fishers, surfers and casters

Now Copenhagen is a beautiful place, and the people   are generally nice. Helpful, yes. Polite, yes. Friendly, oh my God no. Melbourne, and to an even greater extent regional Victoria, is full of people who may be crass, lack gentility, but by God they’re friendly. If someone is standing alone on a street corner somewhere in Vic holding a map, within minutes there will be three four locals offering to help. Up here among the Danes, you need to be yelling out “Excuse me please” in a tone befitting “Help I’m being eaten alive!” in order to get any sort of reaction. You will get the information you need, you may even get a smile (if you are overly grateful). But you will leave the conversation with some of your life energy drained.

A new friend made at the conference who is living in Copenhagen but is originally from Makedonia, heard my confession that I don’t care much for the Danes’ lack of openness, and responded by saying she was friendly with her colleagues, but it took her two whole years to actually make a friend in the city.

Yesterday I sat all day in a doctoral colloquium, where seven of us PhD students presented our wares to two mentors, who were critical and kind to all of us. I think I did okay. I was told that my writing style can be dogmatic at times, ignoring nuances and questions in some of the assertions I make. in my oral presentation I had made it clear to them I wasn’t as closed in my thinking that my writing had led them to believe. I thought that was an extremely important criticism, one that I’ve often wondered about. So when I get a chance I’ll do a re-read of some paragraphs and see how I can soften the tone a little. But I had some great conversations with students, made completely stupid Aussie jokes and made new friends. Ended up at the pub until late. That was cool – feeling a little more at home now.

Before then my old mate Allan met me for dinner, and took me around Copenhagen, bought me a beer in a really kitsch bar. Allan saved Denmark from the wrath of ill prejudice. Thanks mate, so good to see you.

I don’t know if it’s just jetlag, or that I’ve worked my arse off too much lately. Or that all these cities are starting to look the same.

But right now, even if it’s just briefly, for the first time since I was sixteen and first got on a plane, I’m now feeling very far from home.

Okay, so I’m in a plane from London to Copenhagen, reading through a whole bunch of posts from EC bloggers in preparation for a couple of presentations that I’m doing, and I’m wearing a t-shirt that says “What wouldn’t Jesus do?” and trying to ignore the eyes that I get when people read it, and I realise something.

I’m fed up.

Okay so I believe that the lesboes, the fatties, moozies, the single dads and the atheists, those that fuck, those that say “fuck” and those that say “fuck” when referring to God have a place in this world, have something worthwhile to say about what (the fuck) is really the right way to live, and I have to defend my point of view to other Christians.

Fuck that shit man.

From now on if you don’t embrace certain groups of people you have to defend that position to me. It’s not my job anymore. If your religion says that some people are in God’s favour over others then you have to work out to me why that is the case, because for Christ’s sake I don’t get it, and I don’t want to get it.

Okay so I’m a Universalist. Not that  believe there are many paths up the one mountain. I believe there is no mountain. Jesus died, didn’t he? I mean, is that right, isn’t that one of the most important points about the whole God and Christ thing? That he died? Yes?

Okay, so he died. He screamed out of the shadows of God’s abandonment, lived in pain and suffering and loneliness and betrayal. He felt the fragility and futility of humanity. He apparently loved us enough to go through that.

So why (the fuck) does God apparently need us to do something in order to have her grace? These are phrases I refuse to use:

• turn to the Lord to be saved
• give yourself to God
• on the path to finding God
• come back to the faith
• find the light

I believe instead that God found us. I refuse to believe that we have to do or say or promise something that will make God connect with us. That’s just plain bullshit. It’s words used to exploit those who feel lost so we can take them in to make ourselves feel better, get bums on seats, money in the boxes, filling out targets, turning people to our point of view.

And I reject the notion that life in Christ or in the Spirit is essentially a better life, because we can;t prove that. So far we can prove that we Christians have created a global south a dying planet and (in the past few weeks) a consumerist life of debt that has finally caught up with us. Whatever better life it is, it isn’t better yet.

And don’t tell me about heaven or hell. Sure there are biblical references, fires of Gehenna, Luke’s parables, talk about Paradise. But I really don’t think they’re enough to construct a flawless argument that there is another world we go to after we die, be it good or bad, dependent on the type of life we have had here. And if there is, then what was the whole fucking point of creating this world and placing us on it, forcing it on us. If God loved created the world and its inhabitants and loved them and blessed them and called them good, then why does she want us to go somewhere else? Not good enough? I would rather be happy believing that if God put us here then God put us here, and that’s enough to both worry about and celebrate.

So kick me out of the church if you don’t like it; wouldn’t want to be part of you anyway if you put classifications and conditions on the nature of human life and love and their worth to God. Because I believe they are the wonder of God. And if you don’t like the bi’s and the weirdoes and the burqas then don’t make me explain why I do. God is with them.

The fact you don’t embrace them, see them as part of God’s wondrous imagination, then you have explaining to do.

And one more thing: if one American president can ask “What would Jesus do?” and start bombing Iraq, then I can wear this fucking t-shirt, okay!?!

Hat tip to my best buddy B who found this little piece.