Sometimes, things find us. When I was boy growing up in the Winson Green area of Birmingham, England, in the 1960s, many of the houses were being demolished due to post-war slum clearance. Most of these were ‘back to backs’ with shared toilets in communal yards and no baths. We used to play amongst the wreckage of those half knocked down homes, with the memories of people’s lives still clinging to them: bits of furniture and bric a brac left discarded amongst the ruins: broken shards of pottery; framed pictures on walls with peeling wallpaper and old gas masks. Nuclear warning sirens used to sound in the distance. Looking back, it had a surreal, apocalyptic atmosphere to it. But amongst the rubbish, I found a book that I was barely able to read. It had rain sodden covers and woodblock illustrations in it. I knew it was holy book because it had a picture of Jesus on the cross with men kneeling in front of him and angels worshipping in anguished prayer. It was only much later after I was baptised and a colleague at work gave me another copy of the same book, that I looked at it and understood its significance. It was called, “The Imitation of Christ”. Sometimes, things find us.
