A Curious Girl

Lonely

2011-12-23T01:44:00.003Z

"I'm so lonely."

"Is that all?"

He lifted his head and stared at her incredulously. He had not expected that.

"Everyone is lonely, dear," she explained, drawing him close to her. "We touch other people only briefly, then we're alone again. You'll get used to it in time."
- David Eddings, Castle of Wizardry

Shyness is probably my fatal flaw. That and some kind of awkwardness or something. I feel like an alien sometimes, going about in comedy sitcom fashion, trying to work out the rules that are obvious to everyone else. It feels like everyone else falls into being friends with each other so easily, but this alien's still looking for the rulebook on how to make friends.

I was at a party tonight, and although I know and like a lot of people who were there, I found myself wishing that my boyfriend were with me... which is, you know, normal. I wanted him to meet the people that I know and like, and maybe have a picture taken and...

Make me feel special.

I sometimes feel like I wander through life not leaving a mark, like people forget me when I'm not there, like I could walk in snow and not leave a footprint... and I felt a little like I was drifting. Not ignored exactly, but a bit inconsequential. Of course I wanted my boyfriend there because I like him and enjoy spending time with him, but I realised I also just wanted to be part of a team, a cog in a machine not just a bit of useless decorative detail on the casing...

So lonely...

I want to matter, is that so wrong?

Stories, and why life and stories are different

2010-07-31T02:08:00.003+01:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about stories - chiefly how stories are often different from real life. Of course, there are the obvious things - in stories there are things like wizards, unicorns, hobbits, robots that can think for themselves and so on, whereas these things are unlikely to occur in everyday life. And there's that mysterious Dickensian thing where the characters are all mysteriously related (for example, in an entirely unnecessary twist, in Great Expectations it turns out unbeknownst to Pip, he has actually met Estella's real parents. This doesn't help anyone - Estella never finds out who they are - but it does provide a bit of pathos when Estella's real father dies, and Pip is able to tell him that he loves Estella and she is safe).

I've been reading Dear Fatty - Dawn French's memoirs - and also writing a story that is meant to be narrated by an old woman, relating stories from her childhood. So I've rather wondered how memories work, and it has occurred to me that my old woman probably doesn't remember her childhood as clearly as she makes out. I've come up with several theories, therefore, as to how she is constructing her tale - possibly she kept a diary, or perhaps is reconstructing the story using her memories as the bare bones of narrative.

I've taken up playing the ukulele and am trying to write songs. I've got two so far, one which is a love song and one about Rosalind Franklin. And I thought, what better subject for a song, than a story from my own life?

Then I tried to think of a story.

Mark Twain once said, "The truth is stranger than fiction because the truth doesn't have to be consistent." That sounds about right. As I ploughed through my memories looking for something song-worthy, I found that my life simply does not behave itself in a story-like fashion. For instance, I thought of holidays I'd been on (I can still recall our last summer...) - but they weren't really stories, just patchy accounts of places I'd been and people I'd chatted to. All interesting enough in their way, but not enough for a song. Or I thought of friends that I'd known - trying to remember how we met... sometimes I couldn't remember, or it was alarmingly prosaic, something like having a mutual friend at school. There's no story-line to it - just a montage, really, of memories - places, jokes, songs, feeling extremely serious as we sat singing along to Simon and Garfunkel.

Stories have a wonderful way of making sense. One of the things I've noticed in the story I'm writing is how easy it is to tie everything together. Nearly everything has a purpose - it can be foreshadowing, or irony, or metaphor, or pathetic fallacy... Things are appropriate somehow, and even when something in a story is inappropriate, it's usually for a reason. It wouldn't just be irrelevant.

Whereas a lot of life is well, irrelevant. In a story, your character might be going to confront an enemy, and the air is hot and humid, as if before a storm. Both pathetic fallacy and foreshadowing. In real life, you probably wouldn't remember what the weather was like, and chances are it was probably moderate to fair. In a story, your character says, "no, you guys go ahead, I'd like to get some air" and then is attacked by evil monster the moment the party's back is turned. In real life, character gets some air and wanders along later.

It frustrated me, thinking about this, because it made me wonder why we like stories - why are stories written, read and told if they are not really like life at all? I guess in some sense stories are like a thread (a yarn, if you will! :) ) whereas life is more like the cloth or the tapestry. I think of people I've known and places I've been and experiences I've had, and of course they've had the elements of things in stories - after all, stories must be at least a little inspired by life - but the tales haven't ended properly - loose ends not tied up - characters leave without explanation, and a lot of the time, the people who are important in some ways but barely feature. It's embarrassing how many people I feel very grateful to but now am hardly ever in touch with, for no reason better than being busy and not getting around to e-mailing.

On reflection, I've just realised it might be a good thing that I've randomly not quite but nearly lost touch with people. I mean, look at the History Boys - one teacher is the most eccentric and probably the most important to the boys... or look at Pay It Forward - one kid changes the lives of lots of people, some of whom he doesn't know. Or take The Bridge to Terebithia, My Girl, Fried Green Tomatoes, Beaches, Goodnight Mr Tom, or, well, lots of others. In all of these stories, there is a character who is very important, has a role to play in shaping another character's life, and then DIES.

Yes, DIES.

To be fair, this has happened to at least one important person in my life, but our relationship wasn't really film-worthy. There were no life-changing moments, even though it did change my life; nothing that would warrant a weepy with Oscar winning actors and Bette blooming Midler. That person's death did make me really sad - obviously - but there was no real Wind Beneath My Wings moment, thank blooming goodness. His death was not in a delicious twist of irony or in a devastatingly meaningless tragedy, only the sort of sad, horrible thing that happens sometimes. It was, in a sense, meaningless, but not in a melodramatic, end of a movie sort of way. His life didn't end like a story. It just ended like a life.

I think stories are there to make a certain sense of life... to track all those individual strands that are woven in varied directions and tie them up into one long yarn instead. I guess we do need to realise that life is not a story and often doesn't bother to make any narrative sense - but that doesn't mean that stories can't help us find meaning.

Obscure Reviews Inc: Favourite Fairy Tales Part 2

2010-04-04T22:22:00.002+01:00

Thus continues my review of Favourite Fairy Tales translated and adapted by Susanna Noel. You can read Part 1 here.

Trigger warning: Noel apparently doesn't pull her punches, and I discuss whether Little Donkey Skin is suitable for children, as child abuse is hinted at.

The next story in this compilation is Puss in Boots. This begins with a miller who has a mill, a donkey, and a cat, and when he dies, each of his three sons inherits one of these. The youngest son gets the cat and is a bit upset about this.

'My brothers have the chance to earn their living honestly... but as for me, once I have eaten the cat and made myself a coat out of its fur, I will go cold and hungry.' The cat, hearing these words, said to him in a serious tone of voice (for he didn't at all fancy being made into a fur coat):

'Don't upset yourself, master! Just give me a sack, and make me a pair of boots so that I can get through the undergrowth, and you will see that you have not been done so badly to after all.'

To my great disappointment, the miller's son does not respond, "OMG a talking cat !!!111111!!" and then do the sensible thing and take the cat to the circus. But I don't mind that much, nor do I mind that the rather capable cat does not immediately take off for the city and earn his fortune (possibly employing Dick Whittington as his agent). For I must confess, this is a story I really like.

It is, really, a sort of cross-cast Cinderella with a cat instead of a fairy godmother. This innovation is excellent in many respects. Firstly, as we've already seen, and will continue to see, fairy godmothers are rubbish. They make you sleep a hundred years, they don't turn up when you're enslaved in your own home, and they can't do much when your dad wants to make you marry him (see later in this entry for that particular tale...). Secondly, the fairy godmother has magic, which doesn't work as well as it ought to and means you have to leave parties early, whereas cats have cunning, which works as well as it reasonably can. This means that the miller's son's inevitable riches, whilst perhaps not deserved in the traditional meaning of the term, are at least won for him in a satisfying manner, rather than with the wave of a magic wand and a convenient Deus Ex Machina. Thirdly, cats are cute and make excellent loveable scoundrels, and I certainly love a good loveable scoundrel, particularly if I can also tickle him behind his ears...

One minor peeve about this retelling - Puss in Boots claims his master is called "The Marquis of Caracas", which is weird when every child and Neil Gaiman fan knows he is the "Marquis of Carabas" or the "Marquis de Carabas" if you like. But no matter. The eponymous Puss catches rabbits and partridges and presents them as gifts to the king, claiming they are from the Marquis of Caracas. The king is most impressed and mystified (I suspect kings are meant to know the noblemen of their country, but like most fairy tales, I would suggest suspending your disbelief. I mean, it's got a talking cat in it for heaven's sake...).

One day, Puss hears that the king will be driving along the river bank with his beautiful (of course!) daughter, so Puss has a cunning plan. He tells the miller's son to go and bathe in the river on that day. When the king rides past, he shouts, 'Help! Help! My master the Marquis of Caracas is drowning!" The king's men 'rescue' the young 'marquis' and Puss tells them that not only was he drowning, but someone stole his clothes. The king immediately orders his gentlemen of the wardrobe to get the marquis some clothes. I can't help but smile at the passage that follows...

Once dressed in the splendid robes, the young marquis really did look very handsome, and the king was quite taken with him.

I am disappointed that alas it's not that sort of fairy tale, for the king's beautiful daughter is very taken with him, and after one or two tender glances falls madly in love with him. Yeah, we've already established that when royalty fall in love, they do so fast and hard.

The cat realises it's all working out, and phase 2 of the plan goes into action. The cat blackmails some peasants tilling fields and harvesting corn to say that the fields belong to the Marquis of Caracas, or else he would cut them into little pieces. Peasants apparently scare easily and these immediately comply. The king and the marquis and the daughter all come by in a carriage and and all the peasants say that the fields belong to the Marquis of Caracas, and Puss runs ahead, blackmailing more peasants until eventually he comes to a castle. This castle is owned by an ogre (thankfully without daughters) and the ogre really owns all the land in the area. Yes, the ogre owns all the land in the area and yet peasants are terrified of, and take orders from, cats.

The ogre can turn into many different animals. So guess what? Puss dares him to turn into a mouse... and he does... and Puss gobbles him up.

So the Marquis takes the castle, and the land, and also the daughter. He didn't deserve it, of course, but cats don't tend to mind that sort of thing.

I wonder, actually, why this doesn't bother me as much as Cinderella does? I think it might be partly that the miller's son is never really intended to be the main character. The story teller doesn't think that the drippy passive marquis is as important as the clever, suave, and furry individual who has all the tricks. Puss-in-Boots is an appealing character... he's both adorable and debonair. Also the romance isn't the focus of the story, which is good because most fairy tale romances are rubbish and this one is no exception.

Now, after that pleasant interlude, we come to Little Donkey Skin. This isn't the most well-known story, but it is one I have a passing familiarity with. I read two versions as a child, one of which I adored and one that squicked me out. Guess which version Noel picks?

Fairy tales, as I think we've established, are not nice. And Little Donkey Skin... Well. In this tale a beautiful queen is dying, and she chokes out one final wish...

In the version I adored, she tells the king that their daughter must not marry a man unless he is dying with love for her. Awww. But unfortunately it gets about and an unscrupulous knight fakes illness and claims it is because he loves the princess so...

But I suspect this was the cleaned-up version for children (fairy tales, as we have also established, possibly aren't suitable for children).

Noel does not waste her time with such petty nonsenses, certainly.

The queen, on her deathbed, said her weeping husband:
'Before I die, I have one last thing to ask you. Please get married again! ...You need an heir, a son who can take the throne when you die; so you must find another wife. But one thing I would like you to promise me, if you really love me. Don't marry unless you can find a princesss who is more beautiful than I am!'

The king has a beautiful daughter, but this is the olden days, and she cannot inherit the throne. The noblemen remind the king that he must marry, and beauty was not important provided that a queen was virtuous and produced heirs to the throne. If the princess marries, she will marry a prince from another kingdom... Even if her husband chose to remain and rule with her, their children would be of his blood, and the neighbouring kingdoms might use this an excuse to start wars against them. So the king must marry, but the late queen, being good, was incredibly beautiful. No one can compare... except....

His daughter.

He began to realise more and more that his daughter was the only girl in the land who was more lovely than her mother had been. Her freshness and youth filled the king with such a violent love that he could not hide it from the princess and told her that she was his choice for a second wife, since she was the only woman who could release him from her promise. The young princess... threw herself at her father's feet and begged him not to make her commit such a terrible crime.

Now that's dark, creepy and not a little Freudian. In an extra, rather devious twist, the head priest is said to have sacrificed the innocence of the king's daughter by telling her that it would not be a crime for the king to marry his own daughter. The king follows up by giving orders for the princess to obey him.

I'm really intrigued by this rather dark tale, and why precisely Noel included it. In all honesty, I think it is good for children to read stories with 'the good ended happily, the bad ended unhappily', and stories with monsters defeated, stories with peril, and death even, because at the end of the day, children need both the acknowledgement that bad things exist and the reassurance that good people win but...

Well, there are plenty of children who already know that child abuse exists. Really, it's a common theme in fairy tales (we've already seen children enslaved and children abandoned), but I think this is the only story I know that contains what is tantamount to sexual abuse. Could it actually be a good thing that this story, squicky as it is, exists - precisely because it acknowledges the severe wrongness of the relationship, something paedophiles are keen to cover up? Noel's king is powerful and domineering, and even has the church on his side. He overrides the princess's consent and tries to make his actions appear wholesome and normal.

So far, so gritty, and this is probably the grimmest basis for a Cinderella type plot that I know. The princess sets off that night to see her fairy godmother (in a carriage drawn by a large sheep who knew the way to Fairyland) and the fairy godmother, who is called Lilac, tells her she already knows about the king's plans, but not to worry.

'My dear child,' she said, 'it would be a great sin to marry your father; but you can escape doing so without angering him if you do as I tell you. Go and ask your father for a dress the colour of the sky. I'm quite sure he won't be able to find anyone who can make one for him.'

This bothers me, because I can well see why the princess wouldn't want to anger him, but this is truly the most pathetic and useless bit of advice ever given... and guess what, it doesn't work. The king is delighted by this ray of hope because the princess says she will only marry him if he makes the dress.... but before she'd told him she wouldn't marry him at all. Stupid Lilac. The dress, by the way, is ready in two days, and the sky when it is filled with golden clouds could not be more beautiful. The princess goes to Lilac again who suggests trying for the colour of the moon this time. Stupid Lilac, this dress is even nicer and takes half the time.

The fairy, Lilac, who knew everything, came to the aid of the princess and said, 'If I'm not greatly mistaken, you will finally outwit your father if you ask him for a dress the colour of the sun, because he will never be able to find anyone who can do that.'

I'm actually wondering if comedy was Noel's deliberate approach here, because Lilac definitely is greatly mistaken. Like all fairy godmothers, she is useless in the face of real problems, and instead proposes dressmaking challenges like she's on Project Runway or something. And the sun dress is so dazzling that all the tailors who worked on it had to close their eyes for fear of being blinded.

Lilac, to her credit, is, more ashamed at the failure of her plan than she cared to admit, and finally suggests a terrible test - asking for the skin of the donkey that the king loves so dearly.

I must add, at this point, that the donkey is magical and produces money... the king's perversions don't stretch that far...

The king complies right away. Stupid, stupid Lilac! She finally advises our heroine to run away, wrapped in the donkey skin, and arranges for her clothes to follow her in a chest underground... She lends the princess her wand so that the chest will appear whenever she needs it.

What was I saying about fairy godmothers? Lilac must be the most useless I know of, certainly; her goddaughter is on the run and the best she can do is come up with some kind of portable luggage system. How about a disguise? And somewhere to stay? I must repeat that magic is useless. The princess should have kept a cat.

The princess sets out in her donkey skin. I am not sure why this proved such a great disguise, because the king knows that she has it, but in any case it proves effective and she travels far and wide, scorned by all because of her revolting appearance, and she ends up with a job as a farm labourer. She excels at this, but one day catches sight of her own appearance and is deeply ashamed, so the next day in private she cleans up and puts on her sky dress, and feels a lot better. She decides to do this every Sunday from now on.

However, one Sunday a prince happens to pass by, and stops for a meal at the farm. He walks around the farmhouse, and peers through the key hole of a closed door, only to see the princess, dressed in her sundress. He (guess what) falls deeply in love with her, but when he asks who the room belongs to, he is told that it is only little Donkey-Skin, whom nobody ever really talks to.

The prince becomes ill with love, but cannot tell his parents why. Eventually, after being entreated to tell them what is wrong, he asks that Donkey-Skin bake him a cake.

As it happens the princess had seen him peering through the keyhole and watched him ride off, and the memory of him made her sigh with longing. So she cleans up, makes a cake from the best ingredients, but drops her ring into the mixture. (Food hygiene note - remove jewellery before baking). The prince find the ring, which would only fit the slenderest finger in the world. Is this seeming eerily familiar yet?

Girls come from far and wide to try on the ring, but it does not fit them. Finally, the prince, who is actually quite endearingly shy for a fairy tale prince, took his courage in both hands, and asked: 'Has the girl who baked me such a fine cake the other day tried on the ring?' They all laugh because she is so dirty and ugly, but the king insists that she be brought to the palace, and she comes in her donkey skin, but wearing a silver blouse and skirt underneath.

After the ring fits, she lets the skin slip, and reveals how ravishingly lovely she actually is, and the prince feeble though he was, threw himself at her feet and kissed them. It is then that Lilac deigns to appear, descending in a chariot, to tell the king and queen her sad little life story, and they are all pleased to hear she is a real princess, and the prince's love for her increased a thousandfold, which I hope is due to her fortitude and not her royal birth.

The ending, however, bothers me. The princess insists that her father give consent for her to marry, and has a wedding invitation sent to him. He arrives with his new wife, who had not been able to have a child of her own, and moreover her father kissed her tenderly. I think it is meant to show that the princess is no longer scared and has no reason to be scared of her father, both because he has been able to marry another and because she is marrying another... And this is good, because we don't want our heroine to be haunted by her experience forever more. But in all honesty, this ending is much too good for him. I would like him to wither to a pile of dust at her feet and be lost to the four winds.

There are two more tales for our examination, and I hope you don't mind if I squeeze them in here. The penultimate story is called The Fairies, and features a widow who has two daughters. The widow and her eldest daughter are both disagreeable and haughty but the younger daughter is one of the most beautiful girls you have ever seen. The widow prefers her older daughter since people naturally like people who look like them, but makes the younger daughter do all the work, and I don't know why she didn't just rename the poor kid Cinderella and be done with it.

One day, ~~Cinders~~ the younger daughter is fetching water, and an old woman asks if she can have some water from the young girl's jug. The girl is very kind and finds the coolest water, and helps the old woman to drink it.

When she had had enough, the old lady said: 'You are so beautiful and good and so honest that I cannot resist giving you a special gift,' (for the old lady was a fairy who had disguised herself as an old village woman to test the goodness of the younger daughter). 'The gift I bestow on you,' continued the fairy, 'is that every word you utter will come out of your mouth either as a flower or as a precious stone.'

The advantages of such a gift being that she always has a source of wealth, she could get a career in floristry, and people would hang on her every word. The disadvantages being that she's now very open to exploitation, and also that might be a choking hazard.

The mother is amazed by this new gift, and even calls the girl "my daughter" for the first time. After hearing what had happened, and being treated to a cascade of diamonds, the greedy mother then sends the older daughter, whose name is Fenella, out to get water from the same spot. Fenella goes, fuming, and, as she is collecting the water, she sees a magnificently-dressed woman coming towards her out of the forest.

It was the same fairy who had appeared to her sister, but this time she chose to take on the airs and graces of a princess in order to test how far the older sister's courtesy went.

I find this an interesting twist. It's a given that the fairy could not use the same disguise, as the older sister would expect that, but I am not sure of Noel's, or indeed the original author's, intent for this change of disguise. Is the magnificently-dressed woman meant to impress the sister, making it more likely that she would offer her water, therefore damning her more if she does not? Or is this meant to be a harder test - we are all taught to look after an elderly person in need, but we tend to think that ostensibly young and able people should be able to fetch their own water. Or perhaps, this being a fairy tale, is Noel actually implying that a princess is more worthy of water than an old woman?

In any case, unsurprisingly Fenella fails the test, replying haughtily that she should get her own drinking water, and the fairy responds in kind.

'Well, well, since you're so disobliging, I'll give you the following gift: every time you say a word, either a snake or a toad will fall out of your mouth!'

The advantages of this gift are that you can scare away attackers, and you can get a job in a circus. The disadvantages are that it's really nasty.

The mother is upset by this turn of events, but blames the younger daughter. She rushes at her with a broom, so the daughter runs out of the house, and into the forest. The king's son comes by, and asks her what is wrong. As she is explaining, she produces a stream of jewels, and the king's son, who had fallen in love with her at first sight, decided that this gift made her even more valuable, and led her to his father's palace, where in due course they were married.

Well colour me unsurprised, I couldn't have seen that ending coming. Fenella, on the other hand, becomes hateful and the unfortunate girl, after walking for many days without finding anyone to take her in, went into a corner of the forest to die.

Moral of the story: don't be rude to strangers. Ever.

In all honesty, this story seems like a bit of a waste. Can you honesty live happily ever after knowing your prince married you because you have jewels that come out of your mouth? Is refusing to give a princess a drink of water really enough to damn someone forever? I really think this tale could form the basis of a longer story, in which Fenella earns her redemption and ~~Cinders~~ her younger sister learns to deal with her new strange gift. Any budding novelists out there? Also anyone betting this is what I'm going to write next time I have a free minute?

Finally, the anthology reaches Little Red Riding Hood. It is unique in this entry in that it is not a reworking of Cinderella in any way. In fact, it is, as you probably know, about a little girl who lives with her mother and wears a red cape and hood. One day, Red's grandmother is ill and her mother sends her off with a cake and a little pot of butter. I am not sure why Noel needed to include the butter, but to bite a bit of butter makes you bright and better, berhaps. Ahem, perhaps.

On her way, she meets a wolf, who would dearly have loved to gobble her up, but he didn't dare to because there were woodcutters nearby. I once heard that Little Red Riding Hood is really all about sex, and how innocent young women need to be on their guard against dodgy men. If so, I am not sure where grandmother comes in.

Red is a friendly sort, and tells the wolf exactly where she is going, and why.

Oh wait, I've just had another idea - Little Red on the Net! Red is browsing online and shares her details with a charming young man her own age only to discover he's actually a wolf who wants to eat her. Same message but for our modern age.

The wolf set off as fast as his legs could carry him on the path that was the shortest route, and the little girl walked along the longest path, amusing herself by gathering nuts, chasing after butterflies, and picking bunches of pretty wild flowers.

What a girl. And what a time waster. Bet that butter melts all over the cake.

All right, I'm bored now and this 'review' has turned into one of those mammouth English essays. You'll be pleased to hear the story unfolds as usual, but there is one odd thing, given the rest of the book - the wolf does not eat Grandma. In fact, striking a blow for both realism and age-appropriateness, instead of the woodcutter cutting the wolf in half and rescuing her from his belly (a gory but satisfying touch) instead Grandma is hidden in the cupboard and escapes later, thus ensuring her survival without any surrealist touches.

So, in conclusion, Favourite Fairy Tales is a deeply disturbing book. The pictures don't help, either, as the heroines invariably look like dolls and creepy dolls at that. The stories all emphasise beauty before all, and have a very twisted sense of age-appropriateness that doesn't seem to be at all consistent. Did I enjoy it? Of course I did, although I enjoyed writing this more. Would I recommend it? My parents have a copy, if anyone's interested.

Obscure Reviews Inc: Favourite Fairy Tales Part 1

2010-04-03T17:22:00.004+01:00

I like reviews. And recently I have read a book I doubt anyone reading this blog will ever be able to read (my parents have a copy, if anyone's interested, though). Thus I must warn you that this review contains spoilers, and is written mainly for my amusement.

My parents, being grandparents to two (three in October) have a stash of books and toys in the spare room. Since I'm sleeping there this weekend (it used to be my room after all), I've perused the book cases for my amusement, and since I possess a certain fondness for folk tales, decided to read "Favourite Fairy Tales" which was translated and adapted by Susanna Noel (it doesn't say from what) and illustrated by Paul Durand.

The Fairy Tales in question are The Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Tom Thumb, Puss in Boots, Little Donkey Skin, The Fairies and Little Red Riding Hood. And I read them all, except for Tom Thumb which I scanned because it was a bit too gory for me.

Sleeping Beauty is rendered mostly after the traditional style. There are a king and queen who struggle to have children for years and eventually have a daughter. This seems a fairly usual conceit of Sleeping Beauty and yet I'm not sure why it's necessary, given it has no bearing on what follows. Perhaps it's necessary for the daughter to be the heir, but, still, I am baffled.

There is also the "uninvited fairy" plot device - Noel emphasises that her lack of invitation was through an error, as the king believed her to be dead or cast under a spell (she is described as an "old fairy" which seems odd, I didn't think fairies were meant to age). The fairies all give gifts. I've always thought that the sort of gifts fairies give are profoundly ridiculous and these contain some gems. For example, the first fairy said that she would be the most beautiful baby in all the world, which seems rather pointless. In fact, I wonder if it was a cop-out because all mothers believe their babies are the most beautiful in the world. The second says she will have the spirit of an angel - I'm not entirely sure what that would entail - and whilst the third says her every action would be filled with grace, the fourth says she will dance beautifully, which seems like a given, if she's already very graceful. The fifth says she would have the voice of a nightingale, which is patently ridiculous, and finally the sixth says she would be able to play every kind of musical instrument, which for my money is probably the only decent gift of the bunch.

The old fairy then curses her with pricking her finger on a needle and dying. Yes, a needle. This is a bit bizarre, given the rest of the book - this entirely pointless dumbing down of the original tale. Later, when the young princess meets an old woman it says she is "sewing with a spindle". Very odd.

The end, unfortunately, does no real job of improving the original - rather boringly the princess falls in love with the prince at first sight.

Trembling, he went up to the bed and knelt beside it, and kissed her cheek. The princess stretched her arms, opened her eyes and smiled at him, her eyes tender with love.

'Is it you, my prince?' she asked
Enchanted by her words, the young prince declared his love for her and asked her to be his wife.

Which is just the sort of fairy tale rubbish I hate. I've always much preferred the stories where the heroine has to climb up glass mountains in iron shoes.

So the next story of our Favourite Fairy Tales is Cinderella. Another well-known fairy tale that's been turned into a much-loved Disney movie. There is a nobleman, who marries again, and the second wife has two ugly daughters. My mother used to tell me that the ugly sisters were really just ugly inside, but Noel's version makes short work of that presumption - their ugliness is mentioned repeatedly, and there is also a definite hint that they are fat too.

The sisters had not eaten for nearly three days so that they would be able to fit into their ball dresses, and even then Cinderella had to lace them into their corsets by pulling on the bedposts.

I'm not sure how that's meant to work, or why the sisters couldn't get dresses in their own size. Or, in fact, why given this little detail, they look very ordinary in the pictures. Perhaps that's the magic of corsets.

Cinderella's father is still alive in this version, but it is mentioned that he would have only scolded her anyway because he was entirely under her stepmother's thumb. Sigh, those women.

Cinderella watches the sisters go. She sits down and cries, when suddenly her beautiful fairy godmother appeared! Did I mention this book loves beauty? It's really no wonder Beauty and the Beast wasn't featured, the idea of good people not being beautiful hasn't occurred to Noel. It bothers me in this version, as it bothers me in every version of Cinderella, that the godmother only appears at this point. Gee, you'd think being starved in a garret and made a servant in your own home might warrant a bit of magical aid, but no, it's only when a party comes up that she feels she should pop in. To quote York University's PantSoc Cinderella, "You can give me a makeover but you can't solve any of my real problems? Have you ever considered a career in daytime television?"

So yes, the fairy godmother proceeds as per usual, giving Cinders all the lovely things and entreating her to be back by midnight. Cinders arrives at the ball and her beauty stops everything.

As they entered the violins stopped playing, the dancing came to a halt and everybody stopped talking, as they all stared in wonder at the beauty of this unknown princess! A murmur went through the crowd, 'Oh how lovely she is!' 'Did you ever see anyone so beautiful?' Even the king himself, old as he was, could not take his eyes off her and whispered to the queen, 'It's been years and years since I've seen anyone so pretty!'

Yeah, ok, we get it. I'm sure the queen is old enough and mature enough to not be irrationally jealous by this, but I sort of hope that the king followed this up with "Why, she's almost as beautiful as you" or similar. Chivalry's not dead, is it?

The prince, obviously, falls in love with her at first sight, and sits next to her in the banquet, passing her sweetmeats, which she, with admirable daring, passes on to her step-sisters. This apparently astonished them because they didn't recognise her. I imagine they might have been even more stunned if they had recognised her.

She goes home and asks her fairy godmother - who was apparently waiting - if she can go again the next night. It seems to me unlikely that even fairy-tale monarchs would hold balls every single day, but apparently this one does, because she goes the next night and forgets to leave at a quarter to twelve, instead leaving as the clock strikes, leaving the glass slipper on the steps. The sisters report after the ball that the prince had put it in his pocket. They said he kept kissing it all evening, and they were sure he was in love with the mysterious beauty. Whom he knows nothing about. But that part isn't really Noel's fault - it's the usual fairy tale crap.

Of course the story unfolds as per usual - the sisters did everything they could to force their big fat feet into the tiny little slipper... Ooh, did we mention the ugly sisters are also fat? But luckily there is a chance for their redemption, as, when they discover she was indeed the beautiful princess, beg for forgiveness and Cinderella tells them she will always love them. She then (because she was as good as she was beautiful) invites her sisters to live in the palace with her and they marry two noblemen.

I'm actually all in favour for adapting fairy tales - I certainly like to do it all the time - but I'm not sure this really hits the right spot. I mean, isn't it awfully convenient that the sisters hate Cinderella while their mother forces her to be a servant, but suddenly want forgiveness just as soon as she earns her riches? It seems odd that the story about Cinderella ends up being about the two sisters - which makes me wonder whether Noel rather felt sorry for them. Her incarnation of them does make them rather petty, vain characters.

And I think this is one of the problems of this book - Noel is pressed with the task of infusing life into well-worn old stories. There are some nice touches, like the sweetmeats (later revealed to be candied oranges) and the fact that the sisters make fun of Cinderella whilst gossiping all their secrets. One suspects maybe they might have been friends, were it not for the mother's influence. But on the other hand, Noel has named this book "Favourite Fairy Tales", and we're expecting Cinderella, which is a fairy tale, not some gritty family drama.

Anyway, on to the next story, which is Tom Thumb. This story confused me because I was sure I remembered Tom Thumb being vastly different to the story in the book, although I think I had it confused with Thumbelina, another story about a thumb-sized individual. The story opens with a woodcutter, his wife, and seven boys between the ages of 7 and 10 (the woodcutter's wife always seemed to have two babies at once is the sole explanation for this). They are poor and their youngest child causes them grief because he doesn't say a word, but is actually the wisest of the brothers. Noel notes because he didn't say anything he had plenty of time to listen and learn.

I can just imagine a parent of a particularly talkative child saying that last a little too loudly and clearly... In any case, for some reason this very small, silent child is still the bane of their life. I am not sure why, but perhaps young Tom was born prematurely (he was the size of a man's thumb, after all) and perhaps nowadays we would say he is disabled or autistic. The Golden Goose has a similar theme, with the youngest brother being disliked and called "Simpleton" but ending up with all the riches. Perhaps there was some element of disability rights in ye olde days, though only for the boys.

The family are very poor, and the parents decide to abandon their children in the woods. Hansel, I mean Tom, is very clever and collects white pebbles, which he scatters behind them to guide them home again, and then they get abandoned again, and Hansel, I mean Tom, scatters breadcrumbs, which get eaten by the birds, so they're lost.

I can't help but think that it was actually a pretty stupid plan all round, however. The woodcutter abandons his children in dense forest so they can't come home? How on earth did he find his own way home then? Silly. And Tom, despite apparently never talking, does choose this most opportune moment to say "Don't worry, brothers! Father and mother have left us here, but I know how to get us back home. Follow me!" and with not a word of how astonished his brothers must have been. Why did you never speak before? I never had anything I needed to say...

Of course, I mustn't miss the charming interlude where the mother frets and the father gets impatient and threatens to beat her. Honestly, leaving out spindles but including threats of domestic violence? Is this book really meant to be suitable for children?

After various perils, including wolves who threaten to eat them up but somehow don't get around to it, the boys find a house on the edge of the forest. A woman with a good-natured face opens the door and explains that this is the home of a wicked ogre who eats children for breakfast. Tom asks if they might stay, as the wolves in the forest would certainly eat them up otherwise, although they're not in the forest anymore, apparently. Tom (talkative little kid, now) suggests the the ogre might take pity on them. So the ogre's wife (some women really don't marry well) takes them in, and then the ogre returns.

And the ogre says, "Fee, Fie, Foe, Fum..." Oh, no he doesn't. But he does notice a smell of raw meat, and finds the boys, hiding under the bed, and although they all beg for their life, he tells his wife to make the gravy. She points out that it's a little late for a dinner party, and persuades him to wait until the morning.

OK, I'm going to be brave and read the story properly now. If I have nightmares, I'm blaming Susanna Noel. Might have to leave the light on tonight...

All right, back now. So, the ogre's wife puts Tom and the boys to bed (the same bed - they did that in the olden days) in one room. But the ogre has seven daughters who all sleep in the same bed (a different bed) too. They all sleep with crowns on their heads (they didn't tend to do that in the olden days). Tom, not wanting to be eaten in the night, switches the brothers' nightcaps (I don't know where they got nightcaps from) with the daughters' crowns. I must mention at this point that the daughters are, of course, implied to be ugly.

They all had wonderful complexions because, like their father, they ate a lot of raw meat, but they had little round eyes and crooked noses, and huge mouths with sharp, pointed teeth.

Both some dodgy dietary advice and what seems like some gratuitous ugliness. Though I suppose if they were beautiful, what happens next would seem terribly sad.

Yes, the ogre is peckish in the middle of the night. And he gets his big knife out and slices his daughters to pieces.

Yuck!

I mean, I know we can't blame Tom for not wanting to be eaten, also the ogre is pretty stupid to not recognise his own daughters, also the ogre shouldn't be chopping up small children anyway, but in all seriousness, given that Noel says Tom and the brothers run away while it is still the middle of the night, facing ravenous wolves anyway, was the hat-switching trick really necessary?

I know I'm probably being melodramatic, because most fairy tales are somewhat bloodthirsty - the original Cinderella had the ugly sisters chopping off bits of their big fat feet so they would fit in the shoes. Snow White made her stepmother dance in hot iron shoes (regrettably no glass mountains involved though). But it seems weird that in a book where the ugly sisters are redeemed, the hero of another tale is allowed to cause an ogre to kill his own children. It stops short of his actually eating them, although mainly this is so that Mrs Ogre can faint at the sight of them the next day.

Ogre is certainly rather angry in the morning. He fetches the seven-league boots, and catches up with the boys, who apparently ran seven leagues through dense forest in the night. I know, I'm a pedant, but seriously, it seems unlikely, particularly as they've barely eaten. At this point they've managed to find their way very nearly back home, but they see the ogre leaping from mountain to mountain and crossing rivers in a single bound and Tom hides them all under a rock.

And it all ends happily, for Tom at least, because the ogre falls asleep, Tom nicks the boots, and goes back to Mrs Ogre, telling her that her husband has been taken captive by thieves who will kill him unless they get all his silver and gold. The wife, who is clearly extremely gullible, gives Tom all their riches, and he goes home to his parents and brothers, who never go hungry again. It is really rather like Jack and the Beanstalk, but with some extra devious twists. I'll leave it to you to decide which you prefer...

The review (and general snarking!) will continue in Part 2.

So about Nick Griffin on Question Time...

2009-10-23T17:23:00.001+01:00

Appreciate I may be preaching to the choir here, but a rant is always good...

Firstly, please go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/default.stm and leave a comment if you can, there are far too many scary Griffin sympathisers on there...

Now, the infamous edition of Question Time. What's a relief is that Nick Griffin came across as an idiot. Claimed he'd been misquoted, but refused to deny anything specific, apart from apparently "I never said black people walk like monkeys"... yeah, no one had accused him of that. Then he attempted to deny things he'd said on film with a leader of the Ku Klux Klan ("an entirely non-violent one!"). He even laughed when Bonnie Greer said, "If I was in your party, I'd be scared!" But the joke was on him.

What concerned me rather was the way that the other speakers never quite addressed either the Iraq issue or the immigration issue - surely this is where Griffin holds the most sway. The one moment where somebody perhaps got close to refuting him was when he said "bogus asylum seekers" and Sayeeda Warsi said "No, there is no such thing as a bogus asylum seeker, the term is asylum seeker, it's a legal term" but didn't elaborate, unfortunately. I also wish someone had addressed how the mainstream parties also scapegoat immigrants, like that appalling 2005 Tory campaign.

Also, the furore over his use of the term "indigenous". As Bonnie Greer pointed out, his idea of what is "indigenous British" is flawed anyway... White Britons are Celtic, Roman, Viking, Anglo-Saxon, Norman etc. Worse than that, his erroneous assumption that being "indigenous British" is comparable to being Maori in New Zealand or "Red Indians (sic)" in America. Worryingly, that seems to have struck a chord with a few of the people on BBC Have Your Say... despite the obvious extrapolation of that idea. If Griffin wants all the immigrants and their descendents to go home, does he want all the emigrants and their descendents to come back? Should America and New Zealand and Australia be emptied of anyone other than the aboriginals? Scarily I might have some respect for Griffin if he actually said that... but then his pals, the non-violent KKK, might not agree with him. He also had no real answer to what is meant to happen to people of mixed ethnicity

Also his use of phrases such as genocide and lynch mob surely show just how ridiculous his argument is. He seems to think that white British people suffer racism, but uses phrases that imply Nazi gas chambers used to kill Jews, homosexuals, disabled people, and anyone they didn't like... or his pals the KKK hanging black people. The very fact that Griffin is allowed to appear on national TV, on a two-thirds White British panel, and that those who support him are allowed to say so, on BBC websites no less, makes this exaggeration of terms so absurd I can't find words to describe it.

Anyway, to be honest I rather feel sorry for Griffin... he seems to live in a sad world where diversity is bad and the English are horrendously oppressed. He should grow up, get to know a few people with different backgrounds, and also go to some folk festivals. England's not dead, it's alive and well, just aware that it's not the centre of the universe.

...And now I rather want a curry...

Male bias in movies - why?

2009-05-22T11:17:00.002+01:00

Gender relations is a rather tricky kettle of fish. In a Facebook note, I talked about the Bechdel Test which is a very simple measure of whether women are properly represented in films...

A film passes the Bechdel test if...

1) It has two or more women in it
2) Who talk to each other
3) About something other than a man.

One of the reasons this is quite a satisfying measure is that it is so simple and yet so many films fail. After writing the original post, I saw both the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and the Fantastic Four. LoEG had one female character. The Fantastic Four had about three female characters, none of whom spoke to each other (to be fair there was a near miss at the end, in which two women got a drink together but didn't actually say anything before the camera angle changed). The Da Vinci Code only just passed, in the last ten minutes of the film, and had four female characters (only one named) to its myriad male characters.

God knows why I watched the Da Vinci Code, but I was disappointed by the other two. I wasn't exactly expecting brilliance but I like superhero films and I know plenty of women who do. Why then, are we so underrepresented in the cast, relegated to the one stock "girl" character and/or love interest?

It's also something found in kids' movies and TV. Not all of them to be fair - of Disney movies alone, Jungle Book, Bambi, Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Pirates of the Caribbean (all the trilogy), The Lion King, Aladdin, all fail. But Beauty and the Beast (I think. If you count tea pots), The Little Mermaid (there's a maid who talks at Ariel while she's bathing) and Cinderella pass. Feel free to add your own examples of failures and passes.

Perhaps this apparent discrepancy is down to style of film. All the failed Disney films mentioned have an element of the "buddy" story, two (sometimes three) guys, on a journey of discovery. With Jungle Book, it's Mowgli, Baloo, and Bagheera. In Bambi, it's Bambi and Thumper (and Flower, of course!). Toy Story it's Woody and Buzz. In Pirates, Jack and Will. In the Lion King, Simba, Timon and Pumbaa. In Aladdin, it's Aladdin and the Genie. And of course, Abu. It's a time-honoured tradition. Best pals, have fun, beat the bad guy, one of them gets the girl. There are hundreds of movies with this template, even the Muppet Movie starts with Kermit and Fozzie on a roadtrip.

And it makes me wonder what the female equivalent of this is. Thelma and Louise, obviously. Mamma Mia certainly comes close, being about one woman and her daughter, both of whom have two best friends with whom they can sing Abba songs. And both characters get the guy (not the same one, obviously) while their friends are humorous and supportive in the background.

It also makes me wonder what it is that means that in all these various movies where one guy "roadtrips" or equivalent, that a woman so rarely comes along. Is it to prevent inevitable romance? (One thing I will say for the Da Vinci Code is that I was pleased that the two main characters managed to grow merely a warm friendship through all the trials they suffered together.)

Is it because the idea of women roadtripping seems inherently wrong? Perhaps, alas, here's the rub. In old tales there are always wandering knights, and wandering minstrels, while women were staying put having babies. True, there are the occasional tales where women climb up glass mountains wearing iron shoes (there are always iron shoes for some reason) but it's only in the course of true love. Even poor Jane Eyre fled from Thornfield to avoid damaging her chastity and not out of any spirit of adventure.

So maybe my conclusion has to be we women, and anyone else who feels underrepresented by the film industry (LGBTQI people and people from ethnic minorities, step this way) should all stop watching silly male buddy movies, loose the bonds of our oppression and go on one big roadtrip. Who needs movies when we have real life?

Let's ride into the sunset!

(Does anyone here have a car?)

Alphabetical Pie

2009-05-05T17:53:00.002+01:00

I hadn't written a parody for ages and then I hit on the idea of a parody with each line beginning with a different letter of the alphabet, preferably with internal alliteration too. But by the time I'd got to the chorus, and the letter T, I decided I didn't want to see another thesaurus again.

So, to the tune of American Pie...

An age and an age ago
Becomes me to brood over
Choruses creating curled-up lips
Discerning destiny's throw of dice
Expressive dancing I'd entice
For felicitious feelings it equips
Gelid February goaded grieving
Helped handsomely by papers heaving
Ignoble info inside
Just jilted me to abide
Knowledge scarce on tears I shed
Learning of the lass he'd wed
Maybe I was moved, that said
Now all the notes have died

Oh, over! Our American Pie
Parked my pickup by the flood protectors
Quit and quite dry
Rural rakes were refreshing with rye
Singing, soon I will sigh my last sigh
Today will be the time that I die

(I think "ignoble info inside" for "bad news on the door step" is probably my favourite line. "Flood protectors" makes me wince, and "knowledge" seems like cheating somehow...)

Ambitions

2009-03-15T22:47:00.002Z

Things I would like to make and do -

A knitted purple handbag
A floral dress with smocking around the waist
A big painting, haven't decided what of yet...
Several fun piano and percussion arrangements of popular songs
Papier maché ornaments for my room
Secret postcards!
A liquid-look satin party dress
A top with puffed sleeves
A hat with cat ears on it (for Eric)
The thick socks I promised Ceri ages ago
Write a musical!
Lots of drawings
My very own pop-up book
Make cake
Learn to cook some kind of new dish
Start maintaining my blog again
Start a new blog for all the things I've made and done
Write a novel or four
Finish the show we've been rehearsing for ages
Do a project at work based on Sergeant Pepper (I think it could be awesome)
Find a way to put all my various talents to good use...

Things I'm actually likely to be able to do

Finish my tunic that I'm sewing.
Scribble a few thoughts in my spare time in a notebook
Possibly do some painting, when I get around to it.
Get a new zip for my handbag
Fulfil all the criteria for my minute yearly payrise.

Oh well...

Hmmm...

2009-03-08T17:58:00.003Z

Hi folks... I'm back for a little while.

I seem to feel rather like life is one big haze at the moment. Possibly because I have another show coming up (am chorus with a few solo lines in this one... it's a Sondheim. Fun, but I still miss my G&S!), and there have been yet more changes at work. I wouldn't mind but I came in on the Monday morning of my week off to sort out what was going on, and by the afternoon they'd changed it. Sigh. I want to run away and start my own project/anarchist collective.

Also I've learned to sew, which is quite exciting, I've made a skirt, a gingham dress, and I'm working on a top, which I've done from a pattern, and it just needs the sleeves doing, the hemming and the sparkly stuff put on.

There are just so many things I want to make and do, but there doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day. It's frustrating.

And I wonder if this desire to write stories and articles, to knit people hats and scarves and novelty socks, to sew myself all the party dresses for all the parties I never get invited to, to do a series of paintings, and to do all the fun drama projects in the world at work, maybe it's all from some kind of desire to validate myself.

It's depressing that at 25 years old there's still a part of me desperate to prove myself.

Two tunics

2009-01-15T23:51:00.004Z

It occurred to me recently that there is a Bible verse I often refer to as a moral principle (though, as with most of my principles, I am but an imperfect example).

It's funny because I have thought of this verse so many times but never really considered the full application before now.

Often, if asked how to live, Christians will refer to "Love your neighbour" (Leviticus 19:18) or "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44) or "And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8). And they are all such lovely all-encompassing verses that I'm a bit surprised to realise that I also have set a lot of store by Luke 3:10-11.

10"What should we do then?" the crowd asked.

11John answered, "The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same."

I love the advice because it is so practical. "Love your neighbour" is the command, but this is a good example of specifics - if you have more than you need, give to someone who needs it. If this has never come up in a Christian Anarchy meeting (or "Christianarchy" :) ) I will eat my remaining tunic.

It's funny, I thought of it recently because a friend made a comment about "the coat you always wear". It has occurred to me that I can be somewhat parsimonious when it comes to clothes. I have one winter coat and one summer coat, plus two hoodies and a number of jumpers (sweaters, to Americans reading), most of which I was given. There's a small part of me that deeply believes that it is sinful to buy anything expensive. Of course it's perfectly fine for my parents to get me a laptop... Ahem.

And I felt, for a short while, a little smug, as I have one coat and thus am not hording many coats that the poor might be wearing.

And even better, I was given the coat by a friend and so it too is not sitting unused in a wardrobe.

And then it occurred to me that it's really easy to take Bible verses and twist them so they're about green living or anarchism or voting for the Republican/Democrat party, or not buying a coat because you're tight, and perhaps I'd missed the point somewhat.

There's a horrible tendancy in Christianity (and society in general) to emphasize clean living (no drinking, no smoking, little sex for some, low carbon emissions and recycling for others) above actually loving other people and doing good. And here lies the flaw in my smugness. I am not good for owning one coat and therefore not giving one to the poor. I would love to say that having one coat makes me better than people with two coats, but it doesn't, it just means that I have come up with a more subtle way to get out of sharing. On the plus side, it does mean that I can buy another coat if I want, just I should be on the look-out for someone to give the old one to.

The other thing that occurred to me was, how can I apply this motto further? I am sure I have a few things I don't need, even if a tunic is technically not among them, and when it comes to food we tend to buy as we need, although we do enjoy having guests.

There are always lots of collections going around for clothing for the homeless, and of course, if global capitalism had been around in John's time, he'd have probably had a few things to say about bank accounts (right now, "Don't bother", probably). Of course, I thought, giving money to charity and clothing to charity shops or homeless shelters or similar, is really in the spirit of what John was saying. Give to the needy, don't hoard up for yourself. Matthew 6:19 and all that.

But actually, I thought, maybe charities and collections actually aren't what John would have had in mind if such things existed at the time. I'm not saying they're not really good things, especially for overseas aid, but John doesn't say, "I am collecting unneeded tunics and distributing them to the poor", he says "share with him who has none".

And the implication of this is that we should make the effort of finding "him who has none" and making sure he gets our spare tunic and leftover spag bol. This again emphasizes the difference between clean living Christianity and actual Christianity - you can tidily and efficiently give to charity, there are standing orders and direct debits and ways to do it without even trying, but it takes effort and courage to personally find out who is in need and how we can help them. It's tricky and sometimes messy, and means you may end up among everyone whom society hates - the homeless, the asylum seekers, the poor, the working classes, people with learning disabilities, criminals, the mentally ill... the scroungers, the druggies, the conmen, the loonies, the scum... the needy.

Because helping people is not just about paying someone else to do it - in order to make a real difference we need to give ourselves. It's not just about the tunic, it's the person sharing the tunic who can make the difference. It's not just about being warm, it's knowing someone cared enough to figure out that you actually needed a tunic and wanted to give it to you.

Maybe I just know too many Christian Anarchists (Christianarchists... snort...) but I'm tired of how impersonal Christianity - and society - can be. It's possible to care for people at a distance, with charity and direct debits and shoebox presents and letters - but let's care for them up close too.

PS: I really wanted to call this post "Two Coats of Saint"...

It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it...

2008-12-10T23:44:00.007Z

Hi folks, long time no see. Well, I now have both a lovely new laptop and the desire to blog.

Lots of... stuff seems to have happened recently, including both the arrival and departure of a new housemate, the 1st birthday of one nephew (yay!) and the birth of another nephew (yay!), changes at work and my 25th birthday. Do I need to tell you how old I feel? 25 feels like a milestone... of course I'm not saying that I've jumped the shark or anything, just that it's weird that I'm starting to no longer fit into the "young person" age bracket. Guess I should be all grown-up and mature, right?

It snowed in Bradford the day after my birthday, and I was ludicrously excited, even though I didn't get to play in it or take pictures, and my trainers got wet. I did, however, throw a snowball at my boss.

I like my boss very much, as a person. Said boss shrugged off effects of snowball and hyperactive childish 25 year old in snow, and said boss is also a goth who can quote Gilbert and Sullivan. Unfortunately said boss is incurably NICE. I sometimes despair that boss cannot seem to get anything DONE!

It's terrible, but I feel so frustrated at work right now. Our former Glorious Leader (or GL) went off to set up her own business which is apparently doing fantastically, and in her absence we've been short-staffed, our Other Glorious Leader (or OGL) has been vanishing off to do "paperwork" so we hardly ever see her, I feel like I've had to run the place and think up all the ideas and we've had no real time to plan, and to top it off I'm doing it all in the lowest wage bracket and boss attempted to compensate for this by mumbling something about my record of achievement. No, it's nearly Christmas... what I want is MONEY.

Yes, I know, I'm a bad Christian Agnostic*. But... oh, I guess what I really want is to feel appreciated. Boss's smiles and OGL's comments about how well we're doing when she's rarely there to witness it just don't really satisfy me anymore. I used to be passionate about this job - I still believe in it, but I'm beginning to feel that our ex-Glorious Leader had more than a point about how you just can't do it with our management... I feel that instead of being given rein to do wondrous and glorious things we are handed setback after setback, and then told everything will be better when the new staff are in. Yeah, I remember that one from last year.

The trouble is, we have got a new staff member now, and she is lovely. She's a few months younger than me, and coincidentally her attitude is like mine a few months ago. And coincidentally, just as GL worried about management crushing my enthusiasm, I'm worrying about management crushing her enthusiasm. She's chock full of ideas, she seems good at the job... I want to be her again, and but I also want to mutiny and turn our work into an anarchist collective where we can sink or swim on our own, rather than having them deny us staff and resources and then tell us we can't finish our big and ambitious project because it wouldn't match up to GL's standard. I really want to be enthusiastic for new staff member, want to tell her the sky's the limit and we can fulfil our dreams but I've had rather too many dreams trodden on lately.

What to do? Well, it's nearly Christmas - I'm just hoping things are better in the new year.

* I know, "Christian agnostic" may be a contradiction in terms, but I still don't believe the Bible except where I do**. This means that I deep down believe that I shouldn't care about money, except that I do. Because I still like the Sermon on the Mount, except for the bits that I don't. Confused? Try being me.

** And yes, I know that I am very wrong and probably going to Hell or at least purgatory in the unlikely event that such places exist.

Does my job need more meaning?

2008-09-01T20:05:00.002+01:00

I know this post is criminally close to the last one. Don't start getting ideas, I'm borrowing Sophie's computer because she's away in Eastern Europe.

Been thinking much about work lately. That is possibly because I am married to my job. Seriously, I don't just enjoy it, I think about it all the time, I endured a pay cut so I could have it permanently, I spend my free time thinking about how I could do it better...

The bad thing about this is it kind ruins "What do you do?" conversations. I say "I do drama with adults with learning disabilities" and I admit I often think, subconciously, "Haha, beat that!" It's terrible.

Part of the reason for my love is because I really like my co-workers. This has also ruined conversations. We had a member of staff from the day centre where I used to work who asked me which of the staff I missed there. I honestly couldn't think of anyone, besides one whom I still see (Hi Mark! :) ). And, it's sort of hard to miss someone who's still around. For the first time in a long time, I get what it means to work in a team, I feel like I have a part in it - I'm neither hovering somewhere looking embarrassed (my position in most sports) nor carrying everyone else. I have my own part and that is very nice.

Also, and it really should go without saying, I really care about - and like - the guys I support. They're lots of fun. And most of them have wicked senses of humour.

The weird thing about my co-workers, though, is that since our ex-Glorious Leader sort-of offered me a possible job for the future for more money, that they don't just think I'd do it for the money, they believe this would be a perfectly valid reason to. They wouldn't think I'd split on them lured by the lucre, they'd probably congratulate me on a choice well made. Arguably, the fact that I find this weird says more about me than it really does about them. But as I sort of hinted in my previous post, I want some kind of hope and purpose, some kind of meaning! Have actually looked at the website for L'Arche with the vague idea of becoming an "assistant" in one of their communities. Have no doubt that my colleagues would think this is kinda nuts, I mean, it would mean moving again for a job that probably pays less but is probably more intense than mine at the moment...

But it would mean working for an organisation that actually cares. I mean, working for the NHS is kinda disheartening after a while. What the heck am I doing in "health" anyway? I'm a support worker! I should be in support! And why does there have to be so much management? What do these people do all day anyway?

Sigh. So basically I am doing a job I love but slightly guiltily pining for something "more". But what is more? If all the caring people leave the NHS, who would that leave? There isn't enough room to send all the people with LDs to L'Arche.

Who knows? Want to go and visit one of L'Arche's communities anyway :)

Stuff that's happened lately. And Greenbelt.

2008-08-31T18:17:00.006+01:00

Back again, at last!

I used to love blogging, didn't I? Before it was all popular and when it was just about people's lives. Now it's all about opinions! And the trouble with opinions is that there are lots of people who have their own and want to argue with yours and sometimes I'm just not in the mood (to be fair, sometimes I am in the mood, which is probably why I occasionally get addicted to mesmerisingly awful Christian fundamentalist sites).

So... I'm back. As usual, the more exciting my life is, the less time I feel like blogging about it. Luckily for you guys, I've just had the most unexciting weekend in ages. The action-packed events kicked off on Saturday when I woke up early and sat watching Tru Calling on DVD whilst still in my pyjamas. There was a slight down-turn when I discovered there was a car on fire outside (a veritable crowd had gathered, yet none of us thought to call the fire brigade. In my defence, I really thought the owner of the car would have thought of it first). But fortunately the fire was extinguished, leaving me to further enjoy my boring day. Eventually I got dressed, watched more TV, did the washing up, tidied up a bit, played with the cat, sang along to Pirates of Penzance, and by this time it was dinner time, so we ate that and watched Big Fish.

Today I managed more Tru Calling and the repeat of the final of Last Choir Standing. Ysgol Glynaethwy should have won, dammit!

When I was at primary school, for quite some time we had to spend Monday mornings writing about our weekend. For someone who liked writing stories, this posed a problem. I usually had a weekend on a par with this one. I think the car on fire part was kind of exciting, but I suspect most kids realise that detailing things like being dragged around the supermarket, watching the TV, calling someone on the phone and eating potato salad for tea is incredibly boring. I usually ended up writing the plot of whatever I'd seen on television, so you'd get things like "I watched Hyacinth Bucket on Keeping Up Appearances. She entered a flower-arranging competition" etc.

So, down to news! Where have I been? What have I been doing? I bet you're all desperate to know! First of all, we have a FIFTH housemate, she is very small and hairy and I let her sit on my lap... Because she's a kitten, her name is Kerfuffle (and she is one, believe me).

Secondly, I am going to have ANOTHER NEPHEW!! Yay :) My sister's pregnant and going to have a little boy in November. I am sure he will be just as adorable as my other nephew. (Best. Nephews. Ever.)

Thirdly... I've been to Buxton, and Greenbelt. Buxton was the veritable smorgasbord of Gilbert and Sullivan. This year we saw Youth Iolanthe, Trent Opera's Sorcerer, Southampton's Ruddigore, Savoynet's Princess Ida, and a professional production of The Gondoliers, the latter from the worst seats I've ever had. Still, they were the only ones left, what can you do? We didn't have James this year (he was away. Something to do with a honeymoon, apparently. Honestly, they'd only been married two days!) though we did get the inimitable Jim for the last couple of days. We also suffered a serious tent leakage. On the plus side, this happened in a town with at least 2 good camping shops.

Greenbelt was... well. It was Greenbelt. I seemed to spend most of the time feeling tired, possibly because I was venue managing, in Soul Space, the quiet and contemplative bit of Greenbelt. I've decided I want something a bit more lively next time! But the people were nice, and I even got Spiritual Direction with someone who didn't laugh at me for having a testimony that includes Heidi. And they gave me Monday off, so I got to see Martyn Joseph and the Scratch Musical Rock on Simon Peter.

I don't know where I am with God, if there is a God... what can I say? At Greenbelt I get a sense of hope and purpose that I feel my rather secular life is lacking... It seems that everywhere around there is prejudice and fear... I know I'm often one of the culprits (argh! Yet I try so hard! I am very trying!) and it is good to be among people who aren't just taking it, just settling in to assimilate into our broken society. But I can't spend all year at Greenbelt (I would, though :) )... so in the mean time, what am I to do?

Busy Busy life

2008-05-04T19:10:00.002+01:00

Hi folks,

Life feels soooo busy at the moment. It might be because we're moving in a month's time (to a house very near where I live now. Bigger house, cheaper rent. Pity I have to buy furniture...). It might be because I've officially started my new job (the one I was doing as a temp for about 4 months). It might be because I'm not really keeping in touch with my York friends because I still haven't got a new computer.

Or it might be because I've hardly had the urge to write in the past few months. It seems strange. Sometimes I use a paper diary, sometimes a blog. But generally I need to write, it feels somewhat unnatural that I haven't much lately. Actually there have been a couple of songs and poems. And I've been knitting (I love knitting, it's my latest craze) and painting (my other latest craze), and working on the show we're doing at work.

Creativity can be both a joy and a burden, it's very annoying. I love to paint as a way of taking part in the beauty I see in the world but it is frustrating the way you never can quite capture what is was that you saw. I find the best paintings are the ones where I tried to express the "idea" of something rather than replicating it. They tend to be simpler but because they're simple they don't seem as flawed. Does that make any sense?

At work I am taking tentative steps to a leadership role and that's frustrating too. Partly because it's traitorous to my anarchist values ;) It's just somewhat disheartening that after filling in for our Glorious Leader (day centre officer is the technical term) for a couple of months while she was away, and thinking I was doing pretty well, and then she returned and was brilliant again, reminding me what a long way I have to go. (To be fair, our Glorious Leader thinks I'm wonderful and has told the Big Boss this. Not sure what Big Boss's actual title is, he's at least four steps up the managerial chain from GL though).

And I've been doing all this training, some of which is helpful and some of which just serves to muddy the waters. The one on protection from abuse uses the term abuse to mean everything from taking someone else's Clubcard points to beating them up, and then you wonder why no one's brought up "Control and Restraint" used on adults with "challenging behaviours", or if you can admit that you gave someone a hug because they were upset. Yes, I can understand that there may be reasonable uses of restraint and inappropriate times and situations for hugging, but it would have been nice if this had actually been dealt with instead of brushed under the carpet.

Anyway, I had better go, Sophia's cooking dinner :)

2008-03-23T12:36:00.002Z

Happy Easter.

Happy Mother's Day.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Happy New Year.

Sorry it has been so long. Have sort of lost the urge to write since wonderfully fun but very intense job took over my life.

Since my last post, I've met my nephew (Best. Nephew. Ever.). Also got the job I'm doing as a temp. Also was burgled - laptop taken. Also found new house in Bradford (moving in June). Also was in Hot Mikado. Also gone to my brother's for Easter. Still here :)

Medway Christmas

2007-12-29T18:07:00.000Z

A belated Merry Christmas and a be-earlied Happy New Year. Forgive me, gentle readers - yes, all four of you - for my absence.

Quite a bit seems to have happened since I last posted, including my 24th birthday and the discovery that the job I am currently doing as a temp is being offered as a permanent position and the two women who work there permanently really want me to apply. I would really like to, even with the rather unfortunate pay-cut I'd have to take!

I still haven't met my new nephew, Ewan, but I'm sure I shall in the very near future. Possibly tomorrow, if I can sort out train times.

I am in Medway for Christmas. It is strange and just a little nostalgic. Have seen all the family and met up with my friend Sara and her boyfriend Rob, and also Christina. Today Sara, Rob and I sat in Costa Coffee and had a rather heretical conversation, consisting of such topics as whether God has a wife (God says, "Let there be light!", Mrs. God says, "Don't suppose a please is too much to ask for...") We became gradually aware that one of the staff was listening and becoming increasingly incredulous... turned out he was a Christian. I've no doubt we'll get prayed for this evening. We enjoyed bemusing him so much that after wandering down to the river to look at the swans and discarded shopping trolleys, we went back to give him some more entertainment.

After we eventually parted ways, I went back through Rochester. I've actually rather missed Rochester... it is a charming little city. I decided since this is my last full day in Kent for a while that I would go to the Cathedral... I heard the beautiful sound of Evensong outside but by the time I got in they were processing out. So I took a few pictures and wandered around, enjoying the reverential hush.

It often comes as a bit of a surprise to me that beneath whatever agnostic label I am wearing today I discover that a bit of vestigial faith remains. I still have so many confusions about God... I often feel that it does not stand to logic - that this is precisely the sort of unfair, semi-chaotic universe that may have been created without a God, and that if there is a God he/she is so ludicrously unjust that he/she is not worth worshipping except perhaps to gain personal brownie points... but in the stillness of such beautiful and ancient place, it does seem somehow plausible that God is nearby.

So I prayed anyway. Not sure what any kind of deity might think of my prayers. But perhaps there is meaning to it all, in the end.

2007-11-28T21:42:00.000Z

I am an auntie!!

Yaaay!

Where have I been?

2007-11-24T22:59:00.000Z

James texted me recently with a message saying something like "Are you all right? You haven't been on facebook for a while." And Dr Moose left a message on my wall to the same effect...

Well, the house has had a few ups and downs recently, which has been a bit stressful, and left me feeling rather frustrated about what I can do... I'm OK, though, suffering from a nasty cold at the moment (big thanks to Mark and Coll for looking after me today!), and still very fond of my housemates so no worries about that.

And I'm also working full time with adults with learning disabilities. My current position is in a theatre group and it is brilliant. Acting, dancing, singing, I'm in heaven.... they even have a papier mache Dalek.

One of those "what I've been doing lately" posts

2007-10-25T06:49:00.000+01:00

Back again... not entirely sure if anyone... bar perhaps Graham... is reading this, but hey :)
I have discovered the wonder that is regular employment, working with adults with learning disabilities. It's good, and oddly for care/support work, has fixed hours, weekdays. Nice. I've been there just over a week now (seems like longer for some reason, but in a good way!) and I'm starting to feel like I'm an actual useful member of the team. I know most of the service users' names and I'm even getting used to their little quirks. It beats being a dinner lady any day of the week.

I've also made a couple of new friends, which is cool, especially since I was slightly worried that I'd end up depending solely on my dear housemates for company. One is Mark, who's my co-worker and works for the same agency as me (most of them work directly for the NHS)... we talk about folk music and books and anarchism and the Clangers, and vegetarianism (he's a veggie, I'm not, although I may have gotten him into my housemates' habit of referring to meat as "death"). And then at church (well, the service in the Bradford uni chapel, anyway), I met a girl called Sally who very cleverly invited herself over for lunch. I was going to invite her, really, but the house is usually such a mess that I was embarrassed, but she worked out that I lived nearby and asked if I wanted to have lunch together with her, and then I said, "Of course... but the mess..." and then we walked back and Sophia had already started cooking. So I did the washing up, we cleared the table, and passed an interesting and pleasant afternoon together. We had tea after lunch (cups of, I mean) and since we were out of milk I walked to the garage. I got outside to discover that Graham had been chatting to another guy outside for the last hour. Poor him, he'd missed lunch too!

I like Bradford. Next week I'm in a Scratch show, in the "male" chorus (girls singing tenor)... It's not quite York G&S but I'm sure I'll love it just as much with time. I still haven't - to my shame - applied for the social work course. I don't really know why I'm procrastinating, except probably that it's such a bit step and going back to uni is quite a scary prospect... also my job keeps giving me new ideas for things to do, everything from nursing to speech and language therapy. Why does everything have to be so interesting? :) So yeah, I feel happy to be here, even though it would be quite nice to drag all my York friends here too :)

Also, did I mention I've taken up knitting? It is disturbingly relaxing, and productive as well.

Role Models?

2007-10-09T01:29:00.000+01:00

Does anyone here remember Michelle McManus? No? Oh well.

I've bought two singles in my life and voted for Pop Idol twice. The two votes were for Michelle McManus, and one of the singles was "All this Time" by, er, Michelle McManus.

She reached fame in 2003 for being a fat woman who could sing. And according to her website, she weighed "a huge twenty two stone", or 264 pounds. And boy, could she sing.

But alas, she faded from the limelight. Which is not to say she hasn't been doing anything because of course she has. Apparently she's been in the Vagina Monologues and was in a show called Discotivity at the Edinburgh Festival. Oh, and losing weight.

OK, I try not to have a prejudice against anyone who loses weight just because the thought of a diet fills me with apprehension and I actually quite like being fat, for various reasons. I can understand that being a bit more active and eating more healthily - which is how she lost the weight, according to the articles I read about it (yes, I read articles about Michelle McManus...) - is good. And it's something I am endeavouring to do although it's really not too high on my priority list.

She was a celebrity guest star on "You are what you eat" with Pretend-Doctor Gillian McKeith. Didn't watch it because I don't watch anything about dieting, it's a rule, not even when Michelle McManus is starring. And I later read about it, brazenly reading from one of those abhorrent women's magazines in a newsagent's before putting it back and walking out of the shop. I was slightly heartened that she had apparently lost the weight healthily without resorting to ridiculous measures, and of course she must be the fattest woman with her own work-out DVD, which is also rather nice... but...

The thing was, I'd predicted pessimistically to a friend that after "All this Time", Michelle would vanish from sight and then reappear with some big weight-loss story. And alas, she did. Women's magazines are full of this stuff. Apparently the "sexy" Fern Britten has just lost lots of weight too (I won't be mad Fern, I still love you, especially for the remark that you wore a bikini and realised that no-one would die of shock...).

I'm not mad that Michelle lost weight, because it's her body, not mine, and I can well understand feeling a lot better with a bit of exercise and a few more veggies (I went swimming today and still feel good...) But what I do take issue with is this quote from her website...

The first programme was the highest rated “You Are What You Eat” episode ever with 4.6 million viewers (a 23% audience share) and the follow up programme (broadcast just before Christmas in 2005) achieved a similar audience. She had become an inspiration to woman (sic) all over the country. (emphasis mine)

Sod that. She was already my inspiration. She was my inspiration because she went into the crappy judgemental world of pop, "too fat to be famous", and walked out with the crown. She was my inspiration because she made her talent matter more than what she looked like. And she seemed like a nice confident girl from Scotland who could inspire the rest of us to follow our dreams, even before we've lost weight.

It makes me sad... but apparently she's got a new single out soon, so perhaps the future looks a little brighter.

I have been reading a few Fat Acceptance blogs lately... I think I'm settling on Big Fat Deal and Shapely Prose as my favourites. I also like Joy Nash, who made this fantastic video. Enjoy.

My 2p on the prison system

2007-09-29T01:10:00.001+01:00

The state of the prison/justice system has got me quite upset.

For instance, on the buses around Bradford there is a sign saying "turn in a tagger", telling you that there is a £2000 fine or possibly prison for tagging. A tagger is a graffiti artist (or "street artist" if you're a proper lefty :)). Tagging is scribbling your alias on public property. Exactly the sort of dangerous criminals who should be behind bars. Especially when prison numbers are at an all time high.

In related news, two young graffiti artists have been sent to prison for 15 months and 12 months respectively.

Call me stupid, but isn't this precisely the sort of non-violent, non-dangerous crime to which a community service sentence would be appropriate? Cleaning up graffiti, picking up litter, tending public gardens, that sort of thing. Perhaps with also with a fine to cover the cost of the damage.

But something that produced an even greater score on my WTF? scale, has to be this charming story.

Young offenders are being forcibly strip searched according to a report by prison inspectors.

On one occasion at Werrington Youth Offenders' Institution, Staffs, an inmate had his clothing cut off during a search, the inspectors said.

...In particular Ms Owers said inspectors were concerned about the forcible strip search of an agitated inmate, involving three officers holding him down while his clothing was cut off, despite the fact he was willing to comply.

"Werrington had been through a trying period as a result of the population crisis," she said.

"Though it had continued to improve in a number of areas, the weaknesses we identified in safety were serious and required urgent management attention.

"Werrington is still some distance from its stated ambition of being a safe and effective 'secure college'."

Phil Wheatley, Director General of the Prison Service, said generally it was a good report, and said officers had acted "correctly" during the search of the inmate in question.

"As to the incident involving the strip search of the young person, I have seen the video and reviewed the matter in great detail," he said.

"I am convinced that at no point in the process was he compliant and the staff involved dealt with the incident correctly in the circumstances, when faced by a difficult and disturbed young man."

It is such a disturbing image... the idea that officers are apparently acting correctly by holding down and ripping the clothes from an inmate. It is far beyond the firm discipline that could help someone change... it's a simple act of humiliation.

Employed. Yay?

2007-09-20T07:59:00.000+01:00

All right, I keep meaning to blog, thinking of interesting and insightful things to blog, but always being too far away from the computer. And then when I get to my computer, my brain has zombified...

So I am working as a dinner lady.

OK, the job was sold to me as "kitchen assistant" but everyone knows there is only one term for a female kitchen assistant who works in a school, and that is dinner lady.

It is mostly quite boring, edging on mind-numbing. The advantage is that it requires little concentration - they got me doing boring things on my year in industry but they actually required brain power, whereas stacking plates and bowls and sorting cutlery requires only the most vestigial effort from my brain. Meaning I can think about other things. The people are nice and unlike in my last boring job, they don't insist on talking about work all the time. After work I often go and sit in the park near the school, to think and write and watch the birds. Last week I ended up getting in a conversation with a young boy who noticed we had the same phone and persuaded me into swapping music with him. He gave me a UB40 track, I gave him "Next 100 years" by Bon Jovi. I feel quite jealous of his powers of persuading complete strangers to do things. I have to wonder if the reason many adults are scared of children is that children usually aren't scared at all. It doesn't terrify them what people will think if they strike up a conversation or, in the case of some teenagers on the bus today, they don't give a crap what people think when they play their music really loudly in a public place (in the case of the latter morons, I wish I'd had the nerve to threaten them with Gilbert and Sullivan).

In the mean time, taking up my free days, I've managed to get a little support work.

Support work is different to care work mainly I think in the actual amount of work you do and the need of the people you do it for. For instance I did some support work for three women with learning disabilities who basically just get on with life and need someone around to help with things like cooking and ironing. It was cool, actually - the whole setting is very natural and it's nice to feel like I'm helping without having to be "in charge" or "in control" all the time - allowing the three of them to live fairly normal, autonomous lives, which is as it should be.

And I had an interview today for a lab position.

Oh Chemistry.

The interview went fairly well - I wasn't perfect but there were no real howlers (I went for an interview at GSK for my year in industry... the very first question was "Describe an HPLC experiment" and I couldn't think of anything... finally I said, "I think we did something with amino acids?" and the interviewer said, "that sounds plausible..."). As is the nature when you have a meagre degree like mine, the job doesn't sound particularly hard, and there are ways to progress.

I'm not sure I want it.

There are great advantages to taking such a job - the full time hours which will stay put on weekdays and leave all my evenings free, the pay is bound to be pretty good, and I could probably do a bit of care/support work at weekends and get some regular volunteering, which I've been meaning to do for, oh, the past four years.

But on the other hand, I don't want to progress in science. I love science's logic and beauty, but I don't love the thought of routinely making products that I don't really care about because it's a regular wage and I get weekends free. It's so... shallow.

Of course, if I was sensible, I could save the money up for things I've been wanting to do, and it'll come in handy if I do that Masters in Social Work I've been itching to apply for - which would start in January. Money isn't all evil, St. Paul made tents and Lydia sold purple cloth. Jesus made a coin appear in a fish's mouth. I shouldn't be so sanctimonious.

If I get this job I don't have to be a dinner lady any more, but then I can't really be a carer either. I don't want to be complacent, I hate the thought that I will settle for being comfortable when I have found a calling that I love and that benefits other people... I know that working in science can benefit other people, but I doubt I shall be making an enormous difference to anyone if I get this job. I feel it would be silly to turn it down but perhaps more foolish to accept it... I'm semi-hoping I don't get it, just so I don't have to agonise!

Living in Bradford is good though. I'm feeling very fond of this lovely city, though slightly miffed that I'll be at work for most of Fresher's Fair tomorrow (I'm sending Sophie as my proxy :) ). Thanks to my work in various places, I've toured the outskirts by bus. The countryside around here is beautiful. And the house seems to be having a pleasant minimum of house angst at the moment (alas, I feel it cannot last)... Feeling rather fond of all of my housemates. What's more, we've taken to playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith

2007-09-03T16:07:00.000+01:00

I found out about Mother Teresa's Very Long Dark Night of the Soul on a charming Christian website where the commenters remarked that her spiritual darkness was due to her not being a proper Christian, probably because she was a Roman Catholic.

Personally, I want to get extremely mad on Mother Teresa's behalf - no, not at the commenters, I don't care what they think - but at God.

It's a bit presumptuous of me, I'm sure. She struggled tirelessly with the silence, letting only a few know about her feelings, believing it was right to continue. I can't decide for her what it is right for God to do, but it just seems so unfair that as she gave her life for the poor, giving up so many luxuries, the one thing there should have been infinite supply of - God - was not available to her.

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'
"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'
"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

May I learn from her example.

Jobless

2007-09-02T21:00:00.000+01:00

I've decided I'm never going to make a housewife. Heh, I said that to Sophie yesterday and she joked that she would be my wife, I could be the breadwinner and she could stay home, look after the children (though where the children would come from I'm not sure) and make things for the house.

I've started dreaming about jobs. It's been a pain getting into care work in Bradford - I've signed up for three agencies and only one has asked me to do anything so far, once on my Dad's birthday and once during Greenbelt. Of course I've called up and told them I'm available pretty much indefinitely from Greenbelt but they don't seem to be interested. What a pain! A science recruitment agency want me to come in for an interview Tuesday, which is something, at least, although not what I ultimately want to do. Which reminds me, I must go to the Bradford Uni campus and prod the admissions tutor for Social Work.

Maybe all this is the ideal opportunity to become a penniless writer? I've been trying to do constructive things to fill in the gaps. Knitting is disturbingly enjoyable. And I've sewn myself a cushion, or will have done when I get around to stuffing it. I blame Sophie for all this :) I will have to try and do some writing, and hope the little writer's block monsters don't get me.

After Greenbelt

2007-09-01T20:45:00.000+01:00

Hi folks. Greenbelt was brilliant, as it usually is. Being a "contributor" (I sang in my church's service) I got to go for free and only had the ridiculously expensive festival food stalls to contend with.

The highlights for me were taking part, obviously, in our service, but also in the "Scratch Panto", in which random Greenbelters could star in Aladdin. so many people turned up that most roles were shared - I was a Genie! It was very funny and great to see such a talented bunch of loonies at work, including several dames and a variety of Aladdins. Also, seeing Peterson Toscano was cool. He's a performer who does one man plays - he's gay and has spent about 17 years of his life involved in "ex-gay" programs, only to discover that he was still homosexual and end up putting on plays like "Doin' time in the Homo No Mo' Halfway House", which my old housemate (the male Quaker Vegan) had on DVD. I love how he can be both hilarious and tender, sometimes at the same time - but then I guess the whole "ex-gay" thing is both comic and tragic. I queued for ages to get to see "The Re-education of George Bush" on Saturday night, thus both missing Beer and Hymns and being rather frustrated when we were then turned away because the venue was full. Luckily, Greenbelt saw sense and got him to do an extra show on the Monday afternoon, in which he did highlights from several shows. His new show, Transfigurations, sounds brilliant.

I also went to Folk club this year, but only once, alas, mainly because I just didn't have time to cram it in with everything else I wanted to go to. The Iona community did a number of things so there was no shortage of singing for me to do - they did some beautiful African/African American spirituals, the kind that make me grin manically when I'm feeling happy or burst into tears if I'm feeling down. There was a very moving service about Israel and Palestine on the Sunday night.

My housemate Sophie has written a book. It's in Proost's pocket liturgies series - she's written some beautiful poetic liturgies, as well as some poems and stories for the book. I am, of course, really jealous. Especially since her name was mentioned in the Greenbelt programme. Annoyingly, the book wasn't on sale at Greenbelt otherwise I might have got a signed copy. She says all her friends will get sarcastic comments. Still, I have a mention in the dedication :) and she got Rachel and me to do some readings on the Sunday - we also listened to Proost's other "unusual suspects".

And I met Dave Walker and other Wibsiters when I gatecrashed the Wibmeet. It was fun. I think I might have scared him a bit. It was nice to meet a community of bloggers, leaving me rather tempted of switching my blog (shock horror!) to a wiblog. I could start a separate blog but I find it hard enough maintaining this one.

On the Monday night, I went to see Delirious. Or "Delirious?". I find that question mark rather irritating. It was an odd experience, and I didn't stay the full time, annoyingly missing History Maker, because Sophie and I ended up at the chocolate fountain (then the beer tent. Then seeing Steve Tomkins, whom I embarrassed myself in front of last year when I failed to recognise him whilst enthusing about his alter-ego Rev Gerald Ambulance). I felt strangely warmed by Delirious, that mixture of nostalgia and longing for genuine faith... A feeling I'd had all weekend, partly not believing and partly believing. Reminds me of a time I spent apologising to God for not believing in him. But I don't feel that I can honestly abandon my questions and place all my trust in God when I'm not sure there is one. And the other problem is that I do so want to believe in God... But I know full well that wanting to believe is not the same as believing, and it's not really a reason to believe. The really compelling thing about the theory of a Godless universe is that it doesn't need to give an explanation for anything... I can appeal to God - "This doesn't make sense!" but if I appeal to the universe "This doesn't make sense!" its silence replies "It doesn't have to."

There are little signs. About a month ago I dragged the last of my things from York to Bradford, found I had too much stuff and it seemed that no one wanted to help. I prayed that that someone, anyone, would help me with my heavy bags, but no one did... And at Greenbelt, I saw a girl struggling with her bags, and of course no one was helping, so I offered to help and we got chatting, and I helped her put her tent up... and I wondered if the whole point of leaving me to struggle with insanely heavy bags was so that I'd understand when someone else was struggling. Or maybe it was just a coincidence.

It's funny but I get mad at God sometimes when he answers my prayers. I wonder why he hasn't cured AIDS, I wonder why I should ask for him to help me at all when there must be hundreds of families who've prayed desperately for help and not got it.... Sophie wrote a piece in her book called "Life in all its fullness" about how Jesus never said it would be easy, but promised life in all its fullness, with all of the joys and pains. It's something I found rather helpful. I find Jesus very compelling - I often can't help but think of what Jesus might say or do in any particular situation, and that combination of loving acceptance of the poor and anger at the religious authorities is very inspiring...

I don't know. My housemate G (Hiya!) wants to go church-hunting soon (no, in an entirely benign way :) ) so I will probably go with him and see what happens.

To Greenbelt!

2007-08-22T21:26:00.000+01:00

I'm going to Greenbelt tomorrow (to help set up, and to laugh at all those people who arrive later than me :) )

So, obviously, I'm not packed yet. And I'm nervous about Friday, when my church actually leads a service.

And our hamster, Ginny, the beautiful and supposedly intelligent hamster, has escaped.

I've been sitting in the kitchen all day with a trail of sunflower seeds leading to her cage, surfing the internet and reading fun blogs. It was quite nice, in a way. Then I came upstairs, ostensibly to pack, and when I went back down again, the seeds had gone.

Typical.

Sophie, who technically owns her, told me not to worry, though I suspect she was rendered more sympathetic by the fact that I'd spent all day having a Hamster Vigil.

But Greenbelt. Thank goodness for Greenbelt. Far too much goodness for a bank holiday weekend, you have to return the next year just so you can hope to do some of the things you missed last time. This year, I intend to go to Beer and Hymns, even though I don't drink beer. The wine isn't bad though, if I remember correctly.

I was going to say it will be nice having the break, but I've been on one continuous break (the agencies will get back to me, I am optimistic), in truth it'll be nice being busy and having something to do. And seeing if there is any faith left under this crusty and skeptical shell. Well, I spent a lot of time today praying for the hamster to return. Expect a bit of "Come, rejoice with me, for I have found the hamster that was lost..."

I want to find God, but, in the words of Andromeda Veal, I fear he "won't be getting a very good deel"... I want truth, but I admit, I want it to be a nice truth...

Well, we shall see. I'm going to pack. No, really.

Edit: still haven't packed, but found the hamster.
Oh, and my friends James and Lizzie are engaged! Squeeee!

2007-08-21T18:21:00.000+01:00

I am starting to get the unemployment blues (surely that could be a song?) although hopefully now I've signed up to three (count 'em, three!) agencies, something should come up soon. And I'm going to Greenbelt at the end of the week, which will be good. And the landlord still hasn't sent me my deposit, grr!

I've been down to see my parents for the weekend - it was Dad's birthday, although alas the traditional barbecue didn't take place due to the weather. We did, however, play a couple of games of Articulate. It was good to see my family although I find myself strangely confused with how I should relate to them, now I'm a proper Grown Up (TM). It is all very odd.

I went through the things I had left in my old bedroom. Some very random bits. Old certificates that don't mean much (I was most bemused by the Girls' Brigade camp certificate for "Best Washer up"), notes from various people, the little book I got people to sign when I left primary school. Rubbish, basically. So I did what anyone in my position would do - I very carefully put them in a box.

OK, I actually did throw some things away, even some sentimental things, and I'm sure that some of the books that I've saved will end up getting sold to the Barbican bookshop or something. And I hope to get some kind of scrap book that will transform the random bits of paper to something resembling some sort of art.

Memories are funny things, aren't they?

Adventures

2007-08-06T21:27:00.000+01:00

It's been an interesting couple of weeks. I've finally moved out of York - all that remains is to give my keys back and request the return of my deposit. And I've been on holiday, to the Buxton 14th International Gilbert and Sullivan festival. Yes, I am a geek.

It was a good week with four of my closest York friends. The days we spent roaming the Derbyshire countryside and eating tasty lunches. The evenings we spent watching operettas. The nights we spent in deep and lengthy conversation.

They sing choruses in public. That's mad enough, I think. - Ruddigore

It's surprising how exhilarating in can be to burst into song and not only find that other people join in, but that they join in singing different parts. We must have sung dozens of different songs walking about the hills. We got a few funny looks. I'd swear that when we started singing in the pub next to the Opera House, other people around actually started to be quiet, probably wanting to find out what that racket was. We also went to a couple of organised sing-alongs, although alas I still don't know Iolanthe well enough.

The five performances we saw were all very good - a professional production of Yeomen of the Guard - annoyingly, at the end I was hoping for an encore and instead the artistic director of the company gave a rather long speech. Sigh. I didn't know Yeomen - we've done "Tower warders" and "Night has spread her pall" at concerts but I didn't really know the plot. It's set in Henry VIII's time and is more serious than the other operettas - it doesn't quite have a happy ending and seems to have more dialogue, to the extent that I was occasionally surprised to hear the music start because I thought I was watching a Shakespeare play or something (yes, I'm terrible if I can't distinguish W.S. Gilbert from Shakespeare, I know!).

The next night we saw Pirates of Penzance which we all knew very well having been in a production in February, but what a hilarious production! Afterwards it was judged by the festival adjudicator... We didn't really agree with her negative comments and spent the rest of the week relentlessly parodying them. After The Gondoliers the next day we didn't bother staying, but she seemed to have lightened up by the time we saw The Sorcerer. Finally we saw a youth production of Trial by Jury and HMS Pinafore - both were excellent and I thought the particular highlight of Pinafore was the rather small boy playing Dick Deadeye... he was probably the youngest cast member with a principal role and he played it brilliantly. I also liked the bit where Captain Corcoran said, and I quote, "This Gilbert and Sullivan teatowel, which you can buy from the Portacabin, should be an adequate disguise."

How thoroughly delightful it is to be so entirely alone! - The Pirates of Penzance.

I am trying to cure myself of my more hermitish tendencies. The trouble is, I do enjoy solitude. On the second day, we had some time until dinner without really time to go far from the campsite, so I decided to climb the hill and see the view. There was something quite wonderful about being able to see so much, yet being unseen. Is that strange?

A lot of our conversation seemed to centre around human nature and why it's so jolly frustrating. I wonder, in my analytical way, what it is that makes me introverted, whether it's some experience in my past or just the way I am. And I wonder, in my analytical way, whether all this self-analysis can really be healthy anyway. I do often have a hard time trusting people... I assume, often, that people are only going to be interested in what I have to say if they make the effort to dig deep and find out. Or bother to read my blog :) I started writing a story with an attempt to explain the differences between how we are in real life compared to on the Internet. It never finished because the character was a Mary Sue, but never mind.

It was good but actually a little strange to spend so much time with other people for the week. I am always amazed how suddenly people can switch to being vulnerable, usually under the cover of darkness, as if that somehow makes a difference (or else under the influence of alcohol, as so often happens at after-show parties!). I felt strangely unable to join in with the soul baring, even under such tantalising statements as "It's quite interesting to see how you've changed from how you were when you first back from Cambridge." In other words, "Helen, you used to be a raving Evangelical and now you quite obviously aren't." I wanted, so badly, so just let it all out and confess all, but I find crises of faith hard to deal with and didn't really want to subject anyone else to it. Although one of my friends wants to be a vicar and so maybe I should help her get some practice in :)

I guess the other problem is that I've left York now, and I think part of me is convinced that my York friendships won't last, or at least will never be the same. When we left Buxton on Friday, even though we'd had a lovely time, all I could really feel was sadness. Why does it have to be that way? It had been brilliant, so why did I have to mope all the way home? It was probably, to be fair, mostly due to being tired and having to lump some heavy bags home with me.

Live adventurously. When choices arise, do you take the way that offers the fullest opportunity for the use of your gifts in the service of God and the community? Let your life speak. When decisions have to be made, are you ready to join with others in seeking clearness, asking for God's guidance and offering counsel to one another? - Advices and Queries, 27. (Quaker Faith and Practice 1.27)

It's all very well, you know, and I'm fairly convinced that moving to Bradford was the "right" thing to do. It meant that I would be moving in with friends who wouldn't be content to just be passing acquaintances, dropping a smile passing in the hall; embracing a sort of very untraditional family unit. Their activist values challenge me, their honesty is rather therapeutic if also frightening at times. Moving meant testing my values of equality, meaning that I would be forced to mix with people different to myself... Moving meant, hopefully, pursuing the career in social work that I've become interested in. Moving meant being adventurous, trying something new, and learning new things... But it also means, potentially, losing some of the great friendships I have in York, just as my old schoolfriends aren't nearly as close as they used to be. And it also means the end of all those relationships I had as a community carer - it's the very nature of the job that they will never be the same once I've left. I wonder if I've really done the right thing, if sometimes it might be better to pick the unadventurous thing and play it safe. After all, I've been told I'm a good Carer.

In Bradford

2007-07-25T18:52:00.000+01:00

Hi folks,

Well, I'm in Bradford, and I've very nearly officially left York. I meant to get up really early this morning and go back to get the rest of my things and clean the house, but I turned my alarm off and now I'm sitting on my bed with my laptop. For some reason, the wireless internet works better at this end of the room.

So far I've been to the job centre but (for shame!) not called any of the numbers I have. I also called the recruitment agency I've signed up for and it turns out they only have one of my references. Tsk! I gave them three referees! Perhaps the others are on holiday or something.

It's been strange. I've had a party to say goodbye... since I have a large number of veggie/vegan friends, the food was very nearly all vegan! With a vegan accidental trifle!* But it didn't really seem real, possibly because I'm going on holiday with some of them for a Gilbert and Sullivan geekfest.

So my room is rather messy, but looks like mine (not sure that "but" should be there :) ) - so much to unpack and my idealistic mind is suggesting that I take this opportunity to sort through all the bits that I've just thrown into boxes over the last few years. I've got all my books out, or at least all the ones I have with me.

I've already done a little babysitting :) Oh, to be fair, really I just helped Sophie with her babysitting... There was a month old baby and a two-and-a-half year old little girl, and she looked after the baby while I played with the little girl (well, mostly. We swapped occasionally so I could sit down and have a quiet cuddle :) ). It was great fun. Their dad, bless him, said to me, "You're really good with kids, I'm glad you came to Bradford" :) I think I got lucky because they were really lovely kids. I told Sophie that we have to go again :)

It is odd how people react to Bradford - lots of York people seemed surprised that I want to live here... some of the older people I cared for in York said things like "Oh you'll find it's full of Pakis" and other not-very-pleasant phrases. But I like it and think I will enjoy living here, especially as a contrast to York. (For one thing, yummy Asian food!) And I have an attic room, which I like partly because of the views and partly because of A Little Princess.

But anyway, I should go get some breakfast and head to York... Tutty bye and toodle pip :)

*Here's the recipe for "accidental trifle" (or Serendipity Trifle) if you're interested...
Make some vegan rock cakes.
Sift plain flour, demarara sugar, mixed spice into a bowl, add a bit of baking powder
Spoon in a couple of lumps of vegan margarine (I think I used Pure)
Stir until mixture resembles breadcrumbs
Add one vegan egg (OK, OK, I mean egg replacer equivalent to one egg.) Add two if you like.
Add a handful of sultanas.
Mix up... add a little water if you want.
Grease a pie tin and spoon in the mixture in roughly equal amounts.
Put in the oven on gas mark 5/6 for about twenty minutes.
After twenty minutes, attempt to take the rock cakes out. Use your favourite swearwords as they all fall to pieces. Attempt to use a knife to get them out and swear when you realise you've scratched your lovely Lakeland baking tin.
Look sadly at your pile of dead rock cake.
(If you're me, you then call your friend Sophie and exclaim, "What do I do? My rock cakes are in pieces!" But you don't need to, because I can tell you that she said, "Try making them into trifle".)
Pop to the shops for your extra ingredients. Quick Setting Jel is vegan. Pick it up with some strawberries, and some custard.
Put the dead rock cakes in a bowl and put the strawberries, quartered, on top. Pour in the Quick Setting Jel and allow to set. Get your vegan housemate to make vegan custard. Leave the diary custard available for non-vegans.

Leaving, yet again...

2007-06-30T21:58:00.000+01:00

Can I just say, "Aaaaaaaargh!"?
I'm leaving for Bradford in a few weeks - I still have to get lots sorted here, like packing, and what the hell I can do with all my Biochemistry notes. I feel I ought to hang onto them since I might, perhaps if it's chilly in Hades one day, get a job in science at some point. On the other hand there are lots of them and they live in the shed. Recycling!!

I've also acquired a bike which I may some day figure out how to ride. Why did I have to spend my childhood attempting to write my first novel?

And I haven't yet got a proper plan for how I'm moving...

But I do at least have a leaving party planned. Thanks to Facebook lots of people are invited, probably more than I've ever invited to any party, leaving me with the slightly ambivalent feeling that, although I would like to see them all, I'm sort of hoping that not everyone wants to come... Still, I'm sure it'll work out, the house is quite big and July will hopefully be sunny.

I've handed in my notice at work - my last day is July 15th. Meh. I shall miss all my people. I love care work. I still (tsk, tsk, lazy Helen!) haven't sorted out a job in Bradford. I feel a bit ambivalent about this too because I love care work but I find the hours annoying. It might be nice to have a Mon-Fri 9-5 job, especially if I can get in some volunteering and, if all goes well, apply for the Social Work MA with a bit more experience.

My internet access is still sketchy. I'm in the Evil Eye at the moment. I liiiike the Evil Eye. Even though they're playing a Dark Side of the Moon cover album. For heaven's sake, despite being subjected to it endlessly as a teenager, even I know that it's a great album that should not be tampered with.

So, all I have to do is move all my worldly possessions (except for the ones still in Kent) to Bradford, contact everyone to change my address, hopefully complete my vocations course, get a new job sorted, clean and tidy the house, have a party, clean and tidy the house, contact the landlord to get my deposit and not go mad. Well, very. I think I can do it.

Pressing concerns

2007-06-19T13:36:00.000+01:00

My show is over. Meep. It was wonderful. And I lasted the entirety of the post-show party. Really great bacon sandwiches too. Actually I did arrive a bit late to the party thanks to to heading with my friend Bunny to see Doctor Who beforehand. Then yesterday I was very cultured and went to see the Tempest. It was very good. Probably not my favourite Shakespeare play ever, but Prospero (who also played the Sergeant in Pirates of Penzance but a few months since) was sooo good, and I also thought Caliban, Sebastian and Antonio were particularly good.

I have been off work for so long that I now want to go back. This is good. This is why I continue to be in favour of six week summer holidays for schoolchildren. At the end of it, even the teachers will be glad to return.

Oh, sigh. My main aim this morning was to head into town to buy a cheap digital decoder for my television, mainly so that I can watch previous episodes of Doctor Who without getting a DVD recorder.
And then I thought, I lead a sad, sad life which can be enriched by watching previous episodes of Doctor Who.

I would quite like to go have a talk with the Methodist Chaplain despite being neither Methodist nor a student. As my friend James put it, "Rory can't be a Chaplain, he actually talks to me." (not sure whether to put a smiley or a frowny). My housemate has started trying to claim me for a Quaker. She may have a point. I joked about burning the copies of Songs of Fellowship which mysteriously turned up in our house and when the other housemate told me that was a bit fanatical, my response was, "Well, I'm a Liberal Christian Agnostic Universalist... I have to be fanatical about something." She said, "Oh, become a Quaker!"

I have a joke that my other religion is Gilbert and Sullivan. At least I hope it's a joke; an obsession with 19th century operettas might be even sadder than my obsession with Babylon 5 was. G&S is so much simpler than Christianity, though. I don't feel that my excessively quoting HMS Pinafore is anything other than geeky amusement and perhaps some sort of group bonding behaviour ("I never..." "What never?" "No, never!" "What never?" "Well, hardly ever!"), it is not designed to make me look spiritual, it is merely me having a good memory for quotes. If I am not in the mood to sing "Climbing over Rocky Mountain", I don't feel that I am being insufficiently joyful or unfaithful to the memories of W.S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan, I can just sing "Dance a Cachuca" or The Nightmare Song or something. If I want to reject G&S canon, eg. the Grand Duke which is notoriously bizarre, I can do so without fear of retribution. If my friends reject the good news of The Pirates of Penzance, then they could always give Iolanthe a try or perhaps come and see the summer show which features musicals by other composers. They are never (what, never?) in danger of eternal flame for their inability to believe that the Lord Chancellor can't recognise his own wife or that Bunthorne really has that much charisma.

It's funny, I was trying to explain Greenbelt to someone yesterday... I always find it interesting how people react to Christianity... and I explained that it was generally more liberal than, say, the Christian Union. "Liberalism" is a funny thing. Actually like most "nice" things it is associated with weakness - a sort of laissez-faire, we just can't be bothered forming an opinion... But I don't think it has to be, and really, Greenbelt is a prime example. I feel it really does challenge people to engage with their faith while forcing nothing. I feel I should question all that I believe, at least about the important stuff. I mean, I believe that the Co-op's reduced fat mature cheese is rubbish enough to call up and complain (they sent me vouchers! I used them to buy good cheese!) but if someone else loves it I still don't feel the need to call into question my own beliefs because cheddar will still do on most occasions.

I want to believe in God and Jesus, but I'm not sure I do... In James it says,

If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.

But how is one supposed to believe without evidence? I heard it suggested that the failed Tube bombing on July 21st 2005 was due to all the prayers for London after the successful boming on July 7th 2005, which is a nice theory, but by the same theory, Madeleine McCann should have been found by now. Little Madeleine really bothers me actually. Jesus loves little children, doesn't he? It is one thing for adults to suffer - we do at least have some capability to fight back - but letting wicked things happen to children really goes beyond the pale for what I'd hope a respectable (let alone worshipable) Deity would allow. Cue chorus of White Ribbon Day.

I even get the impression that Victor Hugo's uber-compassionate Bishop of Digne sometimes got impatient with God for the plight of the poor.

I don't make a good atheist. I don't want to be an atheist. I want to believe there is purpose, good will triumph against evil etc., but I'm not sure I have any reason to believe that...

Caution: Writer's block ahead

2007-06-14T02:47:00.000+01:00

I am a computer-illiterate hick who can't connect her stupid laptop to the internet. Sigh. It is very frustrating.

So I'm back at the wonder that is the Evil Eye Lounge.

I'm on holiday from work, although not a proper holiday, more a "I'm fed up with work and want a break" holiday. And I have another show at the end of the week! Last dress rehearsal tomorrow! I have a whole solo line! Bah. Last night I went through, in my brain, all the men that have parts; they all seem to have two parts and they all have more lines than me. One of my friends wants to write a musical in which women have good parts and the female chorus gets to do the best songs.

I have been vaguely planning for some time to write a musical of "A Little Princess" (by Frances Hodgson Burnett)... but not only would the entire chorus be pre-pubescent girls, I have another problem. Sara Crewe (the "Princess") has a friendship with a young scullery maid called Becky. Sara tells Becky that they are just two little girls, just the same, only they aren't. Even when Sara and Becky are equals in the eyes of society (Sara's father dies and she ends up a penniless orphan) I never get the feeling that Burnett quite considers them equals. She seems rather smug to have created a character so brilliant that she considers even scullery maids equals... I long for someone to come in and rescue Becky, possibly to reassure her that she has greater worth than just as a random peripheral peasant for Sara to practise her goodness on. It would have been nice, for instance, if Sara's friends had come to recognise Becky as their friend too. Am I asking too much from a Victorian author?

I wanted to write... all these intentions, tsk! ...I wanted to write a different sort of Sara-and-Becky story in which the maid and the princess become genuine friends and at the end, "Sara" gets to properly rescue "Becky", only it wouldn't work, in my head at least. I had this wonderful vision of the young princess storming into the palace and demanding they adopt her friend as their daughter too, only I don't credit royalty with being that nice and I didn't think "Becky" would be especially eager to accept anyway, because my Becky would be extremely sensible and have a touch of spirit. She wouldn't want to be patronised her whole life. So maybe I haven't given Burnett enough credit. Besides, everything works out with a bit more equality in "The Secret Garden".

Writing is so frustrating. I swear it was much simpler when I had no standards. Why do I have to want to write well? Isn't just writing enough? There is so much to think about. Hopefully when I have worked out how to connect my poor little laptop to the internet I can get back to using writing websites like Fictionpress.com etc, which means getting feedback from people I don't know. And hopefully some encouragement. I have attempted to get a novel started only there is just sooo much to write, and already I'm getting that angsty "But what if it's rubbish?" feeling. It's stupid. I'm fairly sure I have a plot with potential, but I want lovable characters, I want sizzling dialogue, I want zeitgeist, dammit!

Anyway, that's me done for now, thank you for reading :)

This just in...

2007-05-31T15:41:00.000+01:00

I'm baaaack!

I am going to be an aunty. Or auntie. Whatever. My sister-in-law is pregnant and I've already seen the first picture. Aunty Helen. I am very proud. I have taken to telling everyone, many times. My brother will be a dad :D

I still have dodgy internet access but I came into the library so I could pay the Council Tax (boo!) without digging up my chequebook. Read an awesome quote in The Times:

(J.K.) Rowling holds the record for the fastest-selling book in Britain, previously held by D.H. Lawrence for the uncensored edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover.

That's right. Harry Potter is more popular than porn.

I'm not sure I want to bother with the Harry Potter theme park though. It just, rather like the films in fact, seems a bit tasteless and definitely commercial, but just Potter enough that I want to go anyway. Still, it's going to be in Florida (which seems a shame in itself. Disneyland is right in Florida, but I'm not sure Harry Potter is), so the chances of me going any time in the distant future are rather low.

Anyway, I had better go since I have to go back to work (sigh), but at least I have a rehearsal tonight. I'm still trying to work out stuff for Bradford and I've been a bit de-motivated today. There is always so much to do... sigh. And money is, well, not tight, but tricky. I shall be OK if I keep working hard :) Bank holidays are great too. Can't imagine why anyone would want to stay home!

See you in the not-too-distant future :)

2007-05-12T16:13:00.000+01:00

Found the notebook, safe and sound. Have no internet connection so I'm writing from an internet café. I'd mind but the music here is too damn good.

Catastrophe

2007-04-19T03:24:00.000+01:00

“Losing my passport was the least of my worries;
losing my notebook was a catastrophe.”
Bruce Chatwin

I sympathise.

I have lost my dear little notebook.

I thought I left it at a client's house. I don't think they'd be curious enough to look inside (thank goodness) but they swear they haven't seen it. I am sure I didn't have it when I got home. I may have dropped it. It does have my name and e-mail address on the front, deliberately, partly because I've misplaced it before and partly because I once lost my term's notes on Biochemistry and I now have a habit of labelling such priceless things as notebooks with contact details. (Incidentally, my friend Sian found them for me and I struggled to control myself as I was on the verge of crying with happiness. I don't think I even cried with happiness when I got my degree results, though I would have been fully entitled to).

Poor little notebook. I should have put on a telephone number and said there was a reward for returning it. I am now worried that it is being read for entertainment by the Chavlings (or is it Chavlets? Or MiniChavs?) of York. I am not going to hope the finder has enough integrity to not read it, because if I found someone else's notebook, no matter how I tried I know I'd give in and read it. So I will forgive anyone who reads it, but I so wish they'd give it back. It has... stuff... in it. Apart from anything else, it has some useful phone numbers. And some poems and things. And some rantings. And some stuff I don't want anyone to read (yes, someone as prone to losing things as me should not be writing stuff that I don't want anyone else to read in something as losable as a notebook. Gah.)

My brain is what-iffing like mad.

Anyway, here is one recoverable musing. It is a song I was thinking of using for the love song I mentioned in this entry, only I probably won't because it is far too gentle and laid back for what a 16 year old thinks of the person she's crazy about. I remember it because I was attempting to make up the tune last week and got it stuck in my head. It's meant to be jazzy and perhaps something Corinne Bailey-Rae would sing.

The days are long
There's nothing to do
But spend another afternoon with you
You crack a joke
I give a smile
And find my heart is in denial

Dreaming
Nothing means so much to me
As doing nothing with you
Drifting
There's nothing I'd rather do
Than spend another afternoon with you

You make me feel like Spring is here
Long before the Winter's through
You make me think eternity
Would last a minute if I'm with you

Dreaming
Nothing feels so right to me
As doing nothing with you
Drifting
Nowhere I'd rather be
Nothing I'd rather do
Than spend another afternoon with you

It's supposed to be about the sort of easy friendship you have with someone when you just sit and talk and do nothing together and it's awesome.

Only I can't seriously believe that a 16 year old girl most wants to do "nothing"... :)

Mixed Messages

2007-04-14T00:02:00.000+01:00

This morning I had a phone call. It was 8 o'clock and I was still eating breakfast. I was convinced it would be Work, asking me to do an extra call or something, but it was actually a science recruitment agency calling to ask if I was interested in a lab technician job in Selby. £6.40 an hour. Who the heck is at work at 8am?

It's a bit much to be expected to make a decision before you've finished your first cup of tea, so the woman said she'd call back at 8.45am.

I had the Sermon of the Mount open. I never get bored of the Sermon on the Mount. I sometimes wonder if some of Jesus' sayings were really as cryptic as they sound. Did the disciples go away thinking "Poor in spirit? What on earth does that mean?" (John 16:29 might suggest this is the case...) In the Message version he's a lot more lucid but even if I did entirely agree with the interpretation (which I don't. It all sounds a bit tame...) I am not sure that Jesus really meant to say, for example, "You're blessed when you get your inside world — your mind and heart — put right. Then you can see God in the outside world" instead of "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God". I suspect he was being deliberately provocative, causing the disciples to go home thinking "How shall we see God? What did he mean by "pure in heart"? Besides, paraphrases take all the fun out of interpretation.

Also there's this one:
"You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat."

Which is a paraphrase of this one:
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

I don't think they entirely match, and I like the second one more. I find it enormously reassuring. He promises that anyone who is striving to be holy, justified before God, will be satisfied. There is something platitudinous about Peterson's version. It could mean anything from the NIV version to "God is nice, try him and you'll really like him". It seems a bit fuzzy and feel-good next to a word like "righteousness".

The thing is, I can see the point of having a carefully done paraphrase, as long as it doesn't defeat the purpose of the original text. For instance, if Paul wanted to write some helpful advice to churches, I doubt he'd have wanted it translated densely with lots of difficult words, especially if it was to be read by the young or people who have trouble with reading comprehension. And there is something nice about the way that a familiar piece of text can suddenly stand out:

"Let me tell you why you are here. You're here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You've lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage." Matthew 5:13

Anyway, I've become a little sidetracked. A New Revised Standard Version Bible and a copy of Quaker Faith and Practice have been lying around the living room, and when eating breakfast or attempting to watch House on Male Quaker's laptop, I've been known to browse them. Oh, and Quaker Girl oddly possesses a Message New Testament. I've accused her of being an Anglican recently but The Message is starting to prod her into the Charismatic camp. Heh. Though she still reacts vehemently when I sing Shine Jesus Shine. So I suspect she will remain a Quaker :)

But anyway, I challenge you to consider any job offer normally when you have the Sermon of the Mount open in front of you.

It's one thing to very sensibly consider that a more reliable source of income, with regular hours, would be extremely helpful for the future, in oh so many ways.
And of course at times I get rather annoyed with my employers (don't they communicate?).
But there was the problem that a) though they reassured me I would get the job, they wanted me to give in my notice right away. This is because you get a trial shift rather than an interview, and if you're half-decent, you're recruited. But what if I don't like the job? I'm not giving in my notice before I'm good and ready.
b) It is a little in the wrong direction. Not that much, I mean, lab skivvying is not likely to drag me off into a career in Biochemistry because I have a 3rd but I'm not really wanting to pursue science right now, and if I want to apply for Social Work I desperately need more experience.
c) As much as I'd enjoy getting back into a labcoat, I don't think it compares to my job. Definitely as a suitable alternative to unemployment. Will consider it if I'm jobless in Bradford.
But mainly, there just seems to be something rather crass about giving up the job that I still like and that I know makes a big difference to people's lives, for a job I could have done with a Chemistry A-level. And when I say Chemistry A-level, I bet that my A grade makes me over-qualified. Even if, I tell myself, it would leave more time free for societies and volunteering. Even if it brings in more money, because do not store up treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy... I could imagine that my employers might understand it if I said I was resigning to take up a graduate position at GlaxoSmithKline or something, but "Sorry, I'm off to be a lab tech in Selby" sounds like an incredibly poor excuse.

Still, if anyone wants to be a lab tech in Selby, do get in touch and I'll give you the details :) Speaking of which, if anyone wants to be a carer in York, my area could do with a bit of help. My people are all nice so long as you're polite and don't mind a bit of swearing occasionally. And can make a good cup of tea. And know when to not to say anything. And can tolerate being called a Cockney despite a continual insistence that you're not actually from London. And can cope with such horrors as being given chocolate and having to turn down continual offers of a trip to Scarborough.

Just round the writer's block

2007-04-12T02:20:00.001+01:00

I'm baaaack! Aren't you delighted?

I was going to post to say that I found the Job centre website surprisingly useful, only I have changed my mind because that website is hideously unreliable. It does have jobs that look good, but that is if the damn thing will load. There is an agency who want me to come for an interview only they expect me to pay for my own Criminal Records check and then they can't even guarantee work. From my experience with the other agencies I've been registered with, they aren't fantastic. Although working for Grapes Direct was an experience. I stuck labels on boxes of grapes. I realised that Invicta FM is not very good (though possibly not as bad as Minster FM).

It is beautifully sunny in York. I wish this didn't remind me that global warming is happening. And to be honest I miss the April showers.

I have been looking back on my old writings. This can be quite a fun exercise. Some of them are good, making me wonder why I didn't carry on the story, or whether I should write a sequel. Some are just depressing. I looked back at one story, which is full of "pathetic fallacy" * It's set in March, and the trouble is that March weather may not be like that any more. Damned anachronisms. There was also a line that I liked "this dialogue had been repeated so many times it was as strained and stretched as an old tape". A tape? How retro! Once the daughter of someone I cared for (in a professional sense) attempted to teach me how to use a cassette player because she was convinced I was too young to know. Come on, I remember vinyl!

Also there is the just plain rubbish. I added commentary on one of my earliest stories (actually to be fair, it was the fourth rewrite of an early story). It features a young engineer (why engineer I am not certain) who volunteers to be a guinea pig for a time machine, ends up in the Second World War. Only she's in Somerset. Nothing happens. No bombs. No threats. No one cares that the Battle of Britain is on. No one mentions Churchill. No one notices she wears strange clothing, wonders why she has no ID... There is no culture clash in which her modern feminist views disturb or enlighten those around her. Nothing at all happens except she gets back together with her time-travelling ex-boyfriend (who subjected her to "the cruellest break-up in history", which apparently translates to "Could we just be friends?") and they discover that the evacuee is not an evacuee but a child sent back in time by aliens. Yes, aliens. No one discovers or even cares about the motivation of said aliens, although there was a sequel planned in which said engineer's daughter is sent back to the Victorian era by the same aliens, and there is the suggestion that people might try to board UFOs. The story had more holes than an Ed Wood film and wasn't as good.

Sigh. I love writing and I wish I was better at it. It is very frustrating at times. I wish my imagination was a lot better. I wish I could make amazingly vivid characters that come alive... I wish I had the patience to follow through on an idea and not get discouraged. I've got a story in mind and in one bit, the main character is sitting at a piano, and she's playing a number of love songs (she's 16 and dippy about someone) and at the end of her selection she sings one that she composed herself. The plot would really depend on this being a good song, because someone walks in as she's playing. The trouble is, writing a really good love song is hard. They all sound clichéd. They all sound nice at first and then get annoyingly cheesy. They're all "I love you, I will love you whatever, I love you more than life/ice cream (see Ice Cream by Sarah McLachlan), I will always love you, you make me feel good/young/happy/horny, I'll do anything for you, I love you and you don't know it, etc." So I've hit on a solution... if her song is rubbish, the person who walks in will say, "That was a great song... the lyrics need a little work, though."

* Pathetic in the sense of being related to emotion, rather than rubbish. Device used in fiction to compliment the events taking place. Nice sunny day = everyone is happy. Dark and stormy night = something evil is taking place.

Puzzled over Gospel reading

2007-04-10T06:43:00.000+01:00

Happy Eastertide, Spring is here, Christ is risen, and I'm updating my blog.

Have been getting increasingly mad with my employers. Also why do I get so little sick pay? I got more for job seeker's allowance! where's the logic in that?

I meant to go to a Good Friday service (I alas did not have time for an Easter Sunday service) but didn't. This might well be because the last couple of years I have gone to rather disappointing Good Friday services. The worst was when the congregation sang "There is a Green Hill Far Away" in a jolly staccato. Argh.

I am puzzled and a bit confused by the Gospels. I reread the Sermon on the Mount recently and though I love the Beatitudes I am a little confused by these verses:

"It has been said, 'Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.' But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery." - Matthew 5:31-32

I'm just not sure I understand the logic. He seems to be addressing men, saying that if they divorce their wives they become adulteresses. Does that matter to them? They've divorced their wives already, for anything from marital unfaithfulness to burning the dinner. What's the point in stigmatising the woman, who, this being centuries before women's lib, will probably want to get married again? I'd just feel a lot happier if he'd said "anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, commits adultery himself, and anyone who marries the divorced man commits adultery." Because if a man chooses to divorce his wife, why should she be the one who is punished?

Also, what is Judas's motivation anyway?

Job hunting continues

2007-04-06T03:17:00.000+01:00

Woo. I put my new CV (Resumé) online last week and have already had two different people contact me. The first one was for a science job agency. I was so delighted and flattered that I pretended to be incredibly interested but was forced to be honest when they asked if I'd be willing to commit to a job (in veterinary science) long term. Probably not.

It might be due to my year in industry that I am rather cynical about jobs in science. I didn't really gel with the people in my office and though I liked my boss immensely he wasn't really that good at management. He just wanted to leave us to it and very very rarely offered feedback. And of course I got frustrated with my degree. But then, I told my careers adviser I was getting a bit nostalgic for science now, and it's true. Reading Bad Science, being geeky about chemistry, and even getting misty-eyed for my Chemistry A-level (in a story I wrote when I was 17, I had a character snapping, "Chemistry! It's fun!"). More importantly, I like to look into things with logic and reason. I think (perhaps ironically) that doing AS-Level (half an A-level) in Psychology actually taught me a good deal about this, mainly because in Psychology things aren't so much "fact" as simply things that work. (Apologies to any Psychologists for the simplification!).

The woman who spoke to me asked me how much I wanted to be paid. I can never believe my luck when people ask that. It's hard to believe that a few years ago I was at the very bottom rung of Pizza Hut, doing the bloody salad bar every bloody shift, and on minimum wage. So I said I wanted upwards of £12000 a year. She seemed amused and assured me that job she wanted to apply me for was £13500 a year.

Why is it that doing a job a ten year old could have probably managed I made £12k but now I have to be responsible adult I don't make nearly that much? Is life just horribly unfair? Is it wrong that I want to help people but would also appreciate a decent wage for doing so? Sigh. I don't want to be an avaricious person. I bear in mind that apparently Rockefeller, when asked how much money was enough, replied "Just a little bit more".

The other person who contacted me did so with a care job, that seems nice except I'd like to broaden my experience a bit and it's basically the same as what I'm doing now... only I'd need a car. I am going to have to learn to drive. This is a pain.

Anyway, job hunting continues. Why do all the jobs I want to apply for want you to phone them? Basically guaranteeing that if you work 9-5 you have to find an appropriate lunch break, or in my case wait until you have a weekday off so you can call within office hours. You'd think they'd have mastered e-mail by now.

Ambitions? Fish!

2007-04-01T23:04:00.001+01:00

Hi folks! Or folk! or... single lone reader who came in just to ridicule me! You are welcome too, dear reader!

It is Palm Sunday and dear blog I have neglected you. I keep thinking of cool stuff to blog and not blogging it. I even have a post on asylum seekers but it's not finished. Basically, I think the way asylum seekers are treated is inhumane and even the government seem to be catching on, John Reid excepted.

It's also April Fools' Day. Since I work with the elderly and vulnerable, I missed out on this. Though one of my sweet old ladies told me this riddle today:

"Slippery, wet and greasy
When it's in, it's easy
When it's out, it wobbles about
Slippery, wet and greasy
What am I?"

She took great joy in telling me it was a fish!

I am now getting itchy feet and that feeling of needing a new challenge, which is very useful since I'm going to spend some time tomorrow applying for jobs in Bradford. I've re-written my CV and everything! And I'm going to see my careers' adviser, take her a copy of my latest CV and thank her (and her peeps) for all their help. Oh, and finally book that interview skills session I've been meaning to do.

I am seriously thinking of training to be a social worker. Either that or I will be a penniless writer, because I think that would be poetic at least. I've got books out of the library, I've sent off to Bradford Uni for info, and I want to do volunteering again (I loved volunteering. It would be nice if I could do work with children again, they're fun!) I am getting a bit too excited about the whole thing and telling people, "I want to be a social worker!" even though next month I may well have changed my mind and decided to become a mime. Still, it is quite exciting.

Sigh...

2007-02-27T14:32:00.001Z

Hi folks, happy Lent. Am not feeling terribly Lenten. Have made a vague attempt to be veggie as a response to my housemates' challenge to be vegan for Lent.

The Quaker "chaplain" came to talk at Christian Focus last night. She even attended my rather impromptu Bible study beforehand (Much to my own mystification, I seem to be Christian Focus's Worship Rep). I really like her; I like Quakers in general despite having lived with two for over six months :) She talked about why she was a Quaker and explained a little about what Quakers do... I identified with her story a lot - she talked about how difficult she had found it being a Christian when she left the support of the Christian Union at university, and how she'd stopped going to church because she felt like a hypocrite. She spoke of how she wanted God to be real for her but how he never seemed to be. She said she found a reality in Quaker worship (they have a shared time of silence - if someone feels moved to speak, they will do).

Meh, I know the feeling.
Being a theological deviant doesn't help... I miss St. Weirdo's like crazy, I've missed the last few weeks because of work. I ask for Sunday evenings off but more often than not I'm the only person even vaguely available to help. So I give very grudgingly. I'm not exactly a cheerful giver :) Though I'm working on that.

She finished the meeting with five minutes of silence. I had a really good about three minutes before my butterfly mind started thinking about these books I read ages ago. I've got out of the habit of silent prayer. And the habit of everything really. I'm currently making the slowest ever progress through the Gospel of Mark. I want God to be real for me. I wish life made sense.

I think I might have to take a bit of Annual Leave :)

So I have decided - I'm moving to Bradford in July. This is very exciting - it just about makes up for how upset I am about leaving York in July! I've a few ideas about what to do next workwise... will make some enquiries.

The obligatory update after a long absence

2007-02-11T03:19:00.000Z

I really shouldn't bother saving posts as drafts. They become out of date and it seems wrong to post them... even if this is a blog, for heavens' sake, the posts are meant to get out of date.

So here is a quick rundown:

1. Life is good.
2. Gilbert and Sullivan rocks. Pirates of Penzance next week, whoo!
3. Job is ok. Seem to be doing well. People like me for some reason.
4. I am addicted to Facebook.
5. I don't know where I will be living in August but it may well be in Bradford.

Bradford. Honestly. I am living in York, beautiful place. When I told people of my dilemma between Bath and York Universities, most said, "Oh York's lovely!" And this is compared to Bath!!
The BNP actually put out a leaflet saying "We don't want York to become another Leeds or Bradford." Good point, we don't want to York to be crawling with the BNP, which is why I might actually vote Lib Dem next local election (I was originally planning to spoil my ballot).
It was really a joke when I asked my Bradford friends if I could live with them, but they said yes and suddenly it is all a possibility. It would certainly be interesting. My housemate Female Quaker suggested that I could do a community care job there that would be a bit more interesting and varied because it's a lot more built up and probably has more problems (does it ever concern you that in Heaven you'd be out of a job?). Male Quaker pointed out that York's ethnic minorities consist of some Polish, some Chinese and Archbishop Sentamu. And I do like a good curry. I'd like to learn a bit more about other cultures since frankly I am rubbish at that, I might as well write "white, middle class" on my forehead.

But I'm not entirely sure I want to leave York... sigh.

A homeless woman gave me a packet of winegums the other day. She's a friendly soul who likes to have a chat although to date I haven't even given her a proverbial cup of cold water, and veered dangerously close to telling her to keep warm and well-fed (see book of James)... I did apologise for nearly being completely tactless and she, pretty much, told me to keep warm and well-fed, which is not particularly difficult for me. Her simple and spontaneous generosity made me wonder why I worry so much and give so little.

A woman who looks after her terminally-ill husband gave me a very stern lecture on the point of marriage. I was going to tell her that I admired her for all she did but she isn't interested in praise. His communication is very disjointed and he can't do anything for himself. It sometimes seems as if she lives for him. I hope if I get married I love my husband as much as she loves hers...

Tomorrow will be my first full day off in over a week and someone has already asked me if I can do 30 minutes, and though it seems mean I really don't want to... Sigh. I would say that next week will be easier but it won't because of a little thing called Pirates of Penzance.

Also, Malt Loaf is amazing. That is all. See you next blue moon.

Christmas tidings

2006-12-28T20:28:00.000Z

About time for an entry, eh? Dear Jean-Luc Picard commented recently that I haven't posted in a while. True. In fact this entry began before Christmas and has had to undergo some editing.

I've upgraded to Blogger in beta, purely so that I can have "labels". This means it will be possible to view wall-to-wall angst. Will have to add some new labels, but but the two I've put in so far on previous entries - angst and faith - do cover a lot. I'll also have to work out how to do one of those label index thingies.

I come back to my dear little blog with far too much to say, and I can't be bothered to bore you with all that "what I've been up too lately", so I thought I'd post seasonally.

In case you haven't noticed, it was Christmas recently.

I remember when I was younger - about 14, I think - my Girls' Brigade section put on an evening's entertainment for old people, and one sketch featured two old ladies (played by 14 year olds... how we got away with that I don't know...) cooing over the Navity and one comments "Of course, Christmas is for the children."

For the children? I thought. Does that mean I'll stop enjoying it when I get older?

There's certainly truth in that. I have been feeling much animosity towards Christmas recently. Part of the problem is living in York, which swarms with Christmas shoppers, and living on a road where people have put up the most horrible outside Christmas decorations.

At night, man, our yard's a trip
More lights than the Vegas strip
We're the only residential place seen from space...
Overdecorated, M. Spaff Sumison.

I like carol services, carol singers, brass bands, York's tree of many faiths (it's an endearingly kitsch attempt at promoting unity and multi-culturalism, by pointing out that all religions have stories featuring trees), giving and receiving cards, and getting together to eat very nice food. (Pigs in blankets, yum!) and as much as I might try and effect an air of superiority, I really love getting presents. Though it occurred to me just before Christmas that as well as putting off Christmas shopping, I put off updating my Amazon wishlist. Which makes me feel less selfish about my procrastination.

But still, I've been feeling very Scrooge-ish. In my favourite Christmas film (A Muppet Christmas Carol, of course) Fred exclaims, "Christmas is a loving, honest and charitable time."

Hmm.

I find it profoundly dishonest, for a start. It's not even a proper Pagan festival. Paganism I can at least respect. All the Pagans I've ever met (OK, Neo-Pagans) were kind, fluffy, spiritual people who can be annoyingly vague but do at least have a concept of what most would consider "Christian" values. I don't agree with many of their beliefs, and I consider some practices to be merely superstitious, but I respect Paganism, like I respect other religions. I respect anything that promotes kindness to others as an intrinsically good thing.

What I hate is secularism, consumerism, and most of all, greed. Apparently retailers have been complaining that people aren't spending enough. I find myself wondering what we're supposed to be doing about this. I get the chilly impression that the implication is that we should all rush down and enjoy the bargains to be had.

There is nothing honest about using a festival celebrating the birth of a Saviour, or even simply the imminence of Spring, to promote spending vast amounts of money on tat. And if people had any respect for the festival, it wouldn't begin in October and finish mid-January. It would not be endless months of the promotion of gluttony, greed and tackiness.

I also have a problem with the idea of a "season" of goodwill. What, honestly, is the point of a season of goodwill?

On Christmas day you can't get sore
Your fellow man you must adore
There's time to rob him all the more
The other three hundred and sixty four
-Tom Lehrer

I know! Let's be nice to the homeless so that they're extra surprised when we kick them next week! Let's send a cow to Ethiopia so that we can enjoy our factory-farmed turkey and our sweatshop-produced presents guiltfree!

Ahem. Now to redeem myself before I discover that I've been struck off all of your Christmas lists...

As Christmas got closer, I felt the odd twinge of excitement and couldn't work out why.

I guess that's part of the problem of getting older. I can't be content with feeling Christmassy. I hate all that tacky rubbish, so why did I suddenly find myself wanting to wander the streets of York, giving Christmas cheer to all that passed?

I still feel, intuitively, that there is good in Christmas. I don't just mean that there is good in Jesus - surely the whole point of Jesus coming was to transform our whole lives, and not just the month of December. Especially not with a festival that originally sprung from pagan origins and now is used for cynical commercialism.

I guess firstly it's just that we can be foolish creatures, and need to be reminded to spend time with our friends and family, and to remind our friends and family what we think of them. The idea that there is a time when, for dimly explained reasons, we are supposed to get together with our family, is quite a useful one. I don't think Jesus was mentioned once during our Christmas or Boxing day gatherings but we did get some quality time in, that involved playing Disney Trivial Pursuit and arguing about politics. My name is Helen and I will be your designated lefty for the evening.

Secondly, the food is amazing. Really.

Thirdly I discovered that people actually like home-made cards. Well, I enjoyed making them, anyway.

I watched A Muppet Christmas Carol (I do every year, Kermit is the best Bob Cratchit ever), and felt like I'd had my inner-Scrooge excised. I like Kermit's song on Christmas Eve:

There's magic in the air this evening
Magic in the air
The world is at her best, you know
When people love and care
The promise of excitement is one the night will keep
After all, there's only one more sleep 'til Christmas

The world has got a smile today
The world has got a glow
There's no such thing as strangers
When a stranger says hello
And everyone is family, we're having so much fun
After all there's only one more sleep 'til Christmas

I want to believe in that Christmas.
But not for just a few days of the year. Wouldn't it be good if we could always love each other, help the needy, welcome the stranger, celebrate and use our talents?

In the meantime, let's celebrate the true meaning of Christmas.

That's right, Doctor Who is back on television.

The "lost" message of Jesus?

2006-11-07T19:57:00.000Z

I'm confused. I read The Lost Message of Jesus by Steve Chalke and Alan Mann, expecting a heretical diatribe full of silly feel-good credos that we don't really need Jesus, and that Jesus came to tell us we were all OK without him, and what I read was an interesting and enlightening book about how the kingdom of God is available to all and God loves us.

Did I miss something?

To be honest, I didn't even think the message was particularly "lost", just plain forgotten by certain Christians who claim to follow Jesus' teaching. Of course he teaches that we help the poor, return good for evil, and have a place in God's kingdom. Some people are just too caught up in "an eye for an eye" to realise that "turn the other cheek" is far more effective. I'll admit that with the recent sentencing of Saddam Hussein I confessed that I'd quite like to pull his toes out one by one. That doesn't mean that God is not capable in transforming even Saddam's evil into good.

I thought perhaps the writers might have been a little more thorough, but I happen to like long books... Not everyone does.

If you are privy to the knowledge of why "The Lost Message of Jesus" ought to be burnt, please leave a comment and enlighten me.

Work angst

2006-11-04T07:01:00.000Z

Hi folks,

I do miss blogging. Admittedly I don't have much new to contribute. I keep thinking of bizarre entries I could write. I was thinking of writing one in praise of Cheese, the musical genre rather than the dairy product.

I would also like to add that I am a bit too delighted that Alan Davies actually won QI this evening.

Also, I think I might love my job.

If only I didn't have the ever-present fear of really screwing up...

The thing is, I like being able to work without supervision; trusted to get on with the job and not being treated like a little kid who needs a task to keep her busy. And I like the people I work with, I feel that I really make a difference to their lives and also I'm learning a lot about effective communication and the best ways of working with people. Oh, and I've had some great feedback.

I like responsibility... but I'm also scared that one day I'll make an almighty mistake. It would be OK if I worked with computers or genes or even genuine Italian food, but I happen to work with the elderly and disabled, I'm not very experienced and I've been known to be rather scatty. I could easily live with myself if I broke a computer, a gene or a Milano salami, but at times I find it hard to trust myself with vulnerable people. I guess the point being that I don't care about computers, genes and salami, but I do care, very much, about people.

Today I had a bit of an incident (not entirely sure if it was all my fault...). It turned out not to be as spectacularly disastrous as it might have been - and perhaps, I don't know, it was never going to be as bad as I thought - and I informed the client's main carer what had happened. He seemed fairly unconcerned, probably because the incident had passed and his imagination is not nearly as vivid as mine. Actually he told me it had happened before, possibly as an attempt to reassure me it wasn't simply my own incompetence.

I am never going to make that particular mistake again, but that doesn't mean I'm not worried. I wish I could trust myself.

Memo: Dave Walker is a genius

2006-10-14T02:14:00.000+01:00

I love this Dave Walker cartoon:

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Aiming Higher

2006-10-10T01:51:00.000+01:00

I like my job.

I suspect that is because I have been in it for just over a week. Yesterday I worked until nine, which meant I missed St. Weirdo's, but I got home in time for the latter half of Jane Eyre. Life is good. I love Jane Eyre, and the TV version - what I've seen of it, at least - is fairly faithful to the book. I really like Ruth Wilson as Jane. I also really like Toby Stevens even though he's far too good looking to be Mr. Rochester. I love the valiant attempt they've made to make the viewers believe that he is ugly.

But still. My job. I like it a lot. I do hate the early mornings - if I'd rather sleep in until 10, why do old ladies get up at 8.30? My project supervisor once told me he thought that young people need more sleep and generally enjoy it more. Actually I don't enjoy sleep so much as lying in bed and vaguely thinking about getting up. This morning, having a day off, I sat in bed with my laptop. But generally after struggling out of bed and thinking of new and exciting ways of eating porridge (a spoonful of Nutella, some walnuts and some almonds was my latest - Yum!), and even more so after getting my first call done with, I can generally relax and enjoy the day.

It's such a relief to be doing something that matters. During my Year in Industry I got the idea I was being humoured, or that if they did need the job done, they could quite happily use a trained monkey, except that trained monkeys are more expensive than placement students, and probably more easily bored. I liked my job on a deli but felt 2/3 of the managers didn't think much of me and I got very bored listening to how jolly expensive everything was.

So it's nice to feel both appreciated and that I'm doing something worthwhile for others. It's also nice to be trusted to take responsibility. Makes me feel like a proper grown-up :)

I still don't have any idea what I'll do eventually. People have been asking me a lot lately if I'm a student (do they ask everyone this or do I have a studenty aura?) and why I took the job. One lady, on hearing of my Biochemistry degree, said, "Oh, so you'll be aiming higher, then."

This suggestion sort of irritates me because there seems to be an idea that care is for people who can't do "better". I often get the feeling that we view important work as far too menial to be worth being paid well. Recently I did a little work for a market research agency and was paid more per hour than I'll probably ever be paid for this work. This difficult and important job involved counting pedestrians as they walked across the road. The trouble is that market forces are amoral. Care has to be cheap because many of the customers who really need it can't afford to pay a great deal. But market research, even the type any fool could do, can be expensive because their clients tend to have a lot of money.

That said, I do feel I have more to offer and once I have mastered my slight squeamishness over incontinence and got my head around all the various procedures I feel I'll be wondering what more I can do. I don't identify with the idea that success is all about making lots of money and having all the material possessions my heart desires. Admittedly, there are a few things I'd like to have, and would probably buy if I wasn't still recovering from being a student/unemployed. I'd also like enough money to actually visit people I haven't seen in ages.

But really what I want is to be able to contribute all my abilities to something. I guess partly this is just because I want to be appreciated, but also because I feel I can do more, I have talent and I ought to do something with it!

But that said, I'm not rushing. I don't want to do something I feel half-hearted about (like a Biochemistry degree :) ) just because I feel obliged to due to my academic ability. I want to take some time out and find out what I really care about, and what I can really do. Then, perhaps, I will "aim higher".

What's happening, dudes

2006-10-02T18:26:00.000+01:00

Hi dudes,

I keep hoping to update more often but I'm using the library for internet access right now until I can find a way of connecting my laptop to the internet. That said, perhaps I should wait until I can find a way of fixing my poor laptop. Its eccentricities are becoming more pronounced, and although I love and accept it as it is, I feel for the good of its health I ought to do some major formatting.

Thanks for all your kind words about the new job! I'm working as a community care worker, going into people's houses and helping with their food/washing/housework etc. I've only just started so it's a bit nerve-wracking. I haven't had a major problem so far though. The managers are very helpful and most of the people I've helped so far are very nice too. It's good to be working again, too, and doing something a bit different!

Staying in York is a bit tricky. It's amazing how expensive the mere act of living can be. I haven't been able to claim for housing benefit thanks to the unhelpfulness of the landlords but hopefully I can put in a back claim. A bit of precarious independence is good though.

I've also been helping out at St. Weirdo's (I'm beginning to feel a bit bad about that nickname, but it's affectionate, really. Maybe I should have called it St. Cool's or St. Interesting's or something but never mind). It's good to get more involved. I love alt worship.

And I'm training for a half-marathon. I am a lunatic, plainly, because I can't run 100m without being seriously out of breath. It's quite amusing (and really rather sweet) how my housemates, especially our resident marathon runner, seem to have faith in me, but friends a little closer to my own fitness and physique have told me I'm mad. I agree with both - I am mad but I reckon with enough training I can do it. Blame it all on the BBC's "Run for Glory" programme in which they got a load of unfit people and helped them train for the London Marathon. Oh, and blame Paula Radcliffe. And blame my housemate.

Since my half is in January and the London Marathon is in April I might even make it to that. Anyway, I'm being gentle with myself and I've decided that it's best just to try as hard as I can and if I keep training but can't make the half-marathon, then hey, at least I actually got out and did some exercise.

2006-09-20T02:43:00.000+01:00

I sent them an e-mail.

They sent me an application form.

I sent them a letter.

They called.

I went for an interview.

They gave me a CRB form.

I waited.

I got bored.

I called. Have I got this job or not?

They said, of course you have the job, duh, now return your CRB form and come in Wednesday.

I'm no longer unemployed!

***

Brilliant conversation with the Job Centre this morning. I'd called yesterday to say that I couldn't come to sign for my job seeker's allowance (which I will very shortly become ineligible for) on Tuesday, ie. today. So they told me to call up this morning and re-arrange.
"Hello, I was supposed to sign for my JSA this morning. I can't because I have a workshop."
"Have you rearranged?"
Er, no, that's why I'm calling.
"No, I would like to rearrange now."
"All right, hold on..." She returns in a couple of minutes.
"Would you prefer morning or afternoon?" she says.
Wouldn't you like to pick a day first, I think.
"Afternoon, I suppose," I say.
"How about 4pm?" 4pm when??
"You mean today?" I ask, scratching my head.
"Yes, today," she says, as if talking to a five year old.
"I can't make today," I remind her.
"You can't make today?"
"No, I can't make today and that's why I'm phoning. I was supposed to come in today but I can't make it, that's why I have to rearrange!"

She explained very slowly to me, as if I was somewhat stupid, that you have to call on the day you want to rearrange your interview for. Erm, wouldn't you like to know I'm not turning up? Wouldn't I like to know when I can next sponge off the government? Surely since I've been advanced booked for Tuesday mornings they can advance book me for Thursday afternoon? I really ought to look through my unemployment bumf and see if there's a way of signing off by post!

In lieu of an actual entry...

2006-09-09T07:07:00.000+01:00

Hi folks. Sorry I haven't blogged lately. I was wanting to write about Greenbelt but feeling the responsibility to write a looong entry usually puts me off any desire to write one.

Yup, I went to Greenbelt, which, to the uninitiated, is basically a sort of Christian Glastonbury. Which, to the non-Brits, is a big festival involving camping. I got a free ticket thanks to my church, which helped considering my unemployedness. Greenbelt is great because there's so much going on. I felt I had space to go to what I wanted, and time to think about God without feeling like I had to be producing testimony-worthy material by the end of the weekend.

I've also been reading Ladies against Feminism, which is quite entertaining.

And hopefully at some point I will be back with a real entry.

The Silence

2006-08-16T08:06:00.000+01:00

I went with one of my housemates to a Quaker meeting Sunday morning. It's really amazing what your mind can come up with to think about during the silence. I was listening to the birds and church bells outside and wondering if I could compose a piece of music mimicking the sounds. Only more tunefully.

I for some reason got a Vineyard song in my head.

In the secret in the quiet place
In the stillness You are there
In the secret in the quiet hour
I wait only for You
’Cause I want to know You more

I want to know You
I want to hear Your voice
I want to know You more
I want to touch You
I want to see Your face
I want to know You more

I have a friend who pretty much hates all songs that a) sound like they were written by Evangelicals and b) talk about a personal relationship with God. Matt Redman can leave now.

Thinking about this song I could sort of understand the feeling. It reminded me of disappointments, prophecies not answered, Faith Camp, and a time of certainty. I remember how someone on a teenagers' Church weekend-away told me that I was going to have a "fast work of maturity" done in me. Someone at Faith Camp reckoned I was going to "walk tall in Jesus". I'm still waiting. I tried to pray in the silence ("in the secret, in the quiet place...").

I had trouble praying. I thought guiltily on when I might have last read my Bible. I remembered a friend's testimony in which he asked, rhetorically, how you can have a relationship with someone you never spend any time with. I feel like a bad Christian, probably because by any standards I am one, but I really am trying. It's just that I've ceased to trust so-called prophecies and fuzzy experiences. And, of course, I can't see the sense in the barbaric doctrine of Hell. I'm not sure what other Christians would expect me to do about that. In my argument with a CU speaker (in the Hellish Dilemmas entry), he resorted to something along the lines of "just having faith". So I asked if a suicide bomber who personally felt killing was wrong, but was convinced it was God's will, should bomb people. He said he saw my point, which was nice.

I am not quite sure how to go about this whole relationship with God business. I realised just how easy it is to squash down questions and go on being a nice Christian girl. If I could blink at every mention of hell, find a church that never uses the phrase "militant homosexual agenda"... Actually St. Weirdo's never does, bless them... If I was quite happy to put on my Christian smile I could quite easily rejoin a "proper" church (St. Weirdo's is made up mostly of people who don't get on well with proper church). I could easily pour the coffee and smile and sing in the choir. But I don't see the point, of seeming to be a nice saved Christian girl that nice Christian mothers want to marry their nice Christian sons. Mainly because I'm not. I have questions, and the answers don't seem to make any sense. I don't feel that I can honestly be the sort of Christian I feel I'm supposed to be. Actually talking to other Christians and even with encounters with various members of the clergy I feel I'm not alone in this. It seems rather that we are all pretending to believe all the right things.

I spoke to a Catholic priest when I went to a retreat in Mirfield earlier this year (Mirfield's Community of the Resurrection is actually Anglican, but the priest used to be my uni's RC chaplain). He was a very gentle person - my friend Rachel told me that his sermons generally consisted of "God loves you". On the first night in Mirfield, he spoke to us about silence - not so much physical silence, but the spiritual silence when God doesn't seem to be saying anything. He didn't see it as a bad thing. Later on, when I spoke to him alone, I confessed that I sometimes felt that the Charismatic church (that is, those who believe in spiritual gifts such as prophecy, healing, tongues) seem to teach that you have to feel really close to God in order to be a proper Christian. Everything's about victory and intimacy and joy, but often I still feel struggle, isolation and sadness. Before I've had times when I've simply been too obsessed with my own life to focus on God. It makes sense that I would feel separation then. But sometimes it just seems to come from nowhere. Often I feel I ought to blame myself for some unknown failing when I confess it feels more like God cleared off.

Once, on another camp, someone told us all that God does not clear off, and in fact we walk away from God. There have been times when all I really wanted to do was pray and worship God, and to tell others how great God is, certain that healing was just around the corner for them too. Telling my friends that God created them to be his own beloved children, that Jesus died for their sins. I miss the intimacy I felt but it doesn't seem to be as simple as praying a prayer. I ask for the strength to continue, for some kind of light in my darkness. Can't see a thing.

Turn me tender again
Fold me into you
Turn me tender again
And mould me to new
Faith lost its promise
And bruised me deep blue
Turn me tender again
Through union with you.
-Martyn Joseph

***

I think I have more to write, or at least to think, and then maybe write.

As for now, I'd better go to bed. See you soon.

Careering into something...

2006-08-11T09:32:00.000+01:00

Yay, blog entry!

Post-uni recovery continues. I'm semi-enjoying and semi-despairing at my lack of things to do and lack of motivation to find things to do.

I've signed up for a career development programme, which for some reason would involve a qualification in "professional career development". As if actually getting a career isn't quite enough, I'll get a qualification too. I've applied for some boring looking jobs and one interesting one (more on that if I actually get it). I've done a psychometric test... it turns out I am brilliant at reasoning and have excellent verbal and perceptual ability. Nice, eh? I was highly amused at the list of suggested careers. They ranged from the Bloody Obvious (Biochemist), to the Spookily Close (Teacher, Journalist), to the Downright Bizarre (Meteorologist?!), to the Right for the Wrong Reason (Librarian... I mean, I'd love to work in a library but not because I'm crazy about cataloguing), and of course, to the Actually Cool (Educational Psychologist. I reckon I'd be good at that :) Of course it would take years more study, and I'd have to be a teacher first...).

I can never quite decide if I like psychometric tests. I think they're really there just to say what you already knew, only to say it with nice reassuring graphs and statistics and things that are a lot more solid than whatever you happen to be thinking at a particular moment in time. I don't have even a vague desire to be a meteorologist, especially not in Britain where our weather is perpetually benign. So I'll quite happily ignore that. And I imagine that if I could get a decent job in biochemistry I would enjoy it, but I did spend my last year of university in angst and my year in industry frustrated because the work really wasn't that challenging. So really the point of the test is to confirm what you know and give helpful yet ignorable suggestions.

I'm living with a couple of vegans. OK, they're more interesting than that. One's a vegan Quaker marathon runner, who recently did a triathlon consisting of something like a 2 mile swim, a 100 mile bike ride and a marathon. In a day. She's sweet, funny, and hyper. The other one's a vegan Quaker juggler. He likes House and Firefly, and he's fun to talk to. And a good cook. He made some awesome vegan bolognese earlier. I've just tasted the parmesan substitute he uses (being non-vegan, I grated cheddar over mine) and it tastes eerily like parmesan. If I'm a vegan Quaker by the end of the year, you'll know who to blame.

I do miss living with Sophie, but she's moving to Bradford to do a Peace Studies course, so I would have had to have moved out sooner or later. I'm sad she's leaving York - she's one of my closest friends here now - but I know she'll really love the course so it would be mean to hope that she stays here instead :)

It's funny... living without blogging/journaling is actually quite unsettling. It might actually be a good thing. I remember bus journeys during my A-levels during which I mentally rehearsed blog entries... I love having the record, and I love to write... and it's so therapeutic... but perhaps sometimes it's better to allow all the tiny details to be forgotten. When I was little I used to daydream all the time. Usually about me being a hero or about a Knight in Shining Armour... or sometimes they would just be what ifs, like what if I could be invisible or what if Charles Dickens was in modern day Rochester (I was convinced we'd be great friends, solely based on my fondness of "A Christmas Carol"). The daydreams turned into stories. I do still daydream, mainly about the same things actually, although with more "What ifs" and fewer "Helen saves the day". But now I'm hounded by a desperate desire to write them all down.

Only it seems that recently I'm writing less than ever. There's a "adult" urge to turn everything into something "productive". It's not enough that I think on a bus journey, I ought to turn my thoughts into an article or a book. It's not enough that I laugh at a joke, or think up a random witty comment - they must be recorded for posterity so that they can Bring Joy to Millions.

But faced with this ridiculous proposal, the child in me has better ideas. Screw this, most things are much less fun if they're supposed to be productive. Hideous educational TV, where you've just got engrossed in a story involving Mystery and Intrigue and they interrupt to tell you that "Mystery" uses y as a vowel and "Intrigue" has a silent u and e to demonstrate that the i makes an ee sound and the g is hard. Who cares? Or it's one thing to be in fancy dress as a Georgian lady and ask someone what year it is, and pretend to be horrified at a bizarre substance called "Coco Cola", but it's less fun if your boyfriend insists on filming it for student television.

I simply can't write out of duty. Duty says "WRITE!" but my heart says "Freecell!", or possibly Solitaire or a Sudoku. Some things are simply meant to be enjoyed. A really good daydream... Some silly television programme... A nice walk into town. That's what I meant by "semi-enjoying" and "semi-despairing", because while I'm enjoying doing nothing, I'd really like to be enjoying doing something! I love to write. It seems unlike me that this could really be the first time I've properly journalled anything in days!

One of the odd things about viewing myself through the lens of a psychometric test was the odd way that during my discussion of the test with my adviser, she referred lots of things to my degree course - the results would say, "You probably like such-and-such" and she'd say, "Oh, and you'd have done this during your degree", for instance, you like a variety of activities, biochemistry is a varied course... You can work things out, you can do science. So I'm predisposed to life sciences, good with reasoning and very perceptive. I'd make a model biochemist. I almost forgot how much I struggled with the last year of my degree. It's terribly frustrating. There ought to be a term for being completely able to do something mentally yet unable to persuade oneself to do it. I'm pretty convinced it's a common disorder. Even I don't understand it though - when I told "Jane" I got third class honours, she said, "Is that becase you didn't work hard enough?" Which I thought was a bit of a cheeky question (for heaven's sake, a "Well Done" would have been appreciated)... but it's pretty much the same as what Jim, my poor long-suffering supervisor, tried to communicate - how can I simultaneously be a excellent biochemistry student and so extremely bad at biochemistry?

There are lots of answers... I think the short answer is probably the best - I don't want to do biochemistry. I wrote an angst note in one of my papers that went so far as to quote the Worst Masterpiece Ever Written... commonly known as Catcher in the Rye... I fell completely out of love with the subject, and the whole thing turned into a bit of a failed relationship, only it was actually a relationship with third class honours, which is not nearly as bad. In the end it doesn't matter that if I'd only done the revision and properly researched the project, and found ways of coping with my what-if-I-fail anxiety, and started my essays and projects earlier, and asked for more help, and slept through fewer lectures, I'd have got my first class honours. It doesn't matter because it didn't happen. And it didn't happen partly because I didn't care enough about it. True, part of the time I was busy worrying about our eternal destiny and compared to that I don't think even the best of degree subjects could engage my attention.

I guess it just frustrates me because I feel like I should want to do it. But I don't, and I don't have to make apologies for it either. But what then? This is where my rebellious brain comes into play - of course I want to have a good career, and I want to be properly independent, but partly I also want to be assured that I'm more than a career - I am not just a biochemist, a graduate, a member of the unemployed (incidentally, if you want to feel like a statistic, try being unemployed. Job centre people treat you like Item 1 "Jobseeker" to be matched with Item 2 "Job" as soon as possible in order to save the government money). But what am I instead? Strangely, loping around the house and wandering about town are all part of the mystical good-vibey experience that is cheesily called "Finding myself", which most students accomplish by backpacking through Europe or going on a gap year digging wells in Africa (I'm not opposed to these methods either, just financially insufficient).

The other thing that unsettled me a little was the sudden thought that maybe I wanted to do theology, and then I realised that the secular test results were not going to instruct me to become an anchorite or get ordained.

I used to have such a nice, sensible, simple faith, or at least that's what I tell myself. And even if this isn't specifically a spiritual value, I still want to do something that'll make a difference rather than simply amuse myself. My first job at Pizza Hut had incentives for a passion for customer care, but the whole point was that you were helpful and kind to customers for the sake of the great gods, Profit and the Company. I want to be kind and helpful because it's good to be kind and helpful. I can understand the simple dynamics of working for a living because it's fair to pull your own weight, but it often seems that everything from volunteering (looks great on a CV) to a highly paid management position is primarily supposed to benefit one person only - yourself.

But where is God in all this? It used to be that I would go on camp every year and after hanging out with God all week, come back feeling joyously self-assured until six weeks later when the crisis of faith hit. I'm really sick of the cycle. It's so easy to go on camp and be blissed out both by God and by the general relief of being away from day to day life. But I want to find out where God fits into day to day life. I want one of the those relationships with God that Christians love to go on about, rather than some ecstatic experiences helped by a charismatic preacher and a full praise band. I don't want a faith that's cliquey, cosy, or just plain unrealistic. It's so easy to go on camp and make lots of very realistic sounding pledges that you'll pray every day and read the Bible, and tell all your friends about Jesus. But often all I do is squash my questions and worries for a week, have a great time and decide I'm one of those Bible-believing, Evangelical, Happy Clappy Jesus-Followers, only for real life to cruelly squish all of this with a nasty thing called the Truth.

Away from ecstatic experiences, where all the actual, proper kingdom building must be done, I find I have lots of questions. It doesn't seem to be as simple as Christians want to assure me it is, and God often seems annoyingly silent. I don't want to go to camp to find him - I want to stay right here and find him!

More Hellish Dilemmas

2006-07-19T22:47:00.000+01:00

Hi Folks,

This is really a very long entry, mainly in response to what people said in comments on my "Hellish Dilemmas" post. I actually feel I have lots more to say, but then, mercy is a Christian virtue, is it not? :)

You can read the comments on the post on this page (scroll down past the entry to read the comments). Please post any new comments at the end of this page.

I figured with such a long entry, to have any chance of any sane people actually reading any of it (who am I kidding? This is my blog, none of you guys are sane) that having subheadings might help. Feel free to skim through. Enjoy.

On hating God, why we do it and whether it's curable

Dave wrote:
If the New Creation is going to be as described in Rev 21 ... with a all-consuming consciousness of God's presence, it is a bit much to expect those who do hate God to want to be there.

I see your point. Having heard lots of theories about what "hell" could be like, one of the ones that interest me is the idea that it's having to endure the presence of God when you hate God. It's an intriguing idea, because it suggests that hell is of our own making, in a C.S. Lewis-ish sort of way. We can come to a lot of complex questions on what choice we have, and what it means to accept or reject God. It often seems to me that many people don't hate God, they hate Christians... They come to associate "God" with whatever foolish Christians (including me) are espousing; perhaps a god who hates homosexuals more than anything, or a god who would rather you sang some Matt Redman songs than help the poor.

And then again, I know that I personally often ignore God because I love myself more. Sometimes beans on toast is just more immediate that a three-course meal by an accomplished chef, if you get my parabolic drift. So I guess I might reject God not because I hate him but because I happen to be pre-occupied with something else.

And it seems to me that both rejections are curable. If you hate God because he's unfair and unfeeling, you'll be pleasantly surprised to meet the real God, and if you become preoccupied with the little insignificant things, you can be given focus. I guess the question I am posing is, is it possible to see the full glory and wonder of God, and hate him? You might be afraid of the cost of following God, you might be in love with something else, or you might just not know God... but it seems to me that if God is as glorious and loving as we say he is, then knowing the truth would indeed set us free... We would have the freedom from fear and selfish love so that we could follow God. Of course God could choose not to bother enlightening us and I've noticed humanity tends to plan to do one thing and then do another. Often when we have the grandest intentions we fail most badly - or perhaps it's just that when we have grand intentions, our failure is most apparent.

Some thoughts on choosing salvation

Is there choice involved in salvation? Can God make people want Heaven? Before becoming a "hopeful universalist", I was most certainly an Arminian, believing that the only way God would reject someone would be because of their own choice and not because he just inherently doesn't like them, making them so he could enjoy burning them in that lake of fire just to prove how great he is (Sorry, I'm using emotive language again, gotta stop that). But here's the paradox - I prayed like a Calvinist. I met a girl on a camp once who was very troubled about her parents. They'd lost interest in correct doctrine and didn't care much for God. I offered to pray for her, and her response was simply to question the point. They made their choice, she said, and though she could reason with them, since they had decided to reject Christ she had to respect their choice, just as God would. Prayer would make no difference... This scared me because I realised it was the logical outcome of Arminianism - one cannot pray for the salvation of the person who has rejected it. I guess in a way I behaved like a Calvinist who considered the elected as consisting of my loved ones and anyone I felt moved to pray for. I always prayed with the belief and the hope that God could melt the resolve of the stubborn and break through the unbelief of even the most resolute atheist.

And if one comes to "TULIP" Calvinism, in that people are unconditionally elected and only saved because of the empowerment of God that allows them to call on him and be saved... The idea that those who saved don't even take the credit of *choosing* salvation, then I don't see why God bothered to create the people who'll be eternally damned. Calvinism means that some people are damned essentially not because they were unwise, stubborn, cruel, self-centred or evil, but just because they were the unlucky ones. All the other unwise, stubborn, cruel, self-centred and evil people got healed and saved. Believing total depravity, unconditional election, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints would automatically make it impossible for me to believe in limited atonement, I'm afraid. (Dave has heard much of it before, lucky him, but think of all the verses in the Bible where it says Jesus came for the world, not just the select few.)

The universalist view is that our rejection of God - whether because of sin or ignorance - is yet another thing we must (and will) be healed of, so that even those who hate God will love God someday, and when every knee bows, every tongue confesses, and all the creatures in heaven and earth and under the earth praise God, it will be out of love and not out of fear and compulsion. Likely? Well, consider me an optimist.

A couple more good quotes from Dave

I feel the desire to quote this passage of Dave's comment because I sort of wish he'd been at the meeting where it was contended that we'll all be caught up with worshipping God and barely notice anyone else:

That is one of the worst heresies I have ever heard! It makes love of neighbour a mere duty and not part of worshipping God as it is clearly described. How can you forget the 2nd greatest commandment. Jesus hated the Pharisees for doing just that.

*Smile*

And I see the sense in this:

We must both cry for justice and forgiveness (just as God does). And these meet in Jesus on the cross - Praise God for his mercy.

I do see the sense in a duality of justice and forgiveness - I think this plays out every day in courts and our lives. For instance in one sense prison is simply there to punish the criminal, but the legal system also has an impetus to prevent re-offence, and in this sense the criminal needs mercy that will allow him/her to change. In fact, isn't punishment itself sometimes a mixture of justice and love? Spare the rod and spoil the child, as it says in Proverbs...

Mum knows best

Mum had these helpful thoughts on the nature of love:
OK, you know I'm not particularly devout. But love is infinite - it has to be. It doesn't take up space. For example I love you and your dad. Do I love you any less because I love your dad? No, of course not. If you have kids, you know I'll love them too, so will that reduce my love for you or your dad? What a silly question. If I can do all that with one human heart, imagine what God can do.

Hell... it's just a mystery... A really horrible mystery...

SocietyVs said:
The argument of a loving God sending people to an eternal torment, weird huh?
I can't say I get either but then again I have love in my heart for Him and for others after having picked up this faith. Prior to having this faith my thoughts, emotions, and temperments were all out of whack. So out of whack I cannot really remember what used to be my paradigm before faith (what did I really believe?).

Thanks for commenting; I appreciate your honesty. You seem to have accepted Hell as a mystery - true, but perplexing since God is love. I used to be able to do that... "Does Hell exist? Hey, it's a mystery, let's not worry about it now." There were periods during which I worried about it, and sometimes I basically declared myself an annihilationist (ie. believing that instead of an eternal Hell of torment, the damned just cease to exist). There are quite a lot of passages in the Bible that back up view, and I'm sure I can provide you with a study if you like... I can't think why I started worrying about hell most recently, but essentially the true implications of the idea hit home. Though I have never been the kind of Christian who believes that people go to hell through simple ignorance of the gospel - because of having lived in a non-Christian country or simply having been too young to understand the gospel when they died - the full implications of anyone having to go to Hell utterly horrified me. I couldn't imagine wanting my worst enemy to go there (Admittedly, I don't personally have any especially bad enemies). In fact since Jesus commands us to love our enemies, it seems very right that we should be horrified by the endless suffering of even the most despicable person.

When I thought about all sorts of people suffering Hell eternally I was terrified. For a few days I wondered if I was going to have a nervous breakdown, or possibly if I was already having one. I found myself looking at people and wondering if they were going to Hell. I felt almost as if I'd been tricked by God - of course the Bible went on about how good he is, and most preachers keep relatively quiet about the Hell thing, but actually God was not only not going to save much of humanity, he wouldn't even allow them to end their pain and die. Maybe, I thought, God is actually a sadist playing a great trick on us all? "Worship me or burn eternally!" Faced with the hideous realisation of all that "eternal torment" could entail, I prayed desperately that God would show me the truth and enable me to accept it, because it seemed that so many other Christians were quite happy with the idea of Hell, and, much as it pained me, I figured that if God is completely holy and loving he could make it clear to me why Hell is necessary and enable me to cope with this without it giving me a nervous breakdown.

I ended up reading a lot on Universal Reconciliation/Christian Universalism, which is the belief that Jesus destroyed all sin on the cross and that all judgements are temporary, leading to a final reconciliation of all humanity with God. As you might imagine, this hasn't made me very popular in more conservative circles. If you want to read about it, there are lots of helpful websites, search for "Universal Reconciliation" or "Christian Universalism" on Google, there's lots of stuff that'll hopefully explain the many Scriptural issues with this position, because this post is long enough already without me going into all the different arguments every which way, but that does bring me to your final point:

So let's throw out the gospels?

I know that God is love and the eternal punishment thing I don't get either, however, it is in the gospels. Maybe we should remove the gospels? Maybe they are not reliable? That being said, that's where I learned God was love in the first place.

I suspect you're being a little facetious :) It's generally taken as given that Christians should read and study the Bible... In my really quite defunct "Jesus Blog" (formed for such a noble purpose, but alas I failed to deliver on my good intentions), I went through Matthew for references to Hell. (I meant to do it for all the other gospels and the epistles too... Yes, I'm a really fun person and they love me at parties!). I think it's really important to examine these passages. I can't find a way to reconcile "God is Love" and "there is a place of eternal torment", so I have looked deeper into these passages. I do think that looking at Jesus' teachings, Hell isn't quite as clear-cut as people would have us believe. It's necessary to take context into account, too. What does "Gehenna" mean to a first century Jew? Is the parable of Lazarus and the rich man to be taken literally, and if not, how symbolic is it, and what is it symbolic of? Even the verses that many evangelicals quote to prove the point about eternal punishment - the judgement of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 - doesn't really match up with evangelical theology. It is a judgement based on how the two groups treated the poor and vulnerable, not on whether they happened to pray the right prayer. It amuses me that conservative Christians often disregard Jesus's reason for judgement but emphasise the separation into eternal punishment and eternal life... whereas many universalists actually believe the whole thing, bar the word "eternal".

It would be silly to remove the gospels - of course I imagine one could get a little picky about the discrepancies between them, but to completely remove them would be ridiculous even to the woolliest liberal. They are the best records we have of Jesus's life and teaching. If I wanted to completely reimagine Jesus so that he completely matched my own politics and ideas, that wouldn't be Jesus, it would just be a god of my own making. If I want to give up on the Jesus of the gospels, I'd figure it would just be more honest to give up on Jesus.

Love demands hell?

Matt K said:
...the way I see it is this: God's love *demands* there be a Hell.

Hi Matt, long time no see. I'm afraid I disagree though... I do agree that no sort of sensible, worthwhile love would be happy to tolerate pain inflicted by sin and injustice. If God said to the Kurds, "Well I love you a lot, and I'm sorry about Saddam, but I love him too, so I'm afraid he's going to continue slaughtering your people", I doubt they'd be convinced as to his love... I don't expect God to tolerate sin... it's one thing for him to blink at someone smoking a cigarette, but I doubt that anyone wants a God who literally lets us get away with murder...

But the reason I disgree is that I think God's powerful enough to have more than one punishment. "You stole some paperclips? Into the furnace with you!" In fact, in the old Testament, with only a couple of exceptions, all the punishments and judgements decreed were very clearly for this life. God never mentioned to Adam that he might just end up in endless torments if he ate that fruit. He didn't mention that Sodom and Gomorrah would be in their burning torments forever (in fact in Ezekiel it says Sodom will be restored). His various judgements on Israel usually involve their capture and domination at the mercy of various Gentile nations. Hell is conspicuously absent from the Old Testament. In fact the hope is that all peoples will come to worship God - in Psalm 22, one of the most prophetic psalms, it reads that all the nations will turn to God and worship him. That sounds like everyone to me. True, love sometimes prompts punishment, but I believe true grace is found in the punishment that causes people to repent. There is no repentance available in the eternal torments of hell, as most conservative Christians understand it. The punishment is both pointless and disproportionate (eternity, for a finite life?).

Justice? Punishment? Healing?

Matt also said:
If you're married to a beautiful woman (or a handsome man) and then somebody comes along, murders that person in a very bloody way, I'm sure that no rational person would say that said murderer can get away with the crime. There has to be a consequence. Why? Because of the *love* for that person. If you loved them, you'd have treasured their memory and the love demands that some kind of retribution, justice, has to be made up for it. Actually, it is *love* that motivates punishment.

In your analogy there is very clearly the sinned-against and the sinner. But real life is messier than that. Whilst love for the "sinned-against" motivates the punishment for the sinner, people also love sinners, and in fact Jesus urges us to be loving and gracious even to our enemies. Of course they don't deserve forgiveness (isn't that the point of forgiveness?), but Jesus forgave people all the time and he didn't always wait to be asked ("Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing"). I also think that healing is more important than justice or punishment. If the attractive spouse in your analogy had been killed by an undiagnosed schizophrenic who thought he/she was a demon (Public service announcement: that was unfair mental health stereotyping. Please ignore in real life), or had been killed by cancer or a natural disaster (an "act of God" as it were), setting the situation right would obviously involve more than just locking up the culprit behind bars. If the husband or wife of the murdered victim had the choice of getting their spouse back or putting the culprit behind bars, I think all would pick to get their spouse back... And similarly, if we're standing in Heaven and someone tells you that Adolf Hitler didn't go to Hell after all, he just ceased to exist, I don't think we'll all be terribly disappointed. In fact, if after a couple of million years in Purgatory, Adolf Hitler turned out to be such a nice guy that God was willing to forget his sin and take him in, I doubt any of his victims - happily standing in their resurrection bodies, restored and worshipping God - will be in the least bit upset. Healing is better than punishment - the healing of both sinner (from their own sin) and sinned-against (from sin inflicted on them) - I guess that's the point of the cross, isn't it? People getting what they don't deserve!

Matt K said:
Now I know what you're saying... oh, but God, knowing how we're made could let us off the hook... well... yes, He sort of has. That's what the cross is about!

I'm not actually saying that I don't think God should punish people. As I said above, in a sense punishment is part of love. Parents discipline their children because they love them, don't they? It's just my imagination fails me when I try and discern why on earth eternal hell is necessary and just.

That old free will argument

God never forces salvation on anybody. That's just not love, anyway.

How could I disagree when you've used the word "forces"? I'm afraid to say, though, I'm a little fed up with the free will argument. So it wouldn't be love to force salvation on them... would it be love to let them endure an eternity of hell without purpose and without end, where neither death nor repentance are possible? Does God still love them, despite punishing them endlessly?

Matt K wrote:
...So then HE *first* comes to us, Jesus *dies* on the Cross and we then harp on about how it's not fair Hell exists? And how it can't do because of a God of love? But don't you see? God actually craves relationship with us above all things but that originated in sin... and we willingly divulge in sin. We have a way out.

(I think you mean "indulge", btw). You seem to take the "Pelagian" view that all sin is deliberate and wilful. The curious thing is that often the Bible seems to take another view... in Romans 11:32, it says, "God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all." The general theme of Romans is that we are all sinners through Adam - we are helpless and need saving, and it is by God's grace we are saved. I would hesitate to say that we have free will. As I mentioned above, I met a girl (at Faith Camp) who had taken it to its logical conclusion and did not pray for her non-Christian parents to receive salvation. Of course free will and predestination are tricky topics, but I do have to wonder just what I was trying to do when praying that someone would find Jesus, if I didn't think that God could somehow bypass their free will.

It's in the Bible, isn't it?

Let's not let mushyness and sincere personal want obscure what is actually clear in the Word. Annihilationism or 'eternal Hell' isn't, perhaps, that clear, but the fact that there *is* a Hell of some sorts is very blatantly clear and I'd absolutely love to engage somebody who can interpret the Bible in any different way.

You would? Good stuff. Try Tentmaker, Charles and Paula Slagle, Martin Zender, Craig Nolin, Gospel for Today, and if you want to do some reading on universalist doctrines, try reading some Christian Universalism articles. Some of these websites have discussion forums and I'm sure there are some universalist bloggers who'd be happy to talk with you (If you want to talk with Matt, please leave a comment!).

Saying *that*, if you regard that the Bible is fallible or what not... *shrugs* Have it your own way, because you can do what you like. You only know what you know about God because of His word and if His word is fallible, then why believe in God at all?

I guess this isn't directly linked with the point of this entry, but this argument does annoy me. I don't believe in "picking and choosing" if that's what you mean. One cannot simply say, "I don't like that bit of the Bible, so I hence declare it untrue." As I said above, I don't see the point in reinventing Jesus, since one might as well be honest and just not believe in Jesus. That said, I also don't believe that the Bible is entirely free from contradiction and error. You only have to look at some of the discrepancies between gospels to see that. This doesn't mean that the Bible is not trustworthy. It's also important to read in context and study texts carefully, rather than take everyone at face value. And as for this assertion:

You only know what you know about God because of His word and if His word is fallible, then why believe in God at all?

I thought you were a Charismatic?! I doubt even the most hardline Sola Scriptura believer would say that all they know about God comes from the Bible, since evidence of his handiwork is all around us, and if we couldn't know about God other than from eading the Bible, how would we even know that the Bible is God's word?

Anyhoo, thanks for commenting. Hope my replies haven't infuriated you and they've given you some food for thought.

Final thoughts, hurrah!

It's taken me ages to write this. I feel like I could have written twice as much! I'll leave you with a verse or two:

"I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone— for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth." 1 Tim 2:1-4

And a question from Sarah Joy you can all digest (posted on the guestbook for my Diaryland diary).

But I have a question of my own: how does God feel about Satan and his group of angels? Presumably He loved them once, does He still?

And with the final thoughts from Julie May (who commented after Matt) and Xianchick:

Julie May said:
Love does not demand justice, it demands forgiveness.
Love is patient, kind...
hopes all things, believes all things, endures all things.
I have heard countless stories of victims families forgiving and befriending the offenders that hurt a loved one. Most of them say they did it rhough the grace of god.

And Xianchick said:
there are some really tough things that come with digesting heaven/hell.

when my faith gets shaken on this one, i try to remember that the torah begins with the letter bet, symbolizing that what came before God, what is above, and what is below are closed to our knowledge.

As always, comments are welcome!

Biochemistry BSc, at last!

2006-07-17T20:57:00.000+01:00

"Dad, do you have to pull that camera out at every available opportunity?"

I'm now officially a graduate! Hurrah!

Existential Angst

2006-07-06T00:45:00.000+01:00

Hi folks,

I've been wanting to blog for a few days but alas not had internet access. Oh well. Luckily the kind people at uni have kept me on their server (my access expires at the end of July) so I can make the long walk to campus... lucky me. I moved out of my house and I'm living with my friend Sophie. She's an awesome cook so it means that she cooks the dinner and I wash the dishes. Good system if you ask me :) We also watch lots of Star Trek, although on Friday, alas, I fell asleep during the Next Generation episode in which Professor Moriarty holds Picard etc. hostage in the holodeck until they find away to get him and his holographic girlfriend out. What a pity they hadn't mastered the holo-projector thing that allows the Doctor to move so freely in Voyager... oh well. Speaking of which, do take a look at Captain Picard's Journal. It's absolutely wonderful.

Term's over. I'm trying to get a job. Annoyingly my phone was out of signal yesterday when I was supposed to get a call back about job seeker's allowance (commonly known as the dole). So I'm as skint as ever. Poot.

Right now I'm not exactly glowing with ambition jobwise, because I just want to get a job that'll help pay off my debts and give me some time to think about what I really want to do. It really rather depresses me how there seems to be a specific pattern, as if once one becomes a graduate, one is expected to do graduate type things... Like the way that my school spent so much effort preparing us for university, even though there were some who just didn't want to go to university.

And the people in the houses
All go to the university,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
And there's doctors and there's lawyers
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

It sometimes seems as though the whole point of education is to kick out any sense of individuality and personal ambition and to make us into mindless drones just like everyone else.

Of course I am probably just being unduly cynical since in fact it's been at university that I've dared to be the most non-comformist. I suspect after graduation I'll post a nice fluffy entry on all the great things I've done during university...

This last year was such a struggle. Jim, my supervisor whom I love to bits, seemed a little concerned as he spoke to me about my final grades. I sometimes, oddly, wish I was a bit less, well, clever. Two of my exams (which, like most of my exams, I didn't do much revision for), the Paper Criticism exam and the Calculations Paper, I'd got above average marks for. Because both papers were more logical than factual, I didn't need to remember much for them and thus, thankfully, they helped get me my well-earned 3rd :) (It was so cute - the night after I got my results, two people gave me massive hugs for getting a 3rd because they did too... And they seemed to understand why it would make me so happy... which is mainly 'cause I was expecting nothing...)

Jim lamented that I was obviously doing something right. It seemed to him not that I am just a foolish and incompetant biochemist, but that I'm actually potentially a really good biochemist who somehow managed score steadily worse in all my exams.

It's always been a problem... when I was at school teachers used to complain about this all the time. They wouldn't have been offended if I'd not been able to do the work, it was just that I obviously didn't want to. Since reading Summerhill: A free range childhood by Matthew Appleton (see Summerhill's website), I've begun to have some doubts about education as it is anyway... The thing was, I didn't want to let anyone down. I would like to learn a lot and make a difference to the world... it's just that often I found myself thinking there were a lot more interesting things to be doing than trigonometry or the industrial revolution. Is forced education really such a good idea? You couldn't make someone a gourmet by force-feeding them...

This year was a struggle for similar reasons. I used to be in love with biochemistry. I fell out of love. We didn't talk any more... we slept in separate beds... we only met at lectures... I found it hard to exert any passion beyond duty on it. In fact I was more caught up with difficulties in theology and faith, and all my degree really brought me was anxiety.

What do I want to do? The question seems a dangerous one because it's not what I ought to do, what I am likely to do, what other people want me to do or what would make other people happy to see me doing. Those questions seem somehow safer, I guess because they don't demand that I trust myself and I find it really hard to trust myself. I guess I have a fear of failure. I love to write but I've fudged so many essays, rushing them off before deadlines... or even after deadlines. I want to help people but I haven't had much volunteering experience. I want to travel but I don't have any money and I'm not good at saving up. I want to work with children but again I don't have much experience and I've never really known how to stop them from misbehaving... I want to follow God but I ask too many questions and have too many doubts and don't really understand him. Heck, I want to get a job but even Wetherspoon's didn't get back to me.

Meh.

I love how Jesus commands "do not be anxious"... Last week in the end-of-term service someone was reading the "do not worry" passage whilst I was angsting. I figured perhaps Jesus might have had something to say about that.

I want to fall in love. Not with a man - but then, I wouldn't mind that either, please get in touch if you're interested* ;) - I want to have some kind of purpose. I don't want to drift through life doing things I "ought" to do, or things that just pass the time or ease my loneliness. I would like to do something worthwhile, achieving something... I want my life to have meaning.

Right, and there we are. Thank you for reading this angst. This is one of those entries that I write not because I think you'll all enjoy it but 'cause it's so cathartic letting all that angst out. Phew :)

Thanks for your thoughts re: the last entry. I'd like to post some more on it soon if I have time and respond to some of your comments. Thanks so much for taking the time to actually comment so I have something to respond to :)

* I accidentally typed, "Please get in touch if you're interesting", which works too :)

Hellish dilemmas

2006-06-29T02:31:00.000+01:00

I went to sell my textbooks today. Most of them were out of date but I got lots for "Principles of Molecular Virology" and "Preparing Scientific Illustrations" meaning I'm now a teensy bit less skint.

It's nearly the end of term. I have to get out of the house. Haven't even started packing. I'm sort of tempted to go for the "bonfire" approach of disposing of my notes (But hey, in these times of global warming, a little recycling would be a better bet).

It's pretty much the end of term. I'm skiving off the summer ball, basically due to aforementioned skintness, and of course most of my friends aren't going. Thankfully they're mostly staying in York this summer meaning that I won't have to say too many goodbyes anytime soon. Good stuff. Thanks to, again, skintness, my staying-in-York plan isn't as happy as it might be, but I'll live. I've applied for a couple of jobs. Due to my status as "graduand" (hurrah!) they seem appealing as stop-gap measures and not painfully likely to constitute my long-term career plans.

We had our end-of-term service today. I suddenly realised just how many Christian pies I seem to have a finger in. Revelation were singing and I ended up joining in. The homily was given by the Catholic chaplain, who I know through Night prayer, the intercession by Christis (I'm a member and occasional writer) and the readings by Christian Focus (again, member). Honestly, I'm such a nerd ;)

I had an interesting discussion with someone at a Christian Union evangelistic meeting about Hell and my feelings on its implausibility. I figured I wouldn't persuade him (to prevent oneself getting depressed, at the beginning of a debate it's best not to even entertain the notion of "winning"), but the evangelistic meetings are the only meetings run by the CU when I feel free to express my doubts on certain doctrinal issues, because in all other contexts such questions are glossed over (or there is a certain shock that you might even possess that opinion!). One of the many nice things about CF is that you can come straight out and confess your particular opinion/doubt/foible/heresy and though people will probably happily debate it for a while, they generally accept that that's what you think, and you won't be met with shock and horror.

The speaker at the meeting was talking about how if we really want happiness we have to look for it in God and not elsewhere, and how Christians will find true joy in heaven. Hell was mentioned. I started out from an "old classic" - ie. the kind of question you learn how to answer in evangelistic training meetings - "How can we be happy in Heaven knowing that our non-Christian friends and family etc. are in Hell?"
His main points were:
- They chose to go to Hell
- Hell is just
- We will delight in everything God does, including, in his justice, allowing people to endure eternal torment
The first one is not really arguable with many Christians because God and Jesus seem so patently obvious to them (or they can't ever imagine questioning, anyway) that they can't see why anyone wouldn't be a Christian. I admit I envy them their faith right now (will have to read through the Sermon on the Mount, that usually helps ;) ) but it often seems to me that there are a lot of reasons why someone wouldn't be a Christian, especially other Christians! :) I would argue that while a lot of people choose to reject God and reject goodness, no one chooses to be punished eternally... There's also the whole "other religions" and "what happens to babies who die" argument... The other argument is that people didn't choose to be born, and surely they'd choose death rather than Hell - and hey, if they still have free will in Hell, why is there no chance of repentance?

The second point I've never quite understood. I admit that given the choice I'd probably send Hitler to Hell for about a billion years - enough to suffer all the pain that he inflicted on all his victims and the families and friends of his victims - but even for a wicked dictator it gets a bit excessive to do it for all eternity. There are lots of things in the Bible about being repaid according to ones acts (will find verses on request) and I simply cannot see how a lifetime's finite sin could result in an eternity of punishment, even if it is against an infinite God. Of course God can do as he likes, but though I can fear a God who punishes in this way, the idea of loving such a God is very hard indeed. I also do not understand how given his mercy "endures forever", he would be in any way happy with the arrangement whereby his beloved creations suffer eternally after shunning him. I can have sympathy with annihilationism (that is, the theory that the rejectors of Christ will cease to exist) but not with eternal Hell - it's a horrible idea and I challenge anyone to meditate on their closest friends and family, and even people they've never met, suffering it eternally and still be happy with the idea.

The idea that we'll be happy that people are suffering Hell is an interesting idea. I was handed an argument I found difficult to refute and yet just as difficult to agree with. One of the guys at the meeting contended that in Heaven we'll be so caught up with worshipping God that we'll barely register the person standing next to us, let alone have time to worry about those who aren't there.

It's difficult to refute because I'd seem to be saying that we just won't love God that much, and how can you argue against someone who says that worshipping God will be all that matters? But then basically what he seemed to be saying is that the most important commandment "Love the Lord your God..." will be all-consuming, leaving even the second most important commandment "Love your neighbour as yourself" obselete. Really, in Heaven will we stop loving each other to make room for loving God more? It seems to me that right now loving God more causes us to love each other more ("A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." John 13:34-35). So why should this change in Heaven? Why will we stop loving those we love now - why will God stop loving them?
Why is this so "Heavenly"?

Jonathan Edwards put it like this:

It is now our duty to love all men, though they are wicked; but it will not be a duty to love wicked men hereafter. Christ, by many precepts in his word, has made it our duty to love all men. We are commanded to love wicked men, and our enemies and persecutors. But this command does not extend to the saints in glory, with respect to the damned in hell...

But this is not the case in the next world. The saints in glory will know, concerning the damned in hell, that God never loved them, but that he hates them, and will be forever hated by God. This hatred of God will be fully declared to them; they will see it, and will see the fruits of it in their misery. Therefore, when God has thus declared his hatred of the damned, and the saints see it, it will be no way becoming in the saints to love them, nor to mourn over them. It becomes the saints fully and perfectly to consent to what God does, without any reluctance or opposition of spirit; yes, it becomes them to rejoice in every thing that God sees fit to be done.

But really, I can't see it at all. Why should we love people God doesn't love? It sounds as if God is asking us to love more people than he does!

Any thoughts?

In the class of 2006...

2006-06-23T22:20:00.000+01:00

I have a degree.

I needed two shots of Bailey's to get over the shock.

Hurrah.

The fate of my degree and Desperate Housewives

2006-06-23T01:35:00.000+01:00

My results are due tomorrow.

Argh.

Oh, and I've just realised, as I eventually do with all non-science fiction/comedy serials that I watch, that Desperate Housewives is never going to get happier. OK, I know I said I wasn't going to become a regular viewer of Desperate Housewives. Blame Kate. At least I got her into Doctor Who. Just revenge, I feel.

But yes, season finale. Instead of Susan and Mike getting married, Bree being happily reunited with her two prodigal children, Tom getting his act together and finally giving Lynette her due, Gabrielle ceasing to be a bitch and Zach finding out who his real father is... we have more murder, angst, intrigue, and manipulation. Cliffhangers galore.

Please tell me there'll be a happy ending eventually. I went through this emotional rollercoaster in the whole week when I was addicted to Eastenders. Granted, it doesn't have to be like Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, in which there's so much marriage and happiness that it's barely worth watching anymore, but at least they could tie up things nicely at the end of the next season. It's got to the stage when Kate and I were watching scenes of relative happiness and saying, "Oh no, this means that something awful's about to happen."

Argh.

Oh yes, and I'm in a show tomorrow too. My dancing is better than it was.

And I applied for a job at Wetherspoon's. Managed to get an interview without even filling out an application form. Nice one. I handed in a CV in order to look nice and efficient, though.

Anyway, I'd better go. See you soon.

Loving monsters and thoughts on Doctor Who's Russell T. Davies

2006-06-19T06:37:00.000+01:00

I really liked "Love and Monsters", the most recent episode of Doctor Who.

OK, it was a bit weird. And it had the Doctor and Rose in it for only a few minutes (apparently a Patrick Troughton episode back in the day had Jamie have his face change by accident just so that the actor who normally played Jamie could go on holiday). It was odd and probably could have done with a couple of explanations. Unlike the Doctor Who stories of back in the day, it was less about a time traveller and his friends killing evil aliens and more about the idea of the Doctor, the kind of people who get left behind after he's killed the evil aliens, the random passer-by who happened to see something.

I like that kind of thing. It adds depth. I think one of the reasons Harry Potter did so much better than The Worst Witch was that while both are boarding school stories about doing magic, you can find out who Harry's parents are, where he lives, how he found out he was a wizard, what people do when they're not at school, what wizards think of unmagical people, and the headmaster's favourite sweet. Mildred Hubble might as well have dropped out of the sky into Cackle's because she never seems to write home - or even think about it, and I think once she referred to "normal people" having to use the gate instead of a broomstick.

It might not particularly matter what some guy who met the Doctor once and got together with Moaning Myrtle thinks about anything. Who really cares, for example, if he happens to be a fan of the Electric Light Orchestra? I admit, "In this episode, we discover the favourite band of some guy who met the Doctor once in a story not shown" doesn't sound thrilling. It's just nice to know. It's nice to wonder what would happen if Rose met Sarah-Jane Smith, or think about what a companion's mother does with her time. It's interesting to wonder if there are lunatics who'd set up a website of collected photos of Christopher Ecclestone at notable events of history.

Something that annoys me a bit about more geeky Doctor Who fans, the kind that actually know who wrote each episode and know both answers to "Who created the Daleks?"*, and can, for example, refer to the 5th Doctor without mentally counting "William Hartnell, one, Patrick Troughton, two, Jon Pertwee, three..." is that they all seem to dislike Russell T. Davies. Never mind that RTD resurrected Doctor Who (or should that be, regenerated?), brushed the dust off, and made it into respectable British science fiction again. Gave us Daleks chanting "Half-human! Blasphemy, Blasphemy!" like some hardcore Whovians watching the TV movie with Paul McGann for the first time. Brought back K9. Gave us Doctor Who on Christmas Day! Employed the extremely delectable David Tennant.

No, he got to take care of our baby, so damn him for not doing it properly. "Parting of the Ways" was hardly Terry Nation, was it? Where's all the 25 minute episodes in 6-part stories with cliffhangers galore? How dare he think of doing an episode that features a companion's boyfriend, mother, deceased father... In fact it amuses me that we tune in every week and get all excited about Daleks, Sarah Jane, and what Bad Wolf might mean and then it seems we all go on to complain about the awfulness of Russell T Davies.

Give me a break. We don't hate Russell T. Davies. We practically love Russell T. Davies. If we really didn't like him, we'd turn off on Saturday nights and invest in some more Tom Baker type goodness.

"Love and Monsters". How could you not love an episode called "Love and Monsters"?

*Terry Nation and Davros, in real life and Doctor Who canon respectively.

A smorgasbord of blog

2006-06-17T08:31:00.000+01:00

I promised a while ago that I would post links to some blogs that I like. Well, I read an entry today (OK, yesterday technically) that I just had to share with you... Alice has had her baby!

She had her first son, Arthur, about a year and a half ago. Agonisingly to her readers, she posted that she was in labour and then vanished for four days. Thankfully she posted her wonderfully exciting birth story soon enough which left me wondering why anyone would have a second child after all that pain! But Arthur being so lovely I'm sure she forgot all about the 'pain' angle. She gave birth to Matthew on Wednesday, and amazingly somehow had the energy to post her birth story. It sounds like Arthur has the makings of a wonderful big brother.

Arthur took 2 sucks on the side that Matthew wasn't using, then popped off, craned his whole body and neck so that his face was inches from Matthew's, said, "Ahh-yo!" and kissed Matthew soooo carefully right on the tip of his little nose while he was feeding! Then he climbed down and ran off somewhere else!

There are pictures too!

This post by Brandon of badchristian.com made me laugh. He takes a look at the Da Vinci Code.

Their idol of progress has blinded them to the call for Christians everywhere to be offended by the attacks on the very celibacy of Christ present in the DaVinci Code. Further, their claims that Christ wasn’t a white middle class Republican is nothing less than repugnant. As if you needed more evidence of this heresy, sheesh.

Uh, I just found this next post just now, but it's interesting. Modern Day Heretic takes a look at perceptions of Jesus and how neat and tidy and generally acceptable he wasn't. Though I prefer to think of Jesus as having his afternoon tea with cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off*, I like his thoughts.

One of the big problems facing the church is the Jesus Box. Whenever we think of Jesus, we think of a brown-hair, blue-eyed, strangely James Caviezel guy bleeding and in the throes of death. Or, in our less somber moments, the stern, wise, calm lecturer on good table manners and sex without touching.

Oh, and you have to love Dave Walker's Cartoon blog. This cartoon has been making me giggle for days, and solved much of my world cup ennui. In fact I was excited for a whole minute when I discovered we won the match Thursday.

I enjoy xianchick's "Church Search" blog. There are lots of interesting and honest thoughts about God - I particularly liked her entry about her "roommate" because she's taken the Bible literally in a way that most people don't ;)

I also adore Cute Overload. A cornucopia of kittens, puppies, bunnies, and other animals for maximum "aaaw" effect.

Andrew Rilstone wrote a brilliant entry lately on ten things he learned reading the Daily Express. Genius.

On August 31st 1997, the car in which Diana, Princess of Wales was a passenger crashed into a concrete pillar at 110 mph. The Princess was not wearing a seatbelt. The driver was drunk. So what could possibly have caused her death? For nine years, the Daily Express has been trying to solve this mystery. A few months ago, it proposed the theory that she was poisoned.

And finally... Sitting on a Park bench holding God's hand from A New life Emerging is wonderful.

Brought to you with the help of Bloglines.

*What? Some years ago, watching a movie based on Acts, I objected that Jesus had an American accent. "You think he had an English accent?" someone responded. Of course he did. He was English, he spent his childhood going to primary school and playing Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario Brothers, he probably watched Fawlty Towers and the Vicar of Dibley and he voted for Gareth Gates in Pop Idol. On reflection I think the advantage of having Passion of the Christ in Aramaic was that no one could complain he had the wrong accent.

The Trouble with Atheism

2006-06-13T01:37:00.000+01:00

One of the things that always amuses me about atheists is when they claim to have the moral high ground. Certainly they'd be right in asserting that followers of many religions can be morons (I heard on the radio this morning that Buddhist monks have been forbidden getting too excited over the World Cup, because apparently cheering is inappropriate behaviour. It seems even peace-loving vegetarians have a mean streak!). Christians spend much of their time bemoaning the stupidity of even their dear brothers and sisters in Christ. (See Stupid Church People, or maybe take an anti-depressant and read Slice of Laodicea.) Richard Dawkins said something rather profound - "To make good people do evil things takes religion". I actually agree, but think it's hilarious that he's saying so, especially since he apparently then endorsed "Do as you would be done by" as a moral code, which is a variant on one of Jesus's most well-known and practical teachings - see Luke 6:31.

If you're an atheist, what is evil? There can be no absolute standard. If one is an atheist, in the sense of believing that we are merely a product of evolution filling a human-shaped niche, with things only surviving because they're really good at surviving... then how can it be asserted that morality is anything other than a human construct that continues to exist either because it's useful or because getting rid of it would be too troublesome? A "meme", as Dawkins might call it - an idea that is passed along and reproduced. Answers in Genesis (a creationist website) quote the following of Charles Darwin (from The Descent of Man):

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered in the manner previously indicated more tender and more widely diffused. Nor can we check our sympathy, even without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature … We must, therefore, bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind.

The curious thing is, even here Darwin, though asserting that our commonly held notions of morality are a sort of evolutionary accident, he himself describes a sort of morality, making sympathy "bad" and survival of the fittest "good". The weak should die, the strong should live, that's the way it is.

I suppose there are really two basic theories as to why anything exists - either something has always existed, or something came out of nothing. The trouble is that both theories seem utterly ridiculous to human thinking. It stands to reason, we think, that nothing is completely permanent. Even things that seem utterly fixed, like the rocks or the stars, are eventually destroyed, and moreover can be proven to have been created - we understand through geology and astronomy possible mechanisms by which both are created. Can the universe itself really be considered a permanent fixture? But it stands to reason, we think, that something cannot come from nothing. Matter is conserved, energy is conserved. Something cannot be spontaneously created.

The first position is held by Christians - that God, who is permanent, created our temporary universe. He was, and is, and will be, forever. Atheists, on the other hand, tend to believe that only things like matter and energy are conserved, or perhaps that everything did simply come from "nothing". The evolution of the universe was merely a process of physical interactions with no meaning or purpose, and the only "order" that exists within the chaos is coincidental - after billions of years, enough "coincidences" have occurred in order for some highly ordered entities to exist within the chaos. In a sense the universe is just an extremely complex chain reaction and the only true "closed system" for the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

In a sense, according to the atheist, everything exists "by accident", and the fact that there are creatures called humans who discuss "meaning" and "purpose" is also "by accident" - reproducing memes that are too useful to die or perhaps merely too troublesome to get rid of. Humans exist because they keep having babies, because they're good at fighting disease and animals, because they haven't all killed themselves yet, and because they're very good at staying alive. The universe doesn't have to have meaning and purpose because humans invented meaning and purpose and the universe was here before they were. The universe doesn't have to satisfy human scruples because it was here before they were. The explanation as to "why" the universe is here does not have to satisfy human morality because, again, humans invented morality and the universe is bigger than they are. It can't be appealed to, questioned, or reasoned with - those are all human concepts. The universe can go on doing immoral things and allowing immoral things to happen and it can't be called unfair because, again, humans invented fairness.

It's a bittersweet symphony, that's life
Try and make ends meet, try to make some money
Then you die - The Verve

Depressing, isn't it? Moral scruples an evolutionary fluke. Religion's a meme. And everything really boils down to coincidences. While, I confess, I find it a less troubling idea than the thought that my dearest friends and family might end up in torment without hope of salvation for all eternity (I think I succeeded in believing this for a few days. I lost my appetite and spent much of my time crying. Really I can't see how anyone could get by without either ignoring it or rejecting it altogether), I must say I find atheism a horrible thought. I suppose there's always the Pascal's wager type advantage that if you don't want to believe in Dawkins' reality, even if it actually is reality, then you don't have to believe it.

I knew someone who was the victim of an anti-miracle. He was 17 and had leukemia. His fraternal twin brother was tested to see whether he was a suitable bone-marrow donor. It turned out that his brother also had leukemia. Unfortunately I'm not well read on the genetic relationship with leukemia, but I understand that the odds against were fairly steep. It sometimes seems to me that Christians often make excuses for God, saying the reason that he seems cruel or even absent is generally due to some more complex motive, that it's goodness in disguise, that natural disasters are really our fault, or just that "he moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform." It seems that horrible coincidences are just horrible coincidences but that good coincidences are the hand of God.

And now I'll get to the point: it just sometimes seems to me that in reality life is as chaotic and accidental as one might expect if we were, not being watched over by a great and mighty God who created us all for his pleasure, but trying to find purpose and meaning in a universe where there is no purpose and meaning - and that we just find God because we want to, when in reality we're just talking to ourselves. The brain can do powerful things.

I don't want to depress anyone, but I thought I'd post this rather sad display of doubt and existential angst because I really hope that there is a point to life, and I was hoping that anyone who's made it to the end of the post might have some helpful insights. Please pray for me, I really want to know God but I'm beginning to wonder if he's actually there, and not just a product of my imagination. It feels like I'm all questions right now. Ironic when many Christians claim to have all the answers!

06-06-06

2006-06-06T17:50:00.000+01:00

Happy Date-of-the-Beast. If you're in the area, apparently there's a party in Hell! Thanks to Bruce of YBMT for the link.

What I've been up to recently

2006-06-04T17:09:00.000+01:00

Been paddling.

Gone to the best Chinese Restaurant in the world. No, not for the food. Then again, I'm easily pleased, it's all-you-can-eat so just give me sweet and sour chicken, and cheesecake for dessert. It's the best because of the CHEESY DISCO! I went with the Gilbert and Sullivan Society, who are great because if you request, say "Reach for the Stars" or "Summer of 69" or "Saturday Night" (Whigfield) or "Wuthering Heights", they will rush to the dance floor. I have to say, the Wuthering Heights dance has to be seen to be believed.

Wandered around town and watched random street performers. This guy was pretty funny. Apparently street performing is his only job, or so he says to encourage you to give generously. If only I was foolhardy enough to learn to juggle fire. Perhaps I've missed my true calling. If you happen to see this bloke around York, do stop to watch then give him a quid or two. I didn't, but then I didn't actually have a quid on me.

Saw Martyn Joseph perform (pictured here with his support act, Rachel Taylor-Beales, who is also very awesome). He was great. The venue, Fibbers, is quite pub-like, making it like a cross between a gig and a folky sing-around, except that we'd all paid over £10 to get in. We all sang along too. It seemed very friendly and warm - my picture of it sadly didn't come out but on his encore, he come out and stood on a chair in the audience to sing "Stuck in a moment" by U2. During which his G string snapped.* There was also a wonderful moment when we all sang the chorus of Dic Penderyn... I think it was that sort of thing that caused my friend Sophie to say, "It's like Church. Well, not like church, but like church ought to be!" To my delight, alongside the more serious stuff, he also did Liberal Backslider, commenting about how it has become an anthem for "spiritual refugees"... After the line "I'm gonna take me a TV evangelist and punch him in the face" he paused, and remarked "I love that line. It's a crap song, but I love that line." After we all sang the last chorus with great gusto, he made us all laugh by saying that our love of that song is probably why there are a couple of prisons in York.

Afterwards Sophie and I queued up to get autographs and we also got hugged! He thanked us warmly for coming and kissed us both on the cheek. I spent the following day squeeing whenever I thought of it. Aw. So go see Martyn Joseph. He's lovely, and his music's awesome too.

I've got a friend, he's a pure-bred killing machine...

...and I've now got that song in my head. Anyway, I watched Genesis of the Daleks. It's about six episodes so 2-3hrs long, and lots of fun. There are moral dilemmas, and Davros, and some rather subtle commentary on the nature of war (subtle, Russell T. Davies, remember that? :)). I actually wasn't too enamoured with Tom Baker as the Doctor when I saw The Talons of Weng Chiang (or "That Victorian one with the Chinese man with flashy eyes and the huge rat" to non-fans) but possibly that was because I didn't really like that story (pur-lease, humungous rats living in sewers? What do you think this is?**), because I really liked him in Genesis of the Daleks. I wish a little that the stories in the more recent series of Doctor Who were a bit longer. It's funny seeing how the series has changed. I get the impression that companions like Harry and Sarah-Jane took an "assistant" role, whereas Rose has settled in primarily as the Doctor's friend - there seem to be lots of episodes where they're having fun or joking about past adventures, whereas in the past it just seemed that they just leapt straight in and fought the bad guys. Then again I've not seen any other episodes with Sarah-Jane in, so I'm not really sure how they compare as companions. (I do love Ace, though. Why can't they bring back Ace?)

I've converted my housemate Kate to Doctor Who. OK, it wasn't exactly hard, I just turned it on and she discovered she fancied David Tennant. She insists on making picky comments throughout every episode, and yelling things like "Come on people, haven't you watched any sci-fi? Run now!" at the screen, but I feel a vague sense of accomplishment over this anyway. I'm not going to bother making her watch older episodes because I know she'd laugh at the Green Death (the one with the maggots) harder than I did.

I must thank Andrew Rilstone for the observation that only true Doctor Who geeks actually call stories things like "The Green Death" when everyone else just says "the one with the maggots".

I have run out of pictures for pictorial observation. But never mind. Other things I have done recently include attempting to dance (I can do cheesy disco dancing. That's it. Salsa goes with nachos, doesn't it?), not looking for a job (will start tomorrow, promise), and going to a friend's surprise birthday picnic. I ordered everyone to sing happy birthday when she arrived. Later when she blew out her candles and we sang happy birthday, she said "Oh no, not again." Given a least half her friends are in musical societies, you'd think we could have done better than that... Even if she didn't have to say, "Oh goody, an encore!"

* On his guitar!
** Some low-budget episode of Doctor Who? Oh, right, yeah, that's exactly what it was...

Incomplete update

2006-05-25T03:46:00.000+01:00

I have at least three half-finished posts lurking for this blog. Sigh. I guess part of the trouble is I started wondering how I could make the blog interesting, and goodness me, I can't think of how I could possibly make angst interesting. So I'll talk to Mum about it, and God too, occasionally, but there's been less of the lovely long posts here. Sorry 'bout that. Although it's debateable as to whether long posts are actually lovely ;)

I bought a copy of An Alien At St. Wilfred's by Adrian Plass on Amazon. I adore that book, and I got some of the jokes I didn't get when I read it as a tender young Christian of 12. I've still no clue who "Graham Gooch" is but I do like "This is how the world ends - not with a bang, but a Whimber." Also in a strange way I identified with parts that I hadn't identified with as a tender young Christian of 12. Funny really.

Finals are nearly over. They've been mostly awful - this afternoon's wasn't so bad, it was "Paper criticism" which is really just an advanced form of comprehension exercise. I'm vaguely proud that I requested extra paper, although this was chiefly because I'd written so many notes in my booklet that I'd run out of room. I've got a calculations paper tomorrow, which I'm almost looking forward to (calculations being the only thing I can actually do...) and possibly a project oral exam next week, which I'm praying will be cancelled (the lecturers are striking). I hate oral examinations.

In a bit of a what-to-do-with-my-life quandary as usual. The trouble is, even if I do brilliantly on my degree (which is not going to happen now, sadly) I'd pretty much decided that I don't want to work in science for the rest of my life. I like reading New Scientist, which might have been a good sign when I was 18 but at 22 I feel I've adequately demonstrated to myself that I really want to do something else! The annoying thing is, it would at least be helpful to have a good degree. I wish I'd worked harder, and that I wasn't such an angsty mess :( Mum suggested trying VSO (voluntary services overseas), which would be awesome, only I'm feeling a bit discouraged and wondering if anyone would accept me. It reminds me a little of something a friend said about a guy in the Gilbert and Sullivan society - "He lacks confidence because he can't get a principal part, but he can't get a principal part because he lacks confidence!"

Well, I'm going to post this because I can't be bothered to save it as a draft - thanks for your comments lately, folks. I want to do a post on some of the great blogs I've found, but now I'm going to go get some dinner. Yum.

2006-05-22T03:20:00.000+01:00

Some things that I don't actually care about:

Big Brother series ∞
The Da Vinci Code
Whether voting on Eurovision is rigged
The World Cup
Pretty much anything to do with Biochemistry

Sigh.

Poetical angstings

2006-05-18T03:28:00.000+01:00

I've started writing poetry again. Not sure if this is a good thing. It's mainly "journal" poetry, ie. thoughts written spontaneously in a vaguely poetic form, which is my favourite type of poetry to write because it doesn't have to be good. Last year I went to a poetry open mic night and read out a poem on homesickness (everybody say aaw!). One person told me it was very sweet, and another (which, in a way, was more of a compliment) gave me some ideas on how to improve it. Improve it? I thought. But I'm not homesick, and improving a poem on homesickness when not homesick would be profoundly dishonest. I guess I could view it as an independent work of art, exhibiting truths about homesickness for the benefits of my listeners, but generally I don't ever edit my poems (though I do occasionally rewrite them, I always save the old versions) because that would be a bit like re-writing an old diary entry.

Here's one I wrote yesterday.

Letter from the Cell

Dear world, I want out
If you'll have me
This great prison must be torn down
And prisoners released

There's Fear, Anger, Doubt
Holding hostage
Love, Creativity, Peace and Graciousness
The saint and the beast

From,
Prisoner HL83
Cellblock Me

Dear prisoner, stupid girl
These criminals can't be let out
For Doubt is a troublemaker
With his questions and qualms
And Fear a carouser who cannot be calmed
And to keep the world quiet, it can't be denied
That anger is much better off kept inside

As for the others-
In a place where efficiency and
wealth are kings it would appear
we've really no use for those prisoners here

Yours faithfully,
The World

Oh, and this I wrote about a week ago, which I feel apologises for itself in the first stanza. I can't believe I'm so pretentious that I actually use the world 'stanza'. It's untitled, which does not, contrary to popular belief, mean that its title is "Untitled".

I thought that all I ever wanted
Was to be the greatest poet
And my humble rhymes entranced a few
To wonderment and awe - but then I knew
That poetry wasn't what I was made for

I thought that all I ever wanted
Was to have the perfect singing voice
And to my choice of melodies I could carry a tune
Perhaps I would improve
But the music ceased to move me
And singing ceased to satisfy

I thought that all I ever wanted
Was to pass all my exams
I failed them anyway and found I didn't care*
If I had got an A I don't know where I might have gone
But I often feel I wouldn't like it there

I thought that all I ever wanted
Was to beat my Solitaire high score
Spending hours clicking at the screen, what for?
A higher score than ever, but to my dismay
A game of Patience laid to waste my entire day

I thought that all I ever wanted
Was to have a lot of friends
What I got were funny people
We passed the time, we had a ball
They didn't know me at all

Then I knew that all I wanted was to be taken by the hand
By someone who would see my heart and truly understand
What I'd wanted wasn't living, it was just getting by
A million things to show for it
But no answer as to why I bother to exist
I keep on breathing air
A million great experiences - nothing to compare
To that still subtle moment
When you find out what you're for
And your poor frozen soul isn't lonely anymore

So yes, a little exaggerated, kinda angsty, some dry humour; it's just like me. Try it yourself - journal poetry. Write what you feel like, start each line with a capital letter, and you just can't go wrong.

* Note to parents: This is a literary device known as hyperbole. Now stop hyperventilating :)

Eureka!

2006-05-15T16:52:00.000+01:00

I had a cool dream this morning.

I've been writing a story in which a woman is driving a long way. I'd got as far as explaining that she did this every month, she stayed at her destination for a long weekend, she'd been doing it for some time and it was time off from work. The one thing that was bothering me as I wrote was that I didn't actually know why she was going there, though I knew it wasn't due to a love affair or anything to do with her job. I tried not to worry, hoping it would come in time.

I woke up this morning and I knew why she was going there!

Nativity Scene Revisited

2006-05-11T22:33:00.000+01:00

A while ago, in an attempt to antidote all the saccharine, sanitised nativity pictures I had seen, I wrote a story called Nativity Scene which tried to put the story more in focus as being the a birth in a Middle eastern country, in a stable, with shepherds. Not actually the most pleasant of locations, if you think about it hard enough.

I then posted it on Fanfiction.net and since then I'd forgotten all about it.

I was intrigued that today I received a review from someone who was evidently quite offended. Recently I've read a couple of fictionalisations of Biblical stories and was quite surprised to discover that there are people who genuinely believe that this is somehow usurping the Bible's authority. In the face of this I was less surprised that someone would find my story offensive, especially since I remember rather enjoying all the gory details...

Here's the opinion of the indignant reviewer. I was a little hurt that apparently I have an "utter lack of respect for the Divine", but I think I can understand why he/she found my story so upsetting.

You went quite a bit overboard in your attempt to be "accurate". This
is not very accurate at all.
It has many errors, and it actually has the effect of being quite
insulting to the dignity of both Mary and Joseph.
As well as to the Christ Child...

Many "facts" here are just plain wrong.
Mary was quite a young woman, but Joseph was a little bit older.
No one scorned Mary in the manner you suggest. St. Joseph protected
her from all that.
Mary would not be in pain and would certainly not "panic".
There were no "women bustling around". Only the shepherds came on that holy night.
Etc. etc.
But most importantly:
Mary gave birth in the same manner as she conceived - miraculously. It makes no sense to have her give birth in the crude manner that you suggest here, when she conceived in such miraculous splendor and magnificance.
In the silent night, a light from heaven comes upon the Virgin Mother.
The light grows and amplifies in beauty until it is too bright and overwhelmingly wondrous to even look upon. Mary is praying, devoutly and serenely, and an ecstacy beyond all telling comes upon her. The light encompasses her and the child within her. All heaven looks on as the moment comes... it is midnight, and the Child is born.
He is in Mary's arms. Just as He is conceived miraculously, without any violation to Mary's body, so He is born, in the same way, by the holy will of God.
She is no ordinary Mother, and this is no ordinary Child. The beauty of the miraculous moment compels the awe of every angel in heaven and upon earth.
This is the Birth of the Lord, the Messiah, our God.

What you have written here, diminishing that Moment of greatest holiness, with such crudity and utter lack of respect for the Divine, is an affront to the majesty of God Almighty.

The poem you post at the end is very beautiful and contains great truth. It's a shame you were not inspired by it, but rather chose to degrade it, degrade Mary, degrade Joseph, and degrade the birth of the Most High.
It's a shame.

I've found it very interesting that there appear to be some people who believe that art is almost inherently profane. I've no doubt that art is powerful and can be a force for evil if it promotes harmful ideas as good ones - propaganda is a form of art, after all. It appears that writers of fiction often can't do right in the eyes of some Christians.

I do have to wonder, though, what the reviewer feels about the suffering of Jesus, and certainly whether his death would have been as clean and straight forward as his birth apparently was...

So, what does God think of art? Discuss.

My eyes are fully open to my awful situation...

2006-05-09T03:50:00.000+01:00

I spent the weekend preparing for and performing in Gilbert and Sullivan's Gondoliers (again. But I actually had a principal role this time!) The madness escalated to the stage whereby we were all talking in G&S quotations. I have never heard of such a thing. What never? No never. What, never?)

So I present herewith a G&S parody (to a tune from Ruddigore....) that I hope will amuse you. See the Gilbert and Sullivan archive for original words and music if you like.

My love for G&S has grown to ludicrous proportions
That my tongue attempts to elocute the words in grand contortions
Now I do believe Conservat-IVE is good pronunciation
And I've memorised long stretches of Duke Plaza-tor's oration
Heartbroken of the blunder of how Bunthorne lost his Patience
Two Gondolieri made king of imaginary nations!
Not a thing that you could say would make my amour for them shatter
So I'll sing another verse of this inconsequential patter

(This inconsequential patter patter patter patter...)

I refuse to say that Gilbert's plotlines were a little silly
For satirical amusement will just shine out willy-nilly
(And even if a rhyme like that utterly benumbing
I'm sure that great Mad Margaret could make it sound becoming)
Love-philtres now seem logical (and so do women's colleges!)
Absurdities and parodoxes, these Gilbert acknowledges
I'm sure to listen to his idle transcendental chatter
Of the sort that would be found to any good Sullivan patter

(Any good Sullivan patter patter patter patter...)

If I had been so lucky as to have a voice impressive
(Though I once did play Inez singing in tones very expressive)
Then I'm certain that d'Oyly-Cart could offer me employment
And my life would then be filled with quite unbearable enjoyment
My enamourment with G&S won't prove to be ephemeral
So I'll write endless parodies of Modern Major General!
And I'll become an expert on each G&S-ish matter
And memorise (and parody) each long tongue-twisting patter!

And I'll become an expert on each G&S-ish matter
And memorise (and parody) each long tongue-twisting patter!

Speaking of long words...

2006-05-08T23:39:00.000+01:00

It turns out I'm interested in soteriology.

6 weird habits

2006-05-08T07:30:00.000+01:00

Tiffer tagged me to write about my weird habits. I'll give it a go but I'm not sure anything could beat recording your wife snoring...

Once you are tagged you MUST write a blog entry about your 6 weird habits/things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next six people to be tagged and list their names.

So here's my six:

1) I really love long words. Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia does not grip me. Why say "Hello" when "Salutations" will do? I have a habit of hearing words I don't understand, looking up the meaning and then acting surprised when the next person I use them on asks what they mean.
2) I sing. Everywhere. In the shower, in the street, at home, and whenever I'm left alone in a room. I sometimes sing a long song, like Bohemian Rhapsody or American Pie, as a way of passing the time when waiting for a bus.
3) I often quote movies, musicals, Tom Lehrer and occasionally Gilbert and Sullivan shows in conversation. Sometimes people notice.
4) I often pray by writing things down instead of just saying/thinking them. This is sometimes interesting because I can look back at old prayers, which sometimes contain amusing phrases like "No one cares about me, except (long list of people)". It also means that I'm less likely to insult God because it always looks a bit more daring written down...
5) I guess this is more of a non-habit: I have a lack of habit of having my hair cut. My hair is now waist length.
6) I watch "A Muppet Christmas Carol" every Christmas. Surprisingly, I still don't know all the words.

I'm not sure that I should be optimistic in entertaining the notion that any of you will do this, but I might as well give it a go. So I'll tag
Chrissie
Dr. Moose
Dave
Hsiu
Nicola (Happy Anniversary... and why have you abandoned your poor little blog?)
YOU. Yes, you.

Did I mention who my new hero is?

2006-05-02T11:48:00.000+01:00

I'm sitting in the computer room wearing a hoodie and surfing (tch, procrastination!) when what should I see but this amazing picture. It's the Archbishop of York wearing a hoodie. Cool.

He said: "Jesus said, 'Unless you become like a little child you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven'.

"We have a lot to learn from young people as well as much responsibility for them."

That's it. I'm going to find out when he's preaching next and head to the Minster. How often would an archbishop like that be at your local church?

Sometimes it's hard to stay thankful

2006-05-01T03:11:00.000+01:00

Not much to say right now, except I'm feeling a bit down and upset due to the pressure of finals. It's hard to talk to others about it. I think it's about time I started using Msn messenger again ;)

I want to try and stay thankful nonetheless ('cause I'm still alive, breathing, seeing, hearing, and watching Doctor Who*) and I like this quote:

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink. --G.K. Chesterton

Now that's a good idea :)

*K9!!!!!

Happy Shakespeare's Birthday

2006-04-24T04:02:00.000+01:00

On St. George's day, this playwright was born,
Envied by every poet amateur.
He died too on this day, and so we must mourn,
In our best iambic pentameter.

His comedies were raucous and daring,
His histories were all spectacular,
He is known for profound words declaring ,
And phrases used in the vernacular.

Take time to wish the Bard your very best,
For the sonnets and phrases that amaze,
For the stories that have surpassed the rest,
For every one of thirty-seven plays.

Thought children may feel tortured by him still,
I'm not a child, so happy birthday, Will.

We English should be proud! But, you know, not get in anyone's way, or offend anyone, we'll feel proud, though, deep down inside, and eat our good old English meals (like Chicken Tikka Masala) with a quiet humble pride.

Because, well, we wouldn't want to boast or anything, and certainly it's just serendipity that we happened to be born in this fair country, but Shakespeare was certainly a jolly talented chap. I'm sure that St. George fellow was wonderful too - of course it's rather sad that he wasn't English, probably never came to this country, very probably didn't actually kill a dragon. But never mind. We English are accommodating, providing of course they speak our language and not Foreign, and providing they don't insult our food.

Let's eat yorkshire pudding together, and recite our creed - I sincerely believe that England will, despite any odds, win the World Cup.

God save the Queen!

Cue chorus of Jerusalem...

Note: I since learned that Chicken tikka masala isn't English after all.

It's Scottish.

Now that's a Burn's night meal! We hae meat and we can eat...

2006-04-23T18:10:00.000+01:00

Even on a day like this when you're crawling on the floor
Reaching for the phone to ring anyone who knows you anymore
It's all right to make mistakes
You're only human
Inside everybody's hiding something

Staring at the same four walls, have you tried to help yourself
The rings around your eyes they don't hide, that you need to get some rest

It's all right to make mistakes
You're only human
Inside everybody's hiding something
Take time to catch your breathe and choose your moment

Don't slide

Even at a time like this when the morning seems so far
Think that pain belongs to you but it's happened to us all

It's all right to make mistakes
You're only human
Inside everybody's hiding something
Take time to catch your breathe and choose your moment

Don't slide

You brought this on yourself
And it's high time you left it there
Lie here and rest your head
And dream of something else instead

Don't slide
- Dido, Don't Slide

Lately I've been slipping down
Thinking I'm the only one
Drifting in and out of blue
But destiny's a state of mind
And today I'm doing fine
Just rolling through the afternoon with you
- Heather Nova, Widescreen

Writes of Passage

2006-04-22T04:55:00.000+01:00

With finals so soon, many thoughts are buzzing around my head, like "Where am I going?" "What should I do?" and "Had I eaten the wrong mushrooms when I picked Biochemistry?"

If I'd taken something like, say, English and Performance, there would be much less pressure on my future career. I could be:

a) unemployed.
b) doing a PGCE to pass the time.
c) "You want fries with that?"

(All right, I'm sorry, any English and performance students, please don't hunt me down and kill me, or at least if you do want to kill me, do it before finals)

It's really a bit depressing working on finals with the main intention of finishing the degree so I can head for the hills and never go into a lab ever again. All right, I wouldn't mind if, say, I had a job in a lab for a few months to get some money, but please, I don't want to be doing this for the rest of my life.

Only I don't really know what else to do. It'd be nice to have a grand plan, but right now my grand plan is literally "pass degree, get job, get money" and that isn't exactly encouraging. I just want to get a job where I can be some good to other people, only I've no idea how I can do that and right now I feel generally useless, and perhaps this is because I should actually be working on my degree rather than posting introspective blog entries.

I'd just like not to be a waste of space, that's all.

I did have something of an epiphany recently when I was reading a story... OK, a fanfic... that I wrote a while ago and remembered a nice comment someone had given me about it. Then I remembered how people nagged me to finish some of my stories and actually laughed at my jokes and appreciated my ideas and I had a sudden moment of revelation when I realised that I could be a writer.

I do have a personal pledge to myself that I will never under any circumstances attempt to become a "great" writer. I met too many of those in a writing group I was in for a couple of months; people whose obsession with flowery language and grand ideas and "originality" often really ended up making their stories sound laboured or even unreadable. Because I'm the sort of philistine who prefers J.K. Rowling to Philip Pullman, I figured I'd rather just write good books that people enjoy, rather than intending on writing tomes encapsulating intense philosophical ideas. If I happen to mix in some philosophy or ideology I'd rather just do it because it comes naturally in the story.

I used to have the vague ambition of writing Christian fiction, which was quashed because I'm bad at it. Whenever I get vaguely near to moralising it sounds like something lifted from The Youth Bible. Or perhaps it's because I feel I ought to include God as a character, which doesn't seem right somehow, you can't invent a theophany. There's also the problem that I dislike most Christian fiction, apart from C.S. Lewis and Adrian Plass. I rather like Adrian Plass's approach, which seems to be just to write about life as it is and not write as evangelism. I think in Why I Follow Jesus he said that God can use his books, but then God can use any old rubbish.

In a possible irony, in Charles M. Sheldon's book In His Steps, the only character who backs down on his WWJD pledge is a novelist. The trouble is, it's quite simple to be, say, a builder for Christ. Build homes for the needy, treat your co-workers with respect and don't whistle at women in the street. (I once saw a cartoon with a builder calling down, "Excuse me, ma'am, you look very nice today" and the caption "Politically correct builders" :) ) OK, if you're a builder please don't come and kill me, or, again, do it before finals...

However, being a writer for Christ will always be a bit troubling because you can't really write books for the poor (except perhaps the poor in spirit, and they're a lot harder to cater for), and because you're dealing with words which are trickier than bricks. Forget the crap about sticks and stones, words are dangerous. Honouring God with words is a tricky business, as I'm sure Charles M. Sheldon realised. And how am I supposed to go about it? Should I take a year out to finally write my novel, or stick to web publishing and blogging?

I don't know, except I did at least have a sudden moment when I realised that my writing need not be all about me. I could write something someone else could enjoy, and perhaps (I hopefully thought) perhaps this could honour God, even if it wasn't directly about him? I enjoy writing articles for York uni's Christian magazine, but I'm not sure I'm ready (not old or wise enough) to be the next Philip Yancey, and I utterly refuse to be the next Rick Warren (and there could be only one Julian of Norwich). Could I really stick at it long enough to write a proper full-length book?

As usual, I'm not sure, but I would really like to. It would be wonderful simply to write something that people could enjoy, and hopefully also be encouraged by. It would be good to know that I'm some good to someone else :)

Giving up is hard to do

2006-04-20T23:50:00.000+01:00

Happy Eastertide everyone - it seems like it's been so long, mainly because it has been so long.

So it's been an interesting... er, 51 days... I missed blogging like crazy, and when in need of therapy had to resort to hot chocolate, or failing that, actual human contact. I kept thinking of amusing anecdotes, most of which I've now forgotten. I've settled at a church I shall rechristen "St. Weirdo's" for the purposes of blogging (really, how could I attend anywhere else?), I did a mini Gilbert and Sullivan concert with the society and sung the part of Mabel in a Pirates of Penzance song - yay!

In all the time that's past I can at least tell you that in that time the oddest compliment I received was "Who is the girl with the wonderful eyebrows?" although an honourable mention goes to "if I was a girl, I'd want hair like Helen's."

I had a great Easter. Saw my parents, siblings, siblings-in-law, sister-in-law's parents, and had a lovely Easter Sunday slobbing in front of the television with Stephen and Nicky before I came back to York. I made them watch Shipwrecked. Hopefully that doesn't actually contravene the Geneva Convention.

So finals are soon, and it's less than 100 days to graduation. Eeek.

I must have read at least three books - What the Bible really teaches by Keith Ward, Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich (a woman, despite the name), and Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde. Can't believe it's taken me this long to get into Jasper Fforde. I loved Revelations of Divine Love (extremely quotable, about half of my copy has pencilled underlines) and I enjoyed Keith Ward's book a lot too, but I'm not really in the mood for the kind of discussion it would probably encourage right now. Plus I have a little thing called a degree to finish off :)

I don't know if my blogfast brought me closer to God. I have, as always, had many Deep Thoughts which I'll no doubt be blogging in future. And I wrote this yesterday. I call it the "Messy Christian's Prayer". Enjoy and God bless :)

Father God,

It seems that following you is a rocky road with many surprises. Please keep me safe and let me love you and know you more and more each day.

May I never utter the following lies:
“I’m very open-minded.”
“My beliefs are always based on fact.”
“I don’t cry easily.”
“When I’m wrong, I’ll be the first to admit it.”
“I hate that sentimental stuff.”
“I’m happy all the time now that I have Jesus.”
“My heart’s one desire is to be holy.”
“Every step I make is a step of faith.”
“I will not boast in anything…”

May I never let my faith puff me up.

May I never be afraid of questions.

May I never claim that you always answer prayers, and certainly never claim that you never do – may I always be prepared for surprises.

May I never equate tradition or quietness with spiritual death, and may I always find time to be still and know that you are God.

May I never ever claim “I’m not religious, I’m spiritual.”

May I never equate witnessing to just not drinking or swearing in front of non-Christians.

May I never assume that someone with a different religion worships the Devil – unless, of course, they actually do.

May I never grow tired of learning.

May I never cease to be thankful.

May I never think being high on Jesus is a substitute for living a Christian life, and never cease to look for you in everyday places.

Let me always love other Christians, let me always love my enemies, and help me when they happen to be the same people.

Cure my itching ears so they only hear the truth and not just what I want to hear.
Remind me that playing solitaire is no substitute for prayer.

Forgive me my sins, even the ones I enjoyed, and especially the ones that still make me chuckle when I remember them.

Help me give even when it hurts, love when I want to hate, think before I speak and practise what I preach.

And may I always trust you and not myself, and remember that you’re much bigger than fear.

Amen.

Addicted to blog

2006-02-28T16:01:00.000Z

Last night Christian Focus had a communion/prayer meeting, and at one point during prayer I suddenly thought, I spend longer blogging than I do praying.

Um.

I tried hastily to retract the thought, 'cause, you know, blogging's a bit like prayer. You're honest about your life, and sometimes you get an answer, and usually not the one you expected... Besides, blogging is my therapy. I'd go mad without blogging! Blogging is my baby, I can't abandon my baby!

Ahem.

Lent is so evil. If it wasn't Lent tomorrow, I could quite happily have, say, a fortnight's blogfast, without too much trouble. But no, it's Lent. Grr.

I've already signed up to take part in a Lent blog, with a group of people all reflecting on Lent/God etc. So I've decided to give this blog a rest (although technically Lent doesn't include Sundays, so may see you then ;) ), and not post endless stuff about what I'm having for tea tonight or how hooded teachers being stopped by security guards demonstrates equality, or whatever, and actually try taking part in a community for once.

So essentially I'm going to be giving my general blogging a rest and from now on, I'm blogging for the Lord! Or something. But yeah, see me at the Lent blog for the next 40 days (minus Sundays). If you want to sign up too I'm sure there's still time :) My posts will be the ones labelled "Posted by Helen Louise".

The troubling questions

2006-02-27T02:46:00.000Z

I seem to be having a lot of conversations with different 'sorts' of Christians lately. (speaking of which, hi Dave :) ) Went on retreat to a (Church of England) monastery in Mirfield this weekend, and the ex RC chaplain of York university came along and gave some talks. I had a long conversation with him on Saturday. I can see why he was such a popular chaplain :) He was very gentle and had so much compassion. One thing that he said stuck in my mind - "God is love, all the time. Not just when he's in a good mood - all the time."

Complex questions of hell, judgement, eschatology, destiny, salvation, faith and works aside, I realised that my "crisis of faith" boiled down to the old questions that continue to trouble me and everyone else:

Does God love me?
Does God love everyone else?
Will he always love us?

I do not wish to take God's grace lightly - I would not wish to say, "God loves me, I'm safe, I can do anything I like, I need not strive or struggle or even obey...", employing some kind of emotional blackmail on God; "you have to love me so I'll do as I like", like a husband who'd beat his wife if he knew she wouldn't leave him, or a daughter who knows that her parents will always feed and house her, so ignores their discipline and breaks the rules, despite any heartfelt pleas to do otherwise.

But I do find it so very hard to believe that there is security in God's love. I am a fool, a sinner and a doubter, and I fear that God will get bored with my foolishness and sinfulness and doubt and *bang* my name's gone from the Book of Life. I find it hard to believe there is persistence in God's love - can I trust him to keep hounding my friends, relatives, acquaintances, enemies even, and all those billions of people I will never meet and can't lead to Jesus? Will he pursue them so that they can at least make the choice to turn and follow him? Or will he shut the door on the last few prodigals who turn for home?

Is it possible that "God is love" is the most troubling phrase in the Bible?

Give me a chance at being young, hip and counter-culture

2006-02-23T03:57:00.000Z

I suspect, like many students before me, I'm suffering from being the Inhabitant of an Idealistic Dream World, but the corporations have started their recruitment drive... and ick.

Today I was handed a free smoothie (very nice, despite its small amount of banana), and a card suggesting that perhaps the place for me is in auditing or maybe tax assessment! If you know you're intellectual but creative as well, tax is the place for you!

Probably this is just a standard student hippy response (says the girl who buys coffee at Starbucks) but please save me from working in auditing. Or tax. Unless I'm somehow doing it for some company set up to Spread the Love and Feel the Peace, Man.

Or at least please give me a few years of being pretentiously counter-culture before I sell out.

Please. It's all I ask. Or at least don't make me wear a suit to work.

Hooded teacher deemed security risk

2006-02-21T20:40:00.000Z

Just read an interesting story on BBC news:

A supermarket has apologised to a 58-year-old school teacher who was asked by an over-zealous security guard to remove her hooded top.

...Mrs Parncutt, a teaching assistant at Longleaze School in Wooton Bassett said: "I couldn't believe he was talking to me. I'm supposed to look like a nasty thug?"
Hooded tops have been banned from some shopping centres and schools because they conceal the face and have been associated with crime and anti-social behaviour.
The company said it did not have a hoodie ban in its stores, and added: "We are sorry if this made Mrs Parncutt feel uncomfortable in any way.
"We will be speaking to our security staff to make sure this doesn't happen again."

I thought this was interesting.

Granted, 58 year olds generally aren't the typical recipients of Anti-Social Behavioural Orders, and in this case, since no hoodie ban was in place, it seems rather rude of the security guard to hassle the woman... but there seems to be an implicit assumption in this story that I'm not sure I agree with.

I assume that people are wary about hoodies because they conceal the face from CCTV cameras - at least that's the reason Bluewater gave for their hoodie ban last year. It is very likely that Mrs Parncutt is no thug, but isn't it at least possible she might be a shoplifter?

What would have happened if a teenage boy had been hassled to put his hood down, I wonder? Since there was no specific ban he could have complained at unfair treatment. Would the story have made the BBC news? (This story's linked on the front page at the moment)

Would he even have received an apology from the store?

Is it advisable for a security guard to consider someone a potential trouble-maker based solely on their age and gender?

Simple Christianity?

2006-02-20T22:30:00.000Z

A few years ago now I remember being in a discussion on anarchy and religion. There were a lot of agnostic anarchists, a few Pagans, one guy who was trying to decide if he was still Catholic, a few Christians and one very quiet Muslim girl who looked intimidated when asked about the Qur'an (and me, of course. Oh, and Matthew, who's converted to Judaism now).

It was meant to be an open discussion but it was more of an open discussion for people with enough confidence to blurt out their point of view, usually interrupting someone who was still talking (Really, it makes it very clear why debates are usually led by a chairperson, although in an anarchist society a chair would somewhat defeat the purpose). One of the Christians tried to apply anarchy to Christianity - "Anarchy and Christianity are both about freedom" but it sounded suspiciously like he was trying to preach a sermon and I don't think the anarchists, knowing full well that "freedom" has different shades of meaning, were particularly impressed. The Possibly Catholic guy somehow got onto talking about Scriptural Authority (he confessed at one point he refused to trust anything in the Bible but the words of Jesus), the Pagans were fluffy and talked about how paganism is religious anarchy, and another Christian told us all how he hadn't bothered joining any Christian societies. He said, "I consider myself a simple Christian."

I can't remember who this person was, and I remember suspecting even at the time that he seemed a bit too proud of his non-membership of any Christian societies, but I confess that the idea of being a "simple Christian" attracted me immensely, and still does. Perhaps it needs to be tempered by my annoyance at the "let's go on being Christians but remove any last recognisable shred of Christianity" brigade (like the types who think you can be a Christian and not believe in God). But there are days when I feel so fed up with the whole "system" that to live "simply" as a Christian seems like a beautiful ideal.

On Sunday I went to a different church from my usual one (as it turned out, this was a good move since some members of my choir were performing and I joined in :D). I was rather intrigued, being personally rather "low church", at the "traditional" nature of the service. There were vestments and even an icon, hymns, and a very traditional church building, with an organ and pews and a pulpit, some stained glass, floor mosaics and those plaques that say "In memory of So-and-so of this parish". They did also have a band (with a guitar!) and a fairly large student population (most of CF seemed to be there), and they served excellent tea and biscuits afterwards.

Non-traditional churches sometimes congratulate themselves on not being like the above church, except perhaps for the tea and biscuits. They may meet in a school hall (or in the case of Hillsong, a theatre), they may have a full band, a gospel choir, and an overhead projector, they might try non-traditional methods of worship, they dispense with vestments, refuse icons, and change the pews for comfy chairs, or at least comfier pews.

Most still keep other traditions (and have traditions of their own), like regular sung worship, a sermon in which a leader preaches to the congregation (who are silent or interject with "amen" and "hallelujah") and many endorse tithing (that is, giving ten percent of your income to church funds), and, of course, meeting on Sundays. None of these are specifically required of the church, although Paul encourages meeting together and sang hymns when in jail, as well as encouraging people to be generous givers. James speaks of helping Christians in need and of course Jesus commands us to love one another. But there is also discussion of how in a meeting everyone has something different to bring, and I think we can conclude that they wouldn't have had a pipe organ.

I am not saying that later traditions are not useful. Seasons of fasting and feasting are useful ways of dedicating ourselves to God in different manners - fasting in discipline and sacrifice, feasting in freedom and celebration - both in their way an expression of what it means to serve God. My brother once stunned me, when previously I had smugly remarked on the pointless of Catholic mass, by telling me that he found Mass beautiful. I realised that for him, at the time (he's no longer a Christian as far as I can tell :( ), it had a special meaning that "low church" protestant me refused to examine. Tithing money can be a method of trusting God with our finances and being generous whatever the circumstances. Sung worship can be used very effectively to expression adoration, gratitude and reverence. Teaching by a knowledgeable person helps the one with less understanding to learn. I don't believe that traditions and rituals have come out of nowhere and serve no purpose. I am just concerned that our traditions may take the place of law - gaining an equal footing with the necessary basics of Christianity: believe and trust in Jesus, repent of sin, love God, love other people.

This is a difficult thing, however, because people can take pride in anything, and if they aren't taking pride of their dedicated church attendance, their financial commitment to the church, their church's impressive organ or impressive rock band, their church's refusal to conform with the world or their church's relevance to the world, they can certainly take pride in their "simple Christianity". We could throw out all the rituals, traditions, songs, formats and organisations, and we could still end up squabbling over who's doing Christianity right...

Perhaps Christianity doesn't lend itself to simplicity that well. People are still fiercely debating theology, which is fascinating but utterly exhausting. And loving other people has problems of its own - people just aren't simple, especially when they get into large groups, and when loving other people, we can't wait for them to reach perfection before we associate with them - and in that case, quitting a church or a Christian society may not be the best course of action. We can become armchair critics, sneering at the flailing church from the outside and congratulating ourselves at our own devotion to God instead of to the church and its traditions.

I suppose what I really want is not "simple Christianity" because I'm not sure that such a thing exists or if it can be defined - and attempting to create a movement for it would only divide the church further. I'm sure the church needs stirring up (don't we all get complacent at times?) but it seems that often a new movement can become an idol on its own - if I said that traditions are useful but can become a hindrance, I'm sure that a resulting movement could be made where traditions were declared anathema and any church with sung worship declared apostate... which would just be silly.

I suppose what I'm fed up with is "doing church". I long to know God and to understand and possess the love spoken about in 1 Corinthians 13. It's fun and can even be edifying discussing minute points of theology or singing a good rousing hymn or volunteering for a coffee morning, but aren't these just physical manifestations of what should be a spiritual foundation? We don't sing hymns to pass the time or because they're enjoyable, but because they express truth about the one we worship. We don't give money to our church because of some divine tax, but because we love our church and because as part of the church, we want to reach more people and bring more glory to God. We don't discuss theology because we want to be proved right, but because we want to discover the truth.

I've no doubt that many traditions are useful and helpful - and that if we want to know God, we can learn from other people. But I feel we need to be assured that the most important thing is to love and know God, and that all else should follow from that. If that means our traditions have to go, then so be it.

Everything I need to know about love, I learned from Patience. And J.K. Rowling.

2006-02-18T02:46:00.000Z

After seeing Patience, I have been wandering around all day today singing Gilbert and Sullivan songs. Not "Twenty lovesick maidens" though. More of the "willow willow waly" and "in this case unprecedented" with a bit of a "singularly deep young man", and with a bit of Pirates and Gondoliers thrown in for good measure ("We will quickly be parsonified, conjugally matrimonified, by a doctor of divinity who is found in the vicinity!").

I often get the impression that W.S. Gilbert simply picks a few themes to mock and then builds a plot around a lot of lovesick maidens and manly men with some good three syllable rhymes ("Then I can hum a fugue of which I've heard that music's din afore... And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense, Pinafore!"), while Sullivan occupies himself with beautiful arias and delightful gavottes.

In Patience it's the fashion for 'aestheticism' that receives most of Gilbert's ridicule, with the utterly wonderful and entirely pompous idiotic poet Bunthorne (apparently not an Oscar Wilde caricature... see the Gilbert and Sullivan archive...) who writes nonsensical melodramatic angst poetry and is adored by the twenty maidens, at least until Grosvenor, another poet, turns up (Oscar Wilde!).

Patience herself is in love with Grosvenor, and he with her, but she feels that it would be selfish to marry someone as universally admired as he. Bunthorne is in love with Patience, and so she decides to offer to marry him, as she decides this would be the most unselfish course of action, as there would be absolutely nothing in it for her. Bunthorne's happiness at her acceptance is disturbed when he realises that all his former admirers have turned their adulation to Grosvenor (who himself is wearied by the admiration), and his fiancée is also in love with the young poet.

Deciding that he needs to find some way of repelling the maidens from Grosvenor, Bunthorne persuades him to become more ordinary looking.

(Happily borrowed from The Patience Web Opera)

Bunthorne
When I go out of door,
Of damozels a score
(All sighing and burning,
And clinging and yearning)
Will follow me as before.

I shall, with cultured taste,
Distinguish gems from paste,
And "High diddle diddle"
Will rank as an idyll,
If I pronounce it chaste!

Both
A most intense young man,
A soulful-eyed young man,
An ultra-poetical, super-aesthetical,
Out-of-the-way young man!

Grosvenor
Conceive me, if you can,
An ev'ryday young man:
A commonplace type,
With a stick and a pipe,
And a half-bred black-and-tan;

Who thinks suburban "hops"
More fun than "Monday Pops,"
Who's fond of his dinner,
And doesn't get thinner
On bottled beer and chops.

Both
A commonplace young man,
A matter-of-fact young man,
A steady and stolid-y, jolly Bank-holiday,
Every-day young man!

Isn't that what we want, after all? Not a A crotchety, cracked young man, An ultra-poetical, super-aesthetical, Out-of-the way young man! But a steady and stolid-y, every-day young man. In the end, every girl really wants a down-to-earth guy who makes her laugh. It's this fatal move that causes Bunthorne to lose his Patience*.

But why do we follow around melancholic idiots anyway? If I may make that most unlikely link, and draw a comparison with Harry Potter, take for example Professor Snape.

Alan Rickman really doesn't do justice to the ugliness. But this drawing should give you an idea.

He's described early on as a teacher with greasy black hair, a hooked nose, and sallow skin which, as you might imagine, has earned him the admiration of thousands of women.

Quite.

If he isn't a A pallid and thin young man, A haggard and lank young man then you must have an issue with the word "young". Throughout the books he unfairly insults Harry (in particular he calls him arrogant, which we, the reader, know he is not), bullies the nervous Neville Longbottom, and even takes points from Hermione for being "An insufferable know-it-all". He has a Dark Past, he's probably a murderer, he's petty, he's cruel, he's sarcastic, and don't we all love him for it?

The reason why women continue to love the Potions Master of Mystery is probably due in part to his fictionality. In real life, when we lope around melancholic and cruel men with poor hygiene, we end up getting upset, hurt or disillusioned. With Snape it's easier because being fictional we can easily reimagine him as the tragically misunderstood and secretly noble Man With A Dark Past, who covers up a deeply passionate and ultimately good soul beneath that greasy and immature exterior.

What I love about J.K. Rowling is that after reading the 50 millionth Snape-turns-good fanfic, we can get back into the books and discover that, yes, he has depth, yes, he's had a hard life, but yes, he is a very horrible man who doesn't need the love of a good woman more than he needs the service of a good psychiatrist.

Why do women love Snape? Why did Pip love Estella? Why do the stars shine above? Why do the fools fall in love? Why does a man become more attractive when you've seen him headbanging to Bohemian Rhapsody? Ahem.

We love the Snapes of this world because we're idiots. Granted, the Snapes and the Bunthornes may deserve our pity, our compassion, and our patience**, but they don't deserve our passionate adoration. Once you'd succeeded in getting Snape away from his potions and out on a date, he'd talk about himself or how much he hates Harry Potter, make cuttingly sarcastic remarks whenever you made a social faux pas, sulk when introduced to your parents and still forget to wash his hair. There's a theory that Harry's mother had a crush on old Sev back in school, and Snape fondly repaid her affections by insulting her (and by implication, her parents) (see Order of the Phoenix) .

Nice guy.

Perhaps we women have self-esteem problems. We reason that a man is inconsiderate, rude, aloof and generally disrespectful because of some kind of disturbing hierarchy that means we're lower down on the romantic food chain and therefore have to put up with this rubbish in order to get a good mate, and that our dogged persistence and loving affection will eventually melt his cold heart.

I really hope no one ever thinks that... but alas, I think there are far too many people who do think like that, both men and women.

J.K. Rowling herself offers this wise advice:

Girls, stop going for the bad guy. Go for a nice man in the first place. It took me 35 years to learn that, but I am giving you that nugget free, right now, at the beginning of your love lives.

It's all very fascinating to have Mr. Hidden Depths, or Prof. Dark Past, or whatever, as a fascinating addition to your interesting lifestyle, but living with this moron day to day? It makes singleness seem all the more wonderful. I thank W.S. Gilbert for providing this painful picture of love so that we can see just how foolish it is:

Love is a plaintive song,
Sung by a suff'ring maid,
Telling a tale of wrong,
Telling of hope betrayed;
Tuned to each changing note,
Sorry when he is sad,
Blind to his ev'ry mote,
Merry when he is glad!
Merry when he is glad!

Really, who wants a pretentious idiot who's in love with the sound of his own voice, even if he is so charmingly aesthetic and so utterly mysterious? Who wouldn't in the long run prefer a nice guy who's unashamedly ordinary, or at least doesn't carry around his Dark Past like a fashion accessory?

So here are my words of wisdom for the day: be kind to Bunthorne, but marry Grosvenor. Be courteous to Snape, but fall in love with Lupin. You know it makes sense. (I will be endeavouring to follow my own advice from now on)

* Sorry, I had to make that joke somewhere.
** No pun intended this time. Well, maybe a little.

"Tell me two things. Firstly, what on earth is this love that upsets everybody; and, secondly, how is it to be distinguished from insanity?"

2006-02-17T07:02:00.000Z

Patience was wonderful.

Still thankful

2006-02-17T02:33:00.000Z

It's been a great couple of days. Keith and Sian came up, Dougsoc won both first and second prize in a bar quiz, and spent its winnings on cocktails, I met up with a guy I met at Faith Camp and we had Chinese, my experiment worked and I just ate some cheesecake. Oh, and I'm going to see Patience tonight 'cause I can't wait another day before getting some Gilbert and Sullivan style goodness. I've had to satisfy myself with learning songs from Pirates of Penzance and singing along with the midi files. It's about time I got to hear from twenty lovesick maidens.

(I discovered that "Adrian", one of my housemates, has never heard I am the very model of a modern major general nor Tom Lehrer's Elements song - I have it half memorised now, though I'm getting mixed up at yttrium and ytterbium. I was, of course, scandalised.)

It was really awesome seeing Keith and Sian again. York didn't seem quite right without them :) (If you're a York resident and have noticed that York lacked its aura of happiness lately, it's because Keith and Sian aren't here. Obviously). There was also generally awesome Dougsoc goodness. Jokes, geekiness, fun. *smile*

It was good to see... hmm, let's call him "Mark", who I met at Faith Camp. Chrissie seems to think that he's like me, which I don't really see, although I take that as a compliment :) He has lots of faith and is extremely lovely. He also likes The Great Divorce and he won't shut up about God :) He blessed me with a meal at a Chinese buffet and we talked about Bible college.

With such general awesomeness over the last few days, despite my general confusion, I'm still trying to be thankful. I don't really understand God right now and the whole eternal destiny thing still bothers me... but God created beautiful skies, spring blossom, chocolate, people, and best of all, friends, which deserves my profound admiration and gratitude! I really hope he clears some stuff up with me soon... but until then, I'm still thankful.

Valentine's Day Message

2006-02-15T01:36:00.000Z

TMI WARNING:

I'd like to thank my Mum for having sex this day in 1983. Thanks also to St. Valentine for encouraging the event.

END OF TMI WARNING.

I wonder why I ever hated Valentine's day? I grinned as I walked past a student television recording today, hearing the remark, It's Valentine's Day and singletons everywhere are miserable, and walked about my way wondering what planet she was on. Miserable? Who could be miserable on such a life-affirming day as this? Besides the reminder that it may even be partly due to Valentine that I exist at all, there's no day like Valentine's to remind me of the many benefits of being single.

If there's anything I'm grateful for in having actually had a boyfriend, it's the knowledge that Valentine's day is not necessarily a beeyootiful day of lurve... It seems to be more about buying your beloved a card and flowers to alleviate guilt and do your duty for another year. A good time for Clintons and Interflora, and a day of intense romantic pressure on all those couples out there. Happily I can be but a spectator in this ridiculous event, go and buy myself some chocolate... oh, and I'm going see Keith and Sian tonight! I also have about forty minutes to think of a fancy dress costume, which may mean I'll end up going to Dougsoc as Miss Make Poverty History again.

What can I say? Life is good.

In the true spirit of the day, the Student Union has put out signs reminding people to protect themselves against chlamydia. Aah, celibacy is a beautiful thing.

I was thinking of some "anti-Valentine's" songs... for years I've been planning to hold an anti-Valentine's party only right now I just don't feel bitter enough :) But I was thinking of one, and realised that the style would hardly be appropriate for a well-bred young lady rejecting her suitor. I felt that I needed to re-write it so that it would be suitable for rejecting the more high-class gentleman that one hopes may be courting one.

I have been acquainted with a number of gentlemen who considered themselves in possession of above-average intellect.
However, you seem to consider yourself infallible,
Your conviction of your own high IQ is a particularly irritating characteristic.
You believe yourself uniquely knowledgeable on every topic.
I do believe that you consider yourself apart from the common herd,
An altogether different breed.

If we accept the proposition that you have extraordinary intelligence,
I remain unconvinced at your general prowess as a suitable partner.
Aside from your brain-power, I would like to know if you have the suitable quintessential qualities I require.
Please do not be mistaken, I consider you an amiable fellow
However this would not be of great comfort during the irrationality of a sleepless night.
I remain unconvinced.

Never before have I been aquainted with a gentleman so possessed of his own beauty
And so dedicated to personal grooming
Your attention to your appearance is concerning
And possibly bordering on obsessional.
I do believe you consider yourself a particularly good catch.
You believe yourself to be a fellow of distinction.

If we accept the proprosition that you have looks not dissimilar to those of a Hollywood actor
I still remain unconvinced at your suitability for a long term relationship
You may have unusually handsome features,
But do you possess the more delicate refined aspects of a gentleman?
Do not be misled, I find you a man of moderate charm
However my insomniacal fits of emotion will not be soothed by so little.
I remain unconvinced.

You are of the particular breed that pays close attention to his automobile.
One might say that it causes you to be unchivalrous.
You have a pseudo-sexual relationship with your vehicle;
I find that frankly laughable.
I do believe that you consider yourself the creme de la creme,
You believe yourself to be a man unparalleled.

It may indeed be useful to possess an automobile for transportation
But that fails to pique my interest
You have the means for travel, but can you stimulate my interest in a more refined manner?
Do not think me churlish, I believe you to be an acceptably decorous gentleman
But that will not be helpful when I require some sustaining thought to aid my rest

So I remain unconvinced
You believe yourself appealing, but do you have particular finesse required in a romantic relationship?
Please do not misjudge me, you are an amiable fellow
Yet this will not be my prevailing thought during a long dark night of the soul
I am unmoved by your appeals.

And if you believe yourself to be akin to a sex symbol of bygone days, I must tell you that I am most definitely not impressed.

I blog because I can't afford therapy

2006-02-13T23:12:00.000Z

Kate seems to have the very sweet idea that I'll get on really well with her friend because we're both Christians.

Actually we did get on really well, which just goes to show how clever my housemate is ;)

I sometimes wonder if I am in fact turning into Oscar the Grouch. I guess lately I've felt isolated because I find it hard to talk about the things that are troubling me. It's much easier to vent in blogland than real life :) And it has been a bit lonely because my close friends are mostly elsewhere - the people I used to confide in (even Matthew!*) aren't around anymore. I think I've also mentioned that I'm paranoid and I am a rock, I am an island, and all that.

I do really want to love others, but I'm a coward and also don't want to be hurt, mocked, embarrassed, or rejected. Love unfortunately is a tricky thing and doesn't guarantee freedom from any of these things.

I did wonder, early on in the crisis of faith, if Kate might sympathise with my angsting. The trouble is, how do you tell an atheist that you're going mad over the idea of Hell and you've started to look at people and wonder if they're eternally doomed? Or at least how do you do it without convincing them that it's time the men in the white coats took you away? She brightly asked me if I still attend church recently, and which point I wondered whether to say that (although I'm still a member of an impressive number of Christian societies) actually I've attended embarrassingly infrequently this term, ie. I went to one Quaker meeting and it's debateable as to whether that counts. I think now that she only asked because she assumed "Teresa" (her Christian friend) would want to go, not that Teresa had actually requested to go, since after going clubbing Saturday night they all woke up on Sunday afternoon...

I really liked all of Kate's visitors, from her bizarre twisted friend "Spike" to the saintly Teresa. I suspect I should have more faith in people. Teresa somehow managed to be angelic without being aloof. Spike has an utterly filthy mind, and I can't work out quite why I like him so much :) But that's people for you. There's nowt as queer as folk. I did actually excuse myself from clubbing, but that was because I hate clubbing, or perhaps I hate tinnitus.

I went to church yesterday evening, possibly because I was ashamed that I'd told people that I go to church when I don't think having last been in December really counts as regular attendence. I decided that if anyone asked why I hadn't been for so long, I would just tell them.

No one asked. I suddenly realised that in fact I did want to tell someone. I'm fed up of pretending that everything's OK. I'm still struggling over everything, as I'm sure readers of this blog can tell. I really wish I understood - I'm trying to seek the truth, I want to understand about Hell - if it is true, surely God wouldn't want me to get by just by ignoring it or even by being constantly terrified by it, would he? I guess in a sense I pray counter-intuitively... I really don't want Hell to be true, as I find it both scary and illogical. I've asked God to show it to me in a way that makes sense, in a way that I can't argue with and that I will accept. It is a prayer I really don't want him to answer ;) If hell is real but the fruit of the spirit is love, joy and peace (etc), I know that God can find a way for them to co-exist. And if it's not true I really want God to convict me that it isn't, rather than just deciding on what I'd most like to believe!

Oh, incidentally, I got up the courage to look at my exam results, and it appears that I actually passed two of them, albeit only just. I'm beginning to see just how pointless worrying actually is.

I'm off to get a coffee and maybe even do some work :)

*Matthew was my boyfriend just over a year ago. He could be both utterly adorable and excruciatingly annoying. I won't bore you with details.

More general observations on life

2006-02-12T02:34:00.000Z

Some thoughts for your consideration:

On the envy of certainty

It was mission week for the CU this week - actually it technically still is, there's one more meeting to go. I accidentally ended up at a meeting on Thursday morning. Yes, accidentally. I came across some CU people and realised they were planning the rest of their mission.

It felt more like observation than participation for me. I wasn't really supposed to be there - it turns out I'd turned up too late to share breakfast and ended up listening to the rest of their plans. It was strange watching them because I could tell that they were really excited about all that had happened, and I really wished I could be like them, with more answers than questions... God seems so silent right now, and try as I might, I can't accept their views on damnation. I know they're loving, and I know they mean well... But I don't see how they can be so certain and so at peace.

On the persistence of questions

Speaking of which, I went to a CU talk on Friday on the love of God. There were a lot of questions afterwards. All the old classics came out - about hell and forgiveness and choice and why God created us at all. I asked about why every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. After I got my answer I wondered why I'd bothered asking. I suddenly wondered if I could really ask any hard question and it would be similarly answered and dismissed. There seemed to be some non-Christians and a few malcontents who asked the same "old classics" as have been asked for centuries. I wonder what was going through their minds? Do we still have these questions because there really are no good answers, or because we can't accept the good answers? I felt quite comforted by one thing - there were people who seemed genuinely spiritually hungry, but unsure of the truth. It appears I'm not the only one ;)

OK, that's weird, Pandora's playing Yesterday Girl by The Smithereens.

I never wanna find an answer
'cause I don't like the truth
And if I find just what I'm looking for
I've something to lose
So please don't go and ask me questions
I just won't feel the same
And when I think about religion
Well, there's no one to blame

Please tell me I'm not that bad...

On the power of perception

Look at this - what is it?

If you said that it's a rectangle overlapping another rectangle, then you can marvel at the wonder of perception. There is only one rectangle in the picture - the other shape is an irregular hexagon. Since the picture only has 2 dimensions, it is impossible for one shape to overlap another.

But our brains are very clever and can work out that two such shapes are far more likely to be overlapping than simply very neatly lined up. It amazes me to think about how much we see based on previous experience (Have you ever wondered what it must be like for a baby seeing for the first time?). This is obviously extremely useful... but in a sense it also pre-conditions us to see exactly what we expect to see. Perception is a funny thing.

On the comfort of solitude

I'm sitting peacefully in the computer room listening to Pandora.com, partly because at home Kate has a number of her friends visiting. Yes, I really am that anti-social. The nice thing about solitude is you don't have to pretend you're having a good time. Kate asked if I could take her Christian friend to church tomorrow. I occasionally attend the evening service at St. Mike's so she'll probably have gone home by the time I go. Sounds crazy, but I'm kinda relieved. Kate seems to have the very sweet idea that I'll get on really well with her friend because we're both Christians. She has no idea. :)

On the fear of self

But seriously, I realised that perhaps the first step to getting courage would be to stop being afraid of myself and the idiotic things I say in social situations, the occasional embarrassments, and the very great likelihood that I have indeed failed all my January exams (the results are out, but I avoided them). I realise that having the courage to look at my own exam results is not exactly a celebrated feat of bravery, but perhaps I should walk before I can run.

Oh no, I'm beginning to sound like I'm Alice (I think).

But anyway, perhaps a really brave thing to do would be to tell Kate's friend that actually I'm disillusioned with church and am seriously reconsidering what the Bible says about salvation and eschatology.

On the offensiveness of unconditional love

A final thing that occurred to me. I thought of this a while ago, actually, when I wondered why people say things like "I don't want your charity!". People are offended by unconditional love! We frankly think we are far too good to get unconditional love. I had a friend at primary school who once confided in me that she liked me but didn't like my other two friends. I then dedicated much of my time to remaining this girl's best friend, when I should have told her to go away and come back when she'd learned to like my friends. But exclusivity is so very thrilling. Who wants to be considered just the same as everyone else? We want exclusive membership! We want to be considered worthy of love!

On the escapism of blogging

I'm off to face reality again. See you soon.

Why be holy?

2006-02-08T01:04:00.000Z

I hope Tiffer won't mind me quoting this here, but his recent comment on my post on the Great Divorce made me giggle:

I may have already said this but look at what live as a universalist holds - no need to evangelise, holiness becomes less important, harder to find people who think along the same lines as you...wait a minute - sounds like evangelicalism!

It got me thinking about holiness; what the point is, and why we aim for it. You could say that I am writing this post from a "Christian Universalist" viewpoint - as I've already said, I'm still struggling over the particulars and not convinced of universal salvation, so forgive me if this post sounds more certain than I actually am :) Still, I pray that God will show me... or open my eyes to what he's already shown me. If you have any thoughts, as always your comments are welcome. Correct me if you like, but bear in mind that I may try to correct you back :)

It is apparently a paradox of the Christian faith that we are commanded to "Be perfect... as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48), but Paul says, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9) Or, in other words, Jesus commands us to be perfect even though he knows full well we couldn't possibly manage it, and indeed our works are not the thing that saves us, only James presents us with another dilemma: "faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead." (James 2:17).

So, be perfect, but you can't be perfect, you must be saved by grace through faith, but faith must have works, but works can't save you.

There's obviously something amiss here, so I decided to think about it... And when I get thinking...

"If you love me, you will obey what I command," says Jesus (John 14:15). I think it may be here that we begin to get down to the matter...

Suppose you've recently got married. After rowing with your spouse, you're really depressed, feeling discouraged and inadequate, and to cheer yourself up you go and visit your mad cousin, who's building a time-machine.

Yes, really. Your mad cousin is building a time-machine. Bear with me...

Mad cousin pops you inside his Delorian/Police box/Shopping trolley, and sends you fifty years into the future. You turn up at a beautiful house, and find you and your spouse, your beautiful children and beautiful grandchildren all celebrating your 50th wedding anniversary. Your future self and your spouse are more in love than ever. You jump back into your Delorian/Police box/Shopping trolley and go back home.

Once home, you order your spouse to make you breakfast in bed every day, ignore them, insist on the last word in every argument, stay out late, and never help with housework.

Why would you do a thing like that??

Would it be because, assured that your spouse will in 50 years time be madly in love with you, you decide it doesn't matter if you make their life an utter misery right now?

It doesn't make sense, does it?

Jesus doesn't say, "Obey my commands so that I will love you" but "If you love me, you will obey my commands". It's not emotional blackmail - tsk, you didn't obey, you must not love me - but a statement of fact. If we love Jesus, why would we take his commands for granted? If he says he'll be with us to the end of the age, does that mean that we can continue to sin and have fun because we're sure he'll never leave us?

"What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?" (Romans 6:1-2)

Or as C.S. Lewis put it: How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing it is irresistible.

If someone only does good and strives for holiness to avoid Hell then I don't believe that they love Jesus at all, and I think they've seriously misunderstood the idea of salvation by grace. We do not strive for holiness to make ourselves better. In fact, that would simply make our holiness a source of pride. "I am holy so God loves me". We know that our own holiness cannot possibly compare to God's holiness, and if we think that our works have any part in saving us, then we say that God's grace is not as powerful as we originally thought.

Why be holy? Because God loves us. Because we love God. Because knowing that God is perfection, why would we even want to sin? Why do we want to do the things that God sent his son to die for?

We don't strive for holiness because it will get us to Heaven and sin will send us to Hell - we strive for holiness because it's the best thing. If we are in love, we want to make our lover happy. We know that holiness is the highest ideal. To sin would be sheer foolishness. Why would we want to when we know holiness is much better?

So I was thinking about what James said - "faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead." I believe this is not saying that we should all rush out and do good works to make sure that we are saved. I think he's actually saying that faith inevitably leads to works. We love because God first loved us, or as Paul puts it "We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." (Ephesians 2:10) Or as he says to the Galatians, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law." (Galatians 5:22-23). If God's spirit dwells in us, fruit is inevitable. If we show no love for others, then our faith has a problem... then we know that we need the Holy Spirit.

I think we should also bear this in mind when considering the Great Commission:

Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Matthew 28:18-20)

He doesn't say that we should go out and get people to pray one little prayer so that we can save them for Heaven... He says, "Make disciples." This is a lot harder work and a lot more labour-intensive than handing out tracts or getting people to come to one meeting. A disciple is not just a convert... Easton's Bible Dictionary puts it like this:

Disciple
a scholar, sometimes applied to the followers of John the Baptist (Matt. 9:14), and of the Pharisees (22:16), but principally to the followers of Christ. A disciple of Christ is one who (1) believes his doctrine, (2) rests on his sacrifice, (3) imbibes his spirit, and (4) imitates his example (Matt. 10:24; Luke 14:26, 27, 33; John 6:69).

Being a disciple doesn't just mean believing in Jesus so that we can be saved, it means actively following him. Loving him, believing him, imitating him. It shouldn't just mean trusting Jesus to save us from Hell, but we trust Jesus to save us from sin, because, as I said earlier, holiness is much better than sin! Sinfulness is evil and damaging. Sin destroys. Sin spoils.

Or put it another way... You go back to visit your mad cousin, who pops you back into his time machine, and you go sixty years into the future this time. You see your best friend married to someone else you know. Despite your friend being ancient by this time, you can tell that being married has made him/her extremely happy.

You go back to the present and hear your best friend insulting their future spouse. You figure that at this rate it might actually take sixty years for them to get married. But suppose you could help them get to know each other better... Wouldn't you want to do that? You know they'll be married eventually but because you love your best friend you want him/her to be happy as much and as soon as possible.

If we believe that Jesus loves and heals our friends, why would we want to wait? Why not tell them now?

I don't believe that if we love God, we need to have the fear of Hell or damnation to keep us holy. We love because he loves us, not because if we don't love him he'll chuck us into torment for all eternity. Our "fear of the Lord" is not in terror for our lives but in respect of his awesome power and holiness - in gratitude, if it's possible to fear in gratitude... We don't take him lightly. We know he will rule, and we know he hates sin - and we submit ourselves accordingly. But if God is good, we need not fear injustice or cruelty. ("He's not a tame lion - but he is good.")

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our "God is a consuming fire." (Hebrews 12:28-29)

Rebirth of the blog

2006-02-07T01:07:00.000Z

This blog has been re-born... Well, OK, it's just been re-named. It occurred to me that despite using some variation on 'Echoes', 'Echoes Down The Corridor of Time', 'Echoing Valleys', whatever for years (literally, I've kept a Diaryland diary for over five years), I don't think Echoes really describes what this diary is anymore. I used to just write about recent events, but since I also use my blog for opinions, getting my thoughts straight about things, asking questions etc, it didn't seem like a good name anymore.

So yes. Meet the new blog, same as the old blog - "A Curious Girl".