Creature Christmas

Welcome to Between The Stools on 18^th December 2022, and our festive service – literally, a festival – called Creature Christmas. This is our third year of such services.

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/creature-christmas

I’ve set a precedent of the title being a single word preceding ‘Christmas’. ‘Creature’ is more alliterative than ‘animal’, and encompasses more than the living, moving oft 4 legged beings which we categorize as non-human. ‘Creature’ suggests that fish, birds and the various creepy crawlies are also included…but it is broader still: it is all things created, including us.

As I hope you’re expecting, Between The Stools does not do conventional, so there will not be a single carol here tonight, and not the usual lessons format that so many other churches as well as secular concerts will offer. Nor will their be secular festive songs, which I admit that I abhor along with the commercialisation of Christmas. This is one of the two times of the year where this community is at its most Christian; and yet this will still be very different.

I picked the theme intuitively, but I knew that it wouldn’t be a critter dress up pageant and cute toys or cartoons, although I do intend to feature some animals.

Let us pray and we shall explore more

I wondered if now was the time for an end of year community chat? Some may be joining for something seasonal, perhaps new to us, and I don’t wish to risk alienation so early on, and yet I do believe in being honest and taking risks.

I will for now cast a swift eye over this past year, and ask you to pause and do the same.

I ask you to use your inner eye, your spiritual eye. What has really been happening in the world, and what might the events be signifying? Are there ways to see those events outside of what the mainstream media is telling us? YES! I say. On my first Christmas service, which was also our first full length service, I believed us to be on the cusp of era-defining change, and that didn’t seem to come. I am bored of being told: it’s next year. But think of who has left us this year…what is being broken down, yes even through the events that are making us mad and anxious. I know that we may all have on our minds not only the places where that there has been conflict and displacement (I note which is the best known), but fears over costs and strikes. I believe that these overreaches will lead to the end of certain systems that have hitherto oppressed us. I will not make further comment on those this time except to say that I stand with those who have stood up to energy companies over their greed-induced orchestrated price hikes.

I also note that mainstream entertainment media is often showing us historical dramas about the end of eras, when those who had been the powerful few fall amidst a public awakening.

Let us take a moment, and rather than sit in fear and regret, see a pattern of hope emerging from what may seem like dark times. No, I may not know about your year as you may not know about mine – although you may know I lost my home a year ago and am not yet settled and still await justice, and that is far from all going on with me. I say that to illustrate I’m not saying this glibly from a place of ease. But as I reflected, I started to see new shoots in what had felt like very ploughed up nude earth, sitting there fallow and forgotten. I started to notice the nature nestling in those wilded bits. I started to learn to be in nature, in places that didn’t seem beautiful, that didn’t seem interesting or hopeful and to watch the seasons, and to listen.

As I write, I can hear many birds, despite the freezing weather that’s putting off some human movements, chattering in seeming delight. What might their tones mean, other than rejoicing at a newly replenished source of food? Might they carry messages…for us?

I learned that bird song soothes human nerves due to its heavenly frequency, as does whale song; avian arias are connected to the solfeggio scale which is healing.

So I’m going to play you some and invite you to consider your year…maybe you’ll want to come back to this

This is a song by the actual Birds; but I encourage seeking out solfeggio and Gregorian chants

We’ve not done liturgy before at Between The Stools – I’m not a fan – but I decided to write something like it for this time:

God of animals and us, bless and keep us as we gather and consider the theme of your birth

If we feel sadness, bring us hope and comfort

If we feel alone, bring us companions and care

If we feel anger, quell our iresome breast

If we feel confusion, irritation, disbelief, cynicism… will you help us put those aside

Fill our hearts, and give us outward signs of fullness

Give us our daily bread, and fire, and bath and give us joy

Give us peace and insight; if we await resolution, especially as the recipient of injustice, let that show itself

If we have been unjust, show us how to right the balance and be reconciled

Give us not easy, convenient restoration that masks resentment and cracks

but the deep, lasting transformative kind

Amen

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SERMON

My first reaction to this theme – apart from attempting to broadcast it live from a stable – was to seek out the animals in the Christmas story. There’s Mary’s donkey that she rode to Bethlehem, the oxen in the stall with her, Joseph and the New Born One…what other animals might have been witness to that uncommon delivery suite? Sheep are present with their keepers at the angelic host spectacular…and then, a year on, those wise men, those ‘keepers of the secrets of the heavens’ on their camels.

Well, some of you may already know that not one of those critters is in the Biblical text. The only camel is in John The Baptist’s hair shirt in the next section. Jesus explicitly rides on a donkey into Jerusalem at the start of Holy Week, but we’re not told that his mum (with him inside) had any such vehicle – it’s conjecture (although interesting symmetry). Similarly, the Magi’s mode of transport is unnamed. And my New International Bible doesn’t even say the word ‘stable’ – Mary uses a manger for a crib because there is no room in the inn, so we deduce that the Holy Family is in a byre. We don’t know who or what else inhabits with them; our annual animal tableau is a fabrication as much as the knitted ones. The nearest we get to animals in the Gospel accounts – there are but two – are that shepherds watched their flocks. But my Bible doesn’t even mention the ovines by name.

(Video link at the bottom)

I could broaden to the rather meaty topic of animals in the Bible, which includes sea cows (their skin is on the ark of the covenant in Numbers 4, NIV) and in the King James version, unicorns! (Numbers 24:22). In Job we meet dinosaurs, but I’m saving him for next month. I could focus on the sheep, donkey, camel, ox that we’re so used to associating with Christmas.

As I skimmed memory and concordance for animals, some themes arose.

1) Animals are often used to point to something to assist human understanding

They are similes: ‘As the deer pants for the water, so my soul longs for you…’ (Psalm 41) gazelles, goats and doves feature in The Song of Songs. The flies, frogs, cows and locusts of the Plagues of Egypt can be read as the God of Israel overcoming the corresponding Egyptian gods; they are three quarters of the symbols of the canonical evangelists; they’re in prophetic visions (Ezekiel and Revelation); they are at the punchline of parables (the rich man and the camel); disappearing doves signified the displacement of deluge; Jonah’s whale (or sea monster) made him reconsider his refusal; Balaam’s donkey saw something heavenly which his responsible human hadn’t. (Num 22). Animal sacrifices had specific meaning, but I am deeply discomforted by that subject.

2) I wondered what sort of God these animals pointed to, the God whom we celebrate entering our world at this time. A God who notices a sparrow fall, and who grants an ass the gift of speech to rebuke its owner for hitting it, but then commands slaughter of animals for his own appeasement. As I sought animal references, I was reminded of several unpalatable deeds of the God (should that have a capital G?) we’re remembering. Zechariah 9, the passage quoted by Matthew about the gentle king on a donkey, involves a God protecting his people from marauders, and destroying corrupt nations’ power on the sea (this phrasing is significant) but I baulked at some descriptions of bloody teeth and writhing in agony; the Syro-Phoenician woman calls herself a dog before a Jesus who seemed disinterested in healing her family because she’s not of the right people. And there’s the God of those aforementioned Plagues….

I just wanted to acknowledge my struggle, and say that if you too ask yourself these questions, you are not alone. I hope these are notions to explore together, especially in person when we have discussions. For now, I offer as I put in my first novel’s sequel:

that God is the sun behind our cloud of human misconception, or like the backcloth behind our stage scenery. Sometimes we frame and set Her off beautifully, and sometimes we obscure Him or get in His way . We have to discern what reveals God, and what conceals. If ever the God I’d like to believe in, the kind of being I instinctually know truly ought to be God, clashes with what I’m told about God – if God appears vengeful or punishing or excluding – then that’s not of God. So I’ve been left with a sense of love and approval of God on a deep, experiential level, even if it seems to contradict what I’m surrounded with

I hope that I might offer some insights towards resolution in this next section

Out of the Christmas story animals, I wondered about making a mini sermon on sheep: they are in Genesis 4, the first sacrifice (by one of the first children); key Old Testament figures Moses and David are shepherds, literally and figuratively; shepherds are one of two groups who are told of Jesus’s birth; John the Baptist heralds Jesus as the Lamb of God, taking away the sins of the world, thus ending the precedent set by Abel; God’s people are called straying sheep (by Isaiah 40:11, 53:6 and 1 Peter 2:25). Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd (John 10:11), asking Peter to ‘feed his lambs’ (Jn 21:15); and his final biblical appearance is in Revelation (ch5 and 14) as a slain Lamb who alone is worthy to open scrolls, and whose Book of Life (ch21) determines whether you are a sheep or a goat (Mt 25) at the Pearly Gates. One could call that a mixed metaphor… but we might see Jesus both as coming to care for us, steer us back onto the path, and change the old relationship with God.

I am tempted to take a least expected creature – snake – whom we hear of in traditional carol services’ first reading. I like that those 9 lessons set up Jesus from the beginning of the Bible and humanity, showing why he was needed, and the regular reminders of his coming. It’s usual to understand that Jesus is the seed of woman who will crush the snake’s head. Thus Jesus’s first mention is in a poetic, misogynistic curse at the end of the Garden of Eden. Like many, I questioned the real meaning of this rich passage, which so vaguely alludes to Mary and the coming of the Messiah. However, I did think that Jesus is indeed in the story, but in a different sort of cryptic way. I once wondered if the antihero of Genesis 3 was Jesus’ first appearance. The reason for that astonishing assertion – and it’s not mine alone – is that the Hebrew for the said snake is nachash, ‘shining one’, recalling the archenemy Lucifer, son of the morning (Isaiah 14:12). But it’s also used about the snake held aloft in Numbers 21 to cure the people of snake bite; ‘snake’ also can be rendered from ‘burning one’ which has the same Hebrew root as the angelic seraphim. Jesus refers to that snake story in John 3:14, likening himself to that healing image lifted up to rescue the people. Note that this comes in his speech to Nicodemus, just before that famous verse which is called The Bible In A Nutshell, specifically teaching that God sent his Son (assumed to be the speaker) to believe and have life…

Hence, I saw the Garden Snake not as diabolical temptation but divine call to adventure, upgrading from a walk in the park/garden to the whole human experience: taking the red pill.

I am less certain about my article now; I am aware that the call to adventure can seem callous when so much of earthly existence involves suffering. Theologically, the Serpent seems to oppose God and is cursed by him, set against this coming Seed that will crush him. Could Jesus really be the problem and solution? Is he here to give us enlightenment or salvation, or are they snakily entwined?

To understand our joy at Jesus’ coming, and what he is here to do, we must understand the need for him. I found myself fascinated but my head spinning with more ideas than I can do justice to tonight. That thread between a shining or burning being is worth pursuing. Let me offer a snippet, to be taken up further another time, and to inspire your own research.

What I will say – and I might have called this Heretical Christmas – is that I no longer accept the Garden of Eden story of traditional teaching. I’ve long been aware that the text does not name Satan in any form in it. I’ve also wondered: what is so wrong about the Serpent’s question? It’s true! Why did God forbid Adam and Eve to eat from one tree, and why do we accept his curses and banishment as just? Where is the real temptation and sin? Does God wish to remove moral autonomy and knowledge from us, on pain of punishment?

Who is this god? I refer you to my quote above; and I have three possible strands:

1) I restate the theories that there’s more than one god present in the Bible, the Old Testament especially;

2) that God too has needed to evolve (as Ilia Delio suggested);

3) or that the writers and translators have fashioned a god in their own immature understanding

I have since read New Age writings based on ancient Sumeria which states that there are other worldly beings of reptilian form which are not benign. Like the Cathars, there was the belief in two gods, and one wasn’t good. Immediately I am resisting the notion that God the Creator isn’t good, and that the God I experientially know is not the one who made all things. But I do feel that there is something in this: that there is a High King Of Heaven, and under deities. The biblical text uses Elohim which is plural and Yahweh, the Holy Name. In the NIV, Elohim is rendered God, and Yahweh (or Jehovah) is Lord.

So which are we meeting here…and in other difficult passages? Is the Serpent one of these deities, or Annunki, trying to scupper Yahweh’s garden? Is it true that his temptation was a fruit of flesh? Are there dual bloodlines being set up here? (I am mindful of the Serpent Seed theory and its critique).

Gnostic Kabbalists believe the serpent to be our kundalini or life energy, and link serpent to archangel Samael. They see the serpent as an inner force, not outer being.

Without a thorough knowledge of Hebrew, I think it’s very hard to really grasp this multilayered story…and so I’d like to move on to other biblical serpents.

Whilst acknowledging the parallels between Jesus’ birth and mission and Moses, it strikes me that the miracle God chose for Moses and Aaron to demonstrate His power to Pharaoh was a staff turning into a snake (Exodus 3 and 7). This links the shepherding (the word that ‘pastor’ comes from) and this very different beast. A staff rescues and pulls back; it is for walking, beating a way…a serpent resembles a stick, although it writhes and has life and curls, whilst a stick is fairly straight and static. Is there a symbolic nexus in this alchemy? I believe that such motifs need contemplating.

The release from oppression seems very pertinent and to us, not just those historic periods.

I see something in the prophecies about the same few nations being vanquished; that God hears his people’s cry; that rulers and people who oppress receive their comeuppance: just as Herod did for killing the newborns to obliterate Jesus, Pharaoh and his people suffered plagues that corresponded to their infanticide (the Nile, dumping ground of the baby’s bodies turning red; the slaying of their firstborn, as pointed out by Rabbi David Fohrman).

Does the serpent bookend like the Lamb? Revelation features a shining being, One like the Son of Man (ch1), and also the Dragon (ch12), which is a form of serpent; and the Beast of ch13, 17… which brings back the woman and child with a beast from Eden, and my favourite, ch18….the Fall of Babylon. It is a kingdom that is still with us, and I believe we are witnessing its fall. The city which ends the Bible is also shiny, full of precious stones and a light from God. The sea which is no longer present is a metaphorical legal term for oppression and waters which wiped away oppressors.

Yet I can’t quite round off glibly that Rev 22 is an all round happy ending (it also precludes dogs from heaven!!) OF COURSE OUR BELOVED PETS ARE THERE

What I would like to leave you with is the hope of the new kingdom, or queendom, coming, and we can truly say:

Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory Of The Coming Of The Lord.

I believe that Jesus witnessed that Garden and was prepared as it unfolded; he has been, accomplished his mission, and will come again

a pause

I felt the need to spend time with animals and see what they wanted to say

how God might speak through them

lower beings in one way, but

higher in others

our mirror

showing unconditional love

knowing us better than we know ourselves

This is what we learn from creatures this Christmas

I also wish to speak for animal justice; that I see them as equal beings that many of us haven’t truly understood; that humans can oppress other species in the mistaken belief that we rule them, and that they must work for us – or at least not be a nuisance, or forfeit their existence. We cannot call ourselves enlightened until we stop treating animals in inhumane ways…there is irony in the phrase, since animals treat us better than we treat them.

I have a short video, for us to contemplate all I’ve said.

Before I show it, I would like to wish you all a blessed Christmas

and to invite you to join me again on January 8^th which will be on Elvis and Job

Thank you for joining me, and Good Night

Pictures and music by me (the piece is called King of All Time)

https://www.brighteon.com/channels/elspethr

https://www.brighteon.com/c8e2fdd8-0db7-4b2b-ba23-52775a1b1bca

Can you spot the deer?

IN LOVING MEMORY OF PEPI who died as I wrote this

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Do reach out to me, Elspeth, on betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk…especially if your Christmas seems set to be difficult

I’d also love to hear from any Hebrew speakers (and believers). What do you think Genesis 3:15 means?

GOOD FRIDAY 2022: SACRIFICE, OR WHY I’M CROSS WITH THE CROSS

https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/sacrifice-or-why-im-cross-with

Introit: Nearer My God To Thee composed by Lowell Mason (words by Sarah Flower Adams), played and arranged by me

This is our Sundown service – hence the funny time, as I hope I’ll end as the sun sets here. It’s our birthday – Between The Stools came into being two Easters ago.

There will be two parts to my speech tonight. I’m not offering my 7 Sayings this year, but I give the link incase you’d like to hear it.

Instead, I am taking on a central precept of Christianity and society. I will warn that some of what I say might seem a little outrageous; but, whilst being aware of the feelings which some listeners might have, I feel that truth and honouring my own feelings mean that this needs to be said. We are an independent, alternative and free thinking community – our sermons are not aiming to be conventional or comfortable. I do hope you’ll feel able to stay for the journey.

HOLD A MOMENT OF QUIET/PRAYER BEFORE PART 1

This Lent, and before, we have been following the Titanic towards its launch, a week ago, and that of my novel. Last night, we stayed up late in solidarity as it sank, and with Jesus in the Garden.

There is a major theme that links Good Friday, the Titanic, and recent history: sacrifice.

This will involve some plot spoiling, but in each of the Titanic films I can think of, someone dies to give someone else their place. And isn’t that what we understand Jesus as having done for us this day? Jesus, according to the substitutional atonement theory, took our place in punishment; on the Titanic, it’s giving up a limited place in a lifeboat, or some other craft – most memorably a wardrobe door, which I have seen at a museum – seemingly for one.

Jack in that version – I refer to the 1997 leviathan blockbuster – gives Rose the space on the wreckage that allows her to keep out of the freezing water. Due to his ice fishing, he already knows that he won’t survive the temperature and bows out, exhorting her to keep her spirits up and live the life she wants, whilst the life ebbs from him.

In the 1953 movie with Barbara Stanwyck, the men in her family serenade the escaping women, again with fortitude. Her son earns his long trousers by taking his place among the doomed males for whom there was no room in the boats. He shows courage in not taking up a woman’s place, or sitting on his mother’s lap. Being a man is to face death and let another live – even if you are barely into puberty. His erring father shows that he has become a good man and husband because he too opts to face the watery deep. He starts the film estranged from Julia – that’s Barbara – and now, having fallen back in love and been reconciled, he is to be estranged permanently by a strange consent. This film says: Good men stay behind.

In the Britannic – a movie about Titanic’s younger sister – the baddie is made good by facing a horrible end bravely – involving propellers – as if that atones for his being the spy that sank that ship. The goodies look on with awe, verbalising their admiration.

Sacrifice is about doing something you don’t want, or giving up a pleasure or freedom, or something important: an opportunity – like Gilbert Blythe giving his teaching post to Anne of Green Gables, who we thought of last month; a body part, such as those who donate organs or who lose body parts in trying to save others. It can be saying goodbye to that body; it can be saying goodbye to someone else’s, which is equally as hard, as Julia and her daughter or Rose in Titanic films can attest. It is not going out, it is forfeiting a holiday, a hope, a livelihood, because someone else may get ill via your actions, despite the cost to your own wellbeing. Or so we have been told for the last two years.

We have become well drilled in the art of sacrifice – in the last century alone: in two multi country wars and countless smaller ones; sacrifice in rations of food; two years of rationed interaction, work and travel, even air; and now we’re asked to make sacrifices for the planet.

And we have seen many people show that they care, that they are willing to consider the needs of others. It is why the manipulation is all the more deplorable, for it appeals to what is best in us, and twists it.

Who benefits from sacrifice? We do not choose to be the recipients of someone else’s sacrifice. The people in the lifeboats in Titanic were unlikely to have asked, even implicitly, for others to have stayed behind to drown or freeze. The only ones actually doing so – enforcing it with gunshots – were officers. The most senior one to survive got into a boat after turfing out other men whom he called cowards. Yes, I am making that point for a second time.

We might argue that we didn’t ask Jesus to come to Earth and to die for us. Perhaps we would have accepted God’s punishment – if that is what today, Good Friday, is really about. It is a theology which I no longer countenance.

Thus I resist the debt and guilt – entwined concepts – created from the sacrifice of others. What we really need to ask is: who asked this other being to sacrifice, and what do they get out of it? What does the sacrificer gain? Glory? Eternal renown? Can their sacrifice be used to the benefit of a third party?

God, king and country are a powerful triad when used as a rationale for sacrifice.

Would you allow me to read from my book about this, before I shift gear a little?

Although about the Titanic, we could apply much of that to any pestilence or hostility.

[I have shared my thoughts on the latest pestilence on here several times: the pinned open letter to Christians may be a good starting point]

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As Good Friday is a central and certain part of each Christian year, and still very much part of mine, I feel wary of sweeping up too many thoughts in one service. Sally B Purvis speaks of deconstructing and reconstructing: for now we are in intense stages of DEconstruction; perhaps in future years, we will focus on building anew, and my critique of the cross, at least to listeners of this community, will be less pertinent.

I said that I would call this service both Sacrifice and Why I’m Cross With the Cross. There is much to delve into in both, although of course, they overlap.

I begun writing this a couple of years ago, having already spoken publicly about the pitfalls of sacrifice, and how much it is used to manipulate. I did not know that we would be about to live through such an example of it.

I am aware that the cross is sacred and deeply emotive, and I am not insensitive to that. But I am also aware of its use in abuse. Sally B Purvis’ book, The Power of the Cross, was an important milestone in my faith journey. She spoke, thirty years ago, about the work of feminist theologians discovering ever deeper layers of oppression. The excavation has continued, and as I re-read her book this week, I felt that it was true of the world now, and the one a century ago, in which the Titanic sank.

For instance, as Sally describes medieval manuals on witchcraft – on how to spot and capture witches – her points about the authorities’ control of reality and behaviour are true of today and of the society on board the Titanic. And I suspect a link between who is behind them.

Power and obedience, hierarchy and censorship, penalty and reward are encoded in traditional Christian teachings – far from Jesus’ real message – as much as they are in the rest of society. I had not hitherto seen how much that axis of two lines had become a symbol of not just stark desolation, but as Sally calls it, power as control: power over, domination by design.

I had noticed its prevalence, and that of the imagery of its effects. How often do we see this instrument of execution, and Jesus dying or dead? The graphic story of Jesus’ demise is not reserved only for the Lenten period, but The Stations of The Cross stay up year round in higher churches; in comparison, Easter gardens appear only around this weekend, soon to be disassembled; and how many pictures of the risen Christ or empty tomb have you seen?

In evangelical circles, the cross’s prevalence is via word: sermons, prayers and hymns. Although the gore of Julian of Norwich is reserved for youth drama outreach events, the revelling in the cross is in favourite hymns old and new. The Old Rugged Cross talks about the dearness of that instrument of execution, “the emblem of suffering and shame”, and our part in what happened on it.

I’d like to play a little medley of modern hymns, ending with an earlier one of my own; although I’ll not sing, they all include words about sacrifice. Some of these might be dear to you, and I respect that, but I feel passionately about what these are saying.

THE SERVANT KING BY GRAHAM KENDRICK; COME AND SEE BY GRAHAM KENDRICK; HOW DEEP THE FATHER’S LOVE FOR US BY STUARD TOWNEND; MY LORD… (AMAZING LOVE) BY GRAHAM KENDRICK AND MISSION COMPLETED (INSTRUMENTAL) BY ELSPETH RUSHBROOK

ALL PLAYED AND ARRANGED BY ME

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A deconstruction of hymns would take at least a service in itself, but the familiar motifs of guilt due to causation of Jesus’ passion; of God’s might and right to judge, his re-routed wrath at our heinous sin, and our gratitude for his Son’s willingness to be slain for us, are in the ones I played, and many others – all of which I challenge, and no longer feel I can sing. 

I take issue with Kendrick’s line in The Servant King “Each other’s needs to prefer” – and then, to justify it, that it is Christ we’re serving. It recalls Sally Purvis’ deconstruction of Ephesians 5, the passage about wives submitting to husbands, and putting that in a theologically grounded very un-equilateral triangle. I’ve come to see that our own needs are equal to that of others: there is no weather clock – one need not be in if the other is out. It is not a see-saw choice between my wellbeing, wishes and yours. We can both sit, reaching the ground – neither has to be in the air at the mercy of the other or crashing onto the floor.

Perhaps this will need revisiting for another year, but I have concerns – no, I’ll be honest: I recoil over the notion that ultimate love is shown through death and suffering, and sacrifice. “What kind of love is this?” ask many hymn writers. Julian of Norwich’s 10^th vision showed Jesus in technicoloured agony, which she seemed to almost enjoy, and as Jesus is abased and abused, he looks on her and said: “Lo, how I love you.” Lo – look on this, if you can – I usually can’t – and know in my bruises and showing entrails and nearly public nudity that herein is ultimate regard.

I was offered to go to a passion play, and I’m not sure. I don’t want to watch Jesus die so horribly and publicly, in the middle of a modern market place. Is this our witness, as Christians to those who see Easter only as a long holiday weekend to consume….the arrest, false trial, and then execution of our Lord? Dramatic, memorable, moving – and yes, easily relatable to in our deeply unjust world. But have you ever been invited to a Resurrection play?

So much of Easter as Christians is about real time re-enactment and I’ve been doing so to the Titanic, but I do not wish to only focus on the end. There is a longer story, both before this day of death, and it continues well after… as will we.

For many high church Anglicans and Catholics, today – Good Friday – is more important than Sunday. Sunday didn’t have to happen for some Christians: today is enough. For today is Christ’s demonstration not only of his love for us, but his obedience unto death. Note that biblical phrase. It is the sacrifice for them that matters; he need not rise. Like Jesus Christ Superstar, the curtain falls here. But that is not my show. There is another act to come.

There is one other thought, for now, from Titanic and Easter. Titanic was built to control and keep in your place; sliding locking grilles kept the classes apart as much as a prison. White Star Line intended that the three classes of passenger should be segregated in every part of the journey – they even were on the rescue ship, Carpathia. But the sinking burst through much of that. Although it’s alleged that these gates were discovered still locked on the ocean floor, proving the reports that lower classes were kept back from lifeboats, people did break down those gates. They stood up to stewards who continued to give and obey orders, when it was clear that the rules were not in anyone’s interest, who kept people prisoner in the name of protocol and safety.

I believe there is an inquiry they will have to answer to. It will not be presided over by Baron Mersey, but another Lord. I’ll have more to say on that in the summer.

Today we remember Jesus bursting through gates created by men, that had hitherto created a sequence where increasingly few could go; it wasn’t just about privilege but access to God.

The sinking, although by no means equally affecting all, was a great leveller. I think it’s SOS Titanic that ends with that sentiment: that all were bedraggled and only had what they were wearing; the grief was universal as were feelings of trauma, relief, and perhaps guilt. Titanic was a loss of an era; the emancipation of women, the breaking down of the class system began at this time. We may feel that class is once more evident with a huge gap between rich and poor, and that emancipation is again much needed. It will come – as will Sunday.

That 1979 film ended with the words: ‘God went down with the ship’. But he did not: not only did he absolutely care, but he returned, as will we.

I play you out with my Titanic theme: note that there’s an unfinishedness, a hope.

There is another movement.

I’ll also have some written thoughts to share tomorrow evening, a little video on Sunday at breakfast, and a service you can join me for at 8pm British Summer Time on Easter day.

Thank you for joining me, blessings and love… and hope to see you again.

The rest of Easter 2022 on Between The Stools:

TOMORROW EVENING, A BLOG POST WILL APPEAR

ON SUNDAY MORNING, A BREAKFAST POST WILL APPEAR

ON SUNDAY NIGHT, 8PM BST, IS OUR EASTER SERVICE

TO JOIN ME LIVE:

Meeting link: https://meet.zoho.eu/RR1fL5oW56

Meeting ID: 1294525879

Password: x5BGDX

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Chocolat 20 years on – not simply a sweet tale

At the 20th anniversary, I began reading this old favourite. It has a chapter for most of the 40 days of Lent, starting with Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Day, which was last night in Britain, and working towards its culmination on Easter morn. I wanted to take the journey with you this year, seeing how this tale caught me a score later, with all that’s happening in the world, and the things that I have learned and experienced since. The film has always had personal significance. I saw it twice at the cinema and introduced it at a public community showing three years ago; I’ve watched it at home several times. My companions and the circumstances have often been of moment in my life.

I own the book, script and film, and a Lent Course by Hilary Brand. I’ve been long wanting to create my own. I’d like to have that in person with my community some other year; but for this, I will drop in throughout Lent, once a week.

None of this is connected to the author, or film makers, or Hilary Brand.

Here is my introduction of 3 years ago, based on a piece of about 10 years previous:

When this film was released here in Lent 2001, it seemed a crowdpleasing award winner, quite safe and saccharin. But Chocolat, based on Joanne Harris’s 1999 novel, is not simply a sweet tale.

It’s not just the chocolate that’s dark – the true, pure cacao-based substance with ancient Mayan roots, as much alchemic as aphrodisiac, more than a simple pick-me-up naughty treat. The extras on my DVD include an ode to the health benefits of chocolate, but this does not extend to its mystical, sacred powers and medicinal uses. Chocolate is as illicit and nonconformist as it is sensuous. The movie plays this down a little. There is dark but also light. This dichotomy is seen – or rather heard – in Rachel Portman’s score. The Comte [count/mayor] – a priest in the novel – has a traditional, pompous, staid, age old theme, the weight of the orchestra as well as his lineage behind him. Vianne – literally a blow in [the Norfolk phrase for newcomers] – is itinerant, mendicant, rootless. He is from the long tradition of the Catholic church; her heritage, more ancient still. Note the sensuous, haunting, mystical and melancholy in Vianne’s themes, even the joyful one. And yet, what I love best about Chocolat is that the Pagan behaves how the Christians should. There are many anecdotes and observations: that this is a truly international story, set in France penned by a Yorkshire woman who received a surprise home visit from the French star Juliette Binoche; filmed in a real French walled town, Flavigny, and on a set in Shepperton studios near London; directed by a Swede whose wife played Josephine; and that there are British, American and Irish cast, crew and characters. That Anouk’s invisible companion Pantoufle is metamorphosed from a rabbit to the more exotic kangaroo in the film, and the setting is pushed back to 1959; that the accent is a half American, half European invention. There is much to observe about who sets who free, and yet who is also held back another, and the ways in which characters are controlled and allow themselves to be controlled…

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This year, we’re aware as much as ever of how much the attitudes of others can enslave us. The parishoners of Lasquenet-sans-Tannes are a dull bunch, in colour and attitude. Vianne observes that their hat colours match their hair: black, brown and grey. They are desperately polite and reserved. There are unspoken codes as to what can be said to one another, especially to a stranger. In their lives of short rein, they are fascinated by the minutae of the lives of others. They notice differences acutely and judge them, and make it into something to report.

Vianne – whose name, a form of Anne, varies with each town – challenges everything that these people are and do. She is a free spirit in colourful clothes who brings a colourful, decadent, metropolitan shop to their village at the time of abstenance.

Drawing a parallel with Lent and lockdown should be very easy. It is a period they comply with, a directive they follow, for it is expected of them as good citizens. This denial serves their soul – although the denials we are asked undergo as a society are for the service of others’ bodies.

The people do so because of the power of one man, a lone figure, among them but set apart, representing long and large institutions which have set the limits of people for millennia. Reynaud is a dark pillar; in the novel, the tarot symbol of The Black Man that haunted Vianne’s mother as it does her. Reynaud has the trappings of the elite: his title, his lineage, his training. Up in his pulpit, Reynaud (or his puppet, in the film) preaches against the woman he considers to be his enemy. Thus, Vianne is their enemy, even though she is friendly, charming and generous, she represents unfettered womanhood and sensuous sin.

I’ve just been out and seen posters about how breaking the rules does us harm. Those posters are actually evidence against the organisation who put them up. I also received an email from someone I respect about harmful rules.

The people are taught that kindness is wrong; that indulgence is dangerous; that strangers are to be treated warily, and possibly excluded and flushed out (should they be those human vermin: river rats). There are expectations about sexuality and marriage, about games one’s child should play, about the businesses one should run – especially in Lent; and one’s whereabouts – in church during Lent, especially on high holy days; not in chocolateries on Sundays.

The rules we have are more harmful and nonsensical. During the next six weeks, the people are about to undergo a transformation, via Vianne and the properties of her product. I pray that this Lent, we too, will undergo an awakening.

Pinned post: open letters

AN OPEN LETTER ABOUT MASKS AND OTHER COVID-RELATED RULES

See also Are you distressing and discriminating against disabled and diverse people?

An open letter to Christians about covid Updated

CEASE AND DESIST ORDER re masks on trains

An open letter to Christians about covid

Dear friends, sisters and brothers in the Lord

I write to urgently awaken you.

During this past year, I am alarmed not only by what is happening in the name of stopping viral spread, but that churches are not only complying, but promoting it.

A politican told me she wanted to protect lives; I said I wish to protect life, one worth living – the sort that Jesus came to give us. But there is not much living to the full in this…

Like many, I was suspicious from the onset that this was really a worldwide pandemic which merited the measures – ie, restrictions – placed upon us all.

I soon realised that I was in good company.

I’ve read and heard the work of so many whistleblowers around the world, including experts in science and medicine, such as Michael Yeadon, Wolfgang Wodarg, Sherri Tenpenny, who blast the mathematical modelling used to lock us all down (modeller Neil Ferguson is disgraced) and state that no virus is this virulent. I’ve watched Judy Mikovits in the documentary Plandemic – a narrative agreed with by a growing number. I have read the open letter signed by 1969 Belgian doctors against the portrayal of the virus and the measures used against it. I have heard the testimony of doctors coerced and even bribed into putting covid onto a death certificate and in using ventilators, which often are the cause of death. I have read about the germ theory driving our health models, discredited even by its own inventor, Louis Pasteur, but which is the lucrative and controlling model (note the many policy makers with shares and other financial interests in pharmaceuticals).

And so many more that I have pages of references and links to studies internationally.

I have also heard repeatedly that the intrusive, dangerous test used to identify covid, Polymerase Chain Reaction, is not fit for purpose; at 45 cycles of amplification, which we use in Britain, it is well over any meaningful scientific limit and anything can be found: traces of previous dead viruses and genetic material we all have. Hence the results are 90% unreliable.

I know that people who registered but didn’t take the test received letters that they had tested positive. The inventor of the original PCR test died last year, but he said that was not ever meant to be a diagnostic tool. It is used as an instrument of fear to drive up statistics and justify fresh restrictions.

I note that many of these scientists are discredited and that their work goes missing from the internet, and ‘fact checking’ has become an excuse to censor those who disagree with a pre-set narrative. London Real’s host Brian Rose was told that YouTube had a policy about the virus a year ago – before covid-19 was supposed to have started, but it was at the time of Event 201, a conference involving the Wellcome Trust and linked to Bill Gates, where a document was produced by WHO called ‘World At Risk’ (on their website) talking of a planned ‘live exercise’ in ‘global health security’. With other international groups’ agenda (such as WEF and IMF) involving economic reset and technological rollout it becomes plain that this is a plan to move us all into a worldwide all-seeing dependent totalitarianism driven by technocracy, not democracy.

Police have also begun whistleblowing: an open letter to New South Wales commissioner in Australia was recently delivered, by Cops For Covid Truth, via their lawyer Peter Little. These 70 officers realised that not only do the medical facts not tie up, but that they are pawns in bringing in tyranny, and their orders are against their oaths and fundamental law. The original signatories have been joined by many others around the world.

Among the myriad medical frontline staff similarly exercised is British nurse Kate Shemirani, who is a Christian, who has spoken out at large gatherings against lockdowns, testing, tracing and masks. The first has caused untold suffering on every level; the second, mostly false postives giving an excuse for the third, which can lead to arbitrary containment; and the last deprives wearers of oxygen, traps them with germs and lowers immunity, whilst offering no protection (virus particles are smaller than mask material) – all it does for others is obfuscates connection and makes us featureless. I’ve seen the burn-like skin damage caused by mask wearing. I’ve been directly told that putting a tube behind a mask on the face for 4 minutes gave off the chart [was it carbon monoxide or dioxide?] readings – making it like a hazardous room that isn’t safe to enter. There are urgent warnings, such as from Dr Margarite Griesz-Brisson, that mask wearing causes permanent lung, heart and brain damage and is especially harmful to children. Indeed, there are reports of their collapse. Some didn’t get up.

And then, there’s the vaccine. The alternative media is increasingly filled with doctors such as Carrie Madej, Christiane Northrup and David Martin telling us that the ‘vaccine’ is unsafe; that this new type which involves toxin coated foreign bodies hasn’t been tested; it isn’t a vaccine, it’s a device; that it can watch and even remotely control and release other substances into you; one of the manufacturers, Moderna, admits that it’s an operating system in the body with updates; that it can sterilise or cause shut down; that people injected are still infected; that those who receive it often collapse – the UK has resuscitation units by vaccine admininstration centres; that severe adverse reactions in thousands of cases have even caused health officials to withdraw certain batches. Hundreds have swiftly died, although this information is downplayed. I have seen screenshots of medical abstracts on how to vaccinate via any orifice unknowingly.

We have to ask: why is this posited as the only protection and cure? Why – and who – is vaccination so heavily invested in? Why are we pressured to have it to the point of possible exclusion from, work, study, services, and a whole new ID and passport industry springing up around it? And why are internet giants involved in medicine? Why are those who raise alarms about it so viciously and often childishly attacked?

Kate is not the only Christian who has considered it her duty to speak out. Catholic priests Carlo Maria Vigano and Robert Altiers have courageously done so; Archbishop Carlo has spoken of not only of the Deep State, but Deep Church. Evangelical nonconformists run campaigns to stop the unlawful mandates – such as Peggy Hall of The Healthy American, or churches like Cap Bap in Washington DC who sued over the fact they can’t meet in person. In New York, the governor threatened to close churches and synagogues which didn’t comply with his ever more draconian and nonsensical rules. He too received negative press coverage and law suits. “This man is not God, he will answer to Him,” one reader raged.

Yet here in the UK, I have generally seen acquiescence from churches, who have not realised the difference between guidance and law (often it is the former, which can’t be enforced) and not even made room for the government’s own exceptions, such as with face coverings. They have allowed governments to render them ‘nonessential’.

Instead, the Anglican church especially have added their own stipulations to worshippers.

It does not seem to have seen that the laws used for coronavirus measures are spurious, for they clash with all 30 of the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and every country’s constitution. These are inalienable, regardless of ‘emergencies’ – and if no real state of emergency exists, then the laws such as our Coronavirus 2020 which are appended to a previous act – note the year, 1984 – are null and void. They have also expired.

There is an international class action law suit being prepared by Reiner Füllmich. He and his Coronavirus Investigative Committee deem these events – which many see as genocide and fraud, unconsenting experimentation and surveillance – as crimes against humanity.

There is also God’s law, which supersedes all others. Discussing Romans 13 takes a sermon – I just wrote one on it – but many see that passage as not supporting blind obedience to unjust earthly authorities: quite the reverse. Indeed many Bible heroes suffered imprisonment and death for what they preached. Peter – central to those of established traditions – refuses in Acts 4 and 5 to stop teaching about Jesus and healing in his name.

And yet, we….

In previous pandemics, churches were not ordered to close. In the 17^th C plague, vicars took risks to be with their flock, even the ones who were banned from their pulpits by the Act of Uniformity. We are now seeing government interference in Christian worship on that scale, but the church has gone online, not into the world, and I’ve seen few offers of help or condolence, and no Christian group in Britain questioning these laws.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke out against the established church of his country for acquiescing, if not abetting, Nazism. Of course, acquiescing – even tacitly – is abetting.

I wonder what he would say now to the established churches, the big international chains.

We may have believed that we were being responsible in stopping the spread by closing our doors, by insisting on masks and being distant, by using harmful sanitizer (look on the side of the bottle at the warnings!), and participating in contact tracing.

We may think that putting others first is Christian, but Jesus said: Love your neighbour AS yourself. Not more than, instead of you. This sacrifical rhetoric is being used to manipulate.

It is clear that this is really about mass surveillance, designed to be a new way of life, and the collection of genetic material. Heathrow is already trialling digital health passports and Ticketmaster is floating the idea of needing proof of testing and vaccination to attend their  events. Britain passed a law in October stating that which is obtained via test and trace will be kept for national security. Denmark passed a law making vaccination mandatory on pain of arrest and being excluded from society. Into 2021, I see more articles about colleges and countries developing, if not requiring these. Camps are being built, which should chill us, and people removed from homes who are deemed to be ill. Clearly their real ‘threat’ is something else. China already runs biometric recognition and a social credit score, determining what prices you pay and what you can do, depending on your compliance. British austerity has also punished – I know its victims. We already have fiscal credit rating.

It is time to awaken, to put on armour, to slumber no more.

It is not just conservative Christians seeing this: Neo Pagans and New Agers, and those without a faith, are seeing it too… the legal irregularities underlying a sham and corrupt system, the cure worse than the malady, the rife censorship that cannot even argue well. Despite our differences in belief, even among Christians, we need to rise.

Along with Dietrich, one other quote spoke to me. It was from doctor Rashid Battar, whose military experience gives him cause for urgent concern as much as his medical training.

He said: what will our grandchildren say of the adults of 2020?

Where were they? Why didn’t they do something? Why have we inherited such a world?

I want to be able to stand before successive generations and my God and say:

I stood up, even if it was a risk.

It isn’t only Black Lives Matter who say ‘silence is violence’.

There is coming a new earth, and the old order is passing away.

The side of Light and Love has already won; we battle a vanquished foe but we should be battling, for this is a medical problem, but also a spiritual one.

It is clear that dark forces are using this virus for another end.

Allowing our society to be broken down for a virus no more virulent than flu, and to have our right to corporate (and corporeal) worship removed is not something that God will say ‘Well done, good and faithful servant’ to us for.

Reiner Füllmich is evoking the term from the Nuremberg trials. Yes, we are comparable – even greater, especially if this goes where many fear it will. It may seem incredible, uncomfortable, but think of those 18^th century tea drinkers who had to face where their sugar came from; the Germans of the 1940s who realised what was happening to their neighbours… and so many other points of history. We are at such a point.

What will future generations and our God say of us and what we did and didn’t do?

I will stand and be counted – friends and siblings, will you stand with me?

Just one of so many links: https://worlddoctorsalliance.com/ including a fully referenced 19 page open letter and many articles, such as from the executive editor of the BMJ

And one on the vaccine: https://mariokenny.wordpress.com/2020/12/12/important-notes-about-the-vaccine/

Mention here doesn’t mean mutual or total indorsement

There is also further material on this blog – and about what we can stand together to do

Pentecost: Parallel Spirits

Brace yourself Nessies, this is 3000 words

I’ve moved Pentecost this year – officially. Because I was still wearing my indigo outfit on Sunday, to see a friend who loves purple. “I’m glad you thought me more important than the Holy Spirit,” she said, clad in red. I think that the Holy Spirit and Indigo are very much connected, this year especially.

Despite being a lifelong Christian, I’m new to the quirks of the high church calendar, and expected Pentecost to be this coming Sunday. Harder of course, when there are no churches to go to to be reminded. Hence I wasn’t really ready – and then something happened on Pentecost night…

Last year was the first time that I discovered the tradition of wearing red on Pentecost to emulate the flames of the Holy Spirit which rested on the disciples’ heads. I feel that red isn’t very representative of flames and felt that orange and yellow should be included. So I went to a high church dressed like a lollipop, replete with matching lipstick. By night I attended an interdenominational meeting at the local cathedral. I was delighted to see a screen – not of the rood and pulpitum kind – and band instruments. I enjoyed the sight of cape clad stewards with heads in their hands whilst we raised ours.

I wondered if putting my hands above hockey height – not something that churches I attend encourage – does actually give you an experience of the Spirit. Alas not I, but then the music didn’t really move me. Others seemed to be straight in there, as if programmed by familiar songs, pulsing with bliss. I confess that my bliss came from a sense of wickedness.

No one there was dressed in red. No one I spoke to understood why I was. Was I the only person who’d seen incense that morning?

I like to go between traditions, and not just the ends of the Christian candle. Candles are used by everyone. Pagans too…

I feel it is my calling to go between different expressions of faith, and especially to be a bridge between Woo Woo and traditional Christians. Which disciples of Jesus among you would listen to the dispensations of the Magenta Pixie? She has especial words, which I discovered at Pentecost. Please let me share them.

If you’re expecting Angela Rippon creations of the garden variety, you’ll be disappointed. The avatar of the said Pixie is more coral than magenta. I do like to describe colours accurately. If you do too, you might be just who I’m looking for at Between the Stools (I’m peppering my articles with hints).

The Magenta Pixie, a spirit channel, was speaking about resetting global finances, and a little known American agreement due to be ratified on 11^th September 2001 called NESARA. There is also a global version, about forgiving all debts and free energy. It’s time for that to come to pass, saith the Pixie. Important stuff – but I was concerned that this website that the Pixie chose for her message, The Golden Age of Gaia, seemed to have rushed ahead with statements and timelines for the new age.

It is vital that we all participate and that no-one takes upon themselves – not governments, universities, think tanks, churches, or communities of Goddesses – to tell us when universal Citizens’ Income and medicare is coming in and that a new worldwide financial agreement has been made.

I’ll speak more about this another time, but I won’t hide that I very much wish to be part of creating a new world – it is a calling I’ve long been aware of. Perhaps some of you reading this feel that too. And all of us will live in this post viral world, so we should have at least the opportunity to have a say. Vast distant systems being imposed on us – even by celestial beings – is not what the Aquarian Age is about. (If you’re a Christian, you can think of it as the 1000 Years of Peace in Revelation).

In my woo woo diet of late, I’d been reading about a particular chef who I shan’t name, whose dishes I had found healthful. But then I discovered a recipe on the OMTimes about the new world being brought to birth which made me choke.

I have and will continue to speak against technology which harms. It’s what I’ve feared for a long time and could see how this virus could be used to make more of it. Again, this will feature more in another post – Lead Us Not Into Technocracy (from my Lord’s Prayer for our times).

But it’s relevant to today because it’s about a new era and the Spirit helpers descending to us to assist us. Jesus left behind his Spirit which came that day, recorded in the book of Acts.

I’m reading 2 books about Mary Magdalene, one of my favourite people. The Jews of that first century AD (not that they knew it was AD yet) expected and hoped for this Messiah to save them and for a new era that alleviated them from oppression. Their most obvious oppression was the Romans who occupied them, and so much of the world at that time. Jesus did indeed preach and usher in a new kingdom, assisted by Mary, but not of the sort they expected, nor in the way they expected.

New wine into old wineskins is a topic to develop more later – but it relates to my public critique of the Anglican church (see tag cloud), which I feel is very analogous to the Judaism described in these novels. The rules for rules sake; the rules that stop you doing good; the rules which are quick to exclude and punish. And it’s not just the church, but secular society which creates ever more laws. In my country, laws were rushed through at the outbreak which curtail liberties and rights, such as making it easier to section people (relevance to covid? That should set off alarms). This would be relevant to Mary’s story too… She’ll get a post for her day in July, and so will ‘mental health’.

But I’m seeing that we need spiritual helpers as we face oppression – from our own governments and systems, the Romans of our time, fighting this ‘invisible enemy’…although conspiracy theorists say that description matches the Illuminati as much as the virus.

My Woo Woo friends tell me that we indeed have such helpers – not only are lightworkers born onto the earth in large numbers for this ascension, but that spirit guides, such as angels and other discarnate beings, are very willing to aid us.

Mainstream Christians would say that the Holy Spirit is ever with us, and yes we have angels although unless you’re high church, you’re not encouraged to address anyone outside of the Trinity.

But I’m afraid about the idea of improvement from some New Age types. Returning to that OMTimes article… we are told that we’ll have to sacrifice privacy for this better world.

Brakes screech to a halt. If you’re wanting an end to injustice and inequality, you do not sacrifice privacy. Privacy erosion is a feature of dystopia. (Not that I think much to Thomas Moore’s Utopia, having read it last year). Our homes, our bodies, our belongings, our thoughts and beliefs are our own.

This same article spoke of robot nurses to avoid healthcare workers getting infected! Yes I can see the concern that of course has been faced round the world, but I also query the narrative about infection levels, and also that our state mainstream medical model is the right or the only one. I have often said that by stopping other modalities from working during the lockdown, it’s not only made those practitioners poor, but taken away patient choice, and deprived us of the very kinds of healing that are most efficacious.

What our modern world and this virus is depriving us of is People Contact. Loneliness has been as much of a problem as the virus. I don’t want to be served by a machine, in a library, in a shop. And I certainly don’t want medical care from one. Many of us find robots eerie. Our online systems are paranoid about robots – stopping those browsers who protect their privacy – but in the non virtual world, we are being encouraged to accept these monstrosities. I say a very clear NO.

The same post also was celebrating, or at least accepting, that much more of our world will be virtual and controllable, including our health.

Again, health will get more detailed posts in the future, but I was horridly disturbed by the idea of being centrally watched in my home. I’ve seen NHS studies on the ‘wonders’ of smart meters being able to watch when I sit and when I rise (isn’t that the Lord’s prerogative? It’s comforting about Him, not about my national health service). Hence, if I am deemed to be depressed, and I get up in the night, you can see that I’ve a sleep (or bladder) issue and alter my medicine accordingly.

Hence I hate smart meters, which not only pump out dangerous EMFs, but allow me to be controlled remotely – but I am not a video! I am also against 5G which facilitates this, and to which I will devote at least a whole post.

The new age self help movement often speak of not giving your power away, but this is doing exactly that!

I’ve heard Christians say that the Holy Spirit is a gentleman; you have to accept him into you heart to become a Christian; and if you’re Pentecostally minded, that to receive gifts of the spirit, you must accept and be open. He (she actually – the Greek is female) won’t force her heavenly language upon you. This is going to put the snake’s tail in its mouth…

Permission is something we’re hot on, or should be. We’re supposed to ask permission in intimate acts of all kinds. I’ve heard Pagans opine about the importance of permission in touching or in opting in… and yet our technological world wants to erode that. Permission was meant to be at the heart of the European General Data Protection Regulations of 2018, although in effect it’s not given the individual much real control. Being heavy about signatures which hand over rights that you don’t choose is meaningless. I had this out, post GDPR, with the Financial Ombudsman service. Cookies have become “we’re just telling you we’re setting them” for many websites – which is not legal or right. If you ask for permission to do something, the answer has to feasibly be NO. Like, when I was eating my lunch and a smoker sat next to me and said, Do you Mind. Yes. (So don’t or smoke elsewhere.) She thought I’d just assent. Consent means we can say yes or no.

So what’s this got to do with Pentecost? This is a tongue of fire new era, with special healers, human and divine.

And consent has to be at the heart of a decent world. One World, but not One World Order. I note that the dreaded Cabal that the woo wooers speak of, and the technologies that some praise, act in much the same way.

The Spirit won’t come into our hearts unless we ask; the angels won’t step in – even to those of faith – unless we especially call on them. And yet, 5G would foist on us a system we may not choose, with energies running through our homes which affect those that we live near (including animals). It’s help we may not ask for, but we’re being monitored by people that are ever more faceless – such as the customer care for this blog – and hard to reach.

This is not an improved world, it’s what I’m fighting to stop.

That OM article, sought out during a challenging day, depressed me. For I felt – have I thus far survived to emerge in such a world? Someone else said, many of us won’t live to see this new age. So we do the hard graft of making it, suffering the old and its death throes, only to hand it over to children?

But I cheered myself up with these statements, and I hope that they encourage you too.

None of us know how long we’ll live but it’s possible that we will share the world with generations that come after us, even outlive them. Of course we should think of those who come next, but not to negate our own lives for children. It’s particularly galling for those who don’t have children. So yes we may well see the fruits of our planting, and we should all have the opportunity to plant and to plan the garden.

I also realised that many don’t want this world where the unseen swoops in to intervene. I’m not alone in resisting it.

Free will is at the heart of all spiritual interactions. Any light transmission, movie about God or angels I’ve seen, theological discourse, says: We can’t help unless you ask.

So this technopolis is not an improvement, and it’s immature. I refer you back to my Tough Love and Nannying piece. This is super spooky nannying. It forgets the medical traditions which gave rise to our cultures and to the Woo Woo movement. Why is non allopathic medicine known as complementary, and has to give medical disclaimers to say “This is no replacement for your doctor”? Why give so much power to this relatively young and localised health regime, instead othe older and wiser ones which have survived for many centuries and enjoy a resurgence?

The OM article also mentioned capitalism, as if it were a necessary and helpful invention needed at a time of crisis and change. It is exactly what is wrong with our world. Christians might want to say it’s Satan or the human heart, but if I had to put it down to a system, it’s the C word. Again, many alternatives are seeking an alternative from that system which they call the broken masculine, the 3D way. This is what our Spirit helpers are here to address, and the virus is meant to break.

We’re not meant to go back to what we had or to start a worse system.

And… yes this has been a super snaky one today… but I said that the snake’s tail would end in its mouth. It was the Light Code transmissions which I discovered on Pentecost that I wanted to speak of as my final point and my link between Woo Woo and Christians. Today, the gifts of the Spirit fell upon the apostles, and charismatic Christians say that we can have these – prophecy, healing, discernment, casting out evil, and tongues too. Indeed, I believe that and some people are living that.

But I found out that tongues aren’t just an evangelical protestant Christian phenomena. I discovered a Catholic Priestess whom I love – I have the honour of reviewing her Mary Magdalene book – who speaks in tongues. I think it’s a mark of mysticism.

I came across the work of Sandra de Vos. I laid on my bed for a healing where I’d be bombarded with light codes coming through sound. It recalled Speaking In Tongues! Although this wasn’t as calm as tongues – the last time I heard these, it was very soothing and I didn’t care that I didn’t understand what was being said. It always sounds a bit Hebrew, but that’s maybe because to Western ears, Hebrew feels an exotic, unfamiliar language. It isn’t Hebrew or any known earth speak.

I hope this isn’t unPC – it’s meant to be quite the reverse – but some of the noises made in the Light Codes recalled not only animals, but humans that we might call challenged.

I have begun to suspect that these beings are actually advanced and that what we consider to be unskilled or unintelligent communication is literally the language of angels. We just haven’t tuned into them yet. I note how birdsong and crickets and waves and whales appear in relaxing healing music, infused (I’m learning) with divine codes of healing, light and profound messages in multi layers.

So next time, dear Pentecostal friends (are you still here?) a cessationalist brethren or sethern challenges your holy babble and says, what’s the point? Without an interpreter you’re doing no good… say that this is God using you as a channel for light codes beyond our current level of understanding. Or as Sandra de Vos says, you’re a Cosmic Microphone. For the Lord. I think that it’s no accident that this phenomenon of tongues reappeared in decades of change as we moved towards ascension…

And it’s these languages these codes these awarenesses that we need to get into our reign of peace.

We also need to understand diversity… like seeing those people we thought as disabled, something to fix or pity, or less valuable, as some of our most profound beings who have a special role. We need to learn to celebrate them and to learn to communicate. This 5G health model would impose more normative standards on us, which is an aberration of true wellbeing.

Hence, I have to say, such proponents are not entirely the old souls that they claim to be.

But it’s OK to be a rosy and green apple. I am. I’m willing to fix my worm holes – and I think that celestial sound is a vital part of that – listening to it, channelling it… the the other worldly, not so logical and empirical voice, the still small voice.

I hope that by my facetiousness, I’ve gotten different belief systems to listen to each other.

I have another Goddess Message to share soon.

And the title of course is a reference to my novel.

What I think of Christians at Pride

There was quite a noisy group at my recent most local LGBT etc Pride, who now have a prominent stall. They have their own uniforms – a T-shirt with a slogan which matches their banner; and then a self styled one of rainbow dog collars… for these are Christians, and several are clergy.

On one hand, it’s to be applauded that this group is there and is trying to be visible, despite the fact that some other Christians criticise them. I also overheard a flag clad woman holding the hand of another comment: I hate it when the Church tries to join in with our day.

And I – a woman on the outer edges of both worlds – understood that.

The Christians in the parade want to say: we accept you, LGBT+ people. (Often they mean just gay… I’m not sure churches have got their heads round all the letters yet.) They acknowledge that Christianity and other faiths have hitherto persecuted their gay siblings – and some still do.

I’d like to point out that the notion that same sex love as being something to decry and exclude over has come from faith groups.

Many of those who still judge homosexuals are those with a conservative faith.

So one could say that the need for Pride came out of religious prohibition, which influenced laws and morals and medicine, so that what denounces LGBT people can be traced to faith roots.

Hence, it’s brave but ironic that there is a Christian presence at Pride.

Sadly like many, I have experienced struggle in coming to terms with not being heterosexual, especially as a woman of faith. I’ve written and published a novel about it, which is available to buy from many online sources, called Parallel Spirals. There will be a sequel.

I happen to know that many of the people on the Christian stall and march are not LGBT. They’re allies, but they have not experienced the challenges of the realisation that you are other, and that otherness may not be welcome. They have not sat in a pew (or sofa with a smoothie, if you’re that kind of church) wondering if the message of God’s love and theirs will still apply if this church really knew them and who they loved. Would they still get a hug (or even a handshake) in the peace; would they still get an invite to homegroups or youth or elder groups or those endless barbecues or garden parties if the truth about them was known? Would they still be allowed their positions of leadership if it was known what they were really like? Do these church people know what it’s like to earnestly search scripture to see if they really are condemned? NO YOU AREN’T, by the way!! Do they have to hear exhortions about the sanctity of marriage between a man and woman and the inevitable family you’re supposed to have, and feel nervous and excluded? Have they had to put up with people who have – almost for granted – what you don’t, and tell you that you can’t have it – namely marriage and family?

Of course, nongay people in church have other kinds of suffering and misfitting, and it might allow them to have great empathy and solidarity with the people that Pink Pride is about. I’ve heard people speak of other kinds of otherness… it’s not only LGBT people who feel a sense of not fitting, if not exclusion, in their faith communities.

But some seem to be presumptious and patronising. Is it fair to say it’s like white people in a Black celebration saying “We weren’t slaves ourselves, but we do know how you feel”? Of course it’s their way of saying – you never should have been, and we stand with you to show we’re not part of that. We see the well-meaning as much as we might cringe at the execution.

It’s also easy for the oppressed to allow no outsiders to sympathise. Am I angry at men against  violence against women in White Ribbon? Have I not applauded those who stand with something they’re not? Would I not march in solidarity with something  I care about, and be put off if I was told that I had no right to, as I’m outside the oppressed group?

I observed this tribe within a tribe with bemusement, oblivious to how their rainbow stickers and collars seemed amongst the outre costumes, squirting their God’s love like bubbles to passers by with the proffering of a gay positive sticker and a few words…but these little interactions felt like that delicate transient rainbow film.

Or actually, was that bubble the start of a new idea, a new relationship?

So am I saying that Christians shouldn’t have a stall at Pride? Am I saying that their well intentioned solidarity is wrong? No…but am am saying: your message has to be relevant and congruent and consistent, and be aware of how it looks from the other side. Don’t pretend you easily understand when you don’t… But actually, you might. And yes, I do think my novel can help with that. Listen to LGBT people and hear their stories. It will mean really chatting – often in a way that you can’t at fast moving, raucous Prides – and really sitting with them, being prepared to follow up, and to hear how LGBT+ people feel about faith and church and what it’s done to them. And to put it right and show a better way. As I know you can.

And actually, I’m quite touched that a group gives up its day to show that solidarity for something they aren’t, risking censure from both sides, and to transform the view and relationship from judgement and exclusion into love and welcome.

 

 

Hare Hare Christian

Different message and cultures – same method of evangelism

 

I had a surreal moment this week. I sat in a building I know well, but instead of ordered western rational church services, there were people dancing to ever more frenzied mantras with drums, in the bright colours of India for the Festival of Spirit.

 

I tried not to think of my evangelical family as I listened, feeling quite alien and a little furtive into my first foray into public Eastern Spirituality. But a thought struck me that I have had in every church I have been to – and I claim to have tried every branch of Christianity – all have the same methodology, the same tone. The people might be different, the buildings, trappings, the words… but essentially, in ebullient outreach mode, are scarily the same. And it is true of these mendicant Hare Krishnas.

 

We were hyped up by a simple song, which also closed the evening. The speaker was a Caucasian dressed in robes, but his voice was just like the preachers of my Christian Union days. The talk wasn’t intellectual but it was clever from an oratory technique. That smooth, colloquial, I’ve been where you are voice. Not the calm of senior Buddhists or contemplative Christians, nor the rant of the traditional protestant and political demagogue, but I say again, smooth, in both senses: The well rehearsed story of Bhagavad-Gitas (re)appearing in spooky ways in people’s lives and changing them; the “you can every penny back of you don’t like it” speech  – this was free, including, cunningly, a meal; the drama sketch designed to lampoon British ignorance and imperialism (which felt at least 50 years too late)… all gave little real content. I still don’t really understand what a Hare Krishnan believes. But then a Christian preacher wouldn’t take you on journey of theology and church history at a Gospel rally. They too would find things you’d notice were lacking in the world, find sore points in your own life; flatter you a little for coming and having the sense to look for something new; even acknowledge some were only here for the food – which we had to wait 2½ hours for – and was not a good way to convert to vegetarianism, as intended.

 

Also like my last experience of a Pentecostal church, I was accosted before the meeting began by a person eroding my personal space and another who kept looking at me conspicuously throughout the meeting, probably for not clapping and chanting the name of a god I don’t personally deal with (or perhaps I do, under a different name – a thought I would not let occur 15 years ago!) At the Pentecostal meeting, I saw another man, similarly harassed, slip out for a fag. Although I am passionately anti smoking, I was tempted to join him and commiserate, as I too fled. It was only the meal that made me stay at with the Hare Krishnas – and that early nonconformist chapels are hard to escape from, with their pillars and pews – and the only free exit blocked by the Hare team using it as a kind of Green Room.

 

Unlike Christian meetings, there was no altar call, no asking for prayer or Holy Spirit/anti demon whip up, though like the cult in Holy Smoke with Kate Winslet, the music would have been enough to incite ecstasy and euphoric experiences. There was nothing in the meeting that made me curious enough to read more, although perhaps I should have a look at another holy book. Again, its presentation reminded me of fundamental Christians – a literally happened story with all the answers of life, just as you need them.

 

I shall not look at that chapel the same, but think my current flavour of faith suits me better.

At least I can’t be accused of not trying anything different!

Cynthia Bourgeault – Christian Contemplation

A friend raved about her so I was intrigued when she came to do a local talk. I am sure others went away raving, but I felt Cynthia’s ideas are much like what I’m hearing elsewhere. Perhaps that adds to their veracity, but it felt disappointingly familiar. As she put it, each has its own ‘emotional fragrance’ and the distinctions between different spiritualities are worth keeping, but I haven’t found in her or others something I’d really like to smell.

She spoke of putting your mind in your heart, which is much like others would call living in your soul. She covers much ground, but that’s essentially her message – to live in that deeper place within, and you move though life more easily. And if others did so, it would make a difference to our planet.

I am glad she ended with the last bit, for I was feeling tired of being told how to improve me and forgetting that we live in a world that badly needs altering and healing. In that way, she is on a mission to convert. But what if the people making the most atrocities are not the ones who will listen? I wonder how political leaders might react to a spiritual pamphlet being sent to them? Meanwhile there are wars, riots, poor people being ever more stretched and threatened, liberties eroded… I do believe that change comes from the heart, but am not entirely satisfied that meditation is the way to experience it or to spread it.

Christians on Gay Marriage

This is in reponse to a post on a British Christian website during the government consultation on giving gay peole the chance to enter into full legal marriage. It was  sent to the site’s editor.

I am saddened by the “Christians Urged to So NO to Gay marriage” post on the homepage. Out of an A4 length article, there are 3 lines from a pro gay Christian  (who are prevalent). The yellowed in paragraph would suggest the site manager’s views, who is also the author of the article.

My faith journey has shown me that neither the Bible nor a deeper knowledge of God supports this view that gay people are not loved and accepted by God. George Hopper’s little book, Reluctant Journey, charts how a conventional Methodist researched the topic and came out still Bible believing but with a very different view. Rather than just study, he met many gay people and their stories of hurt and rejection also made him recast his view.

It’s well documented that the Bible passages on homosexuality – which are very few – are not about the loving and committed relationships, but forms of debauchery and abuse.

I have also firmly felt that as James Alison says in his books, God is clear that he loves all his children, not to chastise and reject and curtail the love and sexuality of some whilst celebrate it in others. If anyone claims God to be about punishment and inequality and segregation, they are not speaking from God, no matter what their source.

I wonder what really is behind the anti homosexual drive is?

My brothers and sisters, why can you not count gay people among your siblings? Do you really see them as such a threat?

The government’s new proposed laws allow faith groups to keep their freedom of speech and to have the right not to have to embrace gay people and marriage. I do not see what the fear and outrage is, therefore. But what a bitterly disappointing way to exercise one’s freedom – by taking that of another.

The family patterns many Christians seek to uphold are in fact not in the Bible. The Old Testament is full of concubines and multiple wives; and the main players of the New are apparently single men travelling in groups with men and women. To say that God created male and female is not to say that that is the only legitimate pairing. If committed loving relationships and values of love, respect and justice is at the crux of Christian family, then you have nothing to fear from gay people.

Reading The Help reminds that within 50 years, Christians felt they could justify racial segregation which often led to acts of violence. Just over 200 years ago, Christians were among those who fought to stop slavery, whilst others were slave owners. We have still not got complete equality for women. Can you not see that some things done in the name of God are not in his name? Whatever is is best, most loving, most freeing, most noble – that is from God. If it is not, then it is not. Ask yourselves whether what you do in really in God’s name and is going to add to the Kingdom or take from it.