Life4seekers

Work / Life Balance

If you're anything like me, you probably find it hard to maintain a balance between working and non-working life. I hope that the following will be helpful to you. They've really helped me.

1 Holidays: at the beginning of every year open your diary and plan your holiday dates. If possible, spread them out over twelve months.

2 Treats: put in yourmonthly diary at  least four personal treats such as a long walk, cultural visit or special night out.

3 Daily Meditation: set aside 10–15mins in the morning and evening to be silent, go over your day and talk to God. Excellent free mp3 meditation resources are available from: www.pray-as-you-go.com

4 Eating: make time for lunch. It’s important for your body and mind to rest after a morning of work.Try to eat healthily.

5 Gadgets/Tools: use tools to help you plan your time. Outlook Express and PDAs, aswell as a simple wall chart, can help you see if your week is getting overloaded.

6 Service: pencil in time to help someone else in need. Perhaps consider signing up for voluntarywork or doing a needy neighbour a good turn.

7 Fun: don’t be too rigid with your routine, just occasionally do something out of the ordinary, and for pure fun!

This article was written by a member of the Life4seekers team.

Chastity

Did you know that the contemporary chastity belt has many modern features? Rust free stainless steel, foam padding, laser cut safe edges and high technology locks. On the other hand, one of my male friends assures me his messy bedroom is a sure deterrent to any sexual activity! It’s not just the practise of chastity that is a challenge today however, it’s the very concept.                                                                        

The purity ring was launched in the USA in the 1990s. The idea was that wearing the ring was a reminder of the young person’s pledge to be chaste. In Singapore just a few weeks ago a campaign promoting abstinence was launched. Their freebie was a wrist band with the inscription ‘worth waiting for’. These campaigns and others have been initiated by Christians. Here in Britain, the Catholic Church similarly promotes chastity amongst its young people. But why?

I’ve done a lot of work in secondary schools, and I remember distinctly the day I told a sixth form group that myself and my fiancé would go no further than kissing. I was marvelled at as if I was a member of an alien species.

Our culture is such that young people rarely hear of any alternative to a sexually active lifestyle. Of course, the danger of gimmick focussed campaigns is that wearing a ring or wristband may not reflect a well thought through lifestyle decision. However, I have learnt from experience, that when given honest answers to their questions about chastity, many young people will seriously consider it.

We have a cultural ‘norm’, and I would say this involves something of a reversed taboo as far as sex is concerned. Outside of talking about monks and nuns, chastity is an unspoken word. There is no kudos in being a virgin. Magazines rarely report on how not to sleep with your partner, and clothes are rarely designed to promote platonic relationships. Too often, sexually active young people are weighed down by this peer pressure. They can be driven by their need to experience love and acceptance, and their lifestyle choices can be a symptom of low self esteem.

Young people need to be reminded of their dignity and affirmed in their power to make positive choices. Saving yourself for a life-long sexual partner is psychologically, spiritually and physically the healthiest decision they could ever make. Chastity then, is about embracing sexuality and sex, not rejecting it, but choosing to express it in the most life-giving context.

Today, each of us, young or old, can choose to be chaste. It’s not just about sexual abstinence but the valuing of oneself and others so highly that you want to respect and protect them as a precious gift.

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Image from: www.god411.com

This was written by Emily Davis who is a Life4seekers Team Member. It was broadcast on BBC Radio 2's, Pause For Thought, earlier this year.

Belonging?

  I was recently chatting to someone who is about to become a Catholic. He said that one of the attractions was that it felt like family. In fact, he said he looked around and saw a lot of people he wouldn’t mind going to the pub with.

I think when we enter somewhere new, a workplace, a gym or a church, we look for people like us. We look for community. There are signs of this everywhere. Our local yoga class, for example. After serious flexing and bending, there’s herbal tea, very healthy biscuits, and a good chat. Which part do people enjoy more I wonder? Equally, a glass of wine and time to talk, doubles attendance at a Church event.

In this area young people and adults are very alike. A lot of my work has involved helping teenagers explore their spirituality. What I discover time and time again, is that the key to young people’s involvement, is the presence of people they’re in relationship with. And this isn’t just their peers. It can be family members, or other adults. Young people are looking for somewhere to belong.

At this crucial stage in the development of their identity, to move towards community can be something of that a survival tactic. However, the Catholic understanding of community would go further. I recall a quote from Henri Nouwen, who said, ‘we come to realise that we were together before we came together and that community life is not a creation of human will but an obedient response to the reality of our being united.’ Each Christian community can be a place where individual is recognised as a spiritual child of God, of equal value and import. The idea is that we are a body. That means someone’s absence is a bit like the loss of a little finger….or a nostril….or some other vital component!

You don’t have to travel far to hear adults in faith communities bemoaning the loss of their young. But if young people do not experience the community in question as a place of unity, strong in both spirituality and relationship, why on earth would they want to stick around? Far better loiter in the local park, or in the high street, where there’s a real sense of camaraderie.

Whatever our background, we can all take stock of the communities we belong to, and check whether they’re in order. Are they healthy enough to receive guests?! And are they places our young people are made welcome?

By Emily Davis, Life4seekers Team Member

(This was broadcast on BBC Radio 2's, Pause For Thought, in March 2007.)

The Size Zero Debate

Contemporary magazine covers are dominated by images of very thin young men and women. There is, in turn, increasing speculation, as to which of those featured is naturally thin and which are suffering the tragedy of an eating disorder.

Image and body shape are the topic of many people's conversation at home, where we socialise or in the workplace. A large number in my circle, seem to be on a constant diet and some desperately feel over-burdened by the pressure to be a particular weight. A large proportion, deep down aspire to be (probably including myself in this) a supermodel; we await that day when we will look perfect and be that ideal size and shape. The pursuit of a perfect size zero is our aim, but then we pass a newsagent's or chip shop and that dream soon fades away!

The presures on us from exterior sources to keep striving for this dream look are enormous, but what does the inner you or I say? Does it really matter if we're larger than life? Does that change the inner us? Do we have to look a certain way to be fufilled and happy?

It's a well used phrase, but many seekers discover the truth that 'true happiness comes from within'; that deep place where we find our true selves and our personal space. If we have love in this space, we will be able to love those outside of ourselves. If we have peace reigning here, surely that is what we will spread? What and who lies in your heart?

As a fellow seeker, although I still have struggles in my life, I'll share with you who is the source of my inner peace, happiness and strength. See: http://www.life4seekers.co.uk/aplaceforgodinourworld/jesuspurposeonearth.html

Medics Abortion Aversion: Tide Is Turning

The national newspapers have featured a series of stories in recent weeks about the growing number of doctors who are refusing to carry out and refer patients for abortions. It’s a significant revelation, given that for decades, leading doctors and professors have tried to argue that an embryo is only a potential life and not a human person.

In the same vain, I was surprised, when talking to a young person not long ago, that the topic of euthanasia and abortion fell into the conversation. Of the latter, I expected, given this person’s young age, that they’d take a fervent pro-choice stance. Instead, they displayed a simple and clear appreciation that abortion was a great wrong and should be discouraged; “it was no easy way out,” they said. (I hope and pray they weren’t speaking from experience.)

Whether medics or young people, the tide of thought in relation to abortion, seems to be turning.

It’s not the purpose of this blog to preach, but to raise issues, themes and concerns, for people to examine and reflect on for themselves. However, abortion is an issue those behind Life4seekers feel passionately. From the moment of conception until natural death, all life is sacred. Whatever the circumstances, life can not be terminated by men and women. Only God can decide the moment of a person’s death.

That is not to say, that we shouldn’t show immense sensitivity to those affected by an unwanted pregnancy or struggling with a debilitating disease. Society has a moral duty to try to support people in desperate and often painful situations. We must display compassion and offer every support, upholding the truth that no one is in a position to take a human life (even if the person themselves wishes to die).

Love is the answer. It is a reality that can overcome every hurt, fear, tragedy, pain and suffering. Society doesn’t need the medical profession to provide life-ending procedures to solve our problems. Society needs more people to show and give those in need, unconditional love and forgiveness, so that those affected by abortion or serious illnesses, are given the strength to accept and carry their burdens with our help.

But being realistic, where can unconditional love and mercy be found? I don’t possess it, do you? The only place that I have found it is in the person of Jesus Christ.

To continue exploring issues related to the beginning and ending of life, please see: http://www.life4seekers.co.uk/lifestylevalues/life.html