麻豆社

Good morning. Bristol Airport has drawn criticism for its new 鈥渕ulti faith area鈥� which can be found off the roundabout by the Silver Zone carpark.

Small and constructed from grey metal, this unusual multi faith area resembles a bus shelter or a jail cell for smokers - the only nod to religious transcendence being a sign stuck on the side of a figure either praying or bracing for impact.

鈥淭his,鈥� said a friend, 鈥渋s what the modern world thinks of religion鈥�. Unworthy of much effort, let alone beauty.

But the airport insists that users have welcomed the shelter and notes that it provides a quiet area in which people can pray whilst waiting to pick up loved ones from a flight. Indeed, even if you find the god cabin hideous, it offers a backhanded compliment to religion - for it suggests that enough people pray to necessitate the expense and acknowledges that prayer doesn鈥檛 just take place in a pretty building once a week. Muslims do it five times a day.

Some people find the very idea of prayer arcane, fanciful and fruitless. In the film The Ruling Class, an eccentric character who has come to believe he is God explains he reached this conclusion after much prayer because 鈥淚 found I was talking to myself.鈥�

But even as religion is supposedly losing its respectability, one survey suggests that around a quarter of Britain has recently prayed - an activity apparently more common among the young than the old.

Some do it to rest the mind, to meditate; to ask for help for oneself, or for others. It is an articulation of feeling, a translation of sympathy into action. The much-derided phrase 鈥渢houghts and prayers鈥� implies I鈥檓 not only thinking about your problem, I am willing it to improve.

I am also appealing to a third party to help. I share the view of the Medieval mystics that mankind has become separated from God, that prayer is a means by which we reach out to the divine to try to reconnect. I do not expect a literal answer. The effort can be reward in itself. When one is contemplating the heavenly, one is lifting oneself up - out of a difficult situation or a vexed state of mind.

Believing it to be so important, many approach prayer as a discipline, like education or physical training, to be maintained even when travelling. That is why space for prayer can be essential, not just a luxury.

Nowhere have I felt the need for prayer more than on an airplane in the middle of turbulence. Convinced of death, for a few minutes I become more pious than the Pope - and relieved when the seatbelt sign finally goes off and the trolley service resumes.

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