DRAFT Diary Re-Cycling

Bits and pieces from other chapters

I looked across at Anne as she drove us back to the farmhouse.

However, I did not consider that the path to such enlightenment lay in limiting the free movement of women and girls.

Like restricting the daughter's access to the workshop.

Such a response, I thought, only encouraged the growth of an age old trope of male behaviour that needed no reinforcing.

Not contained fires, though, like the ones families gathered around on bonfire night.

Families, I guess, like the ones sitting near me. Their laughter and chatter flowed around my table in the outdoor area of Maccas while I consumed my meal, and my sense of unease settled.

Or families who, over the years, had asked me to be part of their bonfire night celebrations. Celebrations around fires, which to my way of thinking, were on a leash. A blaze confined to a particular area and therefore subject to control by those at the bonfire.

However, I preferred fires without a leash.

Similar to those conflagrations that roar through the Australian bush. A blaze roaming free until brought under control by those who weren't there at the start of the fire.

During the inmates' breakfast, a couple of hours before I queried Ken about Garth's medication, Adrian, Clive, and I stood at the back wall of the Dining Room.

As the inmates finished their breakfast, they left the Dining Room. They then lined up at the clinic door, waiting for staff to open the door and give out the morning pills.

The inmates finished their breakfast and left the Dining Room apart from three men, including Garth, who were taking their time over their breakfast.

A female member of the Domestic Staff walked out of the ward kitchen with a tea towel.

She flicked the first two men with the towel, who stopped eating their breakfasts and left the room.

She approached Garth and flicked him as Adrian barked, 'Garth! Outside! You're stopping the ladies from cleaning the room.'

Garth left his unfinished breakfast, and without protest, walked out of the Dining Room.

Therefore, Ken's reply made little sense, and annoyed me as I wrote up the morning's events in the notebo

Sweat coated the palms of my hands, my heart beat raced and my legs felt like jelly.

I felt my sanity slipping away as an inarticulate anger raged through my mind.

To hear whispered on the asylum grape vine that Adrian and his goons withheld Garth's medication so that a staff member would be physically damaged by Garth's psychotic fury was one thing. I could dismiss it as malicious gossip.

But to see it in action shook my grip on reality with diabolical darkness.

But there were over thirty men locked in the Day Room who had to contend with Garth's anger.

I therefore got a grip on myself by thinking about how I was to approach Adrian.

I knew from experience to interact with men who had been drinking was one level of danger.

But to interact with a male who had been drinking by interrupting a footy match he was watching was a territory littered with violence. In my women's groups, women spoke of being beaten up by their husbands when their husband's footy team lost a match.

I needed to focus hard, on how I was to do that so as to minimise harm to myself.

After parking the van on the lawn, I climbed out, locked the vehicle and entered the house via the back door.

I then headed for a shower and a sleep on the lounge in the sitting room across the hallway from the downstairs bedroom.

Apart from assaulting young females, Mike had a business to run during his working hours at the asylum, like other asylum male nurses. But Mike's business wasn't that of an electrician or plumber. Mike ran a concreting business.

I heard about his business interests, like the other male nurses' businesses, from the asylum grapevine. I also heard about Mike's business from overhearing telephone conversations Mike had in his office.

During working hours, Mike had these conversations with the suppliers of whatever he needed for his business. Or he made calls to people looking for a quote to lay concrete, for a patio or a footpath or a driveway.

He then had access to a work car, a Sky Blue Morris 850, to drive to the customer's house. There he talked with the potential customer, assessed the work to be done and provided a quote.

According to the asylum grapevine, Mike, and his brother did the work on Mike's days off, providing the customer was happy with the quote.   

 CHAPTER A

VIRGIN MARY AND CHILD JESUS WITH A ROSARY 

BY

ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Therefore, you are indifferent to the rivers of female-hating brutality raging throughout a particular book. A holy book, which Christians call the Bible.

However, about twelve months before a relative’s death, while reading a newspaper in the local library, I rejected the notion, despite decades of thinking otherwise, that the writings in that book were divinely inspired.

Instead, I began a journey of discovery into the Bible as a world of texts.

A voyage of understanding Bible stories and themes through spiritual insights and textual criticism. A trek out from the confining grave of divine authority into intellectual meadows lush with spiritual potency and contextual constructs.

Constructs like the way men's misogyny warps narratives, themes, and ideas of that book into presentations of men's views on the world. Views with a cancerous contempt for women and girls. Portrayals of females as mere footnotes to men's assumed entitlement to stomp through the world on their terms.

The relative, my father, the late Reverend S.B. (as I call him, the Reverend Sadistic Bastard), whose death a couple of decades ago, came after my enlightenment in the library, stomped through the world not in terms of misogyny but in terms of paedophilia. The murky, dark world of human depravity that lay behind his move away from considering the Bible as divinely inspired.

However, despite misogyny's life-restricting shackles, life-enhancing portrayals of girls and women as they travel life’s journey with the God of No Name stride through the Bible. Narratives of confidence as women and girls speak of their strengths and aspirations as they rise above the lacerations and scars generated by female loathing vileness.

We find one of several such narratives in the story of Jesus’ alleged birth as narrated in the Gospels of Mathew and Luke.

Removing the accretions added to that story for multitudes of theological and marketing reasons reveals a distressing disdain for the lives of females. A portrayal conveyed by the story's mangling of women's and girls' life journeys in the hideous ways men know well.

The perversion of a woman’s life story, the minimisation of the ways women care for each other, and savage reactions from men when they feel threatened by women frame the narrative and corrupt the underlying story.

Casting bright rays of humanity, however, throughout these women-defiling Gospel narratives are stories of women's lives. Lives of kindness and courage; lives that offer protection and comfort to other women. Stories narrated by girls and women. Accounts of life's journeys with the God of No Name.

A God whose presence does not demand acknowledgment. A presence attested to by the movement and power of that God in people’s lives throughout centuries since the recording of the first Biblical narratives.

Power and movement as seen in the lives of some men who get to know themselves in a new and radical way when they turn away from the patriarchal, misogynistic world into which they are born.

A movement from that dominion to a position where a few men recognise and encourage the right of women and girls to live their lives free from the intentional, malicious shit that men and boys splatter over the lives of females.

A miracle confirmed by Joseph.

A place to begin that narrative is the original record of the time in his relationship with his betrothed when Mary confirms the truth of the village-whispers Joseph has heard. Yes, she has had sex.

Men who despised women and girls edited these texts of that original record spoken and written by girls and women. Texts that told of women's resilience, compassion, and power. Writings that were corrupted to become the Christian's so-called Christmas story.

These women-detesting men were eager to give a veneer of male uprightness to that story. They defiled that original narrative by editing out the rape of Mary, a shocking act of male violence.

Men celebrate rape. A gross example of the abusive power men exercise over women and girls. An occasion for cheers, laughter, and back-slapping as men revel in the violent stripping away of a girl's or woman's personhood.

It's a time to crack open a few beers, ain’t it, you male denizens of the dark internet, and let your chests swell with pride as you chuckle over the sexual violation of a female?

Go on, you deranged, sick, fucked up, nappy-soaked infants, giggle, and gloat when you send videos of the assault scorching around the internet. 

For the male editors of the Gospels of Mathew and Luke, their celebration of rape follows the pattern of rape narratives recounted by men on the internet.

The rape of a female by a male is a demonstration of male power over a woman or girl. Therefore, any connection with that female is only on the man's terms as he savages her individuality, her personhood. She becomes a mere marionette in the ego-centric male retelling of this horrific assault.

Hence, while stripping away Mary's personhood, the editors of the original narrative created an image of Mary acceptable to men. Mary becomes the male ideal of femininity, a compliant female willing to obey whatever men's orders are.

She is not to be the angry, hacked-off woman whose voice rages through the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55).

A section of the original narrative spoken and written by girls and women who record Mary's fury after the sexual violation of her body, her mind, and her spirit.

An assault which, as part of the male celebration of rape, is to be chortled over and boasted about by the perpetrator to his mates.

However, for their own devious reasons, including the craft of the fiction they are creating, the male editors of the original narrative are unwilling to name the man who raped Mary. Therefore, these editors do not acknowledge this man's bragging rights in the spruiking of their myth.

Instead, these male editors do something so fucked-up their fable moves in to the realm of the diabolical.

They give the bragging-rights to 'The Most High,' a code word for the God of No Name, when they name this entity as the perpetrator (Luke 1:35). 

This accusation is one hell-of-a spew-inducing horror.

A sickening travesty, way outside any understanding of the kindness and love brought into this world by the God of No Name. Attributes shown throughout Jesus' adult life reflecting his close bond with that God.

A ghastly overreach by editors focused on their dodgy ethical notion that the end justifies the means. As if the raping of females is ever justified by the outcome of those assaults.

The end justifying the means, however, suits the craft of the yarn these editors are spinning.

In pushing their line that their guy, Jesus, is the Messiah, they trash the notion of rape being inflicted on a flesh-and-blood woman.

Because, heh! Look what the outcome is?

Let's forget the awful ordeal Mary has been through and have a party because the child born of that rape, according to the editors, is the male who becomes the Christian's Jesus. That party becomes the Christian's Christmas story.

A real cheering, back-slapping, let's-have-another-beer occasion.

An occasion in its celebratory atmosphere similar to the ones that gladden the sick souls of internet alpha males.

However, it's unlikely many women will join in a celebration of the occasion in which they were raped.

Instead, thoughts of suicide flood the minds of females whose sexual violation is the source of much that brings happiness to the twisted hearts of those alpha males.

Raging thoughts of self-harm for women like Mary.

However, after the rape of Mary, the male editors, having discarded Mary’s individuality, have tried to trash any sympathy for Mary's thoughts and feelings.

But here, again, that section from the original narrative, labelled by those editors with the word 'Magnificat' screams Mary's rage at that unsought, unwanted horrendous assault.

Horrendous assaults on females, which, in men's celebration of rape, include a re-telling, by the perpetrator, to his buddies the techniques he used in overcoming a woman's or girl's resistance to having his boner thrust inside her. His alleged cleverness in stripping away a female's sense of agency and losing control over what happens to her body is an ego-swelling event, making the perpetrator a hero to his mates.

Now the male editors of the original narrative in spinning their tale that their guy, Jesus, was the long promised Messiah, in dismissing the male perpetrator's bragging rights, had to concoct a scenario where Mary is divinely impregnated and therefore carries the Christ child.

Their perpetrator had to be a spiritual being.

They had available to them the women's original narrative of the rape of Mary. They twisted this account, using the rape narrative trope of coercion, in a manner so artful any internet alpha male who pulls off something similar will have bragging-rights for eternity.

In the waffly, opaque, ambiguous way men speak when they are up to no good, the male editors introduce their spiritual perpetrator.

'The holy spirit will come upon you,' replied the angel, 'and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.' (Luke 1: 35)

In Mary's faith background were many stories of God's wrath when a person, a tribe, a city, or a nation defied God's commands. Mary, aware of these stories, now faced a similar fury if she did not obey the words put into the mouth of an angel by the male editors.

These editors use the image of the archangel Gabriel, a figure familiar to Mary because of her faith, as an enabler of the sexual assault of Mary. In Mary's faith tradition, the archangel Gabriel appears in at least one narrative as an emissary of God (Daniel 9:22).

By using the imagery of the archangel Gabriele in this way (Luke 1:27-35), the male editors gave an imprimatur of Divine authority to the rape of Mary. 

They, in a vicious, nasty way, had boxed Mary in.

The male editors used Mary’s faith background to strip a sense of agency from her. A variation of the techniques men use to disempower women bragged about as men recount their narratives of rape.

If Mary disobeyed the archangel’s decrees, she faced the fury of a slighted deity who, according to terrifying stories of Mary’s childhood, unleashed catastrophic violence (The Flood; Sodom and Gomorrah; Pharaoh's defiance of Moses; etc.) on those who did not follow His commands. However, to obey meant the violation of her body, mind, and spirit. 

She chose the lesser of two evils, and, according to the male editors, opened her legs. 

Which meant for the male editors and the art of the yarn they were spinning, Mary was divinely impregnated, lending a dash of legitimacy to their claims regarding the birth of Jesus.

There are echoes here, in these editors’ accounts, of the Nephilim (Genesis: 6:1-6; Numbers:13:33), known to both the editors and Mary because of their shared faith backgrounds.

However, there is little that is heroic in the sexual congress that the editors contend Mary allegedly agreed to. Neither are there giants involved.

Instead, this time, according to the Gospel of Luke, we have the sly insinuation that the God of No Name is the perpetrator.

A horror compounded as the accusation somehow makes rape ‘okay’.

Why view one episode of sexual predation of a female (Mary) as sacred, but not every incident of sexual assault of females?

according to terrifying stories of Mary’s childhood, unleashed catastrophic violence (The Flood; Sodom and Gomorrah; Pharaoh's defiance of Moses; etc.) on those who did not follow His commands. However, to obey meant the violation of her body, mind, and spirit. 

She chose the lesser of two evils, and, according to the male editors, opened her legs. 

Which meant for the male editors and the art of the yarn they were spinning, Mary was divinely impregnated, lending a dash of legitimacy to their claims regarding the birth of Jesus.

There are echoes here, in these editors’ accounts, of the Nephilim (Genesis: 6:1-6; Numbers:13:33), known to both the editors and Mary because of their shared faith backgrounds.

However, there is little that is heroic in the sexual congress that the editors contend Mary allegedly agreed to. Neither are there giants involved.

Instead, this time, according to the Gospel of Luke, we have the sly insinuation that the God of No Name is the perpetrator.

A horror compounded as the accusation somehow makes rape ‘okay’.

Why view one episode of sexual predation of a female (Mary) as sacred, but not every incident of sexual assault of females?

The rape of Mary by a male not now known to history traumatises Mary. However, compounding her feelings of anxiety is the realisation that she is pregnant.

She becomes stressed and fearful of Joseph's reaction because she has a bun in the oven that is not his.

As countless women and girls' narratives attest, men go ballistic when the woman or girl the man claims as his own confirms she is pregnant, but not by him.

The pricks who attempted to edit women out of the Gospels do a bit of slick marketing to explain how Joseph found out Mary is preggers.

They brought the world of angels and the supernatural into play. However, chances are, it's one of Joseph’s mates who pulled Joseph aside when they were having drinks in the back garden of the village pub and sotto voce stated,

‘Now listen, mate, and listen good! Put a leash on that temper of yours and keep your cool. I’ve got to tell you something because you’ll find out, anyway. Now you know your missus, Mary, has been up to no good, but, mate, it gets much bloody worse…’

Like pregnant girls and women across centuries and cultures, faced with the rage of a slighted male, Mary fears for her safety and the safety of her unborn child.

By the time Joseph returns to his workshop from the pub, Mary has shot through and found refuge with Elizabeth, a relative.

By doing so, Elizabeth extends to Mary an act of kindness, protection, and comfort.

Demonstrating that women stand together, no matter the era, culture or circumstances a woman finds herself in.

Misogynistic editing attempts to diminish the impact of these stories of women’s courage, power, and compassion.

However, women's voices won't be silenced. Women's stories peep through the male-centric focus now given to the original narrative written by girls and women.

A pivot by male editors, the Jesus Crew, who wanted their narrative of Jesus to remain the centre of attention and downplayed a woman’s trauma and put a spin on the life of John the Baptist.

After three months, according to the editing of the Biblical texts, Mary returns to Joseph.

Countless women and girls over the centuries know the plausibility men pile on when they want their woman to return to them. Within his social circles, it's humiliating for a man like Joseph to have his woman walk out on him.

To get her home, Joseph, informed by an 'Angel' that Mary was with Elizabeth, promised, through an emissary sent to Elizabeth's house, not to harm Mary or her child by showering Mary with the customary male smoodging.

'Trust me, I won't hurt you. (AKA kick you in the belly, thrash you, choke you, shout, rave, roar, or chuck items around a room). I love you, please come home; 'I’ll care for the child as if he were my own.' Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

My father, the late Reverend S.B., also knew about social embarrassment. My mother, a proud follower of the suffragettes, several years into their marriage, walked out on him. However, it took the Rev. S.B. over three months to get her back.

The astonishing thing about Joseph is that he put those blandishments into practice. He cared for her, comforted her and did not leave Mary to the wrath of the villagers.

Joseph, knowing his missus is preggers by some other bloke, stays with Mary.

This is a section of the original women’s story that peeps through that male-centric editing of the texts. A section that only women and girls narrated because they understood the misogyny-defying magnitude of Joseph’s act in staying with Mary.

Joseph's name is not a footnote, like other names in the Bible, in the so called Christmas story. According to the original narrative, he is a central character because of his challenge to male authority.

A challenge to male norms of how men must behave toward women who, to use male terminology, have strayed beyond the nest.

By staying with Mary, Joseph (as Christ did throughout his adult life, for example, in the narrative labelled 'Christ and The Woman Taken in Adultery') behaved in a way that challenged, disrupted and tore apart thousands of years of patriarchal conditioning.

Joseph staying with the pregnant Mary is an event so powerful, I think there's hope for men to change into better angels in their relationships with women and girls.

It's also why I believe the God of Jesus Christ, the God of No Name, and of Jechocobeh, Miriam, Rahab, Deborah, Tamar, Eliyahu, Amos, Nathan, David, Elizabeth, Mary, Joseph, Peter, Ananias of Damascus and Paul exists.

Imagine the pressure on Joseph when his mates drop around for a couple of beers after work.

Those mates, driving community expectations, wanted Joseph to do the right thing and not shame them.

‘Throw the bitch out;’ ‘chuck the slut into the street, as Yahweh did with Jezebel ;’ ‘It ain’t your responsibility to take care of the whore and her bastard child; ’ 'That’s the way with women. You can’t trust them to keep their legs shut.'

These remarks reflect the attitudes blokes have when a mate's missus disrupts a male-centric view of the world.

Joseph, of course, listens, but he did not follow through. He did not prioritise his mates’ concerns.

Girls and women, no matter what century or culture they live in, know how men put their mates and what they want above other concerns. This only enhances Joseph’s miraculous turnaround.

When the community realised Joseph will not do the right thing, they reacted as communities do when a person challenges male authority and the concomitant way of doing things.

Villagers scrawled graffiti on the walls of his business. They greeted him with stares and silence when he stopped at a village stall. Friends did not call around. Villagers threatened Mary with physical violence if she left the house. They threw rocks through windows, and people refused to do business with Joseph.

Facing bankruptcy, Joseph had a way of restoring his business by treading the well-worn path of male violence toward women by shoving Mary out onto the street and leaving her fate to the hate-filled minds of villagers. Or he had the opportunity of, again, doing something extraordinary.

Joseph shuts down his business, pays out the blokes working for him, cancels the orders to his suppliers and puts his life savings into a leather pouch. 

A bloke putting the needs of his missus for comfort, support, and protection above that of his job, in Joseph’s case his sole-trader business, in a patriarchal, misogynistic domain that still holds sway over large swathes of this world, confirms the life-enhancing power of Joseph’s journey out from that patriarchal, misogynistic prison.

He takes the leather pouch with him, and after he and Mary pack a few belongings onto a donkey, he helps Mary onto it. Joseph then leads the donkey into the night as he and Mary flee for their lives.

 Mary, exhausted when they reach another town, asks Joseph to stop the journey.

Joseph, therefore, asks at a pub for accommodation.

However, gossip has preceded them.

The pub owner has listened to the gossip and knows Joseph has not consummated his marriage to Mary.

The child the weary, dusty, sick Mary carries is not Joseph’s.

If the pub owner allows this whore to stay on his premises, gossip will smash his business.

He brusquely informs Joseph,

‘We’re chokers, mate. There ain’t a spare bed in the place. There’s a game in town tomorrow. You’d best try further along the road. They might have a bed.’

But, yet again, the downplayed part of the story breaks through.

A woman steps up and offers kindness and protection to another woman.

Peering past Joseph to the teary-eyed, pregnant Mary, swaying as she sits on the donkey, the pub owner’s missus ignores the gossip.

Despite the pub owner’s history of violence toward her, the pub owner's missus stares him down and declares,

‘Yer, there’s a game tomorrow. But the stable hands pissed and crashed out on the bar floor. The lean-to, out the back of the pub, where he sleeps, is vacant. You’se can have that. But you’se will have to pay full rates, given the demands for beds and all'.

A sobbing, relieved Mary thanks the God of No Name for women like the pub owner’s missus as Joseph clinks coins into the scowling pub owner’s outstretched hand.

Joseph guides the donkey to the rear of the pub, while shouts and screams shatter the silence of the night as Joseph, Mary, and the donkey stop at the lean-to.

Having helped Mary alight from the donkey, Joseph holds her hand as they walk together into their shelter for the night.

The original account of this episode of sexual violence in Mary's life and its outcome, spoken and written by girls and women, is a narrative of women’s compassion, resilience, and power. Of women working together and, in doing so, knowing and accepting the potential for an explosion of male violence in their lives.

Here, also, is a narrative of the in-breaking of the God of No Name into the life of a man, Joseph, calling him to challenge male authority, like that God’s influence on the actions of Jechocobeh and Miriam.

A call to eschew a socially sanctioned response of physical, emotional, financial and social maltreatment toward Mary when she confirms to Joseph that she is pregnant but not with his child.

A narrative of a man, Joseph, who gets to know Mary when he rejects the patriarchal orthodoxy governing his relationships with girls and women by answering that call. A knowledge of her based on the renewal of his mind through a transforming view of his relationship with Mary.

A call extended to all men by the kindness of the God of No Name to oppose a male-centric conformity holding sway over their relationships with women and girls.

In answering that call, men, as Joseph discovered, will experience the transforming power of the love of God in their lives and their relationships with girls and women.

 Despite the male editors cinematic conceits in dressing up the events surrounding the birth, allegedly, of Jesus, the original telling remains a God-infused, life-celebrating and women-affirming narrative.

Though the Jesus Crew abuse the original narrative for political purposes, it stands apart from the shenanigans of men.

It will do so because of those strengths discussed above. As well as the way it shines a light through the darkness of trauma toward the sunlit uplands of hope.

A lamp lit by women and girls showing a way forward by which the terrifying impact of trauma can be ameliorated through the transformation of the relationships between people, like the change in the relationship between Mary and Joseph.

However, the Jesus Crew cannot have a woman giving birth as the sole focus of their narrative. Mary must share the limelight with men.

Male shepherds abrogate their responsibilities and leave their stock to the predation of sheep duffers and wild animals and head for the pub where Mary has given birth.

Guys riding camels show up. Blokes, besotted by the position of a star (did they use Google Maps during the daylight hours?) with the finances and the knowledge to undertake a journey of several hundred miles, serve an additional purpose. They act as a narrative device linking various sections of the Jesus Crew's bastardisation of the original narrative.

This romanticised yarn of three blokes riding camels shares its lack of veracity with another tall-tale. The census is unequivocal bullshit.

A ruse the Jesus Crew, their media manager, and PR hacks, used to sidetrack considerations of the central part played by flesh and blood women in the original narrative. A side-lining of women by the Jesus Crew that continues the Biblical tradition of men's contemptuous behaviour toward females.

Imagine what’s involved in this census on a practical level.

In this Jesus Crew census, everyone returns to their hometown because ‘…there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world is to be registered.’ (Luke 2:1) Therefore, everyone in the Roman Empire has to return to their ancestral home or home town to be recorded on an official list.

One sign that this is a ruse is the fact that the Roman Empire did not have a middle class. Most people did not receive a regular pay packet, let alone paid leave entitlements. How many people, therefore, had the funds to undertake this travel across the vast distances of the Empire to an ancestral dwelling or home town?

Which brings in another sign that the census is a ruse.

Given the size of this Empire, imagine a woman working in Massillia in Gaul. She was born in Damascus. She, with her daughter, runs a street stall selling take-away snacks. Her daughter was born in Lutetia. Therefore, they had different home towns.

Hence, the daughter, according to the Jesus Crew's yarn, travels to Lutetia. Mum, however, has to travel to Damascus. How the hell are they going to do that?

Going by the Jesus Crew's spiel, the shop has to close. Therefore, where’s the money coming from for these journeys? Are the Romans going to give them travel vouchers? Subsidised boat fares for mum to cross Mare Nostrum? But are the boats still running?

Or have boat owners and crew buggered off to their own home towns or ancestral cities to be registered?

The Jesus Crew's notion of an Empire-wide census descends into farce when the administration of this vast enterprise is considered.

People with literary skills in Latin are required in their hundreds to record the census data; calls go out across the Empire for translators to present at census sites for those who don't speak Latin; reams of parchment are required; gallons of ink need to be delivered to recording centres; birds in their thousands need to be plucked for quills, etc., etc., mind-boggling, etc.

Like the story of Noah’s ark and two of every kind of animal (humpbacked whales, vultures, termites, bull ants, bedbugs, tarantulas, anacondas, bats, maggots, etc etc.) the census is a load of testosterone-fuelled nonsense.

A nonsense that does not consider the catastrophic disruption to the social, political and economic functioning of the Roman Empire by the mass movement of millions of people across the Empire.

Further, no contemporaneous Roman record is yet to be found recording a census as described by the wankers who edited the original narrative of Joseph, Mary, and the birth of a child to an unknown flesh and blood father.

There's also no known record of the original narrative's account, spoken and written by girls and women, of why Mary and Joseph fled into the night.

Instead, the men of the Jesus Crew, and, over the centuries since the time of Jesus' alleged birth, the Jesus Crew's PR hacks, have put their spin on this story of Christ's birth.

Worried that the group forming around John the Baptist may triumph in claiming John was the Messiah, or the devotees of the various self-proclaimed Messiahs popping up across Palestine may gain traction, the Jesus Crew, and those PR hacks set out to promote their guy by downplaying the role of women.

They cut, like university students advancing arguments in an essay, verses from the books of the Old Testament (Isaiah and Micah, for example) and pasted them into the original narrative.

Or those PR hacks slipped those verses into a verbal narration of the Jesus Crew’s mythology of Mary’s life, her pregnancy, and the alleged birth of a male. The PR hacks did this as they spruiked this mythology through their orders of service in Christian places of worship.

Through this cutting and pasting, the Jesus Crew gave a veneer of inevitability, based on a smorgasbord of verses, ripped from their historical context, to their claim that their guy's birth was divinely foretold. Therefore, their guy was the real Messiah, the one chosen by God to fulfill that role. The God who became the God of the Christians.

However, there's a mystery surrounding this story. The Jesus Crew’s clumsy attempts to minimise the role of women as told in the original narrative written by women and girls reveals this mystery.

The census never happened.

As described by the Jesus Crew, it's impractical and lacks a contemporaneous historical record.

Therefore, why did Joseph and Mary leave the town they lived in, where Joseph had his business?

Mary, due to give birth at any minute, knew the women in that town.

Those courageous women were prepared to ignore men’s abuse of Mary and step up to help her at the time of giving birth. It's what women do across cultures and centuries.

Women take risks to care for each other. Like Elizabeth’s kindness toward Mary. Elizabeth faced the possibility of also being smeared by the opprobrium directed at Mary’s pregnancy because of that kindness.

Yet Mary undertook an uncomfortable, dangerous, life-threatening journey - a ride on a donkey in the night to an unknown destination.

What if she gave birth on that journey? Who was there to call upon to assist with the birth and keep her and the baby safe?

If Mary reached a town before her waters broke, what means did she have to reach out to the women in the town and let them know she needed help with the birth?

Therefore, if the journey needed to be undertaken, why not wait until it was safe after Mary gave birth?

The women’s voices, in the original narrative, spelled out, by relying on women’s knowledge of how dangerous and problematic that journey was for a pregnant woman, how unlikely it is that Mary undertook that journey.

 It's just as unlikely if Mary had to undertake that journey, that she did not go unless accompanied by a woman.

Therefore, the Jesus Crew has again dismissed the voice of women as relevant to any account of the alleged birth of Jesus. A demonstration of the cancerous contempt by men for the lives of females displayed throughout the Bible.

Thus, if Mary undertook that journey while pregnant, the motivation for it is open to misogynistic fabrications because the reason is still a mystery; it's lost to human history.

——————————————————————

My hands rested on the steering wheel. Now a slight tremble disturbed their grip. Unlike the thirty minutes or so I spent driving away from the tyre dealership.

During that drive, I gripped the wheel with all the strength I could muster as my hands shook with anger.

The tightness in my chest had also eased. I looked through the windscreen towards Maccas and decided it was time to eat.

I stepped out of the vehicle, locked it and strolled into Maccas.

I placed an order at the counter and, when it arrived, took a tray decked out with burgers, fries and a flat white coffee to the dining area. I sat down at a table and munched my way through the burgers and fries before moving onto the coffee.

While sipping the coffee, I reflected on the duplicity and hypocrisy of men. And the anxiety triggered by memories of the violence men unleash on women who challenge those attributes.

At the tyre service place, I paid the account and collected my car keys. The man behind the counter told me where the car was parked and handed me a pamphlet.

I glanced at the pamphlet and saw that it had to do with a Christian faith group. As I looked up at the calendars on the wall behind him and their sexualised pictures of younger females, he smiled, 'We meet every Sunday, if you would like to....'

I cut him off with a glare as I screwed the pamphlet into a ball and hurled the pamphlet onto the floor and stormed out.

As I ate my Macca's meal, I thought about male hypocrisy and duplicity. The male attitudes for which I wanted to slap the guy's face. The sort of violent attitudes flowing through the evangelism associated with the Christian Jesus. The evangelism of the faith group in the pamphlet.

Male violence had erupted into the life of Mary and a similar, but sneaky violence trashed her life story when the Jesus Crew edited the original narrative underlying the so-called Christmas story. Given these immoral foundations to the Christian story of the life of Jesus, was it any wonder, I thought, an immoral violence wove its ways through the spreading of the word about the Christian Jesus.

The late Reverend Sadistic Bastard was a paid-up, card-carrying member in undertaking this violence. Though this membership entwined with a sickening perversion which he shares with other men. This chapter and others reflect on these matters.

I sipped the coffee and wondered how many of the swarms of multi-gendered people of different ages flowing around that dining area were of the arm-waving, nonsense-babbling types. The types who crowd an auditorium for a spiritual purging. 

Auditoriums within tall, industrial-type buildings, AKA car park cathedrals that contribute little of architectural merit to the vastness of the car park that surrounds them in any of several industrial parks scattered across the world. 

Car park cathedrals which, in their joy-depleting architectural starkness, reflect the bareness of their commerce-focused spirituality. 

They exist to hawk the Jesus of the Christian’s God to people who are looking for an emotional high.

An emotional high turbo-charged by a stirring ol’ fashion hellfire and brimstone shakedown. A band will play emotional, tear-jerking songs, and the

into 

call him, the Reverend Sadistic Bastard), whose death a couple of decades ago, came after my enlightenment in the library, stomped through the world not in terms of misogyny but in terms of paedophilia. The murky, dark world of human depravity that lay behind his move away from considering the Bible as divinely inspired.

However, despite misogyny's life-restricting shackles, life-enhancing portrayals of girls and women as they travel life’s journey with the God of No Name stride through the Bible. Narratives of confidence as women and girls speak of their strengths and aspirations as they rise above the lacerations and scars generated by female loathing vileness.

We find one of several such narratives in the story of Jesus’ alleged birth as narrated in the Gospels of Mathew and Luke.

Removing the accretions added to that story for multitudes of theological and marketing reasons reveals a distressing disdain for the lives of females. A portrayal conveyed by the story's mangling of women's and girls' life journeys in the hideous ways men know well.

The perversion of a woman’s life story, the minimisation of the ways women care for each other, and savage reactions from men when they feel threatened by women frame the narrative and corrupt the underlying story.

Casting bright rays of humanity, however, throughout these women-defiling Gospel narratives are stories of women's lives. Lives of kindness and courage; lives that offer protection and comfort to other women. Stories narrated by girls and women. Accounts of life's journeys with the God of No Name.

A God whose presence does not demand acknowledgment. A presence attested to by the movement and power of that God in people’s lives throughout centuries since the recording of the first Biblical narratives.

Power and movement as seen in the lives of some men who get to know themselves in a new and radical way when they turn away from the patriarchal, misogynistic world into which they are born.

A movement from that dominion to a position where a few men recognise and encourage the right of women and girls to live their lives free from the intentional, malicious shit that men and boys splatter over the lives of females.

A miracle confirmed by Joseph.

A place to begin that narrative is the original record of the time in his relationship with his betrothed when Mary confirms the truth of the village-whispers Joseph has heard. Yes, she has had sex.

Men who despised women and girls edited these texts of that original record spoken and written by girls and women. Texts that told of women's resilience, compassion, and power. Writings that were corrupted to become the Christian's so-called Christmas story.

These women-detesting men were eager to give a veneer of male uprightness to that story. They defiled that original narrative by editing out the rape of Mary, a shocking act of male violence.

Men celebrate rape. A gross example of the abusive power men exercise over women and girls. An occasion for cheers, laughter, and back-slapping as men revel in the violent stripping away of a girl's or woman's personhood.

It's a time to crack open a few beers, ain’t it, you male denizens of the dark internet, and let your chests swell with pride as you chuckle over the sexual violation of a female?

Go on, you deranged, sick, fucked up, nappy-soaked infants, giggle, and gloat when you send videos of the assault scorching around the internet. 

For the male editors of the Gospels of Mathew and Luke, their celebration of rape follows the pattern of rape narratives recounted by men on the internet.

The rape of a female by a male is a demonstration of male power over a woman or girl. Therefore, any connection with that female is only on the man's terms as he savages her individuality, her personhood. She becomes a mere marionette in the ego-centric male retelling of this horrific assault.

Hence, while stripping away Mary's personhood, the editors of the original narrative created an image of Mary acceptable to men. Mary becomes the male ideal of femininity, a compliant female willing to obey whatever men's orders are.

She is not to be the angry, hacked-off woman whose voice rages through the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55).

A section of the original narrative spoken and written by girls and women who record Mary's fury after the sexual violation of her body, her mind, and her spirit.

An assault which, as part of the male celebration of rape, is to be chortled over and boasted about by the perpetrator to his mates.

However, for their own devious reasons, including the craft of the fiction they are creating, the male editors of the original narrative are unwilling to name the man who raped Mary. Therefore, these editors do not acknowledge this man's bragging rights in the spruiking of their myth.

Instead, these male editors do something so fucked-up their fable moves in to the realm of the diabolical.

They give the bragging-rights to 'The Most High,' a code word for the God of No Name, when they name this entity as the perpetrator (Luke 1:35). 

This accusation is one hell-of-a spew-inducing horror.

A sickening travesty, way outside any understanding of the kindness and love brought into this world by the God of No Name. Attributes shown throughout Jesus' adult life reflecting his close bond with that God.

A ghastly overreach by editors focused on their dodgy ethical notion that the end justifies the means. As if the raping of females is ever justified by the outcome of those assaults.

The end justifying the means, however, suits the craft of the yarn these editors are spinning.

In pushing their line that their guy, Jesus, is the Messiah, they trash the notion of rape being inflicted on a flesh-and-blood woman.

Because, heh! Look what the outcome is?

Let's forget the awful ordeal Mary has been through and have a party because the child born of that rape, according to the editors, is the male who becomes the Christian's Jesus. That party becomes the Christian's Christmas story.

A real cheering, back-slapping, let's-have-another-beer occasion.

An occasion in its celebratory atmosphere similar to the ones that gladden the sick souls of internet alpha males.

However, it's unlikely many women will join in a celebration of the occasion in which they were raped.

Instead, thoughts of suicide flood the minds of females whose sexual violation is the source of much that brings happiness to the twisted hearts of those alpha males.

Raging thoughts of self-harm for women like Mary.

However, after the rape of Mary, the male editors, having discarded Mary’s individuality, have tried to trash any sympathy for Mary's thoughts and feelings.

But here, again, that section from the original narrative, labelled by those editors with the word 'Magnificat' screams Mary's rage at that unsought, unwanted horrendous assault.

Horrendous assaults on females, which, in men's celebration of rape, include a re-telling, by the perpetrator, to his buddies the techniques he used in overcoming a woman's or girl's resistance to having his boner thrust inside her. His alleged cleverness in stripping away a female's sense of agency and losing control over what happens to her body is an ego-swelling event, making the perpetrator a hero to his mates.

Now the male editors of the original narrative in spinning their tale that their guy, Jesus, was the long promised Messiah, in dismissing the male perpetrator's bragging rights, had to concoct a scenario where Mary is divinely impregnated and therefore carries the Christ child.

Their perpetrator had to be a spiritual being.

They had available to them the women's original narrative of the rape of Mary. They twisted this account, using the rape narrative trope of coercion, in a manner so artful any internet alpha male who pulls off something similar will have bragging-rights for eternity.

In the waffly, opaque, ambiguous way men speak when they are up to no good, the male editors introduce their spiritual perpetrator.

'The holy spirit will come upon you,' replied the angel, 'and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.' (Luke 1: 35)

In Mary's faith background were many stories of God's wrath when a person, a tribe, a city, or a nation defied God's commands. Mary, aware of these stories, now faced a similar fury if she did not obey the words put into the mouth of an angel by the male editors.

These editors use the image of the archangel Gabriel, a figure familiar to Mary because of her faith, as an enabler of the sexual assault of Mary. In Mary's faith tradition, the archangel Gabriel appears in at least one narrative as an emissary of God (Daniel 9:22).

By using the imagery of the archangel Gabriele in this way (Luke 1:27-35), the male editors gave an imprimatur of Divine authority to the rape of Mary. 

They, in a vicious, nasty way, had boxed Mary in.

The male editors used Mary’s faith background to strip a sense of agency from her. A variation of the techniques men use to disempower women bragged about as men recount their narratives of rape.

If Mary disobeyed the archangel’s decrees, she faced the fury of a slighted deity who,

My hands rested on the steering wheel. Now a slight tremble disturbed their grip. Unlike the thirty minutes or so I spent driving away from the tyre dealership.

During that drive, I gripped the wheel with all the strength I could muster as my hands shook with anger.

The tightness in my chest had also eased. I looked through the windscreen towards Maccas and decided it was time to eat.

I stepped out of the vehicle, locked it and strolled Maccas.

I placed an order at the counter and, when it arrived, took a tray decked out with burgers, fries and a flat white coffee to the dining area. I sat down at a table and munched my way through the burgers and fries before moving onto the coffee.

While sipping the coffee, I reflected on the duplicity and hypocrisy of men. And the anxiety triggered by memories of the violence men unleash on women who challenge those attributes.

At the tyre service place, I paid the account and collected my car keys. The man behind the counter told me where the car was parked and handed me a pamphlet.

I glanced at the pamphlet and saw that it had to do with a Christian faith group. As I looked up at the calendars on the wall behind him and their sexualised pictures of younger females, he smiled, 'We meet every Sunday, if you would like to....'

I cut him off with a glare as I screwed the pamphlet into a ball and hurled the pamphlet onto the floor and stormed out.

As I ate my Macca's meal, I thought about male hypocrisy and duplicity. The male attitudes for which I wanted to slap the guy's face. The sort of violent attitudes flowing through the evangelism associated with the Christian Jesus. The evangelism of the faith group in the pamphlet.

Male violence had erupted into the life of Mary and a similar, but sneaky violence trashed her life story when the Jesus Crew edited the original narrative underlying the so-called Christmas story. Given these immoral foundations to the Christian story of the life of Jesus, was it any wonder, I thought, an immoral violence wove its ways through the spreading of the word about the Christian Jesus.

The late Reverend Sadistic Bastard was a paid-up, card-carrying member in undertaking this violence. Though this membership entwined with a sickening perversion which he shares with other men. This chapter and others reflect on these matters.

I sipped the coffee and wondered how many of the swarms of multi-gendered people of different ages flowing around that dining area were of the arm-waving, nonsense-babbling types. The types who crowd an auditorium for a spiritual purging. 

Auditoriums within tall, industrial-type buildings, AKA car park cathedrals that contribute little of architectural merit to the vastness of the car park that surrounds them in any of several industrial parks scattered across the world. 

Car park cathedrals which, in their joy-depleting architectural starkness, reflect the bareness of their commerce-focused spirituality. 

They exist to hawk the Jesus of the Christian’s God to people who are looking for an emotional high.

An emotional high turbo-charged by a stirring ol’ fashion hellfire and brimstone shakedown. A band will play emotional, tear-jerking songs, and the preacher will close his eyes, raise his arm in front of the assembled multitude and croon, 

‘Come to Jesus. Place your heavy burdens upon him. His shoulders are broad, and his care for you knows no bounds. Let him cure you of the ugliness of sin. Let the fire of his love for you inflame your soul, mind, and heart. Come from your seats now. Come and be blessed by the laying of hands and the power of prayer. Open your heart to the blessedness of the Lord as he washes you in the blood of the Lamb and takes away all unrighteousness….’ 

My father, the late Reverend Sadistic Bastard, had a gift for spruiking that kind of hogwash. 

Several decades ago, he presided over a car-park cathedral. 

About a decade into his preaching there, however, one Sunday after church, he answered a summons to a church council meeting.

The day after that meeting one of my school friends, as we ate our lunch in the school playground, told me the outcome of that meeting.

However, I knew something was up.

At home the previous evening, tea was delayed because mum and the Reverend S.B. were ensconced in the Reverend’s study.

About an hour after the usual time we had tea, mum stormed out of the Reverend S.B.’s study screaming over her shoulder, ‘you stupid, weak, pathetic man!’

She slammed the study door behind her and marched into the kitchen to prepare tea as I made myself busy by setting the kitchen table for the evening meal.

As I and my friend sat in the school playground, I was eastin my sandwiches, when my friend, her eyes wide with excitement, said, ‘Your dad’s been sacked!’

I looked at her stunned, my jaws not moving, as she nodded.

Her father was a PR hack (AKA an Associate Pastor) at the cathedral. He had attended the meeting at which the Reverend S.B. had was b ooted out of the cathedral.

My friend had found out because her father during the family prayer gathering before their evening meal the previous day, had asked his family to pray for the Reverend and his family, as the Reverend had ‘succumbed to the Devil’s wiles’ and had preached his last sermon at the cathedral.

I was amazed my friend remembered such a mouthful of a phrase. But she like me, had a fascination for the strange word’s adults used, though the meaning of them often came later.

I remember one Sunday school prayer meeting at the cathedral, months before the Reverend’s dismissal, when my friend, amongst a gathering of a couple of adults and about a dozen children, with her eyes closed and her hands folded in prayer, blurted out,

‘I hope to fucking Christ Jesus answers my prayers!’

The reaction from the adults present was swift and the subsequent education of my friend, potent. An education experience my friend, in a shaky voice and with tears in her eyes, shared with me sometime later.

Until the Reverend’s sacking, the admonishments, blessings, and offering of salvation contained within a hellfire and brimstone shakedown targeting the arm-waving, nonsense-babbling types crowding the auditorium of the carpark cathedral, funded his family's comfortable lifestyle. 

It also funded a comfortable lifestyle for the elders, (a sordid assortment of accountants, businessmen, solicitors, and property developers), and the PR men (Associate Pastors) and the purchasing of a private jet.

The elders, the PR hacks, and the Reverend used this for their frequent visits to the USA to attend prayer breakfasts in American cities. 

Meetings with nefarious businessmen and politicians, gatherings soaked in the clichés of American Christianity, where pastors and preachers, imbued with American Christian values, led groups of those denizens of the moneyed world in prayer, using the formula the Reverend S.B. used.

‘Jesus, we just thank you for bringing us together to seek your guidance with the great work you have called your disciples, gathered here, to undertake. We pray you will continue to bless and support them, lead them in ways that glorify your name, and be with them as they oppose the unrighteous and build a godly kingdom here on earth….’ 

These trips' primary focus, though, was on prayer and praise sessions with the shadowy men who ran the cathedral park businesses.

A business where the choice of names for the various car-park cathedrals reflected an American marketing image of a white, middle-class family with fathers as the head and mothers fulfilling roles designed to crush their spirits and poison their sense of self-worth through unquestioning obedience to their husbands. 

Over time, the sons of church members moved into administrative, marketing, or preaching roles within the business. 

Preaching positions that were designed to white-ant people’s genuine spiritual journeys through the hyping up of the company’s policies and procedures as the only way to live a life blessed and nourished by the Christian’s Christ. 

Blessings and nourishment translated into a way of life both for company employees and worshippers through the re-incarnation of the Jesus Christ, known by the women and men who broke bread with him in Palestine, into a white American older brother figure. 

This re-birth embodied the male-centric values of the shadowy company executives and CEO, a divinely elected vessel into which the Christian’s God allegedly poured an endless source of wisdom, as shown by the CEO’s prayer-led insights into that God’s word as set out in the Bible. 

This bloke, following a prayer session with the executives of the company, had the ultimate say in who was called by God to be a preacher and where that preacher had company approval to either preach at an established car park cathedral or establish a new cathedral.

A new cathedral within a designated sales area somewhere within the English-speaking wor

Once appointed, the preacher called to this task had to increase the numbers of worshippers attending the cathedral into the performance-focused target of a megachurch.

If they also spoke Spanish, then South America was their oyster.

With few Spanish-speaking preachers in the company, a preacher with that God-ordained gift had a vast territory to harvest souls for Christ.

A territory without designated sales areas, so he did not have to contend with the non-compete clauses of the employment contract signed by non-Spanish speaking preachers.

Therefore, the opportunities for building a megachurch in Spanish-speaking South American areas were limitless.

By bringing that number of souls to Christ and, therefore, swelling the company’s coffers, the company rewarded the preacher with a slot on cable TV, local TV, and radio stations and leased for him, for his personal use, a private jet.

A mega-church swelled the bank balance of the company because it increased the opportunities for franchise deals with slot machine operators to sell soft drinks, chocolates, energy bars, and other snacks from alluring multi-coloured machines, with enticing marketing slogans plastered over them, parading in the cathedral's foyer and along the corridors leading to the sound studios and bible study rooms set aside for teenagers.

Young people who had given their lives to the Christian’s Christ according to the formula spruiked by a preacher at a service in an auditorium.

If it was legally possible, slot machines dispensing cigarettes joined this parade of seductive merchandise.

I read about this fucked-up, conniving, duplicitous business wheeling and dealing in a blood-red, three-ring binder with the company logo on the front cover. Alongside the folder were several type-written sheafs of paper setting out detailed itineraries for many of the prayer breakfasts the Reverend attended.

I discovered these items inside a wooden, metal-roofed shed.

The shed was near the western boundary fence of the overgrown back paddock of the Reverend S.B.’s house.

Several years ago, I ferreted around the shed after law enforcement officers gave the Reverend's family permission to re-enter the Reverend's house.

The re-entry occurred a few weeks after the Lord called the Reverend S.B. home.

Or that’s how the company’s PR hacks spoke of a servant of the Lord’s departure to join the Blessed hanging around the throne of the Christian's God. A call set out in the rodent-chewed glossy publicity pamphlets I found scattered around the shed.

For men like the Reverend, I don't see the afterlife as a place of reward and comfort.

For the Reverend and others of his ilk, and for misogynistic bastards with their never-ending endeavours to bugger up the life-choices of women, their after life begins with a journey into Dante’s depiction of hell where there journey ends at an additional ring of that depiction.

These men’s pathway through life glows with violence, corruption, and exploitation. A wholesale onslaught undertaken with intent and malice, upon the life-choices of not only females but children as well.

Naked men in their millions stand on this additional ring in Dante’s hell.

A fish hook runs through each man’s flaccid penis.

A taunt line of piano wire attaches to this hook and stretches out the penis.

Acid, at a regulated rate, drips on each stretched-out piece of meat for eternity.

Each man’s screaming pain mirrors the misery, suffering, and distress he has spewed into the lives of females and children.

According to those glossy pamphlets I read in the garden shed, the Reverend was not designated as a candidate for one ring of Dante’s hell or fuel for the Christian mythology of Satan’s fires.

Instead, as a genuine God-bothering, morning and evening praying, Bible reading and reciting, Christian God-forgiven, penitent individual who had been washed in the blood of the Lamb and spun dry by the love of the Christian’s God, the Reverend was destined for a finer place.

The warmth that the Reverend will feel in that place would be the love of the risen Christian’s Jesus for the work the Reverend, as a good and faithful servant, had done for the God of that faith tradition. The God who sat on a golden throne surrounded by throngs of happy clappers and saints like the Reverend.

The Lord summoned the Reverend home, reportedly to the place referred to in the pamphlets, during a heart attack.

 According to the coroner’s report, the attack was so comprehensive that even if it had happened in a hospital’s ICU, there was no way the call could have been resisted.

According to that report, the attack occurred roughly between the time the Reverend had taken off his shoes and socks, removed his shirt and singlet and was taking down his strides and undies while standing beside a motel room bed as law enforcement officers hammered on the room door.

A young naked female, sitting on the edge of the bed, froze in fright as the door crashed open and law enforcement officers stormed in.

 She sobbed as carers wrapped her in a blanket, enveloping her with concern and kindness as they ushered her out of the room.

 Inside the room, someone lobbed a globule of spit onto the Reverend’s saggy, liver-spotted chest as the Reverend lay face-up across a spew-coloured carpet with his trousers and jocks draped around his ankles.

The matter of the globule of spit, though mentioned in the coroner’s report, was not looked into.

According to the motel booking sheet, it was not the first time the Reverend had used that room.

A room where the Lord, according to the company and other Christians, called the Reverend home.

A call that was so tenacious that the Reverend did not have time to tidy up his affairs before he departed to join the saints singing hallelujahs to the God of the Christians sitting on a throne made of a heap of metal so expensive that only a billionaire twice times over could afford to buy one.

My thoughts, however, several days before the Reverend’s funeral were not heavenly.

They focused on the here and now as I pondered how to contribute personally to the Reverend’s funeral rights.

After chewing over the matter for a day or two, I saw a couple of ways of doing this.

The first will be to release a barrage of farts during the wake so that the gathering will be remembered for its foulness, like the Reverend’s depraved life. Depravity he had inflicted on several young girls, besides the one rescued by law enforcement when they burst into the motel room.

Therefore, after the private viewing the family had requested and overnight before the funeral service, I consumed copious quantities of my award-winning combination of ingredients to ensure my guts were well supplied with gas.

The second will be to fuck up his corpse.

The private viewing the family had requested occurred in the evening before the funeral service, which was to be held at 10 a.m. the next day.

The family’s private viewing and the service were held in the same nondescript mainstream Protestant church.

One of those places known for its pious platitudes, soothing sermons, and the comforting assertion that God (of the Christians) was in Heaven and all was right with the English world.

I joined other family members at the private viewing.

The open coffin stood on a couple of silver-painted trestles at the front of the church.

The trestles looked like a secondhand knock-off design of frames used for the lying in state of a member of the English Royal Family.

I snivelled as the other family members gathered around the coffin and moved my thoughts from reflections on the state of the trestles to matters pious.

To prevent throwing up, I fasted for several hours prior to the viewing.

I humbly and respectfully joined the snivelling other family members in reciting mantras, like ‘sweet loving father;’ ‘The Lord has taken one of the best;’ ‘such a dear man, he will be missed;’ ‘We were lucky to know him;’ ‘he has given us so much and yet expected so little from us;’ ‘a very humble man;’ 'a faithful servant of the Lord.’

At the conclusion of the viewing, I despondently followed the family to the church entrance; my head bowed in sorrow.

As the others stepped through the entrance, I looked back towards the coffin when I reached the open double doors.

I noticed the minister who would conduct the service step out of the shadowy places at the front of the church’s interior.

He confirmed my suspicions as I watched the ease with which he picked up the coffin lid standing upright against a front-row pew.

The lid was made of cheap plywood and covered with a layer of deep red paint to make the coffin look posh.

I watch him place the lid on the coffin.

I assumed he would not secure the lid, as the lid would need to be removed the following morning as the coffin would be open during the service.

I stepped out of the church, saying a doleful good night to departing family members.

After I watched them walk away in the twilight, I then chose a large gravestone, one of several scattered around the church grounds.

The one I selected was close to the church entrance.

The one behind which I had stashed, a few minutes before I joined the others at the viewing, an overnight bag.

I ducked behind the gravestone and watched the minister walk through the church entrance and slam the doors shut behind him.

I gave him a few minutes to bugger off before I stepped out from behind the gravestone carrying the bag and walked to the vestry entrance at the eastern side of the building.

I broke into the vestry using a credit card on the latch of the door’s Yale lock.

Years ago, when I worked in mental asylums in Sydney, Aussie nurses showed me that trick. We would break into the empty doctor’s offices during night shifts to get uppers and downers from the medicine cabinets.

At the nondescript Protestant church, I walked through the vestry doorway carrying the bag, closed the door behind me, and strolled through to the coffin.

I placed the bag on the floor beside the trestles, put on rubber gloves I took from the bag's open side-pocket, and removed the coffin lid. I placed the lid alongside a front-row pew.

I returned to the bag and opened it.

From within the bag, I carefully took out a small cardboard box lined with plastic and placed the box on the Reverend’s chest.

I prised open his jaws, opened the box, and took out a fat, brown turd.

I placed the turd lovingly inside the Reverend’s mouth and closed the box.

After I returned the box to the bag, I opened the Reverend’s trousers and noticed he was not wearing undies. How apt, I thought.

I guess the funeral directors did not want to waste the brand-new pair of jocks the family had supplied. The funeral directors probably had a side hustle with a charity shop.

With the Reverend’s trousers open, I reached into the bag and took out two jars.

I placed the jars on the Reverend’s tummy and opened them.

From one, I anointed the Reverend’s cock and balls with the mixture of honey and peanut butter I poured from the jar.

From the other, I poured cream cheese mixed with water across his upper torso after I had opened his shirt. (The singlet the family had provided was also missing).

The mixture cascaded across the Reverend’s saggy, liver-spotted chest and down the sides of his body.

After I had closed the jars and returned them to the bag, I picked up the coffin lid and stood it beside the coffin.

For my final act of blessing the dear, departed Reverend, I reached into the bag and took out a metal box.

I had not fed the white rats inside the box since I bought them from a pet shop a few days before the funeral.

I lifted the box and opened it beside the Reverend’s heavenly stilled cock.

The rats were eager to get out of the box.

They showed no inclination to leave the coffin as they went about their hungry feasting business as I returned the box to the bag.

I placed the lid back on the coffin, took off the gloves, put them inside the bag, closed the bag, and, taking the bag with me, left by the way I came.

At the service the next morning, the funeral directors announced a change to the planned order of service.

They said the family had re-considered having an open coffin service. Though remaining at the front of the church, the coffin would now be closed. Therefore, worshippers would not be required to walk past the casket for a final viewing.

I sat in the front row of the church and noticed that the coffin lid was now fixed in place with prominent silver-looking screws gleaming in the morning light.

I glanced along the front row and noticed people looking at the scuffling sounds inside the coffin.

However, their gaze turned to the printed order of service they held in their hand when the organist began playing.

Later, after the service and the consigning of the Reverend’s corpse to earthly flames (I looked forward to scattering the Reverend’s ashes at a wastewater treatment plant), I saw law enforcement officers walk into the large front room of my sister’s house, where the wake was held.

I watched while I munched my way though a plate of curry puffs, the officers and the funeral directors earnestly chatting as I turned the wake into the stench of a badly managed landfill site.

I don’t know whar the funeral directors and the law officers discussed.

Nor do I know whether law enforcement looked into the matter of the state of my beloved father’s corpse when the directors removed the coffin lid just before the service started.

Nor do I fucking care.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

My heart soared with gladness to see Anne had detoxed from the medication she had been taking. Her face was shining, her skin was no longer sallow, and she was back to her usual bubbly self. However, the scars on her temples left by burning from the ECT electrodes were obvious when the wind blew back her hair.

The drive back to the share house was uneventful.

After Anne made a cup of tea, we went out to the back verandah, with our cups and a packet of chocolate biscuits.

We sat on the edge of the verandah, with our legs dangling into the cool air of the void underneath the verandah, and watched the sun set behind the hills.

Anne started the conversation. 'One funeral, eh?'

I nodded glumly.

'I didn't ask questions during our phone conversation last week,' Anne said, her voice low, 'I didn't want to shock our housemates in case they overheard my conversation.'

'So, fill me in. No dramas in starting the fire?'

'Nah! They hadn't locked the car. The music drifting from inside the building and out to the shed was loud enough to mask the sound of smashing lgass have masked the sound of breaking glass if I needed to break a car window. Once inside the car, I popped the bonnet.

I climbed out of the car, went to the front of the car and lifted-up the bonnet. Then it was a matter of following your clear diagram.

I found the petrol in-let screw at the base of the carby. Turned that, and the fuel started dripping out. You said your uncle showed you how to do that?'

Anne nodded. 'I got on well with him. He took me with him to act as a look-out on insurance jobs. He was proud of the work he did and showed me how to do it.'

'Well! It worked a treat,' I replied.

'The window on the wall of the main building beside the wooden shed was broken. I splashed petrol through that window and on the wall of the shed.'

'I stood back from the car and waited until the petrol from the carburetor pooled on the ground. When I flicked a lighted ciggy towards the petrol, the flames didn't hesitate when they leapt from the car and through the broken window.'

Anne nodded. 'It surprised me the speed with which the fire took hold. I did n't have time to check to see if both blokes had conked out before I fled from the building.' Anne replied.

'Yer!' I replied. 'That old ward building, according to the asylum grapevine, was riddled with termites. That's why it was condemned and I guess the damage from the termites sped up the speed of the flames.'

'But boy! Was I glad to see you running out of the building!' I grinned.

'Bloody hell! It was getting hot! My heart was pounding as I raced out of the building. But! Oh! My God! Was I ever glad to see you!' Anne laughed.

We raised our cups and said, 'congratulations!' and chuckled.

'But one funeral?' Anne continued.

'Yep!' I replied. 'According to the asylum grape-vine, the cops are out looking for the other guy. The police have a few questions they want to ask him.'

'I expect he has buried himself deep into a foetid hiding place somewhere in Australia. With the charred remains of his mate found amongst the ruins of a cast iron bed, I don't think he will want to talk with the police. He will find another nursing job somewhere far away from Sydney. He won't trouble us.'

'And no mention of me?'

I looked at Anne and smiled.

'According to the nurses and other staff, you, like the other inmates, are a lunatic and a woman, to boot. Therefore, of no significance.'

'Thank Christ! For that,' Anne muttered.

'I guess they expect the next sighting of you will be a body that is dragged out of the Parramatta River, following on from your previous suicide attempt,' I continued.

'Well! we got one bastard responsible for that. So there is some justice in the world.'

'Therefore,' I concluded, 'the police aren't searching for you. And customs will stamp your passport without asking questions when we depart Sydney for England in two weeks' time.'

If I had a crystal ball to see into the future, I may not have been so upbeat about the disappearance of the other bloke.

After the fire at the university rugby team clubhouse that I and my two friends, ignited, a ghost emerged from the ashes. A ghost with a clear memory of the death of his mate, years ago, in the fire at the asylum in Sydney.

'I heard the others driving the Buggy across the property. I guess they have gone to collect firewood for the fuel stove. So, we'll have dinner soon. I'm looking forward to sharing meals and time with you again,' Anne replied.

'That feeling's mutual,' I said as we stood up and re-entered the house.

I thought, though, it was of no significance. Anne I were off to England in two weeks' time where she would re-start her nursing career.

However, that one bastard had escaped had significance. From the ashes of the fire I helped light with a Molotov cocktail at that clubhouse for a rugby team, a ghost emerged. However, that event was years away from my walking out of the asylum in Sydney and this meeting with Anne.

Do you reckon they experience a similar thrill to yours for having taken a human life and not being asked to account for their actions in court?

Possibly the life of a whingey-whiny woman who has visited several police stations multiple times to complain about a man. A man who stalks and pesters that woman. A man who follows the woman home and sends her nasty, disturbing internet communications. 

Your internet mates discuss what a pain a woman like this is. Plaguing police stations with her constant visits and her endless nagging once she gets the attention of someone at the front desk.

You and your predatory mates rip into these women with misogynistic statements about their physicality and their fuckable ranking. What's up with the bitches, eh? They need to feel grateful that a man has taken an interest in them. Don’t forget, during the coming week, when is it? Thursday? Friday night?

Anyway, one of those nights that interrupts a beer night with your workmates, you are attending a candlelight vigil with your missus for some woman murdered in what the news media calls a 'domestic violence incident'.

When you attend the vigil, buy one of those coloured ribbons to pin on your shirt to show you are taking a stand against domestic violence.

Your missus will hug you as you burnish your ego with the purchase. Violence against women and girls is the physical biffo, the stuff you never do, not the trolling you do on the internet. Isn't that right, Mr Shonky Father?

In that wee section of men’s minds where slumbers an understanding of women and girls’ view of the world, this is the absolute outer limit of men’s comprehension of their violence, targeting women and girls. Violence is only physical.

The stuff Herod allegedly unleashed on two-year-old and younger male children. The Jesus Crew labelled this incident the 'Massacre of the Innocents'.

It's another reworking and censoring of the narrative written by women and girls but now edited by the Jesus Crew as they put their spin on Mary's pregnancy and its outcome as told in the bastardised texts found in the Gospels of Mathew and Luke.

No contemporary accounts of this alleged massacre exist.

Neither has there been a discovery, dated to the time of Herod of a mass grave in Palestine holding children’s bones.

However, the women and girls who narrated and authored the original story had a clear purpose in mind when they created a tale of a king who ordered the murder of children.

A king who is unnamed in the original narrative.

The king is told (editing has removed the account of how the king was told) that a woman is to give birth to a child who will challenge the king’s hold on his throne.

Here, again, in the original narrative, is a story of a man, in this case, a king, who feels threatened by an action of a woman. An action where a woman gives birth to a contender for the king's throne—an episode in the story written by those who have an intimate knowledge of male violence: women and girls.

The purpose of that narrative is to contrast the king’s reaction to Joseph's.

To draw attention to the God of Jechocobeh, Miriam, Rahab, Deborah, Tamar, Eliyahu, Amos, Nathan, David, Jesus, Joseph, Elizabeth, Mary, the women, and girls who narrated and wrote the original narrative, the pub owner’s missus, the God of Ananias of Damascus, Peter, and Paul, transforming Joseph’s life despite his patriarchal, misogynistic background feeding a sense of grievance towards Mary’s pregnancy by another man.

Light years away from the well-trodden path of a violence-soaked lashing out, as told in the original narrative of a king who feels threatened by a woman’s pregnancy.

In this original narrative, the number of kids, hundreds of children caught up in the king’s maelstrom of violence, was over-emphasised to make a definitive point.

When men feel threatened by a woman or a girl, men will rampage a path drenched with brutality, maliciousness, or murder.

Unless, as shown in the life of Joseph, they walk the road he followed.

Yet again, the Jesus Crew had a copy of the original narrative. And again, in their obsession to promote their guy, in this instance as a super nice bloke in contrast to that wicked, nasty bastard Herod, they use the framework of the original narrative and bugger things up.

For instance, the Jesus Crew, unlike the original narrative, stipulated the age and gender of the children to be slaughtered. But they did not show how Herod's soldiers were to undertake that lethal assessment.

Given the lack of birth certificates or entries in cradle rolls, how were male children aged two years or younger identified? What answer did mothers give when asked about the age or gender of their children?

The Jesus Crew's silence on this point is deafening.

When the soldiers burst into a house, were they able to tell if a child was three or two years old, six months old, or two years and two days old?

As young children can look similar in terms of their gender, how did Herod's soldiers determine the gender of the children they allegedly murdered?

Again, silence from the Jesus Crew.

Did the soldiers strip the children naked to check their cisgendered identity before butchering them?

Of course not.

Not only were there no records of the children's birth, but the Jesus Crew has failed to show that the soldiers had the literacy skills to read these records if they existed.

No records of a child's date of birth, no records of a child's gender at birth, the lack of literary skills by Herod's soldiers sent to undertake this alleged murderous rampage and a refusal by mothers to disclose the age and gender (or the location) of their children adds to the archaeological and historical evidence that this so-called massacre is another bullshit story by the Jesus Crew.

However, their excellent literacy skills at concocting tear-jerking yarns are on full display. A classic of men's character in its display of deceit and double-dealing.

A classic fabrication by the Jesus Crew in their denial of a place for women's voices as the Jesus Crew corrupt the original narrative to drive their political agenda.

 A corruption of the original text through a trick indulged in by men where exposure of their fabrications reveals the maggoty undergrowth beneath the deceit and double-dealing.

The Jesus Crew has downplayed the in-breaking of the God with no name into the life of Joseph. They wanted to promote their narrative of Jesus (as opposed to narratives of John the Baptist) and remove the agency of a woman of flesh and blood from their cock and bull story of Jesus' birth.

Therefore, the Jesus Crew resorted to gaslighting, given a male imprimatur of authority on the cut and pasting they did on texts from what the Christians call the Old Testament. 

The Jesus Crew, though, didn’t stop at cut and pasting because another yarn they spun into a faux reality concerned a star in the east. One brighter than any other star.

Monitoring this star were three blokes on camels, of course, astronomers, who followed this star to the place of Jesus’ alleged birth.

Now, given these blokes wealth (they did not need Frequent Flyer Points to defray the cost of their arduous, weeks-long journey) and the lifestyle that went with that wealth, they were the sort of guys who never washed their own undies, let alone ironed their own handkerchiefs or cooked their own meals. 

If the journey as described by the Jesus Crew took place, to meet the lifestyle demands of these guys, a vast retinue of enslaved people and servants, chefs, and kitchen hands, sommeliers, and bottle washers, prostitutes, and God-botherers, influencers, and PR hacks, laundry maids, footmen, butlers, butchers, herds of meat on the hoof, pack animals, and security guards, had to accompany those three blokes. 

How this vast mob found accommodation in a town that the Jesus Crew claimed was limited stretches the bounds of credibility. Did they take over the local showground? 

But again, when men bullshit, gaps of rationality will appear in their gaslighting because the Jesus Crew’s piece of fiction about these three blokes runs bang smack into the nonsense of a census. 

Where did the blokes go to be registered? Did they pass through their various places of birth to visit Mary? Where did the various members of the retinue go to be registered? Was the trip delayed while these people cleared off and returned as they fulfilled their duty as dictated to by Rome? 

Therefore, continued scrutiny of the alleged census reveals its shonky foundations.

However, as with any fog of gaslighting, the Jesus Crew’s three-card-trick regarding the birth of the Christian’s Jesus, given a veneer of plausibility by their spinning of yarns and fabrications (hence the cut and pasting, the Census, the Journey to Bethlehem, the Murder of the Innocents, the story of a star in the east etc.) finds the light of logic uncomfortable.

As countless women and girls know, gaslighting dims a person’s rational grasp on a situation or creates doubt in their sanity unless they accept the underlying myths of the incident. 

By not accepting the myths, however, the census, for example, continues to leak nonsense when considered within the blazing spotlight of rationality. 

As Mary and Joseph did not have birth certificates, passports, Facebook pages, or Twitter accounts, how were the Romans meant to verify that Mary and Joseph were born in the town they said they were? 

And were Mary and Joseph fluent Latin speakers so that those details about their place of birth were recorded?

Further, what steps did the Romans take to prevent double counting? For example, with Mary and Joseph? Put an elephant stamp on the back of their hands? 

And so it goes on. 

Removing the fog of gaslighting is tiresome and exhausting. But the reward comes in sorting out fact from fiction and, by reflecting on the mangling the Jesus Crew undertook on the original narrative, we then consider the ways by which the God with no name interacts with us. 

Such as that narrative’s story of the in-breaking of God’s kindness into the life of Joseph and the promise the God of no name offers to men. 

They, like Joseph, will discover that by heeding God’s call, the promise is that they too will then live a life with women and girls transformed by respect and encouragement for the lives of women and girls independent of any male ideas how the lives of females are to be lived. 

A journey that meant freedom. Freedom to be the person God wanted Joseph to become. 

Freedom for men to journey, as Joseph did, away from misogynistic conformity into a world where their relationships with women and girls are transformed by the freely given love of the God of Jesus Christ, the God of no name. 

There is freedom also, as fabrications disperse like an early morning mist, to continue pulling apart the foundations of the Jesus Crew’s tale of Christ’s birth. Such as, if, as the Jesus Crew claims, Mary gave birth in a town a distance from the town where Joseph had his place of work, how do we know the gender of the baby?

Without access to ultrasound images, how did the Jesus Crew know that this child, conceived when Mary was raped, is male? 

There are no known records of a gender reveal party held by Mary or Joseph. 

We only have the Jesus Crew’s word that a boy was born. It could have been a girl, it could have been twins, Mary could have miscarried. Mary, Joseph, and the infant (if Mary did not miscarry) are the only people who could have answered those questions with certainty. 

Jesus may have been born nine months after Joseph consummated the marriage. 

Or even later, after the other children were born. Who knows? 

Jesus did not have a birth certificate. As with Mary and Joseph, there are no contemporaneous records recording the birth of Jesus. 

Nor are there Roman records of the birth of Jesus' four brothers (Mathew 13:55) or his sisters (Mathew 13:56).

With the Jesus Crew, one fabrication leads into another and creates a frightening horror.

If the journey of Mary and Joseph took place as the Jesus Crew described, who else but cold, callous men thought it's OK to write into their narrative of Mary, heavily pregnant, likely to give birth at any minute, setting off at night, on a hazardous journey without care and comfort from midwives? 

An account that shows men’s inability to listen and pay heed to women’s voices with what goes right and what can go wrong with a pregnancy. And why support from other women is important.

Further, given what we know of the adult life of Jesus, his compassion, his kindness, and his humanity, as well as his appreciation of women’s lives and his respect for them, it is doubtful he would have considered those editors' attitude towards his mother, Mary, acceptable. 

Uncaring attitudes of the Jesus Crew, who did not know and showed no inclination to know women, as those male editors strode along the well-worn road of male brutality towards the lives of women and girls. 

A brutality shown by the Jesus Crew’s deceit and double-dealing, shaping their spruiking of a potentially lethal claim. An assertion embedded into their fable of Mary’s journey to Bethlehem while pregnant.

They did this to give credibility to their contention that their man was the one promised by the God of the Christians.

In putting their weight behind this declaration, these blokes wrote a narrative that lauded a morally reprehensible account of Mary’s life-threatening journey for herself, and the infant she was carrying.

The Jesus Crew embraced this ethically dubious notion to bolster their marketing propaganda, that their guy, Jesus, was the long-desired Messiah.

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