No, what I have been wanting to say is something about things that I think I have discovered over the last few years because of what I experienced through my arrest back a few years ago . . .
I took my psalm book with me into the cell where they put me that morning when my life crashed down around me and I have thought several times since then about how predictable all that had been –[ “O happy chance!”]
Putting that aside for a moment I have been thinking a lot recently about ‘story’.
Dostoyevsky comes to mind (google him for info) because his huge novels are jam-packed with people. . . . people: most of whom are hard to love or even respect or to even see why there are in the story at all (lots of criminals there too). . . and reading Dostoyevsky is hard work because all of the people have names – long Russian ones that are hard to say and even harder to remember – and every scene becomes like a great Michelangelo painting – as I said: jam-packed with people – except that Michelangelo turns his people into heroic grand figures and . . . I was going to say Dostoyevsky doesn’t but, come to think of it, he almost does in an astonishing spiritual way . . . .the point is that they are there for that very reason because Dostoyevsky understood something which I never really have except at odd moments like now . . .
Creation then as a huge, huge novel by God. Sorry for the flippancy but bear with me. I was reading just now one of the psalms for Saturday (St Benedict in his rule puts it into Saturday vigils.) Each of us at times, sometimes long times, thinks that we have been written out of the story. Written off. Society likes to write people off. The newspapers write people off every day. People are judged every day and ‘found wanting’. We do it with celebrities. We do it with politicians. We do it with foreigners. We do it with our neighbours. We do it with people at work. We do it with other drivers on the roads. And above all we do it with criminals – some countries more than others – as well as with people who we believe to be criminals, even when they are acquitted. (“There is no smoke without fire” we mutter).
The psalm for saturday I was talking about was psalm 104. Actually psalm 104 and 105 go together because they are a sort of potted history of the Jews in those early days starting from Abraham through to when Moses leads the children of Israel out of Egypt and they end up in the middle of the desert making a terrible mess of everything. For me, for years, I couldn’t understand why Christians read this psalm at all: how was it relevant? Then, very slowly, it began to dawn on me that this wasn’t so much the history of the Jews in ancient times: it was becoming my story too! ‘then they scorned the land of promise; they had no faith in his word’. .. . .’instead they mingled with the nations and learned to act as they did’ . . .’so they defiled themselves by their deeds and broke their marriage bond with the Lord’ . . .
When I began to discover this every time I got to this psalm (I try to read it every Saturday), I began to get excited about it in a strange way . . . it was as though, through this ancient history of the sins of Israel, my own rather pathetic little story was being not ‘written out’ in the way that the media and society does but ‘written back into’ the great novel that God is writing. . . . . .
I was thinking, in this context, of those Catholic priests who have been accused of sexual abuse of minors. Society has written them off of course: with the stroke of a pen they are gone; finished; irrelevant; scum; wicked people who do not deserve to live. In order to placate society, the Catholic church has had to do the same. The pope has been in Australia apologising for the wicked things done by Catholic priests there. Writing them out of the story; condemning them. Many of these priests have taken their own lives believing themselves to be ‘written off’, exiled for ever, no better than rats to be exterminated. . . .the church was their whole family. Even condemned paedophiles have families who still love them. The Catholic priest condemned for sexual misconduct scarcely has that . . .
“so they defiled themselves by their deeds and broke their marriage bond with the Lord” (psalm 105, vs.39)
Anyone who finds themselves written out of the story by society would do well to read on from there. God writes no one out of his story. His great novel includes all of us. It's so easy to say, but it has taken me years to even begin to understand it properly. . . .
Remember Noah’s flood? There is God apparently writing us out of his novel . . . all the sinners, all the bad people, all the criminals, all the fools, all the insane, all the ugly people, all the people who are not worthy, all the flotsam and jetsam of life: written out so he can start over . . . but the point of that story of course is the rainbow. God’s promise never ever ever to do that again. No-one is written out of His novel.

I am sorry this post is so long but it has been on my mind to write this for some time so please bear with me. I am aware that there is a problem with language at CBLF because most of you are from America and I am not. We all speak English yes but we use English words in different ways and we have different ways of emphasizing things and different cultures too and I know this post may be misunderstood by some but so be it . . .
I will try to keep this brief. Going back to what I said about taking my psalm book into the cell that morning . . . that day was a turning point in my life. Yes of course I did consider suicide that week. Only two things kept me from doing it I think: one was my family and the other was God.
All through my life my attraction to boys and my inability to have sexual relationships with people my own age (men or women) has been my Achilles’ heel and it has come close to destroying me yes it has . . . I have become aware however that this is not some terrible mistake that God made when he designed me . . . quite the opposite: I do know, even if I cannot understand it very often, that it is only through my absurd sexuality and the turmoil that has at times surrounded it in my life that I can come to God . . . as I say, I cannot understand this . . . perhaps we cannot fully understand that we have been ‘written into’ the great novel of God until we have been ‘written off’ by society . . .
I have been reading again a book that had a huge effect on me back in the 1980’s when I first read it ‘True Resurrection’ by H A Williams. I like it even more this time around and it is about the way in which God reunites body and soul: not just after we die, but here and now, through 'resurrection'. It is so worth reading and it is especially relevant to those of us who struggle so much with our sexual natures. . .

I recently asked to join a Catholic monastic community but my conviction has meant that I am not able to. I do know that this is also an important part of my story and that this too is included in the great novel of God.
‘You have kept a record of my tears and an account of my wanderings.They are all of them written in Your book.’
‘They are all of them written in Your book.’
Can’t remember which psalm that comes from but I always love that bit . . . and if you are still reading thanks so much for taking the time!