Tag: non religious spirituality

Losing my religion

Out, out, brief candle. Candlesnuff fungus Xylaria hypoxylon
Warning. This post includes a discussion of grooming and abuse

We binge-watched a whole four part thriller last night on TV. It was my fault. I fancied something like an Agatha Christie without the drawing room scene and just for fun I used Google Gemini to search for something suitable. There followed a typical AI dialogue where I refined my choice on the basis of a few questions and finally I settled on “near the sea” “cosy whodunnit” “wet weather allowed” and one series dropped into the the slot. It was “The Long Call”, based on an Ann Cleeves novel, set in Devon near the sea (I suspected Braunton Burrows but I couldn’t be sure), complete with rain – oh and one last detail that grabbed my attention – set around a religious community.

And off it went with some great actors and even accurate Devon accents. There was a body on the beach and it all looked very promising until we were introduced to the religious community which was very strict, inward looking and eerily familiar to me. It quickly became clear that everyone was lying and that there was enough passive aggression going on to freeze a small lake. My position as a viewer was so completely compromised that I even imagined myself sitting in one of the chairs in the midst of a Brethren style prayer meeting, listening to the endlessly repetitive petitions of a charismatic leader. I’d been there, worn the T shirt and carried the same alienated feelings as the investigating detective who’d been shunned (that’s a technical term with huge menace) by that same community after he came out as gay when a teenager. It was tremendously well researched in the way that vulnerable people were love bombed and befriended, groomed; then became the victims of passive aggression until they were demoralised, subdued and controlled. The next step, because this pattern isn’t confined to religious groups, is violence, abuse and in the worst case murder.

I was pre-teen, pre-puberty, but nonetheless awash with guilt at sins I didn’t think I’d ever committed – and didn’t have the vaguest idea how to commit – and that I could be certain that I was destined, or predestined for hell. Unconditional love, forgiveness and diversity were as underused in the congregation as a Bishop’s bible, although we all knew that bishops were a bad thing and the torments of hell were always good for a spittle infused, red-lipped sermon. Years later I found an antique copy of the hymn book they used which was so full of sado masochistic imagery it would probably be banned today. If I learned anything at Sunday School it was that I was a wrong un and no-one would answer the question “why?” because that was the sin of disobedience.

I left Sunday School as soon as I was able to defy my parents and took nothing away with me except that diffuse sense of guilt into the future. I caught a glimpse of a better looking god in the local anglican church, but that was more to do with fancying a girl in the choir. I got confirmed, took communion once and never went back. Around that time I was groomed by a much older teenager and introduced to a number of dodgy men but fortunately he was arrested before anything too terrible happened. After that I joined a Wesleyan methodist youth club whose saintly leaders kept me safe. We had a fancy dress party once and Mrs Round said “I suppose you’ll be coming as the devil, Dave” . Finally I discovered the meaning of fornication (Oh happy day!/ what happened there?) and after getting chucked out of school over a provocative samizdat magazine which I wrote, published and distributed I met Madame at a CND meeting and we fell unfashionably but hopelessly in love. I was 18 and she was 15. On reflection I was unbelievably lucky to get off the escalator when I did although that didn’t stop the police, and much later the church authorities from treating me as a risk, mainly to their reputation as worthy chaplains to the status quo.

I was about 12 years old when they interviewed me with the utmost hostility at the police station. My Dad was there, but sat silently throughout and when they let me go he never subsequently mentioned the way they had shamed me. Much later on I was a member of a support group for clergy which was supposed to be completely confidential; a safe space led by two skilled therapists. I finally managed to describe what had happened to me then, and also the occasion when I’d unexpectedly encountered one of the paedophiles I had been introduced to during a visit to his mother. This was very upsetting. Even decades later I recognised him instantly. One of the members of the group took it upon themselves to report what I’d said to the church authorities without even warning me. As a result I was telephoned by a church appointed social worker who quizzed me on what seemed to be the prior assumption that the abused were likely to become abusers themselves. In reality both the police and the church authorities became the abusers, forcing me to recall the events without offering a shred of support afterwards. Any trust in the group disappeared and I was on my own again. Completely innocent and yet groomed to blame myself.

As a consequence of all this inside experience of religious communities and controlling behaviour, a large part of my time has been devoted to patching people up; many of them had been horribly abused and robbed of all self-respect. Many of them drifted right back into abusive relationships, but I think I may have made a difference to a few. After the film last night I went to bed feeling thoroughly churned up.

What is it about religion that makes it so dangerous? so corrosive to young minds? I suspect that living without certainties is hard going so shortcutting from judgements of virtue to the ‘either/or’ rules of us and them is an easy way out of difficult thoughts. Madame and I were down in Southern Ireland once, during the Troubles, and we were in a remote bar way south when a group of IRA supporters came in. It was a terrifying hour whilst we sat and they sang anti British songs, us not daring to speak or get another drink for fear of being recognised by our accents. The next day I went back to apologise to the owner for causing a lot of stress and she said it was no problem. I replied “well, we are English” and she said “No but you’re tourists“. I’m still working that one out.

But there is the real reason for the danger of religion. It’s not theology, it’s the binary culture it generates – with its inside/outside, lost/saved, stranger/friend, infidel and faithful. In a world full of anger and hatred it’s all too easy to fall into camps which become gangs – each with its own flags and banners and then guns and bombs.

This morning we were having a cup of tea with our friend Charlie who managed to combine both creativity and science into his life. We were having a conversation about slime moulds – yes you read that right – and we agreed that the earth is so prodigiously beautiful whether you’re looking at an ocean, a mountain or a microscopic cell; and when we consider the almost infinite adaptations and evolutionary steps involved in getting to where we are – then there really is no need to suppose that some kind of kindly, interfering or even malevolent being, could add anything to the picture. By all means use an obvious metaphor, like Mother Nature for instance but I remember saying to someone once about a girlfriend known by everyone as “Peach” – that her name didn’t imply that she lived in a fruit bowl. The sea of faith seemed to be retreating for me. Much later I discovered that the tide comes in twice a day.

The melancholy soft, withdrawing roar – not, in this instance on Dover beach.

Of course we talk to the allotment – how else would we know how to keep it happy?

It’s Good Friday today and English tradition demands that we plant potatoes. Of course traditions can be very local or just plain wrong. With Easter tied to the phases of the moon, Good Friday wanders about a fair bit because Easter Day is calculated by the first full moon after the equinox which – this year – falls on Sunday 17th April; making Good Friday the 15th. The obvious explanation underlying the tradition is that the Easter weekend has always constituted a four day public holiday in this country and so for working people it was the ideal opportunity to get the new season’s crops underway. Jetting off to Spain wasn’t even on the cultural horizon and so my childhood memories of Good Friday are always triggered by the smell of freshly turned earth – scientific name, petrichor; the queues at Palmers seed store and at Flook’s the fishmonger, the owner of which had been working with fish so long he closely resembled a tall cod in his wellingtons and oilskin apron.

Here at the Potwell Inn, the latest frost (since we’ve been living here) was on May 6th so it’s clear that although potatoes, being planted below the surface, would be OK; there are many frost tender plants that wouldn’t. In the real world of allotmenteering, potato planting demands warm earth, no sudden cold or frosty spells on the horizon and time to get the job done and, as far as we’re concerned that means tomorrow because the potatoes are all chitted and ready.

As we were busy setting up nets and prepping beds yesterday I was mulling over the perplexing reason that allotmenteering is so good for the soul, and I think the answer (if there is one) has changed greatly over time, for me. Our first allotments and gardens – if I’m honest – were a bit of a struggle. Weeds and pests demanded constant hand-to- hand combat and any successful crops were snatched from the jaws of death. I can remember once losing an entire crop of beautiful Marmande style beef tomatoes to blight and watching potatoes turn to black slime for the same reason. It was hard to feel any kinship with the earth when it seemed to push back so harshly. We were always opposed to using chemicals, and so our options seemed limited. Sometimes we just gave up and walked away; disappointed and resentful.

But yesterday I realized it all felt very different. We’ve learned the hard way that birds and caterpillars will decimate brassica crops if we don’t protect them with nets. Allium leaf miner and asparagus beetle too are endemic on the site but we use a lot of fine insect mesh to keep the bugs out. We grow blight resistant tomatoes and maincrop potatoes (Crimson Crush Sarpo Mira), and we clear up any dead leaves; minimise the places slugs like to lay eggs and let the blackbirds take the rest. We net the fruit trees until the buds have set and so-on. Finally we don’t plant out tiny fragile little slug takeaways but grow them on until they can take a nibble or two. Badgers need something approaching the Maginot line to keep them off the sweetcorn – and so it goes on.

We also do a lot of companion planting and in the last two years we’ve doubled the number of perennials; increasing hugely the number of insect attractors and pollinators. We don’t dig and we make over a ton of compost every year; the net result being that our allotment can look a bit scruffy but the food plants grow well and we just accept that in a sane world, we simply have to share with all the other creatures. Gardening has become a silent dialogue with the plants, small; mammals, birds and insects who share the space with us. There are no weeds and no pests because we all have a right to exist.

Of course the non-polarized world of the allotment comes up against the binary world of allotment bureaucracy pretty regularly. Recently we had an epistle from on high regarding “non fruiting shrubs” which the writer wanted us to other and promptly remove. What’s a non-fruiting shrub? I wondered. What about cotoneaster for instance? – much loved and needed by birds in the winter. What about our Achillea plants: they have no humanly useful food – although the stalks are useful for casting the I Ching – and they provide pollen for insects – isn’t that fruit in a broader sense? Does our Borage fail the food test? What about Good King Henry? which side of the friend/enemy dichotomy does that fall?

Perhaps the Bible really is to blame in this one respect; (it’s a wonderful collection of texts with some really duff bits!) -maybe the idea of sovereignty over the earth has been really bad for the human race and we’ve got ourselves addicted to smiting anything that’s not directly useful. My own view of the Kingdom was formed more by my Grandfather’s huge row of sheds where anything and everything that ‘might come in handy one day, boy’, was piled high. He was a great rescuer of broken things, and among the finest of the remains were two or three old paper roll pianos (nickelodeons). He would give me and my sister a few pennies and we could bring them to life again. Is that a resurrection story? It’s a bit late for me to be called a heretic now!

Growing things is the silent dialogue between the gardener and the earth and it has to be a life of constant thanksgiving. We learn the proper names of all our plants, including the invasive grasses and the bindweeds that pierce through the soil out of sight and where they’re becoming a nuisance we remove them by hand and say ‘thanks but not here‘. Many of them are very beautiful in any case and to divide the earth into good (food for humans) and bad (food for everything else) – is a corrosive state of mind. The little annuals that take their chances early in the year; the Dandelions, the Rosebay Willowherbs that drift in clouds, the chancers that drop by for a year and then disappear; all full partners in the earth.

So will we be spending any time in church this Easter – (Oestre – work it out) – weekend? Well no, thanks but no thanks. We’ll be planting potatoes and if it seems right I might even sing the exsultet to the apples.

“I know a bank whereon …. take 2.

No – really I do, we were there yesterday again, in Velvet Bottom (who could resist such a place name) – it’s almost as good as Condom in SE France where I once resisted a selfie next to the road sign. Condom is famous for its brandy; a friend once told me that he met someone at a conference who came from thereabouts who told him that the local wine was excellent so long as you boiled it!

I’m not sure how to describe Velvet Bottom because it’s a paradox. From Roman times and again in the 19th century it was ravaged by lead mining and even today the soil is so polluted it has a completely unique flora growing in and amongst the usual – less fussy – suspects. But because I’m not an experienced enough botanist I can’t enlarge much on these rarities unless I happen to bump into one of them when I know that I don’t know what it is – if that’s not too convoluted an explanation.

Velvet Bottom is one of my favourite places on earth, honestly. Aside from the plants there are adders in abundance when the sun shines and it’s quiet in a way that holds you and slows everything down. We see people running down there occasionally and I want to shout out “Hey mate – why don’t you sit down and soak it up for five minutes and forget all about your PB time.”

Because I’m not that experienced a field botanist, I get the lovely bonus of finding and being blown away by quite common plants that I’ve never noticed before. So for instance yesterday we found this common centaury – which in my eyes is far from common and very lovely. Back home I discovered some of its traditional names (Geoffrey Grigson’s “An Englishman’s Flora” lists local names like bloodwort, earthgall, feverfew (confusing because it’s not), gentian, mountain flax and spikenard – all of which demonstrates the brilliance of Latin names which remove all the confusion. Richard Mabey also mentions the name bitterherb – and like everyone else from Culpeper to Mrs Grieve cites its use as a digestive tonic. I wouldn’t know because I don’t have the least inclination to illegally pick a plant that I’ve only just met for the first time. The pleasure, so far as I can see into my own mind, is at least threefold. Firstly there’s the thrill of discovery; but then the aesthetic pleasure at the colour and the structure of the plant and then – perhaps more obscurely – the comfort and pleasure at discovering its usefulness reaching back into history. I could add the fourth very acute pleasure for me of the old names. A few days ago we found a musk mallow on the canalside. The very words musk and mallow conjure up a two word poem, overflowing with associations.

I just used the idea of ‘comfort and pleasure’ to describe what it feels like to know the history of a plant’s name and uses, and since I’ve been casting around for weeks now – looking for the reason that we find nature so comforting, even therapeutic – here’s a suggestion that might help.

I hope I’m not being unfair by describing our western, industrialised and individualised culture as rootless. Perhaps it’s just me that feels alienated and despairing at the direction we’re heading in, but I’m sure I’m not alone. So anything that can function as a kind of mind anchor; that puts me back in touch with the past – is a stabilising influence. It’s not at all the case (as critics often accuse) of wanting to go back to the past; but reconnecting with it contains wisdom and insight that we shouldn’t lose. When I photograph the common centaury and discover its history going back as far as Greece from which it gets its name (it’s properties were said to have been discovered by Chiron the centaur – according to Gerard) – something deep is going on. To behold the plant is to behold the faintest image of countless generations of living beings who have treasured it. We are the issue of those unknown people and they can still speak to us in the names they passed down to us.

In one of my churches we had the oldest communion chalice still in use within the diocese. It was made in the late 1500’s and has survived through all the cataclysmic changes since then – and so when, on a Sunday morning I gave communion to my tiny congregation (on one occasion just a single person) I was always sensitive to the invisible presence of the generations stretching back, who had taken comfort from the same chalice. This isn’t a religious point, by the way, it’s about the reverberations of objects and living forms through time.

But enough reflection! Yesterday we saw any number of small coppers and a single green washed fritillary; loads of common spotted orchids (whose leaves weren’t spotted – I do wish they’d read the textbooks!); yarrow, common bedstraw (if you look towards the top of the second photo from the left you can just see the black, glassy slag left by the Victorian miners); ladies bedstraw and wild thyme. Individually they could hardly be thought of as rare and yet, massed in this post industrial landscape, so scarred and pitted by mining, washing ponds and diverted streams; they amount to a unique flora with its own unmistakable sense of place. Could it be that we also still hear the faint echo of two thousand years of mining through the silence?