Alpha Away Day!

And Lo, did the congregation gather in the home of a local merchant, and yea did they discusseth the mysteries of the Holy Spirit.

The venue was very plush, the food was highly edible. The atmosphere was relaxed for the most part, and the talks were delivered with enthusiasm by the attendant course leaders. The group gathered by a roaring log burner, attended by friendly dogs. People laughed and joked and talked about football, children, work – too all intents and purposes it was an ordinary gathering of ordinary people..

But at the end came something which was out of the ordinary for me - a critical point which I had been musing over for some time. But more of that later.

We were greeted at the beautifully appointed house of a member of the local congregation, who by all accounts had made a great deal of money in the aerospace industry; the stories of his continued benevolence toward the Kerith Church and to the local community in general were substantiated here. It was a shame that the weather, a blustery squall which rattled the windows, was not more pleasant, or we would have taken the opportunity to walk in the extensive grounds. I sense that the organisers may have felt that the Alpha message might have been enhanced by being around nature and the wonder of creation. In any case, I took the preliminary time to avail myself of some pastries and coffee, and meet a few new people who were in attendance. There was an amalgamation of two groups today – the Wednesday evening session (which was the one I have been attending), and the daytime session which also meets mid-week, which I had assumed would be the sole preserve of older people and mums of young children. As it turns out, I was pretty much on the money, with the surprising addition of Steve from day 1, who attended with his wife. He had not simply stopped attending as I had assumed, but had obviously decamped to the more genteel surroundings of the church facilities in the mornings. He was joined by his wife who was South African (the third in the group, along with Thomas and Lee). I also met a few people from my session that I’d never really been introduced to, purely because I had been in different groups throughout.

Things didn’t go quite as planned from the presentation point of view. Leon had been unable to attend at short notice owing to a bout of swine flu, so the presenting duties for all 3 sessions (“Who is the Holy Spirit?”, “What does the Holy Spirit do?” and “How can I be filled with the Holy Spirit?”) were going to fall on Lee. The late introduction of Ben (a young and confident speaker – not to be confused with the more venerable Ben from week five) - saved him from a pretty heavy load. None of us knew at this time, but Lee revealed the fact that he was a tremendously nervous speaker later on – it was testament to his own abilities and determination (or from his point of view, God’s assistance I suppose) that it didn’t show at all, and in fact he gave us a very assured couple of speeches.

The emphasis was on the Holy Spirit. An entire day, in comfortable surroundings had been arranged to talk about this, on a weekend. It was hard to escape the conclusion that this was the key message, the absolute fundamental thrust of the Alpha Course, the one thing that the course structure was designed to consolidate and make memorable. This raised a few questions in my mind – why was there this emphasis on what is really only one-third of the Christian “whole”, and why were we taken away into seclusion to discuss this? I couldn’t help but fear the spectre of “speaking in tongues” which I was convinced would be on the agenda. From the Alpha documentary I had seen, there had been a specific effort to try and introduce people to this. I could only imagine the kind of averse reaction this would inspire in people like Des, and how horrendously uncomfortable it would be for those (like me) who were by nature rather conservative and who felt very ill at ease with the paraphernalia of the “charismatic” church, with its “funky hymns”, obsession with youth and Americanised approach to Christianity.

Time and again, the musty, dusty old stone buildings with their aging congregations, monotone vicars and quietly reserved characters had been denigrated as “boring”, “dead”, and generally undesirable. When I had entered the Kerith, to a barrage of loud and strident noise, whooping and hollering, shouting out directions and the general cacophony of simpering modern Christian music, the only thing I wanted was a wooden pew, a church organ and a neatly observed recital of “To Be A Pilgrim”. It jarred with me so violently that on subsequent occasions, I actually waited outside the building until I could hear the music had stopped. This is personal choice of course, and I make no claims that this is a universal truth – the music and atmosphere does seem to inspire and help a great deal of the people there, who throw themselves into this kind of thing with gusto, but it struck me that the whole thing had been designed to appeal to the senses rather than the mind, and the senses seem to me an unreliable basis for believing in Christ.

On a slightly more relevant note, something I have noticed is that the stock question when a Christian wants to know my position on their faith is to ask “where I am at” – I have heard this exact expression about 6 or 7 times now. This is not only thumping the English language squarely in the nose, it’s also dripping with that faux-“coolness” that seems so important to a youth-orientated church. It also assumes I am “at” anywhere at all.

I understand the thrust of the question, but why it can’t be asked without recourse to some kind of street patois is beyond me. It also assumes that I am at a fixed point on some kind of nominal journey – in some ways I am, everyone is, but it’s a presumption all the same.

It’s an enormously vague question, and I would rather be asked directly in a way that didn’t make me feel as if I was trapped on the set of the worst rap video in the world. It’s only a matter of time surely before they append the whole question with “dawg” and start doing that weird thing with their hands that kids seem to do these days. Anyway, I am digressing here.

So, having eaten some excellent pastries and having imbibed some refreshing coffee, we all decamped to a large conference-style, beamed annex to the main house, which was actually a covered swimming pool. Settling in, the talk began.

And they lodged there, and a preacher stepped forth….

Session 1: Who is the Holy Spirit?

Ben delivered this with the familiar strategy of “contextualising” everything, but he at least did it in a neutral way. He spoke about his girlfriend (now wife), and how he had met her on holiday, and how difficult it had been to part from her knowing that they had shared something special. The parallel drawn here was with the disciples when they parted from Jesus, and how difficult they must have found it to do so. There was a passage from John read out (chapter 14, verses 16, 17 and 18), and this was used as the basis for the existence and character of the Holy Spirit. The disciples were promised “another counsellor” and that it would be a “Spirit of truth”, one of the pivotal descriptions of the Holy Spirit which is pretty much the cornerstone of the charismatic churches, but only ever a third of the picture at best for the Catholics or the Anglicans.

So the talk went on to the nature of this spirit, and the difficult concept that despite being called a spirit (or ghost), being totally invisible and simultaneously “everywhere”, the spirit was in fact a person, with emotions, knowledge, and the ability to speak. The Holy Spirit was also said to have an equal standing to Jesus himself, which again was rather confusing given the insistence that they’re all on some level the same thing. In the subsequent group, we grappled with the idea that something which fails to meet the key criteria of a “real person” can be considered as such. I stated that it was totally contradictory – the Holy Spirit didn’t meet the key requirement that real people generally have, that they are able to be touched and seen and truth be told, I didn’t (and don’t) understand why this idea of it being a person at all is very important.

This discussion provoked a whole range of frankly rubbish comparisons. Firstly, the statement was that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit were akin to steam, water and ice. All the same chemically, but in “different states”. This is a superficially neat analogy, but steam, water and ice are demonstrably incapable of co-existing all at the same time in the same space which is a pretty big hole in this as an explanation. Secondly, the example was used of someone who had died being able to be seen and touched but being “different” to when they were alive. This was a bit of a cheap shot, and required me explaining to people who had claimed to be able to speak to their loved ones on some level after they had passed on that they were in fact doing nothing of the sort. This was not something I was prepared callously to do. It was their spirit which “made them who they were” was the inference. This is another one of those circular arguments really. Dead people are different because they’re dead primarily, being able to touch and see them also happens to be additional evidence that they actually existed, along with memories and experience. A personality or “soul” is important, but only in connection with someone’s physical appearance, or at least the ability on some level to be able to actually see them.

The example of a disembodied voice on a telephone or a name on an email was used. I pointed out that I wouldn’t be entertaining a conversation with someone who insisted that they were invisible.

Then, with an air of fait accompli, an older lady presented her trump card.

“Ah but what about the wind! You know it’s there but you can’t see it!” she said nodding wisely.

“No, but nor does anyone claim you can have a relationship with it” I replied, training a torpedo of logic on her little balsa-wood boat, resisting the temptation to ask if she had ever been “full of wind” as she had the Holy Spirit.

This particular lady represented much of what I have come to distrust about certain Christians. In isolation, her arguments would fall apart, but in company that supports her opinion, she presented the textbook answers with a childish air of invincibility, perhaps knowing she’d be bailed out by fellow believers anwyay. It was as though she expected some kind of kudos from the course leaders for her pavlovian ability to squawk the vaguest but most holy responses at every challenge. Her comments ranged from “the spirit is in all of us”, followed by a long look at Lee for approval, to “we have the gift of the spirit”, followed by a long look at Lee for approval, to something like “the spirit is a dove and lives in our hearts”, followed by a long look at Lee for approval. She would interject with these little epithets during conversations where they were about as much use as a chocolate crash helmet, as if they provided unequivocal answers to everything. Losing my temper for possibly the first time ever on the course, mid-discussion with someone else, I merely turned to her briefly, acknowledged her with an abrupt “OK” as if indulging an attention-seeking child, and then ignored her and continued the point. She was the worst kind of background noise and actually made me long for the clattering coffee machines of Costa. I had nothing against her as a person I should add, lest this seems a character assassination. I am sure she’s very nice - but in this context she was just irritating.

Anyway, I am interspersing group events with the themes of the speech, so this isn’t progressing entirely chronologically but seems a good way to proceed. The speech continued to cover further elements of the Holy Spirit – how it could “possess” and inspire people, and how it was involved in the creation of the world. This seemed to me to be something that had probably been picked up and made into something far more significant than it really was by Christian reckoning. I couldn’t shake the suspicion that the idea of the spirit of God had been enshrined as something “real” because it bridged certain gaps in the Christian ethos, and had been elevated above its actual significance to complete the “trinity”. Without the “Holy Spirit”, there’d be no “God around us” after all. It neatly cements things together and brings a closeness to God that would otherwise be absent. The paucity of mention of the Holy Spirit as a specific person in the Old Testament seems to bear this out, that it was a new linguistic “device” that gave people the idea of a “gift” on earth – that they could be moved and cleansed and helped along with immediacy rather than storing the rewards in the afterlife. The Old Testament mentions really could be interpreted as just shorthand for “God’s intention”, or power, or will – that the Holy Spirit was just the same as a human spirit but divine. It wasn’t separate, or empowered with a character of its own as a “real person”, but was merely an expression of God’s personality. It was given certain characteristics and compared with certain things certainly, fire, water, breath, wind, oil – but I still don’t think this is really supposed to be taken as something quite separate from God, let alone a “real person”.

We were reminded of the story of Gideon who went from a deeply inadequate coward to the leader of a victorious army thanks to God. An army which then systematically slaughtered the Midianites. I wonder where the free choice of the Midianites lay as they were being put to death and routed by an army formed and protected by God. It seems as though God – the God of love and compassion - will see today’s suffering of millions as an unfortunate result of free choice, but in the Old Testament couldn’t help getting involved when far, far fewer people in Israel were under military oppression.

In any case, the speech ended with a reference to the “violent wind” that blew from heaven and filled each hiding disciple with incredible powers, including being able to speak in languages they didn’t know, and converted 3000 people that day to Christianity, which is not only remarkable in terms of a claim, but in terms of the specific number. Did it all just stop when it got to 3000? Or is this an estimate? Who knows.

Session 2: What does the Holy Spirit do?

Lee bravely stepped up to the plate to deliver this in Leon’s absence.

He covered firstly the idea of the Holy Spirit being an active agent, intervening and suggesting and inspiring. He linked this to the idea of “Godincidences” as he called them, and how inexplicable things could be said to be the work of God via the Holy Spirit. As Des pointed out in the group discussion, God is actually a really convenient reason for these occurrences. If you could relate all these things as God’s intervention without needing to enquire further, it meets that human compulsion to investigate and explain. It’s easier for the human mind to accept than wrangle with ideas of chance, luck, synchronicity or convenience. That doesn’t, however satisfy everyone. Not everyone can really embrace the idea that an invisible hand caused some exceedingly odd events and therefore shrug it off with a smile and a hallelujah. If the human mind was predisposed that way, then it’s tempting to conclude we would probably never have discovered the wheel, fire or anything of note whatsoever.

So the Holy Spirit was said to be a real person, as mentioned before, though failing some very big tests in both the “realness” and “person” stakes, and was said to speak to people. This latter point I am willing to entertain – obviously something inspires or speaks to people, though whether that’s in a literal sense and whether it’s God is open to debate. More interesting again was the assertion that God spoke to non-Christians through the Holy Spirit and that’s why some of the non-believers were there on Saturday. I don’t think I was there for that reason but that’s impossible to prove by Christian criteria. It’s nonsensical though – if a Christian attended a seminar given by Atheists, would that then mean that he was being moved by the invisible hand of sceptical thought? I sense not – I attended Alpha to get a rounded view of the argument. I can access atheist resources easily enough – I know more atheists than Christians. I can talk to people who agree with me any time I like. But there’s much to be said for talking to people who don’t. That’s generally how you learn.

But in any case, there were then some words about how the Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, that it gives birth to Spirit, that it was non-physical, that the idea of “rebirth” and “revolving” were important, especially when manifested by baptism. There was also a nod to the idea that it was different for everyone – using the analogy of an art gallery and how some people felt things were real or significant for them personally, but that they were incomprehensible for others. That’s fine as well, I don’t judge anyone much, as long as things aren’t demanded of me personally that I am uncomfortable with. The idea was that we were reborn into God’s family, and just as the new-born child is messy and needs cleansing, the Holy Spirit performs this function on us too like some kind of midwife for the soul.

Lee went on to say that the Holy Spirit makes us aware of our weaknesses. I picked this up afterwards in the group discussion and asked him if it simply helped us to come to terms with the fact that we have weaknesses, or if it actually undertook to “cure” us of them. The answer was a kind of fudge of both, and I think he anticipated the direction I was taking, the idea that the Holy Spirit can “cure” us of our weakness, and as our weakness is manifested in sin, it would seem that the claim is that the Holy Spirit can “cure sin”. I don’t know if that’s a disingenuous conclusion, if so it’s not deliberate. I just wondered if the Holy Spirit had ever “cured” anyone of homosexuality. Like Ted Haggard. He had some pretty serious weaknesses, but he’d commune with the Holy Spirit on a regular basis. Turns out it didn’t cure him at all. Sadly, I didn’t get to broach this subject for various reasons. We were told that God loves us all the time, whether we’re good or bad or indifferent. But again it’s a conditional love. It’s not the love of a father for his children, because there are conditions attached. The much mooted “relationship” with God was summed up pretty disastrously by one of the group leaders. She compared it to having a big brother (presumably Jesus) who always got into trouble for the things we did. If I was 11 years old, I’d probably find that hilarious, but when you’re a grown man, you frankly find it astonishingly unfair. I don’t want a relationship with someone who takes everything out on someone else for things I’ve done wrong. That’s not a desirable person to have a relationship, that’s an unhinged bully by any sane measurement.

There was then some talk about joining an “amazing family” via the Holy Spirit, possibly meaning the congregation of wider Christians. There are some great people, people I admire very much indeed who are Christians, and some that I have no time for whatsoever. But what I would say is that this “family” does not have a significantly higher proportion of either sub-set over the non-Christians I have encountered.

Then the weather really took a turn for the worse, the wind whipped over the windows, and the rain started to fall on the skylights above us.

Lee continued by drawing a comparison with the Royal Family. He stated that no-one is really “themselves” when they meet the Queen, that we are bound by pretty strict etiquette, that we have to adopt “heirs and graces” before her, but God demands none of that. However, he does demand things. Worship, obedience, accepting certain things, rejecting others. The Queen doesn’t. No-one is made to go and talk to her, and there’s no reprisal if you don’t.

Lee went on to list the vast number of titles that Prince Charles holds, but that his children still know him simply as “dad”. He said that God just wants to know us as our father, and that he created us to be in relationship with him. I don’t understand why anyone would create something just to have a relationship with it. I still don’t understand the initial motivation. What was missing for God that he needed to do that? What did he do before? He made the world and everything in it just so that we could tell him how great it is? Again, this paints a picture of something difficult to love. It just seems hugely narcissistic.

The example was given of how empty society was in modern times, how we were feeling some kind of spiritual deficiency, which he put down to the absence of God. I personally put it down to the huge choices we are given now. I don’t think people in less privileged and less decadent societies feel this kind of emptiness, despite the fact they have it far harder than we do. It’s quite an arrogant argument – it assumes that in the west we are at the apex of civilisation, and that the rest just need to catch up. This ignores that devout non-Christian countries don’t experience this “emptiness” though – it seems that any “meaning” at all on a spiritual level will help people find some kind of peace, which is hardly an endorsement of Christianity on its own. It’s possibly a problem with secular society rather than some dearth of Christianity. If we look at the list of countries by suicide rate (assuming this the ultimate expression of “emptiness”), there is no real correlation between non-Christian countries and suicide. If anything, it’s the other way round – from the top 10 countries by suicide rate, only one is non-Christian (Japan). This is hardly a glowing endorsement of Christianity giving “spiritual fullness”.

In any case, Lee then proceeded to state the “gifts of the spirit”.

• Comfort

• Counsel and guidance

• Peace and patience (an example was given of someone during an operation, being filled with calm when they heard a voice asserting “I am in charge, not the surgeon”).

• A healer, emotionally (Ok) and physically (this is going to be covered on later weeks I think but is pretty controversial)

• Makes us “Jesus-like”, closer to that “gold standard”

• Gives us Joy amongst adversity

• Fills us with kindness, goodness, and self-control

• Celebrates unity and uniqueness

• Gives us “gifts of the spirit” – aptitudes said to come from God that allow us to be helpers, prophets, teachers, leaders, hosts etc

If all of those things were found purely in Christians, I’d be inclined to agree. But this idea of prevenient grace apparently gives us all these gifts without needing to be Christian. Again, very convenient explanation of how a Hindu can be a superb teacher. They’re only good at it because God gave it to them. No credit whatsoever to their own God/s, who are just an unfortunate delusion of course, or to their cultures or their different environments.

The talk ended, the groups formed, and interspersed with the continual insistence that personal experience was somehow relevant in a wider context, everyone spoke and gave their opinions and examples of the little “miracles” that had taken place in their lives. It all sounded very admirable as usual, but in none of the cases gave any reason whatsoever for me to personally suddenly embrace the Christian faith. As I’ve said before, people are always moved to share, but if the keystone of all this is your own “relationship with God”, then other people’s experiences are irrelevant. That may sound harsh, but I am not sneering at them for having the experiences, just pointing out that this is a course designed to introduce people to Christianity. If the vast majority of people there have already in possession of that faith and have a multitude of personal experiences of it, then I totally fail to understand a) why they come along, and b) what relevance their stories have to people who are not Christians. It’s a continuing source of bemusement to me – I do not understand why they are there.

A conversation with Des while no-one else was around at least confirmed I was not the only one feeling this. He mused whether a lot of the attendants were simply there to “make up the numbers”, and pointed to a particular case in his group where there was a question put forward regarding how everyone had found the course so far. This happened around week 6, or certainly late enough in proceedings to be relevant. The three young girls had answered – they were already Christians, and had actually been present at just two of the sessions up to that point, making their contribution basically worthless. He also picked up that things were generally taking the form of a “cosy chat” among Christians punctuated by lots of sage nodding and agreement rather than a really in-depth look punctuated by disagreement and debate, and that “Roy” from week one had ceased attending around week three for exactly that reason. I found from talking to him that he had also come across as being much more strident than he actually felt (like me), purely because of the frustration at having an introductory chat about Christianity surrounded by Christians who are already pre-disposed to agree and who should already know the answers. It’s that sense of being embattled which seems to be a totally negative element of the course. My preconception was that the course would be attended overwhelmingly by people like me. In fact, I am in a minority. I can’t help thinking that not many devout Christians would stick out a 12 week course on atheism, when they were outnumbered by a ratio of at least 3 to 1.

And they broke bread in the merchant’s house, and their appetites were sated…

Lunch was largely uneventful, but very pleasant, and a chance to talk to a variety of people about more mundane things. The stormy weather had abated a little, so I took a wander outside to smoke a cigarette and wondered at the sequence of events that had led me to this place at this time on a weekend. It seemed bizarre. Was this evidence of God’s invisible helpers pushing me in directions, or was it just one of those experiences life throws up, like watching a football match, seeing a show, doing a course by distance learning? I doubted God had anything to do with it, but I was enjoying the meetings and (most of) the people, and besides, there were an intriguing mixture of opinions at times. It’s also taken a great deal of discipline to continue going in the face of various obstacles and frustrations, but I felt it was called a “course” for a reason, and that I should give it my fullest attention, which I certainly have done. I would contest any accusation that I had gone into this with any real preconceptions or a “closed heart”. I certainly didn’t have a closed mind. As I pondered, I’d love to say there was a strange “Godincidence” or uncanny occurrence, but there was nothing. Just a steady stream of cars hissing by on the wet tarmac, a scattering of birds here and there, a grey, washed out sky, perching on a muddy horizon.

I headed back inside.

Session 3: How do we get filled with the Holy Spirit?

Before the speech commenced, I stopped for a chat with one of the female leaders. She asked me the dreaded question of “where I was at”. I answered that I was at the buffet. She laughed unconvincingly and accused me of being dismissive. I replied that I wasn’t but that I just didn’t understand the thrust of the question. She said that it was really to do with the point I was at on my journey. I said that I wasn’t sure I was on one. In turn, she stated that we all were. I think she interpreted my answers as evasion, whereas I saw her question as loaded. Despite this, I said that I couldn’t agree with certain aspects of Christianity, so as far as I was concerned there was no point committing to any of it. You can’t be half a Christian after all. I also mentioned that I found it difficult to relate to people’s experiences – that they were, by and large totally pointless and meant nothing to me. They were personally significant, but I get nothing from hearing about them.

We were called back to sit down, so we did so.

Then, unexpectedly, before Lee started speaking, the same female team leader wanted to say a few words to the group.

She recounted a dream, which basically revolved around her being unprepared for a journey she was going on with friends, and how they wouldn’t help her or lend her any equipment or food or water. She stated that the lesson she took from this was that the journey was not about other people’s experiences, and that we should all get from the course what we wanted, that no-one could do it for us. This seemed prompted by our conversation, but I couldn’t decide if this was a point for me to take on board, or some kind of point meant for the people who kept rattling on about what had happened to them in their own “journeys”. Perhaps both.

Anyway, the talk started. Lee stated that the Holy Spirit was already a part of our lives and that “all creation shouts God’s worth”. He said it was working right now in everybody’s life, that Jesus had fulfilled no less than 588 prophecies from 600-1000 years before he was born. (Incidentally, I have found no evidence for anyone having said this, at least on the internet. I have no idea where this came from.)

God works in Jesus, and works in practical ways. The Holy Spirit “makes real what is true”, making that association clear between “real” and “true” which probably helps people accept it as a real person.

He recapped the ways that the Holy Spirit manifested – the “tongues of fire”, the “oil” imagery, the “water” and the powerful wind.

The recipe for receiving this was only three things. Repent (revolve from a position of “without God” to a position “with God”).

Believe.

And be Baptised.

Lee spoke of the “placing of hands” being key, of the Holy Spirit being “poured out” over Gentiles.

He said it happened at different times, with different people in different places, finding that connection with the Holy Spirit.

He said he’d been praying for all of us.

I braced myself.

“Here it comes”, I thought, “I’m going to have to leave the room if the “talking in tongues” thing gets wheeled out”.

But nothing of the sort happened.

In the end, he said that if you could overcome doubt, fear and feelings of inadequacy, you could receive the Holy Spirit. And faith overcame all three.

That circular argument again.

Then, the "practical". He stated that he was going to be available to pray for people, as would the female leader. I looked around and there was a kind of nervous jocularity between myself, “Des” and the lady from week 5 that had agreed with some of my points – the “waverer”.

I stated that I didn’t see the point. I meant that from a Christian and an atheistic viewpoint. There’s no point to prayer as a Christian, as God’s plan is already laid out. There’s no point to prayer as a non-believer as who would you be praying to?

As things panned out, I decided I would take the plunge. I told the female leader that I’d be receptive to being prayed for. It would have been the action of a charlatan to not entertain the idea. After all I’d been through, I think to turn away at this point would have been fear, or just discomfort, or superstition. If God was out there, let’s give him a chance to make himself felt.

We moved away, and the female leader placed her hand on my shoulder and started speaking. I closed my eyes and listened, and tried to see if I could feel anything. Anything at all. In truth, there was a slight nervousness involved. The circumstances were totally alien to me. I tried to relax and clear my thoughts and see if anything would be forthcoming.

Then we swapped and I prayed silently for a bit. A kind of self-conscious dialogue, not that much different to talking into a room with no lights on and seeing if anyone’s in there.

Nothing at all happened. I felt a bit more relaxed afterwards, but I suspect that was relief more than anything to do with God.

I looked around and everyone had tried it, or been involved in some way bar Des, who was resolutely not buying it.

I admired him for the strength of his resolve but couldn’t help feeling he undermined himself a little by not opening himself up to at least trying it. It's the root of why I went - to give it a chance, see if it worked, if there was anything there, if it could answer my issues. As it turned out, it hasn't really, but if I'd been struck by lightning or the spiritual equivalent then I'd be forced to reconsider my whole take on things.

The day duly wound down and we went our separate ways.

The best day so far on many levels, the keystone message duly delivered, a vol-au-vent of prayer digested. Nothing whatsoever has happened in the interim to suggest it worked in any way, though I'm sure a Christian would say I'm just not looking hard enough.

I’d give the “day away” an 8 out of 10.