Co-opted by the Big Society

I've been meaning to post about this for a week or two but wasn't really sure how to start, or if I had that much to say beyond the feeling of being utterly co-opted by politicians I heartily dislike.

The new ConDem government we've got here is forever rambling on about the Big Society, as in: people doing things for free out of the goodness of their heart.

There are lots of issues with this. To begin with, if you're the parents of young children and you work full time, how the hell are you supposed to volunteer on top of that? Then, the jobs we do as volunteers could easily get done by someone who would get paid for it. In an era of high unemployment, wouldn't it be a good idea to give someone a job rather than abandon them on the dole and relying on volunteers who, for whatever reason, can afford the time commitment?

I volunteer at the local prison one half-day a week, providing a centre for the visitors. I absolutely love it. There's always lots of kids and the vistors are delightful (apart from the odd really scary one of course). It's largely a weekly exercise in shyness. I make it a point to be more humble, shy and deferential than the users because I am here to serve them.

For a start you would not believe how hard it is, even if your bloody religion has beaten humility into since you were six. And then you wouldn't believe the response you get. You've got to try it for yourself I'm afraid, it's hard to put into words the surprise, the bursting joy and the all-embrassing welcome you get from someone who's not at all used to being consistently deferred to. Some of the most hands-on liberation theologians have written about that stuff, if you know where to look.

Finally, there's the completely unlikely mix of volunteers, ranging from the card-carrying Tory old ladies, the dreadlocked anarchist, the retired cop, the crazy-assed heathcare worker who already works 6 days a week on minimum wage helping the elderly with personal hygiene but volunteers on the seventh day, the burntout Christian dogooder, the criminology student who needs something on her resume, you name it... One thing they all have is their own brand of awesomeness and otherwordly brilliance.

But at the end of the day, there we are, loved and endorsed by a government that is also obsessed with cutting public expenditure. We're running essential services for free so we can enable that government to continue to suck up to capital and to reward the rich at the expense of the poor. Is there a way out?

So close you can't "feel" it.

It's one of my bad days... I'm tired of sending ardent heartfelt prayers into the stratosphere and feeling nothing back. I start thinking in terms of "complete waste of time" and "cosmic emotional child abuse", you get the picture.

But is God out in the stratosphere?

-Uh oh, yes and no, but for the purposes of that question the answer is a "no". God is closer.

How much closer?

-Well like somewhere within you.

You mean among all the other random stuff that's "within you"?

-Nope, closer still, God's not an item amongst my dozens of neuroses and petty concerns, it's not an "item" at all, God is closer. God lives as we live, loves as we love, laughs as we laugh, fails as we fail, dies as we die. So God's not even distant enough to be detached from the action. I lose sight of that. Then I think God's out there not freaking answering while God's been crying my own tears.

Strange days and strange nights too...

I was thinking about my next post in here, and wished I knew a website that does snazzy little curves.

I would have used it to illustrate my level of churchiness these days, which has taken an alarming downward turn. The curve would have landed in the bootom right corner of the screen into an abyss of "I don't feel like anything churchy or God-related or none of that stuff at all". Sleeping in for Jesus on a Sunday, or reading a big fat copy of the Sunday Times with a pot of tea and croissants, sounds absolutely great and that's exactly what I've been up to recently.

During the day, my mind is thinking "No more God!", "God feels like air that's too thin, it's way too insubstantial! I want God to have coffee with me, not feel like some sort of imaginary friend that can't even be seen or felt or nothing", "Church's boring! The same words every week that I try to mean and succeed less and less each time".

And then at night, my dreams are so full of God that it's scary. In actuall dreams (not just half-awake dreams) God is there all the time, teaching me cool stuff that I never thought about and go on to forget immediately, demonstrating love to me in lots of strange and wonderful ways. In actual dreams, I'm more churchy than your average carmelite. I wake up and my head is still full of the stuff and I think something along the incredibly subtle line of: wtf?

When necessary, use words...

I have never been in the zone like yesterday night. Everything from the last few months (and some things from way further) just came together at that point in time and made sense. I wasn't preachy, I didn't even say much at all, but by the end of the evening we were giddy with laughter and delight.

I have seen, not so long ago, an elderly priest entrust himself to disease and ultimately also to death. It was the most loving and trusting thing I've ever witnessed. I can't believe I was there. I don't feel worthy to be around so much of the real deal.

Now I don't need to relate that event in order to bring about its trust and delight. Such events become part of me after a while. I just need remember this trust. And bizarrely it enables me to enter doubt, pain and ambiguity without freaking out too much. After a little while you feel that trust too. I caught it from the old priest and you caught it from me.

OMG OMG OMG !!!

I struggled not to fall down on my face right on the road in Durham and utter nothing but "Thank You God, we Love You the best we can!" for the next thousand years (and become a beautiful set of nondescript atoms in the process).

I could not believe the relevance of my months of doubting, until I had a chat someone with (possibly) terminal cancer who shared the very same doubts.

When I'm nothing but a collection of atoms of dust, cremated by fire or just eaten up by worms, I believe that the God who created the whole entire freaking universe will say: "Danielle, my Beloved, Come out"!

I believe that with popes, I believe that with bishops, I believe that with drunk nobodies. I believe that with anybody who would believe (or even attempt to believe) that with me.

God loves sinners.

God wants to spend eternity with sinners like you and like me.

And... Guess what? God will.

Clergy wife 101: learning the (very) hard way

I'm booked in for confession next Wednesday.

I was having a hard time pinpointing my latest collection of sins. Mostly laziness, things left undone or not done well, quasi nonexistent evangelising, a good hundred tiny lies and cheating on the train a couple of times.

And then today something cropped up that left me speechless and wanting to give up trying to be a Christian and just plunge head on into endless despair.

The kind of massive sins that makes you cry out "Oh God no! How could I do that? Why am trying so hard to do the right thing all the bloody time and then go on to sin like I'm the devil incarnate? How could I be so self-involved that I did not even notice I was commiting a sin so huge that I would never be able to forget it?"

I'm not very good at socialising after church. Mostly I want to ponder my own thoughts. Chitchat with the card-carrying Tory old ladies used to bore me to death.

I got a bit better and I now make sure I eat something sugary before church so I'm not grumpy as hell when coffee time comes.

I do engage in chitchat, sometimes inadvertently dropping the f-word, or even launching into a tirade about why Karl Marx was right. The parish tolerates me well enough because they love my fiance.

A few times, a guy that comes fairly unregulalrly asked le if H and I wanted to visit him at home, because he was having trouble coping with his wife's illness. "I'm her only support" he said, "it's really hard".

So after church I would tell H. "Look this guy wants us to go have dinner sometime because his wife is not well at all". H said well, it's not my parish, I can't do visits, that's a job for the priest in charge, we'll have to ask him for permission. So I said yeah but someone's got to go.

Not that I remembered the guy's name, or asked for his phone number or anything.

I guess you can all see where this is going...

The guy asked me and H. over for dinner three times over about six months. Each time I said we'd try to organise something.

H. and I had this somewhere at the back of our mind.

We also had a lot more on, including crazy work deadlines, someone jumping in front of a train right in front of H.'s house, a young cousin of mine getting kicked out of his prestigious university and needing a weekend of TLC, and two separate wedding ceremonies to organise.

All the while, I was battling a serious onslaught of nihilism and completely lost my footing.

This morning the guy came to church and wept the whole way through. His wife had just died.

Which part of "my wife is dying, I am on my own, can H and you come to dinner" did I not understand? Three times in a row? Over several months? We let the guy's wife die without support for him, without support for her, and without extended sacraments.

Damn my overblown sentimental piety!

I think I'm going to give Eucharistic adoration a miss this week. I'm stunned and I can't quite believe the inequities on my own hands. I never thought I'd be someone to neglect her neighbour to such an extend. To let down the Church I love.

And all the way I was trying so hard, I was wanting so much to serve, to be an "Instrument of His grace" and all that jazz. Cheating on the train was pretty harmless, considering...

I'm gonna hang out with my ol' mate Kind David tonight and afterwards live with the shame until the end of my days.