It's great being a Priest Ted...

Apparently when I was about 6 or 7 I wanted to be a Priest. I have no real recollection of this phase of my life, but my mother assures me that this is what I wanted to do.

As a young Catholic boy it is quite possible that this is true, I'm sure that lots of boys go through this phase. Catholic priests are a big part of the community and at that age the priest we had - who is now dead - was very cool. He liked football, drinking, smoking, in fact almost all of the vices apart from the one that 6 year olds don't like. Girls. That being said he was at one point sent to - what he himself in later life referred to as - a home for naughty priests. No he was not into small boys or girls but drank too much and may have had a 'fling'. He was, after all, only human.

I have always had a side of myself that has been interested in the big questions, the metaphysical questions, the nature of God. So a desire to follow that interest into a work place, to a vocation makes sense. So when at the age of 23/24 ish I left college - having studied theology - I was natural that I take up a 'calling'. Mine was not as a priest but as a youth worker, based in a church. It backed up what I knew about God and his plans and his church and his ways and him. But it didn't work.

So that left me in a difficult place. What do you do when you think that you are supposed to be doing something and you are unable to do it. Well you do something else but with the belief that you are in the wrong place.

I've been there for the last 8 years. Believing I did something wrong and not being able to fix it. Till this year and in reality in the last few months.
I was chatting to a friend the other night and looking at the idea of the 'big picture' we came to a point where we realised we have seen a bigger path and have walked it - ok we got much of it wrong but it taught us that we are paradoxically crucial to the plan of the divine and surplus to requirements that is great news. It should be liberty but at the same time it just makes us feel or know that we can make a difference. Here's the trick... we do. After years (even) of thinking I was in the wrong job that I should have been a Christian Youth worker, I realised - and only this year in the last few months - that I had a greater influence where I was than I could ever have in a church. And even though - or perhaps because - I am a sick foul mouthed bum I can still have an impact for the love of Christ - we have always argued Christ he hung around with prostitutes, drunks and those who lacked a morally self riteous attitude, so how do we think he wants us to spread his love for humanity? To be with real people in the place where they really live.

In an earlier blog I highlighted that I loved Dali's 'Christ of St John of the Cross' it is transcendent and mystical, but I also love the image of Christ at the well with the Samaritan woman, normal, human Christ who spends time with those he loves.

He is both, surely.

It's been a month...

Exactly a month. Life has overtaken the lack of living which was my blog. I feel I should email all to let them know that I am back online. And As part of the fitting tribute I am back blogging in St Andrews.

Ok it is question time again, before the muse.

Part One Why - and this is not a negative comment, or a cultural slur - do Americans wear their baseball caps in door, in a pub. Not just young people - like many Scots kids - but 50 and 60 year olds?

What is the fundamental difference in culture that means what I would think on as rude they don't. And I'm sure that they don't. It is clearly a cultural difference. But how did it arise?

I am again surrounded by LOUD people who's conversations I am not interested in but who I can hear clearly. Every word in the cacophony of sound could be tuned into and logged. But let's not.


Part Two Why - and this is a comment on me too - are the aspiring middle classes aspiring? What is it we really feel we need. Why do we lack the satisfaction we think we need? I like TM have an overhang from more Fundamental days and am tempted by the response - JESUS. But I 'm not convinced that that is the answer, I think it may be true but it is not what I am trying to get at. We have more money than our parents, (generally - when they were our age) we have more comfortable lives, we have better working conditions - physically - so don't give me that pish about mental stress, grow up for fucksake, my mum worked in a factory on Clydeside during WW2 and bombs were dropping, my dad worked in ships engine rooms before the HSE got all protective. I can't even fart at work without a risk assessment being done. Rant over

So what is it that we want? I know I want something but I am not sure what it really is. That is part of the problem. We WANT. That is the real issue, we don't need for anything and want everything. iPod, Big Car, Laptop, Plumbed in fridge freezer, digital SLR camera, Digital video camera, DVD recorder, SKY+ (TM) Bigger house, Plasma TV, Cinema Sound - with sub woofer, the list goes on and on. PS that is just my list and it doesn't end there.

Just after my kids were born we went to visit friends down in County Durham. They live what I think of as a simpler life and at that point most of their 'stuff' was older. The video worked by using a spatula to 'flick' videos out. I really admired that they had not been caught up in the acquisition rat race. I wanted to be like them and said so to my wife. She laughed, and laughed, and laughed. She knew I was serious but knew me too well. I have more gadgets that anyone else I know. Yet they have it right, they life within their means and yet life a good life. They are that rare breed the NonAspiring Middle Class, whereas I am the grasping bourgeois.

Why? Answers on a postcard please.

Part Three Why - that is it just why?

I was chatting on IM to a former pupil (though not of mine) and current friend last night. He asked a deep question. About English and it got me thinking. Are we defined by the books we read, do they reveal who we are or are they just a good read? There use to be a person in my worksphere who would always ask at interviews
? "What are you reading just now?" ?
Well it may have not been so daft after all. For me it is Conrad's The Secret Agent and Galloway's The Trick is to Keep Breathing or Joyce's Ulysses

Difficult and awkward texts. So he then asked why and that forced introspection. Asking the question who am I? What is my philosophy

oh ps that was all after finding out another friend's dad had died. Mortality.



ok there are two sides to this, the first is my childish immature side
I have never got beyond bum,fanny and cock jokes
so in all that I look at be it music or literature there is an adolescent boy in that background of my psyche so that is the first side. The late teenager who listened to Joy Division, The Sex Pistols and was in a punk band.

but the otherside is this person who is facinated and enchanted by the way things work. and in knowing more, deconstructing and fundimentally using my brain. Not in a straight line way, but, it's hard to put into words

ok Freud (yes I know this is Psychology but we will get to the philosophy in a minute) described people in the terms of a tripartate nature - ego, superego, id. In someways - though Freud would not agree with me- but fuck him he obviously never read Roland Barthe - reader theory - this was the humanistic expression of a religious concept of the Body, Soul, and Spirit, the human reflection of the idea of the Trinity (God, Jesus and The Holy Spirit) - fuck this is getting deep. On the other 'side' of psychology there is Jung who focused on the fundamental unity of humanity redressing the balance towards integrated psyche and physicality Ok so this is pop psychology and very broad sweep and TM would tell me : a) I don't know what I'm talking about and b) My analysis is based on a surface reading of both without an indepth knowledge and over simplification. Too True! That said here is my opinion they are both right, even though they are in 'oposition' to each other they create a paradox. This requires a paradigm shift in the way we understand concepts. This brings me to philosophy...

Kierkegaard - and the existentialist movement - argue that there is an uncommunical experience - the final experience (though this is where they get carried away). So on one front it is bum and tits, and on the other it is an intellectual chase after the big ideas with the knowledge that some of them are sooooo big that you will never get them.

This brings me to the link with the God thing. And this is that God exists in paradox he/she/they are both immanent and transcendent therefore known and unknowable. So in all aspects of my life I am always in search for the knowable whilst recognising the fact that even when I think I've got it I'm probably wrong so fuck it who cares.

The out working, and again it is a theological point, is that you find things unimportant and people and relationship the most rewarding because that is the bit you need to struggle with. So literature that describes the process of relationship moves me and challenges me, and the stuff I struggle with reveals more of who I am and by that I learn.

That is why I went into youth work and teaching, to create useful positive relationships, some short lived, some continuing.

My mate then raised an important question in his mind..." I have real trouble knowing that the majority of people either don't care about being generally good natured, care about the relationships they form, or generally consign themselves to not give a damn about anyone else incase they get hurt"

My response to that is a recognition that it makes me/you flawed, I become Robin Williams in 'Dead poets' which for a teacher is both good and bad. Inside we like him and at the same time as wanting to be him and have his influence we recognise that he was a wank.
In 'School of Rock' There is a bit where Jack Black's character says 'I hope I have touched your children and I know they have touched me' well despite the pervy sound of the comment that is what good teachers - and for that matter good people - want to do

To make a difference - yes I know that still makes me nieve but better to believe a lie that brings joy or a truth that kills? - Watch 'Big Fish'