The Church of Eddie Stobart

There is a new build Church just outside the small west Cumbrian market town of Wigton, I went there once, with my then girlfriend and her family, her family were local to the area at the time. They were practising Christians and regulars at the Church, they were well respected within its community, and despite the father being virtually illiterate, or at least incomprehensible, he was given the honour of doing regular readings. Him being devout in every way of course, other than selling insurance and getting a young girl, the same age as his daughter up the duff before abandoning her. The poor girl in question had helped in the mother’s shop whilst the family had a stint at living in Peterborough, the family sold up and moved back to west Cumbria soon after. The daughter, and my girlfriend of the time, was the polar opposite of her father, she was far from devout in anything, other than the none practice of sex, in the latter, most unfortunately for me, she was verging on fundamentalism, in the former, dangerous, damn right dangerous, I never did trust her. Her brother was gay, but alas poor lad, was shackled by his good Christian upbringing. The mother, well, she had a slyness I could never quite put my finger on, on occasions it felt belittling to be in her company, but an excellent cook and wonderful smile none the less; I was sure that was semen down her blouse after she had collected the father from the station one evening, upon his return from a business trip, maybe she preferred to avoid full intercourse, like her daughter, it was the most I would ever get out of her. The Church had a relatively large but rural catchment area; the congregation was therefore also quite large once concentrated. The original Eddie Stobart, Eddie senior, was there on the morning that I went with the family, he was being honoured with a water colour on behalf of the congregation, on account of him paying a quarter of a million pounds for the building of the Church. There was some unashamed arse kissing going on that day, I can tell you, the water colour however, looked like it had been picked up in a charity shop and would be heading back to one. During the course of the service, all about wisdom, love and forgiveness, I noticed that there were some less than friendly glances going from one side of the aisle to the other, not to mention a far from devine atmosphere, but it wasn’t until the service had finished, and the mingling social of departing commenced, that it became apparent that the Church was segregated, completely split in two, like the parting of the Red Sea. I made some enquiries from the family. Indeed, there had been a colossus falling out between the members of the parish, it was of course to do with power and money; the distribution of church raffle funds and other such fund raising issues, and the best candidate to take the helm of the headless Sunday School for the kids, on account that a deeply strange and overly nice young couple were planning to elope. There was no disguising the lust that the male half of this couple was radiating towards my then girlfriend, and no disguising the lust radiating towards him from his young fiancée, and every other badly groomed adolescent girl in the place. If their plan was not to emigrate to a ranch in a desert of North America and form a ‘community,’ and that well spoken marra has not done so since, then he hath missed his calling. Anyway, between the sexualised undertones, the rift and the hypocrisy, I was beginning to struggle to breath, and my smile was beginning to hurt my face as I was being introduced to some plastic programmed, almost zombie like people, with their big smiles and over friendliness. I got out quickly, marching into the car park and a bright and fresh sunny morning, the birds were singing and the leaves rustling on the trees, I felt immediately cleansed. My conclusion; that the human element in religion is the reason for its existence, and yet religion in turn seems to do nothing more than amplify the flaws of humans, whether from the very large scale, right to the very small. For me, it is a hindrance in the pilgrimage towards goodness, and so I carve my own relationship with God.