Natural yogurt.

Okay folks, it is family time on Natural Yogurt. Readers by now will know that I am an Atheist but yesterday I was press-ganged into a church. Oliver was being Christened at the Church of the Resurrection, just down the road from us along the Grand Avenue in Ely, Cardiff. There were 2 children being Christened yesterday but we did not know the other family at the church. The Church of the Resurrection is a branch of the Church in Wales but this blog post is not about the differences in the liturgy between Anglicans , I will leave that to my dad.

What affected me was the patience of the Priest conducting his service. Here he was doing his day job in front of a group of strangers. These people were not Christians but people who had come along to see Oliver and another child "get done". These people were not members of his church but consumers of a service. These people would not normally dress like this on a Sunday morning but appeared to be dressed for a court appearance to support the defendant. These people would not be there next week unless it was a funeral or a wedding of someone close to them.

In my day job driving coaches, passengers ignore announcements on the microphone and the CD player. The passengers do not control their noisy and badly behaved children. Passengers drone on and on into mobile telephones. At night you can get distracted by camera flashes.

The Priest has the very same problems in his day job. He started his service by pleading with anyone who would listen, to switch off their mobile telephones and not take photographs until the end. His attitude to children was different as he said it was okay for them to be noisy and run around.

We then had the very short Christening service that followed a laminated 2 side of A4 paper sheet. Yes, the children were noisy and the adults chatted amongst themselves. I was not aware of any telephone use or camera flashes but the adults were clearly not paying much attention. It looked more like a large queue at McDonalds and the adults slowly making their way to the counter.

At the end I felt rather sad for the Priest. Here was a crowd of people who had come along simply to get a child "done" - like a vaccination at the doctors. There seemed no respect for his religion from the crowd and he may as well have treated his service as an audition for the X Factor and sang a hymn. I am an Atheist but still feel offended that this crowd of people abused his religion just to get their child "done". This was a show for the parents and the children did not ask to be Christened. This cheapens religion no matter which religion, if any, you practice. I went to the Christening because it was a family thing and I was expected to go. The Priest was there because it was his day job. The Priest is a very patient man and I know how he feels when he speaks and knows he may as well be speaking to a brick wall.