Occasional Scribbles

I thought I would include some writing from some years ago since it chimes so well with this time of year.I hope you enjoy it!

Musings From the Church of Childhood.

By 

Scribble

I grew up in a household with very little ‘Church’.  Religion was occasionally a topic for discussion over a Sunday lunch though equally, one of us might cautiously shut it down. “No religion or politics over the dinner table!” Sometimes came the refrain. For we knew religion raised temperatures and lead to heated discussion not always good for digestion.

For a family that had so little to do with formal church, religion crept in none the less, particularly when our grandparents visited.  Our grandmother was quietly religious. Our grandfather was loudly not.  This intrigued us as children.  Granny did not drive then though she learnt to in her 80’s. Surely the hand of God lay in that unlikely feat. So Gramps would take her to church but he refused to set foot inside, preferring instead, to sit outside in his car, perhaps smoking his pipe and listening to the jazz he so loved, while Granny paid homage to God. We tried on a few occasions to find out why he was so anti church.  

“Won’t you at least go in with Granny so she’s not on her own?” We’d ask, but he would set his mouth in a firm line, a reflection of his thoughts on the subject and we didn’t press him.

Gramps was in his latter teenage years during the 1st World War. I always thought it was the great misery and loss during this regrettable time that lay at the heart of his resistance to religion. To go from the gentle England of that time into the harsh horror of that war, who could blame anyone if belief in a God that allowed such a thing, was snuffed out?

When we were older and driving ourselves, we would sometimes take Granny to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. My recollection is a bit vague as we’d usually have had a good dinner and drinks beforehand and Granny always had a flask of brandy in her handbag ‘just in case’. What I do recall is sitting in a row with my siblings, singing loudly and giggling disgracefully.  Granny would try and look vaguely serious and sincere and try even harder not to catch the giggles from the rest of us with only some success! 

There’s something about being somewhere that requires solemnity that brings forth the irrepressible giggle. You just can’t help it, especially after a Christmas Eve dinner and a nip of Brandy before the hymns. One time, in a moment of collective silent reflection, there was a loud clatter. A lot of faces turned in our direction just as Granny retrieved her flask that had slipped from her purse onto the stone floor. As it dawned on us all that the upright congregation likely thought she must be alcoholic, we burst into more fits of giggles, including her, especially her. She had a marvellous sense of humour!

Those are the happy memories of visits to Church.  Far less happy are the ones of school Chapel. The beginning of school terms for English boarders was usually on a Sunday and it was compulsory to be in time to attend the evening service. How many journeys on the train were spent with increasing dread as we clattered towards our destination.
The Chapel service so mixed with fear and dread for what lay ahead. Much to think about as the rhythm of the service accompanied our thoughts. 

At school, I was surprised to find that many girls attended Church regularly in their family. This was a new concept to me. As we progressed through the years some were preparing for ‘Confirmation’ which had to be explained to me. We were Christened of course but that was as far as we went in our family. And if asked, to which Religion we belonged, like on a passport application, we’d just say “C of E” only vaguely understanding the notion. Only Granny was ‘Confirmed’ and even that, she told us was in her forties in what was described as an ‘odd communal affair’! And in usual fashion, she found the funny side which was funny to us too. We loved listening to her stories.  Often, we’d jump onto her bed, in the morning, watching as she ‘did her face’ while we probed for more tales about her and Gramps, listening happily.

Church to us now, is for the dead. Granny & Gramps and Gramp’s sister, our great aunt, are in the churchyard together, all cremated but allowed a headstone as a focus for our sorrow. I’m not sure what Gramps would make of it, having had so little time for anything ‘Churchy’. My mother wanted them to lie together in eternity and had Gramp’s ‘ashes’ brought from the crematorium where he’d been for so long before Granny, years later, joined him in death. I expect, if asked, he’d reluctantly agree as their resting place is not actually inside the church? But I’m not sure. And surely these things are for the living not the dead? 

The family home is slap in the middle of two parishes.  My brother lies in the other one. He’s not with the others. His death, which occurred just before his 21st birthday and decades before theirs, is not marked with a headstone but with a lovely stone sun dial, as if marking that very brief time he was with us. I’m not sure we could have borne a tombstone for such a young man. Young people should not lie in graveyards.

I have visited it less than a handful of times. He is not there, he is not in the patch of earth under the pretty sundial, too young to be so, time out of place & not in the way that the others, having reached an age, rightfully are. He remains in my memory, my heart and my thoughts as I’ve had to go on without him. He will only be there when I myself am in the ground, wherever that turns out to be, when he will return to greet me. Of that I am sure.

As I’ve grown up the country has changed as it must. I have seen the decline in the importance of our Church of England that’s been at the centre of our country, indeed it’s very foundation and the instrument of authority for our soon to be, newly crowned King, and I find that despite everything, I mind. I mind very much. 

As a growing child, where the church was more or less absent, it was nevertheless there. It was there in the Midnight Mass and at Christmas, it was there through my upbringing based on Christian teachings, if not formally so. Our parents taught us values and standards that are all to be found within it. It is there in the way Granny always attended the early Wednesday service that unlike the Sunday one, was discreet and not showy. She wasn’t the sort that liked to be noticed attending on Sundays.  She used to say that in her experience rather too many obvious Christians, didn’t seem very Christian when it came to it. She took an interest in the changing Archbishop of Canterbury. I’m sure she’d be very surprised at the current incumbent.

The Church’s golden thread, wove it’s way through my childhood with my mother’s diligence in doing the church flowers though only attending a service sometimes at Christmas.  And so it was there too, when she gathered us all together for the Carol service. “It’s only nine hymns and prayers” she’d say as if this was the deciding factor to  solicit our attendance.

It is very much there, now that it isn’t.  The glimpses that threaded through my childhood of something that was wholly good, if not an active part have come fully into focus. I note the changes allowed by our Archbishop and I shudder. Granny would not only be shocked but mortified that we cast aside so readily much that held us together in that other world. I’m glad she’s not here to see what the Church of England has become. 

My garden abuts the churchyard of the little church, where I now live. In keeping with my upbringing I do not attend the infrequent services, carried out by a shared vicar who services several churches in a rural area.  But last Christmas, one dark night i noticed the lights on in the church and realised it must be the Carol service. I dashed across the garden and flew inside on that cold frosty night. I was asked to do a reading which took me off guard. But I understood my duty in that little church with a smattering of people from across the wide fields of the parish. It was, despite my nerves of public speaking, deeply, unexpectedly moving. 

“And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.”  

To all people? Even those like myself always on the fringes but somehow certain that there is something greater than ourselves. Something to be cherished lest it disappears from us altogether.

“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”

Amen to that.

End.