The Belfry

I went to church tonight for the first time in a while. Sitting there during the rituals and proceedings, I thought of R.S. Thomas' poem 'The Belfry':

I have seen it standing up grey,

Gaunt, as though no sunlight

Could ever thaw out the music

Of its great bell; terrible

In its own way, for religion

Is like that. There are times

When a black frost is upon

One's whole being, and the heart

In its bone belfry hangs and is dumb.

But who is to know? Always,

Even in winter in the cold

Of a stone church, on his knees

Someone is praying, whose prayers fall

Steadily through the hard spell

Of weather that is between God

And himself. Perhaps they are warm rain
That brings the sun and afterwards flowers

On the raw graves and throbbing of bells.

R.S. Thomas, the poet of the absent God. His phrases and poems have come to me frequently lately. He writes words that convey how words fall short.

I have questions. I have lots of questions about God. For God. It seems, it has seemed for a long time, that all there is is silence. I feel like I am 18 again, a young, distressed, naive teenager back at Wycliffe, sitting alone in the chapel in the dark quiet, praying and asking and sobbing, the chapel door closed, silence and cold all around me, waiting for God's voice. Waiting, unsure of what it would sound like, unsure of where or what God is. I feel like that little girl again, waiting and hoping desperately, confronted and confounded by the silence.

I sit in church and in conversations amongst other Christians these days feeling the words wash over me. I wonder whether this is something that many people go through, or whether I have passed the point of no return, where all meaning has been lost and I will no longer understand the language and experience of faith and trust and the journey with God. The vicar introduced the service tonight and opened with a declaration containing phrases like 'God's grace and salvation is available if we repent of our sin and turn away from our ways'. I felt a strange sense of disconnection then; the words washed over me, they didn't make any sense. I didn't understand what they meant. All the subsequent bits of service felt similar. I feel like I have lost all connection and understanding of faith; these words of faith, these rituals and liturgies, have lost their meaning for me. I sit, feeling lost and disengaged, bored and uncomfortable.

My husband is a youth worker, a committed Christian servant. He has his doubts and battles, but sometimes I look at him and the rest of the people that I know who are Christians and I feel like I am an alien impostor - that they think I am one of them when I am not. They know what they believe and they trust in it. They know what it means. They have difficulties as the journey is difficult, but they are on the journey and they know what that entails. I feel like I have faith-Aspergers. None of it makes any sense and I feel like I go through the motions because I am in a position where I am expected to, and it doesn't make any difference to me.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have a real independent choice over whether to go to church, whether or not to self-identify as a committed Christian. Whether or not to confess that I have so many questions, so many doubts; that it all means so little to me that I don't know whether I even believe or whether it even matters to me anymore. That it has no impact on the everyday motions of my life and the inner stirrings and yearnings of my heart. That I don't even remember the last time I thought about the connection between my faith and my actions. I wonder what it would be like to be in the position to admit all this, to leave the church behind.

I am a Christian youth worker and minister-to-be's wife and sometimes when I am honest with myself I think that if I wasn't, if I did not love my husband so much, I would have abandoned this faith long ago.

I suppose some would say that this was all God's provision for me so that I wouldn't fall away.

I continue to wait, anyway.