Musings on a sensitive issue

My internet's been dodgy of late so I've not posted for a while. Life has been somewhat bizarre and I'm concerned that my depression's returning, but hopefully once I get back into the swing of uni life my mood will improve. In the next few weeks I have to decide the topic of my dissertation, find a member of staff in the relevent field, decide whether I want to work abroad next academic year and if I want to, where I want to go. I also have at least one rather large piece of coursework, my sister's hen party and wedding, and a sea of reading to wade through, so there's certainly plenty to keep me busy.

One of my housemate's friends went with them to church yesterday. He's a sweet guy who seems to be really searching for truth of some kind, but is quite scared of Christian society, as he's gay and believes that he'll be harshly judged. In my old church (the one in question) at least, I know that this would be the case. I don't know how he'd 'officially' be treated but I'm all too well aquainted with the stances of my friends who attend, who are mostly very well meaning, but one of which claims to be homophobic in the same light-hearted way that others might relate a minor personality flaw, and another of which has scoffed at the idea that God loves homosexuals.

I personally believe that homosexuality is probably not part of God's 'ideal' (as it were) plan for us, and is perhaps a product of the broken world in which we live, but don't believe I can make a strong stance on the morality of something that I (and I know this can be debated either way) do not feel that the Bible gives definite teaching on, and which must be incredibly hard to deal with in such an un-accepting society, the complexities of which I could not feel unless I were in that position myself.

I would not feel in a position to condemn a homosexual person or the lifestyle choices that they had made, but instead to extend love, and to try to as a Christian be if anything a more accepting part of society. To this end I viewed the introduction of civil partnerships in Britain as a positive step, as I believe that the law is in place to protect the poulation, and that homosexual couples should be entitled to the same legal and financial protection as heterosexual couples, with their wish to maintain a long-term relationship supported not hindered. It's a tricky and a contentious area, but too often I feel that I'm wanting to 'protect' homosexual friends from the church, as opposed to encouraging them to join with us, and to me that is desperately sad.

Musings on Church

In order to work out what I think I should be doing about Church, I need to work out what I think Church should be all about. At the moment, this is what I see our priorities should be

-To work together in order to be God's hands and feet in blessing and showing love to the world, thus building the kingdom of Heaven as best we know how.
-To build a supportive community which encourages and provides signposts in the spiritual development of both those that are a part of it and those that aren't.

How is that best achieved?

My Dream

Last night I dreamt that I was trying to help my ex-boyfriend's girlfriend find a dress to wear. I was trying to be nice, but her friend (actually an unrelated girl from church) construed everything I said as offensive, and I got so upset that I ended up slapping her. Everyone, including my ex-boyfriend crowded round her, disgusted at me, and I ran off naked. I somehow ended up running past my old secondary school, which now had climbing flowers growing all up the fences. Some of the flowers were constructed into a dress so I put this on, but then some of my old male teachers, who had been standing around outside chatting, spotted me and started shouting over to see if I was okay. Ashamed, I started running, pulling myself along by my arms as I kept falling over the dress. My old headmaster gave pursuit, grumbling all the time about how restrictive his marriage was. And I ran until I was exhausted, at which point I sat down and tried to cover myself, and he complemented me on my excellent turn of speed and stamina, saying that I must have amazing legs. I pointed out that I had in fact been pulling myself mostly with my arms, at which he seemed less impressed. Then I woke up.

I don't usually have interesting dreams, but this was most bizarre. Clearly my head is at a strange place right now.

Extreme Pilrgim

I just watched the first episode of a tv programme called 'Extreme Pilgrim'. It was interesting; centring on a Church of England priest going to China to experience Buddhism courtesy of Zen and martial arts. I could imagine the voices of friends, family and Church members warning against syncretism, even ready to exorcise the man, and definitely dubious of him as a representative of the Christian faith. However, the overall conclusion of the show, at least as far as I was concerned, was that there is inherent spirituality in simple community living and in stilling your soul.

In terms of stilling one's soul, I was put in mind of a talk I heard by Peter Scazzero, who champions the daily office as an important and healthy discipline, and of a talk entitled '5 Pagan values Christians hold dear' by the late Mike Yaconelli, in which he attacks busy-ness as a Christian value. As a naturally low energy (we could say lazy but I prefer to blame genetics) person this has always resonnated with me(!), if simply because I have at times tried to maintain a typically busy Christian lifestyle and have lost myself in it, become ridiculously stressed, and as a result got ill and emotionally unstable. Maybe this in itself is an indication of my lack of spiritual stamina, but I object to that evalution. Much as I do believe that Christians should be deeply involved in community and environmental work etc, we should not be judged by our busy-ness. In fact, it would be preferable not to be judged at all, which, although we talk about it, still seems an alien concept to most Christians.

I'm very attatched to the idea of community living, although I'm sure that I unduly romanticise it. Me and a close friend, being quite 'hippy' and environmental in our tendencies, always dream about creating a more environmentally sustainable female semi-monastic community after university. We aren't quite sure if this will involve compulsory singleness, it must be admitted that this depends on how pessimistic we feel as the time. Much as I'm a loner by nature, and may end up single for long periods if not permanently, I feel that it's quite important to live, or at least closely share our lives, with others. The creation of this community culture is a key function of church as far as I'm concerned, although it will always be a struggle, as Western society has become so individualist.

Stillness

I'm sitting here at two in the morning in the stillness of somebody else's home, living in borrowed space with only a backpack's worth of belongings. It makes me wonder about what life is actually all about. That sounds trite I know, and I could get all-uber spiritual on you just to prove that I can, but that's not really the point of what I'm saying.

The point is that I can spend time and money 'building' a life for myself, kitting myself out with everything I think I need, equiping myself to be, or at least seem, an interesting well-rounded individaul, and to live the kind of life that I want. But then I'm sitting here without even a bed (admittedly with the laptop) and I'm happier here than at my house, in my room with all my 'stuff'. So what is life? I talked about 'building' a life, but so much of that is surely just peripheral? And how much of that peripheral 'stuff' is just there to make me look like I have an interesting life, and to express what kind of a person I am? When all that is removed, what really defines me, and makes my life good or bad?

There's nothing quite like sitting in the stillness, realising that you're actually happier without that houseful of moderately expensive junk, to qwell those materialistic urges and make me ponder the big questions, such as what my life really boils down to, and what I really want to spend my time doing with it.

I'm going to Kenya for a month this summer for my course, it'll be my first time out of Europe and two of those weeks will be spent with most likely just a handful of us students doing what we want. We're staying in mudhuts. It's always been my dream to get 'out there' and experience the world, I guess after this summer I'll have a slightly better notion as to whether I can handle it or not.

How can I know what I'm capable of if I've never set foot out of the box?

New Year

Happy New Year!

Am staying at my friends' house for a while, is nice as they have heating and hot water. It's nice to have nice people around. Strange though how the only people I feel really comfortable with are non-Christians/those that Christians'd call non-Christians. Surely that shouldn't be the way things work. Although I guess it was the same for Jesus, the religious people were really judgemental of him and he spent most of his time with people that they didn't accept. Not that I think I'm Jesus.