Bad Dreams And "Rescued" Images

The night before last it was torture porn and last night it was an angry ghost. I thought maybe I'd had a stroke because in the dream I was sort of lisping out of the side of my mouth, but I woke up and I hadn't. Phew!

I was sorting through my Scrapbook yesterday afternoon- dropping some images, uploading others, shuffling the pack. Here, apropos of nothing in particular, is a "rescued" image of Tossa de Mar from 2005



And another of Ashton under Lyne



 

Immortal?

Google tells me that a quote from one of my Guardian articles (this one dated 1990) turns up in a popular handbook about (of all things) the Johannine literature. Wow, I'm a serious theologian, who'd have known?

I was writing about the Holy Spirit. I said the Holy Spirit is flames and a rushing mighty wind- and you might want to stand well clear. Yes, I wouldn't quarrel with that.

The Guardian has archived all its back issues online- which means the articles I wrote for it are there for anyone to read. There are quite a lot of them- documenting my progress from liberal Christianity to born-again Paganism. Not only am I a serious theologian, I'm immortal.

Only I'm not really. The self who wrote those pieces isn't me. He took himself more seriously and had a more extravagant, more laboured prose style (which he'd cribbed off G.K. Chesterton). I'm not sure I'd have much patience with him if we did that Tardis thing and I were to cross my own timeline. He'd probably find me frivolous.

Of course the current me isn't me either. He and I and a million others are moments in a continuum of 57 years and counting.   

"In my end is my beginning"? Maybe, maybe not- though I do find myself looping back to where I was when the journey charted in the Guardian began. For a while I could hardly write the word "God" without a sneer. Now I think it's as good a word as any for the unnameable and incomprehensible. 

It's fun to think and have opinions but we shouldn't kid ourselves that our thoughts and opinions are in any way important.