Coteries by James Knight - October 2002

I must start with a confession; I sometimes see social circles and peer groups as lots of small bubbles in one piece of foam, with myself in and amongst every small bubble but not really belonging in any of them. I do not mean 'belonging' as one might feel he does not belong in the sense of being excluded. No what I mean (and what this essay is about) is the small circles that we all see and know about but never talk about. These circles, or coteries, have very practical consequences when it comes to our overall outlook on life, and, furthermore, a good understanding of them can help us in a multitude of ways. A failure to understand them properly can, and often does, lead to a stumbling block regarding a person's positive outlook and, at its worst, their spiritual salvation as well. I work in the public sector - the quagmire that is Local Government; and these past few years I have been noticing something rather interesting. There exists a hierarchical system, a system which divides people in a very unsettling way, and it is not the kind of hierarchy that you perhaps think I mean. Of course, this is not the first time I have experienced such a system - the first place I ever noticed this was in school. There exists in this Local Government two different systems or hierarchies. The first one is printed in official papers, such as LGA minutes, which anyone can read. It also remains (more or less) a constant. A manager scale 1 is always superior to a manager scale 2, and a manager scale 2 to an admin officer and so on. But the other kind is not printed anywhere. Nor is it even an officially organised society with officers and rules which you would be told after you had been admitted. You are never officially and explicitly accepted by anyone. You discover progressively, in almost inexpressible ways, that it exists and that its numbers fluctuate on a regular basis. Some have been in it for as long as they can remember, and some step in and out of it like a ballroom dancer.There are things which correspond to 'words from the inside', but they are too spontaneous and informal. A particular colloquialism, the abbreviating of names, an allusive manner of dialogue, are how you will recognise them. But it is not so constant. It is not easy, even at a given moment, to say who is inside and who is outside. Some people are obviously in and some are obviously out, but there are always several on the borderline. And if you come back to the same team or department after a sustained period away you may find this secondary hierarchy quite altered.Such an arrangement is not necessarily ineffective, because the 'central coterie' may, in fact, be more productive than the usual vehicles would have been. In fact, there are many instances where the usual vehicles are so ineffective that the only way anything can get done is if you are 'in the know'. Such an arrangement, however, is dishonest, because all who must interact with, and within, the organisation are deceived. You can, for example, play by the rules, follow established protocol, and still be left out in the wilderness by someone who knows the person who knows the right person. We see this all the time in the job vacancies page at County Hall. Every job vacancy tells the reader that, no matter how polished his curriculum vitae, the surest way to gain employment is through what is euphemistically called 'networking'. In other words, it is not what you know, but who you have known. This is called your 'previous experience', but it is easy to see that experience is of little use in most situations, as almost all jobs require basic training of the job remit itself. They are simply telling you what kind of personality they want. Therefore, in an extremely elliptical sense, the 'authority' of one candidate's credentials can be superseded by the 'power' of another candidate's surreptitious affiliation with the central coterie. Perhaps one of the reasons that the need for peer-recognition is so strong is that it is indoctrinated; it is moulded into the sector in order that the employer may be able to climb the greasy pole that much quicker. The very fact that we isolate children into stratified groups during their schooling may be at least one contributor to the phenomena, but of course, there are many other contributory factors. For in my experiences, children taught in strict faith schools, or children taken out of society by their parents, are not afflicted by the 'need to belong' to the same degree as the great majority of children in comprehensive schools, and that can be a bad thing. So we can see, it is quite easy to pinpoint the foundational problem, and it is equally easy to see where and why coteries occur. Wealthier parents monopolise higher-performing state or private schools, leaving local schools over-burdened with more difficult pupils. Governments struggle to make state schools more attractive, and consequently their education policy lacks vision because they are designed to deliver the choice and diversity supposedly desired by the middle classes, not the more equal life chances needed by the working classes. In comprehensive schools, and in fact, in most walks of life, a two-tier system will usually favour the middle class. And naturally, top schools attract brighter children; whereas the poorer classes are left to their own devices in "sink" comprehensive schools. Everyone who thinks about coteries will surely realise that coteries in comprehensive schools will be very different to coteries in public schools.Within these coteries to which I have been referring, there are no formal admissions or expulsions. People think they are in it after they have in fact been moved out of it, or before they have been allowed in: this provides great amusement for those who are really inside. It has no fixed name. The only certain rule is that the insiders and outsiders call it by different names. From inside it may be determined, in elementary cases, by mere calculation: it may be called 'You, Me, Bridget and Derek'. When it is very assured and comparatively established in membership it calls itself 'We'. When it has to be augmented to meet a particular Norfolk County Council demand that is made upon it, it calls itself 'All the shrewd and judicious people in the building'. From outside, if you have felt cold emotions towards it, you call it 'Those in the know' or 'them' or 'So-and-so and his enclave' or 'The circle'. But If you are an aspirant member you probably attach no name to it. To discuss it with others who are outside the circle would compound your place outside of the circle too. The other outsiders would make you feel that you were outside yourself. And of course, it would be very unwise to mention the circle to the people inside it, for there can be no such admission that such a circle exists.I hope by now you can recognise the thing I am describing. Not, of course, that you have been in the same Local Government building that I am in, but you have certainly experienced the same thing in school. You have experienced a coterie. When you had climbed up to somewhere near it by the end of your first year in secondary school, perhaps you discovered that within the coterie there was a coterie yet more inner, which in its turn was the fringe of the great school coterie to which the peripheral coteries were only satellites. It is even probable that the central coterie was almost in touch with a teachers' ring. You were beginning, in fact, to drill through several layers of material. And now, wherever you are situated; University, The Private Sector, Burger King - I would certainly find the same system if I were to come down to where you are now - there would exist, several independent systems or concentric circles - present in most departments. And I can also assure you that in whatever hospital, leisure club, school, business, or constituency, you will find the coteries - they are the principal, tacit system of any place. This is why I often find night-clubs so intriguing. Of course, most people in night-clubs are intoxicated, so, with inhibitions being left in their place of residence, people can make a greater effort to penetrate circles to which they do not really belong. In the Waterfront it is particularly interesting because circles are so often conditioned by dress codes - the rock chicks, the punk gals, the Goth contingent. In Chicagos, the divide is between old people and young people. In other clubs around Norwich it varies more multitudinously.And now we must address the main danger of these circles or coteries. I believe that in all men's lives at certain periods, and in many men's lives at all periods between childhood and old age, one of the most governing elements is the desire to be inside the main coterie and the fear of being precluded from it. But even those who think they have escaped such a weakness, are faced with a different problem. People who believe themselves to be free, and indeed are free, from insolence, or disdain, or megalomania, or narcissism, and who think their serenity is a supercession, may be devoured by the desire in another form. It may be the very perturbation of their desire to enter some quite different coterie which renders them impervious to most of the allurements of the exalted circles. An invitation to go to lunch from a canteen worker would be very cold comfort to a man smarting under the sense of exclusion from some chief officers' lunchtime gathering. But alas - it is not large meetings in halls, or smoked salmon sandwiches or even white wine with executives that he wants: it is the sacred little symposium, the chief officers standing together, the sense of the privileged positions, and the delicious knowledge that we - we six or seven chief officers - are the people who know; the people who matter; the people who can enforce changes; the people who can be heard.Often the desire conceals itself so well that we scarcely identify the benefits of fruition. Colleagues stridently assert that they have been called into certain types of 'Important Council Business' because they and two or three others are the only people left in the department who are really 'in the know'. But it is not quite true. Of course, it is a terribly insipid thing, when old Deirdre Fowler draws you aside and whispers, 'We've got to get you in on this one' or "Colin and I saw at once that you've got the requisite skills to be on this committee'. A terrible insipidity - ah, but how much more horrendous if you were left at your desk typing up spreadsheets. I imagine it is tiring doing spreadsheets, but much worse to be out of the circle altogether.Psychologists would point to latent weaknesses; that the whole thing is a subterfuge of a dormant impulse that was 'in you all along'. But perhaps the shoe is sometimes on the other foot. I wonder whether, to use a different example, in this prurient age, many a girl's body has been casually given to a man, less in obedience to her physical impulse than in obedience to the lure of the cultural zeitgeist. For of course, when promiscuity is seen as a 'cool thing', chastity is seen as very 'uncool'. They are ignorant of something that other people know. The same can be said of schoolboys and the desire to drink and smoke for the first time. Boys are more demanding than girls, and that is the principal reason why fewer schoolgirls smoke and drink at that age.I must now make a distinction. I am not going to say that the existence of coteries is vastly injurious. Their existence is, to a large extent, inevitable. There must be executive meetings and confidential discussions: and it is not always a bad thing, it is (in itself) a good thing, that friends who work together should grow to like each other, and feel close to one another. And it is perhaps impossible that the chief officers and managers of any organisation should coincide with its overall functioning. If the shrewdest and most diligent people held the highest positions, it might coincide; since this is not often the case, that there must be people in high positions who are really ineffectual, or superfluous, or both, and people in lower positions who are more important than their company position would lead you to suppose. It is necessary; but the desire which draws us into coteries is another matter. A thing may be morally neutral and yet the desire for that thing may be detrimental.Let coteries be unavoidable and even a fairly innocuous feature of life, though certainly not a beautiful one: but what of our longing to enter them, our anguish when we are excluded, and the kind of pleasure we feel when we get in? I have no right to make assumptions about the degree to which any of you may already be self-conscious. I must not assume that you have ever ostracised friends whom you really cared about in order to court the friendship of those who appeared to you more important, more propitious, or those whose cachet was greater than your own. I must not ask whether you have derived actual pleasure from an outsider courting you because you belonged to a coterie that he or she wished to be in; whether you have talked to fellow members of the coterie in the presence of outsiders simply in order that the outsiders might be full of admiration; whether the means whereby, in your inaugural days, you placated the coterie and exhibited much admiration yourself was wholly admirable. Has the desire to be on the right side of that invisible line ever prompted you to behave in a way which, in the cold light of day, you can look back with regret? You are not alone in doing this. This desire causes much dissatisfaction and discomfort. It is one of the factors which makes up the world as we know it - this whole domain of strife, rivalry, bewilderment, graft, frustration and distress. Unless you take giant strides to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the predominant motives of your life, from the first day on which you start your occupation until the day when you are too old for this desire to matter much. That will be the natural thing - the life that will come to you of its own accord. Any other kind of life, if you lead it, will be the result of much effort. If you do nothing about it, if you move along with the breeze, you will in fact be a member of a coterie. I do not mean that you will necessarily be a successful one; what will be will be. But whether you languish outside coteries that you can never enter, or whether you steadfastly delight in being in a coterie, the result will be the same.I have already made it fairly clear that I think it better for you not to be that kind of person. But you may, as yet, not be wholly convinced. I will therefore suggest two reasons for thinking as I do. And the prediction I make is this. To the vast majority of you, the choice which could lead to contemptuousness will come, and when it does come, it will be quite dull. None will seem particularly bad - a drink, a cup of tea, disguised as triviality and stuck between two who are looking for your approval as they criticise someone else, from the mouth of a man or woman whom you have recently been getting to know quite well and whom you hope to know better still - but just at the moment when you are most fearful of appearing servile or naïve or uncooperative - the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the outsiders, the momentarily abstract people, the fools, the impressionable lovelies, would not for one second understand: something which even those who you assume think like you do would feel uncomfortable if they were in your shoes: but your new friend says this is something 'to which we are quite impervious' - you try not to blush with discomfort and ill-ease - but it is not something you endorse in any way, shape or form. And you will be drawn in. You are drawn in, not by any desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the stage door was so near to you, you could not bear to be thrust back again into the drama once again. Now it would be equally awful to see the other person's face - that well-disposed, delightfully sophisticated face - turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been auditioned for the coterie and told the part had gone to someone else. But you also know full well that had you got in, you would be drawn in further and further, next week it will be something a bit more audacious, and later still, something quite horrendous that goes against your own sensibilities. Of course, they will keep reminding you (not with words, but with facial expressions) that it is all done in the best spirit. It may be quite benign in a government building, but in the outer world it can lead to a scandal, to bankruptcy, to a custodial sentence. And here is where others should not be fooled, for it may also end in a peerage, a knighthood, or in great wealth - but you know, as they do, that they will still be reprehensible. That is my first reason. Of all the passions, the passion for the coterie is most proficient in making a person do things that they feel uncomfortable doing; things that they themselves disapprove of in others.My second reason is this. You are attempting to build sandcastles with a garden fork. It is the symbol not of one blemish, but of all blemishes. It is the very mark of a stubborn desire that it seeks what cannot really be attained. The desire to be inside the invisible line illustrates this rule. As long as your thoughts are predominated by that desire you will never get what you want. As I said earlier, you are trying to drill through several materials: if you succeed there will be nothing but bits of material left. Until you subdue the fear of being on the outside, on the outside you will remain.This is surely very clear when you come to think of it. If you want to be made free of certain circles for some wholesome reason - if, say, you want to join a Sunday league football team because you really like football - then there is a possibility of satisfaction. You may find yourself part of a competitive team on Sundays and you may really enjoy it. But if all you want is to be in a team known for its admiration, known for its appeal with the ladies, known because it is the 'team to be associated with', your pleasure, if you have no desire for football itself (only the desire to be part of a coterie), will be short lived. The coterie will never be as good once you are inside it. By the very act of admitting you it has lost its appeal, because you could only see the qualities it possessed from not being in it. You could only see the qualities it possessed because you felt that having them would aggrandise you in a way that, in truth, it never really could.This happens in all walks of life. Once the first novelty has worn off (if you joined for the wrong reasons), the members of this circle will be no more interesting than your old friends. Why should they be? You were not looking for virtue or competitiveness or kindness or loyalty or humour or learning or any of the things that can really be enjoyed. You merely wanted to be 'in'. And that is a pleasure that cannot last. As soon as your new associates have become over-familiar (and custom does this), you will be looking for another coterie. The horizon will still be miles away. The old coterie will now be only the dreary background for your endeavour to enter the new one. Before I am misunderstood, I should make it clear that I am not saying it is bad to be involved in groups, nor that friendship is a negative thing. I am saying that both groups and friendships should be desired for the qualities of their constituent parts; they should not be desired to make any individual more exalted, for disappointment will follow.And you will always find them hard to enter, for a reason you very well know. The coterie we are discussing takes pleasure in the fact that those themselves, once they are in, want to make it hard for the next entrant, just as those who are already in often made it hard for you. Naturally, in any good group of people which holds together for a positive purpose, the exclusions could not be construed as deliberate. Three or four people who are together for the sake of some piece of work exclude others because there is work only for so many or because the others cannot do it. A football team limits its numbers because there is only a limited number of men of which a football squad can consist. But most coteries are different - they exist primarily for exclusion, not because there is no room for others. There would be no fun if there were no outsiders. The invisible line would have no meaning unless most people were on the wrong side of it. Preclusion is no accident; it is the essence. But you, aware of your own rectitude, do not wish to be associated with such a coterie. A team would take no pleasure in being top of the league if there were no teams below them, and equally, those who are 'in the know' would take no pleasure if there were not those who were 'on the outside'. Now this point may have slipped past many people, but when it comes to belonging somewhere; being in a group of some sort, Christianity is quite unique. It is unique because it takes no pleasure in seeing people outside of the circle - in fact, it fervently and passionately wishes that all people, even people who are not well liked, should enter the circle, become saved, and come to know the Creator of the universe.This is precisely why many people are so dissatisfied, because they are pursuing something that really has no ultimate end - to be in one, or several coteries. It is one of the biggest stumbling blocks that man has, and it is so inextricably linked to that other big stumbling block 'pride' that the two are always having mutual contact. The quest for the coterie will emasculate you unless you can conquer it. But if you conquer it, a surprising result will follow. If, say, in your daily hours you make compassion your end, you will presently find yourself inside the primary coterie for which compassion is its principle source. And the same goes for diligence, wit, intelligence, fortitude and many others. You will be inside the only coteries that matter, for they attract their own kind. Now of course, these coteries will by no means coincide with the coteries of the executives or the self-titled 'important people' or the people 'in the know'. It will not shape any sway or influence amongst the bigwigs, but equally it will not lead to all those bad things that I described earlier. Its main achievement will be to do those things which benefit humanity most, and with which God Himself is most pleased.Now if you decide that you would very much like to spend time in a pub with a particularly pleasant drinking crowd, you will feel that you have become part of something very much like a coterie. But the difference is that the intimacy is unintentional, the privacy is only a particular definition of group friendship; that those who do not know the people cannot know the details. Its exclusiveness is a by-product, and no one is being led by the lure of the coterie; no one has fixed their minds on the enigmatic or the abstruse, for it is simply a few people who happen to enjoy each other's company. Aristotle quite rightly placed friendship as one of the main virtues. It causes so much happiness in the world - but no coterie can really have it; not friendship in its wonderful sense; for coteries exist to make the people inside them feel better, by claiming others are worse than themselves. We are told in the Bible that those who ask shall receive (Matthew 21:22). That is true, in senses that I, as a mere man, do not have the capacity to explore. But in another sense there is much truth in what our parents used to say to us - 'Those who ask do not get'. To a mind that lacks maturity, to the mind that is about to enter into the big wide world, it seems full of 'discretions' full of intimacies and exclusiveness. But if the young man follows that desire to enter them, he will reach no 'coterie' that is worth reaching. The true road lies in quite another direction. Many of us journey into the abyss, only to discover that everything there is artificial, just a debased preoccupation with the same social impulse that drives us all. Coteries lure us, but the 'digging' effect chains us to a cold hard post of perennial jealousy, distress, and disappointment. When our motivation is tainted with the wrong desire, membership of any coterie has no real content. Coteries are essentially a negating form of social intercourse. There is no sense of belonging when you are trapped in a coterie; only a sense of disillusionment. Remember when you were experiencing this at school? You found ways to avoid it, but it placed you in a difficult position. You thought the loneliness you felt at school was unique within yourself. You thought that the other children were not spending their time whittling and dreaming. Do you remember the 'in crowd'? In my school it was the football team. Those who had high energy and ball juggling prowess were the ones who created for themselves a coterie; one that most of the impressionable lads wanted to get into and many of the girls wanted to be associated with. This coterie worked very much in their favour, for to so many, they were adored athletes, they were an embodiment of all worldly power and glory. Many girls wanted to know them (or know girls who knew them) and many boys wanted to step inside the coterie. This coterie had other privileges too; the boys could be less bright than most, yet still they could escape from such vacuity because they were firmly ingratiated in the coterie. But it was quite easy to observe its drawbacks. Firstly, by entering this coterie, or desiring to enter, the boys had largely forgotten where true pleasure lies. It was an obscure, almost mystical pleasure for a short while, but like all coteries, it left one quite disconsolate. And of course, the female attention, as alluring as it seemed at the time, was really nothing more than a burnt sausage left on the barbecue for too long. Those who purged themselves of any self-respect just to be on the periphery of the coterie were not really worth knowing in the first place. The joke no longer remains funny if you badger someone so much into telling it that he ends up indignant and annoyed. Yes, the true members of the school aristocracy, were the temperate, educated, empathetic, compassionate boys and girls; they were the ones worth knowing; but of course, the over-abundant consciousness of image usually permits such friendships to occur, particularly for those in quasi-prestigious coteries. And you will see, if you look further, that such things hugely influence the social position of the boys and girls in the outer world. As adults, you will probably see them trying desperately to wear the right clothes, use the right slang, admire the right things, laugh at the right jokes; there are endless machinations of boys positioning themselves against each other, whether it is in Local Government, in mercantile activities, or in a total existence devoid of any noticeable qualities - you will see men's willingness to give bodies as cheap labour, or women's willingness to give men their bodies as an apparatus for his lust. But another point should be made, before it seems that I am castigating these people. It is not that they are inherently bad, just misguided. What they really wanted was to find the good graces of a coterie member - and this searching process, no more detached (in a cognitive sense) from any other form of searching, was always a central component of this system. In many ways this is hardly surprising, for the game they were playing has left them ill-prepared for proper functioning, whereas the school aristocracy had learnt more of the 'game of life' through their own cognitive resources and introspection. The whole structure of the football boys would collapse if they had ever played in the spirit of play For boys who were not yet football boys but who had some athletic promise, went to partake in athletics or gymnastics - many of which were forever racked with dazzling hopes and sickening fears, never in peace of mind until they had won some notice which would set their feet on the first rung of the coterie ladder. But even for them, there was no peace either, for to stay still or recede is to fall back. Spiritually speaking, the disquieting thing was that school life was a life almost wholly dominated by the social struggle; to get on, to arrive, or, having reached the top, to remain there, was the absorbing preoccupation. And from it, at school and in the world, all sorts of meanness flows; the sycophancy that courts those higher in the scale, the cultivation of those with whom it is prestigious to be associated, the rapid abandonment of friends that will not assist them on the ladder; the readiness to ridicule the 'uncool' or 'unpopular'; and the ulterior motive in almost every action.But even if the current position of the school aristocracy is now enviable to those covetous boys and girls, they need to know that the ground they are drilling into has many layers, that the garden fork can never hold enough sand, that the distant beauty always recedes. There are as many forms of this yearning as there are coteries. At County Hall for example, invitations to lunch from Heads of Departments might mean nothing to those who have been excluded from the coterie in which they really wanted to be included; but they are devoured by the desire to join some group of twentysomethings for a drink at the social club; or to play tennis with that Thursday lunchtime crew; or get with that group of people who sit on the grass outside. They long for that sacred social club coterie, or tennis group, or the grass recliners, and indeed, the desire diabolically conceals itself. Perhaps this contemporary age has come to accept it as normal that human affairs are assembled out of the incessant quest for prestige or a dim sense of belonging. Perhaps it is quite unrealistic to expect anything else, so that to function according to insecure suggestion is always the best way to decipher human affairs. Once again, before I am misunderstood, my target is not the people, or even the coteries themselves. If it were, then all we would be left with is an inter-comparable collective, or thousands of lost souls wandering around alone. But I never really liked mankind's tendency to eradicate solitude and bring people together for the sake of being together, for very often the mismatching of individuals leaves them in no better position, in fact, often much worse. But although my own natural inclination has been towards non-assimilation, detached individualism is not at all that appealing to me either.To this day the Christian vision where we stand together and encourage others to try their hardest to make sense of the world has come most naturally to me, and has been most appealing to me. It is certainly true that every one of us needs human company. But the great immutable foundation (created by men and women alike) which directs a person to another person is a disordering of our correct desire for human relationships, asserted as the 'longing' to attain it, the distress when we are precluded, the negative side of that 'gorgeous sense of belonging' that inclusion gives us, and the pleasure of excluding others on a daily basis - these are the things which cause the damage.This desire for coteries is the kind of desire which does not often pass from an individual. Can it ever be eradicated in this life? It is a desire that is feared or loved by other people, simply because of the pleasure it gives to those who are in it, or those who created it. But as I have said previously, the pleasure gives no real ultimate delight; it is too short-lived. No true fulfilment can result from abandoning ourselves to this drive; we cannot find respite by joining a coterie, whether large or small. We all know that various large groupings, just like friendships, are essential, but they are transitory and are limited to transient goals. Our longing to belong will not be met by 'being inside'. And what interested me most about this observation is not so much the intense longing that exists in everybody, but how, if not by others, could it be appeased? How could that hunger be satisfied? And of course, all along it was patently obvious to me. It was obvious because every time I looked towards God to satisfy my desire, I found that my desire had not only been fully realised, but it had actually been satisfied in a unexpectedly exciting and illuminating way.And I also saw why so many people do not recognise it. It is often because many people, when their desire cannot be satisfied, seek solace in other areas - family, close friends, lovers, to name but three. Now I am not for one second denying the true qualities of all three, but the problem with the supposed solace of, say, family is that we pretend that we can relax and say that we have found the secret road on which we were created to be. But in truth, it is not so, it is just that we are able to truly 'be ourselves' around our close family, and 'being ourselves' is the closest thing (outside of Christ) we have to the truthfulness of our existence. But Christ took great steps to warn us that this is not so. He even used hyperbolic language to assert that He would set families at variance if necessary, and that following Him was the most important thing. And this is why seeking solace in the family, or with a lover will not be enough. It will never be beneficial simply to 'be ourselves' until 'ourselves' have been united with Christ. Home life, close friendships, loving relationships - all three have their own rule of civility; a code that is quite subtle, quite sensorial, and, therefore, in some ways more difficult than that of the outer world. The family home has its pitfalls, and the problem of the coterie can be at its most acute in a family. So if these things cannot do all the work, what can?All of our desires are dim anticipations of what was always finally intended for us by God. Those transient moments of pleasure which keep pointing beyond themselves to something greater. They are hands pointing us in the direction of Christ. Something similar is at work in our insatiable and unrequited desire to belong. Whether we realise it or not, our primary desire is to be united with God. If the desire for the coterie is a precursory glance towards Heaven, the spectre of exclusion is equally a precursory glance towards Hell. Right now, the life to which we are beckoned is a way of life far beyond the desire for human belonging, and also far beyond solitude. I am speaking here of a way of life that begins to show us the way to be untied with Christ. We are called from the very beginning to combine as creatures with our God who created us. The Bible does of course contain the perfect antidote for those who are subsumed by coterie-ism. St Paul explored this very thing in Romans 1-8. And the final conclusion was this:If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all-how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. ... neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:31-39.The force of St Paul's argument obviously calls upon us to look for Christ and accept that the reason we were created was, all along, to know God. Similarly, in the letter to the Colossians, St Paul addresses himself to a situation where those who have a perennial desire to be 'on the inside' perpetuate the fruitless desires for coteries. The Colossians were doing many things that were hindering their relationship with God. But St Paul helps them to get back on track by reminding them that 'God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Christ'. Colossians 1:19. And that 'All the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form' in this Christ. Colossians 2:9 - and startlingly, St Paul declared that those on the outside of coteries are no worse off because of that. In fact, your position is solely dependent on something far greater; 'You have been given fullness in Christ, who is the Head over every power and authority'. Colossians 2:10. To be with Christ in this way is to be at the centre; in fact, those who are in a coterie for all the wrong reasons have 'lost connection with the Head" (2:19). Their languorous approach to the Christian gospel has excluded them from life itself.One final point is this. Those who refuse to accept that Christianity is the only way forward are often those who think they can vanquish their desire for coteries through their own 'self-belief' and 'inner strength'. But of course, all good folks know this is not the case. No human efforts, by themselves, will end this longing. It is only through God that we can find our true sense of belonging; after all, it is in Him that we belong. Virtually all the things that God does for us, He does within us. And with this recognition, we can truly come to know ourselves as God knows us.