A small church

So it turns out that after a lot of ferreting around, from unrestrained Hedonism to a destructive online cult with hangouts and journalling, the Humanists with their tea and biscuits, the Skeptics with their real ale, the Conspiracy people with their spliffs, and the New Agers with their potions, I have ended up attending a small actual church with an even smaller congregation. 

It's quite good, now that I have become a Christian (which I have... I was going to mention it sooner or later), to be able to go to a proper church without worrying about having to hold my hands in the air or attempt to sing along with Christian rock songs, following the lyrics scrolling on a big screen hanging over the stage like at a rock concert, because here, we sing the old favourites and keep our hands down at all times.

The hardest thing to understand, at first, was the quiet time, when we just sit in mainly silence, or so it seemed, for up to an hour. I used to practice my handwriting by copying out bible verses or read the bible silently. I thought it was odd, and I imagined that anyone chancing to come into the meeting from the street would feel quite uncomfortable, which of course they would.

But things aren't as bad as they first seemed, because it turns out that in the quiet time we men can pray aloud and speak the things that are on our mind if we so choose - I mean Biblical things of course, not fretting about whether or not to get a bloke in to fix the immersion heater and suchlike. So once I had plucked up the courage to say a few things it's been a bit hard to get me to shut up at all, because I like to ventilate my dentition and I often seem to  have something on my mind that requires utterance.

I have to be careful however, because of what James said in the third chapter of his book - and he's quite right of course: a wagging tongue is a dangerous member indeed. As my beloved mother-in-law used to say when someone had spoken out of turn (usually my father-in-law, who scarcely opened his mouth but to speak out of turn): e un bel tacer non fu mai detto, which is a sort of nonsense, meaning, loosely "never did the yearned for withholding of speech find utterance". So I'll take her cue and shut my pie hole.

Prod