photo credit: brian kusler

The UK government is launching a consultation on their intention to change the legal definition of marriage to include same-sex couples.

Currently, same-sex couples here can commit to each other in a civil partnership which gives equal rights under the law in terms of property, pension, inheritance etc, but civil partnerships are distinct from marriage and cannot be referred to as such.

The government has made it clear there is no question of forcing religious groups to  perform same-sex marriage ceremonies: gay marriage is intended as a civil ceremony.

What a hornets’ nest this has stirred up!

Roman Catholic reaction

Last week Cardinal O’Brien, leader of the Catholic church in Scotland, described the proposals as “a grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right”.

Head of the Anglicans Dr Rowan Williams is also against the proposal, as is John Sentamu, the influential Archbishop of York.

At Mass this morning, parish churches were read a letter from two senior Catholic archbishops speaking out against this proposal and ending with these words:

We have a duty to married people today, and to those who come after us, to do all we can to ensure that the true meaning of marriage is not lost for future generations.

In other words, they’re mobilising the faithful against the government’s proposals.

Another kind of fidelity

Now I believe we owe another kind of fidelity: to common sense, to decency, to equality and most of all to love and commitment. I believe that those of us who are Catholic (although this one is hanging on only by her fingernails) have to speak out against the Church’s stance on this issue.

What is Christ-like about refusing to allow two people who love each other to marry?

The arguments don’t make sense to me. The Church seems to be saying that governments can’t define marriage because marriage wasn’t created by governments. I think that’s disingenuous; “government” as we know it is a comparatively modern invention. Marriage has been promoted for centuries as a (highly patriarchal) institution by the societies of the day, which have often been the religions of the day. These were effectively “government”.

Biblical teaching

The Old Testament certainly condemns homosexuality, but it also condemns a number of other practices and sets down laws that are absurd to us today. (This clip from the West Wing is a classic on the topic.)

I suppose I must acknowledge that we can all interpret the Bible in ways that suit our own bias. But nowhere in the Gospels does Christ himself say anything about homosexuality, one way or the other. He does however align himself not with the institutions and hierarchy of the day, but with the marginalised. He exemplifies a way of life so radical and challenging that I don’t believe either our institutional churches or most of us as individuals have even scratched the surface of what it means.

Fear

As Christians, we’re taught that everyone is made in the image and likeness of Godde. That means everyone. Why would a compassionate Church attempt to prevent anyone from making a loving commitment to another human being?

It seems clear to me that fear is at the heart of this. If you read the full text of Cardinal O’Brien’s piece in the Telegraph, you’ll see it’s full of alarmist imagery and prophecies of doom.

I believe those who are speaking out against gay marriage are doing so in all sincerity, and I believe we need to try and understand their point of view. But I’m convinced that they are full of unexpressed fear: of the unknown, of the destruction of tradition, of the dismantling of their own authority, of having to move away from the comfort of orthodoxy.

Yet the Carpenter called us to live radical lives, and he called us to love.

For more on this discussion, click here for an article in The Tablet, and here for an article by Jim Martin which sheds light on some of the Church’s less well-known teaching about homosexuality. And whilst I’m hardly a fan of either our current Conservative Prime Minister or of former PM Tony Blair, I have to applaud what they are doing to drive this issue forward. Catholic convert Blair’s support is reported in The Independent.

This challenge by Fiona and Kaspa at Writing Our Way Home is to produce a brief piece of writing each day which engages fully the present moment.

Here are my Small Stones from my journal during the second week of January.

Nine

Incense smoke doesn’t curl if there is no breath of air, it flows straight upwards like an impossible thin stream of water.

Ten

A lumpy shape lies torn in the middle of the sunlit road. Reddish fur coated with deeper red. A pointed face. A suggestion of bared teeth. I’m driving too fast to tell if it is dog or fox. Which is probably what the the driver who hit it was doing.

Eleven

The little girl’s full pink skirt flips in joyful patterns as she skips, hops and jumps her way along the road, one long sock to the knee, the other around her ankle.

Twelve

I scatter the damp brown compost through my fingers into the plastic-lined basket then nestle the purplish hyacinth bulbs comfortably into their dark bed. I tuck them in with more compost until even their green buds are hidden. They’ve been put to bed so that they can wake up.

Thirteen

The steering wheel is smooth and hard under my hands, pocked with tiny pinpricks in the matt surface, ample bumpy spaces on the inner rim for my fingers to grasp.

Fourteen

Today there are two small stones, both from a walk I took this morning. The difference is that the first was a moment of deliberate engaging in conciousness, in the second I had no choice. It was an interesting contrast.

Their cheery reds, yellows, greens and blues half hidden by sombre tarpaulins, the narrow-boats huddle together in the freezing marina, dreaming of spring.

My right foot slips: the fall happens in slow motion. I stagger to keep my feet but I’m on a downward slope. I have absurdly ample time to turn sideways and grab a solid low bush. I embrace it, thankful for my padded jacket and long gloves. I glance around: no-one saw. Struggling to my feet, I walk on as if nothing has happened.

I’m taking part in the Small Stones challenge by Fiona and Kaspa at Writing Your Way Home. Each day in January, we are writing a “small stone”: a brief piece of writing which engages fully the present moment. Here’s what it’s all about:

Most of us have crowded, busy lives. It’s hard to remember to pay attention to what’s around us – to pause and really listen to the blackbird’s song, or to notice the bright poppies by the roadside. But when we really pay attention to other people & to the world, we start seeing things more clearly – we become more intimate with them. We feel more loved and loving. We feel more at home in the world, with others, and in our own skin.

We pay attention by writing. We write short observational pieces called small stones, and we write in our journals, and we write books. We want you to help you wake up to the beauty of the world through writing too.

I’ve been sharing my own Small Stones at the Writing Your Way Home website, but it just occurred to me to publish them here also.

So below is the backlog, the remainder to follow day-by-day.

One

New Year’s morning. The board is bright white, the knife dull silver, the lime vivid. As I cut, juice coats my fingers. Thin slice then sharply fragrant in the mug of boiling water.

Two

Downstairs. My knee creaks. So does the step.

Three

Immediate prayer requested for a gravely sick child. My mind flusters. Is there a correct way? Do I believe it will help? Prayer chains of unknown people in India pressed into action: what nonsense. And yet yes, I do believe it will help. So I write his name on a piece of paper. I draw circles around it to encircle him. I picture him surrounded by love. That’s one way to pray for a gravely sick child.

Four

Cord jeans smooth and bumpy under my fingertips. Velvet with attitude.

Five

With a whirr, two alarming bumps, a wheeze and a loooong sigh, my printer springs into life, surprising me after a minute of silence with a gentle burp.

Six

The colours in the supermarket are too bright. Oranges and pinks clamour for attention. Even the fruit and veg are too noisy and look plastic.

Seven

The honeyed drift of scent from the jasmine candle next to my bed is suddenly undercut by a sharp animal tang from the cat litter tray in the bathroom.

Eight

Plump warm raisin pillows nestle in their creamy porridge bed then pop their luscious sweetness against my teeth and tongue.

I’m delighted to announce my new online venture, a site for women in mid-life and older which launched today.

Pilgrim’s Moon – growing older on our own terms: a countercultural path for women, seeks to explore new ways of aging that move away from the main alternatives society gives us of looking abnormally young for as long as possible or fading into a blue-rinse twilight zone and shutting up.

So do go visit and sign up for newsletter, to get information about forthcoming e-books, courses and events, and to receive a free gift – Seven steps along the pilgrim’s path.

And for readers who’ve been with me for a very long time and have elephantine memories – yes I once used the domain Pilgrim’s Moon as a creativity blog. I did explore choosing a new domain name, something that would be more self-explanatory and search-engine-friendly, but Pilgrim’s Moon just kept insisting on being the name. Here’s the explanation I give over on the site:

Why the name Pilgrim’s Moon? Because life at its best is a magical journey along a winding path, and sometimes we can see more clearly in the shadows cast by moonlight than in the noonday sun. We’re all pilgrims of sorts, sometimes stumbling, sometimes running forward along the path.

We, like the women in the Gospel, are still asking, “Who will roll away the stone?”  The first thing we need to recognize is that the stone is surely there, but notice also the moment of their arrival.  They came “just as the sun was rising”.  I think the text is telling us that it is divine light that allows us to both see—and then see beyond—the very same stone.

Richard Rohr

A very happy and blessed Easter to you all!

Image by Hamed Saber

Last Saturday we had a really interesting Enneagram day at Turvey Abbey during which two members of our group presented a session about risk. It really got me thinking and I’d love  to know what you make of it.

But what is risk? If I love public speaking and you fear it, then it’s far less risky for me. If you’re a stunt man and I tend to twist my ankle out walking, then I’d be a bit mad to try this sort of thing.

We talked about our approach to five kinds of risk, and the extent to which we Avoid, Decline, Accept, Embrace or Seek risk under each of the following headings:

1. Financial
2. Spiritual
3. Emotional
4. Social
5. Physical

It was really helpful for me to consider it under those discrete headings. I’ve sometimes thought I’m not very brave, but it turns out I embrace or seek financial and spiritual risk. I avoid physical risk and accept emotional and social risk.

One of the most interesting discussions that cropped up was what happens as we get older. Some people said they had become distinctly more cautious with age. I can understand that with physical and financial difficulties, but generally I think it’s a shame, and I don’t really get it. Do we want to slip into old age without causing any ripples? I’ve found that I’ve been able to dare more emotionally as I’ve got older, in terms of friendship and exposing emotions. There’s a way to go, but when I was younger, I was completely shut down emotionally, so I’m heading in the right direction.

Another aspect of this that’s interesting is that much-loved business concept of risk management. It sounds sensible, doesn’t it? But we can over-manage the risks we are prepared to take. I’m reminded of that saying ‘leap, and the net will appear’.

What about you? Where do you embrace risk? Where do you avoid it?

Image by jb london

Elsewhere:

Travel feels risky for some folks, but my friend Marian Van Eyk McCain thrives on it. She and her lovely husband are just back from five weeks in Sicily. You can find her travel journal and fabulous photos here. It makes me feel as if I was there.

And as Christians all over the world are journeying through the spiritually risky time of Holy Week, Jan Richardson reminds us of the free-fall feeling of allowing blessings into our lives. Who knows what uncomfortable changes they may challenge us to make?

Yesterday, I saw a little girl of about six out shopping with her parents. I watched her climb up onto a low wall and skip along the wall next to them, holding her mother’s hand. I expect you used to climb on walls when you were a child.

When she got to the end of the wall, her mother had to lift her down. Why? Because this six-year-old was wearing shoes with three-inch heels and couldn’t jump down by herself. I mean shoes for kids, she wasn’t playing dress-up.

Two weeks ago, I was walking along the street behind a short, slim young woman with obviously bleached blonde hair. She wore a denim mini-skirt, high-heeled stilettos and a tight top. She was with an older woman. Then they turned round and I realised that this ‘young woman’ was eight or nine years old. She was wearing make-up to go with the bleach and the stilettos. I’m guessing the woman with her was her mother.

What the hell is going on?

Girls and body image

Eating disorders are rife among women (and a small percentage of men). Mostly these are teenagers or college-age women, but one study showed that three percent of anorexics are pre-pubescent. Another reported that 80% of American girls age eight to twelve have negative feelings about their bodies. Eighty per cent!

Who’s to blame?

It’s easy to blame the media and the internet. A little Googling as I was writing this came up with the GirlsGoGames site (yeah, I thought from the name it was going to be porn too!) This site and its advertisements ‘reaches out‘ to girls between the ages of eight to twelve, and encourages them to play popular games such as The Shoe Quiz, Head 2 Toe Makeover and my personal favourite, Paris Hilton Dress-Up.

Bullying and peer pressure at school are also important factors for young girls wondering if they are ‘good enough’, translated as ‘thin enough’, having the ‘right’ clothes and shoes etc.

Of course parents can be partly responsible. Often, mothers inadvertently infect their girl children with their own body image issues, and fathers’ views can be destructive.

And quite often, I believe, parents must take more than part of the responsibility, they must take a big chunk of blame. I mean, what were the mothers of these two young girls I saw recently thinking? How far away is allowing/encouraging your child to wear high heels and make-up from the grotesqueness of child beauty pageants, from child pornography, from paedophilia?

Please understand, I’m not saying that paedophiles and pornographers are excused from their actions because parents allow/encourage young girls to dress in sexually provocative ways (that’s the completely unacceptable “she was asking for it” argument about rape). But surely the exaggerated feminisation of young girls is interwoven with a society in which huge numbers of men consume child porn or act out their sexual desires for children, sometimes on their own children.

Why “tomboy”?

OK, I’m struggling here not to fall into ‘when I was a girl’ stories and ‘children should be allowed to be children’ clichés.

But why are girls who are interested in running and jumping and nature and learning all kinds of things and who refuse to wear frilly dresses called “tomboys”? Why can’t they just be known as normal healthy children?

It’s clear from observation that many little girls like to dress up, crave pretty things, are often more polite and subservient than their brothers. These aren’t inherently bad things! But much of it is simply socialisation, and there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that this socialisation starts very early.

Role models?

by sarah lace at deviantart

So where are the strong role models for children today? My knowledge of the television shows and other media available for young girls and boys is very limited, although I stumbled across the Willow Rosenberg (from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) awful warning picture on the right and loved it!

There’s a lot mothers can do to help. Here (click on For the Mums)  is an excellent article with suggestions for ways of dealing with a number of scenarios around body image.

What do you think about all this?

Image above of Brooke Shields in the 1970s film Pretty Baby

Elsewhere:

The Endangered Species was a summit that took place earlier this month ‘challenging the culture that teaches women and girls to hate their own bodies’.

Kidscape is an excellent UK anti-bullying charity.

What is a good education?

I’ve been having a discussion on Facebook with two close friends about religious education in the UK. An ‘English Baccalaureate‘ is being introduced which omits RE from Humanities.

Before I read up on the topic, and listened to different views, I was opposed to religious education in schools. My thinking was that schools are secular institutions in a secular society, and that religious education should be taken care of by religious institutions. I still have serious reservations about faith schools.

Now the strange thing is that I have several wise and gifted friends (you know who you are!) who teach or have taught religious education. Did I think they were wasting their time, that what they did was irrelevant? No, I never thought about it, never connected the dots.

Because for me, attending a Catholic grammar school for girls in the 1960s, Catholic religious education was propaganda and indoctrination, pure and simple. We heard nothing about other Christian denominations, let alone other faiths. We were actively discouraged from thinking, from questioning anything. We were expected to learn just exactly enough to pass the exam (I did) and to become good Catholic wives and mothers so we could bring up our families in the same brain dead way (I didn’t).

Do I sound bitter? Well good, because I am.

My child’s mind was opened wide to learning at my excellent primary school,* and going to grammar school at age 11 was like entering a prison in which the gates slammed shut on our hunger for learning.  It was a prison run by a teaching order of nuns, supplemented by lay teachers of wildly differing abilities.

Looking back as an adult, I understand that many of the nuns were in a vulnerable state of mental health. And one of the visiting priests who gave us explicit lectures on the wickedness of female sexuality and then heard our individual confessions in as much lurid detail as he could coax out of us had clearly tipped well over the edge.

But an adult perspective only comes with time, and I still deeply resent those wasted years that turned me off learning – something I now love – at a crucial time.

And now I read:

Not only is Religious Education as demanding and rigorous as the other Humanities options including history and geography – it is a more multi-faceted discipline, drawing on philosophy, anthropology and theology to name but a few… Religious Education has the strong potential to increase understanding and tolerance, building social cohesion in our increasingly diverse society…

From the REAct Campaign

Now that sounds like a fascinating subject to study!

But of course I did get myself a much better education than many hundreds of girls around the world today. Despite those negative experiences I’m hugely privileged.

I believe that education, real education, not the sausage factory approach that spits out regiments of workers, is the silver bullet that could change everything. And on the Centenary of International Women’s Day, real education for girls worldwide seems to me to be a crucial goal to shoot for.

Original image by Charlie Dave with my Photoshop enhancements

*Full disclosure: my father was headmaster at my primary school. Which as you can imagine set the scene for some interesting little psychological sub-plots in my young life, but doesn’t detract from the fact that he was an immensely talented teacher and leader, and ran a great school.

Elsewhere:

Education International has some good things to say about education for girls, and some sobering facts. And Camfed do some really excellent work in on education for girls in Africa.

An acquaintance recently joked about coming along to an impending workshop and being on her best behaviour. It was one of those jokes that had an undercurrent of truth and sadness, because all her life this person has been told she is too loud and too brash and too overwhelming and too… well MUCH really.

And there’s probably something to it. This woman has a real presence. You know when she’s in a room. You can’t ignore her.

And that isn’t the whole of her. Her vibrant character is warm and protective of others; it includes a self-deprecating sense of humour, brave spiritual questing and a core of vulnerability. So I really hope she decides to be true to herself on that workshop and forgets about any particular type of behaviour.

We’re all flawed and we all carry those flaws along like a snail with its shell. If we try to deny our flaws, they can escape in alarming ways. Perhaps the best approach is to acknowledge  the behaviour, the thought or whatever is (once again) harmful, greet it, then move on as soon as possible.

Not for the first time here, I quote the great rebbe Leonard Cohen:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

And remember that humour is a great medicine. Laughing gently at ourselves is one of my primary prescriptions for a compassionate life. Another quote, taken from Cardinal Basil Hume’s eulogy:

He took God so seriously that he didn’t need to take himself seriously at all

Image by Pink Sherbet Photography

Elsewhere:

I’m so encouraged by the attempts all around the world to go deeper, to explore the big questions. Clare’s been doing so here. And anyone who can weave together Star Wars, Matthew’s Gospel and lotus blossoms as Come to the Garden does is OK in my book.

I thought I was finished here at Anchors and Masts.  I thought I had nothing left to say. And yet I couldn’t quite bring myself to publish the farewell post I’ve had ready in my drafts folder since Christmas.

So…

Over the past few days I’ve been taking a leaf out of Chris Guillebeau’s book and conducting an annual review. Now I don’t know about you, but to me, the words Annual Review mean those simply dire corporate performance reviews, the full horrors of which were conjured up so brilliantly in The Office.

But a personal annual review is a very different beastie. This is a for your eyes only review which I like to think is related to Mary Oliver’s brilliant challenge:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

The idea is to begin by asking yourself two questions:

1. What went well this year?
2. What did not go well this year?

And I found out something very interesting and encouraging. It was that everything I’d actually done in 2010 I was really pleased with and proud of, whether it was starting and sticking with my new blog, Sacred Graffiti, or resigning a contract job which was really wrong for me, even though there was a financial risk in doing so.

So what was under the “What did not go well” heading? Absolutely nothing I’d done. Everything without exception was, to paraphrase the Catholic church, a sin of omission. All those ideas I’d been too lazy or scared to take further; all that creative energy frittered away and wasted; all that Godde-given brilliance damped down for fear that I might actually make a difference.

I’m reminded of that fantastic piece by Marianne Williamson:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

There was something hugely encouraging for me in knowing that all (hah!) I have to do is take action. It isn’t about being successful, it’s about fulfilling potential, about taking a risk. It’s about taking the next step, and the one after that and so on.

And one of the things I realised was that I do want to keep writing here at Anchors and Masts. It’s unlikely to be very frequent, and more and more this will be a personal space for sharing ideas.

So if you’re still here reading after all this time, thanks for sticking with it, and keep an eye open for a big new venture I have coming up soon!

Meanwhile, one of the things I’m proud of having done last year is taking over leadership of non-profit organisation the Wholesome Food Association, which promotes food produced by planet-friendly methods and sold locally. We provide an alternative to full organic certification for growers in the UK who work on a small scale and cannot afford either the expense or time involved in organic certification.

Sustainable food production without cruelty to animals is something I believe in passionately. If you do too, why not “Like” the Wholesome Food Association page I’ve just launched on Facebook?

Image by jayneandd

Elsewhere:

If you want to know how to set about doing an annual review, Chris Guillebeau’s original article is here.

And a beautiful blog was launched recently by my friends at Turvey Abbey, the Benedictine community with which I’m connected. Preferring Nothing to Christ is a serene, contemplative space that I wholeheartedly commend to you.