Mustard seed

Faith, doubt and the legacy of leaving

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  • Published 20241105
  • ISBN: 978-1-923213-01-2
  • Extent: 196 pp
  • Paperback, ebook, PDF

ON SABBATH MORNINGS, I fidgeted as we knelt on the speckled purple carpet. The polished wood of the pews smelt of lacquer in the thick, still air, and from the pulpit, the pungent aroma of carnations and baby’s breath, pushed into foam blocks inside their ornate vases, wafted in the lazy arc of a pedestal fan. A clock high up on the wall marked the minutes ticking by, one by one, attracting glances and stifled yawns the longer the sermon continued after the second and hour hands edged past midday.

My mother let us pack felt pens and colouring books to fill the time, plastic animals to play with at her feet. Sometimes I’d drop handmade money drawn with crayons on scrap paper into the velvet offering bags – the bags where my parents’ fists so often disappeared, depositing handfuls of coins or an envelope of tithe. On ordinance days, as the church deacons passed communion bread and little glass thimbles of grape juice down the aisles, my mother would leave some left over for me, even though I was too young to be baptised.

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