The Fringe Benefits of Christianity

12 Apr

As I stood gabbing in church yesterday, as I do each Sunday after the service, my thoughts turned to how very convenient and helpful it often is to be a churchgoer. What had brought it to mind was my need to get some photocopies certified by a “suitable person” in order to open what is apparently the most security-conscious ISA in the world. Suitable people, by their definition, include ministers of religion and doctors. Naturally our church has a minister of religion, and for some reason we have more healthcare professionals than the nearest hospital, so it wasn’t a problem.

I started to wonder, though, how much more difficult it would have been if I didn’t attend a church. I mean, it’s one thing if you live in a nice middle class area peopled by doctors and teachers , or your social circle is packed with civil servants and lawyers, but what if that’s not true of you, and you don’t have a church? Obviously it’s still possible – we don’t live in a society segregated by class or wealth a la In Time, but surely it most be more of a hassle? Then I got to watching the little children tearing round the church as if they owned the place, which in a sense they do, and thought that maybe my childhood would have been poorer without that, too.

So here is my list the benefits of Christianity, apart from the obvious, intrinsic ones.* Some of these will apply to other religions and / or clubs and societies; this isn’t a competition, just some of the handy things I have noticed in my many years as a practising Christian. (And yes, being a practising Christian does necessitate going to church, unless you live on a desert island or North Korea or the like. You can’t be part of the Body of Christ on your own.)

* For the avoidance of doubt, the obvious, intrinsic benefits of Christianity are the salvation of your soul, the forgiveness of your sins, a relationship with God and so on.

Signing documents

As above. Churches are supposed to be the best places in Britain for social integration, providing an opportunity for members to meet and become friends with people of different social classes or ethnic backgrounds. So if you need a doctor or teacher to sign your passport form, you’ll probably find one there, along with the obligatory minister of religion.

Making friends

It can be extremely hard to make friends in modern, western society. It’s fine at school and university, but after that opportunities are a bit more limited. You’ve got work, of course (although I work from home, so that’s out) and maybe the gym or choir or whatever else you’re into, but it can take a long time to make real friendships. You can’t do the five-year-old “let’s be friends!” thing. You’ve got to invite the other person for coffee or similar, and then actually find the time to do it, before you can move tentatively up the friendship ladder until you’re in and out of each other’s homes and laughing about shared jokes. Then, if you move home, you’ve got to do it all again.

If you go to church, you have a ready made pseudo-friendship group (well we have to be nice to each other – it’s in the Bible), and one where it’s very easy and natural to develop real friendships. Of course, some churches are friendlier than others, but they all have times when you can all meet up (Sunday services) as well as, usually, mid-week meetings of smaller groups. If you’re in a small group with someone you get on with, you’ve already had coffee together several times, and got to know a fair bit about each other, before either of you has to make the first move to arrange to do something socially. (As you can imagine, the same principle applies to dating, too. In fact, people have been known to go to church just to get a girlfriend, St Augustine included. That is not a recommendation.)

I have lived in lots of different places, in the UK and Albania, and my life would have been vastly more lonely if I hadn’t been able to find a group of people to hang around with, from the very first Sunday. I have fond memories of kafe dhe llafe (coffee and chat) after church at Guri i Themellit in Tirana, and most of the people I know in Lushnje that I’m not related to (and some that I am) are from the church Kisha e Dishepuejve – including my husband, whom I met there.

There is a problem with Christians having only or mostly Christian friends. It can give you a rather cushioned view of the world, if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor, and making friends outside church is something Christians should work at. But I would respectfully submit that a good part of the problem is not insularity, but the sheer ease of making friends within the church rather than outwith.

Freedom for kids

I haven’t been a child for a long time, so I could be wrong about this, but I can’t think of many places where kids can socialise in a large building (church, church hall, graveyard) with a number of kindly adults keeping one eye out for their welfare, but basically letting them get on with it. Most of the adults that kids have contact with are either related to them, or being paid to spend time with them. Given the kind of news stories we’ve had so much of recently, you could be forgiven for thinking that’s because everyone else is a paedophile. I just think it must be healthy for kids to have social contact with normal adults in a non-professional setting.

I think it’s also probably good for their self-esteem and sense of responsibility to be part of a community that goes from birth right up to old age (the oldest lady in our church is well into her nineties). The children sometimes take part in services or do a Christmas play, and are a real part of the church. Their talents are encouraged and their efforts are praised. All that probably makes it easier for someone to turn into a well-adjusted, responsible citizen later on.

Freedom from kids

The other side of it is that kids tend to disappear to Sunday school for at least part of the service, giving their parents some much-needed time off – although they do have to spend it singing and listening to a sermon, like it or not.

Music practice

And not just music practice, but tech practice, public speaking practice, childcare practice and so on. There are lots of activities to get involved with at a church, because everything in the church that isn’t done by the paid staff (usually only the minister) is done by the people who attend. Yes, some of it may be a chore, but some of it presents excellent opportunities. When else, apart from in a school, are you going to get the chance to perform on your musical instrument regularly, in a group of other musicians, even if you’re not yet of professional quality? Where will the nervous newbie to public speaking have the chance to perform readings or short talks to a fairly supportive audience? Where will you get the chance to be trained (for free) on a sound desk or projection system? There may be other places, but church is certainly one of them.

Elder care

Opportunities for socialising can be particularly difficult to come by if you’re elderly, especially if you don’t keep well or are unsteady on your legs. Church is a great place to mix with people other than your own family, but it’s also a place where people will go out of their way to help you socialise – or at least, my church is, and I assume most others do the same. People will arrange lifts to help you get to church, check up on you if you don’t show up for a while, and even visit you in hospital. Even if it’s only the pastor visiting because it’s his job, it’s a good remedy for isolation. If you’re planning to be old and infirm, it’s probably a good idea to join a church before you do so.

Understanding literature

One that’s dear to my heart, although I realise that not everyone will consider this an important fringe benefit of Christianity: a background in the Bible, gleaned from many sermons as well as private study, will help you to understand references in older literature – and there are tonnes of them! Writers like Dickens and Trollope would throw in biblical quotes and allusions without ever pointing them out or explaining them, because in those days every educated person in Britain, and most uneducated ones, had at least an acquaintance with the teachings and stories of Christianity. Even into the early twentieth century, novelists, short story writers and poets would pepper their work with Christian references, ironically or otherwise, and just expect people to keep up.

These days, when most people in the UK do not have a working knowledge of Christianity (as evidenced by this particularly egregious piece of drivel, saying both that Jesus did not exist and that his bones have been found), these references can pass by uncomprehended or even unnoticed, which robs the works of some of their richness. If you’ve spent your formative years in a church, you’re much more likely both to pick up on them and to understand the point the writer is making. Of course, that doesn’t help you at all with the fact that nineteenth-century writers also had a tendency to throw in lines in Latin or French without translating them. Sorry about that.

None of this is intended to be an advertisement, by the way. Naturally I would heartily recommend faith in Christ to anyone, but due to his being the way (to heaven), the truth (about everything) and the life (to the full) rather than for the reasons listed above. However, if you are a churchgoer, maybe these will give you reason to be even more grateful. And if you have got out of the habit – maybe you should get back into it.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Neologophilia (or, the joy of made-up words)

26 Mar
IMG_20150322_152116036

Barter Books

Last weekend I experienced the pure joy that is Barter Books in Alnwick. (Pronounced ANNick, apparently. Never teach your child to read using British place names.) It is an old station complete with buffet and waiting room, all converted into a massive second hand bookshop. There are open fires, toy trains, snatches of poetry stuck up in odd places. It is a wonderful place to spend a few hours. It is also a wonderful place to contemplate the lovely word “vellichor”.

Vellichor is from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, and has a very specific definition, which I will give in full:

the strange wistfulness of used bookstores, which are somehow infused with the passage of time—filled with thousands of old books you’ll never have time to read, each of which is itself locked in its own era, bound and dated and papered over like an old room the author abandoned years ago, a hidden annex littered with thoughts left just as they were on the day they were captured.

It’s obviously related to petrichor, the smell the earth gives off when it rains after a dry spell. It’s not too much of a stretch to get from the smell of vellum (ok, books are made of paper these days, but you get the idea) to the feelings it conjurs up in you. (I, in fact, don’t feel melancholy in old bookshops. Vellichor to me smells like endless exciting possibilities, the widening of horizons. But that’s beside the point.)

Vellichor and petrichor are both, of course, made-up words. Petrichor was invented in the 1960s, vellichor much more recently. Calling them made-up words sounds dismissive, as if they were less than real words. In fact, of course, all words were made up to start with. Usually not from scratch – there are prefixes, suffixes and roots enough to keep us all happily neologising for decades. I made up the title of this post, then a quick web search showed me that plenty of other people had beaten me to it. (One of them said “This is a Latin word I’ve made up.” Spot the deliberate mistake, those who care about that sort of thing.)

Then there’s the verbing of nouns (whatever your view on the acceptibility of it) and the reverse and so on. There are acronyms (laser) and words made out of people’s names (lynch) and ‘borrowings’ from other languages (although we never give them back).

Then there are those who deliberately make up words for fun, rather than to express something they’re trying to say. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is one example, the Dictionary of Liff is another. It uses place names such as Corriecraving to come up with liffs – words for things that there aren’t words for yet.

When it’s done well, you can’t tell that a neologism had just been made up at all. It sounds right, it feels right, and you can see how you could use it. When it’s done badly you end up with abominations like “framily” and “guesstimate”, which add nothing of value to the language, and carry a real risk of making my toes curl so much that I’ll require foot surgery.

Shakespeare was a famous neologiser. He gave us an astonishing range, from “dwindle” to “hint” to “fancy-free”. Of course, we don’t actually know which ones he made up himself, and which he was simply the first to record. Unless you were there when a word was made up, or made it up yourself, you can’t say for sure.

I remember when I read the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake, many years ago. There were so many words in it that I didn’t know, that I started reading it with a pocket dictionary beside me. The pocket dictionary couldn’t cope, so I bought a much bigger dictionary, but that didn’t contain all the words either. Did Mervin Peake make them up? Quite possibly, but as even the biggest dictionary doesn’t contain every word in the English language, I just don’t know. When I reread them someday, I’ll presumably have a smartphone at my side, and see if that gets me any further.

In the meantime, happy neologising, and if you have a couple of spare minutes, enjoy this classic from Blackadder with some very mischievous coining indeed!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Serving Others

23 Feb

This post will seem strangely familiar to any followers who also attend my church. (Hello, Sheila!) It is actually a reflection I wrote for Adelaide Place Baptist Church, but it seemed fairly popular so I thought I’d pinch it for my blog, too. (NB: It’s not plagiarism if it’s your own work 😉 )

It’s from the series Sacred Rhthyms, whereby church members start the day with a Bible reading sent by email, pause to say the Lord’s Prayer at or around noon, and theoretically in the evening reflect on the day. I always forget that bit. On Sundays, instead of a Bible reading there is a short meditation or homily, and that is where the the piece below comes from. Enjoy.

Cinderella, by Anne Andersonn

Serving Others

If the story of Cinderella teaches us anything, it’s that it is better to be served than to serve. Cinderella was rescued from a life of drudgery by her prince, who took her to live in the palace – where, presumably, other girls did exactly the same work that Cinderella had been doing in her home. And that’s the happy ending.

Things aren’t like that in the Kingdom of Heaven. Our ‘prince’ left the palace and came “not to be served, but to serve others, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” That’s our happy ending, and it’s also the example we’re to emulate.

It’s easy to feel put-upon, especially when family, church or work seems to be making a lot of demands on our time, and no one seems to recognise how busy or tired we are. It would be much easier to step back, relax and let other people do the serving. However, our God is a God who not only asks us to serve others, but who regards it as an act of worship. A poem by George Herbert, called The Elixir, says,

Teach me, my God and King,
In all things Thee to see,
And what I do in anything
To do it as for Thee.

A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine:
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,
Makes that and the action fine.

This week, when we get the opportunity to serve others, let’s take it as willingly as we can manage, and remember that it’s not just others we’re serving – it’s also Christ.

Tags: , , , , ,

The Five Deadly Sins of Writers on Twitter

10 Feb

Before we get into this, I’d better be upfront: I joined Twitter because I am an author, and apparently it’s one of the absolutely essential things you have to do. Tweets drive traffic to your website and, so the theory goes, that increases sales of your books. I’ve yet to see the proof of this, but I stay on Twitter anyway because, annoying as it often is, it’s good for up-to-the-minute news, it’s sometimes funny, and you should see how much faster companies work to sort out your customer service queries when the details are on the web for everyone to see.

However, as a writer on Twitter I’ve become aware of the ways in which writers abuse this extremely abusable medium in a variety of irritating ways, so I thought I would have a little moan about it (which, naturally will increase sales of my books. Hmm.). Here are the five commandments for writers using Twitter.

bull horn

1) Don’t tweet about your book all the time.
I know that’s the reason you joined Twitter, but this isn’t a billboard or a TV screen for you to advertise on. It is, in a loose sense, a community. People follow you because they are interested in at least some of what you have to say. If the only thing you have to say is “Buy my product, buy my product!” they will very soon get tired and stop following you.

That’s not to say you can’t mention your wares at all, but keep a strict limit on it – one every ten tweets, say, or once every five if you absolutely must. In between times, find interesting things to say. If you can’t do that, the question is not “why are you on Twitter?” but “why are you a writer?”

Tweedledum and Tweedledee

2) Don’t only follow authors.

And don’t mainly follow authors, and especially don’t follow authors just because they’re authors. Yes, it might be nice to share the joys and sorrows of your profession with like-minded souls, but that’s not why you’re following them, is it? You’re following them because they’ll probably follow you back. And so they will, because they’ve read the same advice you have about building up your Twitter following to drive traffic etc. etc.

The problem with this logic is that they are not interested in your books! They are not going to buy them! They just want you to buy theirs. Do you plan on buying even one book from each author you follow on Twitter? No? Well use a bit of that writerly empathy to understand that the same applies in reverse, and stop trying to sell coal to coal miners.

BSZpsnx3) Don’t offer a follow for a follow or a like for a like.

For the same reason that you shouldn’t follow authors, hoping they’ll follow you back, please don’t say “follow me, I always follow back!” or “like my author page and I’ll like yours!” Anyone who follows you just to get followed, or likes your page just to get liked, is probably not really going to engage with your tweets or your webpage, and is almost certainly not going to buy your books.

It’s worse than that, though. To my mind, this kind of self-interested mutual back slapping is meaningless, pointless and vaguely incestuous. It’s also a little dishonest – a step down the road towards giving each other reciprocal positive reviews, regardless of what you thought of the book. Yes, you might get fewer page likes and follows if you refuse to play this game, but as we used to say on Team Starfish, “at least we kept our integrity.”

hard-sell-confused.com-0074) Don’t begin a relationship with a sales pitch.

If someone follows you on Twitter it’s nice to say “thanks for the follow” and it’s also nice to comment on some interest you may share. It’s not nice to say “Buy my book!”, “Visit my website!” or “Love me, love me, love me!”

Yes, I know that’s what you want in the long term, but take things at a steady pace and read the signals, ok? Think of it like meeting that special someone for the first time: it’s probably better to begin with “Nice to meet you” than to go straight in with “How many kids should we have?”

father ted5) Don’t give us the gory details.

This last one probably only applies to the writers of erotica, horror and especially gritty thrillers. You want to entice the inhabitants of Twitter to read your new masterpiece, so you give a short summary, and what better to include in those few characters than the most shocking and titillating bits?

Well, anything really. Twitter is public. Your followers may see it (although they may well not, but Twitter algorithms are a topic for another day) but so may anyone else in the whole Twittersphere. People with weak stomachs. People who’ve had traumatic experiences. People with strong moral views.

Although our culture sometimes seems saturated with violence and sex to the point where it’s no more shocking than a PG Tips advert, there are still plenty of people who don’t want to get wet. And don’t forget that, despite the popularity of things like Fifty Shades of Grey, there are still people who see erotica as being just as morally reprehensible as porn.

It’s entirely possible to provide a pretty good impression of what sort of book you’re plugging without giving it both barrels. Save that for your own website, where you’re likely to get a self-selecting bunch of people who actually like that kind of thing. In advertising your wares graphically on Twitter, you’re not gaining new readers so much as alienating potential followers.

And who knows, maybe followers are good for something other than buying our books? Maybe they have value in themselves as human beings. A radical thought, but one that, if embraced, might make us all more pleasant and charismatic members of the Twittersphere.

(By the way, if you do want to follow me on Twitter, for reasons other than sins #1 and #2, my handle is @kcmurdarasi.)

Tags: , , , , , ,

Why I am a writer, not an entrepreneur

5 Jan

This was going to be a post on Twitter, before I realised that I could never fit it into 140 characters. It was Twitter that kicked off this chain of slightly irritated thought, because it always seems to be full of advice for writers along the lines of “write for the market” and “think like an entrepreneur”. This, it seems, is the way to make it big as a writer. And maybe it is. I don’t know, and I probably never will know, because I can’t see myself ever following such advice.

“Many writers balk at this” said a recent article, telling authors that they should think like startup entrepreneurs trying to break into a crowded marketplace. Yup, definitely baulked – in fact, I felt my head draw away from the screen in a physical expression of how unpalatable I found that advice. You see, being an entrepreneur and breaking into a crowded marketplace doesn’t interest me at all. Here are a couple of other things that don’t interest me much: crime fiction and romantic fiction. Just not my cup of tea, generally speaking, but they dominate the bestsellers list. Therefore, as a good businesswoman, I should be writing them. Except clearly I shouldn’t because:

1) I wouldn’t enjoy writing them, and if you don’t enjoy what you do for a living, that’s a serious problem.

2) They wouldn’t be very good precisely because I’m not very interested in them and don’t enjoy writing them.

3) There are really enough of them out there already (in my opinion).

4) I have other things I want to write, that I actually care about, and that I would be prevented from writing if I just wrote the “marketable” stuff.

There’s a fifth reason that actually has nothing to do with my personal preferences, but springs from my experience as a writer:

5) You can’t actually tell what’s going to be successful and saleable.

I have sold stories that I didn’t think had much of a chance of finding a market, and I am still sitting on what seem to me much more saleable stories. Maybe this shows how bad an entrepreneur I am, without a decent understanding of my market, but I don’t think so. I think in the creative arts (yes, however humble, it’s an art) you just can’t tell what’s going to fly and what’s going to crash. I’m working on a novel at the moment about twins separated by civil war in ancient Rome. Maybe it will be amazingly successful and be translated into 50 languages, or maybe it will gather electronic dust inside my computer, but I have to write it because the characters are asking to have their story written, and no one else will write it if I don’t.

I don’t mean to insult writers who can produce dozens of popular, successful genre novels. If I enjoyed it, I would love to make a living out of producing a potboiler every year. I’m also not saying that writers (or other artists) should stick entirely to what they’re comfortable with. Some of my best work is produced when working to tight requirements or unusual limitations, for example when writing for competitions with a strict theme. It sharpens your creativity when you don’t have free rein in every area. But when you discover that you don’t like a certain genre or type of writing, and you’re not very good at it, I don’t think it’s good advice at all to continue writing that kind of stuff because it’s what the market demands.

If I wanted to make myself miserable for money, I would give up writing and get a proper job.

Tags: , , , ,

The Snow Queen – a winter’s tale

12 Dec

My latest work of beauty (indulge me) is an audio adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen. It’s read by Sophie Aldred, who was Ace, the assistant in Dr Who when I was growing up, and who has a lovely, warm voice. But it’s also got a full cast of characters played by other actors, and sound effects, and even background music! What more could you want?

Everyone remembers the core of the Snow Queen – boy captured by evil queen, heart frozen, friend tries to get him back – but there’s so much more in it that you’ve probably forgotten. There are enchantments and danger and robbers, a real shortage of shoes, and even a talking reindeer!

In this adaptation, there’s plenty of drama and suspense, but also a lot of description to engage your senses and transport you to the frozen north and the Snow Queen’s palace. Not that you need to exercise much imagination, the weather we’re having at the moment.

It’s available from Word of Mouth Productions as a 65-minute MP3 download. Visit the website here, or play the video below to hear Sophie Aldred say nice things about my adaptation!

Tags: , , , , , ,

Beware of the Customers

29 Nov

My friend Jackie McLean is a fellow writer, who also used to run a pet shop. She had told me plenty of hilarious anecdotes about her workplace, so when we decided to do a blog swap (my question and answer post will appear on Jackie’s blog soon), I asked her to tell me some of the best stories from her shop:

You’d think running a pet shop was all about the animals, but often as not, during our six years of running our shop, it was the owners who took us aback.

Sometimes it was heart-breaking, like the old lady who was desperately ill but refused to go into hospital because there was nobody to look after her cat. A neighbour came to the shop for help, and we managed to arrange foster care for the cat.

Sometimes it was shocking, like the woman who ran into the shop with a cat under each arm, looking for pet carriers. She was fleeing domestic violence.

Sometimes amazing, like the builder who was sitting on scaffolding high up on a building, eating his lunch, when a cockatiel flew over to him. It sat beside him, turned its head towards him, and said, “Hello.” The builder said he almost fell off the scaffolding, but the bird stayed with him from then on.

We soon got used to some of the things people would say, such as:

“Do you have fat balls?”
“Have you got pigs’ ears?”

Or, the one we got the most frequently (upon picking up a bag of dog food), “What does this taste like?”

Sometimes, however, it just wasn’t possible to keep a straight face. When the wee old lady walked into the shop, and asked our assistant, “Where’s your nuts, son?” there was a pile-up on the floor as we laughed until it hurt.

One of my favourites was an older man who came in, telling us that his male pigeon was laying eggs. Breaking all the rules, I answered back, “No, he isn’t.” The man was insistent – his male pigeon was laying eggs. I tried to explain the basics of the underlying biology, but to no avail. His male pigeon was laying eggs. Definitely wasn’t a female. Couldn’t be – the breeder had said it was a male!

The pet shop was often a focal point for reporting strays and injuries. One day a group of schoolchildren piled in, traumatised to have seen a seagull knocked down by a taxi. The gull was badly injured and in its distress was flapping around all over the road, causing traffic mayhem. Word about the gull spread quickly, and I’ll never forget the sight of Allison charging out of the shop, armed with a box and a big net, and followed by the schoolchildren and several customers. Off they went, following the gull’s progress along the road (lots of squawking and yelling, and crowds began to gather), until it flew over a garden fence and managed to get inside a shed. Undaunted, our heroes…er…broke into the shed and retrieved the bird. Fortunately the shed owner was pleased to have unexpectedly helped in the rescue.

It’s the animals, however, who must have the last word. They constantly surprised us:

We bought in a group of piranha, and fascinated by their fearsome reputation, we were astonished when they all fainted! So shy are these creatures, that the appearance of a human face in front of their tank scared the living daylights out of them.

Sometimes they caused us panic:
We were cleaning out the rats’ cage, when a customer came in and asked us for some advice on fish food. We realised we hadn’t closed the cage properly, when we saw one of the rats casually climb out and drop onto the floor directly behind the customer’s feet. Helpless, we distracted the customer while the rat plodded by and into the back office. As soon as the customer left the shop, oblivious to the goings-on behind her, we locked up and raced through to the office to search for the rat. Fortunately it quickly gave away its whereabouts by noisily munching on the business accounts.

And sometimes we were left awestruck:
Frances the leopard gecko was a young lizard with particularly beautiful markings. But only days after arriving in the shop, she was missing from her vivarium. We hunted high and low, but there was no sign of her. The viv doors were properly locked, and when the rep from the reptile supplier showed us how easily the doors could be removed and that theft of reptiles was rife, we accepted that she had probably been stolen. Fast forward one full year. I was opening the shop one morning, and was reaching for the light switch, when I became aware of something long and stripey hurrying past my feet. Alarmed, we began a detailed search, and there behind the heated tropical fish tanks, was Frances the leopard gecko! She had kept herself fit and well on the loose in the shop for a year – hats off!

Jackie’s novel Toxic has recently been released by Thunderpoint Publishing. Just to warn you, though, it’s not about charming but poisonous geckos 800px-Juvenile-leopard-geckoor something. Instead it’s a gritty crime thriller, with a very nasty villain who does some very nasty things. In Jackie’s words, it’s “at least a 15 certificate”. Suitably warned, please feel free to buy the book from your bookshop of choice, or on Kindle, or pop across to Jackie’s blog to find out more about the Bhopal Disaster that inspired Toxic. A proportion of the profits will go to the Bhopal Medical Appeal.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

The time of your life?

18 Nov

Even as I sit down to right this post, I am thinking Do I actually have time to do this? I have to remind myself forcefully that the answer is yes, yes I do. I don’t have to check my emails again – they do not evaporate if I don’t look at them within twenty minutes; I don’t have to clean the mirrors (well actually I do, but not right now); and I absolutely do not have to check if I have any new activity on Facebook or Twitter. Those are both vaguely work-related, by the way (most things are if you’re an author), but not urgent or even essential.

In Time - an interesting take on extreme time pressure.

In Time – an interesting take on extreme time pressure.

The thing is, I feel like I don’t have enough time in the day, as I’m sure most people do, but I’m not convinced that I actually spend my time very wisely, or that I assess how I have used it very accurately. I got to thinking about it today because of a BBC article about the new meal-replacement drink Soylent, which can save time cooking and eating. (There’s a case in point – clicking through to online articles from social media can be an interesting, but rarely productive, use of time.) It said that if it was all about saving time, then people would certainly replace meals with a dodgily-named drink (look up Soylent Green if you don’t know what I’m talking about), but it’s not. The writer of the article thinks it’s about excessive busyness distracting us from the human condition. I’m not about to get that deep and philosophical here (although I think it’s an interesting point). I just want to think a little bit about good, bad and better ways to spend time.

As a freelance writer, domestic skivvy (sorry, wife) and occasional jack-of-all-trades, I feel particularly pressed for time because I have so many competing priorities. If I’m food shopping I feel that I’ve got to hurry up because I should be writing. If I’m writing I feel like I should be writing something else, or doing housework, or researching. You can see the problem: whatever I achieve in one category, it means I achieve less in another, so I always feel like I’m catching up. In the last few days I’ve submitted the final draft of a manuscript, finished a chapter of the biography I’m working on and handed in an assignment for a distance learning course, which should give me a glow of satisfaction, but I haven’t cleaned the mirrors (I can see them out of the corner of my eye – I’m not usually this mirror-obsessed) or baked biscuits, so I feel like I have not finished what I need to do. This isn’t a problem of time, I would suggest; it is a problem of attitude.

I think it’s possible to go to extremes in opposite directions, and either push yourself too hard to achieve all of the things you want to do before you die, because time is a finite resource for mortal human beings, or to put these things off indefinitely and get on with day-to-day living, as if achieving what you would like to achieve, or even attempting it, is a foolish dream. It’s not a myth, by the way, that there are loads of people who would love to write a book but have never got round to it; I’ve met enough of them to believe it. The old “what would you like to read in your obituary” technique can be pretty useful if you tend to just drift. But at the same time there’s no point in pushing yourself to extremes, because part of the point of life is to just live – otherwise they might be writing your obituary too soon.

There’s a guy called Ramit Sethi who runs various online courses designed to improve your life and particularly your finances. He actually distributed a video on saving time, which was very useful, and which I will watch again if I get the time 😉 (Seriously, it’s worth a watch. Key insights for me were not to fight against my natural rhythms  – I’m rubbish at mornings – and to work in places, like coffee shops, that increase my productivity.) But what I think is particularly interesting is what he says about saving money, which also applies to saving time. He says there’s no point in cutting out that latte every day, or whatever it is, as most money saving advice says you should. It won’t make that much difference, and you’ll be giving up something you really enjoy for not much reward.

With regard to money, the answer, according to Ramit, is to make more rather than spend less. That doesn’t really work with time (although you can become more productive), but I think his less dogmatic, more relaxed attitude to little pleasures can be applied to the use of time, too. I shouldn’t necessarily cut out all uses of my time that aren’t productive or laudable, because while I might fit a few more ‘worthwhile’ things into my life, it would be less of a life and more of a chore. One of the things I particularly struggle with, from a Christian point of view, is feeling that I’ve got to justify my very existence by working hard. This is not what the Christian life is about, and that’s something I have to constantly remind myself of: I don’t need to do anything to justify my existence, I’m already justified. I think Ramit’s “don’t give up the latte” advice is a useful corrective to this extremism, too.

I’ll leave you with a line I love from the Mumford and Sons song Awake My Soul: “where you invest your love, you invest your life”. That doesn’t sound like a bad way to organise your time. A little of what you fancy does you good, and a little of what you love, or like, turns an existence into a life. After all, wasting time may not always be a waste of time.

Tags: , , , ,

Do you believe in ghosts?

25 Oct

“How many of you believe in ghosts?” Tom asks. A few hands go up. “And how many of you think it’s a load of old cobblers?” A few laughs, a few more hands.

“I knew a lad once who didn’t believe in ghosts,” Tom begins…

Ghost Stories UK Volume 1

You can probably guess that it didn’t end well for the lad in that story, but to find out exactly what happens to him you will have to download volume three of Word of Mouth Productions’ new audiobooks, Ghost Stories UK. All the stories have a flavour from one of the nations of the UK. The extract above is taken from my story The Carlisle Ghost Walk, which you can probably guess falls into the English category. There’s also The Child Taker, which is very scary and set in Wales (volume two) and The Glen (volume one), which is my favourite, and is set in Texas. Confused? Well, buy volume one and all will become clear!

Each volume costs £3.99 and is only available for download. There are actually four volumes, but I’m not on volume four, I’m afraid. Word of Mouth Productions is currently commissioning stories for collections in the sci fi, horror and murder mystery genres, and they are keen to encourage new authors, so it’s worth sending them a pitch if you’re trying to get a break.

By the way, The Child Taker was very long, so the audio version is abridged. If you’re curious about what was left out, drop me an email using the contact form and I’ll send you a copy of the original.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Why Morgan Freeman is Not God

7 Sep

Last week at church I learned that Morgan Freeman is not God. This probably doesn’t come as a great surprise unless you have genuine problems distinguishing between films and real life, or you subscribe to the conspiracy theory that Morgan Freeman playing God in the Almighty films is actually a clever double bluff.

The point the preacher was making, in fact, wasn’t so much that Morgan Freeman isn’t God as that God isn’t Morgan Freeman. By that I mean that God isn’t some wise, kind twinkly-eyed man who keeps a fatherly eye on us and gets in touch from time to time to give some sage advice and gentle encouragement. And that might come as a surprise. That’s not to say that God isn’t wise, or kind, or interested in our lives. The problem with the Morgan Freeman view of God isn’t that it’s inaccurate in details; it’s that it suffers from a staggering lack of scale.

It’s this same problem with scale that’s at the heart of people finding the idea of God creating the world laughable. There seems to be this idea that the universe is the ultimate reality, brought into existence (probably) by the Big Bang, and within it there are a group of credulous people who believe that their particular planet, or solar system or galaxy, were made by a divine being that internet atheists so charmingly call the Sky Fairy. That does sound silly, but that’s not what anyone’s seriously proposing.

Instead, try to get your head around a being who created not a planet or a solar system, but time, space, energy, matter, the lot. The one who brought into being all the laws of physics that supposedly make his existence redundant as an explanation of how we got here. The true ultimate reality who not only created everything the exists, but who is the source of all existence, upholds and maintains everything we know (and plenty we don’t) by pure will, and could wink it all out of existence on a moment if he so chose. You probably can’t get your head around that fully. People spend lifetimes pondering the implications of it. But the mere attempt gives you a fair inkling of what the preacher meant by “God is not Morgan Freeman”.

I’m always baffled by people (and I’ve met a lot of them) who believe there is “a god” but don’t feel the need to look into it any further, as if the existence of a creator to whom they may one day have to answer isn’t relevant to them. I’m not one for climbing mountains just because they’re there (not ones that require oxygen or special equipment anyway) but if you really believed there was an all-powerful being with the answers to life and who, rumour has it, is so interested in our lives that he came to live with us and die for us, how, how could you just leave it as merely an interesting fact, like the capital of Peru or the etymology of “treacle” (which is fascinating, by the way)?

In a rather nice bit of dovetailing, this week’s sermon was on how God should be at the centre of every part of our lives, not just a special religious section. It was based on a part of the Bible sometimes known the Shema:

“Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” The passage continues: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” The preacher last week also quoted the Shema but, rather impressively, he was able to recite it in Hebrew. Jesus quoted this verse, along with another, “Love your neighbour as yourself”, when he was asked which commandment was the most important. His response was that all the commandments in the Bible follow from these two. Again, you could spend a lifetime of theological study working through the implications of that, but for today, let’s just take it as read.

The point the minister was making today was that Christianity is not just about a fuzzy feeling of “Jesus in my heart”, and nor is it a thing you do on Sunday if you have nothing better to do. Instead, loving God and loving other people should be at the heart of everything we do, say, think and are. As the song says, “that’s how deep it goes, if it’s real“.

I was once in a church service where there was an incidence of heckling. This is rare in church, so it sticks in my mind. A lady stood up and said, quite sincerely, that she believed that God just wants us to be happy. I remember thinking, “No, he doesn’t just want us to be happy. He wants so much more than that for us.” Holiness, for example. Salvation. To be fully known. Love. Joy. Peace. The whole shebang. Once again, it’s not an error in detail, it’s a failure of scale.

It’s sometimes tempting to make up the attributes of God we would like, as if he were a fictional character (played by Morgan Freeman, say). You know the kind of thing: “I can’t believe in a god who would X”; “My god would never Y”; or “God just wants us to be happy (regardless of what questionable things we may wish to do in the pursuit of happiness)”. Fine if you’re making up a character for a film, not so fine if you’re talking about the one and only pre-eminent being who can neither be deleted nor altered to fit in with someone’s dearly-held mental picture. You can get to know what God is like. You can accept what you find, or wrestle with it, or refuse to believe altogether, but you can’t seriously expect reality itself to conform to how you would prefer it to be.

The minister today asked, if you’re keeping God at arm’s length, what kind of god is it you’re keeping at arm’s length? Because the God on whom your every breath depends can’t be kept in his place or just brought in in scenes 6 and 31 for dramatic effect. His place is absolute sovereignty. He is in every scene. He wrote the film. So if the God you believe in can be portrayed even remotely accurately by a twinkly-eyed actor with a gravelly voice, you might want to take a few steps back, and get a better sense of scale.

Note 1: My church puts sermons online, so if you would like to listen to the originals, rather than just reading my musings on them, you can find them here. (31st August and 7th September 2014)

Note 2: Will Self wrote a short story called “Scale” all about losing his sense of scale. It was my first introduction to Will Self, who is an excellent writer, but it is not in any way related to this blog post.

Tags: , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →