Dear Dave

Please can you say some more about the “Religious” part of your life as that seems to be the part that you never really speak of in historical terms so to speak.

Thanking You In Advance

Mona

Hi Mona

The reason I do not really speak much about the church era of my life is that my memories of that period in my life are somewhat mixed up and confused and seemingly of no real importance or consequence.  Yes I might give the impression that I regarded it as all bad yet that like most areas of life is a generalisation rather than absolute.  Much like any environment that we can find ourselves in-we generally make friends or find peoples of similar age and so on that we can relate to or mix with.  The church issues was perhaps one whereby most of the other young people were already a kind of collective going to Bishops School whilst I myself was at Aylestone.   Likewise they perhaps came from more long term dedicated Christian type families where my own seemingly found God as a keeping up with family friends who had joined the church.

So yes I am sure there are buried treasure memories in the cerebrum somewhere yet in general it was a very compartmentalised existence whereby it took over my entire week and evenings and so on.  Mates playing football and being latchkey kids as I had been-whilst I myself was now only allowed bible and prayer meetings and so on-a somewhat large curtailing of my up until that time period freedom and of course like all group cultures it can be hard to integrate all the differing aspects of life the universe and everything.

There are perhaps out of the many preachers that I saw during that time period only two guys who really stood out and impressed myself one was Billy Graham who is a World Class Preacher and well known name even amongst non-religious folks and the other was a chap called Jim Sepulvida who is another of those who died and lived http://www.finalfrontier.org.uk/index.php?main=13&sub=2&page=12

So I think the difference perhaps from my meditative practice teachings is that it is the people who are the church not the building and ceremonies and all the rest of the indoctrinations.  I do not feel any badness or hurt towards the church for that time period in my life yet you might liken it to having a childhood and then not having a childhood-if I wanted to be dramatic I might call it The Stolen Years: My Years Of Hell At Elim Pentecostal Church.  They were of course one of the more happy clappy type churches compared to the more modest and traditional churches that are available and like many congregations it had a sprinkling of business men who interacted and used the services and business’ of Christian friends and so on-so not all that different from most other areas of life really-choice is choice and you do feel that some so-called Christian values are worthy of having in your own life-irrespective of whose philosophy and teachings are being given-I spoke of Grace earlier and she was a life long attendee of a more traditional church and generally was the embodiment of Christian values.  When the family friends fell out of favour with the church for being sinners a few years later my family also left the church and I was by now at school leaving age and able to go on and do my own thing.

So there you have it-you can call yourself a Christian coming from a Christian oriented Country as David Cameron does or you can say you have a more encompassing approach where you seek to do the best you can for all comers irrespective of other considerations.

Thank you for Reading, God Bless and Be Well 🙂