Church: going to, being part of, leaving and joining
Another thank you on hitting 50
One continuity throughout my life has been ‘church’, going to, being part of, leaving and joining.
So Church is that place where those usually called Christians gather to honour the unseen force of life often referred to as God.
I would visit, as a boy, my grandparents on a Sunday afternoon and in a way going to Church always felt like visiting a grandparent.
I was christened in Armagh Road Presbyterian Church but as it was a mile and a half from my home we never visited. We didn’t have a car, my parents were not churchgoers and there were churches closer. The only criteria for attending another church was, ‘it had to be Protestant’.
My primary interest in going to Sunday School was that everyone else was going and it was different from the routine. Like many things, as the youngest, I was aware that my sisters were going and others in the street before I was ‘old enough’ to go. So I longed to be part of what the others were doing.
I must have been about 4 years old when I started at St Columba’s Sunday School which met in the local community centre. I continued going but then one day, I reckon I was about 9, I decided I should go to Church. The church was a short walk from the community centre. I settled into a pew and kept going every Sunday.
I had also started the Robins aged four. The Robins was the entry point for the Boys’ Brigade (BB). It was attached to Epworth the local Methodist Church. As I spent time with the Robins and then the BB friendships grew. It was only a matter of time that I transferred my Sunday church going to Epworth’s Sunday school and church.
It remained that way until 1983. The combined effect of adolescence and the BB folding led me away from my Sunday habit. I occasionally visited as a friend questioned anyone who identified as a Protestant who never attended church.
In 1987 I returned to Church after deciding it was where I belonged. It was the Prodigal son story in so far as I had decided to do my own thing but after a time of restlessness, I knew where I belonged. When I write ‘Church’ I don’t mean an exclusive body but I do mean a local place where I gather with others who recognise God as Father of us all.
Initially, I returned to Epworth but after a time I was attracted to the liveliness of the local Elim Pentecostal church. I would stay there around 18 months before I moved to Galway in the West of Ireland. There I was a part of Galway Christian Fellowship. It was a lively young church having only started 20 years before I arrived.
Once I completed a two-year course at Galway I moved to Banbridge in the North of Ireland. Banbridge Christian Fellowship Church (CFC) had only started a few years before and like Galway was attempting to be the Church in Ireland without the label of Protestant. I stayed two years at Banbridge before deciding to take up the offer of a place on a Social Work course in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. I had struggled to find ‘a work’ in Ireland and with a little reluctance, I decided to move to England. I had applied for the same course in Northern Ireland but the number of places was small and the competition tough.
At Hatfield, after trying out many churches as a student I settled with City Church. It turned out it was also an Elim church but set in a ‘Home counties’ culture rather Northern Irish. It was a younger church and had embraced a charismatic style. I was married at City and Tee was dedicated there.
I was now in my thirties, married, a father, working in what I had trained and beginning to struggle with conformity. Social work training and membership of Napo, the trade union I belonged had challenged my beliefs particularly my religious beliefs. In navigating through the challenge of being a believer yet also a professional something new was being forged. It wasn’t a quick process nor an easy one indeed it continues as I believe change should. I wanted to be free to be who I was and say what I believed.
‘City’ was moving to their own building and with it was a new phase this seemed to be the time to step off. I remember saying to God, “ But if I leave where shall I go?” I felt God say back, “ I am bigger than any church so don’t worry about that you will still be with me.”
In time I began attending the Baptist church in the village and stayed with them for around 6 years. It was good to be local. Around the same time that I stepped off ‘City’, I began attending a contemplative prayer group in St Albans. I had read a book and it seemed to speak of the path I was on. I wanted things simple. Christian Life Community (CLC) was the organisation that facilitated the contemplative prayer. It is what is called ‘a lay order’ in the Roman Catholic church following the tradition of Ignatius of Loyola (Ignatian).
Curiously although I have travelled through Churches like landscapes I have remained for seventeen years as a member of my local CLC community. Our meetings are centred on 15 minutes of silence during which we contemplate a Gospel passage and then share how it interacted with us.
It was twelve years ago as a CLC community that we embarked on, ‘A Retreat in Daily Life’. Over 9 months we contemplated the birth, the life, the ministry, the death, the resurrection and the ascension of Jesus. It is our practice to pray contemplatively (using your senses) daily although during the Retreat that for me was longer and more focussed.
It was towards the end of the 9 months while contemplating the love of God for the whole world that I had a mystical experience. I became aware that I was one with God and all things. There was no separation. I was part of God and God was part of me with everything interconnected. In that experience, all theology fell away like the launcher of a spaceship. In my mind, I saw a ball of fire which I understood as love.
No separation meant I could never be separated from God nor indeed anything. I was part of all things. I know division and I still see division but I also know that there is a unity of all things. I glimpse it but it does often feel like, ‘Now I see it now I don’t’.
Since that experience, I have been in freefall. Initially, I didn't know to what community to belong as I felt one with the whole world. I didn’t want to belong to a community that required me to sign up to a ‘Statement of belief’ as belief is secondary to the experience of God. There is no need to write about belief when you are experiencing what you have only ever read. Writings help guide us to God but they are not God. They gave me a language to communicate with God and about God and for that I am grateful.
I found myself in Unitarian land and here was a community that was held by respecting the other and the other usually had a different belief. That became my space as I was ‘freefalling’. I remained with the Unitarians for six years.
I was desiring more simplicity and the silent praying of CLC that I experienced was wanting to expand. I was now struggling with the division called clergy and laity and was seeking recognition of oneness and equality within Community.
I had visited the Religious Society of Friends intermittently over a number of years but had not been ready for a regular hour of silence. I started to visit Friends more regularly towards what I now know was the end of my time with the Unitarians. I kept returning and in time I was experiencing a regular hour of silence. That has now been my practice for over six years. I often say it took 43 years to prepare me for silence.
I feel it is also right to say that almost 3 years ago we separated in our marriage and divorced over a year ago. If I held to former beliefs that would have been a much more troubling time. It was a troubling time but I knew that ‘in the things eternal’ there is no separation and while at a human level I experienced pain at a divine level there is only love.
I have written this as part of my thank yous in reaching 50. I am thankful for every religious community of which I have been a part each one had taught me like a school and been instrumental in bringing me to the place I now am.
Best day,
g
