Being Dog-matic, Human and Walking Our Talk

I recently applied for a job as editor for a magazine based round The Secret. Like most things, The Secret is not the whole answer on how to achieve our full potential with peace and joy. Nevertheless I felt that, through the medium of the magazine, I could help to inspire many, many people to realise and live the greatness that they are.

Then, two days before the interview, I discovered that the magazine’s owner, my potential employer, had been less than honest with many, many people. Living in a luxury home with a luxury car and a luxury lifestyle, he had taken other peoples’ money to invest on their behalf. That money seems to have disappeared without trace or explanation. Wages have remained unpaid for many years, as have a number of creditors.

We’re talking about large sums of money, very large sums, but the amounts, to my mind are irrelevant. Even the non-payment of wages and promises is not so bad, in the scale of things – we all make mistakes and, sometimes, people find themselves out of money for all sorts of reasons.

The difficulty I have with this person’s actions (and not with him) is that he denied that he had lost huge sums of money – despite the clear evidence – and there was no apology or contrition. Promises he made on national television were not kept and he would not take responsibility for making or breaking those promises.

This man is a devout Christian – something he boasts about on his website, his FaceBook and LinkedIn profiles and other public places. He’s very proud of his Christianity. I’m sure, however, that if Christ ever made a mistake – intentional or otherwise – he’d fess up, take responsibility and do his best to make amends.

Not so this Christian. This, of course, does not make Christianity wrong. It simply tells us that some Christians are not walking their talk.

While I was discovering these “interesting” facts about this man, this potential employer, I also discovered that one of the presenters in The Secret DVD had been arrested for manslaughter. Again, this does not make The Secret wrong – it just means that one of The Secret’s adherents, one of its faithful, was not walking his talk.

The lesson I take from this is – a lesson we all know but need reminding of, from time to time – is that no philosophy can save us or give us enlightenment, success, peace or whatever else we’re looking for. Whether it’s Christianity, The Secret, Buddhism, Hinduism or any other philosophy, they are all only part of the story.

“So, what’s the other part?” you may ask.

“The other part is us.”

When you point at something, a dog will look at your finger and a human will look at what you’re pointing at. If you want to be dog-matic, you’ll make your philosophy or religion your answer. If you want to grow as a human, you will look at what your religion is pointing at – God.

And, verily I say unto thee, God makes no demands and has no rules – he simply welcomes us back as prodigal sons. God does not force his/her prodigal sons to return home – we have to be willing to return. We have to be willing to practice being the Christ within us and walk the daily human walk – stumbling, forgiving, making amends and trying again.

Using the principle that’s common to The Secret and to Christianity, I know that if I want an employer who tries to walk his talk, then I must first do that.

And so, today, I’m walking. 

And now, how is Mary Collins walking? Her story is continued from the previous blog ...

"Maybe it's a ruse by Sam to put someone off his scent …" said Ahmed, interrupting.

"You mean he sent those people after you to save his skin?" asked John, incredulously. "He wouldn't do that, would he?"

"No, no, I've got a feeling … just a feeling, mind," said Angus as he lifted out paper after paper. "There's something here we missed last night. I'm sure of it."

"I wish you were right …" said Mary.

"Hey! I bloody am, Mary girl!" exclaimed Angus, holding a sheet up towards the window as the March sun tried faintly to shine through. "Look, look what's written …"

"But we've read all that stuff … well, skimmed through it, anyway," said Mary, interrupting him while peering at the upheld sheet and munching her last sausage.

"Nah, yah silly bird!" said Angus, chuckling. He shuffled closer to her, being careful not to spill the remaining breakfast from his lap. Everyone else moved closer. "Don't look at the words, the typed ones. Look at the … aah, I don't know what you call it … like a watermark or something."

"Yes, yes, I can see it, Angus," said Belinda. "It's faint but there's definitely words sort-of inside the paper. She grabbed more sheets from the briefcase and handed them round. "See if there's any more like it."
They all held sheets up to the light while carefully balancing plates of food and cups of tea and coffee on their knees. Then the phone screamed through their fervour and, immediately, everyone dashed into the fray, tossing breakfast remains and paper aside to plunder pockets and bags in search of mobile phones … all except Angus who reached over and picked up the hotel phone.

"Hello? Ah, I'm Angus. Who is this? Sam, Sam who? Sam …"

"Oh Sam, Sam!" said Mary, snatching the phone from Angus. "Where are you? I waited for your call …"

"Yes, yes my dear, I'm sorry I wasn't able to call as promised," said Sam, interrupting her. "But here I am! Would you mind awfully if I popped in now? I'm at your apartment so where are you from there?"

"Oh Sam, it's so nice to hear your voice," chirped Mary. "And you're out, you're free …"

"Mary, Mary, please tell me where you are. I may not have much time," said Sam quickly.

"Right, yes, sorry," said Mary who then gave him the name and whereabouts of the hotel, along with their room number. Sam hung up immediately while Mary held the phone to her ear still, cherishing the sound and though of him being free and near. Then the fears moved in - would he be interested in her, would he be a changed man, would he …
"Where's Sam, Mary?" asked Angus, interrupting her thoughts. "When will he be here?"

"Soon …" said Mary with the silent phone in her hand while her mind floated off in some other-worldly reverie.

"Soon? God, you bloody English are hopeless, aren't you!" said John, playfully punching Mary's arm. "Ask an Englishman 'how long' and he'll tell you 'not long'. Ask an Englishman 'how big?' and he'll tell you 'quite big'. Ask an Englishman 'when?' and he'll tell you 'soon'. Getting facts out of an Englishman is like extracting teeth from a beggar's bum!"

"John, you forget you're married to an English person," said Belinda, laughing. Awkward laughter from the others.

"I can't forget that love!" said John, putting his arm around Belinda. "Charm, politeness, culture, history - you've got it all. But looking for a fact in an Englishman … or English woman … is like looking for courtesy in a French driver." Abandoned laughter from the others.

John's tirade was interrupted by a knock at the door. The laughter stopped while everyone looked at each other. The chances of very good news and very bad news were equal and no one was prepared to open the Pandora's Box the door represented.

"Can I come in?" asked Sam and Mary flashed to the door with unaccustomed rapidity. She opened it to a haggard, slightly untidy and thinner Sam than she'd known before. She faltered, seeing the same Sam she saw last night, now in the clear light of morning.

"Yes, Mary, my dear, the full light of morning reveals all," said Sam, smiling lopsidedly while apparently reading her mind.

"Oh, Sam, do come in," said Mary, recovering but unsure whether to give into her urge to hug him or to behave a little more correctly in front of her Regional Director and other assorted people.

Sam wrapped himself around her but her body wouldn't move. Was this really happening, she wondered, after all this time? Was this the real Sam Lord, the friendly, affable, sophisticated, off-hand Sam Lord she'd known, wanted, desired?

"Am I being too forward, Mary?" asked Sam, releasing his hold a little. The loosening of his hold activated her arms, somehow, and she grabbed him with a ferocity she'd not known before.

"Not too forward, Mr Sam Lord, just too bloody backwards for words!" said Mary into his grimy shirt, smiling through her tears.

"I don't know why it takes a crisis for us to realise we don't live forever," said Sam, relaxing gently back into her. "There just may not be a tomorrow to do and say all those things we've always planned to … oh, Mary, I've been through a tiny bit of hell and I'm not going through anything else, hell or heaven, without telling you how much I … aah …" He stood back with his hands on her shoulders, looking into her eyes. "Okay, here it is, my dear, I need to say …"

"Watch out!" yelled Angus and John together as they dashed across the room with Ahmed in close pursuit. With a perfect All Black tackle, John felled Mary and Sam as Angus fell over the three and Ahmed's pistol boomed in the plush suite. A yell came from the corridor and a white man dropped and a tattooed, brown one, eyes wide and mouth open, faltered in indecision.

Confessions of a Magazine Writer

In July 1993, four days before his fortieth birthday, Sam Barton left his eighteen-year marriage. He left the woman he’d known for 25 years as his new life just didn’t fit into a relationship that allowed no room for growth. No room for change.

You see, a few years previously, he’d studied Rudolf Steiner and, more recently had come across meditation, The Secret, A Course in Miracles and the whole nine yards of the personal and spiritual / development movement. His world had suddenly exploded into a massive new, unseen world … an unseen world that was almost more real than the little tangible one he’d been standing on for thirty nine years.

Then he was introduced to the men’s movement and his growing world got bigger again.

Along with this exciting, confusing and endlessly fascinating world, he rediscovered his writing ability – an ability he’d had at school but which had take a back seat on his drive through qualifications, jobs, marriage, children and all the other trappings of getting ahead in this tangible world … no, it had not taken a back seat, it had been tossed out to languish in the dust of his dash to progress. Then the world became bigger and all that stuff that had been so important before, as a child, awoke, dusted itself off and confronted him with a huge smile of recognition.

Once the cork was off the bottle, there was no putting the genie back. Sam began to be woken at silly times like 5 am with words rattling round in his head. Words that would keep him awake till he wrote them down. Words that could keep him distracted and irritable for days. Words that were fully formed sentences, fully formed articles. The sooner he wrote them down the better. Only then was there peace.

His only choice was when he wrote them down – not what he wrote down. He’d write them as they came out of his head but, as he typed them up, he’d sometimes feel the need to change them. Then he’d read his typewritten words and always, always, always, need to go back and reinstate the originally presented words and phrases. These words were as persistent as he was.

And so this outpouring started and it had nowhere to go. Sam discovered he was not one of those writers who was content to write stuff and have it sit in the drawer for no one else to see. He just had to get it published somehow. He didn’t know how but started asking around. Then, mysteriously, three days after he started asking around, he found that the best inspirational magazine in New Zealand was published right there in his home town of Tauranga. With that discovery came the instant knowing that he would write for that magazine. He didn’t know how to do that, so asked again. A week later, at an expo, he was introduced to the editor of this magazine.

A normally shy person, he surprised himself when the words fell out of his mouth, telling this editor that all of the writers in her magazine were women and that it would expand her readership if she had a man writing for her. She was polite but not convinced. He took her contact details and said she would hear from him … and hear from him she did!

Every month, for the next year, he would either phone or email her with articles, article ideas and the benefits of having a male writer on board. Eventually, she succumbed to his relentlessness and accepted one article – an article that generated more letters to the editor than had all previous articles for the last five years. He was hired and wrote regularly for that magazine for many years. Then he became the editor. During that time, Sam sent his articles and ideas to magazines and became a regular writer for nine other magazines in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Czech Republic.

What Sam discovered was that the words were always there. If an editor wanted an article at short notice, he could rattle up 1,000 or 2,000 words within an hour … as long as it was on subjects he was passionate about – personal growth, spiritual growth, men’s issues and business. He was not an expert in any of those fields – a novice who dabbled, really – but when the words were needed, they always appeared in perfect formation. All he had to do was turn up at the page and let his pen loose. Usually, he had no idea of what was going to come out of the end of his pen and, as he wrote each article, he could never tell how it would end till it did. Mysteriously, the articles always ended at the right number of words – an editor would give him a word-count and the words would arrange themselves to fit that. It was intriguing but, somehow, it never surprised him.

One thing did surprise him, though: In his field of personal and spiritual development, there were no immutable laws, no fixed and immovable edicts to govern the field. Everything, absolutely everything, was opinion, based on what worked for one person or another. Timid, at first, at venturing his opinion, he discovered that the more outlandish, the more satirical, the more challenging were his articles, the more the readers liked them. He stopped being “nice” and became brave, venturing ideas and theories that went against the current thinking. People asked for more. People argued with him and told him he was wrong. People seemed to love it, whether they agreed with him or not. Perhaps, he surmised, people (like children) like or need something to hit against, need others to draw their lines in the sand for them. Perhaps that’s why readers need writers to write articles for them. Maybe. Maybe not.

And now those articles are scattered amongst several of the books he’s had published – Articles of Faith, Understanding Men, The Royal Bank of Stories and Conversations on Your Business.

[Sam Barton does not exist. Philip Bradbury does. This is my story.]

 Now, back to the story of Arthur Bayly and Mary Collins, continued from the previous blog ...

"I'll just get something to clean these guys up," said Amanda. "Can you just keep an eye on them … stop them doing gymnastics and stuff!" She dashed into the kitchen, filled a large bowl with warm water, grabbed a tea towel and two towels and returned to gently wash Arthur's bloody head. He showed no signs of waking but his pulse and breathing were steady, though weak. She then covered him with the two towels to help keep his body warmth up.

"You're a nurse and a cop!" said Toby with obvious admiration. "Anything I can do to help?"

"You could do the same with this other bloke here, if you like," said Amanda, pleased she had willing help. "Then I'll wash this stuff up when you get back. Best to have someone here all the time - you never know what's going to happen next!"

"Always one step ahead, aren't you," said Toby as he sauntered off to the kitchen. Amanda imagined that was a compliment and smiled for the first time that day. When Toby returned with a bowl of water and a rag, she took the bloody tea towel and water into the kitchen to clean up. As she returned, Toby was kneeling behind the solid hunk of a man, gingerly dabbing at the blood on his head and hand. She squatted in front of the man and discovered that his eyes were quivering and his body was twitching a little.

"This guy might be waking up," said Amanda, as the man groaned and moved his hand a little as Toby put it back down.

"Oh God!" she said, sitting back on her haunches. She looked at him closer and shook her head, disbelieving. She put her hand under his chin and gently lifted it a little, perhaps hoping the face would transform itself into one she hadn't seen before. It didn't. She lowered his chin slowly and squatted there on her haunches, indecisively. She looked across at Arthur, hoping there was something she could do for him … hoping to delay her decision. There was nothing she could do for Arthur, unfortunately. Yes, she'd have to do something with this solid, grizzled hunk of a man she knew - the Assistant Commissioner, Special Operations, of the London Metropolitan Police, George Sanderson. How could she arrest and detain someone many levels her senior? There was no question he had attacked Arthur, who had defended himself and been knocked unconscious … or had he? She hadn't witnessed anything and so her current story was nothing but assumption. Besides, she wasn't in uniform and couldn't arrest him, except under a citizen's arrest. Also, she was carrying a police gun and handcuffs, out of uniform, and she wasn't sure of the consequences of that.

"So, why are you here?" she demanded of the portly guard with his hands still hooked over the door handle. "Did this man get you to do this?"

"Uh, yeah," said the guard groggily and Amanda realised that, with his overweightness and the awkward position he was in, he might not be faring too well.

"Yeah what?" demanded Amanda, needing answers quickly. "Who is he to you?"

"He's the guv'nor, Ma'am," said the guard. "He paid us, like, to look after him, to look after this place while he got a few things."
"What things?"

"Dunno. Papers and stuff that this Lord fella' stole off 'a him," said the guard, squirming to make himself more comfortable, without success.

"And who knocked out that man? You?" asked Amanda, pointing to Arthur.

"Well, yeah, he attacked the guv'nor and I hear a crash an' I come in an' I thought the guv'nor was dead," said the guard candidly, perhaps eager to get it off his chest. "He's just knocked out … you know, alive, isn't he?"

"So you knocked him out?" asked Amanda, ignoring his question.

"Yeah, well, I panicked, like, coz I saw the guv'nor dead an' I thought this one here, he be brutal, like," said the guard, breathing heavily with sweat breaking out on his forehead.

"So you did him good, like, as you would say," said Amanda, finishing his sentence.

"Yeah, guess so. I jus' panicked and we knew we's in trouble coz we let those others get in. I knew we's in trouble already …" said the guard.
"We? You mean there's others here, working for this guv'nor?" asked Amanda, pointing at the prone, twitching body of the Assistant Commissioner.

"Yeah, jus' the two of us," said the guard. "The guv'nor said it'd be a quick an' easy job."

"Where's the other guard?" asked Amanda, looking around warily.

"Dunno. He stayed outside, I suppose," said the guard, wriggling and trying to adjust his arms.

"So this man pays you to protect him, does he?" asked Amanda.

"Ah, yeah, he said he needs extra help an' so he hires people for short-term jobs," said the guard. "Cash only. We do building security at nights so we got the uniform and he thinks that scares people … oh, hell, you won't tell my company will ya? We not allowed to do moonlighting." His pained face took on an alarmed look.

"I can't promise anything, fella'," said Amanda, knowing she'd have to immobilise the other guard before the area was safe. "Maybe I keep quiet about your moonlighting if you do what I say. Okay?"

"Yes ma'am," said the guard, his face lightening up a little.

"So, all you have to do is call out to your friend outside. You'll have to yell," said Amanda, standing up. "Get him in here to help us all out and I'll go get the others. Start yelling!"

The guard started yelling, "Rocky, Rocky, get in here! I need your help! Hurry up Rocky!"

Amanda touched Toby on the shoulder and nodded towards the kitchen, to which she ran. Toby followed.

"Find something to tie the next guy up with, will ya," said Amanda, rummaging through drawers and cupboards, not quite knowing what might work. She soon found muslin bags, usually used for keeping meat in. "These will do," said Amanda as an idea started to form in her mind. "Why don't you go and kneel over that guy … not Arthur, the other one and make sure he doesn't get away. I'll nab the other guard when he comes for you."

"So I'm the decoy?" asked Toby, smiling grimly as he ran his hand through his blonde hair. "You better not miss, young lady, or I'll have to beat you with whatever limbs I still have working!"

"It's a deal - I beat him or you beat me!" said Amanda, smiling and slapping Toby's good shoulder.