tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6496460488742488789.post5955288191207863974..comments2024-03-18T10:29:46.055+00:00Comments on Ken Armstrong Writing Stuff: Easter is a Hard Habit to BreakKen Armstronghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07775956557261111127noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6496460488742488789.post-85468498349849307862014-04-19T11:16:11.465+01:002014-04-19T11:16:11.465+01:00I think we all arrive at our own view on things as...I think we all arrive at our own view on things as we get on a bit. I'm fine with what anyone believes so long as it isn't hurting anyone else. <br /><br />What irks me mightily, though, are those folk who are firmly convinced that their way it the only correct way and that they have to convince everybody else of that too. <br />Spare me those ones.Ken Armstronghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07775956557261111127noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6496460488742488789.post-77068472130200251202014-04-18T16:18:27.725+01:002014-04-18T16:18:27.725+01:00As you’ve probably notice I tend to avoid talking ...As you’ve probably notice I tend to avoid talking about the kind of religious upbringing I had. I wasn’t a Catholic. Most people I knew who weren’t Catholics weren’t the slightest bit religious. That seemed to be the divide in our town, the Catholics who went to mass, the Protestants who didn’t bother their arses and us. When my daughter was born I said—announced more like—that I wouldn’t make the same mistakes my father did (and mostly I didn’t) but that I’d make my own mistakes (which I did, very much so). My first wife was a Catholic and my marrying her did not go down well with my family even though she was lapsed and I was losing interest. After we got married and I moved out I had the difficult job of telling my dad that I’d decided to go my own way. I think I hedged my bets and didn’t go as far as saying I didn’t believe—that would’ve hurt him—but I still no longer wished to practice the faith I’d been brought up in. And mostly I didn’t but eighteen-odd years of indoctrination is hard to shake and when the marriage fell apart some five years later I drifted back and decided to explore my spirituality assuming my problems in the past were simply a matter of immaturity. Problem was I didn’t seem to have any sense of the spiritual. I could appreciate religion intellectually and I suppose emotionally although I never did get choked up over the fact God gave his only-begotten son for me. I decided to go through the motions and see if I could grow a faith. Ten years later I realised that was never going to happen. I don’t get spirituality in the same way I don’t get homosexuality. I just don’t get it. I get that some people get it. I’m happy that they seem happy with what they’ve got but the bottom line is that I simply do not see why a man would choose another man over a woman. It doesn’t bother me that they do as long as they don’t start chasing after me and that’s pretty much how I feel about religion. What one man or woman chooses to believe in the privacy of his or her own home (or in their designated place of worship) is fine by me. Just don’t ask me to get on board. I don’t care. I’m not interested in debating the questions anymore. <br /><br />I wrote a poem about it once:<br /><br /> <b>The Human Race</b><br /><br /> (for Richard Brautigan)<br /><br /> A man cannot lose what he never had <br /> but he can give up trying to get it. <br /> Just walk off the track. <br /> Come, join the rest of us on the bleachers. <br /><br /> It's that easy. <br /> Catch your breath now.<br /> It's too hot to run.<br /><br /> I've heard say parallel lines never meet. <br /> Sometimes they seem to – in the distance –<br /> they disappear over the horizon <br /> so no one knows for sure. <br /><br /><br /> Friday, 25 May 2001<br><br /><br />I made a comment on Dave King’s blog back in 2009 which I’ll replicate here since it’s relevant:<br /><br /><i>I find the distinction between agnosticism, atheism and godlessness interesting. I have to say although I am now resolutely irreligious I really don't feel I come under any of these headings. The position I take when pushed is that I don't care if there's a God. I would have thought I could call it indifferentism but the Catholic Church has already pinched that one; indifferentism, as far as they're concerned, is the stance that one religion is as good as another and, of course, I don’t hold with that.</i>Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.com