No Compulsory ID Cards!
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah!!!!! 
Add comment September 29th, 2009
Archive for September, 2009
Confirmed (Part II)
I don’t normally talk about my faith in public as I consider it a private matter and because I don’t believe that having a faith makes you a “better” person than someone who doesn’t.
Indeed, over the last two years, the people I have received the greatest love and support from are hardcore Atheists who are proud to be so. These friends have actually been more “Christian” than half the religious people I knew from the period when I had a “perfect life” – I wouldn’t be without my Atheist friends for the world.
However, St John’s Church in Leytonstone has also been a major part of my life of the last two years and in May I was confirmed there. The fabulous Reverend Raymond Draper (with whom I’m pictured above at the confirmation service) asked me to write an article on my experience for St John’s October edition of ‘Good News’, which has just come out.
Seeing as the print version of the article is now all over Leytonstone, I see no reason not to reproduce it here.
I thank Rev Raymond Draper and Rev Kathryn Robinson again for everything they’ve done for me over the last two years. Alongside my family, Atheist and non-Atheist friends, I wouldn’t have survived without them.
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My Confirmation by Miranda Grell
The 24th of May this year was the first day of the rest of my life. At around 7pm in a beautifully lit St Andrew’s Church in Colworth Rd, Leytonstone, myself and three other worshippers from St John’s Church were confirmed in our faith, alongside six young parishioners. Being confirmed was something that felt completely right and natural to me at the time and four months on I definitely know I made the right decision.
My journey towards confirmation had begun at a point in my life where I had never been so low and so broken. After a series of traumatic personal and political events that took up the whole of my 2007, I spent a great deal of 2008 thinking about my life, my purpose in the world and my future – I spent more time than I ever had done thinking about God, Jesus Christ and the teachings of the bible.
Don’t get me wrong, I hadn’t come to religion cold. I had always been open to faith. I had been born and raised a Catholic and my family and I had attended church well into my adolescence, but we had always been uncomfortable with the harshness of the Catholic Church’s teachings on many social issues. Over recent years, I had remained spiritual but my family and I had all but given up on organised religion.
My encounters with St John’s changed that position for the better. While engaged in local community work as a local councillor, I had always been impressed by St John’s and the practical help its clergy and its members seek to give people living in our local community. Rather than just ‘doing God’ for the sake of it, St John’s had always struck me as the ultimate positive example of ‘faith in action’. Its practical support for children and young people, families, the elderly, the disabled, those in need, and for local people from other faiths or of no faith was just phenomenal. Now at the hardest and lowest point in my life, St John’s reached out to me too and helped me get my life back.
Sanchia, Christopher, Margaret and I began our confirmation classes with Rev Raymond Draper on a cold night back in February. Despite the cold outside, that first session with Raymond, and the many others that would follow, were full of warmth. Raymond had prepared the course under a series of topics – ‘Does God exist?’, ‘What is the bible?’, ‘Who was Jesus Christ?’ and so on. Each discussion we had was backed up with some excellent materials Raymond loaned to us in the form of books, magazines, essays and DVDs. I particularly enjoyed reading some of the books written by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the ‘Faith In Action’ series.
Another highlight of the confirmation course was the opportunity to visit another house of faith in our local area. Our group chose to visit the Quaker Friends Meeting House, just up the road in Wanstead. It was fantastic to be welcomed at that meeting by other local people who are also Christians but just choose to express their faith in a different way. St John’s close interaction with other churches and other faith groups in the local area again signalled to me that choosing to be confirmed there was the right decision.
As our confirmation classes progressed, I definitely felt myself growing in my faith, in peace and in the renewed joy of living. Sanchia, Christopher, Margaret and I would leave our classes feeling strengthened and calm, with a sense of being able to cope with whatever challenges were awaiting us.
I also attended church services regularly in that period and found that what we had learnt in the confirmation classes deepened my understanding and therefore my enjoyment of the proceedings.
By the time it had got to May, there was no question that I would not go through with the formal confirmation ceremony.
Four months on and I feel very comfortable, relaxed and happy that I have been confirmed. I have a new church family to compliment the very good family and friends I already had, and I feel emotionally and mentally strengthened by the extra dimension being confirmed had added to my life. I have always been socially aware and so I am proud to be a full member of a church whose core mission is to ‘do good’ in a practical way for local people.
Joining St John’s and being confirmed has enriched my life and I would fully recommend the confirmation journey to anyone.
1 comment September 27th, 2009
Full Support for Patricia Scotland
Ever since I was a little girl, the women in my Dominican family have talked non stop about the formidable Scotland family from Castle Bruce in Dominica.
This well known family is held in huge esteem by all Dominicans, and the children of Dominicans, for the way Mr and Mrs Scotland managed to raise twelve children, all of whom became high achievers through sheer hard work, talent and resilience.
When I was studying at Walthamstow School for Girls, I always had Patricia Scotland at the back of my mind. Whever I would feel like slacking, my mum would remind me of the careers advisor at Walthamstow Girls who told Patricia Scotland not to bother becoming a lawyer but to go and work in a supermarket instead. Patricia Scotland, rightly, ignored that teacher and decided to “neglect not the gift that is in thee“. She became one of my heroines ever since I became old enough to fully comprehend the significance of her achievements. I knew that if Patrica Scotland could go to University – having attended a normal, local comprehensive like Walthamstow Girls and not some posh fee paying school and then manage to become the youngest QC since William Pitt the Younger – then me and all the other working class girls at Walthamstow Girls could also achieve whatever we wanted too.
While working out in Brussels as a trainee speechwriter at the European Commission seven years ago, I was, therefore, absolutely over the moon to bump into Patricia Scotland in the European Parliament (where she had come to represent Britain at a Justice and Home Affairs European Council meeting) and tell her just how amazing I think she is.
Patricia Scotland has had no silver spoon shoved in her mouth from aged 2 days old. Her rise was based on hard work, integrity and a true love of people and justice.
Patricia Scotland is the victim in the awful situation she’s found herself in over the last few days and she should be treated as so. Her former employee should be ashamed of herself for firstly having abused Patricia Scotland’s trust and then – even worse – having the gall to sell her story to the papers.
I normally have great sympathy for people who have found themselves in Britain illegally through some traumatic experience that occured in their home country – war, poverty or genocide. That’s why I support a proper amnesty for illegal immigrants who are already here, would be at risk if they went home or who just want to earn an honest crust for their families and pay their taxes.
In this cleaner’s case, however, I hope they deport her as soon as possible.
Gordon Brown has risen in my estimation this week for the instinctive solidarity he has shown Patricia Scotland and whatever happens to her, I hope that she knows that she is loved, admired and respected by thousands of people in this country and always will be.
Add comment September 27th, 2009
