WordPress Daily Prompt: In Good Faith

Describe a memory or encounter in which you considered your faith, religion, spirituality — or lack of — for the first time.

Photographers, artists, poets: show us FAITH.

It does not really matter where you go in the town nearest to where I live, Solothurn. The cathedral dominates all views. A wonderful piece of architecture, built in 1762 by the architect Pisoni. Am I catholic? No. The other Swiss religion is the Swiss Reform Church, my husband’s religion, of which I also do not belong. He is also not a regular church goer.

I was born into a family that were Church of England (our local church was high church, so you could say Anglo Catholic, but we do not have a pope, just a Queen as the boss). Anyhow bible is bible and it was all taught in school and in the scripture lesson. A third of our school was of the jewish faith, very dominant in my area of London in my younger years. Every morning at our school we had a general assembly with bible readings we all sung a few hymns.The Jewish section of the school did their own thing. It was law in England and I did not really question anything. I also did not spend a lot of time thinking about it. Religion was just not in my thoughts.

One fine day (or perhaps not so fine for some) I did get thinking about this religion thing. I had no vision, no dream and no sudden awaking moment. I just got thinking. I am a very logical person, so I came to the conclusion that religion was not logical. All those miracles and sudden wonders seemed to avoid me. In the meanwhile my grandmother and aunt got involved somehow in a religion (was it Pentecostal?) where they were baptised and had about 3-4 bibles at home. I even witnessed a baptism. Then the good souls of this community started mixing in their private life. I was about 14 years old at the time. Somehow I had a feeling this was not religion, but meddling and my mum and dad were not happy with the situation.

In the meanwhile I have made my decision. I do not belong to the Swiss church or any other sort of church. I suppose I could say I am an atheist, but I see no reason why I should have a label. Everyone seems to think I am missing something in life, and their big statement seems to be “You must believe in something”. Really, must I? I believe in a world based on the course of nature, which often unfortunately gets a bit thrown out of its course, by human meddling.

I like the new pope, really. He has both feet on the ground, has tolerance and understanding for others and shows what human feelings are. I have no problem with Islam, as long as it is Islam and not this fundamental narrow minded bomb-throwing rubbish. After all I worked for a Muslim boss and lived with his family, wife and kids, for two years. I did not miss pork, and ate the same food as he ate, and if he said “bismillah” before every meal it did not bother me. Some Christians say Grace.

Anyhow, I had no encounter to make my decision. I just try to do things right, which is not always easy. Above all I want to be tolerant of all other religions and beliefs. The beginnings of many religions and beliefs have an interesting history. Just do not try to convert me, I am happy the way I am.

WordPress Daily Prompt: Polite Company

"Its never a good idea to discuss religion or politics with people you don't really know." Agree or disagree?

Local Government Building  - Law Courts

If I don’t really know the person I am speaking to then I could not imagine that my conversation would begin with “What religion are you?” or “Who did you vote for in the last election?” so we have another sort of silly subject to write a blog about. On the other hand, it depends on whether they are invited guests you do not know so well and the conversation turns to religion and politics.

I always have a thirst for knowledge. If my guests were hindu, buddist, islam or another religion then a conversation on their ideas would be interesting. I worked for many years as an export clerk and had a lot of contact, personally or by phone, with the whole world. I was also responsible for the apprentices in our office and they often had other origins. I learnt what Ramadan actually was, I learnt about living your life in a household that was based on another religion and if I wanted to know something more I asked. I found the feedback was interesting and helpful, but I would not actually discuss the basis of the religions. I, myself, am atheist and I never made a secret about it. I too was accepted with my “non-belief”. Tolerance is the basis for a mutual good relationship.

As far as politics are concerned, now that is another kettle of fish. We all have our ideas about the perfect government, but looking around the world, I have come to the conclusion that the perfect government does not yet exist and probably never will. In most Western countries we are striving for a balance, although each politician seems to believe that their way is the right way. If I am confronted with guests that are completely radically right wing, I just let them get on with it. If my guests are from the left side of politics then I also do not discuss with them their political ideas.

To discuss politics with my Swiss guests is not something I would not bother about. We are so neutral we even elect a new president every year in December. We have seven ministers in the government, 2 conserative, 2 liberal, 2 socialist and 1 something else, always from the same parties, so what is there to discuss. They take it in turns to become Prime Minister every year. The Swiss call it the magic formula and it is decreed by the country that it should be like this. Of course we have members of parliament from various parties that are voted for by the Swiss citizens, but as far as discussions on politics are concerned, it is  lost cause.

The Swiss system is such that if you have visitors that turn the conversation to politics, it usually develops into a conversation about the characters of various politicians, not liking him or her, and not a discussion about the actual political problems. 

I prefer discussion with my guests about the weather, perhaps sport, and health. Illness is always a good subject to bring up. Everyone wants to talk about their aches and pains or the weather. If the majority of the visitors are male, then sport is a good subject. 

And now to search for a suitable photo in my collection on politics and religion – I am more into animals and travel photos.

WordPress Daily Prompt: Un/Faithfull

Tell us about the role that faith plays in your life - or doesn't

It doesn’t, so that was an answer to the question. I quite like to visit old churches, they have an interesting architecture and are wonderful subjects for photography. Their history is also very interesting.

Some years ago, when the world was recovering from a second world war, I was born. My dad fought in the war for five years, came home on Friday and married mum on Saturday. Now that was faith, not having seen his bride for five years and only meeting once five years before in the pub. Mum sort of believed and it was a big white wedding with dad in his army uniform as he had no other clothes at the time. Youth clubs did not exist, discos were not yet invented and dance halls were too expensive, so you got your entertainment where it was. Social life in my part of London was organised by the church at this time. The Church of England to be exact. It was a natural developent that I was christened at our local church known as the Red Church, because of its red brick construction. The church had been standing just across the street where I grew up for many years, built 1844. So I never really asked questions and accepted my religion, as everyone believed. Today the church still stands as a building, has been deconsecrated, and has been converted into appartments.

I would just mention that the area where I originated had a very large jewish population and even my school served two meals, one kosher with their own crockery and cutlery (had a “K” engraved) and one “christian”.

As a child I was a regular visitor on Sunday morning to the church, as they had children’s services. There were various youth groups attached to the church of which I was also a member. It was still our one source of social life. Our local chuch also had nuns. I was used to those ladies in their long black clothes, and strange headdress I never had a problem. At Easter we did something called stations of the cross, where we met in the evening at the church and looked at paintings of the crucifixian and got a stamp on a card. Palm Sunday, we were giving crosses woven with palm leaves.

As time went on, a friend of mine at school joined the local Mission and asked me to come along. This was something completely different. They had a way that you really learnt what was in the bible, most of it by memory. You got little pictures to put in you bible as book marks. At the same time my grandmother and aunt became pentecostal. I once attended a pentecostal baptism. As an eleven year old this made quite an impression, and I started to think “Who is right”.

As I got older, I really only attended church for weddings and christenings and the odd funeral. I left England for another country. I spent the first two years in Switzerland living with a family that were moslem. The father was Pakistani, the mother Swiss and the family religion was moslem. This was more than forty years ago, and I had no problem. The food was Pakistani, they had an Indian restaurant, and I would not say they were completely orthodox. Wine was served now and again, and I don’t remember being starved because of Ramadan. It was another time, there were no religious problems or disputes.

So where was I eventually? I now have a niece and her husband that are buddist. My family would be Swiss reform church, although we live in a mainly catholic area (nice to cash in on all the religious holidays they have). Looking into all this religion, I made up my mind many years ago. I did not get married in a church and have never missed wearing a wedding dress or marching up the aisle. My children were chistened in the local church. They can make their own decisions on religion. So I am very happy as I am, meaning that I just do not belong or believe. If I did choose, I would probably choose Buddist as that seems to be a harmless thing. But I would probably let them down eventually.

If we leave nature to do its work, then nature copes quite well. It is only through human interruptions that things do not turn out as they should. We all know the argument that there are too many wars in the world caused by religion, but not only. No-one is perfect and with or without faith, wars will occur.

I am quite satisfied in my atheist world. I respect religion, try to be tolerant towards all beliefs. I believe this is the first time I have officially “outed” myself in this connection. It is not a big problem for me.