Our mind is a kunstkammer

Today just as I was about to star cooking dinner, I heard a knock, and then the ring of a bell, and a French Lady blew in like a hurricane 'he-llo!'

Claire-Elise was her name, and she'd come before to see Grandma, and help her tidy her kitchen counter and shelf. Although she looks just slightly younger than Grandma, she has all the vigour and verve of a much younger woman. Auntie Sarah came in, and they sat in chairs in the kitchen while I leaned against the oven to warm myself, and watched as the conversation slowly meandered over to method and systems and tidiness.

Perhaps some background would be useful. My Auntie Sarah's house is, quite frankly, untidy. Yesterday's dinners are still in pots and pans on the stove top, papers scatter the table, and it's always a struggle to find something when you need it. Auntie Sarah is a very creative person, and starts a lot of projects, and also is always helping someone (or many someones) out, and as a result has very little time to get things in order in her house - Grandma tells me she wishes Auntie Sarah would be a little more selfish. Put that together with the fact that Auntie Sarah and her family are all by nature not the tidiest of people, the house does get very messy.

Claire-Elise spoke about how her Aunt and Mother had different ways of approaching mess. Both were untidy people, but Claire-Elise insisted (successfully) that her mother create method to her madness and declutter her life. It reminded me of the movement towards minimalism that is gaining agency in the philosophy of the present age - a sort of allergic reaction to the voracious consumptive activity of capitalism. What fascinated me, however, was Claire-Elise's theory of the effect of decluttering on the mind. Because her mother remained relatively mentally sound even in her latter days, while her sister, who refused to declutter and was constantly on the hunt for something misplaced, developed dementia, Claire-Elise hypothesised that by living without system, without method, you fill your brain with the mental clutter that easily slips out. You constantly use brain space to think - keys? book? heavy-bottomed pan? And because those places constantly change, your memory weakens, and adopts a dynamic of letting something quickly slip away in a life where things are as certain as quick sand.

Auntie Sarah murmured assent, and said it is difficult, because often she feels objects calling out to her. Objects with beauty and sentiment and history that all have various pulls on her affections and aspirations. When cleaning out Uncle Fred's house so it could be sold, she couldn't sleep almost a whole night because she could feel the pull of the multitude of things, and when she drove from Gloucester back to Ixworth the car was full of items whose call had proved strong enough, like some canvases, and a typewriter.

I thought the idea of objects calling, objects having agency and power, striking. Is that why Buddhist monks use meditation to snip the bonds between them and earthly  and material? Are their chants and mantras a means of creating a sound that will drown out the sounds of things - and is the answer to a world chanting for our attention to create our own chant or is that simply adding to already excessive noise? Are the voices of objects akin to the colours from sound that a synaesthete would see? Is our conception of objects 'speaking' to us ('that painting spoke to me') innate or is it conditioned by things like the talking teapots and toys we read of and watch when young? Do objects we cannot categorise speak to us or only things that have attachment to memory (what would a Renaissance wunderkammer sound like I wonder)?

And so we wheel back to objects and memory. Do things help us remember, or do they wear away at our faculty of memory, like friction on bicycle brakes?

Slow down, time

I feel like I am regressing into a child who feels like 10 minutes is an eternity and 3 minutes is too long to spend on one thing. I wish I had more than eternities to enjoy easy things, beautiful things and secret things that sometimes speak louder to me than Shakespeare.

Is the girl who spoke to flowers still there somewhere? I feel like I need time.

Scotland Day 1

The last time I've been on a bed on a train was probably on the night train from Thailand to Laos. 

This time I was on the Caledonian Sleeper to Fort William with Bramina.

We both couldn't figure out how to open the window, and as I was tugging at the window blind, trying to release it, a sharp, piercing beep begun sounding through the air. I leapt away from the window, thinking 'Dammit I've set something off.' And opened the door to our cabin, hoping I could apologise to our neighbours about the noise. Then I realised that the beep was coming not from our cabin but from somewhere else in the train. Our neighbour had emerged from his cabin too, and said 'Fire Alarm.'

I went back into the cabin, told Bramina, and we both begun putting on our shoes and socks over our pajamas, and getting our coats on. Two train staff pushed past me as I was coming out of the cabin again, and brusquely said 'Get back inside,' and then to his colleague, 'The exhaust has set off the fire alarm.'

And so - an eventful start to our holiday.

When I woke the next morning, I managed to lift the window blind before brushing my teeth in the cabin sink.

Aaah

There is nothing that I can compare the Scottish highlands to.

I ate 3 rounds of muesli (which I'd bought the night before) out of a plastic ice cream tub, with a spoon Ying Ying had foraged for me from Pret a Manger, feeling rather like I was a real backpacker in my temporary, make-do, uncivilised breakfast.

Bramina and I bought sandwich supplies from Morrisons, bought a guide book for walks from the tourist information site as an accompaniment to the maps we had already printed out, assembled sandwiches on a bench in the middle of Fort William highstreet, and stashed our luggage in the train station lockers, before walking to Glen Nevis Visitors' Center to begin our first walk.

We'd intended to do the Cow Hill Walk, however, upon reaching the Visitors' Center we realised that the walk instructions begun at the Visitors' Center but then instructed walkers to walk toward Fort William - where we had just come from. And so we flipped through the walk book we'd just bought to seek another route, and settled on a riverside walk.

The sun was so bright and the water so clear, and both of us kept giving longing looks toward the river. And so within an hour of our walk we decided to stop for lunch on a pebbly inlet to have our sandwiches and lie back in the sun.

After lunch, the walk begun to go awry. The path, which had been initially clearly marked, became quite difficult to follow and a couple of times we had to back track to make sure we weren't straying into completely unknown territory. I was comforted by the knowledge that as long as we stuck close to the river, we'd have a clear way back.

We stopped for another time at another pebbly beach, and tried skimming stones. The sun was so bright that I'd stripped down to my thermals, and the gigantic yellow beacon of a jacket I had with me hung from my bag like an extra set of arms. The beach was so quiet, apart from the low ripple of water over stones, and there were plenty of flat stones perfect for skimming, although neither me nor Bramina knew how to properly skim them.

I found myself thinking of the times I skimmed stones with Hannah and Tim in Vang Vieng, Laos.

 

The rest of the walk entered deeper and deeper (quite literally) into boggy territory. The guide book had warned us of two boggy areas, but there were more like twenty continuous stretches of bog land, which muddied our shoes and gave rise to quite a few squeals when suddenly we found ourselves calf deep in wet, sucking, mud.

At one point, we were worried about time, and the fact that the bridge promised on the map, which marked the half way point where we'd cross the river onto a forest path, was no where in sight. Bramina suggested we cross the river at one of it's shallower points, but looking at the current and how wide it was and the fact that we had no idea how deep it was made me unwilling to try that.
At one point, however, Bramina spotted a part of the river that seemed shallow enough all the way through, with not very strong currents. We headed out onto the pebble beach leading to the river - and then I spotted two white houses, which were landmarks along the trail that came just before the bridge.

We decided to keep going along the guide-book-path, and headed up the bank toward the houses, walking straight into the boggiest bit of the walk yet, which turned my turquoise water proof trousers brown with mud and completely covering the sharks and divers on my socks with sludge.

We pushed through, and finally, finally, came to the bridge.

Such a relief.

The forest path back was so easy - clearly marked and straight forward. As we walked, our conversation somehow meandered to Jesus and whether or not he experienced all the normal teenage problems like pimples, and whether he cried as a baby and whether he went to the toilet. Well, I sort of brought Him up, and Bramina, hearing my ruminations, said, 'Wait, so you actually believe he was a real person?!'

'Of course,' I said. (Why would I believe in something I wasn't deeply convicted of as being true?)

Then I began saying that there was historical evidence for Jesus' time on earth, and that it could never be a question of whether He existed, but rather one of whether He is divine, or was simply of 'good teacher' who happened to also claim He was God.

At that point, Bramina said 'Stop Miriam, don't talk about this or I will answer back and we'll have an argument.'

I wanted to finish my sentence/thematic argument, but Bramina said 'No really, don't.'

And so that was that.

It made me sad that we can't talk about something so dear to my heart - or rather, my heart and my whole existence itself. There will always be a degree of separation between us, if we cannot have meaningful and respectful discussions over religion. I suppose it's much like religious discourse in bigger spheres than between friends - between politicians and in the media (where the word jihad is thrown around and no one really knows what it means), in Singapore, where we practice 'religious harmony' but really all we have is religious tolerance (I can't say I harmonise with Muslim or Hindu religions if I  don't really know about them and the deep meaning and faith behind their beliefs)...

We checked into our hostel, cheekily called 'Chase the Wild Goose', and met our hostel room mate - a sweet old man from Northern Ireland with eyes that twinkled and deep dimples in his cheeks. First thing after putting or things down - SHOWERS to wash all that bog mud off! I sluiced off the mud from my shoes and socks and trousers and legs with warm water and the christmas tree soap bar Nat gave me for Christmas.

If ever I indulged in a shower - that was it. I stayed under the steaming water until my hair was damp with condensation and my skin was pink with the heat, and then changed into my clean pajamas. Bliss.

Great Escapes 2016

On the bus ride to Norfolk I sat in front of two guys who were having the strangest but also most relate-able conversation. The Great Escapes were at Letton Hall, and are a end of Lent term youth camp equivalent.

We were sorted into our rooms, and quite soon after that we had dinner, The lovely catering team had made special arrangements for my meals - including a vegan shepherd's pie, a chickpea and sweet potato curry, a vegan pasta bake, copious amounts of muesli and bran flakes in oat milk for breakfast, and free access to the fruit stash. (apples all day every day)

Our first talk that night was by Pete Gaskell, who was covering a series on 2 Timothy for the duration of the camp, starting with our duty to guard the gospel.

On the second day we played the Wide Game, where you stick a sock in the back of your trousers/leggings/pants/shorts and try to keep it there, and pull socks from your opposing teams. You also have rubber bands, which are your lives, which you forfeit every time your sock is pulled, and you gain every time you pull a sock (and you can restock your lives at your teams base, so if, like me, you're rubbish at sock-pulling and are constantly being pulled, you can refuel) And then there are coloured bands, which are bombs, which you try to drop in your opposing teams bases without getting your sock pulled (which means you have to return to your base to get your life-band restored) And then there are eggs, which are hidden to be found, or stashed in other teams bases to be stolen.

All very complicated.

I realised quite quickly that I was rather terrible at sock pulling and ended up getting my sock pulled countless times. Probably the only thing I could do well was run really fast around people and avoid being caught and drop coloured band bombs in other bases.

Nonetheless, it was huge amounts of fun.

After the wide game most people went to watch rugby, but having no knowledge, or (frankly) inclination towards that sport, I went for a run instead. I passed an animal sanctuary, villages with strange sea-faring names like shipham and took a rest half way through leaning on a wooden gate. England is so big. Sometimes I have dreams that, like Forrest Gump, I start running one day and just keep going. Cambridge to Ely to Manchester to York to Edinburgh to Fort William and then when I get to the Duncansby Head Lighthouse at the tip of Scotland I turn and head back down again, all the way to Land's End, Penzance.

Rich gave two talks that day on God's Word - how we have a huge gulf between our selves and God because of Sin, and how Jesus steps in to bridge that gulf - and of course (John 1:1) Jesus is the Word, made flesh.

On Day 3 we went for a long walk around the nearby fields, which resulted in terribly muddy shoes and meeting an Au pair from Canada.

Throughout the camp we also did an unstructured, small group discussion on Jonah. This was probably my favourite part of the camp! (it even beat the pasta bake) My group became rather stuck over the concept of God 'changing His mind' over Ninevah. He seemed to first threaten total destruction, and then relent and forgive. However, when we factored in God's omniscience - the fact that He knew the Ninevites could repent - His initial threat seemed both to make sense since it catalysed repentance, and also to not make sense, since it meant God in essence went back on his word. And surely God can't lie?

We talked in circles round this problem. How? Why? Justice? Mercy? Foreknowledge? Free Will? So many of our fundamental questions about God's character emerged.

The funny thing was, however, that we were only looking at one facet of God's character. God is a tripartite God - he exists constantly and inextricably in relation with Jesus and the Holy Spirit in the Trinity. And none of us had thought about Jesus.

When we realised we'd forgotten to remember Jesus, suddenly everything fell into place. Because if Jesus sacrifice many years later, God could forgive Ninevah and refrain from punishing them for their sins. Because the salvation promise of Jesus covers all the ages, God remained completely just - someone (Jesus) was still punished for sin - and yet also entirely merciful, in his forgiveness of Ninevah.

How apt, that we forgot Jesus. That is something that I do all too often, every day, in every decision and activity. I want to be a person who doesn't need a bracelet or a charm to remind me to wonder what Jesus would do in every situation. I don't want to be a person who only remembers to pray when everything seems to unravel, or disaster strikes.

Remember Jesus.

23/3/2016

My biggest successes today were getting my watch fixed, finding comfortable and fitting jeans in a charity shop, and getting grandma to eat three proper meals and a snack today.

As I walked up from the bus stop, I passed an elderly man putting groceries into his car and mumbling. Just as I passed him, I heard him say 'Forgive me, I was talking to myself.' I felt like telling him that I do that too, often. And so did Albert Einstein.

Grandma had lost the remote control, and after hunting around for it in the lounge for a while, she discovered it under the throw she had draped on the arm chair.

'Ah ha,' she said, in a Transylvanian drawl, ' I have found ze controller. When you have lost something, always look for it under a big blanket'

On to my third bowl of muesli.

22/3/2016

It was the brightest spring day today. Grandma and I walked down to the village shop to get some prunes, washing powder, and then to the butcher's to get porridge oats. On the way back, we took a detour through the field behind the primary school, and stopped multiple times to bird watch, and listen to the different sounds a robin, great tit, chaffinch and dove make. It is a personal desire of mine to learn the names of as many trees and birds and flowers as I can while I'm here.

Before lunch, Auntie Sarah, Grandma and I sat in the garden with our chairs turned towards the sun. I was reading Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. Auntie Sarah was sorting through the christmas cards to Auntie Sheila from the people who hadn't realised she'd died. Grandma was on the phone to one of Auntie Sheila's old friends, talking about their childhood of collecting blackberries during their Sunday School Class and walking to the phone box at the end of the lane with a handful of coins in order to make a phone call. I was sucked into the heady, spice-scented world of Yemen, and the little flies that kept landing on my yellow jacket (perhaps they thought it was a sunflower) added to the illusion that I'd been lifted from East Anglia to the Middle East.

“I am in another world, a world where faith and prayer are instinctive and universal, where not to pray, not to be able to pray, is an affliction worse than blindness, where disconnection from God is worse than losing a limb.” 

― Paul Torday, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Auntie Sarah took the line from Grandma after a while, and talked to Pat about Auntie Sheila's death. Apparently it was an infection that took her whole body, and they couldn't operate to safe her because her heart was too weak anyway. She told the doctor, 'I'm in your hands, but I'm also in God's hands.' 

I never really knew what exactly caused her death until Auntie Sarah told Pat. I suppose it didn't matter to me. In my head Auntie Sheila's death hadn't been a result of malignant virus or bacteria, it had been the final ascension of a woman who was already so close to heaven. Jesus said to her, definitively, 'Come to me' and she did. How she did didn't seem to matter that much.

Later that day I finished Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, and discovered the magic that is alpro soya chocolate pudding on toast. 

Release

I woke up from a dream about looking for a bathroom in a dusty, dark manor-house. 

This song has been my playlist for the past 3 days (Thank you Ching)

I was writing about Lancelot Andrews yesterday when I looked at my wrist and stopped. You know how baby skin is smooth and old - person skin is criss crossed and wrinkled? I realised that I could see those tiny lines on my skin. And then it hit me - this is an almost twenty year old arm. How wonderful, how strange. Have I lived enough? How much longer do I have? What will my arm look like in my grave? Is it normal for a twenty year old to think about life, death, the after-life, and whether there are bicycles in heaven?

I think I have discovered my super power - On Sunday when I was skyping Hannah she asked me if I spent a lot of time by myself, and I said yes. Then she said, 'Don't you get bored?' And I realised: no, I don't, I really love spending time alone, writing in my diary, reading about weird and wonderful things, perfecting my headstands, going for a run, watching a movie in a theater with just 5 other people who are mostly watching movies alone like me, having space to dance in my room to 'Without you' (today I was dancing and looked out of the window to see someone looking in). I do get lonely, occasionally, but then I turn that into something else - like a cycle ride to the grocery store to get good ingredients for a new dish. And how can I be lonely for long when the world around me is full of love, when there's the friendly Australian maintenance guy who fixed my lights and winks at me whenever we pass, when I have friends who are up for a spontaneous cycle to Grantchester or a falafel lunch, when God whispers to me through His word and His earth, and when I have the assurance of family and friends over on the other side of the planet thinking and praying for me.

Yesterday I spent most of my time reading or trying to read Lancelot Andrew's sermons and criticism on Donne. Drained and curled up in the JCR with a book of Donne's poems, I checked through my emails just to see if anything new had come it. Down the list, I came across 'Reading for Prac Crit class'

'Oh dear.

That class was today.

That class was hours ago.'

I'd completely forgotten to go for a class (which I actually really enjoy!)

That night I prayed probably the simplest prayer in a long time.

'Dear God,

I'm so tired. So so so tired. Help me rest, help me work.

Amen.'

5/3/2016

Today the air smelled like pancakes as I cycled back from ballet class.

Just Love: Food Justice

Romans 12:1-2

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Last term, I was involved with Just Love in holding an evening where we simulated as much as we could the conditions of worshiping in a persecuted, secret church, like they have in North Korea, Syria and many other countries worldwide. This term, we did an event on Food Justice,to see how our eating habits can or can not reflect the love and compassion and responsibility God shows us and commands us to show to others.

Eating with other people in mind - loving your neighbour

First, David talked about the impact of our food choices on our neighbour. He outlined the terrible world epidemic we have in terms of physical hunger:

"There's 900 million people in the world who don't have enough food, and there are another two billion that are malnourished [...] That's 40% of our world [...] That's not fair."

One problem causing this is certainly the unfair distribution of food. But another big problem is food scarcity itself. So much of our land is used to grow crops, but many of those crops are used to feed livestock, rather than people - nearly 40% of the world's grain goes into livestock. We  know that as you go along the food chain, energy is lost. By feeding animals what could be our food (and not just feeding them, but overfeeding them and force feeding them certain crops so that they develop in ways that make them more profitable - aka. us 'feeding' these animals is not kindness) we waste huge amounts of energy in calories. In fact, if all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million.

David (an economist) did some math and found out that: "If we all became vegetarians, we would have 60% more calories reaching our plates, which means we could feed 36% of the 40% who go without food in our world." And this was despite the fact that food distribution problems still exist. Quite simply - what you put on your plate has an impact on what someone somewhere else could be putting on their plate. God calls us to 'love our neighbours', and gives a good example of how we can do that in Isaiah 58:10 'If you give some of your own food to [feed] those who are hungry and to satisfy [the needs of] those who are humble, then your light will rise in the dark, and your darkness will become as bright as the noonday sun.'

David also talked about water scarcity. When I was younger, one of my greatest fears was dying from thirst, and on our family road trips to Desaru (which took about 3 hours) I would bring multiple water bottles - just in case. And water is becoming a huge issue - the Aral sea has shrunk to a trickle, a drought in the Middle East contributed to the instability in Syria and its refugee crisis, and California was in a drought as David spoke. And yet, even in drought-stricken California, 80% of their water was going into largely animal agriculture.

It isn't surprising that animal agriculture takes up so much of California's water, however, because meat is notoriously water-intensive to produce. 1 beef burger equates to 3 months of showering, 6 months worth of flushing the toilet, and approximately 8 years of not drinking water. It sounds ridiculous, because it is. It is ridiculous that we try to conserve water by turning off our taps early and taking shorter showers, when one meal could so easily undermine all our efforts to live responsibly. In comparison to a omnivorous diet, a plant-based diet consumes 1/5 to 1/10 the amount of water.

Another interesting thing that wasn't mentioned was thinking about the workers who are exploited by the animal agriculture industry. Many workers are immigrants who are worked mercilessly hard for minimal pay, in unsafe conditions. The Human Rights Watch published an article quoting a poultry worker from Arkansas: “I hung the live birds on the line. Grab, reach, lift, jerk. Without stopping for hours every day … after a time, you see what happens. Your arms stick out and your hands are frozen. Look at me now. I’m twenty-two years old, and I feel like an old man.”

And a hog worker from North Carolina "I just couldn’t take the pain anymore. Three times I slipped and fell on the greasy floor. The first time I went to the clinic, and they told me I just hurt my pride and to go back to work. The last time I fell, the clinic sent me back to work again.” [A few days later, a hospital diagnosed this worker with herniated disc.]

The demand for meat is an incentive for corporations to push for faster work, cheaper labour, to 'boost productivity' and meet demand, while keeping prices lower in order to remain competitive. And demand comes from anyone who consumes animal products. Our food supports the cruelty of these corporations in their treatment of fellow humans, and keeps our brothers, who we should be loving, in soul-destroying, unsafe, exploitative work.

Eating with yourself in mind - our bodies as God's temple

Next, Will (who's been vegan for years and therefore is a good example of its effects beyond immediate changes) talked about how our food can affect our health. Well. That goes without saying.

He examined how our Edenic diet was a vegan one and drew an inference from that, which was that God intended humans (in their sinless state) to eat vegan diet. He highlighted that our bodies are built more similarly to herbivores than carnivores - our 'canines' are not long or sharp enough to bite and tear as those of carnivores, our saliva is alkaline like herbivores and unlike carnivores, and our gut is 14-17 times longer than our torsos, like herbivores, whilst carnivores have guts 4-7 times longer than their torsos.

Our consumption of meat only entered the picture after the Great Flood. My initial theory about that was that God, caring for his people, provided them a way to sustain themselves in a world which had just been submerged, and therefore edible plants would not have had enough time to flower and bear fruit. I was talking to Tim before Just Lunch one day, and he had a different interpretation, which was that after the Fall in Genesis 3, where God curses Mankind, that wasn't the end of our punishment for eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. That in fact us eating meat was another stage of our punishment for Sin, I'm not too sure exactly how he came to that conclusion, but I do see how it could make some sense. Since we begun to eat meat, humans have always struggled with cognitive dissonance, something I wrote about before. That broken relationship between our mind and our actions seems to mirror the break between Man and Creation, man and woman, and Man and God that happened following the Fall. Anyway, this is me rambling a little, and wondering. But the main thing is: a plant-based diet was God's original and perfect design for humans.

From the beginning of Creation, Will then looked at the very end of the ages, when God makes everything new: a new heaven and a new earth. This Paradise is anticipated in Isaiah 11, where: 'The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox' If the Edenic diet was vegan, and the Heavenly diet will be, living in the interim with our minds and behaviour straining towards a perfect paradise seems to me a natural response to desiring God.

Health was also something Will talked about, since God tells us that our bodies are His temple, and we should glorify God in our earthly bodies. Many Christians see this as a reason why we avoid drug abuse, excessive or unmoderated consumption of alcohol, smoking, and other things that have adverse effects on our health. However, meat has terrible effects on our long term health (remember the shock of finding out that bacon increases the risk of cancer?) and so do other animal products. In countries with the highest consumption of dairy, there are also the highest rates of osteoporosis, because milk leaches calcium from your bones because of its acidity. The touted 'health benefits' of animal products are far far outweighed by their health detriments, but, like in the 'smoking is healthy for you' adverts of the 20th century, corporations can dictate the message which reaches us, creating the tragic paradox of nations and continents literally eating themselves to death.

In contrast, 90-97% of all heart disease (the biggest killer in the USA)can be prevented or reversed by a vegan diet, and by replacing dairy with soy milk, chances of breast cancer falls 60%, and that of prostate cancer falls 43%.

Giving our bodies the nutrition it deserves is completely possible on a vegan diet, with some googling and research:

Protein (although you don't need to worry so much about protein, since our culture places an unhealthy emphasis on getting more protein, which can have problems in itself, whether you get it from animal or plant based sources)
Calcium
Iron

and lots more. God has provided us with beautiful, nutritious food in the form of plants and grains and fruit to meet our nutritional needs.

Eating with joy in mind - We are not given spirits of timidity

Kerry then talked about how food is so integral in community and joy and one of the greatest fears about changing your eating habits to one that reflects your beliefs about justice would be the difficulty it would pose to your loved ones, friends, and community, and of course, that (we all thought it once) it might taste bland, boring, and bad. Jesus was big on communal eating - he fed the 5000 and ate with his disciples countless times. Even today, we eat communion (it's name already highlighting the connective role of food) to metaphorically represent Jesus' sacrifice of His body for us, and to highlight our thanks for it - a highly involved process that reminds us of our relationship with God.

Eating a vegan diet does not have to cut you off from friends and family. When I was at home, I would eat what my family ate, sans animal products. My Mum usually cooks a few dishes and a base of rice, and I'd just pick from the vegetable dishes. Offering to cook with her gave me precious time to talk to her and spend time with her and also help to ensure there was one vegan option, even if it were just some broccoli.

However, eating a vegan diet certainly does not mean you only eat home cooked food. Many restaurants have delicious vegan options, and even if they don't, a polite smile and request and often they are happy to provide something for you (for example, when I asked the chef at Itsu if I could have their 'Greens, Grains, and Glory' Bowl without the egg, he happily asked if I'd like 2 vegetable dumplings instead!) Even better, you could call in advance just to check with the place you're eating at what options they have, and discuss what they could do if they don't currently have something on their regular menu.

Delicious vegan food is everywhere, and vegan substitutes for conventionally animal product-based foods like ice cream, cheese and eggs are available. Simple swaps make things less confusing (almond/soy//oat/rice milk instead of dairy milk, hummous/vegan cheese/nutritional yeast instead of dairy cheese, flax or chia eggs/nut butters/bananas in place of chicken's eggs, coconut cream instead of dairy cream, soy/cashew/coconut based ice creams or banana nice cream instead of dairy ice creams - or you could just go for sorbet! - the  possibilities are endless!)

Delicious vegan blogs are every where too.

And perhaps what resounded most deeply with me is how much eating a plant-based diet can change your relationship with food, from one of guilt and restriction to one of joy and abundance. God created food, and means for us to enjoy just as he enjoyed it on earth with his disciples. However, today's diet/aesthetic culture has made food an enemy to some, or something to be strictly manipulated and controlled for our own image. We eat, and don't eat, and binge, and purge, and fear that one extra banana will somehow result in folds of fat. But God doesn't want us to live in fear. He has come that we may have life, and have it to the full! Simply because eating a plant-based diet is healthier, and plants are more easily digested by your body and therefore move through your digestive tract faster, and have generally less fat in them than meat products, the feelings of bloating, and the fear of eating 'too much' fades away.

I must admit, that sometimes I wonder, as I reach for my eleventh banana of the day, if I will 'grow fat' from it. But, in a way I don't quite understand, by choosing to eat a plant based diet, food is no longer an enemy, food is a friend. Food is just doing what God made it to do-nourish.


Eating with the Earth in mind - loving God's creation

I spoke about the environmental impact of our food choices. I don't think I ever seriously understood the terrible impact of our food on our environment until I watched the documentary Cowspiracy. (which can be found on Netflix, and even on youtube if you search hard for a full length version!) I've always had a love for God's creation (I used to talk to flowers. I still do.) which I think is a love that most people have, which comes out when we admire a beautiful sunset, or a majestic waterfall, or appreciate a cool breeze on a hot day. This love is something that I think comes from God (like ever good gift!) who created and therefore loves everything.

To love and care for God's creation is both our duty and an act of worship in response to the glory of God. Psalm 19:1 tells us that 'the heavens displays the glory of God' and so does the rest of His Creation. Our love for nature is an act of worship because it shows an irresistible reverence and love for the God whose fingerprints are all over Creation.

Furthermore, Genesis 2:15 is God's commandment to us to 'work and take care' of this world. In other words, we are God's stewards, or as I like to think of it, God's gardeners. Even the sometimes misinterpreted commandment from God to 'subdue nature' is a call to stewardship, since it stems from the Hebrew word Kabash, which means to serve (by force if necessary). Ultimately, we are caring for something that is not our own, something that is infinitely precious in the eyes of God who created it.

Unfortunately, many of our food practices cause us to disregard our stewardship, without us even knowing. Animal agriculture is the leading cause of rain forest destruction, and is responsible for 91% amazon deforestation. An estimated 110 species have been lost from rain forests already. And it is not just the land that is suffering, but our oceans, which are estimated to become fishless by 2048 since every 1kg of fish also comes with 5kg of by kill (which includes dolphins, sharks, sea turtles and more beautiful creatures) The animal agriculture industry produces more Greenhouse Gases than all transport industries combined. It is no wonder that in Romans 8:22 Paul writes that 'creation [has been] groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time'.

The hope of God's new creation is a beacon of hope in the midst of the mess we've made of His creation, however I believe our duty as God's stewards still stands, and in our eating we can make changes to fit that role. If whole world went vegan, agricultural related carbon emissions would fall 17%, methane emissions would fall 24%, nitrous oxide by 21% by 2050. And even though that might not seem likely, it does not mean that we should not try. God calls us not to be conformed to the pattern of this world. And truth be told, it is not a question of whether you make a difference, You already make a difference. It is simply a matter of what kind.

Eating for the animals - Opening the sluice gates of God's love

Finally, Tim talked about the ethical concerns of of food. He gave a wonderful analogy about how he finds God opening the sluice gates of his heart to pour out love. God loves us with such a deep and abundant love, that it inevitably overflows in our lives, to things, places, people we didn't think we'd love without God's love in us. Tim talked about God opened the sluice gate in his heart for the Homeless, and the sluice gate for the environment, and then, some where along the line, the sluice gate for animals, even though  he had never considered himself anywhere near an animal lover.

We need to live out the compassion of God in daily experience, just as Romans 12:1-2 (at the beginning of this post), calls us to. Our lives as an offering to God should reflect the theology and philosophy of Christian living in every breathing, waking, sleeping, moving moment. How is it possible to reconcile factory farming, theologically or philosophically, with our concept of a loving Creator God?

Tim said he realised that the way he was eating before becoming vegan, was a way in which he had absolutely no philosophy and theology of animals. The only way to reconcile a loving God with the cruelty of factory-farming is that - to not think about it. But it is important to think about it, because it forms such an involved part of our lives.

Tim talked about his desire to live a life of 'totalising compassion'. Today I heard someone say that compassion is love in action. That means watching a cow screaming, crying, dancing in terror and ramming into the walls of its faeces strewn enclosure because it knows (and they know) that it is being brought to be slaughtered. That means realising that milk is a result of an industry that tears new born calves away from their mothers (and they have a mother-calf bond) and takes the milk meant for a baby cow for us. That means confronting the truth that the meat you eat was once a living creature, infinitely loved by God, every hair or feather or scale on its back crafted by him, and its life was cut short for your appetite. And it means taking steps to change.

It doesn't mean if you eat one chicken's wing, or an egg, that you can no longer eat with compassion in mind. Failure is normal. Failure is fallen, as we are. But Christ, and His love and compassion should be the goal we strive for and the model we live by. And so every action we do with justice and compassion in mind is a way of worshiping Him. When Isaiah 11 imagines our future, where: 'The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them [...] They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.' We should live that out now, purifying our hearts and habits as we prepare for Christ to come again.

He is making EVERYTHING new.

Quickly come, Lord Jesus.

Heard and dreamed

I just heard someone say 'I'm just going to have some of this fat-free gluten-free water'. Hmmm.

Last night I had a dream that I was learning to canoe (for some reason the rhythm of paddling was the same waltzing rhythm of a balance) and ended up together with my canoe instructor. Did not see that one coming. He was Australian. I have probably been watching too much Youtube. Or it's last years binge sessions of Beauty and the Geek catching up on me all of a sudden.

Yesterday on the cycle to Grantchester I passed a little boy who was trailing behind his Mum and brother. 'George! Come one!'

A while later, I squeezed past a woman and her dog who was wriggling through a patch of grass. 'Come on, George!'

Current life situation: Trying to decide whether or not I can last one more week without doing my laundry

Smell

"It dawned on me that ‘gone’ isn’t some throwaway term or vast black hole by which you can define the absence of someone; it’s the little empty spaces, like a vacant armchair or the slippers by their bed or a redundant coat hanging off the end of the stairs." -Amy Peckham-Driver

I caught Auntie Sheila's scent in the pages of her 'living light' book, and immediately bent my head to inhale.

Treasure.

02/03/16

Lying in bed with tummy pains because I went for a run only half an hour after eating half a tray of apple crumble (when I broke it down in my head I thought 'It's basically just two apples and some oats. What could possibly go wrong?')

I've just booked a Caledonian Sleeper to Fort William, and a hostel for two nights there, and doing all these adult things while my tummy is saying 'you fool' makes me wish I had parents here to do it all for me. But this is growing up and this is using a debit card and this going back to the Highlands for the first time after Auntie Sheila died.

Another semi-adulty thing I did today was fix my bicycle brake, and sign up for my room next year.(I'll be next to Natalia, Annika and Alex hooray! And I'll have my own bathroom!)

On the way back from a lecture on Dryden (in which Becky and I pondered the possibility that our lecturer is pregnant) it began raining, then sleeting, and then snowing! I tried to keep my eyes open to see as much snow as possible, but it wasn't long before some flew into my eye and I had to blink rapidly to remain a safe cyclist.

Have Bike Will Travel x Lackford Lakes

Alright, so this is cheating a little, since I didn't cycle to Lackford Lakes. But I was intending to cycle to the train station to catch my train to Bury, where I'd meet Auntie Sarah to go to Lackford Lakes. But I walked instead.

Which was why I missed my train by the smallest smidgeon of time.

And therefore why I was standing in the cold train station for about an hour before Auntie Sarah saved me.

We got back to Grandma's too late to get to church, and so we had lunch instead (so much bread yum) and then drove out to Lackford Lakes.

Lackford Lakes is a nature reserve in Suffolk, a quiet oasis of lakes and their islands, and reeds and little observation huts. In the visitor's centre you can look out to a bird feeder swarmed by blue tits and great tits, and a confused looking pheasant pecking about underneath, and we even spied a red-breasted robin. In the nearby pond two geese and a few ducks were dipping about for pond weed, and from the pond-cam which fed a television in the visitor's centre you could see the webbed feet of the paddling ducks as the swam near the camera.

 We began walking towards the lakes, in a fortunate burst of sunshine. The Lakes are so still, the only sound to be heard is the wind in the reeds that flank the waters - nothing else. I'd forgotten how quiet the world could be. It's never this quiet in Cambridge, where there is always somewhere to be, someone to see, something to finish or something to find. In the Lakes you can't help but think "None of that, what matters is now, what matters is beauty. Not my beauty, since I'm not what matters here. What matters here is everything I see and nothing at the same time.'

I picked up a stone with a thumb-shaped indent in it's centre, scooping into gravelly white rock, with a circumference of smooth dark flint.

As we got near to the carpark, we emerged from the shade of the woodland into a small space of sun light. Grandma, who was walking ahead, stopped in the sun and tilted her face up, her arms slightly away from her body - repose.