Experiences of God in childhood
Teach us, good Lord,
to serve you as you deserve,
to give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not to heed the wounds,
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labour and not to ask for any reward,
save that of knowing that we do your will.
Amen.
St. Ignatius of Loyola
Prior to any philosophical investigations, the atmosphere in which I was brought up assumed God’s existence just as much as the Queen’s existence or the atmosphere’s existence. I had seen them but was aware of them as authority figures and was told that it was God who had created me.
Nevertheless, when I was very young, I cannot remember exactly when, I tried what was partly an experiment and partly because I was curious. One night I left out two pieces of paper and asked God to write me a letter and asked that my grandma would write me a letter. I think I realised that this was a prayer which was not likely to be answered and when I looked at the blank sheets in the morning I wasn’t surprised. Nevertheless, that didn’t make me doubt God’s existence, just that this was part of the way God related to us.
The first was during school assemblies, which, at that time included Christian prayers, and having the words of these prayers resonate with me and often challenge me. I knew in my heart that these were more than just words but that there was something greater here. That the God we were praying to was really there.
The second was an event during teenage years when I had a very strong awareness that God was with me and that that was a good thing and that God was the source of peace, purpose and meaning. Something I wanted to cultivate.
During my early life, I also had a number of subjective experiences of God being there and very close even though He could not be seen.
When I was about 8 or 9 years old, in the days when school assemblies had a strong Christian basis, some of the prayers which were said made a strong impression on me, including the prayer of St. Ignatius quoted above.
Intuitively I knew that they had a “goodness” about them which was often very different from what I saw around me. The focus was care for the vulnerable and a desire to please God.
Although I was brought up by parents who were Christian, they were not church-goers. I only attended church services very rarely and only ever went to a Sunday School meeting once. The existence of God and the truth of Christianity was in the atmosphere, in a similar way to the existence of the Queen or Prime Minister, but my knowledge of who Jesus was and of God’s nature was almost non-existent.
Nevertheless, particularly as I heard these prayers, I knew He was with me, that He was good and it was He whom life was all about.
I had a similar experience during my time in the 6th form at Secondary school, when I was about 17. I don’t know where it came from but I had a strong awareness that God was there, that He took a personal interest in me as well as everyone else and, maybe more to the point, that my behaviour and the way I lived my life mattered and I should pay attention to that.
These are two more of the prayers which I heard prayed in school assemblies and which made a deep impression on me.