Ten Commandments for Loving Yourself

Ten Commandments for Loving Yourself

This is Your God speaking, the one who made You—and everything else:

1. I Am God, who brought You out of the place of shame and guilt: You shall have no other gods besides me.

2. Do not worship sex. Your sexuality is one of my many gifts to You, and it is to be enjoyed responsibly. I know it’s the small print required on alcohol ads but it’s true: pleasure and responsibility go together like good vibrations and paying the electric bill.

3. Do not promise to do something I did not create You to do. If You are gay, committing to a ‘straight’ relationship won’t change the way I made You.

4. Honor Your day off from work each week. Maintain good boundaries in the life I give You.

5. Honor the people who helped raise and care for You. If You had a bad childhood, deal with it maturely; don’t beat up on Yourself or take it out on others. Forgive Your former family and adopt a new one. I’m a big fan of adoption—just ask Jesus.

6. Do not abuse or try to destroy Your sexuality. Remember, it’s my gift for Your joy and delight.

7. Do not cheat on Your partner. Do not cheat on Yourself. If You feel caught between these two, something is wrong. Work it out.

8. Do not steal sex. If someone is too drunk to drive, they are too drunk to engage in sex.

9. Do not lie to Yourself about Your sexuality. Don’t worry about what other people assume.

10. Do not envy another’s person’s sexuality. Be comfortable in Your own skin.

Apple Days of August

Apple Days of August

When we moved to Scotland, nine years ago, we didn’t get to pick our house—it came with the job—nor did we have any choice in our surroundings. The first August we lived here I went out to the backyard one day and discovered apples on the ground. Apparently we had an apple tree. A huge one. For weeks I picked up a dozen or so apples each time I went outside. I’d bring them into the kitchen, wash the bugs and dirt off them, cut out the bruised parts and any holes left by slugs or birds, peel and core them, then chop them up, douse them with a little lemon juice, and put them by cupfuls in zip-lock bags labeled—7 cups Aug 12 2004—and pop them in the freezer.

The next summer I anticipated apple season but we got just a few. The third summer I didn’t expect many, only to get a lot of apples like the first year. I noticed part of the tree was dead and decided this probably explained why it bore fruit every other year.

Then one winter, gale force winds broke a big limb off the tree. I cut up as much of the broken limb as I could, but the base was too thick for me to saw by hand. One day I heard a chain saw being operated somewhere in the neighborhood and scouted out the source. The chain saw operator sliced up the limb for me as well as cut off the jagged remains and dead limbs from the tree. All for 20 pounds sterling. That summer we didn’t get any apples, and I wasn’t surprised; the time to prune a plant is in the fall before it stores up energy over the winter for the next season of growth. This tree had lost a large part of itself in the middle of winter and didn’t get pruned until the spring, leaving it depleted.

The following year, however, the tree produced apples again. A ton of apples. I was back in business. I refilled freezer bags with crisp, tart chunks and wrote the new day and year on top of the old—the number of cups and the month stayed the same.

Now it’s apple season and I’m in the zone—the Zen—of peeling, coring, chopping, and freezing. When I go out to harvest fruit I walk in a spiral beneath the tree span because apples hide like Easter eggs in the nooks and crannies of the roots and under the tall grass and overgrown beds, and they look just like the leaves that have fallen. All sporting their autumnal camouflage of bright red, sour green, and golden brown. Sometimes my feet find apples before my eyes do, when I step on something hard.

After circling in one direction I turn and walk in the opposite direction. Always I see apples that I missed the first time around. I’m sure this is one of the lessons of nature, and it’s a good one, but I don’t let it distract me from the main point: apple pie. So yes, they take over my life for some weeks, but I get to enjoy them all year.

Angry and Inspired

Angry and Inspired

This is the first Olympics in which every participating country had at least one female athlete. The first gold medal of these London games was won by a Chinese woman sharpshooter, Yi Siling. This was the first Olympics to include female boxing; a British boxer, Nicola Adams, became the first woman to win an Olympic gold medal in this sport, in the fly weight competition, followed by an Irish boxer, Katie Taylor, who won gold in the light weight competition, and a USA boxer, Claressa Shields, who won gold in the middle weight competition.

A lot of firsts for a lot of girls and women in a whole host of Olympic events.

Meanwhile a twelve-year-old girl, Tia Sharp, has just been found dead in her grandmother’s house near London. The grandmother and her boyfriend have both been arrested on suspicion of murder.

Another female. Another act of violence. Another relative involved.

Why is it that in seemingly progressive, so-called developed, modern democracies like the United Kingdom and the United States of America, infants and children are more likely to be killed or abused by a relative—often a parent—than by a non-relative or stranger?

According to the British Crime Survey (2010/2011), “more than one in four women will experience domestic abuse from the age of 16 (the age of consent here in the UK), and every year around 400,000 women are sexually assaulted, 80,000 are raped, and around 1 in 25 women are victims of stalking.” The perpetrator tends to be a person known to the victim, rather than a stranger, with the crime taking place in the victim’s own home as opposed to a dark street or deserted alley.

Part of me is tired of hearing one more story about child abuse, or reading about some woman killed by her husband or boyfriend, or learning that genital mutilation of girls goes on right here in Britain and not just in those other countries, on top of news stories about rape in war zones, sex trafficking of poor people, and torture and murder of gay people.

But another part of me says I can’t be tired. I’ve got to get angry. And I’ve got to direct my anger toward positive changes. Just like those athletes who have been training for years for the chance to compete on an international level, we—women and men, girls and boys—have to practice, every day, hospitality and inclusiveness and justice both locally—in our own homes and houses of faith—as well as globally—especially advocating for people who have few rights or protections.

I want to stay inspired by the first woman from Saudi Arabia to compete in the Olympics, Sarah Attar, who ran in an 800-meter event wearing a Muslim hijab headscarf. She happened to finish last, but she won a victory for the whole human race.