Philomena

I wathced Philomena, the film based on Martin Sixsmith book.

If you haven't watched, I highly recommend it. Though prepare for an emotional roller-coaster.

For me the issue was that the nuns were effectively stealing these children away from single mothers and selling them to rich American Catholic families. They judged the women, or in some cases girls who became pregnant and treated them cruelly. They did not even give the mothers the chance to say good by to their children. They lied to get out of facing the consequences of their actions.

The Catholic Church and other churches too are facing a legal actions because of the child sex-abuse by clergy and many people seeking compensation. However, it strikes me that they also should be facing the consequences of this type of crime against unwed mothers and their children who were forcibly parted and who were deprived of the chances of reuniting. This should be called what it is - CHILD ABDUCTION.

You, reader, are hopefully not responsible for actions as extreme as those described in this film, but it strikes me, that at the root of these actions was the view that sex was sin, and so the nuns believed that what they were doing in the belief that it was justified by the supposed sinful actions of the "girls". One wrong is not corrected by the perpetration of another wrong, and in the grand scheme of things, I believe that what the nuns did in the name of Christ and the Church was FAR MORE SINFUL than the supposed sin of the "Philomenas" - even if they enjoyed the sex. I hear someone saying - one sin is as bad as another and they all make us unworthy of Salvation - to which I say - that is nonsense. Are you really saying that someone who steals a few items from a shop is as bad as a mass murderer?

My concern is that we feel justified in our assessment of the perceived wrong of others to justify our own actions - we perceive someone to be lazy and thus deserving of their desperate situation, and refuse to give them anything, even though we could afford to. We make assumptions about a person based on the way they dress, their accent, or some other peripheral issue and then judge them. Not long ago I saw an article in the Evening Standard about a man who due to undignosed bipolar disorder, was singing a Rihanna song out loud on a tube train. Other passengers though it was hilarious and without his permission recorded a video which they posted and which went viral on YouTube. Them man fortunately was subsequently diagnosed and is getting the help he needs, but that video was an embarrassment to him. I wonder how the original poster would have felt if the man had been so mortified (the word comes from the Latin mors - death) him that he commit suicide? Maybe the poser felt entitled since the man was in a public space, and in the apparent opinion of the poster, deserving of ridicule.

This morning in Church there was an interesting prayer of confession which really struck me - I'd like to share it with you. (Slightly modified)

Forgive me, God of healing and humility, when I use the power of the crowd (or any other leverage at my disposal) to isolate and demonise those who are different, vulnerable or unwell. 
May I never exclude where I can embrace, or hurt where I can help but follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, the Saviour and Lord of all. Amen

Toys

Some boys like to play with trucks
Other boys like dolls
Some boys practice rugby rucks
Others, gymnastic flicks and rolls,
All that could be said of girls,
Some like their hair short, others in curls

A toy’s a toy, a plaything, a tool,
A thing that they learn with, at home or in school.
One child wears jeans and a t-shirt,
Another, a blouse and skirt,
Whether girl or boy, it doesn’t really matter
Help the child feel good, whether thin, or fatter.

“Your gender-blender agenda,” I hear you declaim,
“It’ll bring us all down! it’s such a shame!”
I don’t know this agenda of which you speak,
What I know is, God made us all unique.
Now let me tell you that’s not my game,
I don’t want all children to be the same.

Boxing or Ballet,
That should be A-okay,
Doesn't matter what people say,
They don't make you lesbian, bi, straight or gay.
Many achievements towards which children aspire,
Whoever they are, let them do as they desire.

Some people take toys out of boxes, then
They put their children in,
Nicely labeled, each one to define
Girl aged six, boy aged nine.
Toys can fire a child’s imagination,
Help them discover, they’re a special creation.

© J. Fairlamb 28-12-14.

Lady Bishops

Wrote the original version on Sunday. This is a hopefully improved edition:

In the C of E
Now a lady, a bishop can be,
For many years this has been a source of much debate,
But now it's been accomplished, was it worth the wait?

Now we can follow our vocation
Without barrier or equivocation
To pursue the Spirit's flow
Whether woman or fellow

That said, the talking is not at an end,

Some see this as a dangerous trend
For them, the notion of women's leadership —
Nothing but an ego-trip.

As for me, I think it's good
Things are moving forward as they should,
An evolving Church in an evolving world,
Helping the flag of faith to be unfurled

Time for Christians to get real
Helping the poor find their next meal
Not wagging fingers — don't do this or that
But meeting people "where they're at"

All through life there are issues
About which a side we choose
Jesus calls us to love God and one another
Treating everyone as sister or brother.



Silence. Noise. Sound.

Silence

Is there really such a thing as                             silence?

It depends on what you mean by                       silence.

A complete absence of sound? Impossible     silence!

Being quiet, not talking. Realisable                    silence!

Noise

Sharp! Painful!

Rock-concert - throbbing loudspeakers

Bellowing out the BOOM, BOOM, BOOM of the base drum and

Ear-splitting screeches of the electric guitar and

Vocalists’ vicious incomprehensible vocals.

Fields of war! Sonic boom as the fighter jets break the sound barrier.

BANG, BANG, BANG as bombs land and devastate

Ratatatat of gunfire, from semi-automatic weapons.

Screams of pain, fear and grief.

Harsh shouts of combatant commanders barking out orders.

A busy city. Constant rumble and moan of industry and transportation.

Shouts of sirens, blasts of hooters and the BEEP, BEEP, BEEP of reversing HGV’s

Ring tones and pings of busy smartphones.

YAK, YAK, YAK of one-sided conversation

Talk on the radio, Talk on the TV.

Words by the million, but not much listening

Having much to say but not actually saying much.

Inside my head!

like a hectic cityscape,

Worries blaring out like an abandoned car-alarm.

Sound

The gentle trickle of water as the brook flows over stones and between the bulrushes.

The occasional plop plop of a trout surfacing to catch a flying insect, or

Dabchick dipping beneath to catch a minnow and the

Rustle of a squirrel hopping in the high grass.

The whoosh and whistle of the wind bending boughs and branches in the forest and on the farms.

The percussion and pitter-patter of raindrops colliding with the ground and with the water.

The crash and bang of thunder as flashes of lightening brighten the horizon.

The cry and squawk of the cheeky seagulls circling and searching for scraps on the sand.

The splish-splash of waves landing on the stoney shoreline, one after the other.

The squeals of delight from children as their toes touch the cool sea water.

Inside my head!

The tuneful lullaby that relaxes,

A calm assurance that God is in control and He loves me.

Open letter to Mr Rio Ferdinand concerning the "PARTICIPATION MESSAGE"

Dear Mr Ferdinand,
I watched you in your interview with Jonathan Ross on October 25th. You said something that I felt could not go unchallenged.

You said that you were irritated when you hear teachers say, "It is not winning but participation that's important" or words to that effect, and said that winning is the important thing.

I do not deny that teachers, at least many good teachers do say that participation is the primary thing, and I would like to set out the reasons why, in my opinion, this is the right thing to say.

To begin with let me say that the "Participation Message" is not about an excuse to slack off and not try one's best . This was how you represented the Participation Message on the show but that is simply not the case.

We need to firstly put the Participation Message in its proper context. I would be very surprised if the captain or manager of a professional team were to say to the players "The important thing is that you participate and the final score is not that important." Indeed, your careers stand or fall by those statistics. That is the world of professional sportsperson.

However, the context where the Participation Message is appropriate IS SCHOOL and growing people, not only academically, but physically and emotionally and socially.

I would say that the Participation Message is not only appropriate but it is essential.

It is a motivational message. It speaks of valuing every individual no matter who they are, and believing that every individual can achieve and develop. When it comes to physical education, we actually want every student, whether they're potential Premier League material or not, to associate sport and exercise with fun and maybe something worth keeping up into their adulthood.

The Participation Message says that even if you know that this sport or activity is not your forté, and others will beat you, you can still enter into it with a determination to do your very best and that when you have finished, even when the scoreline goes against you, you can still be proud of the effort you put in. This not only benefits those individuals may be overwhelmed by the opposition but it benefits the strong too as if those who felt overwhelmed thought, "what's the point, we are going to lose anyway" they may be present on the field but they won't be playing their best as the scoreline is a foregone conclusion. Therefore they won't present a challenge and the winners will come away with a hollow victory.

The Participation Message says recognise the strengths of others as well as your own and play to your strengths and let others play to theirs - that is team work.

The Participation Message says that defeat, losing, failure are an unavoidable part of life - we shall all experience failure at some point - BUT that does not make you a failure.

If you, as a child, are learning to ride a bike, you are bound to have a few spills as you get used to coordinating to balance and propel yourself forward. When you fall off the bike, stand up and get back on. Winning takes perseverance and willingness to keep trying after we've "failed".

The Participation Message says we all rely on one another to progress and achieve. This is very clearly seen in team sport. An individual can never succeed against a team. A football team needs strikers and goalkeepers. And within any team you are going to have those who are more and less competent.  Football teams also have reserve players ready and at the peak of fitness to go in if one of the regular players is injured. Do we say that the reserve player is a loser because she wasn't selected as an on-field player? Was she "not participating" because she wasn't playing? She might have felt that way, but if she showed up, she deserves the accolades along with other players. Now if truth be told, at a school level, especially in the primary years, participation is so important, that coaches do field players, who would not normally make the selection purely on a basis of ability. Again, this is because a teacher has to bear in mind MUCH more than the ultimate scoreline. For a child to feel INCLUDED is a very big deal. You ask any boy or girl who hears another child say "I'm not your friend any more" or " Go away, I'm not playing with you." As adults we may forget how deeply hurtful that was when it happened to us. For children, participation is important.

To quote Rudyard Kipling's famous poem "If" : "If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same"

Winning is fun, and every child should taste a victory, even if it's a personal victory, from time to time. Winning is itself motivational.

However we should not try and sugarcoat the difficult experience of losing. We must not deprive a young person of the experience of losing just because you don't want them to feel sad because that experience is itself a learning experience, and ironically may prove motivational to some.

So as Rudyard Kipling says: We meet with TRIUMPH and DISASTER. (losing can be perceived as disaster).

Winning can be a false friend, as the one who wins may become complacent and perhaps overconfident and if the winning is an illusion created by well meaning adults who want a child to feel happy, then when the illusion is exposed as it often is,  the child's confidence and trust of the child is destroyed. In that sense, Triumph can be an imposter.

If momentary victory can lead to delusions of grandeur, so too momentary failure can lead to delusions of worthlessness.  Every victory and every loss is momentary.

It's nice to win at something, and we all like it when our team wins the cup, and we celebrated every Gold, Silver and Bronze medal won at the Olympics but let's be honest, if you're a sportsperson representing your country at international competition, you are already a winner, even if "on the day" you are not the winner.

A delusion of worthlessness is the FALSE BELIEF that you are worthless. It's bad enough when people accuse one another of being worthless but we believe that about ourselves it's life-sapping. In fact the delusion of worthlessness is a symptom of depression.

And it IS dangerous.

The Participation Message says to the individual child: You are VALUED. If I feel valued by others, it will make it less likely that I'll feel worthless.

Teachers are dealing with a variety of children with diverse needs and abilities. Among them will be some who have a limited life expectancy; quite a number have conditions such as Down Syndrome, cerebral palsy and autistic spectrum conditions and some may have sensory impairments.  When you see children such as these and even those without these challenges participating in a group activity, whether it's football or a school play, you can see the value of participation. How much it means to them that they're included.

A teacher has to be able to say to your eight year-old son, the same thing as they would say to any of his or her students and that is that participating is important.

Finally, but by no means least, the Participation Message is about HOW WE PARTICIPATE. We learn that we need to respect other participants and facilitators or in football terms other players and officials and to participate fairly, that is within the rules of the game. In short we need to be "good sports"

So, daft as it may sound to your pro-footballer ears, "It's not winning but participation that's important." Is an important message to give young people.

Yours sincerely,

John Fairlamb

Sunday Afternoon

I took a wander on my Honda
On a Sunday afternoon.
Headed North to High Beach
Of London, in easy reach.
Behold there in the Epping wood,
Is a small tea-hut stood.

Kawasaki, Suzuki, BMW,
Triumph, Moto-Guzzi, MZ
Bikes both old and new.
And amongst these stand their owners, proud.
Gathered there, quite a crowd.
To pass the time of day.

Bullying - what do we tell the children.

A few days ago, a friend on Facebook started a discussion in which she shared how she was dealing with her two 7 year-olds being bullied at school. She went to the school that is in Africa wearing this:

Well there were many comments that followed including one which I have heard before that, in effect says, tell the boys, or whoever the victim is to hit the bully and that will solve the problem. I responded at length as to why we definitely should not be encouraging a tit-for-tat response - here it is: (It was spread over a number of comments in the thread.

Yours is not an uncommon response to the problem of bullying . In fact I once heard a pastor give exactly this advice from the pulpit but I want to provide reasons why it is not advisable for an adult to advocate violent retaliation to a child. 

Reason 1 is practical: while children may find that hitting their bully has the desired effect, if the victim lacks the necessary strength to deliver a sufficiently strong punch , it may serve only to provoke the bully to violence (if the previous bullying was more verbal and emotional). or more violent if it had been physical. That hornets' nest of violence might be sufficient to put the children in hospital.

Reason 2 Not every victim of bullying is physically able to "hit back" and the inability to hit-back especially if the adult they have turned to for help has given this advice, is to live in a state of unannounced terror and loneliness and may make them more compliant with the bully or may result in the child committing suicide. or bullying themselves - i.e. self-harm.

Reason 3: A bully in my view is a childish version of abuse. Our advice to children if they are being abused is to TELL AN ADULT and that the adult has the responsibility to do something about it. The same should be true for bullying. How it is dealt with is different to dealing with an adult abusing a child but it is not the child or vulnerable person's responsibility to stop it happening.

Reason 4 : Let us assume that the advice is given and applied and with some measure of success. The victim hits his or her tormentor and so shocks them that the billing ceases immediately. What does the ex-victim take away from this experience? That when I am being given a hard time I must respond with violence. If they take that attitude into adulthood they will become violent individuals who will never learn to respond to conflict appropriately and could land up in court, like Oscar Pistorius, because they were taught from a young age to deal with threats themselves and not seek assistance. They may become domestic violence abusers, or even killers.

Reason 5: Hitting back is not how Christ has taught us to respond to persecution which is what bullying is. Jesus said if someone slaps you on the left cheek offer to them the right cheek too. I do not believe that Jesus is advocating accepting bullying but he most definitely is saying not to strike back. He said we should love our enemies and pray for our persecutors. I think that prayer is a POWERFUL weapon. Let's teach our children to wield the weapons of the word of God and prayer. These are two elements of the Christian soldier's spiritual armour: prayer and the Word. The servant of Elisha feared the enemy forces until he saw the BIGGER army of Angels that surrounded them. So we should pray and ask God to protect us and to help the bully so that they stop hurting other children. God loves that child and wants that child to have REAL friends not people who say they are friends because they fear the.bully.

Reason 6: I wear my "teacher hat". A child who bullies others - let's not label them , 'bully' is doing so to try and resolve an emotional need in themselves and it is the teacher's role to determine the need and equip the child on how to meet that need appropriately. A children who acting out violently towards others may themselves be a victims of violent abuse in their own homes. Threatening to hit such children if they continue to bully or actually hitting the child normalised the violent abuse they are receiving perhaps from a drunk parent. The bullying May be a cry for help.from a terrified child.

I realise reading the above that people may think that bullying is a childhood issue, and that it is one child bullying another - I am sorry to say that there are adult bullies too, and victims do not need to be children either, though sometimes adults bully children. We generally refer to this bullying as ABUSE. I also want to point out that bullies do not necessarily use physical violence to control and manipulate their victim. 

I shall return to this but have to go and get my laundry.