One of the really challenging things I have been working through of late is the obvious yet difficult to explain decline of the institution of the Church. The problem is widespread and multi-symptomatic. It manifests in the institutional evil that I talked about last week in the Roman Catholic church, it manifests in the crisis level decline of mainline churches, it manifests in the raw materialism and catering to consumerism of the "megachurch," it manifests in the misbehavior of the cults of personality that call themselves pastors. I think I may have gotten to, or at least somewhere near, the rotten core of the problem.
Institutions, given time and a certain level of success, inevitably become more and more invested in protecting and perpetuating themselves. Eventually this replaces their core vision, and they are essentially hollow systems, with no other goal than staying alive. It has been noted that the only way the Roman Catholic Priesthood could abide the level of corruption that it took to conceal so much abuse was that the system itself feared that the truth would destroy it. Truth can set you free, if you are righteous, but if you are corrupt it will burn like the dickens. And by the way, being righteous is not the same as being perfect or pure. Wisdom says that the righteous will take reproof and correction, they will repent and turn back from their errors, it is fools who do not heed the lessons of wisdom.
In my own tradition, the great fear that infests my Mainline congregation and the Presbyterian system as a whole is that we are a fading and increasingly irrelevant expression of what it means to be followers of Jesus. This leads us into silliness at best and conflict at worst. The silliness manifests when we rush to employ consultants and what amount to essentially marketing strategies. We hide our failing vision under some very intellectual verbosity indeed. Every time I hear that we (a church or a governing body) is going to spend some number of thousands of dollars on a consultant, I wonder how long it's going to take before we end up longing for the food the pigs are eating.
This prodigality is rooted in fear rather than licentiousness, but the end result is the same: famine and desperation. As we experience stress on the system, agreement becomes more difficult and conflict is easily raised. The Body of Christ begins to turn on each other as we "compete" for scarce resources, which in the case of the church, are simply people to attend and participate in our congregations. Often there is an underlying belief that if we "just did X," sometimes maybe even, "if we just believe X," people would come flocking back to the institution and we would not have to struggle so much for survival. I suspect this narrative has a tragic ending on the horizon, and indeed it may already be upon us. We have become too invested in our institutions to allow them to be sanctified by the consuming fire of God, and thus the life-breath has left them.
What this means, in slightly less arcane terms is that we have lost the driving force that made the institutions important in the first place. This happens in Churches and corporations and governments. When the institution becomes more important than the purpose behind it, you become easy prey for those who would use your infrastructure for their own ends. Your hierarchy becomes an enabling environment for pederasts, your business becomes a "corporation" that spends most of it's resources on administration, while the productive core of the thing is full of unhappy and perhaps resentful employees. Your government is vulnerable to take over by vain demagogues who are willing to promise anything but capable of fulfilling nothing.
I'm wondering if perhaps the church isn't a canary in a coalmine for our culture as a whole, as the things that afflict us are also causing dissolution and suffering other areas as well. I suspect that if we can figure out a way to recover the light that is supposed to be shining in us, we might just help cure a multitude of ailments.
Monday, August 27, 2018
Thursday, August 23, 2018
Of Story and Faith
Last year my daughter sheepishly admitted that she was obsessed with a particular musical. She said she was challenged by her friends not to talk about it for a period of time, and so she was trying to not even tell me what it was. As it turns out it was Hamilton, which at that time was the biggest thing on Broadway. This summer, for her thirteenth birthday, we got her tickets to see Hamilton, at the Kennedy Center here in D.C. It was rather a stretch, because such things don't come cheap, and I am no fan of musicals in general. We could only afford two tickets, and because I'm the one who knows how to drive in D.C. traffic (no small challenge), I got to take my little girl to see something that has become a very important feature in her life.
I prepared myself by considering all of my peers who seem to have been forced into attending Taylor Swift concerts (or worse) to appease the infatuations of their tweens and teens, and I figured that Hamilton would probably prove much more bearable than any of that. As it turns out I had rather underestimated the discernment that my daughter is capable of at this tender age. I should have probably guessed that a child whose favorite song as a four year old was The Pixies Where Is My Mind? might just, as a new teenager, not just go in for any old junk, but people have been gaga over musicals like West Side Story and Grease in my presence before, and quite frankly, I'm not a fan.
However, I neglected two rather important things going into last night's performance. First, that it was a performance, not a movie. It has been a while since I have seen a production like that on stage, with professional actors, musicians and stagecraft. I sort of forgot that the stage is a different medium than film, and that you can become much more emotionally involved with real people strutting and fretting their hour(s) upon the stage than you do watching it on the screen, even if it's the same story.
Second, I was struck by the truly artful storytelling of Hamilton, and this is what I did not expect. Even the one musical that I admit to liking, Les Miserables, comes with the fact that it is based on the work of Victor Hugo and tells a story of human redemption that is well fleshed out in words. The musical relies upon that foundation, but does not have to say everything the book says. Hamilton does justice to the historical source of the narrative, but does not get bogged down with such, which would be pretty unbearable in a play where most of the dialogue is essentially a rap battle. But the weight of the story is, in fact, rooted in the true story of Alexander Hamilton, it involves stupendous success and crushing tragedy all on its own. Hamilton is neither a hero or a villain, neither is Aaron Burr. Full disclosure, most of what I know about the actual events comes from reading Gore Vidal's Burr, which is a work of fiction so...
Anyway, Hamilton, if you've got a couple hundred bucks burning a hole in your pocket, go see it. If you've got a soul left these days it will make you sad and hopeful at the same time, which for me is kind of a good feeling.
I prepared myself by considering all of my peers who seem to have been forced into attending Taylor Swift concerts (or worse) to appease the infatuations of their tweens and teens, and I figured that Hamilton would probably prove much more bearable than any of that. As it turns out I had rather underestimated the discernment that my daughter is capable of at this tender age. I should have probably guessed that a child whose favorite song as a four year old was The Pixies Where Is My Mind? might just, as a new teenager, not just go in for any old junk, but people have been gaga over musicals like West Side Story and Grease in my presence before, and quite frankly, I'm not a fan.
However, I neglected two rather important things going into last night's performance. First, that it was a performance, not a movie. It has been a while since I have seen a production like that on stage, with professional actors, musicians and stagecraft. I sort of forgot that the stage is a different medium than film, and that you can become much more emotionally involved with real people strutting and fretting their hour(s) upon the stage than you do watching it on the screen, even if it's the same story.
Second, I was struck by the truly artful storytelling of Hamilton, and this is what I did not expect. Even the one musical that I admit to liking, Les Miserables, comes with the fact that it is based on the work of Victor Hugo and tells a story of human redemption that is well fleshed out in words. The musical relies upon that foundation, but does not have to say everything the book says. Hamilton does justice to the historical source of the narrative, but does not get bogged down with such, which would be pretty unbearable in a play where most of the dialogue is essentially a rap battle. But the weight of the story is, in fact, rooted in the true story of Alexander Hamilton, it involves stupendous success and crushing tragedy all on its own. Hamilton is neither a hero or a villain, neither is Aaron Burr. Full disclosure, most of what I know about the actual events comes from reading Gore Vidal's Burr, which is a work of fiction so...
Anyway, Hamilton, if you've got a couple hundred bucks burning a hole in your pocket, go see it. If you've got a soul left these days it will make you sad and hopeful at the same time, which for me is kind of a good feeling.
Wednesday, August 22, 2018
A Fever Dream
In the courtroom of honor the judge pounded his gavel,
To show that all's equal and the courts are on the level,
That the strings in the books aren't pulled and persuaded,
And that even the nobles get properly handled,
Once that the cops have chased after and caught 'em.
Spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished,
And handed out strongly for penalty and repentance,
To William Zanzinger, a six month sentence...
But you who philosophize disgrace,
And criticize all fear,
Bury the rag deep in your face,
Now is the time for your tears.
-Bob Dylan, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol
William Zanzinger's tobbacco farm of 600 acres, which Bob Dylan mentioned in his song is right down the road from my kid's middle school. Dylan's song is a folk rendering of a true story about Zanzinger, an old money Marylander, who killed a maid named Hattie Carrol and who was convicted of such, but only given a six month sentence. Zanzinger was white and rich and Hattie was black and poor, and our justice system, even now, is far from equal, and back in that era it was a total sham.
I'm looking at the headlines today, about Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, who have respectively been convicted and plead guilty to crimes of a a decidedly white collar sort, but serious crimes nonetheless, but I'm getting the feeling that we're just in the "speaking through the cloak" phase of this thing.
Our world doesn't ever seem to do justice to the likes of them. A nineteen year old black kid from Detroit might spend most of his adult life in prison for selling a few grams of cocaine, but I suspect that these powerful men, who should be old enough to know better, will probably not see much in the way of hard time. I'm thinking about how money can buy you out of all sorts of trouble, and combined with a high profile and access to power you can be practically impervious to legal ramifications.
Donald Trump joked during the campaign that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and people would still stand by him. Honestly, as much as I detest the man, I did think it was a joke. But as Morrissey once said, "That joke isn't funny anymore, it's too close to home and it's too near the bone." How many of Trump's cronies have to be convicted? Richard Nixon resigned before it got to this level. You could argue that he's just the hub of a wheel, and that he didn't really know all of this stuff was going on around him, but being the unwitting Don (pun intended) of a kakistocracy is every bit as problematic as being intentional about it like Trump's buddy Vlad.
I'm not even sure I want impeachment to happen, I really just want America to come to her senses and start voting for people who have some measure of integrity. That is the glimmer of hope that I see in this current vortex of sewage, people like Beto O'Rourke running in Texas against Ted Cruz and Andrew Janz who is pulling even with Devin Nunes are starting to show up politically. Sure deep blue districts are going to produce some left wing nut jobs to counter the right wing nut jobs that have been spewing out of the Tea Party Hellmouth since Obama's first term, but the hope of this country is that Democrats can recover their identity as the party of the working people instead of being the NY/LA lapdogs, and that the Republicans can remember what the hell a conservative is actually supposed to act like, and they can get together and tell the oligarchs and the con men like Trump and his cronies to stick their fake populism where the sun don't shine.
Sorry, that was an angry run-on sentence, but I'm not going to fix it. Right now, it is the time for our tears and maybe some songs of lament about how far we have fallen from our own values. That is not "Trump derangement syndrome," it is the necessary first step in healing. Like the twelve step programs will tell you, the first step is admitting you have a problem. We have a problem with being too ignorant, blind and apathetic. And I'm talking Democrats and Republicans, both. An intellectually agile and engaged citizenry would never have come to the point where the choice was between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, it really was a choice between two people who could not rise above who they were, the choice became: corrupted politician or even more corrupted salesman and We the People, chose the latter more out of jaded pique than out of common sense.
What is happening now in the courts seems to me like an immune response to a disease, and I hope that once we sweat out the rest of this fever dream we will come to our senses.
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
Soul Meets Body
I cannot guess what we'll discover
When we turn the dirt with our palms cupped like shovels
But I know our filthy hands can wash one another's
And not one speck will remain.
-Death Cab for Cutie, Soul Meets Body
So the Romans Catholics are having a rough go of it this week, and they absolutely deserve it, but they don't need this Protestant sinner throwing any more stones from my glass house, so I'm going to just say that hierarchy is like a lot of other human systems: it's good until it goes horribly wrong. Funny thing, the Pope finally gets definitively on the right side of the issue of capital punishment, which is ineffective, unjust and often amounts to state sponsored murder; then immediately on the heels of that statement it is discovered that the Roman Catholic church systemically buried the sexual abuse of children by priests, which kind of makes even staunch opponents of the death penalty want to re-think that stance. But at the philosophical core of the capital punishment debate is the issue of whether or not justice and our society are better served by punitive/retributive practices or rehabilitation and restoration of criminals. To seriously move towards rehabilitation and restoration, one would need to challenge much more than just the death penalty, it would require re-thinking our massive industrial incarceration systems and ways in which our "justice" system seems more intent on "breaking" the lawless than on encouraging them to abide by the law.
So what does restorative justice look like for the Catholic Church, or any church that finds itself embroiled in such a systemic breakdown, where power was abused, where "little ones" were harmed (in this case quite literally) and not only did the system not protect them, but actively sought to suppress their witness against it? That's where, in the spirit of the Body of Christ, I think the Protestant tradition can offer some healing to the Mother Church (although if the RC's really took the whole mother thing a little more to heart they probably wouldn't be in this pickle). I'm going to try not to be sexist here, but probably I'm going to fail so forgive me. Women care about kids rather differently than men do. After centuries of being run by (supposedly) celibate males, the Roman Catholic hierarchy seriously needs a woman's touch. The patriarchy is out of touch with the nature of the church as the Bride of Christ. The divine feminine is terribly important and has been woefully neglected, Dan Brown made a whole conspiracy out of this very real feature of the Roman church and sold billions of copies of the DaVinci Code. His fiction was an overstatement, but the root of it was absolutely true: the Church has denied the female her place as a co-equal in the Kingdom of Heaven. Evangelicals do it, even some brands of Presbyterians do it, but that doesn't make it right.
I don't want to go into all the twaddle about Eve ate the apple and wives being submissive to their husbands, it's quite frankly not worth the effort and no one who believes it has probably even read this far.
So what I would like to do is reach out to anyone who has ears to hear about a flaw even more fundamental than the patriarchy or the hierarchy of the church, the separation of the flesh and the spirit. The thing about following Jesus is that it is a practice of incarnation, which shares a root with the word carnal. In Greek, there are two words for body: Sarx and Soma, the latter is generally used in a more positive sense than the former, Sarx is often translated as flesh, where Soma is a more integrated vision of the person. But Jesus uses the word Sarx in John 6 (the lectionary reading for this coming Sunday) to refer to his flesh and he talks in deliberately incendiary language about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. The disciples don't know what to do with that, and it's not because they don't get metaphors, it's because already, in the very earliest iteration of the church, people were largely caught in an assumption that the flesh was bad and the soul or spirit was good.
This assumption troubled Christianity in many ways in the first several centuries. They were constantly having to deal with Gnostic variations on a theme from within their own ranks and on top of that they had charges of being cannibals for their own eucharistic language being cast as pearls before swine. Jesus of Nazareth demonstrated that the dualism of flesh versus spirit was a false distinction that had no ground in the divine creation. Body and soul are part of the good creation, sin can afflict both of them, but one is not more vulnerable than the other. This is why, even after the resurrection, Jesus still had his beat up body with the wounds and the ability to eat, because the flesh is part of the plan, as they say it's not a flaw, it's a feature.
Jesus demonstrated that flesh and spirit were not at odds with one another, but were together a holy unity, which mirrored the unity of the Trinity itself. Love, sex, intimacy, relationships, are all part of the plan, it's what we're made for. It took centuries for the church to sort this out, but by the time they did the social and political forces of the world had already gotten hold of the Body of Christ and were busily crucifying it all over again. Of course priests should be men, God always picks men (except for all those women who hold some pretty crucial positions, not least of which being Mary, Jesus' mother). Of course priests should be celibate, except for the fact that many of them weren't in the early years, and things seemed to work okay then, and speaking from experience I think being married to another person actually makes for a better minister.
None of the assumptions we make about our bodies, our sexuality, and their relationship to God are handed down on stone tablets (except for the thing about not committing adultery and coveting your neighbor's wife, both of which are solid moral benchmarks). We need to heal some of our assumptions about God's creation on a very deep level. Shame is not the root cause of all sexual misbehavior, but it's a big part, and it is an even bigger part of the decisions that we make as individuals and institutions to try and cover up bad things.
I am not a Catholic Priest, but I am a member of the clergy, and as such I feel at least some bond of collegiality with the priesthood. To some extent, when I put my Calvinist "I told you so" attitude to the side, I can feel saddened and ashamed that my brothers have been so tarnished by this rising tide of wickedness. However, I am much more saddened and ashamed for all those victims whose lives were violated by men they were supposed to be able to trust. I wonder now, if the hierarchy of celibate men will put aside some of their control in order to allow their Savior to wash them (see John 13: 1-11 for a rather pointed example of how this played out with the first Bishop of Rome). There is a lot of dirt to be cleaned up for sure, and I'm no expert on Roman Catholicism, but if I might recommend two very basic steps:
- Ordain women as Priests, and let them permeate your hierarchy, let them be leaven to your apparently corrupt system. There is nothing superhuman about women, but they are a much needed balance to all that maleness you have going on there.
- Stop with the celibacy requirement. It is apparently not working very well anyway. If someone (male or female) truly feels called to a life of celibacy, great, but you're turning away a lot of gifted ministers of the Gospel by making that a deal-breaker. Apparently, on top of that, you have inadvertently given a fair number of very sick men a good place to hide and allowed them access to your children.
Martin Luther had 99 suggestions, I just have the two, but I suspect you probably won't listen to me either. At least you can't send the inquisition after me.
Thursday, August 9, 2018
Systems
I'm not naturally an optimist, but there is something that gnaws at my pessimistic outlook from time to time: the idea that by thinking certain negative aspects of life are simply unavoidable, we actually contribute to them being so. Does this mean we can defeat cancer by simply thinking good thoughts? No, but good thoughts certainly don't hurt your prognosis. There's an old saying that goes if you aim low you will usually hit your target. Wendell Berry says it this way: "Wrong was easy, gravity helped it."
This week, as corruption trials grab the headlines and public officials and former campaign managers are exposed as essentially gangsters with pens. As I think about how quaint the whole "drain the swamp," rhetoric sounds nowadays, I also keep thinking about the Governor of my state, Larry Hogan. Governor Hogan seems like a freak of nature in modern politics, a Republican who isn't a jerk, or a proto-fascist, or a never Trumper, or a Trump sycophant, or an apologist for an increasingly diseased GOP. He is rather a representative of what I would like to believe is an honest conservatism that has been largely chased into the hills by an angry mob in MAGA hats.
Maryland is a pretty blue state (even if you subtract the egregious gerrymandering). For a Republican to win the Governorship of this state, one really must seek the common ground. Which is essentially what I believe all politicians should be thoroughly committed to doing, because the common ground is the only place we have to stand that will not crumble under us when things go awry. As much as I miss Barack Obama, the ease with which many of his accomplishments are being undone by a veritable stooge is a testament to the reality that he did not occupy the common ground. I think he sought it, but perhaps our racial animus would not allow him to stand firmly upon it. My love for Obama grew over the course of his presidency because he always seemed to care about the nation and our ideals. I am having a similar feeling about Maryland's current Governor, which tells me that this quality is not something that is confined to either the Democratic or the Republican side of the aisle. This is encouraging to me, because it is tempting to feel as though we reward people who cheat and lie their way to the top. So here's the thing 'Merica, can we do our homework a little bit better? Can we stop being distracted by shiny objects and bilious hate mongering? Can we not allow people who prey upon our fear to gain our trust?
This is the way out of our political mess, but it requires a systemic change. It is going to demand that voters stop being lazy and simply voting a single issue or along party lines. It's going to demand that we pay attention to character (isn't it funny how that sounds like the mantra of the Clinton era GOP?). Both parties need to produce and nurture people who have good character. I know they're out there. I'm not saying we must elect only Dudley Doright and Polly Pureheart, everyone has their sins, but everyone also has certain qualities. Trump's quality is that he can sell things, I'm struggling for others at the moment, and honestly that's too little quality to occupy the office the President.
If we are going to find people with more quality and the right sorts of quality, we're going to have to learn to listen carefully. We're going to need to tell the difference between real love of this country and patriotic sloganeering. We're going to need to tell the difference between real care for the general welfare and a simple, brutish desire to grow and win at all costs. We're going to have to do some difficult sorting of people and personalities, not just our politicians, but our cultural interpreters and even of our selves and our peer groups.
Do you care about the truth? Prove it, at all levels.
Do you want justice? Seek it, for everyone.
Do you value your freedom? Then you should value your neighbor's freedom as well.
I know that forceful personalities and people with charisma can be alluring, but what character lurks underneath?
The fact of the matter is that we still, as of now, have something like a democratic system of government, which means that we essentially get the government we deserve. How do you feel about deserving this nonsense? Are you ready to change?
This week, as corruption trials grab the headlines and public officials and former campaign managers are exposed as essentially gangsters with pens. As I think about how quaint the whole "drain the swamp," rhetoric sounds nowadays, I also keep thinking about the Governor of my state, Larry Hogan. Governor Hogan seems like a freak of nature in modern politics, a Republican who isn't a jerk, or a proto-fascist, or a never Trumper, or a Trump sycophant, or an apologist for an increasingly diseased GOP. He is rather a representative of what I would like to believe is an honest conservatism that has been largely chased into the hills by an angry mob in MAGA hats.
Maryland is a pretty blue state (even if you subtract the egregious gerrymandering). For a Republican to win the Governorship of this state, one really must seek the common ground. Which is essentially what I believe all politicians should be thoroughly committed to doing, because the common ground is the only place we have to stand that will not crumble under us when things go awry. As much as I miss Barack Obama, the ease with which many of his accomplishments are being undone by a veritable stooge is a testament to the reality that he did not occupy the common ground. I think he sought it, but perhaps our racial animus would not allow him to stand firmly upon it. My love for Obama grew over the course of his presidency because he always seemed to care about the nation and our ideals. I am having a similar feeling about Maryland's current Governor, which tells me that this quality is not something that is confined to either the Democratic or the Republican side of the aisle. This is encouraging to me, because it is tempting to feel as though we reward people who cheat and lie their way to the top. So here's the thing 'Merica, can we do our homework a little bit better? Can we stop being distracted by shiny objects and bilious hate mongering? Can we not allow people who prey upon our fear to gain our trust?
This is the way out of our political mess, but it requires a systemic change. It is going to demand that voters stop being lazy and simply voting a single issue or along party lines. It's going to demand that we pay attention to character (isn't it funny how that sounds like the mantra of the Clinton era GOP?). Both parties need to produce and nurture people who have good character. I know they're out there. I'm not saying we must elect only Dudley Doright and Polly Pureheart, everyone has their sins, but everyone also has certain qualities. Trump's quality is that he can sell things, I'm struggling for others at the moment, and honestly that's too little quality to occupy the office the President.
If we are going to find people with more quality and the right sorts of quality, we're going to have to learn to listen carefully. We're going to need to tell the difference between real love of this country and patriotic sloganeering. We're going to need to tell the difference between real care for the general welfare and a simple, brutish desire to grow and win at all costs. We're going to have to do some difficult sorting of people and personalities, not just our politicians, but our cultural interpreters and even of our selves and our peer groups.
Do you care about the truth? Prove it, at all levels.
Do you want justice? Seek it, for everyone.
Do you value your freedom? Then you should value your neighbor's freedom as well.
I know that forceful personalities and people with charisma can be alluring, but what character lurks underneath?
The fact of the matter is that we still, as of now, have something like a democratic system of government, which means that we essentially get the government we deserve. How do you feel about deserving this nonsense? Are you ready to change?
Wednesday, August 8, 2018
It's Complicated
I have had a complicated relationship with food for most of my life. Sometime during my childhood I learned to use food as a reward and as a comfort and it took me until well into adulthood to realize what eating my emotions really meant. A few days ago I started a rather radical (for me at least) re-structuring of my diet, to try and largely eliminate carbohydrates in the form of bread, pasta and potatoes. It started with Michele being curious about the Keto diet, which is the latest fad diet based on the low carb approach to eating. It follows the trail of the Atkins diet, the Paleo (caveman) diet, and various other gimmicky shenanigans that have some true disciples and some serious detractors.
Michele put her/our curiosity out there on the Facebook and was promptly deluged with feedback from both sides of this particular argument. None of it really served to overcome my general skepticism about fad diets, but we did have a lot of good conversation about the results. One of her nurse friends sent her this video of a TED talk:
This is the sort of thing that I needed to hear at this particular moment, because I am one of those people on the insulin resistance/type II diabetes train, and a life long fat guy. It jives with what I know from my college biology courses as well as my life experience. When I was first diagnosed with "pre-diabetes," I was able, by reducing my carb intake, to prevent the need for medication for about 6 years or so before I had to go on preventative medicine like Metformin and Invokana. The result of limiting my carbs was a fairly rapid loss of about 25 pounds. Over the course of time though, the carbs started to creep back in to my life and while I didn't go all the way back to the way I was before, my weight loss stalled in the 280 lb neighborhood. For frame of reference, my heaviest recorded weight was 345 pounds (I'm 6'4, so this doesn't mean I was rotund, but I was far from healthy).
My doctor, a very reasonable man, has been giving me pep talks about losing more weight for years, and I have been hedging around the kind of change I needed to make. I know it is the carbs, but I love bread and pasta and potatoes. What I realized as I listened to that bubbly lady in the zippy blue pants is that I am essentially in an abusive relationship with carbohydrates. Over the past two days I have experienced something very much like carbohydrate withdrawal. I have some experience with withdrawal symptoms both first and second hand, I know the difference between a physical dependency and a habit. I have been treating my eating problems as simple habits, but as I experienced hot flashes, and a sort of vague emptiness that wasn't exactly hunger, I recognized it.
Hello darkness my old friend, I remembered when I quit smoking cigarettes not too long after college, there was an intense period of several days where my body was dealing with the absence of nicotine. There were headaches, a bit of mild nausea, and some cold sweats, it wasn't like kicking heroin or anything, but it was unpleasant. Pretty quickly though, that part was over. What wasn't over though was the habit, the feeling like I needed to have a Marlboro pack in my pocket. I carried my Zippo lighter around for a while just because it felt familiar. I wasn't really sure that I was an ex-smoker for years, I could still smoke at parties and camping trips, or have a cigar with friends, and I knew that the habit could come back. Then I started reacting to the poison for what it was. Now I can't smoke at all without getting a splitting headache, now I'm reasonably sure that I'm a non-smoker forever.
I guess that it's going to be even more difficult than that with carbs. Do you have any idea how invasive and pervasive carbohydrates are in our lives? It's pretty severe; the conspiracy angle that our smurfy nurse talked about seems more and more plausible, and no, I'm not particularly hungry right now. I'm still not on board with any of those trendy diets, but I am on board with breaking up with carbs, I've got high blood pressure, type II diabetes and I'm at least 40 pounds heavier than I want to be, I've been hit enough, it's time to get out.
Michele put her/our curiosity out there on the Facebook and was promptly deluged with feedback from both sides of this particular argument. None of it really served to overcome my general skepticism about fad diets, but we did have a lot of good conversation about the results. One of her nurse friends sent her this video of a TED talk:
This is the sort of thing that I needed to hear at this particular moment, because I am one of those people on the insulin resistance/type II diabetes train, and a life long fat guy. It jives with what I know from my college biology courses as well as my life experience. When I was first diagnosed with "pre-diabetes," I was able, by reducing my carb intake, to prevent the need for medication for about 6 years or so before I had to go on preventative medicine like Metformin and Invokana. The result of limiting my carbs was a fairly rapid loss of about 25 pounds. Over the course of time though, the carbs started to creep back in to my life and while I didn't go all the way back to the way I was before, my weight loss stalled in the 280 lb neighborhood. For frame of reference, my heaviest recorded weight was 345 pounds (I'm 6'4, so this doesn't mean I was rotund, but I was far from healthy).
My doctor, a very reasonable man, has been giving me pep talks about losing more weight for years, and I have been hedging around the kind of change I needed to make. I know it is the carbs, but I love bread and pasta and potatoes. What I realized as I listened to that bubbly lady in the zippy blue pants is that I am essentially in an abusive relationship with carbohydrates. Over the past two days I have experienced something very much like carbohydrate withdrawal. I have some experience with withdrawal symptoms both first and second hand, I know the difference between a physical dependency and a habit. I have been treating my eating problems as simple habits, but as I experienced hot flashes, and a sort of vague emptiness that wasn't exactly hunger, I recognized it.
Hello darkness my old friend, I remembered when I quit smoking cigarettes not too long after college, there was an intense period of several days where my body was dealing with the absence of nicotine. There were headaches, a bit of mild nausea, and some cold sweats, it wasn't like kicking heroin or anything, but it was unpleasant. Pretty quickly though, that part was over. What wasn't over though was the habit, the feeling like I needed to have a Marlboro pack in my pocket. I carried my Zippo lighter around for a while just because it felt familiar. I wasn't really sure that I was an ex-smoker for years, I could still smoke at parties and camping trips, or have a cigar with friends, and I knew that the habit could come back. Then I started reacting to the poison for what it was. Now I can't smoke at all without getting a splitting headache, now I'm reasonably sure that I'm a non-smoker forever.
I guess that it's going to be even more difficult than that with carbs. Do you have any idea how invasive and pervasive carbohydrates are in our lives? It's pretty severe; the conspiracy angle that our smurfy nurse talked about seems more and more plausible, and no, I'm not particularly hungry right now. I'm still not on board with any of those trendy diets, but I am on board with breaking up with carbs, I've got high blood pressure, type II diabetes and I'm at least 40 pounds heavier than I want to be, I've been hit enough, it's time to get out.
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