My Pastor Gazed At Me And Said, "Wow! You Were REALLY Fucked Up!"

To begin, a photograph.  I've taken this from a Messianic Christian page about faith in God.   The page argues, through links to many articles, that atheists should become Christians because that would be the sensible thing to do given the "evidence."  On the right of the screen there's an offer for a free book.

It's called, "I Have A Friend Who's Jewish ... Have You?"  Sounds riveting.

Today I've been sorting some files on my laptop.  It shouldn't have taken long but I got quite distracted by my past.  In the process of sorting I've found myself looking at Christian books and documents I saved. I've been looking at some of my own writing too which covers much of my Christian life. I still have the text of sermons preached in the year 2000, all kinds of documents from when I was an enthusiastic Catholic, and some really strong Protestant conservatism I briefly clung to after leaving the Catholic church and wondering how I could survive without it.

I found a document containing my prayer diary through a week almost exactly ten years ago. During that period I was undertaking the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola in daily life, with one to one spiritual guidance from a woman who was part of the outreach team of Saint Beuno's Jesuit retreat centre in North Wales.

That particular week included this exciting day trip in London: It took in 3 churches, 2 cathedrals, a church centre, 2 Catholic bookshops and 2 masses.

In the same document I wrote about other days in this two week period in May 2007.

These days could and would include more hours spent kneeling in front of the "blessed sacrament", daily mantra and meditation prayers, praying the Office, rosaries, chaplets – including that of Divine Mercy, the triple colloquy, litanies, the Ignatian spiritual exercises, consideration of the "Mysteries", biblical meditations, Bible verses turned into daily prayers.

These were all happening on the same day.

You read that correctly. On. The. Same. Day. In my most ardent periods I could pray for six hours a day.

And what comments did I give? Many. They include these:

I wanted to enter more into the pain of Jesus. (Because some saints or spiritual writers recommend it.)

I asked of myself, "Could I be Judas?"

I said, "Not much progress in prayer."

I said, "Much need for change and for grace."

And the classic, "Not enough praying in the house."

Honestly. I wrote that. You read that correctly too.

I didn't believe I was praying as much as I should. I certainly didn't believe I was praying as well as I should. After all, hadn't I consecrated my entire life to Jesus? Hadn't I also made an act of total consecration to Jesus through Mary, in the manner of Saint Louis Marie de Montfort? Shouldn't I be praying more? Studying more?

That's what I thought anyway. Because I was utterly lost. Trapped. Despairing. Still self-hating. And when you self-hate it's hard to love others. Not truly and deeply.

As I've looked through some of the books as I've been clearing them out I find similar words from "heroes of faith" canonised by Rome. These men and women were also giving everything they possibly could for their God. And they still beat themselves up for it - mostly emotionally and mentally but sometimes physically too.

I was utterly screwed up. My ex-pastor from MCC used the phrase “fucked up.” But I was being reinforced in being screwed up and fucked up by the books I read, the spiritual writers, the saints.

Was there any hope for someone so screwed up when he was told that the grace to ask for that week included, “Shame and deep grief because the Lord is suffering for me.” And “Faced with the suffering of the Passion, I may have to pray even for the gift of letting myself want to experience it with Christ.”

I arrived screwed up. I left screwed up.

There were happy events.  There were some smiles.  But underneath it all I was screwed up.  Constantly.

I am immensely glad to become free of all that horror.

I am also glad that on my way out of the faith I discovered some Christian spiritual writers who didn't beat themselves up and who had a Jesus who could and would smile. Some people even have a Jesus I like. I recommend someone like Jim Palmer – a Jesus follower but pretty much an atheist. Or the writings of someone like Gretta Vosper – a Jesus follower but an atheist. There are even some theist Jesus followers I can cope with and dip into.

I'm glad they've found a faith around Jesus that's full of good things. No original sin. No exclusivity. No false gods. A view of the Bible that doesn't try to justify it having plenty of horrific things in both Testaments but just says, “The writers tried but got it wrong.”   I even know very happy Christians.  And I know Christians whose love and service to others is a big example to me.  I am glad they have found inspiration for that in the versions of the Jesus story people once wrote.

As for me, the pain is too deep, too long-lasting. It's hard to find any comfort at all in the Galilean preacher and peasant who was elevated to the sky by his followers with the accretion of pagan myths and superstition, a man whose very words were mostly put into his mouth by his followers and whose miracles were inventions. Yes inventions. Arising from the way religion was done then and often is now. In the quest for the historical Jesus, which some say is doomed from the outset, the New Testament narratives are in many places worse than useless no matter how many fine words they contain.

As for me, my question is what inspiration there is to be found in what is true and in the wonder of being - and the wonders of this cosmos, this earth, and humanity - without appealing to a very faulty ancient book that tells of a man who we can't know much, if anything, about.  As such I plan, after six months of putting it off, to attend a humanist meeting tomorrow night.  I want to see what answers they give.  I want to see too whether they offer new ways of questioning.  I'm looking forward to it and the talks at the meetings always sound fascinating.

It's pointed out to me that Jesus said (or is alleged to have said) some very good things. I can only agree with that. But I don't see that as any reason whatsoever to follow him or call him Lord.  He said (or is alleged to have said) some rather more problematic things too.  In addition, lots of people have said very good things. I've met some of them. I don't call them Lord either and some of them aren't holding onto and speaking with an ancient world view and in words arising from primitive superstitions and ancient pagan blood sacrifice cults.

Why would I want to be a Jesus follower – whether a red-letter Christian or an atheist without a sky god – over and above any other guide and inspiration? Why? I don't see a reason. I certainly don't see any unique claim of salvation power being valid. And I don't see the Jesus way as superior to all other ways although I recognise the inspiration and excitement many people find in him. I am told Jesus is about growing into freedom. I see that some people manage that. I missed the boat on that one!

For me, I need – at least for the present – to keep any version of Jesus at arm's length.  Any version. Even the Jim Palmer inner anarchist version. I was hurt in the churches, hurt by the Saints, hurt by Scripture.  Hurt in self hatred and there being enough in that faith to justify my self hatred even while talking of a God of love.  The second biggest selling Christian work in history is The Imitation of Christ.  In it we learn the call to despise ourselves.

I couldn't see it then. I couldn't see how damaged I was by my faith because my faith was the reason I clung to for continuing to exist and my hope that there was a better future if I would only persevere in faith until the end.  I believed in mercy.  And I was thankful because I believed that without the blood sacrifice of Jesus that mercy wouldn't be given to me who, like everyone else, deserved hell - either in fire or separation eternally from God.

I couldn't see how my faith strengthened my despair for this life.

I see it now.

I see it increasingly clearly the more I explore outside of my old faith.

At this time I am grieving for all the lost years.

But I am rejoicing for my future, wherever that may take me.

Outside of the certainty and shame of my Christian faith it may take me anywhere.

And by his lack of stripes I find I am being healed. (Isaiah 53)

If you pray I would ask you not to pray that I return to Christianity. I would ask that you not hope I return to the flock.

I would ask, if you pray, to pray that I may find the way that is right for me, the way that leads me into the fullest life I can live. If there eventually turns out to be some Jesus in that then so be it. If not, that's great. And I would ask that your hope is that I will be free to be myself, to grow in myself, and to rejoice in living and learning to love in ways that were impossible when I was trapped in religion.

At this point I am an atheist. I have no sky god to pray to.  That picture again.

But the statement “I am an atheist” tells you as little about me as it would tell you if I said “I believe in God.”

I apologise for this: I'm not going to expand on the statement any further today.

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.

Clare's Story - Christianity, Sexuality, Transgender Life, and The Struggle to Self-Acceptance

There's a new issue of "Franciscan" out.  Normally I wouldn't be commenting on that.  But this issue was edited by a Franciscan brother I know.  The article that begins on the front cover is by Professor Helen Berry, one of the preachers at my church.  And inside there is "Clare's Story".

I wrote it six months ago and I have to say that such a lot has happened in the last six months that some of my perspectives on my own story have changed.  When I say at the end that "surprises keep coming," well they really do and they seem to happen with increasing regularity at the moment.  My faith is very different to how it was six months ago and at this point it could go in almost any direction - although I don't think it will ever move back to faith in the literalistic truth of the religious stories.

Also, six months on I do not identify as a lesbian.  I've been able, thanks to a lot of thought and discussions with friends, to be able to accept that I am asexual.  And when you're ace, words such as heterosexual, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual and so on kind of lose their meaning in your life.  Yep, asexual.  This is me, coming out, yet again!

So this is Clare's Story.  I think it was edited a little to fit into the journal - I sent them something about 50% longer than the submission guidelines requested.

My name is Clare. I am transgender and lesbian, truths I only accepted in 2013, a process including great highs, difficulties, triumphs and an examination of every part of my life.

At an early age I knew I was different and didn't fit into the life I was meant to be living. It wasn't long before I'd worked out that I wasn't just different, but what was thought of as bad – in my gender and also in my neuro-diversity. From early childhood I knew shame about my identity and attempted to suppress everything I believed to be shameful, to create a persona to imprison the one already there and live as the kind of person I thought would be acceptable.

I managed to suppress myself so far that I didn't even know that I am female. Clues arose sometimes and because I felt so guilty I hastily squashed them. I would try make up, cross dress and have all kinds of dreams, desires, interests and fantasies but I'd learned such things were evil so I came to intensely hate myself. Inevitably this contributed to decades of mental health problems.

My upbringing was outwardly normal and balanced, a stable home with two parents and a brother. But that balance could not compensate for what was going on inside or for the way I was consistently told that certain things were wrong; the times I was told “Don't be stupid, that's for girls.” Life as a teenager became inner torture. Life cannot be good when every day there is an enormous shadow blocking out the sun. I turned from being a child who didn't smile much into an inwardly bound person with constant low lying depression and major depressive episodes.

Then I discovered Christianity. Or at least one version of it. I converted through an evangelical, Pentecostal, born-again experience. I hadn't expected that but it gave me much that I'd never had before: solidity, meaning, hope. But it wasn't all good. I didn't convert based on the conviction that God loved me. I couldn't really deal with that concept. I converted largely because that brand of evangelicalism was pretty much the only religion that agreed with what I already believed – that I was evil, some kind of monster, an aberration. My new faith taught me that I was right, that I was so evil that I deserved to burn painfully for eternity. But it gave comfort because it turned out everyone else deserved that too – but there was hope for all of us.

That form of Christianity wrecked any self-esteem I had left. When somewhere deep down you know you're transgender, queer, it's hard to be part of a faith that teaches how evil that is. Many can tell stories of how churches – not Jesus – have hurt them greatly. My first church had many ministry tapes from a so-called gay cure ministry. As a young, enthusiastic convert I swallowed the message and didn't dare to question it – because that would have been to question “God's word”, to despise God, to despise that one hope. I became thoroughly Biblically (as we saw it) homophobic and transphobic, hating myself even more. I don't condemn myself for my homophobia because with the inputs I had I couldn't have believed anything else. But I deeply, deeply regret things I've thought and said.

Coming to terms with accepting myself as female and lesbian took a long time and a series of near miracles. I almost don't know how I got from there to here. When I came out I had good and bad experiences in churches. The people in my local church were supportive, though I was told it would be “inappropriate” for me to continue to preach or lead anything. That hurt, but it worked out well, causing me to walk away from that life and find a wide open space to learn more about myself and about my faith.

I'd been attending another church too and got called in for a “talk” with the pastor. He called me an abomination (based on Deuteronomy 22:5) and said that he couldn't conceive that I was any kind of Christian at all unless I repented of my gender. He said lots of other things that were highly unpleasant. But by that time I was secure in myself and certain that I was not condemned for being who I am and his words did nothing to destroy me. In a way I'm glad to have experienced that because it gives at least some insight into what other people have gone through and continue to suffer in many churches. But I do worry and weep for LGBT+ people who are raised in places like that and endure sheer hell.

Overall I've been very fortunate in faith. My wife sent me to get support from Northern Lights Metropolitan Community Church. So in June 2013 I went to a service, one of the many scared people who come through the door. It's one of the best things I've ever done. MCC is now home and the people there are cherished family. It's been very difficult at times and through everything MCC has been a rock of support. No matter how low I've been, no matter how much I struggled with faith and dealt with the pain I'd lived in because of my faith, the people there have stood by me and held me.

I spent a year preparing to leave MCC and to walk away from Christianity forever. But in October 2014 that changed. I surprised myself and formally became a member of the church, publicly renewing my baptismal vows a week before, something that for me was a necessary step.

I needed this renewal for two reasons. Firstly, I was baptised under another name, another gender, and was a very different person then. My present is a changed life from my past. I'd love to be re-baptised as Clare but of course that's not a theological option because baptism is a one time event. I couldn't be baptised again but I needed to publicly express that, as Clare, those vows I made as “him” still stood, more firmly than they ever did in the past.

The second reason was even more important to me than the first. Over the previous eighteen months my Christian faith died a slow and painful death. Church services were torture for me. The church put up with my many words, my complaints, my deep pain through that process. I cannot thank them enough for supporting me through the death of my faith and through everything I said, and felt, and did.

My faith deserved to die. It really did. Good riddance to it! Not because of any doctrines or dogmas that were or weren't attached to it. But because the root of my faith was self-hatred, self-denial, self-rejection – arising from a firm belief that I was no good. Much of that came from received beliefs about my gender and consequently my near-constant urges to self-destruct. My faith helped to destroy me, helped me to eradicate myself, for twenty-three years. It was immensely important to me but it crushed me.

Eventually I was able to leave that faith behind, and rest secure in a faith that excluded any personal God. The plan was to leave MCC and never look back. That was the only future I could see. But throughout the whole journey I still believed in MCC, her vision, her people, and the place of healing that the church is. And, solely because of certain of the people, I stayed.

Many people noticed a not so subtle change in me since the start of October 2014. At church one evening everything suddenly clicked. I could sing the songs, pray the prayers and knew it was OK to receive communion again for the first time in a long while. And I was extremely surprised that night to find myself on my knees, hands in the air, lost in worship and thankfulness to the God I didn't believe in. The “God of Surprises” entered again and renewed my world, my heart.

Faith returned. It's a new faith. Brand new. It's a far healthier faith, one that accepts the love of God, and one that can honestly say with the Psalmist;

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.

As I renewed my baptismal vows it was my freedom to be Clare, to be authentic, that I celebrated. But more than that I celebrated my return to faith. A purer faith. A very different faith than that I had before. Based on self-love rather than self-condemnation, on authenticity rather than self-squashing, on freedom, on love, on grace, on hope, on acceptance, on inclusivity, on joy, on light and life and on so much more.

The story continues. Surprises keep coming and my faith is going in unexpected directions. I am wildly unorthodox, have a spirituality that embraces all kinds of things that I would have condemned in years gone by. And yet I now seriously call myself more of a Christian than I ever have been. A Christianity of love, light, and life not constrained by dogma and doctrines. A Christianity of freedom and joy rather than my previous false Christianity of law and self punishment. In short: Hallelujah! For I am set free.

Simple Words of Spirit - Received in a time of Complicated Doubt

January 2015. Written in darkness, in temptation to deeper depression – I realise that January is often like that for me, in a week of major doubt. Written in deep wondering whether God is real, whether Spirit is real, or whether I was just fooling myself with an idea, or a collection of ideas.

Like before I was told to pick up a pen and listen and write down what was heard. This time the words were simple. Simple concepts. Because when it comes down to it there isn't anything complicated about a call to return to what's already in the heart. Everything here is easy to understand – and actually easy to do if I let go of all the self-created obstacles. In truth there is nothing in the way of the spiritual walk or the path of learning to serve (are they the same thing?) unless we put it there ourselves.

Parts of the writing that came in the months before that night are more complicated – or at least less simple! Some of it I don't understand with much clarity at all. But this is obvious. A reminder of what is pretty much in lesson one for many of us. The previous writing won't get shared. And any further writing – once I'm quiet enough to hear again – probably won't be shared either. This only gets shared because of its simplicity and its broad applicability to the life of pretty much anyone at some time or other.

One thing – the phrase “the Christ” is a wide one. It doesn't have to imply being a church-going Christian, although I am one and am most definitely called to be an active part of the particular church of which I am a part. The phrase doesn't necessarily have to imply believing Jesus is alive or even that he ever was alive.  Take the phrase for whatever you want to take it.

Fooling myself? Perhaps. Are these words coming from beyond? Are they from somewhere closer to the essence and truth of the Self? Or are they just what my conscious mind says once all the analysis and over-thinking gets turned off? Or all three working together? Simple answer, I cannot say with anything approaching certainty.

Perhaps you have lost the way. But what is the way? And if you have lost it, can you not find it again and walk once more in the path awaiting you? You have allowed yourself to stray, to wander. You have allowed other concerns to impede the one concern. You already know how to return – to read, to pray, to meditate, to serve, to seek that purity.

And though you may at this time feel alone, you are not alone. Deep inside, at your core, you know that you are never alone. And you know that you were placed where you are for reasons beyond your imagination. You are not alone. I am with you. We are with you. Always.

All that remains is that you walk again, cry out again, seek again the within and the without. You can do it because you have strength and will be given strength.

You are tempted to give up. You are tempted to fall away. You ask if there is any point and you ask again whether that which is real is Real.

Do not give in. Focus on the safety. Focus on the revelations of the past until you reach again the revelations of the present – or at least the realisation that you are always in that place.

Again, you are not alone. Your essence is safe. I will be with you, for you, beside you, within you, embraced firmly in passionate love. I will never let you go and will continue to draw you, prod you, lead you and show you the ways into the Way, your Way, your Centre.

Remember the words – the Christ IS your path, the Christ IS at the centre of your being. Look to the Christ. Always. Unfailing. Unceasing. To the Christ. To the Victor. Return.

Return. Listen to the call and return into hope, into fire, into that growth into Being. Pray again. Sit again, alone with me. There is nothing to fear in Way, Being, Life. Come to me again and rejoice. This cannot be said enough. Rejoice. Rejoice.

That's all. You know what needs to be done. Look inside, find the answer. Rejoice. In love, rejoice. Return. In Christ, return. Recommit. To the path, recommit. You know it. Only you can do it. Only you. But never only you – never alone.

Yes, that which is real IS Real. Believe again. Know again. And again, run into reality.

Gaudete Sunday - A Sermon From Two Years Ago

Today is the third Sunday of Advent - Gaudete Sunday.  What follows is a the roughish text of a sermon I preached on this Sunday two years ago.  So much has happened since then and perhaps the sermon I'd write now would be very different.  But this is where I was two years ago.  Don't feel obliged to read it - it was much complimented on at the time and I still think there's plenty of good things here but there are also elements worth cringing at with some embarrassment!  And you'll have to imagine it in my style of delivery else something is lost.

____________________________

Allow me to take you back to December 13^th 1973. I understand that this will be more difficult for some of us than others. Some of you hadn't been born and I was only two years old so I can't remember it.

So there you were – or you weren't, but imagine that you were – sitting in front of your posh new 15 inch black and white television in 1973. You wanted to watch Top of the Pops and hoped to catch a glimpse of Marc Bolan and his new hit single. But on this occasion you were disappointed. Yes, Bolan wasn't on. The Children of the Revolution had been thwarted by tax evasion. Disappointing.

Instead, who did Tony Blackburn introduce? Cozy Powell from Black Sabbath performed “Dance with The Devil” and in a zealous moment you wondered if a Christian should be listening to such things. And then there was bunch of strange looking English folk singers, all men apart from one woman in the middle and none of them with so much as a musical instrument. This isn't T. Rex, this isn't even Slade – though they'll be on later with a song that still haunts us forty years later. What's going on? Can things possibly get any worse?

And then the men start to sing. In folk singer voices. In Latin. Good grief, why on earth would anyone buy this? And then the woman pipes up, several octaves higher than anyone else.

Yes, this was Steeleye Span, and this was one of their two hits and though I've seemed to insult them, I confess that by my teenage years I'd bought quite a few of their albums at car boot sales.

Here's what they sang, with only one wrong pronunciation that I won't repeat here:

Gaudete, gaudete, Christus est Natus, ex Maria, virgine, Gaudete...

So, why on earth am I singing you a sixteenth century Scandinavian song in Latin that was a surprise hit 40 years ago?

Today, as the liturgical experts among you will know, is Gaudete Sunday. (sing again)

Gaudete is a word we translate as rejoiceand the day is named, not for that song but for the first word of the reading from Philippians that we've heard. That verse traditionally was also the entrance antiphon in the Catholic mass and in higher church Anglican eucharistic services – the verse spoken or sung right at the start of the service even before the priest had a chance to say hello.

It's advent. You might have noticed that. It's a time of penance. A time of preparation. A time of great meditation on the first coming of Jesus and a growing expectation of him coming again – both into our lives in new ways and at the end of time when he returns in glory. Which I predict will not happen on the 21^stthis year.

I know that most of us (myself included) do not make any big changes to life for advent. But it was and is and actually should be a time of fasting, without which the great feast of Christmas loses some of its meaning. And that's hard work.

So here we are half way through and the church says to us, well done people you're doing well, not long to go now and you can have a big party. But we think you could do with a bit of encouragement today.

So we arrive at our nice traditional service, having been doing all the traditional Adventy disciplines. We are tired, cold, a bit hungry and on our knees seeking God with an earnestness that we didn't have halfway through November.

And suddenly a voice cries out “Rejoice always in the Lord and again I say rejoice”. Here is our encouragement. Rejoice. The Lord has come. The Lord is here. The Lord is coming. He who loves you says to rejoice and to do it in him and through him and with him. It's not only something you can do, it's something that you are commanded to so.

So we've come to our text for the sermon “Rejoice always.” It's taken a while and I feel like a mild version of a preacher I was listening to recently who, 20 minutes into his talk said the words, “and so to the sermon” and began from there.

Now there's quite a lot to say about these two words. I thought I'd have an easy job with this one. Preach on two words and it will be quick. But I can pretty much guarantee that nobody has slaved over a sermon in this place quite as much as I've slaved over this one. What is a short sermon is turning into a book on the meaning and practical application of these words. I'm actually quite shocked at how much there is to say and at some of the directions my thoughts and writing have gone. “Rejoice always”. Seems pretty simple. But it is rich and deep and when you start thinking about all the reasons why we don't rejoice, all the reasons why we should rejoice, how to learn to rejoice always and the benefits of rejoicing – among other things – there's far too much for a little sermon. Hence my slaving on a book that perhaps nobody will ever read but me. So here I can only say two or three things about rejoicing – and those only briefly. Here we go: The sermon proper, in three very quick and incomplete points...

Point One– Don't get guilty

There's just a possibility that you may not be rejoicing at this moment. Please, please do not feel bad about that or think that because you're in effect breaking a command from God that you are a terrible person. You're not.

For years I suffered periodically with bad depression and sometimes Christians were the worst people to have around me. They would pile on guilt and just make me feel worse. “God loves you, why aren't you joyful?” “You need to repent of your depression”

In Morning prayer before advent one of the regular readings is from Psalm 42 and every time, the last verse sent involuntary shudders through me. We read “Why are you downcast O my soul … hope in God.” That's fair – and hoping in God can and does in time ease a lot. But people would tell me that I had no right or reason to be depressed and thought that just telling me to hope in God would solve everything. When it didn't I was often made to feel like I was a bad person. Or “I was depressed and I prayed about it and God took it away -so I don't see what your problem is.”

And then I'd want to make these people happy with me and also to make them shut up. So I'd put on a false joy. I'd act my way through life with false smiles and a forced joy that in the end only made things worse because I was living a lie.

So, don't get guilty if you're not a bundle of rejoicing now. And don't feel guilt if you are currently mourning or grieving or want to be weeping – that's part of a balanced Christian life too, just not the subject of this particular talk.

Yes, sometimes people pray and a miracle happens – they are given the gift of joy. But more usually that doesn't happen and while they may be given seeds, it takes time and a lot of effort to prepare the ground so that God may grow the fruit of joy in us. That's far more common – rejoicing always is a command but it's a command to grow into as the fruit is grown within us.

Point two– the seeds

There are lots of seeds that lead to a life of joy. There are worldly seeds – all the blessings we enjoy, all the positive things in our life. Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters (and others) sang the song You've got to accentuate the positive....

Accentuating the positive is good. Focusing in on the good things of life. Family, friends, home, food, health, and so on and so on. Practising finding the positives is a good habit and practising thankfulness for those positives is even better. No matter what you are going through there will be positives in this worldly life.

I've looked back at my own life. Five years ago I wrote a list of positives in a few minutes and I found that list recently. A page filled with them. Twelve years ago I was in a mental health support group and we all used to write lists of positives. On some days my list struggled, with an hour's work over it, to contain one thing. Yet as I look at the list from five years ago, many or most of those positive things were true twelve years ago but at the time I was in such a state that I couldn't see them. Take from that what you will.

Finding those positives is good. But these earthly blessings are not actually the major basis of our joy and our rejoicing as Christians. (Joy, from this reading, by the way is the Greek word Chairo which isn't a joy of bounding about everywhere in a manic glee but rather a quiet calm within, an inner peace and warm fire that suffuses from a deep root within us into every corner and crevice of our lives, into all the nice things that happen and into our greatest suffering too so that we rejoice even in our deep pain – which we all have and mourning and grief have their place too.)

No, the earthly blessings are not the main basis of Christian joy. For the simple reason that they are transient. If our joy is based solely on friendship, a nice house, having tasty food for tea, our marriage or anything else – and these things are very good – what are we going to do if we lose these things. If our spouse dies and we end up homeless eating other people's leftovers, can we rejoice then? The gospel of true Christian joy says that we can.

We need a more permanent cause for our joy, a cause that cannot and will not fail us. And that cause is God and that cause is what he has revealed to us in Scripture. There are lots of Scriptures about “rejoice” - nearly 200 of them, and loads more about “joy” and studying and praying with these verses can be an excellent way of filling our hours.

Vine's dictionary gives a nice list of reasons for believers rejoicing (chairo). Here's part of it. Believers rejoice: in the Lord; His incarnation, His power, His presence with the Father, His presence with them, His ultimate triumph, hearing the gospel, their salvation,receiving the Lord, their enrolment in Heaven, their liberty in Christ, their hope, their prospect of reward, the obedience and godly conduct of fellow believers, the proclamation of Christ, the gospel harvest, suffering with Christ, suffering in the cause of the gospel, in persecutions, trials and afflictions, the manifestation of grace, meeting with fellow believers …

lots of reasons but the only one I'll mention now is the one sung by Steeleye Span.

Gaudete: “Rejoice, rejoice, Christ is born of the Virgin Mary”

I don't need to say anything about it either – you'll be hearing lots more about it in the next fortnight. Christ is born. God is with us and will never leave us. Salvation is here. Hope is here. True life is here. Forgiveness is here. Rejoice.

Wonderful. There is so much to say about the vast riches of the gospel and why this will – with much prayer, meditation and sharing together – become firmly rooted as the foundation of our life, welling up into a life of calm, unshakeable joy. I'm not there yet myself – but I am resolved to keep moving in the right direction.

Point three – the work.

Some of you won't like this bit. The hard work. Just two verses for you from the New Testament:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Heb 12:1-2 KJV)

Joy was set before Jesus.

A simple question: How did Jesus reach that place of joy?

A simple answer: He endured the cross. Another verse:

Then Jesus told his disciples,"If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Mt16:24ff)

Joy is set before us. Jesus has it and we (hopefully) want to come after him and have it to. So how do we do it? Jesus himself tells us “"If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

I know that's a tough end to a sermon. But we have to take the words of Jesus seriously. If we want to come after him into that place of joy and ultimately to be seated, reigning with him as co-heirs, then we have to seek to do what he says. Deny ourselves. Take up the cross. And then, and only then, can we truly follow him.

Joy will not come to us by seeking the experience of being joyful. True, deep, permanent, all embracing Christian joy will only come to us as a consequence of living a Christian life in imitation and love of Christ. That's the only way – and any preacher who gives you any other way, some easy way out is telling you fibs. Joy is not to be pursued as the end in itself – it is the by-product of a relationship with each other and with the living God. Without that relationship there can be no true Christian joy. Without self-denial, serving others, generosity to others and living to serve one another true Christian joy cannot blossom into the beautiful thing it is.

And so back to Advent for the next week. Back from this wonderful call to rejoice and into the season of advent. The fast, the self denial, the cross bearing. The path to the great joy that we will all, god-willing, experience when we celebrate the first coming of Jesus in just a few days and all the staggering, amazing things that means for us.

Let us pray:

Love is the heartbeat of God listen to the rhythm
Joy is its gift, catch the rhythm
Peace is its result, Live the rhythm
Be drawn into the kingdom of God .

Lord whose light shines in the darkness, Have mercy upon us,
Christ whose birth gives hope to all creation Have mercy upon us,
Lord whose advent brings us joy and love Grant us peace.

Renewing My Baptismal Vows - As Clare, With Brand New Faith

Something good happened at church last night.  Next Sunday I will officially become a member of Northern Lights Metropolitan Community Church.  Before doing that I felt it necessary to publicly renew my faith in some manner, a break with so much of the past and a cleansing - even if just symbolic - in readiness for the new and for whatever my future brings.

I discussed this with our pastor who suggested renewing my baptismal vows, and she designed a short liturgy for this.  There were the traditional vows you take at baptism, more vows relating to the faith and practice of the local church, and between the two a symbolic hand washing to wipe away the past in a sacramental fashion and through the prayer prayed as my hands were dried.

As part of this I was asked to write something brief about the reasons for the renewal.  I don't do brief!  An edited version was in the church newsletter and I read the full version at church last night.  What was read is roughly what follows - though just as when I used to preach I don't stick to the script no matter how hard I try!  I was very well behaved last night, so the changes were minor.

Mentally I've been having a rough time recently.  Some quite major struggles.  My wife says that whenever I'm doing good things I get clobbered.  And there have been so many things recently, so much of a move to becoming a better functioning human, in the places where I am meant to be.  Saturday night was the worst I've had in years - but it led into a Sunday that was excellent.  I realised yesterday morning that among other things I was grieving, mourning greatly - for my mother, for my father, and also for the years that I could not live as who I am.  All those mourning processes are needed but piling it all up together isn't easy.  On Sunday as I was on the way to another church in the morning I opened my Bible to the next chapter.  Happened to be Matthew 5, the start of the Sermon on the Mount.  So I read, "Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted."  And then the first song at that church had lines, also drawn from the Bible, about mourning being replaced by joy.  Sometimes God knows what God is doing!

Truly, this weekend contained very low points, mourning, sorrow.  And it contained high points of commitment, friendship, and joy.  Life can be so amazing in its variety.

 _________________

Last night, during the service at Northern Lights MCC I publicly renewed my baptismal vows. For me this is a needful step before formally becoming a member of the church. I know that's not the case for most people so wanted to publicly explain why I am renewing those vows.

Firstly it's because I was baptised under another name, another gender, and was a very different person then. I'd love to be re-baptised as Clare but of course that's not a theological option. Baptism is a one time event – and I've already gone through it three times as an adult. I cannot be baptised again but I need to publicly express that, as Clare, those vows I made as “him” still stand and that they stand more firmly than they ever did in the past.

That's the obvious reason: My present,living as the woman I am, is such a changed life from my past, forcing myself to live as the man I never was.

But there is a second reason. It's even more important to me than the first. Many people in the church will know some of my story of faith over the last eighteen months. As I sat at MCC my Christian faith died a slow death, a painful death. Every service was a kind of torture for me. And some in the church put up with my many words, my complaints, my deep pain through that process. I cannot thank the church enough for supporting me through the death of my faith and through everything I said, and felt, and did.

My faith deserved to die. It really did. Good riddance to it! Not because of any doctrines or dogmas that were or weren't attached to it. But because the root of my faith was self-hatred, self-denial, self-rejection – arising from a firm belief that I was no good. Much of that came from received beliefs about my gender and consequently my near-constant urges to self-destruct. My faith helped to destroy me, helped me to eradicate myself, for twenty-three years. It was immensely important to me but it crushed me.

Eventually I was able to leave that faith behind, and rest secure in a faith that excluded any personal God. The plan was to leave MCC and never look back. That was the only future I could see. But throughout the whole journey I still believed in MCC, her vision, her people, and the place of healing that the church is. And, solely because of certain of the people, I stayed.

Many of you will have noticed a not so subtle change in me since the start of October. At church one evening everything suddenly clicked. I could sing the songs, pray the prayers and knew it was OK to receive communion again for the first time in a long while. And I was extremely surprised that night to find myself on my knees, hands in the air, lost in worship and thankfulness to the God I didn't believe in. The “God of Surprises” entered again and renewed my world, my heart.

Faith returned. It's a new faith. Brand new. It's a far healthier faith, one that accepts the love of God, and one that can honestly say with the Psalmist;

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.

As I renew my baptismal vows it is my freedom to be Clare, to be authentic, that I celebrate. But more than that I celebrate my return to faith. A purer faith. A very different faith than that I had before. Based on self-love rather than self-condemnation, on authenticity rather than self-squashing, on freedom, on love, on grace, on hope, on acceptance, on inclusivity, on joy, on light and life and on so much more.

As I publicly vow myself to God and to the centrality of Jesus in my life, I do so based on the solid conviction that God is love, and his love is for me and for all of us. And I do so based on a response of love that seeks the beauty and life of Abba, Jesus, and Spirit.  At this point I do not know exactly what I believe down to the x, y and z of doctrine.  But I know in whom I have believed.  In God, who is my parent and source.  In Jesus, saviour, who is my example and who died.  In Christ who lives, and lives in me and in all of you.

What Did It Cost To See My Sin Upon the Cross - Part 2

"I'll never know how much it cost too see my sin upon that cross."


As I said in part one, I loved that line.  But now?  No.

I no longer believe in the fall, in redemption, in any God who can't forgive without bloody sacrifice.  I can't believe in that cross-story no matter how clever the theologian is in justifying Jesus' death overcoming the threat of some kind of hell by raising up God as just or holy or by lowering man, even to the extent of Calvinism's "total depravity".

How can it be just to eternally condemn someone born fallen and living a finite, time-bound life?
How can it possibly be holiness to condemn so profoundly?
How can I call a human being, "beautifully and wonderfully made", a being born in sin, born depraved, born broken?

I no longer believe Jesus was crucified to take away our sin.  I no longer believe that we're "washed in the blood of the lamb."

Another song last night was about Jesus.  It ends with the orthodox claim that Jesus is God.  There's nothing unusual about hearing that sung in a church.

I loved that claim too.  But now?  No.

The creeds call Jesus "fully God, fully man."  I had a solid belief in this picture of Jesus.  One path of reasoning ran:

Who has the right to pay for our sin?  Only one who is fully man.  Who has the ability to pay for our sin?  Only one who is fully God.  Therefore Jesus must be fully God and fully man else redemption - forgiveness - is impossible.

But I no longer believe in this redemption.  And an argument that implies that God (who is love and mercy) can only find a way to forgive if God himself dies has more than its share of problems.

I don't seek to condemn those who do believe in that redemption - if that is for them their path to the divine, the path to life in abundance, to being the fullness of what it is to be a human being.  If others find fullness in the sacrifice of the cross - and what came after in the story - then that is good.  The real is far bigger than my searching or my conclusions and can embrace what sounds like a contradiction.  The story of the blind men and an elephant has recently come to my mind frequently.  The elephant is the real.  Our religious stories are our attempts to vocalise a part of the elephant. 

I believe Jesus is fully divine - but only in the sense that we're all fully divine.

And I believe that Jesus is fully man.  Fully man.  More man than any one of us.  He is the Tao.  He is the superman.  He is the one living the full life we're all called to live and able to live if we believe it and do it and be it.  Jesus, possibly, is more fully man than any human who has ever lived.  In that way he's a pattern for life.  A pattern we can all contemplate, no matter our religious views.

And I believe that one reason he died, one reason why he hung on the cross, was because he was fully man.  We are not fully man.  And we can't cope well with those who are more fully man than we are ourselves.  They don't make for comfortable companions.  He was condemned because his light brought the lives of those around him into sharp focus.

He came to bring us life in abundance and we couldn't face it.  In the end most of us prefer the safety of half-lives.  Indeed we seek safety.  But the fullness of life isn't safe.  It's risky.  It's a raging inferno, not just a warm radiator.  Even Christianity has become about seeking safety - an idea carried over from ancient Hebrew thoughts developed in an even more dangerous world.  "You are our security" we sing.  "You are our rock, our hiding place."  But Jesus didn't come to give us safety, he came to show us life and showed us life in himself.

Nietzsche talked of the superman, Übermensch, as the meaning of the world.  He believed no superman had walked the world and contrasted Übermensch with Christianity.

I believe that Jesus was an Übermensch, showing in himself the meaning of the world.  I believe that Christianity is  still the contrast, that Christians raised up Jesus to be "fully God" because they couldn't deal with the "fully man" that Jesus showed himself to be.

How can a man be like this?  We're not like this so how can any man be like this?  Christians answer that he must be God.

I answer that Jesus can be an example for us, a vision by which we can learn for ourselves to be the over-comers, more human than we are today, more in the Tao, more enlightened, to be Buddha, to be Übermensch, or whatever word suits.

Back to the song.  "I'll never know how much it cost to see my sin upon the cross."

I know what it cost me.  It cost me twenty years.  I embraced Christianity because I didn't like myself - and the Christianity I heard of told me I was right, told me I deserved Hell but this God loved me anyway.  A nice story.  But I now believe a false story and it reinforced and reinforced what I thought of myself, a sinner in need of mercy.  And the Christianity I received reinforced the view that I could not be me - female.  Very sad.  I know full well that not every Christian has such opinions but I haven't found many that would agree that people aren't utterly without hope and real meaning and purpose outside of receiving Jesus, the saviour who died.  Very few that say there would be "salvation" without Jesus dying for us.

Seeing my sin on the cross meant that I carried on seeing myself as a sinner, hopeless without Christ, someone who could do nothing without that personal God stepping in.

It meant I spent twenty years crying out for a mercy I didn't need.  Over and over, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

It meant I spent twenty years rejecting myself and believing I should carry on rejecting myself.  I could say "I'm accepted by God" but believed I wasn't really accepted - especially my gender.

It meant I spent twenty years suffering with a recurrent depressive illness that hurt me and hurt everyone around me and nearly led at times to my death.  Yes, I suffered with this before embracing Christianity but for me embracing that religion was a confirmation of my depression.  My first church told me - especially through its extensive library of taped sermons from different speakers - that gay people should be cured.  And I've been told that transgender people are deranged, evil, demon possessed and they too need healing of this abominable wickedness.

Seeing my sin upon the cross, instead of leading to the fullness of life that Jesus came to show us led to a half-life, a life in which I could not be who I am, a life in which I could combine great shame and guilt with a thankfulness that someone agreed to be punished in my place.

That's what it cost to see my sin upon the cross.

I loved to see it there.  But, I believe, it was never there in the first place.

Jesus was there showing me that in order to live to the full it is necessary to risk everything, sometimes even unto death.  Jesus was there showing me love, life, paradox, meaning, the beauty of a man prepared to give everything.  Jesus, fully man, still name above all names, still awesome and magnificent, living in his full divinity and showing us our full divinity, living in his full humanity and showing us our full humanity.  Jesus.  Jesus.  Jesus.  May we learn to live the truth - that we are fully divine and fully human.

I have lost what I had.  Losing it - losing my security - has been a frightening process at times.  Giving up your one hope isn't easy.

In the process I've gained a better life, a life I've only just started to explore.  The wounds of the old life are still too fresh to be prodded and poked without an agony of inner burning. And that's one reason why a church service can hurt so much.

I am not hurt because others see their sin upon the cross.  I am not hurt to see others praising their God.  If this is the way people approach the divine and find the sacred in life then I have no problem with that - as long as the approach doesn't become exclusive (as mine once was) and thus condemnatory to everyone with another approach.  As long as their story isn't used to nullify my story and the stories of all who seek then their story can lead them to great light.

My pain is not caused by the words themselves but by the relationship I've had with them - the reasons for my belief, my adoration of that belief, and my loss of that belief.

What Did It Cost to See My Sin Upon the Cross? - Part 1

I found being in church services yesterday painful.

I love the people.  Last night's sermon was great.  And it was scholarly.  It's not available online yet but it will be.  Last week's sermon is available and I can highly recommend listening to it on the MCC Newcastle website.  I love that community of faith and am inspired by people there and have a better life as a result of knowing them.

But being in the service hurt.  Like being repeatedly stabbed or punched in the heart and head.  It's not the people, not the tunes, not the loving family that the church feels like.  It's me.  It's my vastly changing faith.  A faith that is still changing and developing.

I think the problem is that for so many years I loved the liturgy.  I loved the doctrine.  I loved the story.  I loved the salvation tale.  The story told me what I wanted to hear.  For twenty years I built my life around the story, embracing the tale of my fallenness and of a purpose for this sinner who didn't deserve it.

I loved my faith.  At times I was obsessive about my faith.  There were times I could pray for hours.  Times I'd be at church an hour before services, sometimes even waiting outside until the doors were unlocked.  Times I'd spend that hour in silence - especially in my Catholic years, praying, knelt before the Blessed Sacrament, enjoying the peace and seeking a particular version of God in the peace.

I loved my faith.  Wild, desperate love.

And now I do not have that faith.

And so the liturgy, the prayers and the songs hurt as they are said and sung.

A song last night included the line "I'll never know how much it cost too see my sin upon that cross."

I used to love that line.  My sin.  Dealt with.  Nailed to the cross with a dying saviour.  I would be lost in wonder and worship of Jesus at the thought that because of him my existence wasn't hopeless, damned.  Because of him I could be set free from darkness - from myself, from my flesh - and walk in light and be transformed into his holy way with lashings of theosis, repentance, and reliance of his strength.  I could look at Jesus, dying for me, and fall before him for taking the eternal punishment I justly deserved because of my sins.  I could look at Jesus and trust that he would lead me to eternal happiness.

I loved that line.  But now?  No.

Why not?  That's something for me to write about at some length in the following post.  I've split it in too because I find I typed about 1,800 words - which seems a bit much for anyone to read in one sitting.  It seems a bit much to think that anyone will have the patience or interest to read it at all.

I plan to visit the Cathedral tomorrow with a camera so some time soon there may be a blog post of only a few words and several pictures.  Hoorah!

Words for my life - Prophetic, Intuitive or Imagined?

In the middle of May 2013, I was visiting another church, a church of enthusiastic people with a love for the prophetic.  I went there several times - the regular pre-service food is probably unrivalled by any church in Newcastle!

After the service I sat with two good people and they prayed for prophetic words, writing down a page of what came to them - with the proviso that they might not be right and that they weren't perfect at listening to what God was saying.

Of course the words could be seen as coming from the one God, coming from developing an intuitive gift, or as coming from everybody fooling themselves in the name of a religion.  And they could be interpreted in many ways.  But there are parallels, real or imagined, between the words and the paths I've walked in the last eight months.

Here goes:

 "Feet walking in the same place up and down for quite a while.  Sense of God changing direction of the route."

"A picture of an old cupboard you haven't opened the doors of for a long time.  The Lord wants to encourage you to open the doors and examine with Him what you find in there.  He will be with you while you do this.  He knows what is in there already, so do not be afraid or hesitant."

"This cupboard might have a maternal link."

"God is calling you by name, calling you out."

Now, I'm not sure what those very evangelical, very charismatic church people would think about the path my life has gone in the last eight months.

But I opened the cupboard.  I examined thoroughly.  It didn't have much link to my own mother - but in the examining I became a mother and embraced the feminine/female I am.

The direction of the route changed drastically in terms both of gender and faith.  I'm not walking where I was and I wouldn't be able to walk there again.

And God did call me out.  They wondered hard about that one and then added a postscript.  "... must be like Samuel."  But it wasn't like Samuel.  I was called out.  And I came out.  As myself.  I came out to myself and then to the world and keep setting my public honesty bar high.  I haven't been back to that church for ages so I don't know what they would think of my coming out in an LGBT fashion!

There were other "words" too.  But "Believe Jesus" is obvious advice from a church - though I am taking it now in a "Believe Jesus" sense rather than a "Believe Christianity" way.  And I don't know what "Get the DVD" referred to - I can't think it refers to any that I've bought in the last months!

Why am I posting this now?  Because this morning in church I "received a picture".  It came to me as strongly as any "prophetic word" ever did in the past.  Since I'm currently not the monotheist I was I have to interpret the source differently.  It arose from within rather than from without, albeit with influences from without and perhaps with influences from the interconnectedness of all things.  We are one.

I'll write about my "picture" in my next blog post.  Unless I get completely sidetracked by another facet of life before I write more.  It's not a "picture" that would have been well received by the church I was attending this morning - and it's not a "picture" that will be well received by many of my friends.  They'll reject it.  But that's fine.  It's just a "picture".  It's not "THUS SAITH THE LORD."