The Bible TV Series

Peter (10) and I have been watching The Bible TV series (I bought it from Amazon).  There are ten forty-five minute episodes each covering one or two of the great heroes from the Bible. It's perfect for older boys, lots of blood, guts and swordplay. When God speaks to people he sends angels that look a bit like Star Wars Jedis!

Jedi

Angels

Each episode starts with a recap and ends with a preview of the next one. I found this a bit annoying to begin with but it helped Peter see the Bible as the story of the people of God rather than a series of unrelated stories.

If you're looking to spark someone's interest in the Bible the series is great, but it's not for Bible scholars. There is a bit of artistic license (e.g. Sarah tries to chase after Abraham when he goes off to sacrifice Isaac) and the words spoken are not direct from the text.

Here are a few thoughts on each episode:

1. Noah and Abraham - Peter loved the 'ninja angels' destroying Sodom.

2. Moses - The parting of the Red Sea was awesome!

3. Joshua and Jericho, Samson and Delilah - Lots of people get their throats cut in this one and Samson has his eyes crushed out. It might have been a bit much if Peter wasn't used to playing 15+ video games!

4. Saul and David - This episode was an eye opener. I heard Peter telling John "You know that guy David from the Bible, the one with the slingshot, well he had sex with someone else's wife!"

5. Jeremiah and Daniel - The fall of Jerusalem and the babylonian captivity. King Zedekiah sees his two young sons killed in front of him and then has his eyes crushed out. The scene where Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego don't burn (Daniel 3:19-27) is quite uplifting.

6. Joseph and John the Baptist - The ninja angels are back and Herod is suitably grotesque. 

7. Ministry of Jesus - Mary Magdalen is featured heavily. The story of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector was my favourite part of the whole series.

8. Palm Sunday to Jesus' arrest - Peter and I were both expecting this episode to finish with the crucifixion. I hate to say it, but I was disappointed when it didn't! I was hoping the series would leave two episode to cover the Acts of the Apostles.

9. Passion and resurrection - There's a strong 'blame Caiaphas not Pilate' emphasis. The crucifixion borrows from the movie The Passion of the Christ. Satan is wandering around in a black cloak and the scene where the nails are hammered through Jesus' hands is very drawn out. Thankfully the bad thief doesn't get his eyes pecked!

10. Acts of the Apostles - This is the least violent episode in the series which I found a bit of a relief. Paul speaks the words of 1 Cor 13 (love is patient, love is kind...) to convince the disciples in Jerusalem (whom he persecuted) that he is no longer a threat. That's not where it appears in the Bible, but it was a great rendition. 

When is a prayer not a prayer?

I don't know how many times I've heard someone address a group with the words "let's pray" or "I came across this prayer" and then have them read a passage from a book or a poem. Whatever it is, it's not addressed to God, or to anyone other than the audience. It might give people nice thoughts to ponder, it may motivate them to go and help someone or to change their life, but as far as I'm concerned, it's not a prayer.

The Catechism calls prayer "the raising of one's mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God." Prayer is not the raising of one's mind and heart towards good things!

These are not prayers:

You have brains in your head. 

You have feet in your shoes. 

You can steer yourself any direction you choose!

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.

They are wise, they are beautiful, but they are not Christian prayers!

Will I still go to heaven if I don't go to Mass?

Peter is part way though his Confirmation program and I feel like we're surrounded each week by people who are wondering whether they really should go to Mass or not. To me the question is a bit like asking  "Will I still make the team if I don't go to training?" or "Will I pass my exam if I don't study?" The answer to all three is "You might get lucky, but it's not a good idea!"

The question we should really be asking is not "Will I get to heaven?" but "How many people will be there because of me?" This is where heaven differs from getting into a team. If I make the team it means someone else doesn't, but heaven has many rooms! That's not to say that Christianity is about being miserable in this life so we can be happy in the next. There are many benefits to being a Christian (outside of the eternal ones), not just community and social, or even comfort during difficult times, but a joy that comes from doing God's work.

Getting yourself and hopefully a few others into heaven involves knowing your faith, living your faith, speaking to others about your faith and showing people what it means to be a Christian by your words and deeds. A living faith involves prayer and action. That's not to say we work our way to heaven. Mother Teresa spoke of doing "little things with great love". Sometimes when we do a small thing for someone else (a kind word, a smile, a hand on a shoulder) God turns it into something big.

Sunday Mass brings people together, but it's much more than just a support group for people on the Christian journey. It's a refuelling station, a glimpse of our final destination and a chance to receive forgiveness for our inevitable screw ups. We offer ourselves to God and God offers Himself to us, we ask Him to turn our small things into big things, and then we're sent out, ready to face another week. A Catholic without Sunday Mass is like a car without gas!

Levels of Life by Julian Barnes

Wimereux

I was planning to write a post about how expensive books are in Australia and how I walk around my local bookshop (the one that offers vouchers to people willing to dump their Kindles) reading the back covers and then download them to my Kindle for half the price or order them from The Book Depository. 

A good case in point is Levels of Life. It was $25 (about £16) for a book that is only 128 pages. I didn't hesitate to download it (it was under $10), but now I've read it I think it would have been worth every cent of the $25.

The book tells two stories, the first half is about the early days of ballooning, it's also a story of unrequited love and how long it can take to get over that. It struck a chord with me as my parents (mum's) house in Wimereux (France) is next to a memorial for two balloonist who died there.  The second part is Barnes' reflections on life without his wife who went from diagnosis to death in 37 days. This is the amazing part. Grief and mourning are something that many of us will have to deal with, but very few people can offer any insight to others. Barnes is an atheist but grief is something you have to deal with whether you believe you will see your loved one in heaven or not. 

Below are a few excerpts....

"I look at my key ring (which used to be hers): it holds only two keys, one to the front door of the house and one to the back gate of the cemetery. This is my life I think."

"Initially, you continue doing what you used to do with her, out of familiarity, love, the need for a pattern. Soon, you realise the trap you are in: caught between repeating what you did with her, but without her, and so missing her; or doing new things, things you never did with her, and so missing her differently."

"All couples, even the most bohemian, build up patterns in their lives together, and these patterns have an annual cycle. So Year One is like a negative image of the year you had been used to. Instead of being studded with events, it is now studded with non-events: Christmas, your birthday, her birthday, the anniversary of the day you met, wedding anniversary. And these are overlaid with new anniversaries: of the day fear arrived, the day she first fell, the day she went into hospital, the day she came out of hospital, the day she died, the day she was buried."

"You need your friends not just as friends, but also as corroborators. The chief witness to what has been your life is now silenced, and retrospective doubt is inevitable. So you need them to tell you, however glancingly, however unintendingly, that what you were - the two of you - was seen. Not just known from within but seen from without."

Below are a couple of other books I've downloaded to the Kindle recently (Save, Send Delete and Sharp Objects):

I read What Have I done  earlier in the year. It's a real page-turner and a bargain at £1.59. It's about the wife of a boarding school headmaster. She kills him on the first page!

Reflections on being a step-parent

This year we plan to return to Hawaii which is where Allan and I went on honeymoon. We had two weeks there, the first in Honolulu where we had Allan's two sons with us, and the second on Kauai. The boys were 9 and 11 at the time, the wedding was the first time I'd met them. 18 years later we'll still have two boys with us, they'll be 10 and 12!

I learnt one lesson about step-parenting on our honeymoon, "add value". When Allan was too tired to take the boys down to the swimming pool and watch them I took them down, when he didn't want to go on roller-coasters I went, when he was working and would normally have got a babysitter for the boys, I took them out. Children are not stupid, if life is better with you around than it was when you weren't, they should be fine.

The second lesson I learnt is to know when to back off. There are times when Allan, his ex-wife and their boys need to be allowed to be a family (weddings, funerals, graduations) and that's when you need to fade into the background.

Marriage breakdown is never a good thing but there are also some big advantages to step-families. Having step children roughly 16 years younger than me and 16 years older than the boys, means our family has a new generation every 16 years rather than the usual 32. So there is always someone to take to Disneyworld and everyone knows that today's child is tomorrow's babysitter! The boys I watched now babysit for our boys and one day our boys might babysit for theirs.

I only ever played step parent for the 4 or 5 weeks a year that the older boys spent with us, which is not the same as living with someone else's children. We've also been very lucky in that Allan and his ex-wife get on really well (if they didn't I'd have to add "never criticise a child's parent in front of them" to my list of advice). As my boys enter puberty I feel much more confident as a parent having seen a lot of it before. If they turn out like their older brothers, they'll be fine!

A good marriage or a happy marriage?

If you’ve ever wondered how adulterers, child abusers, corrupt policemen or torturers sleep at night Mistakes were made (but not by me) by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson  is the book for you. It explores self-justification or cognitive dissonance as psychologists like to call it. These are the techniques we all use to convince ourselves we are good people!

There’s a chapter on the role of memory that explains how we tend to paper over our mistakes and over-emphasise our virtues and achievements. Another chapter looks at how, having committed to a certain viewpoint or belief, we will stick to it even in the face of contradictory evidence. 

The chapter on marriage argues that in a happy marriage each spouse extends their self-justification to include their partner. So as well as making excuses for their own behaviour, highlighting their own virtues and ignoring their faults, they do the same for their spouse. They give them the benefit of the doubt every time.

While this might make for a happy marriage I don’t think it makes for a good one. Earlier in the book the authors argue that in order to minimise self-justification we need to be aware that we do it, but we also “need a few trusted naysayers in our lives, critics who are willing to puncture our protective bubble of self-justifications.” I would say in a good marriage the spouses try to give each other the benefit of the doubt but also act as trusted naysayers. Good friends do the same. 

Here are a few other quotes from the book, which really was a great read:

“If a person voluntarily goes through a difficult or a painful experience in order to attain some goal or object, that goal or object becomes more attractive.” 

“How do you get an honest man to lose his ethical compass? You get him to take one step at a time, and self-justification will do the rest.”

“People become more certain they are right about something they just did if they can’t undo it.”

“Without feeling attached to groups that give our lives meaning, identity, and purpose, we would suffer the intolerable sensation that we were loose marbles floating in a random universe. Therefore, we will do what it takes to preserve these attachments.”

The Dukan Diet

I tried the Dukan diet (3 years after everyone else did) and it works. I wanted to lose the 3kg (7lbs) I put on over Christmas (it just wasn't shifting) and I managed it in 3 weeks. That said I'm not recommending the diet. It's dull, you can't eat out anywhere, and you have to keep following it (though in a less restricted form) for ages in order for your weight to stabilise.

The first phase lasts five days and you eat nothing but protein and low fat dairy products (chicken, seafood, fish, beef, yoghurt, cottage cheese). The next phase involves alternating the protein only days with protein and veg days (but not starchy veg like potatoes). You stay on this phase until you reach your target weight. You then go onto a consolidation phase which lasts 5 days for every pound (11 days per kg) lost. During this phase you eat the protein and veg every day but can add 2 slices of wholemeal bread, 40g of cheese and a piece of fruit, plus one celebration (eat what you like) meal a week. Finally there's a stabilisation phase (I haven't got to that yet!)

It's an impossible diet for people who eat out regularly, even a packed lunch is difficult. I ended up taking hard boiled eggs, crab sticks and prawns with me to college. I've done detox style diets before and I've felt clear-headed and full of energy within a couple of days but on this diet I felt tired and crabby. I think I'm craving sugar!

On the plus side I've broken my habit of snacking on chocolate and chips (crisps) that I fell into over Christmas.

If you want to shed some weight quickly (e.g. for a wedding) but at the risk of piling it back on again this is the diet for you (the Kindle version of the book is very cheap). Personally I think I'll just stick with 'eat less, choose wisely, move more' in future and try and stay off the crisps!