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.

Two Short Poems From Another Life

 

As I look back with Facebook memories I find lots of posts that are better off lost.  I also find some that could be rescued and put somewhere I can find them.  Stories, poems, discussions of mental health recovery, writings about gender and rants on several dozen themes.

For today, two poems, both from five years ago.  At the time I was taking various psychiatric drugs and they were messing me up with hallucinations and other things.  I was also under the false impression that I had BPD or EUPD and that belief led to me living according to how the diagnosis said I should be.  An important relationship was breaking down too, painfully.  It wasn't the best time of my life but in the following year I got over the breakup, tapered off the drugs, and rejected the false diagnosis so as with most very difficult things they were not forever.

First, from five years ago today.  I probably just typed this onto the phone while waiting for a bus.  I used to do a lot of that.

She ran.

Farther, faster than she had ever dreamed was possible.

To escape herself and her past she swallowed every performance enhancing drug.

She gave everything she had to racing,

Sometimes sprinting, the wind blowing back her hair

Then painfully stooping, her body conspiring against her.

Eventually, exhausted, she could run no more.

She stopped. Despair mixed with her sweat.

Looking back she noticed how beautiful the mountains had been.

Looking forward she met herself, embraced, and learned laughter.

From five years ago yesterday there's this.  Perhaps it too was typed when at a bus stop.  I wrote a very good poem once at a bus stop after watching heavy rain wash a strawberry into a drain.  If we allow creativity an open door it doesn't take much for it to escape.

Rebellion, Sunflowers, and the Impossibilities of Physical and Mental Health.

 

A few years ago.
Me doing something with no risk of arrest.

This is very long. Extremely. Again. Sort of sorry. Turn away. Save yourself.

Chuck paint on a company building and nobody reports about the reasons why if anyone reports at all. A BBC building was scaled and occupied a couple of years ago and not even the BBC mentioned it.

So they chuck soup on a glass covered painting. Nobody was harmed but the painting was recognisable to anyone.

Make speeches at Monument and it won't even get a sentence at the bottom of page 27 of the Chronicle.

So they block roads for weeks. Camp out in Westminster. Face arrests. Dig tunnels. Climb trees. Scale the Dartford Crossing.

It gets headlines. It seems to be the only way to be noticed at all. Nobody wants to chuck soup, or paint at Scotland Yard. Nobody wants to spend weeks underground or to sit up trees on cold nights or on bridges in last night's wind. Nobody is doing any of it for fun.

Unfortunately hardly any of the reports really cover the reasons why. Outrage is encouraged and capitalised on. It's easy to create outrage and stifle rationality.

Talking about reasons is not encouraged. It never was and probably never will be. The powerful have too much to lose. The powerless are too distracted to revolt by the stream of propaganda, half truths and narrow agendas from the powerful. Don't look up. Don't see anything.

Unfortunately though we need to hear the why we mostly just hear the what. An image of soup, of a closed bridge, of an arrest. They sell papers and ratings. Talking about all the new fossil fuel licences the government promised wouldn't happen or about the continuing lack of funding for renewable energy or indeed how many major galleries still take fossil fuel money and how the hyper-expensive art world is often more about protecting the wealth of the powerful and about prestige than it is about art, beauty, meaning, or creativity.

I don't always agree with a tactic but I have much respect for people willing to risk criminal records and freedom for the sake of the planet. They act in ways that I find myself unable to act through circumstance, mental and physical health and, yes, lack of desire and some inadequate excuses too sometimes.

Perhaps disagreeing with a tactic is often a reason to join together not to push apart. MLK and Malcolm X disagreed about tactics. They were apart. But the day after MLK was killed he had been due to meet with Malcolm X to discuss how better to work together. They had concluded that the cause was more important and that uniting may be better in overcoming racism and racist legislation and the elites within power structures whose vested interest is protecting themselves.

Nonviolent campaigners are the heroes. Even when they're annoying! Change sometimes results. Sometimes it doesn't. The attempt is the thing. With the climate, pollution, plastics and so on if nobody tries we are definitely dead. If people try we may get through this. We might even save polar bears though I doubt it.

So Jesus overturned the tables. Ezekiel went naked for years and did many strange things. Men marched from Jarrow. Women disobeyed. At least one building in Gosforth was vandalised by suffragists wanting to vote. Strikers held out for pay, holidays, safer working conditions. Protestors have always been inconvenient. Jesuit priests were imprisoned at military bases. Women at Greenham sometimes were too. A priest I know was arrested at military arms fairs. Indians held out for independence. Quakers refused war. Englishman were martyred for peacefully demanding the religious freedom we take for granted. Every one of them was a hero in their nonviolent actions.

Nonviolence was maintained here. No sunflowers were harmed, just minor fixable damage to an old bit of wood. If they were? Aren't living sunflowers more important than a painting, no matter how culturally important that painting is? Meanwhile, more weather records have been broken globally this year than in any previous year. The rate of change is increasing beyond all predictions and those 20 year olds have every reason to be terrified.

These young nonviolent heroes may not have the right answer to the predicament of the powerful protecting themselves. I wish they did. They're trying though. Desperately trying in desperation for our world. They are offering themselves in this righteous cause.

Neither do I have answers. Sitting at home typing this garbage into my phone definitely won't solve anything. It might be a self-therapy. It might be easy. But it won't contribute to minimising sea level rises, the effects of poverty, pollution, ecocide, or anything else.

My mental health is doing quite well right now even if I did nearly burst into tears on a bus this morning. My physical health isn't so good. Perhaps mental health is helped by knowing I can't do as much as I could so cannot pressure myself into many mentally hard places.

I find now a frustration that I cannot be involved with being more active for the planet. I want to be in a position to try again. I want to act now, as the XR demand puts it. I cannot. I haven't even got the energy for a meeting let alone a prolonged and active campaign. I went to some Climate Action Newcastle meetings. They have plans, campaigns and actions locally that are all excellent and I knew I don't currently have the spoons to be involved.

Fuck it. Can I have my physical health back? Can it stop gradually worsening? And can I keep almost reasonable mental health for more than six months for once in my life? Or can I find more useful outlets that I can do with my limitations? Please.

I won't chuck soup in a gallery. But I want to hold a placard again. I want to sing songs of protest and justice and compassion. I want to be able to be part of the campaign and have a head and body that can sustain it. I want to be able again to be part of the attempts at bringing the change that's absolutely essential. This week I can create many sentences. I know though that I couldn't have joined the good people at Derwentside at the weekend and that I can't be in London protecting the oak sapling planted in Parliament Square.

Life is what it is though. Acceptance. Not resignation. Acceptance. I will need to lie down now. I have no choice. Acceptance. Not a resignation of purpose or potential for usefulness. Acceptance.

Turning to Meditation With A Benedictine. Say The Mantra.

 

One of the many books I'm reading.

Finished. Not finished.

There are three books in this volume. I've finished the first, Word into Silence and have just begun the second.

A quick summary: Say the mantra.

There is no need to read further.

John Main was a Benedictine priest who learned mantra meditation from a Swami in Malaya, as it was then, and took up the practice. He stopped in obedience to his superiors in the order only to start again after finding exactly the same teaching in certain Christian writings, most especially laid out in the teachings of John Cassian, from the early 5th century though he learned it from earlier desert fathers who in turn learned it from those before them. I'm an ex-preacher with two theology degrees but I never encountered Cassian in study or churches. There are many things churches and colleges didn't mention.

The mystical, contemplative traditions in Christianity have cropped up over and over again. Mostly they've been either actively ignored or deliberately suppressed in favour of dogma and narrow conceptions of church, god, humanity, Jesus, control, preserving the status quo. They've been reappearing and been rediscovered more in the last sixty years. Unfortunately they're still mostly ignored, sometimes despised as not proper Christianity as they were by me because I'd been taught to despise and are often drowned out by the noise, dogma and pre-modern, pre-enlightenment beliefs of conservative evangelicalism.

Sixty years ago Thomas Merton's Seeds of Contemplation was published. One of the most important books in the little bit of cultural and contemplative spiritual rediscovery that's happened. The following year Honest to God was published, one of the most important books for the development of progressive Christianity. Sixty years on nothing much has changed in many places. Old dogmas die hard.

As a good evangelical I hated both the contemplative and the progressive teachings. Unfortunately. Being able to read and consider both of them thirty years ago would have saved me no end of difficulty and religious damage from a faith that I wish could have died many years sooner. Then I had only the literal and compulsory agreement. Now there is metaphor and the choice to dismiss whatever insults my soul, as Walt Whitman put it.

John Main ended up founding the World Community for Christian Meditation which continues as one of the groups teaching meditation within Christianity, sometimes to those who are no longer or were never Christians. The form of meditation can be found in many traditions across the world. When words and dogmas fall away the human experience is much the same.

I've been finding him and his successor useful and simple teachers this year. True, I have to translate some things away from concepts that no longer serve me and which harmed me. In my Christian life words and the beliefs surrounding those words often led to harm and an inner prison but I've been learning to deconstruct that old faith, just as many others across the world are doing as part of healing from religious trauma. Some stay in a transformed version of Christianity. Some leave. Whatever is best for the wellbeing of the individual is preferred. It's not as if there's a hell that anyone will be sent to and sometimes religion can be a living hell.

I could learn from Hindus, Buddhists, whoever. Mainly I'm reading the more contemplative Christians simply because I know the vocabulary and learning traditions and faith languages that aren't from my cultural background isn't the most helpful course for now. It's not that one is better or worse than another and I'm sure I'll read more widely as time goes on, without neglecting the joys of reading and learning about all kinds of different subjects, and I do appreciate the dialogue between adherents of different traditions. About the most important things they tend to agree. Doctrine separates. In the experience within silence there is unity.

For now though I will simply say the mantra and see what happens beyond amusement at the extent of my own distraction. I am early on the path, thirty years after I could have been. I am sure I bought this book and another I'm reading, New Seeds of Contemplation, thirty years ago and my narrow Christianity prevented my reading them.

Next year will either be filled with meditation or a decision that it is just a temporary foolishness. I do not mind which. Perhaps it's a useful foolishness though in this time while my body isn't allowing a life as active as I'd wish. It's certainly helping psychologically even though mindfulness wrecked me last year.

For now though. Say the mantra. Be still and know. Or not know.

Time will tell. Or not tell. It doesn't much matter as long as I seek to fully live.

It used to matter when a believed there was only one right way and that we'd all face judgement on whether we followed it.

Now is freedom, not imposition. Not on myself. And definitely not on anyone else. No evangelism here. Find what works for you. All this might not even work for me!

Now is a way, knowing there are potentially infinite other ways including joyful atheistic ways far even from saying you're spiritual but not religious, a phrase that on its own means very little at all. Much like words including god and Christianity. Almost meaningless words on their own.

Now is being able to rejoice in many of the ways others follow as long as those ways aren't abusive. There are many abusive ways too. Pluralism is not anything goes.

Now is a 300 page book that could almost be three words. Say the mantra.

Memories of Life With an Antidepressant Twenty-Five Years Ago

The following came up on Facebook memories today, posted five years ago, back in the days when if you typed too much Facebook told you to post as a "note."  They've abolished notes now and rather than lose these words for another year I'm posting them here.  In the last few days Facebook would have told me to post three things as notes.  I may move them here too so that they won't get lost.  Five years ago I was taking different psychiatric drugs.  They messed me up too, in different ways than the drug in this memory.

Ah, memories. Someone in a group asked if people had been on a particular medication. I have.


Yeah. I have. Years ago. In Northampton. Coincidentally I was discussing it at the weekend with my wife. Her simple statement was "You were dead on it." And that's the truth. She says she got her wife back only when I stopped taking it. It was very, very bad for me. I remember writing a list of 18 bad side effects I experienced. 11 of them didn't diminish for the four months I took the drug. And then the GP upped the dosage and it got much worse. The only thing that kept me alive during that time was the fact that I was already "dead" and couldn't do a damn thing. I would never have died as a result of the depression I faced that year. But on those drugs I wanted to die because there was nothing left of me.


But I was forced by the GP practice to keep taking it. Because if I didn't they weren't going to refer me for any other help. And then they did. I was told I would be referred to see a psychologist to arrange counselling or some kind of talking therapy. My relief was great, as was my wife's. Once the referral was done I came off the drug - against the continuing commandment of the doctor.


It's not the only time I came of medication that was totally screwing me up against the advice of a GP or psychiatrist. A shrink in the day hospital in Crawley put me on an anti-depressant that totally mucked up my ability to function. Give me bad depression - it's better than the side effects! When I talked about how bad the side effects were and how I was feeling worse on it the shrink's reaction was not to stop the drug. It was to increase the drug. That made it worse. I then came off the drug and felt a hell of a lot better. The shrink claimed that he was right - that the drug was working now. He wasn't. I told him so and didn't see him again.

In the end I discharged myself from the day hospital because very little positive ever happened there beyond sitting around bored or doing another jigsaw puzzle. The few nursing staff were good. But even then there was a dire funding shortage and they were helpless to provide any of the useful things they would have liked to have implemented there. My only good memory of the place is meeting a man who had designed props for BBC science fiction programmes, including a central element of one of my favourites.


One patient there was taking a cocktail of a dozen drugs. He'd been referred for depression and given one drug. All of the others were meant to tackle the side effects of the previous. That man would just sit there. Unable to communicate mostly. And he would self harm in the dining room with the knives and forks. I hope that he was somehow able to recover - I doubt he ever could in that place.


Returning to the Northampton story: After some lovely withdrawal (which was quicker than when I came off fluvoxamine, which was pushing me rapidly towards liver failure, and had three months of brain zaps) I felt much, much better. I felt alive for the first time in months. Not psychologically one hundred percent well. But being alive again was amazing.


Was I referred at this point for psychology? No. For some kind of non-pharmaceutical therapy? Any kind? No. Even though the GP had promised me I would be. I got referred to a particularly awful psychiatrist who thought that drugs were the only solution, lied to me, told me to "trust in my expertise", gave me someone else's prescription, showed off about all the extra drugs he could give me that the GP couldn't and then prescribed a drug I'd already been on - even though it was on the list of drugs I'd been on that he read out during the appointment. He promised that the only possible side effect was a few days of mild nausea. I knew from experience that was false.


I walked away from that useless psychiatrist in deep despair, knowing that I wasn't going to be receiving any useful help any time soon, if ever. Had it not been for the care of my wife I would have killed myself. She was able to restore some positivity. I hope that man is no longer practicing. I hope that somewhere down the line he was struck off for something - except that my hope would imply he treated someone else very badly.


But my psychiatric experience isn't my experience of the drug I was asked about. And my experience on that drug is not that same as that of other people. I won’t even name the drug in case my horrific experiences prejudice anyone else who may be offered it. Who knows? They might be helped where I was harmed. Some people are.