Bog Myrtle & Peat

The church of St Nonna stands on a slope of Bodmin Moor in the lee of trees where the rooks are nesting. It’s a place of delicate beauty and peace, and in the aftermath of rain on Sunday morning there was a smell of wet grass and wild garlic in the hammer of bells. There’s no space in my own head for the fascinating draw of church architecture; of vernacular art and the heavy, hand-carved weight of ecclesiastical furniture. It’s too much for me, and I need another obsession like I need a hole in my hand. But here I go regardless, avidly stockpiling new information about rood screens, reredoses and encaustic tiles.

There’s a wealth of inexpressible curiosity in this church. I could say there’s a Norman font and Tudor bench-ends, but really it’s beyond my ability to explain how all these ancient home-spun parts combined to leave me gawping. In the lull before the service began, I looked back to a glass window set into the tower and watched the bell-ringers working the ropes in a blunt, unmatching syncopation. They’re like wooden dolls up there; two normal-looking Englishers, stripped to their shirt-sleeves and pulling methodically as if they belonged to the mechanism itself. Some people call this a work-out, but all I could think of watching them reach and pull was the way that Herod’s men stuck the babies with an obedient, thoughtless down-strike.

The Gospel came from John 20:24-29 – the bit about “Doubting Thomas”. What better text for me, who set off in this most conservative direction because the main road appalled me. I am not on this path by any grand design; it was a recent act of rebellion, but what extraordinary comfort there is to be found in conversations which cannot be held in any other sphere, and there is too much hurt and pleasure in the world for each person to carry it alone. I’m happy to let ritual and communality bear some of that intensity, and it doesn’t matter to me that my faith is still unfound.

But I even struggle with Doubting Thomas. I call it unfair because when all the disciples saw Jesus resurrected, Thomas wasn’t there. The poor guy only heard about it afterwards, and all he asked was a chance to see what the others had been shown. For that he was cursed forever-after as man who could not accept the Truth without proof, and it makes no sense that the verses should close with praise for those who believe, even if they have not seen. After a story about people who believe because they have seen, the sentiment is oddly contradictory.

After the service, the priest came down the pews and we talked about this wrinkle. I was surprised when he agreed, and comforted by a sense that it’s acceptable to wonder why. It’s reassuring to remember that absolute belief is not mandatory; critical engagement is enough to make new and separate spaces in your head and even they can free you up from the endless heft of your day. Our conversation overflowed in a hundred potential directions as the parishioners mumbled and filed out of the granite doorway into the rainsoaked primroses. He apologised for the modest turnout, explaining that COVID and other causes have thinned the congregation to a skeleton crew; in a wider sense, he also thought perhaps it was time for the church to go out into the community and find a new place for itself, away from the older fortress mentality. I replied that this argument would have better traction in some dull parish like my own where the kirk is plain and mouldy. But the Church of St Nonna is the most spirtitually obvious place I have ever seen, and if people do not choose to worship there then no amount of chasing will catch them. He laughed politely.

Then later I borrowed a pen to scribble down some of the details of our conversation; the ideas of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Easy Discipleship, not because that’s a path I choose to follow but only because the world is just so burningly fascinating, and on a rare peak between troughs, I want to consume it all this morning and now. Having followed up on Bonhoeffer, I am reassured that while faith carries the hallmarks of a stifling establishment, belief can still be a radical act. This is no Nazi Germany, but peace of mind is hard to find these days.