I grew up in the Church of England.

Most people I know did in one way or another, be that through school assemblies, church going, sunday school or having to attend services at Christmas etc. None of them seemed to want to be there at the time and certainly there are very few (if any) people who I know who still actually go to church or practice their faith regularly. At the time, predominantly between the ages of 7-17, I was in church for 3 reasons:

1) My parents told me I was going / took me there / had no choice
2) I was in the church choir, as was my brother and father
3) I went to a CofE school and it was named after the church we went to as it was in the parish.

Of late, I've been reflecting a lot on what I'm made of and how I've come to be, questioning how probable it is that I could have escaped the first 20 years of my life that was attached to the church and moved on and away from it now that I'm in my 30's.

The truth is for a long while - probably nearly 15 years, I've hated the church. I resented the fact that it left my weekends bound to the church building and the choir for over a decade and that when everyone else was out doing cool stuff, day tripping and playing in football clubs - I was in church, wearing robes and singing like a prize pillock.

Thing is, I was good at it. I was head boy, a very competent soloist and south east finalist for choirboy of the year. But why was I doing it? On reflection (despite being forced) it was because I wanted my parents to be proud of me. And proud of me they were in the context of music and church life.

So, was the whole thing just a load of bollocks? I mean, I resented it all so much that surely I must have hated the whole thing. Wasting my childhood in services with the old grannies at the back who liked the old skool Jesus hits.

To be frank, I think as time has gone by - for all I learnt about music, I also took in more than I'd been able to be aware of from those preaching the liturgy and from the words in the hymns, anthems and motets. How do I know that? Mainly because I seem to have an inherent belief in having a soul and I think I'm pretty much assured of the fact I have a sense of spirituality. Is there a God - be that a being, entity, or reason for everything being without any linked personification? My thoughts are only just crystalising but in short hand, yes. I reckon there are things at work that I don't understand and that things do happen for a reason. That's not to say God is up there pulling strings, but I do genuinely feel like there are things out of our control that we've not been able to explain.

And what of Christianity. I could write for hours. To me, religion is a side tracking away from a direct relationship with the universe. A true relationship to everything 'else' than you seems to me to be something we all strive for, living our lives both inside our selve and outside ourselves. I've never met anyone who doesn't understand what it means to have faith in something other than themselves (be that friends, situations, jobs, hopes, dreams, wishes) even if they won't class it as God. And due to the fact that every religion on the planet can be right, the only thing I'm sure of is that in trusting that we don't know it all yet and that no calculation has been able to provide us with any better moral codes or traditions to pass on than the religions have (as maths can be wrong as frequently as religions are when you add in a new variable), I find myself at 31 looking back on my 13 year old self and realising that the church at least gave me an objectifying eye - where analogous stories help tell truths in life despite their factual unlikeliness.

Do I have faith - yes. I think I do because the opposite of faith (as I overhead last night) is certainty. I am not certain of ANYTHING in life which means I must have faith in it and with that comes the premise that God may exist and in having faith in the world I must also have room for a faith in the idea of God even though I believe religion is a distracting analogy for those who need a simple real world explanation for almost everything.

No doubt I will think more about this over time and having been part of a philosophical/religious discussion group once a week for the last year - I think I'm only now being able to join the dots.

So finally, I leave you with something that someone said to me yesterday. 'Many people want to treat religion as a dip in dip out excercise, where they want to jump from one dot to the next in no sense of order, not understanding the mean behind analogies - assuming they are factual things to be disputed or that come across as non-sensicle.' Like most join the dot puzzles, you have to join the dots in the right order to be able to see the picture at the end and only at the end will be able to appreciate the whole.'

In my first 30 years I do feel like I've been jumping around from dot to dot, trying to draw my own life out without stepping back allowing myself to be guided from the heart more than the head. As Sting said 'Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot (he'll guide you well)'.

I wonder what picture the dots will bring to me in the long run if I just have a little more faith .....