alt.worship

This morning Christians up and down the land may be challenged to engage in an act of alt worship. It’s a fifth Sunday in the month and many churches take the opportunity to try something different. Some churches will be celebrating the Presentation of Christ a few days early. Some will get out the pebbles, tea lights, harps and Iona music for a taste of the Celtic (green and white hooped shirts not obligatory).

However, I suspect there will be many Christians favouring alt worship. Contrary to belief in liturgical circles, alt worship does not refer to alternative worship but Australian Lawn Tennis Worship. Andy Murray, the great hope of British tennis, is playing in the final of the Australian Open this morning against someone who isn’t called Nadal or Federer. Surely, this is the chance for Britain’s woeful run of failure in men’s top tennis tournaments to come to an end. And so the nation is called to fall on its knees in supplication for a British win. Of course if Murray fails to beat Novak Djokovic he reverts to being Scottish but let us not be negative.

Come on Andy!

Update: The Scottish lad lost.

Body matters

The BBC had to apologise to British tennis player Laura Robson after their commentator David Mercer referred to her ‘puppy fat’. The sixteen year old was playing in the second round juniors match at  Wimbledon when Mercer made the comment. Having seen Robson play and the pictures of her I can’t work out what Mercer is on about. However, even if she was slightly heavier, so what? She is a teenager growing up and her body is changing and developing all the time; the last thing Laura needs is some sixty year old man going on about her body weight. Robson is now through to the semi finals, so she can’t be that unfit!

Why did this comment rile me so much? During my time as a parish priest I ministered to a family whose teenage daughter became anorexic following a hurtful remark about her body weight. She was a perfectly healthy young girl who transformed before our eyes into little more than a skeleton looking much older than her age. Eventually she was admitted to hospital where I visited her regularly and after an extensive period of treatment she overcame the illness and returned to being a healthy normal teenager. The pain and anguish she, her family and the wider church family experienced was terrible.

My father-in-law Professor David Mattingly, who died last year, was a brilliant physician and a leading contributor to research on Anorexia. The focus of his work was on the physiological aspects of the illness rather than the psychological and he published a very influential work titled The Diagnosis of Anorexia Nervosa with S. Bhanji in 1982. David worked with and treated many young women who were starving themselves to death because of their perceptions about their bodies.

I have a young daughter who will soon be entering her teens and I am very aware of all the pressures she faces in a society which places so much emphasis on appearance. She and her friends are continually bombarded with images, often digitally or surgically altered images, of what a young woman should look like. The sexualisation of childhood, the forensic analysis of female celebrities’ weight by the gossip magazines, the physiologically absurd shape of Barbie dolls and certain models, are just part of the context in which girls are growing up. They will be naturally self conscious enough about their bodies as they change without ill informed and potentially damaging comments about how they should look.

I realise that there are challenging issues around obesity facing our society, with potentially serious consequences for individuals and for the wider community. However, I can’t help feeling that there is a certain amount of body fascism around which would decree that women like Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe were seriously overweight in their prime. Our young people need to hear words of affirmation and love at a time of uncertainty, self consciousness and change during puberty, that they might join with the psalmist in declaring:
‘I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.’ Psalm 139:14

how come ? (2) - footy

Scanned the TV schedule on Saturday evening to find the highlights of the England v Andorra match only to discover it wasn’t being shown. The FA has sold the rights to England’s away fixtures to Setanta subscription channel and they couldn’t agree a fee to sell the highlights to the BBC or ITV.

How come you can’t watch the national team without forking out to a pay per view channel? Why didn’t the FA make it a condition of their rights sale that highlights had to be shown on terrestrial TV? Footy is heading the way of cricket and boxing with fewer people able to watch unless they stump up the dosh. Not good for the punter and not good for the sport. If you stick it on a channel that no one watches then gradually people will lose interest. Still I ought to be grateful because it did mean I was spared watching John Terry hoofing the ball aimlessly into touch, Wayne Rooney running around looking for a booking and the inevitable series of misses against a bunch of cloggers who wouldn’t grace League Division 2. Scraped a 2-0 win for goodness sake!

Still Andy Murray did us proud in the tennis; edge of the bed stuff last night as I listened to his triumph over Nadal. Playing Federer tonight for the U.S. Open title – come on!!!