Paul Kingsnorth

A few years ago i saw the Tegenlicht documentary De aarde draait door (The earth turns on). The subject of this documentary is Paul Kingsnorth, who currently lives in Ireland with his family on his self sufficient farm. A year ago he went through a conversion to Christianity, after learning from Buddhism, witchcraft and other corners through the past thirty or something years.

I was just walking to my chair when I was overcome entirely. Suddenly, I could see how everyone in the room was connected to everyone else, and I could see what was going on inside them and inside myself. I was overcome with a huge and inexplicable love, a great wave of empathy, for everyone and everything. It kept coming and coming until I had to stagger out of the room and sit down in the corridor outside. Everything was unchanged, and everything was new, and I knew what had happened and who had done it, and I knew that it was too late. I had just become a Christian.

Source

It reminds me of a talk i had with my nephew years and years ago, i was 13 or 14 years old. We talked about the bible. For him the bible was a true and moral high standing book. For me it was a history, not a moral story.

I was wrong of course!

I am not a Christian myself. But my old beliefs are falling apart. My old beliefs of left-wing feminist thoughts and scientific non-mythical words. I am not sure where i stand. But i don’t stand at the same place anymore.

I almost envy Kingsnorth in that he has finally found something worth fighting for in Christianity. I am interested in his whole life, but it is also quite a task to get to know each aspect of it. If i ever do.

There are still so many people around the world who i am interested in.