The 'real presence' in the Catholic ceremony of my childhood prevents me becoming a Protestant, writes MICHAEL HARDING
I WAS LOOKING out a hotel window recently, at the blue skies of London, listening to the bells of St Paul’s Cathedral, up the street, calling me to prayer.
I lay on the bed, reciting poems by Wordsworth, and later I walked up into the cathedral, and considered for a moment the prospect of becoming a Protestant.
What holds me back is the incense and the sanctuary lamp of my childhood. I grew up with that lovely red lamp, as comforting as a candle in the window at Christmas. I grew up in clouds of incense as alluring as the aroma of my mother’s apple tarts, wafting from a warm oven long ago.
For me the sanctuary lamp was the concrete manifestation of the invisible; a magical world intruding into the banality of a Cavan childhood.
The lamp hung like a pendulum, from the high dome, flickering in mid-air above the altar, and whenever the oak doors opened, a sudden wind would flurry down the aisle causing the sanctuary lamp to shudder; it was an act of nature that would have silenced Job.
And the white wafer that floated above the head of the bleary-eyed priest, at the Mass, in a cloud of his own aftershave, was not merely sign or symbol, but the very bread of angels.
I could never understand the cold stones of Protestant space; the indifferent walls, the pale windows, the blank and anonymous cross on the bare table.
The broken Jesus, stretched between the nails, thorn-headed and bleeding, was a token of love, just as precious to me as my one-eyed teddy bear.
Wittgenstein said that religious behaviour was like kissing a photograph of the beloved; but in my Catholic childhood it was not an image, but the real presence that touched my lips and tongue, and cleaved to the roof of my mouth, as I swallowed God.
In St Paul’s Cathedral there is a side chapel, where people sit and pray.
On Saturday morning I went there, and sat in the dark mahogany pews, daydreaming, and quite unexpectedly, the emptiness of the space enveloped me in a comforting, and graceful manner.
The stark room was as exquisitely chill as a Zen garden might be, to a person who has lived too long in the garish dazzle of Tibetan iconography, and in that empty vault I began to appreciate the sophistication of Protestant faith.
This mildly ecstatic moment, even before I had imbibed a Starbucks coffee or a sticky bun, set me up for the day to enjoy London as if I belonged to London, or as if London was indeed, Jerusalem.
That evening I went to see the actor Tom Hickey, performing in Beckett's Endgame; a play in which destitute humanity makes an eloquent declaration of revolt; "God, the bastard! He doesn't exist!"
Hickey was playing Nagg, a legless character imprisoned in a dustbin, whose head emerges at regular intervals, to gnaw at a bone, or offer a gesture of affection to his lady companion, who lives in the adjoining bin.
The text was beautiful, and I never saw the savage roar of Beckett’s anger and despair quite so eloquently made flesh, as by the gifted Mark Rylance.
I stood outside the stage door later, as rain lashed the roofs of taxis. Up the street, outside Bistro Italiano two waiters in black shirts and trousers were on a smoking break. They argued furiously with each other about who was the boss.
When Hickey emerged he was distraught. I asked him what the matter was.
He revealed that, as he was coming down from his dressing room to go on stage, the lift broke. He was trapped inside. He could hear voices of the other actors on stage, and knew his cue was coming in a matter of minutes but he could not break free, until finally a carpenter extracted him, and he was quickly binned, and delivered to the stage, just in time for his first line. The play continued seamlessly, without the audience being any the wiser.
Later we dined on battered haddock in a restaurant up the street and joked about his ordeal. And then he headed for the Underground and I walked back up Fleet Street.
The bells of the cathedral tolled for midnight but all I could hear in them was the magnificent and austere chime of an indifferent universe.