‘The Light said: “I did not bring you here to sit alone”.’

One size fits no one: Jacinta White tells a personal story of her journey into Quakerism

'Faith is outreach – you turn up and people start to see you.' | Photo: David Clarke / Unsplash.

There are many ways that lead to God and Quakerism. As with my autism, my story is only one of many and one size fits no one.

My parents were from Roman Catholic families but by the time I was born they had stopped attending church and I was not baptised. My father studied theology years later, after he retired, and for a year or two he was a practicing vicar with a small congregation in the Dutch village of Brummen. Then in his early seventies he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. After volunteering for years to support people affected by the condition he knew what this meant, and what could happen. Shortly after he found out he told me: ‘I no longer believe in God or anything like that.’ So it is true to say I have some Christian roots but all four of us children were left to do with that as we saw fit.

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