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 Feeds The Spirit?

I've been feeling wiped these past couple of weeks - hence the lack of posts - and I was given some very wise advice: to seek out the things which energise me, which feed my spirit.

I was reminded of that today when blogger John Pavlovitz posted an article, For Those Of Us Needing A Detox From Religion, talking about how draining church involvement can be, and basically saying it is okay to take a break.

Over time you can gradually develop a soul sickness and be completely unaware of it, until one day you turn around and faith just feels… toxic. The reasons aren’t necessarily clear, but you realize that the spiritual pursuits that once gave you life now seem empty and burdensome. ...

If you believe you need a detox from religion my friend, take it. If you’re wrong you’ll be able to course correct without fear. This is the very essence of Grace. 

Pavlovitz is writing into a very different context from here in sunny Caversham (just at the moment it really is sunny!), but I think that before withdrawing from church life it might be an idea to try just rebalancing that life.

In Caversham, at least, churches will try to take all your time and energy: there is always more 'needs' to be done and there are never enough people to do it. So maybe the first step is to take responsibility for our own time and effort: stick to things where we add most value. It's a bit like a budget, but of time and energy ... and just like a budget, leave some slack for the unexpected. And for the occasional treat!

But it's not just about things being important. In many/most churches it is seen as good to read your Bible and spend time with God working through what it is saying to you and those around you today. It is also good to spend time with those who are unwell and need a friendly word. And it is good to be willing to share your experience of faith with those who are not churchgoers.

All of these things matter and all are well worth doing. But is there one of them which really gets you out of bed in the morning, which really gives your soul a buzz? It may be hard work, sometimes sad or discouraging, but still it's what gives you a sense of purpose, achievement or meaning: a sense that "this is what the Kingdom's about!".

If there is something which nourishes you like that then don't neglect it. Don't let all the other stuff, however important, get in the way of what is - to you - essential. Keep a balance between what you do because it needs doing and you can do it, and what you do because it helps you be who you are.

The examples I gave above are churchy ones, but it doesn't have to be so. Playing with your kids, walking in the wild places, going to the cinema with your spouse, solving the problems of the world with a few good friends over a couple of beers. God is present in all of these, whether you see him or not.

There are real benefits to following Jesus in company, so dropping out may make things harder rather than easier. This is not to say it should never be done, just don't do so lightly.

But much more than that, however you feel about churches and church life - even if you would never dream of darkening the door of any religious building - do remember to feed your soul. It'll thank you for it.

Galatians by Scot McKnight

A curate's egg: something which is mostly bad but partly good.

Galatians is part of the NIV Application Commentary series, which aims to link the original context and meaning of Biblical books to modern contexts and so to the Bible's meaning for today. Last year I bought their commentary on Mark which was useful, so this year I tried Galatians. Like all NIV branded materials this series is generally evangelical in approach, but that wasn't a problem with Mark.

Galatians was written in 1991, which seems to have been just late enough to have picked up on some of the modern insights into its context (like where the Roman province of Galatia actually was, and thus the letter's link to Paul's first missionary journey), but without really working them through.

The main problem is that McKnight sees everything from his own context of late 80's US evangelicalism. This raises a sour smile when he insists that evangelicalism has lost its old legalism, but gets very frustrating indeed when he insists on using his commentary to expound his own preferred traditions and views, almost irrespective of what the text actually says.

You could see this coming from early on when he starts saying Paul doesn't really mean what he writes (about issues like following rules and authority). By the end of the book it is really wearing.

There's a classic section where McKnight bemoans that people just don't feel guilty like they used to, so how can they understand the gospel! If the gospel of Jesus can be reduced to helping people with their guilt trips, there's not much to it.

Less crudely there is his overall view that Galatians is about 'Judaisers' insisting that the Galatians need to follow what McKnight calls 'gospel-plus'. In other words that Paul has been teaching the generally accepted Christian approach but these people have come along trying to change that and add extras from the Jewish Law.

That fails to take into account that the early church was essentially a Jewish group - the vast majority of Jesus' early followers did try to obey the Jewish Law. It's not that the Judaisers were trying to add something to established practice, it's that Paul had taken something away. Paul was making changes, stripping away elements which got in the way of God's work, and his letter to the Galatians explains why.

In today's churches there is a lot of stuff which needs stripping away; a lot of crud accumulated over the centuries. But how do we do this without compromising the core of what the church is about; without throwing Jesus out with the bathwater?

The trouble with this commentary, in a way, is that embedded in this smelly matrix of tradition and opinion there are some real gems: insights which had me looking at parts of the letter in a new way. If it had all been rubbish I could happily have just given up and stopped reading.

One of these gems was a link back to the situation in Paul's home church of Antioch. Paul had been called in precisely because the church there didn't know how to deal with a sudden influx of outsiders who didn't have their background, didn't know or understand their practices, and quite likely didn't behave 'appropriately' in church.

Then there is a marvellous insight into the way the Jewish Law, Torah, had been fulfilled. It's job as the route by which people became God's people, part of his kingdom, had been fulfilled and completed by Jesus, of course, but McKnight's insight is that Torah's role as a guide to moral behaviour, for distinguishing right from wrong, is also fulfilled, this time by the Holy Spirit.

In this he also recognises that the 'fruit of the Spirit', famously described in chapter 5 of Galatians, is mostly about relationships between people, about the way a church community works, rather than the old individualistic piety approach.

Overall, whilst the good bits of McKnight's commentary are few and are embedded in a lot of rot, they are important enough that, overall, I have to consider this book worth reading. I learnt something useful from it, which is all you can ask really.

Who Are The People Of God?

Jesus was a Jew: he worshipped at the Jerusalem Temple, followed Torah, the Jewish 'Law', even taught Torah - although with a subversive twist.

Jesus' earliest followers were Jews too, worshipping at the Jerusalem Temple, and so on.

Religious 1st-Century Jews knew who the people of God were: they were.

The people of God, they were sure, were born Jews (technically Israelites, although they denied the Samaritans that status), who remained within the covenant between God and Israel: the Torah. It was possible, although difficult, for a non-Jew to convert to Judaism and so become one of God's people too.

Torah includes provision for people who break its rules in a minor way to make a sacrifice and so return to compliance. By Jesus time this was taken to mean that you stopped doing whatever the infringement was. So if you stole, made the required sacrifice, and stopped stealing you were okay; if you continued stealing the sacrifice was not effective. This also meant that people who worked for non-Jews, who would necessarily break the food rules, were excluded from God's people unless they gave up their jobs.

A lot of the time when the New Testament refers to 'sinners' it means those who are outside God's covenant, maybe because they were born 'Gentile sinners' or because their lives exclude them from Torah. Correspondingly when it refers to those who are 'righteous' it usually means those within God's covenant. Thus you get one of the great letter-writer Paul's themes: those who are within Jesus are no longer 'sinners' but 'righteous' (or 'justified' or various other images of the same thing).

The sign of being one of God's people, from way back in the days of Abraham, had been to be circumcised (which maybe says something about the status of women!).

The very early church was essentially Jewish, although from quite early on they accepted Samaritans and even a eunuch (excluded from the people by Torah, but the prophets spoke of their acceptance when the Messiah came). Eventually even foreigners ('Gentiles') were accepted, although in Jerusalem and Judea they were very much in the minority.

Basically, in the first ten to fifteen years after Jesus' death and resurrection, the congregations of his followers nearly all shared a common religious upbringing and culture. It was very hard to separate that culture from their identity as God's people.

Then came Antioch. The church there started off as Jewish as anywhere else, but then they began attracting non-Jews to their meetings who wanted to join the church. When 'head office' in Jerusalem heard, they sent Barnabas to help - known as a good 'people person'. Barnabas went off to Tarsus to pick up Paul, who had previously persecuted Christians but, having met the risen Jesus for himself, was now spreading the word he had previously tried to suppress.

Barnabas and Paul built up the church in Antioch as a mixed church: Jews and non-Jews alike. But that meant that the congregation no longer shared that common religious upbringing and culture, nor even that 'badge' of God's people: a circumcised penis. Inevitably, perhaps, arguments broke out as religious expectations were not met and assumed standards of behaviour were ignored.

How are the people of God meant to live? Once outsiders have been welcomed in, is it the expectation that they will then change to become just like the insiders?

In the early church one big question was whether those who came into the faith, who had joined God's people later in life, should adopt the badge of God's people and become circumcised. The Old Testament (as we call it today) scriptures were clear: God calls his people to be circumcised. Slightly less clearly, the assumption (of those who grew up religious) was also that God calls his people to follow his law: the Torah.

Paul strongly disagreed: for him the 'badge' of God's people was the Holy Spirit (whatever he meant by that - a subject for a future post) and the 'law' that they had to follow was the law of love, guided by that Holy Spirit.

This row came to a head after Paul and Barnabas returned from travelling through Southern Galatia founding new mixed congregations, where Jews and non-Jews worshipped together.

But the question for churches in Britain today is: how do we deal with an influx of those who do not share our upbringing and religious values? For many, maybe most, of us this influx is something we desperately need, but the experience of Antioch and Galatia long ago warns us that it will not be easy. We insiders will have to change our ways: ditching a lot of cultural baggage, even when that baggage seems justified by tradition and scripture.

Somehow we must rediscover Paul's vision of the diverse people of God, gathered together in local communities, following Jesus under the guidance of his Spirit. After nearly two millenia that is quite a challenge, but it is necessary if we are to be faithful citizens of God's Kingdom.

Grace and peace for your week ahead.

Caversham Chiaroscuro

“chiaroscuro,” by Horatio (2010), dpnow.com

Chiaroscuro: the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, in painting, photography and cinema.

Strictly speaking the title of this post should be "Chiaroscuro at St John's", as it is a post about the results of the first discovery phase of PMC (Partnership for Missional Church, see my earlier post here) for St John's. Well ... St John's is in Caversham and I think the title used sounds better.

This first year of PMC is all about discovery, and phase 1 is discovery about ourselves as a church within a community. What has struck me most about the results so far has been the strong contrasts between darkness and light, hopeful features and unsustainable aspects of life here at St John's.

For example, finance. From the basic numbers it looks as though nearly everyone in the regular congregation at St John's takes part in the planned giving scheme. From the point of view of belonging and responsibility and things like that, this is great. But the bottom line is that we are not covering our costs, never mind putting money away for big bills and big projects in the future. This is simply not sustainable.

Similarly with people and jobs. One part of the PMC process involved identifying people who come to services but don't really take part beyond that. This proved surprisingly difficult: the vast majority of people are involved in something. It might be cleaning, or music, or working with children, or one of the outreach activities, or the church fair, or whatever.

People are involved; again this is great for belonging and taking responsibility. Yet, we cannot fill some of our key roles. We are missing a church warden, we don't have a treasurer, nor a planned giving officer, even the refreshments rota, for after-service tea and coffee, is struggling after the person organising it moved away. Again this is not sustainable.

When it came to getting people's views on what was going on in the church, we again found both light and dark. There is an immense amount of positivity concerning the successful outreach projects of the last five years. Yet there was also significant negativity concerning church 'internals' - the way things were working in terms of the congregation itself. I've deliberately left that last bit vague because it is an area which needs more digging than you can do in the simple interviews we carried out.

Actually, I think exploring this is an important opportunity for us as a church to look at how we grow together and how we continue to support and care for all our members, especially as, we hope, we start getting new people in who need to be included and who have their own, different, needs.

A final bit of chiaroscuro is about the church building. St John's is really lucky in having a building with a large flexible space, with good acoustics, on a main road which is in reasonable walking distance of much of 'our' district. But the building does need serious money spending on it: the roof needs redoing within the next few years, and we desperately need to extend the building to provide meeting rooms and more toilets.

All of this dark and light emphasises the importance of the choices facing St John's as we move into the future, preparing for, then journeying with, the Transition Minister we are hoping to recruit over the next few months.

Many of the challenges directly relate to numbers and to the age profile. Change those for the better and everything looks a whole lot more positive. But we won't do that by carrying on as before: that (in part, at least) is how we got into this position in the first place.

There are over 9,000 people live in 'our patch', most of them of working age. Whilst Lower Caversham is not nearly as wealthy an area as Caversham Heights, it is nevertheless quite well off compared to much of Reading. People, money and energy are out there. Indeed, a lot of them do actually go to church, just not here. People get in their cars and drive past our door (at least metaphorically) to go to church somewhere else!

Ultimately the future for St John's holds a stark choice: are we willing to change the ways we do things, and the expectations we place on those who come to visit us, or will we simply wait to die.

After that we hit questions about how we change, how we catch onto God's vision for Lower Caversham, and how we live out what it means to follow Jesus here and now. But genuine willingness to let go of our habits and step out in trust into an unknown future comes first.

I started off by suggesting that this post is just about PMC at St John's. Actually, that fundamental choice is also the issue at St Margaret's and St Peter's. The different churches have different challenges but we all show significant darkness and light, and face significant change to align ourselves with God's vision for Caversham.

I hope and pray we are in for interesting times here in Caversham.