Twice this week I have been to a church service. First was the baptism of a friend's daughter at a Catholic Church. Today was a memorial service for a woman who died 17 years ago.
Especially at the baptism, I found myself being caught up in the comfort of ritual. Having been raised, essentially, as Catholic, the muscle memory was strong. I was drawn by the power of faith and belief of "things unseen." The awe, wonder and beauty of our lives as humans does sometime move me to believe in something more powerful than randomness of the collision of atoms and energy that is our existence, and who can deny the sheer beauty and awesome grace of that very randomness!
I sit in the church, and listen as the priest talks to my friend and her husband of raising their child in faith. I wonder if they have their fingers crossed behind their backs, as they are as secular as anyone I know. I wonder if they are moved as I by the idea of being held in God's hands? Certainly the existence of their child, whose conception and gestation relied upon science in great part, must also reveal a certain amoung of Grace! To whom do they direct their gratitude for the blessing that is this child?
Is it easier to believe or not? I am a secular skeptic, a lapsed believer, but in moments when that memory of ritual and faith surge forward, in the quiet of prayer, I ponder the loss. Why does my heart fill so when I just enter a church? Why do the Psalms soothe me? What is it about the illogic of religion that still holds sway in some part of my heart? What is this tug of faith I feel! And why is it that I resist so?
