Pilgrimage Moments: Hope Versus Faith

Kate:       It struck me that there's a fear about this whole faith God thing.

Raphael: It always happens to me. Whenever I approach a church, my heart starts to race. I start to get this kind of tingle that makes me feel I don't want to go in there, and I know it's just a building, and I know a building doesn't represent the people that go in there, but I do see it as a place where they manipulate and controlled people and have done and still do. Yeah, sure. Um, and that generates this fear in me.

Kate:       Religion is all the things you're talking about control, extremism, those rules. I will subjugate you. Whereas faith is much more where the angle I'm coming from about the conversation, about the question, about the journey. Are you.

Raphael: Religious?

Kate:       I wouldn't describe myself as religious, but you're a priest.

Raphael: You have to be religious. Everything I know about the godly stuff is that priests are religious.

Kate:       It's semantics.

Raphael: It's words are destroying my faith. You're destroying my faith in my belief in what? You know, it's really interesting. I it's really interesting that you say you're not religious.

Kate:       I would say I'm of the Christian faith, not of the Christian religion. That's why for me, those buildings are beautiful, don't get me wrong, but I don't feel particularly holy when I go into that building. It's a building. I feel holier and now talking to you because I see God reflected in you. Because I'm sat here having this conversation.

Raphael: I'm godly, am I? Of course you are. What do you mean by that?

Kate:       I see God reflected in you. So when I talk to you, that's a that's a faith experience for me.

Raphael: The way you describe it is beautiful, but I just can't get over that hurdle that you pick and choose what you want from your faith.

Kate:       I think the issue is for you is that you're about tangibility. So you're about this is a table, this is a glass, this is a person. And the idea that there would be something that isn't tangible, the idea that you cannot go here is God, it's so far out of your comfort zone.

Raphael: So interesting. But what was the one thing that got me through it in prison? Hope. Hope doesn't exist. That's not something that's tangible. It's just the word. I could never grab hope so, but I look for it and I would.

Kate:       I would say, I would say that where you say the word hope, I would say the word God, that God is hope.

Raphael: Kate's way of describing what got me through the many years that I was in prison. I would say hope. Hope was key to everything. I hope that tomorrow would be the day I got the letter that says something's going to happen. I hope the next day this. I hope the next day that the way Kate said it was, God, I don't agree. It's just not what got me through. You know.

Kate:       I have to be really honest. When we started on this journey, I didn't really like Rath. I thought, oh no, we've got one here, we've got one here who's just going to be grumpy about me being a Christian the whole way around. But actually I realised now and I should have realised then that it comes from a deep fear. I think the poor guy's just had a really bad experience of religion, and I can totally get why he's angry about religion, because I'm angry about religion too. And when I hear people have done things in the name of God, I think God wants nothing to do with that stuff. God's not about control and manipulation and and war and and terror. God's not about any of that. God is as angry about all that stuff as Rath is. Cheers, cheers, mum. Buon Camino.

Raphael: As as different as she is to other Christians who would try to convert you. There is something in me that says, hold on a minute. She's doing it in a cleverer way. So where she's now telling me my hope is a God. I hear what she says, but it's her clever way, trying to make me believe in something that I don't believe in.