The Church Service

Subject: The Church Service.

It being Sunday I was startled on switching on the radio to hear singing, a well known hymn which I could so easily have joined in remembering the verses from my childhood.
The reason I was startled was that my tuning dial (it's an old radio) had shifted a centimetre or two and the program, Hymns of Praise I think it's called, belonged to another world.
The world of football analysis or the world of political commentary were on either side of the dial and somehow "providence" had defined my hour. It's remarkable how such a device as a radio can tap into such a diverse world, each excluding the other as if the other didn't exist.
It's a world remote from the Tesco shopping basket or the bleary eyed attempt to remember where you were last night. It's a world of cheery, wide awake believers out and about celebrating God's presence in their lives. It's a community who get it, who have found their personal solution by placing their faith in a power greater than themselves. Their almost tribal conformity comes through the function of familiarity, the hymns are the same the sermon has been around for decades attempting, as it does to reinforce the teaching of the bible, the reedy voice of the vicar, secure in his robes and the dogma of his calling. Let us pray. The reading is taken this week from St John.
St Winifred's will celebrate with snacks and a cup of tea in the vicarage on Thursday evening, everyone is welcome.
The community is conversant with each other and look forward to this weekly get together for a little gossip and the sense that they alone are keeping the flame burning.
It's a world of good intentions and occasional trips to the sea side.  It's a world of camaraderie, an oasis to escape the crazy sectarian world outside with its pornography and lewdity, its bad behaviour and lack of traditional good taste. Meeting Mrs Brown and Iris Sugden even Henry who's wife passed away last year reminds us of how nice it is to have good friends around. The sombre gravestones by the side of the path leading to the church remind us of our mortality, another grave is being dug for someone, I wonder if I know them as part of this congregation.
To congregate is what people do. Old men in the coffee shop, women in the hairdresser young men and women in the pub. As lads we used to gather at the bottom of Ainsbury Avenue to chat and banter, released for an hour or two from the travails of being stuck at home with the parents.
The church congregation is only following a 

pattern, that in uniformity  comes conformity and conformity brings reassurance.  The vicar and the hymn simply remind us of how much we need each other, and in his case, god.