Stained windows

 Stained windows

Today for the first time I noticed the stained-glass windows at the back of the church looking at it from the outside. I thought to myself the people building the church weren’t thinking of God when they built it as there is no tall steeple or Spire or any pointy bit pointing upwards towards the heavens. the church is low, it is shaped like a cross as churches are, but it’s close to the ground so it’s more of a homely church and less of an inspirational Godly church. More of the church for the people in the church for God. I’ve seen the stained-glass windows before of course, from inside the church, just never noticed them walking past from behind the church. I don’t often go into churches as I was raised by a Quaker. quakers famously say that  ‘I cannot contribute to the building of a steeple or steeple house, but I can contribute to the tearing down of one’. Which is odd because in theory Quakers believe everyone is equal so they would not look down upon another’s religion and instead treats it as equal. It makes me wonder if in fact what they mean is all Quakers are equal which is pretty dreadful. so equality, simplicity and truthfulness -   these are all the things Quakers believe in. The reason I have seen inside the local church is that the school, which should not be religious, holds its Christmas carol singing there every year, so my son sings carols at church every year and of course I want to support my son so I go and I am there for him even though I have to leave work early, and I’m paying the child minder anyway, who isn’t childminding. I go to support my son. Before I went the first time, and a little bit every time since, I have a mini consult with my mum  - inside my head of course, because she’s dead - but I say to her I’m going to have to go into what she would call a steeple house. I’m doing it to support my son and she understands.

All my life I have been a pedestrian in a world that is increasingly built for cars. even here in this quiet village it’s very busy on the road for a walker and I’m only out for 20 minutes but I don’t feel welcome. I shortened my walk today to come down an alley way instead of the road. now the alley way is the sort of alleyway, precisely the sort of alleyway that women are told not to walk down alone, and yet I felt safer walking down the dark secluded alleyway than on the roads because of course there are no cars. so it’s shortened my walk a few minutes and instead of 35 I did 28 minutes of walking is about the exercise down I’m not really about reaching 5K which is only 3 miles. As I have always walked  as my method of transport from a to B I only got a car because I had to in order to please my employers in order to get a job the requirement for my appointment, the condition of my employment was that I have a car so I had to learn to drive and buy a car in order to start work in one month and that was a big effort but I didn’t see it’s Bigg at the time I just saw it as one of those things you have to do and I just did it. Given my upbringing and childhood it seems likely then that I have the leg muscles of an athlete and the Endocrine system of a prisoner of war.

Thinking about how I excused and made okay the fact that my walk was shortened by how uncomfortable I was and how I didn’t feel safe and I said well that’s okay it’s only for the exercise it doesn’t matter if it was the full 35 minutes and we make those excuses all the time because we live this life with restrictions we know we should walk down anyway so we don’t walk on the street at all in the dark and we do the things I will tell ourselves it’s okay because we have to find some way of making it okay so we don’t tell I told the truth which is that we are cowled oppressed and afraid the world is not open to us when we are raped his children when we are beatenAnd controlled as partners or spouses when we are bullied at work and when we eat things I don’t want to eat or have sex we didn’t want to have sex or accept  inside as bodily fluids we did not want to accept and we smile and say it’s okay and then we are told we are fussy and we are supposed to smile and say that it’s okay too.