As I stood in the Easter Service at the school yesterday, I didn't know whether to find the whole event quite nice or utterly ridiculous. I never went to a religious school myself, I'm not religious in the usual sense of the word. Consequently, I felt both warm and cold - warm at heart and cold in the knowledge that most students (and staff) were also non-believers. Arm-twisted by authority to attend (if only the kids realised it's not so different being a teacher). But they seemed so different, as stern-faced and unsmiling they stalked the walkways, making vicious and prolonged eye contact with anyone who spoke. The discipline was quite unprecedented, I've never before witnessed anything like it at the school. Despite this, the overheating hall bristled with repressed discomfort and irritation. The uniforms were crisp and neat, the silence was almost complete, as the odd rebel was shifted to a more well-staffed spot.
The vicar was different; a large, joyous black lady. Vibrant, faithful and the antithesis of the pervasive atmosphere. There were sniggers muffled by smiles, red faces covering resentment. There was the odd intrigued soul, who held out their palms for the bread and wine with some hint of solemnity. There were the silent, raging teachers who are always angry. There were open-hearted evangelists too, singing high-pitched and nasal in this white Christian school. Every so often, the projector displaying the lyrics malfunctioned, and we were left with only the evangelists and the dutifully rumbling song of the teachers.
Some guy took to the stage to talk about brokenness. He got two kids up to try and put a broken easter egg back together (why do they always choose the badly behaved ones?) Needless to say, they failed in fitting the pieces back together, point being that once broken, things are very hard to fix. He talked about broken dreams, fractured communities and natural disaster. He tried to empower the kids to do their part in keeping things whole, or repairing our broken world in their own, individual ways. Unfortunately, it all had to come back to the limiting banner of Christianity. It should be 'your faith' (as if the majority of the audience had any) that inspired you acts of goodness and compassion. To most teenagers, it sullies a powerful image, because it severs their ownership over the act.
Yesterday, as I often have in the past, I silently rolled around the question - can we not be the good samaritan simply for ourselves and each other - must it always be for faith in a specific God of a particular religion, or under threat of Hellfire?! Is there not an all encompassing faith, a spiritual path we can all follow which might also include all the different religions. It's a wild and beautiful dream I suppose. If I ran a school, we would use readings from all kinds of disparate scriptures. The Bible, The Qu'ran, yes, but also The Dalai Lama's books, Krishnamurti and Kahlil Gibran's 'The Prophet'. The school of pluralism. I'd also introduce aromatherapy, meditation and yoga to the curriculum, to name but a few!
The whole thing became long and ridiculous in parts, most notedly - the piano and vocal solo which has to be the most embarrassingly white Christian performance I've ever had to witness. Bless him, he enjoyed it, but it was really awful. It made me itch for a gospel choir or some kind of 'Sister Act' hymn singing. However, I did enjoy the ritual of the service, even the singing, at times. It was somehow pleasant and spoke of community of a kind rarely found in contemporary society. I smiled, I even almost shed a tear when a candle was lit for a teacher who died a few years back. I had to exercise serious control to send the tears back down from their welling up point, despite never having known the woman.
It touched me to observe teenagers blushing in the face of a blessing. I felt sure that they knew they were loved in that moment, somewhere in the labyrinthian confusion that is a teenage soul. The intention of the Christian ethos, is of course, good, but like so many things in our human world - it's expression is, ironically, one of brokenness. The facade of many in the face of the truth. When the vicar spoke of peace, love, of us all being brothers and sisters, I recognised my own religion and felt blessed. As British schools cast off the final remnants of the cloak of religion, we must start to provide some alternative, in terms of the spiritual, holistic education of the whole child.
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