Church on YouTube

Church on YouTube today and as usual Christ Church Cathedral does a beautiful job with a very meaningful service. Our duty to God is how I view my Christianity. That is the most important duty that I have along with duty to family and duty to country. To me life is about duty; that thought instilled into me from childhood. Really I only have gone out of the house throughout my life to do the necessary duties of life which come to one as a child of God, a citizen of one's country and a child/parent throughout life. It is the necessary way for me to live my life.  Although I have not attended a church service now for a number of years I feel that the online Service on YouTube lets me be there. 

My duty to God these days is my transcription of the Church records these past sixteen years. After I stepped away from involvement in the organization of World Day of Prayer, helping with Sunday School and helping my husband with his treasurer duties, I did spend a little time searching out a way to fulfill my duty to God. As I continued with my courses in genealogy and reached paleography I realized that here was something that, amazingly, I found quite straightforward and that I could do to bring forth these ancient documents. The depth of religious conviction is wonderful to read in these old wills although I do realize that they were boilerplate but as I read through the wills there was a variety of language and reading wills of my own ancestors in their own hand was a very revealing experience of how close they felt to God at the end of their days. 

I used to visit my Father when we traveled back and spend the entire day with him in his Nursing Home. As the hours passed I found that we could communicate; he knew who I was and we enjoyed talking about God. The last year of his life he especially could feel that his time was coming (he was 94 when he passed) and he talked more about his mother than he had throughout my childhood. He was very devoted to her as he was to his father. But now as I approach 77 I appreciate that I had that opportunity to talk to him for long periods albeit several months apart but each time I came away with the feeling that he felt at peace. 

Now that I am getting more organized I think I can see myself returning to transcription of the wills and the parish records in a more rigorous fashion. I would like to accomplish one a day because there are still 1500+ wills to do and countless parish records that I want to extract information although whether I would actually transcribe entire registers now has become somewhat unlikely. They are mostly available for search on the various genealogy search engines by various companies. I do, when I am using them, send in corrections if I find that the transcription is incorrect. However, I mostly read through the registers on my own although lately I have been pulling up the searches and having a look as I work my way through the registers. 

May the online services continue on into the future. I think it is a wonderful way to fulfill the command of Jesus that we take the stories to all the corners of the world and tell the Good News that God is always with us. For there is only one God but there are many religions (the ways in which people have been brought to God). The Christian Church founded on the rock of St Peter is my way. My pilgrimage to Rome way back in 2001 continues to give me meaning in my life.