The Guild

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Winter 2005 to 2006
Thursday 26 January
The decision made by Dr Anne Turner to seek help to end her life is one that disturbs me, challenging as it does my largely untested belief that life is a sacred gift – not ours to take. Such moral and ethical problems are nothing new, and it’s some comfort to me that no less a person than St Paul found it difficult to answer the questions thrown up by his society in first century Palestine. 
Small wonder that his writings often proved controversial, as he tried to interpret and apply Jesus message for the daily life of the young Christian community. The religious and ethical questions of the day required some response from the emerging church, which longed then, as now, for clear guidelines on issues like its relationship with the state, or the status of marriage. 
It’s evident from his writings that he struggled and prayed long and hard. But then came the crunch - to call it as he saw it and to offer his opinion. That struggle is shared today by all those who try to live by an ethical code. Social, scientific and economic developments continue to raise new questions. How should we respond, for example, to the dilemmas posed by our new abilities to prolong life through medical intervention, or to assist someone to end their life? At what point do we as individuals say that’s far enough? 
These things hit the headlines when there is a case like that of Anne Turner or baby Charlotte Wyatt. We may be quite clear about our theoretical ethical position, but the love and pain and fears and doubts of a person or family in distress can make that position seem much less secure. For me, as a Christian, the struggle is to work out how best to love God and to love my neighbour in all this, and I’m not there yet.
In these situations, people generally like to have clear cut detailed rules, but if the devil is in the detail, perhaps God is in the principle. And if we concentrate on getting the principle right, we might agonise less about the rules. 

Wednesday 21 December
So it’s official, a little of what you fancy really does do you good. Or in the words of a recent scientists’ report 'a small daily treat of dark chocolate may beneficially affect vascular health.' What great news in the run up to Christmas, that chocolate might help stave off heart disease. Death by chocolate for Christmas pud this year then. 
Unfortunately the news is not all good. In another report published yesterday, we read that death by alcohol is the fate of some 40 people a week in Scotland on average, and you can bet that there’ll be nothing average about the amount of alcohol consumed in the next week or two.
These news items are just two examples of the relentless flow of information that 
bombards us daily about our bodies, and at this time of year the news is augmented by the advertising campaigns, inviting us to spend huge amounts of money on our physical wants and needs. The choice is phenomenal about what substances to put into our body, what clothes to wear on it, how we might decorate and improve it, how much we should pamper and exercise it. And why not? We only have the one body each and it’s got to last us a lifetime, so we should be looking after it, and learning more about how it works and what it can give us in terms of pleasure and enjoyment.
Some people feel that the true spirit of Christmas is being lost in all the commercialism and overindulgence of the flesh and there’s undeniably some truth in that. But those who try constantly to divorce the spiritual from the physical are missing the point. I would resist any attempt to disembody Christmas and concentrate exclusively on the mystical meaning of it all. Presumably, an all powerful God, such as Christians believe in, could have sent his message to human kind by means of a purely spiritual revelation, but, far from despising the body, he embraced it and became like us - to show his love for the world. 

Thursday 1 December
Now I know, because you’ve told me, that some of you listen to this programme in bed, or in the shower. Some of you aren’t dressed yet and might still be undecided about what you’re going to wear today. 
Partly from watching Trinny and Susannah, and partly as a result of what I learned at an assertiveness course recently, I’m more aware these days of the signals we give out by the way we dress. If we want to appear strong and in control at a business meeting we’ll wear our sharpest suit and shiniest shoes if we want to appear approachable and non-threatening we’ll go for something a bit softer round the edges .
Sometimes what we wear can signify what we believe. There are religious forms of dress, the yarmulke, the hijab, the crucifix, and there is the current fashion for wristbands of varying colour, which say something about our concerns, if not our belief systems. 
And then there are the things we wear for sentimental reasons – the woolly scarf your granny knitted or the crazy tie your children gave you for Fathers’ Day. Since my mother died I’ve always worn one of her rings, because I like it very much and because it reminds me of her and makes her somehow less absent.
On this World AIDS Day, like many others, I’ll be wearing a red ribbon, to signify support for the campaign to overcome the spread of HIV through drugs therapy, education and the alleviation of poverty. I’m also wearing a string of beads which I bought in a township church in Capetown, at a craft business run by people living with HIV and AIDS. The ribbon will remind me, and others , of the scale and statistics of the AIDS pandemic. The beads will remind me of the people I met and the warmth and life of their community, where people with HIV were living hopeful and positive lives, proud of their craftsmanship and delighted to make a sale. I’ll be thinking of them today. 

Thursday 24 November
On Monday a poll commissioned by Amnesty International reported that a third of people questioned believed that a woman is partially or totally responsible for being raped if she has behaved in a flirtatious manner. People also criticised victims’ previous sexual history, their drinking habits or the way they dressed. 
As a mother of teenage girls I’ve often heard myself saying: "Surely you’re not going out dressed like that, for goodness sake put more clothes on!" But my maternal concern was always that they might catch their death of cold. Never once did it cross my mind that they might be inviting sexual assault and nor should it have. I know that some women can be provocative, or callous in their rejection of a man’s advances, but that’s no reason to suppose that they deserve to be the subject of a violent and humiliating attack.
I’m not interested in demonising men as the enemy or seeing every flirty girl as an angel in disguise, but I do think it’s time we all took responsibility for our own actions, regardless of gender. To switch the blame for what we do to somebody else is wrong and cowardly and to switch it to the victim of our actions is beyond despicable. 
Tomorrow is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and marks the start of a 16 day campaign to overcome that violence and injustice in all its forms. Members of the Church of Scotland Guild will be praying at the 16th hour of each of these days for victims and perpetrators of violence and for a change in the hearts of men and women. 
As part of the campaign, there’s an exhibition at a London gallery, where artists have contributed their images of a world without violence against women. The exhibition is called Imagine a world, I think that such a world, where truth and respect for each other are valued and where strength and power aren’t abused, would be a creative one for all of us.