Three Year Old Crack Whores

Hello. I started writing this a few months ago, it's an idea I've had for a while. It isn't finished, but it's begun enough to post as it is in the hope of adding more later. I hope you like it.

I sometimes wonder about the testimonies of those who came to God through something other than Christian parents, and feel kind of embarrassed at my straightforward testimony. Who are these people who were crack whores between the age of three and such time as the coven got them dried out and plugged in to Wicca? Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of the radical salvation story, the tale of how God’s amazing grace has saved many a wretch like someone else, but I wonder whether I have missed out on something along the way.

I was born into a church family, and raised in a Christian one. Soon after the birth of my little brother my family were involved in a potentially fatal car accident, my dad cried out to God “don’t let me die” as our car bashed into three trees and tipped upside down at speed: we four were in church the following weekend and have been ever since. My parents rode “the third wave” in the early 1980s and were a part of various local teams facilitating the visits of John Wimber to Australia; they were part of an inter-denominational Renewal fellowship and took my siblings and me to various “spirit filled” churches, conferences, and rallies in their search for “the more of God”. My father was accepted into theological college in 1986 and was ordained in 1989 to the Uniting Church, my mother accompanying him all the way as his “partner in ministry”, a concept she brought into the marriage after her own Salvation Army upbringing in the presence of married couples as officers of the local citadel. I never stood a chance.

I didn’t know “crack” meant anything other than “broken” until I was twenty-three.

I thought “Wicca” was something you make patio furniture out of.

I had heard that “whore” meant a type of heavy frost, but since I was born and raised in Australia I had no real concept of what “frost” meant anyway.

I never stood a chance.

But now I’m not so sure. I have many friends today who were not raised in church as I was. The kids I knew as a kid, in Sunday School and Youth Group, have all moved on to other places in the world, (as indeed have I), and so I am now mixing with people who had a remarkably different childhood to the one I had. I have yet to meet anyone who was actually a three year old crack whore, but some of my new mates have had very interesting pasts: yet oddly they seem to believe that I have had so too.

I suppose it is easy to make fun of the Church of previous generations, the 1980s look naff both for those who grew up within the world and those blessed to be “in the world but not of it” at the time. I ask you, is David Meece really any cheesier than Bros? Pet Shop Boys or Petra, who’s to say? As a planet we laugh at the big shoulder pads and the status of “power” in the 1980s, just as the redeemed of the land recall with chagrin the trees of the field (which clapped their hands), and that laughing thing from that church in Canada.

I am favoured I think that I got out at just the right time: well set-up by my parents to make the switch from church-culture to God-zone in the early 1990s. I was too shy and buck-toothed for real cynicism, and now that I’m old enough and with a University education I find that I can’t really say much in spite about the old ways as they have made me what I am today, and I’m pretty happy with what I am today.

I am one of the chosen few of my generation who managed to sneak through before the doors closed, I was able to move on in adult Christianity where others of my crew tossed aside the crucifixion with all that other fiction we learned as kids and who became Bohemian and chilled. I’m young enough to be in Generation-X, old enough to know who Kurt Cobain is, (I cried when he died, even thought I thought at the time that Nirvana were a bit self-indulgent). I carry the generationally specific worldview of a Baby-Buster alongside my generationally appropriate Christian hope that whilst our world does suck, there’s still One Above who remains in control. Don’t get me wrong, I’m one of you: born during Australia’s commitment to Vietnam, seven months before Gough was allowed to say “It’s Time” and have the mandate to engage in it, schooled under the threat of Skylab braining us during play-lunch, and studying for my VCEs as the Berlin Wall went the way of Humpty Dumpty. But in all of that I seem to have found what Bono was looking for with the minimum of fuss.

Unlike the testimonies of my peers, when I went looking for myself I put Jesus at the top of my list and found that I had to look no further.

I am reliably informed in song that “The Drugs Don’t Work”. I’ll have to take your word for that as all I tried in my twenties was pub-evening quantities of light beer and the occasional peer-group cigarette. (Both of those did work by the way, and the alcohol still does.) I was never really interested in music as a past-time, the radio existed for one purpose only, Roy and HG, (cos too much sport, truly, is barely enough), and I wasn’t committed enough to purchase CDs on an Austudy budget. As for sects, well the J-Wits would come around occasionally but I’d tell them to bugger off pretty quickly.

So what is it about my background that impresses my “recently redeemed” mates? My childhood, teens and twenties has been efficient in getting me to the age of thirty-five: but it was rather dull compared to the international antics of even the most maudlin of the Londoners I live amongst now. When I ask them about it they tell me that I am “so blessed” (Christianese already, ugh!), and that there is a glow around those who have never really been into the darkness of this planet. (They’ve never read my poetry “Unauthorised Autobiographies, 1991-1995” then, I once wrote a precise Petrarchan sonnet on having a head-cold.)

Intrepidation

Hello.

Yet another refugee from the sinking ship that was Yahoo 360, I am thankful for the advice of friends who sent me in the direction of Blogger.Com as I embark upon my adventures in the writerly.

Things you might like to know about me:
1. I used to be a primary school teacher.
2. I enjoy watching films, reading books, and going to art galleries and museums.
3. I am Australian, born in Melbourne, lived also in Hobart and in Darwin.
4. I live in England, and have done since 2000.
5. I was born in May 1972, which at this point makes me 35 years and 7 months old.
6. I am single.
7. I am a bloke.
8. I am Christian: one of the intelligent, friendly ones.
9. At the moment I work in a prison, but we'll see how long that lasts.
10. I want to be a writer full time, and to teach from my books as a speaker. (Again, as one of the intelligent, friendly ones.)

Oh, and my name is Damien, but you already knew that.