A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUALITY

November 2022

My father was a pacifist and registered as a conscientious objector in the Second World War. He’d been brought up as an Anglican, but not finding the Church of England a comfortable place to be as a pacifist, he joined the Quakers. My mother was brought up an Anglican, and I grew up as an Anglican, knowing him as a Quaker. He never spoke about why he was a Quaker, and I only knew because Mum told me.

As I grew up I often tried to get him to tell me his story, but he never would. Then one day, in my mid forties, I visited them on Mothering Sunday as usual, and, sat down after lunch, he began talking about why he’d become a Quaker all those years ago, as if it was a matter he talked about regularly.  I was astonished, & so was my mother.  I ‘floated’ home feeling greatly blessed.  He never spoke to me about it again, ever.  

I have often wondered what triggered him to talk, and why then?   I had no idea.  Recently I have begun to wonder if he was, consciously or unconsciously,

telling me about a time when he went ‘feral’, although that wouldn’t have been a word that he’d have used.  But he spoke of a time when he listened to his own voice rather than the voices of others around him, & acted on it.  It cant have been easy, must have been costly, although he spoke lightly of it.

I went back and read again my notes of that Mothering Sunday conversation, and noticing that the date was March 25th 2001, the Feast of the Annunciation, I made a connection that I hadn’t before.  Some years previously, I too had similarly acted on my own inner voice by stepping out of stipendiary ministry in the Church of England, to go freelance, setting up The Annunciation Trust in the process.  So on that Sunday, consciously or unconsciously he was sharing with me that he had done something similar many years previously and was thus giving me his blessing. ‘Feral’ is a calling that he & I share, that binds us.  No wonder I floated home 

He died 20 years ago. I know I have his prayerful support both as a father and as a fellow feral: that I’m walking a path that he began many years previously. Maybe there were others before him who were also, in some way, ‘feral’, that we stand in a long line. Certainly others will come after us.