Category: Faith

Is it possible to respectfully disagree?

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The world is full of people shouting at each other, each utterly convinced that they are right and their opponent is the devil incarnate. It is so tempting to do, isn’t it – to indulge that volcano in your tummy, to not try to understand, to not stretch out your hand and risk it being bitten off, to not have to undo your own prejudices and fears and doubts by holding them up to scrutiny. When that thing that you are speaking about and opening up about is a fundamental part of your identity, it is even harder to allow others in; others who disagree, who cannot see what you are so passionate about; who do not know that when you are asked to justify yourself you do it with a pounding heart and fear in your bones and a dry mouth that will not let you speak. I do not know why, but one of the things I feel that way about is human-driven climate change. It is not something rational, for me; it is as driven by my faith and my heart and my churning stomach as is the belief that every one of us is equally loved and equally precious to God. 

I doubt I’m the only person on this side of the debate who struggles to understand the opposing perspective, even if others are less irrationally emotional about the whole thing. So, I tried to find out what the other side of the debate actually is. Here are five questions, asked of a friend I trust and respect who happens to fundamentally disagree with me. My own responses follow as well.

Image by Andrew Lloyd Gordon from Pixabay
  1. How would you describe your own view of climate change? 

C: My view is that the climate is almost certainly changing, but that this is probably mostly natural, and that at present we have no way of determining the long-term trend.  We might warm up or we might have another ice age.  We are overdue an ice age, given the general climate trends of the quaternary.  It seems unlikely human activity has no effect, but I don’t think it is likely to be the main controlling factor.

Me: I believe that humanity is causing the climate to change dramatically and dangerously, at an unprecedented rate. Would it have changed anyway, without human intervention? Of course, eventually. The climate is not something that is static; the earth has gone through cycles of dramatic warming and dramatic cooling before. What is different this time is the speed with which we are destroying what the earth has taken millennia to create; the devastation that is likely to ensue; and the overwhelming arrogance of a species that believes itself to be impervious to its actions when that is patently not the case.

2. What are the main things that make you think this way about it? 

C: My family are mostly scientists who are fairly sceptical of it, and a lot of the science doesn’t seem to be really sound: for instance, no-one seems to have come up with conditions that would prove that it isn’t happening.  A lot of the data seems either badly worked out statistics (you have to use a particular non-standard moving average to get the hockey stick graph, for instance), overstretched proxy data (tree rings), changes or recalibrations in the way things are measured, or interpreted in the light of a curious assumption that the climate doesn’t naturally change. 

I’ve done enough geology and palaeontology to be sure that assumption is false – indeed, glaciers have advanced and retreated in historical time – and as it is difficult to tell the difference between overnight and half a million years in a lot of “fossilised” data, we don’t have much idea how quickly some of the changes typically happen.  Moreover, so far, a lot of global warming predications haven’t been fulfilled, and they are having to try to come up with explanations regarding why not.  This doesn’t mean they are necessarily wrong overall, but it does mean they are very far from being able to claim that it is more than a theory.

I don’t believe the majority of scientists agree on human caused climate change, I think that anyone involved who says, “Hang on, might we be wrong about this?” is pushed out of climate science – cannot get grants for research, for example.  This casts doubt on all the normal processes of checking such as peer reviewing.  I would actually be more likely to believe it if they came across as agreeing less, because I would be happier to trust the integrity of the processes involved.

Me: It starts as a family thing for me too. The first time I remember hearing about climate change was when I was back at school, and it was called the greenhouse effect. A biology teacher I loved very much (I sort of had to – he was my dad) told us then to put money on it being a white Christmas in 2010, because by then, the climate would have changed so much that it was pretty much a certainty. 2010 came eventually, even though to the schoolchildren he was speaking to it felt like a lifetime away. In the intervening time, he had died and I had become a mother. And, for the first time in my memory, that Christmas there were inches of snow on the ground.

It isn’t just sentimentality, though. He may have started me down this path but continuing along it was my choice. The majority of the world’s scientists believe that the probability of climate change being a consequence of human action is so high as to be almost certain – the IPCC put the probability at 95%. I am not a scientist; I am a teacher. As such, I would be frustrated if a room full of scientists who had never taught literacy were to come into my classroom and tell me I’m doing it wrong; and I’m not about to do the same thing to them. That is what peer reviews and citations and transparency of funding streams and expected outcomes are for. If, with all those safeguards, a particular community overwhelmingly agrees with each other – quite a feat in any community at all – then I am happy to trust the agreement they have reached.

3. What, if anything, would make you change your mind about it? 

C: The global warming people coming up with conditions that would prove they were wrong, and then finding that what happened were the conditions that proved they were right!  Actually, “proof” in the strict sense is probably not entirely applicable to this type of weather forecasting.  But a combination of taking alternative theories seriously, of having good scientific evidence for the correctness of this theory rather than the others, perhaps combined with odds and ends like being able to predict the weather for next month/year on the same model (!) would convince me that it was more probable than not.  It is difficult to give an exact set of conditions on something like this, because there is no knowing what evidence might turn up or what paradigm shifts might be involved in coming to a better understanding of climactic patterns.

Me: This is a fundamental part of what makes me who I am, and letting that go would be very hard for me; I am honest enough to admit that my emotions, as much as my reason, would have to be involved for me to change my beliefs. If the climate stopped changing whilst human action remained the same, that would probably convince me! Alternatively, if we were to genuinely reform our actions, as a global community; to take responsibility for what we produce and reduce our emissions to actually meet the requirements of the international agreements that have been signed into law; if that was to happen and there was no change to the climate, then again, that would go a long way to changing my mind.

4. What, if any, connection is there between your faith and your view of climate change? 

C: I’m not sure there is one.  My faith dictates a certain relationship to the Creation – that we should aim to be stewards rather than consumers – but that is to do with what is to be done in response to human knowledge of what is happening and what is needed.  It requires me to think about what I am dealing with and how I should rightly deal with it, it doesn’t offer information as to what is happening or detailed commands as to how to engage with it!

Me: This earth that we live on is precious, fragile, and not ours to destroy. Whether we see ourselves as stewards asked to care for creation by God, or use the more bohemian phrase that “we do not own the earth; we borrow it from our children”, in essence we are saying the same thing: that we are tasked with sustaining something now that will in turn sustain others in perpetuity. My faith tells me we are all part of one living, breathing body, stretching into the past and into the future. The threat of climate catastrophe, to me, is a threat to that body; to the chances and choices of many who are alive today, and all who will live in the future.

5. What question should I have asked that I didn’t, because my own bias meant I didn’t think of it? 

C: *Giggle* Probably, “How does your view on global warming affect your view/practice of ecology?”  It means I’m less bothered about CO2 emissions and keener on things like not allowing chemicals to get into the atmosphere that wouldn’t be there at all without human activity (e.g. CFCs). CO2 has always been there, and is an essential part of photosynthesis and therefore of almost all ecosystems (not that we want to suffocate anything – you can have too much of a good thing)!  Chemicals that aren’t usually there are a totally different matter.  I’m also more concerned about a range of things like preserving habitats and species, and sustainable practices, for a range of different practical reasons, rather than having a single focus on one issue.  Of course, the reason I think it matters does come back to the fact that my Christian beliefs give us a duty of stewardship and not possession.

Me: My view of ecology is informed by the same pressure of emotion and drive as my view of climate change, and stems from the same roots. Single use plastic that is abandoned in oceans or shipped to countries in the Global South for “recycling”; pesticides that decimate the insect-life we rely on to keep the eco-system alive; constantly rising emissions that cause the atmosphere to heat unnaturally quickly and will lead to the tropics becoming too hot for humans to live in within the next 100 years; to me, they are all linked, and all deplorable.

Image by No-longer-here from Pixabay

The countdown to a simpler Christmas. Week 1: Advent

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In my mind and in my fantasies, Advent is a time for making memories, dancing from one perfect moment to another with well-fitting coats and knitted scarves and big smiles as we visit Santa, pick greenery, sing carols and romp together in the snow. The house is clean and shiny from top to bottom; all the de-cluttering jobs that have been nagging at me all year are miraculously tidied up into other people’s welcoming arms; and warmth, fairy lights and the smell of cinnamon and homemade sugar-filled treats fill the air. Presents are handmade and meaningful; cards are written with love and actually posted; decorations are natural, zero waste and beautiful; and the air is pregnant with expectation and spiritual growth.

What Advent actually is, in this household at least, is exhaustion. It is cold. It is hectic. It is children with runny noses and adults who rely on their voices for work but are losing them anyway, and an endless, nagging feeling of not being on top of things. It is hyperactivity and the screeching of “Fiiiiive goooooold riiiiiings” from every room. It is The Palaeontologist screaming in frustration because she used up all her energy five weeks ago and hasn’t worked out how to build up more. It is Zoom calls about upcoming SATS and last minute letters about Viking days at school and realising you have no suitable clothes for the end of term celebration because your children have grown two sizes since they last went to a party. It is waiting not for the birth of Jesus but for clarity over government rules and regulations, The Vicar writing and revising what church services will be possible and how, everyone bending their minds around who will feel safe enough to meet together over the Christmas week, and what the consequences of any actions we take might be.

My reality is overload. My ideal is overly saccharine. Neither of them have any connection to simplicity. And Advent is a season whose heart cries out for simplicity. It is a time when we remember waiting. It is a time that was first filled with the praying, and preparation, and solitude, and weariness, and fear, and uncertainty of a pregnancy and birth that would change the world. It is a time of hoping against all expectations that this year it will be different. It is a time that first ended in a dirty, crowded, love-filled overflow to an inn that was more welcoming than it had space to be. How might it be possible, in an era of moments engineered for the perfect social media shot and endless comparisons across the playground, to bring that simplicity into my own Advent rituals?

One way is resisting some of the many and increasing customs of Advent itself. Advent calendars are shared and re-used every year in this household, and contain acts of kindness and, this year, the Christmas story as well as chocolates (because let’s face it, without chocolate would anyone get as far as looking for the lovingly recycled messages to act on every day? Plus, that boost of sugar before getting out of bed in the morning is apparently exactly what they need to drag themselves into their school uniforms in these final, closing days of a term that has lasted at least two decades.) We avoid Christmas Eve boxes (easy enough when Christmas Eve is a work night, and a busy one at that) and buy Christmas Jumpers – an absolute necessity for any primary school child in modern Britain – second hand, and re-gift them after they are outgrown (or try to – currently, I confess, I have a large and growing pile of them I never remember to give away at the right time of year). And I flatly refuse, with everything that is in me, for the sake of my little remaining sanity and well-being, to do Elf on the Shelf.

Notes for an advent calendar, with quotes from the Christmas story and acts of kindness. They are surrounded by chocolate and lying on top of pieces of Christmas wrapping paper.
Acts of kindness written on recycled Christmas wrapping paper. Two chocolates for every action (anything to avoid another squabbling match); one action for every Advent calendar compartment.

These moves are not enough to satisfy my hope of simplicity. Noise and lights and already-decorated Christmas trees still surround me at all times. The underlying fear that presents will not get bought has started to seep into my nightmares. The alternating fears that when my children look back on Advent, they will either remember nothing but chocolate and Christmas films; or that they will remember nothing good at all, make me seek out more to do and more ways, new ways, different ways to fit in with the expectations of those they are surrounded by and Make Memories by doing, spending, acting.

There is no perfect medium in this one. The things that would be my ideal would not be the ideals of my family. The days are long gone, if they ever existed at all, when I could work towards making my own perfect Christmas and simply expect others to enjoy it too. And that is a good thing. Not only because my perfect Christmas was unachievable, but also because, in moving away from my own ideals and accepting that maybe other people’s ideas have equal value, I have also moved away from thinking only about perfection, about service by martyring myself in a quest for everything to look like a Disney set, and started noticing the moments when we get it right, together; even when that means letting The Cowgirl “help” with making the Christmas cake, turning a 15 minute mixing job into an hour-long blow by blow account of every moment of her school day, interspersed with us both swiping tastes of the uncooked cake batter, loaded with brandy-soaked dried fruit, whenever we thought we could get away with it. I still want to try to read more of the Bible and less of escapist novels downloaded because they were free on Kobo. I also want my children to help me to make new family traditions, which are likely to involve a lot more mud, shrieking, and screen time (quite possibly simultaneously), than I would ever volunteer for. I still want quiet times and times of prayer and times when I intensively clean away a year’s worth of dust and grime and make our living space feel more like a home and less like a haunted house, wrapped in spiders webs and clogged with cat fur. And I also want to do one thing, every day, just for fun. Simplicity can be about what we choose not to do, not to buy, not to eat; it is also about living here, and now, and enjoying what is here and now, rather than focussing always on the future. And focussing on the here and now can be as much a part of waiting and preparation as anything else.

Simple figures of a pregnant Mary and a caring Joseph, on a wooden tabletop, with a homemade Christmas decoration in the background.

Telling tales: trust me, I’m a Vicar’s Wife

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Picture the familiar scene: it was early evening, and the phone rang. Except when I say it rang, I really mean it; in fact, it barely stopped ringing. The first call interrupted bedtime, tears and desperation whispered through the crackling conversation. The last came two hours later, screeching with fury and disgust. In the intervening time, in repeated calls never more than ten minutes apart, we had been on a journey of worry, confusion, growing terror, bafflement, suspicion, anger. The Vicar took the abuse, made the tough choices, fielded the follow-up call from the police at a quarter to midnight; essentially, he continued doing his day job until the early hours of the morning – so no change there. And it all happened within our home: the calls came through on our personal number, breaking into our family space; we talked through what we knew and what we didn’t whilst unloading the dishwasher; we worked through the personal and professional implications of the increasingly frantic demands and the demands of our overflowing laundry basket simultaneously. The calls were interrupted by screams from The Paleontologist (I haven’t done my homework! I’ve broken a nail! Why does everyone keep calling at this time of night!) and made me restart a treadmill run 4 times – and my motivation is really not up to keeping going after that many false starts. And at the end of it all? Nothing. Was it all a scam, or a woman desperate for protection? What would happen now? Did we act to protect ourselves, our family, and others, or did God come knocking in the guise of a stranger and we slammed the door in his face?

This not knowing the end of the story is something they don’t prepare you for when you are promising For Worse as well as For Better to someone wearing a clerical collar. It’s part of Quite a List. They don’t tell you that you will look like a student every week, buying Pot Noodles and microwave rice to give away on your own doorstop. They don’t tell you that others will consider your home as much theirs as it is yours; and that you will do the same, feeling mortified as every Midnight Blue acrylic stain on the beige carpet and scribble along the bedroom ceiling reduces the worth of the property gifted into your care by an institution already in financial crisis. They don’t tell you that some faces and stories and voices will stay with you forever, and others will blur into a featureless amalgam, and you’ll never know which is worse. They don’t tell you that you will feel forsaken by a church, and even a God, who own your husband and your home and give nothing but pain and uncertainty in return. They don’t tell you how hard it will be to walk out of a domestic argument and into your husband’s workplace and keep smiling because, whether you’ve chosen it or not, it’s now your workplace too.

They don’t tell you about Life in Limbo either. Where do I stand, and what is my place? I am not part of the Clergy Club, but neither am I fully part of the congregation. I am held accountable for the actions of the vicar, assumed to know by osmosis all his comings and goings (if only they knew. It takes me a bottle of wine and a clear evening just to sort out which of us has evening meetings when, and to make sure we’re not about to make The Cowgirl responsible for sorting out food for both herself and her far-less-grounded older sister). I bleed for the mistakes but have no place in the successes. My stomach crushes where my heart should be with every live-stream stutter, every microphone failure, every low attendance or argument at the church doors; and yet, I have no place in rectifying these things, no outlet for my anxiousness.

They don’t tell you about the double takes when you kiss a man in a cassock and clerical collar, or the abuse shouted at him on the street because of how he is dressed. They don’t tell you how often you will be told the same joke about having more tea, and how often you will try not to look jaded as you respond that you’ve always preferred gin, thank you. They won’t tell you about the comments that at least you’ve got God on your side (without ever asking about your own faith) or mention the all too familiar look of terror once you are outed to new acquaintances, and they run through everything they have said since you entered the room, muttering “Oh God, did I swear?”, too flummoxed to notice the irony.

“Shall I put the kettle on?” Still from Keeping Mum; the film that explains in great detail why every Vicar’s Wife needs access to a pond.

They don’t tell you that if your spouse gets a promotion you move home, move your own career, move doctors surgeries and swimming lessons and schools and hairdressers and supermarkets you can navigate with both eyes on your children and only 5 minutes to grab what you need. And they don’t tell you that when you arrive, you will be greeted by hampers and flowers and the welcome of a whole new family. They don’t tell you your children will gain a whole congregation-worth of doting uncles and grandmothers who drop everything to sew dinosaur facemasks at a moment’s notice, or break Lockdown to bring you Easter chocolate, who show you the trick of opening a door whilst pushing a pram through the snow, who put pictures of your children on the same wall as those of their own grandchildren, smiling in sunshine from half a world away. They don’t tell you that you will be guests of honour at the opening of new Chinese restaurants; meet authors and pop stars and all the local gentry; be invited to weddings and funerals and enough parties to scupper any hopes of keeping a simple wardrobe; be given wine that sells at 3-digit prices and bottles of Lambrini with equal joy and equal sacrifice. They don’t tell you that you will be welcomed into the homes of new mothers and old widowers, shown hearts and souls and senses of humour that crush stereotypes and fill the world with hope. They don’t tell you how many people will come into your heart and how many of them you will have to say goodbye to, and just how much you will miss them when you’re gone.

They don’t tell you any of this because, of course, there is no they. There is no Vicar’s Wife Academy, especially if, like me, you married someone already trained and ordained. There is nothing but an amazing, unspoken fellowship of men and women sharing tales and tears and knowing laughter, up and down the country and all around the world, as we do our best to be ourselves in what has turned out to be a life more baffling, and beautiful, and exhausting than I had ever anticipated. God has put an astonishing array of opportunities and challenges at my feet. Sometimes I have stepped up to them. Sometimes I have stumbled. Sometimes I have avoided them altogether and pretended that doing so was perfectly reasonable, the obvious thing to do. And always, I pray I can do justice to the power and the hope and the jaw-dropping joy that is the always-unexpected daily grind of life as a Vicar’s Wife.

Flowers that still make me smile years after they welcomed us into this parish.

Busy doing nothing: the first 5 days.

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Day 1. The Cowgirl comes in at 6:30am (second time that night) with an ouchy tummy. My sleep-fogged brain finally puts together all the pieces and we work out this is an all-too-familiar list of events, which results in a call to the doctor and antibiotics for a urine infection. Normally this means a day of Netflix, sleep and Calpol, and then back to normal. Today it resulted in a text message by 8:30am reminding us that, because urine infections come with a fever, the family is officially locked in for 14 days.

First I refused to believe it, running through everything I wanted to get done before this happened. Then came relief: at least now we knew what the next 14 days had in store. That was closely followed by guilt and a morning spent in Skype, email and Google Classroom as I watched my colleagues trying to plug holes and fight fires as we locked down the college for the academic year, with no exams complete and no certainty of whether this is entirely practicable or a massive over-reaction.

By lunchtime, we can breathe again. Calls have slowed, children have settled, antibiotics have been fetched. We have more food in the house than we had at Christmas, nothing has run out yet, and there are flowers and sunshine.

The evening arrives and I’m buzzing. Life is good and so are the people around us. My colleagues have delivered my left-behind marking; The Vicar’s colleagues have delivered the most beautiful duck eggs you’ve ever seen, and soil-encrusted potatoes from the local market. The paramedics have also revised their opinion: with The Cowgirl responding as expected to antibiotics and given The Vicar’s key-worker status we are given the all clear for him to leave the house if necessary. We are good.

Home working meets home schooling meets our kitchen table, clear for the first time since… well, possibly since we moved in.

Day 2. Can it really only be day 2? This time last week everything was still pretty much normal. How can things possibly change this much in a week? Within the house, life is manageable, apart from occasional gripes when told that we can’t use the playground and a moderate panic from me until I work out that what sounded like dry coughing from the living room was actually just The Paleontologist putting lanterns into her Minecraft mansion. Seriously – who knew the two things could sound so alike? Outside The World’s wheels continue to turn. Fears abound and people continue to behave like idiots. But self-isolation works both ways, and we are as isolated from that as others are from our temperatures.

Rainbow crystals take 1. These followed the recipe. The others did not. They are not quite so pretty…

Day 3. It’s Mothering Sunday. Church and Meeting are in enforced lockdown; we join Zoom so that we can take part in Meeting, catch up on worship on Facebook Live, and take the timer off Facebook so that it stops telling me this is contradicting my digital wellbeing. The sun is shining; the blossom is blooming; The Cowgirl is experimenting with endless rainbow crystal test tubes. All around us people are struggling and suffering and stressed and I am feeling pretty guilty that I am not.

My students have told me before that it is only in England that the work-life balance is so bad that you cannot shop for fresh produce every day. What habits will we all form in this time of enforced idleness? And will we want to return to our great busyness when society returns to normal? There are times that it feels like this is a giant reboot, turning society off and on again. I am aware that there will be many who are unable to trust that this is an answer to prayer. I am aware that there will be times when I cannot feel that myself, and I am aware that I am very lucky that right now isn’t one of them. But we have been praying for years for something to disrupt the destructive, cataclysmic societal structures that are draining the lifeblood of existence on earth. Prayers are very rarely answered exactly how we would like them to be. Is it just possible that this time, they are being answered like this?

Mothering Sunday flowers. I present to you the New Normal.

Day 4. It’s Monday. Schools are shut and we’re juggling children’s activities with trying to maintain a normal work timetable. This is not going well. The morning was pretty productive and the children were cheerful. The afternoon was productive in a very different way: mostly productive of tears. And screaming. And The Paleontologist pretending she’s 15 and storming off to her room, slamming every door along the way. 8:30pm brings the news of Shutdown 2.0 from Boris Johnson, and the day ends with whiskey and chocolate on the sofa. The Vicar’s phone pings continuously from those who can no longer look to any form of church to sustain them when they need it most. His face greys out as the evening progresses and he gives all he doesn’t have while mourning himself for what has been ripped away from the core of his being. There are many who are screaming tonight, as the candles, lit at 7 to show hope, are blown out one by one.

Our joint plan for avoiding going stir-crazy. And to stop me spending all day hiding away with nothing but a bottle of gin and my phone.

Day 5. The cracks are deepening and blood is starting to seep through. There have been tears, tantrums and misunderstandings galore. The kids haven’t been coping brilliantly, either. Things ease once the morning chaos is past, though – the sunshine continues to help us out massively, a local independent bakery are doing home deliveries of chocolate brownies, and school have sent out colouring activities instead of research tasks this morning. This too will pass. All will be well.

As close as we can get to holy ground, in The Room Formerly Known As The Dumping Ground.

Smiling, Spring and Coronavirus: keeping pandemonium in perspective

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Spring landed this morning. The sky was endlessly, brilliantly, blue, bigger and brighter than it has been for months. The grass was uncomfortably luminous, real life filters making it too bright for eyes used to winter dullness. The glorious yellow of the blooming daffodils was matched only by the golden arms of the JCBs, carving out new foundations next to still-waterlogged floodplains. Blossom, too heavy now to be contained in scent-stuffed blisters, burst forth in transitory wonder. And driving through this cacophony of new life, my heart is crashing and my tummy is exploding with tension; a volcano transforming my focus and sapping my mind.

We all live in bubbles. Most of the time, we ignore their presence, looking out through their soapy rainbow walls at a world filtered for us by our own prejudices, seeing everything as though it fits perfectly with our own expectations. But every now and again – in elections, in pandemics, when meeting the family of a new and beloved partner – bubbles crash into each other and can no longer remain invisible. At these crunch points, we have a choice. Do we stay within our bubbles, shoring up the walls and hoping it will be enough to keep out the threat creeping towards us? Do we attempt to burst the opposing force in order to maintain our own security? Do we create a double bubble, the sides gelled together, though each remains integral to itself?

The thing that is most exhausting for me in this time of fear-fuelled headlines and anxiety-provoking bulk emails are the bridges between my bubbles. I have one for home, another for work. One for Quaker Meeting, and an adjacent one, sometimes attached, sometimes a lifetime apart, for Church. I carry these identities within me all the time, and the nothing moments, when I switch from teacher to mother, from daughter to counsellor, from worshipper to Vicar’s Wife, are always the points of my day when surges of energy rush me with adrenaline and exhaust me from my painted toenails through to my split ends. In normal times it can be overwhelming; and these, of course, are not normal times.

Keep calm and carry on is engrained – after all, we don’t want to make a fuss over nothing. Have a cup of tea and let everyone else whip themselves into a flap clashes in mid-thought with memories of those around me I know are immunocompromised, or over 70, or pregnant. My natural instinct to be a raging hypochondriac sits in chattering conflict with my deep-seated need to write off as suspect anything promoted by Boris Johnson. Wanting to do my job and do the best I can by my students, labouring over planning and guiding and marking and feeding back, is suddenly the worst thing I can do, and to help them the most I need to leave them alone. Together we learn the new language of self-isolation and social distancing, too new still to come up on the spellcheck. Every day I hear new myths, covering racism, justifying prejudice, anticipating financial hardship. All of it is based on fear masquerading as fact. All of it is spoken with authority and without understanding.

The world, for many, has been flipped inside out, and I feel buffeted along with it. If we cannot trust each other enough to not hoard toilet paper, how will we get through this together? (I was sitting smug on this one until it occured to me that our upcoming delivery from Who Gives A Crap will be sitting outside our front door all day, if it’s delivered at all. I never worried about other people walking off with it before – after all, it’s a box big enough for The Cowgirl to turn into a café, filled with nothing but toilet roll. All of a sudden, I feel a bit like I’m leaving gold dust in the front garden all day…) I won’t finish with advice I’m not sure I can follow either. Instead, I will share the three things I have learned today, and let tomorrow take care of itself.

  1. Don’t be like me. Be like The Vicar.* When the news updated us to leave the house only for essentials and work, I bought vegetables and withdrew cash. He bought a case of wine and visited the sick in hospital. It’s all about priorities.
  2. Don’t sing Happy Birthday. Unless it is your birthday, of course, at which point, indulge as much as you can in the singing, as now is not a good time for parties. Instead of singing, say the Lord’s Prayer. I have found little that helps me slow down, be mindful, and hope, as much as that.
  3. Stop. Talk. Share idiotic stories – from a distance of 2 metres, naturally. My introverted nature is close to dancing for joy at the idea of having a legitimate reason to enforce personal space, but even I’ve been talking to people that I would normally just smile at and move on. This is a time when we need every connection we can make, and actually, it’s lead to some great conversations. And the discovery that security tagging Extra Mature Cheddar is a thing. But mostly, it’s made me smile, and I for one needed more of that.
A screen filled with white and blushing pink blossom.

*I decided my husband needs a name on here, rather than just being defined by his relationship with me. After all, I’m very aware how frustrating that can be. I’m going to get in trouble for this name, as it isn’t technically his current job title. But hey, this is my blog, so I’ll stay a Vicar’s Wife, and he will stay The Vicar.

Reader, I Married Him: Living with Christian Unity

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20 “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 

John 17:20-21 (NRSV)

Fifteen years ago, my mother had a premonition that I would meet my future significant other at one of two religious events that summer: the World Gathering of Young Friends, a week-long gathering of young Quakers from around the globe; or an ecumenical conference at Iona Abbey entitled “Breaking Down Dividing Walls in the 21st Century”, which brought together young people from throughout the UK, from different Christian denominations, to talk about our differences and learn from one another in community.

At the same time, in a far away county, another mother had a very similar premonition: that her son would meet his future significant other at one of two religious events that summer: attending the Catholic World Youth Day as a very interested Anglican observer; or attending an ecumenical conference at Iona Abbey entitled “Breaking Down Dividing Walls in the 21st Century”.

As will be of no surprise to anyone who knows either of our mothers, it turns out they were both entirely right, and my future husband and I did indeed meet on that beautiful, far-flung Scottish island, and have been talking about our differences and learning from one another in community ever since. I had never been to Mass. He thought he knew all about silence as worship already. I stood firm in the interpretation of Quaker communities as a priesthood of all believers, and saw Catholics as bringing goddess-worship back into the Christian fold. He believed in the literal and perpetual virginity of Mary, and not in the ordination of women. It was, shall we say, a bumpy ride to learn to listen to one another with love, with respect, with acceptance without agreement. Now, in this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, I am trying to put into words some of what this process has taught me, some of what I would rather ignore, and some of what I can’t avoid, despite my firmest intentions, because every time I try, it beats me over the head and refuses to give up instead.

Unity takes practise. The order of our social engagements in that rosy, hazy summer struck me much, much later. Both of us arrived in Scotland fueled with the enthusiasm of months of talking about and experiencing our own faith with others – those with similar ways of practising that faith, and those with very different ways of doing it, who still broadly came under the same banner. We had spent time exploring what was significant to us and explaining it to others, across language barriers, cultural expectations, and experiential divides. Our tongues were already in the habit of finding new ways and new words for old and comfortable traditions. Not such a leap, then, to move on to rockier, scarier terrain with those who did not already share that mutual language and tradition.

Conviction without condemnation. In a world of post-truth, and convictions that are made or broken on the back of one throw-away tweet, it is a constant struggle to hold to your own convictions, speak them and share them with others, without inviting or offering condemnation. To be able to say “I think this, and you think that. We utterly disagree, and that’s OK.” To be able to learn from each other, to share cultural understanding and religious heritage, to be able to learn more about your own faith when exploring it through the eyes of others, seeing it for the first time: this is a gift, and a route into deeper understanding. Be warned when taking this route, though. There will be stumbles, false starts, and dead ends way up in the mountains that you find only after days of climbing. You will at times be surrounded by rocks and razor-sharp drops. You will bruise your wrists from swinging, alone and surprised when you thought someone else was securing your rope. You will hurt each other. Sometimes you will hate each other. And all of that is part of a journey to a summit that really is worth every year and belly-deep gasp for breath it took to get there.

Find your balance. Everything needs balance, structure, stability: from see-saws to ecosystems to marriages, they only work if they have both solid foundations and equal amounts of give and take. In my household, it’s all about balance. We have two cats: one is named Fry, as in Elizabeth, a prison reformer strong enough to be put onto a £5 note, and a Quaker; the other named Ambrose, after an equally impressive Saint, who had a habit of speaking truth to power, as well as being patron saint of domestic animals. We go to church one week, Quaker Meeting the next. We go away on church Pilgrimages and on Quaker residential events. The Paleontologist joins the choir; I join Area Meeting trustees. It’s all about balance. And also, maybe, just a bit about general absurdity and the triumph of hope over experience.

Be patient. Be very, very patient. Sometimes things will be very important to another denomination, and no matter how hard you try, it will be nothing more than minutiae to you. Exhibit A: arguing over how improper it is to put Jesus in the crib before Midnight Mass. Exhibit B: a stand-up row involving such jargon as Sufferings, Right Ordering, QPSW and AMs. (I feel like someone should put together a Venn diagram showing who may understand the significance of both those sentences. There’s a part of me that is very afraid the overlap may be rather lonely, though.) Whether you understand it or not; whether you agree with it or it makes your teeth scream on end; you need to dig deep, keep your cool, and, if you’re anything like us, leave the other one to it and go sort out some washing up.

Fifteen years has not been enough to work out how to do all this without hurting each other sometimes. A lifetime may not be enough. Life could have been easier for me if I’d met a nice young Quaker from a similar tradition; or for him if he’d married someone more naturally prepared for the role of Vicar’s Wife. I could have continued unswerving on a path I trod and loved when walking alone. He could have shared his vocation with someone who knows how to behave around bishops and doesn’t leave out some sections of the Creed. It could quite possibly have been easier. But it would have been infinitely less fun. Less like a blindfold rollercoaster with the car attached backwards by mistake. And in the end, it would have left me less aware of myself, and my faith more faltering, more superficial, and far less full of convincement.

A view of Iona Abbey and St Cuthbert's cross, looking out over the sea
Iona Abbey: home of prayer, spirituality and, as it turns out, match-making

I’m a Quaker; this is why.

Simply Messy5 Comments

It should be said much more often than it is that inviting questions when you haven’t worked out the answers yet is a Bad Idea. I learned this the hard way a few years ago, when I said on Facebook “I’m a Quaker; ask me why.” When someone did just that, I tied myself into a Gordian knot of “well, I suppose some people say…” and “I don’t mean you can’t” which confused everyone concerned and in no way answered the question. This week being Quaker Week, I’ve decided to have another go. So, in a slightly more premeditated way, here is my answer: this is why. It’s a different answer to the one I would have given 15 years ago; a different answer, no doubt, to the one I will give in 20 years time; but it is as true as it can be right now.

Lights and darkness, hope but not too much hope. A candle burns in a bedroom window, surrounded by lighted windows and a starry sky. In its reflection, the candle has just been blown out.

Loyalty. The Quaker community has been a constant throughout my life. As I have moved around the country, new Meetings have welcomed me into membership and joined the chaos of my family life. Quakers introduced me to my husband; gave me my first kiss; made me believe that there were others around me who valued me just as I was; gifted me with friends without whom the world would be a darker place and I probably wouldn’t be here at all. There are prophets in this community who dare to say the things no one wants to hear; lone tigers who do terrifying things against everything society and their quieter minds are telling them; people who shape the norm and people who shatter it; people I love and people I honestly can’t really stand. Every one of those people has an equal place and an equal voice and without any one of them, this community would be poorer. They took me in and made me strong enough to take on a world I would often rather avoid. They have loved me and my children, baby-sat for us, driven us around the country to gatherings and weddings and conferences, and quite frankly, have dug themselves far too deep into the centre of my being for me to just get up and walk away.

Challenge. There is beauty and peace in worship that consists mostly of silence. It isn’t easy, though. It’s very hard to hide when all there is is you and a Light that is digging around in all the dark corners you haven’t hoovered for quite some time and were really hoping no one would notice. I frequently go into Meeting with a Big Question I want answered: you know, “what should I be doing with my life?” or “how can I make world peace happen by lunchtime next Tuesday?” I usually come out with no answers at all, but more questions; or answers to questions I hadn’t dared to ask; or instructions that go beyond anything I want to admit to. In decision making I find myself going in the opposite direction to my expectations; in daily life I am suddenly, utterly convinced with no premeditation or control that this is what Needs To Be Done.* And then I have to live with that knowledge, that decision, that call, and try to hold on to that certainty when the clouds of the world roll over those beautiful starry skies and I cannot remember, quite, what it was that I saw there.

Discipleship. “By this will all men know that you are my disciples: if you have love one for another.” (Always in a soaring melody, for me, never spoken.) To me, the stripped back act of discipleship, of following the summoning and the footsteps of Jesus, is about talking the talk and walking the walk and living a life that rings true, resonating through my bones and becoming a conduit for a Love far greater than I am. I find the strength to yearn towards this through the stillness of Quaker worship. I’ve tried other styles of worship; I find them moving, energising, interesting, intellectually stimulating, educational, tedious and baffling, but I do not find them to be a way to the still small voice that lies in the midst of chaos and noise and walks the straight path through me. If I spend too long away from that deep pool of stillness I get cranky and lose my way. Much like I do when I haven’t eaten, or haven’t slept. All these things are equally fundamental to my being.

Action. Quaker is a doing word. It is about seeking opportunities to serve our society, making tea and keeping the buildings standing and caring for each others’ health and well-being and taking care of all our resources; it is taking a proactive role in our local communities; it means playing a role in politics, in social witness, in showing how business and ethics can work together to make the world more peaceful, more sustainable, break out of the current mould. It means finding the paths you are meant to get involved in and jumping in with two left feet if that’s the only way to do it, rolling up your sleeves, getting muddy and tired and lost along the way and knowing you are doing it for all the right reasons. It is saying that faith without works or works without faith are both meaningless, as each informs, drives, sustains the other. It is saying that even when these ambitions are achingly out of reach, the very hope of trying is itself an action.

Are Quakers perfect? Of course not. A worshipping community is like any other kind of family. Some are full of light and love and silly in-joke moments. Some are filled with darkness, forbidding silences, fear of crossing the threshold because there is nothing left within them of the goodness they once aspired to. And most are somewhere in the middle, with times of brilliance, and times of apathy, and times when you can’t quite put your finger on what’s wrong, but somehow, everything is just uncomfortably askew. It’s in those trying moments that worship binds us together, striving to live God’s love in a world that really, really needs it. And it’s in the moments that we shake each others’ hands when we disagree, when we agree, when we celebrate and grieve and struggle together, that we are closest to Him.

*This has been, at various points, praying, moving house, teacher training, calling my Mum, and any number of other things at other times.

Re-finding wonder: peer pressure and climate catastrophe are not the end of the story

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Is it just me, or is it pretty much impossible to teach your own children anything?

A couple of years ago, when The Cowgirl was still at nursery, she came home one day and started a conversation that I genuinely believed I was never going to have to have.

Cowgirl: I can’t be a doctor. I’m a girl, so I can be a nurse.

Me: ??? ? ???

Cowgirl: Only boys are doctors.

Me: But, but, but, your Godmother is a doctor, remember?

Cowgirl [scrunching up her face in concentration]: Oh. Yes. [Suddenly her brow clears.] She’s got short hair. [Sits back in satisfaction at having won that one good and proper.]

So there we go. Girls can only do things like being doctors if they have hoodwinked everyone into believing they are actually boys, by having short hair.* But how did The Cowgirl imbibe this view of the world? We’d read books that had strong female heroines; talked about all the great things girls had done (and occasionally touched on some of the rather fun things boys had done too); made it clear at every opportunity that had come up – and created some where it hadn’t come up – that any job is for any one, be they male, female, or non-binary. We avoided gendered clothes wherever possible (no Girls Can Be Princesses and Boys Can Be Anything here). And still, here we were, finding all this undone by outdated cultural stereotypes inadvertantly introduced that day in an environment that we had chosen, but could not control.

This was not the last time that this happened, it will come as no surprise to hear. Wanting to have exactly the same snack, backpack, shoes, hairstyle, toys, holidays, car, skin colour, as their friends is a regular conversation around the dinner table (though that might partly be because the number of their friends who have been to Disney World, Florida is growing every year). Fads come and go, and everything I do to celebrate or deny them seems to fall on deaf ears. Every day, they come home full of the importance of combatting climate change (hooray); wanting to wear make up to school (boo); wanting to join a sports group (hooray); wanting to never read a book again (boo). Then the next day, the wind changes, somebody sneezes, and that determination is out of the window and its opposite is now true. Not only that, it always has been true, and it clearly always will be true. Seriously, anyone who thinks that 1984 is a novel that came up with new and horrific ways that people can be brainwashed into believing things entirely contradictory to their previous opinions has been away from primary school playgrounds for far too long.

So how, then, am I to encourage my children to do the things that lead them to a stronger relationship with the world, with other people, with God? One such relationship is to “rejoice in the glory of God’s continuing creation” (an ideal Quakers link closely with care for and stewardship of the world and all the life dependent on it). Can that become something that is relevant to their experience, link with their daily lives, their own beliefs and expectations of the world, and yet still take them by surprise and fill them with awe and wonder? My own view of the glory of creation is very traditional: that inward breath when you drive round a corner and the sun is setting into the sea in front of you; the sweep of a line of mountains marching into nothingness; the infinite gentleness of a butterfly landing on a dandelion flower. The peace and overwhelming presence of nature is where I see God most clearly, and find it easiest to settle into joy.

Sunset over Dubrovnik, lights shining across the town. Cable car wires disect the picture; islands disappear into the ocean and the clouds. A moment that still makes me suck in my breath at its absolute perfection.

As I have said, my children are not like me. And the world that they inherit will not be the world that I grew up in. Most scientists agree that our view towards the world and the elements will change, as they fight back and become something to fear, to hide from, that bring destruction in their wake. Moments of peace and enjoying the presence of entirely oblivious butterflies, dragonflies, bees as they busy around us might become something I will talk about, and my children will have to grope into the distant reaches of their memories to recall at all. Travelling to foreign lands where the air is thinner and God lies in every stone and corner should become something that is done once in a lifetime, not the expectation of every summer holiday. So where, in all of this, will my children find the glory of God’s creation?

It seems that I need to change my interpretation of continuing creation. It cannot be something static, something permanent, something that has always spoken to me in the past; it lives and breathes and shifts around us, through us, with us as we are all continuing to form new relationships. It is within technology, within people, within buildings and structures and artwork and abandoned empty spaces, just as much as it is within the grand old bones that make up this planet. It will be a challenge for me to find things within this brave new world to rejoice in, as I say goodbye to the things that seemed easy and seek to look harder and deeper and question the assumptions that I have been making all along.

Maybe, in fact, I need to ask my children to help me with this one.

*(I would like to clarify at this point, just in case she’s reading this for the record, that no-one could ever mistake this magical Godmother for anything other than the fabulous, beautiful woman that she is…)

Everything is connected

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One of my all-time favourite films is V For Vendetta. Apart from the obvious moments (after all, right now, is there anyone who would object to Westminster being blown sky high, particularly if empty at the time…) one scene that really resonates is a montage where investigator Eric Finch says “I suddenly had this feeling that everything was connected. It’s like I could see the whole thing, one long chain of events… It was like a perfect pattern, laid out in front of me. And I realised we’re all part of it, and all trapped by it.” His companion, of course, asks if that meant he knew what would happen next, and with typical bluntness gets the response “No, it was a feeling. But I can guess…” And tragedy plays out, giving the film the chance to leave those horrors in maybe-land: did they happen? Did they not? Can the girl with glasses be saved?

“V for Vendetta” by Marko Manev is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

We live in a time when every problem is treated as though it stands alone, and every individual is trained to see themselves as an island, with, if they are lucky, causeways connecting them to others, appearing and disappearing with the tides, with never a hint of where the mainland might be found. If you are ill, you get tablets. Tablets for blood pressure; for cholesterol; for headaches; for coughs, colds and not being quite at your best; for anxiety; for depression. Tablets for each individual symptom, as though all of these things are somehow caused separately, interacting independently with the body they have found a home in. Sorting out your work-life balance is a task for every individual, who is then held personally to blame if we get lost in the middle of a perfect storm of demands and expectations and can’t do it by ourselves. Saving the world means cutting your personal carbon footprint, giving up plastic around the home, individual action and sacrifice. The question is always: what are you doing? You as an individual; a family household; maybe, at best, as a town.

Seeing individuals as worthy of value and respect, with God dwelling within them, whatever they have done or thought, however they look and regardless of the capacity for good or evil weighing down their actions, is a gift and a curse and a thing we should all be aiming for. Seeing the individual as the height of all our ambitions, personal glory over a community rising together, has caused lives to fall apart, an ever-widening gap between the rich and the desperate, and Boris Johnson moving into number 10. How much further does this road have left before it splits into so many individual footpaths, some smooth and wide, some rocky and overgrown with nettles, but all leading inexorably into the wilderness of isolation, getting further and further apart, until we can no longer see, smell, hear, any other living things around us?

Talking to students has made me realise how unhealthy expectations in this country can be. One told me that she works so hard that she buys clothes and doesn’t have the time or the energy to wear them. They lie in the bags they came in at the bottom of the wardrobe until, packing for an extended journey home, they resurface, bringing with them the hope they first entered the home with; hope that will now be enjoyed elsewhere, because there is no time for it here. It is so different, she said, in the country she was born in. People there value and enjoy their possessions, their friends, their time. For someone who barely has the energy to brush her teeth at the end of some days, I confess, that sounds like an idyll beyond price.

How have we come to value ourselves and each other so little? Why do we value money so much more than time? During my first year as a teacher, I got used to a day that left the house running for school at 8am and didn’t finish until the next day’s lessons were just about thrown together, usually at about 11pm. I put up with the hours, the expectations, the lack of any life outside the walls I had prepared for myself. I boasted about how bad it was, as we outdid each other with stress levels and caffeine intake around the staff room kettle. But why? The expectation is that in order to have a job with meaning, with satisfaction, that changes things, however small, you put up with what is thrown at you. And acting alone, my choices are suck it up or sack it off, give up, do something else. But what if we all stood together? Not just my union (though we are working on that one); not just those working in the public services; all of us, walking together saying we, and our lives, and the planet are all worth more than mindless, individual busyness?

More time means more ability to slow down, to make from scratch, to take care and do, buy, say the right thing, not the easy thing. To have a sense of achievement from that. To tell someone else about it, and work together so that they can do it too. More life in that notorious balance means more opportunities for joy. And more joy means less greed; less need for eternal, all-consuming growth; more options.

Living within our means is a phrase that has been used for the good, the bad, and the blatantly discriminatory within society over the last decade or so. But when it is used, it is always used to talk about living within our financial means. What would it be like to live within all our means? To live lives where we use the time, the emotion, the energy we have to live our best lives; where nothing is asked of us that we cannot freely give? What would it be like to be able to look ourselves in the mirror and know that we are enough?

It is the summer holidays: traditionally the point that teachers look at their lives and try and sort out all their problems at once, now that they suddenly have space to breathe. I find myself looking at the chaos I create around myself and wondering what we would have to do as a family to live within our time-means. What would we as a country have to change in order to do the same?

Why I wish I could break the rules

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A long time ago, in a life-stage far far away, I did something unbelievable. The kind of thing that, looking back even a few days later, I couldn’t believe I really did. One Friday afternoon in sixth form, a group of us decided to leave school early and head down to Glastonbury Festival. We had tents and sleeping bags (well, most of us did. If I remember rightly, one individual named very aptly after a capricious Shakespearean character decided all he needed was a change of socks. Probably best not to ask, really.) We did not have tickets. Crowded into the back of a car, a bit terrified and very excited, listening to Britney Spears and laughing at how terrible the music was, was probably the closest I ever came to feeling like I had a part in the action. 

We parked up and started off in the direction of the fences, which suddenly looked rather more official than they had in my head. Close to the car park were a few scary-looking individuals who had cut holes already, and were charging a nominal fee – sometimes rather aggressively – to get through. We walked on. None of that nonsense for us, they said, though at that point my heart was pounding like mad, imagining that all these eighteen year old lads would be literally jumping over the fence, leaving unhealthy and unfit me on the other side, unable to get in, unable to leave. As was the case far more often than I realised, I suspect, I had underestimated the leaders of the crew. They kept going until we found a gap we could all squeeze through.

You are probably wondering why I am admitting to this now. The truth is, that is just about the only time in my life when I have not only broken the rules, but also refused to feel guilty about it. (Not long after this, the same classmates and I had the choice of jumping a queue or missing the Vatican Museum. We jumped the queue. I still feel guilty about it now.) Even when the news broke, shortly after our return, that so many people had broken in to Glastonbury that they were cancelling the whole festival the following year, we still felt proud rather than ashamed. Proud, and just a tad smug. 

A gorgeous image of the beauty and chaos of such a huge gathering of people.
By jaswooduk from UK – Glastonbury 2011, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18498961

Breaking the rules is absolutely not something I do. Even my acts of teenage rebellion were all within the stereotypes. We not only got our parents’ permission for the Glastonbury trip, for example, we also got our teachers’ permission to leave early (though there is a very good chance we didn’t tell either group we didn’t exactly have tickets…) When I started smoking – sorry, Mum, but I realise now you’re not daft and probably knew the whole time – it was an act of rebellion against my parents, my teachers, my goody-goody reputation; but I waited until I was legal before I started, and always used money I had earned myself to buy them, not money from my parents.

Breaking the rules genuinely makes me shake. Even bending the expectations fills me with quiverings. I seem to have passed this on to The Paleontologist too, unfortunately. When she was much younger and we were living somewhere very different, I took her to the local Eid celebration. It was the kind of party that had 20000 people attending, and its own funfair, so I was expecting her to be in her element. Instead, as we walked the familiar route to the local park that had been transformed into a place for prayers and celebration, her feet got slower and slower until eventually she stopped altogether. “What if they don’t want us there?” she whispered. “What if people like us aren’t allowed?”

I watch people who break the rules with a mixture of awe and horror. Extinction Rebellion have achieved amazing headlines, but my gut rebels at the idea of praising their methods. Greta Thunburg I’m happier with; strikes fit better within the language of revolt from my staunch Labour-supporting upbringing. But do we have to break the rules to be noticed? Does that mean that those of us who feel unable, morally or practically, to take that kind of action have no part to play at all? 

And it turns out that being congenitally incapable of breaking the rules has even deeper consequences than feeling unable to take full part in movements fighting for the things I most believe in. Breaking the rules should be a deliberate act, knowing what those rules are and rebelling against them. Middle class adulting in modern society means following a set of abstract and unwritten rules and keeping yourself and your loved ones within them, accepting the inevitable fallout when you step over a boundary no one ever told you was there. There are rules that deserve nothing less than annihilation; and yet, breaking the rules has consequences, not just for me, but for those dependent on me. And I can’t take that risk. So I struggle on, trying to work them out, only aware of them as they lie in ruins behind me. Have a home. Your own home. Keep that home tidy enough for a photoshoot at all times. Apologise profusely for the way your home looks if anyone pops in unexpectedly, even if it is spotless. Record everything – if a day out isn’t on social media, it didn’t really happen, right? – but whatever you do don’t go getting all self-obsessed. Value all things by their economic worth, whilst also bemoaning that stay at home parents are not treated with the respect they deserve. Recycle everything possible. Talk a lot about climate catastrophe. Own two cars. Go on holiday. Drink plant-based alternatives to milk.

What happens when you can’t keep to the rules? They are so many, so varied, so hidden under layers and layers of obscurity and obfuscation that even in trying to stick to the rules you end up shattering a lot of them. In fact, I’m fairly sure that one of the cardinal rules is to never acknowledge their presence. Some have never seen the rules in action, never understood what is expected and what you are expected to ignore. Many don’t know the rules, have never been shown them, have lived among people with different guidelines and spend every interaction expecting to be called out as a fraud. Some know the rules intimately, using them to their own advantage, manipulating the system to create a world that no one quite knows how to challenge. We have created a system so intricate, so all consuming, so woven into the mesh of our society, our economic system, our values, that we are no longer able to tell apart the rules that do good from the rules that do harm.

There are some rules – morality, decency, love – that deserve to be followed with the rigidity I use when waiting for the green man before crossing the road. Somehow, though, these rules seem to be the ones most neglected within the structures and confines of our everyday lives. Some need to be broken in emergencies. And some deserve to be wiped off the face of the world for all eternity. Particularly the one that says your worth as a person (and especially as a woman) is somehow inherently linked to your ability to keep up with the washing up. I really don’t like that one.

Saying it like this makes it sound so easy. Follow the good rules. Ignore the mediocre ones. Send the bad ones into oblivion. Trouble is, it’s really not always obvious which is which. And the likelihood is, some rules are life-giving for one person and a prison for another. One of my students, for example, the thing she is most proud of is keeping her house spotless. It gives her self-worth in a life that has consistently stripped it away, in a society that would cast her to the bottom of every heap going. How can I say it’s a bad rule that makes me feel terrible, when it gives her acceptance?

Some people see Christianity as full of endless rules. But Jesus didn’t just break the rules. He turned them upside down and ripped them apart from the inside out. He set down a way of life that is still more radical than anything we imagine today, and made it sound so easy to follow – just take your eyes off the rules, and follow love instead. Like every religion, one interpretation tends to dominate media consciousness, and it is never the whole picture. For me it is not about rules. There is one clear commandment, set in three parts (God does love threes…): Love your God, love others, love yourself. Do that and everything will be OK. It broke the rules then, it breaks them now. It seems to me that, thousands of years later, this is still the best advice we have. If we followed these rules, wouldn’t it be marvellous to be able to shelve the rest?