Revisiting Some Ancient Wounds Then Letting Them Go Again

 

I did naughty things as a child of course.

Most are forgotten in normal ways. I did wrong. Correction happened. They drifted from memory.

The ones that remain as the strongest memories are different. My head threw three at me this morning, all from forty to forty-five years ago. Two arose because my child brain saw the world in an atypical way. Autism I guess. And my way of seeing wasn't going to be understood by anyone else just as I couldn't understand the "normal" way of seeing, only learn to obey and conform and mask. That's just how it was. Neurodiversity wasn't even a word then and Jim Sinclair hadn't written of ways of being.

The other event I realised many years later arose from dissociation and from having no memory whatsoever of doing something because "I" hadn't done it and so naturally assuming someone else must have done it. I got in such trouble on all those occasions and it's only in the last five years that I've truly understood what was going on.

Then there are the memories blocked and maybe lost forever, held by the very survival parts that lead, on occasions, to dissociation that's sometimes helpful and sometimes deeply unhelpful.

Then there are missing times when I've a few times ended up losing friends for things I can't remember or conceive of but which wounded them. Understanding came late and understanding helps immensely. It can't restore a friendship but perhaps it can aid in not destroying others through ignorance of the disconnects and parts that exist within me because of a past I cannot remember and which they don't want me to discover.

I revisit adult wounds too. Those that are my own doing. Those that came from others. Those that come from events when dissociative and not even knowing that dissociation is part of my life. Those that come from everyone having unspoken personal rules and expecting their rules to be obeyed.

We all revisit though. It's the human thing to do.

For all the talk of living in the present moment our heads will keep leading us back to the past.

And so now I meditate. Focus. But at least today lie in the half awake and revisit the scenes of everything I couldn't possibly have understood when I was seven.

Forty years on I know consciously I don't need to live my past.

Our brains don't much care about our knowledge though, do they?

Even in my dreams last night I revisited. In a dream the journey took us past a place and I said I'd used to have lots of dreams in that place. It's a large and strange market with a big meeting hall adjoining. Last night the outside of it was in Chester. Except a part of Chester that's not real because usually those streets are elsewhere. A meta-dream. The recurring dreams begin again but if I don't go to those places where he and she have influence or presence then perhaps we may avoid terror.

May my sleep not revisit those old worlds. Not again. Never again.

May our awake times learn not to revisit old wounds on days filled with promise. May we learn transcendence in presence not in the creaking decay of what is no more except in the half remembered glimpses held by neurons.

The poem that led to these small thoughts

Don't Shoot For The Moon, Whatever You Do. Unless You're NASA.

 Warning:  This is the silliest thing I've posted for a very long time.

Shoot for the Moon.  Even if you miss you'll land among the stars.

I implore you. Don't do it.

Given physics and the cost of rocket technology it's much more likely you'll smash into the ground if you shoot for the moon. If you hit water it'll still hurt lots.

If you did manage to escape the gravitational attraction of the planet and missed the moon you would be dead for thousands or millions or even billions of years before reaching a star. You may never reach one at all. And you might get caught by a black hole or smashed to pieces by a piece of rock.

Even if you did have a suspension unit to keep you alive for so long, what are the chances that you would land not crash and what are the chances that you would fluke a habitable planet with an abundant food source and no large creatures or microorganisms to bump you off?

If you did hit the moon that's an incredible achievement for an individual endeavour of course and NASA would be very annoyed if you got there before they get someone else there if their current program goes to plan. In this case though, I don't believe in you!

The moon isn't the best place to be. Why would you aim for there if you weren't part of a space agency? No rain or storms but it's a bit cold and while the atmosphere is pollution free it's also almost entirely atmosphere free. There's not even a KFC and Deliveroo don't deliver that far. It's also an extreme move even for the most dedicated hermit and there's neither WiFi nor a landline and the municipal plumbing is underdeveloped. Plus the lunar charity shops never get any good donations.

So my advice is not to shoot for the moon. Even if you have a sufficiently well developed personal space program or have illegally invented a firearm far more powerful than anything the army has.

No. Don't shoot for the moon.

Get an extra cushion. Make a cup of tea. Read a book. Watch a comedy.

Life's good enough. Accept its beauty even on days when you've just posted about how rough it's being.

You don't have to shoot for the moon.

Your life here is good enough.

It can hurt here but it's better than trying to survive alone on the moon.

[This post has been brought to you by Autistic People Struggle With Idioms Inc.]

A Queer Person Gives Glory To God By Being Queer

 

Quotation by Thomas Merton
Photograph source unknown

I nearly quoted this statement by Thomas Merton in the two blog posts I wrote recently in response to religious homophobia.

There are lots of ways to read the quotation and it's perhaps dangerous to read it out of the context of its chapter. There is a lot more in the chapter. It is, after all, by Merton. The quotation is merely a beginning.

But one way is the way of the last sermon I ever preached back when I was a theist. We are beautifully and wonderfully made. Part of that is our sexuality, gender and our potential to love others generously and love ourselves just as generously. I still use the word god. It means something else now.

So a homosexual gives glory to god by being gay.

A transgender person gives glory to god by being transgender.

A cisgender heterosexual of course gives glory by being cisgender and heterosexual.

Some disagree, some with unintended words of violence to humanity disguised as claims of love, but to me that's like wanting a tree to be a different tree or a flamingo to be a sparrow. In my old theistic belief, god made you fabulous.

In any case it's hard to give glory to God, to reality, to each other, to complexity, to being, to a full dose of awestruck wonder, without self acceptance.

Yes. That's only part of the story. I know. I can hear the old religious voices in my head responding with a series of Buts. The old religion could put many buts in the way of radical self-acceptance. It took a lot to learn to respond to the buts.

I also know that acceptance is a beginning not a stagnation. So as I read about nonviolence this week I looked inside and found violence and I find it in the way I sometimes speak too. Love your enemy? Accepting both the nonviolence and violence within is a place to work with the shadows. Accepting both our purity and our messing up, our progress and our non-progress is an act of balance and we can all fall either way. I know I can but that's okay too. Even Blondin must have fallen many times before gaining the skill to attempt Niagara and Alex Honnold fell many times before ever seeking to climb El Capitan or Half Dome with no rope.

No. That's not being down on myself. It's recognition of complexity, a complexity we all have as humans and which a tree doesn't have. We all shine like stars and we all throw mud. Often in the same day, sometimes within the same sentence. That's our brains' evolution not the intention of any designer.

It's the examen, the noticing, the wanting to be more aware of what raises the many defences and fires the arrows. It's a difficult way. As I read of nonviolence in different traditions I realised again how much easier violence is in all the little ways in which it manifests. Is the dark side more powerful? (pauses for thought). "Quicker. Easier. More seductive." Perhaps the most wise response ever given by a puppet in a movie! We all know it to be true.

Sometimes it would be nice to be a tree in an ancient forest, not even aware perhaps of lumberjacks and industrial scale forest destruction. Better to be an ent though and have the ability to act when needed. I think I'd be a happy ent.

Sometimes it would be very nice not to care and to not have this temperament that won't let go. Sometimes it would be nice to be able to think more about soap operas and Love Island than to be a nontheist but still have a pile of Thomas Merton books to get through!

Things That Went Bump In The Night - Knocks On A Bedroom Door

 

One year ago today

Three years ago tonight

Three raps, urgent, loud, on my bedroom door.

And I wake. Hard, harsh intrusion.

Terror lie, listen for pinpricks, burglar creeps,

Or ghostsound in an upstairs hall.

Adrenaline outpourings to an unknown god.

That happens sometimes in this house. Knock, knock, knock. Who's there? No, don't ask. Just in case there's a reply from the estranged twin underworlds of crime and Hell.

After a while I can convince myself that nobody, alive or dead, was knocking on the door. It's the pipes. The wood. The roof. The expansion contraction of the cooling house. But I can't quite believe it and fear reigns, believing they will knock again that robber or dead child is there, that if I move I'll be attacked or worse, have to comfort the lost or experience their agony.

Then I have to look, like the second to die in the horror movie.

And that's why, approaching 4am, I'm sitting downstairs and every light in the house is on. Even now something in my mind can't quite believe in the rational explanation.

Gone are the days of confirmatory hallucinations. Only memory remains and it's the hate sunk eyes and fallen skin of the man in the sour ripped purple suit.

When I'm able to return to my bed, knowing I am alone, I'll still be listening. Fearing three more angry knocks on my door. Wishing I still had a god to deliver me from evil. Not that he ever did or ever could but the story comforted when I felt presences in Fawdon, in Crawley, and when I used to see the old woman who died in the Victorian college lift shaft or place-memory murder at the castle.

Where does hallucination end and vision begin?

When does contracting wood become a stranger at the bedroom door?

When does another world tumble into ours?

Don't ask those questions at 4am when hormoned fatigue is sovereign.

At 4am the answers may turn out to be here and now. At 4am phantom or Fantomas may be waiting for me on the stairs back to bed.

Six years ago today

One Hundred Million - Sanctuary for the Displaced

 

One hundred million. Chained by separation.

A first world problem.  A first world complaint.

Last night I received a message asking for responses to "Sanctuary" by lunchtime today.  That's tough for me.  Usually a word will wander round my head for a week and then some kind of response might fall out on a page.  Nevertheless thoughts arose as distractions in meditation and I wondered whether to write last night.  And that's the point at which Windows decided to update, scuppering my plan.  Isn't my privileged first world life difficult?!  So many problems and hardships and the immense stress of computer updates.  So many things to complain about.

This morning I've tried to write.  Most of the thoughts from last night are gone now, lost in a maze of peculiar dreams.  I had a spare hour to sit down with a keyboard and see what happened.  What happened is mostly not to do with sanctuary at all.  I honestly find my response this morning simplistic, almost banal.  One photograph from a refugee camp, one conversation with an asylum seeker, one shared moment of humanity tells much more than my words.

I have no experience of being displaced.  I have no experience of working with those who have been displaced.  Like most people I don't claim to have any answers to what is a growing problem that will almost certainly continue to grow globally especially as climate chaos increases.  I sincerely think the words of others have far more weight than anything I could write.  

Nevertheless, these are my words.  I'm posting them largely because it's an easy way to get them to the person who asked for them, definitely not because they carry any authority or any of the wisdom that comes from experience.  I might have refused to write at all except I know that the project that this may be a very small part of has refugees, asylum seekers, displaced people at the centre and it's organised by a charity that places the voices and experiences of such people at the apex of importance when discussing the issues, educating, campaigning and doing everything else it does in working in this area.

It's a privilege to be asked, not a divine right for a western white woman who may not be comparatively rich in her own country but who is fabulously wealthy compared to much of the world's population.  I've been watching a video series about life in South Sudan.  My life is carefree compared to the lives of South Sudanese people.  Windows may update.  I may only have an hour to spare this morning - and I'm running late.  But I don't have to walk miles through flood waters infested with venomous snakes just to find enough wood to sell that I can eat.  And I don't have to keep doing it if bitten.  Nobody is trying to drown me.  I have no answers for those people either.

................

They told us of Archimedes,

Inspiration, naked in a bathtub.

They told us how water is displaced

By a crown of power or by a person.

They never told us how power

Could displace a person.

One person flees a home

One hundred million displaced.

We scattered petals on the sand

For those lost, defeated in the desert,

Threw petals while crossing the Tyne

For those drowning each day.

One hundred million scattered

One hundred million scared

One hundred million seeking

The simplicity of what I take for granted.

Today, in freedom and peace, I ride a

Metro train to Tynemouth and smile at art.

Shatila refugees brightened our coast.

Palestinians from a short-term camp for

short-term problems outlasting a generation,

Two generations and still their numbers grow.

Five million now packed tight in deprivation

Ten million more subsisting beyond the camps.

I am closer to the one percent than to the

Two percent who fled from floods, governments,

Guns, paranoia, persecutions, and all

the crimes our species finds so easy to commit.

At least for now.

Hate-crimes increase while writers, religions,

The blind in spirit encourage the hate and

Government ministers threaten to strip human rights

From those like me.

One day we too may have to flee.

I am not the one hundred million seeking sanctuary,

Not the rainbow homed, torture scarred, homosexual.

Not one of those displaced internally,

Fighting for lives unwelcomed on their own land.

I cannot, must not speak for them,

Impose my safety on theirs in a land of Hassockfield IRC,

Forced evictions, and threats of deportation,

Or think my white western woman idealism

Has any clue what it is to run from bullets and brutality.

Yet I want for myself what they want for themselves.

Safety, acceptance, a place to call home, community,

Eyes of compassion not suspicion

The open hand not the fist

Freedom to be, to create, to worship or not worship.

We seek space to breathe deeply, to find healing,

To have our dignity enshrined in society and law.

Sanctuary is no complicated thing

It’s essence an agreement to find our commonalities

To see the beauty in our differences and

To accept that stranger and friend can be the same word.

I am not the one hundred million.

While they may want to return home,

I am already here.

They face wars, civil and international.

Violence, imprisonment, death, disease.

They cannot return.

I need only turn a key in a door

To be free in centrally heated peace.

Revamp slavery act to halt the tide of migrants

Quicker deportations to halt the surge of Albanian migrants

Channel migrant crisis out of control

The words of the front pages today.

Migrant. Migrant. Migrant.

No beds. No fresh air. No toilet doors. No compassion.

The words of a front page yesterday.

But how many of us care? Truly care?

Is it health, hopelessness, or merely selfish complacency

That means that even I do sweet FA?

One hundred million displaced

And I’m just another pointless keyboard warrior.

At least for now.

One day I too may be forced to act, campaign, offer myself.

No government can force compassion.

Perhaps it will flow like the petal strewn Tyne

Out of the depths of my own despair at the next headline.

There will be more headlines.

The one hundred million increase every single day.

Every one, more important than words in a newspaper,

More dignified than any thought or phrase on this page.

To be Queer is Part of My Identity. Four False Responses From A Church.

 

Last week I discussed sexuality while visiting, as a tourist, a church that has unfortunately regressed from embracing acceptance of the sexualities of LGB people and so become a space that would no longer be safe for any LGB person who accepts their own sexuality and affirms any same-sex relationship they may have. I am leaving the T from LGBT here because in our discussions we discussed sexuality and not gender but I get the feeling that the place would also no longer be a safe space for transgender person, even a heterosexual one, to “live and move and have their being.”

During the discussion I made the claim that sexuality is a part of our identity, part of what makes us who we are. I grant that there may be some mystical state where sexuality is immersed in some deeper reality. I’ve not experienced anything like that and to my knowledge don’t personally know anyone who has but I grant it as a theoretical possibility. For the rest of us though I believe sexuality is a part of our identity, a part of who we are, rather than being an added extra that we deliberately build onto our core being or than being merely a belief about ourselves.

I received several responses to the claim and want to respond to the responses in writing. I won’t say much different to what I said in the spoken discussion but may fill out my views.

A. “But it’s not all of our identity.”

I had to agree with this. Of course sexuality isn’t all of our identity. I hadn’t claimed it to be and I know of nobody who has made that claim. However, to say that something isn’t all of our identity or all of our core person is no reason to deny that it’s part of who we are.

Several years ago I made a short film about autism during a short course about basic video making lasting in total about four hours. I’ve received a diagnosis of “autistic spectrum disorder” though I’d much prefer to think of my autistic nature as a condition, or even more as a way of experiencing and interacting with the world and a way I happen to think. Within the broad diagnostic criteria I am autistic. It’s a part of who I am and a part that for many years I was ashamed to consider might be the truth. Or perhaps it would be more true to say that being autistic is parts of many parts of my identity and core person. If at any point autism ceased to be a recognised diagnosis those parts of who I am would still be parts of my person. They would be called something else but would still be parts of me. In current use of language though I am autistic. It’s a part of my identity.

It’s not the whole of my identity though. The film I made was partly about overcoming the internal and external stigma I had about being autistic but the main point was that I am so much more than autistic. Identity and personhood is so much more than autism. As people say, if you’ve met one autistic person then you’ve just met one autistic person.

If you want to see the film, it's only about four minutes long.  You can find it here.

The same is true for sexuality. If you’ve met one gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, demisexual, heterosexual person you’ve met one person and if you see them only for their sexuality then you fail to see a human being. We all belong to many groups and within those groups we are all unique. To know someone’s sexuality doesn’t mean you know about that person, their character, their likes, whether you’re going to become good friends, whether you share a sense of humour or political views or love noise or quiet or anything else. Sexuality is a part of who they are. An important part perhaps in terms of relationships, partnerships, marriage, and other good things. It’s also often an important part because of the effects societal attitudes have on different groups. Simply, being gay is still a tougher task than being straight. Straight isn’t an insult written on walls. Straight couples aren’t asked to kiss on trains by scumbags who get turned on by wanted to see some “lesbian action.” They aren’t beaten up for being straight either and they aren’t illegal or socially unacceptable in any country or religion in the world.

So yes, sexuality isn’t all of our identity. It is though, as I claimed, part of it.

B. Celibacy is good. We need to state that more.

I agree with this too. There is too much pressure in our society to be sexually active. I’ve been called weird because I have never downloaded porn and don’t want to watch other people having sex. Films are made about quests to lose virginity. Virgin is used as an insult and for some people to still be a virgin is to be thought of as a failure. Sex is the default assumption too often and a decision to abstain is seen as the peculiarity. I believe not having sex should be seen as equally normal and fulfilling and that it’s too tough for asexuals and demisexuals to find role models in the movies or in romantic novels.

I also agree that if a gay Christian freely chooses celibacy then they should be allowed to choose it although the religious coercion that tells them they are in some way disordered is entirely not okay. People should be free to make this choice, without social pressure and definitely without dogmatic pressure. I may find the reasons behind someone’s choice to abstain from all same-sex relationships to be against their humanity but they can make their choice and I’m happy to support them in their right to make that choice even when it’s made out of shame or fear imposed from a religious authority.

Having said that, I didn’t agree with what was being said because what was said wasn’t that celibacy should just be a personal decision or that it was okay to not be having sex. What was being said was that God wants all gay people to be celibate. Consensual gay sex was being stated as a sin as opposed to sex between a consenting man and woman. At one time, because of my own religious indoctrination, I would have agreed. Now I can’t conceive of a god who cares about what consenting adults in a relationship do to give sexual pleasure to each other no matter how half a dozen clobber verses in the Bible are interpreted and I can’t conceive of it being anyone else’s business either. I’m not even going to touch on the biblical context here and others have discussed it far better than I now could, including strongly “biblical” believers who affirm LGBT people being fully themselves. I confess I don’t much like the word biblical. As a theologian said in a podcast a couple of weeks ago “The Bible doesn’t get on well with biblical Christianity.”

I also didn’t agree because what was being said seemed to apply only to gay people. There was a treasuring of celibacy, of singleness but that treasuring wasn’t being applied in the same way to heterosexuals. I believe a single life of celibacy can be excellent for the right person, gay or straight. However I also believe that any form of coercion or pressure towards celibacy to be an evil. Hold out the option in a way society and churches very often don’t, but don’t coerce. I saw a lot of coercion towards celibacy in a church I was part of for a few years. People were made to feel they were being disobedient to god and unfaithful to the church unless they prayed and agreed after that prayer to take a vow of celibacy. Freedom of choice became coercion and abuse.

I also didn’t agree with what was being said because in the context of the discussion a category error was being made. My claim was about sexuality. It wasn’t about sex. Two married gay men having sex aren’t any more gay in their identity than a gay man who doesn’t want to have sex at all. Sexual acts don’t create identity or personhood but this confusion is quite common within religious homophobia. The pastor of a church I attended for a while claimed that he could choose to become gay if he slept with a man. He said much worse things too and it was the last time I went near that church. He was wrong. A sexual act won’t change your sexuality. I’ve known gay people who tried to prove to themselves they weren’t gay because they had been told to be ashamed of who they were and they had tried to prove themselves straight by sleeping with lots of people neither of the same sex nor gender. It didn’t work. If a lesbian sleeps with a hundred men because of the shame she’s been taught she will remain a lesbian. As we know, people in denial have often married too in their desperation not to feel shame.

In short, sexuality is something we are. Sex is something we do or don’t do. Sexuality is an is-ness. Sex is not.

C. I need to repent of things every day.

This is a bit of an aside from identity but I want to include it because it was part of the discussion. I said I had been worried since the announcement of the current priest of that church. I looked him up when the announcement was made because that church was one where I had found safety at some events and in discussions with the previous priest. I found he was on the board of an organisation that, at least when his appointment was announced, had discipleship materials online stating that in order to move on with Jesus the Christian had to repent of being gay.

I deeply hoped that when I mentioned this the response would be one of horror. I know many clergy and many Christians who are deeply horrified by such suggestions and who think there should be no place for homophobia or transphobia anywhere in the church. They include Anglicans, Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, and people from many different denominations. My old church hands out badges when marching at Pride every year that simply say “God made me fabulous.” I’m not a theist but I still have that badge on my bag when I’m out even though Northern Pride was four months ago. It’s a message that’s still needed. At the first Pride Vigil service, an event which now closes Northern Pride ever year, someone said that they knew they were going to go to Hell because they were gay. They meant it too. There was much crying that night as they began to learn from some Christians with a deep faith in Jesus that they would not be condemned for their sexuality.

I did not get my hoped for horrified response. The response was, “I repent of things every day” and I knew at that moment, still early in our conversation that a church that had affirmed LGBT people was no longer safe at all for anyone who would live out their humanity as a queer person of whatever kind.

Yes. I know repentance. In a different way to the Christian asking God for forgiveness I repent too. I know that I have “fallen short in thought, word, and deed, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do.” I repent in my own way although I know I have to be careful because of my past, a past which means honest consideration of the times I’ve gone wrong or sometimes royally fucked up or been mean can become a self-abuse rather than a self-examination. “I got that wrong” can so easily spiral into “I’m a scumbag and deserve to suffer.” Probably I will have to be aware of that tendency for as long as I live unless the inner scars of the past totally heal. Self-examination can lead to life, to becoming more human, to a resolution over and over again to grow in compassion. Self-condemnation is a kind of living torture. It’s one that I’ve seen in too many Christian books too. A hymn in the book a local Anglican church uses makes you sing out that you’re vile. Not only that, everyone else is vile too. I think that’s something else Christianity could do with rejecting as a bad thing.

I know repentance. What I also understand now is that I do not have to be ashamed of my sexuality or gender. It took me a long time to learn that these things are good. Some Christians and some churches would condemn me. A few would even try to ban me from entering the premises, but not the one I was in last week. I was told several time, with great pride, that gay people would be completely welcome to come to a service as if letting someone walk through a church door absolves a church of responsibility to turn away from all homophobia. I took no comfort in that though knowing that churches will often reach out in an appearance of love to gay people and only when the gay person is settled and has an emotional tie to the group will they be called in for “the chat” and be told how they really do need to repent, either of living their life as gay or sometimes of the “same-sex desires” and or how it’s okay to struggle with your sexuality as long as you don’t succumb to the temptation of forming a relationship or going even as far as a same-sex kiss. It’s happened to me and many queer Christians have experience of “the chat.” I was told I was welcome to attend a church even after the pastor told me I was an abomination and that he couldn’t consider me a Christian of any kind unless I repented of my gender. So being told the same thing in another church gives no reassurance of safety and acceptance whatsoever.

D. If I had a broken leg I wouldn’t call it part of my identity.

I’ve left this until last because it’s the only response that took me by surprise in any way. I thoroughly agree with it too. I wouldn’t call a broken leg part of my identity. Nobody would although a long-term disability, and especially a congenital disability can be a part of identity whether it’s physical or mental. It’s never the fullness of anyone’s identity of course but it can definitely be an important part of who someone is and how they learn to relate to society and indeed how society relates to them.

A broken leg is a broken leg though. If I’m in a car and it’s involved in a crash I may end up with a broken leg. I wouldn’t get a new sexuality though!

Sexuality is not a broken bone.

A broken bone is a have. Sexuality is an is. They could never be the same thing. Sexuality is being. Sex is doing. A broken bone is having. Three very different verbs.

Besides, to be LGBTQ+ is not to be broken in anyway. It’s not a disorder no matter what anyone may claim including psychiatry not so long ago when not far from here gay people were offered or forced to endure electric shock “therapy.” I can only wish that arguments about so called “conversion therapy” had been over decades ago and I wish that it wasn’t so often churches, where love is suppose to reign, that were continuing the arguments and the resulting abuse. It’s not gay people who need to repent. It’s Christianity.

To be queer, gay, bisexual, transgender, is to be celebrated just as to be straight and cisgender is to be celebrated.

We’re a gloriously varied human race and together we have the potential to be an utterly fabulous species if only we could stop mistreating each other for our sexuality, race, gender, disabilities, health, poverty, sex, nationality, language, or anything else and get on with learning how to love everything that makes us unique parts of a humanity with much in common.

Witnessing a Church that Turned Back From Acceptance to Religious Homophobia

 

Heck. Another Facebook post that turned out long enough for a blog!

I popped into a church in the city centre because the doors were open and I hadn't seen inside since it closed for large-scale renovations. I just wanted to be nosy and have a look, that's all. I accidentally met the just announced new bishop of Newcastle. Her visit was the reason for the open doors. I wish her well in her return to the north-east.

I now know roughly why that church is not on the inclusive churches list anymore, a change that has saddened many people.

It's because God doesn't really approve of being gay. Bible says. So we have to obey. Don't blame us for what God says. That's what I was told today at least and I have no reason not to believe that what was expressed is the reason.

Sigh.

A step backwards unfortunately into preaching old anti-human interpretations of the God that is, according to the Bible, love, spirit and truth. From "God made you fabulous" to God calls you to repent of your sexuality and gender.

I didn't honestly expect anything different. So I have no extra disappointment. I'm glad to have confirmation of what I'd suspected having asked both the church and the diocese about it several times and receiving no response.

It's unfortunate that conservative evangelical churches don't tend to show believers that there are many ways to look at the Bible, even may conservative ways without including more liberal considerations. In all my time in such churches we weren't taught the insights of cultural history, anthropology, linguistics, or source, form and redaction criticism, modern archaeology, or anything much else. We were taught how to unfailingly approach the book from the assumption that it's true, that God said it, and that the interpretation given was THE right one. The "plain, simple truth of the Bible."

I know I missed out on so much for too many years including being able to approach the Bible from a much more rounded perspective, a perspective that allows for the liberating possibility of other answers. I was desperately trapped and I cry for all those trapped in similar ways.

For while the Bible has famous verses to attack queer people it can also be seen as an affirmation of who we are. A big hug to our wonderful variety but never a crush or a narrowing of our humanity. Plenty of Christians affirm. I had to learn how to do it and I probably wouldn't have been able to learn to accept, love and affirm myself if I hadn't.

In 2013 while in the process of coming out as transgender after decades of that crushing from religion I looked deeply into it including all those clobber verses. I was still evangelical in my faith then so I had to study. Nine years on I've forgotten most of what I learned but I remember the conclusion: it's okay to be me.

If faced with an honest and open position of having two interpretations, one of acceptance of the freely lived sexuality of gay people forming beautiful relationships of love with one another and one of seeing those relationships as sin, why would anyone willingly choose the latter?

That's a big "if" though because there is often only one acceptable answer for the conservative evangelical and if it goes against scholarship or liberation or even science and other more secular insights then it still remains the one acceptable answer. The "Bible only" as the basis for doctrine and life and mostly only one acceptable method by which to approach the Bible.

It's not the fault of the believer just as I don't blame myself for believing just the same for so long. It's not even really the fault of the preacher unless they have a wide ranging theological education and it's at odds with the preaching. It's the fault of the whole system that struggles with change and finds it easier to stick with what it says is the answer rather than freely asking more questions and interrogating a presumed answer.

The new baptistry is impressive though and the new lighting means sunglasses would be advisable.

It doesn't look like a place for mystery. Maybe it doesn't have to be. People usually prefer definite answers to unknowing. In religion, politics, wherever. It's much easier. Especially in a world that feels increasingly uncertain and unbalanced.

I'm sure the people at that church are happy enough and confirm each other through the community of the literal faithful. I'm sure they will "build one another up" and through repetition will believe ever more firmly in one way to salvation, one truth, one interpretation. Surety of belief can be a powerful thing in a community. I couldn't wish any ill to any of them. I'd be unsafe were I to spend time in that environment rather than being a cause of risk.

I believe in doubt. I believe in my ability to be wrong, to mess up, to be amazed at new knowledge that reveals my error. I believe in asking questions. I believe in a cosmos too staggering for anyone to be sure they have the one answer. I believe in the progress and exploration of scholarship. I believe God didn't say the words in holy books at all. Men did. Mostly men rather than women. That's the irrefutable conclusion of scholarship not scepticism. I believe in many ways to live, to life, to meaning, to abundance within ourselves and between ourselves. Maranatha. Om mani padme hum. God is dead. I and thou. Even self created meaning in a universe that may have no meaning.

So I have no place in a church like that. Even if was straight and still believed gay relationships sinful and sang out a thousand alleluias a day I'd have no place. I belong to the displaced community of joyfulness in uncertainty. I belong to the community of the lovers of infinite mystery.

I will let them be. Outside of the CofE I can do no more than that. I have no right to either unless their views ever became more outspoken and dangerous to freedom and liberation in our cherished city. I haven't the energy to defend the vast acceptability of my own existence. So I'll just go and drink tea once a week in a church hall among people who don't believe my self-acceptance to be sinful. Ringtons tea cakes too and often home-made cake because the fuel of the church isn't prayer as they might claim. It's tea and cake.

I was so tempted to pick up the guitar and sing. Without asking. I was not quite that naughty today. I'd even have sung a god song rather than "Sing if you're glad to be gay." After all, I don't know the words to that.

A Short Sermon For Bible Sunday. Putting Reason and Compassion Before the Book

 

A sermon for Bible Sunday, free written on a phone before getting out of bed, that you will probably not hear if you go to a church today. I will not be going to a church today. Resting today is wisdom. I will be getting out of bed though. Ten past seven. Time to get up. I hope you all will find something of joy and freedom today. I hope I will too.

Note - I didn't write the sermons I preached on a phone before getting up on a Sunday. A little more preparation went into them.

...

Today the Church of England celebrates "Bible Sunday". The new bishop of Newcastle has written that "Primarily Christianity has always been primarily a religion of the book."

Here's an idea: Perhaps it shouldn't be.

Perhaps it should primarily be a religion of reason and compassion and should seek to cherish and hunger for the fullness of these things as far as possible before ever opening any ancient text.

There are many wonderful things in the Bible just as there are in many religious texts. There are many horrible things too and much that's contrary to reason and history. You don't need me to list them.

We all know the dangers of placing an ancient text before either reason or compassion or of asserting the authority of that ancient text for all time. Or to claim to assert that. Even the most strident fundamentalist brings a whole range of their own values and beliefs into their claimed literal reading of a text.

Reason knows a book cannot confirm itself by claiming itself to be truth. Reason knows it's not "God breathed" and that it contains many errors and reports of events many of which may or may not contain mythic truth but which do not contain literal truth. Reason allies with scholarship not assumption. We bring reason and scholarship and honest enquiry to the book rather than an assumption of the book being the "Word of God".

Compassion recognises dignity and beauty. Compassion liberates, builds, embraces, encourages, empathises. We bring compassion to the opening of the ancient texts and reject whatever in those texts is incompatible with a growth in and towards love.

Reason and compassion, the mind and heart of honest and charitable humanity, protect against both foolishness and meanness when opening the Bible. They bring questions and healthy doubt rather than a diseased certainty.

Today I will read a Bible passage. I do each day even though I am not a Christian. I find it helps in recovering from religious trauma and in bringing a widening understanding to words previously controlled by religious beliefs and structures imposed upon them. Others may need to avoid the Bible completely because of similar religious trauma and that's okay too. When humanity is placed above ancient religious texts, as it should be, then judgement about reading or not reading falls away. There is no one right way and no threat of a hell so reading and not reading are both acceptable and to be affirmed.

I will seek to read with all that reason gives and with a hunger to grow into a greater compassion. I will ask "What is this?" rather than imposing belief on the words, a belief that told me it was wrong not just accepting the words as true, given by a deity. I may still get it wrong of course and may leave the text asking many more questions than when I began to read.

Today the Anglicans and Catholics will both read a passage contrasting pride and humility. The pride of the respectable religious man and the humility of the despised tax collector. Whether or not Jesus actually told the parable the contrast remains and the text of a myth may still teach.

The passage also contains a prayer that to an extent for me turned from humility to self-abuse in a way all too easy to find confirmed in hymnology and spiritual classic literature. When being "a sinner" turns from honestly admitting that you mess up by action and inaction and that you still have inner work to do and becomes a central part of your identity then all kinds of problems arise. Sinner can become a deeply harmful word to call ourselves yet accountability, to use a word that's caused some controversy this month, is a beautiful thing we could all do with embracing more. We all "sin" but that word has so much religious baggage that perhaps it needs replacing with a word that has not been used to cause so much harm.

The passage is also about inclusion, liberation, acceptability, and many other things that didn't tend to get into sermons. So the same passage, regardless of any literal historicity, can be used for life or death.

Christianity, like most religions in our world, has manuscripts and books that have been raised up by people as scripture, counted as more important than any other writings. May they always be approached with the twin sails of reason and compassion and so bring life rather than the shipwrecks of unkindness, foolishness and may all religious reading avoid bringing assumptions of perfection and reliability to any book.

May our reading lead to liberation and to the building of a loving future for all people and all ecology too. Otherwise the books become death and should mostly remain closed, dusty on the museum shelves. May life triumph today, in whatever we choose to read, watch or listen to.