After a pub lunch we decided to ‘do a random’ and apply the ‘half an hour’ rule since Archway was pretty central.
‘Badminton. South West London. Its miles away…’
‘I’m not going to badminton’ said Mary.
‘Okay.’ I replied, secretly relieved. ‘We’ll have to bank it. What’s the next one… Hold on. The Asylum Fellowship.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Don’t know; I’ll have a look. Ah… It’s a church. Do you have a relationship with Jesus?’
‘NO!’ replied Mary, laughing.
‘Neither do I! It looks like it’s close to Tottenham Court Road.’
‘That’s on my line; I can get there by Tube’ said Mary, immediately problem solving and implicitly suggesting that we’re going.
‘I think I know where it is. It’s the church that is close to an orange skyscraper.’
I knew the orange skyscraper. It was where I went to the Gay Mates male grooming event.
I wrote down the address on a scrap of paper and gave it to Mary. Mary set off towards the tube, and I set off on my scooter. One road pretty much took me all the way there. I picked my way through Kentish Town, and then onto Camden Town, negotiated a couple of junctions, and edged my way past Euston, and then into Bloomsbury. I parked up in a motorcycle bay that was on one of the roads that led to Covent Garden; it had taken no more than fifteen minutes.
I found St Giles in the Field easily, but all the entrances seemed to be locked. I walked towards the back and discovered a transparent plastic folder that was strung up on a door knob. In the folder was a note: ‘for the asylum fellowship please ring the doorbell’. I pushed the bell and moments later a tall friendly chap called Tony came to greet me. He ushered me inside.
The Meetup description didn’t say very much (other than it was free and there was a promise of snacks), but there was a link to a website. The site was a surprise: first thing I saw was a graphic of a six-sided star and an image of a skull which seemed to have a red cross behind it. In the background there were creepy looking winged creatures. Scrolling down the page, there was a photograph of eleven people, almost all of them dressed in black, sitting around a table. The surrounding space was decorated with a skeleton, two further cartoon-like skulls and a fake spider web.
I clicked on an ‘info’ link: ‘Asylum exists to bring the love and acceptance of Christ to people from the various underground subcultures in London’. I was worried: I don’t believe in Christ and I certainly didn’t belong to any sub-cultures.
I found myself in a large meeting room. On the walls I saw paintings of old white men, and names of people who had some kind of connection with the church. Crisps, mini-chocolate rolls and copies of the Bible sat on a huge table that was covered with a couple of table cloths that featured Celtic patterns.
‘Hi! I’m Sarah!’
Sarah was a young woman in her twenties. She wore a smart black dress, killer heels, beguiling eye make-up and a pair of cat ears.
‘Thanks for coming! How did you find us?’
I explained that I had heard about the group through Meetup. I said that I knew every little about the group.
Sarah explained a little more: Asylum was primarily about love and friendship; that there wasn’t any sermon or speeches. Instead, it was about meeting and discussing things in a way that would have happened at the time of Jesus.
‘The group is very open minded; everyone is welcome: people who have faith, people who don’t, and people who have different faiths to our own. All that we ask is that everyone respects the person who holds a view’.
My phone beeped. It was Mary. She had found the orange skyscraper but wasn’t too sure about where to go next. I rushed out to the street to find her. Five minutes later, I was introducing her to Tony and Sarah. For a few moments, she seemed to be overawed by the paintings, the names of dead people, the Celtic table cloths and Sarah’s cat ears.
‘So, are you spiritual?’ asked Sarah.
‘Erm…. No.’ I replied.
‘Then… why have you come here today?’ she gently challenged.
‘Erm, well… I was supposed to go to Badminton, but it was too far. It was in South West London. This was the next event on the Meetup calendar.’
Everyone turned to look at me. I explained that this was random event number ninety five of a nonsense Meetup challenge.
‘That’s awesome!’ said Ray, who was wearing what appeared to be a pair of Cuban heels. ‘I went to something called the Goth tour of London. It was brilliant! They showed us all these different places, like, sites of secret Gin halls. There was this other really interesting thing that happened really close to here: the London Beer flood, it’s called. A huge vat ruptured, causing the beer to go all down the street, killing loads of people.’
It was time for the ‘service’ to start. Mary moved to sit next to me. I was glad for her support; there were more Christians in the room than there were atheists.
After a short prayer, Sarah said to talk about a book called ‘The Road Less Travelled’ by M Scott Peck. Scott Peck was apparently a psychotherapist who had an interest in spiritual development.
Sarah read us a passage. It was about laziness. The point was that that it’s easy to be lazy; that it’s easy to just go to work and go home and not really think about ‘big issue stuff’. A key was that having a spiritual relationship with God isn’t something that is easy; it takes time to develop and nurture, and that we’re all at different stages of our spiritual ‘journey’.
‘Sometimes I think it’s easier if you don’t believe…’ said Pete, who was sitting to the left of Mary. My inner atheist inside me started to make a fuss. An internal battle commenced between the desire to ‘sit quiet’ and listen to what is said at the Meetup, and to become actively engaged. I couldn’t be disingenuous: I couldn’t pretend to love Jesus when I patently didn’t. My inner atheist won.
‘Actually… I don’t think it is easy if you don’t believe’ I said.
Everyone turned to look at me again; the room became quiet.
‘I have to confess that I’m atheist. Now, I understand that believing isn’t easy, and that it can be tough, that you can doubt – but it’s also quite a big thing to come to a conclusion that there isn’t anything else; it’s… difficult. In my life, there have been some times when I have thought of praying, but, actually, that’s a long time ago now… I just… We are the ones who need to take responsibility for what we do. We can’t leave it up to God.’ I paused for a moment, trying to gather my thoughts.
‘In some respects, I guess this randomness quest stuff that I’m on is a kind of weird spiritual journey all of its own; I’m seeing what is out there, and seeing what happens, so I do kind of understand, a bit, about where you’re coming from. One thing that I must say is that atheism isn’t a religion. It’s not that at all’.
A chap who had joined the meeting late chipped in. ‘If I thought there wasn’t anything else, I would want to throw myself under a train’.
Silence hung heavily in the air.
‘I’m really glad that you’ve said what you did’, said Tony, turning to me. ‘I’m in a very similar place to where you are. If there is a God, and I ever got to meet him, I would be very angry’. Again, there was silence. ‘I would be very angry with God’ he repeated.
This led to a discussion about the nature of ‘our Christian God’ and differences between Christianity and other faiths. It was a discussion that I didn’t entirely follow, especially when the new member of the group started to talk about ‘early Christian thought’ and Gnosticism.
‘There’s this place not too far from where I live that some spiritualists think is haunted.’ It was Jim, a chap in his mid-fifties. ‘They say that there’s all these different ghosts there, and they said they’ve seen them. I once spent the night there. I didn’t see anything. It makes you wonder whether they’re making it all up’.
The conversation moved to other topics, such as morality. My annoying inner atheist couldn’t resist chipping in again: ‘a really interesting challenge is figuring out our own morality’, I said, stumbling into a debate about moral absolutism.
Eventually, Sarah brought the focus of the discussion back to the purpose of the group. She said that different opinions are welcome. Where there are differences, they are to be explored ‘with love’ for others. I got her point: confrontation and vehement disagreement doesn’t do any good; it’s best to take time to listen. The group wasn’t about preaching, or even about persuasion. Its heart was liberal: it was one about acceptance.
Sarah gave myself and Mary some leaflets. Pete, who turned out to be spectacularly tall, gave me a big hug, which made me feel relieved that I hadn’t inadvertently caused any offense. I thanked Sarah and learnt that she was originally from California and had found ‘a home’ in the Asylum Fellowship, and was now a trustee.
The man who said that he would want to jump in front of a train ‘if there wasn’t anything else’ was called Matt. His words resonated in my mind for a day or so afterwards. Then, during a moment of peace a few days later, my inner atheist spoke to me.
My inner atheist said: ‘if there’s nothing else, we’ve a fundamental responsibility; to ourselves and those around us. We have a responsibility to live the best possible life we can because there is no heaven or hell; there is only now, and the remaining days that we have. Go do whatever you need to do. Seek happiness, and do your best not to hurt others in the process. Try your best to help others, since that will give you happiness too. Don’t put things off; go live life, and live it well.’
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