For the last four years of my father's life, I would visit him regularly, typically staying with him for a week each month. Each Sunday, he'd walk to church - the Polish Catholic chapel on Courtfield Gardens in West Ealing. We'd walk there and back - only in the final nine months of life did he need a wheelchair. As we walked, he'd he be talking to me about what he is observing - he had an eye for detail, for change. We'd go to church, he'd occasionally nod off during the sermon, but he would always take Holy Communion. And after Mass we'd stop for a while to talk to his friends outside the chapel, before setting off home for lunch. But never, not once, walking home or eating Sunday lunch, did we discuss Mass - the readings, the sermon, or any spiritual experiences.
It was only in the past year, listening to a podcast by British biochemist Rupert Sheldrake did I come to understand posthumously my father's personal way to God. Sheldrake says of himself that he grew up in a conventionally Anglican family, became an atheist as a teenager, travelled to India as a postgraduate where he discovered Hinduism, and returned to England where, later in life, he rediscovered his Anglicanism. He makes the point to distinguish practice from belief.
Rather than question arcane points of theology, he would simply ignore them, focusing instead on the ritual. And I rather guess that this was my father's perspective as well. My father went along with the Catholic church, for his entire life, never debating or questioning or discussing its tenets. His weekly devotion was a duty, a practice - not a rigorous belief system.
This was unchanged from childhood; my parents would go to Mass every single Sunday, illness excepted. A quiet weekly spiritual reset rather than a 'glory Alleluia' outpouring of devotion.
For me, I find it difficult to practice and not to question. A scheduled weekly meeting with my God in church where spiritual focus is difficult (crying infants, small children running around) does not meet my needs. During my daily walks, I will often find my stream of consciousness latching onto the higher plane; personal prayers (right now - for peace!) offered up - but not in a structured way. Awareness of and gratitude for being alive are crucial.
The (Polish) Catholic church delights me not - neither the architectural surroundings (unless it's a centuries-old building), nor the hymns, nor the sermons; the lack of mystery or magic in the post-Vatican Council rite - I am not a fan. Before moving to Poland, I would take Moni (then around four years old) to St Benedict's Abbey in Ealing for the Latin Mass, with decent singing from the monks and the nostalgia of 'Credo in unum Deum', 'Fiat volutas Tua' and a bit of 'Et cum spiritu tuo' every now and then. Yet somehow the brutalist architecture of the Dominican abbey in Służew in Warsaw fails to move me, though the music there is also good.
Perhaps I'm too much of an individualist, preferring to take my own personal path towards God, a path that does not repeat in ritual, but is more exploratory in nature, based on subjective conscious experience. But, in an epiphany last summer, I came to understand that everyone who seeks God shall find God in their own way - some will indeed find God through religious practice, some through solitary meditation, others still through philosophical musings.
This time last year:
Imagining higher forms of life
This time two years ago:
Applying Occam's Razor to religion
This time three years ago:
In search of spiritual immortality
This time four years ago:
Knowing and being and intuition
This time five years ago:
Rzeszów - capital of Poland's south-east corner
This time eight years ago:
A tipping point in European history
[sadly - how right I was.]
This time nine years ago:
Random sentiments from London suburbs
This time ten years ago:
Stalinist neo-classicism in Warsaw
A week into Lent
This time 12 years ago:
Afternoon-dusk-night in the city centre
This time 13 years ago:
How I saw these things back then - ALIENS!
This time 14 years ago:
Wetlands waiting for the spring
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