Posts by BenWilson
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Cheers Hilary. It was probably Facebook, though. And yes, he's over the worst I think.
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Oh and Jackson, talking about Existentialism isn't pretentious. But it might be considered Old School :-)
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Edmund, I'm sorry to hear it.
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Stephen, so true. I met a lot of people far less fortunate in NICU. Nothing seemed fair about what happened to any of those babies - I was not moved by God's wonderful sense of morality and justice myself. But I can see that religion for the religious is much more than a dry appraisal of the likelihood of such a being. It's a community of support, mostly.
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Perhaps my response was a bit emotional, but since you spoke from the heart, felt you deserved the same in kind.
It was appreciated. The gift of your real name is not lightly given online. Thank you.
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In the end what does it achieve anyway?
Indeed, Berlusconi milked it almost immediately, wandering around looking dazed. He's a cunning one. He will no doubt use it to his advantage.
But I can imagine feeling angry enough with the man to do it. A nasty piece of work.
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Nice to meet you Jackson.
I was going to tell a story that also happened to me the other day about some christian doorknockers who caught me in a conciliatory mood. But that's an old story.
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I had one terrible night in Melbourne. I think someone slipped me a mickey or something, cause I had a psychotic break in which I was paralyzed with fear that the bar was full of witches and warlocks out to get me, so I had to stay still. I thought I snapped out of it and left, but I can't have been right because I came more fully lucid in the graveyard wearing a black academic robe a bit later. Watch your drinks in Melbourne folks.
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mark, I think mpgs or it didn't happen on that one, sorry.
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On the secularity of NZers, this one story sticks with me. I was attending ante-natal classes before the birth of my first child. Towards the end of the course there was a discussion of what to do if things went horribly wrong, which they sometimes do. What kind of help should people seek, what reserves could/should they fall upon? The question was posed to the group of 12 or 13 couples, and we all shot up some answers. Lots of good ones came up, looking to family, to friends, counsellors etc. Since it was a brainstormy kind of discussion and I like to include people, I shot out "look to your religion, if you are religious". It was bizarre, I got blank stares all around. Not one person in the room apart from me thought this would be a good idea. Not even my wife, who is Catholic. I added "I'm not, by the way, but I know some people are". More blank stares. The frozen pen of the person writing the ideas up on the board started twitching, and someone threw out another alternative, which they happily untwitched and wrote out.
Little did I know that we would turn out to be the ones for whom it would go horribly wrong. And the support was great all around, family came flocking to give support, the hospital turned it on. But of course we were still miserable as hell. One nurse, I think Sri Lankan, came in one day to check on my wife. She broke down into tears when the nurse asked about the baby. The nurse began to console her, hugged her, and began to talk of her religion, which turned out to be Christianity, saying God would help, God was there, she would pray for our boy, etc. The interesting thing to me was that it did indeed console my wife quite a lot. I didn't know really what to do, it was such a curve ball at the time, I was pretty much just happy to see her feeling a little better, so I didn't see any harm in it, despite the fact that I'm pretty sure the hospital discourages that sort of activity from staff. In fact I think they discourage it so much that basically nurses give no emotional support at all.
For myself, PAS was a great consolation. I didn't talk about my troubles, I talked about anything but. Which was an intense relief from basically having to deal with those troubles all day long. Losing myself in an argument, any argument, seemed like a better thing to do than wallow in misery. Perhaps I was just praying to my own creed, rationality through argumentation?
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