Anyone who has used the internet for any length of time will know how difficult it can sometimes be to write from the heart, for yourself, and with complete honesty, rather than writing to win an argument or impress somebody else. In contrast to face-to-face interaction, posting on the 'net allows us to google information, to mine facts from wikipedia and to build up an online persona designed to project an image of ourselves that doesn't always - or even often - reflect reality. I've certainly been guilty of this in the past but I hope that on this blog, just for once, I can share my journey with you in a spirit of openess and honesty.
I'll begin by introducing myself. I'm a 33 year old male and I live in Birmingham, the second largest city in England, where I work for a Police Force. In what seems like a previous existance I served in the British Army for almost 8 years, completing two tours of duty in Bosnia and two in Iraq. I'm single, I flit between being gay and bisexual and have a small group of close friends, none of whom are Christians, with only one or two nominal Catholics amongst them. I'm a bit of a loner and spend most of my time away from work on my own, which sometimes seems like heaven and sometimes like hell.
To say that I have been a sinner is to put it far too mildly. I got my first tattoo at 16 (2 years below the legal age in the UK) and went on collecting them for a long time after that. I've lied about all sorts of things for as long as I remember, often in a fairly futile attempt to make myself appear 'hard' or more interesting. I binge drink every so often, and frequently become a complete arsehole when I do. At various times in my life I have been a bully, a coward, a layabout and a thief. In the past, I was also sexually promiscuous, usually with men but with one woman thrown in for good measure (near Nazareth, of all places). I am still addicted to pornography and have even sexually exploited people in the past ('I'll give you £100.00 if you...').
All of the above can give me a fairly low opinion of myself and I'm often plunged into a pit of despair when I look back at some of the things I have done (and, in some cases, continue to do). You might conclude from that that my interest in things spiritual is simply a quest for belonging or an attempt to make amends for things that fill me with guilt. You'd probably be right. It wouldn't be the first time I'd done something similar. I was a member of a few political parties after leaving the army, and later even attended a synagogue for a while (and lied to friends about being Jewish for good measure). I still frequent army forums in an attempt to re-capture the sense of purpose and belonging that I (sometimes) had as a soldier.
A couple of years ago I began to become interested in Catholicism and in fairly short order, filled with zeal, burnt myself out and turned firmly against the Church. I'll explore that period further in a future post but suffice to say that I tried to take on far too much, to ditch my previous life wholesale and to focus on the Church and nothing but the Church, in a manner almost designed to send myself crazy. That was a low point in my life but - here's the thing - a tiny seed seems to have been planted in my soul and I have never been quite able to shake my interest in the Catholic Church. So now, at a more settled and stable point in my life, I have decided to learn from my mistakes and attempt to explore Catholicism anew. This blog will chart that journey and who knows where it's going to end?
Despite the impression that my soul-baring above might give, I don't walk around in a permanent cloud of depression, I don't despise myself and, believe it or not, I do have my good points. As anyone who's ever been interviewed for a job will know, bigging yourself up doesn't come easy to most of us so I'll leave the nice side of me up to your imagination and let you draw your own conclusions!
I hope that you enjoy following this blog. I'm no theologian and, as I said at the start of this post, I won't be going hunting through Aquinas or Pato in an effort to appear more learned than I am. For those who are a bit more religiously sophisticated, this blog will probably appear a bit 'light', but I hope you find something in it's simplicity nonetheless. Please leave comments - they'll all be appreciated and I'll only get rid of spam, never adverse comments.
Some topics that I'll cover over the nex few months - * Why the Catholic Church? * On Being Gay * The Search for Identity * Sex and Lies * Struggling with the Difficult Bits * Friends * Our Lady of Good Counsel Church, Bearwood * Trying to Live a Good Life *. I'll also be visiting Turin in early September and will be spending some time in the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians with two of my favourite Saints - Don Bosco and Dominic Savio.
Please comment to let me know that you're here! Ad augusta per angusta...
