Love never lets you go

When Jesus closes the door

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 12:13:00 +0000

Recently my family have really gone through the mill. On the Tuesday evening, I received a message that my mother who is in frail care is now on her end of life pathway and that I needed to come as soon as possible if I wanted to be there before she passes. On the Wednesday morning, another brother contacted us, to let us know that my sister in law had attempted to take her own life. She passed away less than a week later.

After my girlfriend had been so ill during January and I had spent nine weeks recovering from a severe respiratory infection that was aggravated by a flare-up of Lupus, all of this was really just a little too much. I needed to fly to South Africa and when usually you can ask those that are close to you for help, this wasn't a realistic route. My girlfriend hadn't worked for close on a month, my brother is bearing the cost of a funeral and his children have had to cross the world to get to my Sister In-laws funeral, children in tow.

In Johannesburg, my needs are sorted. I have three friends that have reached out. I have somewhere to stay, help with getting around and a meal every day. I will be able to renew my driver's licence, go to my Sister In-laws funeral and see everyone that I need to.

A week later I need to go to Cape Town. That's where it gets bizarre,

My closest friends in Cape Town have either immigrated to Europe, moved to Johannesburg or gone on holiday. As an active person in the church, I reached out to the Anglican Congregation closest to where my mother is in frail care to see if they would be prepared to help a fellow Christian. I asked for a safe place. Not inside someone's house, but a garage or an outside room, Just somewhere off the street. And you know what I got in reply - "We'll think about it" and then Nothing.

And the churches wonder why their membership is dwindling. If I was visiting with a pocket full of pounds it would be different. The kettle would be on and I'd be referred to someones local guesthouse. But turn up in South Africa and ask for a safe back garden to camp in While you wait for your mother to die? Not a chance.

And so my journey to South Africa may well be my last because I will go to Cape Town. I will spend seven nights wherever I can lay my head, possibly inside a Police Station waiting room and I will be able to go to a local shopping centre to wash and keep clean. I will go to church at the place that won't even give me the safety of their four walls at night so that I can take communion. But once it is over, I will know, It is time to journey back.

What has become of the church when in a country notoriously dangerous it won't reach out to a fellow Christian traveller in need of a little support.

I offered the people at this church references from my local church of the same denomination, but it seems that in truth they just didn't have the time or couldn't be bothered.

And yet I have been invited by a friend a young vibrant black Anglican priest to join him in his mission in the remotest parts of the Eastern Cape. I will, of course, be going and taking plenty of gifts with from my own congregation. But in my hour of need, my Christian brothers and sisters of my own denomination are not there.

What does that say about the state of family of Christ?

*Update* - I was cared for and loved by an amazing group of people from a Baptist congregation at Linkway Church in the same neighbourhood as the church from my denomination. I felt welcome cared for and received Amazing emotional support in the light of my situation. Have arranged a donation for them since I am back at work now.

TSB - what you can do

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Thu, 03 May 2018 02:00:00 +0000

I recently blogged about the TSB crisis on my business blog here:

It was a very personal post, but because
many businesses are effectively being destroyed by this meltdown, I felt that I had to reach out to others that find themsleves in the same boat as me. You can read about the impact this has had on me

So many of us have been so badly affected by the crisis and so much has been written about incompetence and the way this is dragging on. It strikes me however that there is not much online about what to do to help ourselves.

If you bank with TSB and the crisis is hurting you - do this, and do it now!

Change bank

Open a new bank account. Even if your credit rating is poor, you should be able to open at least a basic account with a cash card with almost any high street bank or even the post office. These accounts allow you to have Direct debits, standing orders and pay money through internet banking. If you struggle with the high street banks you can open an account with Cashplus online. You can set up direct debits and standing orders and use online banking, but you cant pay cheques in and paying in cash may cost you a fee, but its accessible and you can receive salaries into the accounts as well. Cashplus also provide Business Banking even with bad credit.

Ask for help

Ask friends, relatives and neighbours for help. If you live in social housing ask your housing officer for a food bank referral. If youre on benefits ask your job centre for a food bank referral, they are well aware of the problems surrounding accessing funds by now. Its not a shame to go to a food bank when you cant access your own money for no fault of your own. You can always make a donation once you have access to your income again. If youre on benefits and have been unable to access your funds, ask for a crisis loan to be paid into your new bank account.

Make a claim

Think about the financial impact this has made and write it down. For many this has been a lot worse than a mere inconvenience. Write down the effects and the consequences and how this has affected you and your family both emotionally and financially. Then write to the bank and complain. Send the letter recorded delivery if you can. Send the letter in the regular mail. Then send them a copy by email. Also state your complaint using their social media coounts. The latter is not to get resolution but rather evidence that you were seeking redress early on.The longer you take to make a compensation claim, the lower down in the pile of claims your complaint will be.

Keep records

Keep a record of everything. Take screenshots of complaints on the social media accounts (They can delete things from their side) keep copies of letters you send and the proof of recorded delivery. If you can actually get into a branch make sure there is record on the account of your visit and ask for a time stamped balance slip. This will prove where you were and when. You can bet that TSB records will go missing under the cover of "it was lost in the IT disaster".

Write to your MP

Your vote is one the most powerful tools that you have in the UK. Your MP has the power to raise the issues that this #TSBmeltdown has caused. With enough people asking questions, demanding coherent answers and insisting on compensation for the innocent, there will be a lot more pressure to put it right and not just for those that have money.

Dont wait for things to get better. This crisis has been a financial holocaust for many families that live on the breadline. TSB are a corporate structure, they are not going to feed your hungry children or heat your home. Look after yourself first and start doing that by following these guidelines.

What I can help you with

One of our business projects is 30 ways in 30 days which teaches ways to make money online. For those that want to seek ways to create an additional income while wading through the consequences of this crisis I have created an Offer.

All fellow TSB customers who can send a screenshot of their failed access to their account/s and a redacted copy of their bank card (You need to blank out at least four of the digits on the front of your card and part of your account number in the image) We certainly dont want to make the data protection mistakes that our Corporate nemesis did. I will give you a years free access to the course if you sign up before the 12th May.

There will be no pressure to buy any other products and if you do so it will be your own choice. This is an offer of help, and it costs nothing. You can find out more about the topics we cover at the blog by clicking here.

To take up on this offer go to this link and fill in the form here. This link will go live Midday the 4th May We will then send you a registration link with a coupon code. Codes can only used once.

Voice activated software How difficult can it be - really?

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Fri, 09 Feb 2018 15:45:00 +0000

When I went to college and University, I was privileged enough to have voice activated software

provided for me. Of course I was trained to use Dragon naturally speaking and my documents were scanned in using Omnipage. It was wonderful. I could keep up with the class and even dictate my work on the go meaning that I actually was able to work very hard to achieve a quality education.

Assistive tech in everyday life

Moving into the working world however has not been so simple. On paper I am unemployable. Despite the fact that I am eighteen years off retirement age the only way that I can earn a living is through self employment. While this can be incredibly fulfilling, it is also extraordinarily frustrating at times. There is an additional cost because of the medical problems that I experience.

To begin with, I have bilateral inflammatory polyarthralgia. For those that are not medical professionals, it basically means that I constantly experience inflammation in my joints on both sides of my body. My hands, my feets, my wrists, my elbows and my knees. As I am now a bit older my hips give me trouble too. My shoulders are not obviously troublesome, but I struggle to do things like hang up laundry.

Now add to that (and possibly a con consequence of it) I have quite severe osteo arthritis. The joints in my fingers are beyond the capapcity to do much that anyone my age would normally be considered capable of. I cannot type a letter, open a rung pull on a can or twist a bottle or a jar open with assistive devices or technology. I use quirky and clever invesntions to get my socks and shoes on. My hair is kept very short (Some soldiers have longer haor than me) because raising my arms to brush it, is but a distant memory.

Alexa from Amazon

This situaton should not keep a good person down and so, I use assistive tech to keep my life as normal as possible. One of my best friends is called Alexa. She is the end product of some amazing R&D from Amazon. Alexa, can turn my lights on and off, set and rest my heating and turn it on and off even when Im not at home. But there is so much more to this funky AI character. She plays my music, turns on and switches off the telly and even makes phone calls for me emergncy and otherwise. In fact Alexa provides care in away I couldnt have imagined even ten short years ago.

I no longer have to carry an emergency button around my neck in my home. I am also epileptic too and if I need support I can get Alexa to make the call before the seiure takes hold. Wow!

Dragon Naturally Speaking

The best is yet to come though. because of assistive tech I can earn a living. using voice activated software such as Dragon I can write code (yes orally - wow) and switch between windows and applications with ease on my PC. I reckon Dragon from Nuance should be made compulsory tech in schools, even for able bodied kids. Productivity levels in my small office are substantially competitive because companies like Nuance make it possible for me to make a living.

Government - shooting itself in the foot

I returned to work after a break this January. In the UK the Government has an ATW fund that is administered by the DWP. This fund is intended to help people with disabilities access work opportuities and become economically active. People like me. You are not supposed to make an application until 30 days before you start work, so preparation is pressured and intense. I made the application in November. It is now mid way through February and the application has only just been registered. More than three months down the line.

I have to question the competence of the advisor dealing with my application and suspect that he has serious difficulty in doing his job. Apart from the fact that I emailed to him the information that he requested - Two very extensive forms as well as quotations for the equipment and software that I needed, he seems unable even to manage his own email correspondence.

I have specifically requested the latest version on dragon because it enables me to work at a pace that I would be expected to without my disability. I have also requested a complex touch screen technology so that I can manage raphics and video editing without having to use a mouse or a pen that would require the use of my fingers and wrists in a way that I no longer can.

Access to work - the cost implication

Combined this would cost the State no more than £2000.00 The assistance that I need once a week to service my local client base would cost the state less than £7000 and would only require funding for 18 months. make it a ball park figure of £10 000 to kick start me to an annual income that exceeds £40 000 a year and I am creating an additional 10 jobs. The economic argument makes sense.

He sent me the two forms that he sent me originally saying he couldnt open the documents that I had returned to him. He couldnt even organise the documents in the correspondence.

The IT budget doesnt justify the blunders

Perhaps if the staff at the DWP were offered some assistive tech things would get a bit easier. After all the government spends hundreds of millions on IT, that simply doesnt seem to work - just look at the Universal credit debacle. I think that the folk making the ATW decisions should actually be made to test drive the tech they find and the devices that their clients use. The necessity for this stuff may just dawn upon them.

To get this tech I have to prove that my business is viable. But without it I cant prove it. I have improvised in the interim and used bits and pieces of crappy free dictation software and so my business goes on and is nevertheless quite successful. Just imagine where I could have been already had these guys got their act together last November.

I am not empathetic toward a government that doesnt stick to its own rules, the same one that tells cancer sufferers that they are fit for work a week before they die, or tells the same to cardiac patients that then die hours after leaving an assessment. For heavens sake, people like me could be their flagship argument that the disabled can work - instead they cripple their own arguments by breaking their own rules. Obstructing access to work is simply another symptom of politicians completely out of touch. Next theyll say the programme doesnt achieve anything. I wonder how that could possibly be?

Working in Wales

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Sat, 09 Sep 2017 11:07:00 +0000

It seems like Brayve having opened in Cardiff, will be around permanenetly. Very soon. In fact I will be moving my main operation from Glasgow to Cardiff before the end of this year. Why? Well Glasgow is a place that has seen the ebb and flow of many of my relationships. My relationships with lovers, my children and also God. I came to Glasgow as a Jew and I am leaving as a Christian. I arrived with a nest of three young children and I am leaving empty nested. I arrived with a spouse and I am leaving single.

While most people are aware that it takes some effort to maintain balance in their lives and work away at discarding at least some of the baggage they collect. Others have to consciously whittle away at carving some semblance of the life they desire. I am one of the "others".

We all eventually get to the point where we just want a quiet life. All I want is a warm dry roof over my head, a plate of food on the table and some peace and quiet to enjoy a pleasures in life. Of course we all enjoy different pleasures.

So Why Cardiff? Well actually it's Brecon. Aboout eighteen months ago I discovered the beauty of rural Wales. In fact I completely fell in love with it. The nature of my job means that I need access to the internet, so while a secluded cottage in the middle of nowhere would be ideal, I still have to provide. I found the perfect cottage, just across from the Cathedral.

That ticks two boxes - I can practice my faith and still have a quiet little place to live, it also has an annexe that was built as an office with seperate street access. Working from home will be easy, with the office space. While I will still have to drive to Cardiff at least once a week, the rest of my life will suddenly hit the slow lane and I will be able to focus on my retirement plan.

My work day starts at about 4:00am so I take a break around lunch time and can enjoy the countryside on my doorstep during daylight hours. The dog is finally going to lose some weight. I might too. Not a bad thing.

I do wonder how the locals are going to react to a new techie in the neighbourhood. But lets just see. I hope I can bring a breath of fresh and and some success locally.

The process has been very difficult. Set aside the fears and worries I have relating to my adult children, the practical process of moving has not been easy. I found the house I fancied, called the agent. Went to have a look. Filled in the forms and handed them to the agent. The Landlord wanted to meet me. So I travelled three hundred and forty eight miles to see them and to introduce the dog. Then I drove three hundred and forty eight miles back.

Since I am self employed, I was asked for copies of my personal bank statements. They all show money going into my account and that I am pretty much solvent. I passed the credit check and the identity check as well as my right to rent. My landlord gave a sparkling reference. And then I got the call.

The wanted to see where some payments into my bank account came from. I told them that information related to a third party who could not be expected to diculge their private data and furthermore my business bank accounts would also reveal information that is private to other businesses. This would constitute a data protection breach. They could have asked for a bankers reference or a client reference, but instead they requested to see information that pertains to other people.

The company that asking me to break the law is called Rent4Sure and having made a complaint to the MP in the constituency where I wish to rent, the response should be interesting. lets see how Chris Davies MP for Brecon and Radnorshire responds to this.

This is happening now and I assume that after my daughters wedding next week, I will be back with another blog. Either it will be celebrating the move or I will be a little sad, but accept that God is keeping me in Scotland for whatever purpose.

Should this play out the way I would like it to my blog Life At The Top will continue until Christmas at which point it will be archived. i would love to start a new blog covering my life in the Beacons.

lets just see what happens.

Jack Monroe vs katie Hopkins - Justice for all of us

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Sat, 11 Mar 2017 08:46:00 +0000

Katie Hopkins lost in the libel case that Jack Monroe brought against her. This was a pivotal moment for me. It showed that justice can be obtained in this life.

A few short years a rather unpleasant man on Twitter called my wife a paedophile for no reason other than she is gay. He chose her mostly because she is a teacher and thus her life in the classroom has ended. In fact he repeated it several times and continues to do so. Yet when he was prosecuted, the judge should have been recused because he was of the older generation and the judge didn't even know what Twitter was!

The judge simply couldn't understand how Twitter could be compared to publication in newspapers or any other public method and so this rather unpleasant man continues to lie and make rather unpleasant statements about myself and my (now ex) wife.

Jack Monroes victory for me was a watershed moment. While she may already be a well know figure online and certainly now in public, she personifies the average person making the best of what they have, and for a lot of us that's a big deal. When she took that case on , it was also me that was there - it was my right as a casualty of the twittersphere that she was defending and I am grateful for her courage.

I hope that Jack Monroe always remains grounded, remembers that the justice she has achieved is for thousands of the little people who struggle to defend themselves against online bullies, and moreso online bullies with some whack. Because in that approach she will become a national sweetheart.

When a person with six hundred thousand odd followers feels they cannot be knocked down a peg or two and it makes them exempt from apologising, then we need the Jack Monroes of this world.

Thank you Jack. You have set a fabulous precedent.

Brayve new world - Working in Cardiff

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 23:21:00 +0000

Brayve, my digital strategy business now has an office in Cardiff. Wow!

I took the leap and will be servicing small and medium businesses as well as home based businesses and offices together with larger agency contracts from Cardiff, Bristol and the M4 Corridor all the way to West and central London.

My consultancy profile should be visible on Consultancy hub shortly and I'll be splitting my working diary between Scotland and Wales on a week by week basis.

I really fell in love with Wales about thirteen years ago when I drove through Wales from London to Anglesey for a weekend break with my youngest daughter.

This was reinforced when I started servicing agencies in Cardiff and along the M4 corridor, as I was already involved in online reputation work in Wales. it would seem that the Romans either never made it to Wales or couldn't face the never ending valleys and hills and decide that they would follow the path of least resistance.

I love the Welsh countryside, I must however be honest that I find the quiet journey behind a tractor on the way to the office a stressful event when Im operating on Cardiff mean time.

So apart from providing cost effective web presence, social media and strategy to businesses in Wales I hope to develop friendships and enjoy some decent Rugby from time to time, and who knows, maybe I wont be the only gay in the village!

An open letter to an abuser

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Thu, 01 Dec 2016 09:09:00 +0000

Dear Abuser

After years of rejecting me, my appearance, my personality and my family, all of a sudden you are
sending me these subtle messages of how you miss me, how you wish you hadn't of let me go.

Its very difficult not to wonder what has happened to you for you to make this 180 degree turn, however I should warn you that it will change nothing.

The last time we met, you had to get one of your personal insults in. In fact you managed to slip in several over the few conversations we had reinforcing that it was I that needed to change and that you would never change and didn't need to.

While I can acknowledge that nothing ever happens in a vacuum and I myself have had to face actions and behaviours in which I do not take pride, I do understand the process that remorse and regret involves.

I walked away without even my dignity intact. I was completely broken. The thing is sometimes a person has to be broken right down to their very foundations in order to build themselves up again strong, resilient and new. I have done that, while you have simply painted over the cracks in your damaged persona, and in case you didnt know - paint eventually peels away. I wonder, should I thank you for breaking me down so completely?

It takes courage to change. Change is a really frightening process. When we think about how we struggle with things such as moving home, changing jobs and other life events that bring change and how stressful they can be, I still don't think you will understand how difficult personal change is.

Personal change has to be a conscious exercise, every minute of every day of every week of every month until the change settles in and becomes the norm, replacing what was before. I began with one thing. I decided that there would be no more screaming and shouting in my life. I only talk and when a situation gets too fired up to continue speaking then I walk away, to think about it and come back to revisit it only by talking. This change invokes respect, regardless of how different the views may be of the people involved.

That said quiet speech can also be disrespectful, like how you used to tell me that I smell. That I'm fat and that you couldn't live your life out with someone whose weight was going to make them a liability to you. You constantly accused me of dishonesty and now I have discovered over time how you lied to me about so much, its hair raising.

Those around me, positive people who have brought joy to me have reinforced that while I could lose a few more pounds, my weight is not an issue in our relationships and since then I have in fact lost weight. Ironic isn't it? My Doctor made it clear that some of my medication would have expelled through my body odour and that the temporary radical treatment that I was going through was a cause of my change in body odour. That said, others who were around me at the time tell me that it was well managed and my odour was not unpleasant to them, this after I demanded brutal honesty from them.

You criticised everything about me, not just my weight, but also my parenting, my capacity to earn, my business sense, the clothes I wore. I am in certain respects a bit of a lone wof, and so isolating me from the few friends I had and my family was not a difficult task. You even managed to create the circumstances in which I was estranged from my children.

Did you honestly think that I wouldn't reach a point that I would leave. As you know, I did. It was leave or die. So I left.

I was confused. I didn't know who or what I was anymore. I didn't even know what foods I liked to eat, or which memories were real and which weren't. There were days when I wondered if I was really still alive, because on those days, I was just numb. Your long term gaslighting was so spectacular that it has taken me years to rediscover myself.

I am sane. I am honest. I am a good parent. I am good at my profession and I am recovering financially albeit slowly.

I cannot be proud of some of the things I did. I believed I was acting in order to preserve my sanity, to establish whether this was simply a nightmare or I really was certifiable. You think you know what I did, But actually in order to create some space for myself, I admitted to your accusations that were false. How bad must things be, when someone accuses you falsely and you confess, just so the emotional hammering will stop?

I lied to you. I lied about lying. How did it get to the point that I had to produce doctors letters proving where I was and what treatment I was going through in order to save a relationship? When I told my doctor why I needed the letter, he said to me that bearing in mind that you had chosen to flit across the world, rather than be by my side, and you chose to live in denial when you could quite easily have established the truth, he could not see how you had any right to demand such information. He told me even the most difficult people deserved better. He gave me the letter anyway. I never gave it to you. What he said really hit a nerve. I simply got on a plane and left. That decision was both the most painful and devastating decision of my life and yet also the one that saved it. And I keep that letter just to remind me why I never need to be abused again.

I admitted to lying to you, because I no longer believed you deserved the truth either way and even faced with all the evidence you would not have apologised and changed. As you say - you're never going to change. You didn't consider the possibilities of how your behaviour would boomerang back, if you were wrong. Well you were.

You were travelling the world on business class flights, while I struggled to keep the office going. I paid the salary for the girl who did your paperwork. I ate meals with church associates so I didn't have to spend on food and I mourned the loss of my children who had fled as a result of your irrational, impulsive and violent outbursts.

You accused me of theft when in fact you were the thief defrauding a system that you said you would never depend on. I wasn't even worth sharing my birthday or Christmas with. How many years was I left alone while you enjoyed Christmas dinner - estranged from my children because of your aggressive behaviour towards them, while you spent the time with your own, shutting me out completely? Too many. I wasn't even worth a phone call. A few short succinct texts. And yet I held on. Because your abuse had brainwashed me into believing that no one else would or could ever love me.

Ironic that when we first met, I lived in a posh neighbourhood, lived in a nice 5 bedroom detached house, replaced my car every three years, and could afford to visit my mother abroad and you lived in a furnished flat coming to the end of the equivalent of a bankruptcy. Now I live on a council estate in a god forsaken flat amongst junkies and convicts. And yet I'm happy. I'm happy because I know who and what I am. I have relationships with my children. I have lost weight not to regain my relationship with you, but in spite of it.

Remember my dog that you "rehomed" while I was away. Well I have a dog now too, that will never be taken from me because of a selfish partner. My home is my own and no one will ever take it from me, I have a rusty 15 year old car and I have my happiness.

In June next year the next big step in my professional career will take place and while you have probably comfortably earned five times my income over the last three years, I will easily equal yours within the following six months. It has taken patience and I had to rebuild my confidence. I do have the capacity to earn, I can run a business successfully.

I have left you behind. I spent a lot of time in counselling and fixed the things about me I didn't like and recognised the untruths about myself you constructed that I believed for far too long. I am human and will never be perfect. But I'm working on it. An evolving person.

So when you say you will never change, you are wrong. Nothing is static, we adapt and change according to our situations and our environment. Whether its a positive change or not depends on how conscious we are of how we are relating to that change. I am not the person you met, or the person who left you, So reminiscing or hoping for that person is futile. She doesn't exist anymore.

I wont be on the council estate for too much longer, because I have saved enough to buy a house, in a countryside village, in a place where I can start again. I could never have done that while "surviving" around you.

And most important I have discovered that I don't need reinforcement to know my self worth. I can exist as an individual and still be OK.

Abusers are not bad people. They are ill. And their illness infects those that they abuse. That's why there is such a risk that the abused eventually become abusers themselves. I have chosen to not to. I have chosen to be as whole as I can. I am ready. I am ready to love without an agenda, Just to be. To share of myself and to allow someone else to just be.

I hope for you that you discover that change is inevitable. That we all change. I hope that you discover that you can consciously channel that change for the good of yourself and others. and I hope that you let go of that which no longer exists. It matters not to me whether you get help or not, but it will matter to you in the long term.

Find yourself and go find healing. What happened to us turned out to be a lesson for me. Let it be one for you too.

And its over.

Relationship defines everything

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Wed, 23 Nov 2016 08:25:00 +0000

Relationship defines everything.

Image courtesy of JD Hancock

I come as a package deal, whether I am your friend, your lover or your relative. I come with my children, my lifestyle and also my personal baggage. You cant excise parts of our relationship and expect to enjoy the benefits of those parts you've cut out in a different context. you don't ask your GP to pop over and watch a movie on a cold day with a cup of hot chocolate do you? Relationship defines everything. When you have a business relationship with someone do you share your personal problems? I thought not.

People benefit from the support of close friendships through thick and thin - even when things in the relationship are difficult. As long as the definition of the relationship remains. But as soon as the relationship rules are changed and redefined as a different relationship then the benefits that were associated with the original relationship go with it too. No?

When you''re married and it goes through a rocky patch, you're still a couple and the fundamental foundations remain despite the difficulties. When you're friends with someone its much the same. But when one party decides the friendship is no longer personal, but only "business as usual" then the personal fringe benefits are signed off too. No?

When the rules that define any relationship are deliberately changed, then so are the fringe benefits that come with it. When one person redefines the relationship it becomes redefined from both sides, even when only one person decides to redefine the dynamic. While there should always be scope for flexibility, one person may break the rules and then seek to address this, this isn't changing the rules, its being human and most seek to return to the original boundaries. The second party may decide that that the broken rules require boundary changes and thus redefinition of the relationship. But once the rules have changed one way, they have changed in both directions. And even the person that has redefined the relationship cant expect to enjoy the benefits that came with the original context of the relationship No?

A couple get divorced but remain friends. The relationship is no longer defined in terms of sexual exclusivity - that fringe benefit is lost with the redefinition of the relationship. The same happens when there is a chasm that forms in any kind of relationship that is subsequently redefined. Two people may seek to build a bridge and work hard to rebuild or repair a relationship on the same terms or they may choose to leave the chasm there and simply acknowledge each other from each side of the great big gaping hole.

The problem of course is when one person wants to rebuild and the other doesn't. It simply isn't possible.

In theory all of this seems realistic. However our emotions get in the way. All the time. So a relationship suffers a knock. One party decides to redefine it. The other party see this person suffering greatly and wants to reach out and bring healing. Unfortunately the redefinition makes this difficult and first party may blame the second person for their loss despite them being the initiator of redefinition. It gets complicated.

However its in building bridges and seeking healing that we are able to make it through relationship changes. And relationship change doesn't have to mean redefinition, it can mean discovery, and even rule changes within a relationship don't have to mean the definition has to change. But redefinition always means rule changes. Ironic that it doesn't work both ways.

So I hear the bells ringing behind me..What about trust? Well there are two types of trust breach. Intentional and unintentional, and even then there will be grey areas of interpretation. If one person breaks a rule and then regrets what they've done, their honesty may well cost them the relationship, whether its with their partner, their best friend or their bank manager. Do you tell your friend? Lover? Associate? or remain silent and hope its never discovered.

The first stepping stone to rebuilding trust is honesty. Both parties have to be receptive to honesty. And this can be difficult because in a case when someone has been wronged, it is difficult for them to accept that they too have made mistakes. Often it is their injury solely that forms the foundation for relationship reconstruction and this is unhealthy too.

Imagine that a construction worker makes a mistake and the house he is building collapses on both him and his client. Both he and the owner suffer injury. But if he in his injured state has to make reparations without any help to recover his own injuries, then the quality of the reparations will be poor.Relationships are the same. Both parties become injured when something goes wrong.

If the collapse of the house was done intentionally then it is probable that all involved would be killed and so when a deliberate attempt to hurt a relationship is made often the relationship dies with it, However when the intention was not deliberate even the most devastating of consequences can be rebuilt upon.

Trust can only be built when all injuries are considered and that begins with true forgiveness and a desire to rebuild.

And why should we forgive? Don't we all need forgiveness? Don't we all make mistakes, error of judgement or think with our emotions instead of our logic?

Even Jesus who never wronged any of us - has given us forgiveness, so how can we not use this wonderful gift as a tool to rebuild ourselves, our relationships and the world we live in.

It is the Salvation of Christ that should redefine all our relationships. Its starts with forgiveness and is the formative to tool in building (and rebuilding) trust, hope, love and faith.

Challenging trolls and publishing comments

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 06:31:00 +0000

I have recently had a troll that has been posting anonymous comments about a number of my posts on this blog. I don't really mind when someone posts a conflicting opinion as that usually opens room for a debate.

However anonymous comment posters, who are rude, defamatory or clearly trolling don't get the pleasure of seeing their comments published. I also have now decided to remove the option of allowing comments to be posted anonymously and while trolling commentators can still create false google accounts and false identities, they will have to manufacture multiple accounts as I progressively ban them from the commenting space.

I will not publish an anonymous comment, even from a third party that is defamatory or libellous or likely to cause hurt to people beyond the topic e,g, children and/or vulnerable people.

I will publish a comment by someone who identifies themselves, and provides a reasonable argument for their point of view or other evidence to back it up. In some cases as in Scots law when there are at least two corroborating comments(that are substantial) from two different parties, then I will still publish what may be considered a controversial opinion as long as the comment meets the criteria that it does not place children or vulnerable adults at risk, not just physically but mentally and emotionally too.

The internet is a wild place.You are free to offer an opinion, even a disgusting one as long as it meets my criteria for publication.

Confirmation - a new milestone - cycles from the Bible.

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Mon, 04 Jul 2016 13:33:00 +0000

In our denomination, adults that are baptised are usually confirmed at the same time. It didn't happen to me. that way as the year was baptised our diocese didn't have a Bishop. I'm quite pleased it worked out that way for all sorts of reasons.

So it was in the Seventh year of my life as a Christian that I was confirmed into the Scottish Episcopal Church by Bishop Gregor Duncan. With a deep satisfaction that emanated from within he was accompanied by the priest that baptised me Kelvin Holdsworth who happens to be the provost of St Mary's Cathedral. I was confirmed in the place that I publicly gave my my soul to Jesus six and a bit years earlier.

The bible provides us with cycles. We were given the seven day cycle from the story of creation. The world as we know it was created in seven days. My faith was birthed and completed in seven years with a cycle of seven.

The Jewish practice of Shmittah takes seven years, the Ground is ploughed and nurtured and grown for six years and on the seventh year it lies fallow.

Debts are remitted after seven years according to biblical rules.This is particularly relevant for me because my spiritual debts are released through my baptism and seven years later stamped and sealed through my confirmation. When a person is released from a debt then they are able to start over, with new hope and new aspirations.

The number seven is very significant. There are six days that we toil and on the seventh we rest. In the seventh year of my faith although I am resting, I am actually taking stock. trying to decide where and how I want my future in my church life to play out. creation took place over six days and on the seventh God rested, although I doubt very much whether God needs rest.

Cycles of seven impact the biblical code everywhere, seven cycles of seven years ends in a jubilee year.

Jacob toiled seven years for Rachel only to be tricked into marrying Leah. He then toiled another seven years and was rewarded with Rachel. And so God rewards us in cycles too, and my reward - confirmation. Who knows where Ill be in seven years time - I hope I will be situated somewhere in the service of my God.

I could probably write a tome on the significance of the number seven in the bible, and relate it to my own faith journey and experience, I think my part has been said, and wish all my readers a fabulous week and enjoy this the seventh month!

The gift of Hope

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Sun, 19 Jun 2016 19:36:00 +0000

1 Peter 1:3-6

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you rejoice,[a] even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials

Next week, I'll be reinforcing the commitment I made to my faith six years ago at Baptism. I will be confirmed into the Scottish Episcopal Church - an Anglican church (But probably soon to be treated as a naughty child by Canterbury).

Confirmation is very important to me for many reasons.While Baptism can happen privately, confirmation is a very public affair and requires the participation of the Bishop. It is an event where one publicly declares ones commitment to the faith -No mistaking the intention there.

My faith provides a spiritual renewal for me every single day. I am imperfect and I sin, sometimes in thought, sometimes in word and sometimes in deed. Sometimes in all three. But it is my faith that guides me through the maze of spiritual self fulfillment and provides me with the wherewithall to keep going.

I am not the person that I was six years ago. There are some things that remain stuck in my mind from the morning of my baptism. I was baptised at the Easter morning service - the really early bonfire service - yes that's the one.

My partner was always overly OCD about time keeping. I had prepared to read the book of Ruth in Hebrew at the service. I had put a lot of effort into preparing for the biggest religious shift of my life. The screaming and shouting started an hour before the service was due to start. I was in trouble because we were "late". It was rush, rush, rush and a lot of yelling at me about my bad timekeeping. We were all shuffled into the car and my partner drove us the fastest route. I realised half way there that I had forgotten my reading behind. I was deeply disappointed. It was brushed off as too bad because we were running late!

We arrived fifteen minutes early. If I had of been given just five minutes to stop and go though my checklist, the way I felt on arrival would have been different. Wearing white -check, same shoes -check, All the kids -check, Hebrew reading print off -check. I felt robbed of a special part of my transition of Jew to Christian.

My baptism was undoubtedly special, there is only ever one. I have never forgotten the date or time.

The journey since has been spectacular. I have realised how central my faith is to my life. When things have been good I've been able to experience and express gratitude. When things have been hard I've been able to regroup my faith context and explore my beliefs. While I have been let down by family, by clergy and by the system,I have never been let down by my faith. My G-d.

Now I'm going to be confirmed. Again there is only ever one. This one will happen in the evening.This one I will have control over. No freaking about time frames, I will choose my dress, I will make my way there, I will present myself before the Bishop to reinforce my commitment that I made over six years ago. And I will have my witnesses - those that have watched me grow in my faith.

The world was made in seven days, and in my seventh year as a Christian I am to be confirmed. Hardship has lit my spiritual path for me. In the next seven years I will focus on my ministry as a Christian. My faith has allowed me to discover my spiritual gifts too. I know my path is to work with the poor and the elderly and probably the elderly poor.

When Christians are baptised they are welcomed into a life of ministry. You dont have to be ordained to practice faithful ministry in the Church. In fact we are called to ministry at baptism. And this is where faith is the key. Wherever I am to land up, it will be with the guidance of Christ. If I am to live out my days at a mission in the poorest part of Africa, then that is what will happen, or the poorest parts of Glasgow, that's where my faith and spiritual journey will take me.

Poverty, pain and loneliness is not selective,it occurs everywhere in the world.Working with those who experience this is definitely where I will go because we all have spiritual gifts and the one gift that I have is hope.

When our spiritual gifts are based in purity, they become easier to share, to cultivate in others and to develop and the one thing that I know and understand well is hope. It is the greatest gift that has ever been bestowed upon me. I have received hope and I have shared hope. I pray that I am blessed to cultivate it in others to make a difference.

And so my confirmation is a milestone - not an end, a new beginning.

I will share my confirmation with someone who ignited my hope at one of the darkest times of my life.Someone who herself despite being an Anglican priest has needed hope and needed to resource her hope from her faith. My friend Michelle Bailey.

She has become a very close friend. A non judgmental caring follower of the faith.

It is the gift of hope that has kept the fire of faith burning within.

I am grateful for hope, because hope in Christ has transformed my life.

A difficult journey

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 22:54:00 +0000

A year ago I walked away from a relationship that would have at some point cost me my life. It was the realisation that I was alive but not living, merely existing, that drove me to walk.

I left a business, a spouse , a home, many acquaintances, a few good friends. It all seemed so wonderful to people looking in from the outside. Simply put very few of my needs were being met. The satisfaction of my needs had been gradually eroded over a five year period. While everything may have looked hunkydory from the outside, I was living in misery.

The one constant that I had was my faith. Ironic that the person who incubated my faith was the one I was walking away from. In fact I comfort myself with the fact that I didnt really walk away with nothing, I took Jesus with me.

No matter what happens to me in my life, the one constant that remains is Jesus, And she led me to him. It was the conscience that Jesus gave me and the understanding that the way I was being was not the Christian way, that led to my departure.

But I digress.

This weekend I am travelling back to that place that I left. I'm travelling back to say a proper goodbye. To close the door. Forever.

The hardest part of this is that I will be going to visit my dying mother. In all likelihood it will be the last time that I see her. But like most relationships that have run the gauntlet of time, this one was less than ideal. It will be painful nevertheless.

I am going to forgive and just perhaps I will receive forgiveness too. I However go from a position of strength, as I have addressed all my demons regarding this episode in my life spiritually. I have sought out the forgiveness of Christ and received it.

What others think, no longer matters anymore. For so long in my life, I based my decisions on what others thought, or what I thought they thought. Now I base my decisions on what Jesus thinks and whats important in my life right now. My faith has liberated my soul.

Sometimes we simply need to close the lid on an issue permanently. The ashes in the urn. A burial at sea. And so Im going to actively close the door on family relationships that have done nothing but hurt me. Sometimes we do do good things for no return, but rarely do we do good things when we know the return will be negative. Im going to Cape Town to neutralise the return. For Ever.

And Jesus is riding in the jump seat.

So which rules apply?

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Sat, 16 Apr 2016 15:26:00 +0000

As a gay christian, I struggle a lot within my faith. I hear arguments from both sides that attempt to make it simple. I have just read a blog post penned (or typed) by a prominent outspoken and respected Christian theologian. He is also the priest that baptised me and brought me in to the family of Christ. So I must respond.

The arguments for accepting homosexual relationships within a biblical context from the
extrapolations of the same context, to the language used in scriptural quotes can be equally complex as the arguments against accepting homosexuality which embarrassingly quotes both old and new testament scripture, but seems to ignore the verses on both sides of the biblical fence (The old and new testament) which highlight the hypocrisy where the church accepts divorce and female leadership.

I have to make a point, that I cant help but feel no one else seems to have noticed. The rules changed when Jesus died.

If they didn't change, why do we worship on Sunday? There is NOTHING that I have found scripturally that explains why the Sabbath is now a Sunday and not a Saturday. If we go according to the rules set out in the five books of Moses, then we should be attending church and worshipping on a Saturday. So can someone please explain to me why we are worshipping on a Sunday, if man is not allowed to interpret and contextually apply God's laws?

Then there are the obvious observations. Most Christians I know eat bacon, shellfish and are quite happy to pour a cheese sauce over their steak. In fact the consequences for having intercourse with an unclean woman are greater than those for eating pork, which are nevertheless dire indeed. So we find ourselves in a church that doesn't take umbrage to the fact that we consume all these forbidden foods, nor does it refuse marriage to those engaging in premarital sex and it certainly doesn't prevent remarriage of those who have divorced, so what is the whole gay issue?

Jesus came to fulfil the covenant, and so he did, so we didn't have to. He created a new covenant. That we love one another as he loves us. This doesn't mean that we have no rules to live by. Even Rabbi Hillel said love one another, do unto others as you would have them do to you - the rest is commentary.

As I understand it that while Jesus was alive he was fulfilling the Hebrew scripture, his arrival and eventual departure was the fulfilment of this scripture, it's completion. Closure. At the moment of his death, a new era began. An era that allowed us all to share in his grace. No more of the over reaching 613 commandments that restrict every part of every day of the lives of the faithful.

When the curtain tore in the temple, the old covenant ended and the new covenant began. The new covenant that means I can eat bacon, shellfish and worship on a Sunday. The new covenant that ensures that as long as I am hurting no one, I can love anyone and in fact should love everyone. The covenant that places upon me a responsibility to evangelise truth. Not cloud it with ifs and buts from the past.

When I was baptised, I lay my past down at the cross, including the near impossible 613 commandments that I failed regularly at keeping. My baptism didn't wash away my hair colour, my skin colour or my education, intellectual or spiritual gifts and it didn't wash away my sexuality, because that is how G-d made me. What it did do is wash away my sin - the man made part of me.

What belongs to G-d, he has kept in me and what belonged to man he washed away. Every time I confess and take communion, he does that for me again. And again and again.

Because Jesus died, the rules changed.

Yes I know Paul refers to homosexuality (again the context is highly debatable and suitable for a whole new post) and the place of women in the new testament. Don't forget that Paul was human. The letters he wrote may well have been divinely inspired, but they were written by a human. Much of Paul's writing is very obviously influenced by the teaching of his former mentor Rabbi Gamliel, who as we all know was operating on the premise that the old covenant was still in operation. We also need to recognise who he was actually addressing in the letters and the context of their lives and lifestyles.

I once read an excellent interpretation on punctuation and it broke down how differently we understand things that are said based on where the punctuation falls in a phrase, sentence or paragraph. I really see how this applies, since most of us have only the direct translation in our bibles to rely on. What happens when we start moving the commas, full stops and semi colons? And in the same way, when we start to view the lives and contexts in which Paul was reaching out to the addressees of his letters.

All of a sudden the perspective changes. To mature in Christ and his message, we are also expected to explore the evidence and not simply take everything at face value as do children, but to explore and develop an understanding of deeper context, within the scriptures that are available to us.

I look at the Gospel as the core of my faith. I read it in its context. It is largely the foundation of my faith that was prepared and constructed BEFORE Christ died. The Gospel illustrates the fulfilment of G-ds purpose and the creation of a new covenant. The covenant to love one another in the context that we do unto others as we would have them do to us. Our colour, financial or social status, and certainly who we love has become irrelevant.

So before you start, telling me that I am an abomination before G-d perhaps you should start going to church on Saturday(no driving -walking only), ensure that you have all the sacrifices sorted, no pork, no shellfish, no cheese sauces. make sure your menstruant women are separated from your men and be sure to have the threads of your clothes checked because wool and flax are a no-no. In fact there are 613 tick boxes to complete and then come and tell me that the covenant that I am part of excludes the people I can love.

You cant pick and choose the rules as you go along. Either you're with the old rules or the new - I have chosen Christs rule - love one another as I have loved you.

Life and other plans

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 20:24:00 +0000

I just love the line from John Lennon's song - Beautiful boy, "Life is what happens to you when your'e making other plans"

All my life, I have been juggling multiple pans on the fire. I have struggled to come to terms with the idea that removing pans from the fire progressively will make my life easier and improve my ability to focus.

There are so many exciting things to see and do, in our relatively short life span and indeed life gets in the way.
My youngest child is now nineteen years old and suddenly I dont have to deal with schools and other agencies on the scale that I did before.

My son qualifies in December and my older daughter in March. They have grown up and life is suddenly leaving these huge voids.

Most people who know me personally, are aware that my spouse and I have separated. I could write a daily blog about this, but I decided to maintain both our privacy and seek counselling instead. Twice a week one to one and a group session as well and five months down the road, I'm coping. Note coping - not recovered.

The five months have also brought another change. My life has been nothing short of chaotic the last five years, and the last five months have been relatively conflict free. Not stress free, but conflict free. Every single problem or issue I've had to deal with has been dealt with in a calm way. I haven't felt attacked or vulnerable, and some issues have been rather daunting.

I had an interaction with my spouse on Tuesday and it rapidly escalated into an aggressive situation. I was told I made her get rude and angry. It was my fault she was being angry and nasty. One thing I have learned in the last five months, is that we choose to behave the way we do. In every situation. Its very convenient to blame everything on auto response but...... its about awareness.

When we create an awareness of how we behave and develop very simple habits when interacting with others, we control our responses - mostly.

The first thing I have learned is that by learning to assess the situation, rather than respond immediately with a knee jerk response, I take control of how situations affect me. When someone is shouting at you, this could be an indication of further aggression, or they could be warning you of something. Its all in the context.

My spouse is angry with me. She was angry when we met. She is still angry. She shifts the focus of her anger as people move into and out of her life. We must have been attracted to each other, because when we met, we were both angry people. For very different reasons.

I wouldn't say, I have no anger left in me, but I do know why I have been so angry for a very long time, and by identifying it, I can focus on other things in my life.

My daughter returned from being on an extended holiday this week and she noted how much calmer I am. How content I appear to be. I have similar problems to five months ago and a perhaps also few new ones.

I have pretty much isolated myself, in order to cope with the demons that have come out during counselling, and I am now slowly returning myself to the world in a completely different way.

Nevertheless, I love my spouse. For five months, I have worked on fixing all the broken things about me, that she has dictated must be fixed before we can be a couple again. While fixing the broken me, I have realised a few things. She doesnt believe she is damaged in any way. There is nothing about her to fix and therefore she doesnt believe that has made any contribution intentional or otherwise to the state of our marriage.

This is difficult to grasp as I know I have done some very damaging things. I also know that I have to own my actions for myself. But here is the breakthrough. I dont MAKE her do the things she says and does. She does.

I am not responsible for what other people do. I am responsible for what I do. This has completely changed my approach to relationships.

I now know that I also have to take responsibility for how I respond to thinsg that other people do that I dont like. The problem that we all have with this, is that we worry about the "collateral damage". If I tell my daughters boyfriend that I dont like his behaviour, will she defend him and attack my position? Probably. But we all have to decide what our thresholds are and why, And these Thresholds change over time.

Currently there is an issue with one of my children. But this child needs my emotional support more than my advice right now. But in time the threshold will change and we'll being discussing the way forward as my childs mindset over their situation develops.

And so my life has changed. There is far less drama, I am responsible for my own situation and my own outcomes, I have to find my own way forward and I have to balance my desires and goals with the emotional fallout that comes with them.

At the moment I cannot go to Church, I still struggle to go to the place that my wife brought me to. It still hurts to remember. But I know that time heals all things and soon It'll be my place rather than Ours. And then I will start the next Chapter of my life without the emotional baggage Im working to hard to unpack right now,

A breath of fresh air - Ke Leboha, Thank you!

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 14:13:00 +0000

Dr Mamphela Ramphele has offered South Africans an alternative. Oh yes, you may , so whats new, we've got the DA, Cope and other offshoots, whats the fuss?

I'll tell you what the fuss is....Dr Ramphele is not telling us what we want to hear, stirring up emotional responses and

letting us get swept with the moment. She has done exactly what we needed. She has asked the audience to inform the politicians, rather than have the politicians incite the audience to place their vote this way or that, its time for the politicians to choose the people.

She has effectively said, Tell me what you want, join me and we'll do it together. All of I sudden I have this massive rush of hope, to the point that I am virtually filled to the brim with tears.

I see hope for the impoverished in my beloved country, to reach a very basic standard of living, sanitation, education, healthcare - now that the option to stop following like lambs to the slaughter has been opened and instead we can participate, engage and take ownership of our own political, economic and social future. I mean WOW! I want part of this.

Her approach means - We're all in it together, if you're poor you're poor, its not about being white poor, or black poor, its about South African poor. Nor White wealth or Black wealth, its South African wealth, We have the most amazing heritage that so many of us are blindly unaware of.

As a backyard permaculturist, I shudder every time a fire sweeps through Khayelitsha or Dunoon. - Why, you may ask, its a common occurrence? I say, because I have a proposal that I believe could virtually eliminate widespread fires in the townships within five years, Now that Im allowed a voice with Dr Ramphele, maybe I can share it.

I have a proposal that I believe could bring a higher percentage of food security to our poorest - I have hope that I can now share my ideas.

I also see a focus on what we DO have. We have incredible resources and with the correct focus on education, we can turn our country into one of the most prosperous in the world in one generation.

If you read my previous post on debt to South African Society, you will see that the point that I make is that there is so much we can share without anyone being worse off, but certainly in ways that can make us all richer, particularly as a nation.

So folks please go to www.agangsa.co.za, have a read, have a look and know that there is an option, without hate, without anger, without greed. - Now we have to share it and live it.

Ke aleboha - thank you Dr Ramphele - you have my vote - and I have yours!

Debts to South African Society

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 23:43:00 +0000

I just know this blog post is going to raise a bit more than a few eyebrows. But I really just don't care. I really believe in what I'm writing here and I may even lose a few friends over it. In fact I have already been disenfranchised from a large portion of my family, so what the hell.....

I was born in South Africa at the end of the 1960's. A quirk of fate meant that I was born to white parents (actually my mother isn't white, rather classified as white, not quite the same thing, but more about that another day). This meant that I was born with an advantage. Access to better education, medical care, social circumstances and without a doubt opportunity.

Before those of you white South Africans reading this start rolling your eyes and arguing the already very moot points, about justifying the apartheid governments policies, get real and either read on or go learn a bit more about how our advantage put generations of others in an unfair position - for generations to come.

That said, let me get to my point. I have a oodles of criticism for the current South African government, but I believe my perspective is very different to a huge proportion of white people living in the electrically fenced, armed response ivory towers of middle and upper class suburbia.

The system put me at an advantage in so many ways that a single generation (or two or three) of BEE is not going to fix. In fact BEE is never going to fix the problems we face as a result of the inequalities in our society. Getting real and facing our moral responsibilities will however take us a lot further a lot quicker to getting there.

White South Africans need to face their fears and address them proportionately. A lot of (note I haven't said all) white fears are self fulfilling prophesies.

But let me start with the grass roots facts. I received a better education with more resources than a black child born on the same day as me. My education was targeted at entry to higher education and management possibilities. My black peers were educated to be subservient and workers and labourers.

But take it one step further, my mother had the same advantage, so I lived in a home where my mother had a better job than the parents of my black peers, simply because of better access to education. Then too many whites are quick to forget that many of my black peers were forcibly separated from their mothers when they reached the age of two, because the law said that they were not allowed to live with their mothers in a white neighbourhood.

So on a very basic level, the disadvantage was not just education, it was the deliberate destruction of the family infrastructure forcing mothers, fathers and children to live apart - a heinous attack on the social infrastructure and society of my fellow South Africans just because they were black. How do you repay the damage caused by the destruction of social and family infrastructure?

Mr White man - So you don't like the idea of living in fear? Well for at least three generations every black man,woman and child lived in fear, not only of the known discriminatory dangers, but also the uncertainty of what might happen that has not yet been imagined. And this fear can be fixed, but only if you face it.

My advice to these "white South Africans" is to change only one thing. Stop identifying as WHITE. Identify as a South African. Look to yourself to find what you can do to make this country a better place. Stop living in fear of murder and robbery, and start giving away of yourself.

I don't mean that you should give away your belongings, or your home, but there is so much that you can share to make it a fairer society without making you any worse off. For a start, what about your education. Knowledge shared is multiplied not halved. There remains a huge and very real literacy problem in black and coloured society. If each and every South African regardless of their of their racial origin, shared some aspect (however small) of their life's knowledge and experience to the benefit of others, we would be a great nation.

The them and us mentality, combined with a massive lack of trust is tearing the dream of a beautiful nation apart.

Lets take a look at a few issues. As a white child i was raised to be fearful of blacks. Fortunately my black nanny destroyed any attempt by the apartheid education system to instil this fear, simply by demonstrating true Ubuntu day in and day out of my life. She taught me to do things that white people havenet even heard of. I am a better person for it. She was never my inferior or equal. She was my elder, my teacher and her skin colour was irrelevant. Her love and care is what made me realise that some black people are bad and some white people are bad. Most Black people are good and most White people are good.

I note that as the black middle class become wealthier and climb the social ladder many move into what were previously exclusively white neighborhoods In fact where I have lived in Cape Town I noticed shortly after moving in that the majority of my neighbours weren't white, and there is no difference to the environment than when I grew up in a very similar area.

But what I have noticed is that those whites that are no longer "protected" by the government of the day in sheltered jobs and have fallen on hard times, are not integrating as well downwards. Its happening but in a very different way.

We do see the occasional white guy moving into Khayelitsha or Crossroads, but not as one would expect with the merging of societies. This illustrates exactly the them and us mentality perpetuated even amongst the poor. I had the occasion to spend some time in Guglethu last December and if the truth be told, it is obvious there are good parts and not so good parts just like the more formal environments of the city. perhaps Im an idealist but I would without hesitation spend a night in the home(be it a shack or a B&M home) of a trusted friend in Gugs, Khayelitsha or Crossroads.

Actually there are some very nice homes in these places. So here is some advice for the Black people of South Africa - welcome the white folk into what was formerly your territory. You'll find that deep down the average white person and average black person all want the same thing.....A safe home, a regular job, food on the table, the best for your kids and to be able to move forward in life - peacefully. I must disagree with those that try to say the past is the past, we must move forward. We cannot move forward until each and every one of us has taken a positive lesson from the past and applied it to our future, not only as individuals but collectively too.

Again the black man has far surpassed the white man morally. the concept of Ubuntu and forgiveness is what has meant that South Africa is still struggling to recover from a grossly underprivileged situation and not descended into the bloodshed of other countries in the world.

Mr White guy, YOU DO HAVE A DEBT to South Africa JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE WHITE. It may be uncomfortable, but its an uncomfortable truth. So rather than live in fear of the bad black guy coming to rob you, open up your life and share of yourself. Help him to feed, clothe and educate his children. Support the small business. How many white folk have thought of going shopping in Gugs? How many use a township tailor? We make our large white corporations wealthier, rather than enrich our grassroots economies. Break the hex. Go visit someone in a township.

Yes townships can be dangerous places, but to be honest so is upper class suburbia. In case you haven't noticed suburbia is targeted for robbery because its perceived to be wealthy. When us whites start putting something into black south african society we will get a lot more than just a reduced crime rate (You think we've got it bad, you should see the crime rate Khayelitsha residents have to deal with). Social cohesion comes from understanding and integration. That can only happen with effort. Try learning a black language even at rudimentary level. When a black child sees white people respecting his parents as equals he will grow up to respect his white peers as equals. And when a white face in the townships becomes the norm rather than an exception we'll know we're moving in the right direction.It cant be enforced, it has to come naturally and right now it requires effort.

So what are you doing about it, you may ask of me?

I'll tell you.

Every day I learn one new word from one of the 9 official black languages.
I help informal black business to grow at below cost , but with a conscience that knows Im not perpetuating greed but rather prosperity.
I deliberately support south african small business particularly those that create opportunity for those we have a collective debt to. Ever been to a township restaurant?
Every person I meet on the street is treated with the same respect. I feel just as comfortable sharing my hopes and fears with a woman from Gugs as I do with a woman from Big Bay.
I am a South African first and anything else second.
Where I have criticisms for my government, I have solutions to offer and suggest.
I am part pf the solution and NOT part of the problem.

Mr White guy, if you behave like someone who expects to be robbed and murdered then you will be. If you treat people differently because of the colour of their skin, you cant expect respect in return. Respect is earned not coerced. Share your life, your opportunity and your education and you will not become poorer, but you will enrich others around you.

So folks, I am a South African and recently when someone asked on their FB page to post your tribe (I noticed it wasn't race related) I posted Umlungu. The response was favourable despite the connotations that some attach to it. Being Umlungu can be something positive, if only we'd let it be.

Small changes Big impact

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 09:21:00 +0000

Up until now, I've really just blogged about my own life and things what I believe must be affecting others as well, and also sometimes just to get things off my chest.

But last night I watched a movie. A really thought provoking movie. The movie didn't tell me anything that I didn't already consciously or even subconsciously know. The film reminded me to stop thinking about its content and actually do something. While doing that something would essentially be for me, it has to have a benefit for those around me and my future generations, otherwise all else is useless.

The movie is called Owned and Operated and was made by www.crackinfilms.com and is available on www.truththeory.org free. It also is made and distributed under the creative commons licence so it can be copied and shared freely.

The single thought that I cannot shake off is the question why more of us are not doing something? About what, you may ask? Watch the movie, I say. Then you'll understand. And yet I've worked something out about the impact of the capitalistic, technocratic, bureaucratic, financially controlling world we live in. We have been led into this stupour that leaves us believing that there will always be someone else to do something, so we don't have to.

Often this is perceived to be the case because we have had our self esteem and confidence so violently abused that we actually believe that we cant do anything and that we have to leave it to some inspired leader or some other more capable group or organisation.

But I was struck by something. It takes one small change to alter the course of human history, only one.

The reason we are so angry and helpless is because we have handed power to abusive and greedy politicians who not only refuse to hand it back, but are using that power to prevent us from taking it back. Well we can. How you may ask?

When a bunch of bullies come along and cause a problem on the playground, usually you'll find the kids affected will often walk away and start to play a new game somewhere else. A different game, by different rules.

Our current economy depends on us squeezing every last penny and cent to pay for products bought from the large corporations who make billions and leave the average guy on the street done over. But we only need to do one conscious thing to change this.

I frequently get a message on Facebook that says don't buy fuel from this or that company for one day, if everyone agrees then we can cripple them in x or y way. Thing is, these kinds of things could work, but we need to not buy fuel from them for weeks. The same goes for the addictive junk food that is laced with chemicals and additives. If everyone stopped buying McDonald s for a day, it would be a glitch to them. but if if no one bought a McDonald's for two months..... well that would be different.

So how does a person who cant even afford to buy a McDonald's who has been so shafted by the system make a difference. Here's a start.

Buy, beg or borrow a tomato. Yes a tomato. In fact, get together with a friend and obtain a tomato. At worst, go dig in the bins of a greengrocer at the end of the day and find a discarded tomato.

I'm sure by now you're probably thinking, I've lost the plot, but please bear with me. I would prefer that to learn the lesson I'm trying to illustrate that you obtain the tomato free, either through the goodwill of a friend or relative or even the goodwill of a greengrocer and it would be great if you can share this idea with a friend.

Once you have obtained your tomato, cut it open and remove the seeds. If still edible, use the flesh in a sandwich salad or to cook. clean the seeds in a kitchen sieve and plant them. All of them. If more than one of you is sharing the idea, then split the seeds and each person plant them in a tub.

Do not buy a plant pot. Recycle. use an empty yoghurt pot or the base of a plastic bottle. keep the plant inside and grow it on a window sill. You can repot as the plant grows. Then watch your tomato plants grow. Water them regularly, surf the web, for hints on keeping them healthy (I give my tomatoes left over tea from my tea pot), Just watch.

You will in a relatively short period of time have multiple tomato plants providing you with plenty of fruit not only to eat but also to continue propagating your tomatoes so that never again will you have to pay for a tomato. It takes a few minutes to cut, clean and plant , and thirty seconds every few days to water.

Then convert what you pay for a single tomato and calculate the effort that you've had to put in to growing your own and it becomes mind boggling how much over the odds you are paying for a single tomato at the supermarket.

Remembering that you initial investment in obtaining the tomato may not even have cost you anything. Even if you live in a high rise apartment you can grow your own tomatoes. In fact I know someone who lives in a tiny flat and grows their own herbs, tomatoes, potatoes (yes potatoes) and several other food sources.

Someone who thinks they can do do nothing can do something, with (in the economic sense) nothing.

If we start providing for ourselves and remove the dependence on the large corporations for our food, wellbeing and money, we remove the power we have given them and the government that runs and ruins our lives.

They can no longer say do this or that or we'll take away your livelihood, if they don't control it.

Just think if we stopped using money as exchange for food, clothing and shelter, where would that leave the banks, the politicians and the war mongers.

To effect change, we need to change the rules. The rules must suit the people, not the power.

These are my rules to effect change:

1.) reduce your dependency on direct financial exchange
2.) increase your access to self sufficiency. (grow your own)
3.) Share your resources
4.) exchange resources without using the financial system (swap your tomatoes for your some of your neighbours potatoes)
5.) Reduce, reuse and recycle, have a look at this blog to see how economically empowering it can be.

If everyone grew their own tomatoes, the tomato farming industry would collapse and I have no intention of hurting farmers, most of whom are actually manipulated by the political powers and supermarkets and get very little for their produce. But in the even this happened, the farmers would discover that actually there are ways to distribute directly to the consumer and cut out the massive food control and profiteering by the "middle men".

Now apply this to herbs, potatoes and other foods. (We can even produce milk, but I'll go into that another time)

The tomato exercise is one to show that not only can you take control of your food source but you can propagate it to maintain control. If we can do it with basic foods, we can also do it with clothing and other consumer goods.

To do this successfully we need to do only one thing. STOP buying into the mass media hype, that we have to have a better car, a nicer TV, computer, clothes with a particular brand etc....

We could ALL have nice clothes, good food, a warm home, if we stop working in the system that has deprived us of security.

Just as we have been gradually lulled into the system that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, we can gradually work our way out of dependency of that system, and that starts today, with one tomato. Even if you can afford to buy 100 tomatoes.Try it.

When the law is self defeating......

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 18:26:00 +0000

As life has gone by, I have witnessed a few occasions when the law has been used for something it was not meant to be. Then there are those that say that "the law is an ass".

Well here we go... lets discuss what an ass it really is.

My ex husband and I were divorced ten years ago. He was very obstructive during the divorce. The divorce finally went through because he failed to act timeously to a court directive. Because he was unavailable, the court decreed that child maintenance be dealt with by the CSA (Child support agency).

For a short time following the divorce my ex husband flapped in and out of my children's lives, forgetting their birthdays, and clumsily endangering their lives occasionally along the way.

In 2003 he disappeared, and I mean disappeared, one minute he was there and the next he was gone and no-one knew where he was. My family moved away without knowing where he was or what he was doing.

In 2005 I received a phone call asking me where we were and I explained to him that we had moved to Scotland, but could not tell him where because he had disappeared. It transpired that he had travelled to Sierra Leone. Shortly afterwards he returned to our native South Africa because his mother had passed away.

I next heard he was trotting around Africa, from Uganda to Zimbabwe and also the DRC. he was a travelling Medic and paid to travel to these outlandish and somewhat dangerous places. He never paid a penny of child support and never sent any birthday or Christmas cards.

In 2006, I took my children on a holiday to South Africa and took them to visit their paternal grandfather. It turned out that their father was staying in his house "looking after Grandad".

When I asked him if he was ever going to provide for his children, he told me that South African exchange control regulations prevented him from doing so. I wasn't sure he was right, but had a lot more to deal with, so waited til I was back in the UK before trying to check up on this. It turned out that maintenace could be paid to me in the UK particularly if paid through a maintenance court.

Despite asking him to provide a breakdown of finances to deal with child support he wavered between a pile of excuses and aggressive intimidation.

Finally, I decided Scotland had served it's dues and it was time for my family to return back to South Africa. I started selling off work equipment and liquidating my finances. I went to South Africa and opened bank accounts, found a home and instructed an advocate in order to pursue him for child maintenance. I then returned to the UK, to close up everything and wait for my children's final exam results to be released.

During the summer, while we waiting for the exam results, we went to London to apply for passports for the children. The South African embassy refused to issue a passport although the children's father had signed the form months before. They wanted a letter of consent. he has refused to give it and here is why the law is an ass...................

I need to be living in South Africa permanently for my local South African court to have jurisdiction in the child maintenance matter. I have a home, a job and have liquidated my life in the UK in order to take my kids home. But because he refuses to consent to the issue of his children's passports, they wont issue them.

Now get this.I have applied for passports in order to return the children to the jurisdiction in which their father lives. The law requiring both parental signatures is designed to prevent a parent removing (abducting) the children from another parents jurisdiction without their consent, NOT to prevent the return of said children.

My ex husband who has never paid a penny of child support in over ten years, is now using the law that is designed to prevent child abduction, to prevent the return of his children to his jurisdiction in order to avoid a child maintenance matter.

What is so sickening, that despite knowing this, the South African Authorities including the embassy in London, not only have done nothing about this, but in fact have encouraged and supported his behaviour. So if you're a recalcitrant non paying South African father, run away to South Africa abandoning your children elsewhere in the world and then refuse to consent to the issue of passports to return your children home. The South African government will make sure you not only dont have to pay child support, but dont care about the minor children you have effectively abandoned and left destitute abroad and will use every piece of legislation in their power to prevent the return of thse children to your jurisdiction thus protecting you from your obligation to support them.

Anyone wanting indepth details about this case please send me an email

How hate hurts everyone

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 14:48:00 +0000

When I was four and a half, I experienced the first real damage that hate can cause. I remember it as though it happened yesterday.

It was warm African afternoon, early summer and my nanny (a black woman employed by my mother to care for me) was walking me home from nursery. I can remember clearly carelessly skipping along and kicking the dust in the road, in my bare feet. We identified the different birds in the trees and chatted about inconsequential things.

We were about twenty metres from the gate to my parent's property, when suddenly a police vehicle (In those days they were a greyish blue colour with the rear constructed as a cage -typical to the South African Police vehicles at that time) stopped in front of us. As the police officers stepped from the vehicle my nanny looked at me in panic and said "quick - start crying".

I couldn't work out why? it was one of those mindless "what?" moments. But the moment I saw the terror in the whites of her eyes, I burst into tears. Not because she had told me to, but because this normally warm, loving person who spent a large part of the day with me, fed me, clothed me and cleaned my scraped knees, was utterly terrified, and I couldn't see why?

The two policemen alighted from the vehicle and asked her for her passbook. (more about pass laws in South Africa here)Being human she had forgotten it in her room, not far from where we stood, but nevertheless she had broken the law and had committed an imprisonable offence by being on the street without it. When my crying was heard from our neighbours home, my brothers best friend who lived next door came out to see what was happening. As luck would have it, his father was the local police chief and he intimated to the police officers that they would not want my father complaining to his father, that they had been responsible forced the abandonment of his child (myself) to enforce a pass law.

She was allowed to go with a warning..... she was just lucky that day, but I have never forgotten that terror. That look in her eyes, that trembling of the lip, the dilation of her pupils - silent terror. It still haunts me.

That day a seed was planted inside my psyche. I started to ask questions, some out loud and others I knew should not be asked.

I grew up feeling like a thief. I felt like I had participated in stealing the love that was meant for her children. The children that at reaching two years of age were sent back to the homeland to be raised by extended family, because black, husbands and wives and their children were not allowed to live together in white areas, or on even on their employers' property. For three generations Black people were denied family life. Black women were comforting the tears of their white charges, while their own children were left in the care of their grandparents or extended family. I was one white child with one to one care. My Nanny's children had to share resources, love and support with multiple cousins whose parents were also not allowed to have them living with them beyond their second birthday. Their parents rarely got to see the major milestones beyond their second birthdays and the bonding between parent and child we all so take for granted was decimated.

And then the world wonders why there is such a large part of damaged South African society and a criminal element still inexplicably hanging around? An election and a change in government did not miraculously heal generations of severe physical and psychological damage.

What many do not stop to think about is the damage it did to white South African society. My brother said to me one day that he felt betrayed. As with all South African boys of our generation, he was conscripted for national service. All of a sudden he was made to shoot at and oppress the people from whom our nanny had come. One minute he was being fed, clothed and cared for, as well as his emotional welfare taken care of by a black surrogate mother and the next thing minute he was receiving orders to shoot at her children and family!

My feeling of being a thief did not stop there. I struggled to face the way we were segregated. It wasn't just about keeping blacks and whites apart, but as a white person I couldn't engage with black people in public without arousing suspicion. I started to travel on black public transport as a teenager. Now I'll admit there was initially an ulterior motive. I discovered the fare to travel the same distance was nearly half, so I could hoard up the money I saved on bus fares and save it.

The first time I got on a bus for black people, nobody wanted to sit next to me. maybe they thought it was a trap. But soon I became a familiar sight on the route and the regulars began asking questions. When I explained that I didn't see why I should pay more for my fare because of my skin colour, my fellow passengers laughed and invited me in as one of them....always looking for a way to spare the pennies. It got to the point when they stopped me from sitting at the window in case we passed a police vehicle and I attracted trouble. I made regular friends on that bus that I could not have made otherwise. I was 14 years old and the memory of my 4 year old toddler's trauma was coming full circle. I NEVER felt unsafe.

I shared their frustration when I saw a black person becoming victimised and sat among them many a time shedding a tear. I got to know about their husbands, wives, children and grandchildren. Families so badly damaged by a system, yet so much to give.

This particular bus journey used to take 45 minutes. If I calculate the four years I travelled that route, I spent a cumulative mere 45 days of my life amongst these people and yet when I turned eighteen and was old enough to vote, I did and I voted every possible route I could to change the system that prevented me from visiting the homes of my friends on the bus, and in turn prevented them from sharing a movie, a restaurant meal or a night in at my flat.

This blog post is for Sibusiso, Elsie, Charlotte, Thandi, Eric and Johannes who all travelled on that bus with me along Jan Smuts Avenue to Eloff Street. I don't know where ANY of you are now, but I hope you remember, we shared the tears and the laughs and that some of us did break the rules because we knew one day those rules would no longer separate us. None of you knew then that I had my own struggle for freedom.

I feel too emotional right now, because memories come flooding, very painful memories and so I can only deal with each experience in small bits. But the purpose of this blog post is to illustrate that no matter how far apart we appear to be, actually it only takes one to reach out and the other to grab, to end the hate.

And I hope to come home soon, and find a piece of each of you in all the South Africans I have left behind, making my life journey across the globe worthwhile. I believe that when I get home, I will find my peace.

For that Mr Mallon, I thank you.

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 10:10:00 +0000

Mr Mallon,

When I referred to illegitimate baptisms, I meant the baptism of illegitimate children and was not

referring to the baptism itself. I trust that most thinking people reading the blog would understand that within the context of the piece. It's no big leap. You're creating a semantic argument because you know that your church treats pre and extra marital sex as mortal sins. And as for the treatment of illegitimate children, I know what I am talking about. I had a Catholic education. I witnessed it first hand.

You have at no point addressed the right to freedom of religious expression for gay people (whether or not they are Catholic), A freedom the Catholics themselves are exercising by criticising equal marriage, within the context of their own religious practice. Civil partnerships actually prevent this. As a gay person of faith I cannot marry before the eyes of my God in Scotland. And just because your God forbids it, doesn't mean my God does. I don't see any legislated mandate that gives the Catholic church or their God the right to overrule how I worship mine. This is exactly what the Catholic church is trying to manipulate - dictating to the rest of Scots society , religious or not, how they may or may not practice their own faith. I'm quite happy for the Catholic church to make it's own rules and if they want to stick to their position, then fine, but if they want to be allowed to keep their right to object to my right to marry, Then in a fair society I should have that right.

In a modern world each religious group is a allowed to define it's concept of morality and just because one group says something is not moral, does not change the morality of it for another.So while you have the freedom to express your religious beliefs by sanctifying your marriages, your way, my priest is unable to allow me to express mine. Difference is if your church were banned tomorrow, I'd be on the picket line campaigning not for the church, but for your right to freedom in faith, no matter how diverse it may be from mine. The Catholic church cannot bring themselves, to realise the fundamental concept that it is about freedoms,not a morality that you have any sort of licence to dictate to non Catholics about.

As for fraud, I accuse those Catholics that sent BOTH a tick boxed postcard AND a formal response of fraud. When we vote in a referendum or an election, we get to offer our view ONCE. there is no risk of one point of view being counted twice. I sent in a formal response. ONCE. If you sent in both, you committed fraud at least to manipulate the statistics, and were complicit in assisting the Church to do exactly that. I say this because there was no apparent effort by the church to prevent anyone being counted twice. As a family of four, four responses are fair, each individual is allowed their response, as did each member of my family. I'm referring to duplicating individual responses, the size of your family doesn't come into it. That's just muddying the waters. Did any members of your family complete the full response AND the postcard - No? Then as far as I'm concerned you're clean. If the church's honour is to be preserved at the very least they would have known that this probability would occur and nevertheless did nothing visible to prevent a double count for any of its supporters. So if the church can get two counts in a consultation, how is that honest?

As for a referendum. Those against SSM, are calling for a referendum that would cost the government a fortune. Again I must ask myself where do the priorities lie when asking a government in austere times to take money from another budget to fund a referendum. That money would almost certainly come from budgets that fund social care, social services, education and poverty alleviation. Since the church argues that the gay population is less than 1%(another blog post on that will be published next week, so please feel free to come back and comment on that - I don't object to your opposing viewpoint as long as you remain respectful), proportionately the cost to the population is severely imbalanced

Like many heterosexual people your obsession with what actually happens between the sheets when same sex couples have sex is not only ignorant, but also unhealthy. Please explain how sodomy is any more unhealthy than vaginal sex? (Herpes, Syphilis, Gonorrhoea, HPV, Gardenerella, but a few that come to mind) Actually shall we keep that for a blog discussion next Thursday? I just know you're going to raise the issue of Aids, and when I show you that there are more women, children, haemophiliacs and heterosexuals dying of Aids related disease in the world that homosexual males, you'll probably accuse the WHO of lying. No?

Unless you have actually engaged in a regular committed loving male homosexual activity, you will not know how or if "sodomy" takes place, and the fact that you spend your time thinking about this, leads one to wonder, if there's something you're not telling us.

As for me I'm a lesbian, my partner cant sodomise me, not in the biblical sense anyway. And I tell you unashamedly that we do exactly what heterosexual couples do in bed with one piece of apparatus missing, and we do it quite satisfactorily for both of us.

Since you consider same sex relations as so vile, have you ever engaged in such a relationship to be able to pass that judgement, or is the "vile act" a matter of your opinion? Opinion and experience are two very different things.

As for whether it is unnatural or not, can you tell me whether the 500 species of creatures that engage in same sex activity are also unnatural? How many more of Gods creatures are unnatural? And what you may define as unnatural in your moral and religious code, the heterosexual leaders in my church don't. You don't get to dictate to me and the rest of Scots society what is moral, natural or unnatural, that is defined by each individual for how they live their lives and not to presume the right to tell others how to live theirs, as long as it complies within the bounds of law. And law develops as a moral and just society does too. The law allowed slavery just a few short generations ago, so don't go saying that the law is fine as it is. The law evolves for the sake of justice, not religion, but I nearly forgot, the Catholic church doesn't believe in evolution.

I consider it very unnatural to expect a man or woman to live an enforced celibate life with no sexual outlet, and then expect that man to care pastorally over the sexual matters of his flock, when he has no experience of the matter himself. No doubt you differ over that matter and I respect your right to.

As for calling it a social experiment. Please feel free to elaborate, with deeper intelligent argument. As I said its welcome as long as you treat me respectfully. It is obvious that you are thinking about these arguments and from my point of view that can only be healthy.

Same sex relationships have existed as long as humans have been around, the only "experiment"is the evolution of justice in law. The abolition of slavery was a social experiment. As was the abolition of the death penalty. This "social experiment" is evolution of social justice. Enforcing celibacy amongst catholic priests turned out to be a dangerous social experiment, not biblically mandated, but mandated by the catholic church several centuries after the death of Christ. An experiment which continues to damage the lives of innocent people and yet will not be reversed by the Vatican. Simply because the Catholic church finds it difficult to admit its mistakes. I can show you many churches that HAVE had the courage to admit their mistakes of the past.

No one is stopping heterosexuals from sanctifying their relationships in church and no one is stopping churches from defining their own moral code as sanctifying only heterosexual marriages. Your children will still grow up in Catholic homes, with heterosexual parents, learning catechisms and life will not be much different. Catholic life will go on. And NO-ONE has given the Catholic church the right to mandate what should or should not go on in the lives of non Catholics.

Allow me to make another thing clear. The catholic church and practising Catholics do NOT speak for all practising Christians. There are practising Christians all over the world that will disillusion you of that fact. there are many practising Christians that have no issue with same sex relationships and if sodomy is the core of your problem, what is the problem with gay women?

As with your alliance with Muslims, this is is merely (excuse the pun) a marriage of convenience. Several Catholic opponents have argued that polygamy will be the next concession - further damaging our society. So the Catholics will back up the Muslim argument as long as it suits them despite them actually have fundamentally very different views on marriage, a single converging point appears to make the Catholic church approve of the Muslim position on polygamy. In Muslim countries, Muslims are put to death for becoming Christians, Churches are burnt down and Christians persecuted, by aligning itself with the people that actually mandate violence and murder of Christians the Catholic church is not doing itself any favours. Again my point of view is that if a woman enters willingly and without coercion into a polygamous marriage then she should be free to do so. All these freedoms have been very effectively enshrined in South African law, including polygamous marriage. So tell me how that "social experiment" has damaged South African society. And please remember you'll be addressing their State President when you do, he has five wives.

As for redefining mother and father in the eyes of the law. I would like your views as to how this could be changed in law and in by doing so to society's detriment. This could make for an interesting discussion and one I would be happy to engage in. As of now I see no relevance. Feel free top explain your comment in order to make it relevant.

Your comment has been respectfully replied to in the form of a blog post because you have had the courage to stand up for what you believe and say so in a respectful manner without calling me all the names under the sun and displaying bigotry. Your reply has been one of a divergent view and while I shall stick to my view based on my knowledge and life experience as will you to yours.

I have concerns as to freedom for all professions involved in the type of dilemma's you face, and I also believe to sweep these concerns under the comment would be an ignorant mistake. Its very easy to say, of what are you on about, it wont happen....

So please allow me to address your position as a teacher. And this reply is not an open one, but one to you personally. A Lesbian woman to a practising Catholic teacher. It may surprise you.

My daughter goes to a Catholic school. I have no objection to the school teaching her that in the eyes of the Catholic church that homosexuality is a sin. Why? Because the church then stands true to itself. The teacher however should contextualise that this is the opinion of the church and the teacher should be free to say this is their opinion too. However it is also important that when teaching this that it is made clear that there are other opinions on the matter and that in order to gain a balanced view and a balanced judgement before reaching a conclusion these views should be also explored.

I have no objection to opposition to homosexuality being voiced in schools, after all how else do we teach our children about the values freedom of speech and the balance of argument. The proviso is that the alternative view be made available, and a teacher that does not have your constraints of faith be allowed to teach the alternative.

I am happy to inform you Mr Mallon, that despite our incredibly divergent views, based on probably very different life experience, I respect your right to voice your objection. Why? I have met with many an abusive bigot over the last few months, and if you can while crying for the preservation of your right to freedom of speech and the preservation of the practice of your faith include that in the right for me to do the same. Then sir you are not a bigot.

Exactly by engaging within the discussion as you have is what should happen in the classroom and I hope that others will do so too. It is far better to agree to disagree while having a reasonably civil discussion as an example to our children. For that Mr Mallon, I thank you.

Our leaders may not shout as loud, or throw as much money at political issues as Catholic leaders, but they lead by example, and judging by the news in today's Herald, I'd much rather follow the leadership of my faith than that of Catholic church, who as a respected religious leader in Scotland has stated is not the Arbiter of Scottish morality.

Hijacking democracy and Catholic porcupines

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 15:32:00 +0000

Naturally I'm delighted at the Scottish governments decision to move forward with equal marriage. I am however concerned at the way those who have responded in the negative, have abused the democratic process.

I have heard several churchgoers openly admit that they filled in a personal response and ALSO sent

off a postcard given to them by their church.

So Catholics against equal marriage got to be counted twice, while the rest of us only once!

And then you see the sanity of the statistics. When the postcard responses are included, the response goes against. As soon as you remove the double standard (responding twice or counting two responses from one person) the statistics flip almost to show the exact opposite!

It is eye opening to see that the Catholic church has to encourage its parishioners to defraud democratic process in an attempt to make itself look like a visible moral force. A bit like the porcupine that enlarges when feeling threatened but actually just looks bigger than it really is!

Catholicism is supposed to represent christianity, a vision of love, charity and truth.

Please excuse me while I stop choking. Not only encouraging dishonesty but in fact sponsoring it and furthermore actively driving it, has nothing to do with the kind loving God, that I worship.

As with the revelations of severe abuse in the Catholic church, they also have huge problems within their own parishes such as poverty, illegitimate births, pre and extra marital sex (all mortal sins), which they are far less vocal about and appear to be sidelining over an issue that comparatively speaking affects a very tiny number of their members.

This tells me that it's not about morality. It's about power. Catholic Cardinal O'Brien has declared war on equal marriage.

He chooses to go to war over an issue that he claims his members support him on. If indeed they do, then why is he spending resources on non catholic morality, which nobody has given him the mandate to do, rather than feed his own poor, teach sexual morality to his own parishes filling with illegitimate baptisms, and condemned sinners?

I'll tell you why. Because silent charity doesn't bring visibilty, and without visibility power is diluted.

In his war on equal marriage, poor catholic children, morally lost catholic men and women whose needs desperately need these funds wasted on their leaders political ambition, now become the collateral damage. I hope they have the sense to see this.

A Close catholic friend honestly told me that when she was given a postcard, she wasn't asked if she has already sent in a response, but rather encouraged to to send hers off, regardless of whether she had completed a full response or not.

So when we look at the issue, we need to decide whether the people speaking for us, are really taking our interests to heart, or just furthering their political visibility to enhance their careers.

It leaves a bad taste in my mouth when the thought that a spiritual leader would put his opposition to the rights of a minority above the welfare of his flock. Any comment?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Glasgow

iphone vs Samsung

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 15:27:00 +0000

I have just decided that I'm going to replace my iphone 4S with a Samsung Galaxy 111S.

I can hear that sucking in of air between the teeth out there in cyberspace, but believe me I have considered this carefully. so please hear me out.

I have owned the iphone since I acquired my first iphone, the original iphone. Then came the 3G, followed hot on its heels, by the 3GS and then the 4. I held back on the 4S because in all reason I could not see why I should dole out the dosh for features that really didn't make all that much difference to the pleasures I already enjoy with the phone. Recently I spent some time in Cape Town and with a few hours to spare, I investigated the mobile phone market there.

I must admit that I had an ulterior motive. We have an interest in the Social Media market and this form of digital presence has become more and more mobile, I felt that having a look at what was on offer and what people are buying would give me an idea which direction to take, when I finally strike camp and build my home in South Africa.

The first fact that became remarkably obvious is that apple, while enjoying the hype, does not enjoy the popularity at the checkout. Why? Its simple really and you don't need to look very far to understand this. South Africa is way down the list when compared to living in the 7th wealthiest nation in the world (The UK) as I do. The population simply cannot afford the bling. a few hundred bucks makes all the difference so I noticed that Samsung are cashing in on the alternatives and they really must be seeing the dollar bills.

I admit that because I have been able to own an ipad and an iphone, I haven't taken the time to take serious notice of what else is on offer, until fate pushed me to in Cape Town.

It was the Samsung Galaxy tablet that made me realise that the ipad had a serious contender for the first place at the checkout. I know, I know the OS is different, but that is what is eventually going to put apple on the back burner. Because there are several Android tablets, when they become "one in every home", The IBM syndrome is going to take hold and we're going to see apples incompatibility shoot it in the foot.

Then I decided to take a closer look at the Samsung S111. And I loved it. It does everything I want and the itunes/ipod argument for a phone is slowly becoming lost on me. Why? Because I use Spotify more than I use itunes and I can store my music on my PC and transfer to my phone using other software, so itunes is no longer irreplaceable.

The Android phone costs less to insure, less to update and now equals the apps available, also you don't have to pay purely for the privilege.

Now sinceI have an ipad, the Samsung makes sense. I can do anything on the ipad that I can do on the iphone except make a call (I can Skype by ipad). I can make phone calls on the Samsung and all the apps I need on hand on my phone are available for the Samsung. So Android here I come.

Time will tell and pretty quickly we'll see if I've made the right decision.

A Wish list

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 15:32:00 +0000

Well with the winter season coming up and everyone rushing to and fro, buying gifts and preparing for Christmas, I have been asked what would I would like in the line of gifts.

I find it very hard to reply, because in all honesty apart from the very expensive next step life purchases I would like to make, I am quite content with what I have right now.

I have thought carefully about what having possessions means to me and while I feel I have everything I'll ever need, I certainly don't have have everything I'd ever like to have. This is different from actually wanting something, which is a point many of us miss.

My family has a wii and a PlayStation, which no one has used for over a year. I really think its recycling time. But will I experience any resistance, I hope not. Its time to declutter. Now this may be a source of conflict. Why? Well, Jaye and I love books, that we read and reread. We collect them in huge quantities and have now realised a huge collection, that will eventually fill our wall to wall booklined study.

So what am I wishing for this Christmas season. Well to start off with the old cliche' - world peace! of course, if there was world peace we'd have a little less money spent on the war machine and a little more on building sustainable homes, creating sustainable jobs and producing sustainable energy and food sources.

But being a realist and accepting that world peace will not happen in my lifetime, I have wished for a few more mundane things, this festive season.

I wish for equal marriage in Scotland - the catholic church and their big mouthed brigade do NOT speak for me.
I wish for homelessness to be totally abolished.
I wish for personal currency to increase in value and financial currency to stop.
I wish for a cure for autism.(For matthew and Sarah)
I wish for a cure for epilepsy (For Me)

Now for the more selfish stuff, so for those of you that know me - take note.....

A lie in on Christmas morning with hot coffee and mince pies.
Book/DVD/itunes tokens/vouchers
A ring Mandrel and UK size gauges
A concrete mixer
Intraocular lens replacement in both my eyes......

I'll stop there, but anyone can see, I'm not asking for a square meal, warm clothes, or toiletries and socks. So if any of the above are out of your reach think about ethical gift giving.

Wateraid - provide running water for a village in Africa/India the far East
World Vision - provide some chickens and goats for some poverty stricken villagers so that they can make a living and eat.
Cancer Care - Despite all our progress in medical science. the cure still alludes us, think about the folks at Macmillan.
Dont forget charity starts at home so if you'd like to make a donation to any homelessness charity please send them a fiver instead of filling my stocking, it really is no loss to me and it means even more to them if youre a taxpayer.
Finally a dog is for life, not just for Christmas, so please remember those creatures that cannot speak for themselves.

While I am not asking everyone to shower me with ethical gifts, if every stocking had one ethical gift as a filler, how much more would we be changing the world. I would love to hear that there were one million ethical gifts sold this year. That would be the best gift of all.

To err is human, to forgive is divine....

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 16:52:00 +0000

I have made some mistakes in my life. On some counts it was sheer naivete on others stubborness and yes on one or two occassions I ahve made mistakes as an attempt to get the better of a situation. However, many have said that without making mistakes we cannot grow.

Big life mistake number one: This was a mistake that I didnt understand and thus repeated, because I refused to recognise the underlying issue. I got married - to a man. The consequences of my first marriage continue to haunt me to this day. Some mistakes we make are simply set aside and we can ride off into the sunset and forget about them. Others will remain with us to our dying day. For me this was one of them.

It was only after I was divorced from my first husband that I realised that my marriage had been cultivated on bedrock, - nothing healthy and arable. I had wanted to escape my mother and felt needy in respect of attracting some attention. I was immature and not ready for a lifelong committment. I also did not know what I was committing to.

The first argument we had he pushed backwards very hard off the bed and I banged my head on a wall. He rolled over and went to sleep. After I regained my bearings, I washed the wall and went to sleep in a safer place. FUnnt how the first argument or violent experience is the one one remembers so clearly. Well as my other half has told me countless times, the first time is usually never the last. When something happens and it is ignored/excused or justified, the thin end of the wedge is in and the violence sets in to develop a pattern.

But the pattern had already been set. I just had'nt realised it yet. It had alreadyt been emotionally violent for a while. The forgetting to do things I asked. The forgetting of my birthday and anniversaries. The alcohol abuse leading to failed committments in the home.......

And so I found myself in a ten year marriage that because I was constantly reminded of my own faults, I blamed myself for my discomfort therein. I blamed myself for its failure and only ended it because I felt that I would never have been good enough to rescue it. He still balmes me for it but thats his problem.

The marriage produced three children. When we separated I took my children into a refuge for battered women and then proceeded to have a nervous breakdown. The children were taken into care and he capitalised on my "mental illness". He has ever since. The children are now teenagers and tells them frequently that I am retarded because I have a history of "mental illness". For what it's worth my mental illness was depression and one in four people suffer from this severely in their lifetime. But then wife beating is recognised as a trigger for depression.

It is not so much the past that is looked at through the tinted glasses of the observer, but rather the present that and its impact on the future that concerns me now. I dont feel guilty that I ended both my marriages to men and as with time, I move further away from them I am astounded at why I didnt do so sooner. I experience guilt when it is apparent that my mistakes have impacted on the lives of others - in my case, my children.

For ten years, I have been involved in the upbringing of my children, without his support. Not a penny in child support. Nada. Zilch. Zero.Sweet Fanny Adams. During those years he has pranced around the war torn world, as a contracted medic, in places where a telephone is yet to be heard of. Sierra Leone, Uganda, Zimbabwe and several other dark corners of Africa. Now while I am not bothered about his choice of work, he has chosen to blame me for the lack of contact with his children. Yet he was always able to contact us and find us. He seems to think that I should not have moved house because I could not have known when or where he would have exited the african jungle. He has told our children that we moved house without telling him, but failed to mention that we were unable to tell him because he was uncontactable. Rather he chooses to suggest that the house move was deliberate in order to cut him off from them.

Despite not paying a penny toward them - and I really mean not a penny.(He has never given up a pack of cigarettes to afford the cost of sending the children a birthday card!) I took my children to South Africa, provided them with a weeks visit and I thought at the time established a civilised rapport with him - mistake within a mistake.

He tries to justify the failure to send a letter or a birthday card with the exchange rate. From where I'm standing a pack of cigarettes is a pack of cigarettes whether you're in Britain or whether you're in South Africa. Sacrificing a pack of smokes to send your kids a birthday card is not a big deal -or is it?

Following the 2006 visit, I really believed that interacting with him was going to get easier, I didnt realise I was setting myself up for more trouble. And the story would be very funny , if it were'nt so tragic. The next few blogs will cover the story, with the relevant facebook quotes and post identifiers (Many have been removed, but the post identifiers show anyone investigating the archive points for these posts) as well as the emails and the tragedy of how anger and malice hurt children just as seriously as physical violence. In this case how children often do not realise the damage being dome to them until long after the fact......

And Now for something completely different........

noreply@blogger.com (Ruth Richards-Hill) — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 19:45:00 +0000

My children sometimes are embarrassed by me. But then sometimes, they think I'm quite cool. I'm open about my sexuality (obviously) and to some degree other aspects of my lifestyle. I enjoy attending Club Noir. and occasionally turn up at Violate. Then I have certain ideas on saving the planet (I'm a self confessed tree hugger) and also kindness to animals (Peta have some great ideas, but perhaps go about things a bit awkwardly)

Now anyone can pop down to Primark and get a jumper, but those of us that like to stand out shop at places like Osiris and Hellfire from time to time are looking for that something completely different. But the online market is expanding faster than I can type this post and so I am going to share a few of my less orthodox shopping habits with you.

If you like the darker side of dressing then my most recent adventure in online shopping is for you. Yes Angela I'd love to share this with you, everyday that we shared, the way you are, the way you dress, the feelings you share have made me better for who I am, so This post is for you and the friends that influence my ability to say and do what I want!