Introduction

“A Final Distant Clarion Cry” consists of diverse unrelated writings which I painstakingly knitted together to make a suitably grand finale to my as yet untitled experiment in spiritual memoir composition. The kernel of the work was “Apologia for a Cyber Church”, a piece written specifically for the online Church of Philadelphia Worldwide, for which my friend Lane Nickerson serves as pastor, and for which I feel honoured to call myself an elder. Substantial portions of the apologia are still to be found within “The Perils of Church Hopping”. To the apologia I added a prose section from the former “Some Perverse Will”, originally published at the Blogster.com website on Christmas Day 2006, while the poetic soul of the piece was incorporated into another story. Also grafted onto “Final Cry”, and specifically “Waves of Bohemia” and “The March of the Modern”, were extracts from “The Redemption of a Rebel Artist”, initially published at Blogster on the 14th of September 2006. “Fireworks Frantically Exploding”, “The Dispersal of Clouds”, “The Wilderness Decade”, “The Summing Up”, and “Not by a Long Chalk” were all written specifically for “Final Cry”, which was first published as a whole at FaithWriters.com on the 13th of November 2007, and then again in December.

Part One

Fireworks Frantically Exploding

The troubled, turbulent 20th Century having ceded to the 21st to the sound of fireworks frantically exploding all throughout my neighbourhood, I discovered through a phone call to my father that my mother was desperately ill with flu. It was a harrowing start to the new century, but once again God poured blessings on my family, and she made a complete recovery. It’s crossed my mind since that she may have become susceptible to the flu virus partly as a result of stress caused by the fact that I'd latterly quit yet another course; this time an MA in French and Theory of Literature from University College, London, which was one of the most prestigious of its kind in the world.
I found the course fascinating, despite aspects of it that disturbed me, and which were likely to become increasingly so had I persisted with it. However, leaving the course on spiritual grounds as was indeed the case was a painful experience for me as I felt certain I was headed for a first class degree.
As if in consolation, I was appointed chief musician of the worship band of the Liberty Christian Centre, suburban satellite church of London’s Kensington Temple which I'd sporadically attended for a few months during the previous summer. I'd been recommended for the post by my friend Marina, Russian wife of the pastor, Louis M. originally from New York City. She went on to become worship leader, alternating as such with another close friend and mentor, Martha J. from Peru. It was Louis who'd got in touch with me the previous summer through KT about joining a cell group at his home in the Surrey suburbs. This eventually mutated into Liberty, with which I forged very close ties from the outset, going on to serve in the Worship Group until well into 2001.

Once Liberty had come to a close in early ‘01, I returned to my first spiritual home of Cornerstone Bible Church, a fellowship affiliated to the Word of Faith Movement and specifically to Rhema Ministries of Johannesburg, South Africa. Before defecting to the Riverside Vineyard Christian Fellowship, I’d gone to Cornerstone for about two years from early 1993, in fact, had attended my very first service there even before becoming a Christian in ‘92. Drunk at the time as I recall, I'd sat next to a beautiful blonde woman of about 55 whom I later discovered to be a successful actress who at the height of her career in the sixties had appeared in television cult classics "The Avengers" and "The Prisoner". Apart from an elder from the Jesus Fellowship, who'd laid hands on me at a meeting of theirs in central London, she wa