R.E.S.P.E.C.T.
"…Respect isn’t just a pleasant thing to experience. It has a powerful and lasting effect on our health and mental wellbeing. We now know that the brain reacts to being treated with contempt just as it does to being injured or assaulted. We do not deal well with repeated injuries; they indicate that our status is low. We find that hard to bear because humans care deeply about status and the social hierarchy. As the scientist Michael Marmot has shown, people who perceive themselves to be lower in the hierarchy die younger than those just above them. This is not a reflection of poverty. It applies at every level, from junior civil servants to film stars. It is an astonishing fact that Oscar winners die, on average, four years later then Oscar nominees…"
Jenni Russell
Saturday May 28, 2005
The Guardian
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author musician theologian
Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
In an increasingly secularised society few people have a good working knowledge of the Bible. Yet a great deal of our culture is built on stories or ideas that come from the Bible. Literature, art, music, language and even the fabric of our society - such as our justice system - are built on Christian concepts and biblical references. The Writing on the Wall provides a fascinating introduction to the Bible's best-known, and most influential, stories. Each chapter gives some background to the text of the Bible, and shows how the stories have become enmeshed in Western culture. Adam and Eve, the ten plagues of Egypt, The Prodigal Son and Mary Magdalene all feature - along with how the Bible has influenced everyone from Shakespeare to Monty Python, and Caravaggio to Banksy. 
Giving It Up explores the Lenten idea of 'giving up', taking it beyond the traditional idea of simply abstaining from something, and suggesting instead that what we need to give up is our existing ideas about God. With a daily readings for each day of Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, it follows the heroes of the Bible who had to give up their own too-small ideas about God.
This is Maggi’s bestselling book of daily readings for each day of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. Advent is the beginning of the Church year, and marks the anticipation of the coming Messiah. These readings explore how beginnings and endings in our own lives are illuminated by the different Gospel narratives of Christ's coming.
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From what I’ve seen, this is true. I noticed in my own family that on both my dad’s and my mom’s side, the siblings thought of by the family as “out of step” with the rest of the family, the ones who got the least support, were the ones who died first. I’m glad to see this in print because I had wondered about it.
I’m seeing myself age (healthwise) quite a bit faster than others my age, and I think it does have to do with being taught my place in society early. There’s a lot of stress that comes from feeling that you’re walking on eggshells much of the time, able to offend others just by being, and knowing that if you need something you have to ask in a way to leave others feeling more powerful than you or else they may react very negatively and exclude you more. It can be a vicious world.
Maybe once I win an Oscar, my health will improve.