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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes.  It is.  I do it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just an echo of it.  Imperfectly expressed.

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

Just an echo of the divine.  Imperfectly expressed.

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

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

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

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

God is THE WORD, not words.

Drat.  I fell into that temptation.

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

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

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

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


[1706 words]

On A Moment Of Clarity And The Call To Dump Something From My Life

The following may be more than a little ambiguous.  It's also delaying me writing about a canine related photographic quest - a simply worded challenge that becomes much more than the challenge.

 

And then there's today's challenge.  That became very much more than the challenge too.  Today I was challenged to photograph a white horse.  And as I stood at the top of a cliff I had a moment of total clarity.  That's two moments in a week.  Wow.  Was it really only five days ago that I hunted for flamingos in central Sunderland?

 

The moment today received what to me is confirmation when I was beautifully sprayed with sea water coming over the top of the south pier of the River Tyne.  It was a moment of pure bliss.  There was so much of beauty today.  To stand on that pier and look down on the power in the waves and see the uncontrollable.  To look down on the waves and see the light from the sun illuminating each tiny piece of the crest of each wave and to receive the total blessing inherent in the wonder of nature.  But when that water covered me it wasn't just great fun, which it was, but it was bliss.  It was just a wave crashing against a wall.  It was just water being forced upwards in the collision, with nowhere else it could go. Just a wave.  But it was as if the whole of nature was almost baptising me in the confirmation of what I had realised with such clear, total conviction.

 

I hope that's not overstating the matter!

Image found on lots of sites. Original source unknown.

Here is the result of that moment of clarity today:

 

Clare has come to a decision. She has looked carefully into doing something and is now completely certain that it is not for her, at least not at this time and perhaps never.

She hopes that people understand and don't feel let down.

But if the question is "What brings Clare joy? then this thing wouldn't be the answer.

If the question is "What is the fire and creative passion that rises from Clare's heart and mind and spirit?" then this thing wouldn't be the answer

And if the question is "What is Clare skilled at?" then this thing wouldn't be the answer.

And if the question is "What is Clare passionate about?" then this thing wouldn't really be the answer. Yes, she cares about the issues related to this thing. But not all things which concern a person concern a person - as a wise friend of Clare pointed out to her.

And if the question is "What can Clare apply herself to without falling apart and without sacrificing the things she is good at and which bring her joy?" then this thing would not be the answer at all. Clare knows that this thing would harm her.

She wondered about doing it. Then decided she couldn't. Then wondered whether she possibly could. With a lot of work she possibly could, yes. But not without causing herself damage. And not without letting go of the things that are bringing her a life she is excited about.

It is time to say no to something that is still, on the face of it, a damn good idea.

And time to more fully embrace the things that ought to have been yeses many years ago if only Clare had possessed the wisdom and craziness and self-knowledge back then.

When Clare gave up on this idea the first time she did it with shame. With guilt. With a sense of personal failure. She cried many tears over it.

Now she is giving up the idea with a sense of freedom. A sense of truth. Of honesty. A sense of embracing her own nature.

Now she knows that giving up the idea is not giving up. Letting go is not letting down. Walking away is walking towards.

These last days have taught Clare a great deal. And today, standing at the top of a quarry cliff, the wind blowing through her, laughter filling every particle of her being, she knew. Certainty struck her. A thunderstruck realisation that of where she can learn to walk and learn to run and to learn to fly.

To walk on her own feet on the ground that spirit calls her to walk upon.

To run in her own strength, developing stamina and speed.

To fly in her own feathers.

So many times Clare has attempted to fly in feathers that were not her own. Through self rejection. Through embracing the ideas and desires of others. The things she thought she should think and be do.

But she fell. Every time. And her own feathers were never allowed to grow.

Now it is time for Clare to learn to walk and to run and to learn to fly.

Now is the time to lay down some possibilities, strengthen others, and embrace still more that lay dormant or rejected.

Clare doesn't quite know what this mean. She doesn't know where these ideas will lead. She has hope and she has excitement and she has a vast gulf of uncertainty for the future.

But tonight Clare knows at least two things with certainty.

She knows that there is something, a particular thing, is not for her no matter how good it is.

And she knows that definitively saying no to it will be a release and a happiness, rather than a shaming disappointment.

She knows.

It took the wind, the cliffs, the over arching sky, and the whole of nature to cry out to her and scream "This is what you are."

It took a lot for Clare to listen and receive the song of the air.

But now she knows.

She knows. And she is glad.

 

 

 

[975 words]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We talked a little of church history.

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



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

The Cathars

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

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

The Albigensians

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

The Waldensians

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

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

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

We talked a little of doctrine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We talked a little about ethics and morality.

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

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

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

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

Holy crap!

We talked of science.

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

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

We talked about other Christians.

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

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

On a personal level, I am a fool.

We talked of judgement - and inevitably talked of sexuality.

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

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

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

And we talked about other human beings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As I think about those preachers I feel this:

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

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

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

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

To Look Back on Writing. To Look Forward to Writing. Both Bring Smiles.

This morning I went to a 2 1/2 hour writing session that billed itself as an introduction to creative writing.

 

Image grabbed from http://www.lokalart.com/handmade-diary-joy-of-writing-yellow

This afternoon I look back on the results:

a. Another confidence boost. Because the words and images flowed. Freely if not with the skill of a profound wordsmith who has written each day for decades. My own skill will follow from freedom and commitment.

b. Enjoyment. Truly, that's the most important outcome for me in anything I write: That I enjoy it. I am writing for myself primarily.

c. A shortish story all seeded and ready to go in my head, which may never be written.

d. The urge to expand something I have. We were given a photograph of a person and a phrase as a seed. We wrote some character notes about our character. In three minutes. We then wrote whatever scene or story or anything else that arose from our notes. In less than ten minutes. Not quite long enough for a full novel. I read out what I had written and then nobody else wanted to read theirs because they wouldn't be as good. (Not true of course) But it IS good. I truly believe that. It's an excellent beginning and there is enough that I could flesh out story, character and write something worth writing. And now I want to write it properly as a full scale monologue and then take an acting lesson or ten to get me to a level at which I could perform it myself. That's not a job for this evening or even this week.  To be honest I am developing a pile of half-decent beginnings that may never develop middles or endings.  I find it very exciting to know that material exists.

e. A furthering of my inner acceptance of doing what so many people have asked me to do recently: Write my life story. I think it might be even more fun to write it but to intersperse scenes that didn't happen and thoughts I didn't have, placing them as alternative autobiography in the main text.

f. A rather gorgeous book on alchemy bought in Oxfam in Sunderland afterwards. Many pretty pictures - and probably much that will help me with writing at a later date.

All in all I can say I'm glad I made the effort to be there. Staying at home would have been easier and by the time I got home I was pretty overloaded and drained. I am very glad to be able to sit quietly now. I am proud of myself for getting there.

Hey, this writing thing is a thrill at times!  I have found something to bring me joy.

 

Image grabbed from http://www.hanloncomm.com/?p=563

I found it years ago but was never able to enter into it.  That's a tale for another day.  A tale of the madness of feeling shame for wanting to create something beautiful with words.  A sad tale, now being replaced by a happy one.

Tomorrow, penciled into my diary, is a writing workshop.  During the week there are four more workshops penciled in that take place in Newcastle and Sunderland.  Because I want more of this joy.  I like joyfulness.  Please sir, can I have some more?!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

September 1st

Grateful to have taken the plunge.

Grateful to have tried something new.

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

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

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

Yep. Ridiculed. And wounded.

One more kick towards the darkness.

I am grateful that tonight I played again.

One more caress back into the light.

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

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

Yet.

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

Yet.

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

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

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

September 2^nd

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

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

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

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

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

September 3^rd

Grateful for street logos and art.

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

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

September 4^th

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

Grateful to have got the best seat on the Metro.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sacred to the memory of ...

Because there were those words, on a grave.

Sacred to the memory of.   Sacred?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again, Sacred to the Memory of ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The very gorgeous Kate

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A Grand Day Out In Durham - 3: Walking The River Wear And Finding The Joy

After all my moaning yesterday, today is not a moan day.

I may not like the cathedral.  I may feel pretty bloody awful inside it.  But Durham is not just a cathedral.  It's a city with much that I like and I look forward to going back and exploring some more when I have a day on which I have lots of energy sufficient for visiting a city rather than escaping to the back of nowhere on a walk.  Yesterday was a walk day and apart from tiredness, getting overwhelmed, getting giddy and losing my balance, and getting so lost that I finished the walk in a different place than I'd been planning, apart from all that it was excellent.  I found some amazing and surprising places and much beauty.  The surprises began minutes after getting off the bus in Chester-le-Street and they kept on coming.  Now that I know the way I can walk it again and not walk down the wrong roads and paths.  There are places on that walk I want to see again.

I want to see Durham again.  Maybe sometime soon I will.

After visiting the cathedral and having lunch in Alington House I walked back down the hill to the river.  I felt very tired.  The cathedral experience had drained me a lot and it was tempting to cross back over the bridge, get the bus, and just go home and hide in silence.  Instead I stood on the bridge and looked down at the river.  And I looked along the river too.  And Clare saw that it was good.

Blob Thing decided it was good too and he was happy to have his photo taken.  It was a challenge as he didn't want to fall into the river and couldn't balance on the bridge very well.  Blob said that he wanted to walk by the river.  I agreed that it was a good idea.  Durham sits on a big bend in the River Wear and there are paths on both sides (I think) that run from the road bridge at one end of the bend to the road bridge at the other.  It looked quiet down there.  It looked much more peaceful than the bridge we were standing on, more peaceful than a bus journey would be.

So I walked down to the riverside and looked back at the bridge we had stood on.  I've walked round at least part of the bend in the river before.  It was several years ago and I was with my parents.  It hadn't been the easiest day for me because I had a streaming cold.  My souvenir of Durham, by necessity, was a packet of handkerchiefs!  My mother hadn't liked the cathedral either and didn't have many kind words to say about the city.  She did enjoy seeing the river though.

It's a shame that my parents were not able to see my life develop in Newcastle or the discoveries I've made about myself.  My mother died of cancer a week before I was officially diagnosed by a psychiatrist as being transgender.  I didn't need a psychiatrist to tell me that!  But that psychiatric assessment and diagnosis meant that I was able to begin medical treatment.  Two years on and my hormone levels are actually starting to bear some relation to what they're meant to be.  My mother would have loved all the photos on my blog - and Blob's blog too.  She kept a daily blog for many years and it was often filled with photos of the places my parents visited and the people they met.

If you want to take a look at her blog, it's still at http://grandma-p-ramblings.blogspot.co.uk/

My dad, by the time my mother died, was in a care home.  He has frontal lobe dementia and the progression of that illness was horribly swift.  I haven't seen him in a year - my mental health has meant that I haven't been able to get to Sussex to be with him - but will be there at the start of September.  So far the thought of that hasn't caused me to completely break down as it did last time when my visit was booked and I had to cancel it for my own wellbeing.  I would not have survived the visit in one piece, of that I am totally certain.  But next month I will be there.

Back to the river.

It was inevitable that I would spot a tree and need to take a picture of it.  A panorama.  My phone decided to do it like this.

If you stand on your head it might make more sense.  The top is the ground, the middle is the sky, and the bottom are the branches of the trees that were behind me when I started taking the picture.

Something I love about Durham is the amount of steps leading to different places.  Some are narrow passageways in the streets, each of which invite me to explore, experience and take pictures of.

Some are like this, pretty flights of stairs, stretching up into the distance from the river, rising through the woods.  For me, walking up or down a place like this is a far better experience than walking up or down the aisle and nave of a cathedral.  I look at the tree and get a greater sense of god which is creativity, life, beauty, and meaning than I ever do in a building.

And, though I am no longer a Christian, I find that my experience of the divine, of the ground of meaning, of that life giving source, and of the Christ that is within us is more "Biblical" than the construction of cathedrals.



For what does the Bible say?

Stephen addressed the Sanhedrin in Acts chapter seven.  During the speech he says this:

“However, the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands. As the prophet says:

⁴⁹ “‘Heaven is my throne,
    and the earth is my footstool.
What kind of house will you build for me?
says the Lord.
    Or where will my resting place be?
⁵⁰ Has not my hand made all these things?’

It wasn't a very popular speech.  Three verses later - just after he finally mentioned Jesus, "the righteous One", - he got stoned to death, the first Christian martyr.

I am not a Jew like Stephen was.  I am no longer a gentile Christian.  I don't believe in a personal God in control (or out of control) of things.  It doesn't matter whether that Biblical God is so loving everyone that he sends his son to save us or whether that Biblical God is so jealous and narrow that he commands his people to commit genocide.  The Bible says it's the same God and that God does not change.  No variation whatsoever in the Father of Lights.  And thus the Christian God is still the God of genocide, still the God who commanded all those things in the Old Testament that most of us would find utterly repugnant if they were preached today.

I don't believe.  And yet at this point I am in agreement with Stephen.  I am in agreement with Isaiah who Stephen quotes.  My god does not live in houses made my human hands.  No.  My god lives within me, within all of us, and in the spectacularly awesome universe around us.  No.  That's not quite right.  My god doesn't live.  My god is life.  Not just the life of a plant or animal.  But the life that is the music of the stars and the atoms.  My god is found when I stand and breathe deeply and realise that I am surrounded by wonder, filled with wonder with each breath, and that I am myself wonder.

Right.  Back to the river.  I apologise.  I didn't mean to talk about cathedrals again.  I didn't mean to divert into something that could easily have become some kind of sermon about wonder and awe and adoration and all sorts of other beautiful words in the life of a non-theist.

I don't just love trees.  I don't even just love nature.  I find that I am quite into bridges too.  Blob Thing has been getting into them and it's become something of an obsession with him to be photographed with as many bridges as possible.  That's another reason he wants to return to Durham.  He missed out on the pictures.  He's got pictures of himself by all the bridges on the Wear from the sea as far as Fatfield and lots of other bridges too.  But not the ones in Durham because he hadn't become obsessed by the time of our visit.

So here are a couple of bridges.  They are very different to one another.

This is Kingsgate Footbridge, constructed in 1963.  It is now a Grade 1 listed structure.

The second bridge, also Grade 1 listed, is Prebends Bridge, constructed in 1778.  Since 2011 it has been closed to traffic and is now just a footbridge.

There's a website I've come to love while starting to explore the area near my home.  It's http://www.bridgesonthetyne.co.uk and it's fascinating.  It also covers the Wear and several other nearby rivers.  When I write something about a bridge I've often found the information there.

It strikes me that people might think some of what I write is a little odd.  When I write "Blob Thing thinks ..." or "Blob Thing says ..." you may wonder if my sanity should be called into question.  Of course Blob is just a handmade soft toy.  Of course, objectively speaking, he's not really talking or jointly writing his own blog or even sometimes dictating the whole thing.  But that doesn't matter to me.  It's a much more interesting life to have Blob as a friend and much more fun to have a soft toy with attitude!

I'm not the only strange person.  Whoever sculpted this has to have been slightly weird too.  On the other side there are places to sit.  I would have sat too and listened to the magic of the river had the places not been occupied by other people enjoying themselves.

Yes. It's Prebends Bridge again.  From the other side.  Blob is wishing that he was in the photo too!

Continuing the walk round the river I looked up and near the top of the bank I spotted a stone structure sticking out.  There was a path leading up to it.  But not from the riverside.  The path and steps began halfway up the hill.  Here is a part of it:

I've just been looking it up and I am so pleased I did.  I found a webpage that talks of the ancient, healing and holy wells of Country Durham.  Just recently I've become a little more fascinated by wells and have lots of books about them on my wish list.  Blob's sister Winefride was named after a saint associated with a holy well in Wales.  And I am wanting to learn more about wells.  It's a great page and it tells me that what I had climbed to get to was St. Cuthbert's Well.  It also tells me that I have five more holy wells to find within Durham City.  That information is very exciting for me.  Now I want to go back possibly even more than Blob Thing does.  Woo hoo!  Wells!

St. Cuthbert's Well has the largest sandstone surround of any well in Britain.  The inscription on the well has a date of 1600 or 1660.  Of course we know that the remains of St. Cuthbert are in the cathedral but nobody knows anything of the history of the well.  In looking it up I've been led to another webpage and a site that is making me very excited indeed.  This one.  It says the well can only be reached with great difficulty.  I wouldn't call it great difficulty.  But it would certainly have been easier to stay by the river and not decide that I had to climb up to see what the structure was.

Here's the view from the well.  The top half is easy enough - although some of the steps are missing.  But the bottom half is just a steep and muddy slope.  I'm glad I made the effort.  Visiting the well was worthwhile.  And finding the two websites was joyous.

From there I followed the river to the next road bridge.

I had started my walk feeling very tired and dispirited.  I felt a lot better after it.  I was still tired though and decided that I'd done enough for one day.  I'd find a quiet cafe, have a quiet drink, and would then head home.  That was my resolution.  It turned out to be a resolution I couldn't keep.  Because Durham revealed something wonderful to me as I hunted for a suitably quiet place to rest.



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