BBC：100部英国人最喜欢的文学作品].APrayerForOwenMeany.pdf

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THE FOUL BALL
I AM DOOMED to remember a boy with a wrecked voice-not because of his voice, or because he
was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but
because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany. I make no claims to
have a life in Christ, or with Christ-and certainly not for Christ, which I've heard some zealots claim. I'm
not very sophisticated in my knowledge of the Old Testament, and I've not read the New Testament
since my Sunday school days, except for those passages that I hear read aloud to me when I go to
church. I'm somewhat more familiar with the passages from the Bible that appear in The Book of
Common Prayer; I read my prayer book often, and my Bible only on holy days-the prayer book is so
much more orderly.
I've always been a pretty regular churchgoer. I used to be a Congregationalist-I was baptized in the
Congregational Church, and after some years of fraternity with Episcopalians (I was confirmed in the
Episcopal Church, too), I became rather vague in my religion: in my teens I attended a
"non-denominational" church. Then I became an Anglican; the Anglican Church of Canada has been my
church-ever since I left the United States, about twenty years ago. Being an Anglican is a lot like being an
Episcopalian-so much so that
being an Anglican occasionally impresses upon me the suspicion that I have simply e an
Episcopalian again. Anyway, I left the Congregationalists and the Episcopalians-and my country once
and for all.
When I die, I shall attempt to be buried in New Hampshire- alongside my mother-but the Anglican
Church will perform the necessary service before my body suffers the indignity of trying to be sneaked
through . Customs. My selections from the Order for the Burial of the Dead ate entirely conventional
and can be found, in the order that I shall have them read-not sung-in The