Locker Room Talk

"What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in inner rooms will be proclaimed from the rooftops." Jesus, Luke 12:3

"The mouth speaks what the heart is full of" Jesus, Luke 6:45 

On not speaking/singing in church

A further thought on the Jeremy Corbyn/national anthem 'incident'. Each time I take a baptism service, I make a point of saying that if we come to some words in the service people don't agree with, that they should feel free not to say them. There are already plenty of people who don't join in the songs anyway, and I don't want people to feel compromised, that they're being asked to say things they don't really believe. 2 things prompted this:

 - Sitting down for a pint after one christening with a godparent who informed me he was an atheist. Work that one out.

 - Getting a trenchant email from someone who'd attended a baptism at our church and accused me of brainwashing people and imposing religion on them. (As an aside, the Anglican church has such an effective record of brainwashing that 90% of people who attended Sunday school aren't adult members of any church, so that's gone well. And my personal record in brainwashing is so stunning that 99.8% of baptism guests never return).

I don't want a repeat of the email, but more importantly I'd like people to think about what's actually being said and to speak with integrity. So guests at a baptism are encouraged to choose the Corbyn option: supporting the family and the occasion in a respectful way, without feeling they have to join in with words they don't agree with.

Who's the Mummy?

“I am not a biological parent, but I am a parent. I have young actors and actresses that I mentor, I have nieces and nephews that I am very close to,” she tells host Jane Garvey.

“There is a way to become a mother in this day and age which doesn’t include your name on the child’s birth certificate. You can express that maternal side, very clearly, very strongly. It feels very satisfying.

“I didn’t change nappies, which is okay with me, but I did help my niece get through medical school. I did sit down with my nephew when he was [going through] a very tough time to join the army. And those are very motherly things to do, very nurturing things to do.”

Thus spake Kim Cattrall on Womens Hour. Is anyone else reminded of Rachel Dolezal, the white American woman who 'self-identified as black'? Kim, you are a mentor, and an aunt, and I'm sure you're very good at both. That doesn't make you a mother, just because you don't like being described as 'childless'.

At what point do words cease to mean anything, because the arbiter of meaning becomes our emotional response to them, rather than their factual content? If I self-identify as thin, because despite the fact that my BMI is 26.9, telling me I'm fat upsets me, then am I thin, or fat? Do I describe my body as thin, my parenting status as a mother, my relationship as a marriage and my tax dealings as honest, because that's how I like to think about myself? Or is there an actual measure outside of my narcissistic little world that gives either an agreed meaning, or an objective standard, to these words? If not, then we may as well go back to grunting at each other, because that would carry about the same amount of shared meaning.  

Does this mean anything to you, or only to me?