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Passport to Pimlico
This article is part four in a series, if you want to start at the beginning...
Hey, isn't that how God started His book!
From Walthamstow to Pimlico will take you twenty minutes on the London Undergound Victoria line.
It took me much longer, but then I took the scenic route.
I worked in direct selling from 17 to 26 years of age and during that time I visited about eight or nine thousand homes all around the country trying to sell double glazing. The average was to sell to one in three homes you got into.
In each house I learned a little more about what made people tick, what turned them on, how to tweek their switches to make them jump though the hoops I created.
No university offered a more comprehensive or in depth course in human psychology and anthropology. There was no degree at the end of it, but then the University of Adversity has no need to issue pieces of paper to it's honour students, they know they are qualified and those they meet realise it soon enough.
I was a practitioner of manipulation, deception and intimidation, the three elements of witchcraft, (and wherever two or more of those elements are present, so is witchcraft) and had no idea that I was, as many people also do not realise it when they do their daily jobs or deal with other people.
From curses to blessings
As a result of that, being involved even unwittingly in Satan's kingdom, my life was cursed and no matter what I did, I was never going to have true success.
True success is the inner peace that comes from knowing that you are content.
In Genesis, God condemns Cain to be a restless wanderer, which (translated) means unable to settle or feel secure, always looking for something else that will bring fulfilment. Most of humanity suffer from the same curse, and for the same reasons, we are murderers, we reject God's ordinances and we lie and cheat and steal.
That's not you?
Am I making presumptions?
- Have you never stolen anything, not even a paper clip?
- Have you ever hated someone?
- Never broken even one of Gods commandments?
- Tell me have you never told a lie?
So yes, most of humanity suffer from the same curse that Cain did, and like Cain they have sought refuge in cities, where their sins are less recognisable, and probably not even noticed.
There's a line in Air America where Robert Downey Jnr, replies to Mel Gibson's question about why he is depressed, by saying "Where I came from, I was the weirdest guy in town, but here (in Laos flying drugs and guns for the CIA) I'm just normal".
Most people are just normal, but of course it depends what you view as normal.
By the time I was twenty I had been living with Sandie, my public school 'girlfriend' for about 2 years. We started our 'married' life in a cottage in the middle of Kent. It was beautiful and had a long tree lined drive and horses in the paddock behind.
Our cat loved it.
We never got 'officially' married (as in legally) because of a fortune teller, who I visited at a local fète, and who told me that my second marriage would be a happy one. My twisted logic told me that therefore the way to thwart this prediction was to never get married. Don't listen or approach fortune tellers, they can give you a true prediction (and my second marriage is a happy one) but it's always at a cost (and not just crossing their palm with silver).
Look at what happened to King Saul if you doubt that!
God views marriage differently than our society does.
We marry normally to effect a legal contract which is recognised by the state, and in our increasingly secular society, many people have no concept of until death do us part being relevant.
God however views marriage as the union between two people, made when a promise to be together is consumated in a sexual act. The piece of paper is not required, even the blessing in the sight of the congregation is not required.
When we contract with God the covenant is always sealed with a death.
When we entreat with Christ, we accept His death for ours, and we die to self.
When we marry another, we also experience a death, its the death of us as an individual and we then live through our spouse.
Provided both partners do this, there is no problem, because;
- He lives for She and She lives for He
We make the marriage certificate and the church blessing a part of our tradition and ceremony, but the basic fact is:
Knowing how God views 'marriage'
How many people have you 'married'
Promise + Consumation = Marriage
In the bible God differentiates between marriage and fornication by terming a married state as 'knew' and a fornicators state as 'lay' (which is common parlance for a 'quickie').
Where there is a marriage God tells us they 'knew' each other, and indeed marriage is getting to know each other, rather than just 'laying' with each other.
The way God planned it was to put what is required for a full individual into two packages; him and her.
He made him logical and her emotive, and if you put the two together, and they get to know each other really well, you get a well balanced functioning human unit capable of carrying out Gods plans for the family. But they need to keep at it, and it's not easy!
No wonder in our modern society, where 'self' is paramount, we have a breakdown in family and society in general.
Meanwhile, back in Kent...
When you're selling double glazing, where you live is rather irrelevant as you are driving 200 miles a day on average to and from 'work', because victims do not drive to you to give you money. I still kept to my routine of attending the 'office' in Central London each day, and then travelling in convoy, to raid some unsuspecting area for our ill gotten gains.
Sandie changed career and became a 'sales promotion girl' - working in various places selling other people products in-store, and often away for periods of time.
Driving took it's toll on me, and when I was informed one morning that my cousin had died of a drugs overdose, I had a nervous breakdown.
I just froze and stopped speaking for six weeks.
I came back without any medical help, but I had lost the sharp edge needed to con peopel into buying something they did not need, could not afford and normally did not even want, and doing that in two to three hours.
We ended up living on a 56lb sack of potatoes, cooked on an open fire, made from wood I collected from the roadside after gales. You can get very inventive with spuds, and I still love a jacket potato.
We had to lose our cottage in the middle of nowhere and returned home to respective parents like naughty schoolchildren, which in a way we were.
My mother got the cat.
A few weeks later and we were both fed up with parental control, so we took a dingy flat in East Dulwich and rented out the spare room, which paid our rent.
Sandie continued her sales promotion, now working for a banana company and traversing the country in a yellow 'banana' van.
We acquired a dog called (initially) F.G. Pratt (shortened to FG) after a tax collector who wrote to me wanting money.
How can you expect anybody to pay you with a name like that?
Old ladies adored our little black and tan short legged Irish setter puppy, and kept asking his name, so to save the blushes we changed his name to 'Guinness'.
He lived with us for fourteen years and travelled all over Britain with us. He had the morals of....a street dog....which was I guess to be expected as he was just that.
Dumped from a car by all accounts, and as he had a great avertion to black men in mechanics overalls, I guess he was born just down the road in Brixton or around the corner in Peckham in someone's garage.
How many of us are just like my dog Guinness was?
I know I was, dumped, rejected, hating those things which remind us of our fears and weaknesses and never gaining the peace and security that allows us to simply reflect on life and see how God can do ALL things THROUGH us if we allow Him to do so, because we are too angry to give God a chance, to recognise His name even.
Guinness was a complete tramp, he knew (biblically) every bitch in our neighbourhoods, he stayed out for days on end, returning smelling like God knows what, having eaten from bins, he fought every dog that showed anything less than instant submission and we loved him unconditionally despite all that.
If we loved our dog that much, do you think God loves us less?
Other previous bits of these ramblings...
- http://hubpages.com/hub/Getting-to-know-me
- http://hubpages.com/hub/Summer-of-Love-67
- http://hubpages.com/hub/Sheep-to-be-sheared
To be continued....
Please leave a comment when you have read these hubs.
Do you like them, shall I continue, or are these just the ramblings of a young fool turning into a grumpy old man?
