What I love and hate about Christianity

I'm reading The Naked Buddha: a demythologised account of the man and his teaching by Eric Harrison. The author has been a committed Buddhist for 25 years and a meditation teacher for more than 40 years.

He explains why Buddhism grows very very slowly, and why Westerners turn away. He's refreshingly honest:

...my approach is to highlight the good as I see it (which can be very, very good) and point out the bad (which can be quite awful).

This honesty—so rare it's almost unthinkable—stimulated me to think about what I love and hate about Christianity. And why I walked out of church in the 70s and virtually never went back. I'm not highlighting the good and the bad objectively: this is strictly personal.

What I love about Christianity

• My Dad, a vicar and a battler
• God is love (the message we got from our Dad)
• Worship, being consciously grateful
• Values of kindness, service to others, and generosity
• Peaceful meditation and food for thought
• Inspiring ministers: good, brave, wise people
• Jesus: a human being
• "Life is real, now: make your own heaven"
• Aesthetics: music, stained glass, flowers
• Poetry: the King James Bible and Book of Common Prayer
• Mary
• Ritual and chanting
• Myth and metaphor
• Adventurous theology
• The City Mission.

What I loathe about Christianity or at least some factions

Some of what repels me, like the first item, is not intrinsically bad: it simply doesn't suit me at all. Some is all in my own mind. And some is genuinely bad, bad, bad.

I know people who help to create wonderful church communities and they belong there and improve the world. But I walked out one Sunday when it struck me that only 5 of the 400-odd people in the church would have the slightest understanding of my own position. (The 5 included the minister, bless him!) In every service I had been mentally translating the words into a more compatible theology.

Then I caught feminism and the translation job became impossible. Frankly, I didn't belong in a church.

Gradually feminism began to soften church misogyny. But it was far too late for me. I can't stand:

• Being part of an artificially constructed community
• Boring, false, or foolish ministers
• Persistent masculinity and paternalism
• Too much guilt
• Arrogance
• Persistent anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-other attitudes
• Exclusivity: this is the right way and the only way
• Wealth and control and greed
• A sense of pointlessness.

Well, let it go. Growing older, I can see the big picture. I think...

Photo: The Jesus Place at Gobind Sadan, Delhi

My first new year resolution in 70 years

A New Year's resolution? I don't remember ever making one before. At least, not one that lasted more than ten minutes, not one that felt fun and difficult and right. Here it is:

I will buy no clothes in 2011.

Last year was the year of the clothes. Almost my entire wardrobe got refurbished. I had plenty of excuses, or justifications. I lost 7 or 8 kilos (that's a lot on Short People like me) and only my favourite clothes were worth altering. Then there were new clothes for weddings and conferences and India. And some garments were bought because I got a sudden urge to look like a grown-up—at least sometimes.

I normally give away or throw away something equivalent when I purchase something, so I probably don't have a larger number of clothes than before—but they are all fun or useful and I like them.

In other words I am spoiled rotten and have far too much Stuff.

Denying yourself a purchase can be a very satisfying experience. I get an unholy kick out of shopping but I also love psyching myself up to buy something... then changing my mind. Recently I did that on a large scale, saving myself at least 10,000 fantasy dollars. I decided to turn a little archive room into a bathroom, planned it, chose fittings. Then I changed my mind. Do I really need a second bathroom? Of course not.

Now, about the money I'll be saving. Who shall I give it to? My top favourite good cause is Books in Homes. I sponsor a couple of schools and could maybe add another one. We'll see how we go.

Books in homes

Old lady in Delhi

This old lady went to Delhi for 11 days in November. I attended the 12th Annual Conference of the Society for Technical Communication India Chapter, went to Pune for one day on business, and to Agra as a tourist.

Oh dear. I feel a niggling urge to defend myself against my own inner critic.

Rachel critic: You didn't have a Delhi experience. You had a conference-in-the-Sheraton experience.
Rachel defendant: It was excellent, and an ideal plan for a business trip, my first in India.

Rachel critic: You spent a lot of money for the privilege, didn't you?
Rachel defendant: Oh get over it. Staying in the Sheraton sure made my professional activities run smoothly, and that's what I was there for.

Rachel critic: You only saw five beggars the whole time you were there! Don't tell me you saw the Real Delhi.
Rachel defendant: So at least part of Delhi had been upgraded and sterilized for the Commonwealth Games and the Obamas' visit. Is that my fault? Anyway I didn't go there to see Delhi. I went to introduce our wonderful Contented online courses to India and to explore the potential of this fascinating new market.

Rachel critic: OK I give up. Tell it your way.
My way: I enjoyed the conference, the people, the presentations. It was very well run and I learned heaps about the technical communication industry in India. Doors opened a chink. Contented.com has already benefited.

I also learned a personal lesson: one inspiring presentation is worth 21 educational or marketing presentations. Wow! That was such a surprise. Because I had to give two presentations, I quite frivolously called one Knowledge, Wisdom, and the Joy of Writing. It was such fun to express my feelings on this topic, and I spoke with joy and saw joy reflected in delegates' faces.

What a lesson for me: be less earnest, join the dance, let yourself go, and enjoy the consequences.

The annual holiday letter: prickles and problems

2010 is far from over—27 precious days remain—but I've already received one Happy holidays! letter. Email makes it so easy to review the year for friends.

Or is it for ourselves? I feel ambivalent about these annual letters. I enjoy receiving them but have usually refrained from sending them. Why? Well, my writerly professionalism kicks in with editorial challenges. I find it's very hard to get the tone "right". I don't even know what tone I should attempt to strike.

Purpose paralysis: Seems simple enough at first sight: to review the year as lived by me. Or is it the year as lived by my family?

Audience ambiguities: This is a chance to maintain contact with friends and family that I don't keep in touch with during the year. So, first problem, would I send also this letter to close friends and family, who know perfectly well what I've been doing all year?

And those not-so-close friends: what would interest them, honestly?

The holiday letter audience is an unusual audience, non-specific yet personally known to me: a bunch of friends, family and acquaintances. They're special to me in their individual ways.

No wonder the holiday letter is difficult to write. It's not a personal letter. It's not an open letter. It's not an article. It's not a blog post like this, which is primarily for me, but which anyone can read. Maybe it's more like giving a speech at your own party.

Content quandaries: what to say, how much to say, how little to say? Are big adventures more interesting than little everyday realities? To whom? Should social events figure more than my professional interests? Does what interests me interest my correspondees?

Tone torture: How to prevent my letter from seeming like one big boast. You know what I mean.

I am so happy that my children, grandchildren and sisters are all living their own lovely, healthy lives. All grandparents ooze with excitement about the triumphs of their grandchildren. But if I write about that to a non-specific but known audience, how does that affect a friend whose beloved grandson died this year, or all those friends with tiny disfunctional families?

I'm tickled pink by my own adventures in developing the business of Contented.com and this has dominated my year. But to most of my friends and family, that's either a big yawn or yet another irritating boast.

This year, 2010, has indeed been truly wonderful for me. My main discovery is that for me personally, 70 is a marvellous age. Everything is ticking over nicely right now and I expect that to continue for another 10 years at least. And all the fun has an extra veneer of glee, just because I'm 70.

Maybe this is a cop-out, maybe a wise editorial decision: I'm thinking I shall just email everyone (well, not everyone) a link to this blog. The entries are pretty random but they mention at least some of the highlights of the year, and are more like a conversation than an executive summary. They don't mention my family much if at all. Yes. That's what I'll do.

To all my friends and acquaintances, and anyone else who happens to read this blog:
Happy holidays!

Diary of a senior Paris tourist

I've just spent a week in Paris, alone.

It's always felt kind of weird, being a tourist. I'm not against tourism, but prefer having some sort of mission or role or work when travelling.

Being a tourist makes you almost automatically a skimmer and scanner and dilettante. In general, I have never liked that state of mind. Hard to believe, but I prefer focusing, going deep rather than wide.

My only mission, such as it was, was to examine the workings of my own brain in this unusual-for-me situation.

So this time around, aged 70, how bad was my tourist-brain? If bad, how much was ditzimush brain due to age, tourism, internet habits and other factors respectively?

Answer: Despite being a tourist and despite 15 years as an internet junkie, I'm satisfied with the way my brain has behaved. It's been in calm control most of the time.

Are you familiar with that mildly frantic feeling when you confuse something — was that Monet or Manet — north or south — left or right — L'Orangerie or Orsay?*##! This week, I haven't experienced any of that mild but awkward tourist panic.

Firstly, I reckon I'm reaping the rewards of meditating twice a day. This I began last January to counteract high blood pressure. At the time, a friend explained that meditating twice a day has an effect much more profound than meditating once a day. And it's true, I find my state of mind is exponentially different, as if I can hold on to the benchmark of a still, clear mind for 24 hours. So I'm calmer, hard to fluster than I was even last year.

Secondly, I believe my age has been an advantage. I am who I am. Will I ever improve (as in become a more efficient tourist)? Unlikely! And every now and then I think about being dead. Sure puts things in perspective.

Physically, being older meant one day one of my hips protested. Then it stopped. I walked everywhere. Heaps. I've got incipient cataracts which probably mean I don't see Paris quite as brilliantly as other people do — but how would I know? It still looks great to me. Perhaps with better hearing my understanding of French would improve, but I'm more than satisfied with my progress.

Overall, I've enjoyed being a senior tourist just as much as being a junior tourist. Maybe more.

Boring diary follows
Do not read the following. It's boring. But if I don't write this down, will I remember? Regardless, does it matter if I don't remember?

Monday. Arrived Gare de Lyon on the fast train from Geneva. Did not lug my serious suitcase up stairs to Le train bleu restaurant. Ate downstairs and got oriented. Bought redundant carnet of metro tickets. Took taxi to the Villa Mazarin: 5.6 euro, tres simple. Walked the quays. Icecream, spicy hot chocolate.

Tuesday.
Museums shut: wandered around churches. Notre Dame, S. Germain des Pres, S. Severin, S. Etienne du Mont... Many dark pictures of people in agony rolling their eyes. Devout woman prostrate on the floor. Brain teeming, need not share. Ate at Les Deux Magots, did not eat snails but watched rich people. Bought silly gifts for family. Wandered happily through Jardins du Palais Luxembourg. Stumbled across free concert of Spanish choral music by Spanish (Madruda?) university choir in S. Nicholas church: such a treat.



Wednesday. Serious day at the Louvre. Slept in but still got there by 10. Skipped queue by entering through the Lion gate. Guiltily acknowledge my naive preference for portraits and simplicity and mediaeval paintings. Enjoyed the other tourists. Strolled through Tuileries gardens. Think I'm starting to understand the Paris garden philosophy. L'Orangerie for the big Monet garden paintings. Great lunch place, a tea and coffee specialist, #24 in The Book (Pauline Frommer's Paris.) Dinner l'As au Falafel, great, cheap falafels. Sore hip! Did clam exercise assiduously and took a pill.

Thursday. Decided to forgo camera for the day. Went to Carcaret Museum: shut for the day, 'technical reason'. Picasso Museum: shut for August. Much strolling. For lunch, I ordered 3 os a moelle - three marrow bones. Literally: no meat, no veg, just 3 bones. Never had marrow as a meal before. Soooo rich and fatty! No veges. One bone had no marrow and patron replaced it with very good will. Went to Centre Pompidou. Full of young people, yay!! Exhibition of femmes @ pompidou, plenty to inspire and remind me of the wild women of the 70s and 80s. (I was one too.) Bought buttons "La Corbusier" and "Annie Warhol". Totally enjoyed the modern art (up to 1960: they rotate the exhibitions) but in my mind cannot separate the works from those in the Musee d'Orsay. Dinner at tiny eccentric mom-and-pop Felteu not far away. Patron is boss, one must obey! Chatted with French couple. Am getting fat I think. Oh well, sort it later.

Friday. Hip feels fine again now: Louvre day was just too much for the senior bones. Camera-free day. Walked to Musee d'Orsay, Orsum. Lunch, La Palette, arty area, just fine. Then what did I do? I have no idea. Oh yes I do: the Cluny museum (national museum of middle ages). Easy to see why it's everyone's favourite. There I found the perfect souvenirs, but I wasn't allowed to take one away. What I really wanted was almost any small mediaeval statue of Mary.


Later I bought a compromise Paris souvenir: a ridiculous pair of shoes. Dinner, La Tartine, salad. Evening, went looking for Paris Danse en Seine. Couldn't find these freewheeling groups of dancers. Probably didn't walk far enough. Or they stop in August. Or a little rain cancelled. Did see a crazy poet-performer singing his heart out on one of the bridges, and a student band on the banks of the Seine. Plenty going on.

Saturday. Camera free day. Morning, did some work in hotel. Finally checked out the theatres, too late for cheap tickets though. Tons going on: if I'd got my act together I could have gone to a play every night. Tant pis. Walked to Grand Mosque, further than I expected. 1920s, tiles, arches, brass tables in the restaurant. Ate lamb tagine with olives and pickled lemons: must do this with lamb necks! Sweet mint tea.

Then hammam: lounging around in the fabulous old steam baths, a labyrinth of room after room, women being massaged on marble tables, taps and buckets same as Japanese baths, shared a marble cubicle with a pyramid-shaped old lady who was doing a very thorough job on every part of her amazing anatomy. Woman exfoliated her at one stage. Then ate a sweet almond and coconut cookie in the special waiting room, and viewed the mosque itself. It's lovely, not too severe. Walked to Rue des Ecoles area, took another look at St Etienne, a joyous, sunny, extravagant church near the Pantheon, had coffee. 5.30, 26-yr-old star musician Timothee who? played Bach cello suites 1, 3 and 4 in the tiny, quaint Syrian church S. Ephre (?) on Rue des Carmes. Great!

Hurried to Cafe de la Gare in Rue du Temple, very near my hotel. Signs said clearly house full, no tickets for that night's performance of Un Tour de Monde en 80 Jours. But the boss gave me one anyway: being alone can be an advantage. Back to hotel, dumped bags, put on glad rags just for fun including new shoes, and joined the queue for the play. It was great fun and I understood enough to laugh plenty.

Sunday. Gregorian mass at Notre Dame. Amazingly undisturbed by tourists, very smooth and swift. Four young women's voices filled this enormous space (with mikes I presume but didn't see any) and we joined in, following the Gregorian musical annotation: kind of pixillated, sequence sometimes vertical. Horrible silly expensive lunch at the wrong place. Strolled around some more, the last time. Ever? Gave my metro tickets to a young deaf-mute girl working a petition outside Pompidou Centre.

Now it's 4 pm and I'm writing this diary in the hotel courtyard. It was already hard to recall what I did this week, so good job Rachel. Gotta go. Planes to catch, home is calling. Goodbye Paris and thanks for all the fish.

Walkers in the night

Oldladylaughing is not a tourist blog. But exotic Lavigny is where I happen to be, and there's a lot of laughing.

The countryside here (just inland from Morges, near Lausanne) is laced with excellent paths that meander from village to village through vineyards, sunflowers, orchards, woods and meadows. It's hugely friendly for walkers and cyclists.

Last night three of us pushed it some by walking all the way to the lake. It only took an hour each way, but I felt quite bold because it was dark and a tad rainy, and we had no idea what route to take, no map no money no torch. But how hard could it be, we figured, if you just wander downhill towards the lake?

It's true. We really did it. Don't believe me? Check the indisputable archival evidence. Top photo: actual water in actual Lac Leman. Photo below: the three intrepid midnight walkers. Not?

Young food, new food

Several wonderful cooks compete for first place in our bellies here at Lavigny. Every meal so far has been delicious -- including raclette one night -- but on Sunday I was moved to photograph a couple of these masterpieces.

Missed the entree: it got scoffed before I could focus. Sliced smoked salmon with toast, butter, lemon, pepper and capers. Mmmm.

Every mouthful of quiche was a Eureka! for me. Short version: sliced goats' cheese (melting, creamy), courgettes (crunchy) and tomatoes (juicy, sharp, yummy) with herbs.

Then what? Chestnut vermicelli with cream and icecream. Champion gourmande on this occasion, I was the only one who could finish this rich and royal dessert.

I've been in training for this all my life.