Grappling With God

Living with someone who reads a great deal can be a problem at times. Himself needs at least three books on three separate topics near at hand and partially read at any one time in order to feel halfway at ease. The favoured three at the moment are David Copperfield, together with a thriller by Jo Nesbo the title of which I have forgotten and The Qur’an. The irritating thing about his reading choices is that he feels compelled to acquaint me with his progress chapter by chapter together with precise details of what might be happening next. For instance there is absolutely no point in me telling him that I am totally familiar with the general story lines favoured by Charles Dickens (after all wasn’t he practically a neighbour? – born on the doorstep of we Gravesend & Northfleet locals as ‘twere?) - because he will tell me anyway! There is simply no stopping him.

I am sick to the back teeth of Nesbo’s strangely named hero Harry Hole but when I saw Himself clutching The Qur’an as he approached the pay desk at Jason’s Books the other day my heart sank and I feebly waved a Nesbo in his direction. Then more sensibly I asked him if he was absolutely sure and wasn’t he perhaps simply reacting to the Christchurch Mosque atrocities but he blinked at me in some astonishment and snapped that of course he was sure. What was even surer was that he certainly did not need advice from me about what he should be reading. A bit rude I thought but to be brutally honest he is more than inclined to rudeness on such occasions.

The trouble with Himself is that he has a terrible urge to Know everything and then to magnanimously pass his new knowledge on to me, unless he should happen upon a more receptive listener. His children all became very good at ducking for cover and never, ever making the mistake of asking him a question especially about matters of history, ancient or modern. And to make things worse he takes knowledge very seriously. When he discovered that his grandfather on coming to New Zealand all those years ago had not, contrary to rumour, started his spiritual life in the Roman Catholic church but was actually Jewish the accumulation of volumes devoted to Judaism had to be seen to be believed and even Good Friend Georgina (who actually was Really & Truly Jewish to start with) got fed up with passing on recipes for chicken soup and advice about Holy Days. You could simply describe him as enthusiastic if you felt more kindly about all this than I do. Anyhow to get back to his sudden interest in Islam, you can probably understand why I felt myself becoming just the tiniest bit reticent.

He has now been fully engrossed since last Saturday and I have learned a great deal about Muhammad’s first wife (who I am told was an Older Woman) and when I happened to query something about who the following wife might have been I was told a long story about her necklace breaking in the desert and how she was accidentally left behind when her husband’s campaign group moved on. More importantly I was told that there is very little difference between Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Battling through rush hour traffic on the morning of his recent CT scan I was informed that it was really quite foolish for any of us to describe Jesus Christ as God no matter what conventions might dictate, because clearly he wasn’t and the whole idea of the Son of God was not very sensible anyway. I nodded because he turned down the car radio to inform me that of course there had to be similarities between Monotheistic faiths. I ventured to point out that maybe it didn’t matter because even though we two both grew up in the Roman Catholic Church (and to be fair as far as his own mother was concerned it had once been the only thing I had in my favour) neither of us was all that reliable at attending Mass these days. I mean, I said – Are we actually Believers? He told me that as a Catholic it was perfectly OK to be Lapsed, almost a rite of passage one might say. Anyhow he for one was quite comfortable being lapsed. And as for other conventions of Catholicism he could well remember the time when women wore veils when attending Mass and he was surprised I didn’t remember also. Recalling the long and tedious Sunday services at Our Lady of the Assumption in Northfleet I said I did remember but in our church there had been more hats than veils. My mind wandered because I did indeed recall little girls in white veils and beautiful confirmation dresses. How I had longed to be in one of those white creations myself, fashioned from parachute silk and lace. One very indulged girl who must surely have been the much envied Kathleen McCarthy also had white shoes which she said were made of something called buckskin. They had little silver buttons and slim ankle straps.

Himself wanted to know if there had been a mosque in Northfleet or Gravesend when I was growing up but I couldn’t remember and said there might have been a Sikh Temple. In fact there was definitely a Sikh Temple of sorts in the 1950s called a Gurdwara. Then I added that from memory the Sikhs also believed there was just one God so just don’t leave them out of the equation – it was a God not just for them but belonging to everyone and featuring differently in differing faiths. But he didn’t hear me because he was cursing the stupidity of bus lanes. So I said a bit louder that as for mosques, there was most definitely one in Gravesend now. It was called Shal Jalal and had been created in a building that had formerly been a pub. Himself said he was quite sure that wouldn’t be true given the way Muslims felt about alcohol. But I was sure it was because a cousin had sent me a photograph of it and a precis of its history.

What he was really getting at, Himself persisted, was how one could liken such practices, veils in church, largely abandoned though they might be, to Islam and the wearing of the Hijab. Didn’t I agree. I agreed and promptly because by then we were turning into our street. No point in arguing.

The future of Swan Lake?

I’ve written previously on this topic but the current climate of very nearly admiration of those who are horrendously overweight urges me to write once more ….. forgive me if I repeat myself. Let me state here and now that I was once what was then generally known as a Fat Lump. At sixteen I was decidedly overweight and on only one occasion made the horrifyingly embarrassing mistake of getting on the `I Speak Your Weight’ machine at Charing Cross Station. The memory makes me shudder. It seemed to me that I was fighting flab for years and I often claimed that I could gain weight on a diet. I’m not sure now how true that latter contention was, but I do remember saying it. Once upon a time it simply was not a good thing to be fat and not so very long ago either. Thankfully I lost the weight dramatically, suddenly (long story not for today) and though I would like to say that from then on I never looked back that would also be untrue. I tend to gain weight very quickly and easily but these days I seem to have less trouble losing it. Nevertheless I always feel fat. When I was still running school holiday courses for children more than ten years ago I can recall being advised by those who knew best to remove an image of an overweight ten year old on our advertising leaflets because it `sent the wrong message’. I took the advice. So it was with some scepticism that I began to take note of the Embrace Fatties trend that is firmly taking hold in this part of the globe – and I am sure elsewhere also. New Zealand is host to large numbers of large people of course and as every local schoolchild is aware, in some Pacific Island communities Big Is Beautiful. The Oldest Son reminded me quite recently that here in God’s Own Country, we long since ceased to argue about that. He said I would get used to the trend then he added that not so very long ago we all had to remember not to use the term Mongol and keep up with how we were now required to refer to African Americans and that People of Colour was OK. He further pointed out that excess weight is a disability like having no legs. Nevertheless the hasty manner in which we are being primed for not just Acceptance of the Obese, but Admiration also is a little too rapid for me. Overweight twelve year old boys waxing lyrical about healthy budget food cartons delivered to the family’s door pop up during commercial breaks on Prime Time TV, followed by travel ads fronted by larger than necessary young women cheerfully displaying their holiday wardrobe of huge and unflattering sundresses and the corpulent middle aged no longer make room for others on buses during rush hour travel. All of this headlong and reckless rush towards approval and approbation has been eclipsed for me recently, however, by an astonishing video clip on social media featuring a most unfortunately obese teenage ballet dancer. Even more bewildering are the comments made by one viewer after another, applauding, boosting and encouraging her. Maybe I’m simply becoming a crabby and cantankerous old crone – after all it would be true to say that I still grapple with same sex marriage (and yes, I know, I should flay myself with wet reeds) .... so it could be that a confidently rotund teen proudly pirouetting will never get my vote. What could her parents (oops - caregivers) be thinking of I have to ask. Or is it just me?