The other day I had an epiphany. Part of that epiphany clearly taught me how to spell the word 'epiphany' at the first time of asking, the other part of it was that I was sat on an old style American porch having an in depth conversation with Jesus Christ.
Three things struck me as weird about this epiphany. One, I was not drunk. Two, I am not American and three, Jesus Christ is a fictional character whose advice only ever leads to wars and Christmas. Why would I be in conversation with him? Well it turns out he had some useful tips and hints about how I could make my life better. I am going to share these tips and hints with you in the hope that you can find them as useful as I sure will, just as soon as I stop wasting my time blogging about them and start putting them into action in a real world situation.
To lead into this I should explain why my life needs steering in a different direction. I will do this using a neatly organised, bullet pointed list. Yay, conformity.
* I left my job
* I moved back home
* I have not cut my hair since May and look a little like how Russel Brand might look should he decide to go back on the drugs.
Obviously a lot of this needs to change and I need to rediscover the rails in order for me to get back on them. (Metaphor alert, this man has just finished a Masters degree. Check him out.)
So here's what our Lord and Saviour told me in order to help me achieve this.
'Ash,' he said, as that is my name. 'Things have not been going well for you, have they?'
He looked at me in a way that suggested he knew exactly what I had been going through and I nodded, timidly.
'No Jesus,' came my response. 'Not really.'
Christ stood up from his vintage wooden rocking chair. He inhaled deeply from his cigarette and tapped the end on the railing that surrounded us. He walked over towards me and put a hand, the one that was not holding the cigarette, on my shoulder.
'Know what I'd do?' he asked, squeezing slightly.
I pondered for a minute over the decision to say 'What would Jesus do?' but decided that if my jokes were as bad in my dreamworld as they were in the real one (and they are truly awful, sorry) then Christ might stop being my friend and I would be left never knowing how to make everything alright again. So I just said,
'No, what would you do?'
Then Christ said,
'Well, what Jesus would do,' and I felt that he had both stolen my moment and captured the attention of millions of Christians across the globe who have been asking themselves that question ever since they first decided to start believing in a poorly written fantasy novel. 'What Jesus would do is stop worrying. He'd accept that things hadn't gone to plan, have a cup of tea and see what the future holds.'
I then asked Jesus why he'd been talking about himself in the third person and when he failed to provide me with a decent answer I informed him that he didn't exist. This made him cry quite a bit and then I woke up.
The whole experience made me think about things in a different light. A light that makes me live in America and speak to things that aren't really there and, more worryingly, do as they tell me to do.
So today I stopped worrying for a bit. Everything felt better. The rails are still missing and that metaphor is still pretty weak, but it's a start.
