Jamie123

Based on some earlier threads I remember, this statement is going to ruffle a few feathers. It's essentially Polonius' advice to Laertes: I remember arguing till I was blue in the face with someone who insisted that "true to yourself" and "true to God" must be mutually exclusive. I'll say it again: NO THEY'RE NOT! Shakespeare may have given these lines to an annoying old windbag, but that doesn't make them wrong. Like Tennyson said, honest doubt is better than phony faith. (Not that honest faith isn't better still!) P.S. A few years ago my daughter played Polonius in school production of Hamlet. She was good!

I'm an idiot I know, but I'm taking the bait. (I'll regret it later.) The alternative is that everyone who believes in "soul sleep" is mistaken, and that would include 8.7 million Jehovah's Witnesses and 21 million Seventh Day Adventists!

This is a matter of some considerable interest to me. I've tried to give my honest thoughts on the matter, but perhaps I've underestimated how strong the feeling is on one side. When Person A is unsure about a thing Person B is utterly convinced of, he will inevitably have to entertain the possibility (not necessarily the certainty!) that Person B is mistaken. But perhaps there are times when he needs to keep his trap shut. If I've offended you Carb (or anyone else) I am sorry.

A couple more thoughts... I overuse my modest supply of poetry, I know, but this is Tennyson In Memoriam: Perhaps Carb has gone through all this already and found "a stronger faith his own". If so, then good for him. As for me I have flashes of clarity now and then, but for much of the time I'm in "the darkness of the cloud". And (although its true I can't speak for other people) I don't believe I'm alone in there. Perhaps if I was a little more "pure in deeds" I'd get on better, but that's something to work on.

I have not concluded anything and I am certainly not closed to anything else. Perhaps I should not have said "most of us" - in the final analysis I can only speak for myself. But I dare to suggest that I am a fairly representative example of humanity, and I am not the only person ever to have doubted the miraculous. Zechariah had difficulty believing that Elizabeth would bear a child at her advanced age. And Thomas would not believe that his friends had seen the risen Christ until he had seen him himself. If I'm something of a doubter myself, I think I'm in pretty good company.

It makes me think of these lines by Johnson:

Well actually they could be clearer if they were visible to us. You're right we cannot prove they don't exist, but that takes us straight to Russell's flying teapot argument. But as well as a persistence of doubt, there's also a persistence of belief - or perhaps "make- belief" - though often in a rather negative kind of way. I've always had a nagging suspicion that my dead relatives are floating around me all the time, watching what I'm doing. I remember once as a teenager thinking "I'd better be careful when I think I'm alone, Aunt Phillis could be watching!" Do you not think that for most of us there is a "believing self" and a "doubting self" that stand in opposition to each other? For example, the believing self can look at the beauty of creation and think "there must be a God". But the doubting self will point to the Mandelbrot set and say "Look at the beauty here, and that is just numbers! No God needed!" You might pray to God and think you get an answer, but the doubter within you might say "that was just coincidence" or "it was your imagination" or "you think God gave you strength, but you really found that strength within yourself". It's not enough to say "doubt is bad". It is the age-old argument of "pooh-pooh". There needs to be a reason for it that you can trust.

It's almost a year now since my mother died. Over the past few months my father has had a growing friendship with a really nice widow lady - a friend of my late mother. They have been away on holiday together several times, and when I spoke to him this evening I ventured to ask if there was any possibility of romance. He said no, absolutely not, and he would never ever be over my mother He got quite emotional about it, about how he still missed her every day. I miss her myself of course, she was the most loving mother I could ever have had, but its a well known fact that old people die. If they went on living forever, there would be no room for all the new babies. We know that we won't have our parents/ grandparents forever, and if we are wise we appreciate them while we still have them and let them know how much we love them. But where do they go? As Christians we suppose that they live on in some form of afterlife, we hope some kind of paradise. Do we really believe this? It's easy to say we do, but it makes me think of T.S.Eliot's Four Quartets: "Shadow fruit". Even as a child I knew the sentiment behind those words - long before I ever read the poem. Death is final, and compared to it what is the "shadow fruit" - the words of priests? As for people who claim they can talk with the dead, I have no schmuck with them. For one thing the Bible tells us to stay away from that malarkey, and for another have you ever been to one of those meetings? I have - I once took my wife to the spiritualist church in Kingston (after she had been asking for some time to go) and you never saw or heard such garbage in all your life. This "medium" woman was quite clearly making it all up - giving out little bits of information (which could have applied to almost anyone) and letting members of the congregation fill in the details. My wife got so excited with it and so cross with me for my pooh-poohing of it all. Enough about that though. I'll talk about that some other time. And yet, wherever dead people "go" (assuming they go anywhere at all) they are still with us in our memories. My mother still feels as real to me now. Its as though she still exists - just in the past, not the present. Does that make any sense? So maybe our dead relatives still do exist - not in some parallel universe or "higher dimension" but in that portion of spacetime that we (quite arbitrarily) label "the past".

Why did the fridge fall out of the tree? It was the monkey and the elephant's day off. Sunak lost the election. Starmer is now Prime Minister*. Big surprise! NOT *Literally. We don't have any of this "lame duck" stuff in UK. This very morning the King accepted Sunak's resignation and appointed Starmer.

Fridge jokes are the greatest. For example...

I like it rare - though not too rare. Rare enough to be red in the middle, but not cold. When I'm cooking it myself I like it with fried onions and mushrooms, and baked potato with actual butter, and peas*. My mouth is watering at the thought! *Fresh peas only though. Or frozen are as good as fresh. The very thought of tinned peas makes me want to vomit!

Thanks very much everyone, I really appreciate all your support. Today my wife contacted me to ask if I'd paid my daughter's allowance for this month and last. I told her that I hadn't for this month (though I have now) but I reminded her that in the middle of May I paid double my daughter's usual allowance early for June. She said that she thought that money was extra for expenses she was having. I managed to find the texts where we agreed that the "extra expenses" were why it was doubled, but it included her regular allowance for June. She would NOT get another allowance for June on top of that, so her next allowance would be July (which I have now just paid). I told her that they must NOT expect any more money from me until the end of July at the earliest, because I'm going to struggle to get through this month even as it is. Well there it is. We'll see how it goes...

I'm afraid I haven't taken anyone's advice and it's got worse. This afternoon my wife texted me again to say would I give her a "one off" payment of £900. I was shocked, and told her I would need to think about it. Then I remembered the car insurance is coming up and that will be £700, and I am already in big debt. She said not to worry and she would get the money "somehow" and I asked her "how, by going to a loan shark?" She said she would " never sink that low" and if I couldn't do it then don't worry, and I said I always could, just at the expense of going deeper into debt and more stress. She said not to worry and it was her responsibility and she would get the money "somehow" and I said "what are you planning to do, sell your body on the street?" That went down like a lead balloon. She kept saying then that she didn't want anything from me ever again and she would never ask for another penny, and (well you know what guilty conscience is like) I got straight online and transferred her £900. I'm getting dangerously close to my overdraft limit now. But I haven't a lot of faith in my wife's ability get money "somehow", and if she suffers so does my daughter (or "child" I should say). The good news is i get my salary Wednesday, but I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and get professional help. I can't go on like this.

I notice in America it's the norm to address people you don't know as "sir" or "madam". I think that was common here once but its gone out of fashion. Instead of "Excuse me, sir," we would just say "Excuse me".

Reminds me of something else too. When I was about seven, a little girl was abducted and murdered near our school. The investigation went on for weeks, during which all children had it drilled into their heads that they must NEVER talk to strangers and should CERTAINLY never get into a car with a stranger. Well at the height of all this, I was just leaving school when a bearded man I didn't recognize stepped in front of me and asked me if I wanted a lift. I said "No". He said "Why not?" Had I been a little older I would have invented a little white lie. However, I was only seven. My 100% truthful reply was: "Because you might be the man who murdered the girl." By the time I got home it was all over the neighbourhood that I'd been "Calling Mr. Williams a murderer". My parents were dying with embarrassment, and it was all anyone wanted to talk about for ages. Well what the Dickens did they expect? 1. I'd only met the guy once or twice before in my life and in a totally different setting. 2. He had grown a beard since then. 3. We had had it drummed into us for weeks about not getting into cars with strangers, so how the heck was I going to react? 4. Who was to say he wasn't the murderer? For all I know he still might have been. The police did "get" somebody for the crime, but his conviction was later overturned on appeal. A few years back someone wrote a book about the case claiming it was the Yorkshire Ripper. But after all this time I doubt we'll ever know.

It reminds me of "William's Truthful Christmas" by Richmal Crompton. Eleven year old William Brown is spending Christmas with his aunt and uncle. He has taken a little too literally the vicar's Christmas sermon on "casting aside deceit and hypocrisy and speaking the truth". SPOILER: Uncle Frederick was being overoptimistic. Lady Atkinson returns later in a mercilessly forgiving mood.

You're right - I do need to research exactly where I stand. If we're set for long-term separation there likely need to be some safeguards. Deep down I still love her and I like to think this separation is only a temporary thing. Right now I couldn't handle having her back in the house. (I have uneasy dreams about it.) But maybe one day...

I've told my wife that the only reason I would ever divorce her would be to get remarried, and since that's not on the cards I see no reason to give free money to lawyers. If she wants a divorce then that's up to her, but it'll be her project not mine. Maybe one day I'll reconcile with her, but until then I'll be a MGTOW

I'm happy that my wife and daughter have started being nice to me again, but I can't help thinking I'm being taken for a ride. My wife has now rented a nice apartment, and my daughter ("child") is staying with her over the summer vacation. My wife said to me the other day that she has counted all the money she has coming in and it's not enough to cover her rent. I asked her if that included the allowance I'm still paying her. She said no, and including that she might just have enough. Then she said that our daughter needs £550 to pay the deposit on the apartment she is renting for college next year. I told her I didn't have enough to pay it, so she said could I pay part of it and she would pay the rest? I asked her how she would get the money and she said she didn't know. Well you can guess what I was thinking, can't you? Do you use the term "loan shark" over there? If she gets herself in trouble with one of those, which muggins do you think will be getting her out again? So I gave her the £550 (despite putting my account into the red) - after all it is for my daughter's education, fair enough. But last Saturday I took them both over to Ikea at Reading to buy some furniture for the apartment. Fine, no problem. Everyone needs furniture. But while we were there (and this is what my "moan" is really about) they spent about £70 on stuffed animals. I asked them if this was really needed, but mostly kept my gob closed for fear of being put back into the dog house. It may be my wife's money, but whose going to be supporting her when her account is empty again? While we were in the waiting room waiting for the furniture, I tried relieving the pressure by performing the "Octopus and Cat Show" with two of the stuffed toys, but was promptly told to shut up. *Sigh* I wrote a resume for my wife so hopefully she can get a job, and I thought it would be a good idea to ask our curate to be a reference. Our curate is actually a canon at Guildford cathedral (maybe similar to a stake president's counsellor for you?) and thought that might add a bit of gravitas. However, when I approached the curate she told me she wasn't happy with the way my wife had been "giving everyone the run-around" and she might not write nice things about her if asked. I didn't ask for details, but I can infer that there have been shenanigans that I don't know about. Anyway if you read this far, thanks for listening. Moan over.

That's a scary thought!

That's how I understand it too. Some countries (France or Ireland for example) have a nonexecutive president, who is kind of like an elected monarch, and a Prime Minister who is head of government. This is probably the least-fuss route we would take if we ever abolished the monarchy. Some great wise fatherly (or motherly) scholar or writer or musician - someone who could inspire everyone - would be perfect. But think who we could get!

Ummm...the Prime Minister of Canada? We have one too...

Ooooooo Mikbone said a naughty word! I'm not a Cockney but I prefer "merchant banker" 😉

Fourteen of the countries you're referring to still have the British monarch as their head of state. Don't ask me to name them all, but there's Canada, Australia and New Zealand to start with