"Church Going" by Philip Larkin (poetry reading)

A pyx is a box used to take the host wafer to people who are unable to come to communion.

Ruin-bibber is probably a metaphor, like a wine-bibber who is somebody who frequently indulges in wine, which term was applied to Jesus - and Larkin would have known about that. A bibber, these days, is a man who boasts that he has a big penis - Larkin is less likely to have been aware of that usage.

Larkin was much taken by the history and ceremony of the church, but less convinced by its teachings and practices even though he was willing to go through the rituals. This is not a religious poem. The closest he gets to a religious experience is that it pleases him to be there.

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Tags:

• Church
• Going
• Philip
• Larkin

[Keldorek]

Absolutely brilliant. The poem AND the reading of it.

[BanteJante]

You don't have to believe in God to acknowledge the Silence. Thank God for that. And the longing for silence is in everyone, even the disbelievers.

[rriverstone1]

Christopher Hitchens mentions this poem in his book, _God is Not Great_, so I came to have a look. Wished I'd known this poem, decades ago.

[rriverstone1]

@RaggedM88 what ever for? It isn't a nursery rhyme!

[CreedOfHeresy]

@TheComedyGeek High ideals, and meant well? All of them [especially that supposedly love-promoting bible] espoused slavery, the inferiority of women, and killing non-believers or people who made the mistake of carving a stone idol. Religions at their origins are meant to control. And that is what they do. There is no point glossing over their intentions, especially when even if they had been intended for good, the evil they've wrought is so grand in measure.

[RaggedM88]

I like the poem I just wish it rhymed more distinctly.

[TheBlackLagooner]

I could not have put it better myself.

[NoUseForAName06]

one of my favourites

[TheComedyGeek]

I'm an agnostic myself. I was raised without religion.

But I think that the urges that make men build churches and invent religions will always be with us.

The new ones will not resemble the old ones in details of dogma and practice and cosmology, but the same basic ideas will thrive.

We always must remember that religions, at their origins, meant well, and embodied high ideals.

[TheComedyGeek]

There will always be churches.

They just won't be called churches.

But once the old is truly dead, the new will spring up, and find meaning, and a way to hold on to it.