Weekend In Scotland

Another new experience, and now that this one has arrived I am beginning to doubt my sanity.

We are heading to Glasgow for a weekend break, and going by bus. It's exceptionally cheap, at three pounds return, but we are travelling overnight too, to minimise the time away yet maximise the time at our destination. Friday night and Sunday night on a bus! I think I might have managed that better when I was a teenager, but I'm sure the experience will be worth it. Travel is possible on a small budget of time and cash, and Scotland will be new to me.

Planning these trips has made me realise that another brethren cliche is in fact a fallacy - that is that only among the brethren can you find a welcome in other parts of the country or the world. I haven't the time to elaborate at this point (I have a bus to catch), but it's amazing the hospitality you can find.

Assorted Experiences of Openness

Fortunately for my sanity, which has been in danger of being overwhelmed by new experiences however pleasant it is to do new and different things, my newness quotient has lowered a little recently. Still, without coming anywhere near to being an effort, I met with several new activities over the last few days, and there are always things to learn.

Saturday night was an odd mix. We spent the evening at a pub where a band was booked for live music. As there was an entry fee starting about an hour before the band got set up, we arrived early and played Scrabble at a corner table. Games have always been a home-bound activity for me before, so that was interesting. And the band was loud. Good, though, despite my fear for my ears. I enjoyed watching a large assortment of middle-class people all nodding in time to power chords and feedback-heavy riffs.

But Sunday was the real education, in the tiny aspects that so often have the most potential for teaching.

We had a good walk across Wimbledon Common, ending on the far side at a Thai Temple. Having been in no hurry to leave the house, we missed the apparently traditional free lunch, and the temple was full of chanters so we were reluctant to enter. But the grounds are open to all, and anyone can help themselves to free hot drinks and biscuits from a collapsable table under an awning, then wander paths among trees and shrines, over wooden bridges and alongside streams and pools. At regular intervals are little signs with messages of Buddhist wisdom, pointing along the path to purification and away from suffering. A saffron-robed monk with grey ribbed socks was debating spiritual points with a T-shirted sceptical enquirer and with good humour.

I was also very taken with the free and easy attitude to sacredness that was demonstrated in the scattered shrines. I make no claim to understand any other religion outside my own experience, but it did seem quite strange to see not only small and cheap-looking plastic Buddhas among the more sober stone ones, but also what looked like children's toys given equal prominence, and cheesy and tacky ornaments. I have no idea what the significance of any of it is, but I liked the idea that a miniature statue of Don Quixote (headless besides) can be accorded a roughly equal status with the venerated founder of an entire religion. It felt to me like an open-mindedness, and a willingness to let important items stand on their own without artificial pedestals.

So I was cheerful for more than one reason after having spent an hour or so there.

From the sublime to the everyday, we stopped at a major supermarket before heading home. Mammon is worshipped on Sundays as well as weekdays in modern Britain. But even there, things can be learned. In this case it was a whole aisle devoted to Polish products (meaning products for Poles rather than for adding shininess). That made me feel good about my country for a change. I like living somewhere where people from other places want to live, and that we're comfortable enough with it that our businesses milk the new market. Of course, it helps that the Poles seem to be desirable imports (at least the ones I've met, which is quite a few now), but then many supermarkets have had ethnic aisles for a long time now. And the rest of us have learnt to buy from those aisles and had our tastes broadened as a result.

Maybe it's because of many years experience of all things closed and shuttered and walled in, but I enjoy all these signs of openness.

Acceptance

I have been pondering what seems to be strange behaviour on my part.

When explaining my family situation to people who know nothing of my background, a situation which also includes friends who used to be very close, the reactions tend to range from incredulous to just plain puzzled. Besides finding it hard to understand why such a cut-off condition should occur at all, people also wonder why I accept it on the brethren's terms instead of trying to do something about it. I mean, obviously these people mean something to me - why let them dictate the terms of our relationship?

What I concluded today was that it is a no-win situation when you're dealing with unpleasant factors around people you care for. If somebody declares that they want nothing to do with me, and I would like it to be otherwise, then all the power is in their hands, regardless of their reasons.

Because I care for a certain set of people, I respect and take account of their feelings, however hurtful and disagreeable they may be. The only people I would be possibly prepared to hurt by confronting them with their errors and forcing them to behave differently would be those who I don't respect and like. And if the point at issue is whether I can spend time with them, then that disqualifies the effort, because why would I do that for such people? It's a classic paradox.

It's a problem with no solution, and the only way of dealing with it is to find a way of making peace with things as they are. Which looks like a lack of caring to some people, but is very far from it.

On This Day

... usually, nothing happens.

I'm quite sure that cards and secret messages fly around among certain sections of the brethren, although Valentine's Day is most certainly not approved, but I was never part of any of it. I suppose I was the lone type of rebel, not the social type.

So it's a very happy feeling to have a reason to notice the passing of this date. I'm quite willing to set aside my suspicion that it's tacky and commercial, and just celebrate the fact that two people in this world have each other in their lives. As with Christmas, I can't help feeling that it's an alien custom to me, and worrying just a little about the pitfalls, but that's normal for me.

And with that, it's off out for dinner.

TV Times

Six months in my own house yesterday (I just realised). And I still don't have a television.

To be honest, I'm not very well disposed to TV in general, and you might even say I'm verging on jaundiced. That's partly the result of a brush with the BBC that left me with a very low opinion of them as a body, but also because I am in no hurry to develop the watching-TV mindset.

Television means expense, both for the equipment and, in the UK, the license. I kind of resent that, and also know that I would feel obliged to justify the expense by watching the (insert expletive here) thing. Frankly, I don't have the time. There are always DVDs and music for entertainment when I'm feeling passive, books otherwise, and a million things to achieve.

But that's not to say I won't watch TV, because I do when I'm not at home. It still leaves me thinking the whole concept is deeply weird, though, and I wonder if I'm the only person in the western world to think so.

The main thing is that this is a light form of entertainment, generally undemanding, inclined towards the lowest common denominator - and yet it requires detailed knowledge of a schedule. If you feel like watching TV, you get what's on. If there's something particular you want to watch, then you have to make the time when it's on. I know there are recording facilities and so on, these days, but it still seems strange to me. You either schedule your life around your entertainment, or become so passive that you accept other people's choice for that time slot.

But what has prompted me to write about this just now is that it suddenly occurrred to me that whenever I see some television it features the SAME FEW PEOPLE. That is really odd.

Sometimes it's one person in charge of the show, sometimes another, and there are token appearances from normal people, but the bulk appears to be a constant rotation of tellypeople. Do these people spend their lives being filmed? What are they for? So that bored and lonely people feel as if they know at least somebody, because they're always in that little box in the corner?

OK, I suspect I'm weird and out of step. After all, I've never seen why celebrities exist either, so obviously I have a piece of my brain missing. But I'm really not very interested in people I don't know unless they have something remarkable I can learn from them.

Oh, and before anyone rushes to tell me that programmes like "Life On Earth" make television totally worthwhile despite the dross, I'd like to point out that I can buy that from Amazon if I wish. The only point I'm willing to concede is sport, as that is time-sensitive. But I'm not going to spend out just for the occasional match.

Out of the Loop

One very odd thing about being an ex-member of the brethren is the extent to which you become a non-person to them. In the brethren's little world, things are divided quite neatly into "inside" and "outside", and the assumption is that the two never meet. Outside has no need, or even any right, to know about the inside.

Last Sunday, a member of the brethren who I used to know well, and both liked and respected, died suddenly. I know because his daughter told me, and she has been out of the brethren for years.

I was interested to see how long it took for the news to come from any other direction, and the answer is that it never will. I spend large amounts of the working week around people who will have mixed with the deceased on a daily basis, as I used to, and today they disappeared around midday without any word of why - to the funeral. If I hadn't already known about it, I would still be in the dark. As I am no longer among the brethren, why would I need to know, and why should I know? Why would I be interested? It doesn't occur to the brethren that I retain common humanity, and still care what becomes of people who were my friends.

It's not only me, either. I won't make public other people's lives, but even the non-brethren family of this man were included in events on sufferance, and my impression is that the brethren think it unreasonable of them that they should want to grieve rather than stay away and have nothing to do with brethren affairs.

I am reminded of the mythical ogre who forced people to lie on his bed, then chopped off what didn't fit. The brethren's worldview is very small, and very tidy, and woe betide you if you are over the edge. You'll feel the chop, and it'll hurt.

More Secularism

Reading a description of the mental changes involved in the shift from Latin Christianity to Reform Christianity, I feel as though some things have become clear for the first time.

The ancient sense of being was that of being subject to the influence and activity of the world around, by means of what could be called magic, although was often called religion. For Catholics, such magic included relics and the Eucharist, and rituals meant to minimise consequence of sins. The reformers held that God was too great to be limited in His acts, and to think that mere earthly objects could hold powers that stemmed from God was idolatry. This demystified the natural world in many ways, and opened up the possibility of using it in any way humans saw fit, as God clearly willed the flourishing of His creatures.

What's more, if nothing in particular is sacred, then everything is sacred when associated with a person who is blessed of God. So even trivial possessions and actions gain moral significance. And daily life can become a constant testing of one's position in the sight of God. A person is obliged to flourish, but only while ceasing to worry whether they do - focus on God's will ought to bring the flourishing.

But there is a tension between flourishing and complacency, as doing well can indicate that God's blessing is upon a person, or that they are too focussed on the present and not enough on eternity. And there is also a danger that having removed the essence of sanctity from the externals of life, it is not too difficult to move beyond that and discard it entirely to concentrate fully on the flourishing as an end in itself.

I feel as though the brethren are quite recognisable from all this. In a way, they have reversed the usual pattern, and have fixed on an ideology in which human gain is pursued and held to be God's will in its own right.

A Secular Age

That's the title of a book I have just bought in the last few days. I like to keep an eye on the book reviews in various publications, and this book kind of called out to me from a couple of mentions, much as "The God Delusion" did. It's good to get a bit of illumination on the things going around my head, whether I ultimately agree with what I read or not.

This tome, by a Canadian philosopher, is not what I would call a brilliant piece of writing. The style, while chatty at the sentence level, is complex and academic in structure, and I find I have to keep a concept in mind over several pages of preparatory digression before a point becomes clear. However, the ideas are the essence, not the style, and they are well worth the effort.

The overall subject is the retreat of religion from the Western sphere of thought, and why it happened, and what we have both gained and lost in the process, and what it means to have religious faith in the context of that retreat. I hadn't intended to start the book just yet, but having checked out the introduction and first chapter, I have already met with some useful concepts for the change in my own life.

The first is that in some circumstances (if not most), actual belief is less significant than behaviour. If an assumption that one believes in something guides one's actions, then the question of whether that belief is really present may never be confronted. That means that only rare people dissent from the default beliefs of the society they're in, because it needs a positive step to do so. In medieval times (and also now among the brethren) the defaults were different to what they are for most of us now, and that makes the state of mind then hard for modern people to take in.

Another is the idea of "background", in the sense that there are some things in any system of thought that remain unquestioned. If the background is different between two people or two societies, then real understanding is very difficult.

And the most useful idea just at the moment is that everybody's lives have three components: a sense of occasional complete fulfillment, a total absence of that feeling, which produces despair, and a general middle ground in which one is aware of the possibility of both extremes but is grounded in daily life and is the usual state of being. In times past, that fulfilled sensation was associated with religion, but it is key to modern thought that there are other alternatives, and complete satisfaction may be found by other means as well as by religious experience. The important thought to me, though, was that it is impossible to function successfully as a human being without some grasp of such transcendence over daily life - that is, unless you have the feeling deep down that complete happiness is possible, and know roughly what form it would take, your life will tend towards that despairing absence.

That's where I'm at. My life became intolerable among the brethren because I became aware that what the brethren held out as an ultimate goal wasn't something I could accept as complete happiness. When that's the case, daily life is no longer acceptable. Now my woolly ideas of personal nirvana are gaining gradual solidity, and I become more grounded as they do.

As for the book, I recommend it - if only to people with good capacity for thick complicated books. Anyone wanting to grasp the brethren's mindset could do worse than to read it, mentally substituting the brethren for the pre-modern societies he discusses. There are amazing parallels.

Necessary Desires

I had never really thought I would need to ask myself this question, but it turns out that I do:

What do I want out of life?

It's a query that I think many ex-brethren are ill-equipped to answer of themselves, although I'm a bit cloudy as to the exact reasons for that. It may be partly to do with the teaching that our own desires are not only irrelevant but something to be fought against and overcome. When you grow up in an atmosphere where that is taken for granted, you find ways of concealing the nature of your desires even from yourself, hiding them behind more complicated reasons.

One simple example would be the purchase of a new car. It isn't enough to simply want one and to have the resources to do so. The purchase will be because the business demands a certain degree of newness, the family needs more space, it's more efficient to have a car with a warranty ... and so on. These are not just reasons given to others, but I think most will really believe them.

Similarly, a day out will be for the sake of the children, or because somebody needs a break. A good christian shouldn't want anything at all, not even a day with his family - although as a good christian he should be looking after them, and that may include such days.

The doctrine is that saved sinners have forfeited the right to any desires of their own, and that, in practice, happiness is found by controlling one's desires rather than fulfilling them.

So, if I've been told all my life that "wants" are a sign of insufficient christianity and poor character besides, how can I now deal realistically with my plans for the future? The honest answer is "with difficulty".

I do still believe to some extent that happiness comes most from not seeking it too hard, and that self-indulgence is very definitely not the way to it. Yet I have also come to believe that even those who claim to do nothing for themselves are still following their own desires, whether they know it or not. At some level, the satisfaction they get from bypassing their own superficial wants outweighs the downsides of doing so.

But those of us who have left the mental straightjacket behind have a kind of obligation to look at things more clearly and honestly. If I find that I do get the most out of denying myself, then I can continue to be comfortable doing so. If, however, I am merely doing so in order to fit into an image I have of myself, then I am storing up mental conflict, which is unhealthy.

I don't plan to turn self-obsessed overnight. But I feel quite strongly that it is time to look at the various aspects of my life, and think about whether each thing is needed, or whether it is really something I want, or merely a hang-up. It has started with small things, and just the awareness of the process has helped me to say "no" on occasion. As I get to grips, I may find out more, and graduate to the larger issues of life.

Being Busy, Fitting In

Weekends are quite often busy these days, and with things that are very different to life before.

("Before" is now a loaded word, as increasingly my life appears split into two.)

This weekend had its fair share of such activities. Firstly, on Friday night, was swimming. When I first went I was a little apprehensive, as the last time I was in water deep enough to swim in was when I was eleven and failing to get my badge for swimming a length. However, although I am still not a swimmer, I can get from place to place in a pool without drowning - always a useful skill. And it's an activity which is simultaneously relaxing and tiring, which is a good thing for someone inclined to think too much.

Then, on Saturday, was not one but two birthday parties. The first was not too scary, being at a centre for people with learning difficulties. I've been to those a couple of times before, and they're quite endearing. The second, a mass surprise party for someone's sixtieth, was a little more daunting.

Oddly, though, in spite of having to slot in among more than a hundred people in a crowded set of rooms in a bar, and having to fight above loud music to have even simple conversations with people I didn't know, it didn't seem too strange. When I thought to myself "what am I doing here?", what most surprised me was how long it had taken for such a thought to come. It was a long way into the evening, and was prompted by seeing a grey-haired man with missing teeth, a pierced nipple and more tattoos than I could count, dancing with his shirt off. And that's OK, too. I answered my own question with the thought that I was helping to make an occasion, and actually enjoying myself at the same time. Not every experience needs to be just like others before it.

In actual fact, it was another milestone in feeling just a part of society, rather than an odd-shaped piece in the wrong jigsaw. Among so many people there was obviously quite a variety, some who looked very dressed-up, some who looked like they'd normally be shouting at the football in a pub, and some (most noticeable by their discreet appearance) who looked roughly like I felt - as though their usual pleasures were less social ones, but this made a change. We're all different.

Then Sunday brought a trip out into the country to meet friends. And it hadn't occurred to me until today that anything about that was at all unusual on a Sunday - which shows how far I've come in six months, especially as I spotted several minibusfuls of brethren on the way back. Sundays mean lie-ins and walks, these days.