Tuesday 24 December 2013

Christmas Traditions

On Saturday evening I had the absolute joy of watching Southend Choirs and Southend Vox perform in the beautiful surroundings of St James Piccadilly. An alumni of both choirs, I was smiling throughout: because they sounded great, because I wasn't the one upfront trying to sing and dance, because I knew the carols back to front as they created such a triumphant sound around the church.

Carols are such a favourite Christmas tradition of mine, yet singing them on Saturday, I realised I'd made it a devoid motion. It's Christmas, therefore I sing carols. I don't think about the words. They just tumble straight down from the memory to the mouth, without my brain actually processing the lyrics and my heart opening up to worship God through them.

I was lucky enough to receive some early Christmas presents from Mum: cupcake cases, cookies cutters and 'The Muppet Christmas Carol'
Songbook. And as I sat at my piano for a sing-song, I realised like I too knew these songs but not the lyrics. They are beautiful lyrics, especially in 'Thankful Heart', following Scrooge's epiphany:

With a thankful heart that is wide awake
I do make this promise with every breath I take
Will be used now to sing your praise
And beg you to share my days
With a loving guarantee
That even if we part
I will hold you close in a thankful heart

I pray that this Christmas, your heart is wide awake too. That joy, peace, hope and love, the words we so often hear, shine throughout your life. And that the next time you watch your traditional Christmas film or sing a song, you too realise something new from it.


Sunday 1 December 2013

Movember: The End of the Mo

I'm a proud man today. The 1st December isn't just a day to crack open the chocolate and tea advent calendars, as awesome as that is. It's the day I get to show off my moustache to the whole world, then shave it off before anyone suggests I make it permanent. By tomorrow, my face will be a blank canvas again.

My moustache has been a sign of solidarity, that I stand with the men and families whose lives have been devastated by prostate and testicular cancer. That same solidarity was on show at Macmillian coffee mornings in September, throughout Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October and now on World Aids Day. It fills me with such happiness that every Autumn more and more people are learning about these major health issues and baking cakes or wearing red ribbons or, like me, growing a moustache.

But before those public acts of solidarity, there has to be the private one. Early detection is crucial to treating both cancer and HIV/Aids. I'm not going to tell you how to do it. Most people have heard the relevant messages loud enough, they know it's quick, easy and painless.

My moustache has been a sign of awareness as much as solidarity. I hope it's been a sign for you to act.

Friday 29 November 2013

Movember: It's OK to be judgemental (sometimes)

When I judge a person it never defines who they are, it defines who I am.

I have a guilty pleasure. It's not Disney, that's all pleasure and no guilt. Nor is it watching Lorraine Kelly on catch-up when I come home from work. It's reading the Daily Mail showbiz pages: pleasure because I love entertainment and showbiz, guilty because it's a paper full of scaremongering, hate and judgement. Who are they dating? Look who's splashed out on a new car! They're too OLD to DRESS like that!?

It's not limited to the Daily Mail. Rarely do you read a newspaper article or interview where they don't tell you how old the people involved are. It gives you a picture of them, a picture so you can judge if their actions are age appropriate, whether it's Miley Cyrus twerking all over the place or David Dimbleby getting a tattoo. It doesn't stop at celebrities either. We want to know how old the local business man is, or the thug who's just been convicting for attacking a bystander, or the mother-of-seven on benefits.

I hate the obsession we have in society with age, that it should alone define so much about you. It's wrong. It's just as wrong as saying 'she's dumb because she's blonde', 'he's not British, he's Muslim' or 'you're gay, you must hate Christians'. They're all snap judgements and they're not OK.

'Don't bad-mouth each other, friends'
James 4:11

There's another page in the papers where age is all important: the obituaries. My Dad was 63 when he died, 'taken too soon'. I hate that he was one of 40,000 men that year to die because of prostate cancer, how totally and irreversibly it turns the lives of entire families upside from the second it's diagnosed. Then there's the 4000 people who were forced from their land in Cacarica, Colombia because of the conflict; the 30 million people who have died because of HIV/Aids; the girl shot at for going to school, the homophobic bullying that defends itself as 'banter'. In short, I hate injustice.

'Hate what is evil, love what is right and see that justice prevails in the courts.'
Amos 5:15

I shouldn't go round judging celebrities (or anyone else) even if the press tell me they're fair game, or looking at teenager with his hood up on he street and thinking I know what kind of person they must be. It's not OK for me to judge other people. But it is OK to seek out injustice in the world and judge that as wrong. It's more than OK, it's my job as a human to stand up to injustice. It's actually my day job at the moment as a Christian Aid Collective Intern to do something about global poverty. 

It is everyone's job to be judgemental about injustices in the world, but don't stop there: switch to fairtrade tea, write to your MP, volunteer for a local charity, stop being casually sexist, take part in a fundraiser. Be judgemental, be a hero and do something.

You can visit my Mo Space to see how my moustache has grown and donate to Movember

Monday 25 November 2013

Movember: Memories

This weekend I went back to Warwick, revisiting my University days. I say that as if they were 18 years ago, not 18 months. That weird sense of timelessness we all feel hit me, living memories I'd long forgotten as if they happened yesterday. They weren't even 'amazing' memories, but just the happy reminders of going to the pub after choir rehearsal, baking with my bestie and Ellen constantly making tea for me. My university days weren't crazy but all those little things made an awesome experience.

I hadn't realised the wave of reminiscing would hit me so hard. As much as I'm happy and excited for all my buddies going out in the world and carving careers and families for themselves, it made me sad that we're all dispersed. It made me sad I'd forgotten just how many incredible friends I had there. 

Too often we get trapped in the day to day business of living, working, shopping, cooking, washing up that we forget where we've already come in life. I've forgotten the pain of my Dad dying, being heckled at the school talent show and facing up to my sexuality. Instead I've absorbed it. It's all parts of my past that I don't recall that often or tell everyone about. That in itself is what we need to remember: we all have pasts and extraordinary experiences that we absorb. We all suffer pain and grief.

When I was home in Southend a couple of weeks ago I heard about a painful time my Dad had gone through, pain that I'd never heard about for the 18 years we were both alive. Amidst celebrating my brothers' engagements, I had this pang of regret and guilt, that parts of my Dad's life are unknown to me. But why would he have told me about every pain?

God calls us to live a life of compassion (Colossians 3:12). That doesn't mean we need know what someone is going through. You can't know what anyone else is going through, because they've already got a different past and different life. We just need to understand that bad experiences are exactly that. Then we can stand side by side and in solidarity with them, whether it's with displaced people in Colombia or families who are grieving because of cancer.

Monday 11 November 2013

Remembrance Day

I love going to Church on Remembrance Sunday. That might sound like an odd opening sentence, but it's become such a focal point in my year that I look forward to that moment at 11am, when we're silent, when we stop and reflect. This year I was unprepared. Don't get me wrong, I was there and dressed respectfully, yet I hadn't emotionally prepared myself.

Last month I came back from Colombia, where I learnt about the work Christian Aid support in a country where conflict has continued for 50 years. We travelled into Cacarica, in the midst of the rainforest. We heard how whole communities were forced from their patches of paradise to live with 4000 other people in a sports centre. We saw the 'Hill of Terror'. When I was in Colombia, I heard these stories, took them in, processed them as best I could. Only now, sitting in my cosy church in sunny Southend, did I understand the scale of pain and suffering and struggle they went through.

That personal experience gave a depth to Remembrance Day I've never realised. 'Lest we forget' is a call to let the memory of servicemen live on, to vow the horrors of the World Wars will never return and simultaneously to recognise there are nations and militaries at war today, and ordinary people who get caught in the crossfires of conflict and the instability it inflicts on their lives. In Colombia, I met Father Alberto. He personally receives death threats for helping displaced people back onto their land. We asked him why he did such risky work, when he could display his Christian love in simpler ways, like feeding the homeless in his city. He replied:

The puzzle is when there's so much conflict in the world, how can I not do something...
To not act would be treason to my faith



We can and must all act to end conflict, and I'm so grateful we don't need to risk our lives to do so. Peace and justice are twin words, they have to come together. Without peace, there's injustice and without justice, there's conflict. I was really challenged by our Remembrance Sunday service, as our Vicar emphasised standing for peace and justice is not a light-hearted commitment. It means looking at the world, all its problems and deciding how I can personally relieve them. That might be not using 'banter' as an excuse for bullying, boycotting Amazon because of their aggressive tax evasion policies or praying and standing in solidarity with the people of the Philippines. I, a Christian Aid intern, have shied away from the news in recent days, trying to block out the devastation that's happened. Then I heard Father Alberto's voice again.

'And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.'
Micah 5:8

This Remembrance Day for me, the penny dropped. 'Lest we forget' goes far beyond a passive act of reflection on the past. It is a call for use to be peace and justice bearers in the present, and look to the future hope that is promised through Jesus.

Sunday 10 November 2013

Movember: Mr Men

I love Mr Men books: the block colour illustrations, the quirky characters and the punchline on the last page of every book. Over the years my favourite has shifted. Looking back on my well-loved collection, I found a simple question in the back of one copy. 'Who's your favourite Mr. Men?' I wrote Mr. Worry. That's pretty worrying in itself that he was my favourite as a child. Of course, Mr Happy is now up there too. Unlike my Disney sleepwear, my Mr Happy pajamas don't have my name sewn on the front on them, so let's hope I never lose them. But recently a new favourite has come into my life, Mr. Nobody. I really can't recommend it enough and the power lesson of self-esteem it teaches....

Here's the spoiler alert (for anyone who doesn't like their Mr. Men reading ruined).

Mr Nobody learns he's not a nobody, he's a somebody and I'm a somebody. He has dignity, and I have dignity. He matters, and I matter. I really believe we need to live in a world where everyone understands that, embraces the parable of the Good Samaritan not as 'just doing my good deed for the day', but as helping even helping your worst enemy, because gentlemen and gentlewomen help. As I learnt from Colombia last month, helping can be as simple as standing in solidarity with someone, listening and sharing their story. Throughout Movember, I stand in solidarity with men with prostate or testicular cancer, with their families, with my family.

There's a new Mr Men in town: Mr. Mo, published especially for Movember and available on Kindle. I gave it a 5 star rating.

Saturday 2 November 2013

The Clergyman and the Mo

Last week at work I led a youth session on the theme of 'Heroes'. I love superheros and convinced myself everyone else does too. It went well, less well when they decided a superhero would beat up playground bullies, but by the end we'd learnt about some heros of social justice and found the common denominator: heroes do something. It might be organising a mass march on Washington and and delivering arguably the most famous speech in American history, or it might be not using the word 'gay' to mean anything but someone's sexuality. Whatever the scale of impact, heroes do something.

On Wednesday I met a hero at Liverpool Cathedral, a clergyman aged who is about to retire. He told me about the different parishes he worked in before coming to the Cathedral, where he noticed an anomaly. Liverpool Cathedral is an incredible building that draws many vistors in, yet there was no-one with a dog collar ready to welcome them. So he began 'working the floor' as a clear religious presence, should anyone want to talk to him. People did talk, he listened and he helped them.

This hero was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer but he's not ready to call it a day yet. It makes me so frustrated and angry and sad and a mesh of all kinds of emotions that cancer comes along and does this, zapping people of energy, just as kryptonite zaps Superman. That's why this Movember, I'm  going to do something and grow a moustache. I might raise a bit of money from it - great. I might make my friends more aware of health issues and cancer checkes - awesome. I will tell people the story of heroes like the clergyman and my Dad.


Day one: perhaps I should invest in some selfie lessons? You can track my progress throughout Movember at mobro.co/JoeyKnock


Sunday 11 August 2013

Scream and Shout

Last Sunday was a bad day, a very bad day. Mum and I had just come back from a lovely holiday on the Isle of Wight - breakfast outside every morning by the lake, cake everyday for afternoon tea and Pimms every night with dinner. It was glorious. We came home to realize the boiler was broken, the Freeview remote wouldn't work and I had to pretty sharpish find somewhere to live for my new job in Liverpool. With all this on my mind, I was screaming and shouting and threw somethings. (Well some thing - the 79p water sprayer from Wilkos, which is a good buy because it didn't break).

I don't despair like that often. I remember doing it before my Christmas Tea Party, stressed about how my bakes were progressing and probably still drunk from the night before. I hadn't been this despairing since writing a non-assessed (and non important) class essay last February, when I just couldn't work out what to say. I scream and shout when I don't feel in control and don't know what to do. And then I get angry and stressed with myself, that a nice cuppa tea couldn't just sort me out.

Well last week I went for a walk, sat on a roadside bench that I shared with Mike, a Yugoslav pensioner, then went home and started dealing with things. I went to bed, woke up happier (not happy) and by Wednesday I had a spring back in my step. And yesterday i had found a great room for me in Liverpool, at least for the short-term.

What if I hadn't woken up more content? Or  didn't have a loving Mother to look out for me? What if I scream and shout more and more? That thought genuinely upsets and scares me. But it shows I'm human, and that means I have to manage my mental health and wellbeing. 1 in 4 people suffer a mental health problem each year. It doesn't mean they're 'crazy', it means someone you know needs (and hopefully gets) support and help. And I think in out social networking/internet age, there's new pressures on mental wellbeing, from jealousy through to the fatal effects of cyber-bullying. Mental health is too big an elephant to keep in the room.

So at Southend Mind, they've built not just a new room but a whole new centre for it. The Jubilee Centre on Southchurch Road is a drop-in centre where anyone can walk through the door, ask for help and be sign-posted/offered to the right support. Astonishingly, it's the first centre of it's kind in the UK. I'm proud I can tell the Scousers I meet that in the heart of Southend is a mental health centre for everyone, and If I'm worried I'm screaming and shouting a bit too much, I can walk through the right door.

I'm selling 'Summer Tea Selections' to fundraise for the Jubilee Centre Appeal. 12 different tea blends to sample for just £2.50 (£3 posted), with every penny going to the appeal. Simply ask me to order one!

You can read more about the Jubilee Centre and make a donation at www.southendmind.org.uk

Monday 25 February 2013

Enough Food If we all #YOLO


Have you ever written a letter of complaint? I have and it's becoming quite a speciality of mine. Over the last year I've written to Natwest, Virgin Trains, Virgin Media, c2c and Disneyland. Natwest gave me £10 for a delay in my new debit card. Virgin Media wrote off our final bill because I told them we're nice people. c2c gave me the money back I spent on the wrong train ticket. Sadly Disneyland didn't give me a free holiday, but it was worth a shot. When it comes to injustices against me and my wallet, I'm not gonna stand for it.

And yet there are genuine injustices in the world that I do far less about. I spent 90 minutes writing to c2c for the sake of £5 while 30% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa are under-nourished. When I first heard that statistic, my first though was 'oh good, it's only 30%.' It's a classic case of 'compassion fatigue', where the media give us so many images and stories of suffering that we become desensitised to them. We don't don’t bat an eyelid when Huw Edwards briefly tells us there was a suicide bomb set off in Iraq, or when Ewan McGregor is asking us to donate to Unicef during an advert break.

However compassion-fatigued we are, it is nothing short of a disgrace that 1 in 8 people across the globe are hungry. That's 865 million people, more than the populations of Europe, Australia, USA and Canada combined. It sounds like an unimaginable amount of people, but they’re all real individuals struggling to live now, and again tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. That is scary and shocking and angers me that we live in a world that knowingly lets that happen. It upsets and confuses me that I  sit in my cosy home, my cosy clothes, consuming all the chocolates and I tea I want, writing letters of complaint for the sake of £5 while there are people with nothing. And even if I donated that £5 along with every single penny in my bank account to a charity like Christian Aid or Oxfam, it's not enough to end world hunger. It seems like a lost cause.

In those hopeless moments, I think '#YOLO': You Only Live Once. It’s a phrase popularized by the rapper Drake and the footballer Mario Balotelli (hip-hop and football being two topics I’m an expert on). I can live the Yolo-lifestyle like anyone else. It’s about going out, getting wasted, not caring about the consequences. Look through my Facebook photos, and you'll see I can enjoy a night out. This month, I 'YOLO'd' more than before. When I was in Brighton celebrating my birthday, I had such an amazing time doing the Joey dance and so much more on the dance floor. I kissed a guy. I danced with another, he propositioned me and I let him go. And when I went home I was kicking myself about the missed opportunity: he was (through my beer-goggles at least) hot. So I downloaded Grindr  (a smartphone app allowing you to talk to other gay men nearby) and started spending 2 hours a night on talking to desperate guys asking how big your penis is before they ask your name. 2 hours a night not practicing for choir or planning my Christian Aid volunteering. After a few days I realized I don’t want to be chasing faceless fantasies through my phone if it takes time away from all the things I love doing (baking, singing, reading, writing, watching Disney), all the things that I hope one day a guy will look at and think ‘I love Joey.‘ I only live once, so I want it to be the best life it can be. That allows for going out and partying like Drake and Balotelli, but it has to go far deeper than wasted nights. But it goes deeper than that for me, and I want us now to read the parable of the Good Samaritan. (Luke 10:25-37, discuss)

The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) is a parable that speaks to anyone, Christian and non-Christian alike, It's message is simple: love your 'neighbour', who is anyone you come in contact with, from your the person living next door to the homeless man to pass on the way to work and the factory worker in India who made your cardigan. #YOLO means living life to its fullest because you only live once, on one Earth, next to 7 billion neighbours. It is central to my Christian faith and my human decency to love and respect everyone of those neighbours. If the parable was retold today, the Samaritan wouldn't simply help the poor guy up, call an ambulance and go on his way, posting a Facebook status about what a hero he is. He would ride in the ambulance to the hospital, come back daily during visiting hours and help him at home once he was discharged. The Good Samaritan parable tells us we should totally and sincerely care for our everyone else in our world. That is an enormous challenge, which is why it’s one we have to tackle together.

There is enough food for everyone in the world if we challenge the systems we have right now (like legal tax dodging) and examine the food we eat in our own lives. The 'Enough Food If' campaign is calling on all of us to stand up and shout out, to show governments and businesses that we care about people in Africa, Asia and South America just as much as we care about people in Southend, Essex and Britain. If we give our voices to the life-and-death injustice of hunger, huge leaps will be taken that bring us closer to the day needless hunger is eradicated. If we YOLO now by caring for our neighbours, they'll YOLO by not being held back by hunger and poverty.

'If we can conquer space, we can conquer [childhood] hunger'
Buzz Aldrin

Monday 18 February 2013

Happy Salad Day!

Today is Salad Day. You probably won't have seen any cards for it in Clintons, or any special set-menus for it at restaurants. It's not as well known as Valentine's Day but it is more important to me. It's a story of friendship. Three years ago to the day I had a fantastic day out in Banbury with my friend Clare. We'd been to the cinema to watch Princess and the Frog, had a great lunch and now I was on my way home, but that old enemy of British public transport was waiting for me. Snow had turned Warwick Campus into gridlock. I was a first year, so I had to trek a bit to my halls but I made it home.

Thursday night was Cell group night (like a Bible study grop if you don't know) but the snow made it clear we wouldn't be getting off campus to my friends Peter and Ed's house any time soon. So some of the cell group came to mine. I cobbled together any food I could find, including a bag of salad that was half frozen in the fridge. No problem I thought, I'll zap it in the microwave to freshen it up. And I did. 'Here is salad'. Since that day, my friendship with Peter and Ed and everyone else in the cell group, in the associated choir, in the Chaplaincy grew and grew and grew. We've gone on to share masses of (non-microwaved) salad. We had it for my 21st birthday meal. I love salad. I love eating it and I love sharing it. That classic episode of The Simpsons where Homer sings 'you don't make friends with salad!' simply isn't true to me.

This year, Salad Day is extra important to me. I've given up meat for Lent. Someone told me it's a strange thing to surrender. I don't look at vegetarians and think they're strange. Lent to me means giving something up that you like and is a luxury in your life, to prove you can live without it. It's a food type that people across the developing world do live without. It's also a food type that is processed in such a way that uses vast resources. 40% of grains produced in the world feeds livestock while almost 900 million people go to bed hungry each night. Global hunger is a complicated issue, but one we can act on through the 'Enough Food If' campaign. I'm not saying we all have to be vegetarian to end global hunger. I'm just using Lent this year as a chance to reflect on the food I eat.

I'm going to thoroughly enjoy my salad tonight. I hope you thoroughly enjoy whatever's on your dinner plate tonight, and the people you share it with.