It’s odd posting one’s shit to someone

On your 60^th birthday, an unusual present arrives in Northern Ireland. It is a poo kit. A bulky envelope with little windows and flaps with intricate instructions which involves providing three samples of one’s poo. You are even given little cardboard spatulas to paste your shit into three little windows on stiff cardboard. It’s odd posting one’s shit to someone. It’s almost a “happy birthday now you are 60, shit will happen” and “we want you to send us your shit so we can tell you exactly what sort of shit you are in!”  I hesitate to do the deed.  Given how messed up my blood has been these last two years I am not particularly optimistic about my poo.  If my lifeblood is looking dodgy who knows what my poo will flag up.

Generally, I don’t mean to complain. After all, I have so much to be grateful for.  Especially the wonderful people in my life. But the big discovery, so far of being 60, is that shit happens. To good people and bad.  It comes in all shapes and is usually not what you expect.  I used to complain about the elderly being uniformly sad and angry while the young seemed happier, more hopeful like friendly puppies full of life.  Now, I begin to understand why. 

As you get older people approach you with rubber gloves and blood vials.   Your hearing gets worse, your eyesight falters and normal tasks become like intelligence tests designed to trip you up.  A friend of mine recently had to give a stool sample and was instructed by his doctor that he only needed to bring a sample the size of his tiny fingernail.  Obviously, people had been bringing in plastic bags and Tupperware containers full of poo for him to test.  Hence his insistence on nothing bigger than the nail of his smallest finger.  The doctor mentioned his fingernail three times for emphasis. The sad truth is that with age you can morph into the type of person who is quite capable of lugging a stool sample the weight of half a bag of potatoes into a surgery. 

The young often have no idea of how tricky it is for the older person in a hospital.  Even parking, locating the right floor, consulting room, hearing instructions, remembering details are all fraught with confusion.  I reckon that’s why we tend to adopt an unshakeable demeanour. So that if the doctor announces that we have an alien inhabiting our abdomen we tend to respond with “Well, I’ve had a good run so far. I mean I’ve been blessed with a good constitution all these years. So, I can’t really complain, now can I?” We tend to be infinitely grateful for the unexpected kindness of the medical staff and rather stoic if they seem indifferent or even hostile. After all, there are so many of us older ones filling surgeries in waiting rooms in hospitals up-and-down the country. We know the system is weary of us with our blood and poo all over the shop. Samples being sent here and there via postal systems and even being couriered to expensive labs. We want to apologise for all the shit. But there you go, such is life. 

Pretty soon we may well morph still further into entities that cannot deal even with our own shit. Others will have to wipe and clean us. Then, we will long for these heady days when our shit was our own and in our own hands not others! (that just did not sound right!) But, there is a wonderful symmetry to it all. After all, we come into this world unable to deal with our own shit as babies. Others do it for us. Then, we grow in our ability to deal with shit. Afterwards, we can have babies of our own who we, in turn, teach this fundamental skill of life.  Ultimately, this ability can gradually be lost so that we become again dependent on the services of others as we were in the beginning.

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The good news is that all this shit will eventually stop. The even better news is that this amazing journey, shit and all, is a wonderful love filled escapade that you get to share with so many loved ones. Despite all the shit, I wouldn’t have it any other way. May you have joy along with all the shit that comes. May you grow wonderful roses from life’s richest fertiliser!

Fasting - progressing or regressing?

There are many reasons to fast. Several organisations have claimed extraordinary health benefits for fasting. I enjoyed this talk on the surprising changes it can bring.

In fact if you tell people you're fasting for health benefits most people will be impressed with your determination and strength of mind. Slightly in awe of someone choosing not to eat or drink when they have the freedom to do both. In an age where obesity is endemic in the developed world, with all its associated diseases, those who choose the opposite direction stand out.  They are akin to the super fit among us whose regular frenetic workouts keep them energised and in shape. They are to be to be admired for not going with the flow. Actually finding the wherewithal to go in the opposite direction to the norm. After all, for a huge swathe of humans, being without food or clean water is not a choice. They wrestle daily to obtain these basic necessities and die periodically in substantial numbers when they lose this battle. 

We live in a world that has those who literally eat themselves to an early death and others starving from malnutrition who die because of a lack of food. In case we think these two extremes are linked to each other it is important to point out the obvious difference. Those who eat their way into obesity and diabetes do have a choice. Those who are dying of hunger rarely do. You might argue that the food industry has cleverly generated over zealous consumers of their manufactured products to earn them millions. That by the use of sugar, flavour enhancers, excess salt and other means the food industry has caused the obesity we see around us. There may be some truth to this and those who target children with their unhealthy fare are becoming rightly the target of the public's ire. However, in general the public is distracted and in the void where information should be, entertainment and advertisements have elbowed their way in. It is becoming harder to discern the truth. Instead of right and wrong we seem to have only shades.

In a world of excess those who choose to do with less are admired. In a world of scarcity to choose to do with less is suicidal. We admire those who control their appetite by fasting because it is uncommon. Of course those who fast because they have a psychological disorder receive no such admiration. The inner prompting that keeps an anorexic from eating is recognised as a sickness not admired  as self control. The Romans overindulged and then routinely vomited so they could repeat the delight of eating again similarly do not deserve applause. Food is so fundamental to well-being we all inherently fear its wastage to greater or smaller degrees. My mother-in-law who lived through war and the shortage of food that entailed wept in her son’s restaurant kitchen, in Texas, to see huge uneaten steaks being scooped into the bins. To those with experience of hunger, food is infinitely precious.

Fasting for religious purposes is viewed differently by most. When I, as a Baha’i, fast people are sometimes uncomfortable. They can see it as fanatical, incomprehensible and almost akin to scourging. It is undoubtably antisocial.  How many times do I find myself not joining friends at such times. They become self-conscious eating and drinking in my presence despite protestations to the contrary. Not been able to give you a cup of tea or coffee as you enter their home makes them feel like a helpless host. So what is it that fasting does for me.

1. It helps me discover all my addictions. For example, coffee drinking has to stop at least a month before the fast. Otherwise the fast becomes  a time of endurance and not enjoyment.
2. It's frees up time to commune with God. Without tea, coffee, biscuits and meals there is suddenly so much time available. The mind is clearer and sharper. There are less distractions.
3. The physical doing without food or water from sunrise to sunset is not the hardest part. For me dealing with the cold is a major issue. I am sitting at present  wearing jumpers, coat, gloves and a scarf in the shopping mall. Two tourists have wondered by in tank tops and shorts. I'm not sure what goes wrong with my body when deprived of food and drink but for whatever reason hypothermia is the result.
4. Dealing with the physical effects of fasting is not the hardest part at all. The challenge is actually growing spiritually as a result of fasting. It is possible to do without food or water day after day with rigid discipline but advance not one jot spiritually. In fact that's not true. Because I'm convinced our spiritual state is dynamic not static it's quite possible to fast and move further away from God.  You can become grumpy and bad tempered. You can suddenly be judgemental of others! Any self satisfaction during this period can be dangerous. It can generate pride that causes your spirit to actually shrivel.
5. We are told that some who fast will not be accepted by God and many that don't fast, will. In other words, it seems it's not the decision to put something in your mouth or not that determines the spirituality of this period. It is the degree to which we succeed during these days of rejuvenating our spirit. It can allow us insights on what we can achieve and what we need to change within. It triggers the possibility of transformation and provides a quiet space for that possibility.

Every year it feels like the sands of this special time are running through my fingers before I can truly grasp them. Creating the space once a year reminds me that we are all crops in progress. There are things needed weeded out, seeds requiring planting, plants to be pruned and all need the water of life to strengthen them. Everything you do this season will influence the year ahead. May yours, like the coming spring, be fruitful and abundant with promise.

another Australian man wore daring shorts with a “wife beating vest”

There is a fantastic cathedral here in Valletta, Malta.  It’s called St John’s Cathedral and I queued to get in and view the magnificent interior.  While waiting I decided that the entrance fee might be worth paying and entered.  Only to be accosted by a large officious woman at the door who said I needed to cover up!  Bemused, I checked myself, I am not generally known for my daring outfits.  I wore a long skirt down to my ankles and a high necked top.  What could possibly be offensive?  Then, the lady pointed out that part of my shoulders were visible at the edge of my top.  I mean, if you looked up my sleeves you might get a glimpse of my upper arms, but really there was nothing obscene about it.  I could tell the people in the queue around me were bewildered too.  One of them wore a cut away sarong to the waist, but she was okay, another Australian man wore daring shorts with a “wife beating vest” as my eldest son likes to call them.  The lady in front of me had shoulders covered but her neckline descended to her belly button and almost all her breasts were on display.  However, they were all okay, it was I who caused offence for some reason and was duly draped in a huge orange piece of material to make me decent. 

The Australian giggled, as he said, “Sorry love, you looked like Mary Poppins to me even without the shroud.”  I sigh, such things seem to happen to me.  It was at this point dressed in a huge orange tent surrounded by half naked people, I realised I had forgotten my glasses.  Having paid my fee I was trapped in a stunning church with poor eyesight that only let me see what was less than a metre in front of me.    Not to be outdone I peered hopefully at each nave, every picture and all the ornaments.  In fact I am pretty sure, every tourist that day in Valletta has a picture of me in a vast orange tent in all their pictures of the cathedral.  They are all probably at home now in far off places showing relatives and friends their holiday snaps and saying, “yes, I have no idea what this idiot was doing, dressed in an orange tent who managed to get into all the shots.”  Well, the explanation is that in order to see I had to stand in front of everyone really close to the exhibits.  While peering at the aforesaid object people were clicking away in the background. 

The floor is covered in gravestones of the famous knights who died and their names are engraved along with the dates.  The more famous have paid for huge statues of themselves posing with angels and such like.  In fact the more I read and examined the place the less I felt like admiring things.  Is that how it is, you pay for your immortality, your place in Holy places?  To get remembered, you need only get something ornate and gold trimmed and stick it up somewhere?  That doesn’t seem right.  Mind you King Charles V who actually gave the knights Malta, as their centre was not quite right either.  Charles suffered from an enlarged lower jaw, a deformity that became considerably worse in later Habsburg generations, giving rise to the term Habsburg jaw. This deformity was caused by the family's long history of inbreeding, which was commonly practiced in royal families of that era to maintain dynastic control of territory. His bloodline would become so genetically flawed that they could not survive, those red necks from the film “Deliverance”, were obviously not the only ones to marry their kith and kin.  I even think can hear a banjo playing as I wander round the church and its opulent décor.  But, it was perhaps holding his own funeral that makes Charles stand out in my mind.  Yes, you heard me right.  Here is an account of that very occasion.

“The chapel was hung with black, and the blaze of hundreds of wax-lights was scarcely sufficient to dispel the darkness. The brethren in their conventual dress, and all the Emperor’s household clad in deep mourning, gathered round a huge catafalque, shrouded also in black, which had been raised in the centre of the chapel. The service for the burial of the dead was then performed; and, amidst the dismal wail of the monks, the prayers ascended for the departed spirit, that it might be received into the mansions of the blessed. The sorrowful attendants were melted to tears, as the image of their master’s death was presented to their minds—or they were touched, it may be, with compassion by this pitiable display of weakness. Charles, muffled in a dark mantle, and bearing a lighted candle in his hand, mingled with his household, the spectator of his own obsequies; and the doleful ceremony was concluded by his placing the taper in the hands of the priest, in sign of his surrendering up his soul to the Almighty.” Yes, the rich and the royal are often, "gone in the head", as my nephew James would rightly say!  On that thought, I gave back my orange tent and left the cathedral pondering the dangers of riches, fame and glory.