Introduction

In Covid lockdown of 2020, I began two massive projects. One was to produce one music video per day for the duration of lockdown.

See LOCKDOWN LEGACY:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnUh_ZGnZNfUlV8HEyppRIv8FLBtyEY65

The other was to write a book about how I came to faith. Had it not been for that period of enforced isolation, these two projects would not have seen the light of day.

My book began by way of my suggestion to our vicar that it would be good to invite certain members of our church to produce a short video that could be shown on Zoom (i.e. a video link) about how they came to faith. I reasoned that this might encourage those who felt lonely and isolated from church fellowship during lockdown. It might also inspire them and help them to sense something of the reality of God’s presence, as lived out through the lives of fellow members of the congregation. 

So, I started to write my faith story out, just in case I was invited to be one of the contributors. As it happens, I wasn’t invited to do so, but once I had taken those first few steps of reliving my Sunday school days, as a young child in Howdon, Willington Quay, in the early fifties — I became like Forrest Gump who couldn’t stop running. (In my case, writing.)

I found it so therapeutic, each day, to reflect not only on my faith but my entire life. And to be able to hand my reflections on to my family one day felt like a wonderful thing to do. Grandchildren and great grandchildren would be able to read all about my family history, and they would be able to see just how important my Christian faith was to me, when I could tell of it no more.

In time, it grew into a document so large that I was advised by friends to split it up into two separate books: one about my life, the other about my faith. Believe me, I tried many times to split it up, but I found it impossible.

One Sunday morning when I sat listening to a sermon by Bishop John Pritchard, based upon Romans 8.31-39, he kept repeating the words, “Nothing can separate us from...” And I suddenly realised that separating my faith from my life was akin to separating the warp from the weft of a finished piece of weaving! 

I shared my revelation with him after the service. For to me, God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, had been there throughout my life as my constant provider, my comforter, my counsellor, my guide, and my closest friend.

Later that very same day, I experienced an amazing coincidence. I was looking up poems by author Kate Compston for a completely different project, and as I opened a website called Green Christian, the first poem I saw by Kate was actually entitled, ‘Weaver God’. It began:

“Weaver-God, Creator, sets life on the loom,

draws out threads of colour from primordial gloom. 

Wise in design-ing, in the weaving deft:

love and justice joined — the fabric’s warp and weft.”

I found this incredible after my revelation that morning? It seemed to me that God was giving my book project the go-ahead.