Real men wear purple

One of my favourite poems is by Jenny Joseph and it’s titled WARNING! Here’s an extract:

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me,
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

Events of the last couple of weeks that sprang out of responses to a couple of Facebook status updates have caused me to re-evaluate a lot of things and the closing lines of the poem have made me into a man on a mission. In fact as a Blues Brothers fan, I should say, “I’m on a mission from God!”

So here goes. As at 9.00am I have 344 Facebook friends. I expect that to drop considerably as a result of these comments. I’ve had a Christian faith for 45 years and have never wavered in my confidence that God loves me. However, I’ve walked a path where I’ve been on the fringe of things in Christian circles because I have always reacted against the intolerance shown to many groups of people. After all, Jesus was always found with the marginalised people.

At Halloween I posted a status encouraging my Christian friends to bury their knee-jerk reactions against the witches and ghosts and accept it was kids having fun. It was an opportunity to build bridges with kids and their parents hovering in the background. I posted a supportive comment on a friend’s wall who had expressed the same sentiment. All hell broke loose. I was flamed by bitter Christians and supported by people on a journey to faith and, I’m glad to say, some of my Christian friends. Figure that out. Some 25 comments resulted and because of the aggression of some, I removed the post as did my friend who experienced the same thing.

Yesterday, I foolishly left my computer unattended with Facebook open. It was too much for Neil and Josh. My brand new status told the world “Paul Dicken has decided to quit to university! im sorry people i jus cant handle the pressure and stress , i hope you can all understand. After long talks with father josh ive decided to join the catholic priest hood and serve the holy God our father. i ask of all my friends to help me through this difficult tym in my life. Thanks and God Bless x” Fortunately, the style, punctuation and spelling were a little different from mine and several friends guessed what had happened.

I was amazed that between that and my subsequent post explaining that I wasn’t planning on joining the Catholic priesthood (and threatening dire retribution on Josh!), some 35 comments and messages were sent. I was touched by the concern of those who thought I may be in trouble and amused by some of the responses. People came out of the woodwork from everywhere.

So, I’m going to say what I really think about things in the future. I shall speak out about intolerance and lack of acceptance. I have a son who is gay and who has a clear unequivocal Christian faith. I’m going to speak out about the lack of acceptance there is in the Churches for people like my son and I perhaps it’s time to shoot some sacred cows. I no longer care what people think – I’ll understand if you delete me from your list of Facebook friends if you’re offended. I’m relaxed that I do have a great group of friends -some with a faith and some without – who will be patient with me.

But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Look out for the Man in Purple!