To have been frazzled by 🫨 six 🫨 irreconcilable 🫨 hidden 🫨 existential 🫨conflicts 🫨 before my 2-year old 👶🏻has worked out how to resolve the conflict between his breakfast 🥣 and his spoon 🥄.

💩

And then to go to work 💻 and be encouraging to a software developer who is overfaced 😤 by resolving a code conflict 😱.

And to genuinely want to help them both 🫂🤣

To reside nestled-deep in a private interior world 🌃🌑, not because I want to. Not because it's good for me. But because I need *that* *much* personal buffer 😴😴😴 to stay functional in a daily reality that fundamentally will not make intuitive sense to me 🙃🕶️.

In my own home 🙄.

And among my own friends 🥱.

To know that I once let too much of myself out. 🤓

And now my wife has to find herself again. And my friends are in disarray. 🫠🤐🤕

To hope they will get better soon. Because Lord knows I miss them. 😭

To not take responsibility for this because experience has taught me that's not helpful to any of us (and they all did require that I open up more! Silly billies).

To have an arms-length relationship with reality 🥸🎧🚷. Making recces out to 🚶🏼‍♂️this friend, 🚶🏼‍♂️that colleague. 🚶🏼‍♂️The job. 🚶🏼‍♂️The family. The kids. 🚶🏼‍♂️🚶🏼‍♂️🚶🏼‍♂️

🕵🏾‍♀️🕵🏻🕵🏽‍♀️ To be surrounded by a thousand social taxonomizers and “solvers” 🕵🏾‍♀️🕵🏻🕵🏽‍♀️, trying to press me through another dang Western mould 📚 📑. Look bro, if you want to think of me as an ✌🏻introvert✌🏻, or ✌🏻on-the-spectrum✌🏻, if that helps you accept me, then why would I discourage you? But it isn't me. In case you wanted to know. 👋🏻😎😘👋🏻

To feel regularly cajoled 😡🚨 into trading this incoherent life for an alternative incoherent life. 🤡

To see my kids with their mother and realise that if she died I would marry another woman to provide that relationship to them again.

To not understand why this beautiful observation is unsayable in this world. Or why it should need footnotes or caveats .

To be told, "wow you guys talk about *everything*, that's amazing" 🤩🤩 and to look blank 😶 and think "oh, this is just what we had to do to get out of hell" 🤷🏼‍♂️

To watch a young person come into my house and, feeling lonely, want what I've got. And to not really get it. 🤷🏼‍♂️

To have painstakingly worked out in words for myself what a “mature man” is before allowing myself to become one because such things are transmitted in "nods and winks" I am unable to hear properly 🙄. And I had to be sure. 👺☠️💩👍🏻

To love myself, not because it makes sense to, but because Jesus commands me to and because the people from church did. Until I picked it up by rote. 🫶🏻🦜

To be torn by the fear that God, the church, the faith... "something here"... is bad for me 🫤🤨🫨, but also to know He is good for me ❤️. To know too much is true on both sides of that conflict for it to ever fully go away. 😔

To sigh deeply and often. 😮‍💨

To weep. 😢

To consider the photographs my wife put up on the wall. 🤔

To consider the 3-year-old boy playing innocently in the bath with his twin sister 💑🏼.

To consider the 13-year-old boy 🧒🏼who loved his mum🤱🏼and his dad 🙍🏼‍♂️ and his gran 🧓🏻and his Nana 🧓🏻 and his Grampy 👴🏻 and his friends 🤼‍♂️

Unconsciously certain the noble life requires self-martyrdom. The scene set for the martyrdom of his same sex desires a couple years later

To consider the 23 year-old man clasping his arms around a girl 😁 👰🏼‍♀️. Staggered and delighted he got a friend-for-life . Sure he understood what that meant.

To consider the 33-year-old holding his baby daughter, face white-as-death under the sheer weight of depression 💀. As reality hit.

In wave 🌊 after 🌊 wave 🌊.

Well, the same wave 🌊. Repeating itself 🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊. Again 🌊 and again 🌊 and again 🌊.

Forbidden by his own conscience from making that ancient, necessary transition: that the noble life actually does *not* come from self-martyrdom after all, but from stable self-care extended outward.

Paralyzed overlong in patterns of self-immolation 🔥🔥🔥. Doubling down. Trebling down. (What other way forward is there?). Appropriating more and more in the next recapitulation of the pattern. I don't think either I or the counsellor had a handle on how I was using his psychology techniques.. Unable to grow into fatherhood. Stuck for years 🕳️. Because to integrate his masculinity, to become whole, is to integrate his homosexuality 👬🏼, and he can't understand how that can be true 🤔, and he can't accept it 🚫

To consider the 43-year-old, fast approaching...

Will I still feel dogged by this impossible bind? Knowing I must continue the transition to self-care but frustrated by the obvious fact that I am *actually* living a life of incomprehensible self-martyrdom, so it's a bit tricky to pretend I'm not isn't it? 🙄🙄🙄

Will I still be obese? How bad will my liver problems be? Will I be diabetic? Will I be dead?

Sigh.

Will I still be blogging about myself?

...

To consider a hundred fellow Christians, and a half-dozen Christian traditions ⛪✝️. As they all stare blankly back at me 😶😶😶. Willing. But powerless to help.

Sigh.

Well, at least they were willing. That counts as love I suppose.

To have longings too unformed and deep for words.

To look at my beautiful baby son and to realise that I will know him more profoundly than he will be able to appreciate. That I have what I need to father him well.

To look at my awesome preteen daughter. The perfect blend of strident and soft. Bored in the way intelligent children are. Deeply caring. To know that I esteem and love her more than I'm able to say.

To go into my room and sob and pray to the Great I Am that the unconscious wounds left in her by the years of her father's depression will not leave too onerous a complication for her. Folded-in and hidden as they now are among those strange, eternally-ascending-and-descending golden braids of the soul. Only He would know if something needs rewinding. Only He could do it.

To go to sleep and rise and *still* be in the cosmically absurd position. Reality itself mocking me. 🤡🤡🤡 Of having to integrate and reintegrate and reintegrate my same sex desires into my sense of self. In order to remain a full man. In order to sustain a marriage to a woman and be present for his kids like he wants to. Even though this is not-really logically possible. 🙃🙃🙃🙃

But today I'll try again to patch something together. I guess.

I'm a fixer after all. Legacy software… my own heart. Both intractable. But both worth holding-together for another day. ✊🏻😎 🫶🏻

To remember I've already examined this from every imaginable angle. From every perspective available. Zooming in. Zooming out. Squinting. Not squinting. This way. That way. Trying to make it make sense.

Suspecting now that it will never make sense.

Finally able to begin to see that. To confront it more fully than I could last year. This is the one thing even more difficult than that other difficult thing about being a dad.

That the deepest most personal suffering of my life. The bedfellow of my existence. That it has no meaning. Neither hating it, nor loving it, grants a stable purchase on reality or myself.

It all just…

“Is”

This is the thing the human psyche cannot cope with isn't it? That suffering this *defining*, this *present*, is meaningless.

Most choose denial. A thousand internet influencers get it confidently wrong.

Even those who say to me “suffering is arbitrary, life is meaningless” don't live like that's really true. They still seek wives, and an income and have children, and build lives. No. They use that belief as a pretext to justify their own meaning. They *really* mean “suffering is meaningless, so don't you make it too difficult for me to justify or obtain the meaning I'm finding for myself”

I smile. I'm not so different.

Ahhh. Secrets, secrets, secrets.

What is my secret?

I could do as they do and keep Meaning a secret to protect myself from the meaninglessness of the current social order?

That would be the easy option. The one I've been doing for a while now by default.

Or, I could invert it I suppose? Keep Meaninglessness a secret in order to build a fictional world of positivity and sunshine and rainbows? For the kids, I would say to myself.

That feels self-righteous.

Or I could take the Jesus route?

And lay it all out. Exactly the way it is.

And let the gospel do its work.

In my heart and yours, dear reader.

A man is like a wildflower 🌺 that springs up for a while and then a storm snuffs it out 🥀.

Beautiful as it is. In its way. For a time.

And that's that.

But none of that helps us make progress on the question of whether life itself has meaning. The truth is, the world was created good, by a good God, who was (and still is) interested in bringing about Good and our good. The notion that suffering is meaningless and arbitrary is an ancient human instinct, an inevitable one, a natural force of gravity. It's understandable.

But it's wrong.

And none of this has anything to do with Darwin.

If I'm able to weather so much apparent daily meaninglessness and still appreciate that. Then I'm sure you can too.

You got this.

Over the last couple nights my wife and I watched all 4 hours of the excellent Adolescence on Netflix.

Excellent show. Excellent acting.

(Spoiler alert: This post contains spoilers).

"Devastating" doesn't cut it. Hard sometimes for a teenage boy to see, perhaps, but the desires and anxieties he confronts are normal. And yet, somehow, through a combination of well-intentioned-but-clueless adults, a culture that fails to hit the right notes, and unfettered access to certain ideological rabbit holes, Jamie at some point finds and secretly commits to (what I suppose you might call) a terrible “masculine way forward”.

In true pickup-artist style, he “moves” on an older girl at her moment of “weakness”, judging her ripe for exploitation. Presumably winning (“claiming?”) an older girl serves as a prop for his low self esteem? When she rejects and publicly mocks him (accurately, although cruelly) online in coded language beyond adult understanding, he deals with the humiliation by following her and stabbing her to death with a hastily-borrowed kitchen knife.

The series raises many questions and does not allow space for trite answers. Dad has struggles with emotions, but that doesn’t really define him. Nor is he absent. Nor is he disrespectful or unloving to Jamie’s mother and sister. Jamie can talk through his feelings OK, but there is a disconnect between his online emotional reality and normal life. He is fractured and ultimately alienated from what I think could be termed “key masculine drives” and they control him in a hidden way and have found some kind of twisted satisfaction online. At no point in the series does he seem able to integrate the parts of himself. It’s not clear he ever will be able to.

Something I noticed in every episode was a certain ubiquitous male refusal to defer to appropriate female authority. Students are appallingly sweary and dismissive to teachers, but it’s worse towards the women teachers. And then, of course, Jamie’s own Andrew Tate-esque "pivot-to-negging" and angry outbursts when the inquiries of the court-appointed psychologist start to threaten his deeply guarded “male secrets”. The exact nature and extent of which we can only begin to guess.. entitlement..control… God knows.

By the end of the final episode Dad is left marooned in a strange absurdity (and we along with him): To one side immature lads graffiti his van and mock him, while others invite him into a bizarre secret alliance. To the other side, his (to him) “monster” son still reaches out for him as “dad”. Jamie is able to discern that he has failed his father’s expectations somehow (“Dad…I’m sorry”), but does he really understand, even seven months later, how, or why, what he did was wrong? I don’t think so.

Dad and wife Manda refer back to stories of school-disco childhood innocence to ground themselves, which is lovely and delights their daughter (despite herself). But I suppose their teenage world of getting a “frenchie” for being “good at holding hands” would not be intelligible for the (porn-addled?) young men who were not present in that scene.

The father, a good dad in so many ways (although not perfect) fundamentally lacks the resources to engage with a morally complex (“compromised?”) masculinity; he averts his eyes when his son misses a goal in football and the other dads laugh at him. He impulsively recoils from Jamie at one point. He has always struggled to connect to and feel his own anger in a straightforward way, so instead it forces it’s way out and controls him in occasional outbursts (we hear about some of these, and we see a little bit of it too).

Is all of this an internalised over-compensation for his own father’s violent bullying of him? I think so.

This, I think, is presented as the root-of-shame and blind spot that was ruthlessly exploited by…. something… to steal his son away. But this is a penny that has only just begun to drop for him as the series ends. A few weeks before the start of his son’s trial for murder.

We are left weeping with Dad as he tucks his baby boy’s teddy bear into the now-vacant bed. Next to the computer he should never have allowed in his son’s bedroom. With it’s unfiltered internet and social media connection that the UK government should not allow for children either.

Out of his depth. Devastated. Only beginning to grasp how it went wrong.

Starting a journey that we as a society urgently need to start walking properly as well.

I wouldn’t say I am restless, but I desire…

Movement?

Yes. Though, not for it’s own sake. It’s more…

Substance?

Yes. S-u-b-s-t-a-n-c-e. The real meat of things.

What things?

All things. Every—thing.

Where is the Truth? Where are those places—principles—that when you push them, they don’t yield even though no-one is defending them?

Where are the people who aren’t “winging it” or “faking it ‘till they make it?” or in "Survival mode”.

Where Things Matter.

Where is that wide open space? Delimited not by the traffic cones of human anxieties. But by cliff-faces, tree-lines…rivers…oceans.

A fence, not O-ffence.

Where I do a day’s work and it’s not mainly about survival.

Where it matters if the thing I build stays up or falls down.

To Be Good. To Love. To Do Right. To Build Well.

Where are these kinds of hearts?

Child-like. Holy.

Each of the following dots represents 1 million people:

········································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································································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You are 1 millionth of this final dot:

·

Even if you have a good memory, everyone you’ve ever heard of is probably still only a fraction of dots-worth.

How many people hate you? How many love you? How many have any awareness of you whatsoever?

If the world population stabilises at 11 billion (as the UN predicts) and the human species lasts for 1 million years (as is apparently typical of mammals), there will go on to be 100 trillion humans in the future.

So, if the entire above section of dots is represented by a single large dot, this is how many humans will go on to exist:

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So.

Don’t do or say or believe things because you want to be liked, or disliked, or because of anything to do with people’s reactions to you.

Believe things because they are true.

Say things because they are helpful.

Do things because they follow from the things that are true.

And try to restrict the amount of time spent dealing with people who obfuscate.

Smartphones are wires and clock-ticks and nands.

An arm is a shoulder, an elbow, a hand.

Everything's made of something.

A child is a sperm and an egg and a womb.

Progress, a chat in a chair in a room

Patience, those times when “it's coming quite soon!”

Everything comes from somewhere.

A train, to the place at the end of the line,

A child, to the adult consid’ring a crime.

The adult, to judgement at the end of spacetime,

Everything's going somewhere.

The Bridegroom, His bride and the thrill of the chase,

Beloved, her Lover’s turned-toward face,

The Serpent, inventions of human disgrace,

Everyone praises something.

A human, carnation of Imago Dei,

A human, a grass-blade, withering away

A human, eternity-hearted today,

Everything is something.

Everything, made for his pure delight,

Everything, made by his Divine Right,

Everything, made through his wisdom-might.

Everything's made from something.

Beaches are cockles and sea-froth and sand.

Smartphones are wires and clock-ticks and nands.

An arm is a shoulder, an elbow, a hand.

Everything's made of something.

I could talk about how I vaguely followed the escalator of education—not something I struggled too much with—and chose to do Computer Science at Warwick University, because I gotta pick something and I kinda like computers. And I seemed to know more about them than my peers (and I wasn’t good enough to get into Oxford!). And at this point, I guess it makes sense to stick with my training right?

I could talk about how I have a family to support, That my wife won’t have an income for at least the next five years. That most of us are given to great anxiety so benefit greatly from being in a stable situation with a good (=> expensive) quality of living. And this job pays pretty darn well compared to other jobs.

I could talk about the intrinsic beauty of software—information—the language of the Universe. That to get gud at code is, in some allegorical way, to sense something of the Divine Mind.

I could talk about my own disposition. How I like to reflect, to ponder, to enword things for myself. How thinky I am. How I like novelty for its own sake. How it sort of kinda fits me tbh.

I could talk about FOSS and how I think it spawns professional cultures that feel consistent with the principle of gleaning. Surely the most basic of all the demands of social justice?

I could talk about how it’s what I’ve always done, why change? Sounds like a lot of bother.

But. I don’t want to say it’s those things.

They’re important parts of the story for sure. The journey.

They’re all previous reasons. Contingent reasons. I’m sure I’ll keep having particular moments where each feels important again.

But, step back, and none of them are—on the whole—why I still do it.

None of them explain why tomorrow I’m going to cram to prepare an engineering talk that I wished I’d prepared for more gradually over the last few weeks.

None of them explain why I’m going to give that talk to a room full of people when I didn’t have to. Entreating my colleagues to improve. Empowering them to become more effective. Try to be better myself. The next project will be better. The next client will be more delighted.

None of them explain why I’m going to spend the next week, and the one after that, and the one after that contending with tedious bug reports, clients, colleagues, code. Constantly wading through failing things with insufficient information. Sensing daily the disappointing disparity between the beauty of an ideal, and the mediocrity of its realisation. The lurch of a dozen ideals never brought to fruition.

Sensing and sharing invisible depressions and anxieties, and softly encouraging them all once more in a constructive direction.

No.

The reason is this:

I want to work a field.

And this one will do just fine thank you very much.

There were lots of things I was meant to do. Prepare an amazing in-depth talk I’m giving on Monday at work. Build lots of flat-pack furniture. Make a dozen phone calls (we only moved into the house a couple week ago and there’s still lots to do).

And I did do some of each of those things.

But mainly we hung out with a bunch of people we like. Went to a safari park with family. Chilled out. And I spent a bunch of time lost in thought and wrote a bunch of blog posts—set myself up on Substack this time. Entertaining once again the notion that maybe soon—now?—I might be able to recover a plausible sense of faith.

It feels closer than ever before, but.. there’s something in the way. Still.

Ugh. What could it be?! This is so exhausting.

I’m angry with God about something.

Ohhhh.

I’m angry that I have such a strange (excessive?, tenuous?) way of relating to the faith.

I stayed up watching Youtube videos of American bible-belt preachers and then other Youtube videos of people criticising them as heretics. And afterwards I felt dejected. I can’t understand my relationship to Jesus, to the church, to the faith in the sorts of ways either of these groups seem to talk about… stuff. The way I imagined I could when I was younger. The way people who would be my friends talk about God—the way they speak encouragements to each other. It’s so… bibley. So… straightforward.

I wish things could be simple for me, like it seems to be for them. Fruit of the Spirit this. Armour of God that. Guard your heart. Quench the fiery arrows. Use a little wine for your stomach.

I’m angry at God for making me like this. So… complicated. So… difficult for others to relate to. And for me to them.

So

Alone.

Why couldn’t he have done it some other way? Made me with less of a need to word things for myself? Less able to see things for myself. Why is my mind shaped this way? Why are things—why am I so… well… free?

Last night I watched the marvellous Everything Everywhere All at Once.

I loved it. The film brilliantly conveys what it was like to stare naively, eagle-eyed into the Total Perspective Vortex of late-2010s Social Media. You discover at pace that not only is any perspective possible, but someone somewhere is earnestly living it out and how dare you suggest I do any other ya cheeky sod, come ‘ere!! Unable to look away, suddenly you’re urgently motivated to—and then able to—empathise with, to rationalise, to justify seemingly anything no matter how bizarre, ridiculous, or appalling it previously seemed to you.

And yet still there’s more, there are others who must be included, you haven’t yet done enough.

And then, oh look!, it’s morphed into something more. Survival. Learn the new rules and keep your own head above the water! You're scrabbling, clutching for your own breath.

And down you sink into this unexpected rabbit hole—spiral down an endless drain—the sense of your own life, your own perspective, your own journey shrinks away in fright, suddenly unable to stand up in the face of the onslaught.

The etiquette, heuristics, strategies, lessons inscribed by careful childhood tutelage, are now articulated to you—outed to you—oh no—as nothing more than fictive (you naively suppose) projections of your own self-perception. That can’t be right at all! They quickly follow suit, as they must—they must!!. Then, as a result, Society, Self, Distinctions, Categories.

Even God?

Shifts. Lurches. Dissolves.

You lie helpless (”fractured” in the film’s nomenclature). All sensations of meaning collapsed into the infinitesimal nothingness—the singularity—of Nihilism. Any possibility that a meaningful narrative might find a foothold in you—for you—now forbidden by the indignant voices that lavished a thousand discordant, cross-wise lacerations across your unsuspecting super-ego.

It’s Everything and so for you it’s become Nothing. But it’s a Powerful, Knowing, Seen-It-All, strangely Authoritative Nothing. Oh no! Your very presence now threatens to usher your well-meaning friends to join you in hell. You’ve cut yourself up, and now you must cut yourself off. Until you are.. safe once again.

I loved so much about the film. From the hot-dog-finger licking to the fully-grown men squabbling furiously over sex-toys with baffling sincerity. To the path of redemption via your mum—maybe she’s the one person I can reach out to? To the—*stands*, *applauds*—gorgeous “Nihilism flip” while in that sacred embrace—”We can do anything we want [together] because *chuckles* nothing matters, remember?”.

It all makes perfect sense to me.

Give this film all the Oscars.

Being concerned about safety is the starting point of every human. It is literally never a bad thing to share a concern about safety. No, really.

Really.

Safetyism, then, is the Safety concern gone meta. In a world where every view I am able to imagine sharing doesn’t feel worth the risk—this just isn't safe—in an important sense all I have left—all we have left—is Safety concerns. And as with any one-dimensional orthodoxy, once institutionalised, the vocabulary of the thing becomes the medium through which any message must be expressed for it to carry.

The only dictionary a child can use to vocalise an identity.

To state the bleedin obvious: Safety concerns only concern safety. It's difficult to learn skills like problem solving, or programming, or polka dancing by actioning only safety concerns.

You won't learn love, not the proper adult kind—the kind worth bothering with—by actioning only safety concerns.

You won't sustain a house, a family, a business, a community. A life.

Here’s the solution:

Turn off social media. Get as much space as you need. Even if it’s years. This isn't cowardice. This isn't burying your head in the sand. You've already seen it all, why keep returning?

Accept there's a human nature even if you don't know exactly what it is. Even if we can't agree what it is.

Start hugging your mum.

Have, or hang out with, some kids.

Attempt to reach acceptance about the things you'll never be able to relate to about your dad. Start getting to know him on his terms.

Accept mess and imperfection.

Wait patiently, in faith.

Watch as the adventure of your life begins to unfold according to God's timing.

And for goodness sake. Form reasonable opinions. A few unreasonable ones maybe. Plenty of them. And change them. And share them if you have the courage, or opportunity. The right platform maybe. Even if it rubs the Zaphod Beeblebroxes of this world up the wrong way.

Eternal life’s far too pressing to worry about losing your earthly life over such trifles.

Space.

Sense it open.

Brace.

As the croaking chokes of a thousand spoken yokes.

Lie. Broken.

Cry. Soaken.

Face.

Yesterday's child, at rest. For today's miles try

Grace.

The world, yours for a while, its joys and its trials, now

Place.

Your heart and your head, in the start, in its stead. Then

Race.

Race.

Race.

When you ask people, they'll tell you it's the practical stuff. The late nights. The endless nappy changes.

Maybe someone will help out if you mention it? So people talk about it.

Or they'll mention the intensity of it. The deep lurch in your stomach every time her breathing pattern changes in the cot bed. The stress of the first bath. The horror of unexpected trips to the hospital. Important to get that stuff off your chest you see.

So people talk about it.

It's easy to think that's what life is about. The stuff people talk about.

And sure, it's hard.

For me there's one thing deeper than the rest. A creeping realisation beneath it all.

It started hitting from about when she was three months old.

I think.

Sheer existential terror.

T E R R O R

Gradual realisation that I was formed.

In my entirety.

In my mother's womb.

At her side. In her arms. Hearing her voice. Feeling her heart.

Believing her.

You can chart most things back to what was going on then.

I've checked myself.

I can see it now in my own daughter.

As her personality develops from her babyish traits.

As she blossoms.

People don't talk about that.

I don't think people can really cope with it.

I didn't.

I once read a book that claimed that people believe in religion to cope with a fear of death.

OK.

But how about coping with the fear of life!?

Do you know what it's like to hold a life in your hands? As if God?!

It is too much to bear.

And yet, not bearing it is worse.

For all involved.

Everything began forming in me while on my Mother's lap.

Have I ever perceived anything correctly?

Could I?

Has my mind ever contemplated something that was actually true?

Or was it all a by-product of the drive to separate from my parents? To spread out across the Earth?

So many memes passed between brothers and sisters. Stolen from competitors.

Clung to.

To better propagate Adam's seed.

Some things ignore what you thought you believed and drive you anyway.

It appears.

It would be easy to venerate "femaledom" because then I can pretend that all the hard existential stuff is "over there" somewhere and just serve Her and all will be well.

And yet I am drawn to venerate Christ.

Because I know that He is the only man I ever met that I didn't inadvertently influence.

That I couldn't influence.

Whose influence was always perfect. And always will be.

Perfect.

Not of Adam's seed.

Unlike the others.

I’m cross.

My youth stole away.

Amid a strange night.

“It’s like I’ve died!”

“Stop exaggerating”, someone implied.

But he and I are not alike.

It seems to me he’s just stronger.

A tad bit younger

Still got a little longer.

Everything is a pain,

When you feel the force of every strain.

Every cold wind and hot glare.

When the refuge of denial is not there.

And tomorrow’s energy is earnt today,

And might fail to appear anyway.

Every time this question sits:

“Is it worth it?”

Every time I must insist

“Yes”

(Except when it’s “No”)

I remember when everything felt cheap

I just did what seemed to please

Whatever was in front of me

Certain God was leading me

And ground gave way easily

But now?

Daily life has become a… tapestry

A dance

A complex negotiation with France

More about style and rhythm

–the threads you weaved

Than direction or miles driven

–what you achieved

And I think the thing that bothers me most of all

Is it’s normally

incredibly

dull.

(In whatever disguise)

when you hold up a sacrifice

That is despised,

That involved a lie

Surprise!

And when the personal cost paid

Is so absurd–weapons-grade–

And the illusion contained

such trauma and pain

Well.

It’s hard to become human again.

It turns out that hating and pushing away

My feelings for men–my being gay

and with it–in time–my personality

Was not really the right Way

It doesn’t particularly impress Mum, Church or Wife,

It didn’t grow the fruit of a righteous life

Why did so many things seem to tell me it’s right?

Why didn’t my “Christian ethos” boys school correct that at first?!

Why did my return-to-New-Testament-principles twenties make things worse?

I don’t know

and now

I don’t care.

But still I must decide.

Am I going to cling onto being a martyr

To save face (or for fear of losing my faith

as if it wasn’t Him who first chased

and holds me in his grace)?

And am I going to stubbornly wait

For others to change to accommodate my self-inflicted wound?

Expect my family to work around a self-depreciating, confused, insensitive tool?

Encode more hidden loathing for men and women into the next generation too?

Nope

I don’t yet have all the needed answers I’m afraid

But I know I’m not here to form a crusade

Or “man“ some Reformation barricade

Or secretly build a boys brigade

I’m here to seek first the Kingdom of Love again

Where the King didn’t cling onto heavenly fealty

But revealed himself in full human frailty

And I went to a “Christian ethos” boys school you see

So I have a taste of what that’s meant to be

And I can sense what produces it in me

and what does not.

I’m sorry the dreams of Sola this and Sola that

Have so far fired blanks–for me–are falling down flat

And I’m sorry that seeking comfort in a rigid evangelical frame,

produced denial and loathing and shame.

(And Just So stories of why my group of fools

are more ✌🏻Pure and True✌🏻

Than those Other less faithful, sell out crews).

Today I’ll celebrate the World’s Mighty Creator,

And Powerful Sustainer, And Wise Orchestrator,

Arriving as a baby, sleeping in an animal-feed manger.

And that’s quite enough.

I’ll wager.

Maybe what they say is true,

And what I treasure in my heart

Is selfish as the sky is blue

And evil as the sun is hot.

Maybe trusting this to God

(now free enough from childhood fear)

Is really a Satanic prod

From Eternal Conscious Torment Pier?

Maybe Jesus doesn’t act

When feelings disalign on this?

Are some consciences, in fact,

Beyond His purifying kiss?

Or

Maybe Jesus is secure

And never changed from Love’s pure Light

And what men would kill or cure

He saved when first he granted sight

Then loosed amid the darkest night

And breathes in love

And brings to life.

I am!

I am!

I… THINK therefore I AM!

No?

Perhaps I… shrink therefore I am?

Well..

Try a…kink…therefore…I..

Hmm..

I tried to get my daughter to make chocolate brownies with me. A much-loved recipe handed down from an old friend. She obediently sprinkled in the chocolate drops and marshmallows as directed.

And it was.. fun. Yeah, it was OK.

But the thing she really delighted in doing–and it didn’t take long for her to get on to it–was dancing around, arms akimbo, wearing nothing but an apron, distributing plates to us–a proud cafe owner. 😂

I suppose serving and eating the brownies was the segue. Still joining in with her dad’s plan–or hmm–maybe it’s more.. historical starting point?

Ahh I loved it. Laugh out loud funny. So pleasing. The sheer knows-she’s-loved, feels-seen, is-safe,

  herselfness

of it all 🥰.

We glanced at each other. Did she get this particular wonderful-oddness from you or me? Lol. Seems kinda unique to her..

Why would I make her word-out a justification for her oddness? For being the way she is. She just is, I just want her to know she’s

Seen.

Known.

And then..

Was I 15 or 16? There or there abouts.

Lying on my bed. In my room. Door shut. Alone. Frozen. Stuck. I’d been like this for a while. Weeks?

Eventually the tears came, though I tried to stop them. Then the weeping. Then the uncontrollable sobbing.

Bury it! Gulp it down! I can’t let anyone hear. How could I explain it?

Well. I couldn’t. I.. just.. can’t can I? They can’t know.

I will be alone forever. No one can ever find this out. No. Nothing can ever give me away!

Ohh the sadness. The aching, endless loneliness.

And then. It happened.

I was just a witness. My heart spoke all by itself.

Jesus, if following you means every day feels like this. I will do it. I love you.

It was obvious to everyone present that I truly meant it.

And slowly. Then quickly. Then all at once…

It was like a crack opened in my bedroom wall and through it seeped some water. And it steadily dissolved the wall. And grew and grew. A trickle. Then a stream. Now a river. And soon a raging, surging, powerful, timeless, deafening, roaring cataract. Sourced from…somewhere else. Breaking–broken–through.

I lay there. Sopping. Astonished. Drowned. Tears confused. What is this? Is this…fatherly? Wow. Yes. Ha ha ha ha ha. What?!?

My tears of sadness morphed absurdly into tears of relief and happiness. And then more laughing. And then I sat. Then rose. Ha ha. Did I dance? Maybe I did!

Seen.

Known.

He is

He knows me

Therefore

I exist