People embrace Christianity, for soon thereafter you will have Gay Marriage

It's nearly the fourth Advent! 

I mentioned that we don't have the "traditional" 4 candles this year, just one massively big one, and I was cherry picking my traditions like a bad religious zealot does from his holy text - but it turns out that it was a tradition in England of olde to actually just have one big candle!  This actually stems from the custom of emphasising light in the darkest days of winter - asserting faith in the eventual return of the sun.

As the Solstice has now been and gone (December 21st for all you non witchyfolk) and the darkest and longest day of the year is now behind us, it is nice to have as much light and warmth as you can to remind you that before too long we'll be celebrating the return of the light (Imbolc).  I happily lit the candle, placed it in front of the Tree (of sorts...) and then switched on the Christmas Lights.

Goodbye Sun, see you real soon!

So I am always trawling the news, checking out how the world deals with it's diverse population.  I have straight friends who are always letting me know how okay it is to be gay nowadays.  They do not always think very hard about this. They possibly do not even consider countries other than the one they are currently living in but like Americans who view the rest of world as an extension of Disneyland, most of my straight friends will happily holiday in Dubai or Jamaica or wherever they fancy, and quite often then recommend such places "Oh you should try the food there... it's divine!".

I sometimes point out that if I actually lived in said country that I would most likely be beaten, killed or subjected to torture perhaps.  Even this doesn't necessarily stop them - they will point out that it is quite safe for Westerners in the resorts, etc. but I usually stop them there - it is never my idea of a fun time to willingly imprison myself in a resort for the entire duration of my holiday - in fact, resorts are not really our thing anyway.

So what countries do we travel to then?

Well, oddly enough, they tend to be Christian - or formerly Christian, now quite secular places.  And this got me thinking - is this a necessary step towards the enlightenment of society?   The Christianness? 

Should we be conquering all the nations that are not Christian into being Christian, then sit back, wait 200 years, add a pinch of democracy, allow other faiths and cultures to influence (including all the indigenous faiths that are nearly almost, but never quite entirely, eliminated when Christianity takes hold) and voila!  Gay Marriage!?

It sounds incongruous, especially when we consider that in any Marriage Equality debate held in any country over the last decade or so, it is often Christian "leaders" who voice the strongest (and most ridiculous) opposition to it. 

These are folks who claim not to be homophobic, but then go on about the FEARS they have of what will happen to society if marriage is extended to allow LGBTQ* folk as well as heterosexual couples.

Statistically, however, it shows that there is not ONE country that is not Christian that has embraced Marriage Equality.  Even Israel does not have it.  They may have a watered down version of a recognised union (and hey, this is better than getting thrown of a rooftop, right?) but it is still not equality - and nowadays, for me, it really needs to be.

This may well all change - I am really hoping it does.  I would LOVE to have a Buddhist, or a Muslim majority nation challenge the status quo and leap forward into a secular loving society - but that is unlikely to happen anytime soon.  Sadly, the most likely reason for this is because America always needs to have somebody they can fight against at any given moment.  I honestly think we could have achieved World Peace sometime last decade if we did not stupidly follow the warmongers (a.k.a. those making the most money out of weapons and war) into battle whenever they manipulated us to do so, but that is for another blog.

This one is about Jesus, and Christmas.  And quite frankly after all this deliberating and investigation, I'm going to include a little baby Jesus in my decorations around the tree this year after all.  Yup.  It is going to be a symbol of Marriage Equality - may it grow and spread and fill the world with joy and love.

Just like Jesus, who was, at least a little bit, gay.

The Zero of Advent

What's that?  Christmas decorations are up and people are adding seasonally charged holiday memes to their profile pics on social media?

Ah, it must be the zero of Advent.  You know, it's not the FIRST of ADVENT, when traditionally we actually start celebrating this ADVENTure - it's some time before (and if you're a department store or supermarket chain, apparently it can be just after or even just before, Hallowe'en!!!).

Most folks are aware (it is known) that the advents (there are four) are the previous Sundays prior to December 25th - in whichever month they may fall - sometimes the first of advent is the last Sunday in November!  This year, the first of advent will be on my birthday.  (this does not make me special or one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse by the way, in case you were wondering....).

Advent, comes from the Latin adventus - which loosely translated means "arrival (of a king)".  It's a translation of the Greek "parousia" and has become associated with the Christian belief that Jesus will return (supposedly shortly after those aforementioned four horsemen) and reign supreme on this planet and kick out all the competition and the Christians will rejoice because they always believed they were right all along and that all the other religions were wrong ('cept for Buddha, I suppose, who never was a deity but (in some of the stories) became a deity, so he'll probably come back at around the same time and he and Jesus will have to fight it out to prove who really rules the roost).

But enough of this silliness.  My version of Christmas has nothing to do with Christianity (anymore) and we don't even have four candles (we have one big one, and we'll light it whenever we feel like it, thank you very much).  It's a truly agnostic festival for us in the Fabulous Gay Apartment.  And because I don't know if there really is any great deity worth celebrating at this time of year, I can include whatever I feel like and whatever feels right.  For me, that means celebrating the  onset of deepest darkest winter.

So my second cousin, Ben,  has arrived in Blighty with friends (and now girlfriend) in tow, and for the first time I've actually been treated as a family member who must organise and prepare festivities.  Because the whole world closes from about the 24th December onwards - if you're not with family, well, you're not doing much until the world reawakens sometime after Boxing Day.

Ashton's (Ben's friend) got a Drone!

I've decided that we need to have a traditional English Christmas - but without Midnight Mass at the local CoE, so what on earth does that mean?

Luckily there is so much left within the traditions of Christmas that is not Christian, or that has been borrowed from a time before Christianity.  The whole Winter Solstice occurring on December 21, for example, surprising close to this birthday of Jesus that we end up celebrating, is a tad suspicious to me.

Celebrating the onset of winter makes great sense when you live in the Northern Hemisphere.  It really gets cold here, and the further North you go (where all our great pagan traditions stem from) the colder it is and the value of having a big celebratory feast prior to everyone holing themselves up for the next few months until the snow has melted is immense.  There was no guarantee that you would see these people alive again as not everyone survived a Winter back in the day.  So meeting up just before the real cold sets in, meeting up and drinking and being merry and exchanging love and gifts was not only eminently sensible but also very necessary. Celebrate the inevitability of the seasons.  Save up your firewood and create a warm space.  Then everyone goes home and if you survive until Imbolc in early February, well jolly good too.

Funnily enough, our home is already strewn with festive-like decorations - David strung up our chillies a few months ago, they hang from the curtain rails in our Fabulously Festive Gay Lounge.  They do suit the seasonality about to descend on us all as soon as tomorrow arrives!

MY religion is better than YOUR religion (or "MY religion is real whereas yours is just plain silly")

So I published a Sarah Silverman meme on facebook the other day.  I really like Sarah Silverman.  I freakin' LOVED her show.  It was so kooky, the humour so irreverent - she and the team she worked with had me in absolute stitches.  David and I both fell in love with her and her craziness.

Needless to say, Sarah Silverman has some fairly great lines when it comes to religion.  Being of Jewish descent and having a Catholic boyfriend at one time, she once described an imaginary conversion with her future children as thus:  "Mommy is one of God's chosen people and Daddy thinks Jesus is MAGIC."

Here's the meme I posted:

Now I don't think this needs much commentary.  This is from a very highly respected comedian, after all.  What kind of surprised me was that a friend of a friend who had liked this post on my wall decided to prove to me that in no way could one compare Scientology to Catholicism.

For some reason folks who subscribe to a religion that has been around since the dark ages like to view Scientology as if it is a cult.  The same goes for Mormonism as well.  I've heard folks say that stuff in the bible is pretty "out there" but Mormons are just "crazy".  It's as if, somehow, these new religions are just plain silly whereas our ancient Abrahamic faiths are somehow much more plausible and respectable.

I consider myself to be agnostic, I'm not an Atheist.  Many people of a faith can't actually tell the difference between the two (here's a clue, I used a capital "A" for Atheist).  The reason I'm agnostic is that I find Atheism requires one to subscribe to a belief system not unlike those that are held by people of faith.  As an agnostic, I won't subscribe to a belief system because I just don't know!

Nobody comes to a religious belief all on their own - they are either led by somebody to drink from the fountain of faith or they surmise from the teachings of others a new path and become one of the leaders.  Quite often these preachers try to convince folks that what they are preaching is the only path, the only one and truly righteous path.  By this definition, anyone who subscribes to only one religion immediately becomes intolerant of all the others.  You have to reject all the other belief systems in order to truly adhere to the one that you call your own.  You have to pick.  I don't want to pick.  I never want to pick.  The reason I don't want to is that I just don't know.

 

As a result of this, I have found that I can be eternally open to the teachings of every faith.  I can read any book, I can find beautiful uplifting quotes from the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita to the Bible.  And I'm not limited to "official" texts - I can happily find spiritual succour in ancient manuscripts like the Coptic texts.    I can also find crazy damaging stuff - so ultimately if you ask me to bat for one particular team I will gracefully bow out of the room and vehemently decline.

 

Here's one of my favourites, from the Gospel of Thomas:

 

Jesus said, "The pharisees and the scribes have taken the keys of knowledge (gnosis) and hidden them. They themselves have not entered, nor have they allowed to enter those who wish to. You, however, be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves."

We live in a world where every day we learn something new.  Every day we learn something new about ourselves, the world we live in and the universe that it inhabits.  We cannot surely declare that there is no greater power out there, just as easily as we cannot surely declare that there is.  I'll wait, thank you very much, until we can actually determine whether this is the case or not and I won't be swayed by any fear mongering that if I don't pick THIS team RIGHT NOW then I will sadly not get to spend eternity in the ONLY afterlife.  THAT, my friends, is not something that I can believe a higher power would have us do.  That does not bear any resemblance to an enlightened being, that is a fascistic dictatorial power hungry being.  And THAT is all too human for my liking.

How easy it is for someone of faith to deride another person's faith as rubbish.  How easy it is to make fun of the NEW kid on the block whilst failing to see that the old kid is just as ridiculous?  I don't need to go into much detail to point out the crazy stuff that can be found in Christianity (or any of the Abrahamic faiths for that matter).  I mean, it all begins with a talking snake and a deity that was so powerful that he created the entire universe out of absolutely nothing but when he came around to making a female human he had to borrow one of the male's ribs in order to do so!    

If these are just "metaphors", as is invariably put forth once science starts to prove that the concepts are a little ridiculous to accept as facts, then why can we not right now just assume that the whole shebang is metaphoric and be done with the "this can be the ONLY truth that you will ever need to know"?

Since time immemorial mankind has worshipped deities - there have been so many that we literally cannot count them all. What this tells me is that since the dawn of mankind we have never been able to fully comprehend the unknown but we have always felt compelled to try .  We most likely never will be able to grasp it.

 

Bear in mind that if there really is a creator of everything then that means that every deed that we can do, whether we view it as good, bad, ugly, evil or blessed, is something that actually comes from that same deity.  Disease, mass destruction, the euphoric love that we feel for our children - all of this stems from the creator of everything!  It's enough to blow your mind and quite often it blows away all reasoning when folks try to comprehend its meaning.  All we can do is marvel at our inability to do so and keep trying to do so at the very same time.

God is everywhere, including nowhere.

Or as the love of my life likes to say "God is everything I do not know, and I learn something new every day."

I'm not "rolling my eyes" up at you, I'm looking deep into my soul!

I've been asked to write something of a very personal nature about what it is like to live with a survivor of child sex abuse.  This was something that was asked of me some time ago by an organisation that helps to promote awareness of this in Australia and has been of so much help to countless survivors that I couldn't really say no to them, but it certainly has not been something that I have found comes easily.

The first thing that springs to mind is this is not a normal relationship.  I cannot really compare my relationship to anybody else's.   I know we're all different in our own way, but usually girls (and gays) can sit with one another and vent about their boys being boys and driving them up the wall.   And equally the men (and the gays) can bitch about how their old lady is nagging them to death.  Cliches, I know, but also truths.  So my friends and their relationships are just completely alien to what David and I go through.

I've given up trying to explain my woes to my friends, who often offer really unhelpful suggestions like "you need to draw a line" or "you need to stand up for yourself".  Don't get me wrong, I'm no weak flower or pushover when it comes to decision making - in fact I'm quite overly forceful at times (my own issues - am working on them, okay?) when I feel I need to be - but what works for others does not work for somebody who is dealing with a partner who is suffering from PTSD - taking a "stand" can send them reeling into a quivering mess or flare up a past trauma that doesn't really need to surface because he's irritated the bitch out of you over some chore that you really wish he had got around to doing a week ago.

I've met a few survivor's partners and I must admit we do find common ground, but it's not like we all hang out with each other all the time so our meetings are fairly rare.  Also, most partners of survivors tend to keep a very low profile - and most survivors are more than happy with this as they actively try to shield this part of their lives from their lovers/wives and families.  That's not how David and I function, however, and it's unlikely that we ever will.  Those partners that I have met who are like us have been so helpful - we look at one another with that knowing look, like hippies did after they'd taken acid and they'd just "grok" someone merely by seeing them at a party.

Lately, because the Royal Commission has raised awareness of David's and so many other survivor's horrific childhoods I have had enquiries as to how this is affecting me, and boy is that one hard to answer.  "He cries a lot" was a common stock reply.  I'd use it mainly because people did not really understand what it actually meant.  When someone who is suffering from PTSD weeps they look so broken you actually fear that they will never again regain their former composure.  David is amazing at being able to face the world but there are times, when he's at home and in that safe zone, that his weeping and wracking sobs can find a way out of his inner core and shake through the foundations of his soul.  It's never a pleasant thing to observe for anyone (and I have an ongoing issue with folks crying).  I often feel most uncomfortable when somebody displays emotions other than my usual favourites = happy, joy and angry, so I can find it tremendously challenging at times.  Holding him usually helps.  And shutting the fuck up.

Patience is a virtue and by golly have I become much better at dealing with things than when I was younger.  I won't stand for nonsense any more - I'm nearly 50 now so if you piss me off I will tell you why, loudly and clearly.  If I don't want to do something and you needle me about it and try to "cajole" me by bitching about it to me I will probably tell you to "fuck right off" rather vehemently.

When David annoys me, however,  I have learned to take a breath and not bash him with blunt brute force.  I'm not perfect, it doesn't always work out as planned however I am so much better than the raging youth that I once was.  Also, I have learned that there has to be a limit to the amount of alcohol that I am able to consume in one sitting.  I simply cannot afford to 'lose control' any more.  It's a bit like when mothers (and fathers too - although it usually takes them a little longer to get on board this particular train) realise that they have to be able to take charge of situations at a moment's notice at any time while they're caring for their children - they simply cannot afford to be out of control because if the phone rings and there is an emergency.....

Overall I feel blessed that I met David.  Without him, my life would be so different.  I can't even begin to imagine where that drunken whore that I was would have ended up.  I have my own blemishes and issues and traumas, most of them much less public than my partner's have been, so it's not like David is the only broken one in the relationship and it's just possible that maybe that is why we work so well together.  Well, everyone says that we do all the time.  In the words of my best friend Kate, who sadly passed away in her sleep a few years back now: "You two...... I just love you two".

Yes, I just love us two too.

Cross over children. All are welcome. All welcome. Go into the Light. There is peace and serenity in the Light.

David and I moved earlier this year and we deliberated (procrastinated?) for quite a while before deciding on where we should move to - an apartment?  a bigger house?  another country?

For the past forty plus years I have been doing what pretty much every other child of the seventies does when it starts to grow up - I started filling up my house with "stuff".  Friends would come over and comment on how much "stuff" we had.  Our house was filled with it, and then I started to move things into the loft so that the house would be less cluttered..... and then the loft was filled with it.  And then the house became filled with more stuff and of course I had no more room in the loft to hide it so it started to clutter up the place until finally we reached a point of no return.

What does one do when one finds oneself in danger of being smothered to death by all the "stuff" one has accumulated over the seven or so years spent living in one space?  Well, there are two main options that one has - either move to a bigger joint and start filling that place up, or start to throw "stuff" away, and move to a smaller, neater, tidier place.

Our New Space

We went for the second option.


That place is now Cassio Place in Watford, what I affectionately term a young persons home.  Honestly, I feel a little old in this community - all these yummy mummies (and their rather yummy husbands) running around looking gorgeous with their kids in tow.  It's a totally different space.  There is no litter (okay, there is litter but you really have to look for it to find it) lining the streets and the little square of green in the centre is frequented by laughing happy children and owners walking their very happy dogs.  It makes a change from West Watford where the local greeting involves grunting and complaining about something... anything.... everything!  Funnily enough, we've moved about 15 minutes away from our former home, but the difference between the two areas is most unnatural (see photo above).

So the real reason for the move?  It's probably the pool that accompanies this estate.  There is also a gym and a dance studio, but we'll require a few more months of pool activity before we feel confident enough to start using these other recreational spaces.  Being able to slip into the pool 10 minutes after you leave your pad (and slip out and be home in 10 minutes) is a most wonderful thing indeed - I'm not sure I can find a comparison apart from if you live next to a lake or a river.  I suffer from back pain and I know that I must keep up the exercise or face being crippled by the time I reach 50 so it's kind of imperative that I have such facilities close by.  Having said that, I still like I'm one of the most privileged individuals by living in this "hotel" like atmosphere.

Yes we share the pool with countless individuals and their sweat and saliva and yes, whenever I see a child in it I imagine that they are pissing in it at some point during their stay (well, i seem to recall doing this myself when i was a child so why would it be any different today?).  But that's why they invented chlorine... or at least why they use it in public swimming areas anyway and this is far less frequented than any of the public pools I have ever used in my life so.... I can live with it.

And the light?  The light is just unbelievably beautiful as it streams through our window  in the mornings.  We sit in the sunshine on a Sunday morning and sip our coffees as we overlook the children and dogs play on the communal lawn prior to heading off for a quick swim before breakfast.

And we always try to remind ourselves how lucky we are.

Approaching Samhain

So the wheel turns, and with it all of us.  Normally as Summer approaches I get into that garden and you won't see me back in the house until the skies begin to darken and the last tomato ripens and drops from the vine, but this year I hardly even made it into the garden to plant them!

We let the backyard grow wild (last year I'd planted teasels and this year they just took over the backyard, along with all the "weeds" and herbs that are a stalwart when it comes to our gardens.  With regard to the allotment, well.... our mayor from Watford did an about face and decided that we could keep our allotment after all (although, apparently, we've now been told she's back to her original plan of ousting us all).  It's so confusing!  Next year I've decided to ignore the prophets of doom and actually get down there and start digging regardless of the weather and regardless of whether we get to keep the land afterwards of not.  We may have to, D and I plan on moving somewhere a little more urban, so we may lose our backyard altogether. 

Of course I cannot solely blame Dorothy Thorn(y)hill for our lack of gardening this year- partly it was also due to us just really needing to "take a break".

I like an overgrown garden anyway, for at least two reasons:

1. It's messy so looks like an abandoned plot, is mysterious and one can imagine pixies, fairies, gnomes, etc come dancing under the moon on certain special days; and
2. It's messy so when you tidy it (if you tidy it) you get a wonderful sense of achievement by actually doing just that.
3. Even though this is actually more than two reasons, this reason should be the main reason, because wildlife don't really flock to tidy gardens - nature is chaotic, even when it's trying to be ordered.  If you are wanting to help the environment, let that garden overgrow.

Anyway - following on from the sunny season, around the end of July usually, I start to plan our Hallowe'en celebrations (or Samhain for the initiated) event.  It's my favourite time of year, and we put a lot  of effort into decorating our house, our front window and the hallway for when the trick or treaters come a calling.

Our Hallway in October 2011

This year, however, we will be heading to non other than New York City USA to celebrate the scary season - and even though our boy has professed that there really is NO other city on this planet that he would rather see before heading back to Oz at the end of this year, I think I may just be a little more excited than he that I will actually be celebrating this holiday in the country that truly does the best job at celebrating this holiday altogether.  Somebody remind me that this trip is all about Zack... quick, before I book tickets for Blood Manor.

Funnily enough, because Americans have embraced Hallowe'en as an actual celebration to be enjoyed by all the people over here in Blighty have erroneously come to the conclusion that this holiday was actually invented in America. I've even had arguments with little old ladies in the Pound Shop who were starting to complain about all the American things that were seeping their way into the British culture.  "It's a Celtic tradition" I tell them.  They don't buy it.  After all, Celts didn't have pumpkins they retort.  I won't be beaten even though they are already exiting the store.  I run chasing after them as they try to evade my fervor "They used to hollow out gourds," I shout after them as they scurry on down the high street towards Marks & Spencers with surprising speed.  "The kids in Scotland would travel from door to door...." I continue to shout but they've already managed to lose me in the crowd.

Darn it, I nearly had them convinced.

Oh-oh Mad Bessie (Bam-ba-lam)

For Beltane this year I wanted to do two things for certain regardless of what happened on the day:  I wanted to be in a forest for as much of it as possible and I wanted to take the day as a holiday.  So I booked 1 May 2013 off and so did +David .

Ideally it would be good to have taken both the day before and/or the day after.  Actually whilst we're being ideal about it all, why didn't I just take the whole week off? After all, 1 May being a Wednesday.

Wednesday's are "hump" days - in that they are the middle of the week.  You get past Wednesday and it's ALLLLL down hill 'til the weekend.  So when you take Wednesday off, it creates a couple of mini working-weeks.  Which means your brain is pretty much confused cum Thursday when it thinks it's sort of Monday.  Well I wasn't being very ideal and I just booked off the day.  Meant going back to work today was a right pain.  And it was.

I digress.  Beltane. 2013.  Yesterday.  Holeeeday!

We had to be in a forest so I took a satellite view of the area surrounding us the night before.  This is how I found the vast green expanse that you see below.  The joy of living on the edge of London - half the folk that live here honestly have no idea of what is right on their doorstep with regards to wild places and spaces.

 And then my eye caught the words "Mad Bess Wood".... I mean.... come on....?  It was settled - we HAD to go and pay a visit.

Perhaps not so odd was that whilst we walked there we began by talking about trees and spring.  For example: "What birds bring spring?" When the red-red robin comes bop-bop boppin along, is it meant to be spring?  I've seen some crazy memes involving the Boy Wonder and folks seeing him in their backyard and deducing that "it must be spring" so I get that robins may be a symbol for this... but I see robins all year round in Watford and as +David pointed out, the robin in the snow is one of the Yuletide seasons most popular non-christian greeting card.

So are there actually specific birds that come and visit your garden during the spring?  The only one that we could think of was a Canadian Goose.  Although this year they arrived around February.  More an Imbolc ice-maiden than than a Beltane babe.

I started to sing regularly my little ditty in the style of Monty Python, the lyrics for this resembling the following: "Now is the month of May....hay....hey! and green buds all are swelling".  We explored Park Wood, Copse and of course Mad Bess Wood!  It really required the extra emphasis.  By the end of the walk we had moved on to a variation of Black Betty, of course sung Mad Bessie and really there is no need to mention anymore singing.

On the way to the Lido we found a burnt out cottage, within it a discarded bonnet, and the smashed remains of a little china doll.  It was all rather eerie. By the Lido there was a overflow drain that actually really resembled one of the six direct doorways to hell.  All through the woods we heard the strange scritching scratching of Mad Bess' toenails clacking across the forest floor (okay, that last sentence was just me and my big imagination but I I'm sure the local kids have a tale or two to tell about the place along those lines).

We did come across a rare site - a grass snake slithering across the forest floor.  In fact it was the strange rustling noise it made over the leaves and twigs that drew my attention to it.  Fabulous moment.   That, and the marsh tits.  There were some GREAT tits!  Oh, and it was pretty warm, we didn't see many BLUE tits... yeah, I could go on but I probably shouldn't.

We actually found Mad Bess Cottage too.  Turns out the cottage (how quaint to call it that, I mean, it only has 5 bedrooms...!) was built for the local Gamekeeper around the beginning of the 18th century... and said Gamekeeper mayhaps had a wife called Bess who used to prowl the forest at night looking for poachers?  Well that's what this site tries to intimate anyway.  Then I found a whole blog on the subject.  which was clearly created by somebody on August 5 2012.... and they never posted anything again......!

Then I typed Mad Bess Cottage in google and under images came up this lovely image.  When I clicked on the link I was taken to a genealogy website... but i couldn't find the image anywhere.  Then I noticed the distinctive chimney shape in the background.... could this be Mad Bess?   Do you notice how it seems her smile grows the longer you look at her?

I quite like her hand bag.  It's very practical if you need to conceal an axe or a small hammer.