Quest for God

Introduction

As a pre-schooler I believed totally in Father Christmas; and from the time of my Christening I believed totally in God. But while Father Christmas was only relevant for about six weeks of each year, God was always relevant: He had put His mark on me at my christening, I was a lamb in His flock, and He looked after me all the time, but especially through Sunday School. I write something of what it meant to be a child in the years of the Great Depression, to help the reader to understand how Sunday School could be of such overwhelming importance in my young life.

Then, in early adolescence, came World War II, and again I write something of what this inevitably meant to the teenager. To me especially it meant that I became a teenage preacher, one of the earliest exhibits of female-power in the church!

But some ten years later tragedy hit my life, and I discovered both that I did not really know God at all, and that my church colleagues were actually as confused as I was about His relevance in our times of need.

After some 25 years of being ‘nurtured’ by the church, I had no help or guidance in my eventual meeting with the Lord. In fact my sharing of that experience only led to such warnings and watchfulness concerning my mental state that I quickly learned not to try to talk about it to anyone. ‘Church’ was not the place to share a real spiritual experience.

 

1.1

My introduction to the mystery of the Christian faith came about at my baptism - which was never referred to as a 'baptism' in the Congregational church of that time, but as a 'Christening'. I was four-and-a-bit years old when I was Christened. I had not been 'done' as a baby because my father was a farmer, and we lived beyond the 'circuit' of the churches; but when I was four years old the family shifted to suburbia, and one of the first things my mother set about doing was getting me Christened.

So here I was standing between my father and mother up the front of a little suburban Congregational church, looking questioningly up at a gentle-enough looking old man with a shiny bald pate surrounded by curly-grey hair, and little round spectacles and confusedly-crossed eyes beaming through them. They called him 'reverend', and he was going to Christen me.

He began reading solemnly from a little black book, and everybody was very quiet, and there was a sort of an air of mystery about it all; it made me think of the time when Grandma Brown died, and everyone tiptoed around in whispers, as if they were afraid they might disturb her sleep: and there was a 'reverend' there, on that occasion, reading solemnly from a little black book!

I had been trying to come to terms, in a four-year-old way, with what a Christening was supposed to be about. I was given an impression by my mother that I should have been 'done' when I was a baby, that I had to be 'done' now so that I could go to Sunday School, and that having a Christian name was something to do with it all. But I knew I already had a Christian name, and it seemed that I was not about to get a new one! I felt that there must be something more to this Christening thing than my mother had told me, so I decided I had better start listening intently, and try to understand for myself something of what was happening to me.

It was all pretty hard to follow, but suddenly there were some dollops of water on my head, trickling down over my face; and the old man was saying something about Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and about being a lamb in the Kingdom of God.

"A lamb!" Revelation flashed into my mind! Now I understood! Not the "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost" bit really - though I guessed they were something like the Christian names of God - but the bit about being a lamb in His kingdom.

This is what I understood. My father used to brand his lambs, down on the farm: and now I was branded as a lamb in God's Kingdom! I knew that I now had a 'brand-mark', made by the water, on the top of my head; a special mysterious mark that, somehow, did not just go away when the water dried up. So that when God looked down from heaven He would be able to see my 'brand-mark' quite clearly, and would know at once that I was one of His lambs.

There was a feeling of joy, peace, assurance inside me - yes, four-year-olds can feel these things, though they would not know the words to use to describe it all! - good feelings as I let it sink in that I was now properly Christened, and so belonged specially to God.

From that day, I have never doubted that God lives and that He cares for those who are His.

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My Sunday school days were really good. The times were those of the Great Depression of the late 1920's and 1930's. At the time I did not know why we had left our farm and shifted to the city but later I learned that my father was one of the hundreds of farmers who were unable to ride out those lean years, and had forfeited his farm to the bank. So for the whole of my childhood my father was on the dole - 'sustenance' as it was called in those days - and it meant that my father was away from home for much of each year - working in 'gangs' it was called - building roads and railway systems in remote parts of the country. And it meant that there were no luxuries in my childhood years.

Sunday school was the high-light of each week. The whole day was different in those years. There was, of course, no television, and, for many families including my own, no radio. Cinemas were closed, and no organised sporting fixtures were permitted. All industry was shut down for the day, except only essential services. Petrol stations were closed, as also were all shops except only a thin scattering of ‘corner-stores’ which, however, were not permitted by law to sell routine grocery lines on a Sunday. The cost of a telephone was still beyond the reach of the average worker, so there was little opportunity to organise unplanned get-togethers when boredom set in. Sunday really was a day of rest for the whole community. For me, Sunday also meant that all school homework had been finished the day before, that we got clean sheets on our beds, a roast dinner with baked potatoes, and then the weekly outing to Sunday School.

At about quarter-past two on Sunday afternoon, I would set off in my best dress to walk to Sunday school, which started at three o'clock. Yes, it was a good two kilometre walk, and little legs dawdle on the way; but if I got there early I could help the teachers set up the room for the Primary Sunday school - flowers for the table, song-book at the piano, low stools in a semi-circle for the littlest people, and higher stools behind them for the older ones: fresh sand in the sand-tray for 'activity time' - usually making scenes from Jesus' life with little lead men and animals made of tin (it was all before the era of plastic!) and rubber palm trees and cardboard houses - and putting out a supply of white butchers' paper and water paints and coloured pencils and crayons ready for the use of aspiring artists, and multi-coloured plasticine for those who preferred to sculpt models: and a tray of birthday candles in case some-one had a birthday during the past week.

And there was a box full of little well-battered text-cards. From this treasure trove we would each take home one card, to learn its text during the coming week, and bring it back the following Sunday, hand it in, and recite its words to our teacher.

During the precious hours of Sunday school there were lots of good songs to sing, many with actions or holding hands or clapping. There was always a story about Jesus to listen to, then a time of impressing it in the childish mind the better with the activities of the sand-tray, the plasticine, and the paints and crayons. Also there was the time to tell your teacher about the good things that had happened during the past week, and learning to say 'thank-you' to God for them.

Also, very specially, there was the time to take up the Collection. This was when you gave money to Jesus because you loved Him. One lucky child was chosen - you were certain to be the one when it was your birthday - to hold the Collection Box, a solid wooden box, painted blue and gold, with a slot in the top and a wooden handle each side. Everybody marched around the room in a circle, dropping their coin into the box as they marched past. It made a wonderful rattling noise as the coins dropped in, but became rather heavy for the littlest ones to hold by the time it was half full of the big old-fashioned pre-decimal pennies, so then an older child had to come up and help to hold it. And as we marched and gave our offerings to God, we sang lustily:

       Hear the pennies dropping,
       Listen as the fall,
       Every one for Jesus,
       He shall have them all.

        Dropping, dropping, dropping, dropping,
        Hear the pennies fall,
        Every one for Jesus,
        He shall have them all.

Every Sunday I carried my penny, securely knotted in the corner of my best handkerchief, to give to Jesus. I myself had only one half-penny each year to do what I liked with. It was given to me on my birthday, to be spent at the school tuck-shop - and I could get a handful of lollies for a half-penny! Any other gift of money on my birthday or at Christmas was used to buy clothes, or perhaps was put into my school bank account, which was regularly growing at the rate of threepence a week!

So, in the context of my life then, to give Jesus a penny every Sunday was quite a big deal! Sometimes I wondered what Jesus did with all those pennies, but I somehow grew into a sort of understanding that He usually just told the Sunday school Superintendent what to do with them. And even when I began to understand more clearly the 'economics' of running a Sunday school, I knew I was getting really good returns for my penny a week, for it was not just the pleasure of the regular Sunday afternoon outing; it was also all the special events and festivals of the year.

For many readers this will bring to mind thoughts of Advent and Christmas, Lenten fastings, Palm Sunday and Easter, as well as Ascension Day, Pentecost, and various Saints Days. But Congregationalists recognised no such religious festivals. As a child I knew only of Christmas, when Jesus was born, and Easter, when Jesus died and rose again; and our Sunday School ‘celebrations’ of these events were little different from the celebrations which occurred in secular schools, community clubs, and family gatherings where nobody was a practicing Christian. At Christmas we had a party, sang carols round a Christmas tree, and received presents from Father Christmas: at Easter we got a chocolate Easter egg, donated, we were assured, by an invisible Easter Bunny. I am sure I was never told what Father Christmas or the Easter Bunny had to do with Jesus, and I’m sure I never asked.

These were just two of the special events, the parties, that I went to each year because I was a member of the Sunday School. The biggest celebration of each year was always the Sunday school Anniversary which took place in spring. We spent the preceding Saturday decorating the church with garlands of asparagus creeper and pink and red geraniums; then we had a party tea, followed by a concert in which everyone took part in some item, followed by a prize-giving when every Sunday school pupil received a book prize - very precious indeed in those days before local public libraries, or even school libraries in those poorer parts of town. Then, on the Sunday afternoon, we had a special Thanksgiving Service, which all the family came to, and we sang specially rehearsed new songs about Jesus and His love, listened to a special Children’s Sermon, then entertained our families for afternoon tea. My mother always managed to sew me a new dress for the Sunday School Anniversary!

Then there was the annual Sunday school picnic, which took place in autumn. Everyone piled onto the back of a truck owned by one of the dads, and had a day in the hills or by a river with a waterfall; and we ate egg and cheese and marmite sandwiches, and fairy cakes and watermelons and grapes, and drank red cordial and ran races and played team games and splashed in the cool flowing waters of a stream.

The other grand Sunday school festival that I remember was the Harvest Festival, when we especially thanked God for all the good things He provided for us to eat. I write it that way - "for all the good things He provided for us to eat" - because in those days tins and packages had no place in our Harvest Festival display; rather, the whole church seemed garlanded and loaded with the natural produce which we had seen our own dads and mums tending in our own small acreages, plus only those 'refined' food products which we had also seen our own mums and dads produce - home-made bread and cake and cheeses and jams and toffees taking their place happily amongst the carrots and pumpkins and cabbages and oranges, peaches and grapes, and great stooks of hay, and, of course, the endless garlands of flowers and creepers trailing across the ceilings and round the windows and doors. It was an abundantly lavish display, and, for this child of the Great Depression, spoke more than volumes of God's boundless love and care for us.

It was not till I was much older that I even began to wonder what happened to all the goodies after Harvest Festival Sunday was gone; but as a young teenager I helped to pack it all in boxes afterwards, to take it to the local orphanage.

The Sunday closest to your own birthday was a very exciting day. You got to sit in the special 'birthday chair', and blow out the birthday candles, and choose your own favourite song to sing, and hold the Collection Box while everyone else marched round the room and dropped their pennies in. You also got a little gift from your Sunday school teacher, and a beautiful gold-lettered text-card, complete with ribbon, to hang on your wall and keep for ever.

And as all these events happened because of Jesus' love for His 'lambs', I really wanted to find out more and more about who Jesus really was. So I used to listen intently to all the stories about Jesus' life, and to all the stories He told other people - I knew they were called "parables" but I did not know why - and I read all the storybooks that came my way about Jesus and the people who followed Him. And there was never any doubt in my mind that Jesus lived, Jesus died and rose again from the dead, and was now with His Father in heaven, looking down upon and looking after the 'lambs' of His flock.

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There was, as far as I can recall, only one spiritual 'smudge' across this happy childhood picture of His church: it was there from about the age of five, and it was never completely obliterated. This is how I remember it: -

One day a visiting teacher was telling the Sunday school in more detail than I had ever heard before, about how Jesus was killed by wicked men, and how His blood would still wash away our sins; and there was something about the way the story was being told that made me burst into tears: and I sat there for the rest of the lesson with these tears streaming down my face, unstoppable. I wondered that no-one else seemed to be feeling as I was, and, glancing around, saw that one of the teachers had nudged a lady along-side of her, pointed to this tearful child - me - and giggled. How could this have been?

Maybe this was the beginning of my understanding that not all those who work in the church are in fact walking in the image of Jesus!

1.2

With teenage came a total change in my church life. Most of my friends just disappeared out of our church altogether. A few settled into other churches, but none, I am sure, went for spiritual reasons. Rather, it was because another church had a good basketball team, or tennis courts, or they were wooed there in their current love affair! I claim this with assurance because I saw that, before those teenage years were over, they too had dropped ‘church’ from their life as completely as those who had simply walked away from Sunday School as soon as their parents could no longer totally control their comings and goings.

Why did a few of us stay on? Again I am fairly confident it was not really for spiritual reasons, not because we were now knowing the Lord and maturing in His grace and holiness. Rather it was because we were quite happy with the social ‘milieu’ which this church provided, or we were still wanting to please our parents by staying there, or we could sense some other benefits for ourselves from staying within the church system: for example, a current Character Reference from a clergyman was a very useful piece of paper when you were applying for a job. And the regular church meetings gave us ongoing opportunities for public speaking and debate as we discussed issues as wide ranging as buying a new vacuum cleaner or contracting a new Minister.

I was certainly not unaware of all these ‘worldly’ benefits of church membership, but for me there was also a deeper and much simpler reason for remaining in the church. My four-year-old Christening had taught me that I was a ‘lamb of God’, and since, as far as I still understood it, this was God’s house, it was matter-of-course that I continue to live in this spiritual family. So by the time I was fifteen years old I had taken on the responsibilities of a full church member.

In the Congregational church of those days there was no ceremony of Confirmation. I had been Christened, I had indicated my willingness to become actively involved in the affairs of the church, and my name and address went automatically into the Membership book, and I was invited to "stay for Communion". Communion was solemnly shared once a month, after the end of the normal worship service, and at my first Communion Service the "right hand of fellowship" was offered to me by all the members present; and that was all the ceremony there was to becoming a church member.

I was immediately appointed Secretary\Treasurer of the Sunday school. This mainly amounted to counting heads in attendance and monies in Collection Box, remembering birthdays and being a 'stand-by' teacher. It made me feel suitably important! As I grew on through adolescence, new opportunities were opened to me. I became church organist; I was elected my church's representative to the Congregational youth council - by whatever name it went by then I cannot now remember - and thus came to have fellowship with a greater number of Christian young people. In that role I also had several opportunities to speak on radio - it was long before the advent of television - as a vocal representative of Christian youth.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

But what changed my life most dramatically was the outbreak of the World War in 1939. As men disappeared into the armed forces, so women gave up the comforts of home life and took on many of the jobs previously done by men. We all dug our back-yard air-raid trenches, and regularly practiced our air-raid drill as warning sirens blared forth. We learned to cope with food rationing and clothes rationing, and hand-me-downs and make-overs and decorative patches became the fashion trend. As fear of attack by Japan became a reality, street lights disappeared, black-out rules for private houses were strictly enforced by patrolling air-raid wardens, and severe petrol rationing left most private cars sitting in their garages, unusable except in dire emergencies. Those people who ventured forth at night travelled in unlit buses, which crawled by the restricted light of dimmed and hooded head-lamps, while in contrast the sky itself entertained with an ever-moving display of search-lights, moving from horizon to horizon as they watched for the enemy planes which, thankfully, never came.

And teenage girls matured very quickly as they assumed responsibilities in homes-without-fathers, and wrote their love-letters to eighteen-year-old boy-friends who had suddenly become men-at-war.

No life was left untouched by the war. And many people who normally only went to church for Christenings, weddings, or funerals, and occasionally on a Christmas or Easter day, began to wonder if the God-up-there might protect their warrior husbands and sons if they dutifully prayed to Him more regularly. So church attendances began to swell - while at the same time younger clergy were leaving their parishes and themselves joining the Armed Services as Chaplains.

The shortage of ministers soon became extreme, and the Union of Congregational Churches met to consider a solution to the problem. Surely there were people in the pews who, with a little training and encouragement, could lead at least occasional Sunday Services, thus freeing up Ministers to visit more frequently those churches which were now without regular pastoral oversight.

And so a call went out to church members to offer themselves for part-time training to become Lay Preachers. It was not that Lay Preachers were a new idea for the Congregational churches. There had always been Lay Preachers, gifted men who felt called to serve the church in this way, and who were quietly recognised as such by the churches. What was new about this scheme was the pressing invitation to apply to be a Lay Preacher, and the provision of some training to do the job.

I was by now a university student, with zeal to explore new avenues of academic adventure. I wondered if I could become a Lay Preacher in my spare time!

It is interesting to look back on my ponderings in the light of modern feminist struggles concerning women in the priesthood. Although I did not actually know of any women who were Ministers, it just never occurred to me to question whether they could be. After all, it was war-time, and women were tackling all sorts of jobs usually reserved for men. What worried me was simply that I was so young – not quite eighteen. Could anyone so young expect to be allowed to stand in a pulpit and deliver a sermon? I talked with a friendly Deacon. He reminded me that "…. there is neither male nor female…. in Christ Jesus". (Gal.3.28) Then, when he registered that it was my youth and not my sex that was concerning me, he suggested that it was really a matter of whether I found I had anything to say to a congregation, and that was not just a matter of age. He encouraged me to volunteer for the training course: I did - and I was accepted!

The training course for lay-ministry was being offered by the elderly Minister of the city church: he was, in terms of scholarship and churchmanship, easily ranked first in the state. The course involved attendance at his church in the centre of the city regularly one night a week. It is difficult now to look back and begin to understand again the depth of my problems in getting to those meetings. I had to walk in utter darkness - no street lights because of the black-out regulations; nor, for the same reason, did any light emerge from the few houses in the street - along a kilometre stretch of unsealed, pot-holed road: no footpaths, and a potentially dangerous drain down one side of the road, which you needed to be alert to avoid slipping into. Then a twelve kilometre bus-ride, in a bus that moved very slowly indeed in the darkness, with only a faint glow from its hooded lights warning other equally shrouded traffic that it was there. Then another walk in the dark to the church building.

And as a university student there was a heavy regime of study to be set aside for that one night of the week. But I got myself to the church, and took my place in the midst of a bemused handful of mostly elderly men: no other women had enrolled! But the Minister who had organised the course seemed to find no need to treat me any differently from the rest of the group. So there I was! Knowing in my own experience that in Christ there is neither male nor female - nor, it seemed, was there old or young!

In this course I learned how to conduct a regular Congregational Service of Worship, how to prepare public prayer and sermons, and how to deliver what had been prepared so that it could be heard and understood by the most unschooled person sitting in the back pew. And, very importantly, I was taught the structure of the Bible, and how to use it for sermon themes; for in the Congregationalism of those days there was no thought of the use of a Lectionary, or even the recognition of the traditional church festivals, necessarily. (I can still remember one elderly Lay Preacher who found it quite appropriate to preach on the parable of the Prodigal Son on Christmas Day!) And I learned how to use my voice without the aid of the modern public address system, which was not yet found in any suburban church.

As well as this week-night training course, there was, as it were, a Sunday apprenticeship system. I was linked with an experienced Lay-Preacher in my region, and went out with him as he conducted worship services each Sunday. Gradually I took over different sections of the Service from him, until I was judged competent to handle it all. From then on I was on my own, unless I asked for help.

When I ask myself now what were the contents of my sermons then, I have to admit that I have no idea really! They must have been little moral homilies drawn from the parables or other words of Jesus, or lectures drawing morals from the Old Testament happenings of the children of Israel, or some such themes. I am rather sure that my prayers must have been centred upon our need for God to give us victory quickly, to stop the Japanese from invading Australia, and to send all our ‘boys’ home unscathed by the combat: I am rather sure of this because these were the prayers that people were flocking to church to hear and say their Amens to.

But in all my training to be a Lay Preacher, I am sure that no-one ever told me that I should ask the Lord Himself what message I should bring to these people at this time, and I don’t think that I ever met anyone who did converse with the Lord in such a real way. I knew that in the Bible God spoke to people, but I also learned that the Bible was a closed book, a completed record of God’s dealings with His people. I was led to believe that the Lord no longer spoke with us, because He no longer needed to, because all His words were freely available to us now in His Book, the Bible. I accepted this axiom without question: but I have long since seen how very damning such doctrine is, for it means that if I claim to have any real contact with the Lord, I am shunned and judged either as an arrogant, self-righteous but deluded heretic, or as of a disturbed mind, who ought to be seeing a psychiatrist!

However, at the time, I fitted happily into the existing church structure, and felt I lacked nothing; and leading a Service of Worship, preaching the Gospel, and being openly admired by a majority of my congregations for all my religious endeavour – I enjoyed the total challenge of it.

I wondered vaguely whether I should go on to Theological College and be ordained to the full-time ministry. But no-one in the church ever hinted to me that I should consider this, and I never felt to discuss the idea with anyone. In my heart I still really wanted to be a psychologist.

1.3

Then the war was over; the men returned home - and a new era of post-war 'normal' life began. The Chaplains were gradually demobilised, and returned to their churches, and one by one the band of Lay Preachers silently sank back into the pews.

At the age of twenty I was now redundant! I was supposed just to fit into the changed post-war structure. There were many tasks available to the willing labourer, I was told - Sunday school teaching, prayer circles, women's guilds, hospital visiting groups, youth committees, aged committees, church extension committees, missionary committees, and inter-denominational committees on various subjects. "Get involved", I was advised, "and be happy that the Lord can use you."

But I felt bored, and remained unconvinced that any of these activities were essentially the Lord's work - for me anyway - and I soon became a mere 'fringe dweller' in the church, taking few responsibilities beyond occupying a pew most Sunday mornings. In all, though I still went to church and still declared my faith, in fact that faith no longer had any real impact on my daily life. I think I became a typical twentieth century Christian!

My heart now centred on more worldly things. I completed my university studies in psychology, fell in love, married, and started a family. But I felt that church was still a natural and necessary part of the rhythm of life, and so I continued routinely to worship on Sundays and take my children to Sunday School.

Then, about ten years down the track, my comfortable existence was suddenly shattered. My three-year-old son was hit by a car and died instantly. I reacted no differently from anyone else. Question after question surfaced, most of them unanswerable. “Why had this been allowed to happen?” “Where was God in it all?” “What was life about anyway?” And just a few days further along, when I was beginning to think more cogently again, “Why were my Minister and my church friends so hypocritically helpless towards me in all this trauma?”

For within hours of the accident, my Minister, with a comforting arm around me, was intoning with professional assurance “Of course, we don’t believe in heaven any more; this is the twentieth century”; while at the very same time the Sunday School Superintendent, with equal professional assurance, was comforting my weeping five-year-old daughter with very different words “You should be very happy today, because your little brother has gone to heaven to be with Jesus.”

“Jesus!” If He were only here now, is that all He would have said and done for me? All that the church was really offering was to conduct a “Christian” burial service – after which the Minister would collect the appropriate fee, delicately included in the Statement of Account forwarded by the Funeral Director!

And what words of comfort and hope were offered at that Service? “We commit his body to the ground in sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life”, and “Grant us steadfastly to believe that this little child has been taken into the safe keeping of Thine eternal love.” These were the words intoned at the Congregational Burial Service; but ‘how’ and ‘where’, if we are not supposed to believe in heaven any more? Confusion, deep despair, desperation, day after day! Till eventually, after about a week of such utter hopelessness, I did something that I had never quite done before. From the very depths of my being I cried out “Lord, where is my son now? What am I supposed to believe?” There was no answering voice, but I went to bed and fell into a deep sleep.

Near dawn-time I had a beautiful dream – a glimpse of heaven with my little son happily in the care of angels. Simple, brief, but I woke up rejoicing, for I knew in my heart that it was not just a dream, but a message of comfort, the answer to my cry for help. He had heard my voice and answered me! I sat up in bed to give thanks to God …and there at the foot of my bed stood the One Who had answered my prayer, the person of Love, Jesus! And as I opened my mouth to speak He vanished from my sight!

I have insufficient words to describe what was happening inside me at that point. There was joy overflowing: there was a sure knowledge of heaven: and there was an incredible assurance of the Presence of the lord, such as I could never have thought possible. The anguish of my heart had given way to a jubilant and deeply confident peace.

As soon as it was physically possible, I was confronting my Minister. “There is a heaven John, and it has been opened to me, and I have seen my son there with the angels. And I have seen the Lord: He was at the foot of my bed. He answered my prayer. Heaven IS!”

As the words tumbled excitedly out, the Reverend John’s face grew tense and grave. I realised in some consternation that he was concerned for my sanity! How could a psychologist be talking like this about visions of heaven! He put his hand on me commandingly. “Stop”, he said, “You had a comforting dream; but it was only a dream. Calm down; face reality; get back to work. You know more than I do about the sorts of people who have visions; they finish up in mental hospitals. Put it all aside.”

This was my Minister! He thought I was mentally deranged! He could not believe in heaven! He could not believe it was possible to actually communicate with God! What could I say more? Nothing. But surely I had other friends who would listen and rejoice with me. In the next few days I visited two other Ministers who knew me well, and told them of my amazing experience. Had they already been alerted by John? I never knew; but they both treated me like a convalescing patient who might snap under pressure, made various gentle “Ah! Really!” noises, and then quickly changed the subject.

I was amazed and mystified. If those three reverend gentlemen, who had known me well over a long period of time, could not believe my experience, who would? I thought about it all again and again, trying to distance myself from it, to see it through a psychologist’s eye; and I knew that, in our twentieth century church, such an experience would never be received as ‘normal’, even in the midst of grief. So I made a decision to share it with no-one else, and to make no further effort to analyse it in any way. If it was not from God, I reasoned, it would fade away over time into an insignificant memory; but if it remained in me as a ‘beacon of light’ then surely it must have been the Lord revealing himself just as was written in Scripture and as happened in the lives of some of the saints; and I felt that, even as with those people, something more would be revealed to me in due course.

All of this I could tell myself calmly and convincingly: I was a psychologist disinterestedly examining a very unusual experience. But here too I began to recognise something which was to be very significant in my ongoing spiritual growth – that there was a difference between understanding with my mind and knowing with my heart. For even as I was making these intelligent decisions about what had happened to me, my heart was still burning with the glory of my encounter with the Lord, and in my heart I knew for certain, regardless of what I was analysing in my mind, that something astonishing had happened to me, and that this would be the beginning of a new level in my Christian walk.

I got back to work, back to my Sunday religious exercises, and people began to comment on how quickly and completely I had got over my bereavement; in fact, how happy I looked: and all that I felt I could do was just silently smile back.

How utterly bizarre that I, who had been reared within the church from the age of four, who had been trained for roles of leadership and occupied positions of trust within the church, should find absolutely no comfort within that structure in my time of need; and that when I did in fact experience the comfort, the assurance, the joy, which the church so hypocritically preached about, I had to remain so completely silent about its source, lest I be labelled a religious maniac of some sort, and deprived of all opportunity to further participate in the only religious life I knew.