{"id":125,"date":"2013-05-31T17:24:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-31T21:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/?p=125"},"modified":"2013-08-07T15:11:04","modified_gmt":"2013-08-07T14:11:04","slug":"a-letter-to-my-reader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/?p=125","title":{"rendered":"A letter to my reader"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Hello, thanks for reading something I\u2019ve written, and I hope you\u2019ve read \u201cWitness, share, apology\u201d as well.<\/p>\n

Yes, I hope there\u2019ll be more than one of you, but at the moment it\u2019s just you and me, OK?<\/p>\n

Now, I don\u2019t know who you are, whether you have any faith or no faith or even if you aren\u2019t sure which.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if you\u2019re some kind of twelve-stepper or not, or if you have any of the various compulsive behaviours (including addiction), psychological peculiarities or other defects of character which I may share about, whether they have their own Twelve Step programme or not.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if you\u2019re a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Bah\u2019ai, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Sikh, a Jain, a Taoist, a Wiccan, a Pagan, a “Scientific Pagan, a Druid, a Shaman, a Practical Kabbalist, a Ritual Magician, a “Born Again Agnostic” or….. well, just because you\u2019re not mentioned doesn\u2019t mean I don\u2019t mean you, and if you give me a nudge I\u2019ll try to include you in the next version of this. As it is there, I have friends who describe themselves as each of these, and I\u2019m pretty confident that they\u2019ll read this sooner or later.<\/p>\n

By \u201cChristian\u201d I mean you have faith in God – or at least want to – and try to follow Jesus as best you can, whatever conception you may have of what \u201cGod\u201d means, what \u201cJesus\u201d means, what \u201cfaith\u201d means or what \u201cfollow\u201d means. In other words, whatever \u201cflavour\u201d of Christianity you belong to \u2013 and if you\u2019re a Seventh Day Adventist or a Latter Day Saint and think you\u2019ve been missed out, I count you in Christian. I count me as Christian too, if you push me hard enough.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t care about these labels. I think I mean that as an absolute statement, but if it turns out to be wrong, I am trying to move towards it as an ideal.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re human, I mean to include you. I\u2019d include anyone who wasn\u2019t human as well, but I don\u2019t think they\u2019ll be reading this. You get the picture…<\/p>\n

There is only one thing I really want to change your thinking about, and it is this. Please consider moving towards thinking of your fellow human beings more as I try to. They are all \u201cus\u201d, none of them are \u201cthem\u201d.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, don\u2019t panic. I am not trying to convert you. On the \u201cArt of Dharma\u201d<\/a> site, there is this quotation:-<\/p>\n

To a man who asked to become a Buddhist, the Dalai Lama replied, \u201cPlease don\u2019t. Stay in your own religion, and meditate.\u201d\u00a0 Further , he has stated, \u201cIt is better to stick with the wisdom traditions of one\u2019s own land than to run from them pursuing in exotica what was under your nose all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

I take his view, for the most part. If you have a belief structure and it\u2019s working for you, use the maxim \u201cIf it ain\u2019t bust, don\u2019t fix it\u201d. If you have no beliefs and it\u2019s working for you (i.e. you\u2019re a true agnostic, to my mind, though you may call yourself an atheist and that\u2019s OK with me), use the same maxim. It\u2019s possible there may still be something in what I write which is helpful to you, and I hope there is, but I\u2019m not really writing for you. Sorry!<\/p>\n

But if you have some beliefs and they\u2019re not working well for you, I may have more to say (or not \u2013 I can only tell you how it is for me, and it\u2019s up to you and, I suppose, chance whether you can find anything in my writing). Again, if you have a belief structure, I\u2019d prefer you to be more comfortable with what you know rather than to shift wholesale; I may still have experience which is helpful. If you don\u2019t have a belief structure, but feel a need for one, I may be talking about the one for you. Or not.\u00a0 <\/span>It is going to need to feel right and to help you develop faith, by which I mean love and trust, in whatever you can comfortably conceive \u201cthat thing which I tend to call God\u201d to be.<\/p>\n

I have a special note for you if you\u2019re an atheist or an agnostic. I started the journey I\u2019m on as an evangelical atheist, that\u2019s to say I believed strongly that God didn\u2019t exist, that the mere concept of God was pernicious and damaging and that I should try to convince everyone else of that. I then spent a significant amount of time as an agnostic, not knowing but still seeking.<\/p>\n

And in some ways it would be fair still to regard me as an atheist (and some of my fellow Christians do); it would certainly be fair to regard me as an agnostic still, as I don\u2019t know that any of what I believe is true, I just take positions on the balance of evidence or because they are useful to me and I can relate to them (though I have no option about faith; love and trust doesn\u2019t get argued away easily) and there are still a fair number of the stories Christianity tells which I don\u2019t relate to well, or sometimes at all. I know where you\u2019re coming from. I\u2019m on a journey, moving in a direction, and my beliefs have had to change along the way and will probably change further (though, granted, the changes recently have tended to be fairly subtle).<\/p>\n

Please don\u2019t get me wrong; I am very happy indeed with the belief structures I have and I think it would be really cool if you liked them too and tried them for size. For me, Christianity has the best, the most varied, the most useful stories \u2013 but to a great extent that\u2019s because I grew up with these stories and know them better than I know other people\u2019s. You\u2019re not me.<\/p>\n

I think everyone would be better off with a faith, and that their faith should be strong (as long as it doesn\u2019t damage others or get in peoples\u2019 faces or tell them what to do), and that some of what I\u2019ve learned over some 45 years might help you with that. But I can\u2019t tell you you\u2019d be better off with more faith, as such, just that I\u2019m convinced I am (and yes, it could easily be argued that I\u2019m not from reading things I write about my experience; I try to signpost the points where I think there are dangers and what they are, though).<\/p>\n

Finally, before you go further reading my witness, my share, my apologia, please be careful of one possibility. I have had people individually and sometimes collectively wanting to follow me, for me to be their leader.<\/p>\n

Do not even think <\/em><\/strong>of doing this.<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span>Firstly, you can\u2019t get where I am by proxy, only by doing some things and having some experiences. You are not me, your experiences will be different, you can\u2019t borrow mine, only find things in them which speak to your experiences and situation.<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span>Secondly, I do not want to be put in the position of telling people what to do, it will embarrass me, and, within my belief structure, you should not be following me anyhow, you should be following in the direction I point. I want people to walk beside me, not behind me.<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span>Lastly, I don\u2019t want to be put in the position of having to say \u201cno\u201d, because that would pain me, but I would have to say no anyhow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello, thanks for reading something I\u2019ve written, and I hope you\u2019ve read \u201cWitness, share, apology\u201d as well. Yes, I hope there\u2019ll be more than one of you, but at the moment it\u2019s just you and me, OK? Now, I don\u2019t know who you are, whether you have any faith or no faith or even if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14,3,16,12,15,5],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-autobiography","tag-christianity","tag-interfaith","tag-philosophy","tag-preaching","tag-twelve-step"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions\/128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}