Stories of ordinary people

Jackie Macadam learns more about a new book by John L Bell.

“THESE are not stories about famous people of faith. These are the stories of ordinary men and women who have touched my life, who have been witnesses for their faith and who have modelled the best in people to me.”

John Bell, minister, musician and member of the Iona Community is talking about his latest book.

“Entitled And Then She Said, it is a collection of stories about ‘ordinary’ people who have posed challenging questions and who have borne witness to their faith, not just in words but in deeds,” he says.

“One of the stories in the book is about a woman, an office cleaner, a lady overlooked by many others every day,” he says. “Yet she was not just one of the most inspirational women I have met, but also one of the most courageous.

“I knew her when I worked in Amsterdam and I only heard her story when I was asked to take her funeral. Among the small stories that make up a life, it came out that one day in 1943, she had opened her door to a Jewish woman and sheltered her during the German occupation of the Netherlands. Had the occupying army found out, they’d both have been sent to their death – and she knew that – but her faith witness meant she simply could not turn her back on someone in need, and so she took her in, no matter what it cost her.

“ He told me that he cried in church because this was the only place in his life where he genuinely was able to remember that life was meant to be good.

“It was incredible to me that this ordinary lady, who cleaned offices for a living, had risked so much for her faith and Christian witness. And no one knew.

“I find that women are so often the ‘forgotten heroes’ of the Bible,” he says. “They seem to be side-lined at every opportunity, and we are used to traditional male imagery when it comes to the spoken and the illustrated word. For instance the Holy Spirit is often referred to as ‘He’; the Trinity is all male. Many of our traditional hymns use masculine imagery. We need to be open to the female experience and witness. In other parts of the world, and certainly in many Asian and African nations, worshippers call the Holy Spirit ‘She’ as in the original Hebrew. The West’s focus on the male perspective is really a hold-over from the Victorian era, I think. “Because I spend a lot of time giving talks and leading workshops, I can always tell when the chairs have been laid out by a man or a woman. Whether I’m in Britain, Scandinavia, or the USA, if they’re in lines, facing the front of the room, they will have been put out by a man. If they’re laid out in a circle, where the focus is on each other, on the participants, rather than the leader at the front of the room then they almost always will have been put out by a woman. “That’s not to say And Then She Said is only about women and their stories. It’s not. Men’s witness features too,” John says.

“Another story comes from my time in Amsterdam. I noticed, at the services, that one young man used to sit at the back of the church. Often he would be weeping and always he would disappear very quickly after the service ended. He always seemed ‘hunted’, wary.

“It took a while, but eventually I managed to get his confidence enough to talk to him. He was a young Filipino, who had been in the navy and who had taken the opportunity to ‘jump ship’ when the vessel docked in Amsterdam. It was during the Marcos regime, and he became an illegal immigrant to the Netherlands. He had no income, nowhere to stay and no food, but was taken under the wing of an apparently sympathetic businessman who heard his story and said he could work for him. He’d drive from port to port, delivering goods for the guy. Sounded great. An income at last. Of course, it was too good to be true, and he quickly discovered he was a drug courier. He tried to back out, but he was warned that if he stopped, the police would be informed and he would be sent back potentially to face execution.

“He told me that he cried in church because this was the only place in his life where he genuinely was able to remember that life was meant to be good.

“I don’t know what happened to him. In the way of these things, I moved on in time and lost touch. I don’t know if he’s still there, scurrying the back streets in a state of constant fear of a heavy hand on his shoulder, or whether, by a miracle, he managed to get away.”

John pauses. The memory is plainly still clear in his mind, the potential outcomes too obvious.

“Just another ordinary person, bearing witness for his faith – risking everything by coming along to church for comfort and the idea that life could and should, be better.

“A third story is from a lady I met at a conference in western USA. I won’t go into details because I don’t want any identification of her and her family. She was very attractive, clearly intelligent and had a ready smile and a lovely personality. We met at a dinner table and it was there that she volunteered her story to me.

“She was a very successful theatre nursing sister who, as can happen when two people work together in a high-pressure situation, fell in love with one of the surgeons. They were a golden couple, with everything going for them.

“They married and looked forward to their life together and building a family. Soon enough she became pregnant, a very much-loved and anticipated child.

“But when the baby was born, he was severely disabled, deformed. To her horror she found herself rejecting the child. She could not find it in herself to love him. This was not the plan. This was not what she had expected or wanted. This child would not fit into the future they had anticipated together.

“Yet she found herself praying to God for three weeks straight – not to take the child away – but to allow her to love the child she had been given, and not the one she was mourning in her mind.

“Now, over twenty years later, she spoke of how that boy was her proud son and fondest friend. Every day, though unable to speak or move easily, he brings life into the world. One Sunday she wheeled him into church and, as the sun shining through stained glass windows spattered his white shirt with colour, he squealed with delight, and the whole congregation rejoiced with him.

“I sometimes wonder whether that woman would not have been as exuberant as she clearly was if she had not, in the light of her faith, made the decision to accept the child God had given her.

“These are the stories of ordinary people,” John says, “people who would never imagine their witness would be important. They may not be celebrities on earth, but they are in the Kingdom of Heaven.” ¤