Abide with me...

Yesterday saw another Summer Solstice pass with little incident at any of the major Pagan sacred sites. Having seen images of the 36 thousand-odd Swampy-like revellers at Stonehenge peacefully witness the overcast dawn of the longest day in the northern hemisphere, I wondered in what other circumstances would such a diverse cast of individuals get together to joyfully celebrate the religious ceremony of a small minority at their sacred place of worship.

I don’t know for sure, but I don’t expect most of the people gathered at this event were card-carrying Druids or Pagans of any sect, but they shared a moment together where the diverse belief structures, moralities and ethical frameworks didn’t matter – they just wanted to enjoy a spiritual act together, whether it belonged to their belief structure or to someone else's. (Although, I expect some of them thought they were at Glastonbury and were actually just wondering when The Prodigy were coming on).

Were their beliefs all that different?

I was born into a working-class family in the West of Scotland and, like everyone around me, my moral structure was actually a reflection of my parents, and their parents before them. So, for the young SpiderBoz, Protestant Christianity was it. I was baptised into the Church of Scotland before I had a voice to object, and was handed my chalice of guilt to carry with me until I sought escape.

I quickly grew to understand that there could be a choice of more than simply left-foot or right-foot Christianity. My friends had a wide variety of different belief structures (Buddhism, Hinduism, Islamism, Mormonism, Sikhism and so on), but to my forming mind this was simply semantics. Anyway, they still believed in ‘God’ so difference did it make?

The main thing was, irrespective of culture or religion, we had a commonality of morality. Albeit different, we had a moral framework from which to hang our ethics. For most it was based on differing theistic beliefs but we, on the whole, got on. As far as I can remember, there were no Crusades or Spanish Inquisitions, there were very few witch-burnings and nobody declared a holy war on anyone, with the exception of the Rangers-ites and Celtic-ists, but that was mostly fought in an orderly fashion on the battle pitch.

These days I don’t believe in god, but I still thank my parents for this part of my upbringing. Not because of the long, tedious hours spent in church and Sunday School on Sundays, or at bible school and Boys Brigade during the week. I thank my parents for the moral and ethical standards that they instilled in me.

More and more parents are looking to the state to provide an ethical framework in schools, while the schools are struggling their way through the increasing burden of bureaucracy with little, if any, power to enforce discipline within their walls. As I look at the news reports of children forming delinquent gangs, assaulting each other and attacking disabled people, I can’t help if morality is solely taught through post-watershed TV, the internet and the Xbox.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that religion should be adopted or taught in schools, nor am I saying that religion in itself is a good (or bad) thing. What I am saying is that people need to be shown right from wrong before they have been nurtured by society into delinquency. And, frankly, this is the parents responsibility. If you don’t feel you can provide a decent, loving, respectful, moral and ethical upbringing for a child - keep your junk in your pants.

Seriously. If you try to get an animal from the RSPCA, you have to fill in a questionnaire to assess your knowledge and suitability to look after the animal, subject yourself to an interview to ensure that will provide an acceptable level of love, patience, time and commitment, have a home visit to ensure that your house is ‘good enough’ for the pet, and they will even ensure that you have sufficient income to pay for it’s care and upkeep, too. If you want to bring a child into this world, all you need to do is down enough lager or Bacardi Breezers to convince yourselves that getting jiggy without any protection would be a fine and dandy idea. You need a license to own a gun, or to drive a car or even to own a TV, but you can drop a multitude of future ASBO recipients without even knowing the name of the other parent...

We need to get back to a state of morality. Bringing gods into the equation seems to be a recipe for high-horse ranting, politically correct wankness, or exploding backpacks. Well-intentioned Humanists seem to have gone too far down the Richard Dawkins organic, fair-trade, free-range, tie-dyed ethics route. So what does that leave us?

Well, after an entire morning of agonised soul searching I have finally found a religion I can relate to. The good book is an uplifting 2-hour long film, so you don’t have to spend years dedicated to it’s learnings, the ideology could fit easily on a postage stamp but it gives a better moral education than can be found in the ethics teachings of all the schools across the land.

Dudeism

By the middle of the first afternoon on my quest for faith, I had even taken the oath to become an ordained Dudeist priest. So, if you’re reading this from the good-ole U, S of A, and you want the Reverend SpiderBoz to officiate at your wedding (subject to legal confirmation from the local County Clerk) as long as you’re happy to pay for my travel and accommodation expenses, don’t hesitate to drop me a line...

For all the world religions, faiths, belief structures, moral frameworks, and so on. I can find few who can sum up what I have been trying to say so succinctly and eloquently:

“Life is short and complicated and nobody knows what to do about it. So don't do anything about it. Just take it easy, man. Stop worrying so much whether you'll make it into the finals. Kick back with some friends and some oat soda and whether you roll strikes or gutters, do your best to be true to yourself and others - that is to say, abide”

Amen