Wake up.

I have been saying for a while now that the rise of fascism worries me. When I say this, friends and relatives look at with a patronizing smile and I can tell they think I'm over-reacting.

Yet, recent events show that there is real cause for concern. What happened in Charleston is a prime example. A Christian author who came as part of a counter protest writes this:

"Many came dressed in white shirts and khaki pants, reminding me of office workers or WalMart employees. Many wore helmets and carried hand-made shields. They looked like they came expecting to fight, threaten, and intimidate. Some came in paramilitary garb, heavily armed."

In the US, White supremacists are uniting in an organized way, expressing their ideas proudly, and coming to demonstrations armed and ready to fight. In Europe, they are openly declaring themselves; they organize boot camps to train; and raise funds to launch a boat whose sole purpose is to send refugees back where they came from.

I you wonder what you would have done during the rise of Nazism in Germany, YOU ARE DOING IT RIGHT NOW. 

Are you looking for scapegoats for everything you feel is wrong in today's society? In the 1930s, it was Jews, today it's refugees, Muslims, Blacks, Hispanics, oh and Jews too for good measure. 

Are you just living your lives in indifference? Do you shrug it off or turn a blind eye?

Or do you speak out, do you extend to hand of friendship to people who are different to you, do you educate yourself?

If you care about people's lives, if you strive to love and accept people no matter where they come from, please wake up. This is happening.

WAKE UP. Fascism is on the rise and human lives are at stake. Wake up.

Battling depression: down in the dark and out the other side

As I wrote in my previous post, entering adulthood was a lonely experience for me. I felt depressed quite a lot, but a work-related burn-out and a break-up finally were the final straw and I spiralled deep into depression.

I was out of a job. My doctor advised me to exercise, so I went outside the house and walked for 3, 4 or 5 hours. However, I spent most of that time brooding about all my perceived failures, so it didn't help much. My sleeping patterns gradually got completely messed up - I would get up at 3pm and go to bed at 4am.

I had no energy at all. I felt empty - physically, mentally and emotionally. Even showering was too draining some days. Sometimes I would fall asleep on the sofa (I literally could not help it, I felt so drained and heavy-eyed) and sleep for hours, and I'd still feel tired when I'd wake up. I found no joy in the things I used to enjoy. For instance, I am an avid reader but back then, reading a book was too mentally exhausting. I also lost my appetite, even though I normally love food. But back then all I could manage to eat in a day was a small piece if toast and maybe an apple. My very skin felt heavy, dragging me down. I pictured my own death over and over - either contemplating suicide or wishing to die in an accident. It felt like only death could finally make the dull, constant pain in my soul stop (which I once explained in another post). What stopped me from doing it was knowing it would break the hearts of my loved ones.

As a treatment, I was put on antidepressants (Citalopram), which gave me the energy boost I needed to apply for a new job. I remember when I got back from the job interview, I collapsed on the sofa from sheer exhaustion and slept. Eventually, though, the antidepressants started to show their limits. They did not address the underlying issues that caused my depression. They also gave me a superficial feeling of happiness and of being invulnerable. I started to engage in risky behaviours. I drank too much. I slept around. But the fun I seemed to be having was only a shallow thing, an outer layer. Deep down, was still hurting, and empty, and drowning. I asked my doctor to reduce the doses until I was weaned off them. 

I want anyone reading this to understand that I am not saying, "Antidepressants are bad". I am just sharing what it was like for me personally - not two people are the same.

I went to see several counsellors, some of whom helped and some who did not. I also attended a Cognitive Behaviour Therapy course and it gave me some tools that at least enabled me to fonction at work, but deep down I still felt the same.

Yet, eventually, gradually, I started to get better.

A friend once asked me, "How did you overcome it?" I wish I had a simple answer. I don't. Antidepressants helped me because they gave me enough energy to find a job. Therapy helped me because it meant I could talk through stuff and understand my own emotions better. A handful of friends were present for me - they didn't have a magic formula to make me better but they were there and that was important. 

During that time, I received my Asperger's diagnosis, and finally understanding why I was different was a relief. Knowing myself better also allowed me to avoid overwhelming situations whenever possible.

At some point, I moved out of a big flat that was a drain on my budget and that lifted a big weight off my shoulders. I also joined a wonderful church where I finally felt loved for who I was and supported.

Not a single of these things explain how I got better, but all of them helped. I started finding joy in little things of life again. I distinctly remember sitting in my new house and realizing I felt happy for no particular reason, for the first time in years. It doesn't mean I was OK after that but it was a turning point, and things got better and better.

Today, I feel like I am the happy woman I always was inside, the one that was waiting to come out. It doesn't mean I am entirely free from depression forever, but I can say with confidence that I am happy.

Battling depression: the loneliness of not fitting in

A while back, I started sharing my experience with depression. Today, talking with a friend reminded me I never got around to writing more about it.

Throughout the years, I felt at odd with other people, those I perceived as "normal". I felt there was something deeply wrong with me, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

I was as lonely as a student than I had been as a teenager. When people my age were out partying, I was at home reading or studying. I wasn't invited and it didn't occur to me to ask whether I could join them. Instead of socializing, I would walk alone for hours in the streets of Brussels, dreaming my life away. I felt painfully lonely, and developed numerous crushes on boys that I never knew how to approach. The only way I knew was to tell them how I felt, with the immediate result of them pulling away from me. So, I imagined love stories that would never be.

Once I started working, the loneliness persisted. My Asperger's quirks meant that people viewed me suspiciously. At the best of times, they made fun of me; often they disliked me. I never socialized with my colleagues.

I never felt like I fit in in any job - I was like a square peg in a round hole. I felt inadequate no matter what I did and my self-esteem plummetted.

During that time, I met a man and started my first serious relationship (although that is a long story, for another time, possibly). As he was bipolar (with longer periods of being depressed than anything else), "caring" for him gave me some sense of purpose, but it was also mentally exhausting. I naively believed that I would love the depression out of him (not fully realizing I was suffering from depression myself). For the first time in my life, I experienced love and intimacy, but I never felt safe, because his depression caused him to react in unexpected ways and I felt he could leave me at any time.

I eventually took a postgraduate degree to become a primary school teacher. Teaching was a completely draining experience for me and eventually led me to a full-blown burnout. Soon after that, my boyfriend left me, and I sank into severe depression. The following years were arguably the most difficult in my life.

Asperger's and empathy: feeling other people's sadness... or joy

Asperger's syndrome and autism are funny things. People often wrongly assume that we have no empathy, but this is a misunderstanding of our condition.

As I have stressed before, people with autism have social communication problems. This means we fail to read cues in people's facial expression, body language or tone of voice, that would indicate how they are feeling. Because of this, we can fail to respond appropriately to other people's emotions, or appear that we don't care. The reality isn't that we don't care, it's that we don't know.

It has been suggested that just as autistic people have difficulty dealing with sensory overload, they may struggle with emotions, too. Strong lights, sounds, touch, smells or tastes can be completely overwhelming for us. In the same way, we would feel other people's emotions too intensely.

I have autism, but I also have huge levels of empathy. I can struggle to read non-verbal language (although I am getting better at it), but if people verbalize their emotions, I feel deeply for them. When I realise someone is suffering, I feel an intense pang of sadness and anguish deep in my heart, together with the burning desire to make it better, to soothe and comfort the other person..

In my work, I am confronted to heartbreaking stories. And trust me, my heart breaks for them every time refugees tell me what happened to them.

But last night, empathy worked in another, unexpected way: I felt deep, glowing happiness on behalf of another person. One of my closest friends is going through a very happy experience - and I felt as though my heart and my very skin would burst with happiness. 

It felt like dancing in a warm summer rain; like the way music sometimes fills me up inside and makes me want to run; like electric energy running through my body. And for the first time in a long while I started stimming, because I needed an outlet for the strong emotions I was going through. I started bouncing up and down, then flapping my hands very fast, all the while feeling my body was not enough to countain all the joy I was feeling for someone else.

Black Dog

Well, hello there, Black Dog.

I thought you'd gone away. I hadn't seen you in a long, long time. What are you doing around here, anyway?

I mean, you have no reason to hassle me. I have a wonderful partner and a job I love. I live close to my family. I feel fulfilled and useful.

So why are you lurking in the corner? Why do I see your fleeting shadow, on and off, blocking out the light? Why are your vacant eyes staring at me? Why are you gnawing at my heart?

Why are my eyes watering for no reason? Why do I feel so lost and alone, and why do I struggle to explain the unease and dull pain that creeps over me? Why does my strength fail me? I should get up, go see my Mum, visit friends, go for a run. I should talk to a friend. But you, Black Dog, are staring me into inaction and silence.

What do you want with me, Black Dog? Leave me alone. You're not wanted here. Go back to whatever dark place you came from. You're not welcome.

Mary Magdalene (written 31/05/07)

I was there the day the sky went black.

The crows were keeping their grim watch over Golgotha.
His body hung like a rag doll: gone the radiant life, gone the loving kindness, gone the merry laughter.

My heart sank in an ocean of sadness, crushed by a hundred leagues of sorrow.

What have they done? Rabboni, my beloved master!

The source of my hope and joy was withering in the heat of men's hatred on Golgotha.

I had no tears although my heart lay shattered
on the day the sky went black.

The day after the Sabbath we went back to his tomb. We wanted to show our love and respect one last time.

But the stone that shut the tomb was rolled away. The tomb was empty. His body was gone.

My heart sank deeper. Couldn't they at least leave his poor, broken body alone?

I crumbled to the floor, sobbing at last, my chest shaking with hurt and grief.

Then, through my tears, I saw a man. I thought he was a gardener, until he spoke my name.

"Mary."

That voice!

Warm as a fire, soothing as honey, wholesome as bread.

His voice!

"Rabboni!" My beloved master! He stood there. He was alive and smiling at me.

I was there the day the sky went black. I was there also the day the sky opened up and life eternal poured through.

(from John 20:11-16)

Atonement and the Cross

When I read this article by Benjamin L. Corey last year, I had an epiphany.

The year I became a Christian, one book played a huge role in my conversion: C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, I'll give a quick summary:

Four London children are sent to the English countryside during WW2. They're staying in a big old house, and one day, while playing hide-and-seek, they discover a wardrobe that is a doorway into a fantasy world called Narnia. Narnia is under the domination of an evil White Witch; but all Narnians are expecting to be liberated by Aslan the Lion. At some point, one of the children is seduced by the Witch and betrays his siblings as well as all Narnians. He eventually rejoins them, but the Witch then reminds Aslan that traitors belong to her by law, and that she has a right to demand the boy's blood.

Aslan does not deny that, but he offers his own life for the boy's. The Witch gleefully kills Aslan, not realizing that there is a "deeper magic" at work, causing "death to work backwards". Aslan then comes back to life and goes on to defeat the Witch.

Of course, this is clearly an allegory of the Christian faith and of Jesus' death, Aslan representing Jesus in the world of Narnia, and his taking the place of the boy is a metaphor of the Cross.

Coming back to Benjamin Corey's article: in many Evangelical circles, Jesus's death on the cross is explained as follows. God his perfectly just and cannot abide the evil things we do ("sin"). He loves us, but He cannot simply forgive us without punishing sin. Jesus, God's Son incarnate, dies a horrible death on the cross - and what He does there is take upon Himself the punishment for sin, taking on the wrath of God upon Himself so we can be forgiven. This is called penal substitution atonement. Corey wrote a whole series on why he thinks, based on his studies, that theology of atonement is not only incorrect and reductive, but toxic.

In the article I mentioned at the beginning of this post, Corey looks at the word Jesus Himself uses when talking about His death: a ransom. Corey then goes on to argue that a ransom is paid to, say, kidnappers by the parents of a child. The ransom is NOT paid TO the parents. A ransom is paid to an evil character, not to a just and good one. Therefore, he sees the death of Jesus as a ransom not paid to God, but to the devil.

And at that point, I had my epiphany. I remembered Aslan's death in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and the thought struck me like a flash of light.

God is not the Witch.

It had been right there all along, in the one book that helped me understand Christianity. It had been staring at me in the face all along.

God is not the Witch.

Islam - no way out?

Sometimes I hear a sentence that just startles me and makes me want to scream in frustration. Maybe that makes me a "snowflake", but there are things that I cannot let pass.

Recently, a Christian friend and I were discussing Islam and I explained someone I know was contemplating converting to Islam. I saw it as a positive, because the lady in question came from an atheist background and embarked on a spiritual search. My friend, however, did not see it quite in the same way.

"I wonder if she realises that once converted to Islam, she has no way out - all schools of sharia law prescribe either imprisonment or death for apostasy".

My initial reaction was to want to bang my head against the wall. There are so many things that are wrong with this statement I don't even know where to start...

First and foremost, we live in Belgium, where religious freedoms are protected by law: people may not only choose their religion, but change it if they wish. This means if my friend became a Muslim, she could change her mind afterwards. Moreover, if her Muslim friends are open-minded, they will respect her choice either way. I personally know a young girl who converted to Christiniaty from a Muslim background, and her family respected and supported her choice.

I love and respect the Muslims I've come to know. I feel blessed to count them as friends, and I get sad and angry when people tar them all with the same brush. When they ask me about my faith I always tell them I am a Christian. I have never felt any hostility from them, quite the opposite. They are some of the most respectful and hospitable people I have ever met. In addition, I have great respect for their piety. Who among us Christians prays 5 times a day, or fasts for 40 days, or learns significant portions of Scripture by heart? Their devotion is an inspiration. Of course, this doesn't mean I want to become a Muslim myself - I have explained before how and why I chose to follow Jesus.

"All schools of sharia law prescribe either imprisonment or death for apostasy" is a blanket statement that fails to consider the diversity that exists within Islam. True, some fringes of Islam want to impose sharia law throughout the world, which includes severe punishment for apostasy. But the key words here are "some fringes". Not all Muslims are Wahhabi - the fundamentalist, often violent branch of Islam who want to "spread purified Islam through the world, both Muslim and non-Muslim", only making up 0.5% of the global Muslim population (source: Wikipedia). There is a lot of diversity in Muslim doctrine (just like there are many branches of Christianity), from the most fundamentalist to the most progressive, and from decidedly violent to completely non-violent.

Finally, I think such talk about Islam goes against the teachings of Jesus. Equating the whole of Islam with violent fundamentalism is a narrative that, sadly, I have heard in some churches. In fact, I used to believe it… It presents Islam as a frightful threat, and Muslims as would-be invaders who want to take over the world, by violent means if necessary. As I’ve outline above, not only is it untrue, but it also has a perverse effect. It instils fears and therefore hostility within the hearts of Christians. How can we be effective witnesses of Christ if we feel fear and hostility towards a whole group of people? How can we love them as ourselves if we see them as dangerous enemies? Some Christians’ fear of Muslims is already turning to hatred, and politicians are using it to their advantage. Instead of welcoming the stranger as the Bible commands, many self-professing Christians openly reject them and even claim the need to protect ‘Christendom’ from the ‘Muslim invasion’, by force if necessary… while Christ teaches us that His Kingdom is not of this world anyway.

When confronted to a teaching in church, I try to look at the fruit that teaching produces. Does it bring love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness? Or does it instil fear, hatred, selfishness, conflict and discord? Ask yourself this.

 

My goals for 2017

I know it’s a week into 2017 already, a little late to write out resolutions. But there are still 358 days to go, so I figure I’m good. I wanted to think carefully about what I would like to achieve this year, and how. Resolutions can be so vague that it makes it all the harder to keep them, because we don’t even know where the heck to start. For this reason, I wanted to reflect upon my priorities, upon the values I would like to cultivate in 2017, and the goals I would like to achieve.

 

As a Christian, my #1 goal is to become more and more like Jesus. I’m not afraid to say it and I’m couldn’t care less if it makes me sound like a religious nutter. To me, it’s not about being a religious nut, but about bearing spiritual fruit (I didn’t come up with that one, but I think it's a great phrase).

To become more like Jesus, I mean to study his life and character more closely than ever. So I have decided not only to read through the gospels again, but also to read (or read again) books that help me know Jesus more and better. I am currently reading NT Wright’s “The Day The Revolution Began: Rethinking the Meaning of Jesus’ Crucifixion”. I will read others, too : Philip Yancey, CS Lewis, Stanley Hauerwas and Rachel Held Evans are on my to-read list.

The issue with sticking to this is that I get distracted easily. And guess what it my main distraction: the Internet. I spend a lot of time on social media. I do not intend to take extreme measures, however, as the Internet is a valuable tool, and social media enables me to keep in touch with loved ones who live far away.

 

I am going to have a day off the internet, every week. It will benefit me in lots of ways. Whenever I want to sit down and concentrate on something, I always think, “Hang on, let me check what’s going on on Facebook first”. If I give myself a day off a week, I will be able to answer myself  back, “Today is your day off, girl. You can always catch up with the world tomorrow.”

 

I intend to study Jesus’ life and character, but there are already numerous things I know about him, so I would like to emulate the aspects of his personality I alread know. Jesus preached non-violence (Matthew 5:5, 9:38-42) and taught us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:43-48). His Kingdom is one where there will be justice and the oppressed will be defended (Matthew 5:6, 7, 10; Matthew 25:34-40, Luke 4:18-21). He told us we were to be recognisable by our love for one another (John 13:34-35). I’m going to try and cultivate those attitudes and actions, through specific courses (I am going to register for a course on non-violent social action and I am going to complete an online Amnesty International course about the rights of refugees). I also want to pray for my enemies - for people I don’t like.

 

In order to reach my goals, here are my resolutions:

 

1. Every Sunday, I will keep off the internet. My laptop will be closed. I will read instead from the New Testament and from Christian authors.

2. I will pray for loved ones every day, even if it’s only for a few minutes.

3. I will write to, make a call to or visit someone every week.

4. Every Friday, I will spend some time praying for people I dislike.

5. I will enrol for the peaceful social action course and attend it; and I will complete the Amnesty International course about the rights of refugees. I will set aside half a day every week to work on the Amnesty course. The day I set aside will depend on my work schedule (it’s different every week) as I will need to be at home to do this, obviously.

6. Every time I want to curse someone (be it a driver who cuts me off, an internet troll or some politicians whose views I abhor), I will say a quick prayer for them.

 

Have a wonderful 2017. Be the change you want to see. Be kind to yourself and to others. Plant flowers; plant hope. Cultivate joy.