...Once again both [mother and neice] helped me to get the stuff up to my room. ...Mum decided she'd unpack my suitcase, so I didn't live out of it. ...So here now are all the books I want, some at home will even be thrown out though a few will stay here. But in a way I've still to sort things out on the shelves. In a way their help has set me up straight & I have my room as mine, plus the trinkets that help.
And also Judy found it good fun, which is important. It is a ride out for her and to see another place like this. Of course I am here and they are there, but at least it is just under two hours away. I plan to be back there with perhaps a night away this week. Some people here aren't coming back until midweek.
I register at University tomorrow. Then I intend to write two services - Monton and Cross Street - and then I've nothing...
And I've come here to a changed Federation. No we find "lay" students, that is rooms rented out to people not connected with religion. When I didn't realise this someone above had his radio thumping through my ceiling. I had to go and tell him to turn it down ~ he put it off. To me, this does raise the security problem in that you are supposed to be able to trust church people but anyone else is an unknown quantity, especially if somehwat anarchistic.
I first saw HE, and later CN [congregationalist], who I called on as it happened. ...CN and I found the Dickenson Rd fish and chip place shut. So we went to Rusholme chippy. Steak and kindney pie and chips I asked for... My S&K pie was filled with cheese. [and a group of us later went to a chinese shop near to the college for fish, and to play snooker where I comment that I was "quite simply useless".]
I attempted to go to Styal [Unitarian] church tonight... But I got lost well and truly & even ended up down badly surfaced roads and dead ends.
I got really pissed off this afternoon. The registration process was not completed but took ages & ages. First of all GE [at university, in Social Theology] spoke about the "questions" of this and that and "critically" the other. Yawn. I've heard it all before and she's just not into it in a fully deep way that would characterise a real academic. It doesn't come across. But I as much object to lots of bitty courses and compulsion to attend this & that.
[...]
And then back to where I filled forms in. I gave it to Dr S [university]. He had the computer which was printing my timetable and [he] said I'm the one doing time at Chorlton soon. "Er, yeah, how do you know that?" He said he is the husband of [Rev] BD. Oh is he then her name or she his name, I asked, reflecting being pissed off. He said he is hers & had said they keep their professional names. I said Chorlton was awful with just a few there and I wasn't enthusiastic about it. He said there can be quite a few there. Well a little later he said he will pass on my remarks. "Well, diplomatically." So I sort of said it's alright by me, as if I didn't want this whereas I do. I don't want a lot to do with Chorlton & there seems to be nothing there.
And thus I collapsed into a deep crisis which, in a way, began last Tuesday. The crisis is that no one goes to church, that churches are irrelevant to so many people, and I ought to have investigated teacher training in further education and I'm tired of academic work. But there are no alternatives and I began to think I couldn't slip into an ordinary job because I'm too analytical of people by nature. So here I am. But the crisis is very deep & I'm very pissed off. I made H [Unitarian student] laugh as I made something of this in terms of humour production. But it needed another booze up (only 1 pint and I'd have had more fish but it was shut) and I really have to sort myself out.
The [university theology] group includes a short haired woman feminist who has left any church but sees a need for a corporate life as well as personal. There's an ex-Roman Catholic priest who defected to the Anglicans because of overbearing Roman authority though not because he married (later) of theology. And an Anglican. There are a number of Methodists and therea re others from Luther King House.
This morning noise thumped through my ceiling so I went up and complained. From time to time, I said, I will want to study and it will have to be down. Don't be offended if I come up and knock. My computer is in my room. She turned it down then. I mentioned some of this to others and it turns out that this woman who will go to her Anglican church when at home in Liverpool (but none here) is the president of the student body. She would be the person to report to, thought some. I thought of the Domestic Bursar, or the boss.
At the meal tonight she introduced the other two women above me, one also at UMIST and the other doing Comparative Religion.
One, the C R one, is a blonde and - tonight got rather worked up about her. They had gone into the pub, I presume, and someone said BH used to go to the Queen of Hearts. When I was down there there were so many students that you had to queue to get in. I went to a nearby pub, it was crowded too. - incidentally had been to the aerobics and said everyone tried to get to the front the see the women (resident here) doing it. But I said the blonde liked my mooing milk carton (she tried at first to open it).
I like the idea of some "fresh" women around, but obviously this sin't so good. Yet I'll see how it goes, like th next week.
I myself met the only black guy here, as he was in during some of the news. I actually farted which led to some laughs. He said about this place, that he doesn't mind, and that a Muslim keeps trying it on asking if he's Christian or not. So I said be a humanist, and tell the Muslim to "get lost". He said there has to be something wrong with the treat to kill Salman Rushdie. At the time was the East German crisis and he said Marx and Trotsky never wanted what there is in East Europe. Yes, but, I said, he has to aks himslef if what they proposed would become what they got> he put it down to human frailty. Yeah!
S (etc.) ...had been worried about Sister WJ's rough anti-white middle class male sermon creating here some reaction against. I just said that a lot of it is middle class individuals curing their own guilt, but then I wasn't there. ...Anyway S said they are still trying to work me out and A called me an "atheist preacher" and thought this a good idea. His mother a Roman Catholic, his father secular and he said I was beginning to sound like his father. "Good," I said. ...He seemed quite a world wise chap...
Another one is Anglican/ Catholic and Christian. Do I believe Christ is saviour? No. Unitarian (he knew this, someone must have said) but presumes I believe in God. No, not as a being some way beyond us. Oh well he definitely can't be humanist. He'd been on the 'pyjama pub crawl' with ten pints and ten pubs cosing £10. He didn't feel like much of a conversation.
[...]
[...]
V [URC student] started telling G that I should become next year's Body Officer of Keeper of the Ducks, ie plastic ducks which people occasionally nick and hide but should be at the fountain.
Telltale signs suggest one of the girls above has used my small milkpan to cook food. The pan is missing, the packet is there.
I managed to talk to some of these young people. Some of them are quite pleasant; one though is cocksure and rather arrogant - and he was the one who'd pinched my pan. This morning on seeing him return it I gave him my washing up liquid and told him to clean it. Later I did it again.
He asked... straight out the rather luscious blonde girl. Naivity is all around. it is alright as such as long as it isn't cocksure. But the music above my room became very loud tonight leading to yet more calls to turn it down, and that cocksure youth spoke of swapping rooms.
...So the youth having been told 7:30 on involves study time, and music must be on low, was told further at that timethat I will find out the situation from the Domestic Bursar. He lives below; the real culprit is the BH character who always seems to be on a high anyway. So I will indeed check out the situation... One thing is for sure - I can't stick that noise above for a year. ...And the other side of it is that it harms my recovery. Suddenly i want to stay and next minute the nooise undermines me.
Talking Unitarians
It's been all talk today. N has pulled off a good move by ditching the Certificate in Theologywith its narrow biblicism and getting GE to agree that he does the Diploma. If he went further he could aim for the MA, though he lacks the academic base for that. So he'll be doing the course I'm doing. I noticed when he spoke about it, some of the essays and deadlines etc., that he got essay lengths and times wrong. But it is good for him to be broadening these matters. And he appraoches it with interest whereas I have a certain weariness about the matter.
The achievement, N said, had caused rows with his wife who was only prepared to see through another year especially living in a red light district... And he was wanting a church placement which would be ongoing to pay him money and thus have congregation/s to assist in getting proper accommodation... But when his wife appeared it was quite different. She was pleased he had got this [course] and from getting it this morning the rowing had stopped as she could wee what he was doing. Nor did she think much of his congregation plan.
She came in for the Unitarian lunch... And in the get together I'd taken my toys. B really liked the mooing milk carton and G [Principal] too very much... The toilet spraying out water was a laugh. He and she were baffled by the coins trick. Where did they go? asked G. [Showed trick playing cards] ...My silver goblets I described as KA's tea cups, which caused some fun.
But the biggest laugh came from my dry critical humour... B spoke of Free Will and Evil in which there's an hour and then they have an hour to go out and read. So I said that's the time to go out "and do something to somebody" and then "report back to say how you feel" - that later comment involving B spitting our her tea and equally had G in fits too. The point is why else whould free will and ethics have an hour to go out?
G later dismissed N's placement idea out of hand, to concentrate on the work [instead]. And he asked N to get H a RSV bible, ring binder and even a pen. This was done. But we just cannot undestand why G wants H to do this [H comes from a non-Christian area of Unitarianism]. N and I reckon it is showing the denomination's face in [the Federation]... But H can now pull out...
Meanwhile N's wife's anti-religion pro-religion double streak is fairly close to mine in some ways as N noted...
[...]
N's father wants him to pack in the ministry training and go on a scheme where a charity is a front organisation for taking on cottage hospitals and getting the government subsidy per bed. It would mean £14000 plus house a year. But N has said no, if only because N's father took interviews in national newspapers implicating N in [a controversial matter].
Talking to these kids had one area of interest. One was talking about his girlfriend, that he's had many, but this one is different. And somehow it was in its place for saying about me. Well he said that generations had been called David, with a lone Robert, and I said about Adrian in my line. But I wouldn't have children, I don't think. The luscious blonde (as I might call her) said about me not marrying, if it is to do with the church. oh no, it's that I haven't got a girlfriend and can't marry who isn't there. So now she knows!
G announced my first christening to do at Chorlton. ...I'm told she's Jewish and he's sort of Christian and both humanist in outlook. She said GT had given some books but not a lot or help in making a service. I said that my beliefs are that they may design absolutely their own service.
First reaction to G was "help!" but that I would meet the challenge. Suddenly this marginal carrer finds some outer value. I've told a few folks around here about it, and it shows the Unitarian's role.
I got registered this morning with the minimum of a queue... V [URC student] was going so I thought I'd go as well. She does the diploma, the Methodist dandy bloke her man [he wasn't], was also there registering for the Batchelor of Divinity.
[...]
I unfortunately read a notice for Baptists that the Christian Ethics course for the Certificate of Theology starts tomorrow. Oh dear, too late. I'm going home tomorrow to stay overnight and that is it...
Anyway, whatever, I got on with service production today so I could get ahead: yesterday I completed Cross Street and today I completed Monton. That means writing and editing to print...
I use three readings for the sermon to bounce from - the part of Genesis where the Garden of Eden is established, the Chandogya Upanishad where the earth comes from an egg (so does the sky) and the NT reading used by the worship group which was Romans 8. Except here it is different.
Like the theme pursued elsewhere about deconstruction and death of God and being unable to recapture the old religion except ironically, this time I go at mythology. And it is obvious that the garden and egg stories are myths to us now in a new paradigm... but no we know that myths are myths there is deconstruction. And Paul's creation groaning is often taken in some sense historical today, but it is all mythology, and yet seen as it's so today involves it like a magician doing tricks that we know. So it is deconstructed, and means we now have to make our own meaning. Thus I mention the death of God bit and a God of own feelings, direction etc. coming in.
This is for Monton and its has Hymns for Living hymns. Trouble is I can use them in churches which have them - but not Chorlton. How can I repeat the services? ...October 22 for the baby naming will need a lot of effort on my part. That is original writing alright.
Plans for that are to go to her house on Tuesday and to take worship material. But I'm also going to take some Unitarian bumph just to spread the message. I'll have to pick up that gown from home I think, though suddenly it would have been nice to have had the posh job... The woman had the first child done by Denise Boyd so we've had contact there. But I think it is important that she should know about the church that allows such a service to be possible. It is a means for the word to spread, so to speak, and it sure needs to.
[...]
This morning I went to see the Domestic Bursar, first to say I wouldn't be in on Friday night, in case of fire or anything. Oh good, thanks for saying, he said. people had stopped doing so, they must bring out the book again... Then I mentioned the noise situation and said BH is above me. Anyway, he said he'd alrady mentioned this problem to staff because he wants no friction between lay and ministerial students and she is quite responsible. I said I'm pleased to hear this. This, he said, is what his son at university calls "week nought" and I should wait until week one. Later on with H the Baptist someone had been to see her about my complaining. She asked H if it was noisy. "Yes it was noisy," he said.
Later H had complained to G. And it emerged that he had left his room and gone to the TV room to escape the noise. But one of our liberal friends said she was above him and he never heard a sound....
After yesterday's disgusting piece of meat (fatty, uncuttable) and the boss (G) promoting vegetarian food I decided that next week I'd go veggy and marked the meals accordingly. He called the flavours "subtle". Well I'll see.