others? If it’s a chromosomal thing, then what will assessors do about chromosomal anomalies? It seems to me that none of the church’s rules can be enforced. If it’s not possible to enforce them, there’s no point having them.

You may say I’m being silly. Perhaps you think that the institutional church is on the way out, and that what the churches say or do is irrelevant. You might be right. But if you think that the church could be, should be, and basically is, a force for good in the world, then it does matter. The trouble is that the churches generally are run by people who seem blind to what biology has to tell us about the human condition, and who tend to look backwards rather than forwards. A biological Galileo saga in the making.

Biologically, legal recognition of intersex is long overdue.

Click here for more about the development of sexuality.

An awful tragedy

Posted on 17/08/2013 by Rambling Rector

The family of a friend of a friend has just suffered the most awful tragedy that can come the way of parents.

Their son took his own life—because of exam results.

I try to imagine what’s going through the minds of heartbroken parents. Remorse? Rightly or wrongly, I might feel guilty for nagging, or for not encouraging in the right way. I might feel guilty for not noticing distress, not picking up signs, not taking the time to listen and to notice. But I’d feel angry with the school, with my child’s friends and teachers. I’d be angry with a system that sets such store by exam results. My heart goes out to them.

In my former life as a medical school teacher, as well as those who were there because they wanted to be, I met some students who’d been pushed into medicine by their school, presumably for the sake of the school’s, or the teachers’, kudos. I came across some who were there to fulfil their parents’ dreams. I met others who had drifted there because they were good at passing exams and/or charming interviewers. Some of these folk came a cropper and left. Some of them stayed the distance, graduated with Dr in front of their names, and then went off in a different direction: banking, arts, business, motherhood.

I look at the list of hospital consultants in Ireland, and in the English East Midlands, and can point to a good number who passed through my hands. I can tell you that many of them, as students, were academically quite unremarkable, some passing exams only after resits. They are, I’m sure, perfectly competent doctors, and I’d have little hesitation in placing myself in their care, if necessary. (I know a surgeon, though, who says of one of his colleagues, ‘I wouldn’t even allow him to carve the Sunday joint’.) My point is that what people achieve, or fail to achieve, at any particular age doesn’t mean much. There has to be some system of sorting who gets a limited number of third-level places, and whatever system you have will not be perfect.

Let’s do all we can to care for students who don’t do as well as they had hoped. Anything to stem the awful despair that drives a young person to end it all, and the agony they leave behind.

Summer music

Posted on 14/08/2013 by Rambling Rector

Irish Midlands Chamber Orchestra in St Peter’s

The Portlaoise lunchtime concerts have grown. People thank me for brightening up lunchtime as if I were some sort of philanthropist. Little do they know me! The truth is, of course, that I started the concerts last year for my benefit, to get a bit of culcha. They have the added value of bringing a bit more music to a town that in some respects needs it. They get people into the church-—and this is a good thing, for there are still some out there who haven’t quite lost the notion that they might go to hell if they come in. And they raise a bit of money for the Hospice, Dunamaise Arts Centre and the church. But first and foremost they revive my sometimes drooping spirit!

This summer we’ve had some spectacular performers: organ, violin and cello were lovely, trumpet and organ were thrilling, ladies close harmony was charming, organ-alone concerts have been refreshing, and today’s Midlands Concert Orchestra was terrific. There were about 80 people there. Toe-tapping tunes. You could see people’s bodies moving to the beat of Dvorak, Bizet, Offenbach, Lennon/McCartney, and marches from the movies. Organ music has featured most, not surprising given my background and contacts, but then St Peter’s has an organ that sounds well and is good to play.

Visiting musicians comment on the lovely church and its sense of intimacy, the brightness of the place, and an acoustic that gives a bit of bloom to the sound. And, I hope, the welcome. It’s particularly good to have young players, and several have said how much they value the experience of giving a public performance. For organists in particular, it’s gratifying to play music that people actually listen to, rather than merely talk over. There’s plenty of talent about, and it’s great that people are willing to come to St Peter’s.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that if you please yourself, then some others will be pleased with you. Here’s to the rest of the 2013 season.

Trust and be silly

Posted on 10/08/2013 by Rambling Rector

The weekly sermon. It’s relentless, What can I say that I haven’t said before? I vowed I wouldn’t say anything that wasn’t true for me. Aaaargh! Then, as I was pondering, an idea came into my head. The pondering took place, as it so often does, in what people call the smallest room of the house. There are sound biological reasons for this, by the way, and they involve the Vagus (tenth cranial) nerve, which is part of the parasympathetic nervous system that has to do with, among other things, relaxation and the opening of sphincters. I suppose I’d better stop there, but there’s a piece in a recent New Scientist that explains a bit more. (Or you could read my textbook on Cranial Nerves.)

The thing that came into my head was an image of David and Goliath. I’m not quite sure where it came from, but anyway came it did. David the lad versus Goliath the hero. And David killed him. They weren’t expecting that. What sticks in my mind is an easily missed detail in the build-up. Saul gives the young David all his armour because, presumably, he thinks the boy David has no chance without it. David tries it on and says ‘no thanks, too heavy, I can’t move in all this clobber, I’ll be better without it’. That’s the part of the David and Goliath story that I find arresting.

No armour. Armour is heavy and limits movement. The armour that we cover ourselves with consists of things like preconceptions, assumptions, prejudgments, notions. We spend a lot of time trying to make sure that our lives will be predictable so that we don’t have to move within our inflexible ‘armour’. We try to manipulate people so that they do things that we can cope with. We want to feel that we’re in charge. The trouble is that if we’re in charge like that, we’re not open to inspiration, we’re not flexible, we’re not responsive to changing needs. Think how many businesses go under because they are not responsive and so can’t cope with change. It’s just the same.

If we are to live, as opposed merely to exist, we need flexibility. We need to resist the temptation to dress ourselves in restrictive armour: David ditched ‘all this clobber’ and marched off to meet Goliath full of confidence that since he could deal with lions and bears that attacked his sheep, he wouldn’t have any difficulty in decking the big man. And he was right. We need to take the risk, like David did, of stepping out without conditions, restrictions, safety nets, assumptions, efforts to manipulate. In Christian-speak you’d say that the Lord wants us to trust him enough to live with him unafraid, totally defenceless in his presence. The ancient Greek word for this is pistis, and in Greek mythology Pistis was the personification of good faith, trust and reliability. Pistis is the intellectual and emotional acceptance of a proposition. It’s a decision. Faith is a decision. We decide to trust.

Trust in the uncertainty of life. Trust not to be fearful of possibilities. Work with the cosmos, don’t fight it. Part of me would love to fight with the silliness of the institutional church and institutionalized people in it, but there’s no point. Let them at it. For us all, it means working with what we’ve got and enjoying it while it lasts. And if it goes before we do, we work with something else rather than moan how good things used to be—an empty-headed activity according to Ecclesiastes (in the Bible so it must be true). Let go of trying to control. Let go of what ‘I’ want. Let go of ‘ego’. ‘Do not be afraid’. Step out, be ready, be alert to possibilities, be responsive. This means having faith in, trusting in, our own personal ability to make decisions as circumstances arise. In my theology, this means making contact with, and having faith in, the inner divine core, the boy David within each of us. This brings us on the road to holiness. At Christmas we sing ‘O holy Child of Bethlehem, be born in us today.’ We can sing it every day.

Life is messy and unpredictable. Despite what anyone may tell us, or what we in the privileged West may think, we are not in control. We simply don’t know what’s around the corner. Acceptance of uncertainty is the key to living in the moment, and living in the moment is the key to eternal life—eternal being a quality of life outside time, not everlasting. When we acknowledge our powerlessness, and discard attachments, there is nothing left for us to stand on our dignity about, so pride (hubris) goes too. Think how much better the world would be without that sort of pride, based as it is on the notion that ‘I’m better than you’.

I know—this is hard. I say these things not because I’m good at them, but because I’d like to be. But we’ve got to start sometime, and the right time is always now, before it’s too late. Bronnie Ware, a nurse working in palliative care, recently wrote The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, based on her experience. Here they are (my summaries, not hers):

I wish I’d had the courage to live my life rather than the life others expected of me. Most people die knowing that their lives have been limited by their choices.
I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. This came from every man the author nursed. It is true for me. I missed a good deal of my children’s youth and Susan’s companionship.
I wish I’d had the courage to say what I felt. Many people don’t say what they think in an attempt to keep peace. They settle for a mediocrity. The frustration, bitterness and resentment that build up inside can cause heart disease and cancer.
I wish I’d stayed in touch with friends.
I wish I’d let myself be happier. Happiness is a choice. Misery is a choice. People stay stuck in old habits. Fear of change makes us pretend to others and to ourselves that we are content, when deep within, we long to laugh and be silly. There is not enough innocent silliness in this world.

So there you are! Ditch the notions. Trust in uncertainty. Be silly.

Proper 14, Year C

Simple

Posted on 03/08/2013 by Rambling Rector

Layers

Homily for 4 August 2013 (Proper 13, Year C)

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23. Psalm 49:1-12. Colossians 3:1-11.Luke 12:13-21

Simple.

Not simple as in lacking, stupid, inadequate, unsophisticated, not quite all there. Not that sort of simple, the sense in which the word is often used. A somewhat derogatory meaning.

But simple in the way that it is properly used. In Latin, simplex: single, whole, having one ingredient, plain. Simple in the way that mathematicians and philosophers use the word: indivisible, incapable of being splintered—the opposite of diabolical. Innocent, modest, free from ostentation, unmixed.

Here is an image of our psychological development. We begin simple and whole in the Garden of Eden. We see the world around us and begin to make judgments. We begin to clothe ourselves with finery (fig leaves) to make ourselves look more and more impressive. We surround ourselves with layer after layer, like a Matryoshka doll. Each hurt brings more and more scar tissue. We become heavier and more complex, weighed down, more and more rigid, less and less adaptable. There’s more to break down. Like electric gadgets in the car, they’re more difficult and more expensive to fix. The opposite of simple.

Simple is a beautiful word. A restful word even.

It’s easy to read today’s Gospel story as if it were about redistribution of resources. I am nervous about preaching such a message because it soon sounds sanctimonious: look how good I am because I ‘graciously’ give my stuff away. When I attack the mega-rich, it sounds suspiciously like envy. The Archbishop of Canterbury recently said that if he’d been working in the financial services he couldn’t say that he would have behaved any better than the sharp suited barrow boys who’ve got us into this mess. And neither could I. As has been said: ‘it is possible for the rich to sin by coveting the privileges of the poor.’

We live in a society where governments and the advertising industry encourage us to indulge ourselves with what we don’t need. The Lotto! How would you deal with winning millions? Go round the world? Buy this and that? Buy posh clothes? Eat and drink fine food and wine? So what? After all this, you are the same you, but now with new sensations behind you. Your quest for new experiences—for that’s what it is—means that it’s now harder for you to experience the same degree of novelty. You need more and more of whatever it is to get the same degree of stimulation. There’s plenty of biological evidence for this: the biology of addiction. The more we have, the more we want. This is greed. It becomes dangerous for the community when we wilfully accumulate so that others are deprived. We possess – a terrible word. We think we are self-sufficient. If we have enough in the barn, we won’t need anyone else. We become lonely and paranoid. Greed shows a lack of love and trust.

Psalm 17:10: They are inclosed in their own fat and their mouth speaketh proud things.

My precioussssss

It seems to me that today’s gospel story is not about renunciation, though there is plenty in Jesus’ message about exactly that. Today’s story seems more about how to cope with good fortune. It’s not about giving it away: it’s about sharing it. By sharing we demonstrate our connectedness, our not being separate. The Good Samaritan shared his wealth. When we keep things to ourselves we become wizened and twisted and consumed, like Gollum. We become being inclosed in our own fat, behind electric gates and security fences.

The alternative is to stop trying to accumulate goods and feelings and emotions. Simply exist and enjoy. Simply. Living with trust, directed towards the Divine, reminds us that there’s no point thinking that possessing more and more will make us immortal and invincible. Let’s share what we have—time, talents, money—before it’s too late. That’s what the men in today’s story need to be doing.

St Paul recommends that we kill everything that belongs to the earthly life, especially greed, which is like worshipping a false god. To attempt to keep possessions and memories locked ‘in a barn’ is like chasing after wind. Vanity of vanities. We can not recover the feelings we once had, we can not find the same stimulation we once found. All passion spent. This is a great blessing: I can relax. It doesn’t matter what I have or what I’ve done. What matters is who I am and how I share what I am.

A rich woman dies. Where there’s a will, there are relatives! How much did she leave? She left everything.

In our lives we move from simple to complex and hopefully to simple again. The wisdom of age.

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free
‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain’d,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be asham’d,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come ‘round right.

I want to be alone

Posted on 31/07/2013 by Rambling Rector

So you’re in the Garden of Eden, right, and you’re watching the drama of Adam and Eve unfold, with the talking snake and the scrumping of apples. There’s something very strange. The snake talks to the woman who seems to be alone. The big question is: where is the man? We’re told that Eve was created from Adam’s rib, surgery having been performed while yer man was asleep. Biologists have recently managed to grow rudimentary teeth from cells in human urine, so I suppose the woman-from-rib story has something going for it even if cell biology labs in the Garden of Eden weren’t like the ones we have now. A different version of the story from Hebrew literature goes like this: when the Holy One created Adam, the creature had a female aspect facing one way and a male aspect facing the other. The Holy One then sawed the creature in half giving the (now two) creatures a back for one part and a back for the other. So both man and woman were created from a hermaphrodite first creation. Now, that’s more likely, isn’t it? It explains why men and women see things differently—they look in opposite directions, the push-me-pull-you. Anyhow, back to the question: where was Adam? Well, it’s universally acknowledged that men make more fuss of being ill than women, so he was probably taking longer to recover from major surgery than Eve, thus unable to engage in intercourse with the snake. On the other hand—and I think this much the more likely explanation—he was where any self-respecting man would be: hiding from the missus in his garden shed.

Up to now, gentle reader, you might think I’m taking the micturition (though the Hebrew commentary story is authentic). But I have a serious point to make, and it’s this. We all need time alone, and men in particular do. As we get older, we need our solitude more and more. It’s an unfortunate fact that in today’s world success is judged by ‘outgoingness’ and extraversion. The go-getters and self-publicists are rewarded, and the more retiring folk are not. We are required by economic demands to join in the culture of back-slapping hail-fellow-well-met seminars and team exercises and confrontational ‘discussions’ at meetings where testosterone wins. For many of us, this is a real effort. For those of us whose energy comes not from company but from solitude, it’s exhausting to play at being an extravert for any length of time. After a while we long to back home with a book or listening to music or whatever. In my case, my groove on the sofa sings a siren song.

I never said, ‘I want to be alone.’ I only said, ‘I want to be left alone.’

The terms extravert and introvert are used for, respectively, those whose energy comes from interaction with others, and those whose energy comes from rich inner resources. Many of us who seem to be extraverts are actually introverts who have learnt to put on an act as required. And I’m pretty sure that there are more introvert men than is commonly thought.

In my former career, I was disturbed to find important decisions being forced at the meetings at which the issue had first been raised, thus without considered reflection. The idea that we might defer decision until we’d had time to think about the issue was derided as indicating a lack of purpose and courage and commitment. People in power tend to be extraverts—after all, they do better at interview, are better at selling themselves, and are more likely to charm interviewers. And so the cycle perpetuates itself.

A new book Quiet by Susan Cain explores this issue. The author points out that the world needs introverts. We need people who say ‘just hold on a minute, we must think about this’. We need people who don’t just rush into decisions without considering implications.

Our culture makes it easier, I think, for women to recharge than for men. Boys and men who like to be alone, who have solitary pursuits, are looked upon strangely. They are urged to ‘come out of their shell’, to ‘pull up their socks’, to ‘stop shilly-shallying’, to be more like your cousin ‘who climbed Everest when he was six’. This displays more than a little intolerance. It’s not easy for anyone, let alone a child, to say ‘this is me, you will have to accept that I’m not the person you’d like me to be—I am as I am.’

As Susan Cain says, it’s time that we acknowledged the value of introverts. Without them we would have no theories of gravity and relativity, a good deal less technological innovation, and next to no music, art and literature. With more of them I suspect we’d have had far fewer disasters caused by impulsive risk-taking.

Science and self

Posted on 27/07/2013 by Rambling Rector

New Scientist has jiggled my little grey cells recently.

You are not alone

We have creatures living in us and on us. We’d die without them, especially the ones in the gut that help us digest food. Some of them are not good for us, though, and these are parasites. They take, take, take—there’s no give with a parasite. Did you know that parasitism is the most popular lifestyle on Earth? Up to now you may have thought it confined to adolescents who lie moping on the couch all day. Some of you may have, or have had, personal experience of this curious parasitic life form that lives at the expense of its host(s). Perhaps you harbour the wish to turn the tables and one day, in your dotage perhaps, become parasitic on those who treated you as their host. We can all dream. You may have seen parasites in or on your pets. You may even have them yourself: worms and malaria for example (if so, hopefully now recovered). Anyway, the point is that you and I are never alone.

Depression

Sometimes it feels as if we have parasites living in our minds. They suck well-being from us. They used to be called demons, but now we call them other things. One of the commonest is depression. At least 1 person in 6 has to deal with this some stage. It seems that the most popular antidepressants are not as effective as was once thought. Or perhaps it’s better to say that drug-resistant depression is on the rise. New treatments involving magnetism and electricity (not the old-style ECT) are being investigated. If brain waves can affect the external environment—and they can, otherwise EEG/EKGs wouldn’t work—then magnetic and electrical forces might affect the brain. Perhaps someone some day will explain to me exactly what magnetism and electricity are. The anaesthetic ketamine might also have its uses. Indirectly it helps nerve cells in the brain to grow new bits and pieces—which is a good thing for depressives. So maybe depression is not only a chemical thing, but also a structural thing—the shape of nerve cells is affected in depression. Then again, there’s the moon. It’s reported that the full moon makes people edgier. Well, if the gravitational pull of the moon can affect the oceans, might it not also affect the liquid in and around the brain, and the brain itself which is really quite jelly-like? Perhaps someone some day will explain to me exactly what gravity is.

Methane

Huge amounts of methane lie just below the Arctic sea. Melting of seabed ice means that there could be a gigantic smelly belch any time soon. That would bring global warming forward by over 30 years and change the face of the planet: sea levels, climate zones, malaria risk areas … a long list. Human activity might have nothing to do with it: the leakage of methane from this area is nothing new and could have been going on since the end of the last ice age.

So what?

Yellowstone

The earth does not revolve around you or me. In time-terms, the ice age is but yesterday. It will come again. The earth will do what the earth has to do, and we can not stop it, even if that means a gigantic arctic fart next month, or a catastrophic eruption of the Yellowstone caldera. Microbes will do what microbes have to do, and we can not stop them, even if that means MRSA and/or bird flu epidemics decimate the human population next year. We are not in control. Not one of us. The sooner each one of us comes to terms with this, the better. Actually, it’s liberating, for it means that there’s no point fretting about the future so we might just as well work with the here-and-now–which is what eternal means anyway: out of time, in the moment.

Each one of us is no more than a collection of memories, feelings, and illusions—or more likely delusions—about ourselves. If we keep inflating our balloons, at some point they will burst. If we recognize our own powerlessness and frailty, we are not subject to illusions about them, or about the pride that causes us to think ourselves better than others. Ego-self is illusion. St Paul calls it flesh. Letting go of it is what the crucifixion is about. To love my life is to lose it—the self-centred ego, the me, me, me. Losing this means stepping into the freedom of resurrection. Liberation comes phoenix-like after destruction. This is the truth of all religions worthy of the name. We can rise only if we have fallen.

It’s been said that the principal job of the priest is to prepare people for death. So here you are, boys and girls: sooner or later you’re gonna be dead. All your self, your hurts, your trophies, your notions, your targets, your money in the bank … none of it matters. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity. Meaningless. It doesn’t matter how big your grave is, how well-tended it is, how often it’s visited, or how large is the plaque erected in your memory.

Reading about science reminds me that, as I pointed out here, we are creatures of this earth. No more, no less. We’re in partnership with the cosmos, not opposition to it. So work with what you’ve got and enjoy it while it lasts. And when it goes, work with something else.

Rambling Rector Retired

Category Archives: Pastoralia