One Hand Clapping

It happens remarkably seldom that I have proper theological conversations with anyone at all, much though that may surprise people. Yesterday my visiting brought me to a council tenant in some of the new houses down the hill who was somewhat bemused to greet me at the door, a young couple relocating to the parish from Fulham and who were apparently very excited to have a visit from the rector - or it may have been hysteria caused by the stress of moving - and a new member of the congregation. Conrad is of mixed Polish-Irish extraction and had a traumatic education at the hands of an authoritarian group of Jesuits some fifty years ago, and spent thirty years as a Buddhist before finding his way back to Christianity over the last year or so. 

"I kept waking up and feeling thankful," explained Conrad, "and no matter what I did the feeling wouldn't go away. Gratitude makes no sense in Buddhism: the world is something to be liberated from, and in any case there is nothing to be thankful to. Gratitude implies a relationship."

Conrad went at first to a church not far away, then "feeling I ought to go back to the True Faith" visited a local church of the Roman observance on the morning the hapless priest had to read out a statement from the bishop denouncing same-sex marriage. So he dipped his toe in the water at Swanvale Halt and decided to stay. 

I doubt, sadly, his experience is especially typical ...