Innocence

I watched the flames lick higher at the woman chained screaming to the post. The white polished marble of the ruined church flickered with the light of the bonfire and the brands that so many of the people carried. In the corner a weeping man held himself, chained at the ankle he rocked back and forth, worrying the wounds around his legs, blood trickled onto the ground.

The songs of the faithful rose higher.  The man wailed louder. He kept shouting the same words.' I am sorry, I am sorry. I cannot, I cannot.'

 An unusual fear was in his eyes. Perhaps he was next? Hiding behind my mother’s skirts as she stood rigid, glaring at the coughing girl about to be consumed by the heat and smoke of the fire. There was no rain or breeze.

The priest walked around the outside of the pyre chanting. His black robes dusting the floor. The man in the corner stood. His legs and shoulders creaking and straining. Emaciated, withered, his veins bulged against the effort. The men by his side did not see, watching as they were the growing blaze.

I felt I was the only one who saw. The man in his rags and bloodied legs stepped out of his chains but moved no  further. He saw me stare and raised his finger to his lips. I want to say I saw yellow eyes and fire and anger come from him, I want to say that he was a demon who struck the blow that day, but he was not. He was a starved man who whispered something to the wind.

He stepped forward and moved through the crowd. No one saw him, no one moved. Their eyes fixed on the curling yellow and orange light of God’s fury. He stepped into the fire and held out his hand. The woman strained at her chains, closed her eyes and then took a simple step forward. The ragged man helped the woman in her white soot darkened smock from the flames.

They walked towards me. Hand in hand. They passed but the frail sickly man stopped and knelt.

‘Do you hate me child?’ he asked.

I shook my head.

‘Here’ he held out his hand. ‘You will come with us, you will be safe. I promise.’

I took his hand and slipped past my mother’s skirts. They brushed my cheek as I walked away from her. 

Into the distance I saw the town and started to make for the lights. Behind me I started to hear a rumble of thunder and then the cacophony of crowd in panic and fear for their lives.

 I looked at my arms and brushed dust from my sleeve.

‘Do not look back’ he whispered.

Beginnings

The cover of the small book is blank bar the title reference. It is embossed in old fashioned type, the letters dig into the creamy cartridge paper. Like the front page of a movie script trying too hard. A smudge of lipstick smeared across the front like a butcher’s thumbprint. The red makes me feel uneasy. An omen in a real library or a deliberate message here in the depths of the new unreal.

Then I open it to the greeting. First page. The words whisper to me.

‘Hello Garden.’ Two words are there, stark against the white page that doesn’t exist in the library that cannot be.

I can hear a voice say the words.

She knows I am here. Maybe she has even invited me.

 ‘Hello Garden.’

I turn the page and memories I never knew I had raise like floodwater. I am condemned. 

Do religions serve our societies or do societies serve our religions?

Scotland wants to introduce same sex marriage. Not the civil partnership – we have that – marriage – in a church.

This morning 500 Catholic parishes issued a letter condemning the move in words that can at best be described as anti-gay and worst as religiously motivated homophobia.

Do religions serve our societies or do societies serve our religions?

I stand; or rather sit aghast at the temerity of the Catholic Church as it tries to force itself and its antiquated views on the population of this great nation of Scotland.

I’m an atheist, which in the spirit of disclosure and fair play I’ll admit right from the off.

I don’t believe in God, but do believe in people: people who come in all shapes, sizes, colours and predilections.

People love one another and they make those declarations of love in all manner of ways. They buy flowers for a first date; they go and see the awful movie because they think it will make their loved one happy, they travel long distances, learn new things and eventually make promises like marriage.

In a world where one in every ten person is attracted to a member of the same sex it is anachronistic, no, it is offensive to deny 10% of people the right to be part of society.

Religions should serve the best interests of our societies. If a society elects a government and passes them a mandate for change, what right has an unelected body like the Catholic Church to stand in the way of that change?

Scotland has sought to throw off unelected rulers before. The Catholic Church needs to be very careful and think hard on my question.

Do religions serve our societies or do societies serve our religions?

If they get the answer wrong the consequences could be disastrous.

Check out :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-19383571

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/aug/26/same-sex-marriage-scotland-catholic

For more info.

Stories

The chime of hammer against the rough stone anvil woke the village. It always did. Jorri moved from under the covers and squeezed past his younger sisters. He threw on the foul smelling coat that his mother had said ready, but he could swear there was a pocket of flesh or sinew still there in the hide that touched his nose. Nevertheless it was his.

The weather outside the hut was still. The only light was from the forge starting to glow. A layer of snow on the ground a knuckle deep meant he could skip across to Thor quite quickly.

‘The master smith hammered again at the anvil, the metal beneath chimed and sang. Jorri wondered why no one else could hear it. But then he was supposed to be there.

‘I’ll get to the fire’ he said with an apology in his voice that met a recognition in the grunt from his master.

There was another chime.

‘Did I ever tell you’ Thor started to speak as he brought his hammer down again.

‘Tell me what?’ Jorri loved Thor’s stories. He grabbed a handful of oats and dried lingonberries from the bowl. He needed something in his twelve year old stomach, although it would only take a handful. Thor knew he stole a hand ful a day, he didn’t mind. He was always careful not to see.

‘Did I ever tell you my hammer’s name?’ He said, striking what was to become a sword for the chief of the village.

‘No’ the boy said, this was going to be a good one, the smith had probably been up since before dawn thinking up his tales. ‘what is its name?’

‘Not an it boy’ chime, ‘it is a he, all hammers’ are he.’

‘Sorry. What is his name?’

‘A long time ago’ he began, ‘my brother played an awful trick on my wife. I was enraged. I threatened to kill him, but then he said what if I got her some new hair.’

‘Go on’ said the boy, ‘tell me more.’

A slight difference

The final tests were over. The ability to cross between universes was theirs. John moved to the gate. It would flash and the test probe would be transported to a parallel world.  The physics was untested, the engineering experimental, but if it succeeded the ability to test their theories about multiverse theory and M-theory would increase exponentially.

The gate hummed into life. A ten metre square platform was surrounded by blue light. John spoke into his lapel microphone.

‘Test one, probe alpha one’ he took a sip of coffee with his left and hit the button with his right hand in expectation. The probe stayed exactly where it was. Hovering above the platform. John looked at his colleagues.

‘What the hell is going on?’

John asked the engineer to manoeuvre the probe away from the platform so he could have a look at the engines. This was not supposed to happen.

The probe sat to his left, a metre square it hovered on air blades before coming to rest. The technician looked it over.

Three hours later John found no fault with the machine.

He looked at the probe and a thought occurred. He turned it over. The mechanism was fine. He asked the technician to play back the tape. He loaded up the information onto the big screen. John watched for any clue as to the malfunction.

The view from the probe captured him looking worried, sipping coffee, hitting the button. Then a blue flash and then the same worried look and another sip from the coffee cup in his right hand.

Bus

The Bus kept going, into the distance. The airport run, a mixture of expectation and resignation on the coming and the going.

I sat in the coffee shop wondering whether I would ever get to go. The grand plans, the hopes of leaving behind the strain of a life that was slowly killing me.

I say that and I mean it. Programming is hard work, even in a successful company. The hours drag on, the push for results, the being a parent to five hundred employees that you want to do well. Being a boss and an underling, being on top and below. Shareholders tugging one way, directors tugging the other, the work weighing you down while at home sits a husband I promised to spend the rest of my life with, but my life gets spent on people who have bought me for a day, a week, a project. An intellectual whore.

What goes back to him is the empty carton that I came in. Then his smile tops it up.

I looked at my wedding band and took a breath. Maybe it was because it was Sunday; the day of rest and the prologue to another week, another long six day week of somebody else’s problems.

I imagined a lottery win then, a set of numbers, nothing massive, just enough to go, just enough to disappear. I imagined an alternate universe where I had a backbone, a spine, a sense of risk.

I sipped some more coffee and planned it out. I was Thirty two; I had another three decades if I lived not making much more than inflationary increases in salary. I would never be in charge, I knew that, I wasn’t serious enough, I couldn’t not smile, I always saw the other side and I was not about to stop being human for a rise in salary.

I imagined retirement: colleagues waving me off, a gold watch and a badly drawn portrait to go in the downstairs toilet. The average life expectancy is meant to be a year and a half once you retire. No thanks. I’ll take my chances with the rest of the world.

I imagined the Americans behind me struggling to understand a passage in Galatians were spies discussing espionage, outside the people passing and swirling round each other became dancers in a massive show stopping number. Like a purposeless syncopation of an Olympic opening ceremony.

I imagined life as it could be.

Tigers that prowled along the high street, monkeys with German accents swinging from the tapestries in the museum and music halls, a being of pure light who stops clocks on a whim to allow you to live one moment forever.

But there were no Tigers outside, only a bus travelling away from here that I wanted to be on. 

Only a dream of really being with the man I married.