Agape Love at the Sauna.

A typical Friday afternoon. Off to the gym, I went, as I normally do as one retired from full-time work. After a 65-minute aerobic workout on one of the four TechnoGym rowing machines, burning off 300 kcals, followed by 16 minutes on the treadmill with a further 60 kcal burned off, I made my way to the spa suite, where I am to relax in the bubble-bath, steam room and sauna. Indeed, very much like my Roman ancestors across two millennia of history. The only difference is that both sanitation levels and advanced technology have come a long way from the ancient public baths, perhaps to the cost of aesthetics, in which the Romans were renowned. 

Nothing new about any of this. The novelty wore off decades ago when I started attending sauna in 1976, as a slim 23-year-old. Although the original suite featured the frigidarium - a cold plunge pool, which, during the major refurbishment in the nineties, has been replaced by a so-called ice cold shower which has been known to be far from icy during the Summer!

A typical sauna cabin.

But despite my years at the facility - and others overseas such as in Haifa, San Diego, and Sydney - something that I consider new is has been occurring lately. And that is the presence of a female patient with a mental age of that of a baby, along with her supervisor or carer.

Indeed, I have already touched on this subject recently.* Then I wrote about my experience with a group of mentally-disabled patients and their carers at the same Leisure Centre after a swimming workout. I then made a comparison between the lifestyle of one of the patients with that of a wedding of a TV celebrity whose parents I know personally at our church.

This female patient at the sauna looked to be about twenty years of age, give or take, and she was quite pretty, with long flowing hair. She and her carer spend most of their time in the bubble bath, but I have seen them venture into the saunarium, which is cooler than the sauna but with a higher level of humidity. Towards the end of my time at the spa facility, she and her carer were taking a finishing shower. Afterwards, she sat in a chair, facing directly towards me, and apparently staring straight at me.

I turned and smiled at her. There was no other response but to stare steadily at me. Then I waved at her during the brief moment her carer had her back turned. Still no response. Not to worry, as I returned to my inclining position on one of the heat beds. As I lay there, I had a longing to approach her and give her a hug and speak gently to her. The desire to give her a hug was offset by anticipation that she would take it the wrong way, and scream with fright or protestation. As such, I felt the wiser to remain where I was.

But I still felt love for that patient, the love Christ has for us. While we were totally helpless, Christ died for us, thus demonstrating the love of God in the most sacrificial method. Therefore it was significant and still fresh on my mind that their visit to the spa took place only the day after watching a BBC Panorama programme about the abominable cruelty shown to very similar patients at Whorlton Hall private hospital in County Durham.

This was eight years after Panorama had also investigated Winterbourne View independent hospital in Gloucestershire after a whistleblower reported the levels of cruelty which had taken place within. As a result of the Winterbourne View investigation, the care home was closed down. At present, Whorlton Hall has also shut down. Both investigations were carried out by undercover reporters working as carers.

I have found the Whorlton Hall abuse very distressing. One of the patients, a mentally-disabled female who is also autistic, has a deep fear of men, and she only felt comfortable among female carers. Instead of respecting her wish, several male staff members deliberately taunted her while she was trapped in her room. Laughing and guffawing, her screams of terror was entertaining to them. These guys were quite big, strong and imposing, white, English chavs, whose mere presence bringing out the patient's screams of terror feeding their animalistic instincts, taking pleasure of her distress and suffering.

My heart went out to that patient. I wanted to cry, to cry at my frustration of sheer helplessness to do anything. Perhaps I wanted to see a miracle, for me to be there, to see her face transform from terror to joy. How I long to see her safe in the arms of Jesus, as he gives her an everlasting hug.

Undercover filming of abuse at Whorlton Hall. BBC TV.

Yet how frustrating it can be to my faith when considering that churches have a very dim history when it comes to caring. My own father, when he was an adolescent, had to stay at a nunnery during the Second World War. He tells of the level of cruelty which had taken place whilst staying there, especially when receiving a hard smack across his face for taking Communion without first going to Confession.

I can verify my father's testimony. I have a book, Stiff Upper Lip by ex-boarder Alex Renton. In it, he tells of an anonymous English interviewee who suffered hell at a prep school run by the Jesuits during the War. He began to feel rebellious, lending his support for the Germans and for the Communists, after hearing sermons delivered by "cane-happy priests" and being forced to pray, which he didn't but instead hummed a secular tune whilst in a praying position in order to stay out of trouble.

This also reminds me of a well-known novel by Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, from which movies, musicals and theatre performances are made to this day. It tells of the grim workhouse environment run by a board of "Christian administrators" - well fed and often pompous - who believed that cruelty is the right way to keep their junior inhabitants in line. This included keeping them to a state of near starvation as well as freely wielding the cane at the slightest misdemeanour.

Therefore it doesn't come as too much of a surprise when I was stuck for a proper solution to the problem. I have thought about every carer in such homes being committed Christians. Then I remembered history. No, that didn't work very well, did it? Little wonder when Charles Darwin wrote his book, On the Origins of Species, which had the power to displace the Christian faith from all logic, history, and from the general worldview, his works were warmly welcomed and became to be seen as universal scientific fact to this day.

It seemed that God wanted to show me something after watching such a distressing programme. On the very next day as well. That was when I watched this mentally disabled female enjoying the spa facilities with her carer. And all I felt was love for her, a wish to see her happy and eternally saved by Jesus Christ. That when the idea came up: If care homes or hospitals of this kind must exist, why not enforce a constitution that these establishments can only be run by true Christian believers who must first pass a stringent test?

However, I also realise that there is a massive difference between offering her a smile as a passing stranger, and ongoing day-to-day care.

Caring daily for one who is autistic and who has a mental disability can be mentally, emotionally and even physically challenging. And I must be honest with myself, I know for sure I can't hack it. And I believe in Jesus as my Saviour. In fact, coping with my own wife's illness is a massive challenge in itself. And her illness is purely physical, even with a sound mind, she's still in need to be in a wheelchair whenever out of doors. I find it agonising when I have to watch her writhe in pain, and I have no other option than to call an ambulance. Fortunately, the introduction of powerful medicines on her prescription such as Co-Codamol and Oramorph has enabled home treatment in lieu of calling for an ambulance, but these experiences can still be scary enough and demand a deep faith in God on a day-to-day basis.

"Please sir, I want some more" Movie version of Oliver Twist.

By contrast, I know a widowed female pensioner who has just reached ninety years of age, yet her dementia sends her into verbal violence which is intense enough to send anyone present from the room she's in, or even from the house itself. I know full well that I could never be able to care for such a person, but I do know that her own granddaughter is her live-in carer. Fortunately for both of them, her two sons along with the Council pay for daycare at a nearby home for the working week, relieving the carer from hours of stress. In turn, the widow enjoys the company of others at the care home, where she is allowed to carry out housekeeping tasks which prove to be very therapeutic.

That's why I do believe that for such people, the family is still the best environment for them to live. An environment where love can be felt and experienced. However, the best kind of love which can be offered to such disabled people is agape love. It's the same sacrificial love God has for us. Therefore, for a carer, especially in a care home or hospital, to possess such love, he or she must know Jesus Christ to be her Saviour, read and thoroughly absorb the Bible on a daily basis and experience the daily filling of the Holy Spirit.

Only then will the cruelty found in private hospitals becomes the thing of the past.

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*To read the account at the Leisure Centre cafe, click here.

A Shock at a Leisure Centre Cafe.

Last Sunday I was rather shocked as I walked into our Ascot Life Church service, which had just begun. For there was a massive hole of empty seats at the main centre row. As I took my place near the front, as I usually do, any worship meant to be offered to God was obscured by thoughts, troubling thoughts. And as such, I'll add some details about our church as a build-up to what had occurred on the very next day.

I realised that schools up and down the country had just broken up for the Easter break. Therefore colleges have broken up as well. Which means that many of the students from Royal Holloway, at the nearby town of Egham, who attend our services during term time would have gone home. This meant that during these college breaks, about three or four rows of empty seats, usually at the central section, are considered normal. But not last Sunday.

For greater clarification, I'll give a brief description of the seating arrangement at Ascot Life Church and how so many absent that particular Sunday has made quite an impact. The building where we meet is actually a restaurant located in the paddock buildings at the famous Royal Racecourse, where its interior has been cleared of all tables to make room for the seating. Since the length of the building is roughly aligned to the North-to-South points of the compass, the congregation faces south while the preacher and the music band members face north. Therefore, using theatre terminology, to anyone standing at the front will see three stalls of seating rows: The wide centre stalls and two narrower side stalls, the West stalls and the East stalls, both of these half the width of the centre arrangement and each separated by an aisle. 

How the Racecourse restaurant looks during the week!

The huge hole of empty seats was among the middle rows, with most who did arrive taking occupancy among the East and West stalls. That meant that the few sitting at the back had a full view of me as I sat at the second row from the front, a view which is normally obscured by people in between. I would not be exaggerating if I was to say that somewhere between thirty-three to fifty per cent of all regular attendees were absent that particular morning.

After the service, over some coffee and doughnuts, I asked someone standing nearby why such a high level of absentees. His explanation was that many were at "the wedding of the year" which took place the day before, near the Sussex resort of Brighton, and many had chosen to stay for the night. When I asked further who could have participated in such high ranking nuptials, the answer came back: Martha Collison.

Martha is one of two daughters, the other being Hannah, of Chris Collison and his wife Louise. Chris is one of our four Elders of Ascot Life Church. This makes our style of church leadership rather unusual. We don't have a senior pastor, a reverend, priest or even a bishop. Instead, we have four Elders, each of equal standing and therefore a likelihood of equally accountable to the Baptist Union. Chris Collison is a successful businessman who joined our church relatively recently when compared to when I joined, along with those who were already present before my arrival in 1990.

When it became clear that more were attending each Sunday morning than our original church building could cope with, Chris negotiated with the management of Ascot Racecourse during the latter half of 2012, into 2013. An agreement with the officials for a reduced annual fee allowed the hire of an upstairs site restaurant which capacity could hold double to what our original building could accommodate. Eventually, an experimental contract was set up by the Racecourse officials with Chris Collison, and on Sunday 13th April 2013, which is exactly six years to the day this blog was written, we had our first ever service at the new venue. On the same day, Ascot Baptist Church became Ascot Life Church, a new name taken from John 10:10, with its iconic symbol of a bird's eye view of the racecourse itself next to the logo.

It looks to all us members that the reward for a successful contract with the Racecourse officials was a promotion into Eldership. However, it was a known fact that the other three Elders had asked Chris to join the leadership team sometime before any negotiations with the Racecourse officials had ever got underway, which seems to be a good indication of Collison's business prowess rather than a spiritual one. However, that's not for me to say.

On Saturday, April 6th 2019, his daughter Martha married a fellow graduate, Michael Haywood. Maybe you have heard of the name Martha Collison sometime in the past. Indeed, she was a contestant of the 2014 BBC's Great British Bake-off. At seventeen years at the time, she was the youngest ever to take part in a contest which was broadcast across the nation, and being so young, won the heart of the nation. She managed to reach the quarter-final, and it was then when she was eliminated. However, one of the finalists, London builder Richard Burr, coined up the nuptials as "the wedding of the year," after turning up as an honoured guest, among other former Bake-off contestants, to the wedding venue. Martha's status as a celebrity remains endorsed by her published articles in various magazines as well as writing a couple of books on her expertise in baking, which were successfully published.

Cakes donated to Martha's Wedding Reception.

But the road to fame was not always plain sailing. It was during the fifth episode, aired on Wednesday 3rd September 2014, when she hit a blunder while making an apricot flan. Unfortunately, the juice from the fruit had percolated into the sponge base whilst in the oven, making the sponge soggy, when it should have been firm. This earned a critical assessment from the judges, along with that of lacking flavour. Poor Martha! She was visibly close to tears when she was interviewed afterwards, protesting on how could the judges be so severe after two hours of grafting over the worktop.

However, step in Amanda Platell of The Daily Mail. A childless divorcee from Australia, this ardent Brexiteer had a sharp word to say to Martha in a filler which appeared in the newspaper on Saturday 6th September 2014. She laid it on thickly when she lambasted the teenage student for shedding tears after a mere correction from the judges. "If people like her cannot take a bit of criticism without shedding tears, heaven helps us for the future of Britain," she wrote.

It's the same columnist who also wrote, The working classes of the past, no matter how poor, had enormous self-respect. Men wore suits and ties. Women scrubbed the doorsteps.

This echoed her predecessor, self-confessed atheist and former Daily Mail columnist Simon Heffer, who also wrote in a filler that no man can be referred to as a gentleman unless he wears a tie at all times whilst out, even on a Saturday afternoon. Indeed, both must have been cast from the same mould, despite that unlike Heffer, Platell is a regular church-goer. 

It was the next day, Monday, April 8th 2019, when an ordinary day's schedule as a retiree calling for my weekly swim at the revamped Leisure Centre, about ten minutes from home on the bicycle. It was lane swimming at the Competition Pool, a weekly therapeutic session lasting between 75-80 minutes as part of the post-op cardiac rehabilitation program recommended by the GP. It was after the swim, when I was dressed and calling at the cafe outlet which displayed delicious calorie-inducing cakes and tempting Kit-Kat bars which takes a good dollop of will power for a hungry stomach to resist, where I ordered my usual cappuccino while complaining that these tempting food items will undo all my efforts in calorie burn. Her reply was that these items are purposely displayed in order to motivate me to return to the gym!

As I sat alone in a newly refurbished cafe, with nothing more than a paper cup of frothy coffee in front of me, my attention was caught by a group of individuals sitting around a nearby table. It was a small group of mentally handicapped adults along with their supervisors. One of them, a young and rather good-looking patient arose and sat at a nearby table by himself. He looked toward me. I cracked a smile. He got rather excited and grinned from ear to ear, holding up his thumb. As I could see, he was happy. 

Then I heard a slight wail uttered by another patient, a female with curly salt-and-pepper hair, giving me an impression that she was in her forties, possibly even in her fifties, but has a mental age of a two-year-old. Her head was stooped over a plate of salad she was slowly eating. Connecting her lips to the food were several strings of saliva.

I had to turn away with a feeling of revulsion, obliterating my appetite and shutting out any desire for the coffee, still mainly unconsumed. All the others who sat with her were immune from such feelings of revulsion, both supervisors and patients alike, but I was aware that at any restaurant I would have been put off my meal, let alone sharing the table. Yet I could not help turn and fix my eyes on her, the sense of disgust having an overwhelming power over me. She became a magnet for my attention.

Then I began to think of her eternal state. Where would she go after her death? To believe that healthy, well-to-do people such as Chris Collison and his daughter are heirs of Heaven while this poor, unfortunate soul would perish forever is anathema, a wickedly cruel theory! Then I remembered what Jesus once said concerning little children: 

Forbid them not for such is the Kingdom of Heaven - (Matthew 19:14).

This woman, adult as she may be, has a mental age of a two-year-old, probably even less. Therefore in God's eyes, hers is the Kingdom of Heaven. It makes sense. It makes perfect sense. There she is. Never having worn a wedding ring. Never knowing what it's like receiving a husband's intimacy. Having a womb which never, and will never, carry a developing fetus and giving birth. Having breasts which never and will never give suck. Never, and will never experience the joys and hardships of motherhood.

Yet she is happy. Happy in her own little world. Never having to worry where the next meal will come from. Never ever to worry about fuel bills, the taxman, nor a mortgage or rent arrears. As for travel, she most likely had never left the UK - and she couldn't care less! And she will never miss the experience of independent travel and backpacking, nor be aware of its existence. Nor even boarding a train, let alone sail on a ferry or board a flight. Yet she is happy, contented with her lot. Because in her little world, and among many other trials, she would never have to worry about nursing a physically disabled beloved or maintaining medical care in a way I need to. Yet I couldn't but help feel something of a love for her.

Bracknell Competition Pool - weekly therapeutic.

And a feeling of shame of myself. Ashamed of my feeling of repulsiveness, and of disgust at the sight of her drooling saliva. And yet I realise that sin is just as repulsive in God's eyes as the dear woman was to me. Yet God loves her, just as much as he loves Chris Collison, his daughter and her new husband, and all family members. The fact that she's middle class and a celebrity makes no difference. We are all sinners and in need of God's love and forgiveness. All of us. Status is absolutely irrelevant. God's grace fulfils the need for each and every one of us.

That was why I had a longing for her to rise up and make a dash for me, to receive a tight embrace. Even with her saliva dampening my shirt, I would have held her tight, and look joyfully into her eyes, smiling at her warmly. The same kind of love Christ has for us.

The kind of Christlike love such stoical, stiff-upper-lip, church-going Amanda Platell needs to show to Martha Collison, is a far better form of encouragement to get her flan right, instead of publicly criticising her and putting her down for the sake of being British.