Last week wasn't the best time for me in my job as a teaching assistant for reasons I'll not bore you senseless with here by chronicling all the ins and outs and of course it'd be very parochial too for me to do so but I'm mentioning it here as it represented a thankfully rare time in my life when I can become fundamentally fed up with how it is panning out and following on from this quite depressed actually.
I'm as fallible and as flawed as any other human being and people who value me in their lives (aside from unconditional parental love and affection which I can overwhelmingly identify with myself for four years now and counting) would want me to actually be more forceful as a personality type and show what I can really do more than, in reality, I get round to as it happens.
I have always been my own worst critic though and however much I've tried to cultivate and hone a pokerface and become thicker-skinned in more recent times as an aid to getting on I cannot completely expel the fact that I wear my heart on my sleeve and I soon develop a deep and lasting emotional attachment to anything I put my heart and soul into.
The flip and down side to this feeling though is when it goes awry in some way as then I take it very much to heart and it's a big fall from grace for me.
What, I feel, has helped keep me sane and focussed down the years is an ability to see my shortcomings and own up to them as and when they crop up and as it's a much sought-after national trait of the British anyway I also like to think that occasionally I'm half decent at being self-deprecating too.
I also strive to remain down to earth and not get too up myself at any time.
So it takes a lot then to really get me down and almost despairing and last week was one such instance of that happening sadly.
More on this later though when the point to this piece will be more apparent.
As a precursor to the rest of this piece I would like to tell you about a Saturday night spent a few weeks ago at a suite inside Manchester City's Etihad football stadium where my family and I joined by my mother were supporting the parents of a class mate at my son's school during a fundraiser for the Christian charity they have set up and run called Make Jesus Known.
Celebrating five years of MJK's existence the denouement to an evening of musical performances, a former City player turned comedian selling various donated items and memorabilia to the packed tables and a talk on the work of the charity was a speech given by the former world boxing champion Nigel Benn.
Famously to sports fans and not just specifically those into boxing back in the late 80's and early 90's he was known as the Dark Destroyer and via some fierce contests in which he pulverised many of his opponents this moniker was very apt.
Here though on a cold and wintry night in Manchester was the polar opposite of that persona as now based in Majorca and an ordained minister he recounted his life both before his rise to fame and the less than happy reasons for his meteoric ascent including his brother being murdered by white racists right through to his life now having become a born-again Christian which he professes to have given his life meaning that he simply didn't have before despite the fame and fortune that boxing had brought him.
Please see here to give yourself a better flavour of the up to date Nigel Benn.
After he'd finished speaking an hour or so later I got his autograph and he was as gracious then talking to me as he had just been reciting verses from the Bible.
To be frank I'm one of those British people referred to in the other blog linked to who is crushingly cynical about former sports stars and other celebrities finding God and religion once their best days in the spotlight are over and whilst I was somewhat star-struck admittedly at the prospect of sharing a room with someone who'd been a formative part of my sporting education I also recall feeling that it was going to be a very predictable and probably dull evening overall and I'd not really learn anything new.
To some extent this prejudice I'd felt on entering was confirmed but based on the power of his testimony and the resonance of his words that were heartfelt I was also, oddly to me, touched by what Nigel Benn had said and the person he was now happily and so enthusiastically presenting to the world.
Amongst other subjects religion is a permanent feature of my internal mental landscape now in 2012 and on a daily basis it seems something will emerge either in the public sphere of current affairs and the news or more mundanely in my personal life when I'll churn it over once more and possibly even feel compelled to tinker with my previous default position on it.
You could arguably say, to use some modern parlance, that I am conflicted by it as from my earliest days I was brought up in the Christian faith with all the trappings that that entails like Sunday School and for a fair chunk of time during my teens as a member of a group attached to the church that was like a religious rival to the Boy Scout Movement.
Often ridiculed for it the social pressure from this got to me in the end which I'll freely admit to and I caved in and walked away from wearing a crisply-ironed uniform, polishing up a tiny pin badge to the point of exhaustion some weeks (mostly mental as I set myself extraordinarily high standards that sweat and other built-up grime would defeat) and taking part in drills during which I only very rarely questioned the point of it all.
It could all just have been rebellious adolescence on my part and no doubt immature thinking too but I do remember my leaving the Campaigners as a pivotal moment in my life vis a vis religion as for the first time I consciously rejected what up until then had been an integral part of my whole identity as a boy as well as playing football and cricket for the schools and clubs I went to.
It suddenly felt really uncool to have anything to do with Christianity but aside from this transient sentiment for a second as all teenagers go through phases when certain things become the flavour of the month and then as quickly fade from their affections for some obscure and usually nonsensical reason I felt a deep down disillusionment with the church and turned my back on God and that whole story.
Having been soaked in the faith though for such a long time I found that I couldn't shake it off just like that and embrace a whole new lifestyle where it never got a look-in.
I wasn't about to become a full-on hedonist even if the era was perfect for just that sort of life with Rave going strong back then and causing many a moral panic in the press pack.
More pragmatically my oldest sister had met and then got married to a man who had trained to be a vicar and so for the rest of my days (I am fortunate to have a very good and harmonious relationship with my sibling) I was resigned to the fact that religion would inevitably and effortlessly cross my path every now and then due to this family tie even if I purposely chose to ignore it at other times and could go to weddings and the like and enjoy a brief snooze when those attending were asked to pray.
I'm not quite sure where my wholehearted disaffection with religion came from as whilst I have an interest in science and how things have come into being I'm not zealous enough about it either to want to disprove the existence of God with a meticulously prepared statement as to the origins of the Universe and that sort of thing.
It perhaps comes from my dad more than my mum in terms of the influential figures in my life to have an intense dislike for pomposity and grandstanding from people as if they are the best thing since sliced bread and I think this explains my feeling fed up with religion more than anything else.
Back in my youth having relegated the never-shiny pin badge to a dusty drawer I felt the church and its custodians were very uppity figures and that it was as much to do with their own egos being massaged by an appreciative congregation as it was about the message of their sermons that was their motivating force.
The church needs messengers though whatever guise they come in and so really it was organised religion as opposed to God and Jesus that I was leaving behind as I felt it was too self-aggrandising and was too easily a prop for the more vainglorious types who seemed to run it.
After that like other things that can lapse in your life like the sports practised so readily at school once the serious business of becoming a fully-fledged adult takes over with the responsibility to take care of yourself I just let religion slip from my consciousness and got into other stuff.
This didn't bother me at all though and I can't say I noticed much difference in my life.
A rude awakening from my indifference took nearly another couple of decades.
It was in 2005 I met my wife for whom religion could best be described as in essence being her whole raison d'etre and so suddenly religion was thrust back in my face.
I couldn't have one (her) without the other and as part of the process of courting her I'd steel myself and be taken to various church events that she was very keen on going to as in Ghana where she comes from much of the national psyche of that country is inextricably interwoven with the practice of religion.
To fully get this I would advise you (as is shown here) to take yourself along one Sunday to a Pentecostal church that has a Ghanaian audience and see for yourself the fanaticism (I mean this in the nicest and purest sense of the word) of those attending as to the eyes and ears of more typically reserved and understated British folks it is like a refresher course in how to enjoy yourself and let yourself go more than the traditional Church of England's sober and reflective look back on those events in your life in the week just gone that you want God to forgive you for and understand.
Leaving your inhibitions at the door would be a fabulous start and my foremost tip to get the most out of it.
Close to seven years on since our blind date in a pub near the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester I will own up and say that even if she hasn't wholly convinced me that making religion the main focus of your life is something worth doing I am no longer as openly hostile to it as I was just a relatively short while ago.
Which brings me back to my starting point as last week when I was feeling really down I started to do the customary thing I feel works well for me which is to count my blessings and accentuate the positive aspects to Graham John Robinson and all who sail in me etc.
Consequently my kids would get impromptu hugs and kisses from their dadda whether they liked it or not and I'd ask them to reciprocate as a basic gesture like this was working wonders for me by taking my mind off my problems.
It also unashamedly makes you feel good let's face it!
Some might say I'm just being a soppy old (ish) so and so and others with a more religious bent would point to the healing power of God's children (of whom I am also one I'm told) but I would just say that I'm seeking solace wherever I can get it in my hour of need and my kids are better than anything away from my wife that I have found since they landed in our laps to do just this.
This piece might seem very jumpy and possess an inconclusive tone to it to some people reading it - to be honest it's meant to be a work in progress on purpose - as I still really don't utterly know where I stand on religion these days even taking into account the positive experiences I've had of it in recent times some would argue which has rekindled a long-dormant awareness of it with my getting together with my lovely wife and then us spawning two equally gorgeous kids.
Every way I've looked at to express myself in this bit I've felt it might be unavoidable my sounding corny and hackneyed and so I've decided just to go for it and let others determine this for themselves.
To me then my family are the possible living embodiment of what religion means as something concrete that you can viscerally enjoy and I am thankful for them.
Whether or not they were created by a Divine Power is another can of worms which I'm sure I'll come back to at a later date.
For now what I'm really saying is that I'm open to persuasion again but for a wider crowd ie much of the rest of humanity in the UK at least to buy into this a few things have got to change beyond the comparitively lower level concerns of the General Synod last week, for instance, debating with itself as to whether female bishops should be permitted even if that is something I go along with myself.
Raking back over my life I think that another reason that I turned my back on the church is because my life experience during that time after leaving home was so jarring against what I'd been taught until then and in some cases a complete contrast to my comfortable childhood.
It could be that that was always going to be the case and there wasn't much I could've done to prevent this.
Life in the big wide world came as a nasty shock on more than a few occasions and I am in no way being disrespectful to those people that had done their level best like my parents and teachers at school to prepare me for it when I say that it shook my value system to the core as things that I'd once held dear were questioned to the point that I'd toss them to one side for not being useful anymore to me.
It'd be a psychologically omnipotent soul who is also religious who could also claim that they'd never wavered and had any doubts.
No such person has ever existed I feel and never will (even at my wife's church).
The point I'm making is that religion with its often repeated promises of salvation and a loving God etc. can frequently seem out of place in the frantic and unforgiving hurly burly of human experience and in a dog eat dog world.
This could possibly be why, to a larger extent than those within the church itself give credit for or want to understand, many people are resolutely secular and others proudly want to be known as atheists to go to the other side of the fence.
Personally I fall somewhere between these standpoints and could argue as fervently with an atheist as I could with someone like my wife whom I'd prefer to be more questioning of her faith even if I'm never likely to succeed.
To counter this apathy to religion the church has in recent times promoted itself via courses like the one here but for me it could even be said that this is too little and way too late.
Every Sunday or when I'm not preoccupied with something my family is doing or I'm ill etc. I will be a part of the congregation at my brother in law's church in Salford and despite my reservations about religion still it's no great bind as I like the other people who go there and the chilled-out ambience of the church building itself helps soothe my weary soul at the end of the working week.
It's therefore a source of comfort in my life.
This is not meant as a criticism and is more an observation (one I've told him about already) but I'd sooner my brother in law could mix up his interesting sermons which ordinarily reflect the Bible reading (that a few moments before has been revealed to the congregation) with an historical background to Christianity as apart from my liking history myself as a subject, in general terms I think the church could do itself a lot of favours and reach out to a bigger audience rather than just preaching to the converted the whole time if it touched on those areas where there is a gaping hole in the general knowledge of the public who are at home watching Sunday morning telly as well as the more esoteric passages from the Holy Book.
In this day and age of the internet some people might counter my suggestion by saying that if someone wants to really know all that stuff it's out there for them to access for themselves and the church doesn't have sufficient time and resources to devote itself to this.
I feel this would be a flimsy argument though as the church I think would be encouraged to know if they'd not completely sensed it for themselves already that instinctively I feel people do look for guidance be it through laziness on their part or whatever and so for the church not to fully exploit this trait in human nature is for it to be missing a trick and a big one too.
It shouldn't just be up to organisations like the BBC to provide this service and it be part of the National Curriculum in my view.
Fundamentally many people won't go to church or have anything to do with religion as they don't believe in God (from a Christian perspective that is as I don't want to discount the other world religions) but if the church went into their history a lot more rather than relying so much as I feel it does on heavy Biblical symbolism and recurring stories that can sound antiquated and clunky to a modern ear then they could well discover anew that people do want to be convinced deep down and just need something tangible to latch onto.
For too long it can seem to me like the church has got something to hide kind of and is being too secretive for no apparent reason unless there is something that it genuinely doesn't want people to know.
At the risk of sounding trite and too much like the back cover description of a Dan Brown novel I will leave it there.
I'd love to believe with all my heart as it's a great story and I realise that many committed Christians will say that that is what faith is all about by definition but whilst that might be fine for them I feel that they can't be too dogmatic and just expect others to implicitly understand what they mean.
Discuss!
