i was in church yesterday

I went to church yesterday. Now that is almost as close to me saying that I signed up a GIRO donation scheme to NKF. The last time I was in church was probably two years ago, when I was young, naïve and attached. I was probably only there to keep my then significant other company. Or perhaps, it was just to bring back memories of the days in St. Andrews, where Wednesday chapel lessons meant more about not having to stay in classrooms rather than to get in touch with divinity.

I am not Christian, I do not have a religion, actually, I don’t really know what I am. If I have to be labelled and categorised for the benefit of national statistics, all I can say is that I am not atheist, because I do pray in my most desperate hour, but my prayers are addressed to ‘whom it may concern.’

I asked dad when I was little, what is our religion and he said “free-thinker”. I think he meant free to think whatever made sense, rather than ‘no religion’ as what most others brand us. Typically together with a look of pity that my family and I have bought the wrong ticket for a train that departs to some nasty destination where they don’t serve bacon and eggs for breakfast.

Sometimes it is difficult to be a ‘free-thinker’ when they don’t come with printed instructions as to what we were supposed to do. The Bible, Quran, and Sutras are like street directories in a rented car where members, and only members of Thrifty get to refer to when negotiating their way through the tapestry of life. The only guidelines I have are certain principles and values that I cling onto just to make sense of the world around me. I really don’t know how they got there, because my parents did not sit me down on Sunday mornings and drill Confucius teachings in me. At some level, I probably picked up some cheesy notions of societal dogma from Hong Kong movies. But the larger part of it is probably through watching my parents adhere so staunchly to these values that it only makes sense that I follow them. I am really happy about this system, because I don’t need to have ‘thou shall be filial to thy parents’ engraved on stone for me. I know that my children will not send me to a home, because I am not going to do so to my parents.

I like being a free-thinker; one who is free to think and believe in whatever that makes sense. It makes sense to me that I am not perfect and I do wrong, and my concept of sin is if you don’t learn and do it again. It makes sense to me that happiness is a paradoxical pursuit, because the drive to achieve your wants may bring pleasure but so does not having the wants in the first place. It makes sense to me that values, love and kindness are passed forward as how my parents are passing them on to me, and I will repay them on to my children. At the same time, if I ever get to meet God, I will like to thank him, because even though I don’t sing a lot of songs about him, I know that he saved many of my friends who are using his street directory.

I am not Christian per say, not exactly Buddhist, and I think that Confucius is a really cool teacher. I am a free-thinker, and probably a naïve one, because I like to believe that different religion and creed have no reason not to co-exist; we all journey through the same tapestry of life, just using a different street directory to find the way that makes the most sense, and maybe, just maybe with a bit of luck, find happiness along the way.