A church or for that matter any place of worship is supposed to engender a sense of sacredness and silence. But my observation (and very subjective one at that) of the church I have been frequenting is that it brings to me that sense of communion very infrequently. This usually falls in the periods of music and then sometimes in periods of group prayer. The rest of the time it is characterized by a busyness that I find to be antithetical to any kind of contemplative journey much less one towards the sacred.

As I have said these are very subjective personal experiences, colored by my personal beliefs and views. Perhaps the others who attend various services feel differently about them. I suspect this kind of disconnect I observe internally, perhaps has to do with the different aims with which I approach worship and how others approach worship especially in large group settings. I believe in the value of prayer in a group, in Sanskrit “Satsang”; association with the Divine that pervades all life, with and through one another. There is majesty in many voices joining together in prayer and since I believe in the value of prayer, which also has been found to be psychologically and physically effective, I would and have gladly joined in prayer in various settings. But then by natural association, for some reason only rarely is this sense of sacredness carried over in the aftermath.

What I have observed is that it’s very hard, if not impossible to extend and carry on this prayerful attitude into what devolves into a club with aims that in many cases are not congruent with the core purpose of being in a place of worship. While I don’t mean to devalue the value of any institution and community, because without those have their own key place in our lives, I do question the necessity of mixing both.

Usually the period aftermath the service is called fellowship. I perhaps understand and view fellowship very differently. So the questions I pose are what is fellowship, what is the aim of fellowship and what should be the subject of it? My observation of fellowship as I have seen it, it is largely social association and social talk. While sometime this talk does veer towards the issues of the religious institution i.e. church, most of it is outside that ken. Again while emphasizing the necessity of community or societies and the conversation that happens between people, I find this to be in opposition to my idea of sharing time together in a sacred way i.e. fellowship.

Perhaps it is this disconnectivity is what Reynolds Price experienced as well when he in his book, “Feasting the Heart” writes “my religious emotions have been seldom been fed by the churches or temples, the places where I’ve encountered a sense of power in the ground have mostly been secluded spots in fields or woods or secular rooms”. And personally my experience doesn’t differ very widely from Price’s observation. I have experienced more closely this power yesterday sitting next to a brook in a shady glade than today in a church. Wendell Berry similarly has said that to be in the greatest cathedral is to stand under a tall oak. And the best place to read the Bible is outside, because it’s a book of narrative centered about the outdoors.

If religious experience is meant to be an expansion of the self, I believe that kind of expansion can happen only in silence and solitude. How can an attitude of prayer be sustained when the talk turns to the latest vacation in some resort or that of some business matter? And can both of these be dual and complementary aims, if they are in such obvious opposition?

Then it means that I must withdraw from this “Church as the Sunday City Club” phenomenon and devise mechanisms, both ritual and place, for having a quite and sustained engagement with the driving and singular mystery of all life and all religion. Perhaps that overgrown grove of woods with the singing brook up the street and a book of contemplative poems every Sunday morning would do as I continue the search for a place where communal worship without the socializing is possible.