The Downshift Project

So we’re into November, sailing past Halloween and Bonfire Night. It’s wet and mild. Welcome to Wales in late 2009. As usual it’s been too long since my last post. All sorts of reasons for that which I’ll probably get into below. It was this time last year that I first came to Carmarthenshire to see this house which is now my home. I remember arriving and being amazed by the beauty of the place, all the trees and the streams and the air so incredibly clear and fresh you could literally taste the difference from London. It still amazes me to this day. Every time I step outside I’m filled with such happiness that I’m able to live here. Yes the house is old and wooden and rustic and needs a big repaint, but who cares? The whole landscape is utterly gorgeous.

Growing season for the year has pretty much come to an end. There are still one or two new raspberries in the raspberry patch every time I go outside, but everything else has ground to a halt. My lovely woodland steps which I was so proud of in the Spring, are now completely covered in leaves from the big old oak tree that looms ominously over both garden and house. At some time this winter I’m going to have the oak cut. I feel very bad about this, but as well as blocking the light, it could easily drop branches onto our LPG tank, or even the house itself, if a storm was bad enough. Anyway, I’m putting off the inevitable.

Still no woodstove installed, so this winter we’ll be relying on gas for heating. Expensive, but installing woodstoves isn’t exactly cheap either. Financially, things have improved a little as I’m working through a 3 month contract with an indie iphone software developer I met on twitter. This job has been hugely enjoyable for me. Initially I was going to be spending half my time on .NET business applications, and half on iphone stuff, but instead I’m full time on iphone game development, which is the most fun I’ve had at work, like, ever. God willing, the game I’m working on will be a success and provide the finance to allow the boss to re-hire me again next Spring. I’d never have imagined this time last year that I’d have downshifted my way out of soul-sucking investment banks and into something fun and creative, working with lovely people.

Not only that, but I’m getting to know all kinds of people in the local community. It feels so much like home now. I don’t think I could ever live in London again. I’m still occasionally getting offers to go back to work in London, for hedge funds or banks, but why would I? That part of me is dead now. Eight years ago I encountered a group of young people trying to live in community in an eco-village, and that completely changed my dreams. It’s taken all this time for reality to catch up, for my addiction to career to unravel. And now the old conditioning is done with, the real me is starting to take flight.

A couple of weeks ago I had my first training day for the hypnotherapy/counselling course I’m doing in Cardiff. This is something else I could never imagine myself doing a year ago. I have essays to write, and books to read, and I need to practice. Fortunately a couple of people have already come forward who are willing to let me practice on them.

Dave has been away in London for the last few weeks, finishing the long painting job on his boat (can you believe he started on it last February if I recall?) and working on passing his driving instructor exams. He has a re-test in a week or so. So I’ve had the house to myself and have taken the opportunity to go out and socialise rather than stay in and watch tv. As a result I think I’ve done more miles on my motorbike in the last month than in the whole of the previous 12!

My last significant post on this blog was the 21st September. You may recall I was engaging in some religious soul-searching. Three days after that post I started attending the local Anglican church’s Alpha course. Alpha is a weekly evening of talks, food and open discussion about Christianity. I decided to go along because despite not believing in God, I’d come to realise that unlike most other atheists, I actually did want to believe.

It’s easy to ridicule religious faith as crazy and unscientific, full of made-up bigotries in the name of dogmatic tribalism. So often the only time Christianity (or Islam for that matter) appears in the news is when its adherents are engaged in behaviours that secularism finds offensive. One easily gets the impression that religion is just about crazy beliefs and oppression of others and repression of oneself. But on the other hand, when I think back to the people in my life that I’ve most admired, the people I’d most like to be like, they’ve been exclusively Christian.

These are the people I look at and say to myself, “If only I could express love and care for others the way they are able to. If only I could give of myself like they give.” These are the sort of people, who, when you see them in a room, you cannot keep your eyes off them because they are shining inwardly with some kind of peace and joy most of us never experience except for the briefest moments. Maybe you’ve never met anyone like this. Maybe you meet them all the time. As for me, I found I couldn’t easily dismiss Christianity in the way that most of my atheist friends rejected it. For a start, I’ve always had a strong religious or spiritual streak. Religion has always been the most interesting subject for me in any conversation.

I’ve studied Advaita, Buddhism, Taoism (what’s left of it). I’ve read the book of Mormon and the Qu’ran. I have the Catholic Catechism on my bookshelf even though I thought belief in God was the sign of mental delusion. I definitely felt that God-shaped hole in my life. I needed a reason to live and love that was beyond my own selfish desires. So, yes, I wanted God to exist, desperately so. And I wanted to know how anyone could claim to have a relationship with a God they couldn’t perceive. How could anyone experience such a thing with sufficient certainty that their life would be transformed?

So I started asking every Christian I could about their relationship with God. Now you’ve got to bear in mind that I had previously been a Christian of sorts myself back in my early twenties, and at the time I came to the conclusion that everyone was simply faking faith, pretending for the sake of belonging. I figured that really, behind the shiny shallow smiles and homophobia, no one really believed there’s a God ‘out there’ who loves us. I mean, surely they’re just playing along for the good community and the authority that society gives to religious leaders to speak into our lives?

I posed this question to an Anglican vicar: “How to believe in God when there’s no evidence?” He wrote back thusly:

1) Coming to believe in God is not the product of a rational process. Any God believed in as a result of a rational process is an idol, a product of our own minds. There is an inescapable element of intellectual surrender involved, a ‘giving in’.

2) Believing in God is undoubtedly a matter of the heart – but that doesn’t make it irrational. It’s a delusion of Modern society that bringing emotion into play makes for a less rational debate, the truth is in fact precisely the opposite, but the heart itself needs to be educated. (That’s one of the things that religious traditions do, eg through prayer and meditation etc.)

3) Why is evidence so important for you? What do you think evidence can achieve? Are there any _really_ important areas of your life where you have made a decision based on “evidence”? Would you be willing to choose a life-partner on the basis of “evidence” or would you examine your own heart and trust that? If so, why have a different standard for God?

I came to believe because I realised that I had been deluding myself about ‘not believing’ in God, and that, in truth, I had been in love with God all along – it was the love for God that was motivating everything else, especially the search for truth.

I wrote a reply to the vicar that on re-reading now seems so painfully intellectual that I’m surprised he continued talking to me. I now consider that his first reply was perfect and complete but I didn’t grasp that until much later.

Almost simultaneously, a couple of other Christian friends gave me very similar answers. I felt a little dumb. After all, I’d been a Christian for 5 years myself after college, but never experienced any kind of relationship or communication with God. I’d become a Christian back then because of intellectual arguments that seemed to make sense, but I really didn’t get how those around me seemed willing to completely throw their lives into the service of an intellectually unprovable idea.

Something changed for me when I realised that I might not need intellectual scientific-style evidence in order to believe. Several people told me that faith is from the heart, not the mind. I began to think, ‘I feel such an urgent need to love God that I no longer care if faith is fiction. I’m going to act as if God exists and see what happens.’ Part of me felt this was intellectual suicide, but I felt there was no longer anything to lose.

I felt very comfortable at the alpha course meetings. I found it easy to make friends. I found the people easy to love. At some point between the second and third weeks I started to pray. I’ve prayed before. I prayed a lot in my twenties, most prayers of frustration at God’s silence. But I never prayed a prayer of love. I never expressed gratitude for my life, for the beautiful creation around me. I can blame it all on the gorgeousness of Wales drawing it out of me! So there I am, saying thankyou thankyou thankyou and for once it’s like there’s no doubt in my mind that I’m talking to someone. I go to sleep happy. The next morning I wake up, and the sun is shining through the window and immediately I feel an urgent need to start praying again. Thankyou Father for this awesome day! Thankyou for my life, that I can experience and be aware of this incredible universe. I’m so sorry that I ignored you for so long. Please forgive me. Thankyou for waiting for me! This went on for about an hour. Just this continuous stream of joyful thanksgiving.

I realised fairly quickly that I’d just fallen in love with a God that only days before I would have mocked anyone for believing in. Moreover, I noticed that what I was experiencing explained the behaviour of all those emotionally attractive Christians I’d found so mystifying. I suddenly knew how they could act the way they did. I dusted off my old bible – 15 years unopened, and suddenly the character of God that I’d experienced in prayer was evident on page after page. I felt like I’d slipped sideways into a faith I had no right to, and of course I don’t.

I used to pray for wisdom in my twenties, but now I realise I should have prayed for faith. Faith is a beautiful gift. You can’t capture it by intellect. I spent years trying and only achieved a fake sort of faith that had no reality or depth. The vicar was right. I was in love with God all along. And when I realised that, and sought after Him with all my heart, he opened the door, and granted me the faith I needed. I guess I expected it all to wear off after a few days. Emotions would fade and intellectuality would reassert itself. But… no. I’ve realised that the more I keep my mind focused on God, the more I talk to him, the deeper the joy becomes. Prayer is like the energy powerhouse that transforms the rest of our lives. In my experience it’s the only thing that can.

It’s hard to express the strength of the love I feel right now for my God. I find it amazing and wonderful that my experience of Him matches that of all the other believers both in the present and in the historical scriptures and writings. So for the first time in my life I know I have as much faith and belief as anyone has ever been blessed with in all of history. No more and no less. And that perhaps is the most joyous thing of all.

I would gladly be God’s friend forever. I’m still an innocent child in Christian terms, and I’m happy for things to stay that way for a while. I’m Just. So. Joyful. It almost explodes out of me. There just aren’t the words. I’d go to church every day if I could find one holding a service. High Anglican, low church, pentecostal, Catholic – doesn’t matter. I just love God. I love the way he says I Love You in the most unexpected moments. I love his tenderness, and his majesty; the soaring beauty of the way he revealed Himself in such a way that every type of person with every type of personality and talent can find a way home to him.

Love God, that’s the key. Love God and love others. And if you don’t believe in him, love him anyway; pray anyway, with all your heart and strength.

Why do Americans call Autumn, ‘Fall’ ? Autumn is a perfectly good and beautiful word, and given my mild synaesthesia, the word even looks the right colour, all reddy-brown and rustic.

I’ve spent the last couple of months away in Northolt, living on the narrowboat and repainting her for sale. After a slow start, Dave and I finally completed the work in late August and she does look gorgeous in coach enamel green.

I think the boat is a fantastic buy for someone. She’s far cheaper than the price I paid 2 1/2 years ago (because of the house price crash) and has been ‘blacked’ & repainted since then, plus engine serviced, a new cooker installed, and a shiny new boat safety certificate valid until 2013.

It’s a shame to sell her really, but unless I decide to take work in London again, she’s a tad expensive.

The problem with being away  from Wales most of the summer has been the way the garden has gotten severely out of control. Dave was here on and off but everything in the polytunnel was pretty much starved of water for 2 or 3 weeks at a time. The tomatoes did not like this. Nevertheless the crop they did produce (and are still producing) is absolutely delicious and next year I intend to improve their conditions immensely.

So what else succeeded in Wet West Wales? Runner beans cropped well, as did spinach and lettuce, once they grew above the slug onslaught. Also, Chard. Cauliflowers and cabbages… not so much. Next door has a fine array of celery and leeks which make me very envious – all ours got eaten while we away boat painting. I had loads of leeks one week – the next, nothing. Not sure what took them – they were too big for slugs.

I planted some sweetcorn for a larf. Didn’t expect anything to come of it in a wet semi-woodland location, but actually they’ve not done too bad. I mean, they’re still there for one thing, which can’t be said for every crop we’ve put in the ground. Not sure there’ll actually be any corn at the end of the day but it’s all about experimenting to find what works. At least, it is for me. I hate being told what works and what doesn’t… I’d much rather find it out for myself. After all, other people could be wrong. It happens quite a lot you know.

We cropped quite a lot of onions and potatoes – albeit small, but we think we would have had more if the land a) had been well manured and b) had more light. So the plan is to take out more obstructing trees this winter, including the big oak that towers over the house and garden like an ominous headmaster. I feel quite guilty about this but hey, it’s one oak tree on the edge of a woodland, not the Amazon rainforest.

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Dave is still working on his driving instructor training. He has a final lesson next week before his ‘part 2′ driving test in a few weeks’ time. This is where they test your driving skills to extreme levels of perfectionism. Once that’s passed, he gets to go on to learn how to be an instructor proper. Then there’s more tests. Then, finally, he can solicit business and earn money.

For myself, the very nice work-from-home programming gig I thought I’d secured back in July unfortunately went away at the last second. They agreed to hire me but then decided they couldn’t afford to take someone on after all. This was a great shame as I really liked the company’s owners and would have enjoyed working with them I think. In the last couple of days however another opportunity has arisen which potentially looks even more exciting. I’m currently in the interview process so I don’t want to say too much at this stage or count any chickens.

I’ve really been indulging my love of coding recently after becoming inspired to get into iphone/objective-c development. After so long immersed in Microsoft technologies (c#, .net, sql server etc) and business applications, the wonders of objective-c, cocoa and core animation are a new and fascinating thrill. The iphone as a software platform reminds me of the early days of ZX Spectrum gaming – you can still make something worthwhile either on your own as a coder, or in partnership with an artist, or as part of a small team. The day will probably come again when you need 100 people and a $200m budget to make a game for a mobile platform, but for now it’s the pioneering days again. I was just too young to get involved when 8 bit computing was kicking off, so I feel like I have a second chance 25 years on. I definitely feel a surge of excitement when I get my little sprites running around a scrollable maze on the little iphone screen. It reminds me of my teens when I used to design and create board games. I may have missed my calling the first time around…

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In late October I’m starting my counselling course, which runs one weekend a month over in Cardiff. This is something else I’m really looking forward to. I had a few therapy sessions back in Northolt and found the experience very helpful, so I’m excited to be able to learn some of the skills myself. Almost as interesting as the study will be meeting a bunch of people who are dedicated to learning and practising the therapeutic process. It is always a pleasure to be around such folk.

I find the same attraction to being around religious people, even though I’m an atheist, and this is really what I wanted to talk about in the second half of this post. I’ve noticed recently that despite an increasing willingness on my part to admit to a complete lack of belief in supernatural deities of any description (encouraged no doubt by strong atheist voices such as Richard Dawkins and Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio among others), I still find the idea of faith and God completely compelling, as if I’m yearning for something I’m excluded from.

There’s no question that I wish I believed in all all-powerful deity who loves me. There’s no question that I’m envious of those who can and do believe in the existence of such a being, without any great evidence to speak of. But this yearning I think may say more about my experience of growing up and my relationship with my parents than anything about whether a god exists, let alone the quite specific Judeo-Christian God.

But whatever the reason, there are certain aspects of religious faith and practice I find incredibly appealing, something which also applies to many adherents of said religions – particularly the more liberal-minded inclusive types such as anglicans, methodists and so on that don’t see misogyny and homophobia as their raison d’être. When I meet people who are deliberately and consciously trying to become better people and bringing the practice of virtue into their lives, I find that incredibly attractive. So it seems a shame sometimes that I can’t just join in by willing myself to Believe in things I can’t perceive.

I do know that when I act as if God exists I feel a sense of completeness and peace. Sometimes I have conversations with my imagined idea of what God would be like if he existed, and I can imagine that if I was a believer in such things I would call it prayer and feel hugely reassured and fulfilled by the communication.

I’m treading a fine line here. Atheist readers of my blog will no doubt be appalled at this equivocation. It does seem to me that there are three very distinct categories of people on this subject: There are those who simply utterly believe in God and will never be convinced out of such a thing. There are also those who simply will never subscribe to any kind of religion (except maybe the religion of scientific enquiry).

Dave is one of these people. I cannot imagine Dave under any circumstances getting on his knees and praying to a supernatural being. It just would never happen. He has his own beliefs about right and wrong and although most of them will have been directly or indirectly inspired by Christianity simply because of our cultural heritage, I don’t expect I’ll ever see him worshipping or communicating with God, or taking instruction from any kind of spiritual authority.

For myself, and I know I’m not alone (although we may be rare), I find myself flitting nervously between the two camps. Intellectually I see no evidence of a transcendent deity except for the existence of reality itself and the self-awareness to perceive and consider it. Maybe there’s a creator beyond the universe, but absent some kind of definitive communication, it seems like the possibility solves nothing. Maybe we’re all AI subroutines in a massive computer; how would we know? But regardless of the intellectual questions, I still find great peace and happiness in bowing down before an imagined creator and expressing gratitude for my life and the wonders of existence. And I love to hang out with people who feel the same way, especially if they can get over those many years of self-righteous petty theocratic indoctrination by people who only found satisfaction in power and authority.

Some of these same sentiments are also expressed in the first part of a three part article about an American woman’s seven year journey into Islam. Only part 1 has so far been published but the reasoning the woman offers for converting to Islam sound remarkably familiar to me. None of it was driven by a belief in God. She actually had to indoctrinate herself into belief in order to experience the belonging and understanding and acceptance she was seeking. Some of us just love to join religions. We love that moment of intellectual and spiritual submission, even though we don’t believe.

I don’t as yet understand this motivation I experience to be a committed believer in some kind of spiritual path. It rides in horrendous conflict with my intellectual scepticism and causes a kind of perpetual cognitive dissonance. I know I yearn to be a kinder, less selfish person, and communion with God – even a made up imaginary God – seems to be efficacious towards this end in a way that nothing else seems to be.

For almost every Christian I admire (and I do admire Christians more often than atheists I confess), a relationship with God almost forced itself on them at some point in their lives. Anyone who is intellectually argued into a belief in God will later tend to be intellectually argued out again. Those that stick it out for the long haul tend to be people who just find the whole intellectual debate irrelevant. They have this thing called Faith, which doesn’t mean they necessarily ignore evidence, but that they accept they don’t know the answers, and decide to submit their lives to their idea of God anyway, because they love it/her/him so much.

It’s this passionate love for an ideal while suffering in a state of uncertainty and unknowing that I find completely admirable, and this is why I will never feel the sort of dismissive abhorrence expressed by many hardcore atheists towards believers as if the latter were stupid and ridiculous children to be scolded, mocked and laughed at whenever the opportunity should arrive.

And it wouldn’t surprise me at all if I didn’t have another go at trying to be a believer at some point before I die. I still love God, even though I don’t remotely believe in Him.

 

We’ve been back in Ferryside for a few days now, after a week on the boats cleaning them up for sale. The change here over the past week has been enormous. The bluebells are now flooding their colour across the woodland floor, and around the edges of our garden, where they hold sway, taking over from the daffs. Even the big old oak is now unfurling its leaves and dangling its blossom.  

The broadbeans I started in a seed tray and planted out a few weeks ago are enjoying another spurt of growth and might need support sticks soon (though this variety is supposed to be able to cope without them). When I saw how quickly the beans developed huge root systems I decided to plant the rest of the (big fat) seeds directly into the veg bed. I thought for a while they weren’t going to come up but yesterday I found at least five had emerged, looking strong and healthy.

The onion sets are doing very well, all sprouting thick green shoots. The birds have given up trying to dig up the onions for now. At first, we would come into the garden each morning to find half a dozen had been plucked from the ground and needed replanting.

In the front garden plot, which I figured could be a herb garden, I made the mistake of planting a few rows of radish and lettuce. These have become slugfood. I’ll be lucky if I see six radishes out of the three rows I planted. I’m not sure right now what anti-slug weaponry to employ. There’s chemical warfare, biological warfare, physical warfare (chucking them over the road when caught red handed) or spraying my plants with various ‘tea’ concoctions the efficacy of which are unknown to me until I test them. Beer traps are supposed to be futile. If you have any foolproof methods – the less polluting the better – do let me know.

 

I have a lot of leeks on the go, but these are still in their baby pots and will take a while before they need planting out. I read that one is supposed to wait until the leeks are pencil thickness before putting them in the ground. This could take a while, as they’re more needle-like than pencil at the moment. Also I’ve noticed that the birds seem to be having the occasional field day with my leeklings. I had a bunch of leeks doing just fine in one of my larger pots for a couple of weeks, then *poof* they all vanish. It’s either the birds or the fairies. If it’s the fairies then I hope I’m earning brownie points. Anyway, I’m finding that the nearer the pots are to the house, the safer the crop. Maybe there is a zone of human control that the critters respect.

 

Mark, our wonder-outdoorsman neighbour, gave us some very sprightly cabbage plants that were surplus to his requirements. I’m loathe to plant them until I know how to fend off the slugs. I don’t want to replace radish slugfood with cabbage slugfood. I can see I will have to set up some kind of cloche system. When Dave gets the polythene over the polytunnel, we should have some spare plastic to use for cloches.

All this work feels like play at the moment, because we are experimenting and learning. We have several wise old owls to advise us so we’re not completely helpless, and anyway I quite enjoying making mistakes and learning what works and what doesn’t, and why. Take the tomato plants for example. I did peppers last year on my boat, which started in a propagator and then spent their lives in pots on the windowsill, but this is the first year I’ve tried tomatoes. I duly put seeds of the ‘moneymaker’ and ‘beafsteak’ varieties in my propagator and turned up the heat to 27C. Sure enough I got many really heathy strong tomato plants just gagging for more light. They were off to the races! So I figured I’d pot them on, as you do, and give them pride of place in front of the south-facing window in our bedroom. But as soon as I watered the plants in their new pots, disaster! All the leaves shrivelled within minutes and the stems collapsed, leaving the plants looking as good as dead. What on earth!?

I wondered if i had damaged the roots or something during the transplant, or bruised the stems, but surely the effect wouldn’t be this bad? Then later I read about how when tomato plants are watered after transplanting, you have to make sure the temperature is around 27C to avoid a cold water shock to the plant. The soil of course is 27C in the propagator, so this makes sense. Can’t expect the tomato to respond happily to 5C water after spending its first few weeks enjoying 27C! So I re-watered with 27C and lo and behold, even the apparently murdered tomatoes are starting to perk up again, reinflating their tender leaves.

 

No doubt the experienced gardeners among you will be looking at me with horror at my ignorance, but that’s okay. I am learning as I go, and I learn far better from personal experience than being told things. One of the most satisfying things recently has been discovering that I can not only identify willow trees from their flowers, but also sex them by looking for the stamen on the male flowers. (Willows are dioecious and have flowers of only one sex on each tree). Ours is female. This feels like something one should learn aged 8 rather than 38, but hey, that’s the society we live in. Timeless knowledge and wisdom gets devalued in favour of spending years learning how to price sophisticated financial instruments (which I did, by the way, along with my slightly more useful computer skillz). 

 

Speaking of timeless knowledge, I’ve been listening to the Damh the Bard’s Druidcast a lot recently and finding out more about this spiritual path known as Druidry. I used to hang around a lot with pagans in my late twenties, but they were mostly Wiccan and while I felt some connection to their inherent reverence for nature, it always seemed a bit too ceremonial and obsessed with magic for my liking. Not that I disapprove, it’s just that I didn’t feel at home with it for myself. Druidry on the other hand I’d only vaguely heard of as those wacky people who show up every year at Stonehenge or Glastonbury Tor to do the odd ritual before vanishing for the rest of the year. Turns out that actually Druidry has all the aspects of paganism that I do admire, and not so much focus on the bits I don’t like. In addition, there’s a huge emphasis on what they call ‘Awen’, which means inspiration. They harken back to the old Welsh bardic tradition of sharing wisdom through storytelling, something very close to my heart. If one combines storytelling with reverence for nature, and an experiential wisdom that leads to personal spiritual development, then I think you have the three main strands of what matters most to me in life. As with all pagan paths, dogma is rare. Just as the same story can be meaningful to different people in different ways at the same time, Druidic teaching avoids saying ‘this is how it is’, and focusses more on experiential learning.

 

Of course some people really really like to be told ‘how it is’, and take to authoritarian religion like ducks to water, and I’m very glad for them (when they’re not trying to impose said authority on me too). As for me, I’d just like a friend who knows me better than I know myself, to point out the way, and smile and laugh with me when I mess up, without judging. And for me it’s not just about being a better person, it’s about learning to live sustainably in the world, reclaiming a kind of tribal integratedness with our environment that we started to lose millenia ago. I don’t know why this is important to me. I could live my life in an apartment surrounded with hi tech, and never need to care what trees were growing outside, but somehow that just seems like a waste to me, like someone who has eyes spending their life refusing to open them. I am programmed to see beauty in the woodland outside my window, not in whitewashed angular walls and shiny cars on tarmac. And the more I understand how the wildlife around me is interdependent and interrelated to itself, the happier and more comfortable and contented I feel in my own skin, even as it ages and bends ever less willingly to my will. 

 

I have sent off for the Introduction to Druidry package from OBOD – the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids. I feel like I already know what I’ll read, but we’ll see. Often the best wisdom is the sort you never see coming!

Finally, just so I can use another couple of photos, yesterday we visited Llanstefan castle, which is across the Towy estuary from Ferryside. Here’s the view over the river. The other picture is just of Dave lying down. He wasn’t feeling very well…… [sorry].