On Calling God a 'Bitch'

For the past few years I’ve been Feeling Things in cathedrals. The sense was stronger, and different to The Weight that I feel in most historical sites, but, being from a household so non-Christian that, aged 21, I had a near heart-attack when people started giving standard responses to prayers at a wedding, wondering how they all knew what to say, and when to say it, I decided these feelings were just because I love a good cathedral (which, to be fair, is true. Cathedrals are, without a doubt, the world’s sexiest buildings.)

After a while, I knew it wasn’t really because of how gorgeous cathedrals are. After all, for over a year I’d been finding myself writing weird poems about God, when I should have been writing a children’s poetry collection. This, combined with the fact that I had, for the first time in my life, befriended actual real life Christians, meant I’d been asking a lot of questions.

In early September I visited one of these friends, Graham, who happens to be a priest. We toured Norwich, visiting the castle, and the museums, and, of course, Norwich Cathedral. While we were there, we stayed for Evensong. Until that moment the only religious service I’d attended was the ordination of a friend. The choir sang, and I stared at the stonework. The Crossing. The Triforium. The pillars crawling heavily upwards. I Felt Things, and I told nobody. Afterwards, Graham apologised that the organist had taken the day off - he’d wanted to show off his favourite cathedral, in all its glory. How could I explain to him that he had?

Nearly two months passed. I ignored it all. I just like cathedrals, and choir music. Nothing odd about that. I just feel entirely at peace, and somehow whole in cathedrals. Nothing more than that. Nothing weird. Nothing religious.

At the end of October I arrived in Durham, to coach some poets at the University there. Of course, I visited the cathedral. Durham Cathedral is my favourite cathedral in the world, and stands unparalleled in her majesty. I headed, as I always do, to my favourite spot in the cathedral, right at the East end, in the fantastical confection of stained glass that is the Chapel of the Nine Altars. There’s a row of seats there, carved into the wall of St Cuthbert’s Shrine, where you can sit, unnoticed by those who always circulate through the chapel, but never seem to linger.

A few days into my visit, one of the poets I was coaching asked if I wanted to go to evensong, after all, this was my third year year visiting Durham, and by now everyone knew how much I loved the cathedral. We went, only to find it had unexpectedly been changed to evening prayer, to give the choir the night off. My friend apologised, but I didn’t mind. Something akin to my visit to Norwich Cathedral was occurring.

A few nights later, we went again. The person I was staying with was out all night recording a podcast, so my friend and I decided to do Evensong, and then dinner, and then walk and chat until he had finished his recording. The choir was there, the organ played, and, during a pause in the music, I had a word with God.

“Alright, you Bitch,” I distinctly remember thinking (or praying, I guess?), “if this is a thing, you better make it clearer than this. You can’t just go about making me feel things all the time - I’m a poet, my entire job is to feel strong feelings at every waking moment, so that shit’s just not gonna work. Either do a thing, or fuck off.”

It turns out that calling God a “Bitch” gets His attention.

After Evensong, we left the cathedral and went for dinner, and then we walked along the path by the river. We lingered in the darkness of the trees, watching the light of an unusually bright moon shine off of the swollen, flooded river, the fevered rush of it, slicing underneath our words. We headed to Prebend’s bridge, just behind the cathedral. It’s unlit, but with the moon so bright, it didn’t matter, and it has four  niches in its sides, built over the pillars of the bridge, where you can generally sit, and chat, with little disturbance. We cleared a few dead leaves away, and sat down, the cathedral looming over our shoulders. Ahead, the river flowed between the woods, beneath the moon, around a bend, and vanished. I set up my phone on a small tripod on the edge of the bridge, to try taking a long exposure shot of the stars, then sat back down. We talked, for a while, about poetry, careers, the future. Then I got up, to check the photo exposure, and saw a group of students wandering across the bridge on the opposite side. A kid detached himself from them, and shifted across to our side of the bridge, stepping into the niche that stood, just like ours, at the opposite end.

For a second, I thought he was posing for a photo, before he climbed up onto the parapet. I remember murmuring “What the fuck is he doing?” to my friend, before he leapt up, and ran over to him, shouting. There they stood, silhouetted, in the bright, bright, moonlight. One man, leaning forward, reaching out his hand, desperately begging this stranger to take it. The other, swaying, alone, standing above the drop, and the icy, rushing, water. 

Years ago, when I was studying in Bristol, I decided to take my own life. I travelled to Bath, to die in beauty, jumping from a bridge in the city centre. An old stone bridge, that had Bath Abbey looming over it, like Durham Cathedral was looming over us right now. I decided to visit the Abbey, to sit there, and if someone spoke to me, if someone noticed me, I would go home. Forty minutes in, an American tourist slid along the pews, towards the dead-end tomb I’d wedged myself up against, and asked if I was okay. I told her, in British tradition, that I was fine, and, less than a quarter of an hour later, I was on the train home. Now, years later, I was watching myself, but not myself, wavering on an old stone bridge over a swollen river, in a twisted mirror image of my own infinite possibilities.

The boy on the bridge said something, and my friend swore, spinning away so he wouldn’t see what happened next. And, in slow motion, he leapt, dropping down into the darkness, and the rushing water. I ran to the side and saw the white ripples before the current whisked them away. Years ago, I trained as a lifeguard, I’d never been outside a pool, but I knew the risks. The low temperatures, the drop, the speeding current of the flooded river, the debris in the water, the weir ahead, overflowing, faster, and more dangerous than ever. That’s not a situation you should survive.

I ran to my friend, the emergency services were called, we shone phone-torches over the side, but none of the beams of light would go far enough to light up the water more than the moon already had. At our feet, dropped beside his bag, the boy’s phone lit up, over and over again. I didn’t want to know who was calling, because I knew exactly what their reason was for ringing him. Soon, we heard noise on the west bank. A crowd of people had, for some reason, been walking on the normally deserted path, and, somehow, despite the direction of the current, the boy had been washed ashore, right at their feet. They pulled him up the bank, out of the water, and, when the police arrived, we found out he had survived.

None of that should have been possible.

We phoned the guy I was staying with, and told him what had happened. When he asked where we should meet, all I could think was “go to the Cathedral”, so we met outside it, and went home for tea, and biscuits, and uplifting television.

That night, and all of the next day, every part of my mind was telling me to go to the cathedral. To go to the cathedral and talk to a priest. At mid-afternoon, I did. I went back to my favourite seat, and stared up at the stained glass. Jesus, on the cross, stared down at me, and, for half an hour, I guess I prayed. And I felt the peace, and comfort I had always felt in cathedrals, and I think I began to know.

I stood, after a while, and, returning to the Nave, asked a volunteer if I could talk to a priest. This began a panic, because it turned out there were no priests in, at the time. After the third person hurried to and from the office, walkie-talkie in hand, they asked me why I wanted to speak to a priest. I said, “I watched a kid jump off Prebend’s Bridge last night.” - five minutes later, a priest appeared. I didn’t talk to him about God, just about my worries; that the poets I was in Durham to teach, might do the same, under the pressure of the university. That the friend I was with that night would take this horribly, despite doing all he could. I spoke in confusion, of the others present on the bridge that night, who ignored it, even while it was happening. At the end, he recognised me from Evensong the night before, and asked if it was something I went to regularly. For the first time, instead of replying, simply, that I just like cathedrals, and choir music (which was true), I told him that I was not comfortable saying I was religious, but I was no longer comfortable saying I was not. He nodded, knowingly, and I left, to walk the cloisters, and think.

Every night after that I found myself lurking on the Church of England website, browsing in incognito mode, even though I’m the only person who uses my computer, as if I was scared that having a hint of Christianity in my browsing history might make it real. After a few weeks of that, I read the Daily Prayer in the website footer, and started crying. That was the final straw. I phoned my friend, the wife of a priest, and said “I think Jesus is coming for me, what the fuck do I do?” - but I did not tell her the bridge story. She conferred with her wife, and, a few days later, I messaged our mutual friend, Graham, with similar sentiments, so that he would be in the loop. He offered to buy me a bible, and I was so touched that I cried in an unfortunately well-lit reception area.

I’ve nearly done my first reading of the New Testament now, and am slowly devouring the book of Psalms. I’m taking everything slowly, and tentatively, as though my friends are kind, supportive, (and openly gay), priests, I’m painfully aware not all members of the Church of England share such liberal views on LGBT people, especially trans people - after all, the only church near me that runs an Alpha course (an introduction to Christianity) is run by clergy who all signed an open letter, opposing moves to accept trans people more decisively within the Church. Even outside of the concern that I am not really welcome in the Church, I worry that friends and family of mine, who understandably have issues with religion, and the way it has been weaponised, will think differently of me when this comes out. But I will be no different, and, as I believe faith to be a deeply personal thing, and am uncomfortable with evangelism, I won’t be trying to press this change on others. I simply think this is right, and good for me. 

Hopefully, I will one day be able to find a place in a congregation, or church community, despite those who do not believe I deserve one. For now, I will read, and  pray; settling for asking questions of my friends regularly, and sitting alone in the anonymity of cathedral congregations when I travel for work. I could not bear it if ignorance or hatred drove me away at this early, delicate, stage, and I do not believe that is what God wants either.

I’ve already learnt a lot on this journey, about myself, and others - and I’ve also learnt that it’s probably not a good idea to call God a bitch.