Why are the Catholics behind a wall?

So lots of people in France have died because people chose to mock a religion.

But mockery is what we do best, it is at the heart of our culture.  Just look at the Regency caricaturists and how cruel they were with the Royals and upper echelons. I believe the British have total, dry wit down pat but it would appear that the Cheese-Eating-Surrender-Monkeys have a better sense of humour than I ever gave them credit for.  Lucky that, they will now be able to hoot along with many hilarious digs I've made at them and chuckle away.

Like many, I am often at sixes and sevens with religion, I like the sense of calm and comfort that comes from faith but regularly shake my head at the bigotry of religion.  I was once at a meal out with many people from my church celebrating our success at having organised a week of special services aimed at growing faith and understanding.  I was feeling a bit disillusioned at the time, as is often the case after having suffered a few months of decisioning by committee, ironic given the week we had organised.  But anyway, during a discussion at the meal a fairly new curate used the words 'all muslims will go to hell'.  WTF? I said back. Which went over like a fart in church.  But even after all these years it still grates on me, I struggle with how someone that is learning about faith, love, peace and understanding believes that.  Perhaps he struggled with the one God concept or skipped a lot of classes!

At the same time as murder in the name of God was all unfolding in France, I was watching Dave Allen on TV.  It's such a good job it was the Catholics that were the brunt of his mockery:

A Guy goes to Heaven and gets a tour by St. Peter. He points out a group and Peter says "Those are the good Hindus"....points out another "Those are the good Protestants"....points to another "Yes, those are the good Jews"....points to another "Those are the good Muslims."
Then they come upon a giant 20 foot high wall.
"What's this wall, St. Peter?"
"Shhhhh, keep your voice down"
"Why?"
"Behind that wall we keep the Catholics"
"Why do you keep the Catholics behind this wall?"
"Oh, well...they like to think they're the ONLY ones up here."

I prefer the 'come inside no matter who you are'

 and the 'lets have some fun with it'

To the 'keep it sacred', untouchable and irrelevant to the modern world.



May your God go with you

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Deki Loans - A great Christmas gift for kids and teens

I get a little bit annoyed when someone buys me 'a goat' for Christmas.  It's a juxtaposition, I know I should get a warm fuzzy feeling inside but I also wanted something for 'me'.  You just put your goat to one side and poof the  fun is gone.

But I do like giving (and receiving)  Deki loans as gifts because the person you give it to has to do something with it.  They decide who to loan the money to and they get the money back for themselves at the end of it.  It's a hands on charitable gift.

The person you give the loan to will pick the person they choose to loan the money to and then yes, they have to wait, but the loan will be repaid fully in 6-12 months. At that point your recipient can then choose to withdraw the money from the scheme and keep it for themselves or invest it with another entrepreneur. 

They can have a direct impact on people’s lives by lending anything from £10 to an entrepreneur in the developing world.  100% of the money you lend goes directly to the person they choose to support.
Deki is a charity designed to help people work their way out of poverty, so the loans don’t generate profits for lenders. 

There are lots of people to choose from that are looking for money for different business ideas. The total loans are often made up of mini loans from lots of different people so with £10 you can 'complete' a loan and set the person off on their journey to work their own way out of poverty.

This is a great way to give money as a gift to a tween or teen and let them make a difference to a life but with complete autonomy, they choose who, what for and they will see the money come back to them.

To give a loan as a gift you just pay for it and print out a gift voucher, they have something to unwrap and then they can do their favourite thing - log onto the internet!

And remember the money does come back to them and if they want to they can take it back for themselves and buy the iTunes voucher they always dreamed of, or they can re-lend it to another person of their choice.

I think it's a great way to introduce children to charitable giving, to give them a sense of being part of one large world and learn that as individuals they can make a difference to someone very far away.

The fact that they can have the money in the end if they want it makes it different to your standard 'goat' or 'mosquito net' gift.  But maybe they will re-lend it so that it really can be the gift that keeps on giving.

Have a look:

 

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A small act of kindness

Every so often a 'story' comes through my facebook timeline.  This morning's was about a policewomen that had brought someone their groceries instead of arresting them for shop lifting and so the story grew into a small number of public donations and a job offer.  It was a nice, happy day thing.

I noticed over 1 million people had 'liked' it and 200,000 had left 'wow, that's awesome comments'.  Why do we feel the need to 'like' these stories?  Well, I guess it's nice to show that we do actually like a bit of good news or a happy ending but I'm a little worried that there is more to it.  Do we 'like' these things because clicking feels like an action?  Do we think we have actually done something positive to the world by that action?

I wonder how many people float through life without giving anything back?  Yes, I know life is hard/busy/challenging/we don't owe anyone anything but

we live in one world. Go stand up in space and look down at the world and see it, imagine watching one group of people struggling whilst others, busy like ants, ignore it.  It seems odd to me.

I know it's hard to make a difference to the entire world but small stones make large ripples.

Often making a difference benefits ourselves as much as the people we try to help.  I suspect most marathon runners for charity and sponsored bike riders have an element of 'it's good for me', 'it keeps me fit', 'I feel great when I achieve a challenge' going on in there.

I've definitely always said I get as much out of Guiding for me personally as I put in.  Well, I mostly say that, there are some days when I wonder why I do it, but on balance I'm tipping the scales with a big win for me.

But there is something in between clicking 'like' and achieving nothing and running a marathon.  There are simple acts of kindness like offering to push an old person's shopping trolley to the car for them, stopping to pick up the dropped glove of a child when mum hasn't noticed or has her hands full and giving it back, waving at a kiddy on a bus who loves to be waved back at and taking 2 seconds of 'child entertainment' pressure off its mum, picking up a bit of litter and putting it in the bin.

 I think 'like' clicks are like water skaters. They are there on the surface of the water, manically moving around but the water hardly moves at all, there are no ripples, the skaters don't even break the surface.

But even small stones break the surface and create ripples.  Small acts of kindness are like small stones.  What are you going to do today? 

There's an irony in this post that if you G+'d it or 'liked' it in some manner, I would be rather pleased.  Ahhhh irony, the mantle by which I live!

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Differences exist in thought and in sentiment

There has been a long running discussion on a Guiding group about the necessity of encouraging girls to attend church parade. Whether they should be encouraged or not, whether they should be rewarded or not, whether there should be a church connection or not, whether there should be any mention of religion at all or not.

It has been an emotive issue and the differences in opinion have been as far apart as you can imagine and anything in between.

It made me think about the Chief Scout's speech when he became 'Chief  Scout of all the World' at Olympia in 1920.

 "Brother Scouts,
I ask you to make a solemn choice.
Differences exist between the peoples of the world in thought and sentiment, just as they do in language and physique.
The war has taught us that if one nation tries to impose its particular will upon others, cruel reaction is bound to follow.
The Jamboree has taught us that if we exercise mutual forbearance and give-and-take, then there is sympathy and harmony.
If it be your will, let us go forth from here determined that we will develop among ourselves and our boys that comradeship, through the world-wide spirit of the Scout brotherhood, so that we may help to develop peace and happiness in the world and good will among men. Brother Scouts, answer me -- will you join in this endeavour?"

"Yes!" Shouted the Crowd

Mutual Forbearance, a really easy concept and yet so difficult to carry out when faced with a sea of contradicting opinions.

In only a small sea of faces, no two people will think exactly the same thoughts.  Unless they are Guiders and are faced with a huge plate of chocolate obviously - but that is a given.

Give and Take.

So simple and yet sometimes so very hard.

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The Average British Soldier

"Just as with the generations of young people before him, he is paying the price for our freedom.

He is the latest in the long thin line of British fighting men that have kept the country free for hundreds of years.

He asks for nothing from us except our respect, friendship and understanding.

We may not like what he does but sometimes he doesn't like it either - he just has it to do."

Take time today to think about him.

 

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Woody Allen Jesus

Tim Minchin's song has been cut from the ITV Jonathon Ross Christmas Eve show, so typical of the current trend to try to remove Christianity from anything for fear of offending people. It doesn't matter how hard anyone tries you cannot separate Christmas and Christ.

It is so not offensive, it simply brings Jesus into a modern understanding. Maybe people not normally likely to be touched by Jesus might actually spend a moment to think about him.

So praise be to Jesus.



If you want to hear Tim Mintchin's own thoughts on it, his blog is here.

Have a peaceful and blessed Christmas all.

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The Golden Rule

I absolutely adore this time of year. There is something special to me about the light, the chill in the evening air, the smell of fires, the changing colours in nature. I sat the other day looking at a view of our beautiful countryside and musing over how very lucky I was to be here and how this was the most special time of year.

 HWMBO disagreed, in his opinion nothing beats summer. It seemed so strange that he couldn’t see that Autumn was clearly the most special time. This led me down the path of pondering other peoples needs and priorities and how different we all are. I found some interesting reading about respecting differences which in turn naturally turned to morals and values and “The Golden Rule".

The “Golden Rule” could be seen as the highest rule of life, and plays an important part of most religions. It is expressed in slightly different ways, but the general wording: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" seems to sum it up.

Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount: "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them."

Judaism: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."

Islam: "No one of you is a believer until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself."

Confucianism: "What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others."

Buddhism: "Hurt not others with that which pains yourself."

Hinduism: "Good people proceed while considering that what is best for others is best for themselves."

Humanists: "Every person has dignity and worth, and, therefore, should command the respect of every other person."

But my particular favourite is the Indian saying: "Don't judge others until you have walked in their moccasins."

I agree that becoming moral requires enough emotional development to feel guilty when we do wrong, enough social development to accept our responsibility for behaving in agreed upon ways towards our group, and enough cognitive development to be able to place ourselves in another person's shoes.

So I slipped on HWMBO's moccasins to see if the view feels any different …No I thought not…still, if just once a day I can consider why someone does or thinks something that may not fit my own subjective standards or more importantly how what I am doing may affect someone else there will be a benefit.

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It's not fair, it's not dark either

When someone strikes up 'it's not fair' in our house, HWMBO always replies 'it's not dark either', he tells me it belongs to John Elliot. It's about challenging the 'it's not fair' statement to a different dimension, teaching us that life isn't fair and that's the way it is.

How was your weekend?  I got a new dress in the sale, nice isn't it.  I watched a wealth of middle class shop whilst supping on inferior Le Petit Four Français iced latte because Costa had run out of ice.

I was rather put out that our favourite local restaurant was fully booked and I didn't get to go out in my new dress. 

On the other hand, I didn't have to leave my starving child alone in the desert to die, nor watch my family suffer.

 
Is it acceptable to say life isn't fair?
 
£6 billion, yes billion, pounds will be spent on ice-cream in Europe this year.
 
Donate to DEC.

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Maybe we could we try Unity? No seriously...

So Bin Laden is dead....

Which one is your money on for going next:

Canary Wharf

Eiffel Tower

Golden Gate Bridge

Sydney Harbour



Don't suppose there's any chance of them removing Hull, Burton or even rearranging the Cathorpe Interchange?  But it's not even close to a laughing matter is it. 


“Faced with the death of a man, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibility of each and every one of us before God and before man, and hopes and commits himself so that no event be an opportunity for further growth of hatred, but for peace.”

I came across this diagram today.  What would be your definition of the Core?

Love? Peace? Humility?

Somehow 'bombing the shit out of each other' doesn't seem to fit into that piece of the puzzle.  Please let it stop before more innocents die.

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Cradling the Dead

The Gallery this week is Trees

This is the American Cemetary near Omaha Beach.  There are 10,000 men buried here.  This tree's branches seemed to reach out over the graves like a mother's arms,  protecting the men and boys from any more harm.

Mother Nature doing for the boys what their own mothers couldn't.

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I believe in one God,

I'm starting to worry that my religious views are at odds with the Church I am part of...you see, I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible...

....but I believe that your God is my God and my God is your God.  A man I work with has gone to Mecca on pilgrimage, I am in awe.  It is a 3 week stint of religious learning and renewal.  When I go on pilgrimage, I go for 2 days and whilst beautifully renewing and spiritually deepening, it is also very tiring.

Before he left we sat and talked about pilgrimage in general, no question about the difference in faiths and that is really important to me.  So many faiths seem to stem from the one maker, they involve prophets, the teaching of God in terms of word interpreted and written down.  That word tends to boil down to "let's try to be nice to people for a change".

I've given up on denominational divides, on what we call it.  I see myself worshipping in Church as the same as the person in the Mosque.  It's a different way of doing the same thing and that's ok because the one God sent the word to be interpreted as fitted, if it was meant to be the same thing for every person then we would have been sent a prewritten manual.  Yes, I know Moses came down from the mountain with the Commandments but they pretty much cover off the "look, just stop sleeping around and killing people.  Let's  be nice and charitable." and that can also be found in the Quran.

So I sit in Church and sometimes hear things said that go completely against my deep down belief that we are all one.

Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks said today:  "The good thing about faith is that it builds communities.  It takes a lot of 'mes' and turns them into an 'us', the bad news is that it can divide communities into a 'them' and an 'us'."

Next week is Interfaith week, it's time to extend the hand of friendship to someone who is not of your faith.

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We Will Remember Them

At Pickham Ridge I can still see the bewilderment and fear on the men's faces when we went over the top. C and D Company was support, A and B had had to go front line. All over the battlefield the wounded were lying down, English and German asking for help. We weren't like the Good Samaritan in the Bible, we were the robbers who passed by and left them. You couldn't help them. I came across a Cornishman, ripped from shoulder to waist with shrapnel, his stomach on the ground beside him in a pool of blood. As I got to him he said, 'Shoot me,' he was beyond all human aid. Before we could even draw a revolver he had died. He just said 'Mother.' I will never forget it.

Private Harry Patch
Forgotten Voices Of The Great War

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Hugs make me smile

Livi shared this, I think it's cool enough to share again




Particularly good Sick Puppies song.  Enjoy.


*HUGS*

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Other People's Children

Well I've got myself into a right old bother again...trouble is my middle name... usually with a small t but enough to cause another sleepless night.

Would you rebuke a child that wasn't your own?  How would you react if another adult rebuked your child?

If my daughter was being rude to an adult and I wasn't there I would expect them to tell her she was being rude.  If my daughter dropped litter, I would expect another adult to say "hey, pick that up".  It is clear though,  not all parents feel the same. 

Some of my telling children comes from being a Guider.  For example whilst sat in the village car park once one of the Guides walked past and dropped a wrapper.  I wound down my window and said very sternly "A Guide does not drop litter".  She was very put out but picked it up!

Many moons ago in the school playground, as I was seeing my daughter off for the morning, a boy kept repeating everything I said in a sarcastic voice.  I said "please don't do that"  and he said "please don't do that", I said "I don't like it"  he said "I don't like it" ...get the picture.  I said "if you don't stop if I will tell your mum or your teacher that you are misbehaving" and he stopped with a sulk, 'end of' I thought.  No not end of...after school his mum came and banged on my house door with son:
 "did you tell my son off today" 
"yes"
"he has been very upset about it"
"has he"
"he is never naughty, even his teacher said at the parents evening he is a proper gentlemen"
"really"
"he says he didn't do anything"
and so the conversation continued until I apologised to her and her son for clearly being mistaken, just to get rid of her.  But what example does it set to him?  If my daughter came home and said "Mrs Smith told me off today" I would want to know why and my answer would generally be "well you must have done something to deserve it" and the final rest, if we both decided it was completely undeserved, would be to say "what a grump", not to go chasing after them.

Today, a similar thing occurred.  2 years ago I rebuked a brownie (in the school playground) for whispering horrid things about another girl to her friend withing clear earshot of the girl and a 'whisper' loud enough to be heard.  For a convoluted reason this has now come to light.  Rebuke is probably too strong a word for it, I will have said something like "that was a mean thing to do" directly to the girls.  So today I find myself justifying my position again.  Sadly the reason for it coming to light is from something I said which would have been better unsaid.  Not a direct child rebuke, but a comment about a child's behaviour that was passed along.  That was a time to keep my mouth closed for sure but should I also be sorry I told a child to stop being mean?

Supernanny would go teach the parents, but I  don't think I'm going to take it that far and to be frank there are many days when I could do with her myself.

But when did behaviour control stop belonging to the community?  When does turning a blind eye to young children's misdemeanours in the playground become ignoring an old person being pounded with snowballs or young children  being picked on by older ones at the park. I want responsible adults to be able to say "hey, no, don't do that" without fear of what their parents might do or say.

Sometimes I want the moon on a stick.

Rant over, in my poke around the interweb for other people's opinions on this I found out about Child Mentoring with Chance UK.  I'll turn a rant into a possible positive, have a look you never know it could be for you.

If you are outside London Home Start has a great opportunities to get out there and help parents and their under 5's.

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Where Europe stops and England starts

The UK is technically part of Europe but the English Channel (a thin strip of water dividing England and the rest of Europe) could be as wide as the Atlantic Ocean.

Ask anyone what continent the UK is in and you can't argue, it is Europe. But ask most people living in the UK if they are a European and they will look at you with the "you have a scorpion crawling out of your mouth" look or at least a little confused and thoughtful.

Why?  Well I think it all becomes a bit muddy and non-factual then, it's just a general feeling...it may be an undiluted amount of imperialism remaining.  We aren't part of anything else, we are Great Britain*.  The European Parliament straighten our bananas (yes I know they come on a plane but they are still ours - get off 'em), they tell us how much hog we can have in our roast, they are interfering money wasting....oh you get the picture...until we want to the part of the EU working directive so we can put our feet up on a Sunday then all is Euro-harmony.  You see : muddy!

We want to be part of the Ryder Cup, we enjoy the crassness of the Eurovision song contest, but do we want to be put in the same cart of people as the cheese eating surrender monkeys? Nope!

The UK population is so diverse. We are Roman, Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Vikings, Normans (can we try to forget that bit?!), African, Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Bengali, West Indian, Cypriots, Greek, Poles...we are a wordwide mix of cultures and people.  We now have a large Eastern European immigration populous. In my experience the Europeans I know (non-British) are happy to be called European. It's just the non-European Europeans that are non-European - get it?!

So, in summary (for the intrigued Canadians), the UK is in Europe.  The UK population would never refer to themselves are European, unless there was something in it for them and then of course we are!

Clear as mud!!!!  Anybody else want the baton? I think I just dropped it!

*I'll explain the difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and the British Isles another day!!

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Herd Control

Heather from Notes in Lapland  recently blogged about blogger behaviour that often upsets groups of people by directly berating posts of others but often without naming names and sometimes by the finger pointer displaying themselves as victims, looking for sympathy and looking to sway the tide of opinion against the other blogger.

This is a very difficult situation where the balance between open healthy debate and causing deep hurt is sometimes undone. I haven't been at the centre of any of this but the debates about the ethically correct way to deal with it has left me thinking a lot.

I am a believer in 'herd control'. If someone is doing something that a group considers unacceptable then the group simply says "that isn't how we behave around here". I think if an entire group ignores behaviour that is unwanted but openly rewards what is, then people (innately seeking acknowledgement and inclusion) will do what leads to the rewards. If we react to the unacceptable, attention seekers may continue to behave in that manner because they want any attention whether good or bad.

This approach has always been used in toddler taming in my family. We step over a tantrum, simply saying we don't do that here, I am ready for you when you are ready to be nice and walk away (yes even in a supermarket with on lookers!). It often works in my adult relationships saying "I don't want to have a shouting match about this, if we can't reason it out now then can we come back to it later". I believe this says "I don't find shouting acceptable but I am prepared to discuss the issue later" and my husband will do the same with me. Rising above the initial charge of reactive emotion and working out how to maintain a positive approach is a hard thing to do and something I regularly fail to do, but is always my aim or wished for behaviour.

But there are a number of issues with this approach. You can't always ignore bad behaviour. It would be wrong to turn a blind eye to someone being attacked, bullied or hurt. Sometimes the "hey, we don't do it that way around here" has to be said out loud.

So exhibiting correct behaviour isn't ignoring nor is it ostracism. Ostracism could be used a a passive form of bullying and manipulation. Exhibiting the correct behaviour is some where in between.

I feel all this is leading me back to Desiderata, if I could live to this most of the time I would be very proud of myself and it is who I strive to be.

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let not this blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams; it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful.

Strive to be Happy

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Eid and 9/11

I wish joy to those celebrating. I wish strength and send love to those remembering.

I pray for tolerance and humility.




Isn't this a lovely definition of humility : “humility is being willing to accept that things may be other than the way you think they are."

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