The Grace Pages

Hate mail

Not often I get genuine hate mail, but this puzzling comment arrived from a certain Frederick Wierschke this evening, with the heading "Your Comments About Heaven's Gates and Hell's Flames":

What makes you think you know anything? From reading your article it’s apparent that your own IQ is barely above a cucumber. You’re so legalistic in your line of theology that you’d blow your brains if you tried to sneeze and fart at the same time.

Do those of us who do not adhere to legalism a favor. Go blow your brains out.

Charming. I have no idea how any comments I've made about Heaven's Gates, Hell's Flames can be construed as legalistic. Anyway, I think I'll pass on blowing my brains out, thanks all the same, Fred.

The last few days have been quite exciting, as I've been researching for an article on "ex-gay" ministries in the UK. Talked to lots of fascinating people. I'll keep you posted on when and where it will appear.
 

Back!

Having resolved to blog regularly again, I had to hold off for a while as my account was suspended - couldn't pay up! However, back on track now, and back blogging again.

Happy Mothers Day to all moms (and non-mom ladies) out there.

"I hope you remembered to get those flowers for my mother for Mothers Day, dear!"

Well it's been a long day...

Remember last year's Lent Bible study? I was just starting to overcome my anxiety disorder, and leading the meeting was a huge step for me - a triumph. A year on, the anxiety is more sporadic, and I am no longer depressed, but I was honestly not looking forward to leading the Lent meeting again last night. The negative association with last year's anxiety was itself a source of anxiety for me, so I was a little bit nervous, but I need not have been. It was a wonderful occasion, and I had chance to share my experience of reconciliation from last year's Lent course. I had to chuckle when I could see my old Methodist Sunday school teacher nodding and grinning in agreement as I shared how the Methodists had been my childhood church, how I had become arrogant in my teens and joined a "more spiritual" church, and how the last joint-Methodist-Anglican Lent class had been a time of reconciliation for me.

So after having a wonderful time amongst friends last night, the events of this morning knocked me for six. Having been stabbed in the back by my former colleagues at the local website I run, they are twisting the knife further with a very nasty-sounding letter to my other colleague making all kinds of outrageous demands and proving that they will stop at no lengths to undermine our hard work. The whole situation is most upsetting, not least because the whole basis of my work with them was simply good faith, and I believed they were friends.

At the moment I feel nothing more than contempt for the pair - this is where the ideal of forgiveness really hits the road, I suppose. I don't think I'm wondering whether to forgive so much as how to forgive - what does forgiveness mean in practical terms at the very moment that an erstwhile-friend is on your back plunging in a knife and trying his best to destroy everything you've put your heart into?

Confessions of a backslidden blogger

I feel like there should be an altar call now.

You know your relationship with your readers isn't what it should be right now! You know you've lost your love for the blog, and you know that needs to be put right tonight! Come on down to the front, right now! Oh, glooory!

Where did the blog go wrong? Well, life got busy, that's all. I frequently have ideas for blog entries, but never seem to get round to it. A month or two back I had a great idea for a regular blog, and it was great for about two weeks - and then just kinda flopped.

The main thing keeping me busy has been the local website, of which I am editor and sole news reporter. It became a lot more work recently because, to cut a long story short, my colleague and I got stabbed in the back by other colleagues, and now we're on our own. It was a horrid thing to have happen, especially since the guy who did most of the stabbing was an old school chum who I thought was a genuine friend, and it turned out he was prepared to pull everything out from under me without a second thought.

I sure did learn a lesson, though. It's taught me what's really important in business, and that's people, community and integrity. Quite honestly, by breaking off from those colleagues - unpleasant as it was - I think I was saved from being suckered into a model of business that, frankly, I want no part of.

But it's going good: The community is interested in the project, and we're gathering pace.

I'm not going to make any firm promises, but I do intend to try to get back to blogging.

RIP: A Blog for Dead Stars

I'm pretty busy these days, and I'm totally lacking in inspiration. I've always said that thinking time is a luxury, and I just haven't had the time (perhaps the inclination) to sit down and think deeply on the religious issues I used to blog about.

Part of the problem is that this blog has lost its focus. When I started it almost two years ago, the focus was spiritual abuse and fundamentalism. I said a lot about those issues, and I got out of my system a lot of the things I hadn't yet expressed about my journey out of fundamentalism. Now the blog doesn't have that focus and, more to the point, doesn't seem to have any focus. That makes it difficult to attract and hold readers, and ultimately difficult to motivate myself into writing regularly

And yet I really miss blogging. So I've decided to create a blog with a very clear focus, something that will require a little bit of research each day, and that will entertain myself and my readers. I have created RIP: A Blog for Dead Stars. It will be a round-up of obits and news stories about people - mainly in film and the arts - who've died.

Lest you think I just have a morbid obsession with death, it is not death itself that fascinates me, but the personalities themselves who are moving out of this world every day. RIP is about their lives, not the grisly details of their deaths.

I think it will be a fun project for me to undertake (oops, bad choice of words), and has the potential to get a regular audience, which I've missed as Grace Pages has faded slowly away. The Grace Pages remains, although I still struggle to find a focus for it. For now it will contain assorted ramblings for anyone who happens to be listening in. And if anyone has any thoughts on direction - let's hear them!

Things I'll do in 2006

I've never made New Year's resolutions before, at least not since I was a kid and made to do so in school. For all my Pentecostal years there was a huge stigma attached to making resolutions because it was pagan and depended on self-will rather than the power of the Holy Spirit.

Well, this year I thought I'd make some. The New Year the most appropriate time to sit down and reflect on the past and make some changes for the future, so here goes.

1. Manage my time better.
I'm what you might call a right-brained person - lacking in discipline and structure what I have in creativity and imagination. But there's no excuse. We all have to try extra hard with those things that don't come naturally to us. I want to be able to apply myself rigorously to a task and then have it over and done with, not have my day a disorganized melange of one thing flowing haphazardly into another.

2. Manage my money better.
Heh. Like I even have any money to manage.

3. Put aside a short amount of time a few times a week to do basic chores.
Mom will love this one. I'm not talking investing hours of my time in vacuuming and dusting. There are more important things in life than that. But how about taking just ten minutes out of my week to run the vacuum cleaner around the living room? Or five minutes just to wipe down the toilet and sink?

4. Be more active.
I've probably talked before about my obesity. The kind of work I do doesn't require me to be very active. I work mainly from home, and am almost always in front of the computer. Even just walking down to the postbox a few times a week would be an advance in terms of physical activity.

5. Stop eating crap.
I'm perfectly well-educated on what to eat - I just don't do it. And yet I feel so much better about myself when I choose a carrot over a packet of chips or chicken breast instead of sausages. And the weight will drop off, as it has done before.

6. Spend less time in front of the computer.
The work I do and the focus of my life is bound to have me in front of the computer screen for at least eight hours a day. But still, if I were more organized, I'd find time to sit down and read a newspaper or a book instead. Think about that - words on paper!

That's six already, and I can think of more, but these seem to be the most important. Time wil l tell how well I do. Place bets now.

Another Christmas came and went...

It wasn't a bad Christmas this year. Christmas afternoon was quiet. My sister was having dinner with her new partner's family, and her three kids were off with their dad, so it was just me and my parents here. Mom had her most relaxing Christmas in years - we forewent the turkey and she made crab-stuffed plaice with some sort of cheese/wine sauce. One thing I wasn't prepared to miss out on was the candied sweet potatoes, my favourite Christmas dish, so we had those and some honey-glazed roasted parsnips and a few other bits. It was lovely.

Along with the turkey, I also forewent church on Christmas Eve. The last two years I had very bad experiences at Midnight Mass, due to my anxiety disorder, so I decided I would be easy on myself and stay at home this year. The association in my mind tends only to make it a stressful occasion. Missing Christmas Day was no big deal, as I haven't been to church on Christmas Day since I was about six.

I hope you, dear readers, have enjoyed a merry Christmas, and I wish you all the best for the New Year.

It's the most ironic time of the year

I don't know whether it's just me, but the Lord seems to have a habit of flagging up the irony of the whole thing at this time of year. You can pretty much guarantee that however well things are going  for me the rest of the year, by the time Christmas comes around, something has happened to turn life sour. This year it's to do with the bank and the phone call they made me earlier this week. The timing made it a phone call worthy of Ebenezer Scrooge.

This isn't a sympathy drive, by the way. This is just a reflection on how irony -- the main theme of my life, as I've probably said several times -- is central to the Christmas story. The beginnings of Jesus' life (setting aside arguments over how historically reliable the gospel account is) are every bit as ironic as the end of his life. What could compare to the irony of a crucified Messiah? Try the King of the Universe born into a trough and receiving a bunch of sheepherding peasants as his first guests.

I think it's the irony of the gospel that has kept me clinging to it despite change of mind I've been through the last few years. It's an irony that resonates with me and is true to my experience -- that riches come out of great poverty, and life comes out of death. Hell, if I didn't believe all that, what hope would I have when the shit hits the fan? To me, death is just a precursor of resurrection.

One of my enduring Christmas memories is of standing in the middle of a hospital ward, in only my dressing gown and slippers, reading John Betjeman's poem Christmas to a dozen old ladies. It was another of those ironic festive moments -- me spending the week before Christmas 2001 in hospital (gallstones, *ouch*) with a bunch of old dears for company. I love the way Betjeman (right) encapsulates the irony and the meaning of Christmas in the last few verses. I'll leave you with them as I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year.

And is it true? and is it true?
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?

And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant.

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was Man in Palestine
And lives to-day in Bread and Wine.

Hey diddle dee dee, a writer's life for me

Ah, deadlines --  the bane of the writer's life! After six months carving out a career in freelancing, I am now getting down to the real nitty-gritty of the writing life, with three deadlines all coming more or less at the same time. Sometime in the next three days I have to write 6,000 words about leaving fundamentalism, anywhere between 2,000 and 5,000 words on Hammer horror films and about 1,000 words on upcoming video game releases. It's varied, I'll give it that. Hopefully I'll find time to gather some local news, too, and at least make it sound interesting (Exclusive: Town Hall gets new lick of paint, etcetera etcetera, You heard it hear first etcetera etcetera).

Writing has great benefits, not least the fact I'm self-employed and can manage my own time and space. On the other hand, the greatest benefit can also become the greatest drawback, since it is far too easy to slip into bad habits and a total lack of routine and discipline. I think I may need M Scott Peck at this time in my life. Delayed gratification and all that.

If you'd asked me this time last year what I'd be doing now, this would definitely not be the answer. I was depressed, as I had been for years, but didn't realize it. I was stuck in a teaching career that kept me whirling in a constant spiral of anxiety. I was spending the first few hours of every morning on the verge of tears and worrying about people dying and crazy, irrational things liike that, and stopping on the way to work to gag and vomit. And I really didn't realize I was all that stressed. Fancy that.

I must sign off. I am doing exactly what Scott Peck would advise me against -- blogging away and avoiding real work instead of getting the hard graft over with. Tsk.

When I were a lad

Watching this video made me reminisce about all the things that were popular when I was a wee kid. When I was a kid, I played with

He Man
Star Wars
Spirographs

On TV I watched

The A-Team
Streethawk
Knight Rider
Penelope Pitstop
The Littlest Hobo
The Degrassi Street Kids
The Red-Hand Gang
Chips
*Mr Rogers' Neighbourhood
*The Friendly Giant
Mr Dressup
The Smurfs
The Moomins
Rub-a-Dub-Dub
Grange Hill
Sesame Street
*The Electric Company
*Gilligan's Island

*US and Canada, for those confused Brits reading!

Films I watched were

Return of the Jedi
ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
Superman II
Popeye
The Black Stallion

Books I read were

Richard Scarry's Busy, Busy World
Oh, What a Busy Day!
Orlando and His Little-While Friends
Janet and John

I went to the shop and bought a penny mix when sweets were only a hapenny. I strutted round the playground with my arms over my mates' shoulders shouting, "Who wants to play..." until we had enough people for a really good beat-em-up game of Superman or Robin Hood or whatever that particular day's favoured superhero was.

While in some ways it's scary, in other ways I quite enjoy getting at the age where childhood feels like a long time ago. Of course, there are 40-somethings reading this who are astounded at (and really quite jealous of) how young I am!