Nunplussed

Like many Roman Catholics these days, Father Antonio Rungi from Mondragone in Southern Italy, is very concerned about the serious drop in numbers of people who have a ‘vocation’ - those seeking to join the church as priests or nuns.  Many monasteries in Italy are dieing because of the lack of new members.  It appears that a life of poverty, chastity, and total obedience to an organization dominated by elderly men is not so attractive, especially to women, as it once was.

Father Rungi thought he had a possible solution - the internet.  He formulated plans to create an online pageant where nuns could write about their work and vote.  “We have to draw more attention to the world of nuns, who are often not sufficiently appreciated by society,” he wrote, adding that he had hoped his initiative would help boost sagging vocations to religious life.

Ritual

Saturday mornings have become a time of ritual for me.  It hasn’t always been so.  At former times in my life Saturday mornings have been a time of chaos or industry.  There were children to amuse, household tasks to complete that could only get done during that brief time of freedom, essays to mark, lessons to plan, courses to write, sermons to prepare, essays to write.  Everything was crammed into that confined space pushing freedom and choice out.  It was a time completely of ‘oughts’ and ‘musts’ and ‘needs’ and usually ‘others’.  Now, it is a time of ritual.

We all have rituals, whether religious or not - little regularities that we perform without thinking, as ways of easing our existence; comforting routines that satisfy our desire for order or control, requiring minimal effort of planning on our part.  Once, when much younger and considerably more foolish, I challenged an Anglican clergyman friend of mine, gently mocking him about his love of ecclesiastical ritual.

Thinking

Usually, a thought is just a thought, nothing else.  And the thoughts we carry in our heads don’t necessarily have a close relationship with reality.

For some people, thinking is loaded with difficulty. They are plagued by their thoughts. The peace of the day and night is frequently interrupted by unwelcome visitors that bring genuine distress and anxiety, making lives dysfunctional and restricted to a lesser or greater extent.

At times, all of us are capable of being distressed because we ‘got hold of the wrong end of the stick’. We mentally ‘beat ourselves up’ because of some genuinely held false belief - whether that belief came from a simple misunderstanding (”I thought that look meant that you were wanting to end our relationship”), or whether it came from some deep rooted mantra that we inherited from a particular family or social grouping or religion (”I must be so vile for even thinking about that subject”).

Knickers In A Twist

At the risk of being considered a pervert or a sexual deviant, I need to write about knickers (or panties, as my American cousins would apparently call them).

Sue Relf, from Broadstairs, Kent, went into the local Asda store and bought some underwear for her seven year old granddaughter.  When she got the garments home home she discovered the words “Dive In” on the knickers.

Mrs Relf said: “Both myself and my daughter looked at them and thought, ‘Oh my goodness’.

“There was stuff written on them which I thought - and so did my granddaughter - was inappropriate for a 7 year old to be wearing.”

Rape Blame Cut

A 25 year old woman who was raped in the West End of London was initially told by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA), which covers England, Scotland and Wales, that her £11,000 compensation award would be reduced by 25 per cent because she had been drinking.  However, that decision has been overturned as her lawyer successfully argued it was wrong to regard alcohol consumption as a contributing factor in rape cases.

The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority acknowledged its rules had been applied wrongly in 14 other cases.

God Suddenly Appeared

God suddenly appeared.

There I was, minding my own business, when it happened.  Out of the blue.  No warning.  Just came.  God, or rather almightygod, appeared on my screen about three days ago.  And she/he/it has appeared with great regularity ever since.  Just popping up out of nowhere, reminding me of important things, and revealing the inner workings of the divine mind.  I felt privileged to have been one of the chosen few - one of the elect.  It has been such a joy to receive the messages.

B-Day

I posted my first blog on WordPress as ‘athinkingman’ on 8 August, 2007, so tomorrow is my official blog birthday.  Thanks to everyone who has travelled with me for the whole of, or for parts of the past year.  Your comments have encouraged me.  I have enjoyed the process - especially the way wanting to find something to write about prompts me to read and think.

Some Statistics and Other Exciting Information

At the time of writing -

Total hits: 47, 128

Total posts: 289

Average number of hits per post: 163

Average number of comments per post: 6

Busiest Day: 18 December, 2007 - 1,442 hits

Most popular posts: ‘God and the Virgins’ (6821), ‘The Absurdity of Nipplegate’ (1824), ‘MUSTerbation is Bad for You’ (1288), ‘Coming Out’ (1125).  Technically, the most popular post by far was the one I wrote in response to seeing a documentary about Wayne Bent (Michael Travesser) and the End of the World Cult. The second most popular continues to amaze me.  It was a short, flippant piece about the exposure of Janet Jackson’s nipple at the Super Bowl.  The third most popular amuses me as the content has nothing to do with masturbation (apparently the world thinks it is spelled ‘musterbation’), but was a piece about Albert Ellis and Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy. The fourth one, ‘Coming Out’, is my most important piece of the year and narrates a personal journey.  Although it came fourth in my blog, in one sense it is actually the most popular as it was picked up by the de-Conversion blog and to date has had 19,790 hits over there.

Most popular search terms: musterbation (599), super bowl (449), janet jackson (415), free push email (220). The latter term is surprising as my posting on that only appeared very recently - its popularity perhaps reflects the growing use of the mobile phone to collect email and the release of the new Apple iPhone 3G.  The other three both amuse and sadden me.  Although I write about a lot of things, many of my posts reflect my thoughts about what I see as the absurdity of some religious practice, but it would appear that people are finding my blog searching for sex!

The Nice Man. Annoying.

I hadn’t seen him for at least six years, but ‘bumped into him’ yesterday while taking my daily walk.  I used to work in the same College as he did, and then he moved away and I moved on.  I never really knew him very well, but I always thought he was a nice man - a kind man who cared about students and who took the trouble to do a professional job.  So why, after a few minutes in conversation with him, was I inwardly seething?  And why did I find myself carrying the conversation in my head for the remainder of my walk?

iTips and iTricks

I have been surfing the web for the past few days reading all about tips and tricks to enable me to exploit the features my new iPhone.  I thought I would compile a brief list here of some of the ones I have found most helpful.  They appear in no particular order.

The Colonial Elephant

Amidst all the ho-ha about what consenting adults do with various small parts of their bodies in private (arguably following their god-given desires) and about whether the said adults can be part of a Christian leadership or whether they should be sacrificed for the sake of superficial unity, the Most Rev Henry Orombi, Archbishop of Uganda, has made a very interesting point.  In an article in today’s Times he has accused Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, of betrayal and, more interestingly, describes his office as a “remnant of imperial colonialism”.

Archbishop Orombi, a leader of the conservative Global South bishops and one of 230 to boycott the conference, rehearses the familiar line on the biblical texts taken by the conservatives, and argues that the stand taken by Rowan Williams in inviting colleagues who consecrated the openly gay Bishop of New Hampshire to the Lambeth Conference is a betrayal of the historic Christian faith. To many, that is a bit like arguing that using modern understanding of physics and chemistry to develop the combustion engine is a betrayal of Medieval alchemy.  However, what seemed new in Orombi’s piece was the argument that he used to establish grounds for future unity in the Anglican church.