Arkell's Ark: Bittersweet Moments
“Yet despite my lack of faith and anger that surfaces from time to time, I seek out the Church in each new town, each tiny village and sit there for a moment and feel renewed,’’ writes columnist Ian Arkell.
The vague, bewildering déjà vu moment when you know or think you know, that you were here before. Perhaps another time, another life, a situation, face or smell that faintly rings a distant bell.
For me the comfort and feeling of safety when I see a Catholic church; a religion for which I have no time and even less respect. Is that not a paradox? Was that another life? A time when I believed and was comforted by the rites and rituals of the church? When I believed with certainty in a loving God.
Yet despite my lack of faith and anger that surfaces from time to time, I seek out the Church in each new town, each tiny village and sit there for a moment and feel renewed. I am at home, a part of the whole and for just that fleeting moment, I belong.
To me the church is an anachronistic monolith, capable at best of glacial-like change with no basic understanding of humanity. A structure mired in ritual and sometimes guilty of the worst excesses.
But anger is a transient affliction and in the next little village or town I visit on my travels, it will subside as I again seek out the local church and gather more of those bittersweet moments.
