Sing, Choirs of Angels - more childhood minutiae.

Desiring to sing, Melody in my heart

I became churched that I might cry out the word.

Beyond the song, a story that gave no peace.

Seeking, seeking, but finding nothing for my spirit.

Entering in tranquility, destination looked empty.

I left that place, some inner light turned to darkness. 

I liked to sing.  That's all that lay behind it.  I liked to sing.  And I wanted to sing.  I was ten and the idea formed in my head, "I want to join a choir."

I was quite surprised by the reaction when I mentioned this at home.  The idea didn't suffer immediate rejection like other ideas - tap dancing, for example, was both silly and just for girls.  I'm not sure Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly would have agreed with that view!  My mother knew someone who ran a choir, someone I knew too.  I found out when they met and went along - not knowing beforehand that it was a church choir.

And so began my first experience of the Christian church beyond the odd Christmas service and one Easter service that we really only went to so that the Easter Bunny could hide her eggs.

A child friendly version with an evening children's group that didn't mention God too much but did play silly games and set challenges to make egg box monsters or fill match boxes with as many things as possible.  We did do one God related activity - beyond the forgotten prayer that must surely have started or finished each evening.  We performed a dramatised version of the story of Jonah in a Crawley Festival, open air in the main shopping square.  I played God.  Typecast at an early age.  My little self had a crush on one of the other people narrating the play.  I hope she is having a good life.

A child friendly version with a Sunday school that did mention God all the time.  I'm sure we talked about the Bible every week but most memories now are of dull worksheets and learning the names of the first eight books of the New Testament.  That's not the most impressive feat ever achieved by a Bible scholar but it's the one bit of Sunday school knowledge I never lost.

And the choir.  Quite enjoyable - and I could sing.  Plenty of practices for Sunday services - though we only sang some Sundays, a special occasion choir.  I ended up singing some solos.  We weren't a rich, high church choir - we had no robes.  We just sang.

I was seeking - I'd been seeking something more than earthly life, in little ways, for years.  Seeking, disquieted within, long before devouring a dictionary of the occult when I was nine.  I wanted more and I hoped I'd find that more in the church.  In God.  I'm sure that others in that church found something - a number of them are still faithful there, thirty years later, and it was good to meet some of them again on a visit last year and see that church so lively and enthusiastic.  But all I found was silence.  Stories from the past that did not gel with my young life.  I got bored in the church - apart from the singing and developing worryingly good skills in locating Bible passages in the traditional Sunday School game of "Bible Sword".

I was seeking.  "Seek and you shall find," said Jesus.  I did not find.  For me there was just emptiness - and with eleven year old priorities a great chasm when a previously faithful Sunday School boy stole a Lego figure from me and then stopped coming to the church!  My interest waned.  I stopped attending the church - absent most weeks unless the choir was singing.  And I dropped out of the evening group having previously been proud of my metal badge gained for regular attendance.

And then I was thrown out of the church choir because of my ecclesiastical absences.  The only reason I was still involved in the church, in some Christian religion, was taken from me.  I was sad for a while but it was fair enough - how could I sing in the choir of a church I didn't attend?

Yes, I was seeking.  I wanted this Jesus teaching to be true.  I wanted meaning.  But I wasn't given meaning.  Nobody ever told me what Christianity was about - they just told me the plot of old stories from an old book - and then told me that all the stories meant that we had to be nice.  Yes, I sought.  I was so, so proud to have my Bible as a birthday present.  I read it frequently but could not find the promised abundance of life in its pages or in the organisation that represented this God.

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This week I've been thinking about my past - having been asked about experiences of the Sacred.  I've looked at those but also found myself remembering the times of seeking the Sacred and finding nothing but disappointment.  So I've looked back on that church life, what I can remember of it, and the emptiness it brought.  Had I found God I can see that my entire life from that point on would have been very, very different.  But I didn't.  I found only people.  Nice people, but not people able to show me a path to faith.

I left the Church, not to rest, but to search elsewhere. But that's not a tale for today.  Maybe tomorrow, one piece of the search.  Another fruitless effort.

I still search - even when you do find truth, you find it points to bigger truths.  The quest, the searching can and will never end.  You cannot rest, you cannot proudly assume that you've reached the destination.

Desiring to sing, Melody in my heart

I became churched that I might cry out the word.

Beyond the song, a story that gave no peace.

Seeking, seeking, but finding nothing for my spirit.

Entering in tranquility, destination looked empty.

I left that place, some inner light turned to darkness.