Faffing II

Ostensibly, we fell out over my immorality. His position was there were no absolute moral laws or absolute moral values. I think you agree with him. My contempt for him knew no bounds.

It is such a beautifully written email that I treasure it: had he devoted the same energy to praising me, I would frame it on the wall. It starts, I fear that your lawyer’s mind is far too supple and devious for me to cope with; it is, indeed, beyond my ken. A good Scots word, ‘ken’ – one I thought you might appreciate. The friendship had seemed deep, perhaps too deep: one of my theories is that we had got too close, and this frightened him, so he had to pull away. He pulled away with great vigour.

Four months after, I emailed to ask if he had forgiven me, and he emailed back to say yes. What sort of Christian would I be if I could not forgive, assuming there was anything to forgive? Our friendship appears to be on a similar footing to before: we met for coffee, and discussed such things as altruistic and pro-social behaviour with particular reference to closing the door against the cold draught, now its spring is broken, and Doctor Who. I am delighted, glad I made the approach, and happy to frame it as asking for forgiveness rather than asking if he had got over himself. He is brilliantly intelligent and beautifully empathetic- for an Aspie, the latter requires calculation rather than mirroring, and his calculation is subtle and effective. It is a friendship I value intensely. But the breach of it was just faffing.

I thought, whose pictures should I show after Degas’ milliners? Why not Luca Giordano, I had shown his pictures before. I did not think until I was looking at the Wikimedia Commons page that my theme should be naked women attacking from the sky, in one case using her breast as a water-pistol. I hope this theme delights you as much as it delights me.

Angel

At Greenbelt, I met an angel. That is the only way I have to describe her.

She is ordained as an Anglican priest, and is without a parish, working as a prison chaplain. She is a channel for the love of God to the men in her care. We agreed how there is spiritual reality, but the words we use to describe it often just get in the way: the church quarrels and faffs about the precise words used, but the things described circle but do not touch the spiritual reality beyond. So we shed our illusions, and see reality for ourselves, and might be able to share our experience with others who have had them too; but it is so difficult with those yet to have them.

The other prison chaplain gives clear guidance, which a man who has suffered a chaotic lifestyle may value. One of their parishioners became a Born-Again Christian, clear that the Bible might be known and give a clear understanding of God’s will for human living. One of the easiest ways of reaching a state of mindfulness or presence is to be submerged in beauty- Heaven in a wild flower, as Blake saw. However there is little immediately recognisable beauty in a prison. You may see beauty in a rusting table-leg, but it helps to see it in a tree first.

She gave him a copy of Brian Cox’s book Wonders of the Universe. Then she saw him again, and he had got it: he had seen the beauty in that book. Writing, now, I am aware that my words give a facile, misleading account of the experience. She was sharing with me one of her delights, one of her successes, in a job where she must have great dollops of yuck; slow progress or apparent sterile stasis for damaged men. I believe this man has a more complex understanding of how reality is, beyond the certainties of the conservative Evangelical. I have the advantage of having looked into her face as she told of it.

I felt her love as she told me, and showed my love to her. We hugged. Before, I had given her Advices and Queries, and declaimed from it.

I was outside the tent around 11.30 when a thick cloud, moving fast across the sky, which had been between us and the moon suddenly wasn’t, leaving a patch of clearness. It was as if the light had suddenly been switched on. I saw Terry clearly, and his clear shadow.

Resurrection

I am away near Diss (that second “s” is so important). Meanwhile, here is the Resurrection, by Luca Giordano. If anyone does not get the point of pictures of Christ’s descent from the Cross followed by pictures of the Resurrection, please do ask.

Love, abhor?

“Love the sinner, abhor the sin.” Okaaaay- what does your “love” actually mean? Love is an ever fixed mark, which looks on tempests and is never shaken. So not an emotional response, possibly a restraint of an emotional response.

I find it easy to mock people who say this. They “love” me by knowing exactly what I need to do and avoid, and telling me that. I think I am a better judge of it. Before I transitioned, I thought I might be reverted within five years, trying to live male again- but I needed to go this way in order to find that was right. Walk a mile in my shoes before telling me what to do: one is flat, the other high-heeled. Loving me means treating me as an adult, independent person and allowing me to make my own mistakes; and for them, loving means wanting an ideal, unchanging Best for me.

My exercise, then, is to find value in the Love- and the abhorrence: for I loathe homophobia. Can I Love the person while abhorring the sin? Can I separate out my own emotional reaction to the sin, bracket it, and love the person? That would mean restricting the ways in which I opposed the sin.

Someone called “Ann Coulter said “Liberals always think of Christ as some pantywaist”. It means, effeminate person. The world is divided between those who emphasise “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” in Jesus’ words, and those who emphasise “Go, and sin no more”. But Jesus said both. So the liberal can construct from Jesus’ words a Jesus who looks like him- forbearing, self-sacrificing- and the conservative can also find a congenial Jesus. I can find ways of explaining away the bits of Jesus I do not like, but it might be better to live with them, allow them to be, and not rush to an understanding of them.

Ann Coulter quickly repels me; and I want to see her spirit, intelligence and articulacy, and delight in them, while despising the causes to which she devotes them.

Saint Michael

Here is Saint Michael defeating the Fallen Angels:

And here he is trampling Satan:

What strikes me about both paintings, and other representations of the Archangel, is the gentleness on his face as he tramples and stabs his enemies, God’s enemies. There is no failure of purpose, no regret, no questioning, and no anger or malice. He does what he has to do.

More on Jung later, but whether or not I have the idea of an Archetype right I wish to find that Michael in me, the single purpose. Part of my journey towards it is the karate practice. The tension in the block or the blow only comes in at the end. I should be relaxed while making the movement. It makes it faster and more effective. My thinking and exerting get in the way.

When doing a “Plank”- balance on elbows and toes, head body and legs straight, in order to strengthen the core- muscles around the waist, abdomen and back- I fight to relax, to let my unconscious and my body choose the optimal muscles to do the task. Tensing up merely makes me fight myself, and increase the labour of it.

Though in kumite I need to maintain a strong guard, to prevent it being knocked out of the way. Even then not tense, but ready. Watching the young brown belt dance this morning was so beautiful, I was lumbering after him, it is the strength in the ankles maintaining the movement which gives this lightness. And I need to loosen the hocks behind my knee in order to kick with more power: touch my toes, and stretch them.

I dreamed of a tiger. It had nothing else to eat, so it came for the people: me, and the Natives. (I am politically correct, my dreams are not.) As I was between the tiger and the natives, it would attack me first. I felt Pity for it- it would be a maneater, hunted down. Then I woke up, without the sense of nightmare, and thought of Durga riding on the tiger, and that saying from Thomas. I should eat it. Other races may symbolise the Shadow: these weak, cowering, terrified Natives are mine.

At the Quaker meeting this morning, I looked at Julie, in her pink shawl, pink pedal-pushers, pink sandals, soft brown curls reaching to her shoulders and framing her face, and felt such pain and regret at how I have always felt so wrong and inadequate, not a proper man or a proper woman, something different and less. There is a place for my deep femininity, I am not Wrong.

Peter ministered from Rowan Williams: When you’re lying on the beach something is happening, something that has nothing to do with how you feel or how hard you’re trying. You’re not going to get a better tan by screwing up your eyes and concentrating. You give the time, and that’s it. All you have to do is turn up. And then things change, at their own pace. You simply have to be there where the light can get at you.

Kelley ministered on faith, grace and works from Ephesians 2:8-

⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith —and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰ For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

I ministered on trusting my human-ness, my Unconscious being, my body, my evolved creature-ness to do what I need to do, with far less conscious monitoring than is my wont. Perhaps that could be expressed as Grace rather than Works. After, Andrew shared his Presbyterian feeling that charitable works should involve some sacrifice, so his time in Botswana was not proper charity as he had loved it too much. But God’s work should be fulfilling for us.