Why Me? by Guy Ranawake, Sunday 11 March 2018 at St John the Baptist, Holland Road
Why Me? by Guy Ranawake, Sunday 11 March 2018 at St John the Baptist, Holland Road
Why Me?
Good evening, everybody. I think I’m very pleased to be here at Father Peter’s invitation as part of the Why Me series of talks – the type of invitation that it is very difficult to say no to!
By way of introduction, my name is Guy Ranawake. I’m the child of first-generation immigrants – one of whom, my mother, is here today - London born and bred, having grown up in the Bad Lands of Camden before moving to the Wild West of Kensington, or more precisely Gordon Place by the Elephant & Castle pub.
I have been attending St. Georges in Campden Hill on an irregular basis for the last 15 years following the birth of my daughters, Maya and Sasha, and now sit on its PCC.
I have to be very honest with you that I never expected to be standing here today in front of a congregation trying to explain my relationship to God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. It is certainly not a subject that I have tried to discuss in any detail with family or friends. I have always been rather reserved in my manner. As my Sri Lankan father used to say – “You are too bloody English!”.
However, I believe it is sometimes helpful to be pushed outside one’s comfort zone and I guess that this is one of those occasions.
In preparation for this evening’s talk, I decided to do some research on the religious practices of my ancestors. On my father’s side, the Ranawake’s were among the Ceylonese who were forcibly baptised Roman Catholic in Portuguese times and who remained loosely attached to Rome with some family members converting to Buddhism in the meantime. But on my German mother’s side, I was surprised to discover that there was a continuous line of six Protestant vicars all the way through to the beginning of the 20th Century.
However, by the time of my arrival into the world, it would be fair to say that we were an enlightened if not a particularly religious family. As a 1968-er, my parents decided that I should not be baptised as a young child but rather should be able to make my own conscious decision about whether I wanted to be admitted to the Church or not.
As a teenager, I was fortunate enough to go Westminster School in London. Our school chaplain was the Reverend Willie Booth, a gentle Ulsterman, who later became Sub-Dean of the Chapels Royal at St. James and Chaplain to HM The Queen. He was a very kind and compassionate man who not only was much liked by both fellow teachers as well as pupils but also ensured that we should all be aware of the very different circumstances of those less fortunate than ourselves.
In particular, he was very committed to the work of PHAB – a charity that brings together those with and those without physical disabilities to share life on equal terms. This included organising a week at the end of the summer term where groups of disabled young people came along to live alongside an equal number of pupils and to share a carefully prepared programme of activities.
And I suspect that it was under Willie Booth’s pastoral influence that I decided first to be baptised in St. Margaret’s Church, adjacent to Westminster Abbey, at the ripe old age of 13 before being confirmed shortly thereafter in the Abbey itself.
Regular service attendance thereafter was not difficult to achieve as the whole school, both believers and non-believers, was required to troop into the Abbey three times a week. And while there was certainly plenty of ritual, it was difficult to undertake serious spiritual contemplation when trying to avoid having one’s school jacket being deliberately caught on the prayer cushion hook while simultaneously trying to impress the sixth form girls.
However, what I did learn from those days was:
(i) To try and behave in line with the clear moral code contained in the Bible,
(ii) To give and take comfort from the strong sense of community engendered by both the Abbey and the School, and finally
(iii) To appreciate the spiritual benefits that beautiful spaces can bring to troubled thoughts.
And I continued to try and follow these principles through the aptly named Jesus College, Cambridge, and on to a professional life that included overseas stints in Berlin, Budapest and Melbourne before returning to London in 2003.
During this time, I met my lovely wife-to-be, Jacqueline King, culminating in a service of blessing in a little church in a romantic medieval hamlet in Tuscany. We had hoped that Willie Booth, my old school chaplain, would have been able to officiate but he had more important engagements including the lying in-state of the Queen Mother who somewhat inconveniently had decided to pass away at the same time as our wedding.
Instead, we had the not-quite-so-nice Don Mario – if you can imagine a somewhat grumpy Friar Tuck figure - who insisted that he would only speak from the heart rather than agreeing to commit his thoughts in writing for the impatient printers who were waiting back in London to finalise the order of service. The main thing I remember were his words confirming that the service was “neither legally nor religiously binding.”
Fortunately, we had the foresight to have the legal wedding service a few weeks earlier at a stud farm located in the wineries of Victoria, Australia, administered by our lovely ex-alcoholic celebrant.
I think that it would be fair to say that during this time I was a very inconsistent attendee of Church of England services, focusing on baptisms, weddings and funerals of friends and family, with an occasional Christmas or Easter Service thrown in for good measure.
This began to change with the birth of our two daughters, Maya and Sasha. We were looking to have the children baptised in one of the neighbourhood churches and were very warmly welcomed by Father Michael Fuller who was the then priest-in-charge at St. George’s who made it very clear that the most important thing was that the children were to be welcomed into the Church, irrespective of the regularity of attendance of services by either the parents or the respective sets of god parents.
Our goodwill towards St. George’s was further strengthened by the very wonderful Margaret Houston, our Families Pastor. Margaret has organised a number of events for the children in our community, including week long recreations of the Narnia stories, faith weekends away as well as regular Sunday school.
This encouraged both my myself and my daughters to become more regular attendees of St. George’s, culminating in Maya’s confirmation at St. Paul’s Cathedral and my participation as a reader at the regular Sunday services which allowed me to reconnect to the Bible and to understand how it is still so relevant to the way we lead our everyday lives.
Echoing the same themes of my earlier experience of the Church as a schoolboy, it is this combination of (i) the teaching of the Bible’s strong moral code through the Sunday morning service, (ii) the strong sense of community engendered by our current clergy comprising Father James, Father Peter and Father Neil and (iii) the welcoming space of Saint George’s itself that has helped support my and my family’s spiritual and emotional growth.
And now, much to the surprise of myself and perhaps of others who know me well, I find myself here today, speaking to you about my own spiritual journey, a regular member of the St. George’s congregation and PCC, albeit with a still less than perfect attendance record.
Thank you.
Why Me?
Good evening, everybody. I think I’m very pleased to be here at Father Peter’s invitation as part of the Why Me series of talks – the type of invitation that it is very difficult to say no to!
By way of introduction, my name is Guy Ranawake. I’m the child of first-generation immigrants – one of whom, my mother, is here today - London born and bred, having grown up in the Bad Lands of Camden before moving to the Wild West of Kensington, or more precisely Gordon Place by the Elephant & Castle pub.
I have been attending St. Georges in Campden Hill on an irregular basis for the last 15 years following the birth of my daughters, Maya and Sasha, and now sit on its PCC.
I have to be very honest with you that I never expected to be standing here today in front of a congregation trying to explain my relationship to God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. It is certainly not a subject that I have tried to discuss in any detail with family or friends. I have always been rather reserved in my manner. As my Sri Lankan father used to say – “You are too bloody English!”.
However, I believe it is sometimes helpful to be pushed outside one’s comfort zone and I guess that this is one of those occasions.
In preparation for this evening’s talk, I decided to do some research on the religious practices of my ancestors. On my father’s side, the Ranawake’s were among the Ceylonese who were forcibly baptised Roman Catholic in Portuguese times and who remained loosely attached to Rome with some family members converting to Buddhism in the meantime. But on my German mother’s side, I was surprised to discover that there was a continuous line of six Protestant vicars all the way through to the beginning of the 20th Century.
However, by the time of my arrival into the world, it would be fair to say that we were an enlightened if not a particularly religious family. As a 1968-er, my parents decided that I should not be baptised as a young child but rather should be able to make my own conscious decision about whether I wanted to be admitted to the Church or not.
As a teenager, I was fortunate enough to go Westminster School in London. Our school chaplain was the Reverend Willie Booth, a gentle Ulsterman, who later became Sub-Dean of the Chapels Royal at St. James and Chaplain to HM The Queen. He was a very kind and compassionate man who not only was much liked by both fellow teachers as well as pupils but also ensured that we should all be aware of the very different circumstances of those less fortunate than ourselves.
In particular, he was very committed to the work of PHAB – a charity that brings together those with and those without physical disabilities to share life on equal terms. This included organising a week at the end of the summer term where groups of disabled young people came along to live alongside an equal number of pupils and to share a carefully prepared programme of activities.
And I suspect that it was under Willie Booth’s pastoral influence that I decided first to be baptised in St. Margaret’s Church, adjacent to Westminster Abbey, at the ripe old age of 13 before being confirmed shortly thereafter in the Abbey itself.
Regular service attendance thereafter was not difficult to achieve as the whole school, both believers and non-believers, was required to troop into the Abbey three times a week. And while there was certainly plenty of ritual, it was difficult to undertake serious spiritual contemplation when trying to avoid having one’s school jacket being deliberately caught on the prayer cushion hook while simultaneously trying to impress the sixth form girls.
However, what I did learn from those days was:
(i) To try and behave in line with the clear moral code contained in the Bible,
(ii) To give and take comfort from the strong sense of community engendered by both the Abbey and the School, and finally
(iii) To appreciate the spiritual benefits that beautiful spaces can bring to troubled thoughts.
And I continued to try and follow these principles through the aptly named Jesus College, Cambridge, and on to a professional life that included overseas stints in Berlin, Budapest and Melbourne before returning to London in 2003.
During this time, I met my lovely wife-to-be, Jacqueline King, culminating in a service of blessing in a little church in a romantic medieval hamlet in Tuscany. We had hoped that Willie Booth, my old school chaplain, would have been able to officiate but he had more important engagements including the lying in-state of the Queen Mother who somewhat inconveniently had decided to pass away at the same time as our wedding.
Instead, we had the not-quite-so-nice Don Mario – if you can imagine a somewhat grumpy Friar Tuck figure - who insisted that he would only speak from the heart rather than agreeing to commit his thoughts in writing for the impatient printers who were waiting back in London to finalise the order of service. The main thing I remember were his words confirming that the service was “neither legally nor religiously binding.”
Fortunately, we had the foresight to have the legal wedding service a few weeks earlier at a stud farm located in the wineries of Victoria, Australia, administered by our lovely ex-alcoholic celebrant.
I think that it would be fair to say that during this time I was a very inconsistent attendee of Church of England services, focusing on baptisms, weddings and funerals of friends and family, with an occasional Christmas or Easter Service thrown in for good measure.
This began to change with the birth of our two daughters, Maya and Sasha. We were looking to have the children baptised in one of the neighbourhood churches and were very warmly welcomed by Father Michael Fuller who was the then priest-in-charge at St. George’s who made it very clear that the most important thing was that the children were to be welcomed into the Church, irrespective of the regularity of attendance of services by either the parents or the respective sets of god parents.
Our goodwill towards St. George’s was further strengthened by the very wonderful Margaret Houston, our Families Pastor. Margaret has organised a number of events for the children in our community, including week long recreations of the Narnia stories, faith weekends away as well as regular Sunday school.
This encouraged both my myself and my daughters to become more regular attendees of St. George’s, culminating in Maya’s confirmation at St. Paul’s Cathedral and my participation as a reader at the regular Sunday services which allowed me to reconnect to the Bible and to understand how it is still so relevant to the way we lead our everyday lives.
Echoing the same themes of my earlier experience of the Church as a schoolboy, it is this combination of (i) the teaching of the Bible’s strong moral code through the Sunday morning service, (ii) the strong sense of community engendered by our current clergy comprising Father James, Father Peter and Father Neil and (iii) the welcoming space of Saint George’s itself that has helped support my and my family’s spiritual and emotional growth.
And now, much to the surprise of myself and perhaps of others who know me well, I find myself here today, speaking to you about my own spiritual journey, a regular member of the St. George’s congregation and PCC, albeit with a still less than perfect attendance record.
Thank you.