Michael Harding: I have privatised my religious practice

There was a time when my forehead would be splattered with ashes on the first day of Lent, but not anymore. The only ash on my face nowadays comes from the stove in my studio shed, where I have lingered all through the lockdowns, like a miner trapped underground, daydreaming about the lovely world that once existed before Covid-19.

Over the years I have privatised my religious practice and now my only refuge is my father’s bookcase in the corner of the studio; its shelves decked with bells and candles and holy icons. It’s a tiny museum of deities, Buddhist and Christian, and various artefacts and ritual objects gathered over many years.

I touch each object with nostalgia; the Indian incense holder I bought in the Dandelion Market, the Tibetan waterbowls I brought home from Mumbai, and the mala beads that were a gift from a monk in Mongolia. On a separate shelf are three sets of Christian beads.

My mother’s beads are green and made of precious stones, linked together by an ornate silver chain, and which I call her Laura Ashley rosary because the green beads matched the curtains in her bedroom. When she was in the golf club my mother always held her teacup with thumb and forefinger, and when in church she always brought forth the beads from her purse with a flourish of stylish sanctity.

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The second rosary on the shelf belonged to my grandmother. The beads are brown and shaped like little orange pips with a grim black crucifix attached. The crucifix contains nothing of the joy that Jesus promised, but instead is charged with a sense of human agony and pain.

And the fact that the beads were once entwined around my grandmother’s ivory fingers in death doesn’t incline me to ever use them. For me they evoke a time when yellow fly-paper hung from every kitchen ceiling, a tillie lamp lit the way to musty bedrooms, and the toilet was out in the yard.

I don't often recite the rosary, but I'm superstitious enough to drop one into the bottom of a suitcase whenever I'm travelling

The final set of beads on the shelf are my own. I bought them in a gift shop in Assisi many years ago when I was flitting about Italy with my daughter, hoping that a grand tour of churches and monasteries might imbue her with a sense of awe and admiration for the cultural heritage of the Continent. A fanciful notion on my part, although we did end up purchasing lots of holy stuff in the gift shop, because St Francis was very much a lover of animals, and there were sufficient donkeys, birds and fishes in his entourage to impress any eight year old.

Compulsion to purchase

A monastic gift shop contains much the same allure as a shopping mall in Tenerife. Instead of handbags, wallets and other leather accessories, there are a hundred types of rosary, and even I couldn’t resist the compulsion to purchase something.

I chose a rosary that was made of wood and threaded with a simple black chord because its rustic simplicity reminded me of a time when I had friends who played guitar at folk Masses and wore sandals.

I don’t often recite the rosary, but I’m superstitious enough to drop one into the bottom of a suitcase whenever I’m travelling. And I remember being glad I had it with me in Warsaw a few years ago.

I was in TK Maxx looking for trousers when a burly man tried to elbow me away from a pair he was admiring, but I just plucked the trousers from the rail and vanished into a changing room.

After purchasing the trousers at the checkout I went to the toilet and swapped my old pair for the new pair, and then headed towards the exit. Needless to say, the burly man was on the escalator behind me, identified the trousers and accused me of robbing. I insisted that I had paid and tried to explain that I had changed because I was heading for the theatre.

He didn’t believe me.

“I’ll show you the receipt,” I insisted.

‘A mistake’

And as I began emptying my jacket pockets the little rosary of beads appeared in the palm of my hand. We were at the bottom of the escalator. The burly man did not hesitate.

“No, no, no,” he said, “forget it – it was a mistake.”

And he vanished out the door as I returned the beads to my pocket with considerable relief. I wouldn’t call it divine intervention; but I was nonetheless grateful for the entirely accidental appearance of the holy rosary.