Albertus Minimus

Back From Oblivion

It's been a long time. A very long time. If any of my old readers still visit, I'd like to let you know that I've not dropped off the edge of the world. One of the things that kept me busy for so long was designing and writing the website for my local parish. It involved, shall we say, rather more work than I had anticipated. However, it's now up and running and it's where most of my internet activities will be taking place from now on. I'd like to invite you to come over and take a look.

To keep you going

Having the uncertainty over Minimus minor's health finally come to an end, I thought that I would then be able to devote plenty of time to writing profound, erudite and possibly even funny posts for you all. But, er, it hasn't quite worked out that way. I must apologise for my absence, but it looks like I will be hard pushed to do more than post occasionally over the next few weeks, the reason being that I am setting up a website for my parish. When I say 'I am setting up' let me hasten to add that all the hard technical work is being done by another parishioner. I, on the other hand, have to provide most of the written content. Before this I had not the slightest inkling as to how much writing goes into even a small website. Well, I now know better. Unfortunately, this is consuming most of my free time, leaving little for blogging. I'll do my best to post but in the meantime, can I recommend to you two new sites from friends of this blog that you might like to check.

The Cacoethes Scribendi group blog is proving more fissiparous than a lonely amoeba, and has spawned two daughter sites: Chad's On the Silent Planet, which is particularly strong on the intersection of religion and science, and Bekah's The Road Well Traveled, which is likely to follow Bekah's journey into becoming a midwife, as well as taking a firm interest in pro-life matters.

Another friend of this blog, Paulinus, has also started his own site, but for the life of me I can't find the address. If you drop by, Paulinus, please leave a link in comments so I can add it: it's great to have another British Catholic blog, even if it's yet another Scottish one.

Coming back

So, it's been, let's see, three days since we got back from hospital, and things are now just about back to normal. At least, they've been back to normal for Minimus minor pretty well since Monday, but a good night's sleep yesterday for Mrs Minimus and I has worked its usual magic, and we less-resilient adults are nearly back to normality too.

It's over. I know it's a cliché, but it really is only just beginning to sink in. No more worrying each time Matthew catches a cold that it's going to turn into a massive infection, or that the CCAM tissue will turn cancerous. It's finished. (Well, er, almost. The doctors couldn't remove all the cysts since, unusually, the lesions were not confined to one lobe of the lung, but rather spread across both upper and lower lobes, as well as the small connecting lobe of the left lung. So rather than removing one whole lobe, the usual practice with CCAM, the surgeons had to remove sections of each lobe, with the decision of where to cut being a matter of medical judgement. Thus, there may be some small lesions still in the lung, but the doctor does not think they are likely to cause any future difficulties, although Matthew will have to have a CAT scan in three to five years to check.)

It's only now, looking back, that one becomes conscious of just how much we all were upheld by hands unknown to us. When the CCAM was first diagnosed, at the twenty week scan, the left lung was so distended that Matthew's heart was pushed into the right side of his body. Much more pressure and the heart would have failed. Yet, it was at that point that the CCAM stopped. Why?

We don't know. Neither do the doctors. Yet I do know that that was when many people started praying for Matthew, who as yet had no name. Not really his parents, I have to admit. We were in a state of some sort of spiritual paralysis, hardly able to pray at all. But many others did pray, some who knew us, many who did not. And this only continued over the two years since his birth, so that those prayers have been echoed by people who I have never seen, and am never likely to see, yet who have read words on a computer screen and joined their prayers to others. And, I suspect, further prayers have been offered, by the dead whom we have called upon, mainly those family members who have already passed on, and the angels too.

If one could see, really see, the connections that bind the worlds above and below I suspect that one would see Minimus minor held, suspended, in a web of prayer, that has brought him safely over the abyss.

You have held him in the arms of your prayers as he lay on the surgeon's table. You have held him as he grew in the womb. You have helped him live. Thank you.

I love my son. There was a time when I thought that these two years since he was born were simply a devil's ransom, paid, but soon to be claimed. But now he has been returned to me, through the skill and love and concern of so many whom I know either not at all or only in passing.

This is the deep structure of the world. Here lies its foundations, in the kindness of strangers and the prayers of friends. Thank you once again. And, if I may ask again, please pray for Leighton.

Death by wart

During Matthew's stay in hospital, in the space of a single day we saw a family's worst fears realised. Leighton, a 14-year-old-boy, came in to our ward late one night, with his father Craig. He had been suffering pins and needles for a couple of weeks, and then had what seemed to be a stroke, effecting the right side of his body. He could still walk, but his movement was restricted, his right arm clumsy, and the right side of his face pulled down in the way characteristic of stroke patients. Not good, not good at all, but the young recover quickly from strokes, their brains still having a level of plasticisty that we lose with age.

Only, it wasn't a stroke. It was a tumour, or to be precise two tumours, non-cancerous but inoperable because of their location on the brainstem. I wasn't vary clear about the distinction between cancerous and non-cancerous tumours until it was explained to me that a wart is, usually, a non-cancerous tumour. Then I understood. Only, this wart is killing Leighton. Because of where it is, the surgeons cannot operate, as to do so would mean cutting through his brain to get to it, thus killing him. All the doctors can hope to achieve are measures, either through chemo- or radiation therapy, to slow down its growth. But the best the doctors can offer this family is the hope that death may be delayed from being weeks, if not days away, to a year or so. However, as far as the doctors are concerned, the condition is terminal. Leighton is going to die because he has a wart growing in the wrong place. A wart.

Lord, come on. Look, many times in the past you offered signs and wonders that people might believe. I've heard people, knowledgeable people, speculate that history is a record of the gradual withdrawal of God from humanity, so that the God of Abraham and Moses, who led into and out of the wilderness, who was present as voice and fire, who parted the seas and fed in the desert, the God of the Apostles who released Peter from prison, the God of miracle, has receded. Maybe. These are knowledgeable people, and I respect their views. And it certainly seems to be the case that God has withdrawn during the last, blood-soaked, God-haunted century. But maybe this is not a one way process, the withdrawal of a tide never to return. Maybe there are rhythmns to divine activity. Maybe God has His own seasons, times when He sows and times when He reaps and times when He lets the earth lie fallow.

Now, Lord, now, is the time. Let Leighton live. Don't take him. Send him back. I mean, death by wart. Come on now. We know, we truly know, that there is something wrong in a world where parents bury their children. But to die because of a wart. That's not just wrong, that's absurd. You know, of course you know, that we human beings can tolerate evil because, well, we understand it: it's the fracture deep in our hearts. But pointlessness, that is something we don't understand. Against evil we cry out, against absurdity there is not even the defence of anger. Isn't it time to stop? Hasn't the time come for You to show forth Your hand again?

Lord, save him. Save us. Please.

Farewell CCAM. We won't miss you.

Sitting around doing nothing in hospital may well be the most exhausting activity ever devised. After a week of it, I was left fat, unfit and more tired than I'd ever been in my life. Mrs Minimus rates childbirth as slightly more tiring, but only slightly. However, Minimus Minor, the reason we were sitting around in hospital for a week, is now roaring around, virtually back to normal, while his parents are struggling slowly back to their usual state of hollow-eyed weariness.

Anyway, here we are, back again, and thank God it's all over.

It's hard to believe that only a week ago I was sitting in paediatric intensive care, looking at my son, who a few hours before had been a healthy active boy, lying immobile and unconscious in a cot with five tubes sticking out of his body: two chest drains, a catheter, an epidural and an IV drip. It's strange, but I can recall everything else about that ward, the faces of the nurses, the children and babies lying in the other beds, the parents – anxious or all-too-experienced – but at its centre there is a blank space in my memory. Try as I might, no image comes to mind of Minimus minor. Mrs Minimus reports that the same is true for her. Which all reminds me of a film called 'Strange Days' set in the near future, when people's experiences can be recorded and replayed and relived, unfading and unforgotten, and one character's remark to another: 'Memories fade; they're designed that way.'

God made us humans to remember, but just enough. Too much more and we would go mad, much less and we would barely exist.

A week last Tuesday Minimus minor was admitted into King's College Hospital. He arrived, suitcase in hand, looking like a smaller version of Paddington Bear. But after a night there he had decided that he'd had enough of this particular adventure and he announced to us, in no uncertain terms, that it was time to go home. Unfortunately, we were there to ensure that while Matthew came home, a large part of his left lung, that infected with congenital cystic adenomatoid malformation (CCAM to its acquaintances – it has no friends), would not. So Wednesday morning saw Minimus minor in my arms outside the operating theatre calling for Mummy, Granny, Nanny, in fact, working his way through anyone he could think of who would make what was fast becoming a very unpleasant day stop. But then the anaesthetic worked, he went, suddenly, floppy, and I had to work hard to prevent parental tears.

That was nine o'clock. We knew it was going to be quite a long operation, so ten, eleven, twelve o'clock went past without any concern. But by one o'clock I was starting to wonder just how long it was going to take, and two o'clock saw us both getting distinctly twitchy. Thankfully, it was shortly after two that we were told we could go up to paediatric intensive care. And there he was. Only, as I said, I can't picture him at all. The space where he should be is blank. I can remember the blood on the sheet beneath him (as he woke from the anaesthetic he had turned onto his front and pulled various tubes out; I am not sorry I missed that). I can remember Janine, the intensive care nurse from Pasadena, California. But I can't remember Matthew.

The little lad spent the rest of that day in intensive care, but the doctors were so pleased with his progress that he was moved back to the ordinary children's ward that night. And next day all seemed to be proceeding smoothly, to the extent that I was congratulating myself on producing a son with such extraordinary powers of recovery. However, the next couple of days were to prove more worrying. Firstly, Matthew took something of a downturn, developing a fever and ceasing to respond to us, but rather staring blankly into the middle distance. He began to refuse food and water, which meant that he had to be put back on a fluid drip. And he would not, absolutely not, fall asleep. Hours after his normal bed time, he would seem to have drifted off, then a convulsive shudder would rip through him, and he would be awake again. It's only later that it occurred to me that there was good reason for him to fight sleep. From Minimus minor's point of view, he had gone into hospital fit and healthy, fallen asleep, and woken up with tubes sticking out of him, a large (the size of a fist) piece of lung missing, and a great big scar around his side and back. On top of that, he'd go to sleep, only to be woken by a nurse sticking a suppository up his bottom. Is it any wonder he didn't want to sleep?

Those days were hard, but the burden fell mostly on Mrs Minimus as she stayed with Matthew through the night. Our other son, Minimus minor major, was staying with Mrs Minimus's sister three miles away in Forest Hill, so I would return there for the night, before leaving at six in the morning for another day at the hospital. Thus at least I was able to sleep well.

Having complained about the NHS in previous posts, I must say that, as is so often the case with the health service, when we finally got into hospital the care was excellent, both from the medical and nursing staffs. In particular, we would like to thank Mary, who was on duty at night while Matthew was there, who my wife credits with getting her and our boy through the whole experience.

But after those difficult days, Minimus minor turned the corner and his recovery since has been swift. It's good to be home. It's good to think that this vague but lurking danger has finally left us. It's now been nearly three years that it has hovered over us, sometimes a more present threat, sometimes a distant portent, but never before absent. I'll tell you what that's like once we've recovered. To be honest, I thought I would feel more immediately relieved when we got home, but exhaustion and irritableness have been the most notable emotions. Mrs Minimus and I have been bickering like a pair of beauty queens. Hopefully a good night's sleep will put matters aright.

But before I sleep I must take a quick look around St Blogs. And thank you all, once again, for your prayers. However, I must ask for your prayers again, but I will put this in a separate post.

Well, he's back

And so are all the rest of us too, safe and well and all in one piece (except for Matthew, who's missing several pieces!)

It's been a long week, but thanks be to God, Minimus minor has come through it and – exhausted, fractious, but relieved – the Minimuses are back at home. I'll blog some more about it all tomorrow, but for now I want to thank you all for your prayers. They have been answered. I still have my son.

Here we go again

My apologies for the long period of silence, but I was feeling somewhat battered by our hospital experiences. Well, now we're about to entrust ourselves and, more importantly, Minimus minor, aka Matthew, to King's College Hospital once again. In a couple of hours, we're taking Matthew in and, all being well, he should have the operation to remove the lesions caused by his congenital cystic adenomatoid malformation tomorrow morning.

It really does look like the operation might actually happen this time.

Thank you for your prayers in the past. One of the great features of prayer, seeing that they are addressed to the Author of time and space, is that they can reach both backwards and forwards in the playing out of events, so all the prayers that have already been said on Matthew's behalf still very much apply. But we certainly wouldn't mind a few more today and tomorrow if you get the chance.

Thank you again.

Back out of hospital

To be more accurate, we never made it into hospital with Matthew in the first place. Continuing our rather Kafkaesque experience of the National Health Service, the operation was cancelled. Why? When hospital admissions telephoned last week to offer us the operation this Wednesday, I made the point of warning them that Matthew had just begun a course of antibiotics to offset the effects of a chest infection. Admissions said they would check with a doctor to make sure that was all right, and sure enough they rang back to say it was fine.

Now, this morning, the day we were due to go in, a doctor calls us to ask how Matthew is. Checking through his notes she had seen an entry about his most recent chest infection, and when Mrs Minimus told the doctor that Matthew was only today finishing off the course of antibiotics, well, that was it. Operation off. Do not pass 'Go', do not collect £200. Back to the start.

The really annoying thing is that when I spoke to the doctor and asked her how long a gap has to be left between having a chest infection and it being safe to operate, she told me four weeks. So there was no way that Matthew would ever have been able to have an operation tomorrow, only a week after coming down with a chest infection.

So I can only apologise to all of you for the mistake, although since prayers are not bound by time they will, I hope, come into play when (eventually) Matthew has his operation. (I make it that this is the fourth cancellation, for an operation originally scheduled for November.) In the meantime, Mrs Minimus and I will crawl off somewhere and try to regain our equilibrium.

Into hospital

I wrote a little while ago about our two-year-old son's lung disorder, the snappily titled congenital cystic adenomatoid malformation. Matthew was due to have an operation at the beginning of March to remove most of his left lung, and the associated cysts, but the procedure had to be cancelled the day before when he came down with a chest infection. Well, the hospital rang us two days ago. They have a vacant slot this Wednesday. So we are taking Matthew into hospital tomorrow. He'll stay overnight, and then the surgeons will operate on Wednesday morning. God willing, he should be in hospital for between five and seven days before coming home again. I would be grateful if you could keep him in your prayers over Easter. Once the operation is completed I will try and get to a computer to post about the outcome, but since the hospital is a long way away from where we live, I'm not sure when I'll be able to do that.

Since it's possible I may not be able to post again before Easter, may I wish you all a happy and blessed Eastertide.

Albertus Minimus

Divine dimensions

Mrs Minimus: Darling, God has no beginning and no end.

Minimus minor: Does that mean He doesn't have a middle either?

Grown-up relationships

We are told that people today have adult relationships, passing from one sexual encounter to another without, as the canard has it, 'hurting anyone'.

In fact, the opposite is the case. These so-called adult relationships are more like those a child hurt beyond hope by uncaring parents, yet whose heart contains a desperate, unacknowledged longing for his love to be returned.

Not dead yet – part 2

European Christianity’s prospective or imminent demise has been predicted for centuries; yet while its “inevitable” modern successors—from enlightened deist universalism to Jacobinism to Marxism—inevitably descend into strangely quaint anachronism (and there is nothing more quaint than the certitudes of bygone utopian fantasies), Christianity constantly renews itself from sources beyond the vicissitudes of history. Even amid the manifest sins and failings of its faithful, Christian faith proclaims the living words of which modern ideologies are so often parodies.

Amid Europe’s real problems, the persistence of the question of God in Europe, and with it Christianity’s answer, is worth our thanks and our reflection. For American Christians, contemporary Europe should be more than the harbinger of a dreaded future; it is the present sign of an invincible hope.

The full article, from the excellent 'Touchstone' magazine, is here. Thanks to Amy Welborn for the link.

As a further reflection on the situation of the Church in France, and further proof that ideas have consequences, I have been told by a Jesuit learned in Pascal and his times, that those areas of France where Jansenism was most prevalent are the parts which are today most secular. This is interesting as, among other things, Jansenism promulgated an idea that Christ's salvation was narrow, that few would be saved. Thus, in crucifixes inspired by Jansenist ideas, Jesus's arms are narrowly spaced and held above his head, indicating visually the narrow gap through which the redeemed have to fit. Our Jesuit friend is also inclined to think that the spread of the devotion to the Sacred Heart (where Jesus stands with His arms spread ready to receive all into His heart) arose and spread in part in reaction to Jansenist ideas.

Having sons

After speaking on the phone to Mrs Minimus from work I overheard this comment as she was putting the phone down: 'Darling, get off his head.'

Hard labour for Comrade Stalin

I'm reading Anne Applebaum's history of the Soviet labour camps, "Gulag" and among its many fascinating, if horrifying, insights into human nature is the strong implication that the Church's teaching on the fallen nature of mankind is all too true. For as the author points out, the Gulags were not, apart from a rare few exceptions, extermination camps after the manner of Auschwitz-Birkenau, but labour camps, were the Soviet regime used forced labour to achieve economic ends. (Of course, the incarceration of supposed enemies of the state was also useful from Stalin's point of view.) But the point is that cruelty was not a requirment of the system. In fact, inspectors from Moscow often inveighed against the brutality in the camps. Yet cruelty and brutality were not merely commonplace, but the overwhelming rule, such that examples of kindness and humanity stand out the more clearly.

...(O)nce they were inside the system, the employees of the Gulag did have choices, far more than their Nazi counterparts, whose work was more rigidly defined. They could choose to behave brutally, or they could choose to be kind. They could choose to work their prisoners to death, or they could choose to keep as many alive as possible...

More often, cruelty was not so much sadism as self-interest. Guards who shot escaping prisoners received monetary rewards, and could even be granted a vacation at home. Guards were therefore tempted to encourage such 'escapes'...

Most of the time the cruelty of Soviet camp guards was unthinking, stupid, lazy cruelty, of the sort that might be shown to cattle or sheep. If guards were not explicitly told to mistreat prisoners, neither were they taught to consider prisoners, particularly political prisoners, as fully human either.

I think you'd be hard put to find better examples of the inertia towards evil that is humanity's fallen condition.

Making the Church visible

This story from the 'Tablet' comes via Petra at Lumen de lumine.

At my recent parish pastoral council meeting, the discussion centred on how to make the Church better known and to encourage more enquirers. One member of the council asked why it was that the parish seemed to be getting a steady trickle of people who want to become Catholics and how they encountered the Church in the first place.

One important reason was that they had recognised the parish priest or one of the Sisters of Mercy in the street or in a shop and had started talking to them. The much loved Sisters decided many years ago to continue wearing their distinctive habits, unlike many of their colleagues in their own and other orders. The parish priest also continues to wear a clerical collar. Experience seems to vindicate their decision to be visible presence in this way.

When we see in towns and cities members of other faiths wearing distinctive dress as a sign of their allegiance to their beliefs, should Catholic clergy and religious orders that have opted for anonymity consider whether this has contributed to the Church becoming invisible?

It's worth popping over to Petra's site even if you don't speak German. There are a couple of very moving photographs of Pope John Paul II there. Start at the top and just scroll down a little way for the second.

Holy hottie

I blogged a little while ago about a former stripper called Heather Veitch who has now started a ministry to girls working in the sex industry. The other day I read an interesting article about her in the 'Observer', which, for those of you who don't know, is the sister Sunday paper to the 'Guardian', sharing its secular, liberal world view. Given the organ publishing the report I wouldn't have been surprised if it turned out to be a hatchet job. After all, born-again Evangelical Christians are not exactly a favoured victim group there. And indeed, during the course of the report we do learn that the reporter is an atheist. However, it's fascinating to read under the surface of the page: I suspect that the journalist found herself admiring Mrs Veitch and her two co-workers far more than she ever expected to.

Speaking to her over the course of the weekend, it becomes clear that Heather has lived through a catalogue of catastrophes you'd be hard pressed to fit into the most tear-jerking of airport fiction. She recounts it all in a voice whose sweetness never breaks, and whose light and even tone might send you into a trance if it weren't for the horrors enveloped in it.

Let's begin with the terminal illnesses: her husband, with whom she has a young daughter and with whom she has brought up a teenage son from a previous relationship, is dying of brain cancer. She cares for him - and provides an income from hairdressing and from the church, where she is about to go on staff - just as she once cared for the sister who was born with heart disease and part of her brain missing when Heather was 14. 'I take care of sick people,' she says. 'That's my thing. It seems to follow me around.'

It's worth reading the whole report, but be warned that it contains both bad language and some descriptions of sexual acts. The link is here.

The sentience register

The only tenable argument for abortion is that a foetus is not a human being. Thus, it depends on a separation of the idea of 'personhood' from the process, begun at conception and ended at death, of an incarnate human being. In an interesting new twist on ancient Gnostic heresies, we have a new and even more numinous concept posited as being in contrast to the Christian belief that a human being is a union of body and soul: rather than a person being a body, or a soul, a person is defined by 'quality of life'. The curious thing is that this is, as an idea, even harder to pin down than those of 'soul' or 'body', particularly since there's no agreement nowadays on what constitutes the good life in the first place.

Anyway, this is obviously the direction the argument is heading, both with respect to abortion and euthanasia. So, where is it likely to take us? If once we accept that 'personhood' is not something fundamental to a human being but rather a set of attributes acquired, or lost, by a collection of cells, then it seems to me that a logical consequence is the setting up of something we could call a 'sentience register'. This would first come into being to assess those whom society had deemed meet to kill off, and we see the first steps to this in abortion legislation, and more recently the push to legalising euthanasia, and now the so-called Groningen protocol in Holland, which defines which new-born babies can be killed.

After that, it would only be a matter of time before it became obvious that, while all humans are equal, some humans are more equal than others. For once humanity is predicated on a set of attributes, it will inevitably be the case that some people will have more, and others less. Thus the final result will be the creation of a society where worth is probably measured by some mix of genetic and developmental factors. Perhaps parents who produce children very much below or above them in their level of humanity will have those children removed and placed with more suitable carers. After all, it's in the child's own interests that it be raised by parents who can relate to it. One can ultimately envisage a society more rigidly stratified than any other in human history, one's level in it determined by psychological and genetic testing, and the eventual and inevitable slip down the sentience register accompanied by the knowledge that to fall too far brings with it a no doubt painless euthanasia. After all, you wouldn't be you anymore, you'd have ceased to be a human being.

This seems to me a likely development of current ideas. So watch out for the sentience register, coming soon to a health bureaucrat near you.

Where happiness lies

A friend recently relayed this conversation to me.

He was talking to an elderly Chinese gentleman and they got on to the subject of happiness and where it lay. The Chinese gentleman said that happiness was, 'Grandfather, father, son, die.'

When my friend objected that that seemed a rather morbid path to happiness the old man added three words that finished the argument: 'In that order.'

(I must admit that this has the ring of an urban legend, but even if there is no such ancient Chinese proverb, the story seems to convey a truth about what is the right and proper order of things. How great a tragedy it must be for a man to outlive his sons, or a mother her daughters.)

All in the mind?

Dr Michael Persinger, a neuroscientist living in Canada although American by birth, has a theory of everything: God, alien abductions, mystical experiences, feelings of deja vu, pretty well the full panoply of the extraordinary and the supernatural. Basically, it's all in the brain. Yep, the whole caboodle is down to those pesky little neurones misfiring, rather like a car with a faulty transmission suddenly shoving you into reverse when you meant to put it into first.

But how does he know this? It's quite simple, really. He claims he can produce mystical and spiritual experiences in people, and it doesn't take years of self-discipline, personal mortification and contemplative prayer. No, all you have to do is put on a yellow crash helmet, sit back, and relax. (If you think I'm joking about the yellow crash helmet, see here, and scroll down for the photo.) A weak electromagnetic field is passed through the temporal lobes of the brain and enlightenment results. A journalist gives an interesting account of his experiences with the helmet here. As an aside, if Hollywood, with its visions of gleaming metal laboratories, has convinced you that scientific research is glamorous, his description of the experimental set up here will set you straight.

I'm escorted into the chamber, an old sound-experiment booth. The tiny room doesn't appear to have been redecorated since it was built in the early '70s. The frayed spaghettis of a brown-and-white shag carpet, along with huge, wall-mounted speakers covered in glittery black nylon, surround a spent brown recliner upholstered in the prickly polymers of that time. The chair, frankly, is repellent. Hundreds of subjects have settled into its itchy embrace, and its brown contours are spotted with dollops of electrode-conducting cream, dried like toothpaste, giving the seat the look of a favored seagulls' haunt.

Of course, some, not least Dr Persinger himself, have taken this to mean that religion has been explained. In the same way, such critics would no doubt say that a thorough chemical analysis of the consituent pigments of the 'Mona Lisa' would constitute a thorough understanding of La Gioconda's smile. But it occurs to me that if other parts of the brain are stimulated they likewise produce effects: thus stimulating the visual cortex affects sight, other areas recall memories as clear as the moment that produced them. The interesting thing about these is that they correspond to something real. No one would think that by understanding how the brain sees it therefore means that the external world that it sees is therefore explained away. So I would argue that, if Dr Persinger's research is correct, that it actually provides evidence for religion.

Of course, psychology being the field it is, there is now controversy over the methodology Dr Persinger's experiments, and various other things. For a quick overview of the dispute, go here.

The worst writer ever?

I work as an editor for a publishing company here in London and most of the time the copy I receive is, at least, serviceable. There are, however, the odd exceptions: writers who submit work of a standard that makes me wonder how they can call themselves 'writers' with a straight face and unblushing countenance. This last week I've been editing the copy of a person who is the worst writer I have yet come across. Virtually every review she submitted has had to be rewritten from scratch. Here is an example of the worst restaurant review I have ever had the misfortune of editing:

Have a yen to see the industry power brokers in action, book a booth well in advance at luncheon and observe everyone from A-list actors to top of the line agents, while chowing down on well prepared American fare, you know steaks and hamburgers, with equally fine Martinis.

Still, at least in that example it's easy to understand what the writer was trying to say. But how about this sentence for a construction that is almost completely opaque in its meaning:

Named for the temperature difference between medium rare and well done is also helmed by the talented Goodells at The Roosevelt Hotelk, is essentially their twist on the burger joint.

I did eventually work out what she meant, but it took some time.

Reading her copy, I was wondering how on earth this lady could make a living as a writer. Then it occurred to me that something I had read about Hollywood applied here also. This is the riddle: why do so many bad films come out of Hollywood, when no one (with the possible exception of the characters in 'The Producers') actually sets out make a bad film? Even the director of the worst Z grade direct to video schlock didn't wake up each morning when filming and think, 'Great, I'm going to be shooting some more really bad scenes today.'

So, where does it all go wrong? Well, one point that had never occurred to me before is that there are a very wide range of skills necessary to a film maker, and not all of these have anything to do with the actual movie. Thus, the ideal director will obviously be able to extract performances from actors, frame a story, and so on. But he will also, and long before he ever gets near a camera, have to be able to 'pitch' a concept, network, and, most importantly of all, make film company executives believe in him enough that they are willing to stump up a lot of cash for the movie to be made in the first place.

Thus, it's easy to see how it's perfectly possible for a person to have all the talents required to get a film green-lighted, but few of the abilities needed to actually produce a good movie once production has begun. The same is true, althought to a lesser extent, with writing, where the ability to make contacts with agents and publishers and publicists is at least as important in getting work published as the words on the paper.

So my anonymous scribe will probably continue in a long and successful writing career, her prose polished by generations of long-suffering editors.