God and unrelated stuff



I have struggled with being in and out of belief in a God being all my life. Even more of a struggle has been believing that God believes in me. Perhaps that is why virtually none of my writing is about spiritual matters. In fact most of what I write is a bit pessimistic - "life's a bitch and then you die" sort of thing. This is pretty depressing really when I look at how much time and energy I give to spiritual matters.  

http://www.subud.org.au/



I usually go to Mass and I'm often involved in some Catholic prayer or study group. As well I'm heavily involved with Subud, and attend latihan twice a week, unless Quiz night at the Port Football Club entices me instead. I won't try to say what Subud is (there is plenty of information on Subud websites), but obviously it's pretty big in my life. I'm even supposed to assist new members be opened and generally be a Helper.  

I mention all of this because I've been feeling a bit despondent the last few days. I've also for the last few months been pretty angry over God playing with my head about curing me of cancer at Lourdes in France. This was part of my motivation for starting up another blog on the topic. Now that I don't believe he did me a miracle I've had to rethink the whole blog. Anyway I was lying in bed this morning feeling sorry for myself and I had the strongest feeling (and image) of God lifting me out of bed by the scruff of my neck with one enormous hand and giving me a tremendous shake. I guess the point is that with all the misery of the poor bastards in Libya and Japan I shouldn't complain. Anyway I've felt much better since.  

Another article in Articlesbase (http://www.articlesbase.com/authors/william-logan/57251): "Revise what you've written". Too many writers leap into publishing before adequately revising what they've written. This article reviews the pitfalls of submitting work for publication without adequate revision and makes constructive suggestions on how to go about the revision process.

I was recently asked to write a comment for a friend in a copy of my 1999 thesis: A social work perspective on changing service approaches to people with disability. In addition to my own research, I had drawn on the writings of the French philosopher Michael Foucault to argue that categorisations of people as mentally ill or disabled was really to serve more the interests of powerful interest groups. For example, this could be big business, politicians, drug companies or treating professionals. I compared the way in which working with people categorised as mentally ill and intellectually disabled was regarded by social workers. One of my conclusions was that social workers had much more authority (and consequently enjoyed) working with people with intellectual disability than they did with people with mental illness. This was because they had less competition from other more powerful interest groups who preferred to work in mental health because of the financial rewards in giving the appearance of providing a cure, and the more profitable patient/client group.

I won't continue on about my thesis or otherwise I'll be at risk of trying to rewrite it here, but what struck me was that in my novel Bloodied Brains and Bureaucrats I was making the same argument, although this had not been my intention. My original idea had simply been to write a bit of a mystery / satire within an area I knew something about, that is the disability service industry. What I ended up doing was describing the parasitical behaviour of people who benefit from the disability industry. Unfortunately in both my thesis and my novel, I'm unable to offer an easy solution to this situation. Maybe it is the human condition, or maybe it can only be addressed at an individual level, a bit of a struggle that will go on as long as we draw breath, like my struggles about God.