[bless you my child] ups and downs of the ecumenical life

When I taught at an orthodox Jewish school, the most impressive thing I saw was a young[ish] Rabbi, Stephen Link, telling Jewish jokes and not sanitized versions either. That was pretty impressive and the fact that he was secure in his Judaism was obviously at the base of that.

There are two people, outside my family, I've tried to model myself on. One was an excellent supervising teacher when I was a student teacher I tried in vain to emulate all my teaching life and the other was Stephen. He showed me [and many others, I'd dare say] that one's faith need not be fanatical. In fact, if it is, then it's a total turn-off, even for the faithful.

If Jehovah's Witnesses come to my gate, I run and hide. If someone at an airport, wearing saffron, offers me a flower and then tries to slug me for money, then I do what Captain Rex Kramer does in Airport - slug him back. Cults and fanatics are the bane of any cause.

Fire and brimstone preachers are just as much the enemy as any atheist and an atheist is not an enemy anyway - he's just someone at a different point along the path. My Jewish headmistress at the time told me, in my initial interview after getting the post, that she was not trying to convert me, nor would anyone else. "We have enough Jews as it is," she said.

On the other hand, she spoke of respect for their synagogue and wearing a head covering in there, amongst other things. Hey - it's their place, their community. When in Rome, you know. Many of us have been in a mosque and done similar or a Buddhist temple in Thailand and lit a candle.

Stuart A, of Indecent Left, once told me [in the thick of a Christian/Atheist debate], that I was a "religious tourist". That's when I started to like the guy and think out what the hell I was doing and believing.

Dave Allen is a great comedian - he shows the ludicrousness of the High Church, its rituals and prohibitive haranguing, just as Blake did [another favourite of mine]. As a "practising atheist", Dave Allen misses the whole point though of the Christian community at ground level, of which the previous generation was au fait. Both my mother and aunty were mothercraft nurses and nobody could have called them religious and yet they embodied the Christian ideal, in my eyes, through the selflessness and support they gave many people, many kids.

And I tell you what - at my mother's funeral, some of those kids [now grown up] told stories of her I'd never known. She was no saint by any stretch but she was a saint, if you see what I mean.

That's what Buddhists should be about and what Christians should be about too - not all this Torquemada and Religious Right stuff.

Why shouldn't I laugh at the ridiculous aspects that the so-called Church fathers tell me I should be embracing? If G-d doesn't have a sense of humour, then why did he give us one? If he didn't want us to be get animal with our wives, then why did he make our wives so damned alluring [except at the breakfast table]? If we shouldn't enjoy a wine or a whisky, why did JC say we should mix a little wine in with our water? Why shouldn't we laugh at a bawdy joke and tell one or eight?

The message I get is that most things are fine if not taken to excess and the occasional excess is no bad thing either. Just don't become a slave to anything or anyone, that's all. Try to do right. What's wrong with that?