Late Night Questionings

I went to bed early tonight, feeling decidedly under the weather, but being tired and having a head apparently packed tight with cotton wool doesn't necessarily mean that the needed sleep will come. Meanwhile, there's something about illness, even minor, that invites worries and negative thoughts. So, as ever, a blog posting goes some way to exorcising them.

Some questions have been going round my mind in the last week.

The personal first: why do I so frequently feel hopeless? The recent travel has boosted my confidence in some useful ways, yet I still feel less than a full member of normal society. When it comes to some point of test, I find I back away, unsure that I will measure up to what is required. Looking at alternative jobs (a necessary precaution, I think, although things seem to be smoothed over at work) has revealed very little that I would seriously consider going for - often because the type of jobs advertised seem to be quite bureaucratic, but also because I really can't see why the advertiser would consider me. Is this just me, or what?

More interestingly, I have had an assumption challenged. It is fairly obvious that the brethren have changed their attitude to people they deal with in their religious administration. By which I mean leavers, willing and unwilling, joiners and re-joiners, and various species of sinner. The most noticeable change is that the rules are no longer fixed, but that circumstances alter cases. I had thought, without examining my thoughts in detail, that this was a good thing.

After all, if one's life is under judgement by someone with the power to make major changes to it, you would kind of hope that they might look at other things besides how specific events match up to rigid rules. There might be reasons for actions, or intentions buried by external forces. Other people might be affected. One might be especially grateful for leniency, and that leniency might therefore be more effective than the letter of the law. The brethren have a history of harshness without exceptions, so I assumed that any watering down had to be good.

On balance, I still think so. Yet having been the subject of the new fuzzy rules, I can see the point of view that says it's not such a good thing.

In the old days, you knew where you stood if you did something against the rules - and you probably stood on your own on the outside, having been kicked out. That certainty at least went some way to focusing the mind. These days, it's harder to tell your position, and consequently harder to adapt to it. The apparent position may even vary from week to week, and keep you off balance, prolonging the mental torture. That's not theoretical, either. I still don't know what my formal position is. As far as I'm concerned, I am no longer part of the brethren, and it doesn't much matter what they call my degree of severance from them, but it is disconcerting to have dealings with various current members and find that their attitudes differ. Nobody really seems to know what's going on.

I have my suspicions that there is some element of deliberateness to all this. I think that the original easing of rules was due to a long-overdue realisation that common humanity demanded it, but I doubt it has escaped the management's notice that it can be a more effective means of control, too. I can't regret that the harshest elements have been softened, but it isn't a wholly clear-cut improvement.