Coffee number one: "You'd be crap at it!"

Meeting up with Tom, my office buddy. His church is a lot more happy clappy than mine, and he's a total Christian Union freak.

We're talking about the job, what kind of university we would like to move on to after Durham, we're both a bit bored by this town, but we're both about to finish our PhDs, so the future is bright. I haven't seen Tom in ages. He's on suspension for depression and he's not allowed in the office for health and safety reasons.

I ask: hey Tom, my church is bloody apathetic (albeit very musical and nurturing), do you know of any radical christians? I'm not gonna do this upwardly mobile thingy, I want some form of fellowship with people on the margins.

The look in Tom's face gets very sombre. The light tone of our conversation has just droped five levels: "you'd be crap at it"! Since moods are contagious, mine droped quite a bit too. I start to panic: but I'm not that bad, and I'm not even that inexperienced, well, maybe you're right, maybe I'd be crap at it.

He launches into a little lecture: "You've either got to be FROM the margins originally, or you need to be a VERY advanced kind of christian, otherwise your motivations are probably dodgy, and you won't last a fortnight. You know, people who are from this milieu are a million times better than we are. Middle class sentimental christians like you probably should not journey in there. What are your motivations anyway?"

I knew pretty well what my motivations were a minute ago, but you've just delivered me into a spiral of self doubt. Oh God, maybe I'd be crap. Maybe my motivations are dodgy.

I make a mental note: stay tuned to that feeling anyway, Tom may not be entirely right but it's not a bad idea. The stuff I desire are probably still all determined by consumerism anyway, so if I plunge head on into the margins, there's quite a risk that it would be "sacrifice", not "love". Tom does not think I've got what it takes to exit the matrix. I'm hurt, too hurt. He just hit a weak spot.

I don't mind weak spots, I like revisiting them. I did not realise that there was quite a bit of baggage right there where Tom pressed his finger. There's gonna be some hardcore journalling tonight. The truth, all the thruth, nothing but the truth. A quill!