Tradition - a story for children, young and old

This is based on an old apocryphal story. I told this version in church last week. 

There was once a small kirk in the countryside. There was an old woman who lived in a cottage next door. Mrs G was a sort of caretaker or beadle. In return for looking after the building she was given her cottage rent free.
In those long ago days mice were a big problem and to keep them under control most people had a cat. This old lady was no different. She had a big cat called Meg who lived most of the time in the church.
The people who came to the church loved to see Meg. They would stroke her and pet her as she went round greeting them during a service.
Then one day they got a new minister. Mr James was straight from a preachers college and he was quite serious. Everyone liked him and he liked the people in the village but every time he took a service he started sneezing.
Outside the church he was fine but when he went inside he had a sneezing problem.
The doctor in the village knew what the problem was. 
"Cats fur" he said. “You are allergic to cats”. 
He knew that Meg the old cat who kept the mice away from the church was always there during the service. It was Mrs G's cat.
The minister went to see Mrs G and told her of his problem
She offered to shut the cat in her cottage while the service was on and Mr James agreed. But the congregation complained. They had become very accustomed to Meg. They wanted to see her. They liked to pet her and stroke her as she walked round the church greeting them all during the sermon.
Mr James and Mrs G had an other chat and came up with a brilliant idea. She would tie her cat on a piece of string outside the front door of the church when the service was due to start and then all the congregation could greet Meg as they went into the church.
And so it was and everyone was happy. Eventually a big brass cat ring was fixed to the church wall just beside the front door to attach Meg's string.
Years passed. Mrs G died. Mr James moved on. Meg the cat died and was replaced with a new mouser. The caretakers cottage was demolished. But the tradition still continued. Before each service the caretaker would take the church cat and tie him or her on the ring fixed to the wall by the front door especially for the purpose.
And everyone had forgotten Mrs G and Mr James. All they remembered was that it wasn't a proper service without a cat tied with a piece of string to the brass ring on the outside wall.
And that is how traditions start. We do something and then forget why we are doing it and no longer think about what we are doing.
Our bible reading today is about Jesus teaching his disciples the prayer we call the Lords prayer.

Those familiar words can be so well known that we repeat them without thinking about their meaning. Today in our service will think about those words to look beyond the tradition.  

More summer reading THE BOOK OF WHY by Nicholas Montemarano

This novel is about Eric, the broken author of motivational self help books. Eric has made a fortune by telling people that that can do anything they want if they have a positive attitude and believe it possible. He is broken because, despite all that he has written and the inspirational lectures he has given, he could not stop his beloved wife from dying.

He retires from the world and lives in a remote cottage in Martha's Vineyard with only his wife's old German shepherd dog, Ralph, for company. There he is found by Sam, a woman who has read all his books and believes all he taught. Yet she too is battling problems of her own. Together they begin a journey that is a search for meaning. He tries unsuccessfully to write his next book which addresses the “why” question. This is the real question that Eric and Sam and struggling to answer, namely why is it that when people do all the right things crap still happens?

The book is dark journey through the sub-conscious emotions of desire, love and guilt. The plot is not straightforward and in places confusing The characters are not very likeable but become understandable as the story unfolds. The book explores the vacuous hype peddled by motivational life coaches and comes to the conclusion that theologians have long known that suffering is a mystery and the things that happen can afflict good and bad people alike. (Theodicy is the name for the study of the problem of evil in a world with a good God.)


For me one of the best parts of the book was the loving portrayal of the dog Ralph who is a constant feature through Eric's life: courtship, marriage and widowhood. At the end of the book the old dog dies and I was left wondering how Eric will live without Ralph. But that is part of the ambiguity of the ending.

More summer reading

Book review Matchbox Memories by Ray Kingfisher

It must be the weather - I have read more books in the last fortnight than....

Matchbox Memories is the story of an ordinary family with secrets. Ian has to leave his wife and young boys in the south east to go to Cumbria to look after the Aunt who brought him up while his uncle is in hospital. They have been Ian's parents since he was orphaned at five years old but he has never called them Mum and Dad. His mother is now suffering from Alzheimer's and needs constant supervision. Ian's siblings each have difficult situations in their own lives which they have been keeping secret from the rest of the family. As Ian lives with his mother for a week, caring for her while his father is in hospital, he learns much more about her and in moments of lucidity she hints at secrets from the past that he never knew.

The book is well written as it develops each member of the family as a rounded character. It deals sensitively and humorously with Alzheimer's and the bizarre behaviour and conversations that can take place, especially the continuous repetition of the same questions. Yet throughout this the author always treats the sufferer of the condition with dignity and respect. Ray Kingfisher must have either direct experience of living with Alzheimer's patients or has studied his subject carefully because this is one of the most perceptive fictional accounts that I have read. It accords with my experience of those with the condition and their carers. He portrays accurately the difficulties of being a carer of someone with serious memory loss. Alzheimer's could be a depressing subject matter but this is an uplifting book.

The novel has a moral about the importance of being open in family relationships because of the power of secrets to undermine trust. At the end of the novel the family members reveal to each other the hidden parts of their lives. There is a feeling of release of tension as they each begin to understand the burdens that the others had been carrying alone. There were so many secrets to emerge that I half wished for one member of the family who was not hiding a guilty secret!

It is a very enjoyable read with a warm bitter-sweet humour running through it. I recommend it highly.

Click here to buy this book on Amazon

Book review "An invisible sign of my own"

An Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimee Bender

This is a well written book with a lovely prose style but the plot is unbelievable and the characters are either not likeable or completely weird.

Mona, the main protagonist is a flawed, confused and withdrawn twenty year old who takes solace in numbers. Her relationships with other adults including her family is difficult. Her father became ill when she was ten and since then she has withdrawn more and more from life. She becomes a primary maths teacher and this novel tells of her experiences with the children and the way she reacts to their needs and how she is challenged and reacts as a result.

Mona is hired to be a primary school maths teacher. She has no teaching qualification but has always had a thing for numbers. Perhaps this could happen in the USA but most countries expect teachers to be college trained! She doesn't act rationally and does silly things. I thought the most stupid was taking an axe into her classroom to represent a number “7”. She hung it on her wall which of course led to it being in the hands of a child in a tantrum with disastrous results. She does have considerable success in enthusing young children to like numbers.

Instead of being sympathetic to Mona I found myself getting annoyed with her for her irrational and incomprehensible behaviour. She shows signs of mental disturbance by knocking on wood in time to her breathing when she gets stressed. Her next door neighbour is a former maths teacher who now runs a hardware store. He too has a strange relationship with numbers and is also mentally unbalanced.

Fiction is an opportunity to work out how other peoples minds work from the inside. This can work really well and offer unique insights into very different perspectives on the world. Perhaps the best example of this is “The curious incident of the dog in the night time” where the world is seen through the eyes of a person with autism. Unfortunately, I didn't find it worked here, perhaps because the plot was weak and confusing. Also I found the ending to the book unsatisfying as it didn't come to an end but stopped without a resolution. I didn't like the book but others have given it good reviews, so perhaps it was just me!

You can buy this book on Amazon by clicking here

Assertive or Aggressive - they are different!

It helps me sometimes to remember the principles behind assertive language which is in fact the opposite of aggressive language. This post is based on an email from a friend - I don't know the resources they used to write it.

Aggression in communication is complicated and always unhelpful. It gets divided into different types.

1) Open aggression in which one person is clearly and obviously violent and rude to another. This is quite an honest form of aggression, you can see who is verbally thumping you, it hurts and you know why. An example of an aggressive phrase - ‘you are an idiot’

2) Indirect aggression in which one person hides behind politeness acting like a sniper, and ducks and dives so much that though you feel you are being thumped it’s not immediately obvious why. An indirect aggressive phrase - ‘I see you have behaved as usual’

3) Passive aggression is harder to notice again. You know aggression is going on because you are feeling a bit thumped and wondering how to cope. It is passive, often expressed by the aggressor being all wounded and hurt. A passive aggressive phase ‘I’m made to feel no one loves me’
Assertive phrases are less ‘spikey’, not aiming to punish the other person but where one does feel aggrieved or hurt, one takes responsibility for that feeling and tries and help the other person help you. An assertive phrase might be, “When you tell me I’m an idiot I feel hurt, I would prefer it if you told me what you were upset about in a way I could respond to”. An aggressive person might say, ‘You’re and idiot too!’ (direct) or ‘I can see you've used your usual level of insight and judgement’ (indirect) or ‘I’m so hurt I’m going to run away and hide’ (passive).

The assertive person takes responsibility for their feelings, recognises their own rights to be treated respectfully, but also respects the other person’s rights to feel cross and express themselves. They seek for a ‘win win’ and not just the satisfaction of trying to make the other person squirm. For me passive aggression is always the hardest to resist giving and the hardest to cope with. I’m an absolute sucker for the sucker punch, ‘Just look how much you've hurt me!’ Unless I’m careful I feel anxious and guilty and then want to ‘out passive aggressive the other person’ by saying how much they have hurt me!

I believe it really is worth exploring assertiveness and I say this as someone who is hopelessly addicted to various convoluted, mostly passive aggressive, form of communication.

The internet is an arena where our interactions with others are visible for the world to see. It should be a forum in which we resist all violent language including open, indirect or passive aggression.

Engaging in a group.

A friend of mine was recently hurt in an exchange on-line by the comments made in an open group. 

Some comments made in the midst of a passionate and heated argument were far more nasty than if the participants had been face to face. 

At times like this I find the following notes on the difference between aggressiveness and assertiveness very helpful. They based on a website on cognitive behaviour. 

1) I am responsible for my own feelings. Other people can only have power over how you feel if you let them. Our choice remains foremost. Eleanor Roosevelt is quoted as saying, ‘no one can diminish you without your permission’.

2) People can’t make me do things such as, feel hurt, leave the group, feel diminished, be excluded. These are my choices. To choose not to be hurt is hard but liberating.

3) I am not responsible for how other people react to what I say. I am only responsible for what I say and feel. I can choose therefore to exaggerate, ignore facts, ride rough shod over others, ignore their point of view and context and while other people may choose to be hurt or not hurt, I can only remain responsible for my own integrity, motivations and love.

4) It is not unreasonable to expect people therefore to take responsibility (especially in a in a Christian group) for providing a context filled with love, kindness and hope while maintaining their own integrity.

5) Criticism is a positive and good thing particularly when the intention is to be positive and good. I can’t assume that the other person is deliberately trying to harm and damage me. I could ask them if I was worried about their motives. If they are trying to hurt me I don’t have to accept their criticism or allow it to undermine me.

6) It helps not to ‘mind read’. It is quite possible to get very cross with what I think motivates the other person, when in reality they had not realised that is what I was thinking nor did they have that motivation. Before choosing to be hurt by them, I can say what I felt when they said what they said and offer them a way of offering that criticism that I would have found easier to deal with.

Image courtesy of twobee/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Book review "A lady cyclist's guide to Kashgar" by Suzanne Joinson

"A lady cyclist's guide to Kashgar" bySuzanne Joinson

This new debut novel tells two stories and it is not until you are half way through the book that you understand how they are related. The first story follows an eccentric group of missionaries to one of the remotest regions on the earth in 1923. Kashgar is a city north of Tibet and south of the USSR in China. The party is led by zealous Millicent assisted by beautiful Lizzie who is under her spell and Lizzie's sister, Eva. Eva doesn't really believe in evangelism but comes for the experience of travel. This ill matched triplet cause chaos and confusion in Kashgar and their woes increase as there is an uprising. Eva's story dominates this part of the narrative as she completes her project – the cyclists guide. The author brings to life the colonial attitudes and reality of life in remote places for British women in the 1920s.

Alongside this is a story set in present day London based on Frieda, who dissatisfied with her life, sets off on a new journey of discovery with a Yemeni refugee that she finds on her doorstep. Together they discover the tale of Kashgar and how I relates to her confused life.

The book is written with beautiful vivid descriptions of the atmospheric places described. It is about belonging and alienation and how we connect to the world around us. It is about inheritance and the way that history repeats itself. The story is moving and the characterisation deep and expressive. The pattern of alternating chapters telling the two parallel stories could have been annoying if you had found one interesting and the other less so but both were engaging.

It is a moving adventure story as well as a profound examination of the way that well meaning families can fail their children.

It was on the whole well written, but I have three criticisms of it. The title is misleading as there is little about cycling in it. I found it difficult to engage with the characters in the book as they all were to some extent weird! And third, there were so many story lines that sometimes it got a bit confusing.  

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Image "Family" courtesy of arztsamui  / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Book Review - Paul Torday's latest novel

Book Review

“Lightshining in the forest” by Paul Torday

“Salmon fishing in the Lebanon” was Paul Torday's excellent first novel, now also a film. Since then he has been prolific. He has produced interesting, well-written and often comical and moving fiction. His latest novel "The light shining in the forest" is no exception, though it is much darker than the previous novels and covers the uncomfortable ground of child abduction, murder and the supernatural.

The main character in the story is Norman, a minor bureaucrat, who has risen through the ranks by playing the system to become the Regional Children's Commissioner (designate) for the North East. Due to political manoeuvring, this new post has been created but policy changes in Whitehall have meant that nothing has been done to give the post-holder a role. As a result he is left on his own with a job title, large salary, and an office with secretary but has nothing to do. Also crucial to the story is the local trainee reporter, Willie, who is desperate to move beyond the parochialism of a local newspaper and become a real investigative journalist. The book conveys an oppressive description of the remote border lands of Northumberland, especially of the Kielder Forest.

Torday gives a critique of much child protection practice and the whole safeguarding industry that has grown up to protect children. The character Norman shows how someone can be very efficient in social work at tick box exercises but have never have anything to do with actual real children! In this sense the book is a critique of our contemporary society's attitude to child protection that sees the only way to counter evil  to be through bureaucracy. The argument goes that evil will not be possible if there are enough checks and procedures to safeguard against it. The by product is to frustrate and annoy all the good people who are just trying to get on with doing youth work.

The novel also has a political dimension as a key element of the plot depends upon the Home Secretary not wanting to lose face by admitting what has happened in secret and therefore damage his promotion prospects.

There is also a supernatural element to the novel. Some of the major characters have pseudo-religious visions, and hear voices which are totally inexplicable to other characters in the book. They end up being regarded by them as insane. Several of the characters in the book have names of characters from the Christian bible but these are mostly ambiguous to the plot.

The plot has a believable villain (a sociopath who is probably on the autistic spectrum) whose viewpoint and actions seem very logical in his own mind.

There are two weakness in this novel. The first is the weak characterisation. The lost boy's mother, Mary, disappears from the narrative almost as if the author didn't know what to do with her. Pippa, the leading female in the story is very much a one-dimensional character who never develops. We end the book knowing very little about her despite the crucial part she plays in key parts of the narrative. Secondly, the book suffers from some confusion as there are many points of view. The result is that at certain points dramatic interest is diminished.

Overall this is an excellent, imaginative and compelling story. The middle section especially is particularly gripping. Towards the end I became very annoyed with the establishment and their attempts to manipulate the outcome. After the climax there are still over forty pages in which the author tidies up the loose ends. The very different style to Torday's previous novels may alienate some readers who've got used to the cosy if somewhat manic environment that he created with the more loveable characters there. This is a much darker place and the events that unfold are also much more serious. Child abduction is a particularly nasty, painful subject and overall it is explored with sensitivity. Adding a supernatural element to this confuses the genre of the fiction and could give the reader emotional overload! Incidentally, I believe that the book would make a very good film.
To buy this book click here...
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