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OCTAIKON | | |
 Interlude: Church memories
My earliest memories of churches (the building, rather than the people in it) are
of the taste, feel and smell of chair backs – at eye level. That was in Hounslow,
near Heathrow, in the fifties. I also remember that time for all the aeroplanes
coming in to land. I used to watch them avidly – bit of a fanatic I was – still am.
In the sixties, I remember with affection five years singing under the majestic
stone canopies of Canterbury Cathedral while at school there. What a contrast
to the mud and thatch church I later attended in Nigeria, under the rainforest
canopy. There, the minister, Alidu Obi, doubled as my night watchman.
Come the seventies - in Honduras at the town of Siguatepeque (which means
the place of the little or beautiful women) – I had the opportunity to help design
and build an Episcopal church from scratch. Since that time, churches we have
attended have been all sorts, shapes and chair arrangements.
Early memories of the church as people are less distinct – gradually becoming
clearer as I understood what it was to be a Christian. I heard a lot about the
Baptist missionary work of my wider family. Then I absorbed the outlook of the
Anglican church (low variety) into which I was born. While abroad, I met many
wonderful protestant missionaries, and gradually came to know the Catholic
Church in its many guises and orders – with a sudden jump in understanding
when I married Gilli – a Catholic. I met her in Nicaragua, where she was working
as a volunteer nurse with the Catholic Institute for International Relations (CIIR) –
now called Progressio.
Then there was the exciting charismatic movement in its various forms. Some of
the most memorable and exemplary Christians we have known were part of that
movement. And latterly Gilli and I have begun to learn something about that
wonder-filled branch of the Christian church – the Orthodox.
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