Monthly Archives: June 2026

I wake up in trouble. Don’t hide your face from me. What can I do to justify my days? They go up like smoke. How long will you hide? You fashioned me in my mother’s womb, in that secret place. You know my sitting and rising, my thoughts before they come to me. You’re on every side of me: where can I go to hide from you? Come then, please, and show me what they mean when they say you made all this out of love. Out of the depths you call me; out of the depths I call you.

Religion’s a funny one, Rob says on the way to the pub the next week.

Funny how? I say.

What does faith mean if it means believing in fairy tales?

It’s an act in itself. You like that kind of thing, don’t you?

You say that, he says, but where’s, like… the proof of it?

That’s with God.

That’s a nice get-out, though, isn’t it? he says. It’s like you only find meaning in the world after you believe in something that’s out of the world.

That’s true, I guess.

Look, I’m a socialist. I don’t think – ’

I know, I say.

So you just believe what the church tells you?

I believe in the creeds of the holy catholic church, I say.

So you’ve been brainwashed? he says.

You can call it that. A washed brain, wouldn’t that be nice.

I just don’t see it, he says. You people hide behind your faith. I’ll be honest, it’s infuriating. Look at how much harm religion’s done. I could give you an endless list. At least we try to change things.

Some of the folks in church do too, I say.

Yeah, but not because they believe in this world, on its own terms. They look at it through some mumbo jumbo, not the messy reality.

I don’t really believe in this world on its own terms, I say. Never did.

What, so you’re some kind of gnostic?

Seems like it’s pretty much ruled by evil.

You mean like the devil?

Yes.

Then the devil’s in church too, he says.

Oh yeah, he’s all over the place, I say as we wait at the bar.

So do you think you’re a better person because you go to church?

I don’t know. Yes, maybe.

I’m not seeing much proof of it, he says. Though I guess you seem a bit nicer these days.

I hope so, I say.

A woman turns to stare at us as we get our drinks. I wonder what she’s thinking.

I still don’t get how you think, he says, as we make our way to the billiards table. The devil’s in this world, right?

Absolutely, I say.

So you have to fight him here?

Yes.

But you don’t really want to fight him in the real world, do you? You said you’re not that kind of person.

I guess it depends on what you think is real and what the real fight is.

There it is, he says. See, it makes no sense. We can go round in circles.

Fuck all that, I say. Let’s play some bar billiards.

Now you’re talking, he says. Heads or tails?

*

Dear God, I think as I walk home, you’re higher than the highest thoughts. No one can think you. You’re with the lowest too, the tortured ones on Earth, that’s what they used to say, isn’t it? Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, deliver us from evil. Have mercy on me a sinner, who doesn’t know what he’s saying.

My ex-girlfriend – a lame phrase for what she’s become for me – came back to Norwich over the Whitsun weekend to visit old friends. She had a window for me on Saturday. In the Boar she told me she was engaged to the man she’d left me for. I steadied myself for days of confusion. Might be weeks, I thought, as we talked and I introduced her to whoever was at the bar.

At Pentecost mass the next morning, I slipped back into the habits of mind that helped drive her away in the first place. It was as if no time had passed, no spiritual progress had been made. I judged people in the congregation in the same way I would have back then. I couldn’t master the envy and grief and bile that came up in me, even while the lesson from Acts was read about the Spirit coming down on the apostles. Heavenly things were paper-thin in comparison. Churchgoing these past few years was a pastime. The gift of tears was laughable. Strange how easily the eternal becomes a mere idea when some old wound opens.

Then, walking home, the old feeling of absence. There was almost a pull to it, something like real evil, what they used to call the devil’s work. I’d have left too, in her place, I thought, and cried tears of self-pity when I got home.