This is a short story which won third place in the March 2008 running of The Mystery Prompt competition on writing.com I have made some changes to it based on the comments I received from the WDC judge, and post it here for you to read now. Enjoy!
“But that is still a long way off yet.” The optician spoke as if that were the brightest news ever spoken by Man. You are going blind. Eventually you will not be able to see, but you are not blind yet. Louisa wasn’t sure whether that made it a death sentence or a life sentence; neither sounded particularly comforting to her.
Six months ago Louisa had not had a worry in the world. Pretty, intelligent and doing the job she loved; she felt at the top of her game. Then, one ordinary morning, she noticed an odd bloodspot in her eye: as if someone had dabbed a finger into the not quite dry paint of her portrait and smeared the iris into the white. Brown iris, white white, a rusty coloured smear of colour from tear duct to pupil, Louisa thought nothing of it: simply tiredness and perhaps the stresses of her new job. She promised herself she’d get it checked when next she had space in her multicoloured planner for an appointment with the GP: and promptly forgot all about it.
Over time the smear deepened in colour and both eyes became decidedly bloodshot. Louisa began to worry, but never enough to see the GP; continuing to put the cause down to stress-inducing busyness at work and to too little sleep and too much caffeine. But now she was seeing blurring, like looking through a rain-splattered windscreen. She made the appointment with the GP, she was referred on to her optometrist and finally to a specialist optician who had delivered the cheerful news: she was going blind, but only slowly. Like pace mattered.
Paul knew something was wrong. He’d known Louisa for over a year and at last he had managed to convince her to spend some time in his company. He had noticed that Louisa had loads of friends; whereas Paul, whilst not a loner, seemed to enjoy the pleasure of his own company above too much social kerfuffle. On that darkening afternoon in Moss Park he saw her and decided she needed a friend, and with a deep breath he offered himself into the role.Louisa did not understand at the time why she had chosen to confide in Paul. A voice and a face from home, he like her was Trowennan and they had been contemporaries at the University; but she hardly knew him. Indeed to say she knew “of him” was possibly even an exaggeration; but still she shared, and he came through for her. Paul asked all the right questions, left all the right pauses, and like the girl in the apocryphal story of the late returning daughter he “helped her to cry”. Paul could not change Louisa’s medical prognosis, but she knew that with him about she would have support.
***
“Miss, what do you want with them books? They’re for grannies!” Louisa looked around with a start. It was not often she was stopped by the sound of one of her pupils’ voices at home, since she lived two towns across from the school where she taught. Louisa caught herself and offered her warmest smile.
“Perhaps this is for my granny, Elizabeth; I’m not too old to still have a nana.”
“Oh, okay Miss. Have a lovely day with her.”
The girl walked off, pausing only later to remember that Miss Davidson’s family all lived in far distant Trowenna.
Louisa tuned back to the shelves and felt the welling of a tear in her “good eye”. Large Print books were indeed for grannies, that’s why the covers were in such bold secondary colours and the pages smelled of old saliva. In truth she’d only stopped to see if there was a large print edition of a novel she wanted as the regular print, paperback edition was already out on loan. It had not occurred to her until then that one day she would only be reading large print, and then... And then, well “and then” was still a long way off yet. Paul had just that morning teased her, as her friends often did, that the notoriously clumsy Louisa parked her car “by Braille”. It didn’t bear thinking about. In the mean time there was another appointment with the optician.
***
Paul looked up as Louisa entered the restaurant. Dusk had overtaken the daylight outside; ensconced in the brightness of the booth Paul hadn’t noticed the gathering darkness. Louisa gently placed her book on the table and waited for Paul to embrace her.
“How are you?”
“How do I look?”
“Stoned.”
“Ta.” Louisa sat and idly fingered the wineglass in front of her. She sighed and smiled. “At least I can still touch and taste...restaurants are so wonderful. Ooh and hear, what lovely music this is.”
“And smell,” added Paul. “You smell too.”
“True story.” Louisa flashed her wicked grin.
The dark had completely overcome the day when they left to walk home, Paul via Louisa’s. The light of the half moon above them lit the path, but it was a familiar walk which either could have made with their eyes shut. Louisa tried to do so and promptly walked herself into a rubbish bin.
“Ouch! What’s the point of walking with you if you let me bash my legs on bins?”
“What’s the point of walking at all if you’re gonna close your eyes and hope for the best? Do not rely on what you think you know but in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.”
“I acknowledge he let me walk into a bin.”
“I wasn’t talking about me; now, take my hand.”
***
The brilliance of seven spotlights lit the room as Louisa idly flicked the switch and kicked off her boots in the one coordinated movement. The room was warm and Louisa realised that she had left the heater on again. She paused to smile at herself in the mirror; eyes red where they should be white she did look “stoned” as Paul had said. Louisa dropped her shoulders and exhaled the stress: deliberately relaxing herself she consciously thought “smile” and allowed her face to follow the thought. She looked into the mirror again and saw that she did indeed look beautiful, relaxed and happy. The red in her eyes was uniform in distribution, the original incursion into her iris had gone and she was responding well to treatment. The optician’s prognosis has not been the best, but it had been better than the original: she was not going blind but she was losing the ability to see in colour. “Quite simply”, she had been told, “your eyesight will diminish to black and white.” Louisa looked across at the painting on her wall, W.C. Piguenit’s Mount King William from Lake George, Tasmania. Black and white, yet almost photographic in its quality, Louisa allowed her gaze to pass through it: it would be okay after all. Dull: but then all life is dull. It would be up to her to fill the colour in, and Paul would provide a start.
Friday, 4 April 2008
Monday, 24 March 2008
Assignment Two
Hello.
This is the second assignment for the course and I have just finished writing it. It is ready to be posted to Manchester today. The task was to choose a magazine that I am interested in, to review it from the perspective of a submitting writer, and then to write an article for the magazine. I have not included here my synopsis or my article plan, just the article itself.
For interest's sake, the magazine I had in mind for this was New Internationalist, which you can read for yourself at www.newint.org.
Thanks for stopping by,
Damien.
SECRET MEN’S BUSINESS
Eleven year old Alan[1] sits still and quiet in the middle of the classroom while his teacher walks around discussing the similarities and differences between Chanukah and Christmas. Alan is a big boy and often finds it difficult to sit and listen for long periods of time, but today he is motivated to patience because he knows that History is coming up next and History means Mr Dunn and the opportunity to engage in boy stuff. Across the corridor Daniel Dunn is reading over his lesson plan. Today is lesson three of five on the topic of The Lives of Children during The Blitz and he has two specific tasks for his class: one suggested by AQA and the other of his own choosing. This is the first time Mr Dunn has departed from the school’s approved syllabus and although he has the blessing of Mrs Johns, the Assistant Head Teacher who approves all lesson plans in advance, he cannot quite stifle the sense of nervousness.
The issue of educational equality for boys is a new one in the Developed World; historically the question has been one of raising girls’ education to the level of their brothers’, but is the tide turning against young males? It has been observed that school is becoming more “girl-friendly” as the more practical and active tasks of a generation ago are replaced by theory-based, written work: indeed the goal posts seem to have shifted such that a teacher’s goal now seems to be getting the girls to achieve and the boys to behave[2]. But boys today are not just doing worse compared to girls, they are doing worse compared to themselves, to what they might be or become with the right help and motivation.
Tony Sewell is Chief Executive of the initiative Generating Genius and he argues[3] that if boys are encouraged, like their sisters, to help with household chores they can adapt more easily to the routine and methodical nature of such tasks; but is this the entire answer? Certainly the social climate of (Western) Europe and North America has changed to allow for, indeed to expect, men to carry their weight, (and push their iron and cook their supper) around the home, but what of the boys who are still children who become less able than their sisters to deal with the style of schooling in those same geographical places?
Experience has shown that boys like clear instructions; indeed they often need help in making connections and benefit from having tasks broken down into linked, discrete, doable chunks. Girls are better able than boys to cooperatively in a team; boys will attempt to establish a pecking-order in any group task, but is that always a problem?
The bell has rung and Alan waits excitedly while Mr Dunn passes around the instruction booklets. The teacher has allowed each of the children a choice of task today and the divide is not uniform to gender although there is a distinct bias toward each one. Next to the window a group has a pile of items to try out and then write about: the experience of a wartime evacuee in either a letter home or a diary entry for 1941. A gas mask is there, with two 1940s style food tins, a ration book, a woman’s hat of the era, a pair of silk stockings, (not genuine they are rayon and belong to Mrs Dunn), and six photos of the town where the school is located taken in 1943. Of the eighteen children in that group thirteen are girls. Next to the door a group has three Airfix models, one each of a Mark VII Spitfire, a Hawker Hurricane, and a Messerschmitt ME 109. Paints and modelling cement are provided but Mr Dunn alone has charge of the craft knife. Of the eleven children present in this group eight are boys. Alan is in the model-making group and has taken charge of the cement, even though he knows that the painting must come before the cutting and sticking. He is content to wait and to talk about the planes and their uses with Mr Dunn and the group in the knowledge that his turn with the plastic kits will come.
Teachers like Mr Dunn are becoming more common, and not just amongst men. Projects such as Essex County Council’s Mantle of the Expert[4]developed by Dorothy Heathcote indicate that it isn’t only men who are interested in how boys are educated. My own experience of working in a Behaviour Support Centre with an all-female staff (except for me) demonstrated that the necessary qualities of an effective teacher for males can be found in women teachers as well as men, but all agree that it is vital that boys have access to the right type of men while they are at school, men who can act as suitable male role models.
Teachers of boys must be firm, focussed, friendly, and funny; a boy can only learn from teachers he believes like him. (Unfortunately for the boys, and girls, of a Behaviour Support Centre they tend to think nobody likes them, but that is another story.) Boys are competitive, generally more so than girls, but as is shown by young Alan waiting his turn with the cement many boys find comfort in the competition because it establishes place. Boys are role-focussed and place-centred: everyone has his fit in male society and everyone knows his place where the climate is one of up-frontness and easy honesty. For “problem boys”, a spade is always a spade.
The lesson ends with Mr Dunn carefully moving the painted sections of the model kit to the windowsill where they will dry before the next session with this class in two days’ time. Alan has not been able to use the cement today, but he has earned himself a green square (for good behaviour) on his IEP chart and he will be rewarded with five additional minutes of Golden Time on the computer on Friday afternoon. Besides this he has heard about life under Blitz conditions and shared his views on how he would not have liked to have been evacuated to the countryside. His turn as leader will come, but in the meantime Alan has managed forty-seven minutes in his seat and has not raised his volume above Partners Voice. “Mum will be proud of me and dad won’t believe it.”
[1] All names have been changed for anonymity.
[2] Steve Biddulph in Raising Boys (Thorsons, London: 1997) page 133.
[3]Address to NASUWT biennial equalities conference Boys To Men: teaching and learning masculinities in schools and colleges (2006).
[4] http://www.mantleoftheexpert.com
This is the second assignment for the course and I have just finished writing it. It is ready to be posted to Manchester today. The task was to choose a magazine that I am interested in, to review it from the perspective of a submitting writer, and then to write an article for the magazine. I have not included here my synopsis or my article plan, just the article itself.
For interest's sake, the magazine I had in mind for this was New Internationalist, which you can read for yourself at www.newint.org.
Thanks for stopping by,
Damien.
SECRET MEN’S BUSINESS
Eleven year old Alan[1] sits still and quiet in the middle of the classroom while his teacher walks around discussing the similarities and differences between Chanukah and Christmas. Alan is a big boy and often finds it difficult to sit and listen for long periods of time, but today he is motivated to patience because he knows that History is coming up next and History means Mr Dunn and the opportunity to engage in boy stuff. Across the corridor Daniel Dunn is reading over his lesson plan. Today is lesson three of five on the topic of The Lives of Children during The Blitz and he has two specific tasks for his class: one suggested by AQA and the other of his own choosing. This is the first time Mr Dunn has departed from the school’s approved syllabus and although he has the blessing of Mrs Johns, the Assistant Head Teacher who approves all lesson plans in advance, he cannot quite stifle the sense of nervousness.
The issue of educational equality for boys is a new one in the Developed World; historically the question has been one of raising girls’ education to the level of their brothers’, but is the tide turning against young males? It has been observed that school is becoming more “girl-friendly” as the more practical and active tasks of a generation ago are replaced by theory-based, written work: indeed the goal posts seem to have shifted such that a teacher’s goal now seems to be getting the girls to achieve and the boys to behave[2]. But boys today are not just doing worse compared to girls, they are doing worse compared to themselves, to what they might be or become with the right help and motivation.
Tony Sewell is Chief Executive of the initiative Generating Genius and he argues[3] that if boys are encouraged, like their sisters, to help with household chores they can adapt more easily to the routine and methodical nature of such tasks; but is this the entire answer? Certainly the social climate of (Western) Europe and North America has changed to allow for, indeed to expect, men to carry their weight, (and push their iron and cook their supper) around the home, but what of the boys who are still children who become less able than their sisters to deal with the style of schooling in those same geographical places?
Experience has shown that boys like clear instructions; indeed they often need help in making connections and benefit from having tasks broken down into linked, discrete, doable chunks. Girls are better able than boys to cooperatively in a team; boys will attempt to establish a pecking-order in any group task, but is that always a problem?
The bell has rung and Alan waits excitedly while Mr Dunn passes around the instruction booklets. The teacher has allowed each of the children a choice of task today and the divide is not uniform to gender although there is a distinct bias toward each one. Next to the window a group has a pile of items to try out and then write about: the experience of a wartime evacuee in either a letter home or a diary entry for 1941. A gas mask is there, with two 1940s style food tins, a ration book, a woman’s hat of the era, a pair of silk stockings, (not genuine they are rayon and belong to Mrs Dunn), and six photos of the town where the school is located taken in 1943. Of the eighteen children in that group thirteen are girls. Next to the door a group has three Airfix models, one each of a Mark VII Spitfire, a Hawker Hurricane, and a Messerschmitt ME 109. Paints and modelling cement are provided but Mr Dunn alone has charge of the craft knife. Of the eleven children present in this group eight are boys. Alan is in the model-making group and has taken charge of the cement, even though he knows that the painting must come before the cutting and sticking. He is content to wait and to talk about the planes and their uses with Mr Dunn and the group in the knowledge that his turn with the plastic kits will come.
Teachers like Mr Dunn are becoming more common, and not just amongst men. Projects such as Essex County Council’s Mantle of the Expert[4]developed by Dorothy Heathcote indicate that it isn’t only men who are interested in how boys are educated. My own experience of working in a Behaviour Support Centre with an all-female staff (except for me) demonstrated that the necessary qualities of an effective teacher for males can be found in women teachers as well as men, but all agree that it is vital that boys have access to the right type of men while they are at school, men who can act as suitable male role models.
Teachers of boys must be firm, focussed, friendly, and funny; a boy can only learn from teachers he believes like him. (Unfortunately for the boys, and girls, of a Behaviour Support Centre they tend to think nobody likes them, but that is another story.) Boys are competitive, generally more so than girls, but as is shown by young Alan waiting his turn with the cement many boys find comfort in the competition because it establishes place. Boys are role-focussed and place-centred: everyone has his fit in male society and everyone knows his place where the climate is one of up-frontness and easy honesty. For “problem boys”, a spade is always a spade.
The lesson ends with Mr Dunn carefully moving the painted sections of the model kit to the windowsill where they will dry before the next session with this class in two days’ time. Alan has not been able to use the cement today, but he has earned himself a green square (for good behaviour) on his IEP chart and he will be rewarded with five additional minutes of Golden Time on the computer on Friday afternoon. Besides this he has heard about life under Blitz conditions and shared his views on how he would not have liked to have been evacuated to the countryside. His turn as leader will come, but in the meantime Alan has managed forty-seven minutes in his seat and has not raised his volume above Partners Voice. “Mum will be proud of me and dad won’t believe it.”
[1] All names have been changed for anonymity.
[2] Steve Biddulph in Raising Boys (Thorsons, London: 1997) page 133.
[3]Address to NASUWT biennial equalities conference Boys To Men: teaching and learning masculinities in schools and colleges (2006).
[4] http://www.mantleoftheexpert.com
Assignment One point Two
Hello.
Here is the second piece from my first assignment. I wrote these in late December, about the time I posted my first entries on Blog Spot: I hope you enjoy them and that you will stick with me to see how my writing develops over the next few assignments.
Thanks for stopping by,
Damien.
Visit...a place that interests you...(300-500 words)
The Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Alban has the longest nave of any Christian church building in Western Europe. This fact meant very little to me until the day I entered the place by the West door for the first time. I was awestruck, I’d seen nothing like it before, and even now when I wander in as a nonchalant local from time to time I am still taken by the size of this one room and its procession of columns and windows, ending in a vast pipe organ and carved stone screen with brightly painted stone statues of saints and martyrs from St Paul to Martin Luther King.
I am Australian, our oldest church buildings date from the 1820s and were built to look old. St Alban’s was built in its current form in 1077, even the “repairs” date back to the fourteenth century, although there is Victorian mock-gothic as well in some places. The place where I do church is a theatre in the West End, we have no statues of The Virgin, or frescoes of the saints, we have photographs of Freddie Mercury and an enormous LED screen. St Alban’s is therefore quite different to what I have known both architecturally, and as a worshipper.
Recently I attended a pilgrims’ service in the abbey: I was passing by at the time and so went in to look. The nave had been emptied of its thousand chairs, and was filled with people. Children ran around the columns, playing chase-and-hide; older people sat on blankets on the stone floor eating picnic, (it was raining outside), tourists with cameras looked at the frescoes while pilgrims sat anywhere they chose, just watching the scene and resting their feet. The service was lead by the sub-dean, who joked his way through the lessons, songs, and sermon; it was all very light-hearted and welcoming for those who had travelled a long distance to be there, and just as much for me who had “popped in” uninvited.
This is a cathedral which feels more than just a place where Normans used to gather to sing, or monks to chant, or Roundheads to pillage. For me, on that one day when I saw it “in action”, it felt like a church, where Christians would celebrate their common faith in God and St Alban, and where travellers on “the road of life”, as well as the A5, were made to feel as if this was home, at least for a short while. This is not my kind of worship, but on that day it was my kind of Church.
Here is the second piece from my first assignment. I wrote these in late December, about the time I posted my first entries on Blog Spot: I hope you enjoy them and that you will stick with me to see how my writing develops over the next few assignments.
Thanks for stopping by,
Damien.
Visit...a place that interests you...(300-500 words)
The Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Alban has the longest nave of any Christian church building in Western Europe. This fact meant very little to me until the day I entered the place by the West door for the first time. I was awestruck, I’d seen nothing like it before, and even now when I wander in as a nonchalant local from time to time I am still taken by the size of this one room and its procession of columns and windows, ending in a vast pipe organ and carved stone screen with brightly painted stone statues of saints and martyrs from St Paul to Martin Luther King.
I am Australian, our oldest church buildings date from the 1820s and were built to look old. St Alban’s was built in its current form in 1077, even the “repairs” date back to the fourteenth century, although there is Victorian mock-gothic as well in some places. The place where I do church is a theatre in the West End, we have no statues of The Virgin, or frescoes of the saints, we have photographs of Freddie Mercury and an enormous LED screen. St Alban’s is therefore quite different to what I have known both architecturally, and as a worshipper.
Recently I attended a pilgrims’ service in the abbey: I was passing by at the time and so went in to look. The nave had been emptied of its thousand chairs, and was filled with people. Children ran around the columns, playing chase-and-hide; older people sat on blankets on the stone floor eating picnic, (it was raining outside), tourists with cameras looked at the frescoes while pilgrims sat anywhere they chose, just watching the scene and resting their feet. The service was lead by the sub-dean, who joked his way through the lessons, songs, and sermon; it was all very light-hearted and welcoming for those who had travelled a long distance to be there, and just as much for me who had “popped in” uninvited.
This is a cathedral which feels more than just a place where Normans used to gather to sing, or monks to chant, or Roundheads to pillage. For me, on that one day when I saw it “in action”, it felt like a church, where Christians would celebrate their common faith in God and St Alban, and where travellers on “the road of life”, as well as the A5, were made to feel as if this was home, at least for a short while. This is not my kind of worship, but on that day it was my kind of Church.
Assignment One point One for my Writing Course
Hello all.
I haven't been in for a while, but I have been busy. I have been studing writing with a crowd in Manchester and so have been working on my assignments. Here is the first one for your reading pleasure: the important people in Manchester liked it.
Tell us in about 300 words why you want to write...
I want to write because I enjoy writing, and always have done. As a child I often made my own little books and newspapers, and I enjoyed English writing tasks at school and university. Now, as an adult, I still enjoy writing letters and stories for friends; but I would like to take this further and make writing part of my career, if not a new career entirely. There are many things I want to write about, both in fiction and non-fiction genres, or perhaps a mix of both. In the past I have been a school teacher, and liked to teach through stories; I would like to write in this way too, perhaps sharing new ideas with people through anecdotes, or even “parables”. I would also like to write stories for others to read simply for pleasure.
My hope from this course is that I will pick up tips on how to write “properly”, to improve my written English, and also to learn the best ways of seeking publication. I want to write better than I do now, and I want to be able to be published so that I can share my ideas with others.
In the future I would like to be a platform teacher/speaker in the church, teaching from my books about the things I have learned in life. Writing is then a means of sharing information with those who would come to hear me speak, or even for those who’d rather just read than listen, (as I usually would). I don’t want to be a vicar or an “evangelist”, but to be a teacher in the broadest sense, and I see writing as the central part of that.
I have set a target to be teaching from my first published book by the time I am forty. I shall turn thirty-six in May.
I haven't been in for a while, but I have been busy. I have been studing writing with a crowd in Manchester and so have been working on my assignments. Here is the first one for your reading pleasure: the important people in Manchester liked it.
Tell us in about 300 words why you want to write...
I want to write because I enjoy writing, and always have done. As a child I often made my own little books and newspapers, and I enjoyed English writing tasks at school and university. Now, as an adult, I still enjoy writing letters and stories for friends; but I would like to take this further and make writing part of my career, if not a new career entirely. There are many things I want to write about, both in fiction and non-fiction genres, or perhaps a mix of both. In the past I have been a school teacher, and liked to teach through stories; I would like to write in this way too, perhaps sharing new ideas with people through anecdotes, or even “parables”. I would also like to write stories for others to read simply for pleasure.
My hope from this course is that I will pick up tips on how to write “properly”, to improve my written English, and also to learn the best ways of seeking publication. I want to write better than I do now, and I want to be able to be published so that I can share my ideas with others.
In the future I would like to be a platform teacher/speaker in the church, teaching from my books about the things I have learned in life. Writing is then a means of sharing information with those who would come to hear me speak, or even for those who’d rather just read than listen, (as I usually would). I don’t want to be a vicar or an “evangelist”, but to be a teacher in the broadest sense, and I see writing as the central part of that.
I have set a target to be teaching from my first published book by the time I am forty. I shall turn thirty-six in May.
Friday, 14 December 2007
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.)
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.)
Sunday, 9 December 2007
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.
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.
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