having my sweet tooth removed

For Lent 2013 I will mostly be giving up my sanity. Let me explain...

A couple of days ago I had the following conversation with myself.*

Me: maybe I should give up sugar for Lent
Me (the other side of me): WHAT??? Have you completely lost your mind? Since you stopped eating Marmite on toast**, sugar has been your staple diet. You'll die.
Me: yeah you're right. But...

Yeah one of those moments. Where you're sort of pleading with yourself not to do it. But the more you do, the more you realise you need to give it up.

Lent trends have varied around the UK church in recent years.

There's the standard catholic giving up of luxuries (wine, chocolate, caffeine etc***)
Then the subversion - taking something on rather than giving up. 40 days of exercise, reading, learning etc.
Some of it is cause-related, challenges to live on £1 a day, or on a benefits budget, or with a minimal wardrobe, as a way of understanding the life of others.
Or another alternative, encouraging 40 days of service or kindness, with schemes from Stewardship, Soul Survivor and the Church of England sending Lent-ers****

I love the creativity that Lent brings out. It's inspiring to see people consider a slightly different way of life for 40 days, whether that's sacrificial, life-improving, eye-opening, servant-hearted or perhaps all four.

There are, obviously religious and theological reasons for Lent too. Denying one's self in order to better focus on God, giving up something in order to dedicate the time to reading or praying etc. This morning I read about idolatry being anything which we depend upon to provide that which we should be receiving from God.

And the reality is, I depend on sugar.

To be clear, really clear, I don't think food is evil. Or that eating meals is idolatry. Of course not. It's good, necessary and (usually!) enjoyable. A healthy balanced diet is an essential part of human survival and there's plenty of opportunity to be grateful to God as he provides for us through farmers, supermarkets, restaurants etc.

It's definitely fair to say my food habits wouldn't be listed in any textbook as healthy or balanced. My working week is far from routine so there aren't any regular mealtimes or patterns. So it looks like this:

Breakfast - if I'm driving to the office or a school I probably won't have any. If I'm working from home I might grab a bit of toasted soda bread, but I'm just as likely to eat cake if there is any, or chocolate.

Lunch - again, some days I won't have any. Partly through working but also due to snacking so I'm not hungry. More on that later. On a good day I might make cheese on toasted potato farls, or microwave some soup. Or if I'm at the office perhaps a wrap from Boots, or a Greggs sausage, bean & cheese melt, or maybe a jacket potato from the van.

Dinner - this brings my score up a bit! Dan and I cook. We cook everything from scratch and enjoy it. So evening meals are usually healthy and balanced. They do almost always include dessert though.

Snacking - my number one pastime! If there's chocolate in the house, I'll eat it. And given that I love baking, there's often cake around too. It's bad for my teeth and waistline, it stops me from eating proper meals at mealtimes, it's often expensive and sugar is a short-term energy boost.

So for example, yesterday I survived on three homemade carrot cake muffins, two coffees, one chai latte, two glasses of water, three creme eggs^, two lemon and sugar pancakes and a good bowl of homemade tomato and mushroom pasta.

If you've managed to read this far, you're probably urging me to give up sugar for Lent before I descend into a diabetic coma. Quite.

Can I do it? Watch this space...

* I fully believe everyone has conversations with themselves. If that's not the case, please stop reading. You already have enough evidence that I have lost any shred of sanity that I might ever have had.
** Yeast intolerance. Most things can be replaced. Marmite? That's a beautiful, unique and completely irreplaceable thing. I am still in mourning.
*** if your response to that list is "Luxuries? Those are essential life-blood items" I hear ya. Perhaps you should give them up for a few weeks?
**** Is that even a word?
^ in my defence they were spread throughout the day. My autocorrect changed that to Crime Eggs. How appropriate!

repost: glee and jesus

This is a post I wrote two years ago for the Church Mouse blog. Plenty of things have changed since then and Mouse's blog is now closed for public readership. It's a great loss to the blogosphere - personally I really enjoyed the rodent perspectives on the ins and outs of the Anglican world. But while we're devoid of the anointed mouse's squeakings until he feels ready to share again, I figured he wouldn't mind me reposting something I once wrote as a guest post for him...

Glee and Jesus

(episode preview of Glee, series 2, episode 3: Grilled Cheesus)

They addressed sexuality, disability and teenage pregnancy in with a no-nonsense approach so bold it’d be easy to forget there ever was any taboo around the subjects so it was inevitable that eventually, Glee would ‘do Jesus’. The episode, titled Grilled Cheesus broadcast in America in October 2010 and in the UK last Monday, opened with Finn seeing an image of Jesus in his cheese toastie. Taking this as a sign from above, he prays to this cheese Jesus, seeing almost instant answers which spark an interesting conversation amongst the characters, fuelled all the more by Kurt’s struggle to come to terms with his father’s sudden heart attack and its implications.

Through conversation and their choice of repertoire, the Glee Club members address a variety of aspects of faith and spirituality in an evenly balanced and gentle debate. In an interview with an American TV Guide, series co-creator Ryan Murphy says that he was keen to “address religion in a responsible way” yet predicted that the episode could be their most controversial so far. Keen to ensure a fair representation, the show references several faith including Judaism and Christianity, Sikhism and even a mention for the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The script was checked by Murphy and his co-writers to make sure that every anti-religious sentiment was counter balanced by one of a pro-religious nature.

The show is a godsend for preachers, youth workers and RE teachers, providing a library of illustrative material to last at least the rest of the year. In one 40 minute episode, subjects covered include prayer and answered prayer, social stereotyping and perceptions of church, the existence of God, a range of perspectives on suffering, the place of faith in every day life, interfaith discussion and the acceptability of speaking up about your personal beliefs in a public context. On top of all this, the whole concept of a Glee Club – a group of people, diverse to a degree that would make United Colours of Benetton proud, united by their shared love for one thing and finding acceptance and belonging as a result – surely has a lot to offer for those of us considering what church could and/or should look like. Expect to see clips of this in churches and classrooms for a long time to come!

For the church today, this episode of Glee brings a host of challenges as well as opportunities.

The script presented an open discussion of personal faith and spirituality without it being sidelined by defensive aggression or preconceived judgements. The characters aired their views and reacted and responded to each other in the context of their love and mutual acceptance as a community, without the argument and conflict which so often follows these conversations in ‘real life’. So often it seems that we Christians pre-empt the attack, firing out our justifications for our faith like anti-missile shots, whilst so many non-believers switch off at the first mention of God, reverting to pre-prepared responses. Generalisations, I know, but the result is all too often an almost rehearsed performance of a familiar debate, rather than a considered responsive discussion of what we actually believe. A few minutes of a popular TV series reminds us that it doesn’t have to work this way, that it is possible to listen to each other, to engage in thoughtful conversation about beliefs without animosity. How many more of us would feel comfortable speaking publically about personal faith, just like Finn did after his encounter with Cheesus, if we knew that an accepting and considered conversation could follow without the need for there to be aggressive debate, or even a “winner.”

As for the opportunities, whether you like it or not, you’re surrounded by Gleeks. Those teenage and student population will openly admit it, but they’re not alone. The happenings at McKinley High School become the topics of discussion in the classroom and office the next morning. Which means that this week, 1.29 million viewers in the UK are now thinking about, and discussing, faith and spirituality in their classrooms and workspaces. If we, the Church, can engage and respond with the same grace and openness as the cast of Glee, the potential for both personal spiritual development, and the social acceptability of discussions of faith are huge.

If you’ve ever dismissed Glee as fluffy mindless entertainment, as I know I have, watch again and be challenged…

going grey

This week's twitter furore around the Bristol Uni CU issue has been interesting to follow... if a little predictable.

I don't want to get into it, but what I'm about to write needs a some background so...

For some reason this week a long-held policy at Bristol CU regarding whether or not women should be allowed to speak has become national news. There has been wide range of comment around this, from the wild angry accusations, to simple statements of position and fact. UCCF released their statement this afternoon.

There will be many blogs and articles which get into the theology and detail of the issues and I'm confident that they'll do the issue in question far better justice than I could. So I'm not going to try. If that's what you're after then  Jenny Baker's blog for the Sophia Network is a good place to start.

My thought is this.

It's 14 years since I went to university. So a while ago, but not so long that I can't remember some of what it was like.

Our CU was small and we got involved fairly quickly. I was VP for a year and President for the year following that. I remember many hours of discussion around issues including the question of what women could do (although the fact that I was president, and female, should give you some clue as to the position of our particular group on that one!)

What I remember, is that during the student years, life is black and white. Things are right or they are wrong, and everything can be filed on one side of the fence or the other, sometimes with some discussion, but always resulting in a decision. It's that easy. Circumstances come up that challenge those decisions, but there's very little grey area to leave things in. Memories of many late nights discussing/arguing the issues confirm this. I'm sure at times this meant that we were hideously ungracious, unforgiving or arrogant. Naively unaware of it all too.

I didn't learn to live in the grey areas until later. My student self would probably say I've become a fluffy liberal. But then there's a few things I'd like to say to my student self too. Since uni I have learnt... and am still learning that many issues remain firmly in the grey. Even those that do have clear black and white distinctives are areas where I'm likely either to be wrong or to find others who see the same situation completely the other way. And these "clear" right/wrong situations are all very well in theory, on paper, as hypotheticals. But the reality of life just isn't that simple. We live in the grey. It's a much easier place in which to love and be loved.

So when it comes to the Bristol CU incident, please let's have some grace and patience for them. For one thing, the whole situation makes me eternally grateful that I'm old enough that twitter and facebook simply didn't exist when I was a student. There'd have been many more "national news whirlwinds" just like this one. Let's pray that the reality of their situation isn't quite what the media are misrepresenting, and that through this (and other) exploration of what seems a black and white situation, individuals will take one step closer to life in the grey.

tagged: the ccm praise meme

Reading through a few blogs over the weekend, I found that I'd been tagged by Tim to participate in a meme that's doing the rounds.

So here it is:

Please try to name ONE (I know, there are so many to choose from) CCM praise song that you find unbearable and at least 2-3 reasons why, pointing to specific lyrics if you must.

Tim writes a good answer, and links to a few others who make valid points about the lyrical content of some of the songs being sung in churches these days.

Well, Tim et al, I'm sorry to disappoint, but I can't participate. Not because I have any problem with the meme as such (although it is a little negative, and perhaps not the best way to encourage our worship songwriters to improve on their lyrics in future writing?) It's this...

When it comes to worship songs, I have literally no memory for them. In the moment I'm fine - the lyrics come back to me and I can join in with many songs without needing to see the words. But take me out of that context and ask me to suggest a song and I won't be able to think of more than one or two.

I was part of the service planning team at the church I worked at for a while, but this sieve-like aspect of my memory does become a fairly obvious disability in such situations and it wasn't long before the decision was made that my skills were probably better used elsewhere!

There's probably a reason for this, but I can't work out what it is. I'm married to a musician who has spent a fair amount of his time travelling across the country to play in worship bands at various conferences and events. Since 1998, Dan and I between us have worked at 17 weeks of Spring Harvest, 4 Keswicks, 9 weeks of Soul Survivor, 3 Soul In The City projects, 5 Youthwork conferences, 2 childrens ministry conferences and played at several services and concerts with the All Souls Orchestra. On top of that there's all the church services in various churches. So the exposure has been there!

It might be that I almost never listen to Christian music, worship or entertainment. There's reasons for this, which are probably for another blog post, or maybe better off not being publically aired at all?

So there are probably many songs that I could use for this meme. Lyrics which I find amusing or confusing or that I totally disagree with. But I can't remember what they are!

Having declined to answer this myself, some might say that I have lost the right to tag other bloggers. I'm going to do it anyway. I tag Liz, Jude and The Vicar's Wife

just because

I've just started reading The Because Approach by Andrew Baughen, vicar at St James, Clerkenwell

I'll write more when I've finished it but for now, I just wanted to say READ IT! - be challenged, be inspired, be enthused.