Faith, Hugging and Dolly Parton!

Hello people of the internet!

I’m sitting here with two cats fighting over my lap and purring so loudly it’s difficult to concentrate, but I’ll give it a go!

So what to write about? What minutiae of my life have I not bored you with yet?! Hmmm, let me think!!  Well actually, those of you that know me will already be aware of this, but I got to meet Dolly Parton recently, it’s all a bit of a blur, it lasted about 30 seconds and I’m not sure I managed to actually speak words…out loud…but still it happened.  I told a few people I had won the competition before it happened (but not many as I was scared of jinxing it somehow) and I got the same responses from a few of them ‘OMG you are the luckiest person alive’ ‘You win everything’ etc etc.  Now admittedly, there are some people in the world who have a misconception about the amount of things I ‘win’, people who for their own good, don’t need to know that ‘won’ in some instances means ‘paid silly amounts of money for’ (!!) but still generally, I do win quite a few things and I am, I guess, what some people would call ‘lucky’.  However what the people who congratulated me on my luck didn’t know is that every night for the past 7 months I’ve been writing ‘I will meet Dolly Parton’ in a notebook on my nightstand.  I try to do it every year – set myself a list of goals to achieve, things I dream of happening.  I try not to think about the logistics of how they will happen or the realistic chances of them happening, that’s not for me to sort out, I just have to believe they will occur.

That’s my personal belief system – that we create our own lives through our beliefs about life and about ourselves.  I believe thought is creative and if we honestly believe something will happen and we don’t waiver on that belief, then it will,….maybe not in the way we imagined, but it will happen.

My belief system stems primarily from a series of books called ‘Conversations with God’ which changed my view of life when I first read them a lot of years ago.  I remember a couple of books from my childhood, a big bound volume of fairytales that I would make my Mum read the same story from over and over (‘The Little Match Girl’) and a tattered copy of ‘The Little Mermaid’ that went everywhere with me, but strangely I also remember, with the most perfect clarity, standing in a bookshop in Penzance fingering this big hardback book called ‘Conversations with God’. I don’t know how old I was, but I know I was young and I remember asking my Mum to buy it for me and I remember her telling me it was too expensive (we didn’t buy hardback books!) and to wait for the paperback.  Strange then to think that years later I would still remember that book and that eventually one day it would come back into my life and change my view of everything.

Now, before we get too spiritual and start lighting incense and reading each others auras, let me be honest.  I absolutely consider myself a spiritual person, but most experiences I’ve had with other ‘spiritual’ people have been a nightmare!  I’ve attended talks and classes and been on retreats and at every one of them I have met the same types of people…they speak softly and gently and never have normal jobs!  They are always spiritual healers or Reiki therapists or something of that ilk and they always want to hug me for no particular reason (well I have had suspicions that some of the men that attend these things have very particular reasons!!).  They don’t put anything into their bodies that isn’t squashed from some kind of vegetable and every conversation is about the profound nature of the universe!  And there I sit, an office administrator with my packet of chocolate buttons for lunch and a copy of ‘Heat’ magazine in my bag that I feel too guilty to take out and read!  I don’t fit in…but mostly I don’t want to fit in.  I like my job and my chocolate and my trashy magazines.  And yes sometimes I like indulging in a bit of gossip or bitchiness, it’s fun! I went to a Buddhist retreat once where we sat in the garden eating lunch (a bowl of vegetables!) and flies started coming near the food.  I waved away the flies and got a lecture about the nature of a fly and how I shouldn’t interfere with it!  If that’s enlightenment I’m never gonna get there…I like my dinner free of fly faeces thanks! ;)

But still, flippant as I am, the things I believe impact every moment of my life and my attitude to every experience that passes my way.  I believe the universe is on my side, is on everyone’s side, that positive thoughts create a positive life. I don’t mean by this blind positivity, ignoring problems, assuming they will go away or refusing to acknowledge the genuine hardships and difficulties of life, but my faith in the universe allows me to believe, whatever the situation, that I will get through it, and whatever my dream is, that it is possible.

I find it very difficult to explain what it is exactly I believe, my words get jumbled and I get embarrassed because faith these days, in this country, is something to be suspicious about.  But suffice to say I don’t believe in a God of judgement or a God who requires anything of us or a God that punishes us, I believe we are the universe made manifest in order to experience the delights of physical life and that ultimately we and God, we and the universe, we are all the same thing, the same elements and we all have the same power to create for ourselves the life we believe we deserve.

All this being said however, I acknowledge absolutely that this belief system is one that I hold because I live with all the opportunities and luxuries of the western world. The suffering of people across this globe is too great to try and justify with some spiritual niceties.  I remember when I visited Cambodia, a country where the reality of genocide is impossible to escape.  I remember standing by a tree beside a pit in The Killing Fields and I remember the nail in that tree that had been put there so the skulls of children would break more easily when the soldiers swung their small, helpless bodies against it and I remember for that moment feeling like everything I had ever believed about the love and beauty of the universe was meaningless, that it was superficial, unrealistic nonsense and no God, no greater power could exist if this kind of pain and cruelty existed in the world.  How many people who died there called out to God? How many of them would have believed that you can achieve anything in life with the right state of mind?  That experience (and others since) sits side by side with my faith, it rests there, in my mind, a reminder always of doubt, of the possibility that I’m wrong.  And personally I think that’s a good thing, it’s dangerous in almost any circumstances to think you are 100% right - ‘mine is not the right path, mine is just one path of many’. 

I don’t feel I’ve been very eloquent here, it’s very difficult to put a feeling or a sense of knowing into words and harder yet to summarise a complex theology, but what I guess I want to say is, I believe luck is something we create and that life is something that happens because of us not something that happens to us and if you want the same ‘luck’ I sometimes seem to experience then maybe try to change your mind about the way the universe works. But similarly, if you think everything I have just said is complete nonsense, I too acknowledge that possibility….and I look forward to having a good, deep discussion about it….just don’t ask to hug me!! ;)

Comments

[Louise Smith]

That was really beautiful Cathy! I sincerely hope you are right! I happen to believe the same thing. Thought is a darn powerful tool if you can focus it and trust the universe. :-)