The trouble with food

I've basically hit a point where food is too hard and I don't want to do it any more. It brings me very little joy, and far too much trouble.

Pretty much everything available to eat fits in one of three categories:

• Food that will cause me pain, or is otherwise no good for me
• Food that is produced in such a way it causes suffering and misery, or negatively impacts the environment
• Food I really just don't like - as in, I find the taste or texture entirely unpleasant.

That's it - that's what I'm eating these days. Things that hurt my body, things that hurt my soul or things that make me gag.

I sit down for a meal knowing that if I actually enjoy it, I'll pay for it later. Or I'll spend the entire time I'm eating it feeling like I'm committing some sort of betrayal I need to apologise or atone for in some way. Sometimes both. Actually, often both.

If I could find a small group of foods that provided the nourishment a human body needs without hurting anyone, and be palatable for a long period of time, I could just feed myself like some people feed their cats - put the same food in front of myself day after day and feel confident that even though it's not enjoyable, it's at least doing the job.

I have IBS, which means my gut reacts strongly to foods that humans struggle to process. Apparently my intestines are kicking me for eating things that give other people mild discomfort. One of the main ways to control IBS is to find your trigger foods and just eat fewer of them. So slowly but surely I'm eating less and less food that's tasty and nutritious. Eating too many of the wrong kinds of vegetables can see me floored with abdominal pains for most of the next day.

It feels like a zero sum game.

At least, that's what I've been told most recently, that I have IBS. I was also once told I couldn't possibly have IBS because it's not a real thing, and I must have functional dyspepsia. That doctor, I'm reasonably sure, told me that because I had suggested IBS as a possibility after reading about it in a magazine (so of course it must be anything but that - can't have patients diagnosing themselves, now, can we?).

I found out a few years later that "functional" basically means you don't have a reason for it, just symptoms. Which, to my mind, sounds a little bit like throwing your hands up in the air and saying "well, I dunno - it's probably all in your head."

But I read just recently that IBS is a "functional" condition as well. And this article that I read also pointed out that "functional" means the problem is with the way something functions - like a malfunctioning piece of firmware rather than a damaged piece of hardware.

All of which is making me wonder whether I've got the wrong end of the stick, when it comes to trying to avoid pain. Maybe I should just eat the "delicious and nutritious" food that's good fuel for the machine and doesn't make me miserable, and then find a way to simply disguise/squash/shut up my stomach when it complains, rather than trying to avoid upsetting it in the first place.

Of course, I'll probably try this technique and then find out that I've actually got some sort of hideous auto-immune condition that I should have been treating this whole time, instead of covering up my symptoms and hoping they go away.

But I've got to do something. Food has become thoroughly depressing and I'm beginning to dread it.

Borrowed Scenery

"Borrowed Scenery" is a concept in landscape gardening and traditional Japanese and Chinese gardens (shakkei) in which the surrounds of your garden far beyond the borders is part of the visual "field" or "impact" of your garden - everything looks more expansive and lusher than it actually is, because you can see the scenery beyond. The trouble with "borrowed scenery" is that people can take it away. When I bought my house two years ago, one of the things that most attracted me to it was the fact that the garden, though small and pokey, was a green oasis thanks to the hedge and trees in the garden behind me. The people who owned the house had filled it with greenery, and that greenery was mine by extension. That house sold a couple of months ago, and yesterday morning as I was getting ready for work I heard the new owners talking to some gardeners about "tidying all this up". I was worried they might cut things back so much that it would let the street lights from the highway cut through. It was dark when I got home last night, so I wasn't fully aware of what had happened. I did notice that I had more light in my house than normal, so I thought they'd cut things back as I had feared. They got rid of the hedge. And two lovely lili pili trees that made it so nice to sit on my porch and look at the greenness. Also, instead of a bank of green things filled with flowers, I now see the side of my neighbours' house - including their sensor lights. Thankfully, I let my own lili pilis get bushy and overgrown, because otherwise the yard would feel completely exposed. As I was standing in my garden this morning, commiserating with the two sunbirds who have been living in the hedge that's now gone, I found myself feeling completely bereft. It wasn't my hedge, but it was part of my garden, and now it's gone and my garden looks so sparse without it. Plus, the birds are now missing a major food source. We both sort of looked at each other as if to say "why would anybody do this?" I know that all things are impermanent. I know the hedge and trees weren't mine to keep. I know that all that I can do now is try to plant something with lots of flowers to give the birds a reason to stick around. I know I should accept it and roll with it... But right now I look at the side of a building when I used to look at a lovely green bush and feel incredibly saddened. Part of me knew this day could come - I just hoped the neighbours would realise the hedge was a benefit to them (not just me) for many reasons. But still, when I got into my car this morning and looked at the side of my neighbours' house, I realised that without that hedge, I probably wouldn't have bought my house.

I don't have great photos of what it looked like "before", but imagine a bank of flowering plants so high you couldn't see the roof of the house behind me, and then you might appreciate why the "after" photo hurts so much:

What’s for Dinner?

By Steven Groves from Denver, CO,
United States of America
Sammie, CC BY 2.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/
w/index.php?curid=48825930

I’ve been struggling to find something I want to eat lately. For a few months now, I get to mealtime, think to myself, “I’m hungry, I should probably eat something,” and then spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what I actually want to eat. Most of the time I end up dismissing what I don’t want to eat and picking the least objectionable of what’s left. I can’t say I often enjoy what I end up eating, either.

For a while I went through a phase where all I really felt like eating was a sandwich, but my mother assured me I couldn’t have sandwiches for every meal. I gave it a shot, but then I got sick of the sandwiches. I don’t think that’s what she was getting at, but that’s what happened. I have to admit, though, I still get to a point most evenings where the only thing stopping me from giving up on “real” food and eating a ham sandwich instead is the fact that I don’t currently have any ham.

It gets especially annoying when I’m in a food court or something and I’m surrounded by options I don’t particularly want. Then I also baulk at the amount of money I’ll be paying for the privilege of eating something that I don’t actually want to eat.

It’s not a problem when I’m over someone’s house and they’re feeding me. I don’t have to want it, I just have to say “thank you,” and politely eat it. That actually works for me.

I don’t know that I’ve lost my appetite. I still feel hungry, and I still eat a full meal most of the time. I just can’t think of a single thing I actually want to eat, and largely just end up picking something I should eat instead. When I get especially stumped, I just eat breakfast. I have the same thing for breakfast every morning with minor variations, and if I could figure out what I’d stomach on high rotation for lunch and dinner every day I’d probably try to repeat that formula (maybe a sandwich?).

What would really work for me is some sort of dining hall or refectory, where I pay some sort of subscription for the “meal of the day”. If they could also give me a packed lunch every day, that would be awesome. I keep fantasising about simply turning up to a counter, saying “today’s special, thanks” and that’s it – dinner is sorted.

Steal this idea: The Lighthouse Project

The universe steals a lot of my ideas and gives them to people who are more likely to do something with them. I'm okay with that, but sometimes I feel it needs a nudge with the redistribution. The idea is worth having, but I'm not the person who can execute it. So I invite anyone who can to steal the ideas I offer and make them happen.

This one is for the creation of a charity (or NPC): 

The Lighthouse Project.

The gift of space

The institution I work for is one of several places that have a multi-faith chaplaincy. There is a chaplaincy team that provides spiritual support for anyone who needs it, regardless of which religion they belong to (even if they don't belong to one at all). This in itself is quite nice, but the MFC does something else which is (in my opinion) more tangibly useful: they provide a space.

The Chaplaincy building provides a space for groups to meet that they wouldn't be able to afford otherwise. Small faith groups, that don't really have the numbers to be able to qualify as a "congregation" or an "organisation", but still need a place to meet and share their faith together. I'm talking about things like a Tibetan Buddhist group that sometimes has as many as eight people, but normally only has three. Or a Christian denomination from a refugee community that barely rustles up ten people on a good day.

These groups wouldn't be able to hire a space, but thanks to the MFC, they're able to book a room and get together to practise their faith and do a spot of community building.  The MFC building also has rooms for meditation and a Muslim prayer room.

It's a fantastic service. Unfortunately it has no money and the building is in serious need of some work. I've been there a couple of times myself to use the meditation room, and I felt not so much "restored" as "bummed out" by my time in that space. I keep thinking fondly of a couple of other chapels I've visited in the past few years, which had a light bright feeling to them and a pleasant outlook from the windows. A pleasant space can make a world of difference when you are seeking spiritual balm.

The curse of space

Now, at the same time, I've been part of several conversations in a few different churches over the years talking about the problem of buildings. Once upon a time, everyone went to church on a Sunday. There may have been a few people who didn't, but most people did - so it made perfect financial sense to have church buildings in every community.

These days the attendance numbers are so low that you can have a church building capable of holding over 200 people that only sees about 30 on a Sunday morning. You might also have an evening service (but, increasingly, most churches don't), and you might have a midweek prayer group or bible study in the church itself - but really most non-Sunday-morning activities for the majority of churches happen in the hall (and that's a whole 'nother building!).

It's worse in the country towns, where there weren't that many people to start off with, the population keeps dropping, and now most people don't attend church on a Sunday morning.

So now you get situations where a small country town has (at a conservative estimate) at least three church buildings (Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian - maybe also Baptist and a couple of others) which are all largely empty for most of the week. Since some of these churches are being run by dioceses that can only afford to send a priest along once a month, they're largely empty for most of the month. 

In the meantime, the congregations and churches who own the buildings are still paying rates and insurance and trying to keep up with maintenance on buildings that they can't really afford any more.

The gift of space

So, here's my idea for a charity:  The Lighthouse Project.

The Lighthouse Project will be in the "business" of providing a space for all religious/faith groups that need one. They will provide and maintain a building with at least one auditorium and a number of smaller meeting rooms (and a few meditation/prayer rooms). They will be responsible for keeping the building nice and maintaining a garden space to give it good vibes.

Instead of driving themselves bankrupt trying to maintain all of their separate "God Boxes" (as a priest I was talking to once referred to them), the mainstream churches (Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, etc) can hire the Lighthouse in the town. You could probably fit at least six services in the building on the weekend for different denominations, and the meeting rooms would be available to take all of those activities that would happen in the church halls. Other community groups would be able to hire out the space during the week, for running conferences and what have you.

With many hands making light work, the cost of running services in the Lighthouse should be much easier to bear than the cost of maintaining a church, a hall and a vicarage/presbytery/manse/whatever.

The money charged to the "big" faith groups would enable the building to be provided to the small groups (the ones that can't afford to rent a space) free of charge.

The Lighthouse can also provide a secretariat service which is (once again) paid for by the larger groups in order to offer a charitable service to the smaller ones. No longer do small faith groups who have approximately five members - all over the age of 60 and largely computer illiterate - have to work out how to maintain their own website. They can just have a page on the Lighthouse's website, run and maintained by the Lighthouse's staff, so all they need to do is provide up-to-date information.*

A multi-faith space

Essentially, the Lighthouse Project is a multi-faith chaplaincy on steroids. I see a future with a Lighthouse in every town - a beautiful building that provides a pleasant space for people of every faith.

*Yes, I know they will almost never do this.

The trouble with decluttering

Part of me wants to be a minimalist. I look at my stuff and think, "that's too much stuff - I need less stuff."

But the sad fact of the matter is that my "clutter" can be largely divided into two groups:

1. Things that are actually useful, it's just that I haven't used them (yet)
2. Things I bought for hobbies

It's the second group that causes the most angst.

You see, I haven't given up hope. Sure, I haven't played that concertina/finished making that stuffed bear/actually used my whittling equipment to whittle anything for over a year (maybe longer). Heck, I have a tent (it's a really good tent) that I have literally never used - and I bought it over five years ago. But I still want to do "that thing". I want this to be a hobby that I actually do, and there's always the possibility that I'll be the person who does that thing if I have the stuff to do it with.

So, I have paints for the water colour painting that I don't do. I have a lovely chip-carving set for the chip carvings I have never made. I have dancing instructions and music for the Scottish Country Dancing I haven't done for years. I have instruments I was once passionately in love with, that I've barely looked it for an awfully long time. And I have a bag full of reclaimed material so I can practice making stuffed toys (even though I've been working on finishing one small bear for the past year).

I want to create, make, play, do... But I don't actually do any of these things.

Technically, it's all clutter. Just crap filling up the corners of my house.

But every time I go to clear some if it away, I remember the dreams that brought it into my house in the first place. I still have hope that "one day" I'll be the person who does that.

One day.

Don't eat the dieffenbachia

Aspidistra elatior by Digigalos
CC BY SA

So I finally started the forest.

For quite a number of years now, I've been thinking: "My workspace needs green things." But thinking about how much I'd like a few pot plants around the place and actually making the effort to get them have been two different things. I have been doing the former quite regularly, but the latter? Not so much.

But the other night I finally said to myself: "Bunnings is open until 9.00pm, dangit - go get an aspidistera."

Some months back I bought a lovely pot plant stand for my house, and I went looking for houseplants to keep on it. I did some research for "okay-to-be-indoors, reasonably-hard-to-kill, won't-poison-pets" plants, and aspidistera came in a winner. Aspidisteras and peperomias. But when I went shopping for plants the Bunnings I went to didn't have any aspidistera. I'm not sure how that was possible, because aspidisteras are one of the most common houseplants on the face of the earth.

They also have a really fun name to say: "Aspidistera". Fit it into a sentence and it makes you sound somehow more civilised. "Oh, yes, you'll find that on the coffee table next to the aspidistera."

So, long story short, I went home that day with a couple of peperomia and a trio of ferns, wondering how long it would take for them to show me that I don't know squat about keeping houseplants alive. So far, one of the peperomia is doing quite well (the other is struggling a bit), and one of the ferns is going great guns, while the other two are busy telling me I should have put more thought into my potting mix. They are communicating their displeasure through the medium of dying.

And yet, even though my track record with "keeping plants alive" isn't great, I still want to live surrounded by them.

So I went to Bunnings (a different one) to look for apsidistera. I found some, but instead of buying a small aspidistera plantation (which was my original plan), I suddenly went on a houseplant frenzy and just bought a bunch of things. Aspidistera, dieffenbachia, fikus, boston fern and peace lilly. The fern and the peace lily also have the fun names to say (nephrolepis and spathiphyllum, respectively), but if you say "aspidistera" there's a chance people know what you're talking about. If you say spathiphyllum they think you're having a stroke.

Both the dieffenbachia and the spathiphyllum came with strict instructions to not eat them. Now, I know from my research that they're not safe around pets, which is why I didn't buy any for my house (even though my pet currently doesn't live in my house - long story), and I'm glad they put that information on the plants themselves - but I'm finding the very general warning quite amusing. "May be harmful if eaten". It kind of implies that anyone in the house might give it a crack.

I suppose, in some houses, they might.

Right now I'm surrounded by green things that aren't dead yet. It's only been a few days, but I'm hoping they stick around for a while, because I like my little forest - it makes me smile.

Finding something in nothing (Or: A strange and slow crisis of faith)

By Michael Rivera - Own work
CC BY-SA 4.0

My mother was visiting my house the other day (a rare occurrence these days, as she doesn't like driving at night) and she picked up a few of the books I've been reading lately.

"If I didn't know any better," she said, "I'd think you were turning unto a Buddhist."
"I'm starting to think that myself," I replied.

A little over a year ago I was sitting in a Thai restaurant (where all good life-changing moments happen) and reading the decorations on the wall while waiting for the food to come. I noticed how similar the statements attributed to the Buddha were to things said by Jesus and/or Solomon, and it suddenly occurred to me that I knew absolutely nothing about Buddhism.

All I knew was a throwaway line handed to me by a teacher at the church-run Christian school I went to - that Buddhists worship "Nothing".

Now, I realised ages ago that the kind of Christianity that was on display in that particular denomination wasn't for me. The more closely I looked at it, the more I felt that it was propelled by wilful ignorance and arrogance instead of openness and a desire to learn and grow. Now, this denomination may be exactly what someone else needs in their spiritual walk, but I felt like I was constantly finding things I wanted to talk about that were on some sort of list of things that I shouldn't want to talk about if I was a "good Christian". Stick to the party line, and don't ask questions.

What I hated most about that denomination was the fact that they kept saying "oh, we're not religious, we just have faith" - which sounds great, but was a load of crap. They were totally religious - and there was nothing wrong with that - religion is a framework that we use to build a community of faith. They just wanted to feel somehow superior to other denominations, so they tried to use "religion" as a way of telling the difference between "us" and "them" - and this was one of many things you weren't supposed to call them out on, even though it would have made us all better Christians if we were called out on it and became more self-aware.

I was raised into this version of Christianity, but I didn't belong in it. I'd felt that even as I was getting more and more involved in the church and youth group. Eventually, I just had to leave. I found Anglicanism, and that kept me in the Christian church. It was, basically, as far away as I could get from the denomination I had left without becoming Orthodox or Catholic. I loved it. I was the drink of water I needed after feeling like I was drowning in sand in my old church. I even considered becoming a priest at one point... only there were a few things that I really didn't agree with (like baptising infants), and I found myself confronted by a rather important question:

Can you be a member of a particular faith if you don't believe in what members of this faith are supposed to believe in?

And then there's a little issue that I noticed some time ago: I actually don't buy the afterlife as Christianity describes it. I've never been interested in heaven - and I've never heard a description of it that makes me think "oh, that's the point - I can get behind that." This whole idea that you live an incredibly short life in this plane of existence in order to work out what you are going to be doing for the rest of all eternity sounds like crap. It doesn't sit comfortably with me and I do not like it at all. If you gave me the choice of possible after-life options, I'd take another short-term option, followed by another, if that's okay. One short life followed by *forever* is not something I actually want.

I know that what I want and reality are not the same thing, but the afterlife is something you have to take on faith. Having faith in something you don't actually want to believe in is a bit odd, when you think about it.

I've also been noticing that a lot of the concepts and teachings I associate with "Christianity" weren't actually taught by Jesus. They've been "extrapolated" over the centuries, and apart from the Quakers, there aren't that many people saying "hang on, let's get back to basics, shall we?"

And then there's that moment when I was reading a passage in the Old Testament, thinking about how it applied to my spiritual walk (which is what I do - or rather, did), and an epiphany hit me. I realised as plain as day that it wasn't written for me. It was written about some ancient Israeli dude. I am not an ancient Israeli dude. I can learn from what this ancient Israeli dude experienced, if there is something to learn from it, but there is no *good* reason for why I should be learning from his experiences more than anyone else's.

I've been holding on to Christianity because I cannot fathom a universe without God, and Christianity is the way I've come to know God and think about him. But I feel like I'm holding onto the bar of one of those playground roundabouts - like it's actually flinging me off, and the more I look at Christianity, Christians and the Bible, no matter how much I want to move towards the centre, I'm actually finding myself closer and closer to the edge.

I started reading about Buddhism to fill a gap in my knowledge, but I'm at a point that I have to admit I'm being won over. I've just read so many things in either the sayings attributed to the Buddha or the writings of other Buddhist monks and teachers that made me say "Yes! Exactly! That makes so much sense!" or "Oh, man, I needed to hear that - if I'd heard it back when I was younger it would have made a world of difference."

When I was a teenager and in my early 20s, I struggled with bouts of depression. Not as severe as others - I think "mild to moderate" is the term - but they were still rather devastating at the time. Looking back on it now, I realise that the things that helped me deal with that are actually part of the Buddhist way of approaching life, and if I had known more about this approach to mental health at the time it would have helped me immensely.

The theology of the various streams of Buddhism aren't doing anything for me, but the philosophy, the world view and the approach to being a human being in this life are ticking a lot of boxes. Sometimes I never even knew the box was there (and empty) until it was ticked. I'm arguing with Buddhism a lot. I'll read something and think "well, that's complete nonsense". But the beauty of Buddhism is that you're not supposed to swallow it hook-line-and-sinker. You're supposed to question it, challenge it and take what is wholesome and leave the rest (something that is actively discouraged in most versions of Christianity, as I've encountered it).

And I've often found that the reason why I've disagreed with something I've read is because I'm coming at it from a particular angle and interpreting it a particular way. When I look at it from a different perspective, or change my reference points, it gives me a lot to think about. I feel like, for the first time in a very long time, I'm actually growing.

But I still hold to the teachings of Jesus (which, believe it or not, are not incompatible with Buddhism as a philosophy) and I still hold to God - I still cannot fathom a universe without "My Father In Heaven", if you know what I mean?

So I've been having an incredibly protracted crisis of faith. It has accelerated in recent years, but it has been going on for a very long time, when I think about it. I no longer feel entirely comfortable calling myself a Christian (even though I kind of still am) as I have one foot out the door and the rest of me is facing that direction (some days I barely have one foot in the door), and I'm not yet comfortable calling myself a Buddhist (but, man, I'm not far off).

The really annoying thing is that the priest at my church keeps coming back to sermons about making decisions and commitments to your faith ("choose you this day, whom you will serve" and all that), and I really wish she'd stop. I don't want to stop attending church because I feel like it's going to be really hard to rebuild my relationship with Christianity if I'm not spending quality time with it, but right now I'm at a point in my life where if you say "choose one", I'm really not sure which one I'd choose... but I have my suspicions.