A Three Reservoir Walk In May - 1. Wayoh Reservoir, Lancashire

Yes.  I was staying in Greater Manchester again.  Perhaps not again, because my last post was about the same visit.  Friday had arrived and when I'm in Manchester and Friday arrives I know that I have to fend for myself.  That's not much of an issue as there are plenty of places to explore in dry weather.  And when visiting recently I discovered a great way to spend a day when it's pouring with rain.

Six months ago the day was going to be dry and I spent a while with online walk guides and planned myself a walk.  The idea was to catch a train to Entwistle, a request stop that doesn't feel like it's near anything particularly.  I would then walk down from the station to Wayoh reservoir, walk from the far end of that reservoir to the pleasingly named Jumbles reservoir, and from the far end of there over the hills and down again at the Turton and Entwistle reservoir which I would walk round before returning to the railway station where I had begun.

That's a longish walk for someone as unfit as me.  But I was as confident of completion as I was of having a stunning day walking (nearly) alone in (mainly) peaceful places.  Accompanying me would be my soft toy Blob Thing.  He wrote at that beginning of July about his experiences on the walk.  Now it's my turn.

I had caught a train to Entwistle once before, with Amanda.  We had taken a short walk and seen the first of the three reservoirs before returning to the station by another route.  That had been a good day - even though I suspect she further damaged her knee when we left the path.  The other happening when we left the path was that I gained a very long green scarf.  I saw something along a branch that looked like some kind of netting and I pulled it, discovering a very pretty but quite dirty garment.  I lifted the whole thing and put it in a bag to take home.  It was only then that I had noticed the remains of lots of candles around the scarf.  I reckon it was left there in some kind of ritual by some type of witches unknown.  I don't seem to have drawn down any curses upon myself for recovering something that must have been left to nature or the goddess as an offering.  I think I'm safe.

As I began my walk I remembered that earlier day and the laughter and joy we had shared together.  I like to remember glorious days.  And I like to experience more glorious things to remember, as best as I am able to go out and gain experiences.

I set off from the station.  The weather was an improvement from my first visit.  When we stepped off the train that day it was snowing.  No snow in May.  And no rain either.  I walked down the track and looked down the hill towards Wayoh reservoir.

The memories returned to me and I smiled.  At the bottom of the hill I followed the path once again towards the reservoir, crossing over the stream that feeds the lake.  I remembered that previous day and the joy on Amanda's face as she stood by that water and felt the elements on her face and hands and as she listened and watched everything and how the noise of the city seemed to fall away from her manner.  This time I had Blob with me instead, and his face is always a smile - and I'm not posting photos of him because he's already done that.

The path continued and the sky and the trees and the ground exuded wonder.  This morning I was experiencing the noise of central Newcastle.  The many people living their lives.  I passed a cafe where a group from the local philosophical society were meeting.  What would they say about the many people living their lives?  Would they cast doubts on that living?  Would they ask whether the many people were living examined lives?  Perhaps.

All I can say is that I have discovered that for me there is more life in walking along a path like this than there is on that city street.  There's nothing wrong with that street.  But the path and the air and the light and the lack of city noise vivifies me.  I have learned that - or relearned that - this year more than in any year previously.  And that gladdens me.

And so the path reached the reservoir.  That open expanse of water, artificially created to serve the needs of a city.  Artificial but no less beautiful.

I walked a little and sad for a moment on a bench.  It was there that Amanda and I had shared a simple lunch and noticed a card pinned to a tree with the inscription "This is NOT a cemetery."  I went and stood by the water.  Three ducks and a goose suddenly swooped down and landed at my feet.  Unless they were just happy to bask in my presence, an unlikelihood, they would have been disappointed.  I had little to feed them.  I had little to feed myself and it was well before lunchtime.

From that picnic site - a bench - my path deviated from the one I had taken before.  I continued the walk along the reservoir and where possible stopped and looked at the water and breathed in the life and light from my surroundings.

The path rose and rising up further from it was a broad field with the most wonderful display of yellow flowers.  A nearby noticeboard announced that this type of grassland is one of the rarest habitats in Britain.

Inevitably, I found another tree to take a photograph of.  Someone on facebook asked the other day whether tree hugging is a real thing.  I think it had been mentioned on a programme on television that I have never seen.  The answer?

Yes.  It is.  I do it.

I didn't hug this tree.  But I have been known to hug trees.  It's an amazing feeling to hold close to a tree and to be united with (or imagine it) the energy it possesses and to become more firmly rooted into the earth and into the life and wisdom and spectacular cycles of nature.

And so I approached the end of Wayoh reservoir.  The day was already being as much as I dreamed it would be.  I looked back across the water and forwards to the dam.

And both ways in a panorama of the scene.  The photos do not express the reality.  They are just pixels on a screen.  Pretty pixels hopefully.  But just pixels.  The reality transcends the pixels as much as a cube transcends the depth of a square.  I love to look back on my days.  But the days are where the source of life is to be found.

It's tempting to go off on one of my wild tangents about God - or the divine, source, Being - here.  Because for two decades I often fell into the temptation of seeking to find and know God (whatever that concept means) in a book or a belief.  God was not to be found there.

The book is like the pixels.  Whether that book is The Bible, The Qu'ran, The Bhagavad Gita, The Tao Te Ching, or any other sacred book.  It's like pixels.

As I share my days in posts on this blog I can use words to try to express what they meant to me.  I can give facts about the days.  I can give information about the places.  And I can try to use phrases to express a little of what it was like to live those days, a little of what those days did and do within my mind, my heart, my spirit.  And I can happily share some of the photos taken during those days.

But in the end they're all just combinations of letters and pixels.  They're not life.

I lived the life.  Just as you live your life.

The holy book is like this blog post.  It's not life.  You will never know from reading this post what it felt like to see the joy on Amanda's face.  You will never truly know what flowed through me as I watched the water and the sky or walked up a path and felt such passion upon unexpectedly discovering those fields of yellows and greens.  If I had the eloquence of Shakespeare or Wordsworth or Rumi you would still never truly know from my words.  If I had the brilliance to win photographic awards you would love my photos but would still not fully grasp them.

You will never find life by reading my words or looking at my pictures.

Just an echo of it.  Imperfectly expressed.

And you will never find God by reading a holy book.

Just an echo of the divine.  Imperfectly expressed.

Whatever the divine is, whoever the divine may be, you will only find clues in a book set down by other people.

Whatever the divine is, you will never find it until you live it.

God is eternal life, eternal energy and fire.  Not fragile paper and words from the mouths of dead people.

The divine is love and wonder and passion and the infinite.  Not a piece of paper.  Not a skilfully crafted poem.

God is THE WORD, not words.

Drat.  I fell into that temptation.

I will make amends by sharing one more photograph of Wayoh.

That's me that is!  No.  It's not me.  Of course it isn't.  It's just pixels and an approximation of my appearance.

Amanda complained about this photograph that I wasn't smiling brightly enough, too focused on trying to take the picture.  We have a way in which I am guaranteed to smile a very real smile for photographs.  It concerns Jesus.  And that's all I'm going to say about that!

Next time I'll share photographs of the walk to and around Jumbles Reservoir.  There will even be another photograph of me.  And another photograph of a tree.  Have I mentioned that I like trees?!


[1706 words]

On An Encounter With Fundamentalism. And On The Wonders Of The Human Race.

I chatted with some preachers in Sunderland yesterday.  I wasn't meaning to.  I was just wanting to finish my ice cream in peace.  Damn you preachers, you thwarted my quiet ice cream enjoyment.

But once they began talking at me, and because I am still utterly obsessed about God things and think about them a heck of a lot, and because I wasn't at that point falling to pieces mentally, I talked back.  It's still a novelty to me to be so far on this side of the dogmatic fence.

We talked about a lot of things.  All of them may bore you.  Some of them you may find strange.  Some of them will make you wonder why Christians sometimes don't even love each other let alone non-believers.

I am no longer a Christian.  I'm not.  But I am still fascinated by it all.  It's a special interest.

So as someone with a deep fascination, I've done the talking.  So you don't have to!  There.  Aren't you pleased?  You will know, when you encounter such people, the kinds of things you are happy to be missing by not having a conversation with them.

I have to give this disclaimer:  Not all Christians are like the ones I chatted with.  Quite a lot are very different indeed.  My plans for the day had fallen apart due to my own absent-mindedness, confusion and panic.  But those plans had been to meet with, sit with and relate with a group of Christians.  To talk, share and learn about theology with them.  I'd been looking forward to it too and am sad to have missed out on the experience.  I believe it would have been great.  And I believe that the Christians I didn't manage to meet with would have had nearly as many disagreements with the fundamentalists as I did.

If you did choose to engage a fundamentalist of this variety, a strange choice, what might you talk about?

Image from https://lotharlorraine.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/is-fundamentalism-destroying-christianity/

I'll start with the more boring bits (history and doctrine) and will end with the most interesting bits (humans and my thoughts about the people I met).  Skip through to the end.  Most of this is not exciting stuff for most people, only strange obsessives like me.  Seriously.  This is long.  And it doesn't even cover the full encounter.  Skip through to the part about people.  Because that's the important thing.

We talked a little of church history.

They said there was a church existing sometimes in secret and sometimes in persecuted groups from the time of Constantine until the Protestant Reformation began.  Theodore Beza, the successor of Calvin, wrote about this history.  That's not an uncommon claim among Protestant fundamentalists but it's a laughable one.  Plus Beza, a man who wrote in defense of burning heretics alive, didn't have the information available to write a reliable church history - which might be why he didn't write one!



They gave some examples of the secret church that upheld the "one true faith."

The Cathars

I was informed that this group were Christians with a beautiful Christian faith, part of the true church. They were persecuted because they held the way of salvation hated by Rome.  This is something I find very funny.  Because the Cathars were dualists - they believed in two Gods.  And they believed in reincarnation.  The Cathars were also gnostics and believed in the ultimate salvation of all people.

In all honesty I don't think the Cathar faith was quite the same as that of these preachers!  I tried to tell them that - because I looked into the Cathars years ago when, as a Catholic, I had the same claims thrown at me.  But no.  Everything I had read and learned was a lie.  Propaganda.  Invented by the Catholic Church.

The Albigensians

I was told that this group were also just like beautiful Protestants.  Bearers of the one true faith.  In fact they were a Cathar sect.  Where most Cathars were pretty ascetic, the Albigensians were more extreme than most.  They also believed that Jesus was just human, not God.  For these people to be held up as models of the true Protestant gospel - the proper Jesus - is crazy.

The Waldensians

This is the funniest of all.  I'll say why a little later.

We talked of other historical documents from the early church.  Reputable ones.  The ones for which we know who wrote them.  And when.  Such as the epistles of Ignatius of Antioch to seven churches, written on his journey to Rome where he was martyred in about AD107.  Such as the two Apologia of Justin Martyr, written to the Roman Emperor around AD150 in the hopes of stopping a persecution.  Those documents contain much that wouldn't fit into the Beza history or the preachers' ideas of the early church.  I know.  I read them a lot before becoming a Catholic for a while.  But no.  All of those documents were fabrications, forgeries from much later, many centuries later, written to prop up a false church.  All such documents that the preachers disagreed with were deemed to be completely non-existent or fake.  I urged them to read these early church documents.  See what was believed by these men of faith and see, especially in Justin, how the early church functioned and how the mid-2nd century Christians worshiped.  I didn't say to follow the way of Justin - just to see for themselves that such a way had been followed by early Christians.

The preacher kept on talking about what Beza is meant to have said and how we have to believe Beza and how all the other things were just false and shouldn't be touched at all.  I could see that historically, there wasn't really any wiggle room for a rational conversation.

We talked a little of doctrine.

The Catholics invented Transubstantiation in AD999.  And believes we're saved by works.  And rejects the Bible.  And has a false Jesus.  And a false priesthood.  And Constantine invented it.  And so on and so on.  These preachers don't like Catholics!

I found it strange.  Two days previously I had laid into some of the teachings of the Catholic Church - with full acceptance that I was giving one side of the teaching far over and above the other.  Now I found myself defending Catholicism.  Of course I'm not Catholic now.  But the accusations fundy Protestants throw at Catholics are ludicrous and hateful.

On a personal note, I am condemned for my Catholic ways and if I don't repent of them I will be judged and burn for eternity.  As a non-Catholic learning this came as something of a surprise.

The New Testament was in its final form by the end of the first century because the apostle John made it so.  Er, no.  Just no.

The gospel was preached across the world by the first generation of Christians - because the Bible says so.

This does not include Australia or the Americas because there wasn't anyone there to tell about Jesus then.  I was told that we know there can't have been people in Australia 2000 years ago because the apostolic church didn't go and preach to them.  Honest.  I was told that.

But the gospel was preached in the British Isles in the first century AD.  Oh yes, I was told that.  And I was told who by.  Apparently the Waldensians came here and told the natives about Jesus.  Oh yes, they did.  Now, unlike the Cathars, the Waldensians did have a faith similar to that seen in the ideas that can be seen in the Protestant Reformation.  Some of their ideas and major criticisms of the Western church of their day are not only valid, they are very praiseworthy.

But did the Waldensians bring the story of Jesus to our shores in the first century?  Well, no.  It would have been difficult for them to do so.  Peter Waldo didn't start that movement until the late twelfth century.  It's an interesting story.  But his followers were not time travelers.

On a personal note, I am the antichrist and an abomination.  That didn't come as a surprise to me.  Old news.

We talked a little about ethics and morality.

I was asked if lying is wrong.  I agree, it usually is.  But to me it wasn't a yes/no question.  I posited an extreme situation.  Sometimes extreme cases disprove a rule.  I was in Germany in 1943 harboring a family of Jews under my floorboards.  The Gestapo paid me a visit and asked whether I was harboring any Jews.  I said I would lie.  He said he wouldn't lie and that God would judge me for my sin in lying.  I tried to explain situational ethics 101.  For the preacher the way of righteousness would have been to give those Jews up to the Gestapo - and myself too, I suppose, for protecting them.

We talked about the verses in the Old Testament in which God commands genocide.  He said that he didn't believe God would command his people to commit genocide now because God does things differently now Jesus has risen.  He said that God is holy and commanding genocide was holy.  He said that if God did command genocide now he would take part in it and kill people because it was better to obey God.  I pointed out a group of children who were passing at that moment and asked, "Would you kill those children?"  He replied that he would, if God told him to.

We talked of the times when it's written that God hardened pharaoh's heart after some of the plagues - and so pharaoh didn't let the Israelites like he had planned.  That's in the story.  But that means that the killing of all the first born children of Egypt wasn't necessary.  Which kinda means all that horror is God's fault.  It's there in the text.  If you, like the preacher, want to believe the text.  The preacher didn't like that.  He couldn't accept it was there because it didn't fit into his dogma. Others say God did it so his power could be seen.  Which rather makes God out to be an egotistical monster.

Yes.  The preacher would slaughter the children of Sunderland under some circumstances.  

Holy crap!

We talked of science.

The preachers believe that the universe is 6000 years old.  I asked about the light coming from a supernova 50,000 light years away.  I was being kind to the man giving this number because it's hardly any distance at all in terms of the universe.  Of all the galaxies in this astonishing universe, less than 100 of them are closer than ten-million light years and we have detected supernovae in galaxies far further away than that.   Wouldn't we thus be seeing the light from a star exploding thousands of years before they would say the universe began?  I got the reply that I didn't know what I was talking about because (a) the universe is expanding so the star would have been much closer 6000 years ago, (b) the speed of light is very different in space to what it is here, and (c) there is no time once you leave planet Earth.  Time doesn't exist anywhere else.  I was told that's what science says.

Evolution is of course a lie.  Anything a scientist says that doesn't fit in with the preachers' brand of dogma is a lie given by Satan.

We talked about other Christians.

Because there are Christians I love who have a faith that's attractive.  They said that these people aren't Christians at all and certainly haven't got the right Jesus.  They said that these other Christians need to repent or burn.

The Protestant Church was going well because it had the Authorised Bible.  But then people started making non-authorised translations from the wrong Greek and Hebrew manuscripts.  And then the Protestant Church went wrong.  Any church using the false Bibles hasn't got Jesus.  Any Christian with a false Bible probably isn't a Christian at all and if they are they desparately need to repent and find the true Jesus in the King James Bible.

On a personal level, I am a fool.

We talked of judgement - and inevitably talked of sexuality.

Please note that I didn't bring this up.  They did.

God has judged and condemned nations in the past.  And he's going to judge this one and condemn it if it doesn't repent, especially from the sin of homosexuality.

On a personal level, I am condemned for my sexuality.

And we talked about other human beings.

They told me this of the human race:  All people, from birth, deserve to burn painfully in Hell for all eternity.  All people are at root evil because of sin.  There is no light in them.  Nothing of God.  Nothing of hope.  Unless they believe on the Lord Jesus Christ (and exactly the right version).

I have a confession to make.  I used to believe that kind of thing.  I thought the Bible said so.  And I wanted to believe the Bible.  I wasn't as extreme as the preachers I met yesterday.  But I believed quite a lot of things that I now find either embarrassing, shockingly reprehensible, or both.  I don't blame myself.  I know the reasons why I came to believe as I did.  But I regret many things.  I accepted Christ in a fucked up state.  And in many ways was fucked up further by my Christianity.

As I talked with those preachers I felt myself more filled with light than I possibly ever have been before.  I did.  And why?  Because when I looked at all the people around me, ordinary people from Sunderland, I saw light.  I saw beauty.  I saw magnificence.  If God is light then I saw God shining from each and every person on that shopping street and saw it as plainly as I could see their physical forms.  It was an amazing experience to have that clarity.

Now, I believe that humans are basically good.  No matter what they do, what they've suffered, what they've been taught to repress or embrace.  No matter what they're going through.  They're basically good.  All humans.  Every single one.

We all make mistakes.  We're all imperfect - or perfectly imperfect.  And sometimes we muck up bigtime or embrace views and beliefs that we later may look back on with a sense of regret or shame.  We all hurt other people sometimes.  We let each other down sometimes.  And all of us may become people who say or do horrible things.

All of that is admitted.  We screw up!  We hurt.  We may be in need of healing.  We may be hungry.  We may be scared.  We may be lonely.  We may act badly out of insecurity.  We may get raised in an environment in which we are taught racism or homophobia or some other prejudice.

But.  We are all basically good.  I believe that.  I know I can be rubbish at social skills at times.  I know I can fail to act in love and light - out of laziness or out of my own woundedness or out of lack of resources.  But I do believe all human beings are wonderful.  Yes, even the suicide bomber.  Even the preacher!

I looked yesterday at the people of Sunderland and I saw shining lights.  And it was wonderful.

And I was being told that all those shining lights were evil.  Dead.  Deserving of eternal torment.

And that for me, beyond history and dogma and science and all the rest of it, is the saddest thing about those preachers.  The saddest by far.

As I think about those preachers I feel this:

Sadness for the years of my life in which I would have gone along with at least part of what they believe, including that view of a fundamentally evil human race in need of salvation from Hell.  Sadness for the relationships I missed out on because of my faith.  Sadness for the times I hurt people because of my faith.

Gladness that the rest of my life will not be spent following such a path.  Gladness for all the things that happened in the last five years - some of them very painful and difficult - which have brought me to this point in my life.  Gladness that I have been "set free from the law of sin and death" which I lived under as an evangelical Christian.

And as for those preachers, I pity them.  And I feel deep sorrow for people in their lives who become affected by the results of their dogma.  I won't be leading the preachers out of the darkness in which they now unwittingly stand.  I hope that they find their way, just as I have been learning to find mine.

My other sadness was that the woman I talked to - because she was answering back to a preacher and had really cool hair and seemed nice - didn't have time to come for a drink with me.  And she really didn't.  Lots of shopping to do before a six hour Megabus journey this morning.  She says if I see her again, to ask again.  I think it would have been quite fun to drink tea with this stranger whose life I completely butted into.  It wouldn't be the first time I've done something like that.

A Three Way Rant About Donald Trump, Religion, and Autism Service Provision

Note:  This post was meant to be about walking along a canal in Manchester, just as Blob Thing wrote about it this morning.  It turned into a three pronged rant about Donald Trump, religion, and the lack of help available for autistic people.  So it's not about the walk at all.  It just keeps mentioning the walk.  Like this:

Blob Thing blogged about this already today.  He did a good job in describing the walk although I was a bit astounded at the way he managed to complain about Donald Trump so much when describing his day.  Trump was not a participant in our day and he does not have a tower in Greater Manchester.  I didn't know that a small soft toy could have such strong views about an American politician.  John Pavlovitz this morning noted that Trump was prophetic about himself when he said that his followers would still follow him even if he was to murder someone in broad daylight.  Someone could write a fascinating psychological study into his followers and how they are similar to fundamentalist religious believers.  Many of them are such believers.

In both cases, evidence does not knock the belief.  They believe Donald Trump is wonderful and they want him to rule them.  No evidence seems to knock their evangelical fundamentalist Trumpist faith.  And no evidence knocks the fundamentalist religious either, of whatever variety.  Science and reason keep knocking blocks off fundamentalist religion and keep showing why it's (almost certainly) nonsense.  A rational person either gives up the religion totally or finds ways to adjust the beliefs so that their God fits in with human knowledge and slides into the cracks where we lack full knowledge.  A fundamentalist ignores the evidence or creates words and arguments that attempt to show why evidence is wrong.

So whether it's evolution, a young earth, the existence of Satan, the inerrancy of the Bible or Koran or Gita or whatever other scripture, or the glories of Donald Trump, the fundamentalist will not be budged.  They are not rational.  They cannot reason about their faith.  I don't condemn them.  It's just a sad thing when someone falls into such a system in their own heads.

I know.  Because I fell into it myself.  We are sorting part of the house at the moment and I found the sheets of paper on which I wrote brief notes before starting to write my life story.  It was to be my spiritual story and contained all the wrong turns I made and how I discovered the truth of the Catholic Church - the "best" version of Christianity and the "only" one to be truly and completely one, holy, catholic, apostolic and sacramental.  I was writing all this.  How I now KNEW the truth.  How I praised God for showing me the best way.  And how I was convinced that now I knew the truth I would remain a faithful Catholic for ever and ever and ever.  Well we all know how that plan turned out!  I read it now and I am a little embarrassed - and I am even more thankful that I moved on.  It's not that I hate the God of my past or think anyone with a similar God has lost a grip on reason.  There are some very reasonable believers out there, ones who accept doubt and accept that faith sometimes has to change in the face of evidence.

It's a hard road away from fundamentalism and the certainty of a religious system.  It might be just as hard for people to turn away from Donald Trump when they have pinned so many hopes and dreams on the man.  Especially when some of those people share many of Trump's despicable attitudes and beliefs.  As was said the other day by a Christian pastor,  "Better a pussy grabber than a pussy in the White House."  Yep.  I don't want to call a human being a little piece of shit.  But.  His views are big pieces of shit.  And they arise from an antiquated, horribly patriarchal religious system that may once have had a place but has now gone rotten and putrid and smells worse than a big piece of shit.  Plenty of churches teach it though - a woman should not have authority over a man.  They say that God said it.  In his book.  Which is infallible and God breathed.  Some churches are explicit in that.  So Trump might be a disgusting sex criminal but to have a woman?  No.  Nay!  Never!  That's banned in the Bible.  They're right too.  It IS banned in the Bible.  It's quite explicit.  A woman isn't even allowed to speak in church and if they have questions have to wait until they get home before asking their husband.  As for authority, well man is head of the woman.  The Bible says so.  To go against that is to go against God - at least according to some believers.  But even to others to go against it is just one part of noticing that the Bible is wrong about God.  And once a believer reaches that point they have a lot of soul searching to do regarding what value both their holy book and their faith have.  There are multiple answers to that soul searching.  Some lead to atheism.  Some to a form of progressive or liberal Christianity.  Some to hiding one's head in the sand and holding on to a form of faith that a believer cannot bear to allow to die.

I'm not going to talk much at all about the walk.  I've talked enough already.  It was a walk along a canal.  Simple.

In any case.  I just that moment had a phone call.  Not my favourite thing.  This was to tell me - and I had to chase people to find this out - that the NHS people I was referred to for help with my mental health problems cannot help me because I am autistic.  Basically because I have a neurological difference the NHS tells me to fuck off whenever I ask for help.  Great isn't it?  No.  It's another big piece of shit and at this moment I feel pretty bloody bad about it all.

I am autistic.

I need MORE help.  Not less.  More.  I've been fighting over and over again for the past year and yet again another service waves me away with an "Oh yes you need help for your mental health but all of us people who spent years training in mental health can't deal with you because you are autistic."

Aaaargh.  If I had severe learning difficulties - if I was "low functioning" - there would be lots of services almost falling over themselves for me.  But I am "high functioning" - which means that I function very well, in certain areas, some of the time and I have a nice high IQ  (I am officially a genius).  And that means there is no help.  None.  Fuck all.  And even the help anyone else with a nice high IQ could get is stolen away from me because of my diagnosis.

I am bloody glad to have my diagnosis.  It helps.  And self understanding helps greatly.  But right now it stinks.

Anyway.  The photos.  Nice aren't they?!  I'm not going to talk about them at all.  Not today.  My head isn't up to it now.

Oh well.  Life goes on.  I'm out tonight with some of those progressive Christians.  They're very nice but still a little too much into the old old story for me as if they still need psychologically to grasp onto a tale that they know doesn't make that much sense.  That might be unfair.  But they know the Bible is just the record of a bunch of people trying and often failing to find the divine and that much of the Old Testament contains a lot of nationalist propaganda.  They look to Jesus for their guide which is fine.  But even there they have to be very selective or interpret in a way that surely the gospel writers didn't mean or else they have to cope with all the things he said about unbelievers and Hell.  So in effect they love the nice bits of Jesus and leave the rest because those bits aren't right.  I don't know exactly what's left that is worth basing a 21st century life on.  But maybe the speaker tonight will enlighten me and leave me wanting to read all his books - of which I own five, four of them bought in the last year.

The photos.  Because life contains incredibly wonderful days with or without an autism diagnosis and with or without help from an NHS with funding and training and service provision gaps.

Maybe I will just have to sort myself out, as I would if the NHS didn't exist - and who knows, under our caring sharing Tory government its future isn't safe.  I've done a lot of self work.  It's just that a bit of help wouldn't go amiss.

You know what?  The photos can wait until the next post.  They are too good to be combined with my woes or musings about people believing beyond the point of rationality.  Just one photo.  Because life is good.  Life is a wonderful thing.

A Short Thought About Christians Going Into The Ministry

Is find myself annoyed at the commonly used term of Christians "going into the ministry."  My annoyance arose from the reports I read yesterday of our local assistant bishop who is "retiring from the ministry."  Bishop Frank is a lovely man and when I was re-accepted into membership of the Church of England four years ago I was happy that he was the man at the front doing the accepting.  I wish him well in his retirement.  And yet, I found myself getting more annoyed and the phrase got stuck under the surface of my brain.

My annoyance is this:  It isn't THE ministry at all.

It's A ministry. One of many.

Every Christian has a ministry to go into, in which they should minister as Christ in this world, light bearers to others. Every Christian will have their own ministry.

Being an ordained priest is certainly a form of ministry but to refer to it as "the ministry" is unfortunate. If it is THE ministry then this automatically relegates the lives of all laity from being Christian ministry.  It posits a system in which some people's service of their God is more important and better than the service most people give their God.

 

And although I'm sure most people don't mean to do it, by calling an ordained hierarchy THE ministry they linguistically make the service of Christ, ministry to the earth and all who dwell upon it, to be a second class service.

All Christians should be in ministry. All should be ministers. And though the form of ministry may vary widely, they should all minister love.

In fact I believe that - although non-Christians may use different language and may not centre their lives upon the life and way of Jesus - all people should be in minstry and minister love:

 

If Christ is the light of the world then all people should seek to be Christ-bearers.

 

If God is love then all people should seek to be reflections of love.

If the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of creativity, of reconciliation, of transformation, if the Spirit is the encouraging paraclete and the model of faithfulness then all people should seek to be Spirit bearers and speak the words of the Spirit.

 

If the life of the Spirit is wonder and awe, service and excitement, rejoicing and mourning with others, and living the fullest lives possible then all people should seek that way of being.

If the Gospel is of hope and peace, if it is good news, then all people should preach and live it.

That's what the ministry is.  Not gaining a dog collar and a place in a hierarchy.  The ministry is to follow the commandment of Jesus to love one another.

The ministry is for all of us.  Christians.  Non-Christians.  Even anti-Christians.  All of us, preachers.  All of us, examples.

That includes me. And I, like all of us, sometimes am a good minister and sometimes (often!) fall short.

 

I am not a Christian right now.  [Although I think a few people would disagree with that statement.]  I am not a theist right now.  But I want to grow in ministry.  I want to be a Christ-bearer.  I want to preach that Gospel in word and deed - and in silence too.  I want to walk in the wholeness of God and fullness of being which is love.

Please bear with me while I keep getting it wrong and keep exploring to find out what my ministry might be and might become outside of believing the old, old story, outside of dogma and doctrine, and outside what most people would recognise as Christianity.  Please bear with me as I learn to walk in the wholeness of God while not believing in a God.

Yes.  Please be patient.  This woman is going into ministry!

As for Bishop Frank:  He may no longer be a bishop of the Church of England.  But I don't believe he is retiring from the ministry.  Those reports were erroneous.  He's just retiring from a form of ministry he happened to have.  He'll still be in ministry.  It'll just be a different form of ministry.

Days Of Gratitude - Hoop Dancing, Cardinals, Cafes, Art And A Little Revelation

The gratitude diary continues into the ninth month of the year.  Two-thirds of the way through.

These were four days in Newcastle between a time away that was wanted and a time away that in so many ways isn't wanted.  As I write this I am still away for that time away and look forward to being home.  It's a necessary time away but a sad and difficult one and it got more sad than expected.  It's all part of life, and I am now gaining a life that I want to live and live to the full.  That's not something I could have said not too many years ago.

Four days.  A lull.  A time that felt a bit unreal.  And a time that demonstrates my current zeal to live.  Days of trying new things and going to new places.  Some of them got listed in the diary.

The day after this I left home for Sussex to help with the final clearing and selling of what was the home of my parents and which was my home too - my only childhood home.  On the day that this post is published I will be leaving that house for the last time.  It's pretty empty now and doesn't feel like my parents' house now.  Contents have gone to the tip, to family, to charity shops, and some to refugees.  More will be taken for family and refugees very soon and the remainder will be cleared by a house clearance firm.

I hope that the new owners and/or residents love it there.  My parents moved there just a few years after getting married and never moved even though they considered it several times and there were a couple of periods of looking at lots of other houses.  We came quite close to moving once but the house we wanted was taken off the market.  My mother said it was good that we didn't move.  Finances wouldn't have worked out well if there was any larger mortgage to pay off.  So they stayed in that house and made it a good home, filled with the things they loved.

So.  Four days, between the joy of Greenbelt and the non-joy of the job-nobody-really-wants-to-do-but-most-people-have-to-at-some-point.

September 1st

Grateful to have taken the plunge.

Grateful to have tried something new.

At Greenbelt I stood and watched a guy play with a hoop. Returning home I find notice of a hoop dance workshop once more.

I have heard of these workshops since they began. I wanted to try. I couldn't.

This time I went for it in full knowledge of my unfitness, lack of balance, stiffness, and of having not really played with a hoop since I was six and was pretty ridiculed at school for being so crap at it.

Yep. Ridiculed. And wounded.

One more kick towards the darkness.

I am grateful that tonight I played again.

One more caress back into the light.

Yeah. I can't do it. Or much of it. I could begin to do a couple of things.

But I can't set a hoop spinning round my middle without it falling to the floor.

Yet.

Yet is a word I didn't used to use of my lack of a skill.

Yet.

I will play with a hoop again. And see what happens.

Does anyone have nice hoops they don't want? I think regular play would be excellent for me physically and mentally.

So Clare had a good time. And if she hadn't? Well that would have been okay too.

September 2^nd

Grateful for the meeting in Broadacre this morning. It may lead to good things.

Grateful for a free evening of meditation even though it all felt a bit cultish possibly. I enjoyed it but my inner siren said "Danger, Will Robinson."

Before the evening, Blob met this priest. A man from Ampleforth, a place currently embroiled in further accusations of sexual abuse and of cover ups, this time unrelated to Basil Cardinal Hume.
Grateful for another priest today - the Anglican Bishop of Grantham. He has publicly stated that he is in a gay relationship. A brave thing for a bishop to do.

Hopeful for a church future - if the church has any worthy future at all - in which neither sexual abuse nor loving sexual relationships are ever covered up.

A future in which churches aren't so twisted in doctrine or practice.

September 3^rd

Grateful for street logos and art.

Grateful too for cheap clothes in Byker and a superb toastie in a Byker cafe.

Also grateful for a moment of revelation in a discussion with one of the evangelical praying people in town.

September 4^th

Grateful to be able to buy just the right kind of liquorice for Amanda. I went to Tynemouth just to buy it.

Grateful to have got the best seat on the Metro.

Days of Gratitude - The Music of Greenbelt, Belts and Beliefs

Some more gratitude to take me to the end of August.  Eight months of keeping a gratitude diary every day apart from the nine that I missed.  Nearly 250 days to look back on and see the happy things in the good days and the hard days.

These three days cover the later parts of Greenbelt and then a day of being back home after all the excitements and sleeplessness of being away.  I'm looking forward to Greenbelt 2017 even though I still don't do that theistic God.  I wasn't converted by the God festival but enjoyed all the nice people who do God in a pleasant way.  Possibly this week I'm going to attend a humanist meeting.  I'm not sure how that will go.  It might clash with dancing though and if that's the case then dancing might beat secular humanism.  It'll be a tough decision - both events are happening in the same building, a building where lots of good things happen and where I should probably be more often.

Onwards!  Greenbelt.  As the Bible would put it - in my basic Hebrew lessons at college:

And it came to pass that ...

29^th August

Grateful for even more freebies - including ones from some people who knew my mother. The first from them came (this belt) on the second anniversary of her death.

Grateful for a storytelling workshop.

For three trips to the theatre which were the best three of the weekend.

Grateful to relax at The Wee Sing - songs from The Wild Goose people from Iona.

Grateful to have accidentally found myself right by the stage for more loud music. This time from Tankus The Henge. Awesome. Again. With more point, click and hope photos.

Grateful for the music question. And to experience some of the answer. I was incredibly smiley and happy flappy afterwards when meeting Amanda afterwards - she had been making an icon - and heading to see a cabaret show by Bourgeois and Maurice on how to save the world. Hilarious. I actually cried laughing at one point.

And grateful for a day of lots of noise, lots of people, lots of unknown things - but almost zero panic or meltiness. Yay!

30^th August

Grateful for the all night cafe not far from us in the festival campsite. Cheapest place on site for tea - including spicy chai that we drank lots of. At 6am after a night in which the temperature attempted winter and zero sleep was gained, it was so much appreciated.

Grateful to have spotted Kate by the entrance as we left. She's an MCC minister and volunteers there with the access team. Turns out that we qualified, because we had signed up for access to the access team, even though we hadn't actually remembered to do it!, for a free taxi to the shuttle bus back to Kettering station. Very grateful for that. And for the nice shuttle bus driver who waived the fee because we pleaded bus pass with him.

The weekend was brilliant. But:

Grateful to be home with my bed. With that luxury of a shower. After so little sleep and a ten hour journey - via Manchester - I was very happy for comforts.

No photos were taken of the day. But that only partially compensates for the ones I've shared from the festival.

So much happened. So many good people. So many stories. So many blog posts to write! And we plan to return next year. Grateful for an offer of easier transport in 2017.

31^st August

Grateful to have woken up in my own bed. Because it was my bed. And because "woken" implies sleep.

Grateful that the GP did everything I wanted her to do. My posture is awful and I often have rotten pain and have just gained a new determination to sort it. The NHS may be able to help. Or maybe there is a good yoga for people with almost zero flexibility, bad posture and pain and muscle knots gained over years of holding everything in. The yoga must be VERY cheap. Rather than the cheap most people talk about which is generally more than I can afford with a personal income of zero.

Grateful to be able to look back on Greenbelt and spot that Clare can do more than she believes. Sometimes.

The height difference between my normal standing and my standing up with better (but still very imperfect) posture.  It's a bit more than two inches.

You'll Be Amazed At This Woman Who Can't Love Someone More Than They Deserve

Recently I attended a meeting of a not-church. I call it a not-church anyway. It's a meeting for people who are “guided by the life and teachings of Jesus” and who meet “in the presence of a God whose love is freedom, whose touch is healing, whose voice is calm.”

The people at the meeting are good people, seeking their God and I find it less difficult than most meetings. It's still hard though because every word in the little bit of the liturgy prepared for each meeting is phrased with theism in mind. It's a language that takes theism as a presupposition of a shared belief in an interventionist deity. I don't believe in that deity. I'm not sure that everyone there believes in the deity either. But the language, like the language of a church, is theistic.

It's not exclusive though and it's not evangelistic so usually I've been able to cope with it and just miss out what I couldn't say at all and translate the rest into my own meaning. That day I couldn't participate at all. Just as the meeting began my brain decided it had had enough of things and I spent the whole time wanting to walk out and sit in the sunshine. Perhaps that's what I should have done. Afterwards I left very quickly and couldn't speak even when grabbed for conversations, including one with a person who offered to buy me a ticket for an event in October.

The subject of the not-church this month was kindness. As always, the liturgy includes some quotations about the subject and after they are read there is an open group discussion – something that I can't participate in at all vocally because I can't deal with group discussions. My head just doesn't know the rules and can't process everything quickly enough. By the time it has something worthwhile to say the topic has moved on and even if I have something to say at what might be the right time I don't know how to break into the group and say it. Never mind. That's just how things are and they're not likely to change. The diagnostic criteria for autism still mention a triad of impairments. My inability in group situations is part of one of those impairments. It truly isn't my favourite part of my autism and it's one in which this so-called very high functioning autistic person is pretty severely impaired.

One of the quotations struck me:

A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.

Joseph Joubert

Joubert was a French moralist who died nearly 200 years ago. His Pensees were published after his death. I haven't read them – I hadn't heard of Joubert at all. Then again I never managed to finish the Pensees of Blaise Pascal either. I guess I will probably never read Joubert. But I guessed I would never read a lot of things that I have since read.

One of the members of the not-church discussion really liked that Joubert quotation. She talked about it. I wasn't able to speak and was rapidly sinking into a state in which it's quite difficult to even get myself home. If I had been able to speak I might have talked about this quotation too. Because I didn't like it. I still don't like it.

Joubert says “loving people more than they deserve.”

I take issue with that and ask a question:

How much love does a person deserve?

I believe that every single person on this planet deserves more love than they give themselves. They deserve more love than other people give them.

Basically, whatever is happening, whatever the situation, whatever a person has or hasn't done, a person deserves more love not less.

However they feel, however they dress. Whatever their gender or sexuality or race or height. Whether they are disabled or not disabled. Whatever their politics. Whatever their religion. They deserve more love not less.

Even if they treat us badly or treat others badly they deserve more love not less.

And for ourselves. We deserve more love not less. Always and at every moment.

My belief is not an original idea. I've inherited from others, most especially from a spiritual teacher who has been known to use “more love not less” as a kind of mantra and as part of a liturgy. It's pretty powerful to look at a person we don't like and tell ourselves that they deserve more love not less. It's even more powerful to look at ourselves when we unfairly criticise ourselves and say “I deserve more love, not less.”

More love, not less. In fact I would say that we deserve total love. All of us. Total love. Constantly.

Joubert said “loving people more than they deserve” and I sit here typing about it two hundred years later. And I type this: Joubert's thought was nonsensical.

You cannot love any person more than they deserve.

You just can't. It's impossible.

What we need to aim to do is to love each person as much as they deserve. Total love. Always. If anyone lived according to that aim it was Jesus, a teacher of the way of love.

Unpacking that is hard. It raises many questions of how to love people as much as they deserve. It raises questions for what to do when we fail to love people that much. It raises questions of how best to love ourselves, and how to keep loving ourselves when we fall short of the aim of a life of total love. I am not even going to begin to attempt grappling with those questions in this post.

I think Joubert is not to blame for getting it wrong. He was living in a society with a Christian based morality. Even those Frenchmen who killed priests in various revolutions were really only removing a Christian establishment and morality and replacing it with what, beyond story, was just another Christian establishment and morality.

The Catholics of Joubert's day believed in original sin. They believed that God loved them but that loving them was in itself an act of mercy because they didn't really deserve the love of God, let alone to have God as a friend. The Church taught that each person deserves to go to Hell and suffer for eternity, separated from God in fire and torment and damnation. That's what humans deserve. Anything about that is mercy. It's true that the mercy story was rich – the loving, merciful God finding a “just” way to rescue the fallen, sinful humans from hell if they followed him and his son. But it's also true that the Church had a very negative view of human beings. Gee, thanks Augustine for developing that doctrine so well.

Every now and again you might have heard that we're all fearfully and wonderfully made or heard about the dignity of human beings. But the Catholic liturgy was based on the idea that we need to repent – and that one sin of the wrong type leads to Hell without that repentance and reliance on mercy. The Protestants of the day weren't much better and sometimes were much worse. Thanks Calvin, for outdoing Augustine – the very first point Calvinism makes is that every single one of us is totally depraved. It's not a good starting point for developing a healthy, loving view of the human race.

I confess that I used to go along with all this. Original sin. The fallen nature of human beings thanks to Adam and Eve eating some fruit. There was a time I even believed in the literal truth of that story, that there really were two people wandering around a pretty garden being tempted by a wily serpent. I believed that we were fully reliant on God for salvation, hope and anything that might be nice. I believed in a literal Hell once. And in literal human souls burning for eternity. I believed that the Bible taught it so it must be true. The preachers in my churches taught it too, straight from Scripture and you wouldn't want to go against what God wrote in his book, would you? Yeah, I believed people were fundamentally sinful. I believed I was fundamentally very sinful. I was a worm – as Scripture puts it. I was a wretch – as John Newton said in the hymn “Amazing Grace.”

I don't believe any of that now. It's been a long journey to get from there to where I am now, which is a much more free place. And I don't like that hymn any more because I am not a wretch. I was not a wretch. I just believed in my own wretchedness and acted accordingly.

Now I believe that humans are fundamentally good. It's a statement of faith. It would be easy to look at newspaper headlines and see the suffering we inflict on each other and to despair, to see the obvious faults – and let's face it, the way humans act is sometimes particularly awful and the way I act falls short of the way of love. But we're fundamentally good. And we're fundamentally deserving of more love not less. Yes, even those of us we see as monsters. To prove Godwin's law because it's fun to prove Godwin's law: Even Hitler!

Human beings deserve total love.

So. A rewrite of Joubert's thought is in order, removing all the nonsensical stuff about deserving or not deserving love.

“A part of kindness consists in loving people.”

But hey, that's not right either.

It's backwards.

I want to rewrite it again:

“A part of loving people is showing kindness.”

Yeah, that's better.

Love people. And in that love, show kindness.

Here endeth the lesson!

Those final words could have come from Jesus who said to “love one another.” He didn't say anything about deserve did he? Just “love one another.”

Sometimes it's good to be like the people at not-church. And as an ex-Christian I can say this too: Sometimes it's good to be “guided by the life and teachings of Jesus.”

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A Grand Day Out In Durham - 4: Sacred To The Memory Of ...

I was having a - mostly - wonderful time in Durham.  And the day was about to improve.  I've been wanting to post this ever since that day.  It just hasn't happened though.  I've been writing about Blob Thing instead, getting out to places as much as I can, and generally trying to get my brain working properly again.  The path back to decent mental health after eighteen very tough months is hard work.  I'm still not there and I have to accept that there are some things that will be with me for the rest of my life that I once would not have said were part of a suitably decent mental health.  The path forwards involves acceptance, embracing those difficult parts of me that I have both fought and denied for so long.

During the couple of days before visiting Durham a couple of news stories had come my way.  People were getting stunningly enraged about similar activities.  And I wasn't.  I was thinking that their rage was pretty daft and I couldn't see the problem.

News story one:  People were sometimes dressing up and having their pictures taken in an old graveyard.  Other people were shocked and dismayed?  How could anyone disrespect the dead in this way?  How could anyone be so dreadful that they would do this terrible thing?  I wasn't shocked or dismayed at all.  Instead I thought it was wonderful.  People were enjoying themselves.  Nobody was being harmed.  Great.  And they were bringing life and celebration and happiness into a place of death.

News story two:  Some children had been photographed lying in an old stone coffin, with their hands in a praying position as if they were corpses placed that way centuries ago.  People were shocked and dismayed.  The outcry on Facebook was great, far greater than it would have been if those children were photographed lying dead in the sea having drowned when their boat full of suffering refugees sank.  Okay, I might be a bit cynical.  But I might be right too.  How dare children do this?  And how dare adults encourage children to do something so awful?  And there were lots of comments too along the lines of "This would never have happened in my day.  What is the world coming to?  This generation are being brought up terribly."

I saw the offending photo and I thought it was really nice.  Children playing.  Being children.  Sweet.  And then I thought, "Hang on, haven't I seen something like this already?"  And of course I had.  A photograph of myself and my brother, taken when we were maybe about ten years old, probably younger.  We were lying down in two stone coffins.  Pretending to be centuries old dead people.  And at least one of us had our hands in that praying position.  Yes, it's true.  We were that awful!  Our parents were that awful!  And we were the precursor to this terrible generation of children!  We were part of the end of civilisation.

Except of course we weren't awful.  We were just having fun.  We played.  We didn't disrespect dead people by having fun.  I rather suspect that if those dead people in their graves could have sat up and watched us they would have had a good laugh and thought it great that children and families could have a good time even in such a place as a graveyard.

Those were the two stories.  Fresh in my memory.  And one phrase stuck out above the others because it had been spoken so often about both stories:  It's sacred.  You have to treat it a certain way because it's sacred.  You have to act with due decorum around anything related to death.  Because it's sacred.  So treat graves and graveyards like this.  It's THE way.  The ONLY way.  Those places are sacred to the memory of people.  That was said.  On TV.  On social media.  Sacred to the Memory.

And I was in Durham looking for a quiet cafe in which to have a drink before heading for home.  I'd walked up a road that led up from the shopping street.  A sign pointed up to a cafe and when I got there I decided that I wouldn't go there.  There didn't seem anything wrong with the cafe and I don't know why I didn't drink there.  Indecisiveness and the difficulty of making any decisions when overwhelmed and, if I'm honest, quite close to melting down or shutting down or somehow managing to combine the two in an impossible way.  Later I would be very glad that I had walked away from that cafe because I found another cafe that I loved.

Opposite the cafe that I didn't use was a church.  This was St. Margaret's.  I want to go back and explore the church building.  Parts of it date from the twelfth century and there's a lot to see.  When I was there a small choir were inside practising some sacred music.  I'm sure they wouldn't have minded me doing the full tourist thing inside and I was feeling fragile and didn't want to disturb them too much.  Exploration of the building can wait for another day.  It's been there for 850 years.  So I expect it'll still be there for me even if I don't return until next year.

On the far side of the churchyard is a gate.  And something within me piped up and said, "I wonder where that leads."  Sometimes you just have to go through gates.  And sometimes they lead to places that you would rather never have visited.  Other times they lead into wonderment and excitement and a place where Clare is happy and flappy and totally grateful to have explored.

Through the gate.  Completely away from any tourist route in Durham.  I hadn't liked the Cathedral.  But the river was pleasing.  The little church of St. Margaret was pleasing.  And now I was to be very pleased indeed.

Through the gate I found graves.  And more graves.  And a large graveyard.  And it was amazing.

The two news stories came back to me and those comments.  You can't do that.  You can't disrespect the dead.  You can't PLAY near graves.  It's horrific.  All those comments.  And one comment in particular came back to me when I passed what was almost the first of the grave stones.

Sacred to the memory of ...

Because there were those words, on a grave.

Sacred to the memory of.   Sacred?

What does that mean for the site.  Does that mean that all graves and all gravestones should be treated with solemnity for the rest of history?  Does it mean that we should not disturb the sites, leave them in situ until the end of time?

If it's a heinous sin to photograph a child in a coffin or an adult by a gravestone, then why isn't this a heinous sin too:

All those stones.  Dug up.  Ripped away from their associated corpses.  And buried so deep that only half the inscriptions are legible.  What do our attitudes mean when this is acceptable but a fun snapshot is an outrage?

I walked further and had a choice.  I could either walk to the right of the wall, into open space with grass and pretty trees and graves in places through the whole quite massive churchyard.  Or I could walk to the left of the wall, down a path that probably wasn't really meant to be a path - or at least was becoming very overgrown and forgotten.  That way led into the woods and the wall continued to be lined with graves.

I took a decision.  Getting good at decisions now.  I may not be able to decide where to have a quick drink.  But I could manage to decide how to explore a graveyard.  By then I was feeling very happy and was loving being there.  If I hadn't wandered through a gateway and past some houses I would never have found this place of wonder.

Yes.  The graves continued.  Ripped from their original sites.  Separated from those people they were sacred to the memory of.  Buried.  And neglected.  I quite like neglected grave sites.  In these places life triumphs.  Death is not the end.  How can it be when there is so much abundance of life even in the dead places?

Further up the path it became increasingly overgrown - and there was no exit at the far end.  I loved it.  I loved the atmosphere, the light through the trees, the smell of the victorious nature.  These sacred sites were still sacred.  Perhaps far more sacred for being swallowed up in that victory.

I couldn't help wondering though why people would be so enraged by those photographs of fun when nobody was being enraged by realities such as this:

Again, Sacred to the Memory of ...

I looked up from the victorious life around the stones.  And I saw even more victorious life.  The trees of the wood, perhaps holding more wisdom than anything in that place.  The tree looked down upon me and said "In this moment all is at peace."  Peace.  Truly.

The beauty of the tree triumphs over the grave.  We all may triumph over the grave through the way we live as individuals, as a species.  Whether we triumph beyond it I will leave to your own beliefs about the soul of our glorious being.  And if we humans manage through our foolishness to destroy all the trees then the beauty of the Earth will triumph over that grave.  The universe will triumph until that too dies and is lost.  And then what?

From the dead end - very much a living end - I walked back from the not-path and back onto the path and I couldn't stop taking photos.  There are a lot.  Far more than I've included here.  I was filled with joy to be there.

This is in memory of Elizabeth and Thomas Eggleston.  They died nearly 200 years ago.  Is this a fit way to remember them?  After 200 years, should we remember them at all?  Should we imagine the lives they lived and the way they would have loved and struggled?  They must have had good times.  But they had sorrow too.  The stone tells of two children also buried, both of whom died in infancy as many children did then.  As many children still do across the world.  What does the sanctity of life mean when so many die so young?  What does the sanctity of death mean?  If it's acceptable to treat a grave site like this when Elizabeth died in 1826, can we treat a grave like this for an Elizabeth who died in 2006?  If not, what is the cut off point?

Truly the way we treat graves tells us a lot about ourselves.  One thing may be acceptable and another thing unacceptable.  And we will disagree about what those things are.

And all these things are just our way of dealing with death.  Our cultural ways.  They're not shared in other cultures where a corpse will be burned or left for vultures.  Where shrines are erected in homes to honour ancestors.  Where a body must be buried that day.  There are many ways now and there have been many others before.  Are any of them more right than any other?

And our ways are changing too.  It wasn't long ago that cremation would have been totally unacceptable for many Christians.  The idea was that a body should not be cremated because then how can we expect it to be resurrected when Jesus returns?  So cremation was impossible.  That's changed.  You won't find many Christians now who would see the cremation might cause them any problems at all in their afterlife.  As faith changes, and as faith sometimes dies it's own death, our attitudes change too.

I think this century will be an interesting one as far as our attitudes go.  More and more we're entering into a post-religious society where many more people belief that physical death is the end.  We have one life.  And then it's over.  What difference will have have to the ways we choose to treat a human corpse?  At this point we're only just beginning to find out.

I've typed more than I meant.  The plan was to post a load of pictures of gravestones.  Then I started thinking.  A set of thoughts that lead me to questions but which haven't led me to answers as I've typed.

One last picture.  I left the overgrown wooded part of the graveyard and I met a friend.  She's called Kate and she was the most fluffy, friendly, joyous person I met that day.  She wouldn't stop moving for long enough that I could take photos.  There's just this one.  A beautiful bundle of joy who couldn't care less about death and graves and about what will happen to her own body when she dies.

Maybe Kate can teach us something.  Just get on and live.

You have this life.  Live it and embrace the moments.

The very gorgeous Kate

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