October 2008

What are we going to do about Sarah Palin?

     As far as I am concerned it will be like having the late Mrs Winterson in the White House; something she would have enjoyed hugely, but the rest of us, less so.

    I am one of the few arty intellectuals on the planet who really understands what it means to be a Pentecostal. For those of you don’t know, I was raised that way, and so, when people talk about it lightly it makes me shudder. It is a serious faith and an active faith, and if anyone thinks that Sarah Palin will be a Pentecostal in private and a politician in public – forget it. She is going to make Mitt Romney look like Richard Dawkins.

   Oh dear. All we can do is vote her out, and let’s hope that happens, because if it doesn’t then we might as well get into the body bags now.
  Pentecostals believe in the Second Coming and they want it to happen – they will be in Rapture, and the rest of us will get thrown into the pit with Satan and the other losers. Well, so goes the story, but it is a powerful story, and there will be little restraint on activities that will push us to the brink of all-out war and beyond. If SP is really Pentecostal to the core, Armageddon won’t worry her, and she might even see herself as destined to be part of the Final Hour.

   Pentecostals are big on Bible interpretation, and they love reading themselves into the Book of Revelations – if you haven’t read it yourself recently, go and stay the night in a cheap motel and you’ll find the Gideon in the drawer. Keep the light on and get a stiff Scotch.

   I don’t know if I am worried, but I am concerned. Even yesterday, a guy from the Times (London), remarked that SP hadn’t been born into the Pentecostal faith, but had embraced it, revealing how little even educated media types know about that branch of faith. It doesn’t matter if both your parents are Pentecostal; you must still accept the faith yourself, in your own right, through Baptism by Total Immersion. It is a faith you choose.

   This is really good as an idea – the worst thing in life is passivity. Don’t accept anything you haven’t worked out for yourself. Yes, great, but in the case of SP, it means she has thought about it and decided to live it.

   Pentecostalism is pretty basic stuff. It takes the nastier bits of the Old and New Testaments, and uses them as tenets for modern life.
  It doesn’t understand the concept of sexual choice, nor of gender discrimination. It is low on intellectual questioning, high on faith.
   But faith in what? Mainly what the Pastor tells us according to his interpretation of the scriptures, so if SP’s Pastor believes in witchcraft, then witchcraft will soon be an issue in the White House.

   She calls herself a hockey mum. Small-town values grafted onto a regressive understanding of scriptural truth is scary stuff.
   I am not a Richard Dawkins type, and I believe in the validity of religious faith, and I believe that religion has just as often been a civilising influence as it has been a destructive dark power. I prefer a world where there is recognition of the invisible and the unseen, the unprovable. I do not find that people who have no faith, and no religious values behave better, or are better people than those who have faith of some kind. It is not straightforward.

   Some of the best things have been done in the name of religion – and yes, some of the worst.

   My worry is that there is a particular strand of folksy Americanism that is distrustful of ideas, of intellectuals, of science, of enquiry, of doubt, and so on. George Bush has fed this head-in-sand, gun-in-holster, pie-in-oven, stuff, and Palin will make it much worse.

   Let’s not despair, but let’s not be head-in-sand ourselves either. This is a very serious time.

   I hope you live somewhere where you can get fresh apples this October. My trees are full, and my great pleasure every day is to g and pick an apple from the tree and eat it. The ultimate fast-food.

   If you are in the UK and supermarket dependent, Waitrose offers the best and the freshest, from their own apple orchards.

   If you have even a little bit of room, plant a bush apple tree in you garden – it can grow OK in half a barrel provided you feed it.

I know I am always going on about growing your food – even a tiny bit of salad, but it is about connection as well as appetite. There is a pleasure to be had from what you grow which is different to anything you can buy.

   I am busy with my pots of tulips and other spring bulbs, enjoying the tidying the clearing that autumn demands, and the ritual of bringing in wood for the fire. I live in the country because I love it – though if you check out JOURNALISM this week, you’ll see an article of mine for Country Life, which exposes at least one remaining peril – homophobia. But thank god, of a kind so absurd that it is entertaining. I dare say that city types would think it, but maybe not say it…

   I am having motorcycle lessons. This might be a mistake. My friend, the writer Kathy Acker loved her motorcycle, and I wish she were still alive to cheer me on with this insane endeavour. I fall off every week, at slow speed, trying to do a U-turn or a figure of eight. Fortunately I am not physically timid, so I don’t mind the bumps and bangs. I am going to give it another few weeks, and if I am still a mobile death-trap, I had better stop. But it would be fun to have a bike, and it makes fuel sense.

   Thank you to all the people who have written to me so gently about my August column, and my troubles of heart and mind. I am really truly honestly so much better, and am better, I think, for just going into the horror, and not struggling away. And as I didn’t get fat or drunk, at least I don’t have to rescue my body. I feel that our bodies are forced to take too much of the strain for our stress and heartache. It is important to meet the problem on its own level, and solve it – in so much as it can be solved- by finding a new level of mental understanding and emotional awareness. Dropping the lot on the body gets us nowhere.