there are more open forms of living belief in the spiritual.

True spirituality is as much part of our subjective humanity as our sexuality, auditory systems, and capacity to feel love and pain: none of which are too well served by religion - or even Radio 4 if it comes to that, whose select hierachy is oft a tad remote from the more pressing concerns of real life. There will, for each and every one of us, and all too soon I fear, come a time for silence. In the meantime - be it Buddhists, Quakers, Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Pagans, Anglicans, Gnostics, Cathars, Folkies, Taosts, 2012 New Agers or Happy Clappy Glossolalists - have fun by all means, but as long as we have to call ourselves something then I can't help but feel we're missing the point of what we really are. To be human is truth enough; the common cause of every single one of us, yet unique to us all.

Maybe it's that very uniqueness (the defining core of our spirituality) that blows our minds and has us running to an orthodoxy, however Free Thinking that orthodoxy claims to be? Only as Individuals can we think freely, for ourselves; but once we join The Club, hoping for answers to questions which just get in the way of a greater communion of simply being, then I reckon we've blown it. Times in ones life - times of real darkness - one has felt the need, but you know you're back on track when you can recognise it for the horse-chocolate it most surely is.

With every breath we take we are communing with the universe; with every breath we exhale we are giving thanks for being able to do so. If that exhaled breath just happens to be vibrating our vocal chords in joyful blasphemy, then so much the better really.