The Right to Die debate

I am not against euthanasia for "religious reasons".  I do not think it is enough to say "life is sacred" and believe that the debate stops there. If my faith influences my position on euthanasia, it is mainly because it urges me to speak out to protect the most vulnerable and encourages me to face truths that will set me free. My opposition to euthanasia come mainly from eleven years experience working as a medic in the NHS - including spells as a palliative care doctor and a psychiatrist. I have neither time nor energy to write an in-depth blog on every reason I have for opposing legalized euthanasia: some notes will have to do. The notes may seem a little disjointed, but I hope together they paint a picture of what I find troubling about the right to die debate:

Effective palliative care has not be found wanting - it has not been tried. All of us will die and most of us will have some warning of that death. Death is a very common ailment! Yet the medical speciality which supports "good dying" has been chronically underresourced (much of it funded by public donations and not the NHS budget), and palliative care training for all health care professionals is seen as something optional rather than a core skill. I grieve for Debbie Purdy and remember her as a remarkable woman, but I think the many less-celebrated people with life-limiting illness who raise money for their local hospice or Macmillan nurses have done more to ease the suffering of those with incurable disease. I also wish more was done for the millions of people worldwide who will die in unnecessary agony because of ignorance and cultural suspicions about effective palliative pain relief. So if you are concerned about suffering associated with terminal illness, don't write to your MP to get them to support Lord Falconer - write to your MP and ask what they are doing to help resource effective palliative care in the UK and abroad.

Most people in the UK do not know what normal dying looks like. The vast majority of deaths occur in some form of institution, and have done for three generations. As a doctor, I did not find it unusual to walk into a room where someone was leaving this life in a beautifully gentle way, and be accosted by distraught relations begging me to hasten the end and "stop them suffering". Losing someone you love is an intensely painful experience - sadly we all know that - and distressed relatives, ridden with very normal feelings of guilt and anxiety, do not always respond rationally to what is before them. In the right to die debate, doctors are often accused of over-treating dying patients and denying them a dignified, peaceful end. While I do not suggest for one moment that some of my former colleagues could not have benefitted from palliative care training to help them know when to draw back on treatments and interventions that were no longer helpful (see my first point!), many front-line staff are pressured by relatives to continue treatments, food and fluids when best and kindest practice would be to stop. There is a great need for education amongst the general public as well as amongst the professionals.

A left-field one, this one. The baby boomer generation are beginning to die. This generation - for those interested in generational theory -are an interesting bunch. They succeeded the wartime generation, who were depleted and defeated by what they had endured, and took control of post-war Britain from their early twenties. They pretty much stayed in control for the next forty years, and now in active retirement remain influential in many spheres of common life. They have not relinquished control easily to susequent generations, struggling to anticipate a world they were not controlling. Have you noticed a common theme? But death is the one thing you cannot really control is it? For an entire generation this is a huge anxiety, and I am not surprised that despite euthanasia being discussed for centuries, it is now the debate is gaining momentum.

Back on central ground, again. Lord Falconers bill will not help the majority of the heartbreaking cases we see portrayed in the media. We have heard many stories of people with incurable and incapacitating illnesses which cause them distress and indiginity, but few of them are in a recognisable terminal phase of a  illness. So, there is no comfortable solution - if we are determined not to have some sort of free-for-all in terms of ending life, we will have to accept that some hard cases and some suffering will always lie out with the law. Also, the safeguards most recently discussed are unlikely to be responsive enough for terminal patients with acute symptomatic distress, so those tales you hear of "Grandma was in pain at the end" will still occur under this bill. The question we have to ask is what Lord Falconer's bill solves. It would not have ended Debbie Purdy's suffering. It would not have ended your neighbour's Gran's suffering. (Better access to excellent palliative care may have - see point one again) Is Lord Falconer's bill the best solution to the problem of terminal suffering? If not, what sort of problem is it trying to solve? Perhaps the generational anxiety I mentioned in point 3?

Finally, I have seen a lot of death compared to your average UK citizen. And even with the ignorance and under-resourcing mentioned above, I have seen very few expected deaths which ultimately did not have some peace and diginity. In the flurry of the euthanasia debate, you could be forgiven for believing that horrendous deaths were the norm, but that is not my experience. So, please don't be afraid. If you do have to wait with someone in the final days and hours of their lives, you can do a good thing. You can love them and care for them and ask for help for them and send them gently on their way. Love and do not be afraid x

The Hallowmas Triduum

A few months ago, I was on holiday during a time of particularly intense mental and emotional stress at work. One day, my husband and I went walking, and tackled a near vertical track leading over into a beautiful glen. Unfit, I struggled with the steep gradient. I pushed myself and pushed myself, yet the lactic acid built in my muscles compelling me to stop every few yards. Frustrated and beaten, I yelled "I cannot do this!" In a moment of insight, I recognized that I had vocalized not just my current physical state, but the state of my soul. For reasons I cannot quite articulate, this was a very healing experience. There is something powerful about our physical knowing reflecting our spiritual knowing.
 

At the moment, my social media feeds are full of church-going friends debating how, whether or why Christians should/shouldn't engage with Halloween. Yet this black and white argument fails to address the fact that this festival was once part of an important opportunity, when the nights drew in and nature slept, to physically and spiritually engage with the darkness of life, and reaffirm our belief in the Light. We live in a death-denying, sin-denying society - surely, this society needs the church not to ignore the Hallowmas Triduum (three day festival of All Hallows Eve, All Saints and All Souls) but to engage with it.
 

Below are excerpts from two writers who have helped me think differently about these festivals:
 

"Both spring and fall Triduums deal with that passage from death to life which is at the heart of the Christian mystical path, and in fact, all mystical paths. But they do so in very different modes, with a very different emotional and spiritual coloration. At Easter the days are lengthening, the earth is springing forth with new life, and resurrection energy is already coursing through everything in the physical universe, like Dylan Thomas’s celebrated “force that drives the green fuse through the flower.” Resurrection is sort of a no-brainer, if you want to think of it that way; all the currents of our being are already set in that direction.
 

In the Fall Triduum the movement is more inward, against the grain. The days are shortening, the leaves are fallen, and the earth draws once again into itself.  Everything in the natural world confronts us with reminders of our own mortality. The scriptural readings as the time just before Advent approaches are more and more preoccupied with the end, not only personally but cosmically: the last coming, the end of time. In this dark and inward season, there is little that encourages us to somersault over death right into resurrection; we must linger in the dark, allow the dawning recognition of how fragile we are.
 

And yet in the midst of this broody season of dark and inwardness, the days do offer themselves as a journey, a progression we can take. Halloween, that great druidic celebration is often lost in excess and revelry. But if you pay attention, it is actually asking us to acknowledge the false self (yes, head out trick-or-treating dressed as your false self!), let the “ghoulies and ghosties, long leggity beasties, and things that go bump in the night” cavort as they will without causing us alarm. “All shall be well, and all manner of long leggity thing shall be well.” The shadow faced, we are then free on November 1 to move into that most exquisite and subtle foretaste of the glory to come, the mystical communion of saints. From my own personal experience I can say that not Easter but All Saints is the thinnest of the thin places between heaven and earth, where the boundaries between ourselves and all we have loved but deemed lost, all we have grieved for, all the roads not taken in our lives, are met in the gentle solace of “yes.”
 

From there, having glimpsed on November 1 that  (in the words of a wonderful old children’s book) “all land is one land under the sea,” we are then invited on November 2 to return to our human condition and particularity; to acknowledge and grieve the ones we have lost (from the viewpoint of this world) and to prepare ourselves to live more deeply and courageously this strange dual walk that we humans seem cosmically appointed to traverse, poised “at the intersection of the timeless with time” as the poet T. S. Eliot depicts it.
 

In the quiet, brown time of the year, these fall Triduum days are an invitation to do the profound inner work: to face our shadows and deep fears (death being for most people the scariest of all), to taste that in ourselves which already lies beyond death, drink at its fountain, then to move back into our lives again, both humbled and steadied in that which lies beyond both light and dark, beyond both life and death.  What better tilling of the inner soil for the mystery of the Incarnation, which lies just ahead?

 

(Excerpts from Cynthia Bourgealt "The Fall Triduum - another twist of the spiral" originally published on The Contemplative Society blog.)

And, more concisely:
 

“All Saints' Day is the centerpiece of an autumn triduum. In the carnival celebrations of  our ancestors used the most powerful weapon in the human arsenal, the power of humor and ridicule, to confront the power of death. The following day, in the commemoration of , we gave witness to the victory of incarnate goodness embodied in the remarkable deeds and doers triumphing over the misanthropy of darkness and devils. And in the commemoration of  we proclaim the hope of common mortality expressed in our aspirations and expectation of a shared eternity.”
 

(Quoted from Sam Portaro from “Brightest and Best: A Companion to the Lesser Feasts and Fasts” 1998, Cowley Publications)

And so inspired by these sorts of reflections, I wonder how the church might "do" Hallowmas differently - and perhaps better?  How might we acknowledge our false selves which deny the image of God in self and other.  How might we offer opportunities to engage with our darkness and that of our world, before offering the opportunity of sainthood and the hope of eternity?
 

This year, I have been inspired by the example of Worldvision, who in their #NightofHope appear to have combined the reality of darkness with the hope of the light.  Supporters are encouraged to remember the children of Syria - currently facing their fourth year in a war zone - and decorate a pumpkin with a heart, displaying it as a sign of solidarity with those children.  The supporters are also encouraged to raise money for Worldvision projects which support those children and their families.  You can find out more about their work here: http://anightofhope.worldvision.org.uk/why-a-night-of-hope/

 

Surely there are few things in our world as dark as the violent conflict which dehumanizes so many.  Perhaps using this Halloween to look that darkness in the face, yet refusing to be paralyzed by its power, and by symbol and action proclaiming a resilient hope - perhaps, in that, we might reclaim Hallowmas as it was intended to be?

Rev Series 3 and Holy Week

"I'm really disappointed with this series of Rev..."

"...it's all a bit political"

"...it seems to have forgotten it is a comedy"

"...the writers have lost the plot!"

Apologies for the pun.

But actually the writers know exactly what they are doing, and have got it spot on.  The key to understanding what is going on, is to remember that series 3 of Rev is supposed to be the last series.  The last.  The final credits will roll tomorrow night, and this changes things. As any good story heads towards its climax, there is an increase of tension.  Things tends to get darker and more precarious.  The big questions which have lurked in the background come increasingly to the fore.  And this is all happening as we journey with our clerical everyman, Adam Smallbone, towards the end of his tale.

We approach the end of this story with Adam's job in jeopardy, his church facing closure and his relationship with his beloved Alex in tatters.  There is the very real possibility he could lose everything.  And as Adam wrestles with these issues, he must also tackle the question every clergyperson faces: what sort of priest am I called to be?  In previous series, Adam has faced and ultimately resisted the temptations to be what he is not: a trendy megachurch pastor or a media priest for example.  In this series, we find Adam discovering more of what he is: a priest who will stand with his gay friends and bless them, a priest who will treat a repentant child sex offender as a human being, a priest who is neither an uncritical product of his institution nor his society, but will hold up a mirror to them both.  In this series of undenied weakness, Adam has shown moments of heart-breaking strength.

But many devoted Rev fans are far from happy.  They watched the series to give them light relief, but now (most of) the slapstick humour has been displaced by a wry and painful humour which asks hard questions about what it means to be church.  "This wasn't what we signed up for!" they cry...

During Holy Week, we remembered another man approaching the end of his story.  In this story too the mood darkened, the stakes were raised, the questions got tougher - and those who enjoyed the healings and the stories, the banter with the authorities and the impromptu processions drifted away.  Following him when he was entertaining them - well that was one thing - but to stand by him while he loses everything?  Why did he have to spoil it by being too political; being too serious; being too uncompromising; being too controversial? They didn't sign up for that...  

Of couse, I am not the only one to draw parallels. Starting with Adam's prediction of St Saviour's demise and the birthday cake Last Supper, the fourth and fifth episodes have increasingly played on the events of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Colin denying his friend as the alarm sounds in the chicken bar; an embarrassed and impotent Bishop washing his hands as he discusses Adam's future; the emptied, dark church echoing like a cavernous tomb. The question for this last episode is surely: will there be a resurrection, and what will it look like?  

The good news is that I suspect Rev, will continue to echo the Easter story, and will be a comedy in the truest sense. No seriously - bear with me! Classical comedic drama was not defined by the laughs but by the ending - namely a happy ending - and you don't get much happier than the despised and rejected messiah defeating death, restoring his little community of disciples and sending them with a message of forgiveness and reconciliation between God and creation in which the whole world can share. The ending of this television series cannot attempt to match that, but as St Saviours closes its doors in episode 5, just remember episode 6 is coming...

A Mother's Memory of Petertide

The ethereal voices of a girls' choir begin to sing Veni Sanctus Spiritus. Eleven solemn ordinands, clothed in black and white, their diaconal stoles a slash of red, kneel with heads bowed in a semicircle around their bishop. The beauty of the music somehow amplifies the profound stillness of the holy moment. I wait. I wait for the Bishop to lay hands on me and ordain me as priest.

Suddenly the peace is torn by the wailing of a small child - and I am torn too. I know, with a peculiar maternal certainty, that of all the small people in the cathedral this evening, that particular wail belongs to my four-year-old daughter, Emma.

MUUUMMEEE! It is amazing how much focus you can give to two things at once. As I watch intently, my fellow curates walk forward and kneel before the bishop, and my heart is full of pride and joy at the wonder of these friends offering themselves to God and God's world. Yet another part of me is monitoring a very different situation:

The wail has abated. Someone is soothing, cuddling, cajoling - will it work? But no, the wail resumes with increased vigour. What do I do? She needs me, wants me, but of all the times in my life, I cannot go now.

My husband will cope.

My husband will cope.

And sure enough, the cries soften - Will scoops up Emma, carries her away from the ministrations of anxious grandparents and aunts, distracts her with all a Daddy's wiles.

And it's my turn to go forward...

After the service, Emma greets me with a reproof. "I don't want you to be a priest, Mummy. Why do you have to be a priest?" We are walking hand in hand down the stairs to collect my belongings from the cathedral chapter house. I am exhilarated and exhausted and in no way capable of understanding her questions at first.
"Jesus asked me to be a priest, darling."
"But why did Jesus ask you to be a priest. I don't want you to be a priest!" - is her robust reply.
The conversation circles for a few minutes more, and I am at a loss. The emotion of the day catches up with me, and I am weary, vulnerable, close to tears; childishly resentful of my daughter's complaint; desperate for someone wise to rescue us. But there is only me, and Emma needs me. And then, I get it.

I gather my little girl in my arms and tell her seriously:

"Emma, Jesus wants me to be a priest, but I am still your Mummy. I'll always be your Mummy. Nothing will change that."

And the questions are at an end - Emma is satisfied.

No Make-up Selfies

For the past two days my Facebook feed has been full of photos of women wearing no make-up. Teenagers, grandmas, tired young mothers, sophisticated professionals - all posting selfies of their unadorned faces. All looking beautiful.

It appears no one is sure quite how this phenomenon began, but somehow women are challenging their friends to post a make-up free photo and make a donation to a cancer charity. A good thing - yes? Of course, when any craze sweeps through social media, there is the backlash: "I don't get it. Are they saying going make-up free is like having cancer?"

Er... no! Going make-up free is not like having cancer. Neither is holding a cake sale, abseiling down a twenty-storey building, running 5k, shaving off your hair or even walking from John O'Groats to Lands End - but these are all things people do to raise money, raise awareness and show solidarity with their friends and family who live with cancer. This social media craze has generated an unexpected windfall for charities researching treatment for cancer - research which has transformed the survival and life expectancy rates for people who have cancer over the past few decades. Celebrate it!

But as a friend of mine says, there can be multiple good reasons for doing something, and there is another reason I support no make-up selfies. I know many of my friends who have posted a photo would rather abseil down a twenty-storey building than walk out of the house without their slap on. They have been fed the lie that they are only as valuable as they are youthful and beautiful. Seeing dozens of bare-faced women on social media being affirmed and cheered on by those who love them challenges that lie, and to me it is something life-giving.

In a month when I have lost two friends and colleagues to cancer and another variant of this disease threatens the life of a third, I am all for doing things that promote life and love. So I have posted a no-make-up selfie, and I have texted BEAT to 70007 to make a £3 donation to Cancer Research. Why not consider doing either or both too?