Spiritual Home

It's been a long time now since I've set foot in a Church for anything other than the wedding, christening or funeral of a friend or relative, around 20 years in fact.

A long time that I've rejected Christianity and tried to fill the gap with a variety of other theories and systems.

My siblings and I were raised in the Church of England, Anglicans, by the time that I made my first communion however my parents had long since left the Church, well at least physically they had. I would've been around 14 at the time I think and was involved with the Church through assisting to operate their creche and Sunday School and also through a Friday evening Youth Group. I loved that Church, I loved the people I met there, yet eventually I drifted away from there, for what reason I cannot recall.

I've struggled ever since then with the ideals held in the Bible; what is real, what is an analogy, an idiom? Where do you draw the line between fact and fiction and is it really meant to be read literally anyway? I think my drifting away from the Church began at that age when I naturally began to question everything I knew and when things couldn't be explained I sought to find the answers elsewhere.

Strange then, isn't it, when I haven't been able to find the answers elsewhere that I've returned to the place from whence I began?

What am I seeking anyway?

I believe firmly in signs, that if you live your life in a fully aware state there are many indicators in our day to day travels which lead us in the right direction, confirm our paths or potentially, lead us astray. Many days pass I'm sure in which I'm surrounded by signs that I either do not see or fail to recognise for what they are.

There is a children’s television show, actually I don’t even know the name of it, all I know if the theme song “everything’s rosie, everything’s ro-ho-o-sie, everything’s rosie when your friend’s are around… everything’s ro-ho-o-osie-ee now…” (Okay, I just googled, the show is actually called “Everything’s Rosie”.) Monty Python sang “Always look on the bright side of life,” whistle, whistle, whistle.” Pollyanna learned to play the glad game and for many eons people have been saying “every cloud has a silver lining”.

These sentiments, whilst mostly true, fall under another old saying “easier said than done”, however another quote I read recently was “The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything” had me thinking on the theory of always looking “on the bright side” all over again. What if it really is possible to change your life just by changing your perception of the events in your life? It’s worth a try isn’t it?

These are the signs that have been thrust upon me of late; genuine silver linings around real clouds as I drive home exhausted from work, the theme song of that children's tv show, the Monty Python troupe singing to themselves randomly in my head a friend mentioning the Pollyanna game. I must start putting more effort into noticing the positives in my life, being thankful for them and emphasising them.