On Why I Need Christ During Christmas

So the Atheists are back, and they have a new billboard (because all the best-spirited debate happens when billboards get involved) in Times Square. It's animated (because why should Jesus have all the tacky adverts?); it starts off by saying "Who needs Christ during Christmas?", and then there's a bit of CGI whizziness and it changes to "Nobody needs Christ during Xmas".

Now, first of all, I appreciate that there are plenty of atheists out there who are facepalming at this; the ones who mocked the atheist bus campaign, and who hide under cushions when Richard Dawkins goes off on one again. And secondly, if they have the money and want to buy screentime, who am I to stop them?

But mainly I want to discuss their key point, that nobody needs Christ at Christmas. Firstly, this is a stupid argument to make, because, as any student of logic will tell you, you can't prove that something doesn't exist, whether that something is God, or a blue elephant, or "a person who needs Christ at Christmas"*. I'm being pedantic here, but a certain brand of atheist would go nuts if this was the other way around, so I'm not going to feel bad about it.

* It's a bit more complex than this, but still.

But secondly, and this is my main point today, I'm going to disagree with them, put my hands up, and say "I do. I need Christ this Christmas". I can't prove it to you, or use logic to persuade you, because I don't have a logical, rational argument (mainly because my life insists on being illogical and irrational). And I know that for some, only the logical and rational will suffice, but for me, I need there to be something else.

I need Christ because Christmas fills me with dread. At the darkest, coldest, most difficult time of the year, I'm expected to be merry and bright; I'm expected to go to parties; when all I want is the safety of bed and quiet and warm, I have to organise, plan, attend, pretend to enjoy, and I need Christ because I need to hear "You're enough, as you are. You're loved and accepted on the bad, grumpy, teary days as much as you are on the happy, excited, joyful days. You don't need to do more or be more. You're enough, and you're loved".

I need Christ because I often don't like myself; I hear criticism where none is meant; I hear sarcasm and anger when I need gentle words and compassion; and every time the fear rises and the anxiety comes and I need Christ because, Oh God, I don't want to cut again, but I need to let the feelings out and I need to hear the still, small voice saying "I know. I understand", and I need to let the tears run hot without judgement.

I need Christ because I don't always love my husband as well as I could; because love is not a feeling, but a series of choices, and a lot of the time I need help to make the right one.

I need Christ because I've made mistakes this year. I've hurt, I've lied, I've let down, I've judged, I've condemned. My best efforts have missed the mark. I need Christ because I need to hear "You're forgiven. You will always be forgiven. And you will overcome."

I need Christ because I've been lied to, I've been let down, I've been betrayed and abandoned, and I need to hear "I am with you always".

I need Christ because my friends have been beaten, abused, raped, cheated, widowed; they've had miscarriages and cancer and depression; they've been hurt and belittled and seen their dreams ripped up and their stories trampled. I need Christ because I need to be able to say "There is healing; there is hope; there is peace and joy and love for those who cannot even dare to imagine it".

I need Christ because my friends have cheated, lied, stolen; they've had affairs, fought, and gossiped, and I need Christ because I need to be able to say "There is redemption and restoration, and there is forgiveness and there is reconciliation, and sin is never the most powerful thing".

I need Christ because all the willpower in the world can't make me less afraid or more patient or give me any hope of transformation. As Robbie Williams sang, "You can't manufacture a miracle", and yet, a miracle is exactly what I need to hope for, in my life, and in my friends' lives, and it would be nice to have a machine to churn out miracles on demand, but instead I can only hope and pray and hold on to the promises with the tiny grain of faith that keeps living when it should have died.

So I respect the atheists' opinion, but I respectfully exercise my right to disagree; I know that others will say they don't need Christ for any of this, but I can only say that I do, and why don't we all just get on with things that matter and not be twerps about it?

This Post Is A Bit Serious And Contains A Smattering Of Religion. I'm also not really sure why I'm telling you it, except that it's in my head and I want to get it out.

Well, over 2 people thought the "Here's-a-headline-and-I-wrote-a-better-article" thing was a good idea, so I'll be doing that forthwith.  In the meantime, I've been Thinking Thinks, and decided to share some of them, for no real reason except that sometimes Thinks make more sense when they're written down and you can have a good look at them.

Recently I was looking through old diaries and journals, and came upon some stuff from about 2000-2001, when I did a Thing called "Encounter" - a kind of discipleship / Sonship course, which involved about 20-25 Irish people and some Americans all meeting in a little village south of Dublin and Learning Stuff for a fortnight, before being sent to far-flung places like Galway to work with churches for a week (that was a whole other experience, which we'll save for a time when I have the emotional strength to dig it all up again).

Anyway, part of this was that you got stuck in a "discipleship group" with a few others, and you talked about your problems*.  So I was with 2 others, who we'll call Lorraine and Christine, since that's what they're actually called.  I like to describe the three of us as "The discipleship group from Hell", because, while we're all very nice people, in general, we all arrived on the Thing refusing to talk about ourselves or share experiences or generally do any of the things that make a discipleship group actually work and not just be really awkward.

*I'm not sure that that was really what we were meant to do, but it sounded more doom-laden when we put it that way, and we liked that.

I remember being asked things like "What are you struggling with at the moment?" and it wasn't just that I was being awkward (I mean, I WAS also being awkward, but even if I hadn't been, that wasn't even close to the main issue), it was more that I really honestly couldn't have told you what I struggled with, because I didn't like Thinking Of Such Things.  If you'd asked me whether I was happy with who I was, I'd immediately have laughed and said "no" (well, I might have said "yes", but that would have been to stop you asking any more awkward questions), but if you asked me for specifics, I'd have been at a total loss.

During that time, I was keeping a journal fairly regularly, and one of the Bible verses I wrote that week was "Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from you and give you a heart of flesh." (Ezekiel 36:26), and I remember feeling that I had a heart of stone because it didn't seem to really do "feelings" and stuff very well, so I prayed that God would soften it and put feelings in it and that, even though I had a notion that I might not like That Sort of Thing, but I figured I could always throw them back out if I had to.

The thing is, I'm not an especially good person.  This is not me-bashing.  I'm not an especially bad person either.  I'm just a regular person, and I have good points and bad points.  But I've always loved an excuse.  Like, when I read stuff about how I should love other people, I liked to be able to say "Ah, yes, but that command is for people who can do stuff like that.  Not for me.  I just exist to facilitate everyone else doing that."  In the great mosaic of life, where everyone adds their own little bit of colour, I liked to think of myself as the grouting.  I'm there, I show up, you can see me if you look, things wouldn't go well without me, but I don't actually add anything much.  I liked to think that stuff that happened in the past meant that I had a sort of free pass to skip bits of the Bible.  I didn't have the capacity to love other people, I told myself, so therefore I was exempt.  I didn't have a ton of people in my life who loved me or did stuff for me, so it was ok to not love people all that much.

Don't get me wrong; I was all for compassion and goodness and kindness and things like that happening, and if I was able to do the dishes afterwards then I could feel ok about myself, but I didn't like to think that I could actually DO anything to make myself more compassionate or loving or generous or whatever, because then I'd have to actually DO something involving feelings.

I liked to be liked, though.  We all do, I think.  I liked to be nice to people, and to help out where I could, and to listen to problems and be all sympathetic about them.  And I was aware that sometimes sympathy wasn't the best course of action, but if I tried to suggest that perhaps plotting to kill the person who'd annoyed you wasn't the best course of action*, then you might not like me, so I'd go back to sympathy.

* Dear Police, this never actually happened

But then stuff started to change.  Our little group started the fortnight by spending our hour (or whatever it was) of discipleship group time studying the daisies and making jokes to break the tension, and ended it by actually talking about stuff.  Like, not major stuff.  But stuff.  At some point someone even cried a little. Then we went to Galway and we all came back exhausted and ill, and suddenly all the feelings inside me exploded all over the place one night.  The leader of the Thing was summonsed, and I sobbed on her shoulder for about half an hour, howling out the most random sentences known to mankind before or since, and she very patiently held me tight and then pointed out that maybe I was a self-centered, people-pleasing ball of anger and confusion who used excuses to stop having to move on or let God work* and suddenly I realised that maybe that was true, and maybe I couldn't just excuse it away, and maybe it might be ok to deal with it.

* I think she said it nicer than that, though.  But I wouldn't swear to it.

So suddenly the heart of stone started to crack a little, and let stuff happen.  Not much stuff, and not very fast, but I could stop blaming myself and my past and my fundamentally flawed personality for not being able to say hello to a new person who'd just come into the room, and I'd start going over to chat.  Awkwardly, of course.  It is a merciful thing that I don't remember my early attempts at being a Normal Sociable Person.  But I started to discover that people weren't really looking at me and thinking "Why is this girl with the weird facial expressions and weird voice who looks all weird having a weird conversation with me?", but really they were thinking "Does she think I'm weird? At least she's talking to me so I don't have to stand here like a weird freak on my own.", because really, I'm not the centre of everyone else's universe, and that's probably ok.

And then after a little while I could open myself up to being generous and taking little risks like giving people stuff and risking that they might give me something back and then I'd be stuck in some sort of viscious cycle of gift-giving, or else I'd look bad for not saying Thank You loudly enough, or else they wouldn't like what I gave them or they'd just think it was weird.  And I started to stop giving things just to make people like me, and started giving them just because I thought they might make the other person happy.  And I stopped really noticing whether the things I did for people made them like me or not, and I just went on doing things because there was joy in it.

And after a while that got to be ok, and, to cut a long story short, I started to open myself up to the idea that maybe I could try to love people properly, and focus on them instead of on myself, but in an encouraging way and not in a comparing myself to them way.  And maybe I could be honest and say "I know you want to kill that person, but maybe you shouldn't" and maybe they'd reject me and not talk to me again, but maybe that wasn't the end of the world, and maybe it was even better than just encouraging them to kill the person so I didn't look like a party pooper.  And maybe I could let them love me too, and I could be vulnerable sometimes, and accept help and allow other people to give it and not have to immediately make it up to them, and not be obssessed with what it would make them think of me.

And after another while, I realised that it was actually ok to obey what God said and to love other people, because it's not about me anyway, and if I screw it up, I have a couple of friends who were in that discipleship staring at daisies who have seen the bad and the good and who love me anyway, and then I thought that maybe that's a bit like what God is like, only he's even better, and then I started to get more friends like that, and then I think maybe I started to be that kind of friend for other people sometimes too.  And it turned out that other people actually thought that being secure in Christ as a child of God was more important than being good and right all the time, and that I could drop the pretence and not have to be perfect, and actually that was much better and safer and more exciting than always trying to be good and right and then having to run away and hide and never speak to people again when I messed up or gave in to temptation or couldn't be bothered or decided to have fun doing things my way.

So I'm thinking that somewhere along the way, quite a lot of what was stony and scared has been replaced with flesh and confidence, and even though that sometimes means that I care too much and probably annoy the feck out of people (especially the people who just want to block things out and stare at daisies), and even though there are still a lot of stony bits that I probably don't even know about, and a lot of the good bits are messed up in some ways, and there could be a lot more good bits and a lot less bad bits, I think I find much more joy and freedom in being this way, and overall, I think I would recommend it.

A Series Of Things

So I've had a lot of thoughts going on in my head this past while, and I haven't quite distilled them to the point where I'm ready to write about them, but I thought I'd list them so that you can all keep asking me for my deep and incisive thoughts on them.  Otherwise, my vast pool of wisdom could end up being lost to the internet for ever, and that would Not Do At All.

Topic 1: Marriage
So remember I said I was reading a book about marriage and it was making me feel a bit sarcastic?  Well, Mr Smile asked me for my reasons, and at the time I'm not sure I had them properly established.  However, since then I've had coffee with my friend Emma, and she recommended a book, and I looked it up on Amazon, and it's subtitle was "What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?" and I was all "YES!!!  THAT'S what I want to read about!".  So I think the problem with the current marriage book is that it's all a bit "making your marriage work" and I don't really want to read about that, not because it's not important, but because it's not very exciting, and I want exciting.

(In case you're wondering why I'm reading all these books about marriage, it's not that I'm having a marriage crisis; it's more that because we got married fairly quickly after getting engaged, we didn't have time to go to any marriage preparation classes, and in any case we probably would have been thrown out because we would only have sniggered at the sex bits, so I'm reading some books in case there's some vast wisdom out there that I've missed out on.  I still snigger at the sex bits, because I am Not Very Mature. It's also because some people bought us books on marriage for engagement/wedding presents, so it would be rude not to read them).

Topic 2: Loving People
I came across an article on 'tinternet the other day, all about how to love people who annoy you, and it was fine as far as it went, but then I got in a discussion on The Facebook, which lead me to think "Really the command is not to get along with people, it's to love them.  And really it's not about people who annoy you, it's about actual enemies and that". So I have some Thoughts On That, which I'm preparing to dispense.

Topic 3: Friendship and being nice
A third ongoing issue is that of how to be a good friend, especially to someone who has let you down or who is doing crazy stuff that hurts you a lot, or, you know, that kind of thing.  And it has seemed to me that it is not important to be nice, but it is important to be all manner of other things which are much more difficult and scary and possibly unpleasant and risky but which are also (as far as you can ascertain) loving and helpful and therefore you have to do them because the person is your friend and you care about them.  But also you don't want to completely just feck the person off by being an utter twat (incidentally, Mr Smile and I are currently involved in an ongoing argument as to whether 'twat' is a really bad swear word, or just a funnier version of 'twit'... please feel free to get involved), plus they're an adult, and frankly, when they want your opinion they can ask for it, and anyway you might not be as Right as you think, and anyway also you should probably sometimes just shut up and listen.

This reminded me of my second form chemistry teacher, who once said during a lesson (I've no idea why, but this may explain why I have only a very basic grasp of chemistry) that he would never want to be described as 'nice', and this shocked me because I was a 12-year-old girl and being thought of as 'nice' was the only ambition I had at that point.  But now I think I agree entirely with him, because, as they say, no one ever changed the world by being nice, and also because we're supposed to be like Jesus, and I don't know that He was really all that nice, when it came to it.

Topic 4: The Inanity Of Following Your Heart
This was prompted entirely by this article, and I like it because I've never been comfortable with following my heart, but people seem to tell me to do it sometimes, and therefore they are Wrong and I am Right, and I like when that happens.

Also, it gave the opportunity for her over at Living Gently to share the following quote on Facebook, and is worth a lot for that reason alone:

 "Should I bolt every time I get that feeling in my gut when I meet someone new? Well, I've been listening to my gut since I was 14 years old, and frankly speaking, I've come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains."

Rob (John Cusack) in High Fidelity

So these are all grand, and I hope to come back to them, but I think we also need some light entertainment, and so I present some of it here:

1. This is the work of a genius.  An evil genius.

2. Daily Odd Compliments are hysterical.

3. Very British Problems will hit home.

4. Pins which amused me this week were this, this and this.

You're Welcome.

I Know What I Did This Summer. Mostly.

So it's the end of a long, hot, wearying rollercoaster of a summer. We may only be in mid-August (I say 'may'; I really haven't the faintest clue what day it is), but the evenings are that bit shorter and there's a definite smell of Autumn in the air. I say rollercoaster; I won't go into the details, but it's been one of those summers I won't forget for a while. I'm mentally, emotionally and physically tired today, and although it's nothing a good weekend of taking it easy won't cure, it feels like I'm ready for term time to bring on its routines. Still, we have Holiday Bible Club next week in church, so that'll be a good opportunity for a bit of rest and recuperation... Small children are always restful *.

(*small children are almost never restful)

First, we had the arrival of Nephew Smile. This caused great excitement in the Smile household, particularly for Papa Smile, a man not generally renowned for his love of small children, but who has been seen lying in the summerhouse with Nephew Smile on his chest, chatting away and telling him stories. Also, Mama and Papa Smile got a summerhouse. Like, a shed thing in the garden, not a whole separate house that they go to in the summer. That's crazy talk.

Also good this summer was the firm re-establishment of an old friendship - not that it had lapsed, it just hasn't been firing on all cylinders for a few years, for various reasons. Anyway, this is one of those friendships where all we need is to look at each other and we descend into the most irritating (and yet weirdly catching) giggles. Which is probably kind of annoying for other people, because it tends to interrupt the flow of proper grown-up conversations if two of the participants go into hysterics if someone says one of their trigger words. But I've always felt that grown-up conversation is vastly over-rated. Also, CHICKENS!! *collapses to the floor giggling with friend*

<warning: religious bit>

It's also been a summer when I've had to do a lot of thinking about what it looks like for broken relationships to be restored, and how to help in a very broken, messy situation. I've done a lot of reading, and praying, and thinking about God's grace and mercy, and what that looks like in terms of human friendships, and how to bring about restoration. I've been hurt and been let down, and probably hurt other people and let them down; I've forgiven and been forgiven; I've had to trust that God will work in miraculous ways. I've been reminded that God does indeed work in miraculous ways, and that through Christ we have victory over the power of sin. I'm learning that I need to be patient and wait for that victory to be worked out, when I want it all now. I've resisted the urge to shove all my solutions onto a friend going through a bad time, and I've failed to resist that urge. I've tried to figure out what it really means to be a good friend.

I revisited my favourite book (From Fear To Freedom), and have started a crusade to make everyone read it. When I mentioned it on Facebook, Transfarmer requested that I wrote a summary of it here, because she's too lazy to re-read it herself (or she had a baby or something). So I might do that. Then I wrote to the author of the book to say how much I loved it, and she wrote back and said she'll send me a copy of her new book. So that's exciting, and I'll tell you all about it once I've read it.

<end of religious bit, mostly>

So that basically summarises my summer of 2013. I may be back shortly with the WhyNotSmile Guide To Running A Holiday Bible Club (tips: don't end up in charge, and don't be vastly over-ambitious with your craft), depending on how it goes. If you're the praying type, you could say a few words for the week. If you're the type who thinks it's all about brainwashing children into superstition, calm down. I don't have the energy for that sort of thing.

Also, if anyone out there knows how to make and bake salt dough, please get in touch. All the helpers for next week are Supportive Of The General Concept, but none of us have actually ever done salt dough before. I'm currently thinking that the best-case scenario is that we at least get a good laugh out of it, but you never know: it might work. I'll keep you posted.

On having faith in the church instead of in God

Some time ago, over at Living Gently, she said this (well, technically, she said someone else had said this. She didn't say who though, so I don't know and can't attribute it. Meh, so sue me):

"…people generally have little or no faith in God: their faith is in the church. Then, when the church fails (inevitable), they lose their faith."

I thought this was epic, and promised to blog on it. Then I did precisely nothing about it, because I'm lazy. I let you all down. This is why you shouldn't put your faith in me. Still, I'm getting round to it now, so you know, would it kill you to be grateful?

First a warning: this post is all about church and God and stuff, so if you're only here for the Comedy Guides to Childcare and so on, I'd save yourself the next 5 minutes and leave now. Come back soon, though. We'll miss you.  And I might have one on Wedding Planning soon, because I seem to be doing Quite Well at that.

So, yes, on having faith in the church rather than in God. A lot of people do this. I probably do this. But we shouldn't do it, because it is Not The Best Way To Do Things.

Unfortunately, it appears to be the default setting for lots of my generation at least. We talk about finding "a good church", and finding "a place that will help me grow" (or, even worse "a church that grows me") and finding "somewhere that really connects me to God" (please note, if you use that last phrase around me, it makes me feel stabby towards you). As if the purpose of church is to do all these things for us.

While pondering all this, I came across this quote from East Belfast Mission's Twitter feed:

@ebelfastmission: "We can not wait for great vision from great people because they are in short supply. We must light our own small fires in the darkness"

See, this is the thing.  It seems to me that we spend a lot of time waiting for other people to inspire us to do things.  We think that we'd do awesome stuff if only we had a good leader or more people to help us or a bit more cash to spend.  We'd love to understand the Bible, but we need someone to explain it to us.  We love to really be led into worshipping God.  And so on, and so forth.  But, then, when it doesn't happen, we ditch those people, and move on to new people, and then they don't really help much, and then eventually we run out of people, so we try to go it alone for a while, and then we give up on the enterprise entirely.

As I've said before, I believe that the local church is the hope of the world.  I think God more or less says this in the Bible.  Not those exact words, but the general sentiment.  But we seem to be sitting around waiting for the church to look a bit more like something that might be the hope of the world, because we're putting our faith in the church.  What we should be doing is putting our faith in God and thereby, as the church, becoming the hope of the world.

This means that we don't get discouraged when we look around church and don't like what we see.  Instead, we look for the good, and we celebrate that, and we wonder what on earth it is that God's going to do through this group of wasters, and we get excited about that and get stuck in, and be thankful that there are other people turning up at all, because when things get rough, chances are it's going to be one of those people that God works through to help us out.  And also because, if God works through all these other wasters, then He might also work through me, and it would be nice to be around for when it happens.  We remind ourselves that the disciples weren't the most inspiring bunch of people, and that they did All Right In The End, what with the Holy Spirit to stop them completely fecking it all up and all.

It means that we don't sit around waiting for the worship to inspire us.  Instead, we turn up with an attitude of worship, because we recognise that worship is what we do all the time, every day, and if we're not "feeling it" during the service, it may be because we didn't bring it with us, so maybe we should pray a bit about that, or at least accept that it happens sometimes and not get too hung up about it.  We express our thanks to the people who take time to prepare the music, and, if necessary, we remind ourselves of CS Lewis' little anecdote from when he first showed up at church:

"I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered fifth rate poetry set to sixth rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren't fit to clean those boots."

It means that we don't go home and complain that the minister didn't explain the Bible passage well enough; instead, we appreciate that we were pointed to the Bible at all, and we pray about not understanding it, and we read it a bit ourselves, and we see what we think, and maybe we ask some other people or take a look online and see if we can figure it out a bit better, and then maybe we find we're actually capable of figuring it out for ourselves and maybe that's a good thing.

It means that we don't complain that no one ever helps us with the things we do in church, but instead we take time to invest in people, help them figure out their talents, and then be prepared to stand back and watch them fly.

It means that when we face opposition or complaining about stuff that we're doing, instead of being all huffy and offended and upset and giving up, we turn to God in prayer, and ask if what we're doing is what He really wants, and if it's not then we give it up and try something else, and if it is then we carry on and don't listen to the condemning voices of the people around us, because those are not ultimately the voices that matter.

In short, it means we stop sitting around waiting for things to be better, and for people to inspire us, and for our church to catch a grip and start doing things in The Proper Christian Way, and we start looking for ways in which we can make things better, and we honestly ask God what He thinks, and then we trust that God will be the one we listen to, and then we realise that there is no Proper Christian Way, but there is only God's grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, because otherwise it would be all about us, and, well, that would suck.

Of course, it's possible that I'm entirely wrong, but that's fine, because by this point you will have realised that you shouldn't have too much faith in me and that probably the best thing that could happen now is that I stop talking and you listen to God instead.

Of course, if you're not really into God and church and stuff, and were really only here for the Comedy Guides, well, you've probably just waste 5 minutes of your life, but, frankly, I warned you, and it turns out you should have had faith in me after all.  Heh.  Ironic.

A Good Thing I Read About The Importance of Mercy and Compassion and Stuff

You could probably guess that I'm not a big fan of celebrity Christians.  I don't mean like Milton Jones and Frank Skinner; I mean the 'big names' like Mark Driscoll, Rick Warren, Bill Hybels and themuns.  It's nothing personal, and it's not that I dislike them (ok, some of them I dislike) or their teaching (ibid), it's just that I don't feel all that inclined to follow them on Twitter and hang on their every word.  If they write some good stuff or make a decent Bible study series or something, that's great and I'm all for it.  But, you know, that's where my fandom begins and ends.

And sometimes it worries me when I see teenaged Christians who are big fans of the latest leader or singer or band in the Christian world, because then they often aspire to be like that, and to be honest, that's not really what we need our young people to aspire to be.  Now, I've been promising you a post on my views on Youth Work (sorry, Transfarmer, it will happen, I promise), and this is sort of vaguely related, in that it often makes me uncomfortable to look at the kinds of people we think our young people should be influenced by, because I came across this post (thanks, Soapbox) and she said a lot of things that I wanted to say, and said it better than I would have, so I thought I'd just link to it for now (it's directed at all of us, not just young people, so it's ok to read it even if you're a bit scared of the young people in church because they're all cool and stuff).

Go and read it.

I'll wait.

Back?  Good.  Now, wouldn't it be nice if we lived in ways which showed our young people that THAT's the kind of thing that matters, and not the Big Names and the People With Fans and the Famous?  You know, so they see that they 'worship' just as much on a Sunday morning when they take time to chat with an older person as when they're singing with their arms in the air?  That they serve God as much by picking up a half-eaten biscuit that one of the creche abandoned and throwing it in the bin as the guy at the front does when he preaches his sermon or plays his guitar or looks all relevant?  That it is as important to hold back from sarcasm as it is to be on the prayer ministry team at the cool conference?  And that when they start with the small stuff, they can build the big stuff on, because we're all going to be there supporting them in it?

Because I think that would be nice.

A Thing About The Flegs

So there's a thing that's been bothering me in all this talk about The Fleg Protests, and it is this: I keep hearing the protesters referred to as 'scumbags', 'lowlifes', 'hoods', 'morons' etc.  Of course, this is simply classic Northern Irish tribalism, but with the boundaries rotated.  Nowadays, instead of splitting into 'Nationalist' and 'Unionist', we're splitting into 'the ones with sense' and 'the eejits'.  But This Simply Will Not Do, because Tribalism has never served us well, and in order to move forward, we need to move together.

It's rather depressing to see politicians trot out the same old lines night after night: "They started it", "They attacked us first", "Our rights are being stripped away", "They get handed everything and it's being taken from us". In the midst of this, I've been impressed by the likes of Naomi Long, who said, after receiving a death threat, that she wants to build a shared future which includes everyone, and specifically, which also includes those who issued a death threat against her.  Naomi is one of those incredibly impressive people who can, under pressure, take a loaded question and instead of giving the same old answer, can inject her response with grace, sense and vision.  Kind of a bit like Jesus.  She's also funny on Facebook.  Also like Jesus, maybe.

Anyway, I think this is the right way to do things.  We need to build a future which includes everyone.  And we can't do that if we write people off because they're a bit undesirable, what with their hoodies and their bricks and their funny little accents (Although there's a fabulous irony in one area of Belfast mocking another area for their accent.  A bit like the pot calling the other pot a pot.).

* WARNING: sudden swing into Religious Talk coming up about now *

Now, part of this of course comes down to churches, and this brings up another point. Since announcing my Intention To Become Mrs Smile, several people in church (and outside it) have asked whether I'll be moving house.  The underlying question often includes the nuance 'to somewhere a bit nicer'.  I can't blame them, since this is what has happened to pretty much every couple who have got engaged/married in our church in the past number of years, and in churches in the area.  It's not as if it's a bad area, it's just not necessarily the most desirable, so people assume you'll want to get out of it when you have the option, to have more bedrooms and a bigger garden, and a place to park the car.  But I have no intention of going anywhere, mainly because my stress levels would go through the ceiling if I had to move house, but also because I believe that the local church is the hope of the world, and the hope of the local area as well.  We can't make a difference in an area unless we live in the area, worship in the area, serve the area, and know people in the area.  Too many people of my generation are off to the 'big name' churches, which are often in the nice middle-class areas, serving the nice middle-class areas, attracting the nice middle-classes.  Too few hang around in the places that are struggling because their members are elderly (and therefore often having wisdom and experience, but not necessarily fond of drums), or unchurched (and therefore with fresh vision, but also crazy ideas during Bible studies), or too stretched in their resources (and therefore having to rely on God, but not really knowing that the work they do can be paid after the end of the month, even though it's already on a budget of about £3 per week).

Now, my church isn't quite in that situation (although too stretched in the resources department is true, so feel free to send us money (no, seriously)), but we want to serve the community we're in, and by and large we do that best when we actually live there and know the area and know the people.  We'll never do it if we start labelling people, whether as scroungers, skivers, shirkers, lowlifes, scumbags and chavs, posh, holy, mature, needy, useful or anything else.  We'll do it if we get to know people as people, and we see their good, bad and annoying only after seeing our own good, bad and annoying, and only after realising that the reason we can live with the bad is that we've been redeemed by a gracious God who sees everyone else as being precisely as good/bad/annoying as he sees us.

Of course, then they might join our church and do weird things like go all fundamentalist or not understand the doctrine of prevenient grace or not like our cool new worship singing (it is interesting to note that people who are not in the habit of going to church very often quite like the Old Ways Of Doing Things, Thankyouverymuch, although we like to think that they'll be all cool like us (not like me, I'm not cool at all.  But like the cool people)).  And they may have to miss the Bible Study to go and stand at the protests, if those happen to clash, but that doesn't mean that they have nothing to input to the study, it just means that maybe we'll have to learn from them over a cup of tea at a more convenient time.

But I digress. I'm just saying that if we've deserted a particular area because it wasn't 'nice enough' for us, then we can't really stand and wring our hands and look down on the people who live there as if they are in some way inferior.  I'm saying that maybe we need to stop thinking we can have All The Nice We Want and if other people get left behind, tough.  Because we have to Share The Nice, people.

At some point I may give you my rants on The Middle Classes, Spiritual Journeys, and General Christian Bollocks, but I have been specifically asked to share my rant on Youth Work, and that may be next.

It is also entirely possible that I am completely wrong about all of this, and that I will change my opinion tomorrow.  So don't get too worked up, like.

On Liking Cake

One of my favourite parts of teaching Sunday School is the bit where we ask them what they want to pray for this week.  The suggestions generally range from 'my granda is sick' through 'I have a test tomorrow' to 'I like cake'.

This always gets me wondering: at what point in life does it become unacceptable to announce in a prayer meeting that you like cake?  For I can guarantee that if I did this at the church prayer meeting, I'd get 'looks'.  What is the point at which we think we have to be all grown up and serious?  And also, why?

It's almost as if we think it actually matters to God how we pray.  As if we think we can, in any way, approach the Creator of the universe as anything other than ridiculous creatures who should, by rights, be flicked away to stop us cluttering the place up with our crappiness.  As if we think He'll only hear us if we say it all proper, instead of just coming and enjoying being overawed by the fact that we're there at all.

I think God likes it when we come and tell Him that we like cake, or that we don't like cake, or that we saw a cloud shaped like a chicken today.  I think He maybe likes that better than when we pretend that we are proper serious creatures who can only bring 'worthy' things and when we are a little bit proud that we have managed to learn about another worthy thing.  I don't think He minds us praying about serious things either, of course, but mostly I think He just likes when we pray about things that delight us, and things that matter to us, and things that are in our hearts and on our minds, whether those are serious or not.

I wonder if God has more fun being at the church picnic where people are chatting and having fun and talking about how their week was and what's happening in the week ahead and whether they should plant the spring bulbs yet or wait till after the first frost and probably not being very spiritual at all, than He does at the Bible studies where we're so focussed on finding out more information about Him that we forget how crazy it is that we can know anything about Him at all, so instead of just laughing and appreciating what we have we get all earnest and furrow our brows and look up things in Greek dictionaries.

Sometimes when I watch people in churches squabbling about stuff, I'm amazed by how much both sides seem to think the stuff in question matters.  I mean, sometimes it does, and sometimes difficult issues need to be debated.  But, when people fall out over the time of the prayer meeting or the colour of the carpet or the length of the hymns or the content of the hymns or the age of the hymns or anything to do with the freaking hymns for Pete's sake, I picture them as small children squabbling over who drew the nicest picture for mummy, when neither of them is exactly Monet and in any case mummy's just happy they drew her pictures at all, and that they were on paper and not on the wall, and also that it kept them quiet for an hour so she could put the dinner on and mop the kitchen floor, and I think I've lost the thread of this analogy now.

But the point is that when we think there's a 'right way' and a 'wrong way' of doing things, we start to deny how great God is and how not great we are, and we start to make it all about who is the most 'correct', as if any of us is capable of coming close to the goodness of God, and then we get all arrogant and that is Not A Good Thing.

A Thing I Like A Lot

When I first met transfarmer, she was, like, 19 or something,  and didn't know how to get the bus to Dublin, and got her mum to phone me to help her.

Now she's all grown up and writing awesome stuff like this:
http://transfarmer.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/its-about-youth-work-again-im-sorry/trackback/

I like it a lot.

How The Lent Thing Went

So you'll remember that this week I was doing a Lent Thing, in which I was choosing to see good in people and not bad. The masses have been clamouring to know how it went (mainly they seem to have been led by espero), so here is how it went.

Now, in all honesty, it was an easier than average week, as all social things were Off For Easter, so I basically worked like mad and didn't really talk to anyone, apart from some work people, who didn't annoy me.  And I also talked to Sister Smile, but I'm not allowed to talk about her on the blog.  And it's not that the people I generally socialise with annoy me, but I have a word limit of approximately 50 per day, and once that's exceeded I get narked fairly quickly.

However, there were a couple of people I was quite annoyed with (I won't say who, because some of you might know them, and then my annoyance will turn into A Situation), but I wasn't actually talking to them, so I privately seethed a bit and then mostly forgot about it.  So I think we can say it went well, but that it wasn't exactly a challenge, and therefore we shall continue it until such times as it becomes an actual Issue.

I think the core of the issue is that I don't really generally get annoyed with people any more, having realised that my main responsibility in life is to ensure that I am doing the best I can to love them, and there is nothing they can do to stop me (mwah ha ha).

So since there was nothing much to report about my week, we shall instead consider some things that happened to me today.

Firstly, in church we had an Easter Egg hunt, which was fun, but mainly for the children.  At the end they each got 2 chocolate eggs, and were told to keep one and give the other to someone they love.  One of the younger boys gave his to me, which made me feel all loved and not so much a waste of space, so that was nice.

Then in Sunday School, we were talking about the Easter story, and for reasons I won't go into, we had Bible Class in with us as well as Sunday School, giving an age range of 4-14.  Which became an issue when one of the children asked "How come God was Jesus' father and also Joseph was Jesus' father?".  My immediate response was along the lines of God being Jesus' actual father who made Mary pregnant and Joseph being married to Jesus' mother, but thankfully (and unexpectedly) I caught onto the potential dangers of this line of thought before any of it came out of my mouth, and thus I avoided giving a full-blown sex education lesson to the assembled group.

Now I'm at the parents' for a few days, which is nice.  There's talk of building a fence to replace the one my dad and I made about 15 years ago, so that may be tomorrow's task.

A Lent Thing

According to Blogger, you can now view WhyNotSmile in 5 different ways.  I don't know how.  But that's 5 times as much WhyNotSmile, which can only be a good thing.

Anyway, to get back to the point.  Many moons ago, I had a year out, in which I did this. We had a saying (it may have been the motto, or we may have made it up; also, I may not remember it entirely accurately) which said "Encourage good wherever you find it; if you can't find it, look harder".

Now this is a Good Plan for many reasons.  For instance, it's Biblical.  We should encourage good things, because those are from God, and therefore... well... good.  And also, it enables us to get along with people who would otherwise annoy the feck out of us.  Everyone has some merits, however deeply buried, and it is always nice to focus on those and not on the things that make us want to stab them in the face.

Over time, one finds that the person one previously suspected of being an arrogant, irritating fecker of a waste of space, actually has some redeeming features, and if one can encourage those, one tends to get on a lot better with the person, which is helpful if one is stuck with them in a confined space, such as an office.

Also, when one focusses on someone's good points, the other person begins to trust one more, which means that when you say "You know, you're really quite irritating when you do that", they tend to listen more and sometimes even try to stop doing it.

It also helps a lot with the Biblical command to "love one another", which is, in many circles, deemed to be Of Note.

So this week, as my Lent thing (which we're finally getting round to starting; don't judge me, at least I'm trying (encourage good, see?)), I hereby proclaim that I shall make an extra special effort to do this all week, and to look for good things all over the place, and not snark over much about bad things; and also, I shall not just stay in the house so I don't have to see people, because that would be cheating.

If you would like to join me, please feel free to leave comments about how great I am.

Thanks.

On How I Would Like The Way Things Work To Be Different

It is fashionable these days, in Evangelical circles at least, to point out at every opportunity that "I'm a Christian, I don't 'do' religion". It's one of those provocative things that's meant to make the listener say "Oh! You shock me! Please explain all about this as I have been stunned into curiosity.". In practice, of course, most people don't really give a fiddler's fart, as they mostly have other things on their mind than you.

Anyway. My point is that I quite liked it in the Olden Days, when it was all about religion, and rules and so on. You know where you are with the Ten Commandments. I am reasonably confident I have never committed adultery, and, quite frankly, my neighbour can keep his ass. Mine's nicer anyway. I do not have the time or inclination to make graven images, as my craft projects largely revolve around my friends' babies, and they tend not to like statues of Baal.

Religion is something I can manage quite well, thank you very much, and I shall take my gold star and go to the top of the class. But then you go and bring all this grace and love stuff into it, and I fall flat on my face.

The whole "not into religion" thing is all about how being a Christian is about being forgiven and learning about God's grace, and loving other people, and this is Not A Good Thing if, like me, you are profoundly unsociable and spent much of your first 20 years desiring nothing more than to be left alone. This is not a good start in the loving people thing, as sitting in the corner with an Enid Blyton book doesn't help anybody. Trust me, I've tried. On the other hand, I suppose when you're starting from the viewpoint that other people are largely to be endured, you at least skip the part where you can only love the nice ones.

My point is this: that sometimes we have to learn to love people, even when we think they are highest order wazzocks (I am so pleased to get to use that word), and Christians can be a useful source of practice material. Actually, I'm not sure that was my point.

Think Of This As A Tweet

I write to warn you all not to read Virtual Methodist's latest book.  Someone told me that they had heard someone say they'd heard on the grapevine that it is a repository of Heresy and Poor Doctrine(TM) and for this reason I am coming out now to condemn the book, the author, and all who read it.

It does not matter that I have not read this book; I know enough from the two sentences I heard to know that it is not of the Spirit, but is, in fact, a paving stone on the road to hell, and must be condemned by all Right-Thinking(TM) Christians(TM).  One need not allow for context, or the fraily of the grapevine when one comes across such blindingly obvious falsehood; when souls are at stake, knee-jerks are fine.

It does not matter that I am not being Very Nice when I condemn Virtual Methodist to hell for this, because Correct Doctrine is more important than Love. As Jesus famously said,

By this shall all men know that thou art my disciples, if thou hast dottedest all the i's and crossedest all the t's, and thou hast written them in big books and banged other people over the head with them

Nor does it matter that Virtual Methodist hasn't even written a book, because with all this publicity, when he does, it'll go viral, so he won't mind.

On The Rights And Wrongs Of School Assemblies

So The Atheists want school assemblies to be made illegal (warning: link to Daily Mail.  WhyNotSmile accepts no responsibility for anything that might happen while you're there, but advises you not to start reading the comments), on the basis that they infringe children's human rights.  It is hard to know what to think about this, so I have compiled a Helpful List of pros and cons:

Reasons to Ban School Assemblies
1) If you were to design something guaranteed to turn a child away from all things religious, you could do little better than your average school assembly.  School assemblies are generally run by either the teachers (in which case you often have the ridiculous sight of atheists ssshushing small children so they can hear other atheists talking about God), or the local vicar (generally consisting of over-stretched stories with "that's just like Jesus!" shoe-horned onto the end); you get the odd quite good one where someone with both social skills and an enthusiasm for spreading The Word is put in charge, and of course you get some excellent ones, but in my experience these are few and far between.

Reasons to Keep School Assemblies
1) It is always wise to disagree with anything the National Secular Society says, just on principle.  Anything which annoys Richard Dawkins is also a good bet.

2) It is useful to ensure that children are accustomed to being bored, as it will prepare them well for a life in the office.  I am firmly of the opinion that everyone's lives would be a lot easier if children were better at entertaining themselves quietly; school assemblies are good places to practice this.

3) The world would be poorer if no one knew the words and tunes to 'Morning Has Broken', 'One More Step Around The World I Go' and 'Fight The Good Fight'.  Actually, no.

So with 2 votes to 1, we see that school assemblies should be kept.

The WhyNotSmile Guide To Blue Monday, And Other Depressing Times

Good Afternoon, and Happy New Year.  Sorry for not posting, been busy and so on and so forth.

So today may or may not be Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year (currently the score stands at 3 for (This Morning, Virtual Methodist and my friend Claire; it is possible that these sources are connected), 1 against (Wikipedia)).  This is the day on which we all feel very miserable, due to having bankrupted ourselves at Christmas, not being paid for a few weeks yet, it's Monday, we're all getting divorced, and it's dark outside.

I have no idea whether it's Blue Monday or not, but I do know that I feel feck miserable today.  It is unlikely that this is due to my impending divorce, and more probable that it has a connection with my doctor thinking that 2 weeks ago was 'a good time' to reduce my anti-depressants.  I'm not entirely clear that I follow her logic, but she's very nice, so I went along with it, and hey, I can always go back and get them upped again. Once all the people with swine flu get out of the surgery, of course, cos I don't want to catch that.  And also I like to get a bit of attention at the doctor's, and she might not have so much time if she has 300 whining people who woke up this morning and sneezed twice to deal with.

So anyway.  Virtual Methodist is feeling good, and we're happy about that.  Also, on Facebook the concensus seems to be that we're all enjoying the blue skies and sunshine.

Historically, the week of Blue Monday has not been a good one for WhyNotSmile.  Three years ago this week was the big Thing With The Boss That Led To 5 Weeks Off With Stress.  Two years ago was the Broken Arm.  Last year passed uneventfully, as far as I remember, so this either means the effect is wearing off, or I'm Due.  Hard to say.

But it's not like I need a special day on which to be miserable, for WhyNotSmile can be depressed on any day of the year, for no particular reason, and in great force.

So here are my tips for coping with depression:

1) Enjoy the little things.  Like your new Christmas jammies, which have been through their first wash by now, and therefore can be worn with confidence that this is the size they'll stay, and they can be washed again without losing all their colour, so it's ok to wear them as much as you want.  I hate that initial 'new jammies' thing, where you're enjoying them, but you have the worry that Something Bad will happen in the wash, so you don't want to wear them too much because then you'll have to wash them, and then you might never be able to wear them again.

2) Do little things.  There is no point in attempting to restructure your entire life in January.  The initial enthusiasm will fall away, and you'll be back to square one, but with less energy, and shattered dreams.  Save the big things for an indeterminate day in the future.  Instead, concentrate on the little things.  People always need hugs.  Give hugs.

3) Exercise.  They always say you should exercise when you feel miserable.  I'm sure it's great.  Give it a go, and let me know what happens, kk?

4) Remember that sad is deep people's version of happy.  Anyone can be happy.  But it takes a great intelligence to see the misery in everything.

5) Likewise, valleys.  We can all enjoy being on the mountaintop, much beloved by Christian musicians through the eras.  But coping with valleys is something else.  Sometimes we can even learn things from God when we're not in the middle of another hyper praise song, waving arms in the air, and yelling 'Amen'.  At least, I think that's true.  I read it on the internet, so it must be.

Exploring Our Matrix: Why Anti-Evolutionism Is Evil

This post encapsulates many reasons why Creationism is a Bad Thing.

In particular:

Christians have a strong sense that they are supposed to be going against the flow, that they need to dare to be different, that they need to stand up for their faith even if it means ridicule or persecution. What Ken Ham and others like him have done is to give Christians a way that they can feel that they are in fact doing this, standing up for their faith, by standing up for pseudoscience, instead of taking a stand for the things that really ought to distinguish a Christian: love for enemies, concern for justice, bringing together those whom society divides along lines of race, gender, status, and much else.

And if I get one more person inviting me to the Facebook group 'I bet we can find 1000000 people who don't beleive in evolution before June', I may also fail to do things which ought to distinguish a Christian.

In fact, please stop inviting me to Facebook groups, unless you are really VERY sure.

Invade the Airwaves: A WhyNotSmile Review

Some people have all the luck. My friend Sean for instance. Wakes up in the middle of the night. Looks outside. Sees two people walking past carrying a toilet. That kind of luck doesn't happen to me. I wake up in the middle of the night; I look out and it's raining.

But that's not why we're here. Today's discussion is about the current campaign to 'Invade The Airwaves' and get a Christian song to the number one spot for Easter. I keep getting invited to join this campaign; lots of my friends have signed up and seem to expect that I will want to do the same.

Now let me say, I'm not against 'Christian' music being number one, and nor do I have any objections to anyone who likes a song buying it. But nor can I get myself excited about this, and I hereby declare my reasons:

1. What is the point?
Essentially, it seems to be about 'putting Jesus back into Easter'. Leaving aside the irony of putting a Christian festival into a pagan one and then getting a bit huffy when everyone realises that they prefered it when it was about chocolate, is this the best way to put Jesus back into anything other than the charts?

Let's face it, the message of Easter is a glorious one, of resurrection, newness of life, freedom from bondage and renewed relationship with the creator of the universe. If people don't get that, I've a feeling we have a more fundamental problem than that they got distracted by the nice shiny Easter eggs when the preacher paused for breath. I've a feeling that maybe the message of Easter (which is, after all, a not insignificant part of the message of Christianity) is not what people hear when they talk to Christians, because if it was, then I think they'd be keen to know more.

Maybe if we want to put Jesus back in to Easter, we need to live out the Easter message ourselves. I'm not saying don't buy the song. I'm just saying.

Secretly, I suspect that a large part of the campaign (not among the organisers necessarily, but among some of those who've signed up) is about saying 'Hey! Look at us! There are lots of us and we can make our song number 1!'. It's marking our territory. If only the charts were a physical object, rather than an ephemeral concept (that might be wrong, I don't really know what ephemeral means), we could achieve the same thing by just peeing a circle round them. But they aren't and we can't, so instead we have to start a Facebook group, which amounts to a virtual circle of pee, but not as smelly.

2. Can we justifiably describe any music as Christian?
And now my second point: can a piece of music actually be redeemed by the atoning blood of Christ? Can it be said to have made the choice to take up its cross and follow Jesus? Because, if not, then I think we'd have to agree with Richard Dawkins that the music is being unfairly labelled and should be allowed to make its own decision when it grows up.

There is another point to be made here, about how all music comes from God and is a celebration of His creation and so on and so forth, but I can't think of it right now, and anyway, I'm sure Zoomtard has already said it better. Because he does, you know. Say things better.

And so, in conclusion, I do not object to anyone buying the single if they want to, or to it being number one, but I do not think I will buy it myself, and I do not wish to join the Facegroup book is all.

Mary and Martha

So I found my hat (turned out my sister had taken it), and the oven is on its way to being fixed, and there has been much rejoicing.

Now, I may have mentioned that my sister is doing a PCGE, with a view to becoming a teacher, and to this end, she is co-opting anyone within shouting distance to help with Lesson Preparation. So this week's lesson is RE, and they're doing the story of Mary & Martha. You know the one: Mary and Martha invite Jesus for tea, and then Martha does lots of work making dinner, and Mary just sits and listens, and then Martha gets cross with Mary, and shouts, and Jesus says Mary's the one in the right, and then Mary doesn't even act all smug like I would have done. The point is that it is better to listen to Jesus than to be engaged in activity and not listening to Jesus, even if the activity is good.

Now, this being 2010, the children cannot be taught That Sort Of Thing, so instead they are teaching the story in terms of how generally it is better to spend time with your friends than to be being busy all the time. Or something.

So with this vaguest of all points in mind, Sister decided that the lesson needed jazzing up. And you know what would jazz up an RE lesson? That's right, a DVD. Cos we all like DVDs, right? But of course it can't be any old DVD, it has to be related to the story in hand, and of course we do not have one of those. So she decides we'll make one.

And this is it:



If you're now confused about the point of the story, be assured that you're in good company, but isn't it fun?

On Ecumenical Matters (Or Something)

By now you may or may not be aware that Pope Benedict has issued an invitation for Anglicans to become Roman Catholic. The exact details of this are beyond me, but it got me thinking.

Firstly, I thought any of us could become RC any time we wanted. I mean, I assumed there was some sort of entry ritual, like an assault course or a quiz or something, and you couldn't just waltz in and expect to be one of the gang, but I always thought that the entry ritual was open to whoever wanted to give it a lash. It wasn't that I was sitting around waiting for an invitation. It was more that I didn't feel inclined.

Secondly, and perhaps more interestingly, if I were issuing an invitation to a group of people to join my church, I'm not sure that the Anglo-Catholics would be the focus of my marketing strategy. Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against them or anything; it's just that broadly speaking they're the ones who are defined by being against women bishops and gay people, and I'm just saying that wouldn't be my first choice of essential criteria. Now if someone happened to be against women bishops and gay people, I wouldn't object per se to them coming along of a Sunday (and if they can bake, so much the better and I'm sure we can get over our differences), it's just that it's not the thing I'd be first inclined to go after.

Thirdly, if anyone is inviting me to join a church (and I notice they're not), I'm not sure the Roman Catholic one would be my first choice. Now, I do not wish to offend my RC readers, and assure you that it's not that it's absolutely not an option; it's just that it wouldn't be my first choice. I've always quite liked the Pentecostals, for instance - or indeed any place that combines 'being allowed to dance' and 'being able to dance' so effectively. And I've long had a soft spot for the Quakers. Some of them seem a bit nuts, but I quite like how they all just sit and think and call it a Sunday service. I could do that. I can sit and think. So I think if I was to go anywhere and angle for an invite, it would be one of those two, or perhaps the Rastafarians, because I think I could carry off the hairdo. But I think if I really wanted to join them, I could, because I don't think you have to be invited, and I would just have to gear up for the assault course.

So, in conclusion, the Pope has done something I didn't know he had to do and which I wouldn't want done to me anyway to a group of people who are not me, so that's fine.

On My Opinion On Ireland's Blasphemy Law

An interesting story of recent times has been the introduction in Ireland of a blasphemy law, which could see people being fined €25,000 for saying or doing things which are offensive to the overly-sensitive*.

There has been something of an outcry, with Atheist Ireland promising to release a blasphemous statement Sometime Soon, Ditchkins being virtually apoplectic with rage and... well... not a lot else**.

WhyNotSmile has mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, I can see how it is bad for freedom of speech and so on, but on the other hand, I am not sure that I am a big fan of freedom of speech anyway. I mean, in a political, sociological blah blah blah sense, I think freedom of speech is more or less a Good Thing, but in everyday life I generally wish everyone would just be nice to each other, and I'm not sure I couldn't get fully behind a law that enshrined that principle.

Also, since many people class 'Oh my God' as an exclamation of surprise as blasphemous, surely 90% of the country could be in court by the end of the month. Which seems a bit silly, although all those €25,000 fines would probably come in handy. In fact, maybe that's the idea. There's a recession, the government needs money, they can't raise taxes, so what do they do? Fine every fecker in the land. Quite clever, when you think about it.

* I have not been able to find exact details of the law, so this is part fiction and part speculation.

** The main reason I couldn't find exact details on the law was that when I Googled it, the first page of results was mainly atheists going beserk, and if I can't find what I'm looking for on page 1 of Google, I give up. I know, I know, modern technology has sent me to the dogs.