I have been to have a haircut today and for the second time on the trot my hairdresser and I got talking about Christmas. No not the "What are you doing at Christmas talk", well we did briefly, but as she is off to Australia just after and I am just doing the usual it is neither of ours hot topic of conversation.
No what we have been talking is about excess that surrounds Christmas. Last time it was the commercials asking people to go into debt in order to get people the right present. Yes that is right, there are commercials that advertise going into debt as a positive solution! It seemed over the top to me and to her.
Today the topic was on excess drinking. A student has been knocked down and seriously injured after a "Christmas Day" event at the Students Union. You can check it out at Sheffield if you prefer but that reporting is far more sensible in my opinion than what is available at Sheffield. The quotations marks around "Christmas Day" are deliberate since it was held on 15th December and secondly its main attraction seemed to be cut price drinks. The carol service happened on 14th for instance and I did not hear of anywhere serving turkey sandwiches cheap. Is Christmas really seen by those student age as really being about getting drunk, probably very drunk?
It makes you wonder if all our festivities at this time of year are well and truly fucked up. Maybe we would be better off in a world where the story did not end with Scrooges conversion to the Christmas Spirit and we all had to be in work on Christmas day. Maybe we could do with having to get a certificate from our cleric to say that we were active Christians in order to have Christmas day off as a religious festival. I wonder if church attendance would go up if that was the case. Give any religion three days a year, to be specified by the authority of the group (maybe we would have to specify three for atheists: maybe Human Rights Day, Workers Day and Earth Day as they don't seem to require any religious attachment. If you want other days, than those, you have to find you religious person to certify you as practising whatever belief. It would mean the withdrawal of Christmas Day, Good Friday and Easter Monday as general bank holidays. Maybe Boxing day could be attached to New Year as in Scotland.
It sounds good in principle but I just expect the excess would be spread over to New Year.
Now I am also sure the Students Union was playing to what attracts students. Cheap alcohol has long been a tool for attracting students to use the Union and I am pretty sure that if the Union lost its license it would pretty quickly be in financial difficulties despite the money the University puts in and its other enterprises. I am pretty sure as well that the encouragement to go into further debt was because in part the economy runs on debt. We have become dependent on people behaving excessively to survive as a culture. I want to suggest our culture is sick.
I tell you we have lost two things is desire and appreciation. What we have is gratification. The thing is that without desire, gratification looses it savour. Desire is the practice of developing a want, of understanding the wanting in itself to be good and a proper preparation for gratification. It is about imagining what we want, thinking it through, planning for it, finding the money, denying ourselves other things so we are ready for it. This sort of practice does not diminish the gratification but increases it and can itself be pleasurable.
Appreciation is the mirror image of desire, it comes after the gratification, when you appreciate what is given not because it means a want but for what it is. It is the looking back and enjoying memories (try doing that after a night when you are blind drunk), it is knowing not that you got anything for your desire but you chose the right one and it is the feeling of no longer having to do without. Instant gratification never gives you the sense of something truly desired being gratified, you never fully appreciate the part it plays in your life unless you have truly experienced being without it. It is savouring the flavours in the drink not just knocking it back for the fussy feelings it gives you. It is about caring for something, looking after it, because it is desired even though you have it.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Monday, November 21, 2011
A Radical Welcome Eh?
The United Reformed Church has decided to run an evangelistic advertising campaign called Radical Welcome. Now I can argue that it is a good thing on a number of issues, and I can also here the arguments about it being wrong on a whole lot of other issues but that is not the point of this posting. It has two names really the one used "Radical Welcome" which seems fairly popular with people at present and the less popular one that the campaign agency prefers of "Zero Intolerance". Lots of people are attacking "Zero Intolerance" as a title I however want to make clear that "Radical Welcome" is not without its problems.
The problem isn't with the word "Radical" its the word "Welcome". What is a welcome? Is it the ability to enter a church building without hindrance and to be physically safe while in there? Is it the strength of the hand shake on the door? Is it the depths of the fellowship?
Most URCs are actually pretty good at the first two although and I hope disability campaigners will take note, we tend when it comes to disability to form fill until we are confronted with someone who is. So at my local congregation we had braille hymnbooks but until we were faced with a person who used them we did not wonder about getting a table to put them on. The number of loop systems that are not properly working until someone who is deaf and understands these things comes along, is appalling. I can still remember one guys face when a friend made the effort to get a loop system working at a church that had one that wasn't and he heard the sermon for the first time in years. He was beaming from ear to ear. My view on disability is that all congregations should advertise someone as the person to contact, and they should be prepared to meet with a disabled person and/or their carer and discuss requirements before the person is faced with coming into worship on a Sunday. This person should normally not be clergy.
The warm handshake and the brief chat is clearly catered for in most URCs. I mean that seriously, here is the description of the welcome given at the first Mystery Worshipper Report I found today on Ship of Fools
"The welcome was amazing. I was greeted at the front entrance by a couple, who both shook my hand. Then, as I entered the church, three other people welcome me. I received the relevant service sheet, Bible and hymn book. One of them introduced herself as Eunice, the church secretary. I sat down near the middle of the church, and three more people came up to me, one by one, to say hello and welcome. The minister also came over and introduced herself. They even showed me where the coffee hatch was, although it wouldn't be open until after the service."
Most URC reports are in that style. As far as initial welcome is concerned we largely have it sussed.
What is more most URCs have had it drummed into them that they must be welcoming, it really has been dinned in in the last twenty years. However apart from the tick box approach to equal access and the initial welcome, most members of the congregation judge a church to be welcoming by the warmth of the fellowship they experience.
The problem is that very cliquey churches where nobody could possibly join are also often places of very warm fellowship for those that belong to the clique. In such congregations the switch from "I am welcomed" to "We are welcoming" happens unnoticed. However this is poor evidence. Are they equally welcoming to the parents of the child with Aspbergers who can't sit quiet during the service? Are they as welcoming to the person who is twenty years younger than they are or do they think "he will be off very quickly to join a church where there are more young member and modern music". That sort of thought can become a self fulfilling prophecy and when the next person comes in in that age bracket then there is even less reason to be welcoming as "she will be off like the rest". Or what about the person who nips out between worship and coffee to have a cigarette? The person who comes in tatty clothes or smells? Yes we greet them at the door but hold a conversation with them when our friends are around?
No I am not being pious, I know I am as guilty as the rest of doing this, it is always easier to talk to people we know than to those we don't. I still have to make myself do it. It is also easier to talk to people we think of like us. It is far easier for many churches to accept a middle class gay couple in a long term relationship, than to accept the young married couple with a group of noisy children who use colourful language in discipling them.
What is more, if I only deal with people I know, then to some extent I am dealing with a known quantity, I like the familiar. The incorporation of somebody new into the community does not just mean change for them, it means change for us, and what is more unpredictable change. It takes real discipline to try and implement a consistent interest in people who are on the edge of your friendship group whether congregation or other. Even if you start from the supposition that variety makes for richness there is still the day when richness isn't what you want, or the a friends has pressing needs.
That means we need to look further into our hearts that we think. The welcome we really needs to have, is about meeting the person as that person. Not giving them a hand shake at the door then ignoring them, not ask them through to coffee the first week then expecting them to mix with their own friends from then on and leave us to talk to ours. It is also the real challenge of realising that some of them has a profound ability by our standards to mess things up and still managing to care for them without saying it is fine to mess things up. It is also the ability to see the love and care that so many of them demonstrate despite the mess they are in.
Communities that attempt to do that, I believe are struggling to become Christ like, but that isn't the work of five minutes, the human capacity to mess it up is huge. All I hope is by my death I have learnt slightly more of how to do that than I do now, I can only learn that from trying to participate in such communities not from all the theory books. This sort of knowledge is heart knowledge and the head can be totally sorted and the heart in totally the wrong place.
There is a problem though, the URC has consistently told its congregations that they must be more welcoming. The congregations have responded, they have developed a good initial welcome and dealt with a lot of discrimination issues. Members also find the local fellowship welcoming particularly if it has familiar faces that you see week in week out. So when they are asked to be welcoming they tick the box. Few, very few are going to admit there is something missing and those that do, know they are unwelcome for saying so.
The problem is that we need a conversion, that is us in the church need it, not those outside, and I worry that with all this talk of welcome we might just miss how radical the real task is.
The problem isn't with the word "Radical" its the word "Welcome". What is a welcome? Is it the ability to enter a church building without hindrance and to be physically safe while in there? Is it the strength of the hand shake on the door? Is it the depths of the fellowship?
Most URCs are actually pretty good at the first two although and I hope disability campaigners will take note, we tend when it comes to disability to form fill until we are confronted with someone who is. So at my local congregation we had braille hymnbooks but until we were faced with a person who used them we did not wonder about getting a table to put them on. The number of loop systems that are not properly working until someone who is deaf and understands these things comes along, is appalling. I can still remember one guys face when a friend made the effort to get a loop system working at a church that had one that wasn't and he heard the sermon for the first time in years. He was beaming from ear to ear. My view on disability is that all congregations should advertise someone as the person to contact, and they should be prepared to meet with a disabled person and/or their carer and discuss requirements before the person is faced with coming into worship on a Sunday. This person should normally not be clergy.
The warm handshake and the brief chat is clearly catered for in most URCs. I mean that seriously, here is the description of the welcome given at the first Mystery Worshipper Report I found today on Ship of Fools
"The welcome was amazing. I was greeted at the front entrance by a couple, who both shook my hand. Then, as I entered the church, three other people welcome me. I received the relevant service sheet, Bible and hymn book. One of them introduced herself as Eunice, the church secretary. I sat down near the middle of the church, and three more people came up to me, one by one, to say hello and welcome. The minister also came over and introduced herself. They even showed me where the coffee hatch was, although it wouldn't be open until after the service."
Most URC reports are in that style. As far as initial welcome is concerned we largely have it sussed.
What is more most URCs have had it drummed into them that they must be welcoming, it really has been dinned in in the last twenty years. However apart from the tick box approach to equal access and the initial welcome, most members of the congregation judge a church to be welcoming by the warmth of the fellowship they experience.
The problem is that very cliquey churches where nobody could possibly join are also often places of very warm fellowship for those that belong to the clique. In such congregations the switch from "I am welcomed" to "We are welcoming" happens unnoticed. However this is poor evidence. Are they equally welcoming to the parents of the child with Aspbergers who can't sit quiet during the service? Are they as welcoming to the person who is twenty years younger than they are or do they think "he will be off very quickly to join a church where there are more young member and modern music". That sort of thought can become a self fulfilling prophecy and when the next person comes in in that age bracket then there is even less reason to be welcoming as "she will be off like the rest". Or what about the person who nips out between worship and coffee to have a cigarette? The person who comes in tatty clothes or smells? Yes we greet them at the door but hold a conversation with them when our friends are around?
No I am not being pious, I know I am as guilty as the rest of doing this, it is always easier to talk to people we know than to those we don't. I still have to make myself do it. It is also easier to talk to people we think of like us. It is far easier for many churches to accept a middle class gay couple in a long term relationship, than to accept the young married couple with a group of noisy children who use colourful language in discipling them.
What is more, if I only deal with people I know, then to some extent I am dealing with a known quantity, I like the familiar. The incorporation of somebody new into the community does not just mean change for them, it means change for us, and what is more unpredictable change. It takes real discipline to try and implement a consistent interest in people who are on the edge of your friendship group whether congregation or other. Even if you start from the supposition that variety makes for richness there is still the day when richness isn't what you want, or the a friends has pressing needs.
That means we need to look further into our hearts that we think. The welcome we really needs to have, is about meeting the person as that person. Not giving them a hand shake at the door then ignoring them, not ask them through to coffee the first week then expecting them to mix with their own friends from then on and leave us to talk to ours. It is also the real challenge of realising that some of them has a profound ability by our standards to mess things up and still managing to care for them without saying it is fine to mess things up. It is also the ability to see the love and care that so many of them demonstrate despite the mess they are in.
Communities that attempt to do that, I believe are struggling to become Christ like, but that isn't the work of five minutes, the human capacity to mess it up is huge. All I hope is by my death I have learnt slightly more of how to do that than I do now, I can only learn that from trying to participate in such communities not from all the theory books. This sort of knowledge is heart knowledge and the head can be totally sorted and the heart in totally the wrong place.
There is a problem though, the URC has consistently told its congregations that they must be more welcoming. The congregations have responded, they have developed a good initial welcome and dealt with a lot of discrimination issues. Members also find the local fellowship welcoming particularly if it has familiar faces that you see week in week out. So when they are asked to be welcoming they tick the box. Few, very few are going to admit there is something missing and those that do, know they are unwelcome for saying so.
The problem is that we need a conversion, that is us in the church need it, not those outside, and I worry that with all this talk of welcome we might just miss how radical the real task is.
Friday, September 30, 2011
From where does good self image come?
I am on holiday staying with close friends, last Sunday morning my friend applied for a job working with alcohol and drug abusers. Her reason for taking it rather than staying with a current job was partly pay, although it is even shorter term than her current one, partly status as it is 'proper' social work although it is no more secure than her current job (both have short term contracts) and that means that her clients have to see her.
I challenged her on this, my dealings with addicts suggest that it takes lots of self discipline to stay off what you are addicted to. That it is a niggle that wears away at a person. She then made the comment that for most addicts accessing services meant they had to acknowledge their addiction and to do this was to undermine their already poor self esteem. This is wronger than a wrong thing that is mistaken (Erin:Ship-of-fools).
The thing is there are two things that build real self esteem in my book and the first has to come first. According to Jurgen Wolff, Brian Tracy when stuck in the desert with a friends and a broken down landrover, faced the first. That is if life is to be worthwhile, it is up to us to take responsibility for what is going on in it at the moment. Not seek to blame but in the same way a treasurer is responsible for a clubs money. Circumstances can be someone-else's fault and nearly always we are co-creators of them with others, but on the whole the finding of blame is pretty pointless. Rather the question that is useful is "What am I going to do about it?" Doing something to try and improve the situation, in Brian Tracy's case help fix the Landrover, is the crucial step. It changes one from victim to active player. There is no guarantee of success but you have made failure less likely.
It is recorded that most addicts don't believe they are addicted. They believe they can give it up at any time and because they never try they never fail at that! The fact that the addiction is controlling more and more of their lives is not taken into consideration. They will justify doing it, even telling themselves lies. I have seen it, it is not pretty. Keeping the addiction going becomes a method to avoid dealing with other things. It eventually becomes the overarching organising principle of their lives and in doing so it saps their self esteem. Until someone in this situation faces up to the fact that they are responsible for their lives including their addiction nothing will change. So much as my friend may like to spare them that step until they do, there is no future and there will be no growth in self esteem.
The second part is altogether pleasanter and that is to find a non-judgemental accountable community. This is difficult, I suspect that for at least the first few years the person needs daily contact with the community. That is asking a lot of any group of people. It certainly isn't a one off thing. I suspect that it is not accidental that where such communities have existed they have had religious overtones (from Alcoholics Anonymous "higher power" to Evangelical Christian missions in Russia). The real good news as far as alcoholics go, is that when they are going sober, they often are some of the best and most skilled people at doing this. I do not know whether this is the case for drug users. I do know that other groups such as writers groups and so forth can form a similar function for parts of a persons life.
I suspect that for a few individuals of exceptional character the second may not be necessary, but it certainly eases the struggle. Unfortunately if the second happens without the first you can well end up supporting someone's self delusion. If that is addiction that could well make the situation worse.
Please note I am not saying addiction is solely a self-esteem issue, it isn't. It has many other facets, not least of which is craving, which is almost certainly due to brain chemistry and is very unlike other desires in that it is very close to compulsive.
I challenged her on this, my dealings with addicts suggest that it takes lots of self discipline to stay off what you are addicted to. That it is a niggle that wears away at a person. She then made the comment that for most addicts accessing services meant they had to acknowledge their addiction and to do this was to undermine their already poor self esteem. This is wronger than a wrong thing that is mistaken (Erin:Ship-of-fools).
The thing is there are two things that build real self esteem in my book and the first has to come first. According to Jurgen Wolff, Brian Tracy when stuck in the desert with a friends and a broken down landrover, faced the first. That is if life is to be worthwhile, it is up to us to take responsibility for what is going on in it at the moment. Not seek to blame but in the same way a treasurer is responsible for a clubs money. Circumstances can be someone-else's fault and nearly always we are co-creators of them with others, but on the whole the finding of blame is pretty pointless. Rather the question that is useful is "What am I going to do about it?" Doing something to try and improve the situation, in Brian Tracy's case help fix the Landrover, is the crucial step. It changes one from victim to active player. There is no guarantee of success but you have made failure less likely.
It is recorded that most addicts don't believe they are addicted. They believe they can give it up at any time and because they never try they never fail at that! The fact that the addiction is controlling more and more of their lives is not taken into consideration. They will justify doing it, even telling themselves lies. I have seen it, it is not pretty. Keeping the addiction going becomes a method to avoid dealing with other things. It eventually becomes the overarching organising principle of their lives and in doing so it saps their self esteem. Until someone in this situation faces up to the fact that they are responsible for their lives including their addiction nothing will change. So much as my friend may like to spare them that step until they do, there is no future and there will be no growth in self esteem.
The second part is altogether pleasanter and that is to find a non-judgemental accountable community. This is difficult, I suspect that for at least the first few years the person needs daily contact with the community. That is asking a lot of any group of people. It certainly isn't a one off thing. I suspect that it is not accidental that where such communities have existed they have had religious overtones (from Alcoholics Anonymous "higher power" to Evangelical Christian missions in Russia). The real good news as far as alcoholics go, is that when they are going sober, they often are some of the best and most skilled people at doing this. I do not know whether this is the case for drug users. I do know that other groups such as writers groups and so forth can form a similar function for parts of a persons life.
I suspect that for a few individuals of exceptional character the second may not be necessary, but it certainly eases the struggle. Unfortunately if the second happens without the first you can well end up supporting someone's self delusion. If that is addiction that could well make the situation worse.
Please note I am not saying addiction is solely a self-esteem issue, it isn't. It has many other facets, not least of which is craving, which is almost certainly due to brain chemistry and is very unlike other desires in that it is very close to compulsive.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Mission in Urban Priority Areas (personal reflection)
I am tired after a hard week in work, it has been frustrating checking the fine details of papers to be submitted to journals and by 5:30 p.m. I am exhausted. All I really want to do is go home to my warm flat and relax with a glass of wine and a book but I need to shop for the weekend still, so that I can spend tomorrow working on my thesis.
So I set out and head to the supermarket. In doing so I walk down a major road, with ice still on the pavement from the snowfall about a week ago, past a few equally weary workers who trudge up the hill to where they live. By doing this I walk through a small area of with quite a high level of social deprivation. However although there are lights on in my home church, I see people come out of car park carrying large black cases which have the outline of brass instruments. there is Samba drums coming from the local community centre, but when passing the high-rise flats not a single creature stirs, not even the overfed pigeons. Nearby is the old Methodist Church that the Jesus Army have taken over and are redeveloping as a Jesus Centre.
On the underpass to the supermarket sits Mike, he has his battered blue parker hunched around his thin body, his black eyes sharp in his thin face, and before him sits his cap, waiting for any spare change the straggling passers by might put in. I stop and ask if he is getting on and if he wants anything to eat. In doing so I learn he is seven quid short of his B&B money for the night having 'slept' rough the previous night.
As I go to buy him his egg sandwich and a chocolate milk shake I ponder what to do. It is clear to me that tonight of all nights nobody should be sleeping rough. I am not sure that ringing emergency accommodation has any point even if I knew the number, which I don't. I know Mike is in contact with the authorities at least for the last six months. I also have never seen him clearly drunk or under the influence, I know he is ex-services and he smokes. I also know that most of the places I could send him during the day (or better still go with him to) are shut. In the end I give him the £7, he offers to repay, I reject saying that he should do something for himself with any extra.
It takes another eight months, a trip to hospital with serious illness before Mike is housed. His first plan on being housed was to go and help at local charity. Now I know I did not fix anything, I maybe gave Mike a bit more comfortable existence for twenty four hours but that is it. I may even have allowed him to get drugs that were the cause of his homelessness in the first place. I don't know. I do know that one of the problems of trying to help people like Mike, and there are plenty, different stories but similar difficult circumstances, is the fact that they live chaotic lives.
Expect them at church dressed in clean clothes at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday, and then to behave politely is just not reasonable. I am afraid the chance of getting them to a church is negligible. Mike was invited at least three or four times including people willing to walk in with him, to a community breakfast at my church less than half a mile away, he never came let alone to Sunday worship with many middle class people.
The problem is that in many ways church has to be twenty-four seven in these communities, it is no good expecting them to come when church is open, church needs to be open when they come. What is more they often need more support and effort at least initially than your average middle class person. In order to even start to comprehend the faith they will need a small affirmative accounting community. A place where they are helped to tackle the chaotic forces that rule their lives.
Yet I know equally the high cost of trying to do such work. I have lost count/track of the cases of burn out when people have tried. These were people of faith, why else would they do it. Even to live your life in close proximity to these people (by that I do not live in the area, I have done that for years and it can be done with very little contact, but actually living so you shop at their shops, socialise where they socialise) is extremely draining work.You are faced with an overwhelming need that could drain your spirit and your finances very single day.
I have come too a conclusion that really only two groups have the ability to deal with such a challenge. On the one hand there are the Roman Catholic orders who specialise in living alongside the marginalised. They manage to do it, partly because they have systems that watch peoples reserves, because quite often the brothers and sisters who do this have as much money as those they help (i.e. none) and because you normally do this as a community.
The second group are from the other end of the spectrum and are groups like the Jesus Army, again the do it by living in community, actually by quite strong discipleship and again by having a communal rather than an individual purse. The difference is that people from the area can join the Jesus Army where as the Roman Catholic brothers and sisters would expect people to join the local RC church and are not looking for others to have a vocation to their order. In some ways this makes the Jesus Army more vulnerable to the stresses of the people around them.
Which of the two is best?
Well the Roman Catholic has the advantage of not expecting people who want to be involved locally to make the commitment the brothers and sisters have made. The supply of people for the presence is not from the locality and what they want is to create a worshipping community around them that will be part of the Roman Catholic Church. The problem is that as soon as you start to help people in these very dire circumstances in a way that really does challenge the chaos, then they normally start rising up the social ladder and quite often end up moving out of the area. So you have an continual mission situation with the need for constant support.
With the Jesus Army approach you actually do develop a local community. There are people from the neighbourhood and they tend to stay because the amount they have invested in the Jesus Army, i.e. housing, job and friendship means that leaving is very difficult. What should the Jesus Army do for people who want to leave. They may well have come in with nothing, been given shelter and then experience of employment by the Jesus Army. If that person leaves and the Jesus Army gives them nothing then that person is destitute again and open to fresh forces of chaos. However given the amount of support the Jesus Army gives such people why should it be expected to support them still when they no longer want to belong?
It seems to me both are flawed but both work better in these circumstances than standard church model as practised by many churches in this country. Getting the balance right, for there to be a church which really is open to the community will always be extremely tough.
So I set out and head to the supermarket. In doing so I walk down a major road, with ice still on the pavement from the snowfall about a week ago, past a few equally weary workers who trudge up the hill to where they live. By doing this I walk through a small area of with quite a high level of social deprivation. However although there are lights on in my home church, I see people come out of car park carrying large black cases which have the outline of brass instruments. there is Samba drums coming from the local community centre, but when passing the high-rise flats not a single creature stirs, not even the overfed pigeons. Nearby is the old Methodist Church that the Jesus Army have taken over and are redeveloping as a Jesus Centre.
On the underpass to the supermarket sits Mike, he has his battered blue parker hunched around his thin body, his black eyes sharp in his thin face, and before him sits his cap, waiting for any spare change the straggling passers by might put in. I stop and ask if he is getting on and if he wants anything to eat. In doing so I learn he is seven quid short of his B&B money for the night having 'slept' rough the previous night.
As I go to buy him his egg sandwich and a chocolate milk shake I ponder what to do. It is clear to me that tonight of all nights nobody should be sleeping rough. I am not sure that ringing emergency accommodation has any point even if I knew the number, which I don't. I know Mike is in contact with the authorities at least for the last six months. I also have never seen him clearly drunk or under the influence, I know he is ex-services and he smokes. I also know that most of the places I could send him during the day (or better still go with him to) are shut. In the end I give him the £7, he offers to repay, I reject saying that he should do something for himself with any extra.
It takes another eight months, a trip to hospital with serious illness before Mike is housed. His first plan on being housed was to go and help at local charity. Now I know I did not fix anything, I maybe gave Mike a bit more comfortable existence for twenty four hours but that is it. I may even have allowed him to get drugs that were the cause of his homelessness in the first place. I don't know. I do know that one of the problems of trying to help people like Mike, and there are plenty, different stories but similar difficult circumstances, is the fact that they live chaotic lives.
Expect them at church dressed in clean clothes at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday, and then to behave politely is just not reasonable. I am afraid the chance of getting them to a church is negligible. Mike was invited at least three or four times including people willing to walk in with him, to a community breakfast at my church less than half a mile away, he never came let alone to Sunday worship with many middle class people.
The problem is that in many ways church has to be twenty-four seven in these communities, it is no good expecting them to come when church is open, church needs to be open when they come. What is more they often need more support and effort at least initially than your average middle class person. In order to even start to comprehend the faith they will need a small affirmative accounting community. A place where they are helped to tackle the chaotic forces that rule their lives.
Yet I know equally the high cost of trying to do such work. I have lost count/track of the cases of burn out when people have tried. These were people of faith, why else would they do it. Even to live your life in close proximity to these people (by that I do not live in the area, I have done that for years and it can be done with very little contact, but actually living so you shop at their shops, socialise where they socialise) is extremely draining work.You are faced with an overwhelming need that could drain your spirit and your finances very single day.
I have come too a conclusion that really only two groups have the ability to deal with such a challenge. On the one hand there are the Roman Catholic orders who specialise in living alongside the marginalised. They manage to do it, partly because they have systems that watch peoples reserves, because quite often the brothers and sisters who do this have as much money as those they help (i.e. none) and because you normally do this as a community.
The second group are from the other end of the spectrum and are groups like the Jesus Army, again the do it by living in community, actually by quite strong discipleship and again by having a communal rather than an individual purse. The difference is that people from the area can join the Jesus Army where as the Roman Catholic brothers and sisters would expect people to join the local RC church and are not looking for others to have a vocation to their order. In some ways this makes the Jesus Army more vulnerable to the stresses of the people around them.
Which of the two is best?
Well the Roman Catholic has the advantage of not expecting people who want to be involved locally to make the commitment the brothers and sisters have made. The supply of people for the presence is not from the locality and what they want is to create a worshipping community around them that will be part of the Roman Catholic Church. The problem is that as soon as you start to help people in these very dire circumstances in a way that really does challenge the chaos, then they normally start rising up the social ladder and quite often end up moving out of the area. So you have an continual mission situation with the need for constant support.
With the Jesus Army approach you actually do develop a local community. There are people from the neighbourhood and they tend to stay because the amount they have invested in the Jesus Army, i.e. housing, job and friendship means that leaving is very difficult. What should the Jesus Army do for people who want to leave. They may well have come in with nothing, been given shelter and then experience of employment by the Jesus Army. If that person leaves and the Jesus Army gives them nothing then that person is destitute again and open to fresh forces of chaos. However given the amount of support the Jesus Army gives such people why should it be expected to support them still when they no longer want to belong?
It seems to me both are flawed but both work better in these circumstances than standard church model as practised by many churches in this country. Getting the balance right, for there to be a church which really is open to the community will always be extremely tough.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
They say that Love is blind
It is a well known saying that "Love is blind" but I say that love is no more blind than I was born in England.
Let me put that in context, I am white British, I have pale skin, blue eyes, and brown hair with a reddish tint. I speak with an educated Northern English accent and I was educated in state school. In other words if you met me, you'd assume that was English born and bred. The fact is you would be wrong although English bred. I was born in East London South Africa. In other words first appearance are misleading.
So why do I think on first acquaintance love appears blind and yet on closer inspection turns out to be clearer sighted than many more objective standards.
Firstly let me be clear, many things closely associated with love are blind, or blinding. Infatuation blinds one, sexual attraction often leads to one over looking faults and admiration can deceive both the admirer and the person admired, idolisation most definitely does. As far as love is mixed in with these there will always be some blindness.
However to the extent that this blindness is a matter of deliberately or by emotion overlooking something that is part and parcel of the beloved object, then it also fails as love, because there is that in the beloved that is not loved.
Love rather sees clearly. I have a friend, Stephen who has problems with alcohol. Basically he is capable of not drinking, but once he starts drinking he cannot control it. There are reasons why being this way is difficult for him, he comes from a culture where drinking is part of socialising, it is the way he has always relaxed and I suspect he does enjoy it to a certain extent. If you add in the idea common in today's society that if you don't drink you are a prude, you get a fairly clear picture what sort of a mess he easily gets himself into.
Now Stephen is fussy over his appearance, if there is one thing he is more fond of it is his job. He has a good degree, is affable and a genuine person. In other words for most of the time, he fools most of the people, who don't think he has a problem. I actually was going out with Stephen when I first realised he had a problem, yes I got him home and safe after that incident. No we did not break up over that, but did a few weeks later at his request. I was becoming a distraction from drinking (he would hate me saying this but I suspect that is the truth).
Do I reject Stephen, no I don't. Do I pretend he doesn't have problems with alcohol? no that is not an option either. I do keep some space between us, and probably need to be stronger about that, but that is because we have split up and both of us need that space to get our heads sorted. What is clear is that being close to him, caring about him, far from hiding his problems with alcohol made me have to face up to them.
To some it might appear I am turning a blind eye to those problems. Particularly the weeks when he came around on a Friday night with a bottle of wine to share, and we talked about life, including his drinking patterns. At that stage both me and his doctor were in damage limitation mode. I suspect if I have refused to have a drink with him it would have set me up in a position where he would not have been honest with me about his struggles and as I was supporting him through them, it was a price I paid, and yes I did not enjoy that wine. I knew what I was doing, I knew in many books it was wrong and yet it seemed the only possible way forward.
That is the problem a person from love will often take action which appear to be "blind" when in fact they are very clear sighted. They know the risks and this seems to best path for them and the individual. Their love is not despite the bad things, but including the bad things. I do not like alcoholism, I have lost friends to it, I have seen decent people ruined and that someone I care for is going through it is painful. I will keep trying to help him fight against it, because each small victory is worth it because I care about him.
I struggle equally with being honest, I can't support him, if he starts to presume our friendship is something other than it is. He can't substitute me for the alcohol nor expect me to pick up the pieces every time. He has to take responsibility for himself. So there are boundaries on what I can do and in the end if the only way to be fair is to walk away I will but that does not stop me caring.
So at one level I see more clearly than others, on another at times I act in ways that to someone outside would assume I was blind to the reality. At its core love has the acceptance of who someone is for who they are. It means risking being hurt, when you know there is high chance you will be hurt.
Therefore in some ways I see God's love shown more in the resurrection than in the crucifixion. In the crucifixion God faces the worst reality of what humanity is; in the resurrection he comes back to stay in relationship with us. No doubt he could have walked away, gone and sat up in heaven away from all the mess that we are making here. He did not, he came back and dwelt once again amongst us.
Let me put that in context, I am white British, I have pale skin, blue eyes, and brown hair with a reddish tint. I speak with an educated Northern English accent and I was educated in state school. In other words if you met me, you'd assume that was English born and bred. The fact is you would be wrong although English bred. I was born in East London South Africa. In other words first appearance are misleading.
So why do I think on first acquaintance love appears blind and yet on closer inspection turns out to be clearer sighted than many more objective standards.
Firstly let me be clear, many things closely associated with love are blind, or blinding. Infatuation blinds one, sexual attraction often leads to one over looking faults and admiration can deceive both the admirer and the person admired, idolisation most definitely does. As far as love is mixed in with these there will always be some blindness.
However to the extent that this blindness is a matter of deliberately or by emotion overlooking something that is part and parcel of the beloved object, then it also fails as love, because there is that in the beloved that is not loved.
Love rather sees clearly. I have a friend, Stephen who has problems with alcohol. Basically he is capable of not drinking, but once he starts drinking he cannot control it. There are reasons why being this way is difficult for him, he comes from a culture where drinking is part of socialising, it is the way he has always relaxed and I suspect he does enjoy it to a certain extent. If you add in the idea common in today's society that if you don't drink you are a prude, you get a fairly clear picture what sort of a mess he easily gets himself into.
Now Stephen is fussy over his appearance, if there is one thing he is more fond of it is his job. He has a good degree, is affable and a genuine person. In other words for most of the time, he fools most of the people, who don't think he has a problem. I actually was going out with Stephen when I first realised he had a problem, yes I got him home and safe after that incident. No we did not break up over that, but did a few weeks later at his request. I was becoming a distraction from drinking (he would hate me saying this but I suspect that is the truth).
Do I reject Stephen, no I don't. Do I pretend he doesn't have problems with alcohol? no that is not an option either. I do keep some space between us, and probably need to be stronger about that, but that is because we have split up and both of us need that space to get our heads sorted. What is clear is that being close to him, caring about him, far from hiding his problems with alcohol made me have to face up to them.
To some it might appear I am turning a blind eye to those problems. Particularly the weeks when he came around on a Friday night with a bottle of wine to share, and we talked about life, including his drinking patterns. At that stage both me and his doctor were in damage limitation mode. I suspect if I have refused to have a drink with him it would have set me up in a position where he would not have been honest with me about his struggles and as I was supporting him through them, it was a price I paid, and yes I did not enjoy that wine. I knew what I was doing, I knew in many books it was wrong and yet it seemed the only possible way forward.
That is the problem a person from love will often take action which appear to be "blind" when in fact they are very clear sighted. They know the risks and this seems to best path for them and the individual. Their love is not despite the bad things, but including the bad things. I do not like alcoholism, I have lost friends to it, I have seen decent people ruined and that someone I care for is going through it is painful. I will keep trying to help him fight against it, because each small victory is worth it because I care about him.
I struggle equally with being honest, I can't support him, if he starts to presume our friendship is something other than it is. He can't substitute me for the alcohol nor expect me to pick up the pieces every time. He has to take responsibility for himself. So there are boundaries on what I can do and in the end if the only way to be fair is to walk away I will but that does not stop me caring.
So at one level I see more clearly than others, on another at times I act in ways that to someone outside would assume I was blind to the reality. At its core love has the acceptance of who someone is for who they are. It means risking being hurt, when you know there is high chance you will be hurt.
Therefore in some ways I see God's love shown more in the resurrection than in the crucifixion. In the crucifixion God faces the worst reality of what humanity is; in the resurrection he comes back to stay in relationship with us. No doubt he could have walked away, gone and sat up in heaven away from all the mess that we are making here. He did not, he came back and dwelt once again amongst us.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Regression towards the mean, the scientific publishing culture and the lack of repeatability
A recent exchange on twitter the Thesiswhisperer wondered about why effects were disappearing as mentioned in this New York Times article. The feeling is this should not happen with the modern scientific culture, and yet I suspect modern academic scientific culture is partly to blame. To explain why I have to introduce a little known but rather simple statistical fact which may be called Regression towards the mean.
Let me do it by given a common example used in teaching regression towards the mean. The lecturer tells a class that he has the ability to improve people psychic ability. He then writes on a piece of paper a number between 1 and 100 without showing the class. He then asks the class to write down what they think the number is. He then reveals the number and asks to class to tell him how well they did.
Now the experiment starts. He takes a sample from the class of people who got furthest from his value, say the worst half. He points out these are obviously the less psychic to show the effect. With these he performs some ritual, perhaps to stand up turn round three times and say “esn-esn-on” (“nonsense” backwards).
Then he repeats the experiment but this time with only this worst half and low and behold, they perform better. That is there average guess is closer to his value than they were in the previous study.
The lecturer then admits there is no psychic ability involved in this, so what is going on. The trick is in the selection. Indeed if he looked at the Standard deviation for the whole class at the start and the standard deviation for the sample in the second they should be of approximately the same size. People are pretty randomly choosing their number, those who guess badly at first do that pretty randomly and actually if he had taken the full class the performance would have been much the same as before, only the ones who did better would have differed.
Regression to the mean basically means that if there is a selection bias in a distribution as fresh data is produced this will tend to go back towards the mean.
So what has this to do with non-repeatability. For starters I am not belittling this phenomena I have been involved in studies which aimed to replicate a previously carried out study. The prior study reported a huge effect so the power calculation required a small sample size, indeed so small we upped the numbers just to persuade the ethics committee that this was a genuine attempt to replicate. This only to find when we have the data collected that there is no effect visible in the data. So I have experienced non-repeatability.
Nor am I accusing researchers of bad practice. They are honestly reporting the results they get. It is the ability to report the results, i.e. the selection process by journals that produces the phenomena!
Published results and accepted results aren’t just a random sample of all results. They are selected for the results that demonstrate a genuine effect. They particularly like those results that are significant at p=.05 level. However gaining a p-value of less than .05 (or any value) is no guarantee that you have a true effect. For a start off with p=.05, one in twenty of results where there is genuinely no effect get reported as having an effect. Now that isn’t one in twenty of reported results (it might be lots higher or lower) but one in twenty of results where there is NOTHING is genuinely happening. Unfortunately we don’t know where these one in twenty are. It looks like a result even though it there isn’t an effect. We know there are type 1 error, our selection for criteria for publication reports allows one in twenty papers through where there is genuinely no effect.
But what if there is an effect? Well we are more likely to detect it if our sample happens to over-estimate the effect than if it under estimates the effect. In other words there are studies out there where there was a genuine effect but it did not get published because they drew a sample that performed badly. On the other hand on well designed experiments all the studies that draw fortunate samples are likely to significant. So the tendency is to over estimate actual effects because the selection criteria for publication favours those who draw fortunate samples.
This is not news, I have not suddenly found this inspiration, look there are learned reviews exploring this very topic. There are approaches when results start behaving in this way, one is to look at the sample size it would take to detect a difference between the original results and the fresh results, and if that is larger than the two studies then it may well be just the result of regression to the mean. It is also why clinicians are moving towards Meta Analysis rather than the results from just one study, but meta-analysis itself is hampered by the publishing bias.
I also want to sound a warning, skewed data (data where a few people produce very high scores) can quite easily produce odd ball results. This causes problems when sampling, there are statistical methods for analysing this but I have rarely seen them applied out side the statistical class room.
So yes I would expect the published results of effects on the whole to be over-estimates. The over-estimation is a product of the current scientific publishing culture. There are some approaches to alleviate this problem but at present no cure because the cure involves a change of culture.
Let me do it by given a common example used in teaching regression towards the mean. The lecturer tells a class that he has the ability to improve people psychic ability. He then writes on a piece of paper a number between 1 and 100 without showing the class. He then asks the class to write down what they think the number is. He then reveals the number and asks to class to tell him how well they did.
Now the experiment starts. He takes a sample from the class of people who got furthest from his value, say the worst half. He points out these are obviously the less psychic to show the effect. With these he performs some ritual, perhaps to stand up turn round three times and say “esn-esn-on” (“nonsense” backwards).
Then he repeats the experiment but this time with only this worst half and low and behold, they perform better. That is there average guess is closer to his value than they were in the previous study.
The lecturer then admits there is no psychic ability involved in this, so what is going on. The trick is in the selection. Indeed if he looked at the Standard deviation for the whole class at the start and the standard deviation for the sample in the second they should be of approximately the same size. People are pretty randomly choosing their number, those who guess badly at first do that pretty randomly and actually if he had taken the full class the performance would have been much the same as before, only the ones who did better would have differed.
Regression to the mean basically means that if there is a selection bias in a distribution as fresh data is produced this will tend to go back towards the mean.
So what has this to do with non-repeatability. For starters I am not belittling this phenomena I have been involved in studies which aimed to replicate a previously carried out study. The prior study reported a huge effect so the power calculation required a small sample size, indeed so small we upped the numbers just to persuade the ethics committee that this was a genuine attempt to replicate. This only to find when we have the data collected that there is no effect visible in the data. So I have experienced non-repeatability.
Nor am I accusing researchers of bad practice. They are honestly reporting the results they get. It is the ability to report the results, i.e. the selection process by journals that produces the phenomena!
Published results and accepted results aren’t just a random sample of all results. They are selected for the results that demonstrate a genuine effect. They particularly like those results that are significant at p=.05 level. However gaining a p-value of less than .05 (or any value) is no guarantee that you have a true effect. For a start off with p=.05, one in twenty of results where there is genuinely no effect get reported as having an effect. Now that isn’t one in twenty of reported results (it might be lots higher or lower) but one in twenty of results where there is NOTHING is genuinely happening. Unfortunately we don’t know where these one in twenty are. It looks like a result even though it there isn’t an effect. We know there are type 1 error, our selection for criteria for publication reports allows one in twenty papers through where there is genuinely no effect.
But what if there is an effect? Well we are more likely to detect it if our sample happens to over-estimate the effect than if it under estimates the effect. In other words there are studies out there where there was a genuine effect but it did not get published because they drew a sample that performed badly. On the other hand on well designed experiments all the studies that draw fortunate samples are likely to significant. So the tendency is to over estimate actual effects because the selection criteria for publication favours those who draw fortunate samples.
This is not news, I have not suddenly found this inspiration, look there are learned reviews exploring this very topic. There are approaches when results start behaving in this way, one is to look at the sample size it would take to detect a difference between the original results and the fresh results, and if that is larger than the two studies then it may well be just the result of regression to the mean. It is also why clinicians are moving towards Meta Analysis rather than the results from just one study, but meta-analysis itself is hampered by the publishing bias.
I also want to sound a warning, skewed data (data where a few people produce very high scores) can quite easily produce odd ball results. This causes problems when sampling, there are statistical methods for analysing this but I have rarely seen them applied out side the statistical class room.
So yes I would expect the published results of effects on the whole to be over-estimates. The over-estimation is a product of the current scientific publishing culture. There are some approaches to alleviate this problem but at present no cure because the cure involves a change of culture.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Rant: Where Roman Catholics and Reformed Christians agree.
So the title is jokey, which actually agree about quite a lot, but the Church of England has given us one more item of common consensus.
Its to do with the way the CofE factions behave.
They quite often pick on another tradition as having something valuable to say. This is not bad, cross pollination is in my opinion a good thing if only because it can lead to better understandings. The more we explore other traditions and come to some understanding as to how they work the better. If Anglicanism thinks there is something within the Reformed tradition that is worth emulating then by all means emulate it. After all imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I am quite sure that Roman Catholicism is also happy for Anglicanism to explore its rich theological and liturgical tradition and to borrow from it. I am even content for these pressure groups to adopt the relevant badges. Nothing is wrong with that
BUT
When they decide that they know what we believe better than we do and will tell us so, I object. Especially when they decide it is a stick to beat us with. A bit of humility would go a long way. Anglicans don't seem to be happy to learn from the Catholic tradition or the Reformed tradition they want to claim they have the essence of it and are more truly it than those who belong to it.
Well I have news, to be Reformed or to be Catholic is not something that is down to purifying the tradition until you have some deified essense. It is about belonging. To be Reformed or to be Roman Catholic is not just to adopt a set of stances, it is a whole way of being. You are formed by the community which you belong to, often in ways to subtle to notice.
Look Reformed Christians disagree about what constitutes a Reformed Christian. We would not be Reformed if we didn't. We have several hundred years of falling out and making new alliances. Yes we are a dysfunctional family, but we don't like Anglicans behaving like social workers and telling us exactly how we should be ourselves. Or to put it another way the one thing we will agree on, is whatever Reformed is, it is not what you tell us it is!
I full expect that many Roman Catholics will agree with me on this one point.
Its to do with the way the CofE factions behave.
They quite often pick on another tradition as having something valuable to say. This is not bad, cross pollination is in my opinion a good thing if only because it can lead to better understandings. The more we explore other traditions and come to some understanding as to how they work the better. If Anglicanism thinks there is something within the Reformed tradition that is worth emulating then by all means emulate it. After all imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I am quite sure that Roman Catholicism is also happy for Anglicanism to explore its rich theological and liturgical tradition and to borrow from it. I am even content for these pressure groups to adopt the relevant badges. Nothing is wrong with that
BUT
When they decide that they know what we believe better than we do and will tell us so, I object. Especially when they decide it is a stick to beat us with. A bit of humility would go a long way. Anglicans don't seem to be happy to learn from the Catholic tradition or the Reformed tradition they want to claim they have the essence of it and are more truly it than those who belong to it.
Well I have news, to be Reformed or to be Catholic is not something that is down to purifying the tradition until you have some deified essense. It is about belonging. To be Reformed or to be Roman Catholic is not just to adopt a set of stances, it is a whole way of being. You are formed by the community which you belong to, often in ways to subtle to notice.
Look Reformed Christians disagree about what constitutes a Reformed Christian. We would not be Reformed if we didn't. We have several hundred years of falling out and making new alliances. Yes we are a dysfunctional family, but we don't like Anglicans behaving like social workers and telling us exactly how we should be ourselves. Or to put it another way the one thing we will agree on, is whatever Reformed is, it is not what you tell us it is!
I full expect that many Roman Catholics will agree with me on this one point.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Church poem
I write poems as a way to be creative, normally my poems try to take you into something, this one doesn't it is polemical. Perhaps it is worth saying that this poem is actually arguing with those that claim that church is only any use because it gives you the chance to go to heaved.
Church
What use is this institution
kept alive by its few elderly followers
who recite ancient texts,
sing communally
and perform odd ceremonies?
None
Unless
you want to live
and by that I don't mean
to keep breathing
or to seek your own survival
but rather
to open to the possibility
that you are not
the flotsam or jetsam
of the gene pool
but part of a connected whole
where other lives touch yours
and yours theirs
and to chance by so doing
that you may find reflected in the pool
the image of God.
Church
What use is this institution
kept alive by its few elderly followers
who recite ancient texts,
sing communally
and perform odd ceremonies?
None
Unless
you want to live
and by that I don't mean
to keep breathing
or to seek your own survival
but rather
to open to the possibility
that you are not
the flotsam or jetsam
of the gene pool
but part of a connected whole
where other lives touch yours
and yours theirs
and to chance by so doing
that you may find reflected in the pool
the image of God.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Who made the Blind Watch Maker
I have decided that it is time that someone did this. I am not the best creative writer out there, nor am I an evolutionary biologist, but for at least the last twenty years the following has been begging to be written.
Firstly let my say honestly in my opinion evolution is elegant. It is an elegant solution to how to maximise the life sustained in an eco-system. Its elegance is that of a good mathematics solution. Mathematics has its own aesthetics, the modern computer solutions which take hours of computing power and involve going through every possible permutation are ugly. The neat classical proof of something in a dozen lines from first principles is elegant. The problem with the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is that it is ugly and we suspect that what Fermat actually had was a very elegant proof although bigger than the margin. So proven but Fermat's proof is not found and some mathematicians will go on looking for that proof. Mathematicians suspect that such proof if it exists probably takes less than a hundred pages and would probably open up whole new areas of mathematics.
So then I am using "elegant" in this sense when I am talking of evolution. You might suspect with the diversity that occurs evolution was actually quite complex but it does not seem to be. There seems to be two principles:
However there is also something peculiar, the processes have to be carefully tuned. It must not be that all creature patterns pass onto the next generation. This would mean no space for adaptation, over population or we would live in a static universe. For some reason this universe does not seem to like static stasis only dynamic stasis.
Secondly the rate of mutation must be controlled. Too fast and you would never get species, too slow and life would die out when something changes. The pace of change has to be right.
In other words to get the abundant variety of life there is no earth the parameters have had to be tuned fairly precisely, as precisely as any mechanical device.
I therefore put to Mr Dawkins and his ilk that the creation from design can be written not from some marvel from evolution such as the human eye but from the process of evolution itself. Precisely understood evolution is an elegant, finely tuned process that has all the hall marks of designer as much if not more so than any marvel it has produced.
Now I don't personally buy the argument from design, I am afraid I go with Hume and acknowledge that showing elegance and fine tuning is not enough but that you must also show purpose and honestly the best guesses at purpose are just that guesses, however much they are dressed up in religious language.
What I do want to do, is make people aware of what the classical idea of creation within Christian theology is. The first thing is to be aware that God's pan-time existence is very different from human. If we experience life as a viewer in the movie theatre, God experiences it far more as the director at the cutting table. It is of course wrong, we interact with the movie and for God there is never any scene which does not have his attention. It seem natural then that God can be as much responsible for the processes by which we see the universe is created, as he can be for creating elements within it. In the end these processes are only other elements.
Firstly let my say honestly in my opinion evolution is elegant. It is an elegant solution to how to maximise the life sustained in an eco-system. Its elegance is that of a good mathematics solution. Mathematics has its own aesthetics, the modern computer solutions which take hours of computing power and involve going through every possible permutation are ugly. The neat classical proof of something in a dozen lines from first principles is elegant. The problem with the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is that it is ugly and we suspect that what Fermat actually had was a very elegant proof although bigger than the margin. So proven but Fermat's proof is not found and some mathematicians will go on looking for that proof. Mathematicians suspect that such proof if it exists probably takes less than a hundred pages and would probably open up whole new areas of mathematics.
So then I am using "elegant" in this sense when I am talking of evolution. You might suspect with the diversity that occurs evolution was actually quite complex but it does not seem to be. There seems to be two principles:
- Given that only some of the creatures manage to pass their pattern to the next generation
- There is a process by which genes within animals are able to mutate and change within a generation.
However there is also something peculiar, the processes have to be carefully tuned. It must not be that all creature patterns pass onto the next generation. This would mean no space for adaptation, over population or we would live in a static universe. For some reason this universe does not seem to like static stasis only dynamic stasis.
Secondly the rate of mutation must be controlled. Too fast and you would never get species, too slow and life would die out when something changes. The pace of change has to be right.
In other words to get the abundant variety of life there is no earth the parameters have had to be tuned fairly precisely, as precisely as any mechanical device.
I therefore put to Mr Dawkins and his ilk that the creation from design can be written not from some marvel from evolution such as the human eye but from the process of evolution itself. Precisely understood evolution is an elegant, finely tuned process that has all the hall marks of designer as much if not more so than any marvel it has produced.
Now I don't personally buy the argument from design, I am afraid I go with Hume and acknowledge that showing elegance and fine tuning is not enough but that you must also show purpose and honestly the best guesses at purpose are just that guesses, however much they are dressed up in religious language.
What I do want to do, is make people aware of what the classical idea of creation within Christian theology is. The first thing is to be aware that God's pan-time existence is very different from human. If we experience life as a viewer in the movie theatre, God experiences it far more as the director at the cutting table. It is of course wrong, we interact with the movie and for God there is never any scene which does not have his attention. It seem natural then that God can be as much responsible for the processes by which we see the universe is created, as he can be for creating elements within it. In the end these processes are only other elements.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Coincidence
I am a graduate of St Andrews University and what is more I spent my four years there in University Hall. So I came across this picture in this article from Reform Magazine and my immediate response was...
THAT IS WARDLAW WING
Well that is the best picture I can find of Wardlaw Wing. It only looks like a building in the same style because you are looking at it from a different angle. If you search the web you can find an angle where it is very similar to look at.
Now apparently isn't, but is the Scottish United Reformed and Congregational College. I am not sure the college is still in that building and I am also well aware that the building was originally in Glasgow. I also have a suspicion that at least at one time it was in Edinburgh. I once stayed as a child with the Principal of the college as part of a family holiday which was in Edinburgh. So whether this is at present the college building, a picture of the Glasgow original or the building at some other time, I have no idea.
The odd thing is that one of the founders is in fact Ralph Wardlaw. Now I was always led to believe that Wardlaw was named after Bishop Wardlaw and had formerly been a house of a wealthy family known as Westerlea.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Vulnerability and Mission
The sermon today got me thinking. The minister was going on about the way that we needed to respect other people and also to serve other people as part of our Christian witness and mission. I agree fully with this, respect and service are part and parcel of good Christian mission. However I want to add a third and that is vulnerability
I am well aware that vulnerability is not the first thing that most people thinking of a mission strategy consider, yet it seems to me essential on two levels.
Firstly the kevlar mailed knight in shinning armour is great for getting you out of difficulties, but you don't actually believe you could become one. That is the rub. The state of postmodernity that the world is in has changed people's questions. It is no longer "Does it work?" but "Will it work for me?" and the super-person or kevlar mailed knight just isn't who they are. They want to see the Christian faith working in a frail person like themselves. The closer you can get to a person, the more they can see where your fault lines match theirs the more they are going to be able to trust your solutions.
Secondly there is the fact that the Kevlar coated knight is actually a pretty poor way to allow the light of of Christ to shine through your life. The power is visible but it is assumed to be the power of the individual whom it is working through not the power of God. The other thing is God, at least the one revealed in the New Testament does not seem to think that the normal trappings of power are good ways to communicate what he is about. Oh he can use them if he wanted too, far too many examples of that in the Old Testament but he seems to not use them in the New Testament. Yes he heals people, but he does this for individuals or small groups, yes he can produce food and drink, but he does this for a crowd for a single meal, not a nation for forty years. Yes he can tell the wind to stop but he does not get it to part the Sea of Galilee. In other words he has gone small scale and low key, an interesting change in approach. He is now using the small, weak and vulnerable to show forth his power. As St Paul says God's power is perfected in weakness.
I am well aware that vulnerability is not the first thing that most people thinking of a mission strategy consider, yet it seems to me essential on two levels.
Firstly the kevlar mailed knight in shinning armour is great for getting you out of difficulties, but you don't actually believe you could become one. That is the rub. The state of postmodernity that the world is in has changed people's questions. It is no longer "Does it work?" but "Will it work for me?" and the super-person or kevlar mailed knight just isn't who they are. They want to see the Christian faith working in a frail person like themselves. The closer you can get to a person, the more they can see where your fault lines match theirs the more they are going to be able to trust your solutions.
Secondly there is the fact that the Kevlar coated knight is actually a pretty poor way to allow the light of of Christ to shine through your life. The power is visible but it is assumed to be the power of the individual whom it is working through not the power of God. The other thing is God, at least the one revealed in the New Testament does not seem to think that the normal trappings of power are good ways to communicate what he is about. Oh he can use them if he wanted too, far too many examples of that in the Old Testament but he seems to not use them in the New Testament. Yes he heals people, but he does this for individuals or small groups, yes he can produce food and drink, but he does this for a crowd for a single meal, not a nation for forty years. Yes he can tell the wind to stop but he does not get it to part the Sea of Galilee. In other words he has gone small scale and low key, an interesting change in approach. He is now using the small, weak and vulnerable to show forth his power. As St Paul says God's power is perfected in weakness.
Reforming church structures to Reform Church finances
It has just occurred that the reason the centre has grown in the URC and the periphery diminished is the way we set our finances. At the moment the finances are a levy which the centre sets on all the local churches. The problem with this is that the centre can see work to do, and then set the levy to pay for it. Once or twice this does not matter.
Under the old Congregational Union, the local churches had far more say over what the levy was and when it was to high simply did not pay it. The centre thus had to decide what best to do with what was given.
So we need to redress the balance of power and put power back into the hands of local churches. One way would be to have a scrutinising body of church treasures to look at the levy. I would suggest that for national each synod would send one church treasurer to a central committee, each appointment lasting five years. In each synod a body of about the same size 12 people should also sit, the rule being for a member that they have to be a church secretary. This would mean a meeting once a year before a synod and it is this body and not the central finance people who should bring the levy.
Such people are a lot better placed than either a full synod or central staff to make these decisions. They can be fully briefed on the central issues but are also well aware of the local church finances as well.
This is not a quick fix, it will not work overnight and it will not bring about immediate cuts. What I expect it to do is over twenty years to consistently reduce the central bureaucracy so that local churches are empowered to carry out their mission or not as they see fit. The only long term way to keep control of expenditure is to put people in control of it who have an interest in keeping it low.
Under the old Congregational Union, the local churches had far more say over what the levy was and when it was to high simply did not pay it. The centre thus had to decide what best to do with what was given.
So we need to redress the balance of power and put power back into the hands of local churches. One way would be to have a scrutinising body of church treasures to look at the levy. I would suggest that for national each synod would send one church treasurer to a central committee, each appointment lasting five years. In each synod a body of about the same size 12 people should also sit, the rule being for a member that they have to be a church secretary. This would mean a meeting once a year before a synod and it is this body and not the central finance people who should bring the levy.
Such people are a lot better placed than either a full synod or central staff to make these decisions. They can be fully briefed on the central issues but are also well aware of the local church finances as well.
This is not a quick fix, it will not work overnight and it will not bring about immediate cuts. What I expect it to do is over twenty years to consistently reduce the central bureaucracy so that local churches are empowered to carry out their mission or not as they see fit. The only long term way to keep control of expenditure is to put people in control of it who have an interest in keeping it low.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Older Generation and the Church
This was a mini rant I was giving to my parents and thought it was perhaps worthy of a blog post.
Lets be clear, there are certain things that I don't want to hear from the older generation. Firstly I don't want to hear them grumbling about the mess the church has got into. Not because the church is not in a mess, but because its a method of seeking to make other people (i.e. the younger people) responsible for getting the church out of the mess. Lets start with facts, the church did not get into this situation overnight, it has taken decades to get into it, and in each preceding decade it would have been easier to rectify than it is now. The people responsible for things in previous decades are now older people. So the grumbling is asking others to get you out of your mess.
Secondly I don't want excuses not to engage with the younger generation. One of the things that has happened is a disconnect between the Church and the vast number of younger people. It started before 1970s, as I can remember sitting in school in the late 1970s and finding myself the only person familiar with the Easter story amongst my class mates in high school (I hope it was Easter, it may have been Christmas). They already did not know the grand narratives of the Christian gospel. That gap is partly your making, help us bridge it.
Please don't think you can pass this onto us. What you tried to do then obviously wasn't enough because it did not halt it. This means there are fewer of my generation in church than of yours, in case you had not noticed it. Expecting us to make the effort to connect with those younger and provide a chaplaincy service for you that allows you to stay within your comfort zone ain't fair. I suspect our priorities have to be to get the gospel out to those who are younger than us. So yes things are going to be more uncomfortable for you. Believe it or not, its not half as uncomfortable as it is for us.
Now I am really not interested in blame, blame does not solve anything but I am interested in getting you on board, realising that you have a role to play (your retirement from church is cancelled just as mine from work is).
What is more it means change, its not the church kids we need to connect with or keep. I am sorry but we have consistently failed to find a way to keep them through college, when grants came in in the 1960s we should have started looking for new ways to connect. Chaplaincy is often under funded and does not connect back to the local congregation.
It is the secular 20 to 30 years olds who are just setting up a home in the area. How do we reach them? I don't know, but we have to try experimenting to find a way.
That of course means our resources are directed elsewhere, not to keeping the body of the church functioning as it is, but on trying to develop relationships with people , people who are distinctly different from most of us in their attitudes and ideas. People who are a lot younger and therefore a lot more technologically au fait.
So if you are up for the challenge, welcome to the team, we need all the hands we can get, no matter how weak and full of arthritis they are. If you are not, then I am sorry, but we have more important things to do and at least you can stop grumbling.
Lets be clear, there are certain things that I don't want to hear from the older generation. Firstly I don't want to hear them grumbling about the mess the church has got into. Not because the church is not in a mess, but because its a method of seeking to make other people (i.e. the younger people) responsible for getting the church out of the mess. Lets start with facts, the church did not get into this situation overnight, it has taken decades to get into it, and in each preceding decade it would have been easier to rectify than it is now. The people responsible for things in previous decades are now older people. So the grumbling is asking others to get you out of your mess.
Secondly I don't want excuses not to engage with the younger generation. One of the things that has happened is a disconnect between the Church and the vast number of younger people. It started before 1970s, as I can remember sitting in school in the late 1970s and finding myself the only person familiar with the Easter story amongst my class mates in high school (I hope it was Easter, it may have been Christmas). They already did not know the grand narratives of the Christian gospel. That gap is partly your making, help us bridge it.
Please don't think you can pass this onto us. What you tried to do then obviously wasn't enough because it did not halt it. This means there are fewer of my generation in church than of yours, in case you had not noticed it. Expecting us to make the effort to connect with those younger and provide a chaplaincy service for you that allows you to stay within your comfort zone ain't fair. I suspect our priorities have to be to get the gospel out to those who are younger than us. So yes things are going to be more uncomfortable for you. Believe it or not, its not half as uncomfortable as it is for us.
Now I am really not interested in blame, blame does not solve anything but I am interested in getting you on board, realising that you have a role to play (your retirement from church is cancelled just as mine from work is).
What is more it means change, its not the church kids we need to connect with or keep. I am sorry but we have consistently failed to find a way to keep them through college, when grants came in in the 1960s we should have started looking for new ways to connect. Chaplaincy is often under funded and does not connect back to the local congregation.
It is the secular 20 to 30 years olds who are just setting up a home in the area. How do we reach them? I don't know, but we have to try experimenting to find a way.
That of course means our resources are directed elsewhere, not to keeping the body of the church functioning as it is, but on trying to develop relationships with people , people who are distinctly different from most of us in their attitudes and ideas. People who are a lot younger and therefore a lot more technologically au fait.
So if you are up for the challenge, welcome to the team, we need all the hands we can get, no matter how weak and full of arthritis they are. If you are not, then I am sorry, but we have more important things to do and at least you can stop grumbling.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Drinking - who should moderate drinking be aimed at?
I have a former boyfriend called S, he has had drink problems, I would not mention this if work and a whole host of other people did not know this already. or at least I would not refer to him so directly if this was not the case. He has brought this largely under control over the last six months and needs a lot of praise for doing that.
Most of this has been done by a principles of alcohol reduction. So he learnt how to tell if something was a weak or strong wine and choose a weak one, he learnt to alternate glasses of wine and water, he taught himself it was possible to go into a pub and order pineapple juice and that actually he quite liked sparkling mineral water. He learnt to have days off completely from drinking. This cut his consumption substantially, each skill was introduce separately so as not to over burden his as he was under pressure at work as he need to complete a course.
On Thursday evening I rang Stuart, as I had cancelled quite a bit of weekend activity due to the cold and say that whereas before I had not been able now if he wanted too he was welcome to come around. He comes around to chat and talk how things are going we normally share a bottle of wine and some garlic bread. He told me his news, basically that he has gone teetotal. That was a surprise as actually no-one has put any pressure on him to go teetotal.
I think the doctor thought that having completed the course and done this reduction policy so successfully the next stage was to get him to adopt a moderate drinking policy. This was for him a complete turn off, trying to manage his drinking in such a way was to re apply the pressure he drinks to escape. Therefore he decided this was too much hassle. You can guess how he spent the evening and anyway he gave me no details.
However when he went into work the next day he met one of the Broomhall Breakfast guys already plastered (the miracle is not I think that the guy was drunk but that he was up at that time), then being called on his drinking by another former drinker who works at the Museum and the also realising he was jeopardising the progress he has made. In the last six months he has come to a better level of financial security, he generally feels better in work and is able to cope better. Faced with that he felt he really had only two choices to loose what he had gained in the last six months and go back on a downward spiral or to give up drinking completely. He chose to give up completely.
I think moderate drinking is a good message for your average drinker. You want such people to understand what their bodies can take and to drink sensibly. Most people who drink recreationally are able to understand about safe limits and are not stressed by the accountancy work of the sensible drinking message.
However I suspect for a number of people with problems with alcohol like S, such a message can be counter productive. The fact is they drink to escape pressure. If the safe drinking message produces pressure, then the either will ignore it and go back to drinking heavily or a few like S may give up completely. I don't think without the six month building of alcohol reduction Stuart would have done it, he need the tangible benefits of those six months to build the knowledge of what alcohol was costing him.
I also suspect that concentrating solely on the drinking is not a good idea. When you have someone whose drinking problems have got out of hand you need to look at causes. I suspect it is causes rather than cause, and I suspect to be successful you need to act holistically. That meant for S that he needs help in methods to handle pressure, he needs an accountability network (and seems to have at least a rudimentary one) and he needs to develop a life style that favours sobriety. The last includes developing hobbies and interests where not drinking is easy. So as to discourage going to the pub in an evening for some company.
If these two factors are correct, I suspect I know why Alcoholics Anonymous and schemes such as one I heard of in Russia are successful. The Russian scheme involves the detoxing alcoholic actually lives in community I think for upto a year and even then they tend to move into places where there are churches which have other people who have been through the same programme. In other words they have a simple message of absolute abstention and a support network in doing that. They work because they reject the modern individualism and replace it with personal accountability to others.
Now by all means keep educating people into sensible drinking habits when they are social drinkers. It may prevent some people from sliding into problem drinkers, but with problem drinkers themselves, then some care needs to be taken in using this tool, as it has the potential to push a person further into problem behaviour. We need a different approach then.
Most of this has been done by a principles of alcohol reduction. So he learnt how to tell if something was a weak or strong wine and choose a weak one, he learnt to alternate glasses of wine and water, he taught himself it was possible to go into a pub and order pineapple juice and that actually he quite liked sparkling mineral water. He learnt to have days off completely from drinking. This cut his consumption substantially, each skill was introduce separately so as not to over burden his as he was under pressure at work as he need to complete a course.
On Thursday evening I rang Stuart, as I had cancelled quite a bit of weekend activity due to the cold and say that whereas before I had not been able now if he wanted too he was welcome to come around. He comes around to chat and talk how things are going we normally share a bottle of wine and some garlic bread. He told me his news, basically that he has gone teetotal. That was a surprise as actually no-one has put any pressure on him to go teetotal.
I think the doctor thought that having completed the course and done this reduction policy so successfully the next stage was to get him to adopt a moderate drinking policy. This was for him a complete turn off, trying to manage his drinking in such a way was to re apply the pressure he drinks to escape. Therefore he decided this was too much hassle. You can guess how he spent the evening and anyway he gave me no details.
However when he went into work the next day he met one of the Broomhall Breakfast guys already plastered (the miracle is not I think that the guy was drunk but that he was up at that time), then being called on his drinking by another former drinker who works at the Museum and the also realising he was jeopardising the progress he has made. In the last six months he has come to a better level of financial security, he generally feels better in work and is able to cope better. Faced with that he felt he really had only two choices to loose what he had gained in the last six months and go back on a downward spiral or to give up drinking completely. He chose to give up completely.
I think moderate drinking is a good message for your average drinker. You want such people to understand what their bodies can take and to drink sensibly. Most people who drink recreationally are able to understand about safe limits and are not stressed by the accountancy work of the sensible drinking message.
However I suspect for a number of people with problems with alcohol like S, such a message can be counter productive. The fact is they drink to escape pressure. If the safe drinking message produces pressure, then the either will ignore it and go back to drinking heavily or a few like S may give up completely. I don't think without the six month building of alcohol reduction Stuart would have done it, he need the tangible benefits of those six months to build the knowledge of what alcohol was costing him.
I also suspect that concentrating solely on the drinking is not a good idea. When you have someone whose drinking problems have got out of hand you need to look at causes. I suspect it is causes rather than cause, and I suspect to be successful you need to act holistically. That meant for S that he needs help in methods to handle pressure, he needs an accountability network (and seems to have at least a rudimentary one) and he needs to develop a life style that favours sobriety. The last includes developing hobbies and interests where not drinking is easy. So as to discourage going to the pub in an evening for some company.
If these two factors are correct, I suspect I know why Alcoholics Anonymous and schemes such as one I heard of in Russia are successful. The Russian scheme involves the detoxing alcoholic actually lives in community I think for upto a year and even then they tend to move into places where there are churches which have other people who have been through the same programme. In other words they have a simple message of absolute abstention and a support network in doing that. They work because they reject the modern individualism and replace it with personal accountability to others.
Now by all means keep educating people into sensible drinking habits when they are social drinkers. It may prevent some people from sliding into problem drinkers, but with problem drinkers themselves, then some care needs to be taken in using this tool, as it has the potential to push a person further into problem behaviour. We need a different approach then.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
My stance on depression
I picked up a friend on Facebook which says:
"Depression is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign that you have been trying to be strong for too long. Put this as your status if you know someone who has or has had depression. Will you do it, and leave it on your status for at least an hour? Most people won't, but 1 in 3 of us will suffer at some point in our lives. Show your support. I copied and pasted, will you?"
Now I have toyed with taking up the challenge and putting it on my perspective but have not for two reasons.
Firstly I suffer from Mental Health Distress, I am/have been on anti-depressants for more than five years, treating mild to moderate depression, I also take medication for an anxiety complaint. However if you met me you would not pick this up very easily. Some of this is helped by the fact mine takes the "smiling" form indeed I smile more when on anti-depressants than off them. However it leaves me with a lot of very physical symptoms. I get tired very easily, need a lot of time alone, suffer from migraines and get other painful symptoms (yes that is physical not emotional pain). When I was bad I lost the ability to concentrate for more than a few seconds (I took to reading books with a rule basically so I knew which line I was on) and became very un-proactive (it is very hard to get the energy for anything if you feel totally exhausted all the time). I do a lot despite this partially because the anxiety stays better under control if I am busy, partly because boredom is a good way of triggering depression symptoms for me and partly that is who I am.
I am telling this not simply to state my credentials but also so you realise that the form my mental health distress is unusual. There are many people out there with far more common forms of depression. For many overwhelming sense of sadness is a major feature. Just because I am up and doing things (well I am either that or curled in a small ball in my bed) does not mean other people even with similar diagnoses are able to be up and doing things. Depression does not come in only one flavour.
Also what I have experienced is relatively mild, there are lots more serious forms out there. I have no special right to insight by virtue of this experience, there are forms that although I try to empathise with I do not really experience. I have little tendency towards either substance abuse (including alcohol) and self harm for starter. Both of these symptoms are experienced by a significant number of people who are suffering from mental health distress. In some cases I suspect they are attempts to relieve emotional pain rather than symptoms.
Equally there is no single cause of mental health issues. Yes some of mine is hereditary, some is due to poor life choices and some is due to life events over which I had little or no control. I suspect I am not the only person to have multiple causes. Other people may have theirs 'created' by long term abuse, or dealing with tragedy close at hand or even other disability or physical illness. There are no doubt other contributing causes. Stress plays a role as does unexpressed anger but they are not the sole cause.
What perhaps characterises many mental illnesses more than anything else is that thought patterns differ markedly from the healthy. In mild forms these can almost be intangible to those around a person, perhaps a tendency to be slightly more pessimistic or worried over things but not much else. Quite often what people don't realise is that the individual is making a huge effort to function normally. As it trips into moderate, the person still has an understanding of what normal is, but they are not able to make the effort to function in that way and inevitably display more ill behaviours. In my experience people really strive long and hard to retain some connection with normal thought patterns. However with severe the person actually has lost connection at all with normal thought patterns. What is also true is the vast percentage of people suffering from mental distress are in the mild category, the headline grabbing categories are in the severe. The services are such that there is little or no help available for people who are mild. It is not good for even the severe. Yes that means the vast majority of such people struggle on with the help of friends and family.
However to say that it is a characteristic of mental illness to have dysfunctional thought patterns is not to say that it is not physical, it is markedly physical in a variety of ways. Many people who have mental health problems will manifest physical symptoms, I already mentioned I suffer pain, but in set circumstances it can also cause me to vomit or to shake like a leaf. Just because a symptoms origin is in the brain does not stop it being distressing for the individual who is going through it. Nobody likes eating a meal then heaving it all back.Especially if you are out celebrating with friends.What is more physical treatments work, sometimes these can be as simple as mineral supplements, exercise and such.Even things like massage and aroma therapy have brought some relief to some. Other times they are complex drug regimes.There is no barrier between the mental and the physical.
Talk therapies can work and are useful. The success of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and associated therapies is to be welcomed. They are not a cure all, but they are a major step forward and at the very least make people suffering from mental distress more skillful at keeping contact with normality.
So what as someone undergoing mental distress do I want. Well firstly don't define me as that, I do lots of other things and the more you help me hold onto those other things the more you help me function normally. Secondly when I can't do something or my behaviour becomes odd don't assume it is about you, its more often me trying to cope with my illness. I like many others am actually quite skilled at dealing with my illness, I can and do manage it, sometimes trusting me to manage and ask when I need help is the most constructive thing you can do. It is amazing how often people's need to help means that I have to manage that on top of my illness. For those who want some idea of how draining this is, please read this article on spoon theory, and understand that if I am having to tell you how to help I am using my spoons to do that. Finally oddly if I start withdrawing, please try an make the effort to keep low level contact. What it normally means is that I am personally not able to sustain the contact in the form at the time, if you can take the effort out of doing it, then I probably will appreciate it. There is a gap between when I can make the effort to keep in contact and when I am no longer able to sustain contact.In that gap gentle contact is likely to sustain me rather than allow me to fall further. I know I am usually the proactive one.
On a more general note, you do know someone who has suffered mental health distress, but they may not be willing to be open about this.Try therefore when someone is behaving differently not to jump to conclusions and certainly don't jump to conclusion because you hear someone has a mental health diagnosis. We remain individuals in our illnesses. More importantly if you have the opportunity please try and find out more about mental health issues, you never know it may be you that needs the knowledge next.
"Depression is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign that you have been trying to be strong for too long. Put this as your status if you know someone who has or has had depression. Will you do it, and leave it on your status for at least an hour? Most people won't, but 1 in 3 of us will suffer at some point in our lives. Show your support. I copied and pasted, will you?"
Now I have toyed with taking up the challenge and putting it on my perspective but have not for two reasons.
- It is manipulative trying to get people to support this statement about depression. I don't like chain messages, I think they are almost as bad a chain mail
- It is factually in accurate, Depression is common but one in three is not even featured in Mind's estimates for Mental Distress. The worst being 1 in 4 and that covers all mental health cases even those with such mild distress they don't go to the doctor. Secondly being strong too long is not the sole cause of depression. Just like falling out of trees is not the sole cause of broken legs. For some it no doubt is, for others it can be a whole host of things.
Firstly I suffer from Mental Health Distress, I am/have been on anti-depressants for more than five years, treating mild to moderate depression, I also take medication for an anxiety complaint. However if you met me you would not pick this up very easily. Some of this is helped by the fact mine takes the "smiling" form indeed I smile more when on anti-depressants than off them. However it leaves me with a lot of very physical symptoms. I get tired very easily, need a lot of time alone, suffer from migraines and get other painful symptoms (yes that is physical not emotional pain). When I was bad I lost the ability to concentrate for more than a few seconds (I took to reading books with a rule basically so I knew which line I was on) and became very un-proactive (it is very hard to get the energy for anything if you feel totally exhausted all the time). I do a lot despite this partially because the anxiety stays better under control if I am busy, partly because boredom is a good way of triggering depression symptoms for me and partly that is who I am.
I am telling this not simply to state my credentials but also so you realise that the form my mental health distress is unusual. There are many people out there with far more common forms of depression. For many overwhelming sense of sadness is a major feature. Just because I am up and doing things (well I am either that or curled in a small ball in my bed) does not mean other people even with similar diagnoses are able to be up and doing things. Depression does not come in only one flavour.
Also what I have experienced is relatively mild, there are lots more serious forms out there. I have no special right to insight by virtue of this experience, there are forms that although I try to empathise with I do not really experience. I have little tendency towards either substance abuse (including alcohol) and self harm for starter. Both of these symptoms are experienced by a significant number of people who are suffering from mental health distress. In some cases I suspect they are attempts to relieve emotional pain rather than symptoms.
Equally there is no single cause of mental health issues. Yes some of mine is hereditary, some is due to poor life choices and some is due to life events over which I had little or no control. I suspect I am not the only person to have multiple causes. Other people may have theirs 'created' by long term abuse, or dealing with tragedy close at hand or even other disability or physical illness. There are no doubt other contributing causes. Stress plays a role as does unexpressed anger but they are not the sole cause.
What perhaps characterises many mental illnesses more than anything else is that thought patterns differ markedly from the healthy. In mild forms these can almost be intangible to those around a person, perhaps a tendency to be slightly more pessimistic or worried over things but not much else. Quite often what people don't realise is that the individual is making a huge effort to function normally. As it trips into moderate, the person still has an understanding of what normal is, but they are not able to make the effort to function in that way and inevitably display more ill behaviours. In my experience people really strive long and hard to retain some connection with normal thought patterns. However with severe the person actually has lost connection at all with normal thought patterns. What is also true is the vast percentage of people suffering from mental distress are in the mild category, the headline grabbing categories are in the severe. The services are such that there is little or no help available for people who are mild. It is not good for even the severe. Yes that means the vast majority of such people struggle on with the help of friends and family.
However to say that it is a characteristic of mental illness to have dysfunctional thought patterns is not to say that it is not physical, it is markedly physical in a variety of ways. Many people who have mental health problems will manifest physical symptoms, I already mentioned I suffer pain, but in set circumstances it can also cause me to vomit or to shake like a leaf. Just because a symptoms origin is in the brain does not stop it being distressing for the individual who is going through it. Nobody likes eating a meal then heaving it all back.Especially if you are out celebrating with friends.What is more physical treatments work, sometimes these can be as simple as mineral supplements, exercise and such.Even things like massage and aroma therapy have brought some relief to some. Other times they are complex drug regimes.There is no barrier between the mental and the physical.
Talk therapies can work and are useful. The success of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and associated therapies is to be welcomed. They are not a cure all, but they are a major step forward and at the very least make people suffering from mental distress more skillful at keeping contact with normality.
So what as someone undergoing mental distress do I want. Well firstly don't define me as that, I do lots of other things and the more you help me hold onto those other things the more you help me function normally. Secondly when I can't do something or my behaviour becomes odd don't assume it is about you, its more often me trying to cope with my illness. I like many others am actually quite skilled at dealing with my illness, I can and do manage it, sometimes trusting me to manage and ask when I need help is the most constructive thing you can do. It is amazing how often people's need to help means that I have to manage that on top of my illness. For those who want some idea of how draining this is, please read this article on spoon theory, and understand that if I am having to tell you how to help I am using my spoons to do that. Finally oddly if I start withdrawing, please try an make the effort to keep low level contact. What it normally means is that I am personally not able to sustain the contact in the form at the time, if you can take the effort out of doing it, then I probably will appreciate it. There is a gap between when I can make the effort to keep in contact and when I am no longer able to sustain contact.In that gap gentle contact is likely to sustain me rather than allow me to fall further. I know I am usually the proactive one.
On a more general note, you do know someone who has suffered mental health distress, but they may not be willing to be open about this.Try therefore when someone is behaving differently not to jump to conclusions and certainly don't jump to conclusion because you hear someone has a mental health diagnosis. We remain individuals in our illnesses. More importantly if you have the opportunity please try and find out more about mental health issues, you never know it may be you that needs the knowledge next.
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