Many years ago, I took a long walk in the Pyrenees. Deep in a mountain forest, I came upon a small stone chapel that hadn’t seen a congregation or priest for a very long time. Hoping for rest, I pushed open the rusty metal doors. However, inside, I didn’t find anywhere to sit, what I found was something stunningly beautiful.
Lacking any form of decoration, furniture or embellishment, the bare stone walls and plain wooden rafters made an ideal home for a roost of bats, who were clinging upside down over the earth floor of the dimly lit interior. At the far end, a solid rectangular stone alter sat below a single lancet window which was the only source of light. There was nothing of artistic note in this simple building, so, why am I bothering to tell you about it, you might well think.? Well, at precisely the moment I walked in, the sun shone a dazzling shaft of mote filled bright pure light onto a simple iron cross set centrally on the alter. It was as if my entry had switched a blinding laser beam directly onto the cross, at the precise moment I walked in.
It is my strongest memory from that 600 mile walk through the mountains.
I like English country churches, which may strike you as strange for an atheist. Many churches are locked up these days, especially urban ones, because bored or selfish people amuse themselves causing damage, but thankfully many village churches remain open and welcoming to all, even non believers like me. Most date back to medieval times and often there will be perpendicular windows, Norman doors ways and if you are lucky traces of Saxon walling in one unaltered corner. Light floods in and the thick stone walls keep the noise of the daily grind outside, so a peacefully calm insulates you from the troubles of the world. The churches usually contain tombs to the rich and famous of the parish, such as crusader knights, past priests and local land owners. On the walls will be a Georgian heraldic board, telling everyone "Us Georgians are in charge now“, that no one has bothered to take down even after a couple of hundred years.. Frequently stained glass will beautify the choir and the shimmering light shining through the coloured glass puts on an amazing technicolour light show.
They are timeless, unruffled, sentinels that have seen all the joys and troubles of parishioners over the centuries. Like sleeping old hounds, nothing can phase them. You can sit in an old church and imagine generations of screaming babies baptised in the font, countless joyous weddings and too many sorrowful funerals. You can almost hear the priests thoughtful sermons to an enduring congregation, with fidgeting children, dozing old men and over dressed parents. Imagine a bit longer and you will also see the flirtive glances between a young man and woman that says in the universal language of love ’See you latter?’..
Today the trouble is that people aren’t coming any more. Congregations are small because, like me they don’t believe in a God or the afterlife or perhaps its just that modern life gives them the opportunity to do much more entertaining things on a Sunday. So now in this time of rapid change the English parish church is under threat. The roof starts leaking, but there's no one to make good the repair with local skills using local materials, and over zealous Health and Safety rules wouldn't allow them on the roof anyway.
Why should an old atheist cynic like me really like English parish churches? Well I think it is their ageless simple honesty. Because, if you forget about the God bit, accept there is no afterlife, and ignore church politics, you are left with the constancy of humanity down through the ages getting on with life as best it can, coming together in one place and endeavouring to base their existence on a love of others, selflessness and compassion. It’s just a pity human nature usually gets in the way of such noble aims and makes life such hardwork.
There are a lot of people at the moment trying to work out what Putin is thinking. Well I don’t know what he is thinking, but what he is definitely not thinking about is Love, selflessness and compassion. I get the impression he is only thinking about himself and how he will be remembered in history. I wonder if he really wants to be remembered alongside Hitler, Stalin and Mao? I would recommend that he goes and sits in a church on his own for a few hours and thinks about others, rather than himself.
Recently, I concluded that because we have a brain, we can learn of different options and can chose how to act. The point of life, other than the biological need to survive and reproduce, is to make the world better not only for yourself but for all others, which includes future others and the other life forms with which we share this planet. So I started letter writing and emailing any one who I thought might have the power to make the world a better place. I’ve no idea what happens to my correspondence, I expect that most of it gets deleted unread, but the few responses to my atheists prayers, give me hope that the butterfly effect might kick in and my ideas might alter the chaotic system that is the world for the better. It is my act of faith that any good idea will be pinched by someone else and claimed for their own selfish benefit, so if I have a good idea and sent it to enough people, someone out there with more readers, skill, resources or power than I will promote or implement it.
I’ve frequently written to the Russian Ambassador asking for Russia to drop it’s 20th century militaristic mode of thinking. In a BBC interview 18th May 2021, Sergi Naryshkin the head of Russian Foreign Intelligence service referred to certain respectful correspondence and spoke of his desire for future meetings with MI6. Coincidence? Did the Russian Secret service, in their mindset of espionage, think I was working for British intelligence probing for better relations? There is also a group of Norwegians spammers that, similar to an idea in one of my essays, are currently randomly bombarding Russian email addresses with the truth of the Ukrainian war and advising how Russians can verify it. Did they read my essay? It’s unlikely, they most probably thought up the idea themselves, but it could be possible they read my blog and they used their computer skills in order to help Ukraine and Russia.
So, are my atheist prayers changing the world? I correspond with love of humanity, hope and brutal honesty, so I have faith that they will do no harm and may even change the world for the better. I will continue to write and hit the send button and encourage you to do the same.
The more I learn and see of the world, the more I realise how much I don’t know and that it’s all a deep, deep mystery. Why did that beam of light shine on that rustic iron cross at the precise moment I walked into a forgotten chapel, when I was in the middle of a remote forest, a long way away from home? The boring atheist says it was just coincidence, but others might ham it up into a really entertaining essay.
Well, that’s my delusion. But is it closer or further from reality than yours?
