Body Image In Middle Age

Not what I See in the mirror

Forty or so years back I was a skinny teenager. I then spent several decades gaining roughly a pound and a half a year - barely worth mentioning, yes? - and still felt like a skinny ... non-teenager.

Body image unreality is most commonly associated with teenage girls, but a quick bit of mental arithmetic will demonstrate that I really wasn't skinny at age 54. At 13st 2lb my BMI was a little under 28: a good halfway up the overweight part of the scale. I wrote back then about the mismatch and my decision that I needed to do something about it.

I probably finally reached my '6 month target' (a stone lost ... three years behind schedule) late last year, but not for long enough to be convincing and I've bounced back a bit since. The trouble is that a year back I had a scan, for another reason, which found fatty changes to my liver, and the follow-up reckoned my cholesterol was borderline. Cue another push to get those final few pounds off to stabilise at or just under 12 stone.

It turns out that the strategies which lost the first half stone - basically a bit less food and a bit more exercise - don't work so well with the next half. Not that surprising really. It also turns out that feeling a bit hungry most days - but never a lot hungry, which just leads to trouble - is important to carrying on with weight loss once the early gains have consolidated. Which is a pity as I had started ramping up the 'have a good breakfast' route.

In terms of realigning my body image with reality, one helpful comment from the practice nurse described the pad of fat on my belly as a separate organ. At the proper size it performs a useful job, but as it expands it puts the body out of balance and gives grief to the liver, in particular. I'm finding I can see what my waistline is doing more realistically now, and there is a clear relationship between what I can see my belly doing and what the scales say.

Which is probably totally obvious to many of you, of course abdomen fat deposits and weight are related! But that's the thing about wonky body image: what you see in the mirror doesn't truly reflect what is actually going on.

So, what am I trying to say? I've not put 'rambling' in the title, so I should be trying to go somewhere.

What I'm not saying is that viewing the stomach as a separate organ would help anybody else but me - that could go horribly pear-shaped. You still have to get the balance bit right: it's a useful organ, in moderation.

I think part of what I'm trying to say is something obvious along the lines that teenage girls and middle-aged men are not two different creatures, totally alien to one another. To paraphrase Paul, writing to churchgoers in Galatia:

There is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave nor free, there is no longer male and female, there is no longer teenager and middle-aged; for all of us are one in Christ Jesus.

It's not that the experience of a bulemic teenager is really anything like that of a man with middle-aged spread, it clearly isn't. But we are all human beings with all the beauty and brokenness which goes with that; we all have minds which can trick or inspire us and, most of all, we are all loved by God for who we are, not for how we look.

But there's another Galatians quote which I think is relevant:

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.

We are free to look at ourselves however we like: if in five years time I've lost five stone and still feel like that belly fat organ is too big it won't stop God loving me. Nevertheless it won't be the truth and it won't help me live how I want to live. I kind of reckon that matters.

We have been set free, so how do we stay free? If someone offers me crack cocaine I am free to accept or decline. Once I've accepted a few times, I have lost my freedom. My own free choices can either enhance my freedom or restrict it. Using freedom to enhance freedom is surely better.

If you have an eating disorder, whatever your age, please don't depend on the health advice of some random blogger from the Internet (like me). Get proper professional help and support.

If you can, and I know not all families are the same, try to have a good series of conversations with family and friends to get their support.

Oddly enough, a lot of church communities are actually quite good at helping people with real problems like this (although some, sadly, are not). So consider getting involved.

The NHS has a decent page on anorexia here, and the Beat page is here.

Grace, peace and truth for your week ahead, and enjoy God's love in Lent.

What's So Special About Galatians?

Paul's letter/epistle to the Galatians, that is, from the New Testament.

This is an exciting time for Bible geeks, such as myself, as new finds from Bible times reveal new insights into Jesus' world; the world in which most of the New Testament documents were written.

A quarter century or so back, when I really started getting into this sort of thing, the scholarly consensus about Bible writings was based on the views of 20th-century theologians, building on the work of 19th-century writers, responding to 18th-century thinkers, developing the ideas of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation from the 16th- and 17th-centuries, and so on.

It was all very clever, but such a long way away from the simplicity of, say, Mark's Gospel, and it left Galatians itself appearing confusingly inconsistent with the timeline of Acts and the rest of Paul's letters.

Now the translation of high-profile documents like the Dead Sea scrolls and the Nag Hammadi library, along with vast numbers of lesser-known smaller finds - individually less-important but cumulatively highly illuminating - have changed all that. They allow us a more direct view of what was going on in and around Judea, to help us understand Jesus' words, as well as in the world of the North-Eastern Mediterranean, which Paul wrote into.

In particular, as far as our understanding of Galatians is concerned, we know more about the southward expansion of the Roman client kingdom of Galatia (which became the Roman province of Galatia in 25 BC) to incorporate Antioch and the planned Via Sebaste (completed in 6 BC), along which Paul travelled on his first missionary journey.

This links Paul's letter to the Galatians to this first missionary journey (around 46-48 AD). Its subject matter - passionately arguing that God's grace supersedes the Jewish Law for non-Jewish Christians - makes it a part of the controversy which led to the Council of Jerusalem (around 49/50 AD). This pins the date of the letter to around 48/49 AD, some 3 years earlier than Paul's next letter, to the Thessalonians around 52 AD.

Which makes Galatians special:

- It is the earliest written New Testament document;

- It is a pivot between the Old and New Testaments;

- It sketches out what it means to be a church, a community united by God's Spirit;

- It is the background and foundation for understanding Paul's later writings.

In theory the Protestant Reformation, back in the 16th century, marked a rediscovery of Paul's message (particularly from Romans) that following Jesus is about God's grace, received through faith, not about following rules. In practice it mostly just changed the rules, particularly once Calvin got involved.

Galatians is about freedom. Maybe, just maybe, a focus on its simpler, more Spirit-focussed, message could lead to a new reformation in our churches: one actually about God's love and grace rather than power politics. You never know ... it's certainly about time.

12 Years A Slave

Quite a moving story, but I'm not sure what the point of the film really is.

12 Years A Slave tells the story of Solomon Northup, a free black man from New York State, who, in 1841,  is kidnapped and sold as a slave in the Southern USA. He's beaten and abused then, after 12 years, he is set free again (given the title, I don't think that counts as a spoiler). There is a lot of whipping, dwelt on in a manner reminiscent of Mel Gibson's Passion, and a certain amount of abusive sex. Quite why it only has a 15 certificate is a bit of a mystery.

The movie is based on a true story: one that happened in the 1840's, which was a very important story to tell back then. Even after 1865, when slavery was legally abolished in the USA, the story would still have been important in showing why abolition was necessary. But why at the beginning of the 21st century? Does anyone seriously still think that slavery was a good and reasonable institution? If they did, would they watch this film?

I am part of a housegroup which will be looking at this film over the next few weeks, so maybe I'll have better ideas after that. In the meantime, a few thoughts:-

The first point is that it makes a powerful and dramatic story. Not much happens, but it still paints a vivid and painful picture. A picture of long ago, but a truthful picture nonetheless.

The second is that, like the Holocaust and the First World War, slavery in the USA remains a painful but vital part of a people's history, which should not be forgotten. The original book was a very important historical document which dovetailed well with other accounts of slavery at the time, written from the perspective of an educated man who was 'on the inside'.

Thirdly, although legalised slavery has been abolished in the West (Pakistan and other countries still practise forms of indentured labour, which is essentially the same), illegal slavery still continues. The slavers may not comfort themselves with dubiously interpreted religious texts any more, but they are still active. Also, the underlying racism and dehumanising of 'the other' are far from over. In the USA racism around their black president is explicit; here in the UK it tends to hide behind other masks.

I guess the biggest take-home message of the film is that a human being is a human being, made in the image of God, never 'property', never disposable, always to be respected, always to be treated according to the Golden Rule: how would you want someone to behave if the situation were the other way around.

Autumnal Ramblings

Autumn Rain by RayCrystal

It's classic British autumn outside: grey with heavy, but warm(-ish), drizzle; and it's far too long since I posted anything to this blog, so ...

It's not even as if there's been nothing I fancied blogging about. There've been reports about genes and free-will, all sorts of health-related issues in the news, and, of course, reports of various security perverts spying on us "for our own good". As if MI5 and GCHQ are at all trustworthy or even the least bit accountable to anyone, certainly not parliament.

Consider the SpyCatcher affair, when the British government sent its Cabinet Secretary, Robert Armstrong, to lie to the Australian courts, to cover up a faction inside MI5 working against Harold Wilson in the 70's, when he was prime minister. Then there's paedophile traitor Geoffrey Prime, whose day job was working at GCHQ, but whose hobby was using surveillance to identify young girls most likely to be home alone so he could attack them (in spite of being positively vetted six times, it wasn't GCHQ or MI5 who finally caught him, but the local police using traditional policing methods). There's a really good article on Adam Curtis's BBC blog about the history of MI5 here. Maybe US readers can reassure me that their NSA is more trustworthy and accountable?

In terms of my own church life, I am in the process of getting re-licensed as a lay reader, at St John's Church here in Caversham. Considering that we used to belong to St Johns several years ago, this seems like a bad idea - like a deadhead sticker on a Cadillac. Also, St John's remains the far side of Caversham from me, which is hardly helpful when it comes to local involvement. Nevertheless, I spent lots of time last year visiting local churches and St John's was where the wind of the spirit seemed to be blowing me, so that's where I've ended up.

As a part of the re-licensing process I've been doing some supervised preaching. This is quite challenging as Anglican sermons are VERY short compared to Baptist ones, but also an opportunity to be as creative as I can in presenting truth in a different way. For harvest, last Sunday, I took in Biblical-style flatbread - made that morning - so people got sight and smell and touch and taste, as well as the words.

Meanwhile we have a son who's in his final year at university - so he needs to work on job-hunting - and a daughter who is planning to go to uni next year, so we've been taking her on visits to open days in various parts of the country.

Life goes on, and remains a gift - even in soggy autumn.

No Barriers, No Burdens, Just Be Faithful

Going through the first half of the Acts of the Apostles, trying to see it afresh, minimising preconceptions, is quite an eye-opener. But it leaves me wondering, how on earth did the church end up here? All these rules, all these barriers, all this exclusiveness: that's not how the church began.

One huge theme in the early chapters of Acts is the contrast between the old Jerusalem Temple - full of barriers to keep people away from God - and the new Temple which is Jesus' body, his followers, going out to take God to people: any people, any where, no barriers (see my last post for an attempt at presenting this).

Around AD 47 Paul and Barnabas, two of these early followers of Jesus, took the new Temple out in this way to Southern Galatia (in modern Turkey) founding churches in the towns there. These were churches to which anyone was welcome, no matter who, and of which anyone could be a part: as long as they turned from their old lives to God, through Jesus, of which baptism was the sign; and as long as they accepted God's gift of his Holy Spirit, bringing life and unity to the churches.

After Paul and Barnabas returned to their home church in Antioch, other followers of Jesus came and visited these new Galatian churches. They celebrated that God was at work in this new way, and that new people had come into the family of God's people. Of course, these others told the Galatians, having become God's people they would now have to learn to live like God's people. They would have to follow God's Law, as revealed in the Scriptures. They wouldn't have to learn it all straight away, of course - there are 613 rules in there - but they should start with one of the earliest signs of membership in God's people: circumcision.

When Paul heard he was furious, he wrote a very passionate and rather idealistic letter to the Galatian churches begging them not to be fooled, not to turn away from trusting Jesus. Then when Christians preaching a similarly legalistic message came to Antioch, there were blazing rows, and soon the Antioch Church sent them to Jerusalem to sort the question out “once and for all”.

Essentially the question that the Council of Jerusalem had to sort out was this: are there moral rules you have to follow in order to be a part of a Jesus’ body, the church? Whether these are the 613 rules of the Torah, or the ‘10 commandments’ which are right at the heart of the Jewish Law, or any other set of membership requirements church organisations might come up with. Paul said “no, none”, other early Christians said that the rules laid down in Scripture – Jewish law – were required.

Given the state of the church today, busily tearing itself apart over who is allowed to belong, the answer to this has obvious current relevance. Or it would do, if there was the slightest chance of it being followed.

The Jerusalem Council came out with a rather strange answer. Rather than talking about rules, they simply said there should be no burdens (on non-Jewish believers). What's the difference between a rule and a burden? Consider the old sabbath laws, given to Israel as a celebration of freedom. They had been slaves in Egypt, and slaves don't get days off. But now they are free so they should take a day off a week: they are to remain free and not allow themselves to be enslaved again into an unending routine of labour. The sabbath rules were meant as a boon, a blessing, yet by Jesus' day a crippled woman who comes to Jesus for healing in the synagogue on a Sabbath day is heavily criticised for it: the boon has been turned to a burden. Sadly, religions are all too good at turning rules into cages.

The Council did lay down some restrictions, which at first sight are confusing: they look awfully like burdensome rules. Thankfully Paul later wrote to another new church, out in Corinth, to explain these restrictions. Essentially they are about communion: when we share bread and wine in Jesus' name, we are part of his body. Likewise, if we share in an idolatrous feast we are in communion with an idol, which Paul describes as a demon. So being in communion with Jesus at the same time as being in communion with demonic powers isn't on, it's unfaithful.

Not all communion is about sharing food: even today there are temple prostitutes in parts of India, back in Paul's day they were all over the eastern Mediterranean. Another communion which is inappropriate for a member of the body of Jesus.

So the basic ruling was: no barriers, no burdens, just be faithful to Jesus.

Only By Grace Can We Enter

It seems very strange, yet I'm sure a lot of churches are like ours. We have a thriving set of youth groups coming into the church building, where they are welcomed and gently introduced to God's unconditional love and care, whatever their background, their lifestyle, or their felt sexuality.

Meanwhile, in the adult part of the church, at least whilst we had a pastor (we are between pastors at the moment), anyone who came was at risk of being lectured from the pulpit on permissable and impermissable sexual behaviour. To be fair, at the moment - in the absence of a pastor - I think it is true to say that preaching tends to be rather more grace-focussed. Nevertheless I strongly suspect that anyone who wanted to become a full member of the church, whilst living with their partner without being married (or who was living with their same-sex lover, even with the benefit of a civil partnership), would be unlikely to be successful. Although I could be wrong.

Other churches maybe have different barriers to entry. Nevertheless, high barriers seem to me to be a widespread characteristic of 21st-century churches. Some churches have explicit rules to keep people out, others have cultural barriers, or simply "This is the way we do things here", that lead people to feel excluded and unwanted. If you want to feel part of an 'evangelical' church you have to look at life - and especially God - one way; if you want to be in a 'liberal' church then you have to take another, similarly restrictive, viewpoint.

Doubtless this was always the way with religion, but the barriers over the past decade appear higher as the rest of the world moves on and many churches just stay put. The vast majority of non-churchgoers are just not willing to go so far against their own grain to conform to norms which actually have little or nothing to do with Jesus, not to mention being decidedly unhelpful in engaging with God in their everyday lives.

Yet, in the very early days of the church things were different. In the Bible the early chapters of the book of Acts chart a removal of the old Jewish barriers. The Temple at Jerusalem was full of restrictions on who could go where. Non-Jews were restricted to the very outskirts, Jewish women and eunuchs were restricted to their area, Jewish men were allowed fairly close - if they were ritually clean according to the rules of the Torah, the Jewish Law - but only priests got to be where the sacrifices were made, and only the High Priest got to the Holy of Holies, where God was believed to be especially present. The Christian Church, in contrast, was fully opened up to non-Jews, to eunuchs, and to women very early on.

When Paul of Tarsus went out starting churches in southern Galatia, a Roman province in what is now north/central Turkey,  he founded churches for whoever wanted to join, Jew and non-Jew, where all could worship God freely. This was fine until some conservative Jewish Christians turned up, after Paul moved on, telling people that now they were part of the church they had to obey the rules: the Jewish Law, including becoming circumcised.

Paul wrote a very angry, very idealistic, letter, in which he makes clear that in the Church of Jesus everyone is accepted: Jews & Gentiles, men & women, slaves & free. All can freely come to Jesus in his body, his church, and all can freely remain. There are no rules, other than the rule of love. There are no restrictions, other than the requirement of Baptism as a sign of turning to God through Jesus, and acceptance of God's gift of His Spirit. That was it.

A wise woman once said to me: "You have to have rules, otherwise there will be anarchy". According to Paul, in his letter to those Galatians, God has thought of that. If you don't have God's Spirit then rules are not enough, fallen human nature will break through anyway. But if you do have the Spirit of God within you then it will bear fruit in your life. And the fruit of the Spirit is: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Given these you don't need all those rules, just time and space for God's love to bear fruit.

Now, in 21^st century churches, it's as though Paul never wrote his letter to the Galatians. Many churches call themselves 'Bible-believing', yet deny the freedom that Jesus won for us! They throw away God's Grace - his free gift to any who will respond - and replace it with empty rules and religion. Why?

There is a popular song in Church circles; it's a pity people don't always listen to what they are singing:

Only by grace can we enter
Only by grace can we stand
Not by our human endeavour
But by the blood of the Lamb
Into Your presence You call us
You call us to come
Into Your presence You draw us
And now by Your grace we come
Now by Your grace we come

Gerrit Gustafson

Liberation & Healing

In Egypt, in Tahrir Square, there was a revolution taking place - not just a political revolution, but a revolution in the way people relate to one another. Salma El Tarzi, a 33-year-old Egyptian filmmaker who was previously not politically active, wrote:-

"I was one of many women, young and old, there. We were as active as the men. Some acted as nurses and looked after the wounded during the battles; others were simply helping with distributing water. But there were a great number of women that were on the front line hurling stones at the police and pro-Mubarak thugs.

The duties in the square were divided. We were very organised. Something changed in the dynamic between men and women in Tahrir. When the men saw that women were fighting in the front line that changed their perception of us and we were all united. We were all Egyptians now.

The general view of women changed for many. Not a single case of sexual harassment happened during the protests up until the last day when Mubarak stepped down. That is a big change for Egypt."

Similarly Mona Seif, a 24-year-old researcher, wrote:-

"I was amazed by the peoples’ determination to keep this peaceful even when we were under deadly attacks. When we caught the pro-Mubarak thugs, the guys would protect them from being beaten and say: 'Peaceful, peaceful, we are not going to beat anyone up’. That was when I started thinking: 'No matter what happens we are not going to quit until Mubarak leaves'. The spirit of the people in Tahrir kept us going ...

I have never felt as at peace and as safe as I did during those days in Tahrir. There was a sense of coexistence that overcame all of the problems that usually happen - whether religious or gender based ... We went through many ups and downs together. It felt like it had become a different society - there was one Egypt inside Tahrir and another Egypt outside.

The moment Tahrir opened up, we saw a lot of people that were not there before and there were reports of females being harassed.

I know that Egypt has changed and we will transfer the spirit of the square to the rest of the country. Before Tahrir if I was [harassed] I would refrain from asking people for help, because there are a lot of people that would disappoint you by blaming you. But I think the spirit of the revolution has empowered us to spread the feeling we established wider and wider."

The photo at the top of the page shows the aftermath - protesters out cleaning up the square, clearing out the mess. This was a very different revolution. Liberation is not just about politics, liberation is about how you live. A struggle for liberation is a struggle to learn how to live together. It is a struggle to make the world around you better, not worse.

Long ago, in the Bible, there is another story of a people set free, in Egypt. Those people left Egypt and went on to follow their own path elsewhere. Today the people from Tahrir Square want freedom within Egypt, liberation and healing inside their own land.

Jesus commemorated his people's freedom from Egypt, one Sabbath, by liberating a woman from 18 years of suffering. The religious authorities protested: somehow they missed the link.

Today, around the world, inside churches and outside, Jesus still brings liberation and healing. And religious authorities - some of them - still try to block him. But you can only delay liberation for so long: sooner or later God's Kingdom breaks through. Often in strange and unexpected ways: God's Spirit is unpredictable, but effective. God's Kingdom is all around us, sometimes it breaks into our lives and the lives of those we care for. Then everything changes.

I know some people in desperate need of liberation. Today, maybe this week, pray God sooner rather than later, my prayer is that the Kingdom will break through into their lives. It won't make life easy, but it will make it free. And that, I think, makes a huge difference.

'Interesting Times' In Africa

Egypt is in the news at the moment (so much so that I'll leave it to last, otherwise things will have already changed there by the time I finish). Over the past few months there have been several ongoing stories about African nations which are somewhat different from what has gone before, and which look likely to have long-term implications for much of the continent.

Sudan is currently the largest country in Africa. It is one of those countries created as a result of the carve-up of Africa by 19th-century colonial powers, whose borders bear little relation to the reality on the ground. In terms of geography, language, ethnicity, religion, wealth, health, you name it, northern and southern Sudan are distinctly different (not to mention various east-west divisions). After thirty years of civil war a peace agreement in 2005 gave the southerners a referendum, which was held early this year. The official results aren't out yet, but are known to be an overwhelming vote for secession; the new state is due to be formally created on July 9th, 2011. One possible complication is the tiny border region of Abyei, which has its own vote over whether to join the north or the south; as an ethnically mixed region this is going to cause problems.

The new country is certain to have many difficulties when it comes into being - poverty, oil, ethnic divisions, and a lot of guns all create problems. On a more individual level, there will be many families who will be moving from one side of the border to the other, and doubtless ethnically mixed families will face even greater prejudice and pressure, at least for a while. But the continent-wide issue arises from the simple fact that this will (hopefully) have been a successful secession: one section of an established African country will have split off to form a new country. However logical this move may be for Sudan, and however extreme a case the old Sudan was, this will encourage separatist movements across the continent. In ending this one civil war, there is a risk of provoking or exacerbating many others.

In Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) things have not been going so well. Another civil war was supposed to be ended with presidential elections last November. Except that the incumbent, Laurent Gbagbo, lost but refuses to stand down ... and has the army backing him. Nothing new there in African politics, but this time it has played out differently. The other West African nations, even (for a time) the African Union, got together to tell him to go. He didn't go, and some African leaders are getting a bit iffy about pushing him, but it remains a standoff in which other African states may be the deciding factor in forcing an ex-president to stand down. This would set an important precedent, and give hope to many African nations suffering under 'strong-man' rulers who stay in power through thugs and militias, rather than the ballot box. If Gbagbo goes under African pressure then maybe things really can change for the better across the continent.

I can't write about Cote d'Ivoire without mentioning chocolate, of course. Most mass-produced chocolate uses cocoa from Cote d'Ivoire, money from which goes to pay Gbagbo's army. The big exception is Cadburys (except in the US, where I'm told 'Cadburys' is just rebranded Hersheys); fair trade chocolate and many specialist chocolates also use higher quality cocoa from elsewhere. So your chocolate consumption may be making a small difference to the future direction of Africa.

Which brings us to Tunisia and Egypt. Very strange situations: long-term dictatorships overthrown by demonstrations which were not organised by any opposition party, or indeed by anybody much. Just tens of thousands of, mostly young, ordinary people going out on the streets to tell their government that they had had enough.

In Tunisia they won, at least for now. President Ben Ali, after 23 years in power, fled to Saudi Arabia. The rest of the regime attempted to cling on to their power, by setting up a supposed 'unity' government in which the RCD (Ben Ali's party) held the key ministries: defence, interior, finance and foreign - ie controlling the army, the police, the money, and relations with the rest of the world. Not an encouraging sign that they planned to break with the past. But continued demonstrations forced a change; now Tunisians must wait to see whether their 'jasmine revolution' will indeed bring democracy, freedom, and economic strength.

In Egypt the game goes on. Egypt is much bigger than Tunisia, and Mubarak's hold on power seemed much stronger, but when the people went out onto the streets the army refused to attack them openly (although behind the scenes arrests and torture went on). Yesterday (February 11th) Mubarak finally went: hundreds had been killed, vague promises and threats had been  made, but the protests just continued to grow. Crucially, younger members of the army are said to have sympathised with the protesters, whilst the old guard supported the regime, so the army remained relatively neutral.

Now we have the country being run by a committee headed by an army 'old guard' - Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Minister of Defence since 1991 and general commander of the armed forces since 1995. Strangely, western observers seem more cynical about this than Arab ones.

One remarkable feature of the Egyptian protests has been the way protesters have organised themselves, and have worked together. Telling images have involved them setting up their own management of people coming into Tahrir Square, and of them working together to protect one another: Christians standing guard during Muslim prayers and vice versa. Tyranny thrives on division: in much of Africa the tyrants thrive on ethnic differences and disagreements; in Arab countries it tends to be religious differences that they can use: fear of Islamists, hatred of other flavours of Islam, divisions between Muslim and Christian. To see the Egyptian people show that by working together they can defeat tyranny is an inspiring sight.

Another remarkable feature has been the western governments' dithering, way behind the curve of what's actually happening. The Obama administration, particularly Hilary Clinton, was busy backing Mubarak as a stable ally, then Omar Suleiman (Mubarak's right-hand man, and head of intelligence - known as 'the CIA's man in Cairo') was supposed to be the great hope for democracy. Finally Obama caught up that Egyptians actually wanted the sort of democracy where Egyptian people have some say in what goes on and where emergency rule and police crackdowns and torture aren't part of everday life. Even now the US look to be wanting to back the army old guard, apparently hoping that democratic aspirations can be kept to a minimum.

Nobody knows whether other North African (or indeed other Arab) states are vulnerable to these sorts of protests. Autocratic leaders are hurriedly making promises and rearranging governments, but Algeria, Morroco and Sudan seem potentially vulnerable. There seems to be some consensus that the critical point is whether the head of state is genuinely respected, or merely hated and feared. In a police state you can't really know that until the protests start, though, and by then it's too late.

So, interesting times indeed for Africa. Events occuring which seem genuinely different from what has been before. Whether this will end up as a blessing or a curse is yet to be seen; mostly that lies in the hands of the African people, in all their amazing diversity.