God Does Not Endorse TV Evangelists
One now from invisible_fool.
Spiritual beliefs (or lack of).
This one's liable to get rambly. You have been warned.
So my family's a Catholic family. I was baptised, I did the study, I took first confession and then Communion. My grandparents gave me a crucifix to hang up which went on the one wall hook my room had. All the kids who had their first communion the day I did got some weird kind of medal with vaguely angelic symbology. I vaguely associate that time with a book they gave us to fill in about our lives and our relationships with Christ - I found that again, recently, and read through it; I was embarrassed, but in that way you always are when you revisit things you wrote before your teens.
I also associate it with Fiendish Feet yoghurt. Have I got that name right? Google says yes. This was a kid-marketed yoghurt range where all the flavours were different monsters. I got one a week as a treat after the Saturday pre-Communion meetings. (They were held near a place that sold the things, and the Beano adverts had me fascinated).
So that's up to about 11. For all that I'm talking about side matters, material offshoots, I believed, at that time.
You never leave Catholicism behind, not completely. For the rest of your life, after the faith goes, you're a lapsed Catholic. My grandparents' relationship with the Welsh Catholic church was intimate; the church in the graveyard of which they both lie wasn't Catholic before my grandfather brokered a deal to alternate Sundays with the C of E congregation in there. By the time I was growing up, the C of E had left it behind; cutbacks, and it's a tiny village church (in a beautiful part of the world).
But at 12, with the encouragement of my school's chaplain and of the priest at my church, I was reading the Torah. In translation, obviously. I'd already gotten through a Good News version of the Bible, having given up on understanding the KJV until my vocabulary had expanded. I was still Catholic in my faith.
Around 14 I dipped my toes into the Qur'an, again with the encouragement of the same spiritual counsellors. I was still Catholic in my faith, (the school chaplain was C of E) but I felt a lot better for having read the other texts, and for asking about certain parts. I wanted to know what other folks' saw in their faiths, I guess, and I felt better in my own for it. I read C.S. Lewis' Space trilogy around this time, too. I still didn't see Narnia as Christian, apparently I was blind, but my family introduced me to a lot of writings by people who had questioned their god or gods and come through with faith intact. (R.S. Thomas is a particular favourite, for that.)
Around 16 I had a crisis of faith. I didn't realise this when it happened, because it took the form of the first novel-length fiction I ever completed. It was only in the third draft editing that I realised what was going on. Over the course of writing this, I'd refined the various niggling doubts I had about both Catholicism and wider Judeo-Christianity. I ceased to look at my faith as Christian; actually, for quite a while, I considered myself atheist. It took a while to come back to the kind of loose faith I have now, and I detoured through agnosticism on the way. (I also read the teachings of a number of Gurus, while I was at it.)
Intellectually I remain agnostic; I recognise the argument for a godless universe, and I recognise the argument for a divine universe, and on a purely intellectual plane, I do not believe there to be sufficient evidence in either direction to make a choice. Emotionally, I have faith.
If you ever visit Chester Cathedral, try to get up to where the organists play from, on a raised area. Look out from that position out to either side. With the electric lights installed in the lasty fifty years, you can see the intricate carvings atop the wooden structures.
Intricate carvings by workmen who would never have imagined anybody could see them. But they were the chosen of their community, to honour their community's faith. This was no time to skimp. Betjeman was atheist, yet he loved church architecture. It seemed to me, when I first saw those carvings, self-evident why.
Whether faith is right or wrong, it can drive us to amazing heights. It ties communities together.
At sumbels, I toast to the gods of my land, the gods of my ancestors, and the gods of my blood. My ancestry is mongrel, sourced from many countries, but Irish, Germanic, and Nordic mixed is a good bet for the primaries. My blood is my life, my passions, my interests, my thoughts, my desires, my fears and my loves. Its gods vary in my sights between deities with identities and abstract concepts. My land is British, and its gods are legion. But I feel they deserve their recognition.
Spiritual beliefs (or lack of).
This one's liable to get rambly. You have been warned.
So my family's a Catholic family. I was baptised, I did the study, I took first confession and then Communion. My grandparents gave me a crucifix to hang up which went on the one wall hook my room had. All the kids who had their first communion the day I did got some weird kind of medal with vaguely angelic symbology. I vaguely associate that time with a book they gave us to fill in about our lives and our relationships with Christ - I found that again, recently, and read through it; I was embarrassed, but in that way you always are when you revisit things you wrote before your teens.
I also associate it with Fiendish Feet yoghurt. Have I got that name right? Google says yes. This was a kid-marketed yoghurt range where all the flavours were different monsters. I got one a week as a treat after the Saturday pre-Communion meetings. (They were held near a place that sold the things, and the Beano adverts had me fascinated).
So that's up to about 11. For all that I'm talking about side matters, material offshoots, I believed, at that time.
You never leave Catholicism behind, not completely. For the rest of your life, after the faith goes, you're a lapsed Catholic. My grandparents' relationship with the Welsh Catholic church was intimate; the church in the graveyard of which they both lie wasn't Catholic before my grandfather brokered a deal to alternate Sundays with the C of E congregation in there. By the time I was growing up, the C of E had left it behind; cutbacks, and it's a tiny village church (in a beautiful part of the world).
But at 12, with the encouragement of my school's chaplain and of the priest at my church, I was reading the Torah. In translation, obviously. I'd already gotten through a Good News version of the Bible, having given up on understanding the KJV until my vocabulary had expanded. I was still Catholic in my faith.
Around 14 I dipped my toes into the Qur'an, again with the encouragement of the same spiritual counsellors. I was still Catholic in my faith, (the school chaplain was C of E) but I felt a lot better for having read the other texts, and for asking about certain parts. I wanted to know what other folks' saw in their faiths, I guess, and I felt better in my own for it. I read C.S. Lewis' Space trilogy around this time, too. I still didn't see Narnia as Christian, apparently I was blind, but my family introduced me to a lot of writings by people who had questioned their god or gods and come through with faith intact. (R.S. Thomas is a particular favourite, for that.)
Around 16 I had a crisis of faith. I didn't realise this when it happened, because it took the form of the first novel-length fiction I ever completed. It was only in the third draft editing that I realised what was going on. Over the course of writing this, I'd refined the various niggling doubts I had about both Catholicism and wider Judeo-Christianity. I ceased to look at my faith as Christian; actually, for quite a while, I considered myself atheist. It took a while to come back to the kind of loose faith I have now, and I detoured through agnosticism on the way. (I also read the teachings of a number of Gurus, while I was at it.)
Intellectually I remain agnostic; I recognise the argument for a godless universe, and I recognise the argument for a divine universe, and on a purely intellectual plane, I do not believe there to be sufficient evidence in either direction to make a choice. Emotionally, I have faith.
If you ever visit Chester Cathedral, try to get up to where the organists play from, on a raised area. Look out from that position out to either side. With the electric lights installed in the lasty fifty years, you can see the intricate carvings atop the wooden structures.
Intricate carvings by workmen who would never have imagined anybody could see them. But they were the chosen of their community, to honour their community's faith. This was no time to skimp. Betjeman was atheist, yet he loved church architecture. It seemed to me, when I first saw those carvings, self-evident why.
Whether faith is right or wrong, it can drive us to amazing heights. It ties communities together.
At sumbels, I toast to the gods of my land, the gods of my ancestors, and the gods of my blood. My ancestry is mongrel, sourced from many countries, but Irish, Germanic, and Nordic mixed is a good bet for the primaries. My blood is my life, my passions, my interests, my thoughts, my desires, my fears and my loves. Its gods vary in my sights between deities with identities and abstract concepts. My land is British, and its gods are legion. But I feel they deserve their recognition.