What's That, God?

I think you'll have to shout a bit louder.

A really really sensational series of books that hit the US best-seller lists a while ago, were Donald Walsch's. 'Conversations With God'. I read all three.

I read them with interest and a great deal of enjoyment, because this chatty God, who answered all Donald's questions with commendable frankness, was a very likeable Divine Presence.

I read them with a great deal of scepticism because this new revelation of All-Holiness said some pretty radical things.

At the end, it all came down to: Love the things you desire, and they will be drawn to you. That's it - You have created who you are, and you go on doing just that, so create something you REALLY want to be.

Lots of people will attest to having pulled the Universe into their hand, and become richer, better-loved, more beautiful, more gainfully employed and with better health... And good luck to them.

I never tried it, not once. Maybe I Am who I really want to be?

Or lazy. Yes, lazy. Think about it: if I had more money, I'd be obliged to find ways of spending it, if I ruled the world, I'd need to find things for people to do, if I were young and beautiful, I'd be beating suitors off with a stick... All too much trouble, I'm afraid.

Somewhere deep though, something stuck. This must have been the beginning of my belief that you can believe what you like and get away with it. Ultimately, the realisation that God as Revelation, is Open To Negotiation.

I watch my lovely fundamentalist friends having not too much fun at all, tying themselves into knots trying to reconcile into one indivisible truth, the revelation of God as a vindictive old tyrant, and a universally loving Spirit.

Either? Neither? Or Both?

It's entirely up to you.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. Alongside reading the New Scientist on the nature of consciousness. I'd love to watch my own neurons fire, I think that would be pretty amazing, but what I observe from looking at pictures of other people's, is, that the subconscious sorts everything out, then the conscious bit ( let's call it 'you') just does as it's told. I tell you it's pretty scary stuff. The subconscious self makes quite a lot of it up as it goes along, so the reality you think you're experiencing, isn't really real at all. And, furthermore, holds together what you think of as 'you' for about three seconds.

THREE SECONDS. We are all about three seconds long, which is no time at all if you ask me.

I have about 2.5 seconds to let my subconscious inform me as to where we're going with this. Ah yes, Talking to God.

You want to capture a few Hittites and batter their brains out? In about three seconds time, God will tell you to do it. You want to love your neighbour as yourself? Ditto.


God! I hope I'm wrong!

Born To This

It's Sunday, and I'm catching up on my emails. Thankfully, I am no longer being offered enhancements to a member I do not possess, or low-cost pharmaceuticals that I do not need, and it's even been a while since an over-familiar Nigerian has attempted to make me a wealthy woman.

I say, 'thankfully', but on the quiet I am a little disappointed, because much of the colour and interest has gone from my epostal existence.

I am left to muse over the offerings I have freely signed up for, and am thinking I could, if I totally lost my senses, sign up for a few more... But, there's fun to be had with what I have:

"Have you ever felt like the world simply isn't ready for the work you were meant to do? Like the role you were born to fill simply isn't considered possible by society?"

Oh YES!! I am pretty certain the world isn't ready for the work I was meant to do. There is one, no, there are two, good reasons why the world isn't ready.

One, I no longer wish to do any work at all, and two... Heck, I've already forgotten what 'two' is, I'll get back to you on that one.

But what a lovely thought! I could, at the click of a mouse and a complete rethink of my philosophy, become so utterly egocentric as to believe that the world gives a green fig about what my life's purpose is!

That this rethink in my philosophy is to be nurtured by bunging $300 in the direction of th e sponsoring organisation is neither here nor there, as I do not splash out on enlightenment. I am as enlightened as I can handle at the moment, and I'm profligate with it, and all for free!

I am intrigued though. WHAT role could there possibly be that, 'Isn't considered possible by society.'?My mind boggles. I am racking my brains... I have to assume that this reputable group isn't tempting me to anything deadly or illegal, so what's left?

I did, for a brief spell last Tuesday, consider getting the gear out and dancing in the streets to test that Iranian cleric's assertion that under-dressed and over-stimulating women cause earthquakes. Frankly, it was too cold, and I have my chest to think about.

I waited in all morning on Thursday to invite the Jehovah's Witness in for a chat, but none turned up. On Friday, I walked round Gloucester Park looking for the oak tree planted by Queen Mary in 1902 ( I WILL find it!) On Saturday, I planned to walk with the National Trust on May Hill to listen to the dawn chorus, but dropped out on the grounds of a hangover...

'What conclusions,' I muse, 'Am I to draw from the random aimlessness, and haphazard failure, of my enterprises this week?'

None. None whatever. I may very well have found the role I was born to fill in society. That of just being, just doing, and then sitting down on Sunday and having a good laugh about the beautiful pointlessness and glorious absurdity of it all.

"Love Is ...

What Makes A Suburu A Suburu"

What??? I think this is the most outrageous and stupid advertising slogan I have ever heard. Admittedly , I don't hear many, and the ones I do hear, home in from Seattle, but nevertheless, I am incensed, exercised and otherwise miffed.

Suburu, I am never going to buy you, I don't care how much love...

But wait...

Are you offering me a mild sort of affection that will have us just holding hands? Or, rather, hand and door opening appendage? Perhaps a rather more intimate expression that might require you to be left in 'Park' and me hyped up to 'Drive'?

Maybe you are showing me respect, and are willing to wait until we're married? Well, I might be persuaded, but owing to my age, it will have to be a short engagement. And you will have to stump up for my divorce.

The Green Lane

I walked slowly home from babysitting Abigail this morning.

When the weather's good, and the ground underfoot, dry, I walk the green lane. It is an extension, in it's way, of Bury Barr Lane out of Newent. It was, a century or so ago, I suspect, the cattle-rutted Drovers' Road to Gloucester. It's now beleaguered and set about on all sides by the new housing developments, whose faux-rural names I have mercifully forgotten.

Rubbish is frequently tipped over into this cool green tunnel - garden waste, knackered lawn mowers and non-functioning kitchen appliances - by the sort of people who would do that sort of thing. All of which is regularly 'disappeared' by the sort of people who wouldn't.

Yes, a cool, green, tunnel. A hundred yards of retreat. A multi-sensory experience of the wildwood fringe, that would be difficult to recreate today.

The sun is finally warm. I think of my hat, hanging, forlorn, in the cupboard under the stairs, and wish it wasn't. I stop to chat to a twittering grey squirrel and again, to let the birds have their say too. I note where the bluebells will burst open next week, and admire the golden riot of lesser celandine, reflecting,in their blowsy way, the glory of the sun-shining . (Even when it's not.) By mid-May, St. Anne's lace will be waste high and peppering the air with a pale cream scent from it's flamboyant parasols.

I'm savouring this. I let all that I see, and hear, and smell and feel, coalesce into a memory of a beautiful morning, in late Spring. One that I will recall over and over again when memory is all I have left.

I don't walk alone.

Flash died today. I wrote of Flash last year ('Bumping Into Flash'). That guy could spin a yarn so incredible that you might think that no-one could believe it but me. His scrapes with the law, which he held in contempt, featured the longest chases, the most spectacular escapes, the most unlikely outcomes... . No one DID believe them but me.

Dirty heroin? Vodka and pills? The streets are rife with rumour. It hardly matters. He was careless, and now he's dead.

I walked the green lane with Flash this morning. A hundred yards of retreat.