May Angels Watch Me While I Sleep

I've always thought that I didn't have much of a religious upbringing, but lying in bed the other day 'Praying to Imaginary God' for the sake of a friend's unborn baby (status: critical) I suddenly realised I knew two prayers off by heart, which I was tought to say each night in my pyjamas before going to bed. The first we were taught was clearly designed to reinforce the protestant work ethic:

Jesus grant me every day,
That I might work as well as play.
Help me to learn and understand.
Please guide my mind and guide my hand.
Amen.

I think that poem may even have come with a picture book, but even as a child I seemed to instinctively have less interest in religious picture books than ones about happy dogs called Scamp. A later addition - with a less overt message, although possibly more redolent of a world filled with vampires - came this prayer:

Lord keep me safe this night,
Secure from all my fears,
May angels watch me while I sleep,
'til morning light appears.
Amen.

It occurs to me, the more I probe my mind for religious material, that my mother would spend every morning reading from the Bible while drying her hair, although there was never indication that the same was expected of me.

A number of church trips also spring to mind. I was christened in All Saints Parish Church on Kirkgate, and I recall at least three trips there on a Sunday for a service. These were unbearably mundane affairs: sitting on hard wooden seats (why the hell are the cushions always on the floor?), listening to complex parables intended for adults, and singing drab songs to which no-one knows the tune.

I was not a patient child, and I suspect my fidgeting and open expressions of boredom during these early trips would have quickly put paid to the idea of taking me to church again. I remember during my last trip there as a child - perhaps aged five - I was shown a numbered plastic token hanging on a hook on a wooden board, which I was supposed to turn over when I attended services in future so that the vicar could keep track of attendance. It is no exagerration to say that I do not recall ever turning that token over.

My father is a devout atheist, so I suspect there was pressure at home to stop taking me to church too (he certainly never came along). Still, my mum was not defeated and one year decided to take us to an evangelical church in a school hall near our house. Her reasoning was that there would be less droning and more singing and clapping, which would really engage the children.

Alas, the 'church' comprised us standing in a circle in a school hall and a man screaming "Can you feel it? Can you feel god's love?" and the more regular members of the grouping swooning and screaming about how yes, indeed, they could feel God's love. My mum is a very polite woman and would not typically wish to offend, but even her faith has limits and after about 20 minutes she grabbed my brother and I by the hand and marched out before things got any more extreme. This was probably a good thing, as I was quite getting into it.

At the back of my head is a memory which claims that during the evangelical service someone daubed their hands in red and started talking in tongues. I cannot vouch for this, but I cannot rule it out.

And since then, I've had no religious influences on me. Attending a Comprehensive School my R.E. lessons were of course strictly pantheist, and so we spent much more time learning about Omega Point (a mystical place in the outer realms of the galaxy where all the positive thoughts go and, when we've all been sufficiently positive, a rainbow space-bridge will open up and suck us all into heaven) as we did the Church of England (a mystical place in middle England with fully no mystical rainbow space-bridges). We also watched Lord of the Flies and Amadeus during R.E., and the only lesson to stick with me was learning not to say "My pen has run out" (if you did, the teacher would open the door and urge you to chase after it. Ho fucking ho).

And that is my life in religion. And yet somehow, when I attended a small Bible Study class at the Carlisle chapter of the Church of Christ in Pennsylvania during the Summer of 1997, I was able to convince the Minister I was a good and devout Christian and thus secure myself lodgings for the summer. But as I've said before, that's an entirely different story.

[Time: Passim]