Blob Thing writes:
I was already having a wonderful time at Greenbelt even though the volume of rain falling from the sky left something to be desired. It was about that time when people were wanting to pray for a drought. But no drought came. In fact the opposite happened.
I wish to apologise because in writing about the first hours at Greenbelt my person and I left something out. We had gone to a place called Grove. It was a circular gathering space without any sort of roof. I'm glad we didn't go there during the storms. We went there several times later too and it was a bit muddy underfoot but in all honesty it wasn't that bad. I was glad to be carried all the time though because my fur would have got horribly mucky walking around the soggy Greenbelt site. I haven't got any adventure shoes and I haven't got any adventure feet to wear them on either.
Yes, my person and I wandered and we managed to find Grove in time to hear the end of a talk and some questions asked to the speaker. Someone my person used to sing with regularly asked a question about inclusivity. A good question. The speaker was from a church called the Jesus Fellowship, a radical church where many of the members live in community houses and share their income and pretty much everything else. It's a church with a checkered history and the long-term members might agree that it's the church in the UK that has made the most mistakes. My person wanted to hear the talk and was sad to have missed much of it. She used to be a member of the Jesus Fellowship too. It's also known as the Jesus Army and she has been known to annoy people by repeatedly singing a terrible Jesus Army song to the tune of a Robin Hood song.
She says the Jesus Army had some awful songs when she was a member. It had some very good songs too but they're not as fun to annoy people with so she doesn't sing them much. Last year the Jesus Army released a song called Thank You which my person found totally gorgeous. She kept playing it, badly, on the piano. My person isn't much of a pianist. We heard someone playing Chopin at Newcastle Railway Station yesterday and my person couldn't do that. She doesn't play much at all now because much of her enjoyment came from playing God songs and she doesn't really believe in them any more which takes away lots of the fun. When my person is playing the piano I generally remain in another room and I get one of my friends to stick their hands over my ears so I can't hear the racket. I've got lots of friends at home and feel very fortunate. I met the leader of the Catholic Church last night and then when to a meditation group run by something that seems to be something of a cult so I don't think I want to go there again even though as a one off visit it was quite fun. Winefride was there too. She got a bit bored and it was all we could do to stop her disturbing all the people trying to be silent and raise their kundalini by making funny arm movements and believing it so.
My person felt things through it but she wasn't surprised by that. She knows that there are perfectly good physiological and psychological reasons for feeling that way. It's quite a nice way. But it doesn't imply the raising of some mystical kundalini. And it certainly doesn't imply that the people's guru was listening. And it most definitely doesn't imply what they teach about her being the reincarnation of a range of Hindu gods and also Moses. And The Buddha. And Mohammed. And The Virgin Mary. But not Jesus. A funny feeling through meditation practices will never imply that a modern Indian woman is a reborn Mary-Mohammed-Moses. That idea is just silly isn't it? I don't know. Some humans believe some very strange things and other humans feel that critique is not allowed or that pointing out that they're tantamount to lunacy is a bad thing. Personally I feel that things should be called out for what they are and that if someone makes some wildly implausible claim they had better have some pretty good evidence to back it up before they try to convince someone else.
Anyway. Greenbelt. People there believe things that I don't believe. But it didn't seem to matter much and they weren't trying to convince me to believe the same so that's okay. They are free to believe in a personal saviour God if they want. Or a god who is being, is love, is beauty and is lots of other marvellous things. Or to believe in no god. They can believe in heaven. They can believe in a nirvana state. They can believe that physical death is the end. It's all okay to me. As long as they don't look on me and say completely patronising but well-meaning things about what I believe. I should blog more about that sometime and about my philosophy and about the way I keep arguing with my person about it.
I'd love to be able to debate these things with Winefride too but she's non-verbal and perhaps she's happier even than me and I'm very happy all the time and smile a lot. We both got photographed today with a very lovely woman who does lots of teaching with refugees who have arrived in the area and who does a lot of work for charities helping refugees. My person was happy at Greenbelt because she managed to replace her "Refugees Welcome" badge after a long time not owning one. She lost the last one on a street in North London while having a panic attack about whether she could find someone's house and her phone battery was down to three percent and she needed to be using it because that's where the map and directions were. It was all quite difficult but she got there in the end and saw a very friendly fox too. She was telling me all about before Autscape because at Autscape I met the person she had gone to see in London. I'll tell you about that day too sometime. It was the Dalek day. And Winefride and I rode on a swing which was ever such a lot of fun and the way Winefride squealed so loudly with total delight brought me possibly more joy than I have ever experienced.
Anyway. Greenbelt. My person says I need to stop talking about other things and talk about Greenbelt. She says that she's regretting letting me dictate my blog post and that I always do this and things get a bit out of hand when I'm talking. Greenbelt. Yes person. Whatever you say person. I'll talk about it. Even though we listened to that woman because you were in the Jesus Army, not me. I was there for you. It was interesting what she said about inclusion though. She said that both she and the friend with her believed in full inclusion for LGBT people in the church. She then said that her church hadn't quite caught up with her yet. That's the same in quite a number of churches. The younger people don't care. They say that it's okay to be gay or transgender or whatever else and that God doesn't mind and let's all just get on with being ourselves and serving and enjoying God. The leadership cares. They say gay and transgender are wrong. Biblically terrible. They would say that any accepting yourself and either having a same-sex relationship or transitioning to live as the gender you are (or genders you are) would be frowned on by God and that anyone doing such a thing should repent and certainly shouldn't be having any position of leadership in a church.
But it's okay. I say it's okay. The leaders are going to die one day. And that will be wonderful. Hooray for death! Because then the younger generation will be leading and there will be full LGBT inclusion in the churches - assuming the churches survive at all. My person thought it was very nice to hear the Jesus Fellowship/Army person say what she said. My person was encouraged. She says that recently a Jesus Army member got in contact with her to ask if she would be able to offer advice or support to a woman whose child was transitioning. I think that's great. Stunning. I love that things are very different for queer people in the church than they used to be. It's true that some churches behave very, very badly and that queer people can still have awful experiences. But in other churches they are now accepted more and more. I wonder what those horrible churches would think of me - I have male pronouns but you wouldn't catch me not wearing my dress. Oh no.
So that's the thing we forgot to write about yesterday. My person went and talked with the Jesus Fellowship member afterwards. It was a nice chat. And then we went off and did other things. Which we told you about yesterday.
My person says that I should stop talking now because I've already said a lot. I think she wants to be in more control tomorrow and try to stop me talking about every topic except for the one I'm meant to be talking about. But she might not get her way. Why should she? This is my blog. It's not my fault that she doesn't get round to writing her own blog. She's only got herself to blame for it.
I just want to share one thing more today. Tomorrow I want to talk about some of the people we met as we attempted not to get very wet in the storm - because it wasn't over and then it got even wetter and very windy too. Between the storms it didn't look too bad. It was all very pretty and I hoped that the rain was over. It wasn't.
As we walked away from the mime workshop we passed the village hall. There was an advert for a discussion group on mental health. My person said to me that we should go to that because she has had a long history of mental health problems. She's relatively stable at the moment but only because of the drugs she's on and even with the drugs she is finding a lot of things very difficult and has to limit herself a lot more than she would like. We didn't go to the group because it turned out we were doing something else at the time. Greenbelt is a place where people with mental health problems are accepted. It's a place where people who are good friends with small pink soft toys are accepted. We loved it and think it's quite sad that we'll have to wait for nearly a year to go back. Just think. A week ago we were there. A week ago we had survived the storm and pretty soon we would be going to the theatre. I'll tell you about that tomorrow probably. Or the next day.
Next year we can probably do even better at Greenbelt because my person won't have been so anxious about going to it and will just be able to jump in and enjoy herself without having to spend ages exploring and exploring until she could relax. I think she did incredibly well on that first day because she had been pretty terrified. I'm very glad that we were there with my creator too because that helped my person a lot to know that my creator was there, even in all the times that they weren't together. I love my creator. She's amazing. She must be. She made me. I can prove that my creator exists. God believers have been trying to do that with their creator for many centuries. But my creator exists and I have met her and been held by her and I love her. I even have photos of the two of us together. I've posted a few in my blog.
Yes. Yes. Okay. My person is bullying me again to get on with it. Okay. We passed the village hall and we saw this sign:
Yes. Greenbelt has everything. I'm not sure why my person took a picture of the sign. We haven't got a ferret who needs walking. It's good that such a service exists though.
Right. That's it. My person is ordering me in strong terms to stop now. I think her fingers are getting tired and I think she wants to eat some food too. It amazes me how inefficient the human body is that it keeps needing more and more food. If it was designed by an omnipotent person then they didn't do they best job possible. That's what I think anyway. I know other people think that the wonders of the human body - which is admittedly an amazing amazing complicated thing - prove that it must have been designed by Mr. Omnipotent. That's what they think anyway. Okay, I'll stop. I won't go into discussing the classical arguments for the existence of God. If you insist. Yes person, yes. But they're all so fascinating and they are just as fascinating if you aren't convinced by them - or sometimes think that they're actually a bit silly - then if you are convinced. Okay. Stopping. Now. Don't get your ontological knickers in a twist.
[2523 words including this bit. Blob's person writes: I wasn't paying too much attention to the content of that. I just typed it. Don't blame me if Blob has said anything out of place. He's hard to control when he gets going. It's amazing. Winefride is non-verbal and sometimes Blob is hyper-verbal. There is no balance in this household.
They were in hysterics earlier. I entered a public toilet. There were two cubicles. One was well lit and the other wasn't. When I entered, the place was empty. I went to the badly lit cubicle and sat on the loo. I then started talking to myself as I often do. My talking ended with "Strike down your father and complete your journey to the dark side of the toilet." Just as I reached the word toilet, the other cubicle door slammed shut and when I left my cubicle there was a group of people out there. They stared at me. People often stare at me so that's nothing out of the ordinary. I decided not to be embarrassed. But Blob and Winefride laughed so much about it and they were teasing me right through our walk and every now and again this afternoon Blob has burst out laughing and spluttered the words, "Dark side of the toilet." This is the life I lead now.]
No comments:
Post a Comment