Movember Memories

This Movember, I'm doing things differently. Instead of a simple selfie, I'm sharing a photo of a moment in my day that reminds me of my Dad. So far they've included salads, spectacles and stripy tie. Every picture tells a story. Not stories that say 'Dad bought me this so I like it' or 'we went on this expensive holiday, it was awesome'. They're stories that talk about the concerts he came to support me in, the family trips we took, the party he let me have. They're memories of moments we shared together.

Yesterday I shared dinner with a friend who's Dad unexpectedly died last month. I don't like saying he 'committed suicide': it's such an ugly term and it hints at it being a rational choice. He was severely ill, just as my Dad was severely ill with prostate cancer. As she told me how she was, I was taken straight back to my Dad's death in a way I only ever am when I know someone's grieving. I was again sitting in a church full of people at the funeral. I was again thinking of the friends who supported me in that immediate aftermath.

In the UK, twelve men die from suicide everyday. That headline figure barely touches on the scale of mental health and isolation problems that men are prone to and suffer. Isolation is especially something I struggle with, having just moved to my 4th home in 4 years. What helps me cope isn't knowing how many people tap their phone to like my selfie, but the ordinary moments I spend with my friends and family: the cuppa tea Mum makes me, the meal out I have with uni pals, the time a friend helps me out of despair over the phone.

I don't want to sound sugar coated when I ask you to tell a colleague their outfit looks great, text a friend a plethora of emojis or wish the checkout lady a nice day before she wishes you one. I know living in a Disney film and flashing one smile won't cure mental illness. But I know connecting in person with strangers and our loved ones will build strong communities, where the risk of stress and isolation is minimised and joyful memories are easy to find.

You can see my Movember Memories photos, donate and read more about mental health issues for men on my Mo Space.

Movember 2014: There's got to be mo' to it

I've already pestered people for a lifetime's worth of sponsorship. I'm not totally comfortable with gendered imagery. It gets 'too much money' compared to other causes. And, most importantly, I hate how I look with a moustache. 'Four years and £500 in sponsorship is good going,' I thought, 'I'll give Movember a miss this year'.

Yet it doesn't take much to recognise life itself isn't always good going. When I hear that another two people have died in Dad's Rotary Club, ebola is creating orphans in West Africa and the friend I saw last week is suddenly mourning the loss of their Dad, I know there's more death in the world than we can cope with.

It brings my own grief back to the forefront, and the demons I still struggle with. Movember has always been a poignant month for me. In 2008, at a Remembrance Day service, I was taken aside. My Dad, who'd been diagnosed with prostate cancer 18 months earlier, died the following day.

Isn't there a better way to remember Dad than just growing a mo and sharing the selfies? Of course there is. I'll still be growing a moustache this Movember but I'm also challenging myself to share a photo from my day that reminds me of him. It won't be easy. We didn't drink a cuppa or bake cakes together. The photos won't fit my social media caricature of a baking-mad, tea-guzzling Disney freak. I'll have to go far beyond selfies to find moments genuinely worth sharing and remembering.

Within that spirit of remembrance, I'm asking you to donate a gift in memory and in honour of someone you love. If you want to sponsor me this Movember I'll be very grateful, although it's not my place to tell you how to use your money. You might want to volunteer your time, or give a present to someone. Grief doesn't end by growing a moustache or giving gifts, but I know actively remembering someone is a good way to control my demons and worries.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.