I volunteered at the time in a second-hand bookshop, and often idly rifled through the surplus stock in the back. One day I found a copy of something called The Book of Common Prayer, which I had barely heard of at all. Out of sheer bemused curiosity, I flicked through it.
It was quite different to anything I had ever experienced before when I had had glancing contact with Christianity. I found myself recognising, perhaps through familiarity with an English literary canon profoundly influenced by it or the mysterious transmission of some cross-generational English collective unconscious, some of its phrases and rhythms. I was particularly struck by the general confession said at something called “morning” and “evening prayer”, with its talk of how we had “followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts” and “left undone those things which we ought to have done” and “done those things which ought not to have done”. I suppose I had become unsatisfied with the emptiness of many aspects of my life and unable to account for or give voice to a deep, visceral sorrow at my own unworthiness and the sinful actions that I was acutely conscious of having committed. It moved me: I was embarrassed at how much, but felt obscurely that it was important. I started carrying around a copy of this curious little book — the bookshop didn’t want it and would have chucked it out otherwise. I did it furtively.
Keep reading to find out where the story goes.