Days Of Gratitude - Mistakes, Challenges, Adventures And A Wonderful Time

I write this having been at home all day.  The weather hasn't been the best and I'm not particularly well.  That doesn't mean it's been an awful day of course.  I had been able to rest.  I've been able to catch up on some rubbish television watching.  And I've been able to write.  I've also cobbled together a makeshift cover for the hatch to our loft (or roof space) which has been open for a few weeks.  The noise of the wind over the roof was impressive from the hall this morning and now the weather has got colder having a large open hole in the ceiling isn't the best idea.  My plan worked so now we have a cover made out of a piece of kitchen work surface and an old kitchen shelf.

The days I'm posting about today were amazing.  Each day had another photographic challenge - and I've posted about all of them so most of these photos have already appeared on this blog.

Ten days in a row I've gone out in search of things.  I didn't succeed yesterday in finding a gorilla in a tutu.  I won't say I failed.  Just that I haven't succeeded yet.  The giver of the challenges did succeed in my non-successful challenge.  And she found a pink flamingo too today.  And a winged unicorn.  She has amazing finding skills.

Today I had to take a day away from photo challenges - although the challenge has been set I am leaving it a day.  Instead I've written from a writing prompt I asked the giver of the challenges to give me yesterday.  That's been an enjoyable pastime.

Okay.  Some amazing days.  A writing prompt is a little thing.  It doesn't contain a story.  And for each of these days the photo challenge acted much like a writing prompt.  The challenge was a seed but it wasn't the story.

What story will arise tomorrow from prompts and challenges? - and from my first cinema trip of the year, at a little 51 seat independent cinema.  Looking forward to it.

29^th October

Another day. More challenges! Photos of a butterfly, a pink flamingo and a marble run.

I completely mucked up the thing I was meant to be doing in Sunderland with nice Christians and so wasn't there at all. But that gave time for challenges and getting distracted.

By bedtime I had completed the three challenges. But on the way in Sunderland I'd walked down a few streets I'd not walked before. And there was art. Lots of art. (It's all on my little blog)

All that art made me happy. Just as playing a little in that water and getting a bit wet made me happy.

And the shelves of the liquorice shop made me happy.

Even spending a good half an hour discussing things with three of the fundamentalist preachers in Sunderland city centre couldn't bring me down, and they were of a particularly vile variety!

30^th October

Grateful to have been able to be at a certain event and to be mentally well enough to get to the end and still feel okay.

Grateful for going for lunch with SA people afterwards. It was great.

Grateful for my hunt for a robot and taking enough photos on the hunt to fill another blog post.

31^st October

Grateful for a really good morning, spent alone, on a quest to take a photo of a duck. This simple challenge transformed my day completely.

Grateful for free museums. Grateful for walking into random buildings I didn't really have any business in. Grateful for the fun of a slide in the play area. Grateful for dinosaurs. Grateful for swans. And trees.

Grateful to have taken enough photos to fill two blog posts.

And grateful to have photographed a duck!

1^st November

Grateful for having a lot of fun on a dog related challenge.

All I had to do was photograph a white dog. And I knew where it was before I began. But the adventure has turned into three blog posts! In part because Newcastle is such an awesome place.

2^nd November

Grateful for a moment of absolute clarity when standing at the top of a cliff. I wrote a sentence about that moment and it turned into a blog post.

Grateful for another silly photo challenge because without the challenge there would have been no adventuring and without the adventuring there would not have been the clarity.

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.

Still Challenged To Take A Photograph 4B: A Pink Flamingo

This post continues from a first post about the enjoyment I found trying to find a pink flamingo in Sunderland today.  And that one continues on from a quest to photograph a butterfly.  It's been a busy day!

I left you in suspense.  Would I find the flamingo?  I didn't know.

So much art.  The art gallery had closed but all this free art on the streets of Sunderland made up for that.  Even the most derelict of buildings seemed to have some kind of beauty all of its own.

And this sticker, placed on a private car park sign seemed to have more to it than most stickers placed on private car park signs.

A little further on I found a church.  Information on the wall told me much about their ways.

I am guessing their traditional manner varies somewhat from the traditional manner believed so important by the Catholic Society of Saint Pius X.  It is a shame that the ordinary people here - without a pastor - are outside of the city of God.  I know for sure that this is the case because a sign on the church a few yards up the road proclaimed that to be the City of God.  I wonder how traditional the worship is in that city.  Tomorrow is a Sunday.  I could go and find out.  But I am not going to!  I wonder whether either of those churches would accept me.  For I am someone who obeys the first commandment written on that sticker.  I come queer!

Walking on I found something odd.  Blue paint.  Peeling.  And underneath the paint, some rather wonderful tiles.  I wondered who it was who thought it a good idea to paint such tiles a single shade of blue.  And who it was who wasn't keeping up with the maintenance of the blue so that we can see the tiles once more.  I cannot express how tempted I was to start peeling off the blue paint and revealing more of the tiles.

I hadn't found a flamingo.  But it was time for me to head off to the post-lunch section of the Liberation Theology event, in the place where I now thought it was.  I would have to cross the river - a bridge that I've posted about before.  Blob Thing has also posted about it when accompanying me on walks.  Along the way, high up on a building was an elephant I first spotted when walking in a Pride parade.  I love that things such as this elephant exist in the real world and are not just confined to fantasy worlds.

I crossed the bridge, eager to reach the theology gathering.  Hurry, hurry, hurry.  Stop hurrying.  Get distracted again.  By more art and more animals.

I had seen - among all the other enthralling sights - snakes, dogs, penguins, ravens or crows, a gorilla, a giraffe, cats, a bird in flight, a rhinoceros, plenty of fish, starfish, crabs, an octopus, a turtle, butterflies, a bear, a lion, a pig, a horse, an elephant, a fox, a hare, a badger, a mole, an owl and a lobster.

So many animals.  But no flamingo.  It wasn't fair!  And now it was time to do some theology.  Except it wasn't.  Because I arrived at the place where it was taking place and the door was locked.  Oh no!  I couldn't get in.  Eventually I worked out why:

I was in the wrong place.

And the right place was the place that I had been three hours earlier when I concluded that I was in the wrong place!

Yes.  I had completely mucked up the plans for my day.  I didn't mind too much though because if I had sat in Sunderland Minster all day then I wouldn't have found all those animals.  I walked back across the River Wear into the city centre.  No theology.  No marble run.  And no flamingo.

I decided to cheer myself up with some ice cream from the market at the entrance to the shopping centre.  I was doubly cheered when I noticed something marvellous.  The liquorice ice cream was in stock.  Now that brought smiles to my face.  But before buying it I decided to walk round the market.  Not for any reason.  It was just there.

On my way out of the market I passed a pretty things stall.  Not the kind of pretty things I want to have for myself.  But they are popular pretty things.  I went in to see the sparkly things.  And noticed a display case full of animals.  Glass animals.

And then I saw it.

This:

A flamingo!

Yes.  A flamingo.  It wasn't pink.  But it was a flamingo.  And I wasn't about to rush off to the Washington Wetland Centre and try to get there before closing time to see a pink flamingo just because this glass flamingo wasn't pink.  See, there is a way to photograph a pink flamingo in the City of Sunderland.  It's just in Washington.  Not in Sunderland.

My wife came to my rescue.  She pointed out that for a flamingo to be pink it has to have a special diet.  But a flamingo living in Sunderland wouldn't naturally have that diet so it wouldn't be pink.  And since Sunderland is known for glass making - if you get a chance, pay a visit to the glass museum as well as the nearby St. Peter's Church - any flamingo living and feeding in the area would naturally be glass coloured.

I had done it.

I had photographed a flamingo.

And it was the colour that it should be too.

Success number two of the day.

The other challenge given to me this morning was of course totally impossible.  Unless I found it's solution in a charity shop.  Which I hadn't.

There would be no way that I would be able to photograph a marble run.  A pity.  I like marble runs.  And so does she who has given me the challenges.

Challenged To Take A Photograph 4b: A Pink Flamingo

She had said that I told her challenges were impossible.  She had said I then completed the challenges anyway.

I had now completed the easiest challenge of my day.  It was time for challenge two.  Find a pink flamingo.  Take a photograph.  I knew that without a stroke of luck - or going into big shops and searching for a flamingo bag or an Alice in Wonderland themed croquet set - this would be an impossible challenge.  But I was determined to try.

Walking on from my butterfly related success story I saw this creature peeking out from a doorway.  They were smiling broadly at me and I decided that this was a good omen.  They could just have been smiling having concluded that I am daft.  That's equally likely.

I asked around.  I walked round the museum and asked the receptionist where I could find a flamingo.  She didn't know of one in Sunderland.  Nobody I asked knew of one, not even the set of fundamentalist preachers I was to talk with later that day.  Preachers with some pretty amazing ideas.  Ideas that would baffle anyone who possessed some kind of reasoning faculty rather than concerted adherence to the exclusive rightness of one way.  Preachers who knew their Bibles and knew me to be an antichrist and an abomination.  But not preachers who knew something more useful, such as the whereabouts of a flamingo.  And what is the point of gaining harsh dogmas if you lose your own flamingo?  I quite enjoyed them.  They were so extreme!  They might get written about so you too can marvel at them.  I am sad for them.  And sad for me and others who used to follow dogmatic paths, albeit not quite so silly paths as the one walked by these preachers.

Many would say that these photographic challenges form quite a silly path.  Silly can be a very good thing.

I visited the city library and gallery of modern art.  The latter had closed down.  I am glad it's not forever and that it's moving elsewhere.  When art dies it weakens the meaning of humanity.  The library contained a few animals and a comfy looking sofa.

Onward.  I resolved to leave behind the central shopping area of Sunderland and I headed down a street I had never walked down before.  In the distance I saw something that looked pretty.  I knew full well that it wasn't going to be a flamingo.  And it wasn't pink.  But at that point I settled for pretty.

I walked round the corner and found myself in a very pretty area.  It was quiet too.  Sunderland was surprising me and then surprising me some more with treats.

Very pretty.  But no flamingo.  I wouldn't really have expected to see a flamingo in such a square.  There was a dog.  There were penguins.  But there was no flamingo.  In a way that's a shame.  But in another way it's a good thing.  If there had been a flamingo I would have taken my photo and walked away.  And then I would have missed out on the good things to come.

I walked through the square, enjoying the peace.  As I came to the end I turned down a back street and saw it.  A picture.  Not of a flamingo.  But a picture on a wall.  And I knew I had to go and take a photograph of it.

And then I saw three more paintings on the wall.

After that the images just kept on coming.  And coming.  And coming.  Who knew that Sunderland contained so much gorgeous street art?

That's not the end of it either.  There was so much art to see in Sunderland that this blog site would complain about me fitting it into one post.

So I'm going to have to stop now and leave you in suspense about whether or not I ever found a pink flamingo in Sunderland.  It is doubtful that this will cause you enough anxiety to raise your blood pressure or lead to any major health problems so I feel safe to leave you in this position of suspense.

Tonight I am very glad to have accepted another daft challenge.  Or three daft challenges.  If I hadn't gone off on some weird quest I would never have been blessed with finding all these pictures.