Whether we believe in God or not we can all agree religion is a human construct. I like this poem Church Going by Philip Larkin.
The title contains a pun as the poet visits a church and imagines how in the distant future people's memory of what churches were for might disappear.
He wonders whether the last to remember will be architectural fans, antique lovers or people with a fetish for Christmas. Or, he asks, will the 'cross of earth' retain its power because of the weight of human business - births, marriages, deaths - that has gone on there?
Here's an excerpt:
I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,
Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
(Above is St Luke's Church in Liverpool city centre...it was bombed during the blitz in the second world war and remains as a monument.)
I count myself with Larkin here. Churches will always have a power even if, as in my view, it is built of human history and longing.
Now, on a less melancholy note.................
Been catsitting this weekend and listening to music and reading.
Hard to read with this on though.... I love it when the chewy bass kicks in.
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssJfWcj4dK0[/url]
Fuck yeah!