Prayer of the Bear - holy space

A church building is in essence a holy place. It has been made for, and over the years imbued with, prayer. It’s in the walls as much as in any words. It’s in the activity and the inactivity, the music and the quiet. It’s in the mother trying to delicately negotiate some reasonable silence with her two year old. It’s in the enthusiastic server blowing candle-wax over the altar cloth. It’s in the smile that one parishioner offers another. When the knees bend or the hands outstretch, when we listen or laugh, eat or drink… we eat and drink of God. The totality of church is a prayer, and it has the potential to cradle and hold us no matter where we are in life.

Priests and parishes can do a lot of weird and wacky things. If you have the opportunity to travel around a number of churches you’ll know what I mean. Each place has its own colour and culture. Sometimes you feel you’ve just touched down in Outer Mongolia. It’s called “the wonderful diversity of Christianity”. Yet there are some limits to that diversity. One such limit I believe is when a church is no longer a place where people can touch with the God who touches them. Places where prayer is defined too narrowly, or where there is too much noise from engorged egos, or where the demands are too severe.

When it came to church Tom Bathgate was different man. On any other day of the week he was a talker. He talked an awful lot - to anyone and everyone, regardless of whether they were listening. He would talk to strangers, friends, people pushing supermarket trolleys, and guys having a smoke outside the TAB. They all knew him and felt part of his world. But when it came to church, he would sit there quietly, not talking to God but soaking in the silence. His wife wished he would pray more often.