Temple Cloud

This year, I badly need to get a grip on my mental health.  But then, I have been telling myself that for most of the past ten years – or perhaps nearer twenty. I am not alone.   According to the World Health Organisation, nearly a billion people worldwide live with a mental illness.   The commonest is depression, affecting around 300 million people. However, I suspect that most people in poorer or war-torn countries aren’t worrying about their mental health itself, so much as the specific things they are depressed or anxious about, such as ‘My entire family were killed when the country next door bombed our town,’ or, ‘How can I feed my family when all our crops are dying of thirst?’ I am hugely privileged compared with many people.   I am happily married to PDB11 , a wonderful man who, for reasons I don’t understand, thinks I am a wonderful person too.   We live in Somerset, one of the most beautiful parts of the world that I know.   I have mostly go...

Lately, I have been wondering about whether to remain a Christian.   The evidence around us indicates that there isn’t nearly so much difference between all Christians and all non-Christians as Christian preachers try to make out, nor so much difference between all religious believers and all atheists as some atheists try to make out.   Not only European Christians like PDB11 and me, but also probably plenty of American Christians with liberal political views, probably have more beliefs in common with liberal atheists than with fundamentalist Christian Trump-supporters, for example. PDB11 mentioned to me a question on Quora about a quiz, the Religious Values Test , which a Quoran we follow, Melissa B , had taken.   Melissa, who is a Catholic, took the test and got – Pantheist.   According to her results, she was 59.8% pro-Catholic, compared to 68.5% pro-Jewish and 65.5% pro-Hindu.   PDB11 , as a Protestant, also got Pantheist, but scored 59.4% pro-Protestant, ...

‘And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins…  After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.  “The time has come,” he said.  “The kingdom of God is near.  Repent and believe the good news!”’  Mark 1:4, 1:14-15 When it’s coming up to Christmas, I am frequently ambivalent about whether this is good news or not.   It’s not that I don’t believe that Jesus was born (even though he probably wasn’t born on December 25 th ), but that I’m not always sure that I trust him to be good news for us.   If he isn’t, then Christmas for me carries similar overtones to the spoof Christmas carol my friend Doom Metal Singer found for me: Death to the World!   About ten years ago, a visiting preacher at the church I then went to asked the congregation how we would sum up the message of the gospel in one sentence.   We wrote various answers, generall...

November may be carnival season in Somerset, but for PDB11 and me recently, it has been climate protest season.   The placards that PDB11 made in the summer (on one side, his reads ‘There Is No Planet B’ and mine reads ‘Climate Crisis Is Still Here’; on the back, both read ‘There’s No Economy Without the Ecology’) have been getting plenty of exercise, mostly mounted on walking poles. A fortnight ago were Extinction Rebellion’s Insure Our Survival protests outside the offices of companies that insure fossil fuel companies.   PDB11 went to one outside Howden’s Insurance in Bath on Friday (while I was at work), and we had both meant to go to one outside Tokio Marine in Clifton on Saturday, but didn’t make it. Last Saturday we went to a Christian Climate Action silent prayer vigil in Bristol Cathedral, under the poignant Gaia sculpture .   PDB11 commented to an attendant at the cathedral that compared with some of the things and events that have been installed in cathe...

November is carnival season in Somerset .      The Somerset County Guy Fawkes Carnival Association carnivals begin in Bridgwater on the first Saturday of the month, and yesterday evening my friend took her children to the Shepton Mallet carnival , with a flask of hot chocolate and some sandwiches, as her children aren’t keen on the burgers sold from the vans.   The carnival circuit starts in Devon in September , but these illuminated processions in Somerset in November take place to commemorate Guy Fawkes’ attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament .   On a completely unrelated note, at the start of December I’m going with my mother, PDB11 and Doom Metal Singer to listen to one of the Carnival Band’s Christmas concerts.   Their lively performances of well-loved carols like Angels from the Realms of Glory , less well-known carols like Dancing Day and the desperately sad Coventry Carol , (both of which I had seen mentioned in The Children of Green Know...