British

The thing about St. Andrew's Anglican Church in Zurich is, I'd like to like to go there: I think the Anglicans have their priorities a lot straighter than the Catholics and it would be nice to go to services in English. But, oh, they are sooooo British. You know how when immigrants carry their culture to a new place, that culture gets frozen in time? The ladies of St. Andrew's remind me very much of the ladies of the League of Friends at the Royal Marsden Cancer Hospital, Surrey, where I did my PhD. The Friends, a group of elderly ladies seemingly time-machined direct from the 1960s, ran a little café that served simple sandwiches at lunchtime and currant buns with lashings of butter in the afternoon. And tea, of course. Oh, those buns were delicious. But I digress. In any case, we don't go to church at St. Andrew's. But I stalk them on Facebook and try to go to events that sound interesting.

Which is to say that last Saturday I bribed the kids and Dan with the prospect of real scones and dragged them to the St. Andrew's Christmas Bazaar. Which was? Sooooo British. Right inside the door was a kindly-looking older man selling Remembrance Day poppies; across from him was a stand of ladies selling homemade Christmas crackers (!). There were cakes and scones for sale, and a whole stand of British foodstuffs like Branston Pickle and lemon curd. And a café serving tea (what else?) and some kind of open-faced egg salad sandwich things (ooh, more flashbacks to my studentship days). And a kids' corner and a white elephant sale and two whole rooms full of English books. It was the books, of course, that were my real motivation for coming, and sure enough an hour or so later we were leaving with one (1) new lunch thermos for Caroline, a package of Christmas crackers, a bag of scones, a sugar cookie hand-decorated by Christopher, and three (3) new books. So we (and they) did pretty well.

Cracking!

My book is "Religion for Atheists" by Alain de Botton, which I'm enjoying. It's not great - I don't get the impression that he bothered to do a ton of research before writing it, and the number of women mentioned in the book is alarmingly low - but his thesis that religions perform important social functions that are lacking in secular society is one I'm interested in. He tries to imagine new practices entirely divorced from the world of religion; I'm more interested in adapting the practices we already have - and particularly our language around them - to make them accessible to people who aren't willing to surrender their intellects at the door. Which is most people, these days? But contrary to what I often hear in churchy circles, I don't think that these people are superficial or that they don't want or need spiritual support; it's just that they don't want or need to associate with institutions who refuse to accept them as they are. I think we can do better.