CHARMAIN NAIDOO: Why I'm back in church every Sunday
'I walk into this quiet, meditative space and light candles for my dead mother and father and brother Shaun. Sunlight streams through the stained glass windows'
In the week before Easter this year, Holy Week in the Catholic Church calendar, I went to mass on Holy Wednesday, on Maundy Thursday, twice on Good Friday (Stations of the cross and the Good Friday re-enactment of the crucifixion of Jesus service), on Easter Eve Saturday and on Easter Sunday. It’s the first time I’ve done that since I was a teenager, since my mother made me.Going to mass was obligatory in the Naidoo household – no argument. Church on Sundays, and on high and holy days were mandatory, a date cast in stone by my mum and dad who believed in heaven and hell and fire and brimstone and a merciful and a wrathful God. I went back to church 18 months ago to the surprise of many of my friends. Not surprising since, for the last 30-odd years, I have announced my religious status (with a shrug) as not-so-holy Roman. I told anyone who asked that I was more spiritual than religious, a fashionable thing to say. I’d say I believed in universal goodness, in the power of self in whit...
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