The Naked Troubadour

💥70 is the New 50!💥 (and other news…)

Posted on Mar 3, 2019 Updated on Mar 3, 2019

💥 70 – I S – T H E – N E W – 50! 💥 (and other news too, for which see below) At each measured age, we think that we’ve reached a pinnacle and are at the top of our game; but it’s nothing compared to the future pinnacles which we’ll achieve later down the line. Each imagined “pinnacle” is just a stepping-stone to the next. I feel as if I’ve got more energy, verve, zest or vim today at seventy years old than I had twenty years ago, when I was a mere fledgling and comparative ignoramus in relation to who I am now (and in each single moment I am a total ignoramus compared to the next! 🙂 ). I certainly have more boldness today than ever before and am continually filled with a “nothing-left-to-lose” mindset. For some years previous to this one —having allowed myself to be way too daunted by adverse circumstances — I’d felt as if I was “underground” or “undercover” — quietly exploring my mind and my place in this world. But during the last year, I have emerged; one could even say “come out” (though I don’t mean that in the popular sense of today 😃 but to express my release from a kind of tunnel which had served a necessary purpose for a while). Never before have I been seized with such passion and commitment in my body and soul as I am today. A kind of transcendence (which sometimes feels like devotion, and at other times like thanksgiving) seizes me by day and night like yearningful streams of holy water relentlessly flowing down the volcanic hillsides of my heart, thus continually drawing me back to reality. [I mean real reality — the one which hovers in the parallelistic shadows of our experience in this world and which should be given a much more prominent place within it].

NEW WEBSITE COMING!

My previous year was spent writing a 600-page large-format book which is both autobiographical and expository and pretty much shows where I am up to in my thinking these days. Having already been downloaded by hundreds of people during the last three months (a number of whom have since contacted me to discuss the contents, which I love), the book is still available for download free of charge here: https://narrowgate-pathwaystrait.com . This year I will be building on the foundations of that publication, firstly by setting up a new website based on a service I originally provided beginning in 1990 for around twenty years or so (which had an accompanying international email list of around 1500 at its peak). Thus, like the previous service, the new one will provide written commentary on a wide range of topical, biblical, social and pastoral issues, holding out a hand of rescue to those who suffer psychological, emotional or spiritual manipulation and abuse in the religious scene, while providing counsel and encouragement for the spiritually-confused. The new website will carry out this work with a similar name to the original service, but with an even sharper focus and an even greater spirit of boldness and liberty. Like before, it will contain articles related to spiritual matters and investigative commentary and exposition on issues in world development which are of prophetic interest, exposing deception and cultism both in the “Christian” scene and on the wider world stage. People can sign-up to be kept abreast with what is uploaded to the site and when. No monetary charges or subscriptions will be involved. It will all be completely free.

As a result of the setting-up of this new site, my Naked Troubadour site will in future be reserved solely for my poems and music. Any spiritual or similar articles currently on there will be transferred to the new site. I am right now writing what will be the inaugural article for the new site, which is entitled, “Empty Gestures: Love without Truth is a Lie [and No Love at All]”. Another article is also being written which will follow it there, entitled: “Foolish Wisdom: The Genesis Blueprint for Gender Dystopia Down the Ages”. The website will also have an interactive Questions and Answers page, where anyone can pose a question to me on a spiritual, global, or even a personal matter (anonymously or not) and I will publicly respond, thus creating a live body of constantly-updating relevant material available for anyone to read. Coupled with all this, as part of the new service, I will be offering to travel anywhere in the world to give public or private talks on the issues dealt with in the book and on the website (or on any other issues desired!). As part of this service, a quietly longstanding vision of mine has been the opening of a conference and study centre in Europe to provide courses and resources offering teaching about the living Christ and what it means to be a disciple of His, how to be effective in the world as it is unfolding now, as well as providing an oasis where people can come for spiritual and intellectual nourishment. Anyway, visions aside, the new website has already been purchased and is currently being designed and filled with material. So WATCH THIS SPACE for news of it going live, hopefully later this month!

BIRTHDAYS ARE BREEDERS OF GRATITUDE

Birthdays always kindle in me feelings of gratitude for all the blessings (or even for the not-so-blessings!) of the previous year. As my 70^th birthday has now arrived, I can honestly say that most of all, these days, I am filled with the profoundest sense of gratitude yet — not only for what might be considered to be beneficial or positive experiences but also for those which could be regarded as detrimental or “negative” ones. They all reverberate together as a life of lessons from my Maker and which I hope have all been for a higher purpose, shaping and honing my typically-human stubbornness and stupidity (and blinkeredness and rigidity) into something more fluidly productive and worthy of the gift of life which I’ve been granted. Gratitude for being kept alive in this raging ragged world — sometimes embarrassingly extravagantly — especially for being housed, clothed, fed, watered and well-cared for by my benefactors, sponsors and other assorted angels in human disguise who have believed in my work and trusted me to get on with it. Gratitude for being kept safe from serious harm. For I have had some close shaves in my time as a result of my own silly actions, as well as through assaults of many kinds from both nutty humans and well-disguised demons. I am grateful that even when my discernment has been at its lowest, divine protection has been at its highest. I am grateful for God’s faithfulness toward me, especially during those times when my faithfulness towards Him has been at its weakest (though, thankfully, never wholly extinguished). Grateful for my true friends (who couldn’t even fill a full hand of counted fingers). I am deeply grateful for all those who have crossed my path over the years and made a deep and lasting impression on my soul. I am even grateful to all those throughout my life, from my earliest childhood to the present day — whether from family or faux-friends or bitter folks who chose to make themselves my enemies or who chose to misunderstand or malign me. So many carry reins or a straitjacket around in their mind’s pocket, waiting to use them on some other human whose sense of freedom and ability to fly (gifted wings) has triggered their jealousy or deep sense of inadequacy. They just don’t like it when you refuse to take shit from them and instead fly your freedom-flag even higher. But I’m still grateful for their presence. For thanks to them, I’ve now fully realised that I’m not here to live my life to please controlling people or to fulfil their crassly limited expectations for who they think I should be (for they will always try to rein-in folks like me, or put us in a straitjacket). My only wishes are to magnify Truth in the Light of the Christ and to be as pleasing to the Creator Spiritus as it is possible for any human character to be (my failings notwithstanding). If that doesn’t suit some other humans, then that is on them and I will no longer be burdened in any way by their malice. 🙂 In the previous two decades, I had allowed them to get to me so that I tended to shrink away into an underground cavern, in some ways bewildered and spent. But not anymore! Those days are over. I am going to go out with a BANG 💣💥 rather than a whimper 🤐😶! So bring it on!

THE BREVITY OF LIFE

And here’s a thought (and it’s not just a cliché)… Tempus fugit! Life goes very quickly. You may be twenty or thirty-something and sitting there thinking, “What an old wrinkly that Alan bloke is! How great that I’m still so young!” But life is exceedingly fleeting. Really. Blink and you’ll miss it. One day, when and if you reach my age of 70 (on paper) [50, or less, in heart 😉], you will remember these words and nod your head while smiling knowingly to yourself. It is common for people to consider the reality of their inevitable physical demise in this world when it looms in front of them during what is known as old age (which should ideally be “youth made wise”). But we should be aware of our mortality at all ages, even in the tenderest of youth, for life can be taken from us in an instant. As Moses wrote in a prayer around 3500 years ago:

“The days of our lives add up to seventy years,
or eighty, if one is especially strong.
But even one’s best years are marred
by troublesome toil and affliction.
Yes, they pass quickly, and we fly away…
So teach us to consider our mortality,
in order that we might live wisely”.
(Psalm 90, verses 10 & 12).

UNRAVELMENT & UNDONENESS

So now I have reached those “seventy years” mentioned (or “three-score years and ten”, as it was translated in the 17^th century King James version of the Bible). When I look back, I can honestly say that, in one way or another, I have considered my mortality almost every day of my life; occasionally many times a day during this strange waking-dream of Divine making. It is a great and humbling thing to do so, making it impossible for us to get any fancy ideas about ourselves while at the same time increasing our depth of wisdom. Being ravaged and laid waste by considering the ephemeral nature of this life and our personhood in it inevitably increases wisdom, for wisdom begins when we are unravelled and undone —wisdom being a natural biproduct of that unravelment and undoneness. In the accompanying photos, taken specially for this 70-year marker, I may look com-posed and competent; but I know too much to be fooled by that. If one is a disciple of Christ, as I unashamedly am, then one lives in a constant state of creative unravelment and undoneness (He sees to that, with no exceptions!) — not in a chaotic sense but in the sense of having been demolished and rebuilt with a different circuit-board in this dream-state, fallen, 3-D universe; one which is not made by human hands, and which definitely doesn’t come from China or any other location in this cosmos! If you haven’t experienced this yet, then please take it right into your heart, for none of us is of any real use in this world unless we’ve first been broken!

Pause…

Honestly, I never thought I would make it this far. What a funny surprise it is (and what a weird journey it’s been)! <Smile>. It’s all borrowed time anyway. All of it. Each day, I awaken with thanks that I’m still alive, ready and able to work and do whatever it is that I’m supposed to be doing. In fact, I’m continually amazed that my heart keeps beating from one minute to the next! So I live each day, even each moment, as if it was my last — and will especially do so now that I have reached this great milestone of youth! 🙂 (But don’t worry… I’ll still keep appointments and make plans, just in case… you never know! 😃 ). However, my mind is fixed on more infinite elements than are manifested in this theatre of illusions:

“For all flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the wildflower;
the grass withers and the flower falls away,
but the word of the Lord endures forever”.
(First Letter of Peter, chapter 1, verses 24-25).

THE HIGHEST POWER

This dream-state matter-life will soon be over for all of us — gone in the blink of an eye. Then “books” will be opened, and we will be judged according to what we’ve done and how we’ve used what we’ve been given. This will be so, whether we believe it or not; for we are not at all the little gods that we imagine ourselves to be. On the contrary! We are very much creatures — the work of creation by an Infinitely Higher Power — the highest possible (to Whom we are also servants, whether we realise it or not). This is why the epiphany that there is that Infinitely Higher Power than ourselves — and I don’t mean ETs (demons/archons in disguise) or so-called “Ascended Masters” (who are also demons/archons in disguise)! — is such a radical turning-point in the life of a human creature. That Infinitely Higher Power is what manifested as the Christ on this earth more than 2000 years ago. When we have that realisation, we can then begin to live authentically and fulfil our true destiny.

So many people make such an issue out of foods and health and obsessing constantly about smoothies and superfoods and whether or not the things we eat and drink are organically-correct, bla-bla, desperate to extend their lives indefinitely. But here is a fact: It doesn’t matter how long or short we live. All that matters is whether or not we are in a right relationship with the Highest Power behind the creation of this universe. When that is the case, then everything else follows on from there in majestic magnitude. This is the kind of thing that I find breathtaking in life — infinitely more than a mountain landscape or a seascape sunset. Deep is where I want to be. Always and forever.

SHOW ME YOUR SOUL

So when I relate to people, I am not so much interested in your superficial personality (which could easily be little more than a rehearsed disguise you have learned to wear as a shield or cloak). For each of us is a Graphical User Interface of what lies hidden within us and thus can be used to cover up our hurts and therefore is very often used to conceal the soul rather than to illustrate it. But here’s the cosmic shout: Your soul is what I really want to know! So show me your soul and then we can maybe walk together. Show me just some of your soul and we can walk arm-in-arm. Or, better still, show me your whole soul, and if it is the soul of a true disciple who sees this world for what it is, and the Divine for what that is too, then we will embrace eternally, as if we are flying as passengers on the same airline, in the same row of seats, staring out of the same porthole, comparing notes and communing like a stream on steroids. I will meet you there very soon — like NOW, if you wish… for there is no time to waste… This is [always] the beginning — even at 70! 😎💖