Perhaps Possibly Maybe
- 3 hours ago
- 6 min read
Rupert Loydell
For so long I’ve been running
For so long I’ve been scared
So unbecoming
For so long I’ve been impaired
For so long singing
The words to the same old song
Maybe it was you all along
– Michael McDonald, 'Willow Springs'
If you were brought up in the 1960s by a Christian family, regularly attending a nearby Christian church, you may, like me, have spent some time rebelling and trying to run away from what for many years was a major part of your upbringing. There was no abuse or anything at all unconventional going on, just Sunday services, Sunday school and youth group; later on, monthly church meetings, often argumentative ones with idealistic youths pitched against conservative elders. I had friends at church, knew other families, old people, young people and the middle-aged; and we had 'youth services' where we presented what now appear to be tired 'radical' ideas to those who had put such idealism, hopes and dreams, aside in the name of convention, employment, finances and adulthood.
In retrospect this would sometimes lead to unintentional personal compromise. At the end of the 1970s our church hosted a huge group of young people, who slept on the hall floor, and were part of the Festival of Light. I happily went along with the trips to demonstrations and concerts, only realising several years later that the organisation, founded by Malcolm Muggeridge and Mary Whitehouse, was censorious, homophobic and scared. Nothing, in fact, to do with Christian faith, merely repressed individuals living in some imaginary idyll, desperate to impose their own ideas and rules on a regulated society.
The illiberal organised church would remain, and still remains, a problem for me. At best, I compare it to a cricket club demanding that soccer, squash, rugby and bowls teams play by the same rules; at worst, I see institutions built on colonialism, oppression, control, power and wealth, not to mention ones enabling abuse, coercion and embezzlement. Having said that, I have never quite managed to escape Christianity's orbit. As a writer, I worry that a whole generation (or two) are not Biblically literate, because English Literature is historically rooted in that; and at a smaller level I think stories such as those of Creation, Noah's Ark, Jacob's Ladder and the Crucifixion are important because they are part of human mythology, with echoes, overlaps and different versions in many cultures and other sacred or historical texts. I understand that metanarratives are fast disappearing from society, but it is useful to understand where previous generations were coming from.
For many years, my only involvement with Christianity was the Greenbelt Festival, an arts event held each August Bank Holiday. My partner and I used to have a stall selling Stride magazine and books, her hand-printed clothes and textiles, and we were both involved in running the fine art venue. I would also give poetry readings and run writing workshops over the weekend. Our friend, the musician and artist Steve Fairnie, called Greenbelt a 'telephone church', a network of confused, questioning, doubting, believers. We had committee meetings throughout the year and then all met up – with 30,000 punters when attendance was at its peak! – for the festival itself, which included a main stage and several other music venues, marquees for talks, discussions, comedy, dance, literature and fine art, as well as a fringe field with stalls and a smaller stage.
Greenbelt was, at the time, artistically and theologically brave and radical. It invited speakers such as witches, contrary politicians and radical gays to discussions, offered a safe space to those questioning their sexuality and/or gender, and took the attitude that if you felt your belief or faith was threatened by others then you needed to question yourself more and listen to others. Of course, the festival had to deal with the fall out of this, which included visitors complaining about the genitalia of male nudes in figurative art depicting Bible stories ('Do you not have a mirror in your bathroom?' retorted my partner to one irate vicar) or telling me that I should not be selling Peter Redgrove's book Dressed as for a Tarot Pack (which I had published) as it was clearly an occult text. The critic was not appeased by me explaining that occult simply meant secret or hidden, and that the Bible was also an occult text.
The festival was also a place for late night discussions outside tents, often with whisky or beer involved, and it was during one such starlit conversation that our Scottish musician friends reminded us that church had nothing to do with buildings, denominations or organisations, but was simply the group name for those who had any kind of Christian belief. Their remark passed me by at the time, but when our children arrived we thought about it again and decided we wanted them to know a range and breadth of people just as we both had as children and teenagers. We were lucky in that the high Anglican church round the corner from us in Exeter was both welcoming and liberal. Its ritualistic mass suited us both (my partner was brought up Catholic), as did it's laid back attitude that implied the unstated: 'this is what we do, there are plenty of other churches in the city that do things differently, but you are welcome if this suits you'.
Our children are grown up now, and we live in a small Cornish village with only a C of E church. We attended for a while after moving house, but we haven't been for years now. I am more interested in Renaissance art and its depiction of angels and saints, and postmodern theology, where language games, philosophy and deconstructed secularism and sociology meet. I like the contemplative poetry of Robert Lax, and the letters, diaries and books of Thomas Merton, a monk who lived in a hermitage but would happily jump over the monastery fence to picnic, drink and chat with friends whenever they turned up. Merton may have lived alone and in seclusion but he was also able to clearly see what was going on in the world he was mostly separated from.
I can't quite go as far as Don Cupitt, who declared that God is only a social construct, but his early books are challenging and his radical ideas about what the organised church might be remain provocatively visionary. I prefer Mark C. Taylor's difficult books about, well everything: fine art, tattoos, theology, death, gaming, complexity, ritual, doubt, and why people believe in things. Or there are the books by ex-Bishop Richard Holloway documenting his gradual turn away from traditional Christian faith to doubt and disbelief. And David Dark's The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, whose back cover blurb starts with the question (in bold oversized type) 'Is Your God Big Enough to Be Questioned?' The book is more conservative (and American in focus) than that implies and than I would wish but I nevertheless found it inspirational and thought provoking.
The second half of Sydney Carter's poem 'Interview' sums up for me the position I find myself in:
So what do you believe in?
Nothing fixed or final,
all the while I
travel a miracle. I doubt,
and yet
I walk upon the water.
That is impossible
I know it is.
Improbability
is all you can expect. The
natural
is supernatural.
Where are you going next?
Like you, I ask that question.
I can only
travel with the music.
I am full
of curiosity.
I believe in questions. I believe in unanswerable questions, contradictions, doubts and impossibilities. I believe that we construct our lives and thoughts through language but that sometimes we run out of words. I believe in tentative, uncertain answers that suit the moment, and in asking unanswerable questions. I was brought up to debate, argue and discuss, and still believe in doing so. I believe doubt is as important as faith, and dislike those who are assured, blessed, convicted, convinced or sure. I believe in what my friend the poet A.C. Evans called 'the leap of doubt' as much as any leap of faith. It may be how I was brought up but Michael McDermott – whose quoted song lyric is the epigraph to this piece – is right that maybe God was there all along, even when my poems and paintings ignore or dismiss it or confuse matters.
