Monday 22 March 2010

Cholesterol and Hell

I’ve booked tickets at Party on the Lawn (http://www.partyonthelawn.co.uk/) and so will get a chance to see Chris While and Julie Matthews play live. Sally and my elder daughter (now, doesn’t that sound a little over-formal?) are coming along as well. It’s a noon until midnight affair and it looks good to me. The more I listen to their music, the more I like it.

Over the past few weeks there’s been a Surrey Swans get-together, a buffet at Kathie & Billie’s and a trip out shopping and dining in Windsor.

I timed things not-too-well for the buffet. Cutting a long story short … I ended up with my annual-ish blood cholesterol test sample needing to be taken from my arm the morning after the buffet … and I had to fast for fourteen hours. So Andrea had to sit and watch everyone else eating the wonderful food and just take an occasional sip of water.

When I got to see Nurse Nicky the next morning … as I rolled up my sleeve I said I’d be looking the other way … the sight of my own blood makes me faint. She quipped back … that’s fine … I’ll look the other way as well.

The trip to Windsor was with Billie. It was the usual kinda thing. In and out of shops and lunch at Cafe Rouge. I bought some food at Marks and Spencer’s and some nail polish and moisturiser at Boots.

The election is approaching and a lady handed me a Labour party leaflet. I had a little chat with a man that was selling … or maybe giving away books about some kind of spirituality and meditation. He seemed nice enough, but it was one of those conversations that opened with the question “Have you thought about what happens after we die?”.

Well, I have. Quite a lot over the years.

I’ve journeyed from childhood faith through atheism, born again Christian and then to agnostic and now … a part of me would like to believe … but mostly I’m not able to. It all doesn’t make sense to me.

As I was chatting with the man, Billie explained that she was a totally committed atheist.

I’m not at all sure what I am … but if there is a God I hope that he or she is different that the one that I used to believe in. I believed in the all loving and all forgiving kind of God that evangelical Christians believe in. But in the final analysis it also meant that I believed that it was likely that the vast majority of people that had ever lived would spend eternity in hell.

Whatever is true … I hope that it’s something different than that.

That first ever shopping trip as Andrea seems along time ago now.

It’s nice that to step outside as a feminine me seems more and more natural as time passes.

2 comments:

Pretty Sissy Dani said...

In my experience, evangelicals claim to believe in all-loving, all-forgiving God, but when you ask them about His judgment, you discover he is loving and forgiving only of those who believe "correctly".

I much prefer the God I have discovered in my 30 years as an Episcopalian...one who truly loves and forgives everybody--without regard to their beliefs about Him.

Andrea said...

Thanks Dani :)