Half-forgotten faith

I wrote this in January 2012.
I assisted with Communion on Christmas Day and witnessed an astonishing variety of half-forgotten devotion. This is not to belittle. We had people from so many traditions, but I would swear much half-forgotten in the rush of the modern world.
It is in this half-forgetting that I have found signs of hope. Half-forgotten also means half-remembered; it means that once there was something. Perhaps it is to these who once were here, to whom the cathedral should direct its attention? If they were here once, then why not now? It is perhaps a good question. But there is more.
My sense on Christmas Day was of the importance of the sacramental act in which they were participating in their half-remembered way, rather than the meaning of any finely crafted words, and they were finely crafted. Yet at Christmas perhaps more than any time, words are part of the half-remembered act: ‘In the beginning…’ goose bumps rise on my arms as I write. Half-remembered words which have a deep echo in the hearts of those who once were here.

Prime Ministers and Church

I posted on Facebook a short piece expressing my sadness that we now have Prime Minister who does not see fit to go to Church on Christmas Day. Some people agreed; one, however, preferred this to the hypocrisy of someone attending without believing.
This got me thinking, yet again, about what we mean by faith.
I have no doubt that some people are the recipients of a 'gift of faith'; they just have it. They have placed their trust in Jesus Christ, and live out their lives on that basis. There are then those, and I was one, who longed for such faith, but could never quite grasp it. I tried every which way, not least by attempting to create an intellectual framework that would justify belief. I failed.
There is more. I have previously written about those who come to Christmas Day Eucharist with a 'half forgotten' faith. A friend expressed is slightly differently as being 'hard wired' with a belief system that had been taught from the cradle and which is there for life, however much the owner may intellectually dismiss it.
There are many more who will speak quite happily of a loved one, who has died, looking down on them. Just watch any edition of BBC's Repair Shop where treasured possessions are brought back t life. Such a belief in Life after Death was a comparative latecomer to Judaism in the centuries before Christ's birth, but it was embraced by the early Church.
A church at Christmas is a meeting place where all these people can come together for their disparate purposes. It is a gathering where the individual is not centre stage, and where a group of otherwise unconnected people can spend an hour thinking (or praying) about those others who are less fortunate. It gives space for contemplating big questions. It can be a space where people gather around a shared ethical framework.
I would have thought that this is just the place for a Prime Minister.