In some corner of England

The business meeting I just attended ran extremely well. This Durham church has got to be one of the friendliest organisations I know. It’s full of funky older Christians who have been friends for years and obviously love each other very much. Their meetings are like being at the pub, but without the booze and with some genuine concern for the outside world. Hanging out there is refreshing.

The business meeting ran extremely well. This church is like a wonderfully maintained locomotive. It feels so right. Every Sunday, we will start the engine and we’ll have a little trip in the countryside. It is a wondrous, well-oiled machine and it functions amazingly well. Surely, this is what church should feel like.

The agenda is impressive: “What charity are we going to support this month?” “The regional church office is asking us what we are doing for refugees in county Durham, so guys, let’s shape up and come up with something credible on that front”. “Also can everyone please rack their brains for the funeral service of our deceased friend, we’d like to thank God for the Grace He showed us and the world through the life of our friend, so let’s write something nice”. “Any book recommendations for new additions to our library?”

I’m concerned that we’re really talking about tiny amounts of time and money here. It’s almost funny that we should have such formal procedures for (collectively) sending a hundred quid per month to a charity, or for nominating our newsletter editor*.

But I don’t say anything, I like this church. I like its people. This is the very opposite of a dysfunctional church: these are the most playful, tolerant bunch of folks I know. I wonder what the voice of Jesus would sound like in our nice meeting. If Jesus had anything to say to us lot, what would it be? After racking my brain for most of the meeting, I still honestly don’t know.

Somebody relates a special moment they shared on the train with a troubled kid. The 12-year-old was living in a foster organisation and had been expelled from quite a number of schools. He was back from a day trip in London with his carer and he chatted with one of our church member on his way back. He was starting at a new school and was nervous about it. When he nipped to the loo, the carer told our congregant that she was very surprised, as the kid had never opened up to anyone like this before.

Cool story! Everyone was admirative and expressed hope that this brief chat might be a turning point in the kid’s life. At some point I asked whether our congregant had gotten the kid’s phone number and whether they planned to stay in touch. It turned out that she had sent him a card, wishing him luck in the new school. She was not going to write any more as she did not want to be another person “telling him what to do”.

Fair enough. I still think that an impersonal Hallmark card is in fact rather placating and closes off all dialogue instead of initiating it. Still, I didn’t say that out loud. I had already been the only slightly dissonant voice by suggesting that it was important to stay in touch. That was pretty daring, even though I really don’t think that there was any hint of judgment in my remark.

So really I don’t know where I stand. I like this church and I don’t like it at the same time. I like it because it’s the friendliest thing on Earth, and as far as I can tell, it is one of the most committed churches around. At the same time I don’t like it because it seems a bit complacent, and it might just try to discipline me into its norms. I’m very confused. I don’t want to judge anyone and I absolutely love the tolerant “zone” which this church has created. But I’d also like to be challenged a bit more.

Whenever I walk home from this church, I’m restless and dying for a cigarette. To be honest, I’m on the verge of giving up on this Christianity business. All it does is keep me up at night with prayers, and during the day it makes me even more awkward and weird than I already was before. I’m evolving into a freak of sorts.

I’m still haunted by the blue eyes of the homeless kid in Edinburgh. I can’t believe that I did not think of asking where I could write to him, and that I don’t even know the name of the hostel he sometimes manages to stay in. I feel like hopping on a train and scouting the whole city to find him again. I feel like giving him my mobile phone and opening a bank account with some cash on it. I feel like finding the best person in Edinburgh for him. I feel like acting as I would if it was my actual sibling sitting in the rain (or my actual God, for that matter).

Recently, someone asked me what I get out of prayer. Well, sometimes not much. It feels a bit like in "Life of Brian": Christ is patently there but I’m definitely not getting anything of the message.

And then sometimes -you don’t quite expect it as you walk between the kitchen and the TV room- you sense a rumbling muffled cry, like a father whose child has died and whose grief is beyond words. All you can sense is a growling lament. There’s not a hint of reproach in it, just this huge grief for His child. You realise that the God you pray to is a God who cares, deeply, for each of His children. And that if you can maintain your composure in the presence of His grief, check your pulse, for you might be dead.


Someone would need to go to the places in which people are hurting and dying. Someone would need to deeply care for people there. Someone would need to allow the “muffled cry” to dwell in their own guts. And someone would need to come back to my lovely church, and ask us, in the name of God, not to turn away from our very own family and from the people God so loves.

* Although to be fair, I have no way of apprehending what people commit to in private, i.e. outside of the things we do as a "church". There might be quite a lot going on backstage.

And keep your powder dry

I used to really dislike this saying. For me “keeping your powder dry” was a way of NOT depending on God. Nowadays I rather like it, because using one’s brain and giving it our best shot is a way of depending on God. Actually, in reference to yesterday's post, I do know some ways of recovering a sense of love when I’ve lost the ability to feel it. Still, these take time, radical truthfulness and intense vulnerability. And so the “inner wall” is really a symptom that I’ve been letting things slide on that front.

So yes, I will sit down and write down all the messy truth. And, each time, I will remember a poem by Rilke that pretty much changed my life:

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

“Gott spricht zu jedem nur” by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy. (Sorry for being a snob here, but Rilke's poetry is a million times better in German. The translation isn't very good and that's because it's nearly impossible to render his thoughts in translation. German is a stupendously expressive, nuanced and creative language, English doesn't have words for the notions Rilke uses).

I’m still fascinated by the topic of lack of authenticity in religion. Not long ago, Naked Pastor wrote the following: “For the vast majority of those connected with church in any way, it is one of the most inhumane and soul-murderous thing in their lives”. It is a beautiful post, I loved it.

Imperfectly surrendered

There's a phenomenon I'm really scared of. It happens when a sort of inner wall rises up in me and my whole being really ressents doing the "right thing". I don't know where this "wall" comes from but it is really imperious. It' like an inner scream: I don't want to do that.

On those days, I end up really stuck because it seems like the only choices are between a rock and a hard place: withdrawing into selfish concerns or acting without concious love, which I think is hugely counterproductive. No good. By this time, feeling like an undercommitted wretch, I can think of no other options than to ask God to walk me through it.

Somehow, I often thought that there was a problem with me: if only I was more committed and if I had actively sought the experiences that might have taught me this stuff, I wouldn't end up stuck like this. On the other hand, depending on God's intervention might be all the commitment that's needed.

The other day I was praying that God might take me where he wants me to be. Still, when we ask for something in prayer, do we believe that yes, in fact, God will grant us either that, or something better? It strikes me that Jesus asked this question of quite a few people he healed.

Painting: Sick Husband by Vasily Maksimov (click for larger picture)

Please, not another book!

School(s) for Conversion is teaching me nothing. I’m going donate these to my church’s library, or even to the Christian Union of my campus. Maybe someone else will be grateful to know that they are not alone.

I quickly read though the things I already knew, the things I already thought (at this point, reading another Claiborne-type book feels like an insurmountable ordeal). And where the fuck are they? I keep wondering.

And then… the scary thing…

They’re the burnt-out clergyman whom I keep “challenging”. They’re the lapsed catholic white guy who can’t handle his South African heritage and whose cynicism I find more touching than many Christians’ sense of peace. They’re the rich theology professor at my university whose eyes never smile on a photograph. They’re the seventy-year old Quaker who’s desperate for us to read the gospel together instead of sitting around. The “radical Christians” are under there and I can sense their passion, it’s obvious.

Oh shit. I haven’t got a clue how to access that.

The policy-maker on her knees

Our Father who art in Heaven,
Hallowed be the lovey-dovey principles to which anyone can subscribe.
Thy Kingdom have some form of positive influence upon our earthly ones.
Thy will somehow be commensurate with our democratic decisions, within the bounds of our lovely welfare states.
Give us this day our daily prosperity and a 3% growth.
And forgive us our trespasses.
As we lovingly rehabilitate those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation.
But deliver us form the axis of evil.

um...

Wow!

A Faith Dissolved makes for compulsive reading! Oh, for the love of the secular, the curious agnostics, the seekers, the atheists and the understated...

Breaking News: Trinity to Split

(by David L Rattigan)

Billions of devout fans worldwide are devastated today after it was revealed that members of the Trinity are preparing to go their separate ways. The official announcement last night ended weeks of speculation about the future of the Godhead.

"Creative differences" were cited as a reason for the break-up, which only fuelled deep-running suspicions that the Holy Spirit had engineered the split in order to forge his own solo career.

"For years it's been this whole Father and Son thing," an anonymous source told us. "The Father gives glory to the Son and the Son gives glory to the Father and there's this big love-thing going on between the two of them, and here's the Spirit asking, Hey, guys, where do I fit into this? Frankly, I think he has the talent to make a go of a new religion if that's where he's heading creatively. Hell, he deserves it."

This latest development has come as no surprise to some, however. Their long career has been plagued from the beginning by accusations that all wasn't as it seemed. Early on some were claiming that they weren't the three persons in one essence they were touted to be, but merely "three manifestations of a single person," while others simply denied the Son and Spirit had anything to do with God's success anyway.

"It was obvious the real talent all belonged to the Father," Arius told Rolling Stone magazine in an interview over sixteen centuries ago. "The Son didn't come along till much later, and even then he lacked originality. By his own admission, he only ever did what he saw the Father doing.

"Others are looking at the whole situation more optimistically. "They've lasted longer than most," one hardcore trinitarian said. "As the simultaneous three-in-one, they've managed to retain that sense of mystery about their image for a long time. No matter what happens, to me they'll always be three distinct persons, yet undivided in essence. It's who they are."