Years ago, my son Jack dubbed my father a “secular missionary”. He was spot on. Funded by the British government, my father crisis-managed schools and set up 14 new colleges across Nigeria in the early 1970s. So, at the age when children in this country were being confirmed, I was with my family on the Biafran border – a world away from church and school.

Louise as a child

When we returned to Kent, I was a teenager. My sister and brother and I had a great deal of catching up to do. We soaked up books, radio, cheese, apples and a temperate climate. On rare visits to church in our hamlet, my sister and I giggled quietly at the seriousness of the congregation and totally failed to understand the sermons or the liturgy – all so foreign to us. I do remember Archbishop Ramsey giving a very angry sermon in that tiny church – something about a tomato seed. I did register that he was trying to show we were all sinners but I’m not sure where the tomato seeds came into it. He sprinkled a few from the pulpit.

All this is by way of saying that I missed my moment for Confirmation as a child and then catapulted into adult life still constantly trying to catch up. So, what led to my eventual Confirmation and to a deeper love of God – always there but always rather buried under the weight of just keeping going? 

Seven years ago, a man in a van drove into me as I was cycling home from work. He didn’t kill me – almost but not quite. After two years of struggling to get back to normal, I decided to leave my job. And suddenly I had time. Time to contemplate and time to spend with my two sons. There was much talk at our kitchen table about life and moral courage, comradeship, duty and faith. We started going to church every Sunday. And this part of the story – the important bit! – I find difficult to put into words. All I can say is that my journey of faith is about what I let stand in the way rather than any effort being required of me to travel this path. The best word to describe the difference between now and then is ‘completeness’. 

Of any church I have ever known, I feel especially complete worshipping at Old Church. This feeling is also hard to explain in words but I would describe the aura of the Church itself as a strong combination of rooted humility and love.

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