Guilt Guilt Guilt!

Listening to the radio this morning, I stumbled upon people talking about the issues of "sin" , what is it?  how do we avoid it,? what constitutes a "sin"?  
Needless to say it was unadulterated sanctimonious claptrap, but it did get me thinking about my own upbringing and how practically everything apart from breathing was considered  "sinful"
I was obsessed with being good! Hardly surprising really when you consider, as I have recounted many times, how I was told aged 5 to kneel and pray for a cousin of mine to die! His "sin" was to be intent on marrying a divorcee, and his Mother(my Aunt) was told by her priest that he would be better off dead than living in "sin" So we were all told to kneel and pray for a "happy death" for Ted. 
So all of my growing up years I was quite convinced that people would be praying for me to die every time I committed a "sin" (which seemed almost all of the time)  It was really quite terrifying, which of course was the object of the exercise! To keep us terrified and in constant fear of hell fire and damnation.The idea that I was born a "sinner" was drummed in at every turn!
The whole concept of "sin" is cruel and appalling and to feed this kind of fear in tiny children is REAL child abuse. 
I was given the image that each time I "sinned" it was like going up to the baby Jesus in his pram and SLAPPING his face really hard (this was accompanied by loud slapping and gestures!) And not only that, but even when his beautiful brown eyes were full of tears, I went and SLAPPED him again!! 
GUILT GUILT GUILT poured on in bucket-loads! I always felt lower than a snake's belly in the grass!
Then of course there was the whole image  of having those "stains of sin" on my soul, which wouldn't come off., no matter how much you scrubbed. (no doubt the beginnings of  one of my later  self harming habits where I scrubbed and scrubbed till I bled!)
The "get out of hell" clause was of course the confessional! That horrifying of places where the priest hiding behind a grill listens to your every sin of "thought word and deed" and then gives you a penance as he absolves you from those terrible sins! 
The implications for that  are massive! Not only is he listening to everyone's innermost thoughts and fears, he is identifying who you are! Who comes from a family that doesn't protect them or who are so priest obsessed that the child will always be sacrificial. He knows who has not paid their taxes, missed going to mass, committed adultery, is maybe into the same fetishes as he is, and as he listens to children's accounts early sexual "fumblings" who knows what he is doing on the other side of that grill! 
It is a grooming box of sickening power abuse possibilities.

And then there is the "sin" hierarchy! There are "mortal sins" which send you packing off to hell pretty damn quick (unless you have told the man behind the grill!)
There are "venial sins" which don't condemn you to hell but give you a bit of time in purgatory (unless you have told the man behind the grill of course! or maybe if you have followed the pope on 'twitter" apparently that will get you a bit of time off purgatory!)
Then there are "sins of omission" which are the ones you have NOT  told the man behind the grill! 
I remember having discussions with other kids, about wether something they were doing was a "sin" or not! If it wasn't on the "list" it must be ok, no matter how unpleasant it actually was.

The ludicrous thing about all of this is of course it is actively stifling the human being's natural desires to be "good" that inherent quality of human beings that are benevolent and decent. 
The catholic church is the antithesis of good!

We are a benevolent species, despite what we hear daily in the media, we naturally want to do right by each other, we are mostly and naturally altruistic.

We do not need these power hungry narcissists with their lists to tell us what the "right thing" is! We already know.

So stick your list of "sins"!

We are human beings and quite capable of being "Good without god!"

Thankyou for your son

My Mother in law died and today is her funeral. She was 95 years old and had been quite demented, she hadn't really known who any of us were for many years or indeed even who she was herself. Such a sad thing to see.
I feel sad for my husband, because she was his Mum, but I have to be honest and say she wasn't a particularly nice woman, in fact she was really awful to me and my family when Gez and I first got together! She behaved like a hysterical harpee,  threatening and screaming abuse at me and my children, suggesting they were all from "different fathers" even trying to stab Gez with a knife and fork!
Sounds like the stuff of nightmares, and of course it was for quite some time. It didn't daunt him though, he still wanted to marry me! It sounds like a slushy cliche, but we were very much in love and nothing would have kept us apart. We have now been married for twenty six years.
Over the years we tried to be as kind to her as possible, made sure she had things she needed, and invited her to our house.  But she was never someone that I could have felt close to or warmed to, and my husband never really forgave her for her dreadful behaviour. It was a relationship more of duty than anything else. Also very sad.
The reason I managed to talk to her at all was because I sort of understood her! I am a Mother too and I wondered what it must have felt like to see your son get involved with a divorced woman with six children! I am sure I was not what she had hoped for!! It didn't matter that we were happy, that the children were wonderful kids who loved her son too., all she could see was that I was "soiled goods" as she delicately put it! Had she known the full extent of that "soiling" she probably would have been worse!!
But my husband is remembering her when he was small, that he had  a good Mum  and Dad and he and his brothers were very well cared for, and are all decent chaps. So I am trying  also to think of her as someone who  brought my husband into the world and raised him well, so much so that he has been a great husband to me and a lovely step father to my children.
I was concerned about her funeral, I  find it hard to be too hypocritical and was hoping that the other members of the family wouldn't get into too much religious stuff, or involve me too much! But it seems they all feel the same, we won't be singing hymns, or saying prayers!
So a sad day really, more than anything I feel sad that she didn't have the warm loving relationships that she could have had, she missed out on so much because of her bigotry, but I hope it makes me cherish the relationships in my life more. So thankyou Edna for that reminder, and also for your  wonderful son.  RIP

Butterfly effect!

I do,  I know,  go on about how I have the best job in the World ! and today is no exception!!

I teach all sorts of healthcare workers  and I love them all, you have to be a special sort of person to work at the heavy end of substance misuse, they sure as hell don’t do it for the money! 

In the twenty three years I have been teaching in this field I have taught thirteen and a half thousand healthcare workers! Sometimes I have to pinch myself !

I teach in lots of drug and alcohol services, hospitals, rehabs,etc. and 128 Uk prisons!! I love the idea that if everyone I have ever taught helps ten people (and they help FAR more than that!) then that is 135,000! 
When I first began working in in addiction, it was suggested that each addict affected at least 4 people around him or her, a VERY conservative estimate! But even at that rate that would be  540,000! It is hard to walk away from a job where you can be part of that kind of hopefulness.

And this isn’t work that is done in fancy expensive clinics, often this is in a run down building in a run down part of a city, or a very small service in a little town on the coast, a community project or an NHS service hanging on to it’s funding by it’s fingernails.

I am as always in awe of them all.

But this week I  have been in to three of my usual prisons, and I never fail to come out uplifted, proud of our prison service and privileged to be one of their partners. 

Every time you pick up the papers you hear nothing but bad opinions about our prisons, one thing goes awry  or something violent occurs, an officer maybe makes a mistake, and it is plastered all over the front page of the tabloid press. What they NEVER print are the thousands of good things that happen all the time, how lives are turned around and how many people will ultimately benefit from what they have learned.

One young prison officer told me once that he had been feeling really fed up, demoralised and jaded, and he was dealing with prisoner who had been in prison for five years and showed no sign of engaging in any rehabilitation programmes. He didn’t have visits and never wrote home, and the officer was fed up with trying to help him. Then something happened and  the prisoner suddenly asked for paper and a pen and he  wrote home to his mother. Not such a big deal you might think, but the officer said that in that moment he realised what a difference that would make, the mother would have a smile on her face when she got a letter through the door, and when her husband came home she wouldn’t have been crying, and he therefore wouldn’t get frustrated and angry and take it out of the other kids, who wouldn’t in turn go to school and bully other kids  because they were so unhappy. Not only that but the officer said that he realised HE had been fed up, grumbling at his wife and maybe drinking too much, he resolved to buy her some flowers and take her out and show his appreciation for her. And then I felt better! listening to his  observations and feeling inspired! So  I came back home and maybe felt more gratitude, and maybe wrote a little something about it on my FB page, and so maybe others felt better! 

Good news and integrity doesn’t sell papers! But it creates a positive chain event.You don’t hear of all the fund raising they do for all sorts of causes, of the sponsored head shaving or the marathons being run to maybe help an injured colleague or  child who needs a transplant. But I get to SEE all of that and I am so lucky.

It was never wise words or clever professors or sanctimonious religious people that have impressed me, it has been very ordinary people just like me, going about their daily lives, often doing a job which is mostly thankless, and often dangerous with professionalism , humanity (and a LOT of humour!) and making a real difference in our world that no one ever gets to hear about, simply because they want to do the best they can.

Lots of those positive chains of events being started by maybe one kind act in the most unlikely places and that butterfly effect is set in motion!

Happy Halloween!!

So the vatican's "chief exorcist" Gabriel Amorth(the mind boggles, are there"apprentice" exorcists and "deputy "exorcists or "baby" exorcists? )  says that that "celebrating halloween is like singing hosannas to Satan", and the reason that children can't sleep and are "suicidal" is because  of this dreadful practice! He says that  "there is danger to young people at Halloween because of the increase in occult activity which fuels insomnia, mental  illness, depression and suicidal thoughts in children"

Frankly I wouldn't want to meet this creep on a dark night!Give me a scary pumpkin any day!

The catholic church says (in the 21st century!) that there is a "spike" in 'possessions" in October due to Halloween. They even have a "helpline" where parents can phone if they suspect their children are "possessed"  
For F...s sake!!!!!!
If there was anything that made me terrified and suicidal when I was a child it was the dreadful terrors the narcissistic catholic church put into my mind!
Baby's who were not baptised floated around in limbo for eternity, burning in hell for ever if you died while not in a state of "grace". 
That omnipotent  puppet-master who watches your every "though word and deed" and decides if you will burn or not (depending on his mood!)
And who could forget the bloody catechism (learned by rote  when young and malleable and embedded deep into our minds)
The suggestion for a child as he or she goes to bed in the catechism is quite clear :- 

Q: How should you finish your day?

A: I should finish my day by kneeling down and saying my night prayers

Q: After your night prayers what should you do?

A: After my night prayers I should observe due modesty in going to bed; I should occupy myself

with the thoughts of death, and endeavour to compose myself to rest at the foot of the cross, and

give my last thoughts to my crucified saviour.

What a great way for a child to end her day! So I would go to sleep with my hands crossed over my

chest (to make sure I didnʼt touch myself!) and with my final thoughts of a tortured, murdered man,the image of whose bloodied, tortured crucified corpse was hung around my neck.

THIS is the stuff of nightmares, THIS is what makes children terrified, and THIS is the worst kind of trauma bonding.
We are outraged in this country at the rise of the african church's terrorising of children accused of being "witches" and yet we listen to these creeps in the vatican doing EXACTLY the same thing!
francis himself is a great believer in possessions and exorcisms, and yet people hail him as being some kind of new broom! 
THESE are the people who are dangerous, and along with their filthy pedophile priests, it is their nonsensical teachings that are 
 THE WORST KIND OF CHILD ABUSE

Godless Grace

                                                        Godless Grace Foundation

Supporting a Better World Through Humanistic Fundraising

It am honoured  be a part of the Godless Grace Foundation, founded by my wonderful friend David Orenstein from New York, and to be a member of the board of trustees.  
David and I were talking this year about how we both felt about the "charities" that prevail, and what we both feel about the acts of giving.
There is a vast difference between being a "charity" and being "charitable"!
I have always been acutely aware of the buzz I get when I have been able to "give" something or do something for someone. Or even the buzz I get when I have witnessed beautiful unselfish acts by others. Sometimes we might feel a bit uncomfortable saying such a thing, it does sound a bit smug!
Now nobody on the planet could accuse me of being Pollyanna! In fact I am quite feisty and often "arsy" and very difficult,  but I have always experienced a real "lift" from these  acts of kindness  which feel almost physical!
The much quoted  cliche that tells us that "It is better to give than to receive" might make us cringe, probably  because often it is people of a religious persuasion who lay claim to these kind of insights!
But of course that is nonsense! religion has nothing at all to do with it! They do not have the monopoly on kindness!
Being HUMAN is what it is all about!
We are, despite the daily acts of barbarism we hear of daily in the popular press, a benevolent species! We WANT to be good to each other, we have an altruistic core,  also we have learned  that to get along with our fellow beings it is in our best interest! It is about survival.
So perhaps we would feel more comfortable being "givers" if we understood that actually our altruism is really quite selfish!
Knowing for example that although we do get an abundance  of  "feel-good chemicals"in our brain when someone is kind or  compassionate towards us, definitely enhancing our wellbeing, science tells us that we get a  far greater benefit, in fact a positive avalanche if those chemicals when we "give" something or do something for some else, or even if we witness those kind acts, not only will that enhance our wellbeing, but it is shown to  benefit our health and even prolong our lives!  
And unlike being the recipients of things, being able to give is something we can have all the time!
So I wonder why wouldn't we want to  tap into that free "pharmacy" that is readily available to us thanks to our evolved humanity!
I can think of hundreds of wonderful acts that I have witnessed by others that have impressed and inspired me! 
I remember my lovely older daughter, who found herself for a while working as the site secretary to a building company, given the job of building a new operating theatre for the Royal Marsden hospital, one of the greatest cancer hospitals in the world. She was the only girl among 200 builders, architects etc. As they worked, and witnessed the wonderful work of that hospital and saw the patients come and go, they were so moved that they began all sorts of fund raising activities to support the hospital. I am sure that sort of thing happens all the time when decent people actually see the reality of needs. 
But what they DON"T see is that before they put the final plasterboards  on those walls of the operating theatre, when they had installed all the pipes and wires that would be needed , every one of those tough builders along with my daughter wrote personal messages of encouragement and hope for every patient  that passed through that theatre. No one knew they were there.
I remember my son's Mother in law, Enid,  who died sadly after a long battle with cancer.She was a brave and fun lady, who had very little materially. Her funeral was probably the most "uplifting" I have ever been to - not religious but with true sentiments. Her son said a few words about her and we sang "Thank you for the music" he told us that his Mother had left just enough money for everyone to go and have a drink on her afterwards, but she also asked that everybody at her   funeral  went from there that day and each did two kind acts for  other human beings in her name. We all went from the funeral with a "buzz" and got more of a buzz when we honoured those wishes!
Later I was asked to speak at a friends funeral and I suggested the same thing, everyone felt a lift at the idea. I wonder how many people have benefitted from Enid's kindness? The knock on effect could be enormous!
I think about my youngest son who, though disabled,  shares his little bit  of money with his favourite animal sanctuaries and supports anything and everything that he possibly can.
My husband who very often does a free art "workshop" for patients in a local hospice and tells us how wonderful it is to see  those patients create something beautiful to lift their "spirits"
When I was teaching in Yorkshire a while ago, I came across a lovely little cafe where they encouraged everyone to "pay it forward" to pay for someone else to have something to eat!They also have a flower shop attatched , and they had a scheme where you could donate a little money  so that someone could pay for  funeral flowers  who perhaps couldn't afford them. It was a very uplifting and happy little place!
None of these  people acted  in the name of any god, but because it was  just natural  and uplifting to do so! 
I bet everyone reading this can think of many wonderful acts by ordinary people just because they are human!
And yet we continue to give endless charitable money to religious organisations!! Secular activities  are not nearly as recognised.
That is why the "Godless Grace foundation" is unique and exciting. There are so many wonderful people who are making our world a richer and nicer place.
We don't need a religion to show us how to be kind,we just need to be human beings!

www.ggfsupport.org