Figuring things out

Just noticed the date: always remember that as the first day I flew to Americaall those years ago – seventeen to be precise – but still so fresh in my mind…

Not what I’m here to write about today. A catch up on recent events. And discussion, perhaps, on events to come. Putting my life out there in the form of the written word in order, hopefully, to move on and gain clarity. Blogging is like my prayer: things change when I express them here. And that’s what I’m looking for today.

And so: what have I been up to?

1. Still living with the Christian boys and –

A week ago I would have written about how great that was, and of things that seemed to be progressing, seemed to be moving towards something. Mentioning the healing and of how someone was interested in that. The morning that he came over in tears and we talked for a few hours and how right from the moment that he opened the door I just knew what the problem was – what had happened – obscure and unexpected though it should have seemed. God at work, I thought. But now…

Today I feel a little bit weird in it: same old thing really. A few weeks in and the odd psychology starts to rear its head. The way Christianity excludes to the point of ignorance. The strangeness of their practises and beliefs. Are these boys happy because they’ve got God or are they happy because they’ve got a thousand happy friends and grew up in well-off houses and went to nice schools and are attractive and fun and don’t question life because all the answers are in some old Jewish book? And what of that book anyway? All the justifications for its authority. Very odd that smart brains should reason so. And me…

The man on the outside, though sharing certain similarities, will never be the same. Just as I shan’t be middle class. Just as I shan’t go on to have a nice career and a nice home and marry a nice chaste Christian girl and thank Jesus for my nice detached house and car, raise nice Christian children.

Is that God? I don’t know. But one can’t buy it if one can’t buy it – no compelling reason to do so – and soon enough our ways shall part…

One guy says to me – the main guy; he’s always asking me questions – that I represent something of a challenge to him. He’s had his lifelong beliefs and he believes in them wholeheartedly – yet he openly acknowledges that I seem to have lived more of the life divine and have more understanding of it than pretty much all the Christians he knows. That bothers him, I guess. Yet I admire his openness and honesty in being aware of the dilemma that provokes. The talks are fun and good. Not that I really say much. Try to keep schtum when it comes to matters of theology and religion. No point in questioning someone’s beliefs if it makes them happy. Faith more important than intellectual understanding anyway. Not sure all my reading and thinking has done me any good in that regard. And they’re doing good things in the world so where’s the harm?

Ah, but for that enlightened expression that says: “Ours is not the only way, ours is but another way.” How glibly they profess their superiority over others while at the same time acknowledging their ignorance about the rest of humanity. It’s like those Americans who proudly proclaim “they’re number one” and trumpet their world-envied ‘freedom of speech’ with no experience or understanding of life in, say, Sweden or Holland. “Only Jesus has ever done such and such,” they say, “it’s never happened anywhere else.” But how do they know? For they’ve never taken the time to learn of what else has gone on. Not of Buddha nor Krishnanor Ramakrishna nor Amma. Not turned the pages of Autobiography of a Yogi. Not, even, examined the lives of their own saints, such as Therese Neumann or the ones from Avila and Assisi, Padre Pio, Julian of Norwich.

Still, they’re young. And, like I say, they do good things in the world. And, anyway, there’s nothing I care to do about the situation, nor could, except to be myself. Really, that’s the only question: where’s my place in all this? For the foxes have their holes and the birds have their nests, but where has Rory to lay his weary head…

2. Greece

A weird thing happened the other day that sort of freaked me out. I was talking with Christian – that’s his name, but he is a Christian – and I decided to tell him about that vision I had back in December. I’ve been thinking about it a lot again the last few weeks and wondering if maybe the time isn’t approaching. Trying to figure out how one would know, what with “the right time, the right place” being such an obsession of mine. Pretty much right now I’m in that space of just wanting to go for it. The recklessness and the abandon. The freedom I have. But also wondering…

Thinking back to Shasta and how it took a whispering tree and then the timing of going via Shawn’s to finally get me there. Do I need a whispering tree again? Or has hearing the word here and there been sign enough? The fact of cheap flights to Greece? Or…

Not long after I had that vision back in December I played Christian at a game of squash. We were talking various things after and I figured, well here’s a guy who shouldn’t find such things outlandish. So I told him the story but omitted to mention the name of the town – as I did in this blog – for wanting some sort of divine intervention and for someone to corroborate the vision. You know, like them popping up and saying, “you should go to Korinth” and me going, “wow, I just had a vision about that; I should.” But no such thing happened that day and I let it sit while all those various other things transpired anyway (Vipassana, Nicky, crashing, humility, making it up with Laura and mum, meeting the Christians). Seems to me like they’ve been really good things, and definite reasons for not leaving Leeds when I had all that time of desperately wanting to. Happiness and peace have returned and all things heartbreak have been forgotten. So it was good that I stuck with that – good that I listened to the I Ching and to my feelings – and now here I am, better and enjoying the world once again. But…

The other day we’re walking down the street and I tell Christian the name in my vision was Korinth. And he tells me that he went there back around Easter time. Back around the time, actually, that I wasn’t really doing very much and was just leaving my flat.

My mind kind of stops. What if, I want to know, I’d told him the specifics of my vision back in December when we’d been playing squash? What if I’d reached out to these guys a little sooner, as so very nearly happened around March anyway? Would I have gone there with him? Would it have been like Shasta, or Mexico, when my journeys coincided with those of another and our two paths became one? Less questioning, less needing to decide so much for myself. Less uncertainty about the right time, the right place. For now uncertainty reigns once again…

I never used to do that, I guess. Never used to be so aloof with that kind of thing. And yet it felt sort of right to keep it to myself. Or was I just “testing the Lord”? To use a weird old phrase.

I guess I’ll never know.

But now Greece and Korinth hangs over my head and I beg to know an answer. Will it be something magical like Shasta? Or will it be a nice little holiday but ultimately fruitless and daft spiritual excursion like Israel? Has the time perhaps not passed? Was that my window or is his mentioning it further incentive? He talks about some caves nearby, says that Korinth wouldn’t be my final destination. And ideas of places elsewhere – Mount Olympus, Delphi, Arkadia – do get me excited. But when, oh Lord? That is the question. To go for two weeks? To go one-way? Such lameness in the way one must book place tickets and predict the future compared to simple thumbs of Shasta and original Mexico days! And what of my life here? The job I currently have? The refereeing? The lack of home and stability and relationship? Or am I made for more than this?

The only way to find one’s way through this maze is to feel it all one day and one decision at a time. This morning, nothing needs deciding upon. These first few waking hours will be used to write and to express all these thoughts and questions and then one will go to work. And who knows? Perhaps life will bring the answers in the meantime?

One day, one decision, one step at a time.