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Who Am I?

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I’m just about to return from a week in Belfast, hanging out with my buddy Pete Rollins at his ‘Wake’ festival. It’s been a week of discussion, drinking and debate, centring around the theme of the absurd. It’s given me a lot to think about, and I’m sure there’ll be plenty of posts on here over the next few months as I try to process everything I’ve learnt and experienced this week. Belfast has become a very special place to me, the city is rich with culture and history, with a vibrant music and comedy scene and an endless supply of pubs and bars to experience them in. The troubles in the late 20th century are still incredibly recent, and even though it’s nineteen years since the ‘Good Friday Agreement’, the city is still very much reeling from the events that took place.

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Prisoners of Conscience

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We’ve all sent a text that we regret. That moment of horror when you wake up after a heavy night out to find the string of embarrassing messages you’ve sent to your crush. When you write something mean in the heat of the moment during an argument and realise you can’t take it back. In 2014, Fomusoh Ivo Feh, about to start university in Cameroon, forwarded a text that changed everything. Ivo received a joke message from a friend commenting on how difficult it is to find a job in Cameroon without a lot of qualifications. The text said that even Boko Haram, an armed terrorist organisation based in Nigeria and Cameroon, require at least four high school grades to join. This message was intercepted by a teacher who reported it to the police. Ivo and his friends were then arrested and charged with several offences, including attempting to organise a rebellion, due to Cameroon’s draconian anti-terrorism laws. They face the prospect being sentenced to twenty years in jail by military trial, all because of a text.

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Leave the Goats Alone

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We love to pass the blame onto someone or something else. I remember as a kid; I’d never want to admit that I’d done something wrong, it was always my sister or my parents or my circumstance that were to blame. It was never my fault. I mean, it was, but that was hard to admit. That meant accepting that I was responsible for something that went wrong, that I was at fault. We do this for others as well, when a friend’s relationship breaks down, we’re quick to point out all the faults of the other person saying things like, “they didn’t listen enough”, “they didn’t give you enough attention”, “you’re so much better than them anyway”. We do this, of course, in love. We want to make our friends feel better, even if we know deep down that maybe they were the one at fault, at least partially.

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The Judas in Me

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“Imagine if the worst thing you’ve ever done is the only thing you’re remembered for?”

That was the question presented to a packed tent on the first night of Greenbelt 2016 by Rev. Kate Bottley in a talk provocatively titled “Team Judas”. Kate shared with us the journey she went on while filming a documentary for the BBC earlier this year entitled “In the Footsteps of Judas”, discussing the life of the infamous disciple of Jesus that we remember only for the terrible, unforgivable betrayal that leads to Jesus’ crucifixion. A man who spent three years with Jesus, who was probably one of his best friends, that we know only for that one act of betrayal.

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I Am Nothingness

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We all want to feel complete: to feel like our lives have a purpose, that there is some point to all of this, that there is meaning to find in the universe. The entire advertising industry is built on this notion. Every day, whether we’re watching the TV, reading the newspaper or even getting on the bus, we’re bombarded with adverts telling us that we need this new product, TV show, film or holiday in our life, and then we’ll be happy. Religion tells us that if we say the best prayers, believe the correct things and give our money to the right church we will be made whole. Every day, we are bombarded by the idea that we are somehow incomplete and that if we buy this product, get that job, go on that holiday or believe in that God then suddenly our lives will be complete, and we’ll find meaning in the universe.

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Disruptions

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Just before my 23rd birthday life was going great. I had a job that I loved; I was working with a team of really cool people, doing something that excited me. I was able to be creative for a living, developing and growing skills I already had as well as learning new ones. I met my targets pretty consistently and, although I made some mistakes, I did the best I could. I learned and grew in my role as it expanded and changed, however when it came to my six-month probation meeting everything changed. My boss told me that the job I was doing was not, in hindsight, the role that the team needed and that they would not be continuing to employ me past my initial probationary period. I was devastated, I didn’t know what to do.

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Now and How

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I spend the majority of my time in the past or the future. So much of my headspace is taken up with wishing things could return to how they were back then, thinking about how when that happens I’ll finally be happy. I live so much of my life focusing on the past that I can’t change, and the future that is never entirely certain, that I miss the only thing I have any control over. The present.

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Where is the Love?

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The world feels like a pretty dark place right now. Brexit is happening, Donald Trump doesn’t seem to be going away, and I can’t turn on the news without hearing about another mass shooting or terror attack. The past couple of months I’ve seen more and more bigotry, racism, homophobia and sexism on social media from people I’m connected with than ever before. It has genuinely upset me, and I’ve struggled until now to write anything that I’ve been comfortable to post. Even today I’m not sure whether this will ever leave my increasingly growing collection of draft posts.

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Does Love Really Win?

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‘Love Wins’

I’ve heard that phrase a lot over the last couple of days. It’s a message that gives us hope in the midst of tragedies like we saw in Orlando this weekend. The mantra that we cry in the face of terror, extremism and hate crimes. It gives us hope that eventually good will prevail over evil, love will prevail over hate. It’s a phrase that caused thousands of people all around the world to hold vigils on Monday night, remembering the lives that were lost under such terrible circumstances. Last year at pride I marched in the parade holding a sign with that message, with hundreds of others declaring this message across the world. But last night, after a day of hearing the stories of innocent people who died after that horrific homophobic attack, and seeing people blaming and scapegoating the Islamic community for the acts of a small minority; I asked myself, does love really win?

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Grace and Acceptance

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Do we know what it means to be struck by grace? It does not mean that we suddenly believe that God exists, or that Jesus is the Saviour, or that the Bible contains the truth. To believe that something is, is almost contrary to the meaning of grace. Furthermore, grace does not mean simply that we are making progress in our moral self-control, in our fight against special faults, and in our relationships to men and to society. Moral progress may be a fruit of grace; but it is not grace itself, and it can even prevent us from receiving grace. For there is too often a graceless acceptance of Christian doctrines and a graceless battle against the structures of evil in our personalities. Such a graceless relation to God may lead us by necessity either to arrogance or to despair. It would be better to refuse God and the Christ and the Bible than to accept them without grace.

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