On Leaving Behind The Influence Of The Bruderhof. The End of An Affair

A fabulous piece of art I found on this page.

Until tonight I have continued to try to like and affirm the Bruderhof, a Christian community in the anabaptist tradition.  I have tried for years. I used to succeed.  At one point their literature saved my faith - although I honestly wish now it hadn't.  At that time I was going through a very difficult period and was finding Christian faith hard to accept.  Someone in a support group - an atheist of all people - pointed me to the Bruderhof because they were giving away a few free books.  Without those books I would almost certainly have left Christianity behind in 2001.  It's fair to say that for some years I loved their books, magazines, articles.  From works like Inner Land by their founder, to works by the Blumhardts, to writings about war, and their publications by other people such as Daniel Berrigan, the Jesuit peace campaigner.  I treasured those books.

I liked the Bruderhof especially for their pacifism and love of justice.  They say many things that people of good will can agree with and even, sometimes, aspire to.

On the other hand though they love injustice too and call it Biblical. Hence this article, published today. It's an article that calls LGBT+ affirmation a "plundering" of marriage from our society, an "extinction crisis," and a "looming disaster" that we mustn't forget when dealing with flood victims. (Really. It says that.)

http://www.bruderhof.com/en/voices-blog/world/responding-to-the-nashville-statement

I've just come back from Greenbelt, a mostly Christian festival attended this year by more than 11,000 people, a festival that's affirmed LGBT+ people for a long time, a festival where I am safe to be transgender and my married gay Christian friends can celebrate their love for each other as well as their love for Jesus and the Bible too.

If I prayed, my prayer for the Bruderhof following the death of their long-term leader would be that the next generation of it could embrace the justice of accepting people just as Greenbelt accepts them. I hope too that their founder, Eberhard Arnold, would have managed to walk in acceptance by now. But given that the article is by the son of the leader I doubt it will happen. (The Bruderhof leadership tends to run from father to son.)

Because to discriminate against queer people and then proudly quote the Beatitudes when anyone says you're wrong is something that I think Jesus himself would have been disgusted by. I'm convinced that he would have said that if you're persecuted for acting unjustly then you bloody well deserve it! Sorry guys but any persecution arising is because of religious bigotry rather than because you're some imagined heir to an Old Testament prophet.

And when you call the idea of accepting people like me an "extinction crisis" you don't deserve to be supported by people like me. Yes, you stand against war and for much that is good. But so do many other groups who have learned not to use and misuse an ancient religious text as an excuse for such homophobic and transphobic statements.

I've enjoyed much that the Bruderhof have published. At one point I had an entire shelf of their books. But it's increasingly hard to own Plough Books knowing they come from an organisation that hates what I am while proclaiming they love people like me.

Perhaps, and with reluctance too, it's time to move on. To chuck out many of those books, especially those written more recently, in an age where homophobia is - at least in the countries in which the Bruderhof operates - a negative counter-cultural statement rather than any kind of societal assumption.

Perhaps I must say goodbye.  It shouldn't be that hard.  I'm no longer a Christian of any variety and as I look at Christians around me a great many work hard for peace, fraternity, love, justice and all manner of spiritual and physical fruits while at the same time embracing the queer communities.

Not just perhaps.  Definitely.

Because I don't need to have my "transgender self-conception" forgiven and overcome.  No thank you.  And when you say that my very existence as myself needs to be forgiven, ultimately that's a statement not of love.  It's a statement of violence, of rejection, of hatred of my very person.

I would say that to any Christian who tells me I need to be forgiven and healed for being transgender.  You hate me.  Pure and simple.  No matter how many fine words you speak about love and truth.  You hate me.

Humbly, people of the Bruderhof, I would ask you to seek new light.  I would ask you to consider whether there are other ways to interpret your holy book and the society and people who wrote it.  Many other Christians have managed to do so and some of those are staunch and unswerving in their great devotion to the texts before them and to the saviour they believe in.

If they can do it, take the risk of having been wrong, can you do it too?

My own love affair with the Bruderhof has been waning for some time.  It is now over.  I can't be in love with those who see me as part of a potential end to the human race just for existing and daring to stand up and be who I am.  I can't be in love with the haters who are too proud to admit they intentionally fail to walk in the love their Jesus speaks of.

Life is too short and too precious to waste more of it in even quiet support of the Bruderhof.  Wisdom must prevail in this case.  When there are Christians like the ones I met at Greenbelt this weekend, who could ever need the Bruderhof?

__________

A couple of follow-on posts for today.

 

The first concerns a response to the Nashville Statement by a denomination of which I was a member:

The Nashville Statement on "Biblical Sexuality" was recently published by a coalition of conservative Christians. Last night I read the response of the Bruderhof Communities to the statement and it prompted a regretful blog post.

This is the response of Metropolitan Community Church. Until I quit church totally I was a member of this denomination.

I no longer believe in God but I see in this response a far greater witness to all that is life, love, wonder, and compassion. Here's a short section:

"WE AFFIRM that the grace of God in Christ gives transforming power, and that this power enables a follower of Jesus to put to death the siren song of the sins of legalism, patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, and willful ignorance. We affirm that to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord is to walk in the full embrace of all of God's children."

I'd like to thank Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) Denomination and Northern Lights MCC for continuing to be beacons of love and inclusion in our communities.

I'd like to thank too all the other Christian groups and individuals who have taken the step of accepting LGBT+ people, sometimes very bravely and with the real risk of total rejection by other Christians.

I'm glad that many such Christians remain my friends. Some of you are LGBTQIA+. Some are not. Thanks to all of you for being you and embracing people like me.

__________________

The second concerns the response of a wider group of Christians:

Another follow up to my post about the Bruderhof and the homophobic, transphobic statement released this week by various evangelical Christians.

Here's a response to the statement by a collection of LGBTQIA affirming Christians, some evangelical, some more liberal.

http://www.christiansunitedstatement.org/

I don't share their faith but I applaud their response. And I see the names of people I greatly respect among the initial signatories.

How Solfeggio Frequencies Are Leading Me Into The Deepest Of Rabbit Holes

Thoughts about a rabbit hole I've found myself exploring:

Friends of mine are very into solfeggio frequencies / Fibonacci frequencies. You know, the kind of thing that says 528Hz sorts your heart and heals your DNA. Sounds far-fetched, yes?  But they're my friends and I love them.  They say the frequencies add something good to their lives.  I'm happy for them.  What harm can it possibly do to them, to me, or to anyone else?

 

639Hz - It'll Sort Any Relationship Problems You May Have

I was very involved with new age people and learned a lot in courses 30 years ago (before rejecting it all for fundamentalist Christianity for too many years!) but nobody ever mentioned such frequencies. Not even the sound and colour healing practitioners I knew. Somehow in the intervening years they've become very popular. And I have to admit that some (some) of the music I've heard based on it is quite relaxing and good to fall asleep to.  I wanted to know why the idea was so prominent and how this development had occurred.

So I thought, "Why don't I look into this. See if there's ANY evidence outside of New Age sources and sites like Natural News. Some actual science. And find out the history of the idea. Let's not reject the whole thing out of hand but apply some very basic critical thinking to the theories and history."

That seemed a sensible thought.

And that's when an idea that sounds far-fetched became more crazy. And then I fell down a rabbit hole and crazy became bad-shit crazy. It just gets more and more bonkers.

I've learned interesting things about the history of musical notation and the reasons why the frequency of that A is mostly set at 440Hz. That's really very fascinating.

But my wandering in the rabbit hole has gone through selling snake oil remedies (to heal cancer and undo vaccine damage), vaccines causing autism, the US government inventing AIDS, Nazi conspiracies to move music frequencies and so muck us all up psychologically, the Illuminati, Tesla, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, mad codes derived from the Bible, symatics, Kenneth Copeland (honestly!), young earth creationism, secret laser guns and so many other things related by the guy who promoted the theory of the frequencies. His name is Leonard Horowitz. Research him at your own risk!  His official biography page claims he's a Levitical priest and co-creator of "The World's Most Powerful CD."

On a hunch I googled "Leonard Horowitz Andrew Wakefield."  Wakefield is the disgraced doctor behind the totally debunked study that claimed to have found a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.  There's no link.  And Wakefield wasn't just wrong.  He was fraudulent too.  People believed him thought and the take-up for the MMR vaccine fell with the unfortunate result that we've seen an increase in measles outbreaks leading to deaths and life-long health consequences for children in Europe and the USA.  I place at least part of the blame for that directly on the shoulders of Wakefield.

I wasn't surprised by the results of my google search.  Horowitz and Wakefield are pals.  Look up the ConspiraSea Cruise if you dare.  It's a whole deeper level of rabbit hole than the one I've been exploring.  Enjoy yourself there.  Here's one person's experience of the 2016 cruise.  Here's another person, relating their experiences of the 2015 cruise.  Both pages are very entertaining - at least for someone with my special interests.  Horowitz's relationship with Wakefield's Vaxxed movie is also of interest.

 

One of his books. I want a copy.

I'm very happy in my rabbit hole. It's a wonderful surprise. The only sadness is that I haven't found any aliens in the hole. Yet.  They might be coming.  Horowitz's four hour talk is on YouTube posted by UFO TV: The Disclosure Network.  So there may yet be aliens.  If you're as obsessive as I am about crazy spiritual things, mainstream and fringe, take a look at his talk.  Or as much of it as you can bear.  I'm only 70 minutes into the talk and have taken long breaks from it.

 

Horowitz is currently discussing how the frequencies were discovered encoded into the book of Numbers in the Old Testament - because offerings were made by representatives of the twelve tribes of Israel on twelve successive days and each day's offering is described in much the same way in six verses.  (In a verse structure that didn't exist until thousands of years later but Horowitz doesn't seem worried about that).  The conclusions raised by this six verse interval are far further than far fetched.  My own conclusions when I used to read through the Bible regularly and got to that chapter were that I was quite bored with it and that I looked forward to getting ahead a few chapters to Balaam and his talking ass.

I just wish my friends weren't into any aspect of this total junk, some of which isn't just daft it's dangerous. I wish there was something I could say that would convince them it was junk. Because all those friends are very lovely people. And some of this is very dangerous and damaging.

 

That's all I wish.  People can believe whatever helps them.  As long as they don't look down on those who disagree or claim that their belief is an essential for some kind of salvation.  But when that belief becomes dangerous and when it arises from and is connected when the kinds of things solfeggio frequency theories are linked to then that becomes a matter of great concern.

Believe a wafer is the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus.  Fine.  I believed that.
Believe your gurus inhabit a particular place in a temple because a book is there.  Fine.

Be helped by making an offering to Krishna, ancestors, God, guru, Buddha, or whoever else.  Fine.

But when belief becomes a danger I will be worried for you and equally worried for anyone you may influence through your dangerous beliefs.

If it wasn't for the dangers I'd say to my friends to believe whatever they wanted about the power inherent in these frequencies (which are only 440Hz or 528Hz or some other number of Hertz because we relate them to an arbitrary time period that in English is called a second.  639Hz in the picture at the top wouldn't be 639Hz if Hertz wasn't based on that particular time period so making anything about it being multiples of three - as Horowitz does - is without common sense.)

But with the dangers?  I'd love them to stop.  I'd love them to walk away from such nonsense.

You may say I'm over-thinking all this - rather than my friends under-thinking it.  You may be right of course.  Just in case, I'd better close by watching this video and listening to the sounds through my headphones.  That'll solve my problem.  One of the comments tells me to heal the world by listening to this while holding my crystals.  Yeah, that might work.  It's quite relaxing.  I admitted that right at the start.  I still freely admit it.

The Jehovah's Witnesses Ask "Is The Bible Really From God?"

Warning:  This post is a self-indugent trip into one of my special interests.

 

Yesterday I accepted the Jehovah's Witness offer of a publication.  "Awake!"  It asks the question, "Is the Bible Really From God?"

 

If you happen to want to read it you can find it here.  I link to it because otherwise commenting about it as I have below would not be fair.  The magazine contents do not reflect my own opinions.

I believe the article to be almost hilarious in the points it makes.  They are points that really ought not to be made in any serious study of any ancient text, religious or secular.

The article begins by claiming the Bible (which incidentally says the sun was created after life on Earth) is scientifically accurate and therefore should be believed. As if it's meant to be science.  The writer asks the reader to "Consider examples from the fields of meteorology and genetics."  Okay, I'm game.  I'll consider them.  I'm absolutely shattered this afternoon and my head's not up to much more than playing with its continuing obsession with all things God!

Meteorology - Formation of Rain

 

The writer of the article claims that the writer of Job shows a creator who "does understand the rain cycle and saw to it that a human writer would include the facts accurately in the Bible."

 

It makes the claim based on Job 36:27-28.  My English Standard Version renders this as

 

For he draws up the drops of water;

    they distill his mist in rain,

which the skies pour down

     and drop on mankind abundantly.

 

The writer of the publication claims this shows a perfect picture of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation such as we all learn in school.  That could be an impressive thing to find in an ancient text although by the time Job was written, probably in the sixth century BCE, scholars were speculating and often understanding that rain originates from the water below being drawn up.  How could this information be included in the Bible?  It doesn't need to be some kind of prescience of science.  It can just be an idea that the writer had already encountered.

It becomes even less impressive when we realise that the words commonly translated "draws up" don't mean that at all.  Not at all.  They actually mean "draw away".  The picture here probably isn't of a properly understood water cycle at all.  In reality it probably mirrors an idea that the clouds and the rain are drawn away from a great mass of water above.

 

So it's probably not scientifically accurate.  And even if is broadly accurate it could just be reflecting a known idea.

 

It might also be fun to respond to the Witness that the words in the Bible were put into the mouth of Elihu, one of Job's friends.  God's response to his words begins, "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?"  Or that God's response in chapter 38 mentions "the springs of the sea" - echoing that idea commonly held then and for many centuries afterwards that the water on earth was also replenished by percolation.

And yet it doesn't matter.  The whole conversation is poetry not science.  As poetry it's very beautiful and the imagery is stupendous.  As science it stinks.  It's okay that it stinks.  Poetry books tend to stink as science and science books make for awful poetry.

I'd recommend reading Job.  Considering the story and playing with the concepts.  Delving into the images and ideas and being amazed at this ancient work of literature.  I say that as someone who no longer believes in the personal God the writer inspires us to follow and trust.

Genetics - Development of the Human Embryo

It quotes a verse which my Bible reads as "Your eyes saw my unformed substance," translates it as "embryo" and tries to prove from that single verse that the psalmist was well schooled in genetics! Accurate science.  The article writer admits it's poetic language but then tries to say King David, to whom the psalm is traditionally attributed, was being accurate about the human genetic code.

I think that's crazy but the Jehovah's Witness who talked to me about it yesterday until I had to rush for my bus took it totally seriously.  I used to take similar things just as serious.  When you're stuck in a dogmatic religion and believe it is the only way to truth and salvation then it's almost impossible to see through things like this.  People can gaze on open mouthed and apply reason and you won't be able to see it.  I look back at some things I used to believe and wonder how on earth I - with an IQ above 150 - ever managed to believe such unreasonable things wholeheartedly and call them reasonable.

For some reason the article writer doesn't quote the previous verse: "When I was being ... intricately woven in the depths of the earth."  I'm not sure they could claim that one as being scientifically accurate.  No geneticist says that we humans are woven in the depths of the earth.

 

It's not scientifically accurate.  Of course it isn't.  Again, it doesn't matter.  Not one bit.  Because it's poetry.  And poetry written by someone living thousands of years ago with a very different view of the world and the universe than the one we have now.

 

Part of that poetry was very important to me when I came out as transgender.  It's a part that's been important to many LGBT christians.  Verse 14 is a wonderful thing to hold onto when you've been hurt by churches for being who you are.

 

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

      My soul knows it very well.

 

It was very reassuring to me at the time.  I'm transgender.  God made me this way.  And that's just as wonderful as if he/she/they had made me cisgender.   I held that verse close to my heart and mind and wrote about it too.

Less important to me though were later verses in the psalm:

Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!

   O men of blood depart from me!

They speak against you with malicious intent:

   your enemies take your name in vain.

Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?

   And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?

I hate them with complete hatred;

   I count them as my enemies.

Those verses are rarely quoted.  They're not in hymns.  When the psalm was read in my old church (Metropolitan Community Church) we missed those verses out.  They are persona non grata.  We don't follow those ones.  It's just as well we don't or we might set out to be like King David and conquer and kill all the neighbouring nations who don't follow our God.  It was a different time.  If we raised up those verses we'd quickly become a Christian version of ISIS - who raise up such verses from the Qu'ran.

Those hate verses are followed by a final verse.  We read that one.  Everyone does.  It's in hymns and choruses.  We like it.

Search me, O God, and know my heart!

   Try me and know my thoughts!

And see if there be any grievous way in me,

   And lead me in the way everlasting.

 

Nowadays of course we'd say "Yes, there's a grievous way in you David.  You hate people with a different religion to you."  But let's ignore that for today.   Let's also ignore that the Hebrew word and idea could sometimes mean something very different to the word in English translation and usage - and that Jesus didn't really tell us to hate our parents even though our English Bibles tell us he did.

The poetry of the Psalms can be amazing.  With or without faith it's an amazing body of literature.  Yes, it's got those hate verses but every single ancient work has things that we would now refuse to make a part of our life.  Ancient writers, the wisest of their day, say cultural things we would now reject.  That's okay.  They are from another culture and age and there's no need to rip up the books.

The mistake made in this Jehovah's Witness publication - as in many conservative Christian or Bible-based publications - is to attempt to turn an ancient book of faith into something that it was never meant to be:  Science.

In doing so they've turned something that's often stunningly beautiful into something that deserves only to be laughed at, ridiculed and rejected.  Yes, they turn their God into a laughing stock.

I'm going to stop at that point.  I'm not going to examine the article's claim that the Bible accurately predicts the future.  I'm not going to examine the claim that the Bible answers life's big questions.  It does.  That's a given.  The scriptures of all religions answer life's big questions.  They just disagree in places on what the answer is.

I'm also not going to answer the question that's been on your lips for your entire life.  "The Sea Otter's Fur:  Was It Designed?"  The magazine doesn't answer the question either.  Disappointing!

 

You've probably been very bored reading what I've just written.  I had fun with it.  That's the nature of my obsession, my special interest.

My sadness is that some people will encounter the ludicrous scientific claims about meteorology and genetics, be amazed by them, and be one step along the way to becoming a Jehovah's Witness.  A group that wouldn't agree with what I said about LGBT Christians.  Not in the slightest.  A group that is monolithic, dogmatic and exclusivist.  Much as they smile at me in the street as they hold out their publications I would not be safe in their midst.  Not for long.  A 2014 survey showed that the Jehovah's Witnesses are the most homophobic of all major religious groups in the USA.  The best article I've found about it online is this one, simply because it quotes so many primary sources.  They've told me in the street that I'm fine, that I'd be welcome, that God loves me, that I'd be safe there.  It's a lie.  Their own writings demonstrate it to be so.

My gladness is that the Jehovah's Witnesses were not the only people offering something on the street of central Newcastle yesterday.  I took the plunge and joined a group with an offering that condemned nobody, welcomed everyone, and truly spread some love totally free from dogma and judgement.

We offered hugs.  Free hugs.  And for those who didn't want a hug a smile or a kind word.

Someone tried to offer me money.  Because they found it hard to believe people would just stand there offering something and expecting nothing, preaching nothing, embracing everyone.

That's what we did and it was an excellent time.  I say that as someone, autistic, who happens to have problems hugging people.  I'm usually a non-hugger.  But I went out hugging and it brought smiles to people and reassurance to people too the day after another terrorist attack.

I still have hug issues.  But I'd join those people and give out free hugs again in an instant.  It was like a perfect expression of love.  A piece of Biblical excellence because "perfect love casts out all fear."  Others gave a perfect expression later in the day.  I rushed for my bus to get to a community festival.  500 people attended and received something beautiful in the west end of Newcastle.  This time I was on the receiving end.

It was a fabulous day.  I saw lots of saints.  They might have a religious faith.  They might not.  It doesn't matter.  To me they are saints.

I confess! I was a cult member! I was part of the Jesus Army.

I confess.

I was a member of the Jesus Army.

They called it a cult.  I still joined.
I went in with my eyes open, knowing that I would not be there forever.
I was warned of heavy shepherding, warned that they would brainwash me and steal all my money.
I joined anyway.
This was in the mid-1990s.  Since that time the ways of the church have mellowed somewhat.  There are actually people there who believe in LGBT equality.  Perhaps they've moved on a little from what, to an outsider, would seem to be a very sexist structure.  I've heard that there is even a transgender member of the community.
It's been sixteen years since I attended one of their services, sixteen years since I stayed in a community house, prayed and slept with the brothers, sang those songs and rode around in a brightly painted Jesus Army minibus.
Looking back now in my post Christian days I can tell you this:
I had a great time there and if I had to live those years again I'd live them more devoted to the vision of that church, more enthusiastic about the community, and less likely to grumble at all the shortcomings I saw.
Would I be safe if I visited?  As an ex-Christian, non-theist, transgender woman.  I don't know.
Looking back on the Jesus Army I see perhaps the only church I miss.

A few things about the community:

I was part of a community household that no longer exists.  The head of the house says that he takes the blame for some of the reasons why it fell apart.  Perhaps with a little more of the heavy shepherding it would have thrived.  Or at least with a little more shepherding.  In effect most of us who visited that house could do pretty much as we pleased.  And we did.  The other reason why it fell apart was perhaps that of charity and compassion.  Vineyard Farmhouse took in a lot of waifs and strays, of whom I was one.  There were a lot of people to be helped and not enough people to be the helpers.  Eventually that balance gave way.

I was loved in that community.  I had friends.  And I laughed more than I ever laughed before or since.

I struggled in that community.  I wasn't prepared to submit to much at all and was critical far too often and charitable far too little.  While there was much to criticise that's only because the place was full of fallible humans.  They were all doing their best and all too often I was too quick to point my finger at the shortcomings of the church.

I sang lots.  I played the guitar lots.  I enjoyed worshiping my God through music immensely.  In the community the evening meal was preceded each day by "grace time" which wasn't just a five second mumbled prayer.  It was a half hour praise and teaching party.  Each evening the community was united in purpose before sharing the meal.  At least that was the theory.

I was a brother and so slept in the "brothers' bungalow" above the main farmhouse.  That's a building which no longer exists.  A good thing.  It was pretty rough and often smelled of oil.  It was cold too and if you ever wanted to live in a luxurious cult you wouldn't have chosen it.  But there was clean bedding and clean towels and a hot shower.  And there was generally conversation, laughter and the odd argument too.

The Vineyard community housed some "interesting" characters.  People of I kind I never would have met anywhere else in my sheltered existence.  On one occasion - in another community - I found that I was the only person in a sizable group of brothers who had never been to prison.  One person involved in the community, the guy who stole and wrote off a Jesus Army minibus, had a large collection of car badges from different makes of car.  Each badge was taken from a car he had stolen.  One person held a knife to the head of the house.  A young brother ran off with a much older sister who happened to be celibate.  One person had robbed a bank.  There were lots of people who were drug addicts, some of whom still took drugs.  The aroma of weed could often be smelled outside Sunday services.  The Ship of Fools mystery worshiper went to a service a few years ago and popped out to the loo half way through.  He found people snorting lines of coke there.

With all the interesting characters relationships were sometimes strained and everyone wore their issues close to the surface.  There wasn't time to be proud and hide everything and there wasn't a desire to put on an English stiff upper lip.

When I first arrived at Vineyard I refused point blank to go and sit with the brothers for meals - sex segregation at meals was the custom.  I was much more comfortable sitting with the sisters.  I wonder why!  Of course I submitted to that custom pretty quickly and found some great brothers.

I learned eventually never to lend anything to a community member.  Jesus said to lend not expecting to get it returned.  That was a key there.  You wouldn't get it back.  Ever.  It was as if people thought Jesus had said you should borrow not expecting to give it back.  Maybe I was just unlucky but I had a 100% success rate of losing everything I lent to someone.  Including a guitar.   He couldn't give that back.  Some high up drug dealers took it in order to cover some of his drug debt.

I am no longer a Christian.  Yet a folder of songs is currently on the music stand on the piano.  It came from Vineyard Farmhouse and contains all the songs we used to sing.

Flapjack.  I can't speak of Vineyard without thinking of flapjack.  There was a lot of flapjack.  The best of it was made by a woman named Julie.  Lovely woman.  Sorry Felicity but yours wasn't quite as good as Julie's.  But the doughnuts you made once were absolutely gorgeous.

Flapjack.  It was part of the Jesus Army.  Early in its history, with the members pooling their resources and income into the community and the church, members formed several businesses and cooperatives.  They had solicitors, doctors, a hairdresser, a motor repair business and a farm.  They also started a bakery and a tiny wholefoods cooperative.  The latter developed and became a large health food company housed in what was the largest warehouse in Northamptonshire.  They had their own line of flapjacks.  Oh Chunky Jacks.  I miss you!

Critics pointed to the monetary worth of the Jesus Army and its turnover and accused it of being a very rich organisation.  They said that someone somewhere must be getting very wealthy out of it.  None of it was true.  That financial turnover was the result of the businesses and included the incomes and livelihood of each of those members who lived in the community.  Nobody was getting rich and the church used extra money to pay for the work of the church - all those events in the big marquee and the printing of thousands of copies of the magazine to be posted to subscribers for free and giving so much to waifs and strays like me who hardly contributed a thing financially to them.

All those nights stayed in community.  How much did they charge me?  Zero.  That's how much.  I'm sure that if I'd been able to give them something and had given it they would have been glad of the cash and would have put it to use.  But it wouldn't have changed the way anyone treated me.  Not one bit.

As for getting rich.  The head of Vineyard farmhouse lived in a shared bedroom in the brothers' bungalow.  The leader of the whole church lived in a bedroom in one of the other community houses - New Creation Farm.  He ate what everyone else ate and lived as they did.  He worked very hard and kept up his passion for Jesus and the church vision throughout his life.

I struggled under his teaching.  I found his sermons painful to listen to.  They just didn't seem very good.  I'd moan about them all the time.  And then he would say something and it would just hit me in the guts and I'd have to deal with it.  We used to laugh about Noel's preaching style and imitate him excellently.  The head of Vineyard pointed out the fallacy in our claim to not be listening to Noel while imitating him so perfectly.  Because we were listening.  Carefully.

Vineyard had comfy and very scruffy sofas.  It had a basement with washing machines and second grade apples from the farm.  It had no potato peeler but many potatoes to be peeled.  It had an outhouse containing a 24/7 prayer room with walls on which we could write prayers.

Vineyard had smiles and tears and struggling people and a bunch of misfits.  It had walks in the woods and in the countryside nearby.

I moaned about it while I was there.  There was much to moan about.  I could write another blog post about the moans.  But what would be the point?

But it was one of the happiest times of my life.  Sixteen years later, though I don't believe the gospel and don't believe in many of the practicalities of how they think that gospel should be lived, (Whatever they say, women weren't treated as well as men) I love that church more than I ever did.

One day I might return.  Give my testimony in that giant marquee again.  Tell them I don't believe in their God but I love them still.

The Greatest Printing Story Ever Told. A Tale Of Perfection.

50. Just Say No: Write about the power you felt when you told someone no.


Celebrate!  Call the Jubilee year!  Forgive all debts and free all slaves!  This is my fiftieth writing post in fifty days.  At the beginning of the year I did not know whether I would reach this point.  Looking back I'm pleased with some of the writing I've posted.  I'm pleased too with a few things I haven't posted and with the way that words have been flowing sometimes.  I know I have a lot to learn, that there are plenty of aspects of writing about which I am totally clueless.  But I am pleased and can smile at my own words.  I have also been surprised by it all.  Surprised by the stories especially, but surprised too that I've attempted poems.

Above all I've been enjoying the process.  It's been a joy process.  And that, in the end, is the most important thing of all.

So let us celebrate gladly.  And let us humbly pray for each of the next three-hundred and fifteen days on which I plan to write again.  Hundreds more prompts to either use or ignore.  On some days, ignorance is bliss!

This story was basically free written.  I warn you now: It's 2900 words long.  I also warn you:  I did not know the ending of the story until I wrote the final sentences.  I was surprised to learn what happened.  Did not expect that!

Two happy print workers.  Image taken from here.

I worked my ass off to satisfy him.  Put in overtime nearly every day.  Took every training course going in order to become an expert.  Nearly broke my back.  At least it felt that way.  By the end of it I could do the job faster than anyone else, neater than anyone else, and with more of a smile than anyone else.  I was the life and soul of the factory as well as being employee of the month six times during that last year of hell.

It might seem like menial work to you but to me it was satisfyingly important.  Without me and my colleagues there wouldn't have been any product at all.  The whole company would have headed right up shit creek.  Blindfold.  In a leaky boat.  We're the ones who got that product out there, an important cog in a machine that would have been better oiled if only the boss had the foresight to add any oil at all.  He was a bit useless but I knew he wouldn't be there forever.  I admit it.  I do.  I didn't just do all that training for the love of my role on the factory floor.  I was looking for promotion.  Give him enough help, I thought, and maybe he'll choose me to replace him.  I hoped he would.

So I put my learning to good use.  Kept sending him memos.  Kept telling him what I thought should have been obvious.  If you tweak it here, add in this efficiency there, you'll get five, ten percent more productivity.  Sometimes he listened.  But I never got the credit even when I copied the entire factory into a couple of memos.  On purpose though of course I said it was an accident.  It didn't work.  Instead he publicly humiliated me by replying to everyone that I was an idiot with stupid ideas.  And he didn't make the changes even though half the factory could see that they would have saved the company thousands over the course of a year.  Not only that, the bastard demoted me.  I had stood on the second rung of the ladder.  Now I was at the bottom and it was only through the influence of a supervisor that I was reinstated to my previous post a couple of months later.

I loved my job.  It gave me a sense of peace to see it well done.  It was varied too.  It wasn't just one job, it was many.  Sometimes I'd be sticking address labels onto envelopes for a whole day and every time I placed one of those stickers I'd feel an electric tingle because I'd placed it exactly in the middle and perfectly straight.  I couldn't understand some of the other workers around me.  Especially the temps.  They were just shoddy.  Their labels could be centimetres off centre and at an angle that made me nervous.  To think, sometimes they would stick on an address more than five degrees from straight.  Why didn't they care?  I don't know.  How anyone wouldn't be ashamed of such messiness is beyond me.  Maybe they didn't get a thrill from a well placed label.  Maybe they just hadn't given it a try.  They were slow too.  At least compared to me.  And that's a very strange thing.  I took pride in being both neater and quicker.

After sticking in such a glorious manner I would fill the envelopes with whatever had been printed and needed sending.  Seal the envelope.  Straight.  That should be easy enough shouldn't it?  To seal an envelope in a perfectly straight way every single time.  It should.  Yet my colleagues were still able to bungle the process.  No wonder they smiled less than I did.  No wonder they moaned about how boring the job was.  If they took pride in doing it right they could have experienced regular bursts of those pleasant tingles.  Stupid people.

Other days I would have other tasks to complete.  Collating leaflets and papers.  I liked that one.  It wasn't my favourite though.  That honour is split in my mind between two specific tasks.  The first of these involved combining several sections of a catalogue, stapling them together, and then packing them correctly.  Ten catalogues in a bundle.  Then another bundle placed in the opposite direction.  That was an amazing week.  I spent nearly all of it using the stapling machine because I was the most efficient at it.  I was glad to do so.  My colleagues' task was to combine the sections and then pass them to me already sorted into tens.  My colleagues were bloody useless!  It's fortunate I was stapling and packing.  Alone.  Otherwise the whole job would have been wrong and perhaps the company would have gone bankrupt.

I saved the day again.  What I learned that week was that my colleagues couldn't count up to ten.  They had one task.  Just one.  To count all the way from one to ten.  Who were these people who couldn't even do that?  Idiots!  The bundles they passed me sometimes had eight or nine catalogues.  Sometimes eleven or twelve.  Just think of how awful it would have been if I hadn't recounted absolutely everything.  The boss would have been the laughing stock of the entire printing industry.  They would have probably cut his master printer's tie off at the annual dinner and dance and forced him to bathe in ink as a punishment.  Was he grateful to me?  No he wasn't.  The swine.

My other absolute favourite job I ever did was a folding job.  A machine had gone wrong elsewhere in the factory - easily avoidable if only the boss had listened to one of the public memos because I could see the disaster was coming and that the creasing machine would break.  So there we were with one-hundred thousand pieces of card that were meant to have machine made creases in.  Pieces of card with no creases.  So I and my shoddy, messy, quite frankly useless and should be sacked colleagues had to add all the creases into these bits of card.  Manually.  That was bliss for me I can tell you.  It took us nearly a month to finish the job.  A month of beautiful creases, perfect lines, wondrous love.  They all hated it of course, moaned about it and did a generally rubbish job.  I wish I could have got them to change.  Wish I could have convinced them that being even a single millimetre out was far too much.  Wish I could have taught them all how the job should be done.  Instead, all I could do was work, work, work on my own piles of card.  I gave everything to that job and when it was over I grieved.

There had to come a breaking point.  Not even I could keep up my pace of work forever with no reward.  Three years in and I was still folding, counting, sticking and I hadn't even been allowed to progress to the role of luggage label print coordinator.  A job with responsibility.  A job where I would have kept meticulous records and in which I am certain I would have improved efficiency by a total of seventy-six percent just by rearranging the order in which the different parts of the job were completed.  Even the stupidest of dolts should have been able to see it.  Three years of doing everything.  I could have run the whole company with my eyes closed.  I could have made us world leaders in printing, expanded the base of operations into the largest premises in the city and possibly even be given the contracts to print everything for Apple.  Waitrose too, and there were a few publishing houses I thought I'd be able to win over.  Start small and then buy out the Oxford University Press within three years.  It was doable.  I kept showing my boss how and he kept asking me to do the lowest of low jobs.  I enjoyed them of course but that wasn't the point.  I wanted more.  That's not a lot to ask for.  Not if you consider how brilliant I was.

During the course of the next two years I became increasingly dissatisfied.  More sticking.  Then a foreign evangelist decided he should send one of his stupid religious magazines to every single house in Britain.  Somehow or other my boss won the contract.  I think it was because my boss used to read those stupid religious magazines.  He had holy handkerchiefs on display in his office and on some days he replaced the music playing in the factory with rubbish songs in which they sang about how miserable life on earth was and to keep your chin up because heaven might be nice.  I don't think those days increased productivity.  My colleagues would grumble and agree with the first half of the sentiments of the song.  Yes, they would say, life is miserable isn't it?  All this folding and collating?  It's bloody miserable.  Enough about them.  The job is what's important.  Our team, with lots of temps drafted in all of whom were rubbish, had to stick an address label on each of thirty million envelopes, fill the envelopes, seal them and pile them neatly on pallets.

Even I have limits.  Thirty million.  And I broke.  I am not ashamed to admit it.  I broke.  We had pretty much finished the job and I'd made sure that each pallet was perfectly packed.  As neat as anything.  I'd had to make changes of course because nobody else could count to ten, let alone pack something neatly and with no sticking out edges.  Twenty-five thousand envelopes to each pallet.  One-hundred and twenty pallets.  And we were working on pallet one-hundred and seventeen.

Then the order came from the boss.  I'd already queried it when we were still working on the second pallet.  I had.  I'd done it and if he had listened then he would have saved his company.  I'd asked him a very simple question about the envelopes.  Any fool would have thought of it.   I said this:  "Shouldn't the envelopes each have a postage label as well as an address label?"  I'd received a reply too.  "Dear worker."  He didn't even call me by my name.  "You are only a level two packer.  Don't be so arrogant as to have any more ideas above your station.  Don't think you have the right to tell me what I should be doing.  Do it again and I'll have no choice but to end your contract with my illustrious"  Illustrious!  I ask you!  "company.  This is your first and final written warning."  I could have screamed.  I wanted to go right up to his office there and then and scream at him and try to knock some sense into his skull.  Physically if necessary.  I knew he was wrong.

So when that order came it was inevitable.  I remember the exact wording.  "When you have finished sticking address labels to envelopes I need you to start sticking postage labels on each of them.  This must be completed by the end of the week otherwise we will lose our contract and there will be consequences for each of you and possibly for the future of the company.  For the rest of the week I need each of you to work eighteen hour shifts in order to get as much done as you can.  As a reward, there will be a slice of chocolate cake provide for each of you every day next week and I will personally see to it that you each receive a signed copy of the evangelist's new book which will, I am sure, bless the soul of each one of you.  Thank you for your attention in this matter."

Enough was enough.  Why hadn't he listened?  I burst.  I stomped upstairs very loudly and walked into his office.  He was on the phone trying to apologise that there might be a delay.  He looked worried.  I got more and more angry as he talked and when he put the phone down I told him everything I thought of him, told him he shouldn't have been such a turd to me when I'd told him about the problem ages ago and had given him dozens and dozens of good ideas before and told him we would have easily finished the job if he had listened to me and how now we wouldn't finish it even if we all worked twenty-eight hours a day instead of eighteen and how I thought he was a rubbish boss and how I would be much better suited for his role.  I didn't shut up there of course.  I told him a lot more.  Reminded him of how he had demoted me for saying things that would have been good for his company.  Told him how much of my life I'd given to him, how much pride I'd taken in every job no matter how menial or repetitive.

And then I told him this:  "I will not undertake your massive shifts while you sit up here drinking coffee.  I'm not going to do it, not going to solve your problems for you.  I packed those pallets perfectly and worked more than anyone else.  I'm not doing it all again.  Find someone else to do it.  Promote me to a job where my intellect and training can be put to use.  At least let me use a bloody guillotine for one!  I don't want to see those bloody Christian junk mailings again.  Nobody wants to see them."

It felt wonderful.  Honestly, I had never felt more free as I did in those moments of shouting my head off at the boss.  The excitement of it all beat any electric tingles from sticking on labels.  This was living.  This was my future.  This was salvation to everything I was, a new beginning.  This would lead to a decent wage and a managerial post.  I just knew it.

My boss fired me on the spot and gave me five minutes to collect my bag and coat and leave the factory.  Said he would call the police if I didn't go.

I left.  I believed he would see his error and call me back.  I don't know why I believed that.  In retrospect I can see my belief was as crazy as some of the things the evangelist claimed to believe.  I'd been right, those moments were a new beginning.  It just wasn't as part of a printing company.

As for the company, it went belly up by the end of the year.  My boss failed to complete the contract for the evangelist.  The labels were crooked and a colleague I bumped into told me that nobody had been able to pack a pallet as neatly as I could.  Everything ran very late.  Just as I had predicted.  The evangelist wasn't forgiving.  My ex-boss stormed out of their meeting shouting that it didn't say that it didn't really matter if everyone got their crummy magazines a few weeks late.  The evangelist proved that he and Jesus didn't see eye to eye on things at all.  Because he sued the company for breach of contract.   He won the case, even preached against the dishonesty of the printing firm he'd hired.  But he used the magazines that we had packed and labelled anyway, getting another firm to finish the job for free in return for him promoting them across the globe.

The company was ruined.

And as a result of the posting of thirty-million evangelistic magazines this happened:

Fifty thousand copies were used to line cat litter trays.
The KLF reformed, gathered together eighty-nine thousand copies and burned them while dressed as lambs and carrying nine foot crucifixes.
Christians up and down the country rejoiced to receive such a righteous and holy piece of mail, briefly browse it, saw they had heard it all before, and chucked it away.
The total weight of paper recycled during a month increased.
People of other faiths complained to the government about some of the articles in the magazine.
The atheists of the internet laughed at everything they read and two memes went viral.
Friends of The Earth pointed out the cost to the environment of so much junk mail and began a campaign against all junk mail, with moderate success in the hearts and minds of the people but no success at all in reducing the amount of rubbish posted through letterboxes.

The evangelist was pleased.  He had done his duty and spread the good news.
Some people read the magazine and were impressed.
Some people thought about it.
Some considered doing something about it all and making changes in their lives.

A year later it was known that at least three people had been solidly converted through the work of the evangelist.  He featured the three on his television show, syndicated globally.  He was heard to say that if just one person had been saved it would have been worth it.

After another year two of the three had left the church.  One had become a well known speaker, touring the country visiting humanist and atheist groups.  He appeared on the BBC a few times.

The third person?  Well that was me.  Saved by grace and the weight of thirty-million labels.

I work for the evangelist now.  I'm head of the printing company God told him to establish on earth.  It was for printing that Christ set me free.




[2924 words]

Better To Be A Fool Than To Be Bound By That Christ

47. Light Switch: Write about coming out of the dark and seeing the light.

Again, this is completely free-written.

And they said unto Jesus, "You are the light of the world."


The day I found the truth was the day I died.
I turned to Christ and I learned from him
The wailing, the untruth and the lie.
He broke me on his cross and left me bleeding
While he rose up, pointed his jewel bearing finger,
And laughed at me contemptuously.
Christ bound me in chains of razor wire
Ripped the nails from my thumbs
Nailed ice fire into my palms
And thirty-nine times lashed me with accusations.
He squeezed all resistance from me
Made me his slave, wove his will over mine.
He told me that he stood in my place
When all the time I stood in his as he pressed
That thorn crown into my flesh until I could bear no more.
Then he pressed more and I cried out,
"Jesus save me.  Save me from you."
He just smiled and hammered the nails deeper,
Twisted the wires, though muscle and marrow,
Then ordered me to give up my life for him.
Not once.  No mercy from the man of sorrows.
He told me "Die each day for you are burdensome."
So I died, expired, and once more ceased to breathe.
And under the cruel tyranny of Jesus Christ's rule
I was stretched on the rack of heresy
And burned on the pyre of the witch.

Unexpectedly, the fool spoke on the street
Preached his sermon in majestic simplicity.
"The cross you hang on is not given by the Christ.
He who is your light is darker than the universe
Before ever matter exploded into form."
The fool spoke and I, agonised, writhing, bleeding,
Opened one ear to listen, saw with one half-seeing eye
The garish display of colour he wore in his garments
And how his words too broke richer than rainbows.
He held out his hand, beckoning me to his side
But I would not leave my Christ love behind
I could not leave my chains, dared not struggle lest
Even one wire tip broke my heart again.
The fool wept and walked away.

I cried too for he was a more beautiful being
Than the precious hatred person of Christ.
I yearned for him, longed to be like him,
Dressed in the eighteen shades of freedom.
There was no way for my Christ was the only way
No point in dreaming for the fool had moved on.
And all the time I made my many tears an act,
A pretense, convincing the blessed one that I wept
Always for him, never for myself.

By the time the fool returned to me,
Holding out his wrinkled hand once more
I tried to reach out my hand to his.
In that act my chains fell off and when
Our hands met I learned a more penetrating truth.
There never had been any chains.
He smiled broadly, full of extravagant compassion
Held me tight did not let go as I bled on his robes.
He never promised to heal me.
Never told me he would pay my way.
The fool encouraged me to become a fool
Just like he.  Then, to be more foolish still.

When I asked him who he was he told me.
"I am he who you may choose to call Jesus,
The fool who sets you free,
The wisdom who points you to light."
When I asked who it was who gave me a cross to bear
He told me this:
"He was Jesus too, but transfigured by men
Into religion's deathly shadow. He was death's witness."
Then he entreated me not to hold him any longer.
"Go out into the world and make fools," he said.
I went.  I came.  I stand before you now,
Fool among the wise, wise among the fools.

Don't You Dare Sing That Song Young Woman. God Hates Ecology.

Here's the next prompt from the daily list I've been writing from.

41. What You Don’t Know: Write about a secret you’ve kept from someone else or how you feel when you know someone is keeping a secret from you.

Nope!  I'm not doing that one.  Not today.  If there's anyone else who doesn't want to write from that prompt today we could get together.  We could form a new Rebel Alliance and defeat the Empire of legalism.

One of the early exercises in a book I have is to write something solely in commands, imperatives.  I can't remember what else it says but the gist of it has stayed in my head.  This morning the exercise came back to me and with it a fragment of a song I used to sing as a child.

I had an American book of folk protest songs.  Some were political, others environmental.  Unfortunately I no longer have the book.  In that book I learned names like Pete Seeger, Malvina Reynolds, Woody Guthrie, and Joan Baez.   Later I heard them sing too, on old records.  I bought a second American book of folk protest songs too which I still own, put together by Pete Seeger.  It was there I learned L'Internationale and used to sing it with dreadful pronunciation in several languages.

The first book contained a song by Malvina Reynolds, written in 1970.  Much of it was written as imperative commands encouraging listeners to behave in a more environmentally friendly manner.  It's at least twenty-five years since I last sang the song but could still remember a few lines and, part way through writing, I wanted to incorporate them into this post.  I have to admit I'll never obey the first line of the song.

I could only find one mention of the song online.  Nancy Schimmel, the daughter of Malvina Reynolds, kept a blog for a while devoted to her life and work.  The words to the song are in one post.  I find that Nancy wrote it, not Malvina.  I'll link to the post at the bottom of this one.  Glad to have found it.  There's a link to a site containing lyrics to all of Malvina's songs.  And there are links there to some amazing resources.  Among them is a site with pdf files of Broadside which was a "magazine of topical songs."  It's a brilliant treasure trove and I think if I allowed myself I could spend many days exploring it and taking up my own guitar again, learning more of the songs of the 1960s folk revival.  Here, for instance is issue #20 which contains perhaps the most famous song by Malvina Reynolds, Little Boxes.  The issue begins with Bob Dylan's Masters of War.  There's some talking blues too and an inspiring version of Wayfaring Stranger. 

On to my writing.  Written freely with just a pause to stick those lyrics in.  It's not all written as imperative commands.  There are two characters in this.  Only one would force obedience and conformity.

Pete Seeger's banjo.  Image taken from here.

Don't you dare sing that song again.
Put down your guitar at once.
Don't make me block my ears.
Don't you dare make me come over there and block your mouth.
Stop it!  Stop it now!
Throw away that wretched book.
Close your eyes.
Don't look at the cover, at the horrible face of that old folk singer.
Remove it from my sight.
Traitor to your race, close it again.
Close it now you hear or you won't be welcome here again.
Turn back to the truth of religion.
Repent of listening to the ideas they've brainwashed with you.
Preach it like you used to.
Tell the world of the evils of folk.
Teach about the evil words and deeds of Woody Guthrie.
Make placards to protest when the heirs of Pete Seeger come to town.
I'm pleading with you, return to truth.
Don't make me cry please.
Stop turning the pages.
Stop searching for that song.
And paint out that false slogan you've painted on your guitar.
Repaint the Bible verse that you used to be proud to carry with you.
Try not to hate your mother so much.
Listen to her when she tells you what's good for you.
PUT DOWN THAT PLECTRUM AT ONCE YOUNG LADY!
Come back please.
Draw back from the precarious ledge you're standing on.
Remove yourself from Satan's clutches.
Destroy his works, his words, his lies.
Stamp out ecology.  Let Jesus save the world as he promised.
Throw out the disgusting theory of, I can hardly say it, climate change.
Rebuke the teachers of evolution.
Put yourself in sackcloth and ashes and
Destroy any notion that there is freedom in the cesspit of the world.
Young lady, put it down or you'll not be welcome under my roof.
Don't make me hate what you've become.
Remember The Bible.
Remember the way God touched you in the camp.
Don't try to tell me that Pastor Eric touched you too.
Don't you tell such despicable untruths about that lovely man.
Remember how you used to say that Jesus was your force field.
Remember how cute we said you were.
Think about how God was raising you up into a beautiful woman.

LISTEN TO ME.  Please.

 

In tears, I strummed the first chord.
Through the noise of my sobbing I began to sing.

Don’t use a tissue, sniff instead,

Don’t use a napkin, use a piece of bread,

Don’t flush the toilet every time you pee,

Do your bit for ecology.

Stop it.  Stop it.  For God's sake stop it.
Oh Jesus forgive me for my blasphemy.
Oh Jesus forgive me for raising a child of the devil.
Have mercy on her, she doesn't know what she's doing.
Help me to love her, a sinner.
Help me to hate her sin, her environmentalism.
Jesus Guide me.
Jesus show me your plan.
Help me to be strong when I cast her out as you command.
Never let me waver.

Get out of my house child.
Don't come back until you've learned submission to The Bible.
Watch me and see how much you've hurt me.
No, don't take the book with you.
Don't take the guitar either.
Leave them here so I can burn them.
Get out you socialist!


I left.  A friend took me in.
She lent me a guitar.  She had the same book as me.
She had many books.
A warm bed too and the best hot chocolate.
Mum called hot chocolate decadent,
A distraction from the work of the Kingdom.
My friend called it a taste of heaven.

I sang with my friend.
We smiled.
I cried too about my life.
She called me strong and held me tight.
Then I knew I could persevere, learn true freedom.

And then, the following Saturday, I sang that song again.
On the steps of the city hall I sang.
I sang of freedom too, of hope.
I sang of the power we have to change our world.
The people cheered.

Except for a few who stood where I once stood.
They brought placards.  Bigger than ours.

Repent!
Hate socialism!
Hate environmentalism!
Turn from the lies of science!
Love the sinner, hate the sin!

They looked so angry, so much sadness in their eyes.
They looked lost.
I had once been as lost as them,
Fundamentalists, terrified in case they ever wavered.

And there among them, my mother.
She too, one of the angry, the lost.
I caught her eye as I led my songs.
No pride there.
Just a mix of regret and hate.

I turned away from her
Into the embrace of freedom
And the warmth of inclusive love.

I prayed for her too that one day she might learn the truth.
It was for that same freedom Christ came
And for love Jesus walked among us.


As promised, here's that blog post with the lyrics of the song.

If you're wondering.  I bought some 2017 calendars very cheaply in a Christian bookshop in Bolton.  I plan one day to wreck them for my own purposes.  One page of one is a simple image and the words "Jesus is my force field."  Really.  Honest.  It does say that.  Photographic proof will be provided on request.