I wonder how it feels...

One of our local papers has an article about Boxing Day, in which they helpfully explain:

In fact the day after Christmas Day is the feast of St Stephen, commemorating the stoning to death of the first Christian martyr. He is, incidentally, the patron saint of horses, which is why it was the traditional day for the big meet and why there are so many race meetings.

I do wonder how it feels to sit there in heaven and watch people commemorate the day you were stoned to death in this bizarre fashion, riding horses and hunting foxes - or, for that matter, sitting at home and eating and drinking too much in front of the television.

But then, why should I be surprised at this, when just the day before that people will have been sitting at home and eating and drinking too much to commemorate the birth of the Saviour of the World? It seems that any earth-shattering event is a good excuse for that.

On being misunderstood

It happened to me a couple of days ago, when someone misinterpreted my attempts to offer her help and advice, took it totally the wrong way and decided that I was against her.

But it's not just me. I see it happening to people online so often, I seem to spend half my time trying to clarify things, saying "no, that's not what he's saying, he's saying......". Once in a while there is a moment of satisfaction, when someone says, Oh, I see... (But of course, once in a while, it's me who gets the wrong end of the stick, and it's my turn to say, Oh, I see...)

Obviously online communication is more open to misunderstandings because of the lack of all that extra information we normally rely on to help us interpret what someone means in a face to face conversation - things like facial expressions, tone of voice, body language. And in some discussions online there is the extra factor of communicating with people we don't know, plus possible cultural differences, plus some language barriers - so there is a lot that can get in the way of understanding one another. And then of course there is an element of distraction by all the multitasking that goes on - we hop from one conversation to another so easily, I've sometimes seen people post a reply on completely the wrong thread.

And then there is the fact that even when not online, even when talking to someone face to face, there are still plenty of misunderstandings between people. Partly this is because we are generally not so good at listening - I mean really listening, really paying attention to what the other person is saying, not thinking about what you're going to say as soon as they pause to catch their breath, not wondering how to fix their problems or how to win the argument, not jumping to conclusions about what they are going to say...

And so often we come into a conversation with expectations - he's bound to say X, people always say Y... Our insecurities come into it - if you're insecure about being overweight, for example, then someone at a party asking if you want more cake could sound to you like they're making fun of you. If we expect people to mock us, we are very likely to hear that in whatever they say. If we expect people to disagree with us, we're very likely to hear disagreement in whatever they say.

Our prejudices also come into this equation - and, like it or not, we all have some prejudices. We might not be racists, but deep down we all have some assumptions about people - it could be what you think about men or about women, what you think about people who dress a certain way, people who smoke, people who don't smoke, people who live in a certain town, people who work in a certain occupation (traffic wardens?) - the list is endless. (Oh, and I haven't even touched on the thorny issue of accents!)

Prejudice means we assume certain things about a person, not based on facts but based on some general idea we have about "such people". Prejudice isn't always negative, by the way - I've had people tell me upon hearing I'm Jewish how they admire our warm family life...

If we think we know what "such people" are like, then we won't be listening to them properly, because we think we know what they're going to say. We think we know what they think.

Listening properly is a rare commodity in our age of busy rushing around and multitasking. Have you had the experience of being listened to really really well? If you have, then you know how valuable it is. So try and offer it to others too - whether it's online or out there in everyday life. Being misunderstood is painful. Let's try and be the ones who do listen and do understand. Showing someone that you have heard what they said is one of the most precious gifts you can give them.

Could we make murder legal too?

This morning's paper has an article calling for the legalisation of prostitution. "We will never eradicate prostitution," says the quote on the front page, "so let's make it legal."

According to this logic, I expect all crimes to be made legal - after all, we're not going to eradicate any of them, are we?

By the way, as far as I understand the laws in the UK do not criminalise prostitutes, they treat as a crime certain actions on the part of their clients (e.g. kerb crawling) and the people who live off their earnings. Which is as it should be - women who sell their bodies are harming no one but themselves, so I see no point in punishing them for it.

This article also seems to suggest that there's nothing wrong with paying for sex, that it doesn't do anybody any harm.

That would be true if we were animals, and sex for us was merely a physical act that has no emotional consequences.

Faith in humankind?

I had an online dialogue recently with my cousin in Israel who was questioning the apparent discrepancy between the teachings of Jesus and the way Christians live. I tried to draw his attention to the difference between those who call themselves Christians and those who really are followers of Jesus. I tried to explain that following the teachings of Jesus is humanly impossible and that it is only through being born again of God's Spirit that we are given the ability to do this.

It felt like a bit of a ping pong match. He kept saying: look at all those awful murderers who were Christians (e.g. the Spanish Inquisition etc), and I kept saying: just because these people called themselves Christians, that doesn't mean anything. He kept giving me more and more examples of people who did awful things whilst calling themselves Christians, and I kept saying: just because people call themselves Christians that doesn't mean they've been born again. People who really love Jesus wouldn't be able to do that sort of thing.

The other side of the coin was him saying: there aren't any Christians who do live up to the teachings of Jesus about love and about turning the other cheek. At some point he accepted that maybe there are a few, but he reckons they are very few. I said: I don't know the numbers, nobody does except for God, but my point is, if you want to see the teachings of Jesus lived out, don't look at the nominal Christians, look at born-again believers.

He suggested that even Christians who do good works, even they only help fellow Christians. At this point I was outraged. How dare he write off all the works of charity being done all over the world, Christians who go out to live in all sorts of difficult conditions to help the poor and needy simply out of the love that Jesus has put in their hearts!

But this is where we run into the stumbling block of humanism - faith in the goodness of humankind. For a humanist, all the examples I could bring of Christians showing kindness would be of no value, because to him the kindness of human beings is taken for granted - he believes we are naturally good. To him the aberration is when we do evil.

Whereas I look at the old me, the natural, sinful me, and I know how much evil there was in there. I know that I was not born good - far from it. I was born selfish and self-centred, and consideration for others is something I had to be taught. We like to think of babies as sweet and innocent but the truth is we are born completely self-centred, not yet aware of other people and only aware of our own needs and wants. When a baby is hungry, it cries. When it's uncomfortable, it cries. When it cries and doesn't get what it needs quickly enough, it screams. It takes us time to grow and learn to appreciate other people as separate human beings with their own needs and feelings, to learn that other people can be hurt by what we do or say - and once we've learned that, we have choices: do we use the power that we have to hurt others, or do we withhold that power? Sadly for many people the answer is: depends if you'd get caught or not. Through being punished we learn not to do things that we shouldn't. We are taught certain ways of behaviour that are deemed acceptable by society. I remember at school when someone in my class had upset another pupil, the teacher made him stand in front of everyone and apologise. The teacher could make him say the words, but was he really sorry? Was he sorry that he had upset the other pupil? Or was he just sorry that he had got caught and that he had to go through the humiliation of standing in front of the whole class and apologising?

It would be nice to think that human beings are nice and good and loving. But open the newspaper, turn on the television, check out the news any given day and you will see plenty of examples of people being far from good. Are all of these examples really the exceptions? We like to think so. We like to hear about some particularly awful murder and think: look at him, he's evil. Because then we can allow ourselves the comfort of believing that we, in comparison, are good. But are we really so good? Are our hearts full of love for everyone? Even my humanistic cousin, who believes in the goodness of humankind, says of course he doesn't love his enemies - but what sort of goodness is it that is kept only for those who are nice to you? (Yes, Jesus said something like this.) Being kind to your friends is relatively easy, being nice to those who are nice to you is relatively easy. If you're nice to your friends, that doesn't make you good, it makes you pretty normal and sensible - very early on in life we learn about the value of friendships, the value of belonging to a group, and for the sake of this belonging we sacrifice some of our self-centredness, because it's worthwhile to us. And even doing good to those who aren't our friends (I don't mean our enemies, I mean just strangers) is something we sometimes do for selfish reasons - for the nice warm feeling it will give us, or for a chance to do something interesting, to get out of the house, to have a sense of purpose. (I speak as one who in December 1994 went to help prepare and serve Christmas Dinner to homeless people simply because I'd split up from someone after a very long relationship and was suddenly faced with the prospect of spending Christmas Day on my own. Good deeds? yes. Unselfish motives? not quite.)

What I find odd is how easy people find it to believe in the goodness of humanity despite all the evidence to the contrary, whilst at the same time they seem to find it so difficult to believe in the goodness of God. Which of these demands a greater amount of irrational faith?

Sorry, Josh, have we been introduced?

Putting my fuddy-duddy hat back on (what do you mean, have I ever taken it off?) I have to say, Shelfari has slightly gone down in my estimation today.

First of all, they send me an email full of enthusiasm and excitement about having been acquired by Amazon. Like, I'm supposed to be pleased about this? You guys think I actually like Amazon? You think I've got this pro-uberdog streak that makes me gush with enthusiasm every time I hear about another big powerful company getting more powerful? Why?

And then, as if this wasn't enough, I find that this email from this company is taking the chummy My Space approach to communication and their email to me is signed:

Happy reading

Josh

So I've got a new friend, have I? A new best mate to be all chummy with? Well, at least he hasn't signed up as my "friend":-)

"He made the mistake of picking on my friend"

So I'm hanging out in a group discussion somewhere on the net, nice friendly chat, until this guy turns up who has turned into a bulldozer and starts shooting everyone down in an unbelievably aggressive manner. (Yes, I know I'm mixing my metaphors, bulldozers don't shoot, but I'm sure you get the picture.)

So I'm watching this guy with horror - I really want to answer him but I can't think of anything that would be constructive, and I really don't fancy getting this sort of guy on my case - and then into the discussion comes a very nice lady who says to him: you're not very nice are you, I don't like the way you're snapping at everyone. And the bulldozer apologises and calms down. Phew.

I sent her a message to say well done, and she said: I'm generally non-confrontational, but he made the mistake of picking on my friend.

It reminded me of someone I worked with in London - about 30 people in an office, plenty of gossip and back-stabbing - who simply refused to listen to anything negative that anyone had to say about anyone else in the firm. If you tried telling him something bad about someone, he would say: don't talk like that about my friend.

So what am I getting at? Well, it's a vague thought but it's something to do with how if we regard everyone as friends, as people we care about, then we are much more likely to come to their defence when they need it. It all goes back to that "love your neighbour" stuff - caring enough about the other person to go out of your way, to even take risks sometimes, to help them in need.

I read a horrifying news item the other day about a man who was driving and stopped on his way to help a woman who had been run over by a car and was dying. When he saw her handbag he recognised this woman was his wife - he'd been on his way to meet her. I can't begin to imagine how he must have felt. But how would he have felt if he hadn't stopped, if he had just thought something like, I haven't got time to stop and help a stranger, I'm in a hurry to meet my wife... How would he have felt if nobody had stopped to help her? There is that old chestnut about how everybody thought somebody should do it, but in the end nobody did it. It's very easy to tut tut about the state of our society today, to tsk tsk about people not stopping to help a stranger like they used to, but the real challenge for each of us is: would we stop to help, or would we be in a tearing hurry, or just plain scared, and hope someone else would do it?

Got a letter composed by someone who obviously understands nothing about procrastination

Got a letter from the Inland Revenue today - a very nice and friendly letter telling me about all sorts of ways they can help me with filling in my tax return.

But what really cracked me up was this bit, when they're telling me about the possibility of filling it in online: "You also benefit from a three month longer deadline of 31 January if you file your tax return online." So far so good, but look at the very next sentence and see where the logical connection just completely falls apart: "So there's absolutely no reason to put it off." No reason to put it off? When you've just told me you're giving me 3 months longer? You've just given me a very good reason to put it off. Why do it now if I've got till January?

My conclusion is that whoever wrote this letter obviously doesn't understand the inner world of the procrastinator. Maybe the Inland Revenue have a policy of weeding out procrastinators at interview stage? (Well, I suppose if you're really bad at it you just won't ever get round to sending in your CV...)

A bunch of cells?

We had someone come to talk to us about abortions in church last night. He didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, although I'm sure many others hadn't been aware of a lot of the facts. He showed us a video clip of the developing baby in the womb at around 6-10 weeks (that's the time that most abortions, at least here in the UK, are done) but that was not new to me, in fact I had seen a better video clip once, probably when I was on the pregnancy counselling course - it was beautiful, I really felt like I was watching what it says in Psalm 139, "you knit me together in my mother's womb."

But this guy showed us another video clip, which I couldn't bear to watch for more than a few seconds. It was a clip showing what actually happens in an abortion.

It wasn't the sight of all that blood that did it for me. It was the sight of these tiny little limbs being scraped away, as though they're rubbish. Bits of human body being scraped out. And why? Unwanted pregnancy - that's what they call it. Unwanted. Inconvenient. Extremely and highly inconvenient sometimes. Having a baby just now would mess up my plans, it would mess up my education, my career, my plans for the future. Or: I can't afford to have a baby just now, I have no way of supporting it. There are lots of reasons, and they all seem like very valid reasons at the time. I know. I've made that decision twice, and I know how unbelievably sensible it seemed at the time. (Of course with all such reasons of "inconvenience", giving birth and having the baby adopted would work perfectly well - for every unwanted baby there are so many couples going through the agony of not being able to have children.)

I also know now what I didn't know at the time: that it wasn't "just a bunch of cells" - well, no more than I am just a bunch of cells, which I suppose in terms of my biological makeup yes, that's what I am.

The doctors use these euphemisms to try and make it all more palatable - for the woman having the abortion, and also for themselves, as they also have to live with what they do. I've heard that some doctors and nurses who perform abortions report nightmares - having seen just a few seconds of that video clip I'm not surprised! When a woman has an abortion she doesn't see what's going on, they protect us from the awfulness of it. Just as they protect us through the language they use - talking about "termination of pregnancy" rather than describe the violent removal of a baby from the womb, bits of its body being scraped out as though it wasn't a fellow human being.

But that's what they need to keep telling themselves - if they are to be able to keep doing what they do, they need to believe that it's not a human being. The use of terms like foetus and embryo helps them to believe that - let's not call it a baby just yet, so we can pretend it isn't. Because we all know that killing babies is wrong.

That's why the doctor didn't say to me: ok, let's arrange a date to have your baby killed.

But leaving aside for the moment the horrendous fate of the baby, the other thing they don't tell you about when you're considering having an abortion, is what it will do to you. They don't tell you that women who have had an abortion tend to develop a version of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which can only be healed through some really good and deep counselling.

Because despite all the euphemisms, deep down you actually know what happened, you know there was a baby inside you and that you acted totally against the role of mother - instead of protecting and nurturing, you destroyed and killed. The guilt is huge. The grief and loss feel unbearable, especially as you have no outlet for them - you feel you're not entitled to grieve, because you brought it on yourself; and society around you tells you that you have nothing to grieve for, it was "just a bunch of cells". So you bury the grief as deep as you can. You find all sorts of ways of numbing the pain - it could be stuff like alcohol or drugs, it could just be keeping very very busy. I found that seven gin and tonics every Friday night did the trick for a while. So you go through life, sometimes for years and years, not realising why you are living the way you are living, not realising why you need these pain-numbing mechanisms, not realising why at a particular time of the year you get especially sad (it's often the anniversary of when the baby would have been born), not realising that the pain is still there and is never going to go away until you bring it out and deal with it.

I am so grateful to have received God's forgiveness and healing. "Come now, let us reason together," says the LORD. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." (Isaiah 1:18)

Let us reason together, God says. We know when we've done wrong. All we have to do is repent, turn back to him and he will forgive us and give us a clean slate. But carrying on as though it wasn't wrong - that is the way to constant grief and never-ending pain.

P.S. If you have had an abortion, don't suffer in silence. There is hope, there is help available. This is one place I can highly recommend.

Equality for women in the workplace - not quite as straightforward as some would like to think

There's been quite a bit in the papers here recently on the subject of women's equality in the workplace, including this interesting article in the Times a few days ago. As far as I understand, it all started when Nicola Brewer, chief executive of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, said that "improved" maternity leave legislation is actually making employers more hesitant about employing women.

Is that really surprising?

I think the campaign for women's equality started with good intentions but has been spoiled by a gradual erosion of common sense. There have been some issues that were certainly worth fighting for, and I'm very glad I live in a time and place where women have the right to vote, the right to own property and manage their own bank accounts, etc. And the principle of equal pay at work sounds good too, but...

When the government intervenes and says to the employer: you have to keep your employee on if she gets pregnant, and you have to give her 39 weeks' paid maternity leave - sorry, but how is that fair and equal? How is the employer supposed to fund these extra wages, when he still has to pay someone else at the same time to do the work that he's paying his female employee not to do? How are small businesses supposed to survive under such conditions?

It's putting employers in an impossible situation. The law says they're not allowed to prefer men to women when they're choosing staff. That sounds good - surely they should just hire whoever is best for the job. But the issue of paid maternity leave changes the arithmetic and we no longer have a level playing field. If an employer knows that when he hires a woman of childbearing age he risks having to pay extra every time she has a baby - well, it's going to make very clear economic sense to hire a man instead; unless he could pay the woman less, but oh no, we want equal pay.

It seems to me we've been trying to do what the Brits call having your cake and eating it. We demand to be treated equally, loudly asserting that of course we are just as capable as men are of doing the job (if not better in some cases). Treat us as you treat your male employees, we demand. But treat us differently when we have babies.

Sorry, but why on earth should they?

I'm not sure I have a solution, except that I'd like the legislation to get a bit more common sense mixed into it. I'd like to see a clear distinction made between sexual discrimination - treating someone differently just because she is a woman - and reasonable discrimination, which in fact is what people do all the time, applying common sense to choices they have to make. When I want to buy something I make choices about which shop to go to, when I need a plumber I make a choice about which one to call. If someone needs to hire staff, they make choices. If their choices are based on criteria that are relevant to the job, there shouldn't be a law telling them they're not allowed to. If the fact that I'm a woman of childbearing age is potentially relevant to my performance at work - which it is, as if I were suddenly to get pregnant and have a baby my performance can suddenly plummet from excellent to non-existent for a while and at that time my boss would be obliged by law to keep paying me (and guess what, even if you're not planning to have a baby, these don't always go according to plan) - now where was I? yes, if the fact that I'm a woman of childbearing age is potentially relevant to my performance at work, then my potential employer should be allowed to take that into consideration. He should be allowed to decide that he prefers a man for the job; or an older woman. He should be allowed to say: I'd like to take you on, but I'll pay you a bit less than I would pay a man, because I'm risking additional costs and inconvenience in case you get pregnant. He should be allowed to say these things without worrying about employment tribunals.

I'd like to see employment tribunals concerning themselves with real discrimination and real ill-treatment of employees by their employers. I'd like to see employers free to make reasonable choices that make sense. Equal pay for equal work - yes, that's an excellent principle, that is fair. But can we women guarantee that we will give our employers equal work? No, we can't. There is a small biological difference that we can't ignore.

And why should employers have to pay us when we take maternity leave? If the government thinks we should get paid, let the government fund such payment out of our taxes. I know there are countries where the government pays women to stay at home and look after their babies - I'd love to see that here. Being a mother is one of the most important jobs that exist, and as these days most households require more than one income to survive, I'd like to see the government recognise that and provide financial support for mothers who stay at home to perform this crucial job.

But demanding that employers cover it? Of course it puts them off hiring women. Employers are normally in the business of making a profit, they do their sums and if they don't do their sums they'll go under.

Or am I missing something?

Sorry it hurts, but it's for your own good, honest...

There was quite a bit in the Times on Friday about the latest figures for teenage abortions in Britain. One item was about a gynaecologist in London who clearly believes he is providing an important public service in providing abortions for young girls. "The girls I worry about," he says, "are the ones who don't come to us, and go on to have the baby. It is not in the interests of any child to have a 16-year-old mother."

Sorry it hurts, baby, but don't you see it makes sense?
You wouldn't want that sort of life
You're much better off if I get them to kill you now

You see, once you're out of my womb
it becomes illegal to kill you.

Just eat less calories - now why didn't I think of that!

Got into a debate elsewhere on the web and the subject of prejudice against "the obese" came up - and what prejudice there is out there! It seems that in a society that won't allow anything that might seem like you're possibly a teensy bit discriminating against people who sleep with those of their own gender (for example), anyone whose bmi is above a certain line is still considered fair game. And why? Because, as a guy called Andy on that thread pleasantly explained to me, the arithmetic is simple - eat less calories and you lose weight; eat more calories and you gain weight. Simple. So there's no reason why people should be overweight, and therefore - following Andy's logic - if I'm overweight it's my choice.

I'll just pause here to clarify some terminology. If you don't know what a BMI is when it's at home - lucky you... You probably don't have a weight problem. Those of us who have struggled with weight issues are more likely to have come across this term: Body Mass Index. I don't remember off the top of my head how it's calculated, but it represents a certain ratio between your weight and your height, and is supposed to measure you against the supposedly healthy standard. If you're on one area of the graph you're considered to weigh a healthy weight; a certain level above that you're considered overweight; go over that level and you're officially obese. Which is where I've been for a while now. And oh, how I hate this word! It just sounds horrible, doesn't it? And when people talk about "the obese" it just sounds yuk, you can feel the disapproval coming at you through that word. Somehow saying I'm fat doesn't feel so bad, don't know why.

But back to that brilliant piece of logic I was presented with, that showed that obviously being way overweight is my choice...

I have made many stupid choices in my life. The thing is that when you're presented with temptation, the price tag is usually hidden. When I chose to start smoking (aged 14ish, eager to become "grown-up") yes, I knew it wasn't healthy, but I had no idea how strong the addiction would be. I had no idea how difficult it would be to stop. About twenty years later I finally managed to kick that habit, but it certainly wasn't simple. Would I have made the same choice at 14 had I known what it was going to be like? Who knows. Anyway, I'm not here to talk about smoking, it was just an example of a bad choice I made.

Was there a particular moment along the way, a decisive point at which I made a choice that would affect my weight? You know, I don't think there was one. There was a gradual sliding that started when I was about 23 and the person I started going out with at the time decided that I needed feeding up. At the time I was thin - not horribly thin, not like current-day models, just nicely slim. I weighed 50 kilos (about 8 stone) which for my height (or should I say my shortness) is a good weight. I had always been slim, and had always been able to eat whatever I liked without putting any weight on. And I had always had a sweet tooth. I remember when I started working (my first job when I was 15) I had this Friday afternoon ritual, coming home from work (in Israel we finished early on a Friday) via the Elite chocolate shop. They sold chocolate by the weight, and I would get 250 grammes of this kind, 250 of that kind, etc (don't remember them all, but my favourite was definitely the chocolate-coated orange peel) and then I'd head home with the chocolates and the similarly heavy Saturday newspaper (yes, in Israel the Saturday paper comes out on Friday, we just don't have a newspaper on the Sabbath) and after lunch I'd lie on my bed, reading the paper and munching through chocolate.

And I didn't gain one kilo as a result.

And no, I was not using up tons of energy through exercise. I wasn't even doing housework! I was sitting on a bus all the way to work, sitting at my desk at work, then sitting on the bus all the way home. A completely sedentary lifestyle, with absolutely zero physical exercise. Eating whatever I felt like, and staying thin.

Until age 23, when suddenly the magic spell was broken and the food I ate started actually making a difference to my size. I was extremely surprised to suddenly find that I had gained 5 kilos. I was totally new to the world of weight-gain, diets were a foreign subject to me, and in the years to come I was to learn a lot about this subject! I was to learn how absolutely climbing-up-the-wall depressed and/or ratty some diets can make you. I was to learn how infuriatingly-easily the weight creeps back up once you stop whatever diet you put so much effort into. I was to learn how hard it becomes to find nice clothes that actually fit you and flatter your figure once you've crossed a certain line. I was to learn how much harder physical exercise becomes once there's more of you to shift when you move. I was to learn how your body resents the extra weight you're putting on it and expresses its resentment through all sorts of creaks of the joints, all sorts of aches and pains that sometimes make you feel like you're your mum's age.

And I was to learn how infuriatingly smug some people can be who have never experienced any of this.

This is just a bit of my own story. Obviously there are people whose situation is even more difficult than mine. Obviously there are those who have medical conditions that affect their weight, or who take medication that affects it. (I was put on steroids once and blew up like a balloon!) There are those like my next-door neighbour who is in a wheelchair and simply can't do any exercise. But I reckon there are plenty of people out there with stories similar to mine, people who suddenly found at some stage that their metabolism changed and the eating habits they'd grown up with were not serving them well now, but suddenly changing your eating habits as an adult is not that easy - partly because generally changing habits isn't easy, partly because there are so many different theories coming at you from different directions that it can be very confusing.

I have tried counting calories, and yes, I did lose weight through that, but could I carry on doing that for life - weighing everything you eat, keeping a daily record of exactly how many calories you have consumed? No, I'm afraid that was only doable for a short time, for a few months of pushing myself really hard. And many other diets are just not healthy as a long-term plan.

My brother recently introduced me to the concept of the low-carb diet, which I do find much easier than others I've tried in the past. I like meat, so eating lots of meat is no hardship for me... The great difficulty is resisting my sweet tooth, and I have ups and downs on that front, which translate pretty directly into ups and downs weight-wise - so yes, it does work: focusing on eating lots of protein + fat, filling up on that so that you won't need the carbs - to my surprise I found it does work. But there is still that bit in a corner of my mind that equates sweets with a treat, which is a problem.

So here I am, I weigh 76.5 kilos, which makes my bmi 32.5, and apparently if it's over 30 you're officially obese. I never chose to become overweight. It happened, and fighting it once it's happened is actually very very difficult. If it was really as simple as people like Andy reckon, we wouldn't have such a huge diet industry. And seriously, Andy, putting aside the fact that I would love to once again just stroll into any shop and buy nice clothes, do you really think I enjoy the discomfort of having to lug so much weight around? Don't you think if it was so simple to lose weight, I'd have done it by now?

Sabbath rest - what does it really mean?

Okay, here's something that I've been wrestling with and as it's come up recently in a debate elsewhere, maybe it's time I attempted to put my confused thoughts together. Be warned though - I have many more questions than answers! In fact, I'd love to hear any thoughts or insights that you have on this issue.

I'm leaving aside for the moment the question of which day of the week it should be - I know some people will want to stone me for saying this, but I really don't think it's that crucial, I think there's a principle in the Bible of having a day of rest, of not rushing around like headless chickens all the time but trusting God that he will provide all we need even if we dare to stop for a day. I think God gave us this gift out of his love and care for us, knowing the human tendency to work too hard and to keep pushing ourselves until we get a heart attack.

So far, so good. We have a principle of stopping work for a day, and resting. Sounds good. But what does that actually mean in practical terms? What does work mean? And what does rest mean? My questions come from realising that these terms can mean very different things to different people, or even to the same person at different stages of their lives.

When I was doing an ordinary 9-5 office job, it was very clear to me what work was. Work was what I did in the office, obviously... Some of you may have already noticed what's missing here - what about stuff like housework, I hear you saying. But then in those days I didn't do much of that (not that I do now, come to think of it) so this wasn't an issue for me. Having said that, I do remember visiting a Christian friend who was also working 9-5 but had a young daughter to look after and very different standards to me as far as housework was concerned, and I was surprised to see her doing the ironing on Sunday afternoon after church. My understanding of the Sabbath principle is that you would somehow squeeze the ironing etc into the rest of the week, say in the evening after work, so that you could have a day that is completely restful. But I didn't ask my friend why she did it, and it just may be that she is one of those people who find ironing relaxing - who knows?

It could be very easy in a way to go with the list the rabbis put together of what you shouldn't do on the Sabbath - it would mean not having to think about it. But it would enslave me under a set of rules that I don't believe God intended. You see, he made me and he knows what I'm like, and he doesn't expect me to be like everybody else. He's made each of us different! And he knows that what is work for me is restful for you, and vice versa.

I remember when living with my friends up in Wales - I helped them run a retreat house and we had a "community day off" on Thursdays (Sunday was not an option for them as a day off as they were both church ministers). I was stunned to see one of them doing some gardening on a Thursday afternoon, but then discovered that for her, pottering in the garden was relaxing, it was a way to unwind and rest.

The rabbis would frown on gardening on the Sabbath. But then I expect they would also frown on, say, embroidery or knitting, which for me are fantastic ways into stillness. Or what about drawing or painting? At least they do allow going for a walk, but they tell you how far it's ok to walk - again laying down the same standard for all of us, no matter how fit we are! And they won't let you go for a nice drive, take the family somewhere nice for a stroll in the countryside, have a nice picnic, enjoy the beauty of creation.

I have seen how silly it can get, following the rabbis' rules and regulations. For instance, my mum keeps the rule about not writing on the Sabbath. So one Saturday afternoon - this was a few years ago when I was living with her - I was having a rest and she was going out for a walk with a friend. She needed to leave me a message, but couldn't write me a note. So what did she do? (My mum has always been very imaginative!) She got her Scrabble set out, chose the right letters from the bag and left me a message on the dining table made out of Scrabble letters, saying: Gone for a walk with Erika. Now, I take my hat off to my mum for the ingenuity, but I have to ask: which would have been the greater effort? To make this message out of Scrabble letters, or to write a quick note?

But having said that, if I try to define work in terms of effort, I run into problems too, because there are some things that we do for fun and relaxation that involve effort, like playing sports for instance. (You'll notice I said "we do" not "I do"...)

You see why I said I had many questions and not so many answers?

The question of "what is work" has been a big question for me in recent years as I am not in a job and when people ask me "do you work?" or "what do you do?" I don't have a straightforward answer. No, I don't go out to work, I try to explain, and all sorts of well-intentioned people say, ah, so you're a housewife (or homemaker). Well, no, I'm not really. I'm at home and I do the household shopping and I cook a meal for us every night, I do some washing up once a day and once in a while I throw some clothes into the washing machine, but that's as far as my housekeeping goes. My husband does a fair bit - he's actually much more fussy than I am about cleanliness, so if he waited for me to notice it needed doing he'd wait a long time...

So, what is work for me right now? Well, cooking and washing up and supermarket shopping - definitely. Which is why I make a point of doing the shopping before the weekend so that I can have time off from that; and I've negotiated with my husband a couple of nights off from cooking over the weekend - either he cooks or we get a takeaway. Then there's coursework - it's quite obvious to me that that is work. And the course involves residential weekends, so obviously when I have one of those, I have to take a day off in the week instead.

Oops, I said "obviously" but that's just obvious to me, not to everyone. Many people on the course work full time and so they come on Friday straight from work and on Monday they're back at work. I don't know how they do it! And here's a question: is it right?

But another non-obvious bit about this is that for some people on the course, those weekends feel like a break, like being away on holiday. I've spoken to some women on the course who so enjoy being cooked for and not having to do the washing up! For me these weekends are something to be endured and survived - as a night owl having to be up before 7am, and as an introvert having to be with people all day, I get through these weekends with the help of coffee and chocolate and then I come home and crash. But for extroverts, who thrive on being in company, I can see that it could be positive and recharging.

This issue comes up for me again and again when I go away on Messianic conferences. I love these get-togethers and wouldn't miss them for (pretty much) anything, but... I struggle with the Sabbath issue. We do the candles and wine on Friday evening, welcoming Shabbat. We do the Havdalah on Saturday evening, saying goodbye to Shabbat. But for me as an introvert and a night owl, this is not a Sabbath, it's a day in which I'm pushing myself to be up early, having to interact with people over breakfast, and there's no way I can see this as keeping the Sabbath. I come home from such a conference and have a day off on the Monday to rest and recharge.

And here's another question: surely there are some things that are work for you but you still simply have to do them on the Sabbath? If you're a farmer, no doubt you still have to feed the animals and milk the cows. And if you're the mother of a young baby, you won't leave the baby in dirty nappies for a day, will you? I suppose some things can be resolved by getting someone else to do them, but a breastfeeding mum wouldn't really be able to delegate... So how does she go about having a Sabbath rest? or doesn't she?

Just a few questions... Would love to hear what you think. Do you have a regular day of rest? What does rest mean for you? How do you interpret the Sabbath principle in your own life?

Free personal nutrition report? I'm extremely unconvinced

So there's a company that's offering a free personal report to tell you what you should change about your nutrition. I thought I'd give it a go - what did I have to lose?

The way it works is that you fill in a questionnaire online, which they analyse and then they send you a link to your "personal" report which you can view online. I wasn't too surprised to see that their report ends up with recommendations for the purchase of health supplements from them - after all, why would they be offering a free report if they didn't hope to make a profit somehow? That's fair enough in my book.

But really disappointed me was the way the questionnaire was phrased. They ask you about certain types of food, and the question is: how often do you eat this? e.g. how often do you eat red meat/wholemeal bread/fruit/etc. And then on the basis of that rather limited information they produce what is supposed to be a personal report for you - how on earth do they reckon they can produce a personal report about my nutrition when they have no idea how much I eat of anything - all they know is how often I eat this stuff! Say you have two people filling in this questionnaire - John eats 100 grammes of red meat 5 times a week, whilst Jane eats 250 grammes of red meat twice a week. The answer to the question "how often do you eat red meat?" is going to be 5 times a week for John and twice a week for Jane, but they both eat the same amount per week.

Either I'm missing something, or this is one big con!

Who was it that thought up this expression - and why?

Once again I read in today's paper about a crime involving a "member of the public", and no matter how many times I've come across this expression I still can't get my head round it.

Am I missing something? It just seems like such a pointless, meaningless piece of euphemistic journalese. What does it actually mean when they say that someone is a "member of the public"? As far as I can see, all it means is that this is a person, one of us plebs, an ordinary human being. The public is us, not an exclusive club or political party or even book club or library, where you have to take out membership. I've been a member of the public for 46 years now, how long have you been a member? Can I cut up my membership card and stop being a member of the public? Are there any benefits to being a member?

I can see the point of euphemisms for expressions that may be considered obscene or offensive, but what's so bad about saying the guy who was stabbed on Oxford Street was, well, a guy who was stabbed on the street? an ordinary bloke? If what they're trying to say is that they think he wasn't a criminal, then they could say just that: the man stabbed on Oxford Street is believed not to have been a criminal. How about that? And anyway, I don't see that criminals aren't members of the public - they're just not very law-abiding ones, that's all. And there's another expression they could use if the intention is to say he wasn't a criminal: a law-abiding citizen.

Hey, I think I've got it. In other countries they could say he was an ordinary citizen, but the Brits aren't citizens, they're subjects, and nobody would understand the expression "ordinary subjects". I wonder - am I right? Is "member of the public" just a British expression?

Being fully present in the moment

One of my favourite Times columnists, Michael Gove, wrote yesterday expressing his longing for "pure immersion in the moment". He said he'd love to read our thoughts about the best way of being "fully present", but when I went onto the Times website I found that they give us a maximum of 300 characters to comment! Yes, you read right - 300 characters, not 300 words. How on earth can I squeeze all that I have to say about this subject into 300 characters without resorting to TxtSpk?

I'm not going to try and compete with his suggestion of surfing, as risk-taking just isn't the way I get my buzz, though I can see how a feeling of danger can bring about a total focus on what's going on for you at that moment, I'm sure that facing a huge wave and concentrating on survival would mean you don't suddenly find yourself thinking about the shopping list or the person you were supposed to be phoning or the report for the boss. But there are other ways of getting that pure focus. (Actually, I was surprised to find a man asking about this - my impression has been that men are much better than us at focusing on whatever they're doing and forgetting about everything else, whilst women tend to juggle lots more different activities and are not so good at shutting out the world and its distractions, which is probably the way we're programmed so that we could be good mothers. Babies wouldn't survive very well if their mothers were too good at focusing on what they're doing to the exclusion of everything else.)

But the question was about ways of being fully present in the moment, which is, as he says, quite rare these days as people tend to rush around so much - the developments of technology, instead of those optimistic fantasies of a life of leisure which I remember reading about in sci-fi when I was young, have brought us more pressure, higher expectations, and much less peace and quiet. To be able to focus on the moment these days you need to switch off a huge number of gadgets! One of the things that I find crucial to my sanity is the ability to switch things off. Even now as I write, I've got the email closed and have signed out of Messenger - useful as they are, these things are likely to distract me from my writing.

Yes, writing has to be near the top of my list - being creative is something you can fully immerse yourself in, so much so that I've been known at times to forget about supper because I was so immersed in a story. And I expect people who are creative in other ways - painting or sculpture or whatever - probably experience the same thing, total immersion in what you are creating.

Praying can sometimes do that for me - not always, because often I am very distracted, but now and again there are these special moments when I am totally and wonderfully aware of God's presence, and nothing else matters, there's just me and him and total bliss. Even better than making love - which of course is another opportunity for totally immersing yourself in the moment and forgetting about the boring and mundane elements of life.

And then there are those little moments that are on offer but so often we don't feel we have the time to really enjoy, like watching a rainbow or a butterfly, or pausing to cuddle a cat. Children are so much better at this - somehow we lose it as we grow up and allow ourselves to become more and more burdened with To Do lists. But the choice is still there - seeing the neighbour's cat in our back garden when I go out with the rubbish, I could tell myself I've got a zillion things to do, or I could stop for a minute and really enjoy stroking the cat. I find if I allow myself that moment of pure delight, I then have much more energy to tackle my To Do list afterwards.

Really encouraging! one man making a huge difference

This has got to be one of the most encouraging things I have ever read - someone who has found a way of giving a sense of hope and purpose to convicts in what would seem a totally hopeless situation.

And reading this I found myself thinking how easy it is for us to think that convicts in prison are worse than we are, whilst in reality the difference between them and us is that they've been caught and punished.

This one is dedicated to that lovely lady who just rang my doorbell - she showed great perseverance, albeit coupled with a slight insensitivity

What are blogs for if you can't get these things off your chest.

So what happened? It's like this. There's a charity that is doing a bit of fundraising in our area at the moment, a good charity as far as I know and I would have been inclined to drop something into their envelope, if this lady hadn't annoyed me so much.

The way they go about it is that they put an envelope through your door so that hopefully you will put something in it and have it ready when they come to collect. But they don't tell you when they're coming, so it's a bit hit and miss. So far, not a problem to me. No big deal as far as I'm concerned.

But this lady turned up and rang my doorbell at an inconvenient moment - she couldn't know it, but I'm having a major flop day today and wasn't dressed so couldn't really go to the door. I looked to see who it was (aren't net curtains a great invention!) and that's how I know - and that's how I know who it was that stood there for a very long time ringing my doorbell again and again, which personally I think is extremely rude and inconsiderate. It's as if whatever I'm doing is so much less important than putting a pound in her charity's envelope. I think people who go from door to door can sometimes forget that they don't know what they may be interrupting. What if I was a tired mum who had just at last managed to get her baby to go back to sleep and was hoping for a five-minute snooze after a sleepless night? What if I was a shift worker trying to get some sleep before getting up for the night shift? What if I just had something on the stove that would burn if I left it for a minute? I'm sure if I carried on I could think of a zillion other reasons why ringing the doorbell half a dozen times would be extremely annoying.

It's a bit like those sales people who bang on the door as well as ringing the bell, which makes me feel like going to the door and saying: where's the fire?

Maybe next time I should.

How does the supermarket know I'm so special...

It's still a couple of weeks till my birthday but I got a birthday greeting in the post today. From my supermarket. So very touching... sorry if I sound a bit cynical, but really, it's nice of them to offer me a free box of chocolates (though in some ways it's the last thing I need...) but what narks me is the sentimental gibberish they put on the card: "Because you're really special, we'd like to make a fuss, by treating you to something sweet, especially on us." Well, really, I wouldn't have appreciated such twee mock-poetry from a friend, but from my supermarket? In what way exactly am I special to them? Do they particularly value the way I wheel my trolley round their aisles? Do they admire my own special way of choosing carrots?

But this is nothing compared to the pharmacy chain with whom I also hold one of those so-called loyalty cards (do they really think they can buy my loyalty by giving me one penny back on every pound I spend? I'm not that cheap!) - I hardly ever shop there, but I still get these ridiculous leaflets in the post with all sorts of money-off vouchers (usually for stuff that I have no interest in buying) which they claim to send me especially "as a valued customer". I look at those and think: aren't you confusing me with someone else? someone who actually spends more than the odd five pounds once in a blue moon when she's sort of stuck? I know for a fact that there are women out there who spend a small fortune regularly on make-up etc, so their "valued customer" threshold seems a bit low.

Thank God I don't need these corporations to give me a sense of value and of being special.

On cars and emotions

Well, it feels like today should be a celebration as it's a year since I passed my driving test, and thank God I'm still in one piece... Got one dent on the left-hand side from that time I got confused in a multi-storey car park, and have had one wheel changed because of that stupid moment when I fiddled around with the heating controls whilst doing probably about 50-60mph, but it's all part of the learning curve, we make mistakes and hopefully learn from them.

But where do the emotions come in, you are probably wondering...

Well, one of the things that was mentioned on the counselling course I'm doing is how negative emotions can be a bit like a red light on the dashboard, a sign to tell us that something isn't quite right, something under the surface needs attention. So many times in life, for one reason or another, we ignore these red lights. Have you ever driven a car with a red light on the dashboard, thinking, I haven't got time to stop and check this just now, I'm in a hurry, or I haven't got the money to spend on repairs, or, I'm not sure what this light means - we do this with our feelings, we have anger or tearfulness or anxiety or whatever coming up and we put a lid on the feelings because it's highly inconvenient at that moment to deal with them, we've got things to do, we're surrounded by people and what would they think, we've been taught boys don't cry or that it's wrong to show feelings in public or that feelings will go away if you ignore them or perhaps even that Christians should be joyful always and it's sinful to feel sad (so why does the Bible tell us that Jesus wept? and was he joyful when hanging on the cross? my role model showed feelings of sadness, of anger, of pain, and if it's good enough for him then it's good enough for me!) - so what am I trying to say here? Just this: burying emotions makes just as much sense as ignoring the red light on the dashboard. The problem will not go away, it will very probably get worse, the car won't go very well and at some point, when you're not expecting it and probably when it's extremely inconvenient, it will just stop.

Like I said, I had that stupid moment a few months ago when I bashed into the kerb because I'd been fiddling with the heating settings. I heard a loud noise but didn't understand what it meant. There were cars behind me and I felt I couldn't stop right there to check what happened. So I carried on - onto the M25, with a very spectacularly flat tyre. No, I didn't get very far. And it would have been a lot easier to wait for the AA man before I'd got onto the motorway. But I had felt I couldn't afford to stop at the time, it wasn't a convenient moment.

The truth is, there never is a convenient moment to deal with problems, but ignoring them doesn't work long-term.

"Be who you want to be" - oh, really?

I saw this advert in the Times today about training to be a Life Coach.

It says: "Coaching starts from the awareness that you can be, do and have anything you desire!"

Does anyone seriously believe this?!!! I mean, how is this going to work? Can I become six foot tall just by really really wanting to? Can my 89-year-old mother start playing tennis if she really sets her heart on it? Can my wheelchair-bound neighbour start walking by sheer willpower and determination?

Bring back logical thinking! Now!!!