Happy Odyssey

[Neil Richardson]

Even as a small child I saw the supernatural world as a single entity which somehow intruded into our world at odd times. God, angels, Santa, fairies, elves, etc, lived in this other world and capriciously appeared to mortal individuals who happened to be alone at the time. For several years I patiently observed and searched high and low for fairies in the locations which adults said I'd be most likely to see them, but I never did.

My parents allowed my brother and I to accompany the family across the road to the Salvation Army fortress in Shenton Park for a Sunday afternoon service from which I gained some knowledge of the relationship between God and the rest of his creation. They used to recall with some amusement, the day when I was about five that I sat atop a large geraldton wax bush and proclaimed that I was God and my brother, lower down the tree, was Jesus.
When I was 7 or 8 years old I found a dead cat in the laneway behind my home and, as it decomposed over the following couple of weeks, I became certain of the utter finality of death. The meaning of "dust to dust" was absolutely clear to me. The chance of resurrection from that state seemed remote in the extreme.

At school one day I heard a kid saying there was no such thing as Father Christmas, it was just your parents who left the presents. Although I hoped it wasn't true, this revelation seemed to answer the questions I had in the logistical area. I knew the world was a pretty big place and that it took an hour for us to drive from our house in the suburbs to our bushland shack in the hills at Gidgiegannup, so covering the whole planet in one night required unimaginable speeds. The ability of a portly gentleman to negotiate our narrow chimneys also seemed to present a problem. In the event I stayed awake on Christmas Eve and found that Duzzo's revelation was dead right.

By the time I was 10 I was pretty sure that the supernatural world was a giant leg-pull of kids by adults. By then I had also read all I could on Greek and Norse mythology, Zeus and Thor seeming to be interchangible with the Old Testament God, but, I was assured by my elders, entirely imaginary. That assertion made a lot less sense to me when I started reading a copy of Burton's "1001 Nights" I found in the book case at home. It was hard going and took me years, on and off, with a dictionary to understand what was intended to be conveyed, but helped expand my vocabulary to a significant degree. There was a foreword in praise of Allah who seemed to be the same God described in Genesis, but who was also described to me as being entirely mythical. This didn't seem to be very logical, but I was just a kid, what would I know? Of course I kept my thoughts to myself.

As punishment for forgetting Mother's Day in 1954, our mother sent my younger siblings and I to Sunday school at the Nedlands Church of Christ. It was my first year at high school and I joined the natural science club run by an inspiring (to me) teacher named McKenna. I'd loved wandering through the forest at Gidgieganup and discovering so many different animals, rocks and plants, so I enjoyed the outings with the Naturalists Club. I found the positive, optimistic attitudes of the science oriented people, particularly a loud young bloke named Harry Butler, much more to my liking than what seemed to be the rather sombre, barren outlook of the religious.

Around this time I found a box of books at the tip, one of which was Clement Wood's "The Outline Of Man's Knowledge" (1931). That book expanded my horizons enormously and gave me a bibliography as a framework for further reading. I found it much more interesting and challenging than the blandness of the biblical narrative. I also discovered that those without superstitious faith were not all criminal psychopaths, but people with empathy and altruism who were able to think for themselves without needing a social template to fit in.

While walking home from the church one sunday morning, I asked the kid from across the road whether he understood the benefit we derived from Jesus' having died for our sins. I just couldn't see how that worked and asked sincerely, but he just shrugged. About 3 weeks later I was called outside by the Sunday school superintendent, a Mr Cutts, who told me that better educated and more intelligent men than he or I accepted the absolute truth of the Gospels and that it was pretty arrogant for me to question that truth. He gave me a month to think about my relationship with Christ and whether I was ready for baptism. Until then I was suspended from the basketball team and social functions and was sent home forthwith.

I had no idea as to what had happened there, although it slowly came to me over the next few days. I was relieved as I'd discovered the joys of the game they play in heaven on Wednesday sports days at Perth Boys and wanted to play in the Saturday interschool competition. Now I could, without feeling guilty about abandoning the basketballers. The prospect of being excluded from the fellowship of Christ didn't seem at all like the end of the world to me at that stage, more a stroke of luck.
It also occurred to me that Mr Cutts had no more idea as to the answer to my question on the significance to me of Jesus' demise than I did, otherwise he'd have told me. Over the years I've asked it of many clergymen and none has answered me, preferring to acuse me of wilful obtuseness because the answer is so obvious or of attempting to belittle their faith, but refusing to believe the sincerity of my question. It's clear to me now that there is no answer to my question because blind faith is required of adherents to the Christian sects and, as I've been told many times, neither logic nor reason should have any part in one's search for the truth. If you believe, no rational explanation is needed.

At 17 I joined the Citizen Military Forces and on my enlistment form I left the space for religion blank. The warrant officer overseeing matters told me I had to put something in there, so I wrote the word "nil". He told me that that wasn't acceptable, that I needed a religion to join the Army. The attesting officer interrupted things by saying I could affirm rather than swear the oath and I was in. When I joined the Regular Army there was no requirement for me to have a religion until, as an officer cadet, I underwent surgery at HMAS Cerberus hospital and it became an issue again. The staff were adamant that I couldn't be admitted until I entered a religion in the appropriate box, urging me just to put something in there. I didn't and was admitted, later finding that someone had written "CofE" on the form.

In the early 1960s a group of us were sitting around in the sun one Saturday afternoon on the foreshore, waiting for the Nedlands Rugby Club change rooms to be opened. We were telling jokes and I did the crucifixion mime where the bloke pulls his hands off the nails and, while blowing on and shaking them in pain, suddenly realizes theres nothing supporting him and falls face down off the cross. Strong facial expressions are required to convey the poor bloke's horror. A young bloke came over and identified himself as a policeman and arrested me for blasphemy. He walked me up the road to the local copshop where he identified himself to the old sergeant as a police cadet and was told he didn't have the power to arrest anyone for anything and I was sent on my way while the eager beaver got a bit of advice from the older officer.

There seemed to be an assumption (probably subconscious) that religious belief was inate so that claiming not to believe was a sign of mental instability or mere posturing to gain notoriety and draw attention to oneself. There was a widespread belief that one needed a religion to join the Army and I was accused of joining under false pretences on several occasions; one senior officer proposing to charge me on this offence until he'd sought legal advice on the matter.

During initial training recruits and officer cadets are inflicted with a week of what's described as "Character Guidance" where a gang of Chaplains are let loose to tell you that being a good, Christian soldier is essential to your mental and moral well-being in the line of fire or in the event of one's being captured by the opposing team. There was plenty of "no atheists in the foxholes" slogans and the old furphy about religion enabling one to withstand psychological or physical torture. A gentleman I served under in Vietnam and who'd suffered captivity by the Chinese in Korea, knocked that notion on the head. To me, the idea of a digger clasping his hands, closing his eyes and praying while under fire made him a real liability to the whole team. It seems to have been a real problem for the Americans.

The cadet class was divided by sect for our "guidance" sessions; Catholic, Anglican and Other Protestant Denominations. I was allotted to the OPD group, along with 3 Muslim cadets from Malaysia and Brunei. One of the first topics for discussion was "is swearing really necessary?" and the Skypilot asked me what I thought.

Previous experience told me that this topic would arise and I'd prepared, but being asked first was a real gift. Yes, I opined, it is and demonstrated the added emphasis that adjectival profanity gives to any concept. That was the only time I was asked my opinion on anything by the chaplains.

During the following 20 years in the Regular Army I amused myself with baiting the padres. A Catholic chaplain reported me to the Executive Officer at Kapooka for assuring my platoon that, despite dire warnings from the padres, masturbation was an entirely healthy sexual outlet for young people in a situation where members of the opposite sex were not available. In fact, supressing one's sexual needs was definitely not good for one's health. The XO agreed with my view and the complaint went nowhere.

I also created a phantom chaplain of extreme fundamentalist views, the kind of Old Testament protestant one sees in the US, who communicated by letter and signal (military telegram) to criticize pretty-well everything we see in everyday life. Chaplain JC Cross' tirades were humourous due to their absurdity, although many chuckled guiltily at his silliness and others saw his view as the way things should be, despite knowing it was a hoax.

I was also an informal advocate for the abolition of laws preventing homosexual people from joining the ADF. Even from my early CMF days I was aware that many gay blokes I knew were serving usefully, most after completing National Service where sexual orientation didn't seem to be a problem to the powers that were. By the 1970s it was apparent to me that gays numbered at least 10% of the Army and that things needed to change, but very few agreed with my view, even gays who feared being outed by a precipitous voicing of their real views. I had no way of knowing what was being said in the higher echelons of the ADF and was pleasantly surprised in the early 1980s when, after being interviewed by a general on another matter, he told me that matters were in hand on the employment of gays. It was good to know that I'd been heard where it mattered and, although it took a few years longer to lift, few present members of the ADF would even be aware that the ban ever existed, or why.

More recently I've attempted to keep the institutional nature of the churches' crimes against our society in the public consciousness by letters to newspapers, some of which have been published. The churches and their apologists like to characterize those offences discovered as the isolated, abberant activity of the occasional bad apple, but in taking a global view it becomes very obvious that it is institutionalized. Men, in particular, with a predilection for paedophiliac and/or sadistic sex join churches and religiously oriented organizations in the expectation of being able to realize their sexual fantasies on children in their care. As well as my concern for our political pioneers' intentions for the separation of church and state, the present campaign to insert chaplains into our state schools seems to be an open invitation to a sexual smorgasbord for the paedophiles. Catholic Archbishop Barry Hickey often warned of the dangers of creeping secularism (he refused to accept that we were a secular nation by design), but what we're seeing today is creeping Christianity against the intentions of our founding leaders.

I first became aware of this matter at primary school in the 1940s on hearing classmates giggling about the groping hands of a leader at the local, church-run youth group of which they were members. On mentioning it at home I was told that I would be in very serious trouble if I was overheard repeating that story. Social ostracism, it seemed, was the price paid for any criticism of the churches, even mere nominal adherents.

[Mjt]

What a wonderful story Neil.
You have led a life, haven't you?
Thanks for sharing, and I look forward to your input on the forum

[AUSloth]

Thanks for sharing that Neil, very much appreciated.
Keep those letters rolling

[Praxis]

Originally Posted by The Irreverent Mr Black

Crikey!

What can I say but "Thanks" and "Wow!"?

Wot 'e said

[Rhys]

Fantastic story, Neil. Thanks for sharing .

[Neil Richardson]

Some bloke referred to prayer as God's junk mail. I suppose it's floating around the cosmos with all those lost emails and electro-magnetic emissions which didn't find an antenna.

[EvilDRMike]

Neil thanks for the short intro :-). You seem like a thoughtfully interesting chap.Also thanks for the heads up on the safety of masterbation that is a load off my mind.

EDM

[Neil Richardson]

You haven't been repressing the urge all this time, have you? You're lucky your scrotum hasn't exploded, or has that happened all ready?

[DanDare]

Mate that was a joy to read. I'd love it if you wrote a book. "How a heathen kept the country safe" or some such. Anyway, thanks for that gift of words and story.

[Deceter]

Brilliant!

I wish I knew you!