Love is an unarmed intruder

I mentioned I was just in Sofia, Bulgaria, at a book festival. Someone had that phrase on a T shirt.

I wrote it.

I wrote it so long ago I didn’t remember it until I saw it. And I wondered about the person I was then - when I wrote that. And I remembered someone - me - who hoped there would be a Someone Else who could make their way in to my House of Self. And wake me up one morning with coffee. And then we’d talk.

Then I remembered another piece of a short story…

In this night-soaked bed with you it is courage for the day I seek. That when the light comes I will turn towards it. Nothing could be simpler. Nothing could be harder. And in the morning we will get dressed together and go.

And then I thought of something more recent….

Love is a disturbance among the disturbed.

I started thinking about love this morning because today is the fourth and final Sunday of Advent. The word-message is Love.

The Christmas story is absurd. In the might and power of the Roman empire, an unmarried mother gives birth in a stable to a child who will change the world.

This looks like a Hero story, but it’s not. The Hero fails. Is killed. Resurrects as a Being of Light. What exactly has changed in the world around this figure? Apparently nothing. This person fed the poor and healed the sick. This Hero was a homeless man dependant on the charity of others. When challenged by the smart and the cynical (they never change) Jesus said that the whole of the Law ( what you should do - how you should behave) could be summed up in two commandments:

Love God. Love your neighbour as yourself.

He said the same thing in another story, where some would-be radical wanted to defy the Empire, by not paying tax. Jesus took a coin and asked whose face was on the coin. Answer: Caesar. So, says Jesus, ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and render unto God the things that are God’s.’

This is tricky stuff. No big fight. No armies. No manifesto. No revolutionary hideouts. No political movement. Instead…. Look after others, and live in the material world with kindness and compassion. Do your duty. Pay your bills. AND, recognise that not everything about you is summed up by this world. You too are spirit. You too are love.

The change in the world didn’t happen because of 3 short years of teaching by one strange person… the change happened because others - at first a few, then more and more and more, wanted to follow those teachings.

And yes, organised religion, codified, moralistic, punishing, separating, warlike religion, that has turned love into hate, is not a place to be Secular movements away from the power-mongering of priesthoods and their twisted teachings, has been a relief, a progressive thing. On the one hand, I am glad to see the decline of religious strangleholds, and when we look at extreme religion - the Islamism of the Taliban, the baleful backward-seeking ‘order’ of anti-feminist, anti-gay, pro-capitalist, evangelical Christianity - make your own list - I don’t find any kind of love there. Only self-justification and arrogance. And if those types of people are right - the gods they serve are the bullies they deserve. No love to be found there.

So don’t get me wrong on this… I don’t want to go back in time to some Golden Age that never existed, except maybe, as it always does, for straight white men and their friends. I am thinking about how we go forward in time, in this world, in the state of this world, where religion is not the answer, but when secularism is also failing us, as human beings who are in difficulty.

The question for me is how to be secular AND spiritual. To bring together what is good and powerful in both kinds of thinking and feeling. Both methods of understand and interpreting self and world. To be sceptical and questioning, to submit to reason, not to be superstitious, or to follow rules blindly. To do all I can in the world, according to my capacity, because loving your neighbour would solve just about everything, and as a piece of teaching it is unmatched. Yet, when Christ linked it to loving God, there was a warning there - or at least, a reminder, as well as a connection.

We are hybrid beings. We sense we are more/ that there is more, than can be managed by outward-facing rational us - who have turned out not to be so rational or enlightened after all. The vicious, scared, irrational self seems not to be managed by a series of secular answers.

And as someone whose whole life has been built out of language - that is, symbolic expression of inner states, I recognise that life is not fully met by matters of the world. It can’t be. We are more than our surface area.

Love, love love. It’s impossible. But another bit of me on a T-shirt

Only the impossible is worth the effort.

I wrote these things because I had to… because they came from a place in me struggling to understand, trying to articulate.

This time of year is important to me because it is a chance to step aside from getting and spending. To reflect. Even with kids, chocolates, party hats, presents, there is still time to sit with the mystery of the Christmas story.

And of course it’s the only time of year where my mother, Mrs Winterson was happy. 12 days of warmth and cheer. Of course it matters to me. I am my past, just as you are too.

If you haven’t got a copy of my short stories, recipes, and reflections, then give it a try. It’s called Christmas Days. 12 Stories and 12 Feasts. Actually, not exactly feasts, but fun…

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Meanwhile, for those of you like listening to BBC Radio 4, the Christmas stories are Book at Bedtime, for the week beginning Monday Dec 22. 22.45 each night and I have written something new for the Xmas Day episode..

And if that is not enough, I am presenting Pick of The Year. Xmas Day 12noon for the first part. It’s an hour of fun while you are coshing the sprouts and having that glass of wine.

Me, I am about to start my annual ritual of reading Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I do this over 4 nights and finish on Christmas morning. We all know the story. We’ve all seen the movies. The novella is something else. Read, read read!

Merry Christmas Everyone!