However it may have been, it is the case that having put in place the skeleton of Salvador's faith, God later fleshed out this new creation, and gradually revealed to our Founder the tripartite nature of Their being: both male and female and sexless (this was what God had been saying to Christians, but they had misinterpreted it as Father, Son and Holy Ghost because of the nature of society of the time, which was profoundly patriarchal).

Similarly, Salvador originally thought that there was a Devil - old Redtop as he sometimes referred to him - and that there was a Hell, too, a place submerged in eternal darkness whose walls were made of glass, where tormented souls burned like a billion scattered embers on a million blackly towering levels, forever sliced and cut by the razor-sharp edges of their frozen prison.

Later, he was able to separate this fevered, fearful vision from the quiet, calm articulation of perfection that is the true Voice of God, and realise that - again - what he had been experiencing was something from inside himself.  These were his visions, not God's; they were the result of the fear and terror and guilty dread that exist in everyone and which certain faiths, especially Christianity, prey upon and exaggerate the better to control their flocks.  My Grandfather was a new voice bringing glad tidings of joyful, ultimate hope and a whole new way of looking at both the world and God, but he still had to speak in the tongue he'd been taught as a child and which other people understood, and that language itself carried with it a host of assumptions and prejudices, telling its own old stories even as Salvador was using it to reveal his brand-new one.

The idea that there is a Devil is obviously a powerful one, and common to many different cultures, but I think our Founder is right in emphasising the Satan-free nature of our Faith.  We have no need of bogeymen to frighten our children with, and do not believe in giving adults any excuse for their own faults; ours is a modern faith, born after the War's great blood-letting in the midst of our century of pain, when humanity finally revealed itself as the ultimate devil.  Just as there is both fear and comfort to be drawn from devils - the fear speaks for itself, the comfort comes from being able to absolve oneself of responsibility for one's actions - so there is, inversely, both comfort and fear to. be drawn from the realisation that there are no such things after all.

Of course, this means that we must shoulder more responsibility for our lives than other religions would allow, and one of the other errors in this area my Grandfather has cleared up over the years includes the Heresy of Prudishness.

The Heresy of Prudishness was a result of Grandfather originally teaching that while it was wrong to restrict sexual relations between people of the same generation, it was right to do so between generations.  He later amended this to specify that only if one full generation lay between the two people concerned should their love be forbidden.  Again, I think one can see the divinely inspired but still humanly limited prophet struggling to hear the Creator's voice above the clutter of a hypocritical and morally constipated society whose restrictive teachings still echoed in his ears.  Let cynics find their own shortcomings and denied desires in what they blame our Founder for; I believe he has only ever tried to tell the truth as best he can, and if the truth leads him - as our leader - to a better, fuller personal life then we ought all to be grateful, both for him and for ourselves.

There is an afterlife, and our Faith's ideas on that too have evolved over the years.  Originally, incorporating the idea of Heaven and Hell, it was fairly conventional and recognisably Christian in inspiration.  However, as Grandfather has tuned in more and more accurately to what God is saying, the afterlife, in the shape of the all-absorbing Godhead, has become more complicated and more sophisticated.  Indeed it might almost be more true to say that what we live in is the pre-life; a sort of minor overture to the grandly symphonic opera that follows; a scrawny solo before the richly glorious massed choir.  Most religions have some sort of angle on the truth in this regard, but I think it obvious that Luskentyrianism, with elements of almost all of them, decisively out-does the lot.

I did not enjoy my flight from London to Edinburgh, which was the first I had ever made.  For one thing, I did not feel well, and the various movements and changes of pressure involved in flight seemed almost designed to introduce a reeling of discomfort even without the effects of far too much alcohol the night before.  In addition, though, there are various mistakes and errors of practice and etiquette one can make when travelling by aircraft, and I think I made all of them.

Grandmother Yolanda found my gaffs most amusing; the business-suited fellow sitting to my other side was less impressed.  My first mistake was to tell him - in a spirit of vigilant and caring friendliness and general camaraderie - to study his safety instructions when the conductress told him to; he looked at me as if I was quite mad.  My final mistake - on the plane itself, anyway - was a result of trying to show off (how often is that the case!).

The cup of tea I asked for after my miniaturised meal was a little hot, and I'd noticed that above each seat was a small swivelling nozzle which dispensed cold air.  I decided to redeem myself in the eyes of the businessman at my side by using the stream of air to lower the temperature of my tea.  This was a fine idea in theory and would undoubtably have worked perfectly well if I hadn't ostentatiously held my cup right up to the nozzle and twisted it fully on, producing a fierce and highly directed pulse of air which displaced the tea in the cup and showered it over the businessman and the person in the seat behind him.  Yolanda found the whole episode quite hilarious, and even stopped complaining about the lack of First Class for a few moments.

Yolanda's good mood evaporated rapidly when we got to Edinburgh Airport and she couldn't remember where she'd left her hire car.

'Thought it'd be quicker just leaving it here instead of turning it in and having to hire another one,' she said, stamping down another row of cars.

I followed, pushing a trolley. 'What sort of car was it?' I asked.  Not that it would make much difference to me; cars are cars.

'Don't know,' Yolanda said. 'Small.  Well, smallish.'

'Doesn't the car key tell you something?'

'I left the keys inside the exhaust pipe,' she said, with a hint of embarrassment. 'Saves carrying zillions of keys around.'

I'd noticed that some cars had stickers in the back window identifying hire companies.

'Can you remember what company it belonged to?'

'No.'

'They've got these letters on posts all over the car park; was it near- ?'

'Can't remember.  I was in a hurry.'

'What colour was the car?'

'Red.  No; blue….  Shit.' Yolanda looked frustrated.

'Can you remember what cars it was parked between?'

'Get real, Isis.'

'Oh.  Yes, I suppose they might have moved.  But maybe they're still here!'

'Range Rover.  One was a Range Rover.  One of those tall things.'

We checked all the Range Rovers in the car park before Yolanda thought to check her credit card slips.  There was no sign of a car hire from Glasgow Airport.

'Probably left it in the car,' she admitted. '… Oh, the hell with this.  Let's hire another one.'

'What about the one that's here?'

'Fuck it.  They'll find it eventually.'

'Won't you get charged?'

'Let them sue.  That's what lawyers are for.'

If our Faith had a Golden Age it was probably between the years 1955 to 1979; that was when our Order grew from just a few people, many of them related in one way or another, to a fully functioning religion with a complete theology, an established base (indeed, two established bases, the original at Mr McIlone's farm at Luskentyre and the new one at High Easter Offerance), a settled succession of Leapyearians - through my father, Christopher, and then myself - and a steadily growing number of converts, some of whom came to stay and work at the Community and some of whom were happier in the outside world, though remaining committed to the Order and pledged both to come to its aid if required and to act as our missionaries to the Unsaved.