In "Church Going" by Philip Larkin, a narrator is visiting
an open but empty small country church. It is obviously an Aglican church somewhere in
rural England. The narrator reveals that he is in the habit of doing this but is
somewhat bewildered as to his own motives, saying:
Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And
always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for
…
As he spends longer in the
church, he wonders if the church is meaningful in a secular age, or whether the church
will stop being used and end up only visited by people like himself, not worshippers but
somehow still with an odd sense of reverence. The longer he spends in the church, the
more he comes to appreciate its moral and spiritual seriousness, and even undergoes an
understated epiphany, realizing that the church is not "obsolete", but even for him, as
it has been for generations of worshippers, a place it "was proper to grow wise
in."
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