Why I Go to Church
This, you will recall, was the title of an
article Jenny Paton-Williams wrote in the September 2010 Magazine. It
has had me thinking because, while I agree wholeheartedly with most of
Jenny's points, I don't find as she does that Church attendance keeps
me "honest in my faith". The opposite in fact. I am dishonest
in many of the words I speak and the hymns I sing. I also feel dishonest
in supporting the wider Anglican Church which in my view spends a disproportionate
time on matters which divide us instead of concentrating on working together
in areas where the Church excels.
So why do I still attend? It's because, like Jenny, "I am blessed
by the local Christian community"; a community of friends of all
ages and a great force for good, joined together in a spiritual journey.
I am also encouraged by a poem Adrian Alker read at a conference I attended.
(Lord).....it was Your custom to go to the
temple:
to the noisome temple
sometime to the scandalised temple,
listening to the mumbo jumbo,
but it was Your custom to go
till the new temple of Your body was available for men. (sic)
Give us grace in our changing day
to stand by the temple that is the present church.
The noisome temple,
the sometime scandalised temple
that is the present church,
listening sometime to what again seems mumbo jumbo.
Make it our custom to go
till the new outline of Your Body for our day
becomes visible in our midst.
This extract from "A Chaos of Uncalculating
Love" by George Fielden MacLeod is quoted by kind permission of Wild
Goose Publications.
Astrid Fielden
