The time with Graham left me feeling optimistic. I had shared with him the new positivity I felt with my Creation Centred Spirituality approach to Christianity. I had explained how I preferred that over past versions of Christianity which I knew had left him on edge with me. It was a welcome change when I wanted to write less, last thing at night, to sleep better after his visit.4
But it was only a few days later that I was back to writing more intensely late at night. And it was odd how the triggers for me needing to write so much could be quite light, an utterly innocent response to anyone else. But even a casual exchange that was intended as affirmative politeness from, say, the staff of the job centre could have me wondering what they meant by what they said. The arguments I found myself writing out would have been openly vicious were they spoken out loud. These dialogues were built on the gaps between what I remember my parents saying and the actions from them that followed where they would imply some hope in their words and defer in their actions the means of fulfilling that hope, simultaneously diminishing from me the hope I had in my own ideas of how to act. On paper I filled in the gaps in their arguments with the words that came to me, pen in one hand A4 pad in the other hand. I knew. If as an adult I wrote as someone who was trapped in their anger, then I accepted that description of me. I would defend myself by saying 'This has to be sorted out; now it is opened out it can't be left unexplored'.16
I was increasingly unable to connect the way I felt when venting in writing in order to be able to sleep better with the sociable and prayerful person I was in church, the most sociable place and community there was about me to be part of. Somewhere in all this nightly sturm and drang, in my prayers I got a very distinct message 'Book some time with a church leader. Ask assistant pastor Lou if he will pray with you in his office; there is something you need to hear and that is the best place to hear it', I found it remarkable that my prayers were responded to in a language that was so modest in tone.23
Although I prayed I thought other people were better at getting answers to their prayers than I should expect for myself. I felt better praying that my doubts be accepted than vanquished and permanent change happening to me. Often enough I had seen people spoken to at the end of meetings when there has been an altar call, and it had become like a scene from an over choreographed self-dramatizing Hollywood musical, with the experts in prayers marshalling the scene and keeping those they thought either inexperienced believers or rubberneckers at a distance from the person who was having a spiritual experience and being prayed for because inexperienced people mostly get in the way.31
Whatever I hoped for from the prayer time it had to be very calm, all responses in plain language, and politely and quietly spoken. There should be no need for marshalling in prayer to manage the scene-they would remove me from being the centre of the prayers for my inexperience in prayer if they were there. And so it was that I was sat in Pastor Lou's office and I explained what had God told me, and he very neutrally suggested we all three in the room pray. After ten minutes of prayers with silence between the prayers the words very gently came to me that 'I had a spirit of death about me. My father had the same spirit too, I had got it from him. The spirit of death was part of what was behind him always keeping the television on when family were around; he preferred the television over his family but the spirit would not let him say so'. There was a simple form of prayer afterwards that technically was a casting out or renunciation of the spirit. But again no histrionics. This was not quite the spiritual equivalent of removing the fuse from an unexploded bomb, but it might as well have been. Lou and his prayer partner asked me to leave the room. After ten minutes of sitting in the church I assumed they were done with me and I left the building and went home. 48
When I got home I realised that I did not know what was safe or what was unsafe for me with the television. To be on the safe side I avoided watching television with the rest of the house where I could sociably leave the room. My need for quietness and discretion had left me without follow-on instructions. Three days later I was contacted by Pastor Lou on the phone at home. He asked me call in his office that same day 53
Since I was unemployed I was free and so I went along to his office as I was asked. The first point Pastor Lou and other elder explained to me was to clear up the misunderstanding that after the prayers they had wanted to talk to me, but needed to confer with each other first. They were surprised when they could not find me to talk with. Then they reassured me that that watching television sociably was now probably safer for me to watch than it had been in the past when the spirit of death might have directed my viewing habits. Most entertainments were safe as long as I sought discernment on the matter.60
Then we had a discussion where he asked me about my background, since it was obvious to both of them that my family was, ummm, unusual in how it was structured. I told them I was gay, That I had been labelled maladjusted at age 10, and from age 16 I had struggled to mature against a background that had inhibited my maturity, including my spiritual maturity, At aged 19 I had switched writing with my right hand after nine years of writing with my left and nobody seemed to care or notice how cramped the writing was. I gave them the word picture of me where I was more awkward to help, than I was too silly to be worth taking notice of. I was an outsider who found asking for the help to be drawn in to a more regular sense reward mostly did not work for me. Where help did arrive, then it arrived at too late to be the help it was originally promised to be; it fixed only second order problems. I told them about the cottaging, since for some time I had worked out that if the mechanism that ensured the anonymity of the sex relied on was silence then breaking the silence would surely break either the anonymity of the acts, or the desire for the sex outright. Lou sided with me about that and did not put sex on some pedestal where being obedient to God in that area of life was some unexplainable process of faith, bound by taboo where taboo was expected to keep the language safe but leave the unexplained life potentially dangerous. Instead sex had to be explainable-whether the sex was bad, poor quality and an activity to be disapproved of, or the sex was good, enjoyable agreeable and accepted, sex had it's mechanisms that required explanations for those who owned to own it intelligently.81
Pastor Lou was easy to like, and an immediate help to me that I had not expected him to be. He was an assistant pastor who was the second assistant pastor I had liked since I had started attending service in the church, and the second one that my acquaintance with was cut short by his being promoted elsewhere to lead pastor. The point about lead pastors was that getting time with them where we could both be regular human beings with each other was always more fraught than they admitted. They were like the mistimed promises of help that I had known in the past; by the time I got my appointment with them I sensed an anti-climax approaching me, as they tried to meet me but were busy. When I eventually got the appointment I thought I wanted I ended up having to explain to them 'Things have changed since I first want to talk to you.' whilst avoiding saying 'Your appointments system does not work for me'. This usually made them respond 'Well I am glad that you did not need me after all then. Was there anything else?' and I had to avoid saying 'Okay lets cancel this now by mutual agreement. That way I can let you be too busy to meet the present day needs of somebody else.'. 96
Whether the issue was mental health or spiritual matters, the booking systems for getting one to one time with professional people always seemed to be freighted with retreating trust and desperation from those in need, coupled with the needy hearing the polite detached language of the health/spiritual professional and intuiting that their needs were unlikely to be met from the tone of voice. It could have been eight to ten months since I had last seen my doctor to ask for further therapy and there was no sign of any letter offering me the group therapy. At least I had the A4 pad and plenty of pens with which to write out what no other person wanted to to listen to me talk out. 103
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