Leisure Blues

It's been a great Christmas so far, and there is still almost a complete week of holiday to go. Unlike last year, when it was all still too new, I've relaxed and been fairly stress-free about the whole thing.

With the exception of yesterday, when the blues struck at random, as they do sometimes for me.

The thing is that I still miss my family a lot, and I still feel a kind of guilt that I walked out on them. I know I'm not at fault for the doctrine that says that once I'm not in the circle any more they must cut me off, but still I feel deep down as though it was me who initiated the break. And when I did so, it was justified in my mind by all the great things I'd be able to do with my new freedom. And every now and then it hits me that I haven't done those things, and I suddenly feel like I can't justify the hurt of leaving my family.

Life is full, and life is good, no doubt about it. But days, weeks, months go by, and no doubt years will too, and I won't have written a novel, painted the pictures that are in my head, started working full-time at something that fulfils me, travelled the world ... etc etc. And in my rational mind, I know it's unreasonable to expect much of that to happen, if anything. Life is busy enough just living from day to day. That's the crux, really - as long as life is busy, it doesn't worry me. But a few idle days, and the guilt begins to set in: I'm not accomplishing enough, I'm not justifying my freedom. The mental list of things I haven't achieved starts growing in my mind.

In a way, being in the brethren is mentally liberating just because things are decided for you. You may dream of writing and releasing a hit song, for instance, but you are relieved of any need to obsess over it because you know it can't happen - brethren don't do such things and won't allow it to happen. It can remain safely as a dream, with a dream's rosy glow and none of the harsh spikes of reality.

Once out of the brethren, in my case at least, the excuses feel stripped away, and it's my fault alone that I am not doing what I dreamed of before.

Rationally, I should just sit down, look at my list of wishes, and do some addition. Once it is obvious that doing everything would require two lifetimes of thirty-eight hour days, I could cross items off the list and accept that they are never going to happen. This, I am told, is part of growing up. Still, murdering dreams is a harsher action than neglecting them, which I can pretend isn't happening, and so it's a tough thing to do. Until then, I guess I can expect to get very sad every so often.

Into the Educational Yonder

For better or for worse, I have taken some action on the education issue. I have not only signed up for a course, but filled in the forms, written in my card details for payment, and sent it all off. So that's it. I'm studying the first module for a degree in Mathematics and Computing Science. I shall see how I get on with that, and maybe step it up a stage or two once this is complete - some of the future modules dovetail together so they can be studied two at a time ... or maybe I'll hate it or find it all pointless. I don't know. But how else will I find out?

Besides that, on a whim I started investigating MBAs.

To be honest, I find the study of business-related things dull and of questionable utility. But I had a suspicion that it is the only route that puts any value on my life experiences so far, and could offer a leap into postgraduate qualifications in one move, with all the benefits in time saved and prestige gained and so on.

And so it proves. A reputable University, offering distance learning for MBAs, took my CV seriously enough to phone me to talk about my entry onto the programme, and of course send details ... which is where the plan gets holed below the waterline.

An MBA is an extortionate item. Really, a ridiculous amount of money. I can see why, and they all seem to be the same, which proves the point - someone on a decent wage, already in management but wanting to step up, is probably willing to invest quite a lot in something which directly benefits their career. Whether it's worth it is another matter, and honestly, with my lukewarm interest in the subject I have to say I'm not tempted to bet on it.

However, I must say it's done good things for my self-confidence. I like that someone has looked at my CV and said it's worth something and would enable me to skip being an undergraduate.

So at this point I feel able to hold my head up in my current degree-less condition, and study just because I want to, in a subject that suits me. Dilemma squashed, at least for now.

Christening

It seems a while ago now, as I seem to be so busy that I can hardly keep up, but last Sunday I added to my professional photographic experience by doing a christening. Admittedly I was already invited as a guest, but it definitely counts because the parents had to pay an extra fee to the church!

And so the slow but steady trialling of churches and varieties of Christian experience continues.

Leaving aside the photography for now, the whole thing was well worth while. This was another C of E church, not as grand as Hampton Court (obviously) but very well-to-do with a solidly middle-class congregation, and fully kitted out with steeple, grassy surroundings and gravestones outside, and wooden carving, stained glass and pipe organ inside. It was quite cosy, though, with function rooms off the main nave and a play area with toys behind the rows of pews. The principal difference this time was that the vicar was a woman, and so was her assistant.

I have to say that in the case of a christening, having a woman in charge is a splendid idea. I don't know what her services are like in the ordinary way, but this one was great. It's the first time I've felt really comfortable in a religious setting since my brethren days.

It was a double double event, with two families having two children each. They and the godparents all gathered at the front around the vicar, and she also called forward as many of the other children present who wanted to go (which was quite a few). Already that made for a pleasant feeling. Maybe it was a little bit much that a lot of the remaining children spent their time running around the hall and making noise, but even that was much preferable to having them tense and quiet against their will. As it was, it all felt happy - that's the only word I can use there, I think.

The ritual itself was all as set out in standard practice, from what I understand. Yet it didn't feel ritualised, as the vicar gave every sign of enjoying interacting with the children, and they enjoyed her attention in return. And she added unscripted speeches between times, too, part commentary, part teaching, part prayer.

All in all, I felt quite at home, and would be very happy to return. We shall see what happens - I may be disappointed by a normal Sunday.

As a bonus, the pictures came out well, too. And the meal afterwards was delicious from beginning to end, with fascinating company. Now that's what I call a success.

Please Do Not

Please Do Not, originally uploaded by dhewi.

I have just discovered that I can send photos to the blog direct from Flickr. This is a happy discovery, probably for no other reason than that I am by nature a geek.

As this is (still, after all this time) an EB-related endeavor, what better picture to test with than this?

High Church

A common query from brethren when they enquire about my life is whether I am doing anything about collective worship. It’s a double-edged question, as it both unthinkable for them to refrain from that and to accept any other communal worship than their own. Normally I don’t give a straight answer, as I think it isn’t any of their business (but I’m too polite to say so). Actually, I have thought it would be too weird and unsettling to do anything of the kind.
 
However, opportunity and inclination combined this last weekend. And, starting at the top, I “went to church” in the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court Palace. It was very different.
 
For a start, the setting is such that you would have to pay to get in if there wasn’t a service on. It’s grand, highly decorated, and has the air of a museum as much as a church. I should imagine there would always be plenty to look at if there was a boring sermon going on. Frescos, carvings, a vaulted and painted ceiling, candle-holders, stained glass … anything except people, most of the time, as the pews are more like boxes and from a sitting position you can only see the tops of other people’s heads, if that. It’s a bit like a virtual reality simulation, in which you’re surrounded by the sights and sounds of worship without feeling part of something particularly personal. Fortunately there was a personal touch in the elderly gentleman sitting next to us, who kindly helped out by indicating the right places to stand and sit and where to look in the books provided – a hymnal, traditional version of the Book of Common Prayer, and a booklet of services for the month of November.
 
What really surprised me, though, was the extent of the musical component.
 
There was a little bit of speech, and a tiny amount of that was unscripted. The remainder of the speaking was either scripture or set texts. By far the bulk of the service was singing, though, and the singing was, for want of a better word, antique. But extraordinary. Even sections which had no music were declaimed in a kind of chant. It was one of few days in the year (apparently) where there were women in the choir, as the boys had a day off, and the whole lot were fervent and professional. Actually, if I’m honest, the music rather detracted from the spiritual aspect, purely because it was very difficult to follow the words without reading along, and even then there was a lot of classical-music license with repetition and odd phrasing. Lack of understanding doesn’t boost fervency, at least for me. As a concert, though, it would have been worth quite a lot in spite of being free. It was first-class music, performed beautifully.
 
And the spiritual aspect? Mixed, I'd say. It was probably an unfair test for me, as everything was so new and dramatically different that it would have needed an angel's trump to draw my attention to the religion specifically. I was too involved just taking everything in.

But there were a couple of things that occurred to me. The first was that it was surprisingly touching to hear familiar pieces of biblical text read aloud. They are firmly embedded in my head and, reasonably or not, I love some of those texts. I don't think you need to be religious to believe that parts of the Bible are very wise and great literature to boot, and having been brought up on something not too far different to the KJV, I was quite moved by hearing them.

The second was that there is another side to the old brethren dismissal of organised religion, saying that prepared texts and routine is not real worship. I still have some sympathy for that view, as something in me thinks less of a service without real participation or spontaneity. However, I could see that there is a certain benefit to knowing in advance what will be said, and the points that will be emphasised, and the words that will be sung. What is lost in immediacy can be gained in depth if the congregation can avoid the temptation to sit back and let it wash over them. It could be said to be more humble to accept that somebody in the past has said something better than we can say it at the time, and by repeating and considering those words, we take something from them that is more than we can find within ourselves.

Having said all that, our helpful companion and his wife were really there for the music, and I suspect not many of those present were really wishing for any kind of transcendental experience. And nor was I, exactly, as my religious inclinations remain private these days. But I enjoyed what there was, as did the new acquaintance we took along who is a Polish Catholic far from his family and needing companionship. He normally attends a Catholic church, and I was surprised to hear from him that there was more pomp, ritual and music on this occasion than he was used to, either, by far. Interesting.

It all made an interesting contrast to the night before, too, when we went to a staging of the musical Sweeney Todd in which a friend was performing. That was great for an amateur production. And which event would the brethren worry about more, I wonder? I'm honestly not sure.

Clubbing

Last night I found myself in a fairly dense ring of people, average age about sixty, around a naked fat man taking up a variety of poses from Bacchus to Sumo. Anyone unable to guess what that was all about can relax - it was a life-drawing session.

For a while after leaving behind virtually my entire set of acquaintances it felt like a relief to cut down on their numbers. Just recently, though, I have been gradually realising that it is a good idea to mix with society a bit so as to broaden my outlook and add variety to my relationships. I seem to have met most of my friends by one or other of very few ways so far.

So after a few weeks delving, I found an art club which actually meets at a time when I can go - most of them seem focused on retirees, and meet during weekdays, but this one has its winter meetings at 7pm on Tuesdays.

Why art? Well, I enjoy drawing and painting, and I have plenty of scope for improvement. Also, it offers the most scope for complete freshness as, with one important exception, it isn't an activity I share with any of my current friends. On the downside, I'm not really sure I have time for another commitment (thinking of my last post and pondering whether I can add education to the list as well!). If it was only the art, I'd be happy plodding along solo, but joining a club of SOME kind feels like a good thing to do.

So I turned up to try the idea out last night, with mixed results.

The first thing that amused me was that it took quite a lot of determination just to get up and out of the house to get somewhere for seven in the evening. Normally, once I'm home, I'm settled. But only eighteen months ago, that was a way of life every weekday! However did I manage it?

Also on the negative side is that I haven't improved much at meeting and mixing. I suspect I give the impression of being quite laid-back, but I stress and dither and wander around feeling like a spare part. In actual fact, I was uncomfortable enough that my drawing wasn't up to much either, which kind of spoiled the point of going. Probably I should give myself a chance to get better, though, and it does prove that I need the practice at being part of a group.

It's a pleasant group, anyway. As expected, it's heavy on old folk (nothing wrong with that, of course) but not so much I feel really out of place, and if I was the youngest there then it probably wasn't by much. And I was fairly firmly in the middle of the ability spectrum, so that could have been worse. And it can never be bad to get on good terms with a selection of well-to-do people from an upmarket commuter town.

Degree of confusion

I am wrestling again with a problem that keeps recurring: what to do about my education. Apologies if this is getting boring. The same old arguments go round and round my head, and every now and then I need to let them out.

The starting point is that my work experience significantly outruns my paper qualifications, which means that I don't even measure up to the point where I would be considered for anything similar to my current job in any other company. That means that, if I lose my job or resign, I have the following options:

1. Work for myself.
2. Take a pay cut and a less fulfilling job (probably).
3. Get a qualification.
4. Go on benefits.
5. Lie to prospective employers.

Somewhere between options one and two is the possibility of a more open-minded company, probably a small one, who want a self-starter with experience and don't much care about education, but as a few months of looking have failed to turn up such a company and the employment market is tightening, I am discounting it for now. Options four and five are out, at least as deliberate courses of action. Agreed, I could say I had a degree just so as to get onto a shortlist, but I think the untruth would count against me at that point, whatever other star qualities I might show to make up for the lack.

That being the case, option one has looked the most likely for some while now, and remains where my effort is directed. But should I hedge my bets by redirecting a proportion of that effort towards option three?

Pros of doing a degree of some kind:
1. It gets me the all-important bit of paper.
2. The process itself is (I'm told) beneficial.
3. The contacts made could be more useful than even the qualification itself.
4. I can choose something that is interesting and useful, probably.

Cons of a doing a degree:
1. It takes time, energy and money I can hardly afford.
2. By the time I have the qualification it's likely to be too late.
3. I remain skeptical about conveyer-belt knowledge.

So still I dither, and I get advice that goes both ways. What is bothering me at the moment is that I could have been partway through that long long process already, so how do I know what I will wish I'd been doing with my precious time a year from now? Should I hedge my bets by enrolling in a January course just in case? Or will it be a diversion from better uses of my time and resources?

Disagree or help?

If you have major points of disagreement with somebody, yet are obliged to keep some kind of relationship going, there is no avoiding compromise - however much of a naughty word that may be to brethren. As I am not as detached from my past life and acquaintances as others in my position, I rub up against this all the time.

In the case of working relationships, the simplest thing is to pretend there are no differences. Anything that can be ignored is ignored. I don't alter my appearance unduly, don't talk overmuch about life outside work, and so any potential problems can be treated as nonexistent. Out of sight, out of mind. And I refrain from commenting when the tide of rules ebbs and flows, whether it's heading in the direction of sanity or further into insular oddity.

But overall (and this is more noticeable in less formal and more emotional relationships), it isn't possible to disagree with someone over a point that one or both consider to be important without wishing that the other person thought differently about it. That's where the compromise bites a bit more. Especially where something in the belief on one side or the other results in harmful attitudes or behaviour. What can anyone do about that?

Many, I know, would say that the disagreement must be open in such cases, if one is not to be tainted with blame for harm that one knows is happening. And that is a reasonable point of view. What, though, if one's judgement is that persuasion is unlikely, but a large decrease in influence very probable as a result of expressing an opinion? In that case the clear conscience would be at the expense of the possibility of practical good. You can wash your hands of what you don't approve of, but if you hope to retain any way of edging the person away from what is going on, you must also retain some moral grubbiness from acquiescing to it in the meantime. And if no movement happens, you stay grubby for nothing.

I see this happening with me and those brethren who maintain contact with me - in both directions, depending on whose views you agree with!

A bit of practical psychology comes in handy here. It helps that, for the moment, I think they are more worried about losing influence on me than the reverse. So all conversations must be like walking on eggshells for them, whereas I needn't worry so much. That means conversation tends to range widely ... but only on subjects that have nothing to do with anything we might disagree over. But there is more to it than that.

I find that agreement is habit-forming. If I can find some subject where we will definitely agree, ideally one where they might expect me to differ from them but I don't, that agreement feels good. If the conversation then heads onto more uncertain ground, but still with some effort to find points of agreement, it can be amazing how far we get. I have found staunch brethren members able to see my point of view on some very surprising things when led to it by sufficiently diverting paths.

In a way, this is just a method of subverting conditioning. My point is that some subjects, to a person brought up to hold strong opinions, produce reflex reactions. There are many such things for brethren - a certain subject comes up, and there are instant warning lights so they know that all they are permitted to think on that subject is the party line. They expect people to disgree with them, and disagreement or argument will be pointless. Approached differently, their thoughts may be different.

Anyway, that's my self-justification for not openly disagreeing too often and making waves. I keep my conscience as clear as I need for mental comfort by straying onto subjects in conditions where I feel it will do some good, and I hope that by carefully making room for unfamiliar opinions, those opinions may gradually become less alien to them and begin to shift things. I never did have much faith in revolution and changing the world.

A long long way

Some years ago, I had a serious taste for Science Fiction. I still have, to some extent, but whereas back then I liked the ideas enough to overlook weak writing more than I would in other genres, these days I'm fussier about all my reading and ask more of the books I pick up.

However, one book has been returning to mind, one which struck me powerfully at the time and I'm not sure I have the courage to reread.

In it, a crew of astronauts are sent to Titan, the best-known moon of Saturn. The exercise is a desperate one undertaken by an American government trying hard to revive confidence, and the technology is barely sufficient to get the mission to its destination even with good luck. The plan is that the hope embodied in the mission kick-starts a technological and cultural revival in the time taken to complete it, and a second spaceship with improved abilities can then be sent to collect the brave pioneers. The distance involved is incredible, such that even radio waves take hours to get there, and so there are years and years to plan the follow-up.

Things don't go well in any respect, and the hard-hitting aspect of the book to me was its depiction of utter loneliness. I don't think I'll be spoiling much for anybody if I say that the final scenes have one solitary surviving astronaut descending to a cold and desolate surface, all the others having died en route, transmitting hopeful messages to a distant Earth ... and getting no reply because a revolution has turned the whole Globe in on itself and nobody knows or cares about the last remaining human billions of miles away. I don't think (if I remember rightly) that the writing was all that powerful in itself, but something about the scenario gave me the horrors.

That feeling of being on your own can be like a particularly cold draught that finds its way in just when warmth is in short supply, and whispers messages you don't want to hear. I've felt it often enough over the years to know. It was never worth telling anyone about, because the standard brethren response would be that only sin can bring about such a sensation, and the way back to happiness is to give up something in your life which is against God's will and causing the alienation. If part of the problem is feeling fundamentally different to those around you, and yet still feeling unwilling to forgo their love and respect, that can't help. Obviously I've never been as far from human support as the moons of Saturn, but the situation had painful parallels.

My coping mechanism (I suppose everybody outside mental institutions has something like it) has been to try to be the person that others seem to need me to be. That's something that has only recently become clear to me. I pick up on clues from those who care, and attempt to mould myself into the person they expect and would like, while inside remains a sadder and weaker individual who only appears when I'm too tired to keep up the effort of being the "me" I present to the world. And, of course, at such times I feel a failure for having slipped, which compounds the problem, and the people I can least share the emotion with are those I feel I've failed.

These kinds of conflicts are a prime reason why I had to get out of my previous life. I hoped I could leave such things behind as unnecessary in a less judgmental world. But of course life and mental characteristics aren't as simple as that, and I find I slip into the old ways of reacting and build up problems that make no sense outside the restrictions of brethrenland. I'm still unsure at times what is the real me, and what is a collection of actions and reactions I've put on like a costume. The effort involved is sometimes a clue, but who wants to spend time around someone who makes no effort to conform? Not all costumes are a bad thing.

I'm not quite sure what I'm driving at here. Maybe the point is that, to some extent, the old saying that no man is an island is exactly wrong. We are all alone in our heads in some absolute way, and it's only once we have accepted and learned how to deal with the fact that we become sturdy enough for others to rely on us. I don't feel I've quite got there yet.

I'm not a party man, but ...

The day of the unaccustomed event has come and gone, and things worked better than I feared they might. I have no real way of knowing whether my most nagging worry was justified or not, which was whether the occasion could possibly be worth the effort it took some attendees to get to it, but everybody seemed cheerful enough.

The thing that hit me most as of this morning was that the entire weekend seems to have vanished twice as fast as usual. The time with guests went quickly, as so often happens, but with a busy week last week and then launching straight into preparations, it felt like I was still at high speed as we reached the finishing line of guest arrival time, and couldn't slow down in time to enjoy it as I should have done.

I have learned a few things in the course of it all:

1. There is more space in my living room than I thought, and I could have fitted more chairs in - but probably not more people!

2. Helpful neighbours are a good thing, but having enough cutlery myself would be better.

3. Notwithstanding point one, I would have been glad if a couple of people who are nothing to do with the brethren had been able to come, because I was uncomfortable with the amount of brethren talk at some points. More notice is probably required, as I learned from some other people too.

4. If everybody is at ease enough, they can simply ask if they need something, otherwise ten to a dozen people is too many to keep an eye on their drink levels all at once, and help may be needed.

5. It's a good idea to check the glasses before visitors arrive, as the normally unused ones may be embarrassingly dusty, even in a cupboard.

6. I have touchingly good friends.

I was worried beforehand that I didn't know what to be most worried about, and by mid-afternoon on Saturday was definitely most worried that we still had no food cooked ... but in the event the food was less of a problem than I thought. I hope nobody went home hungry, as there didn't seem to be all that much (definitely not afterwards!), but nobody sat looking sadly at an empty plate, fortunately.

On the whole, I still think I'm not a natural party person, and function best in very small gatherings - I was sad that I didn't get to speak properly to many of the visitors yesterday - but I'm very glad I did this, and am also very grateful for the support. I expect I shall have a little warm glow for a few days.

Jumping v Being Pushed

My recent reading contained one assertion that hit me quite hard: that people's psychology is generally such that control over their environment has more effect on their happiness than the circumstances themselves. More specifically, the author said that he had himself proved that it is possible to gain great satisfaction from leaving a well-paid job for a lesser one ... provided that you resign rather than being pushed out.

Obviously that has relevance to my current circumstances, as although all is quiet on the work side of my life, I'd be ignoring history if I thought my job was secure indefinitely. But it made me wonder more whether those who took a very deliberate step in leaving the brethren have fared better in the time since than those who were thrown out or otherwise left without it being completely their decision.

All things being equal, I can see that we tend to seek confirmation that we have made correct choices once we've made them (I remember being taught that customers tend to become repeat customers if you call them and reiterate what a great purchase they made in the days after they take delivery - they're more persuadable when they are already expending their own mental energy justifying their decision). That means that someone who has taken a drastic step, freely, will be focused on their gains, keen to grasp any evidence that emerges that says they were right to do what they did. By contrast, a person who feels disposed-of may find it so hard to see past what they have lost without having decided to do so that the same scraps of good news pass them by entirely.

Reasoning from what appears to be common sense rather than evidence proves nothing, of course, but it would be interesting to know if there is any grain of realism in that summary.

Meanwhile I take the lesson to heart myself.

Confirmation

I have a weakness for popular factual books, the kind presented as having a "big idea" or strong theme in any semi-scientific area of knowledge. This week's reading is "The Black Swan" - I've been intrigued for a while, and it has become topical again.

And I find it is one of the quite rare books that has me nodding at regular intervals and, if I was the kind of person who wrote in books, I would be underlining points quite often too. Like I saw people doing to Brethren ministry in the past. (Tangentially, the kind of brethren who leave their weekly ministry visible to visitors tend to be the kind who underline and take notes, although I wouldn't cynically want to say the two habits are connected.) Although this book is somewhat overstated in its tone, it chimes with my own outlook on life and makes me wonder why other people haven't said the same things so clearly and vocally.

The central message is that prediction is a human weakness that leads to trouble, because few things that matter are predictable and those that are predictable are swamped by other unforeseen circumstances anyway. That feels right to me. I'm forever hedging my bets because what seems obvious to others looks rather fragile to me, and yet wondering why I'm out of step.

However, there is a big irony here, and it's the main reason I mention the point at all. One of the central points the author makes about the limits of knowledge, and consequently of prediction, is about confirmation bias: the human tendency to fasten on information that fits with what one already knows or thinks while ignoring contrary facts. Here is a book that tells me I'm right to be conscious of the weakness of knowledge. So what's the use of that?

Absorbing Rules

Having spent a very large proportion of my life in the thick of a community whose main defining point is that no other communities are allowed, I have found it slightly strange to dabble in others. The most obvious ones being online.

Facebook, while handy, still feels just a little bit creepy to me, I suppose because its sole purpose is as a means of interaction between friends, and friends always feel as if they deserve more personal attention than messages on a cyberspace noticeboard. So for the moment I tend to stay semi-detached from that community. I also dabble from time to time in a photography website with lively forum pages, which is always a sign of a set of people who feel themselves to be a community, but always feel something of an outsider there as anyone who doesn't contribute on an almost hourly basis is ignored as a part-timer. I have observed that any successful forum seems to have a hard core of utterly dedicated people who feel a certain sense of ownership, and a self-developed set of more or less arcane rules and etiquettes.

Such rules seem to be necessary as a dividing line between the insiders and others, but they do vary from case to case whether the effect is to include or exclude. The photographic site I mentioned has a presumably unintentional bias towards exclusion, as do many others where the topics are subject to strong opinions. The sense I get is that you need to pay your dues in some way in order to be accepted.

But what started me thinking about this was Flickr, which is altogether different. It is designed to feel like a community, but a welcoming one, and I feel at ease with it because it's about something definite, unlike Facebook. But I have gradually become aware of subtleties that weren't immediately obvious, ways in which a joiner gradually slips into the ways of the network.

I have been posting pictures for a while now, and it gets to be mildly addictive as some get attention and others don't. And so I find I am more likely to post things similar to those that were liked before, and that begins modifying, slightly, my actions when I create in the first place. And a certain sort of caption seems to work, and so I spend a few moments more in each case thinking of that kind. And I try out groups to see where like-minded people are.

And what really struck me was that if a loose and optional community at a distance can have powerful behavioural effects that slip in almost unnoticed, it's not surprising that the all-encompassing brethren network shapes the participators' thoughts and actions to the extent it does, such that even those of us who have made a conscious decision to leave them behind find we still get tangled in the after-effects. I have always maintained that the "rules" and "control" spoken of as endemic to the brethren are rather overstated. But then when each person spends their life unconsciously adjusting to what the others think of them, maximising attention and wishing for affection and respect, control in the strict sense becomes almost superfluous.

Gathering Ahead

I have let myself in for what amounts to a party at my place, and it feels to me like one of the biggest and bravest steps I've taken. Is that because I'm just basically shy, or is it that I'm affected by the brethren mentality?

For quite a while I have wished I could get some friends together, and also that people who know me could see where I live while I live there. I have always put it off, though, because such things seem to need an excuse of some kind. Yet any kind of excuse is probably something to do with me personally, and I hate to be the focus of attention. This kind of feels like putting myself on the line, and is also a worry because having asked people to come along to my place, I have a hard time believing I can make it worth the effort for them!

As with so many things, it would be nice to know if the reticence is down to my upbringing or not. I do admire people who are equally comfortable being noticed or ignored, managing events or fitting in. It always feels like an awkward shift for me, even when I know it's required and do my best. I suspect the brethren attitude that says the self is to be suppressed in favour of the community is a hard one to dispel entirely. Going against it feels both exposing and unsafe.

Still, the die is cast, and it will be fun making arrangements, I think. I hope!

Undermining the leaders

I had thought I had left all this stuff behind, but I have had a reminder of a key part of brethrenism. Pause for swooping strings and a drum roll ... it's the Aberdeen issue!

Apparently some people think that ferreting out undeniable facts about this historical affair is the best hope of bringing the EB edifice crashing down. They may be right, and logic would say they are, but something doesn't feel too promising to me. It has taken a bit of thought to see why.

After all, it is true that the morality of the brethren's leaders is all-important. From the early days of brethrenism, when the key doctrine that led to their existence was that clergy were an offence to God, a key has come to be that the perfectibility of Mankind is proved at all times by the perfection of one man on Earth - who of course must be in the only perfect position. And that person comes to be leader by mysterious means that can only be traced back to God's ways. So, for brethren, all morality can be tested against an easily-seen marker, and the compulsory progress towards God's plan for them is measured the same way. After all, the reasoning goes, God couldn't be satisfied with less than perfection, and wouldn't be so unreasonable as to ask for the impossible, so the result must be there to see for the enlightened.

So it seems equally reasonable to suppose that if that perfection could be proved to be illusory or, better, totally fake, the foundations of the brethren's thought would so weakened as to be unable to support what has grown up on them.

There's no doubt that, on the face of it, James Taylor Jr is an easy target for such an effort. I recall listening to a set of recordings of meetings late on in his life with increasing discomfort and distaste. He rambled and slurred, and spouted such self-centred content-free verbiage that I was embarrassed on his behalf, and thought it would be a good thing for everybody if such recordings were kept under lock and key to preserve his good memory. That's without considering the many people who claim to have firm proof of activities up to and including adultery, culminating in scandal at Aberdeen in 1970.

Yet there is a big problem, and that is that the whole affair has moved beyond facts and history for the brethren and become a matter of ideology.

All brethren are brought up from birth with the assumption that their leaders are and have been pure. For example, even as I was cringing at what I heard on those ancient recordings, I could see looks of admiration all around me as though everybody else was hearing something entirely different. If you start with the assumption that a man is God's example to us all, then anything and everything can be twisted to fit that narrative. My companions were spellbound by the genius of the man in skilfully leading the ignorant astray so that only God's elect could see his true worth. I think everybody has had enough practice in mental contortions that there isn't a fact that they couldn't make fit somehow.

But more to the point, all brethren consider the whole affair to be among the top dividing lines between the sheep and the goats. That's the brilliant thing about it from their point of view. If somebody provides "facts" that reflect badly on JTjr, that's all you need to know - they're on the wrong side and you mustn't listen. So those facts won't get very far because they're greeted with instant deafness.

What's more, I have many times heard ex-brethren disparaged just because they can't move on from the issue: the feeling is "is that all they've got to harp on about?" So that combination - indifference, closed minds and sense of superiority - makes the job harder than it first appears. Some may think it's merely a tricky lock to pick, and worth a lot of effort if it provides a way in, but I suspect it's more like trying to pick a concrete wall.

Still, I'll watch with interest in case I'm proved wrong.

Criticism

The brethren believe they're better than everyone else.

Well, actually that isn't quite accurate. Nobody believes in their
kitchen table: it's there, it's obvious, and nobody needs to believe
in it. They take it for granted. The same applies with brethren
superiority. It's the starting point for all interaction of any
kind.

I read an article recently on why the Danes seem to be the happiest
people on Earth, and one reason put forward was much the same - that
they consider Danishness to be a superior state of being. That makes
for a certain amount of xenophobia and difficulty in the country in
some ways, but apparently the common society values more than make
up for it as a place to live.

The brethren are kind of similar, except that the attitude is
boosted exponentially by the conviction that the superiority is
God-given. It can also lead to a kind of schizophrenia in the ones
who are aware of deficiencies (which is many), because they
simultaneously believe that they are in the best community in
existence and can see things which are bad in one way or another.
Everybody has their own way of dealing with that, whether they go to
enormous lengths never to have to consider it, go all-out for
denial, or rationalise it in whatever way they can.

It does help to remember that when dealing with them. The key thing
is that criticism, implied or straight, is going to clash with their
root assumptions and nobody likes that.

Depending on the circumstances, it may be OK to criticise specifics.
Only the most blinkered of brethren refuse to admit to any
imperfections. What few can deal with is any suggestion that the
totality might be in any way at fault. That clashes with such deeply
held beliefs that the only possible conclusion is that the
suggestion must be wrong even without examination of what has been
said. If it is then insisted upon, the insistence reflects back on
the person doing it, who must be anywhere between misled and evil.

Complicating matters is that such criticism is held to be exactly
the same as criticising God Himself in their eyes. No matter that
anybody else would regard that as a separate step, and an arguable
one. They won't see the difference.

That explains the extreme reactions to what brethren perceive as
attack - it isn't rational or part of a master-plan, just the
outrage of people who've had the very foundations of their worldview
questioned and can't handle it. It also explains the strained
relations between family-members within the brethren and outside,
because the very act of leaving the brethren is about as strong a
criticism as anybody could make.

When people discover my background, one of the first things they
wonder is why I don't have more contact with my family. I have never
managed to explain to anyone's satisfaction that it isn't really to
do with rules, but a matter of hurt. By leaving, I have said to them
that something they consider to be a part of their essence, and
something they most value, is worth nothing to me. Blood ties are
strong, but lesser things than that can pull families apart.

I can see the varying degrees of contact with my family in that
light. Relations are best with those who feel a more pragmatic
connection with the brethren, and therefore accept my situation as
simply different from theirs in that it works for them and didn't
for me. Relations are also OK, interestingly, with those who never
question the whole brethren-thing, as they remain mystified by my
actions rather than upset. For the remainder, who have to work all
the time at resolving their worries and beliefs, every contact with
me rubs away at a rawness in them, and they would sooner not have to
deal with it.

Folk in the Woods

It's been a busy weekend again, and I've been able to confirm that my parents are more or less OK now. A good side-effect of the incident is that I have slightly better points of contact with my family than before.

Anyway, when I'd spoken at length to one of them on Saturday afternoon, we treated ourselves to an odd and intimate evening of music out in the woods.

Not far from my place is a Youth Hostel in a forest of sorts surrounded by National Trust property. It's very old indeed, with no vehicular access, reached by a twenty minute walk down a bridleway from the nearest carpark. It has no services to speak of, so electricity is from solar panels backed up by a generator, and all water except drinking water comes from rain harvesting. The ceilings are low and full of beams, it's cramped, and staying there means sleeping in a dormitory in triple-decker bunk beds.

Periodically they have folk music nights there, and people seem to come from surprising distances to join in. One man (with the beard you might expect of a folk-music fan) had been coming for over forty years. When we arrived there weren't many people around, and I didn't think there would be to judge by the venue - which was a room about the size of a suburban master bedroom, perhaps, or a small living room, only to three-quarters scale in the height dimension. And of that, a large chunk was taken up by an enormous fireplace. But we made tea in the cheerfully communal way of hostels and got chatting to some pleasant people.

But as the evening wore on the room filled with people to a density of about one per square foot ... well, not quite, but close. All ages, too, from a slightly crippled older woman with a nun-style headscarf to a couple of toddlers. And a good many guitar cases.

And we all had a really good time. Not everybody was equally talented, but it didn't much matter. Some people performed while everybody listened quietly, such as the solo warblers of unaccompanied serious folk, but the general pattern was for someone to sing the verses of a well-known song and everyone to join in with the choruses. And sometimes one person played the guitar, sometimes several. "Folk" had a pretty broad definition, too, stretched to encompass basically anything that could be performed without electric backing - including Radiohead and Eighties electronic pop.

We left at about half past ten, and the evening was really just getting going. That's the great thing about a hostel in the woods. They could play and sing into the small hours without disturbing anybody at all, and then stumble up the narrow stairs to sleep.

All this might seem a bit strange to someone used to the brethren life, but actually it was one of the things I've done which felt most comfortingly familiar in many ways. A crowded room, acoustic music, and a hippyish vibe in which it was taken for granted that everyone present was a friend. Not exactly a brethren-style Saturday evening, but oddly not far off in feel.

Then today was the zoo in glorious weather. But that is best left for another time.

Book Review

I'm feeling kind of odd this evening. Family affairs are complicated, and while some of my feelings are telling me to contact people I love by any means possible, I still can't escape the strong idea that it's only by not trying to have contact that I retain the option of contact at all. And so there is guilt and conflict while I battle it out.

So I will move on to a more cheerful subject: a book recommendation.

Terry Pratchett is a favourite author, and I am in full agreement with a recent review that said he is one of the best writers alive - only too popular for critics generally to admit it. Maybe the critics get hung up on his early work, which has nothing like the depth. Anyway, his most recent book, "Nation", is a sideways step that has no connection to his usual work. It's - on the surface - a children's book, and not so wild and witty. But as with most really good writing, I can't help seeing parallels to my own life as I read it.

It's set in a version of the South Seas, in a version of Victorian times. The main characters are adolescents, a local boy and a travelling girl, both solitary survivors of a catastrophe of weather. The theme is how they manage when everything they knew has been swept away. Does this sound familiar yet?

It gets better. Both are thinkers and questioners, with conflicting urges between trying to put things back the way they were as far as is possible, and the knowledge that the old ways, for all their familiarity, didn't work and aren't appropriate. And the boy has his ancestors shouting inside his head, commanding that reverence be paid to the old rituals, threatening disaster of physical and moral varieties if he lets the old ways die. Now that the world has changed, can he have the strength to change with it, or will phantom authority fill the gap where the authority of convention used to be?

The message it gives to me is that even when a person is outside of a world they've known, they bring more of it with them than they can be aware of, and it takes constantly opening eyes to see what is real, what is valuable, and what is merely a groove in their thought processes. And that you can sincerely grieve for loss without needing to reconstruct a version of what is gone.

Besides that, there is also the intriguing clash between cultures in which two people genuinely do not understand things which seem so obvious to the other. I have the T-shirt, as the saying goes ...

One quote will do, I think, not about either main character:

"He believed in rational thinking and scientific inquiry, which was why he never won an argument with his mother, who believed in people doing what she told them, and believed it with a rock-hard certainty which dismissed all opposition."

Shocking News

Things were going pretty much as normal today until I had a call from one of my brothers at work during lunch. Nothing surprising about that: he and I have been conversing and corresponding on a project of his over the last few days.

But this time he asked me if I knew that our parents were out of the country. I didn't. Apparently I was due to be told but stress and busy-ness meant the call was never made before they left. And now, on their first day away, they were in a serious car crash. Fortunately it seems there are no serious injuries as such, but my mother is still in hospital a day and a half later.

There isn't anything I can do, or could do even if things were different. I'm not there where the action is. But it does raise all sorts of feelings and I feel distant and powerless, even more distant than before. And I really don't like to feel distant from my family, as we were always closer than average even among the brethren. I'm just very thankful there isn't more need for something to be done and that everything seems to be OK.

I guess I'm fortunate compared to many that I have at least a reasonable point of contact, and that allows me to convey at least some of my feelings back the other way.

Work

Life has been busy for a few weeks now as, semi-accidentally, work outside work has taken off.

Besides the prospective wedding photography, the old stand-by of product photography has revived – mainly due to my most regular brethren visitors. One of them has used my services for a long time now, off and on, but the other has persuaded the company he works for to switch to me too. At least for now, I should say.

At some point I shall begin to ask if there’s anything else to the story. I am never surprised by brethren work because of the “known quantity” mindset that seems to be so prevalent among them: brethren generally will go to considerable lengths not to need the services of anyone unknown. If somebody within the community can do a job, they will probably be first on the list. If not, then someone that somebody within the community knows will be preferred, even if they don’t come particularly highly recommended. There seems to be a strong aversion that I don’t quite understand to finding new solutions. However, to return to my own situation, something may have changed which makes me an option to call on, and that something could either be changing attitudes or a perceived need to keep me on-side in some way.

I have noticed that since technology has become less alien and forbidden territory to brethren, it has opened up doors. My suspicion is that now brethren are able (and encouraged!) to use computers and digital equipment for work, my long-standing attachment to those things is no longer a reason to shy away from the subject but more a reason to take advantage of somebody familiar who has experience. That would be quite enough reason for them to send work my way.

What would be more worrying, and could well be part of the reason even if not the whole story, is if somebody somewhere sees this as a route to entice me back into the fold – or at least a way of keeping the tentacles entangled. A cynical view would be that they see a danger that I might become totally independent and leave my brethren-provided job, and so try to become essential to me in the new area of work as well. Still, I have to say that even if that was the case, it marks a big improvement over the old “cast the heretics out forever” attitude. They may be beginning to learn that being nice brings greater benefits than being nasty. Although in my case I think most of what happens is simply the result of brethren trying to do what they think is best for everybody concerned, rather than a massive plot.

Besides that, I have been dabbling in location and house photography, and it is possible that it may become regular through an agency who provide better pictures of houses than estate agents for people whose houses are worth the extra trouble. And I am waiting to hear if Saturday may be a baptism of fire on the wedding front, as a professional friend is double-booked and offering to hand over one shoot to me.

So what with all that development, I have decided that the time is right to scrap my current photo website and revamp it to serve professional needs instead. Originally I was going to start another site for that, but I am in the process of moving my personal work to Flickr, which is cheaper and more flexible, and that leaves my short and simple website address free!

As I said, it’s a busy time.

Anniversary

Another month comes to an end, and with it a year. The first year on my own in the wide world. This time last year everything was new and fresh and daunting.

A lot of the time it's still daunting, actually. But gradually things become normal to some extent. Yesterday, for example, I went to a party at a very nice house in a good area, there were around eighty guests there, and I knew only one of them. That would have been a serious worry a while ago. As it is now, I am aware that most others are in a similar situation and so I can relax and enjoy it - talking to assorted people, moving on from those who don't appeal in one way or another and having a good time with the ones who do. That's life in a nutshell, I suppose. It was a good time.

Meanwhile, as is the way with the passing of time, things need money spent on them this month. A whole lot of renewals come round at the same time. Also, my main computer died while in the middle of two freelance jobs that relied on it, and I had to hastily bite the bullet and buy another. Fortunately I found an ex-demo unit not too far away, and having spent out now have the pleasure of a much faster machine and can watch the readout of eight processer cores barely budging whatever I do. And I changed mobile phone suppliers and was cut off for two days while they changed me over. I'm hoping nobody tried to get hold of me urgently during that time.

I had a little pang while driving home from work on Friday as I realised it was now more than a year since I gave any of my family a hug. That's sad, and not something I can do much about except maybe write a note to tell them it occurred to me.

And thinking about the brethren situation today, it is noticeable that things appear to have loosened quite considerably even in the time since I've been gone. It is possible, I suppose, that it may ease some more and I may find that family becomes accessible. Whatever, so many things have now become acceptable that were previously banned that I think it will be hard for them to put the technology genie back in the bottle, at least. And that new connectivity can surely only help break down barriers.

Dwelling in Tents

Life needn't become boring just yet, as there are still fresh experiences to have, and some of them are very accessible. No need to book that trip into space while I can go camping for the first time.

I don't think camping is exactly forbidden among the brethren, but it's not very practical when combined with that lifestyle. When you need to be at a meeting every day if questions aren't to be asked, and need to arrange in advance if you expect to be at a meeting other than your own (in which case you will be offered a bed and hospitality), there isn't much call for a tent. Except in strictly metaphorical connections when talking about the early old testament.

But this last weekend was a holiday one, and on the agenda was a visit to some old folks in the country, so we decided to combine that with a night in a field - otherwise known as camping in the Cotswolds, which does sound better.

The setting was great and the weather was pretty good too. The field was beside a pub outside a village, and the village was small and pretty itself. We were by a stream and, apparently, a disused canal, and the rolling hills and surrounding trees meant that we felt quite as though we had a place of our own for a while. Well, we shared it with an odd assortment of fellow campers, a couple of whose tents were neatly set up across the entire width of some passing areas, but nature was more noticeable than the company.

All in all, it was a fun thing to do, and I look forward to trying it again. This wasn't a very fair test, because although we had lovely weather during the days, it actually rained almost all the night (I think - I did sleep as well as noticing the rain). Single skin tents are easy to manage, but tricky in a downpour. There is something quite pleasant about listening to rain while dry oneself. However, it doesn't make for restfulness if some part of one's mind is worrying that water may be getting to something it shouldn't.

Musicals

On Saturday evening I was transported back to a previous life. One that seems several lives ago already.

There was a short window of time among the brethren in which theatre suddenly blossomed. As usual with blossom, it was lovely while it lasted but didn’t last very long. It kind of grew out of the realisation that if the community was to educate its own children, then it had better take some teaching, at least, quite seriously, combined with a need for funds that was becoming quite daunting even for the wealthy brethren.

One of the first elements of education to be championed was literacy and being able to express oneself, and another was confidence and articulacy in speaking, because of the perceived need to be able to rely on all brethren members to say the right thing if called upon in the public arena. That led to plays within the classes, and it wasn’t long before those who were hands-on in the running of the Education Centres (as they were then before the centralised control) realised that a good many birds could be killed with one stone by performing plays as fund-raisers. It worked extremely well, too. The pupils loved it all, and got real experience of the pressures of an audience, while the rest of the brethren tore open the loophole in the ban on entertainment with great glee.

That glee was the reason it couldn’t last. Brethren tend to be quite single-minded in the few things they do pursue, and theatrical performances were no exception. It became fairly obvious that everybody was enjoying it far too much, beyond what could be excused as a useful necessity, and it was all shut down.

Not too long before that I had my own experience of why the stage is so seductive, when I was heavily involved in one of these productions. I foolishly volunteered to write the script and lyrics for a musical, and ended up deeply involved. It was fascinating fun, all the more so because everything was invented from scratch – few brethren had been to see a performance anywhere else, and so they had no idea how things should be done. The ingenuity that showed itself was quite amazing.

That’s all past for me, now, and already was before I left the brethren.

But going to see the Wizard of Oz on stage in London brought a lot of it back. The really odd thing was how much of it reminded me of our amateur efforts. OK, there was an orchestra where we had a few musicians in a side room, and computer controlled lighting where we had old-fashioned lights screwed and clamped where we could get them, and they had a large turntable as part of the stage ... but really it wasn’t so different. I could see why they were doing what they were doing at each point, and their solutions weren’t very far from ours except for the superior resources.

Admittedly we had a homegrown script and score instead of an all-time classic to perform. And part of the fun of our performance was that we had precisely the right number of students to be actors, and so had no chance of selecting for ability, whereas London has the cream to call on. Yet the Wizard of Oz is so stylised that the overall feeling was oddly similar, at least to me. There was no striving for realism. It was performed as a kind of moral fairy-tale, like life reproduced in poster colours. Real actors in a stylised drama reminded me strongly of amateurs attempting realism!

I haven’t seen the original film (I’m still in the early stages of catching up on classics I feel I’ve missed), but I got the impression the stage version is a pretty good effort at reproducing it, and it’s the kind of thing that reproduces well on a stage, where everything is an indication of real life rather than a copy. The critics haven’t been too kind to the show, and the audience must have been a bit thin because we were given a substantial upgrade to our seats, but it made for a great night out.

Too close to see

I often wonder how many of my reactions and emotions are a result, at least partially, of my brethren background, and how much is just me. Speaking to other ex-brethren sheds a little bit of light, but we do all vary quite a lot and I don't have a huge sample set so as to draw definitive conclusions.

The next question is, if a particular life problem can be traced back to a particular cause - in this case, the brethren - how much help is it to know that?

A good few years ago now, when I first got connected to the internet as a still naive brethren member (no active rebellion was intended at the time - I needed a connection to activate important software. And yes, I know I wasn't allowed any such thing) with no plans to do more than be a bit dissatisfied with brethren life, it only took a few days before it occurred to me that I was now in a position to see what the world of the web said about my community. Already at that stage brethren would whisper in shocked awe about the internet and how wicked people had seen to it that all the brethren's secrets were there and could never be removed. A quick check soon showed me that there was no massive online repository of ministry, and no conspiracy of all-knowing villains cooking up plots and misinformation against the brethren. Ironically, the brethren's own actions have since led to the reality coming a little closer to their dreads, but that's beside the point.

What I did discover was a semi-accidental meeting place for many who were starved of news about people who had been important to them and very short on connections to anyone in a similar position. Then, as now, emotions tended to run high and there was a lot of negativity due to the brethren-related troubles in everybody's lives. That shocked me at the time, and I felt compelled to ask why so many people were unable to leave the brethren behind them and get on with their lives. Why, I wondered, if anyone was miserable enough within the brethren to leave, would they stay miserable by obsessing over the past and remaining fascinated by current brethren affairs?

That question started a long and fruitful correspondence, but that's another and more private story.

Several times recently I've seen people with less intimate knowledge of what it's like to be ex-brethren clearly wondering much the same thing. Personally I have been losing the feeling of shock I had then, but I think it's helpful to stand back now and then and remember what it looked like. There are ways in which a less-informed viewpoint can be very useful indeed. I tend to wince whenever I hear a non-brethren person told that they can't understand because they were never part of it.

Having discussed this already this week, several thoughts crossed my mind. One is that some parts of having left the brethren are like an ache - it may not be a huge pain, but the fact that it's constant and can't be cured makes it harder to deal with than a brief agony in some ways. So anyone trying to understand the problem by looking at things as they are must necessarily miss the long grinding-down process that wears away the ability to look rationally at it. Another is that an outside view may be more accurate, but there are difficulties involved in being helpful and communicating that view. People suffering a trauma probably know, intellectually, that they would be better off if they could put it behind them, and hearing someone say so doesn't much help. Nor, actually, does it make it less true.

And one thing brings me round to the beginning again. If I decide that even one problem in my life is all the fault of the brethren, it's very tempting to conclude that as it isn't my fault it also isn't my responsibility. That's comforting, in that it lets me off the hook, but it doesn't fix anything and I'll still be stuck with the same problem years from now. It's better, I think, if harder, to take a good hard look and identify what aspects are down to me.

Another Prom

It feels like it's been a very full week. Normally I find that work and the daily necessities of life take up most of my time and even more of my energy outside the weekend, but this week has been different.

On Tuesday I headed into London promptly after work for a long-scheduled meeting which turned out to be a pleasant meal and pleasanter chat. I am reminded often these days of the pleasures of intelligent conversation without the old consciousness of whole areas of my thoughts which were out of bounds.

The next night I caught a train for London again to get my second experience of a Prom. It felt a bit ambitious having two nights out in a row, but in this case, having been offered tickets free, I couldn't pass up the opportunity. That's a great benefit of having a friend in the management of an orchestra.

It all felt very different this time around, and I'm not really sure how much of that is because it was different, and how much because of changes in me over the last year. There was, on the whole, less of a sense of occasion. Partly because it is now something I've done before, and partly because this Prom was undersubscribed whereas the previous one was a hot ticket. They can't all be blockbusters. The orchestra is respected rather than legendary, and the programme was not the kind which brings audiences flocking, it seems. However, I enjoyed it very much and, in a way that doesn't happen too often, actually caught myself consciously enjoying it at the time. Typically, I find, happiness is retrospective, and asking whether a particular moment is a happy one is a good way of spoiling it, but this time was an exception. Last time I felt like something of an alien intruder, but this one felt very natural. That must be me, as I doubt the audience at the Royal Albert Hall has changed significantly apart from being a little thinner on the ground.

I was there for the Ravel, principally, although as it was a twentieth-century selection I was interested in the rest of it too. The music turned out to be all interesting, but variably enjoyable, with the first half of each half (I'm not sure of my terminology here) seeming more like soundscapes than music, a little like having a movie with no visuals. Reading the programme gave a good clue to what was intended in each piece, and they accomplished it in each case, but it was easier to admire that achievement than be transported by the process. At least I found the visual side less distracting this time. I rather enjoy watching the musicians, some cultivating a slightly bored look while others play the animated eccentric, throwing themselves around as they play. Again, like before, the conductor seemed to be in his own time frame compared to the orchestra, but this time the orchestra didn't actually seem to even take much notice. In the initial pieces (admittedly rather abstract in nature), I could barely detect any connection between his movements and the resulting music, and certainly there was no clue as to the beat or timing. Very odd. They paid more attention to the conductor during the performance of the piece he'd written himself, and gave as good an impression of a thunderstorm as people with musical instruments could.

During the interval we were allowed into the musicians' area beneath and behind the stage, and even ventured just onto the stage itself. That was a novel perspective, definitely. I like the way that the business area even of a big important event like a Prom is always slightly rough-and-ready, and particularly enjoyed the sheet of paper taped to one door saying in large letters "Do not open this door, it squeaks". As it led directly to the stage, I could see the problem.

After the interval, a few of the empty seats near us filled up, and the woman in front of me looked very familiar. After a few minutes I realised why. She was the violin soloist from the first half, looking a little less glamorous close up and a whole lot less animated. I couldn't help glancing at her from time to time, wondering what it could be like to be listening when she had been the focus of all the listening only a short while earlier. I can't say she gave much away.

The final part of the experience this time round was a trip into the bowels of the building down a fire escape to the car park, where a huge door that reminded me of a Bond movie or something let us out into the night. Hitching a ride with part of the orchestra also gave a fascinating light on the previous hours.

So I suppose this week has added a fair bit to my store of new experiences and I'm thankful for that. Although tired, as I say.

Islands

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the supermarket yesterday. No, really.

My car is fairly distinctive and there aren't too many around like it. However, I have noticed an almost-identical twin around the area in the last few months. Yesterday, while getting a ticket in the carpark, it drove round from somewhere else and parked right in the next bay. I ended up having a good long chat to the owner, a German who actually lives very close to me too. He's an enthusiastic member of the fan club for these cars, and when I checked their website (which I used to do more often a while back), I saw that he'd already posted a photo of our cars side-by-side!

Which reminded me that I had been thinking a few days ago about a "belonging" feeling. While I would hesitate to say that I miss the strength of that feeling among the brethren, I can definitely feel its absence. It seems that human beings are hard-wired - to a greater or lesser extent - to feel a need to be part of a group. I couldn't help wondering if this guy's enthusiasm was partly a result of having moved to a new country leaving a certain amount of his old social identity behind, and so therefore he was more disposed to put time and energy into a group that shared an interest. Who knows. If we stay in contact, I may find out.

I don't doubt the old cliche "no man is an island", but it does seem less true than it used to be. The sense of community among the brethren is insistent and relentless if you're feeling trapped by it, and secure and unfailing if you like it. I don't think anyone would claim it was weak. The very fact that it's so hard to break the connection (emotionally, that is - it's physically very easy indeed) means that the sense of being part of something larger than oneself is so ingrained that it never needs questioning. You just ARE part of that larger entity, and anything else is all but unthinkable. By comparison, the links I've experienced on the outside seem fragile and consequently worryingly temporary.

There is a big bonus to the normal outside way. As the links are based on choice in each direction, freedom is built-in. The other side of that benefit is that those of us used to an absence of choice can't help feeling that such links are in danger of breaking at any time. We stand alone, and are dependent on the choice of others for continued community, which can be unsettling. I can understand the temptation to limit one's relationships just to minimise the risk of heartache. Or at the very least, to put energy into the type of community which makes minimal demands, such as the many online forums that seem to grow permanent residents these days. Or a car club.

I no longer have an accessible family myself, and most of my new friends and acquaintances seem to have minimal family ties. That makes them seem like islands to me, and something deep down considers that a rather melancholy state. Yet I doubt they see it that way themselves. Anybody without the experience of belonging to a community that demands your membership be a primary part of your identity as a person would, I think, struggle to see any attraction in the idea. A link based on personal choice must surely be of infinitely greater value than one that is based on demand. And without doubt it is ... except that something in the human make-up does like the security of a strong arbitrary connection. The very fact that you can't change it means that it's reliable.

Freedom is a great thing, and I wouldn't be without it, but it doesn't come without some cost.

Something New to Work On

The blog has been dwindling somewhat and, although I'm a bit sad at that, it is really a good thing. I try to keep it relevant, and that means the subjects are meant to be always about my life as a person who used to be among the brethren. Either things that occur to me about the brethren themselves, or things I've been "protected from" in the past and am therefore encountering for the first time. Well, as time has gone on, there's been less of that. Call it creeping normality ... or maybe a rut. Depends on the viewpoint.

Except that in the summer warmth something is stirring. An old dream is flickering into life. I have taken steps, and thought about more. Yes, I am attempting to move into wedding and portrait photography. That's new.

I've considered that in the past and tended to dismiss it. There are a lot of people in the game, and a lot more people dabbling part-time and so diluting the paying market - Adam Smith himself pointed out that it's very hard to make money doing something that others do for fun. I've tended to concentrate on commercial work when not taking photographs for my own pleasure, as nobody does that for enjoyment and people are readier to pay out for something that has a clear benefit to them in monetary terms. A good picture makes a product easier to sell, and anybody who's tried knows that such pictures are more difficult than they look. And besides, I'm by nature a quiet person, and products don't need bossing around in the way that people do for official photos.

However, there is one huge advantage to the social type of work, and that is that it can run alongside normal employment. Just now, that's very important. And if, as an outside possibility, it turned into enough of a money generator to actually live on, it would also leave useful free time to catch up on areas of my life where I've missed out. That, combined with the fact that I need no longer restrict myself to working alone (and can consequently put some of the burden of visible authority on a trusted partner) means that I can't resist giving it a go. A side benefit is that I already have basically everything I need as equipment, and so needn't risk anything financially.

So I've looked through my photo collection and found just a few photos that could be a seed - maybe enough to convince others I can be trusted with their occasion. I shall spend a bit of time putting together the cards, leaflets, information etc that say "competent professional" and see where that gets me. I may need to get some people to pose artificially, perhaps, so as to fill in gaps. But overall I think I shall be presenting myself as the type who's almost invisible, capturing people and events while staying out of the limelight, and that means I needn't spend too much effort on huge formal set-ups. I have a few more ideas that may offer a bit of differentiation, too.

The biggest problem is publicity, at least in my mind. I've never liked shouting about myself (writing, yes, but that feels more private) and I suspect success may depend on being fairly blatant about self-promotion. I'll gather ideas from wherever I can, but there may have to be some gritted teeth and forthright blowing of my own trumpet at some point.

Still, I've been almost a year treading water. It's time for some vision and this feels like a good one.

Not such a loner

Up to a year ago I would have said that I was by nature a solitary person. The brethren lifestyle is one of pretty near constant companionship, and that was something I always found difficult. I do like my personal space.

But this has been the first weekend for many months that I have spent alone and it has felt quite empty, to my surprise.

One thing that is different to my expectations of life away from the brethren is that I don't have a lot of time. I imagined that once I was free from the eternal round of meetings and obligatory visitings, I would have the space to achieve many of the things I'd always wanted to do. Yet I hadn't really reckoned on housework - well, I had, but not that when combined with a day's work it can leave a person feeling like there's no urgent rush to get non-essential things done. And other free time when spent with valued company seems too precious for activities that could be undertaken alone.

So I thought this weekend would be a good one in that regard. I had a vague mental list of things that I had been wanting to do.

In the event, I didn't do too much. Saturday was spent looking forward to visitors in the evening, and then the visitors came and went. Enjoyably, I hasten to say, but I did feel more alone than before afterwards, and it really wasn't very long compared to the weekend. And most of my list has remained vague.

It's odd, but I have become used to being part of a unit that isn't just me, and that isn't something I particularly expected to do very soon.

Sidling into a Technological Future

Things continue to develop at the bleeding edge of brethren technological advancement. What is particularly interesting to observe is the way that the thin end of various wedges are starting to work further into the previously impenetrable cracks in what was unbroken luddism not too long ago.

I think I've mentioned before about mobiles. Initially, they were strictly attached to cars, and nobody but a very select few was allowed to know the number of any of them. They were for emergency contact and outgoing calls. Those restrictions loosened with time, and I wasn't too surprised to see that. It always seems that once something is allowed at all, it loses the aura of evil that the management spent so much trouble building up. And it wasn't too long before genuine mobiles became available (sorry, they aren't mobiles, they're "portables"), as long as they were the neutered ones provided from the central distributor. How successful they can be in holding back the tide of further loosening ... well, I reserve judgement and will watch with interest.

From my point of view, it has been fascinating watching the computer situation, too.

There was a big initial effort to present the official machines as simply a glorified (literally!) mix of typewriter and calculator. Partly this was necessary to overcome the average brethren-member's suspicion, and hold on to some vestige of the old technophobia, but the computers themselves were set up with the assumption that use would be quite restricted. They are low-powered, with small hard drives and slow processors and loud fans. What's more, they are complete pigs to administer. Any problem of any kind requires the personal presence of the one person for miles around who has the necessary passwords to sort anything out. A corrupted mouse driver, for example, will probably render a machine unusable until that person has time to visit. And an intrusive blocking mechanism randomly shuts down all sorts of things in case they might be an attempt to install something. Depending on the particular computer, opening a document with "install" in the title (such as instructions in PDF form) can do it, working on VBA code can do it, and attempting page setup in Acrobat Reader will do it. And the only functions that have any internet access are automatic updates and email.

Now new computers, with a new model number, are starting to appear. And it seems that even the slow brains behind the technological rollout are realising that things could be done more sensibly. They are more powerful, and quieter, for a start. And - glory be! - they can be administered remotely, and even a little bit of administration can be done by the user. Web access is functional, with a whitelist as a control. That allows access to the central distributor's own website, with permitted programs available for download. It also allows a few other websites deemed innocent enough. The user can also contact the distributor with a request for an unlock code for new software, after which they can install it themselves.

Like the mobile phone situation, this begs the question of how far this will go, and how much the drift to normality can be controlled. The thing is that everything just works so much easier when technology is treated as normal instead of hampered at every turn, and the brethren do worship efficiency in their current version. But where will the line eventually be drawn? I don't really dare make a guess at this stage, but I look forward to finding out.

Getting to know unfamiliarity

This may not make as much sense as I'd like, as I'm battling a headache right now. I have been prone to those this week, which seems to be something to do with my neck. An extra osteopath visit may be required.

Still, my thoughts have been about the perennial puzzle of why ex-brethren feel useless and alien in some circumstances while other "normal" people struggle to see what's so strange. And yes, I'm talking about my own experience, but from conversations it does seem like I'm not the only one.

What eventually occurred to me was that I was thinking about this the wrong way around. In some situations, I feel awkward and odd and don't know what to do. When I say so, I am told not to worry because everyone feels that way, and I've wrestled with why that still leaves me worried. And my conclusion is that it's not that the difference between me and others is that I feel odd and they don't, but that they are used to feeling that way whereas I'm not.

Brethren lead a sheltered life, there's no doubt about that. And for many of us who've left it behind, that was one of the frustrating things we longed to leave. Yet shelter and predictability are habit-forming, and something deep within me expects life to only present me with situations in which I know what is expected - or at least in which I can work out rapidly at a gut level how to act. Rigidity is convenient at an emotional level.

Here on the outside it feels absurd to expect life to be like that. Hence the average person is familiar with unfamiliarity and it must be hard to imagine the kind of life that could lead to normal everyday variation feeling alien. As with so many things, the mind knows that, while something underneath finds it harder to accept.

Most people my age have not experienced everything there is to experience. Yet it is definitely old enough to discover oneself and feel comfortable with a standard set of reactions to the unfamiliar. Whereas I am new to so many things that all I feel able to do is freeze, and that in itself worries me. At least I have a bit more perspective on it these days, and so can watch myself and control the process. Knowing there are understandable reasons does help.

Little bits of life

I had thought I would note a few more things this week, but the days have rushed by and another weekend is almost here. So just a couple of comments, one on unclean links and another on pipelines of filth.

I am now a member of the National Trust, and not just a member but a joint one. That links me with the largest society in Europe (apparently), and surely some of those are bound to be disreputable people? That's what my old co-religionists would say, anyway. In actual fact, one of the things that's so pleasant about the NT is that the average member is so relentlessly middle-class, predictably well-mannered and unobtrusive. We visited yet another of our series of old houses last weekend - Ham House in Richmond - and the pattern held. And it was nice to snack in the sun, sitting on a bench that looked a hundred years old.

My membership sticker is in the windscreen of my car, but I haven't had any comment yet. I'd rather be externally identified by that than as a member of the brethren, I have to say, regardless of their thoughts on the subject.

I have also acquired an increasing fondness for radio, and now wake to the sound of a clock-radio thanks to a gift. That too would be a shock to my family, as radio is almost a defining moral point for brethren - if you can't see the evil, you are the wrong side of a very definite line. Yet I was thinking about that this week, and noting to myself that the doctrine appears to have weakened a lot in the last year or two.

As I understand it, the original argument against radio was that it was an uncontrolled medium in which external forces decided what would emerge from the machine stationed a Christian's home, and such a risk could not be countenanced. But along the way, all electromagnetic waves longer than infrared became demonised ... well, actually, microwave ovens were always acceptable. That never made any sense to me - how could you decide at what wavelength they shifted from innocence to evil? But nevertheless, all kinds of things were banned purely for making waves of the wrong frequency. That seems to have ended now. Radio remotes are OK. Mobile phones are OK, as long as they're from the approved source and carefully crippled. Just another example of deliberate sliding from one emphasis to another, as the original stated reason for banning something is replaced by a convenient alternative reason, which can then be stated to have changed somehow. Still, I can't see radio in the usual sense ever being permitted, as entertainment of any kind is just not a brethren thing.

Oh yes, and one final thing. Fishing. Brethren do not do field sports, and official doctrine says that animals are only to be killed for a reason such as food. Yet I know quite a few brethren who are only to keen to go on fishing expeditions. I've never seen the attraction myself, but having dabbled this last weekend just briefly, I begin to see just a little. Mind you, the water we fished in contained fish who were tragically innocent of the ways of people with rods (maybe something to do with the sign alongside us), and consequently weren't much of a challenge. Another time I hope to do a bit of the sitting-and-doing-nothing type rather than just pulling fish out at will.

Prospective Pieces of Paper

My exploration of the jobs market, although half-hearted, has shown up a few interesting and in some cases disturbing facts. The first among these is that a degree appears to act as a simple indicator that a prospective employee can think with more than their hands, and is therefore used as a filtering mechanism. I should imagine that very few people really think that only graduates are worth employing, but equally I can sympathise with the view that there are so many graduates around that trawling through the mass of the rest of us is more trouble than it's worth.

My inclination is to look for ways around this, as I have a long history of regarding higher education as a combined time-killer and connection-former with a piece of paper at the end of the process. However, having been rebuffed by the MI6 website (well, I think I'd be good at the spy stuff), I began to think the unthinkable: that a simpler solution would be simply to demolish the diploma deficit by doing a degree.

I hasten to say that it's only an option at this stage. Even so, though, complications begin to surface.

At this stage of my life I'm none too keen on taking three or more years out of earning. I doubt I'd ever make up the difference. If I had a solid wedding-photography business for weekends, say, as I have sometimes considered, then perhaps it might be possible to devote weekdays to full-time study. But I'm not convinced. That leaves distance learning.

Then there is the study subject to consider. Should that be merely something that interests me (hopefully enough to last throughout an entire course, which would be a first in my life), a purely functional subject intended to increase my employability in a particular area, or something midway if such a thing exists?

I'm not short of interests. I can imagine fruitfully studying Maths or maybe a more concrete type of Philosophy, but I suspect I'd be better occupied in something with visible results such as Engineering. I have often thought I'd like to get involved in Robotics, for example, or even to learn the formal aspects of software engineering. I'm partway through a tome by Bertrand Meyer, but I think there would be a lot of merit to being taught instead of merely learning in that area, as it is easy to skip important concepts while too ignorant even to see what I don't know.

Yet a look around what is on offer shows that distance learning is very much a poor relation to full-time education, and caters to the lowest common denominator. I can't (admittedly without a comprehensive trawl) see anything like the engineering courses, and the Maths I saw was aimed at people who might not even have a school qualification in the subject. I get the strong feeling I would be heading for frustration.

Welcome to life, everybody says, where there are no simple answers, not even to simple questions.

No Mistakes

Over the last couple of weeks I've been attempting to take life easy. For some reason this time of year is one that I find difficult and I start to get stressed. So in this case one thing that has taken a back seat is the blog.

However, I have had reason to think a little bit about the brethren's attitude to their leadership. One thing that is obvious from the outside, yet baffling, is that they consider their leaders to be infallible, whatever the circumstances.

The thing is that brethren doctrine ties the spiritual very closely to the earthly. It is an important piece of truth to them that it is possible - even required - for each person to be perfect, and so it has also come to be important for them to have proof of that possibility by claiming that it is already achieved by the leader. Who else would they look at for proof? Then, once that step has been taken, it cannot be undone so they are obliged to accept whatever the leader does as perfect.

It isn't actually as hard for them is it would appear. Another article of faith is that God cannot be understood by the natural human mind, and another is that God communicates His thoughts directly to his representative on Earth. Therefore anything strange is not so much unexpected as ineffable. What right has any human creature to understand what might be done as God's will?

This is then backed up by their conviction that, as God's chosen people, they must be misunderstood and hated by the world in general. So it isn't surprising that they might be required to do some things that would look bad to the outside, and the very fact that anyone outside objects is then taken as proof that it has worked and is justified.

Of course, viewed rationally, all this is very dangerous. It leaves the possibility of blatant abuse of authority very open, for a start. And many might say that such abuse has happened on occasions. Yet infallibility, once accepted, is something that can't be backed away from, and so the brethren are stuck with it.

One hundred and eighty degrees

The only time I wish I had a television is when there is a good football match on. Today I discover that the BBC has started streaming the action on their website, so I can watch anyway. The wonders of the modern age.

In the meantime, my main computer has finished updating to a new operating system and is busy cataloguing and backing up my important data - most importantly more photos than I can countenance losing. They were already backed up, but it was time to regroup and do it differently. So computers remain a major part of my life - I can do without TV.

It's interesting to see the brethren's attitude to computers changing quite steadily. From being a complete no-no, they have become vital and acknowledgedly so. That's kind of strange, as over many years I heard all sorts of rationalisations saying that there were more than moral reasons (moral in a brethren sense, of course) for brethren's avoidance of computers. Nothing important should ever be entrusted to machines. Paper and people are always the answer, and machines are a distraction even when they're not actually causing problems.

Well, no longer, it seems. Computers are important. I couldn't agree more, even if I don't agree with the general methods, and it does seem a shame that the neat doctrine U-turn had to wait until after I'd given up on the whole system.

Vapourous Goals

There comes a time in most people's lives, I understand, when they come to the sad realisation that this is all there is. The dreams of youth give way to the mundane realities of real life, and they acknowledge to themselves that they are, after all, just an ordinary person and not the special gift to mankind that the whisper of youth in their head said they were. And that there is not some great task that they are destined to do, just a long long list of small and dull tasks.

That's when men tend to buy big expensive cars and make a few foolish decisions for a while.

I've been feeling a bit like that, but I think it's mostly just an adjustment process. Although I knew that leaving the brethren would be difficult and painful, in some corner of my mind I thought of it as a gateway to something, kind of "in one bound he was free". Instead, not much has changed since, and it's taking some work persuading myself that, actually, that's OK.

I have spent many years telling myself that I was building up to something, and that all the skills and knowledge acquired in the meantime would all be valuable one day. When times were hard I patted myself on the back, knowing that there were things I could do that others couldn't, and sometime that would be just what I needed to get somewhere.

Note all that vagueness. Something, sometime, somewhere. At the moment, my goals have evaporated due to insubstantiality. The barriers have gone, and with them my sense of direction. That's a tricky thing to deal with.

Still, I have a good life, and if nothing much changed for quite some while it would still be a happy one. OK, so I feel there's a hole where some ambitions used to be, but that will be fixed in time. There's no hurry, and when it gets to me I can talk it through with someone understanding. I am learning that it's OK to just "be" sometimes, to go with the flow rather than push and drive forward. When I have learned more about the world as it is now, and about myself in the process, I hope I will be in a better position to make some wise choices.

Gathering

I'm not entirely sure what to make of ex-brethren en masse. Large groups of people are not my favourite habitat, and I can't decide whether being classified as belonging to the group helps or not, but that's just me.

Brethren vary, as people, whatever it may look like to the uninformed observer, but ex-brethren vary more as they have had time to grow away from the previously uniform aspects of life and thought. That applies to appearance, beliefs and behaviour. I'd like to think I could still spot somebody as having the brethren background, but in reality I'd be fooling myself. And, of course, in such variety, there are some I like more than others and some I find more interesting than others, and I expect that applies to all of us - hopefully our opinions on that differ, too.

One key aspect of the brethren past is the difficulty of explaining it to anyone else. It has a shape and a pattern such that it feels as though it makes sense, yet few of those who haven't shared it can grasp more than a succession of details and surface facts. That means that it's a relief for those who share the background to find each other, and somewhat tedious for anyone who doesn't. Many ex-brethren, even those who have successfully moved on in their lives, continue to pick at the whole brethren situation with fidgety mental fingers, and seize on opportunities to compare musings with like-minded others much to the bafflement of outsiders, who wonder why something obviously so negative need be anything other than the past. Any explanation tends to sound like self-pity, and there is very little like self-pity to make a person unsympathetic.

It really is a little like being an expatriate, which was reinforced for me at the weekend by a queue of people wishing for news from "home". I use the word for want of anything better. As I am still a recent leaver by the standards of most, I am in possession of memories that are comparatively fresh, and others hunger for information of some kind it seems: friends and family mostly, or just comparisons with their own experiences and some feel for how things really are now within the barrier of separation. I did my best.

But there is really nothing quite like mixing with people who have that one large factor in common. There is no need for explanation, no need to avoid saying things which make no sense out of the old familiar context, no worries about what anybody might think - at least in that respect. That relaxes a part of my mind that I didn't know was tense.