Another busy weekend. On saturday Carol, Kayleigh and I went to the annual English Christmas Bazaar in Zürich organised by St. Andrews church. This is where all us expats get their odd English things for the festive season (Christmas Crackers, Sweet Mincemeat, Christmas Puddings, Rich Fruit Cakes...). But more importantly, to Carol at least, is they have a huge second hand english book sale where you can pick up a carrier bag full of books for CHF40 (the cost of 2 new books) and get rid of some of your old ones.
I guess you might find me celebrating Christmas a bit hypocritical following my previous posts, but the way we celebrate Christmas has more to do with family get togethers and Peace & Goodwill to all men than the birth of the founder of Christianity.
On Sunday Carol & I joined a couple of friends for a great Brunch in Zürich. Hope the parking fine doesn't bankrupt you R.
Monday, 12 November 2007
Eerie
I'll forgive you if you don't believe this, but I had Winamp (music player) playing on Random while I was composing Losing my Religion, I have over 14000 songs in my library and the next song that played after I pushed the publish button was REM's Losing my religion.
Question is: How do I interpret this revelation?
Comments welcome....
Question is: How do I interpret this revelation?
Comments welcome....
Losing my Religion?
I haven't been as plain with you folks as I should have been. about a month ago I mentioned an e-mail from a christian friend of mine (spiritual can of worms) and my problems with an answer. Well I actually answered him not long after that entry but haven't mentioned it before now as I haven't got my head around what I wanted to say here in the blog.
As I said back then, I am a religious apathist in that I have failed to study Religion enough over my life to have gained the insight needed to choose a faith I can put my trust in, but recently I have put a bit more thought into the subject.
I was born into an Anglican family and raised in the Christian faith as taught by the Anglican Church. My family was not very religious, but personally I became strongly religious at an early age, even at one time wanting to become a priest. I spent many of my younger years involved in devotional music, singing praises and devotions to a god I didn’t know or understand. I was a good singer with one of those beautiful pure voices young boys have. I was a devout Christian by the age of 10, the age at which I was confirmed, I don’t remember having to practice the catechism much.
I have blanked the loss of faith from my memory although I suspect it may have had something to do with my mother being taken away from me at the age of 11 by a brain tumour! The church told me this was god’s will, and no god helped me to understand why this should be his will. By the age of 13 I had a religious clean slate and no motivation to refill the slate., and that is how it has remained.
I picked up the (New English) Bible again as my friend suggested, and have read much of both the old and new testaments by now. Sorry to say I have found no comfort in its pages, I found only unbelievable and irrelevant testaments from men of dubious moral fabric (in the old testament), and little more than a few stories of Jesus Christ's ability to perform miracles (in the new). Jesus, at least, attempted to teach a policy of Love one another, but still under the threat of a jealous and somewhat nasty God. I find it difficult to believe that the world's largest faith system is based on such flimsy evidence of an all powerful God. Why should we find faith in the god that has shown nothing of significance, either directly to us all or revealed to the "blessed", for the last 2000 years.
Perhaps I'm oversimplifying but I see two sides to the value of religious teachings; one is the putting down of a basic set of moral values (the fundamental laws of a society) and the other is to help us understand our place in, and our spiritual connections to the universe from before birth to beyond death.
On moral values it seems that (most of) mankind has a built in Empathy to other living creatures that allows us to build a small set of laws without divine intervention (unless of course you see empathy as divine). Many religions (and countries) unfortunately use a fear principal to impose these simple laws.
A much tougher role of religion is to help us in understanding our place in the universe. Tough because it requires us to understand things that are clearly impossible to fully understand. There are two ways of dealing with this, either we have faith in what somebody else has had revealed to them (Check out the revelation of John if you want nightmares with no apparent value), or we have faith in our own observations of the Universe. We are lucky to live in these enlightened times where we sometimes get a glimpse, through Science, of things that are starting to reveal other planes of "existence". Just imagine, for instance, places without time as calculated by Mr. Einstein and his followers. It is such phenomena, and just the pure fact of the universe's existence that provide hints at a greater god. I think it is our purpose to get as close to that god as possible by striving to understand our universe. Do we get to become part of that understanding when we die? Who knows.
So where does that leave me:
I feel some alignment to the teachings of Buddhism where there is no specific concept of God but where the teachings are spiritual in nature, and I feel very close to Deism and the two core features of Deism: The rejection of revealed religion and the belief that reason, not faith, leads us to certain basic religious truths.
A quote from Thomas Paine (the father of Deism) sums up my current feelings on death:
"I consider myself in the hands of my Creator, and that he will dispose of me after this life consistently with His justice and goodness. I leave all these matters to Him, as my Creator and friend, and I hold it to be presumption in man to make an article of faith as to what the Creator will do with us hereafter."
And before that I will strive to understand a small bit of the universe concerning cancers, by fighting this thing until the end.
As I said back then, I am a religious apathist in that I have failed to study Religion enough over my life to have gained the insight needed to choose a faith I can put my trust in, but recently I have put a bit more thought into the subject.
I was born into an Anglican family and raised in the Christian faith as taught by the Anglican Church. My family was not very religious, but personally I became strongly religious at an early age, even at one time wanting to become a priest. I spent many of my younger years involved in devotional music, singing praises and devotions to a god I didn’t know or understand. I was a good singer with one of those beautiful pure voices young boys have. I was a devout Christian by the age of 10, the age at which I was confirmed, I don’t remember having to practice the catechism much.
I have blanked the loss of faith from my memory although I suspect it may have had something to do with my mother being taken away from me at the age of 11 by a brain tumour! The church told me this was god’s will, and no god helped me to understand why this should be his will. By the age of 13 I had a religious clean slate and no motivation to refill the slate., and that is how it has remained.
I picked up the (New English) Bible again as my friend suggested, and have read much of both the old and new testaments by now. Sorry to say I have found no comfort in its pages, I found only unbelievable and irrelevant testaments from men of dubious moral fabric (in the old testament), and little more than a few stories of Jesus Christ's ability to perform miracles (in the new). Jesus, at least, attempted to teach a policy of Love one another, but still under the threat of a jealous and somewhat nasty God. I find it difficult to believe that the world's largest faith system is based on such flimsy evidence of an all powerful God. Why should we find faith in the god that has shown nothing of significance, either directly to us all or revealed to the "blessed", for the last 2000 years.
Perhaps I'm oversimplifying but I see two sides to the value of religious teachings; one is the putting down of a basic set of moral values (the fundamental laws of a society) and the other is to help us understand our place in, and our spiritual connections to the universe from before birth to beyond death.
On moral values it seems that (most of) mankind has a built in Empathy to other living creatures that allows us to build a small set of laws without divine intervention (unless of course you see empathy as divine). Many religions (and countries) unfortunately use a fear principal to impose these simple laws.
A much tougher role of religion is to help us in understanding our place in the universe. Tough because it requires us to understand things that are clearly impossible to fully understand. There are two ways of dealing with this, either we have faith in what somebody else has had revealed to them (Check out the revelation of John if you want nightmares with no apparent value), or we have faith in our own observations of the Universe. We are lucky to live in these enlightened times where we sometimes get a glimpse, through Science, of things that are starting to reveal other planes of "existence". Just imagine, for instance, places without time as calculated by Mr. Einstein and his followers. It is such phenomena, and just the pure fact of the universe's existence that provide hints at a greater god. I think it is our purpose to get as close to that god as possible by striving to understand our universe. Do we get to become part of that understanding when we die? Who knows.
So where does that leave me:
I feel some alignment to the teachings of Buddhism where there is no specific concept of God but where the teachings are spiritual in nature, and I feel very close to Deism and the two core features of Deism: The rejection of revealed religion and the belief that reason, not faith, leads us to certain basic religious truths.
A quote from Thomas Paine (the father of Deism) sums up my current feelings on death:
"I consider myself in the hands of my Creator, and that he will dispose of me after this life consistently with His justice and goodness. I leave all these matters to Him, as my Creator and friend, and I hold it to be presumption in man to make an article of faith as to what the Creator will do with us hereafter."
And before that I will strive to understand a small bit of the universe concerning cancers, by fighting this thing until the end.
Friday, 9 November 2007
Sicko
Out with friends (one over from England) last night for food and a movie.
We went to see Michael Moore's Sicko, another one of his Docutainment movies this time on the US Health Industry and how it fails to serve the Insured, let alone the uninsured. As usual you have to be careful not to be dragged in by the overdramatised methods he uses, but as usual you come away thinking it's better to live in a country where big business is not the only driver behind such an important public service, and where democracy without fear is one of the most important drivers to a healthy society (physically and mentally).
We went to see Michael Moore's Sicko, another one of his Docutainment movies this time on the US Health Industry and how it fails to serve the Insured, let alone the uninsured. As usual you have to be careful not to be dragged in by the overdramatised methods he uses, but as usual you come away thinking it's better to live in a country where big business is not the only driver behind such an important public service, and where democracy without fear is one of the most important drivers to a healthy society (physically and mentally).
Sunday, 4 November 2007
Busy Sunday brings on the Seizures
All the crew around our place today, for the fortnightly get together. Spent a couple of hours playing Singstar this afternoon, fun for parties of any size and singing ability not as important as one might think. Suffice to say, scores will not be revealed here
Downside, got the first two little seizures since upping the anti-seizure dose, but I guess it was a fairly stressful day. All the same a bit of a disappointment. I'm convinced I'm taking longer to recover from them now even though the actual symptoms are very mild.
Downside, got the first two little seizures since upping the anti-seizure dose, but I guess it was a fairly stressful day. All the same a bit of a disappointment. I'm convinced I'm taking longer to recover from them now even though the actual symptoms are very mild.
Saturday, 3 November 2007
Morbid Day
We had what Carol calls a morbid day.
That is, thinking about stuff we should do so that we are ready for the worst.
Sometimes I think it's a bit unfair knowing you have a severely shortened life span, and thus feeling an obligation to sort stuff out for your own demise! But then you remember this is about making things just a little bit easier on the loved ones that have to survive you.
You would be amazed at some of the wierdest stuff you end up putting on the todo list. There is all the usual like pensions and life insurance and wills (I keep joking I've got nothing to give away that wouldn't need upgrading in a year), but then there is looking into things like can I get my no claims bonus transferred to Carol seeing as she has been driving as long on my insurance as I have.
The trick with morbid days is to try and disconnect the actions from the emotions. I seem to be able to do this better than Carol, is this a man / woman thing do you reckon?
That is, thinking about stuff we should do so that we are ready for the worst.
Sometimes I think it's a bit unfair knowing you have a severely shortened life span, and thus feeling an obligation to sort stuff out for your own demise! But then you remember this is about making things just a little bit easier on the loved ones that have to survive you.
You would be amazed at some of the wierdest stuff you end up putting on the todo list. There is all the usual like pensions and life insurance and wills (I keep joking I've got nothing to give away that wouldn't need upgrading in a year), but then there is looking into things like can I get my no claims bonus transferred to Carol seeing as she has been driving as long on my insurance as I have.
The trick with morbid days is to try and disconnect the actions from the emotions. I seem to be able to do this better than Carol, is this a man / woman thing do you reckon?
Out of It
Sorry for being missing for over a week. The main reason was a bout of Gastric flu. The whole family has had it in various forms (some coming out of one end, and some the other) lasting a couple of days but not being too bad.. except for my case, I now know what it means to have your immune system messed with by Chemo.
The symptoms were no worse than anybody else on the surface but I basically slept for three days only dragging (or rather being dragged) to my radiation therapy to break up my sleep. I was like the proverbial Zombie. Today I awoke feeling almost normal, despite the continuing squits.
Anyway to other events of the week:
NOVO-TTF
On Tuesday I dropped an e-mail to the Dr. in charge of the Novo TTF trial centre at the University Hospital in Zurich. This is a new tumour treatment that has been showing a lot of promise in early trials by destroying tumours as the cells divide turning them into useless bits of sub-cellular matter. The Novo-TTF device does this by using low energy electric field at specific frequencies and thus interfering with the division process. I'm not currently eligible for the trial because it is for recurrent or progressive GBM's and mine is still going through its first attempt at killing me. But I thought I'd show my interest anyway. I was very surprised to get an appointment with the lady in February to talk about my interest. I know I shouldn't be tempting providence like this but this one sounds cool.
Bought tickets for my son and I to go see "We will rock you" on Thursday... I never made it but my son in law enjoyed it on my behalf.
Professor Neuro
A visit to Professor Neuro on Wednesday (the neurologist who is responsible for my well being) where I got an EEG to see how my brain waves were acting up. After 20 minutes of opening and closing my eyes, bright flashing lights and ringing bells I was returned to Prof Neuro who showed me some abnormality on the left side of my brain, commensurate with the outstanding potential (no pun intended) for minor seizures. He said that the current small seizures were not likely to cause any damage. We then discussed upping my anti-seizure medication (mainly so that I can do some exercise) and after a quick call to chemo man (who has all the ins and outs of my blood state) he agreed to up my Timonil (carbanmazepine) from 900mg to 1200mg per day. So let's see how this goes.
Funny each time I talk to somebody with Neuro in their name my chances of sitting behind the wheel of my X3 or riding my precious F650GS ever again seem to become just that little bit more out of reach
The symptoms were no worse than anybody else on the surface but I basically slept for three days only dragging (or rather being dragged) to my radiation therapy to break up my sleep. I was like the proverbial Zombie. Today I awoke feeling almost normal, despite the continuing squits.
Anyway to other events of the week:
NOVO-TTF
On Tuesday I dropped an e-mail to the Dr. in charge of the Novo TTF trial centre at the University Hospital in Zurich. This is a new tumour treatment that has been showing a lot of promise in early trials by destroying tumours as the cells divide turning them into useless bits of sub-cellular matter. The Novo-TTF device does this by using low energy electric field at specific frequencies and thus interfering with the division process. I'm not currently eligible for the trial because it is for recurrent or progressive GBM's and mine is still going through its first attempt at killing me. But I thought I'd show my interest anyway. I was very surprised to get an appointment with the lady in February to talk about my interest. I know I shouldn't be tempting providence like this but this one sounds cool.
Bought tickets for my son and I to go see "We will rock you" on Thursday... I never made it but my son in law enjoyed it on my behalf.
Professor Neuro
A visit to Professor Neuro on Wednesday (the neurologist who is responsible for my well being) where I got an EEG to see how my brain waves were acting up. After 20 minutes of opening and closing my eyes, bright flashing lights and ringing bells I was returned to Prof Neuro who showed me some abnormality on the left side of my brain, commensurate with the outstanding potential (no pun intended) for minor seizures. He said that the current small seizures were not likely to cause any damage. We then discussed upping my anti-seizure medication (mainly so that I can do some exercise) and after a quick call to chemo man (who has all the ins and outs of my blood state) he agreed to up my Timonil (carbanmazepine) from 900mg to 1200mg per day. So let's see how this goes.
Funny each time I talk to somebody with Neuro in their name my chances of sitting behind the wheel of my X3 or riding my precious F650GS ever again seem to become just that little bit more out of reach
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