Tuesday, January 31, 2006

on saturday i chased my tail and this is how i found it

So, I'm sat by the door of the front room in the house we're staying at. We, as in everyone in the room, are having a bit of a session, trying to sort some issues out with the man upstairs via the power of prayer and some good old-fashioned soul-searching. They, as in everyone in the room apart from me, are doing this in groups of twos or threes. I, as in me, by myself and I, am sat by the door and I'm about 5 seconds away from walking out.

I've done this one many a time before. It starts with a feeling of unease, like, hang on, this doesn't feel quite right, how come I can't connect with the worship, why can't I stop fiddling with my hair and pulling at my clothes, why do I feel so... bad? Then it changes, adapts to my surroundings, like, they're all doing this so much better than I am, how come I'm not feeling it, how come no one else is feeling shit, how come I'm feeling like I always used to feel at church...

This is an old feeling, it isn't a good feeling. This is the curse of the charismatic church, or of any church that doesn't conduct its business standing in pews with lacklustre regularity. So much focus on expressing and feeling and being 'real' makes it hard to fake - I love my kind of church, but damn if it doesn't sometimes feel like if you're not speaking in Hebrew and floating three inches off the floor you're doing something wrong.

Sometimes I wish I could just sit back on my cold wooden bench and let the liturgical good times come rolling. If this was church as my parents knew it I'd be sat, back straight, fire and brimstone, reeling off the books of the New Testament and looking up the dirty bits in the Old when I thought no one was looking.

But there's no fun in that, and besides, this isn't the church of my parents. This is my church, and I'm sat on a green carpet, a cup of tea by my side, with a shaking back in front of me, the sound of someone's tongues to my left, the draught from the corridor to my right, the open door supporting my weight. I've got a dog-eared, everything-stained bible on the floor beside me, a couple of felt-tip pens in my lap. All I can hear is voices, people praying, singing, murmuring, weeping softly and staring out at something right now so invisible to me.

Dear God, I think, you've got 5 seconds to impress me, 5 seconds to change my mind. All these hugs being shared, these prayers spoken, these prophetic words being flung about the place - how hard can it be for you to fling one my way?

All these voices... then there's another one in the mix, you know, the still one, the small one that people like to blame for wars and helping people. I don't so much hear it as feel it, the words are already there. They say: it's been half an hour, and you're still here.

I look at the clock. This is undeniably true. I've been sat here threatening to walk out for half an hour. Actually, if I'm honest about the great long prayer meeting that's been my two years as a Christian, I think I've spent most of it threatening to walk out. And yet, somehow, I'm still here.

Still here, still pissed off. I don't get this. I'm in this for keeps now, I'm never gonna walk out because I just can't, I can't turn my back on this now, you won't let me. You've gotta cut me a break, either make me feel better or let me the fuck go.

I don't know if God finds it funny when I swear at him, but I'd swear I heard someone laughing.
My time. Not yours.

Fine, I concede, if that's the way you want it that's the way we'll do it.

This is the thing about trust, you see. It means not questioning someone, not being a backseat driver, or worse, trying to wrestle the wheel out of their hands. Saturday night worked out fine in the end, better than fine. I spoke to an Irish woman called Jessie who put oil on my forehead and told me my name was joy.

Now there's all these questions, and I know nothing at all.

How long can I keep claiming to trust God when I'm secretly convinced that nothing and no one can ever fix me?
How long am I planning to do this faith thing with one foot outside the door and half my mind already slamming it behind me?
How long 'til I stop craving someone to tell me I'm beautiful?
How long 'til I actually believe someone when they do?
How long do I keep feeling like this?

How long do I keep writing like this?

question

I've just finished a beast of a post about last weekend, but before I publish it I want to ask you all something:

What would you do if you checked my blog one day and read that I'd jacked the whole thing in, I'd walked away and I wasn't a Christian anymore?

What would you do? What comments would you leave if I ever published that?

Friday, January 27, 2006

then....

To bunk or not to bunk...

Tonight I have to get from my seminar (finishing at 5:30) to meeting my church in Englefield Green (at 5:45 sharp) in order to go away for the weekend.

It's the little challenges that make life worthwhile.


I'll be back on Monday, after the weekend away, some spiritual shenanigans and some top times at Chinese New Year.

Love...

PS - I don't have time to reply to everyone's comments, so here's a group hug and a thank you - you guys are what makes this blogging lark so worthwhile.

Thursday, January 26, 2006

<-------where is the love?------->

This one's about love. It's all about love recently. I've started using dashes and arrows to communicate my affections for the people and things I love. I feel like I'm full of it, to the point where it's a bit much to handle, these things are happening and I can't adequately express how I feel about them...

Strike one: Wanting to look after someone. As in, really look after them. Like, I'd make you Lemsip and pass you tissues but more than that, like I'd be there for you and take your shit and no matter what you were going through I'd hold it because that's just the most natural thing in the world for me to do. Remembering the difference between love and infatuation, I reckon. This isn't about how you make me feel...

Strike two: Wanting to look after myself. Standing on Portsmouth pier, discussing with Dani if jumping in would be suicide. Would you die? If not from the waves, then from the cold? Yeah, we reckon it would, and I'm standing there staring at the black waves hitting the legs of the pier and realise that there's nothing I want more than to stay alive. Wandering back across the pier, into the slightly safer part of the nightlife, so glad to be warm and breathing. That's all. It's enough to be alive right now.

Strike three: And this is important. I'm getting homesick now, which isn't like me. I haven't wanted home this much since September, in the awful loneliness that was Fresher's Week. If I've never said it before, and I'm not entirely sure I've ever said it to them, I fucking love my parents. More than anyone else on earth, my family are mine, my brother and all, and I am theirs. I was theirs first and I'll be theirs last. I want to buy my dad a kite, run off and play somewhere, the four of us.

Strike four: I'm talking to Est, about sites like this and this, and she says "it's just mental...very weird how much energy ppl put into hating". And I'm... Marra, that's so true, that's exactly it. This is the problem, you see, if we put as much energy into understanding each other, if we spent as much time building each other up, put some effort into withdrawing our heads from our asses long enough to see people for what they really are... And by 'really are', I mean to see people for the fragile, stupid, wonderful, messed, terrified, hilarious and genuine things that they 'really are'. If we could do that, if we could learn what to do with that...

Strike five: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." Matthew 11:28-29. This, for me, is somewhat the point. I've never loved like that, or been loved like that before. I could go on, talk about 'greater love hath no man', 'for God so loved the world that he gave His only son', 'love one another and love Him'... You know the drill?

For me, all of it, this whole life thang, this whole love thang, comes back to God, to Christ. But however you see it, whatever you think it is or wherever it comes from, the point is that we need a whole lot more of it. Drugs aside, I think it's safe to say that the hippies had it right on that score. And maybe that's naive, perhaps talking about love in a world that loves cynicism is kind of redundant. But when you think about it, about family, partners, friendships, children, things like that, it doesn't really make sense if love isn't right in the heart of it.

That's where this post came from, really, trying to put into words that, no matter what you believe or whoever the hell you are or think you are, if you're spending more time hating than loving you've got something far wrong. I can't express it without sounding like a Hallmark card, but that's what I mean when I say I love someone -

<---------------------------------this much----------------------------------->

- I mean that they're exactly what's right about the world. They're where the love is.

Sunday, January 22, 2006

new church: mark two

I love my church. We're called 'the journey', we meet in a freezing cold Methodist hall in Englefield Green. Not even the church bit, but the sort of youth room on the back of it. The building's so old and dank looking that I actually thought it was abandoned the first time I went there. It certainly doesn't look used anyway.

We go in the side door, and turn right to get in the back room. It's cold. Very cold. There's several heaters dotted around the place, including a huge luminous red one that gives everyone a kind of creepy, uplit glow. Pretty hellish looking actually. We start off each meeting, each 'gathering', with hot drinks and doughnuts: the drinks to keep our fingers warm; the doughnuts just for fun.

There's no chairs, or at least, we don't use any. We sit on the floor, nursing mugs of tea, trying not to look directly into the leering red of the heater. Instead, I like to look at the hangings on the walls, old bedsheets draped over a table-football game and stuck by string to the pipes. "Impact on the 'Green" "we were made to love and be loved" "because he loved us first".

My favourite is engraved in the wall itself. There's a big pointed arch of grey stone in the red bricks, and along it is written "suffer, little children, to come unto me". I like it because it scared me shiteless the first time I read it, and I only realised the truth of it when I stopped to read it again.

There's an acoustic guitar, because there always is in my kind of church, a mic and a couple of speakers, another sheet draped over a stack of chairs to shine the OHP onto. No multimedia worship software here, no six piece band, no airy string pads on the keyboard, no plastic walls around a £500 drumkit, just guitars and acetates, a little bit of soul.

I find that I'm part of this church quite accidentally. I don't like to think that I found them, or that they found me, because what actually happened is that, like most great relationships, this was one that started entirely by coincidence, half tight and in the pub. What surprises me is not that I threw myself into this new adventure, but how readily they've received me.

Showing up at a church where half the people mysteriously know your story, and half of them have apparently been praying for you since September is an odd experience on the best of days. It's also the best experience for the oddest of days, and it worked for me. Some girl that was found at the pub asking to join in, to be a part, to have responsibility, to serve, even though she's so unreliable that it's vaguely distressing - it's kind of odd. But it's worked.

And I've said it now, that I'll be a helper at Alpha, that I'll help with the tea and doughnuts. I'll help with the chairs and the acetates, I'll try and learn everyone's names, I'll do what I've wanted to do this whole time, but I was too drunk and frightened to do before. I'll enter in, I'll do church with these guys, because they're exactly what I need a church to be right now. Honest and relaxed, passionate and genuine, quirky and small. Yeah. This is something I want to be a part of; they work for me and I want to work for them.

I ask Alan if I'm still invited to his cell group on Tuesday. My attendance, (with the exception of the Thursday night prayer walks, which I have attended, as it were, religiously) hasn't been great since I met this church. I've never actually been to the cell group that Alan and Katherine run, and it seems only polite to check that I'm still wanted.

"Our cell group?" Alan replies, "It's your cell group."

You take a risk sometimes, you do something that scares you - suddenly your picture's on the newsletter and people are even pleased to see you. It's as simple as that.

Why didn't I realise it's as simple as that?

stronger than bombs

I wanna be better than oxygen
So you can breathe when you're drowning and weak in the knees
I wanna speak louder than Ritalin
For all the children who think that they've got a disease
I wanna be cooler than t.v.
For all the kids that are wondering what they are going to be
We can be stronger than bombs
If you're singing along and you know that you really believe
We can be richer than industry
As long as we know that there's things that we don't really need
We can speak louder than ignorance
Cause we speak in silence every time our eyes meet.
 
On and on, and on, and on it goes
The world it just keeps spinning
Until i'm dizzy, time to breathe
So close my eyes and start again anew.
 
I wanna see through all the lies of society
To the reality, happiness is at stake
I wanna hold up my head with dignity
Proud of a life where to give means more than to take
I wan't to live beyond the modern mentality
Where paper is all that you're really taught to create
Do you remember the forgotten america?
Justice, equality, freedom to every race?
Just need to get past all the lies and hypocrisy
Make up an heir to the truth behind every face
That look around to all the people you see,
How many of them are happy and free?
I know it sounds like a dream
But it's the only thing that can get me to sleep at night
I know it's hard to believe
But it's easy to see that something here isn't right
I know the future looks dark
But it's there that the kids of today must carry the light.
 
On and on, and on, and on it goes
The world it just keeps spinning
Until i'm dizzy, time to breathe
So close my eyes and start again anew.
 
If i'm afraid to catch a dream
I weave your baskets and i'll float them down the river stream
Each one i weave with words i speak to carry love to your relief.
 
I wanna be better than oxygen
So you can breathe when you're drowning and weak in the knees
I wanna speak louder than Ritalin
For all the children who think that they've got a disease
I wanna be cooler than t.v.
For all the kids that are wondering what they are going to be
We can be stronger than bombs
If you're singing along and you know that you really believe
We can be richer than industry
As long as we know that there's things that we don't really need
We can speak louder than ignorance
Cause we speak in silence every time our eyes meet.
 
On and on, and on, and on it goes
The world it just keeps spinning
Until i'm dizzy, time to breathe
So close my eyes and start again anew


Oxygen, Willy Mason

Saturday, January 21, 2006

nobody said it was easy

I get in, see Est to her door with an emotional 'night, marra' and head upstairs, listening to people playing Frisbee outside. Knock on Kate's door first, it's ajar but there's no answer. Where is she? And where are our Argentinian guests? I hear music playing through someone's door and stop to listen, try and figure what it is and perhaps why they're playing it so late.

The kitchen then, perhaps some kind of snack. No milk, that went off. No carrot, that went off too. There's some salad but it's in a glass bowl and I don't trust myself to pick it up. Anyway, I went to the gym earlier and I want something real to eat.

I remember the ice cream. Sainsbury's ice cream. No bowl. Hmm. Bowl one, the white china one Kate bought me after breaking my old ones is in my room, covered in old sauce. Bowl two, the glass one that's actually for mixing things in, is in the fridge full of salad. For reasons completely and utterly beyond me, I choose to eat my raspberry ripple out of the bulb of a wine glass.

I steal someone's teaspoon, because it just seems right to, and vow to wash it up before they notice. Opening the cupboards, I find the mini doughnuts that I had to sneak into the trolley at the supermarket. Couple of them will do nicely.

I switch the light off with my elbow, hands full, and head back to my room, which is boiling hot because I don't know how to work the radiator and a complete tip because I'm lazy.

I guess I'm trying to divert your attention away from how I really feel, because I haven't figured out how that is yet.

In my messy room, by my keyboard, is a half-drunk glass of wine, because these days there always is. There's a couple of bottles of tonic water, like always, some pills and nail polish, that same Chinese takeaway box that was there last time I did an inventory of my desk.

I guess I'm starting to cope. I guess I have nothing to worry about. But. My skin won't stop crawling. The urge to kick and scream, the urge to make things worse. Shells will always sound like the sea and I will always live with this feeling. This, I guess, is just the way I am.

I don't know what I want. There's always this half-glass of wine on my desk; I know enough to pour it but I never seem to finish.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

dealing with these changes

Yesterday was handing in essays, drinking for the first time in a while, having some conversations. Yesterday was taking control of myself a bit, noticing the pattern in my behaviour that makes a nice evening into a bad evening. Yesterday was finishing my drink and going home for a sleep before I had a chance to make myself unhappy.

Today was joining the gym, seeing my parents and downloading free music - thank you, Napster, I assume when I find the catch it'll be the financial equivalent of a fish-hook in the cheek but in the meantime I appreciate your generosity.

Tonight was the start of the adventure that will come to be 24-7prayer mark two. I realise that last year I got pretty vague about 24-7 when it came to the crunch. Truth is, I felt pretty vague about it too. It was a fantastic thing for our church to do, and I know a lot of good came out of it. Me, I felt quite detached from it. Maybe because, after the initial spark, I didn't have that much to do with the organising, maybe because I had so much stuff going on in my head, I didn't have much room for reflecting on anything that mattered.

So, some changes. I'm buying a camera, I'm taking pictures, I'm writing more, really trying to improve the way that I write. And to improve the way that I read. I don't care what that wanker in the Orbital says, resolutions are a good thing, so I resolve. I'm gonna change a bit more this year. A lot of things are gonna change this year.

PS: 24-7prayer mark two makes it a year since the first proper conversation I ever had with Trev. If I remember correctly, we watched Stoppit and Tidyup and I hit him with a broom. Funny how things work out. If you don't know what 24-7prayer is, click on one of the links on the left and find yourself out. I like it. It's good.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

sleepy

Today I got up at 7am for the first time in months. Tonight I am tired at the right time (ie. at bedtime rather than waking up time) for the first time in even more months.

I can't tell you how relieved I am.

Sunday, January 15, 2006

on my desk

Tonight, the unusual contents of my desk are as follows:

- 1 bottle of Los Portones Merlot, corked, empty.
- a book entitled Clubbing: dancing, ecstasy and vitality, stained with Los Portones Merlot.
- an empty bottle of Indian tonic water.
- half a tomato
- my Critical Theories reader, stained with sweet and sour sauce.
- Chinese takeaway box, fork, sweet and sour sauce.
- essay, proof-read.
- essay, marked and annotated, waterstained.
- bottle of Vanish stain remover, lying in a pool of wishful thinking
- three tealights
- purple candle, shells, glow in the dark fish
- British passport, vaguely smelling of Los Portones Merlot.
- piece of chewing gum, chewed.
- The Clubcultures Reader, Redhead
- Chambers Concise Dictionary
- The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler
-
essay plan, the best I've ever written, abandoned because there's no way I can ever write an essay good enough to do it justice.
- bible
- wallet
- keys
- journal
- diary
- post-it note, reading: blue sky chinese restaurant 01784... i wanna be a soapstar superstar!!!
-
a Green Key from the Happy Man

Tonight, my to-do list reads as follows:

- email accomodation office re: fees
- email Nikki, 24-7prayer!
- Journey weekend away form
- learn French
- stop eating sweet and sour
- write essay!
- stop procrastinating
- read p1-44, Performance Studies, an introduction
- drink more tonic water

Tonight, the questions running through my head are as follows:

- how do I get police checked?
- do they let you keep hamsters in student houses?
- when they say teens are 'barely legal', do they mean they're 'just legal', 'not quite legal' or 'very legal (London slang)'?
- it's half past nine, how come I know where my keys are?
- would they let us perform the Vagina Monologues at RHUL?
- more to the point, if my vagina were to get dressed up, what would it wear?
- do they make you pay for wine-stained library books?
- do I care?

- will I ever stop procrastinating? Ever?










Ever?

Saturday, January 14, 2006

for crying out loud

Procrastination can only get me so far. This is what I like to call 'crunch time', when I've checked every blog, edited ever playlist and eaten every leftover in my fridge. I've wasted an entire hour since I sat down at my desk, having wasted some time playing in the vacant room next door, after I wasted time with Kate doing an anthropological study of the rabbits outside our halls. This is getting silly.

Am I woman or mouse? Student or slacker? Am I gonna do this essay or am I going to see what happens when I fail to hand in work for the second time? Am I gonna play with the boneless girl (thanks, Becci!) a few more times and pull another all-nighter? Am I gonna break out the Pro-plus and try and overdose on caffeine like I did last time? Am I gonna make myself ill with stress again or am I gonna cut the crap and just start writing?

Right. Writing it is. Right now.

Friday, January 13, 2006

never as funny as i thought

Today I found out that someone I know has died.

I've been reacting to it slowly, I'm still reacting to it I guess.

I want to go home, already. I want to go back in time. I want to give her a hug. I want to be a little bit different to how I am; I want to be me but without my thoughts.

We were speaking Spanish tonight, Kate, the Argentinians and I. Funny how the only piece of Spanish I could remember was quiero - I would like.

Funny how I still blog, even when I have absolutely nothing to say.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

key change

I feel like I've spent the last few years letting my emotions run me, instead of the other way round. Like I've been building up to something, some miracle cure, some giant flood of tears that would take it all away, and now I've realised that, really, that's just bullshit. It doesn't happen that way, there is no crescendo, there is no end. I will always be this way and if I let myself, I'll always feel this way.

Time for some new-year's resolutions, you know how I love them. Stuff like, lose weight, get fit, stay organised, be tidy, sleep, feel better, pray more often... Same as every year, really, so I got specific.

Big six for January '06
1) Stop eating sugary foods.
2) Don't be lazy.
3) Enough self-pity.
4) Trust, love and obey God.
5) Live more ethically.
6) Find fellowship.

Which means no more Coca-Cola (this is going badly), going to church (I haven't had a chance to test this yet) and canning the teenage-angst crap (progress is slow).

But then, progress is always slow. Slow, but beautiful. I feel like I'm waking up after a really long sleep, I feel like I'm going somewhere, I'm not good or bad, I'm just me. I am fine.

This is going to be a happier term.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

dear blog

*whistles* Hello? Is anyone still out there? Good. Nice to see you again, guys. If you're wondering, that is in fact the longest I've been without blogging since I started this shenanigan over a year ago.

It felt weird to be away, let me tell you.

There's no real reason why I haven't been blogging, no drama or sudden need to leave the country, our internet connection didn't die a spectacular death or anything like that. To be honest, it would take a lot more than fire, famine and general pestilence to keep me from blogging if I wanted to. I guess I just didn't want to.

You see, when I write, something I do a lot of, I tend to back myself into a corner. I start out trying to explain myself and end up bringing myself down. Writing helps, don't get me wrong, there's nothing like expressing yourself and all that jazz but... good news doesn't sell, ask any journalist, and it's far too easy for me to dwell on the negative when I blog.

I started a diary at the beginning of January. The week after I became a Christian I went to WHSMiths and got a purple, suede-backed journal with nice cream pages. I opened it at a random page and wrote the date of my spiritual birthday, where and how it happened and who I was with at the time. I started writing stuff in it, prayers and bible verses, bits about people I was worried about, people I wanted to get saved and things like that.

It lasted about a month. Then I got bored (as I do so well) and lazy (as I do even better) and I stopped writing in it. I can't remember when I started writing in it again, but I remember what I wrote, on the first page, my intention to fill the whole book and that I didn't care how many years it took.

As it happened, it took just over two.

So, now I have a new book, for those things I can't and shouldn't write on here, for those things that other people aren't allowed to see yet. Yet. It's always been my intention that some well-meaning and dashingly handsome chap will one day discover my writings and turn them into bestselling novel/arty film/moving Rachel Corrie style piece of theatre at which point everyone will think I'm post-humously great. Just wait.

I can't write without a reader. I can put words together, make scratches on paper and hit keys but to actually write something, you have to imagine someone reading it. The last couple of weeks I've been writing for a reader that doesn't matter, whoever reads this diary (and I hope like hell it's not anyone while I'm alive because I'd have to kill them) means nothing to me so I can finally be uncensored.

Being completely uninhibited in the stuff I write each day has been really good for me, but I miss blogging too much to stop. Blogging is gratifying in a very different way, one isn't better than the other, I don't need one more than the other. But I need to know where one ends and the other begins.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm going to try and vent on here less. I will always be honest on this blog, I won't ever spare you the gory details because I know that it's the gory details that make life fun. But this is a place for me to write, not a place for me to cry for help and, maybe, I should be keeping my cries to myself from now on.