Katy Bettany

Why are you forever here, and I forever there? 

My feet rest on the solid ground, 

The rest of me far away, 

In a place made of salt and sky and silent sound. 

Didn’t the pirate ask for a distant shore?

And don’t the gulls fly free? 

I ask only for a familiar place, 

Where you are just you, and where I’m only me. 

‘The thing is, I’m just bad at…’ I pause. ‘Well, life’. 

I don’t mean this in an over-dramatic way. I’m not saying I’m a fail at everything, and that everything I touch turns to disaster. I’m saying that I’m bad at doing the things that keep us ticking over. Like laundry. And food shopping. And paying my bills. 

This is a tower of voices, 

Every light another heart, 

The same hands that draw lines, 

Also connect us, tiny spark, 

That kindles life from silent dark. 

And our resting places from this point, 

Fan out in time and all that space. 

This is a tower of voices, 

Of rude life of peace and wars, 

Stop me from drawing lines, tightlipped, 

All their geometry and logic unzipped, 

I offer you my hands, my voice and lack of reason, 

Keep still the pen, let my hands hold yours. 

I’m not very good at saying what I think. Or making decisions. Or anything that really requires me to come down from my fence. This annoys the crap out of some people (usually people who have no trouble in voicing their opinions - oddly, the kind of person I seem to get on best with).

I’ve never seen it as a bad thing before - at 20 years old, I am ill-equipped with knowledge and experience, and deciding something, something important, when you’re travelling light in both the aforementioned things, can be a little foolhardy. I don’t say what I think, partly through cowardice that nobody will agree with me and that I will be shunned (lol), but mostly because I don’t know what I think yet. In a trial, there is evidence, witnesses, months of deliberation - there isn’t just a judge throwing out decisions and thoughts like confetti at a wedding. If someone asks me what I think about xyz, I’d like to hear about all of the other letters first, to make sure what I say is really what I mean. Of course, there is always gut reaction, first impressions, blah blah blah, but I’d rather not have to keep changing my mind as time goes by. 

Part of my inability to voice opinion, of course, is part of a deep rooted fear of offending anybody. Whether this is pathetic or not is debatable. Of course, wanting to avoid hurting others is a good thing, and something to be strived for. But someone (whose opinion I respect very much) reminded me this week that by always sitting on the fence, I prevent people from getting to know me. And doing that not only hurts myself, but hurts my friends too, who would occasionally like to hear some honesty, no doubt. 

And decision making. Oh dear. Big things that I feel justified in spending weeks deliberating with myself. No problem. Trivial things like what to eat for dinner. Nightmare. I think it all comes down to the fact that I would rather please the people I’m with than get my own way. But as someone pointed out to me, if the other wants me to decide for a change, neither party gets what they want. 

So here it is, the best honesty I can offer you. I have ideas and a few opinions, but I have more questions. Don’t expect me to decide on the big stuff, and I will occasionally decide what to eat for dinner. I can’t always give you my opinion, but I promise to let you into my inner narrative. But the truth remains that I like my fence. It allows me to see both sides of the argument. 

The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood. John, 1:5. 

This phrase from John’s Gospel has been of incomparable help to me for many years now. There is much confusion within the modern Church - be it over the eligibility of homosexual clergy, the rights of women, contraception, or even something like the existence of hell. Argument over these issues, have always seemed to me a little futile. Human existence is open to error - we misinterpret and convolute the ideas and thoughts of one another, let alone the ideas of God. What we know is a closed system - God may appear to us individually, and touch our hearts, but God’s wisdom ultimately transcends the imagination of the human. To try and play advocate to God is almost insulting - what human could ever truly understand Him?

So this confusion, then, is the dark. We are the dark - and we shut out the lights every time we choose to fight with one another; or judge one another; or put forward a personal view as the one of God. To me, the Bible isn’t a wholly reliable source of truth either - man has corrupted it so. In addition, the decision to observe the Old Testament is something which bothers me: Jesus was the Light - the new covenant, sent to dispel the darkness of the Old Testament. But those who cling to the Bible in its entirety, in my opinion, cling to the darkness.  

Christianity is simple - the clue is in the name. Christ is the one true Light: the one concept we must let into our lives. We distract ourselves with arguing about the Way, and forget the things which Jesus taught us. To love each other without question, to refrain from judging from one another, and to love the one true God: these are the things that matter. Let God judge the rest: to pretend that we can give a valuable insight into the wisdom of God is something very arrogant. And,at this point, I would like to remind any die hard Doctrinarians that Pride is a deadly sin.

Driving away from the city,

Where the drink heats my brain,

And the smoke stains my lungs,

Breathing through a fug of cigarettes,

And an unsettled stomach.

I went back home,

Where the air carries only salt,

Where I can walk only with myself,

Where I can see things without design,

And hear things, or not. 

Low sun, golden leaves,

Flies that burnt sunlight,

Our salt skin,

Our grazed knees and feet,

And our bikes.

The summer closing in,

Its balm drawing us close,  

The children leave the parks,

And we race each other home.

We spend a whole summer,

Running wild and swimming,

In the river we grew up on.

You insisted on using fuel for the fire,

You built a frame of steel and filled it

With fire liquid, cooled solid and strange.

You stagger towards the burning heat,

You set your course by the flare,

With wit and hubris and calor.

You wondered why, oh dripping torture,

Your waxen wings did scream and melt,

And twisted stricken, Icarus you did fall.

Words to create images in gaps

between the neurons - ugly, cellular structures,

Like scaffolding wrapped ‘round cathedrals. 

Theory more beautiful that art,

And course more of design than scene,

Yet you, more lovely than the bones

Under your skin and sinew, 

Because the cathedrals in your skull, 

Host the images they do. 

I was thinking about bereavement today - trying to find a way to describe it without sounding patronizing or irritating. I came up with the following analogy. 

Grief is like getting a shard of glass trapped in your heart. It’s painful all the time to begin with, but then, little by little, the constant stream of blood wears the shard down into a smooth, milky pebble (like on a beach), which just sits heavily in your heart. You carry it around with you for the rest of your life - sometimes you feel a dull ache, other times nothing at all.