Pledges Made to the Lord

 

God is definitely a useful entity no matter who he or she might be and in whatever form either or both of them might choose to reside.   Voltaire must have realised that long before the rest of us when he stated that if God didn’t already exist it would be necessary to invent Him - or these days perhaps Her as well. 

Although I don’t consider I have had a particularly close relationship with religion over the years, I certainly do not dismiss the idea of the existence of a higher power.  You could say that although God is not an altogether tangible idea for me, He always lurks reassuringly in the background of my life and for me He will always be male.  OK, call me old fashioned!    When you grow up with the idea of an all-knowing, all-seeing Deity that in itself acts very much as a comfort blanket.   You are aware that as a mere human you are fallible and when faced with difficult, painful situations if a solution can be conjured up with just a modicum of faith and an old-fashioned prayer or two it’s hard not to take advantage of this generosity.    I am almost embarrassed to recall the occasions when I have frantically bargained with the edge of that comfort blanket, attempting to offer deals to the Almighty concerning how often I will attend Mass if only a seemingly insurmountable problem can be solved.  Well that’s the way things go in the dusty corners of the life of a lapsed Catholic, Faith is never entirely eclipsed by Reason.

Although absolute belief has often been somewhat lacking in my life I’ve always had a great fondness for churches, not those vast cathedrals where God is pitted in serious competition with architecture, but small intimate places where the decades of hope and prayer can almost be heard to be hovering.   How easing of mind and spirit it is to sit within holy spaces for a time whether as a Believer or a Non-Believer, and most especially in a Catholic space where a candle can be lit to send a prayer hurtling into the ether.    Perhaps that’s what Nietzsche meant when he spoke of caves in which a dead God’s shadow might for ages be evident.  

Back in 1950 God was definitely all around us and whilst my father was alive he insisted that I should go to Mass on a regular basis.   At one time he always accompanied me but in the months before his death I definitely recall him leaving me at the rather forbidding doors of The Church of Our Lady of The Assumption and saying he was off to see a man about a dog and I was to walk home alone.   I didn’t mind particularly because I was used to walking alone and when he was not present I could forgo adding to the collection plate and spend the two pennies on bubble gum instead.   The church itself was not a welcoming place in any way at all.   It had been built by someone called Giles Gilbert Scott in 1914, entirely in brown brick which I thought to be most unattractive.  It was said that during the blitz the German Air Force used the tower as a guide towards London, knowing that when they could reference it they were well on the way to their principal target.   

On those Sundays when I was abandoned at the church door My mother would invariably ask, tight-lipped, where my father was when I got back home, slightly nauseous from incense and bubblegum.  When I told her about the man and the dog she would bang saucepans on the stove and hum `We’ll Meet Again’ rather too loudly.   On those days he was always late for Sunday dinner and when he did arrive we sat in silence.   It was years later that I realised that his regular absences probably involved the Fancy Women he was unable to tear himself away from.  

I was never totally at ease in that church on The Hill and much preferred the ancient parish church around the corner, by the old village green, St Botolph’s. It dated from the 14^th century and had a splendid carved oak screen which at school we were told was the oldest in Kent.   Back then the Sunday services were well attended and the hymns regularly sung were inspiring so there were times when I switched my attendance from Giles Gilbert Scott’s monstrosity and felt guilty as a result.    This desertion of what my father rather hypocritically viewed as the One True Church would have horrified him but fortunately he was never to become aware of it.  

Despite his attempts to maintain his reputation in the eyes of God by making a great deal of fuss about where I went to Mass, strangely he made little comment on the Sunday School I attended in the afternoons in the building on Dover Road that eventually became the United Reformed Church.   It was run by a group of enthusiastic unmarried women who were intent upon bringing sunshine into the lives of underprivileged children.   Consequently it was always an hour and a half of unadulterated fun consisting of singing, dancing, clapping, listening to stories, drinking orange juice and fighting over ginger biscuits.   From time to time outings were arranged to places like Whipsnade Zoo and Southend-on-sea where the best behaved children would be conveyed in what we called charabancs and would end up not behaving very well at all and being told they were forbidden to apply next time.   

I had little understanding of how much the Sunday School in Dover Road had to do with God at least not the God I was familiar with.  There were a lot of Bible stories and good Catholic families did not seem to be all that conversant with the Bible so there was not a great deal of encouragement for children in particular to read it.  At least that was my understanding.  Years passed before I realised that there was in fact an acceptable RC version called the Douay-Rheims Bible which contained 73 rather than 66 books.     My time at St Botolph’s had ensured that I was to become fond of and more at ease with the King James version and viewed it in much the same way as my favourite poems.   I placed preferred verses such as `consider the lilies of the field’ or `bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you’ alongside `The Forsaken Merman’ or `The Lady of Shalott’ without too much consideration as to the possible message being conveyed.   In the everyday life that was lived completely outside of the beauty of the written word I would never for one moment have considered blessing those that cursed me.  This was possibly because I was far too influenced by the vengeful attitudes of my mother and aunts spurred on by my pitiless grandmother.    It would be rare in our family to consider forgiving your enemy.   Instead the various ways of hitting back hard enough to ensure the wrong done to you would not be repeated would be considered.

Nevertheless, despite our shortcomings we considered ourselves as staunchly devout as others.   This was despite the fact that Aunt Martha who almost always attended Sunday Mass on a regular basis after Uncle Paddy was killed, was frequently heard to say that God was definitely love, but it was best to get it in writing.    This mini homily was lifted directly from the wisdom of Gypsy Rose Lee who apparently came from a similarly pious but dysfunctional family headed by a matriarch, Rose Hovick who held astonishingly similar attitudes to Old Nan Constant.   This included a long history of forging birth certificates for each of her daughters making them older when it was necessary to evade varying state labour laws and younger for reduced or free train fares.   The girls were largely unsure in later years what their true years of birth were.   My mother and her sisters ended up in a strikingly comparable position because of my grandmother’s inability to come clean with The Authorities when it came to the birth dates of her many children.   In Old Nan’s case the reasons included the necessity to be available at all times for itinerant field work.

Surfacing from this diverse and shaky religious vortex as a young teenager in March 1954 I was more than eager to sign up for the first Billy Graham evangelistic meeting in London.   I don’t remember who suggested the trip to me but I do know that it was totally free, including the charabanc ride so my mother was more than happy for me to attend.   All I had to do was take a packed supper which I dutifully did, cheese sandwiches and an apple.

Billy Graham came to the country with much fanfare having been vaulted into the national spotlight with unprecedented publicity.   I knew little about him but I was more than eager to be Saved by making a Commitment to Christ that evening at Harringay Arena.    Beholding Billy in action, beseeching us to welcome The Lord, thumping Bibles until they fell to pieces and looking indescribably handsome as he did so, was mesmerising, hypnotic, enthralling.  And when those prepared to Commit to Christ were called to come forward I was one of the first to oblige, only too anxious to become part of Billy’s world if not the Lord’s.  On the journey home a large number of my fellow passengers congratulated me on my courage and said I would never regret the pledge I made to Christ that day.   I was already having some doubts though. 

A week or so later my mother received an important looking letter from the Crusade Team via their UK associates discussing the fact that I was a child and would need her support to progress with my Commitment.    She was quite affronted that I could what she described as `go in for such a thing’ without her approval and even more slighted when I appeared in a photograph in one of the Sunday newspapers standing alongside a group of teddy boys who all looked very dapper indeed in their drape jackets and drainpipe trousers.  They had also made a Commitment that evening and looked scarcely older than me so I couldn’t help wondering if their mothers had received similar communications.

I was to rapidly relinquish the idea of allowing Christ into my life a la Billy Graham which was a great relief to my mother who was anxious as to what her role in the idea might be.   Aunt Mag had told her it was bound to blow over given time as most of my more doolally ideas did and she would do well to remember that I was fanciful.  And Old Nan made sure that next time I was in her company in Crayford High Street she did some blatant shoplifting of haberdashery items telling me that God helps them that help themselves and adding that she didn’t hold with too much religion anyway.    I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to make of that and so I said nothing.   Billy Graham meanwhile,  exciting and handsome as he most certainly was fell into the recesses of memory.  However, over the years I have often wondered if any of that group of Teddy Boys managed to maintain the pledge made to the Lord that day at Harringay.   I suspect not.