AKMA’s Random Thoughts

The marriage we’re attending today will fulfil the condition for ironicity proposed by Alanis Morissette: it is indeed raining on their wedding day. Whether ironic or not, Margaret and I will wish Alex and Niamh all the best and join in prayers for them, then will celebrate at the subsequent reception, and come back to our B&B full and exhausted. (We’ve already begun the process by digging in to the 10/10 breakfast, including gluten-free baked goods for Margaret).

Let’s see. I didn’t run Wednesday, because I had to catch a very early bus to catch an early train to get to the Tube in time to arrive early for a Sodality Day in Tooting. The day went very well, reminding us that although the sodality is a ‘dispersed community’, it remains a community united in sentiment and mutual affection, and we thrive when we gather regularly. (My remarks were very generously received.) I got home at about seven in the evening, and sagged into exhaustion.

Yesterday I didn’t run because it was raining, and even though I hate to miss consecutive days, I’m disinclined to run in cold rain. Call me a baby, but that’s just too much punishment. I caught the bus in to Oxford after Morning Prayer, gave my tutes and had a lovely lunch, hastened home and sorted some business.

Two miles this morning, though, and coffee and fruit, cleaned up and on my way to Morning Prayer, home and after a business call, off to a wedding.

Two miles went well, I think, this morning — followed by fruit, coffee, shower, Morning Prayer, more coffee, lots of banging my head against the Advent collects, interrupted by various parish responsibilities and even an academic responsibility or two. Off to London tomorrow!

Morning miles went more easily this morning. Whatever accounts for the difference between San Diego treadmill and Abingdon pavement, I seem to be adapting to Abingdon again. Yesterday’s services went well, I think, apart from a legendary face-off over who would read the fourth lesson at Lessons and Carols, conducted right at the lectern! Margaret observed that if we lived in an Agatha Christie novel, one of them would be found in the Thames this morning.

Coffee, fruit, Morning Prayer, then office hours at R&R, home for lunch, service at Bridge House, home, and working on my Advent Collects preso for the Sodality on Wednesday…

This morning’s miles were again diffcult, which seems counterintuitive; two miles is two miles, and I ran them every day in San Diego apart from the last, and I resumed running here two days later — so I’d think I shouldn’t have such persistent difficulty resuming running at a generally limber way. I’ve certainly had longer intervals of not-running followed by relatively smooth re-entry. Perhaps the biggest difference from years past involves the number of gargantuan American restaurant meals I had in San Diego….

Two miles this morning, but a lot of it was walking — my legs just resisted sustained running. Still, two miles is two miles. Hot breakfast, Morning Prayer at home, shower, trip in to the church for the Christmas Fair, home to work on tomorrow’s homily, back to town for groceries, now home again and that’s enough.

Today the Parliament will debate and vote on permitting medical authorities to assist patients with terminal diagnoses to commit suicide. I think it’s beyond doubt that palliative care in the UK has been devastated by austerity policies (policies that benefit the wealthy while grinding down people who rely on government services to get by in hard times); that much must be addressed regardless of the outcome of today’s vote.

The remaining question concerns the situation of terminally ill patients whose condition impels them to wish for death’s relief. Should the law permit medical staff to aid them in managing a quiet, deliberate death?

I do not oppose acts of mercy for people who suffer greatly and whose physical conditions show no sign of possible recovery. I’ll get back to this, but I want to acknowledge that their condition has to be met with generosity and understanding.

I am unswervingly committed, however, to protecting vulnerable people from cultural pressures to end their lives: people with non-terminal illness, mental illness (particularly acute depression), and any other cause of intense suffering. Most specifically with relation to this bill, I worry that terminally ill sufferers may themselves be led to suppose that it’s their duty to request medical suicide. For very terminally ill patient who desires suicide, there are many others for whom that prospect is not urgently appealing — who may plausibly fear death, or have other reasons for raging against the dying of the light. Once the bill becomes law, these patients will have to answer, every day at every turn, when they will ask to die, why they aren’t volunteering, what makes them so stubborn, and so on. The law is not simply permissive — it indicates a tacit commendation, and a distinct trajectory of change (manifest in every other polity that has allowed medically assisted suicide). It changes the role of medical staff from presumptively unalloyed defence of life to a consumer-service agent who in some cases will deliberately kill and in other cases sustain life, a vast change in the role of the vocation.

Add to this other circumstances that don’t fall within the ideal-case ‘dignified death’ of the unquestionably terminally, agonisingly ill patient: the patient who ‘doesn’t want to be a burden’, the patient whose relatives don’t want to support a determined terminal patient through their last days, the non-terminally ill patient whose suffering may, arugably, rival the pain of terminal illness, the patient with second thoughts who feels unable to voice their doubts, the medical staff whose bearing and whose workload communicate indirectly the ‘need’ to move the patient on to death.

Most pertinently: if there be any risk of any unwilling patient being moved to suicide by the fact that they and their medical carers have legal permission so to do, those lives must not be sacrificed in favour of the availability of suicide for thsoe who truly, honestly, top to bottom desire it. One unwilling life is not balanced out by any number of willing suicides. That’s murder, and a civil society may not make peace with murder.

Plus, religious reasons — but since many of my neighbours don’t share those, I haven’t advanced them here. Yes, it’s about religion — but it’s very far from being only about religion.

To return to the souls who demand the prerogative to end their lives of suffering: I do not favour prosecuting every sympathetic medic who in exceptional circumstances risks the force of law in order to relieve a soul in agony. I don’t endorse that, but I can envision circumstances in which the police or the prosecutors may not think it fitting to bring a case against a doctor or nurse. But I do think it very much for the best that such people know and understand that their position is at risk, that their actions transgress the legal norms of a society that values and supports all human life.

Vote against this private member’s bill. Lives depend on it.

Well, grey sweats in the morning. I ran and walked my two miles this morning, taking it very easy on my legs. I’m intrigued at how very different the treadmill felt from the pavement on which I usually run. Coffee, fruit, and getting ready to shower. I will head in to Oxford for the New Testament seminar toward midday.

The water is verging on lapping onto St Helen’s Wharf behind the church; it wouldn’t take much for the road to flood. The flood alert has been cancelled, though, so that the weather and river authorities must be confident that the water has crested upstream. Just for the record, this makes three near-flood events in 2024.

No run this morning, as I was marking essays that I’ll be discussing today with students; a cup of coffee and an apple got me off to a good start, and now I’ll shower and dress for Morning Prayer and work at Oriel. Then I need to work on parish concerns (homily, planning, future service booklets). All, of course, being hampered no doubt by the loopiness induced by jet lag.

Back. Boggled. And now, bloggèd.

I allowed myself a break this morning, and didn’t run. I mean, I hadn’t expected to run at all over the past week, so one day off is hardly a big deal. We will pack up, do our odds and ends, and head out to the airport for the usual plane flight full of British academics (if you’re a theology jobseeker, keep an eye on San Diego > LHR flights). It’s been a good meeting — I’m not in full fit conference form, but as a cautious return, it went well. Maybe I’ll even read a paper next year.

It was especially great to greet some friends from long ago, and to meet one or two scholar whom I hadn’t already known. Again, I’d like to do more of that.

Two miles on thee treadmill, shower, hot breakfast, and I’m spending the morning in a session about the Epistle of James. So far, so satisfactory a conference, and it has definitely been a pleasant return to international conference-going.