< am feeling more and more uncomfortable about tonight. And I wonder now how hard it is for non-Christian young people in this situation. It must feel very alienating and exclusionary.>
Rambi, I've stood holding hands in a circle in California while they prayed for my safe trip to London. I've sung in church with friends who had become new-age Christians. Our daughter was Mary carrying a baby [aged about 10] in a school Christmas show in a big church full of maybe 1000 people. I've experienced the magic of theatre [at the level of pantomime as an actor dragged in to fill some parts] and the prosaic world of reality in drab, bricky, grey, wet and cold Antwerp.
We are non-Christian and they are great experiences. I've never felt alienated or excluded. Our children don't seem to have either. On the contrary.
Go with the flow and enjoy the show and fantasy, be it theatre of the deliberately fake type or the self-deceiving world of superstition. I am happy to be excluded from Aztec-style religious rituals involving heart hacking, and Islamic Jihadic hand, or head, hacking, or olde-style Christian old testament tortures and burnings at the stake.
Mqurice
PS: Forgetting lines on stage in front of 1000 people was a peculiar experience, with the magic suddenly disappearing, and the reality arriving, of being on the wrong side of the world, dressed as King Richard, on a stage, with everyone waiting to see what was going to happen next. "What am I doing here?" was top of mind. Life's a giggle. Okay, I'm not young, but our children were and they were fine and cope well with all sorts of weird beliefs. |
