Church & State
What is a life of service?
My parents were heavily involved in my secondary school and the church. I grew up with an understanding that there was, and should be, a life beyond the paycheck. That service to building the world you want to see is the thing.
Service was: choir practice, governor’s meetings and sitting on mum and dad’s bed as mum practised her speeches. Servers practice for the boys, school and parish meetings that stretched into the night; advent candles, confession and meat-free Fridays, silver cutlery for Sunday lunch, no swearing. Performing at school masses, carol singing on the high street and washing up the cups after Brownies. Handing out newsletters at the church doors before Mass, praying for the needy. Minding yourself. Always - always - putting others first.
Bishops phoning for my dad, the headteacher coming for a coffee during summer holidays, priests coming for lunch, mum going on retreat was the hum of the home. Mum had recently started leaning icons on the sitting room mantlepiece.
An iron bust of the Madonna and Jesus still sits in the corner of the dining room, almost touching an eight foot scene of Jesus welcoming the little children - the little children are, I think, some great aunts, all blonde curls, staring up at a decidedly white Jesus.
-
The Catholic community was big, active - 5 Sunday services for every taste, Brownies, marriage support, Cubs, Alcoholic Anonymous, retreats, choirs. I can see every sharp, 1960s corner of the presbytery, the steps down to the priest’s quarters, the low, egalitarian altar and the smooth marble floors I skidded over and around more than once.
My thick red jacketed missal was my pride, 2 inches deep in thin bible paper. As I type I hear the echo of the congregation repeating ‘... The Lord the Giver of Life / who proceeds from the Father and the Son / who with the Father and the Son / is worshipped and glorified ... who has spoken through the prophets…” I hear the resonance of hundreds of voices joining in practiced rhythm, the echo bouncing around the pauses. Even now, it feels comforting.
I see the square shoulders of my Yorkshire father standing at the lectern, his fingers like mine - long and wide and prone to losing all their blood, pushing into the beech wood of the lectern as he rehearses the 400 strong congregation through sung responses. He sings unselfconsciously, a job like any other, suit and tie, his hair the same style since his childhood family portraits taken on Bridlington beach.
-
One evening, I ended up with a half dozen friends in the upstairs of my tall, skinny Victorian house. Within an hour, someone’s older cousin had bought a crate of Rolling Rock, and now drunk 16 year old boys were rolling around my brother’s old bedroom. We probably had ‘Goodfellas’ on the video player. I was panicking - one guy, Frank, would stop and start drinking every now and then, and he had a habit of opening the first small door he could find and pissing with abandon, and tonight he was chugging the cheap bears.
Normally having drunk kids in the house was, well, sort of normal. But, and I can’t remember how these collided -
downstairs was an intimate gathering of my mum’s favourite people - the headteacher, the parish priest, a couple of others, sitting over glasses of good red wine and nibbles. Quietly talking about the future of the school, the Christ-centred education.
My friends bounced around the sloping ceiling of my brother’s abandoned bedroom, getting sillier and drunker by the minute, I panicked - a fucking PRIEST two floors down, on a Saturday night. Our headteacher, sitting on the sofa I usually spent Saturday nights on with the dog. I was trying to find Frank before he pissed in a cupboard and praying I wouldn’t bump into Fr Michael or Ms Peters if they tried to find the loo next to my bedroom.
Another brother came home, and stashed the empties in his room so our parents wouldn’t find them, and he binned them whilst we were at church the next morning, the same priest celebrating Mass as had been in my kitchen, using my toilet, stroking my dog.
-
Nothing dramatic happened that night, bar Frank actually pissing in my mum’s big kitchen cupboard. These people were my life. It was weird but funny. I was home. Everyone around me was giving up their Saturday nights, Wednesday evenings and skills to build better - to build a christ centred community of love, support and kindness.
-
I’m walking to lunch. It’s cold, walking from the common room up to the canteen. Through the high, wide windows of a woodwork classroom, I see a couple of dozen teachers, hands on hips. Chins jutted, hands gesticulated. In full view of the thousand odd children passing up and down between courtyard, canteen and playground, they paced...
Photo by javier rojas on Unsplash