My memories of church

The empty St James Church in St Andrews was the place I loved the most while staying in the town. 

Still whenever I go to St Andrews, I visit the church. 

Catholic church is for me a place that I can always turn to when I feel exhausted with pain. 

I have joined some bible studies and attended some chapels at Protestant churches since I came to Scotland, the land of Presbyterian church, but I do not feel as comfortable there as I feel when sitting alone in an empty Catholic church building.

 

Maybe such comfort that I feel comes from the structure of Catholic church buildings. 

Especially when I go into a small Catholic church building while it is empty, it makes me feel as if I came to a small dinner table where I can sit with Jesus and the two of us can talk with each other quietly and peacefully. 

Indeed, as every Catholic Christian might know, it is a dinner that Catholic Christians are invited to every Sunday, in the form of mass. The only difference between other authentic Catholic Christians and I is that I, who is now merely an agnostic medical historian, comes to the dinner table only when the dinning room is empty or silent, to feel the warmth and comfort. 

It was while I was writing my book Individualism and Collectivism in Us, that I found myself not as deeply religious as before. I was being more interested in the evolutionary history of human thinking and the brain, rather than Scriptural meanings of the human soul. It felt like it was another person's life to have devoted my time to church to such an extent of joining numerous events as a Sunday school teacher and devout Catholic student.   

However, as a healer and a teacher, Jesus is my life long role model, and in a sense, I respect him now more than when I was in university. 

I have seen lots of medical doctors and teachers, many of whom, sadly in my eyes, were nothing but soulless fortune makers who were indifferent to the true meanings of their vocation.  

Moreover, I do not want to let my past self erased, whose memories are too closely connected to the days when I spent in Catholic church in the past, to forget about church.