"Thou Mine Inheritance, Now and Always..."

Yesterday a dear friend of mine had her confirmation. The service was at our college chapel, which is an absolutely beautiful building where I attended a memorable Christmas service last year. This was, obviously, a private service so everyone there was her family or friends. While this is the first time I've been to a confirmation, I can say I found the service lovely; my friend gave a testimony about her journey, which was both interesting and a nice way to personalise the service, and the college choir sang. I love our college choir - they're a definite asset to the place! Afterwards we had dinner in hall, at which I found out that one of the other attendees was from the same part of Devon as me, was actually neighbours with a family I'm friends with, and we have at least fifteen mutual friends & acquaintances! Devon is such a big county that I never expect to meet people from my part of it, much less people who know the same people I do. We worked out that we had, if not actually talked to each other before meeting at Oxford, at least been in the same room a couple of times. Funny how that goes.

Unlike my friend, I am not religious. I was raised in an irreligious family, and you'd have to go back to my great-grandparents' generation to find genuine religious feeling on either side of the family (my mother's parents were raised Catholic, but have been lapsed for a very long time) and barring various superstitions regarding the saints - my mum always told us to pray to Saint Anthony whenever we lost something - religion has never been a part of my life, really. I went to a CofE school for a couple of years as a child, but all I took away from that was a deep resentment at being forced to pray before lunch. I was hungry! I didn't want to thank God for what he had given me, I wanted to eat!

Sometimes, I do think it would be nice to have a faith, but I think I was raised secular enough that belief in God... I'm not wired that way. I appreciate a lot of things about religion - I love visiting churches and cathedrals (and other religious buildings, but since I'm European and mostly travel in Europe, churches are overwhelmingly what I find) and I'm awestruck by the fierce love and dedication that went into constructing such amazing buildings. I also love a lot of religious music - hymns, psalms, carols, you name it. The few times I've attended a church service, I never fail to get a rush of overwhelming emotion when the singing starts. In that way, while I appreciate the ideas and sentiment behind sects like the Quakers, the closest thing I get to religious awe and passion has only ever been at very "high-church" services. Actually, I remember visiting a Serbian Orthodox cathedral (Saborna Crkva Rođenja Presvete Bogorodice in Sarajevo) and being so overwhelmed by it all that I left reeling, head spinning, almost unsure where my body was. I was visiting with a friend who said the feeling, leaving that cathedral, was like we had been "crushed by God", and we had to go for a strong cup of Bosnian coffee to get over the experience. So yes, religious grandeur definitely does it for me.

And because I might as well, here's the hymn I quoted from in the title. It's my friend's favourite hymn, and we sung it in her confirmation. I hadn't heard it before but I think it's beautiful.