Take a breather
Like dawn spreading across the mountains (Joel 2:2)
After a while Joel can really get you down. He only just finishes describing a previous nationwide destruction and then immediately prophesies another one: darkness, gloom, clouds, blackness. I, for one, can only take so much dread and destruction. I'm the kind of person who turns off the news and listens to my favourite music or comedy programme. So today, I've cheated. I've picked an image that Joel intends as a picture of unavoidable disaster, dawn, and re-appropriated it for spreading joy.
So here's my good news. Funerals in the churchyard, with almost no mourners, are not the farce I expected. Yesterday as I spoke the words of commendation and committal, it felt good. The only item in the churchyard other than the gravestones dedicated in memory was given by the man we were honouring. He had a witness ready made. The sound of the words as I spoke echoed around the buildings that surrounded the grassy lawn, like pipes echoing off the hills of a glen. It seemed to me at least as if a whole cloud of witnesses had gathered to say goodbye.
Here's more. Yesterday I had two unexpected phone calls. Both were from people who had simply decided to cheer the vicar up. One was just a joyful catch up. The other person told me jokes, both of which were both innocent and funny. I have to admit that I realised I'd heard the golden phone one before, but my memory is so poor for certain things that it came to me fresh and amused me well.
Oh and I've been on a bit of health binge over the last 3 months and it's going really well. At Christmas my dear daughter looked at my growing belly and said, 'You'll never get rid of that, Dad. At your age you're stuck with it for good.' Well that was enough to set me on a path. As you probably know dieting makes you put on weight not lose it, so I wasn't going on a diet, except the seafood diet (see food, eat it). No, I simply set a target weight, tracked it carefully, and increased my level of exercise until I was burning more calories than I was taking in. Not hard with my sedentary lifestyle at the time. Oh and I also reduced my cheese intake. When I eat cheese, I might as well just spread it across my midriff. The whole tummy thing started when I asked my Dad to provide cheese for Christmas and I ended up finishing up the 13 large cheeses he thought were adequate as an after-dinner treat for 6 people. Well, anyway, I've lost about 12 pounds in 3 months at an almost exactly even rate, and the tummy is almost gone. Next step is to replace what's left with a bit of muscle so that I can enjoy my windsurfing when we are able to go back on the water.
Well, that's my good news. What's yours?
PS If you're interested in the problems with diets, there's lots of research, but, in essence, will-power is a limited resource, so anything that uses it to bring change is doomed to failure, and dramatically reducing the body's calorie intake tends to cause it to go into starvation mode where it becomes more effective at using less calories to function. Thus in the medium to long term diets mean you put on weight. There are complicated ways of avoiding this, but the simple one is not to bother, and find a way that works for you to burn more calories than you eat. I mostly do more exercise but added a couple of refinements. First, I worked out which foods my particular body is efficient at turning into fat and cut down on those. Everyone's different but in my case it's basically any kind of cheese. Secondly we began to eat more vegetarian food, which is just as filling but leaves less trace as it passes through the body. Interestingly, I find I often now prefer it to meat dishes.
After a while Joel can really get you down. He only just finishes describing a previous nationwide destruction and then immediately prophesies another one: darkness, gloom, clouds, blackness. I, for one, can only take so much dread and destruction. I'm the kind of person who turns off the news and listens to my favourite music or comedy programme. So today, I've cheated. I've picked an image that Joel intends as a picture of unavoidable disaster, dawn, and re-appropriated it for spreading joy.
So here's my good news. Funerals in the churchyard, with almost no mourners, are not the farce I expected. Yesterday as I spoke the words of commendation and committal, it felt good. The only item in the churchyard other than the gravestones dedicated in memory was given by the man we were honouring. He had a witness ready made. The sound of the words as I spoke echoed around the buildings that surrounded the grassy lawn, like pipes echoing off the hills of a glen. It seemed to me at least as if a whole cloud of witnesses had gathered to say goodbye.
Here's more. Yesterday I had two unexpected phone calls. Both were from people who had simply decided to cheer the vicar up. One was just a joyful catch up. The other person told me jokes, both of which were both innocent and funny. I have to admit that I realised I'd heard the golden phone one before, but my memory is so poor for certain things that it came to me fresh and amused me well.
Oh and I've been on a bit of health binge over the last 3 months and it's going really well. At Christmas my dear daughter looked at my growing belly and said, 'You'll never get rid of that, Dad. At your age you're stuck with it for good.' Well that was enough to set me on a path. As you probably know dieting makes you put on weight not lose it, so I wasn't going on a diet, except the seafood diet (see food, eat it). No, I simply set a target weight, tracked it carefully, and increased my level of exercise until I was burning more calories than I was taking in. Not hard with my sedentary lifestyle at the time. Oh and I also reduced my cheese intake. When I eat cheese, I might as well just spread it across my midriff. The whole tummy thing started when I asked my Dad to provide cheese for Christmas and I ended up finishing up the 13 large cheeses he thought were adequate as an after-dinner treat for 6 people. Well, anyway, I've lost about 12 pounds in 3 months at an almost exactly even rate, and the tummy is almost gone. Next step is to replace what's left with a bit of muscle so that I can enjoy my windsurfing when we are able to go back on the water.
Well, that's my good news. What's yours?
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| Sunrise over San Cassiano on the last day of our last holiday with the whole family, six years ago |
PS If you're interested in the problems with diets, there's lots of research, but, in essence, will-power is a limited resource, so anything that uses it to bring change is doomed to failure, and dramatically reducing the body's calorie intake tends to cause it to go into starvation mode where it becomes more effective at using less calories to function. Thus in the medium to long term diets mean you put on weight. There are complicated ways of avoiding this, but the simple one is not to bother, and find a way that works for you to burn more calories than you eat. I mostly do more exercise but added a couple of refinements. First, I worked out which foods my particular body is efficient at turning into fat and cut down on those. Everyone's different but in my case it's basically any kind of cheese. Secondly we began to eat more vegetarian food, which is just as filling but leaves less trace as it passes through the body. Interestingly, I find I often now prefer it to meat dishes.
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