wildeabandon | Entries tagged with religion

I think it's good to note when you change your mind about things and why, and that happened to me at this week's Bible Club*. The question we were considering was "Do you have to be a Christian to be a Christian** theologian"

We went round the room, and everyone else said 'No'. And my starting position was that whilst you certainly don't have to be a Christian to study or teach Christian theology (which apparently some people have argued that you do), you do in order to do new work/research in the subject, and that non-Christians doing related work were doing something more akin to anthropology than theology.

My argument was that Christians doing Christian theology were trying to understand and elucidate what is true about God, and therefore about the world, whereas non-Christians were trying to understand and elucidate what Christians believe, which is a fundamentally different question. For example, one of the hot topics in theological discussions of the second half of the 20th century was whether God can suffer. And if you're a Christian, trying to answer that question makes sense, but if you're an atheist or a Buddhist, then it doesn't, although "what do Christians believe about the suffering of God," does, and if you're Jewish or Muslim then it's a question in Jewish/Islamic theology instead, and if you're a Hindu then you probably need to come back with "which God?"

And then one of the others*** asked "So if I was doing historical research into the Synod of Ancyra, and what was decided there, and the social context at the time, and what influence that had on the subsequent development of the church, would that be theology? And if an atheist was doing exactly the same research with exactly the same tools, what would be the difference?" And I was pretty stumped. I could have argued that perhaps both people were doing history rather than theology, but we'd had an earlier question about how we define theology, and there was a pretty clear consensus that things like theological history, as well as pastoral theology and ecclesiology and biblical studies and Christian ethics were as much a part of the discipline as the kind of systematic theology that focuses specifically on setting out clearly what it is we believe about God.

I still think that there are some questions in Christian theology where the difference between answering them as a Christian or non-Christian changes them into fundamentally different questions, which could also be phrased as "you have to be a Christian**** to do some aspects of Christian theology," but that's a much weaker statement than "You have to be a Christian to be a Christian theologian."

*which is currently slightly misnamed, as although most of the time we have been looking at biblical interpretation, we are currently working through Alistair McGrath's "Introduction to Christian Theology", which is a slightly broader topic.
**in which the adjective Christian is modifying the type of theology being done, rather than the theologian doing it, so as not to be tautologically true.
***the person in question should let me know if I've misrepresented them. I'm not at all sure I've got the right Synod
****there's also some fuzzy edges here about what it means to be a Christian, especially when it comes to people who are questioning their faith in either direction

As I'm sure some of you will already be aware, after several years of the "Living in Love and Faith" process, the Bishops of the Church of England have decided to allow clergy and churches to conduct services of blessing for same-sex partnerships and civil marriages, and have published a draft of worship resources for doing so. They will also be retiring the 1991 guidance document, "Issues in Human Sexuality", which dictates that clergy in same sex relationships must remain celibate, and replacing it with new guidance by mid-2023. And they have apologised for way the church has failed queer people.

They have not, as I suspect more of you are already aware, proposed changing the doctrine on marriage.

This isn't what I expected to happen. What I expected was that they would propose changing doctrine, and the proposal would go to General Synod, where it would need a 2/3 majority in all three houses, and be voted down. I am much, much happier with the actual outcome, which will go to Synod for discussion, but as it doesn't involve doctrinal change, doesn't actually require a vote to be enacted.

In 2004 there were plenty of people objecting to the introduction of civil partnerships, because they were "separate but equal", which we all know means not really equal. But the realistic options then weren't "civil partnerships" or "marriage", they were "civil partnerships" or "no legal recognition at all", and of those options, civil partnerships is much better actually. In a similar way, if you are someone for whom church recognition of the validity of your relationship matters, then the difference between "blessing" and "no recognition at all" is significant. Is it enough? No. But it's a damn sight better than nothing. Of course, in 2014 we did get same-sex civil marriage, at least in part because the visibility of people in the marriage-like state of civil partnership made the idea seem more acceptable.

In terms of the personal impact on me and my priestly vocation, I don't actually know what it's going to mean, and won't until the new guidance comes out in the summer. The Bishop of Oxford has said that he believes the ban on clergy forming same-sex marriages (and by implication, the ban on people in same-sex marriages being ordained) will be lifted, but I'm conscious that he is one of the most vocal supporters of liberalising marriage doctrine in the House of Bishops, so it may just be wishful thinking. But where previously I had been guessing that the likely timescales for this change could be anywhere in the 5-20 years range, it now seems very plausible that it could be a matter of months. Somehow the proximity actually makes the wait feel longer.

Last time I saw my Spiritual Director I said that I was feeling very secure in my medium term pathway; that my plan to start a theology degree this year is what I'm supposed to be doing now, and that I really had no idea what I was going to be doing afterwards, but that I had no concerns at all about waiting and leaving it in God's hands to be revealed in time. I really should know by now that feeling perfectly secure is probably a sign that something is about to be upended. I'm definitely in that alexithymia thing of knowing that this is something with a big emotional impact, but not being at all sure how I actually feel about it yet. I hope it isn't going to take until the guidance comes out for me to figure it out.

The other personal impact on me is that suddenly the internet is full of people, many of whom are neither queer nor Anglican, talking about how terrible and regressive the Church is, and how meaningless are the apologies and changes that are being made, and how the LLF process and work to reform the Church have been just a waste of time. And so once again I find myself in the position of having to defend her, and my choice to continue to engage with her, to people who are not nearly so profoundly affected by her attitudes as I am, and I am so, so tired of doing that.

I've been doing the thing where loads of stuff has been happening, and I've not been posting to DW because I've been busy, and then because I've got so much to post about that I put off updating until I've got time to write about everything that I want to write about, so I'm going to post the big exciting news, and then maybe later fill in some of the gaps...

The big exciting news is that I've decided to go back to university to do a theology degree. Whilst looking into the options I first discovered, rather disappointingly, that it's not permissible to do a second undergraduate degree at Cambridge, but then on closer inspection that in fact it's only sitting for BA(Hons) a second time that isn't allowed, so I guess cocking up the first time and getting an ordinary was part of God's plan all along*.

Obviously I still have to get in, and they want recent qualifications in relevant subjects, so my decades old Maths and Chemistry A-levels aren't going to cut it. I've therefore signed up to take French and Religious Studies in June. I got the study materials about a week ago and have been thoroughly enjoying plunging into them, although I'm already having to hold myself back from being the sort of annoying student who's all 'well, I've been studying the philosophy of religion for all of a few days and clearly Kant was talking complete bobbins about epistemology.'

*I'm not entirely sure how flippant I'm being there.

I've been continuing to think and pray about vocation stuff over recent weeks and months, and yesterday I had a meeting with the vicar where I articulated some threads of discernment which had been gradually coming together. For a long time I used to think that whilst I had a calling to the more didactic and liturgical aspects of lay readership, I had no aptitude for pastoral work.

Something the vicar had said the previous time we'd met to talk vocation started me on the path to realising that whilst it is true that my autism makes it difficult for me to quickly and easily develop casual relationships with large numbers of people whom I don’t know well, it doesn’t impede my ability to develop deep and enriching bonds of understanding once that initial hurdle has been overcome, and that this is a)actually something that I'm pretty good at, and b)just as much a way of providing pastoral care. I explored a related theme a bit further with my therapist, thinking about having for a long time had a perception of myself as having poor social skills, and again realised that whilst I'm not naturally skilled at making friends, once I'm close to someone, I think I'm generally quite good at being a friend. In particular that I'm good at listening to people and making the time and space to meet them where they are and understand them, and let them feel safe with me and supported. And also at being able to offer perspectives that might be new and perhaps even challenging in a way that they're able to remain open to.

And somewhere along the line, the thought occured to me that one form of pastoral care which is considerably more aligned to these strengths than a lot of parish ministry is the relationship with a spiritual director. I sat on this for a while, not entirely sure if it was just a knee-jerk response to having had such a wonderful experience at St Beuno's earlier this year, or whether it was hubristic of me to think it was something I could do, but yesterday I mentioned it to Mthr Alice. Her response was that she'd been wondering whether or not to suggest it to me ever since I got back from St Beuno's, but that she thought it might be better to let me get there on my own. At which point it just clicked, and I suddenly have this firm and confident gnosis that this is how I'm suppose to serve God, which is something that I've never experienced before, and is extremely comforting and heartening. I've done some research into what options there are for my next steps, and am now in the process of filling out an application for a three year course at the London Centre for Spiritual Direction, starting in October. I'm very excited!

A few days ago I got back from an eight day silent retreat at St Beuno's Jesuit Spirituality Centre in Wales, and I've got lots to say about it but I suspect that if I leave it until I have time to say everything I might not get round to it at all, so have some bullet points as a holding entry that may or may not get expanded on.

It was very very very good. I scarcely knew there was so much grace in all the world as I encountered there. My faith is deeper and more alive and firmer than ever before. I'm excited about prayer, and I feel as though I'm relating to God in a far more three-dimensional way.

My retreat director was wise and knowledgeable and seemed to understand me very quickly, in a way that made it possible for her to judge when I needed to be challenged and when I needed to be reassured

Other than prayer I spent my time knitting and walking, including a ridiculous and glorious hike of around 23 miles on Ash Wednesday, which included climbing into quite a lot of Weather(tm) in the early morning, and then descending towards an extraordinary panorama framed by a clear, bright, rainbow, and then heading back up to a higher peak and making snow angels in the crisp winter sun.

( Photo )

One big thing I came away with was a far stronger sense of what we mean when we say that Jesus is fully human, which is making the synoptic Gospels feel a lot more exciting and alive
The second big thing I got was a sense that I need to rest more and plan less. Yes, of course the first thing my brain did when I realised this was start planning how I can restructure my life to get more rest...
The third big thing I got was a sense that I need to start taking more seriously my role as a steward of God's creation. One way in which I expect this to play out is in moving towards a more plant-based diet, but I suspect there will be other things as well, and I will be figuring out more of the details over Lent
A fourth big thing was a clearer understanding of what it means to be poor in spirit, both as a general concept and in terms of how it plays out in my life, in helping me to draw ever closer to be coming the version of myself that God wants me to be.

Last week I went for a silent retreat at St Beuno's (pronounced bi nose) Jesuit Centre. It was a profoundly enriching experience, challenging at times, comforting at others, and one which has left my faith deeper, richer and far more steadfast than it has ever been.
( Read more... )
I'm not going to talk too much about the detail of the prayer and the spiritual growth that happened, because it feels a bit too private, but I've come away full of intentions of changes to make to build on and continue that growth. ( Read more... )

We have a new vicar! In fact, we've had her for about three weeks now, and so far I think she's just as brilliant as I hoped and expected. It feels as though there's a new lease of life in the parish and the weight on my shoulders is a great deal lighter. We also have a very pleasing addition to the congregation in the form of

smhwpf, who has not only just moved back to London, but from next week will be just up the road from us. This is great not only because it means I get to see more of him, but also because he very foolishly volunteered to take on one of my excessive number of hats; handing over responsibilities always feels good, but especially so when it's to someone you know is going to be competent :D

All this lightening of the load has been quite timely, as it's given me a bit more space to focus on the more spiritual aspects of my religious life, which I've been sorely in need of. I went to a one day Ignatian retreat at the Mount Street Jesuit centre, which gave me some time and structure in which to reflect further on the vocational questions I've been exploring recently. That, combined with some very helpful conversations with

artsyhonker and Fr Angus (my confessor/informal spiritual director) has let me develop a lot more clarity. I'm now back to being fairly confident that I don't have a vocation to the priesthood. I'm not completely ruling out the possibility of one developing later, but definitely not now.

In the meantime though, I've got a clearer sense of what I am called to do within the church. It very probably does include Lay Readership, but something that really crystalised whilst I was talking to Fr Angus yesterday is that it also involves music. This is scary, because clearly I'm barely competent enough to participate in making music, let alone be allowed to try and lead and develop doing so. But oh well, apparently that's what I'm supposed to be doing, so I guess my insecurities about it are just going to have to go do one... Obviously the details of what this might entail is going to need some thought and some conversation with Mthr Alice, but it's good to have a direction.

I recently read “Paul: The Misunderstood Apostle” by Karen Armstrong on

angelofthenorth’s recommendation, followed by a reread of Meeting God in Paul by Rowan Williams for comparison. Both were good, and left me with a deeper understanding of Paul’s writings, as well as of the context which surrounded it. I felt as though I got more out of the Williams, but that was more because the thing that it was doing was of more interest to me personally, than because it was a better book in general. To me the most marked difference between the two books is that the Armstrong felt like a history book with theological implications, whereas the Williams (based, as it was, on three sermons) was a theology book with historical underpinnings.

One thread that was common to both books was the emphasis on how radical Paul’s teachings were. He often gets characterised as a fuddy duddy conservative, misogynist and homophobic, corrupting Jesus’ message and making it more acceptable to the traditionalists at the time, but actually, in the context of the hierarchical worlds of the Roman Empire and the Jewish religious authorities, his proclamation in Galatians that “There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither slave nor freeman, there can be neither male nor female -- for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” would have been ground-breaking. Similarly, in Corinthians, where he says “The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does”, this was just common wisdom at the time, but to follow it as he does with “and in the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.” would have been shockingly egalitarian. The whole letter to Philemon, in which he exhorts his friend to take his disgraced runaway slave back into his household, but as an equal, was turning the established order of things on its head. The question of how we square this with some other verses where he seems more sexist or pro-slavery is a difficult one, and Williams notes but doesn’t address it. Armstrong makes an argument that some of the other verses were later additions by another writer, and I don’t have sufficient knowledge to assess its robustness.

Both books are short and engagingly written, and both were improved by reading the other at a similar time.

Well that's certainly been a spiritually intense day. Unsurprisingly, keeping silent vigil for sixteen hours (even with a short break to get some coffee and breakfast about thirteen hours in) is both physically and psychologically taxing.

At first I was consciously trying to keep my thoughts focused on our Lord and his tribulations in the garden of Gethsemane, remonstrating with myself every time my mind wandered and dragging it back. As the night deepened I realised this was folly, and allowed my thoughts to drift away; in retrospect the fact that they wandered back of their own accord, bringing me new insights and answers to the question "Where is God in my day to day life" isn't that surprising.

The real revelation came later though, after the watch had ended, and we entered into the Solemn Liturgy of Good Friday, a service which draws you in to the horror of the crucifixion, and always leaves me feeling somewhat fragile. Entered into from a starting point of having been awake for 24 hours, alone in the garden watching my Beloved Lord suffer, something just broke. I began to weep as Fr Daniel delivered an austere and beautiful chant of Psalm 22, and continued through the Passion of our Lord.

Fr Justin, always an outstanding preacher, was on particularly fine form, with a meditation both impassioned and erudite on the different interpretations of Jesus' final word, Τετέλεσται, "It is finished." We were invited to shed our hindsight knowledge of the resurrection, which makes clear the valedictory nature of the phrase, that Jesus' great saving work, His fulfilment of the scripture and His redemption of the whole world is now complete. It is finished. Instead we were asked, hear those words through the ears of Mary, of the disciples. Watch the last breath of our dear son, our beloved friend and teacher, and see his life, and all that he has worked for disappear, ended, ruined. It is finished.

By now I am a complete mess of tears. I don't believe I can truly imagine what it can have been like to be there, but I understand better now than I ever have before.

You may recall that about a month ago I talked to my spiritual director about being, in some sense, an atheist? He recommended the book God of Surprises as reading material that might help me process the tension of belief and unbelief.

Well, I certainly can't accuse it of false advertising in the title. I, er, appear not to be an atheist any more. Which is unexpected, to say the least. This evening has been a bit of an emotional roller-coaster, and I'm now feeling a little weepy and a lot overwhelmed. Prayers from those of you that do would be appreciated.

Crossposts: http://wildeabandon.livejournal.com/270105.html

I’d say that he took it surprisingly well, but actually I wasn’t a jot surprised. His response was just as considered and wise and useful as I’ve come to expect.

I started meeting with Fr Angus for the Sacrament of Reconciliation during Advent. I’d found it such a powerful and useful experience on our parish pilgrimage to Walsingham that I wanted to take it up regularly. After having asked Fr Daniel’s advice about suitable confessors and undergone a certain amount of procrastinating and faffing, we began that discipline. After a short while it became clear that actually, important and useful though confession is, there’s a point of frequency above which it starts to feel repetitive and rote. We discussed this and agreed to move to taking a more general approach to spiritual growth, which would include, but not be limited to confession.

He’s very good. His way of thinking about and relating to God makes a lot of sense to me, and gave me some useful ideas about how to start thinking about and resolving the tension of alieving but not believing in God. I still have a lot of work to do, but before I started meeting with him I'd been letting my faith drift and stagnate a bit, whereas now it really feels like there's some important growth going on.

Crossposts: http://wildeabandon.livejournal.com/268516.html

I started writing this a week and a half ago, saying...

I feel as though Lent has started well for me. As I anticipated, the first few days with no facebook were quite challenging, and I think that had I not taken the step of uninstalling the app on my phone and logging out on all the computers I use I would have slipped far too easily, but by now the instinct to load it up every half hour has become far more infrequent, and also less jarring when I remember.

My other discipline, which I expected to struggle with rather more, is getting to bed with the lights out by 10.30 every night. I am having slightly more difficulty getting to sleep when I go to bed that early than when I go exhausted, but by that I mean it takes me 10-30 minutes to drop off, rather than the moment my head hits the pillow. I had wondered whether that would mean waking before my alarm (which goes off at seven), and on Thursday & Friday it didn't quite, but I was definitely in the waking process by the time it went off. Over the weekend with no alarm set I slept quite a lot - 9.5 and 8.5 hours between going to sleep and waking up each day, but this morning I woke just before five, feeling quite refreshed.

...and then got interrupted, and haven’t got back to finishing it since. I’ve not quite had the discipline to stick to it perfectly every day since, but I have managed to be in bed by then, and lights out by 11.30 or thereabouts. I’m definitely finding that although I’m spending less time awake, I am finding much easier to spend more of that time being thoughtful and prayerful and in general more the me that I believe God wants me to be. So that’s good.

The lack of FaceBook is definitely helping with that, but is also leading me to feel quite disconnected in ways that aren't entirely positive, so I need to give some further thought to how I might be able to regain that connectedness without giving back so much of my brainspace to it.

I’m also reading Meeting God in Paul by Rowan Williams. In fact, it’s short enough that I finished my first read through of it last night. I found it interesting, moving, and enlightening, and definitely feel as though I have a better sense of both who Paul was and what he was trying to say in his writings. I haven’t magically stopped finding him difficult and at times frustrating, but it’s easier to view him with nuance now. I’m going to go back and re-read more slowly, looking up the various biblical passages referred to, and writing some short notes.

Crossposts: http://wildeabandon.livejournal.com/266947.html

There’s been a fair bit of coverage on my social media of the recent interview with Tim Farron after he was elected leader of the Lib Dems, where he repeatedly deflected the question of whether gay sex was sinful. My initial reaction was bemusement, as I wondered why people care what someone else believes about their ability to relate to a God that they don’t believe in. With a bit more reflection and some comments from others I realised that there’s a lot more cultural weight to the idea of sin than that, and I also got the feeling that the acknowledgement that we are all sinners is seen as facetious and insincere, which is far from my experience when I have thought the phrase myself, or heard it from other Christians I know.

There was an article I read recently, I’m afraid I can’t remember where, in which a Christian who does believe that homosexual acts are sinful talks about why he is more vocal in his opposition to that particular sin, compared to lying and violence and selfishness and so on. And his point was that whilst these other sins are certainly committed, and probably tacitly condoned, no-one is actually arguing that they aren’t sinful, or that one shouldn’t try not to commit them, just that it’s difficult, whereas with homosexuality, the dominant narrative has become that it isn’t sinful at all. And I think that that is actually a good answer to the question of why some Christians are concerning themselves with speaking out about homosexuality when there are far worse sins in the world.

In case it wasn’t obvious, I do, rather strongly, disagree with the belief that homosexual sex is sinful. I have definitely had sinful sex, which made me less kind and less loving, and probably more of it has been with men than with women, but then I’ve had quite a lot more sex with men than with women so that’s hardly surprising. But on balance, most of my relationships, whether of one night or several years in length, have been good and loving and positive experiences, and have turned me into a kinder, better, more loving person, and that is particularly and overwhelmingly true of my relationship with Ramesh.

But when one believes that something which is commonly viewed as acceptable is sinful then there is a bit of a dilemma. You can lie, which is of course, sinful in itself, particularly in the case where it condemns other people to sin. Or you can speak out, and suffer the social consequences. There are two big things which are commonly accepted and which I believe are sinful, at least in part because of my faith, and which I mostly avoid talking about, because I don’t want to look judgemental...

The first of these is not giving to charity. I don’t have precise or set numbers on this, and it’s definitely an area in which I fall short myself, but I do believe that if you can afford to, but are not giving away enough of your disposable income that you notice yourself able to have less fun because of it, then you have some culpability for the harms that could be averted by that giving.

The second of these is divorce, or more accurately, choosing to divorce someone who isn’t abusive. I’m not 100% on this, and I do believe that sometimes things and people change enough in ways that you couldn’t have predicted that it’s the right choice for everyone involved, but I feel that it happens a bit too easily, and perhaps more importantly, that marriage happens a lot too easily because everyone knows that it’s an option if it doesn’t work out, and what I really feel is sinful is making a vow that you only intend to keep if it’s convenient, or deciding to break it merely because it’s not, rather than because it’s become completely untenable to do so. I do find it very telling when Christians are far more vocal in their opposition to gay sex, which has a couple of brief Old Testament mentions and one in Paul's letters, that to divorce, which our Lord speaks about repeatedly in the gospels, and is a significantly more common phenomenon.

Now, with those beliefs, I don’t think that my friends who have chosen divorce after a foolish young match, or who don’t chose to give to charity are worse people than me. Perhaps that’s what I mean by “we are all sinners”. There’s so much that I need to do better that I can’t begin to compare, and perhaps it is easier for me not to sin in those ways because I’ve let myself have too much liberty in others. (and indeed, if my ex-husband hadn't left me when he did, seeing the man he's become since I would be sorely tempted) And I don’t think that my morality should be legally imposed on others (well, maybe I think that the % of the UK budget going to foreign aid should be increased, but not by nearly as much as I think we should all be giving).

But perhaps after reading this you think that I’m a terribly judgemental bigot, and if you do, that’s your prerogative. But if you don’t think that, but you do think that Tim is a bigot for refusing to say that homosexual sex isn’t sinful, then you might want to think long and hard about why.

Crossposts: http://wildeabandon.livejournal.com/264741.html

I spent this weekend on pilgrimage to Walsingham, location of one of the most significant Anglo-Catholic shrines in England. It was an extraordinary weekend, and I feel gloriously refreshed in spirit.

I was deeply honoured to be asked to serve as thurifer for the pilgrimage mass on Saturday, and whilst slightly nerve-wracking, as serving somewhere new always is, it was also deeply moving, and I think I managed not to get anything wrong. It will live long in my memories.

Later that evening was the procession of Our Lady of Walsingham around the grounds of the shrine, which was exquisitely beautiful - scores of pilgrims bearing candles and singing a hymn telling the history of the shrine. One lovely thing is that the sound of the organ is transmitted to speakers all around the shrine, so the frequent difficulty with processions where all the singers get out of time with one another is overcome.

Following the procession was a service of healing ministries, where I partook of the Sacrament of Reconciliation for the first time since just before my confirmation, more than eleven years ago. For years I've been wanting to avail myself of it again, but somehow the longer it's been since the last one, the harder it gets, and so whenever it came up I found an excuse, or just didn't get around to it. And now I feel like such a fool for that failure. Afterwards I walked around the shrine grounds, feeling as though any moment a breeze could sweep me away, such a heavy burden had been lifted. I am determined, now, to make it a regular habit.

I picked up a couple of books whilst I was there. First was The Lion's World - an edited transcription of a series of sermons by Great-grandfather Rowan on the Narnia books, which flawed as they are, were an important part of my spiritual development. I read that over the course of the weekend, and it moved me deeply, and now I'm re-reading the series keeping his insights in mind. The second, which I have only scratched the surface of so far, was recommended by Bishop Lindsay, the Shrine Administrator - The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, by Fr James Martin, SJ. For most of my life as an adult Christian I've felt a certain pull towards the Jesuits and the Ignation approach to spirituality, and based on the first couple of chapters I am very much looking forward to reading the rest and incorporating it into my life.

Crossposts: http://wildeabandon.livejournal.com/263921.html

sfred asked "Could you tell us something about where you're at with religion, these days, in terms of practice and/or beliefs?"

So this is actually quite difficult, because I'm a practicing catholic in the Church of England, and I don't really believe in God. Which is to say, that although I have a gut feeling that something Godlike probably exists, if I think about it hard and look at the evidence, it seems much more likely that we've evolved to have that gut feeling for various reasons that have nothing to do with it actually being true, and that in fact, it probably isn't.

However, (1) knowing that doesn't make the feeling go away, and (2) the last decade or so has demonstrated very clearly to me that participating in regular worship and being part of a church community makes me much happier and mentally healthier and kinder than when I'm not. So I just don't think too hard about it.

I'm a Christian specifically partly because it's what I grew up with, but mostly because the Easter Story, the sacrifice of everything, and the love of all humanity no matter how flawed we are is something that is beautiful and magical whether it is true or not. I'm catholic specifically because it's the liturgy I grew up with, and all the emotional responses I have to the Easter Story are hotkeyed to that liturgy. I'm anglo-catholic because "we believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church" and that church is Little St Mary's in Cambridge. More seriously though - LSM was a wonderful place for me, and where I first realised how much happier I was being part of a church community, but also, until recently the Roman church has been rather hostile to us queers, and although that can certainly be found in the CoE* it's also much easier to find catholic communities who are actively welcoming.

I worship at St John the Evangelist, Brownswood Park, which is actually my parish church. When we last moved I was expecting to go to another church nearby which I used to attend last time we lived near Finsbury Park, but it's about half an hour away, so I figured I'd try the parish church first, and it turned out to be just my sort of place liturgically, as well as being closer, having an extremely charming** priest, and not being Backwards in Bigotry***.

I'm on the serving team, which means that most of the time when I'm attending Mass I'm in the sacristy party - either thurifer (that's swinging the smoking handbag with incense in), or crucifer (carrying the cross during the procession in and out, and helping the priest prepare the bread and wine which will become the body and blood of Christ). This actually helps a lot with the not-actually-believing stuff, because it means that I'm concentrating sufficently hard on what happens next in the liturgy that I don't get bogged down in too much "but what if this is all meaningless".

*I remain utterly devastated that I still can't get married - please tread with extreme care if you want to discuss this
**although younger than me, which I find a bit terrifying
***Forward in Faith, the organisation opposed to the ordination of women, which is made up of an uneasy alliance of evangelical biblical literalists who think that women should be silent because that's what Paul said (and also that homosexualists should burn in hell), and high church Anglo-Catholics who are mostly older gay men who think that women have cooties and should be kept away from their playhouse.