This post is a direct response to the Occupy protest that took place within the walls of St Paul's Cathedral today (I'm writing this on Sunday night). I wasn't going to write this, because the whole thing made me so angry, and I didn't want to post something I would later regret. I certainly don't want to hurt anyone, although I know it is inevitable that at least one person might not understand where I am coming from. Those of you who know me, or who read this blog with any regularity, know that I stay away from political discussion in this space - not because I do not care, but because I have always wanted this to be a place of peace. On this occasion however, I had such a visceral response to the story that it was impossible for me not to say something.
I am not going to proffer an opinion as to the "right-ness" or "wrong-ness" of what the Occupy movement stands for. What I do have a problem with is the way in which they have chosen to make their protest in this specific instance. For those of you who have not been near a television, newspaper or the internet in the last day or so, on the evening of Sunday the 14th of October, four women from the Occupy movement chained themselves to the pulpit in St. Paul's Cathedral. During Evensong. According to a statement from St. Paul's, the women interrupted the service, shouted a list of grievances and read from the Bible. The service then continued as the women remained chained to the pulpit, and they received communion, with the priests taking the service coming over to the pulpit to give it to them.
What offends me about this, what I think is wrong, is the fact that these protestors interrupted a service to make their point. Were the big banks present? No. Was much of the church hierarchy present? No. Who, then, was probably most affected by what was happening? I think that it was probably the members of the congregation. The people who are the church, the people who need the church. People who had come to worship, people who had come to praise, people who had come for solace, or for a million other reasons we cannot know.
There have been times in my life when the only thing that has stood between me and the abyss was the church. I have been at the end of my tether, despondent, not knowing where to turn - but I knew I could go to church, and find comfort in the presence of my God. I knew there was one place I could find peace, forgiveness, love, solace. There have been times when the noise in my head was almost too much to bear, when so much was happening in my life that was beyond awful. And always, always, I knew there was somewhere I could be safe. There was somewhere I could go to talk to God, or not talk to Him. To just be in His presence, to let the words and music of a service wash over me even if I could not participate because I was in so much pain.
So to think that I could have gone into a church, any church, looking for calm, peace, comfort, or whatever else it is a soul may be yearning for when they step into God's house, and I might have had it taken from me in the name of a political agenda, however worthy, makes me furious. It fills me with rage. It's not even about respect, although I do think there are more respectful ways to make a point. It is about forcibly taking something from someone when you have no idea what that time might have meant to them. Even thinking about it feels like a violation.
If, on any of those (numerous) times I had been sitting in church, trying to get something from the service or just trying to feel God with me, and this had happened to me, it could easily have pushed me over the edge. When the church, her worship and the people in it have been the only things giving me hope, I cannot begin to imagine what it would have been like to have that whipped out from under my feet when I most needed it. There have been moments when but for the church, but for certain good, kind, loving, giving people within her, but for the glimpse of peace vouchsafed me by an Evensong or a Eucharist, I might have ended my life.
So, I hope the protestors think about this the next time they are planning something like this. I hope they ask themselves whom they are really hurting. Is it Wall Street? Goldman Sachs? The church hierarchy? Or is it more likely to be, here and now, in this moment, someone who just needed the church to be there for them, to give them the strength to keep on living, just one more day.
