Religion….

By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart

As I sit in my Kailyard I wonder often about the future.

Today is a Sunday as I sit here and type. As a child it would be a day when I attended church.

It was an odd church. The Ayr United Wee Free Church of Scotland was devoid of many things including fun. It was not quite all fire and brimstone, but it was a time when you saw people take themselves overly seriously. Their greatest worry – were they going up to heaven or straight to hell?

And then they told you how bad you were. And it often did not matter how good you were, you always deemed to be bad.

In the West Coast of Scotland our Christianity comes in two distinct and for decades mutually exclusive flavors – Protestant and Catholic. We even have schools dedicated to ensuring that this division is enshrined in our system of education. The state has catholic school and non-denominational schools from which to be excluded on the grounds of religion.

It remains a running sore of embarrassment and pain that the division is still very raw and unhealed.

In the islands of Scotland, Christianity comes with a harder edge where having any fun on the Lord’s day is frowned upon and that includes opening any kind of shop, delivering any kind of Sunday newspaper or even running ferries between the islands for supplies and transport.

They take their devotion devoutly.

I know their ilk and had seen their frowns in the church I attended as child as they banked devout deeds rather than counted the good things they did.

By the time I arrived at university at the tender age of 17, I was aware of Judaism. Studying the Second World War extended my religious knowledge but it was during my time at University I became aware of the other religions, in between bouts of excessive religion, serving the type of wine I was mercilessly able to continually turn into water, at various temples I christened my own.

I got married twice – both times in a church. Of my four children three have been christened in a church.

I don’t believe in a God.

But it is tough to shake off the habits of your childhood.

And so, this year as World AIDS day has come and gone, I have been aware of the celebrations of survival, the focus back on the tragedies of the times and remembering how the Religious Right throughout the world became the clarion callers of the disease sent like a plague to wipe out the unclean.

Along with that memory, which may or may not be as accurate as my memory allows, I have had the opportunity to look at how religion has used the con artist’s rule book to become richer and richer. Partly because of an excellent podcast series by Jon Ronson for the BBC, called Things Fell Apart, it has been regaling us with strange tales from the Culture Wars, including the whole religious right’s response to AIDS.

Coupled with an article looking at the failure of Alcoholics Anonymous to achieve any better than between 5 and 8% of sufferers managing to stay off their substance misused to stay normal, the principal criticism comes from the origins in the Oxford Group of AA and the need to “have” a God. I have read my Big Book and have read over the letter to an Agnostic, several times.

But like most, whilst I balk at some of the assertions, I recognize their dangers and their comfort. Where it becomes difficult is when they need something in return. Even if the idea of paying your way out of purgatory with a priceless artwork is left behind in the 18th Century or thereabouts, there are plenty of people seeking to purchase peace when they die.

What I feel is challenge and the opportunity to challenge would be something that a God, any God could contemplate without much worry – can’t they? If during my time on this earth, I have to worry about when I may leave it and what may happen thereafter, how can I enjoy my time while I am here?

As I was once told by a wise man who knew less academically than I but had success in his life I admired, “I have no idea what it is like when you die but have a funny feeling it is very similar to what it was like when you were born.” Amen to that.

A view from the new Kailyard or, how you look over there, from over here…

(Kailyard n. a cabbage patch, often attached to a school of writing – the Kailyard School – a genre of overly sentimental and sweet Scottish literature from the late 19th century where sentimental and nostalgic tales are told in escapist tales of fantasy, but here we seek to reverse it by making the Kailyard Observations of effective invective comment from that looks not to return to the past but to launch us into a better future by the one Donald worth believing…)

And today’s Scots word tae bamboozle ye…

Each time we see ye, we shall try tae leave ye wi a word o oors tae replace a word o thine. Jist fur the sake o learnin, ken!

Babbity Bowser – A Scottish country dance that was usually the finale to a special occasion like a wedding, Babbity comes means to bob whilst bowser means to bolster – the dance being held in a circle with one person in the middle who would dance and then, with a pillow kneeling to kiss a chosen target from within the circle. There is a children’s game which is a derivative – Bee Baw Babbity, in which you kiss the wee lassie! There are, of course, more modern versions…

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