Prayer-fest

So, Manchester has a new listings mag on the block – 8020 magazine to “rival” the longstanding Time-Out second-cousin CityLife (http://www.8020magazine.com/8020php/home.php and http://www.citylife.co.uk/ respectively). But weirdly enough – they both this fortnight have articles on spirituality and prayer.

CityLife’s is a regular column by Flic Everett called “Looking into the God-shaped hole”. Essentially, she bemoans the fact that organised religion is too inflexible, simplistic (“sandal-wearing losers about to strum “Kumbaya” on the banjo”) and that regular people can’t relate. But then she says that “contemporary spiritualities” such as kabbalah, as promoted by celebrities and their spouses, are equally unrealistic for regular Joe Public.

She ends with this: “But what we need more than anything is meaning. … For now, our spiritual void will remain – until we find a religion that promotes kindness, fulfilment and a better world, yet allows us to carry on drinking, screwing, swearing and spending without censure. The nearest we’ve come so far is Live Aid.”

On a slightly more light-hearted note, 8020’s contribution to the debate is a piece on “Fun Places to Pray” which encompasses all sorts of faiths and denominations – Church of God of Prophecy, Seventh Day Adventists, the Baha’i Centre, the Sikh Temple, and the Islamic Youth Association Mosque. But concludes most of the “reviews” with notice that perhaps not many of these were that fun…