magnanimous.

Another day, another meeting, another crisis.

The very nice solicitor I saw last night tells me that, in all my dealings with them, I've been "hugely magnanimous". I think Jesus would have been, too.

Jesus, however, could never have used the first century Palestinian legal system to fight the religious authorities he clashed with. No solicitor would ever have represented his case of vicitimisation for having claimed to be the Messiah.

I don't want money or publicity, nor do I feel the need for any public vindication, nor am I naive enough to believe that a tribunal claim would prevent them from doing to another employee exactly what they're done to me. All I want is for them to think. To think about the love they preach and to comtemplate how their employment practice might relate to that. So the question for me, in considering whether to take legal action against them is straightforward: which course of action will better help them to ponder what they're doing.

I spent the night with Fiance and couldn't sleep. I ended up downstairs watching various Benn Hinn miracles crusades dubbed into Yoruba (much flinging about of crutch, which says essentially the same thing in any language) and an un-named Muslim televangelist implore me to give my credit card details to Fatah. At about 4am I rang into one of the Properity Prayer lines and asked the operator to believe God with me for twenty grand for my "ministry". Not that money would sort my job out, of course, but it certainly wouldn't be any harm. The man ended the conversation by assuring me that a twenty-five grand cheque will be in my office pigeon hole tomorrow. If he's right, I will publish a written retraction of all my cynicism and apply to Rhema college.

If I'm learning anything whatsoever about this, it's that what the Christian message starts, ends and utterly depends on and stands or fails upon... it's love. Unless Christians can treat each other properly (or rather, unless Christians can be honest about how hard it is to treat one another properly) they might as well not bother invoking the name of Jesus.

a prayer I found, which sums everything up

By Thomas Merton, quoted by Bishop John Liscomb, quoted by MadPriest

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone."

On a lighter note

Grace's own Equalities Challenge

Four bridesmaids. Representing between them the beautiful diversity of the female form, each one gloriously unique in colour, shape, size, age and fashion sense.

What are they going to wear? I attempted
a) hiring a dressmaker (none of those I emailed/left messages for have got back to me - I think I must have scared them all off.)
b) buying the same outfit off the peg for each one in the relevant size (I took Bridemaid 1 to John Lewis to try this out, using myself as a comparator. Whenever anything suited either of us, the other ended up looking somewhat, ahem, unfortunate. And Bridesmaid 1 and I are virtually the same colour, shape and size as one another, too.)
c) ebay (I found an outfit that I thought would ideally suit Bridesmaid 1 - who was delighted. I then got a bit excited and found a wonderful dress for Bridesmaid 2. It was 3 minutes until the auction ended and I bought it for a tenner. It's rather too small for her - well, at least I didn't overestimate her size - and she's now somewhat unimpressed with me. Ooooops.)

I'm now contemplating a possible d), which would involve writing each bridesmaid a cheque and telling them to dress themselves in whatever they want. When I put this to Bridesmaid 3 she replied that, given the choice, she'd dress herself entirely in Goretex and hi-performance fleece but that I'd have to accept that because she has a disability which makes her feel the cold, and claims middle-rate DLA for it, too.

And we all laughed.

the theology of equality?

As lilwatchergirl recently joked, I'm currently a bit obsessed with the concept of Equal Opportunities.

Suffice to say, this isn't the first time I've contended with such issues (suffice to say, because I don't want to be identified) and I've had plenty of opportunities to think about such things.

I think that the concepts of equality and diversity and the legal construct of Equal Opportunities is something with which the Church has yet to properly contend. In my opinion, the Church either
a) needs to produce a cohesive and dignified narrative about why Equal Opportunities does not accord with Christian principles and how it could run society better or
b)needs to embrace Equal Opportunities and lead the way in inclusion, tolerance, anti-discrimination and fair employment.
And currently, the Church does neither. There was the furore over the Incitement to Religious Hatred and how it would stop an evangelical preacher asserting that the Muslims will burn in hell... and then there was whatever the Bill was that was supposed to be able to force Christians to employ Buddhists as their vicars... then the particularly vicious kerfuffle earlier this year about how the Sexual Orientation Regulations would force a fundamentalist hotelier to allow a gay couple to dirty his sheets. Time after time after time after time the church gets dragged along kicking and screaming and is forced to stop scare-mongering cheap moral panic and obey the law.

But perhaps I should give the Church more credit. I think the Church realised long ago what a postmodern and pluralistic society has not yet grasped: one cannot legislate for attitudes. People will act far more readily according to their beliefs, feelings and attitudes than according to external rules imposed up them, and maybe there's little point pretending otherwise. Maybe the Church exposes what the rest of us daren't say, which is that Equal Opportunities legislation promises far more than it delivers and even, perhaps, delivers very little.

So where does one go from here? I don't know.

a job what i want

... what was advertised today.

Points in its favour
1. It's at an LEP [local evangelical partnership - an amalgamation of several churches each from a different denomination] and therefore in theory making a virtue of being all broad-minded and tolerant.
2. One of my best friends ever goes to the church attached. This may or may not be an advantage in getting me an interview (and of course, it shouldn't be), but it certainly indicates that they're nice people.
3. It's just round the corner from Fiance's so I would be working within a community. And I wouldn't be generating carbon emissions getting there (*grace is currently seeking all possible theological justification for pre-marital cohabitation*). And I'd be doing my bit for social inclusiveness by taking the shortcut through the grounds of the local mental hospital to and from work.
4. The pay is rather good. For the voluntary sector, anyway.

Points against
1. They want someone with management experience (*grace does not possess this*).
2. They want someone with two years of management experience (*grace does not possess this, either*).
3. Ideally, they would prefer someone with five years management experience (*you can see what's coming*)

questions

What would happen to Christianity, if it began to base itself on the love of Christ rather than the sin of humanity (ie Creation Spirituality as opposed to Original Sin-centred religion)?

If so, what would happen to the Church, without guilt as a mechanism for enforcing conformity?

Therefore, is his grace (2 Corinthians 12:7-9) really sufficient for us...?

Either way, can one ever create a community based purely on love without descending into control-freakery, anarchy or bullying the free-thinkers?

It's my party and

A Significant Birthday. Ouch. I don't like them, at all. I don't think having one's Special Day so close to Remembrance Sunday helps, either. So far, I've been washing all my furniture covers to celebrate.

I'm feeling very much as I did on about my eleventh birthday, my mind suddenly full of new thoughts, perspectives and ideas, awakening to new possibilities. It's exciting but absolutely terrifying and, I am increasingly aware, likely to end in me very soon thinking myself out of a job. I'm going away, somewhere both extremely cold, windy and isolated, to think and pray and snuggle up with Fiance about it all.

Jesus began at 30, the Bible says.

fellow travellers #3

The fireworks began as soon as it got dark... well, that was about ten days ago now. But the banging began long before I left work this evening. I stood at the top of my road, the highest point for miles around, and watched.

It's a bit grim when you think about it, really. And the more I do think about it, the more I grow in sympathy for Guy Fawkes. Attempting to blow up the Houses of Parliament was an indisputably stupid thing to do, of course. But perhaps Guy Fawkes felt that he has no other option, no other means by which to express his sense of oppression. Perhaps he was motivated not by powerlust or anger as much as his longing for religious freedom and his desperation simply to be allowed to worship God as he needed to.

The local authority in which I live has a policy of providing as many free Guy Fawkes night bonfires and fireworks displays as it can. Their thinking being that their provision will prevent local NEETs, unwashed and "communities" from randomly aiming lighted rockets into one another's yards. In an area so historically divided, racist and inflammatory, one can see their thinking. But yet it's ironic, in response to Guy Fawkes' attempt to fight state control of something, the government seeks to impose a controlled response. Like in all these new anti-terror measures.

I've never been particularly anarchist or libertarian, but I can't help wondering. If we all allowed those around us to believe whatever they want and worship however they like, what would happen?

And what would be the theological implications - and prerequisites - for that amongst people who believe that there is only one Saviour?

I don't know the answers to my own questions. But all around me, the firworks continue.

anonymity breach 101

Earlier this evening, blog readers were temporarily able to access the entire Facebook profile of Fiance through my blog.

D'oh.

fellow travellers #2

I think I inadvertantly Outed a volunteer I work with last week. She was asking why things seem a little ahem awkward between myself and a certain member of the management. I was telling her that we had exchanged ahem words about me having a Fiance who is Unsaved and Divorced. Before she had a chance to even consider offering any further ahem words, I added, jovially, "well at least he's a he. If we were talking even about a saved un-divorced woman I were in love with, we'd both be crucified in boiling oil".

It was only after she'd left the room in tears that I realised what I'd done.

She's a wonderful woman, so positive, so creative and God loves her so much. The only question I want to ask her is how, how do you cope with living and working and being in a situation in which you have to hide who you are?

I don't think that there is any non gay-specific (ie Metroplitan Community Church etc) area of Christianity in which being openly gay (or bi, lesbian, transgender etc) is an easy thing. But the most conservative, evanglical, traditional, male-dominated (well, that'd be them all) dare-I-say-fundamentalist churches are definately the least tolerant, caring or thoughtful. The Church of England's current tearing of itself apart over questions of sexuality are a mere microcosm of the wider Church. And the way in which the Church is currently responding to questions of sexuality is exactly the same way in which it was responding to gender issues a generation ago, and to considering questions of ethnicity a while before that.

So whereas, of course, I'm in an immesurably easier position than the colleague I accidentally de-closeted, I still believe that their opposition to our marriage remains not an issue of faith or theology but of diversity, different-ness, other-ness. The more our detractors tell me "now it's not because he's [ethnic and religious background of Fiance] it's because he's Unsaved and Divorced" the more I feel they keep saying that only to persuade themselves. And that all raises, I think, massive questions about the nature of faith affiliation, selfhood, identity and what it measn essentially to be human in relation to God.

"Give it another two hundred years" Fiance says, "and then they'll stop hassling and accept that we love one another."

And what, then, in the meantime? Does one run from any church that seeks to reject the most fundemental parts of one's being? Or does one stay and hope that, through one's persistence, that two hundred years might become only one hundred and fifty?