I got my promotion. I'm looking forward to finding out where I'll be managing, what it's like and starting to make my own decisions. And to getting paid.
I went away with Sanctus this weekend. I had a lot of fun, drank a moderate amount of alcohol and thought until my brain felt like it had been trodden on.
I started coming out as some sort of atheist a while ago - I used to believe passionately in god, but with a lot of turbulence. I got a bit tired and decided to have a holiday from trying so bloody hard, and hopefully discover something about what I believed from what floated to the top at the end of it all (this may be something of a mixed-metaphor experience...).
Unfortunately there wasn't much left floating. I discovered that I had no real sense of any sort of god existing. But I discovered intellectual freedom along the way, and the real joy of feminism... However, there's something to be said for believing that someone created the world and that that someone loves meand has a plan for my life. I'm left feeling slightly purposeless and less loved. And less like a lovely person. My life just feels slightly... flat.
So I went away this weekend hoping to at least think a little about what I might believe. I realised that Sanctus is very important to me. I find a sense of community, safety and acceptance that makes me hope there is perhaps something more than just us. I'm not sure I can believe that it is just the result of a lot of people trying to create something good. It keeps me hanging in because it's something I want to be part of.
Dave Tomlinson, who wrote the post-evanglical, which I thought at one point might save my faith, came and talked with us about ourselves and about what he thinks. It was thought proviking. He talked about god's kingdom as a spirit of life and liberation. I don't have any ability to believe in a personal, intervening god but maybe a spirit of life and liberation is somewhere I can start exploring from - less crude than just good and evil.
And I thought about my place in sanctus. Socially I feel very part of sanctus - I can turn up, say what I think and feel secure. I feel that I belong. Spiritually, I feel less inside - a community is built on shared values and, not believing in God, I haven't felt like I have so much to say. But I think I've realised that I have things to contribute. I'm not pastoral like some people, or particularly wise - things you would associate with being part of a church community thing. But I've been to lots of places in my faith, and I can organise things and ask interesting questions, and cook an awesome pudding. I've realised that maybe I need to be giving, and see myself as someone who has things to give, in order to grow. Some theologians have talked about belonging without believing, and maybe that's where I need to start in order to believe.
8 comments:
...a truly seriously totally scrumptiously awesome pudding...
mmm...
Stupendous puddings in fact.
Amazing puddings.
World class puddings, of the kind previously only enjoyed on mount olympus.
Oh and btw. you're actually quite wise!
First, congratulations. Really pleased you got the promotion.
Second, there seems to be a suggestion in there somewhere that to be a feminist yohave to be an atheist. Not sure that's correct though.
Oh, and thirdly I want some of that pudding at Greenbelt this year.
If you provide an oven and a fridge I'll provide the pudding...
No, you don't have to be an atheist to be a feminist. Or vice versa. But I found the conservative evangelicalism that I grew up in quite stifling, and once I got out of that I was really able to think about gender. When you grow up being told that god says you can't do certain things becuase you're a girl, and do the mental gymnastics necessary to believe that, it's hard to think rationally about stuff.
One thing I loved was what Dave said about a progressive orthodox faith being informed by a combination of scripture, reason, experience and tradition - not just scripture. How that works out in practice I'm not entirely sure but I think is maybe found in the way I've worked through my thinking about gender - what was put to me didn't seam reasonable, didn't fit with my experience and didn't seem to fit with the whole history of the church. Though I think using the tradition of the church as grounds for reasonable behaviour may require some re-examining...
Ah, you see, my belief tells me that women can do just as much as men. And my god agrees.
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