This made me think of my studies on slavery and women’s equality and how stunned I’d been that the church had got things so wrong. The “grace of the Spirit” had finally helped change those traditions, and the church was far better for it.
As the spirituality course neared its end, Bishop Kallistos gave me a copy of his book The Orthodox Way. One passage in it remains, to this day, one of the most beautiful summaries of faith I have ever encountered: “It is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder.”5
This concept stayed with me throughout the rest of my theology degree—it seemed to sum up everything I had learned. I’d gone to Oxford to get answers, but I was learning that faith was less of a mathematical problem to calculate and more about surrendering to the vastness of God. We can love him wholeheartedly and follow him unswervingly, but we can never fully comprehend the Being who created us out of the dust and gave us breath. Honest faith begins with surrender and matures into wonder.
13
A heavy bell chimed from a tall spire, and a sea of undergraduates walked across a black-and-white-checkered marble floor. It was time for finals, the exams that would determine whether we passed or failed the degree. We were all a bundle of nerves. The pressure was immense, and students all around me had been swallowing caffeine tablets and all manner of other substances to pull revision all-nighters.
We made our way up a huge stone staircase to the examination hall. It was university regulation that we had to wear subfusc—the white shirt and black gown with tails and the flat mortarboard hat. Usually in these outfits we’d all run around pretending to be superheroes, with the tails of the gowns flying behind us like Superman’s cape. Today there was no joking around—every face was etched with anxiety.
As tradition demands, Oxford students wear a white carnation in their buttonhole for their first finals exam. For the following ones, they wear a pink carnation. Then for the last examination, they wear a red one. This communicates to everyone around them where they are in their finals slog—just starting, in the middle, or at the end.
I couldn’t wait for the afternoon to arrive when I could switch my pink carnation for a red one and walk up the stone staircase to my last exam. When the bell rang to signal the end of those three hours, a wave of relief washed over me. Somehow I’d made it through finals in one piece.
Staggering out into the bright light of the June afternoon, I’d forgotten that people would be there to congratulate us. By tradition, students from the years below wait outside the exam building for the emerging “finalists.” If they see someone with a red carnation, they shower them with champagne and confetti.
When I saw those students running toward us, popping the cork of a bottle and spraying champagne in our direction, I burst out laughing. We all got doused in the expensive alcohol (slightly wasted on me, a teetotaler) and had boxes of confetti shaken over our heads. The result left us a sticky, colorful, grinning mess. Cheering loudly, they hoisted a couple of us onto their shoulders, spinning us around.
We headed off to the Turf Tavern, Oxford’s oldest pub, dating back to 1381. I bought a coke and joined the noisy celebrations. “After this, how about we go punting?” one student shouted. An hour later, exhausted but happily willing, a gang of us headed down High Street toward Magdalen Bridge and the river.
“Punting,” found in both Oxford and Cambridge, involves a long gondola-style boat that you propel along by pushing a long metal pole against the riverbed. Oxford’s main river was filled with students attempting to master this skill, usually with a great deal of splashing and screaming and the occasional person falling dramatically overboard to the sounds of yet more laughter. We unmoored a college punt from the side of the river and all climbed in. It felt amazing to lie back in the reclining seat, stretch my legs out, and watch as we wound our way lazily around the bends of the River Cherwell, passing libraries, spires, and turrets on either side.
I breathed a long sigh of relief knowing that my exams were done. Whatever lay ahead, I was now twenty-one and had survived the pressures of Oxford without failing my course, without losing my faith, and without kissing any girls. All in all, that seemed like success to me. Lying back in the punt, blinking in the sunlight, and seeing my fellow students splashing one another with river water, I felt the tension leave my shoulders, and I smiled.
A few weeks later, the narrow streets were crammed with cars collecting students. Parents and siblings helped lug bags and belongings out of dorm rooms and into waiting vehicles. The college quads buzzed with smiling but solemn faces. There was much hugging and snapping of photos, as we unwillingly bid each other good-bye after our three memorable years together. It was bittersweet—the relief of exams done mixed with the melancholy of letting go of this chapter of our lives.
We were going our separate ways, to new jobs scattered across the country and the globe. Personally, I wasn’t going far. Keen to stay in Oxford a little longer, I’d signed up for an internship at the Vineyard church, where I could be mentored in songwriting and continue to sing at national conferences. This was still the career I wanted to pursue—worship was the heartbeat of my existence, and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
The internship kept me extremely busy. It also plunged me into full-time church work and a community where everyone held deeply traditional beliefs about marriage and sexuality. Away from the Oxford tutors and books, I let the big questions I’d begun to ponder about LGBTQ+ theology dwindle away. Loneliness was a daily battle, and all my friends were dating, or getting engaged. I shelved my pain, gritted my teeth, and told myself I could manage to stay single and just focus on my faith and my ministry instead.
Career-wise, things were moving fast. Before the year was out, I was sitting opposite a UK record-label representative with a recording contract in her hand, being offered the chance to go into a professional studio for the first time. I recorded my first album at ICC Studios, near Brighton, a hallowed place in the Christian world. It would be mixed and mastered at a truly legendary music venue—Abbey Road in London, where the Beatles recorded almost all their records.
Outside Abbey Road Studios stands the famous road crossing immortalized on the cover of the Beatles’ 1969 album. I walked across it, feeling nostalgic about all the musicians who had trodden that ground before me.
The chief mastering engineer, Chris Blair, welcomed me into his audio suite, decked out with vast speakers and a mixing desk containing more knobs, sliders, and dials than a plane’s cockpit. Chris had begun his career there back in 1969, starting as a basic tape operator. The first summer he worked there in this junior role, the Beatles had come in and recorded. He’d gone on to become a world-renowned mastering engineer, and on the walls were the album covers of famous artists he’d worked with: Radiohead, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, the Commodores, Olivia Newton-John, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Genesis, Kate Bush, Morrissey, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Sting, the Cure. He’d even mastered Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
When my CD was done and copies arrived in the mail, it was amazing to hold it in my hands. Having my own album ramped up the pace of my career—before long I was going back and forth regularly to the States and Canada as well as playing across the UK and Europe. Music was proving a viable job, so I gave it all the energy I had; I was doing what I had always dreamed of—leading worship and writing songs for the church. At least one part of my life now felt fulfilling and exciting, and I poured everything I had into it. Very soon I would find that even more doors were about to open.
Not long after the launch of my album, I was in California playing at a Christian conference in San Diego with three thousand people in attendance. After I sang, a man in an expensive-looking black suit approached me backstage.
“Hey! I wanted to catch you . . .” he said, extending a handshake. He was from a Christian label owne
d by EMI Records. Giving me his business card, he said he and his wife would love to take me to dinner and talk. They drove me to the Hotel del Coronado, located on Coronado Island just off the San Diego coast, a stunning place that had been a favorite haunt of American presidents as well as Charlie Chaplin, Katharine Hepburn, and Clark Gable.
I wasn’t used to being schmoozed like this and felt rather overwhelmed as I took in the beautiful chandeliers, dark wood ceilings, and luxurious red carpets. Outside, we sat at a dining table overlooking the ocean and watched the sun go down. It was a wonderful evening, and they couldn’t have been kinder to me.
As our evening came to a close, he asked if I would be open to the idea of moving to the US full-time. If I was, he said, EMI would be interested in signing me to its Christian label. This was a lot to process: a move across the pond and a totally new life in a new country would be a huge step. I told him I’d give it serious thought.
Nervous but excited, I emailed a few weeks later, saying I was genuinely open to the move if they were able to make me a formal offer. He said the next step was to play in front of their staff team in Nashville, where their Christian music HQ was located. They invited me to sing at a megachurch in Franklin, just outside Nashville, so within a couple of months I was flying to Tennessee for a weeklong visit.
A long line of men and women, some in black suits, some in leather jackets, stood at the back of the venue. Peering around the backstage curtain, I’d seen them all arrive and take their places. As I began to sing, it was intimidating to see the record label staff watching, as they scribbled into notebooks, exchanged looks among themselves, and whispered into each other’s ears.
After I played my final song, I walked into the backstage area, whispering a prayer of thanks and relief. The friendly man who’d treated me to dinner at the swanky Hotel del Coronado appeared, saying, “Everyone loved you. Come to the label building tomorrow. Let’s all get around a table and talk.”
Visiting the EMI office was an intimidating experience. From the large lobby a gold elevator took me up to the top floor and the label head’s suite, complete with a panoramic view across the city. I was nervous, but the record executives put me at ease and even managed to find a cup of Earl Grey tea for me, which made me smile.
As well as saying positive things about my singing and songwriting, they helped me understand how the Christian music industry worked in the States and how vastly different it was from in the UK, where church music only occupied a tiny niche. If I was moving to start a new life there, I’d need to know how this genre of music worked.
In the US, they explained, Christian music was sold in all the main supermarkets, on the same shelves as the Top 40 pop and mainstream rock albums. I knew England had a small churchgoing population of around 2 percent in weekly attendance, but the US had vastly more, especially in the South, where there was a church on every corner. Ever a geek, I was interested in statistics, so with a few hits on Google I found that 89 percent of Americans believed in God, 55 percent prayed daily, and 50 percent attended a church service at least once a month.
Catering to that huge chunk of the population were megachurches, where literally thousands of worshippers attended every Sunday. Big Christian festivals were held every summer rivaling the scale of the UK’s Glastonbury. Christian music in the US was a billion-dollar industry, with radio stations, merchandise, and vast bookstore chains. It was gargantuan in scale. I’d known about megachurches already, from my Anaheim trip, but understanding how the whole religious music industry worked was like staring into a supersized world; it was a little overwhelming.
I finished my Earl Grey tea, and our meeting drew to a close. The EMI executives were keen to have me on board; they just needed to speak to their wider team and make sure they could formally offer me a contract. “We want you here,” one of them said, “but it can’t be a definite yes until we get the green light about an official deal. Give us a few weeks to talk with our contract department,” they said.
I flew back to the UK and, as the weeks passed, I wished the phone would hurry up and ring so I’d know whether they would offer me a firm contract. Not wanting to seem pushy, I left the ball in their court. Eventually, six weeks had passed since the Nashville meeting, and I still hadn’t received a call. Christmas was approaching, so everyone around me was getting into the festive spirit, but I was struggling to relax without knowing the answers about where my future lay.
14
Driving up the steep winding hill into my parents’ village, I was looking forward to spending Christmas there. It was always nice to visit the place I grew up. I drove past the beautiful thirteenth-century parish church where I’d gone every Sunday since I was twelve. This year, as we did every year, my parents and I would attend the Christmas Eve Nativity service.
When I was younger, I’d been in the Nativity play myself. Mary, the angel Gabriel, a shepherd—I’d played most roles through the years and loved it. It was an all-age affair too; my dad was always one of the three wise men. Each year he’d wear a robe made of old curtains and a golden crown that always seemed a little too big. It usually slipped down over his eyes by the time he delivered his key line, “I bring gold,” laying his gift near the manger.
This Christmas Eve, I wasn’t in the play—although my long-suffering father was donning the golden crown and playing a wise man with his usual good humor. So my mum and I were keen to get a good seat to witness it all. I was especially looking forward to my favorite moment—every year, near the end of the service, we turned off the lights and sang “Silent Night” by candlelight, which felt truly magical. To this day it remains one of my most treasured moments each Christmas.
The pews were packed, and the only seats left were right at the front, so we sat down there. I felt cheerful, but also distracted, as the record label in Nashville still hadn’t been in touch. My life felt up in the air. Would I soon be packing everything and moving to the States? It was incredibly hard not to have clarity and be able to plan.
I looked at my watch, mentally calculating the time-zone difference: five o’clock in England was about eleven in the morning in Nashville. My heart sank, because I was sure there was little chance anyone would be in the office the day before Christmas. I had to let it go and assume they’d be in touch in January.
My thoughts snapped back to the present as the organ blasted out the opening chords of the first carol. Small children dressed as shepherds, with dishcloths wrapped around their heads, delivered their lines with heart-melting cuteness. Kids in angel costumes declared, “Glory to God in the highest,” in their loudest voices, adjusting their lopsided halos made from wire clothes hangers.
Adults played their roles with great gusto—the innkeeper, the chief shepherd, the narrator—everyone was fully in the spirit of the evening. My dad, with his signature booming voice, did an excellent job as a wise man, and for once his gold crown seemed to stay in place.
My favorite part of the night was approaching. Candles were handed out to everyone, and the lights were switched off. The organ began to play “Silent Night,” and in the glow of the flickering candles we sang, “How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given.” I looked around, cherishing the faces of my childhood school friends and my parents in the thirteenth-century village church, and sensed that God was close by. Everyone was smiling, enjoying the atmosphere of reverence and magical wonder as we shared the warm candlelit moment. It was absolutely beautiful.
Right then, a horrendously loud clanging noise interrupted us all. It was the loud ringtone of a mobile phone. And, worse still, I instantly realized it was mine. Horrified, I reached into my jacket pocket and silenced it. All eyes swung toward me, and I wanted the thirteenth-century wooden floor to swallow me up.
I now faced a dilemma. Even worse than my phone ringing intrusively would be actually taking the call. The rows were full, and the aisles were packed with extra chairs—getting over to the door and outside would take a feat of Olympic magni
tude. But I knew if I didn’t take this call, I’d be stuck all Christmas break without clarity about my future. It might be weeks before people fully reengaged with work in January. Gritting my teeth, I shuffled down the packed pew, past everyone clutching their service bulletins, still midsong. Finally reaching the eight-foot-tall oak door with its huge bronze handle, I closed it behind me with a heavy thud. Despite my best effort, I couldn’t have made a less subtle exit.
It was utterly freezing outside. I hadn’t worn a coat, assuming I’d be inside in the warm building all evening. Our village was also pitch-dark; we had no streetlights. So I stood in the inky blackness, listening to the voice on the other end of my phone. A cow in the field opposite the church watched me, its eyes glowing in the night, as it lazily chewed a mouthful of frosty grass.
The EMI exec said they’d made a decision. I held my breath in anticipation. Even the cow stopped chewing, sensing my tense posture.
“We’ve decided,” he continued, “it’s a go from everyone here—we’re saying yes.” A huge grin spread across my face.
I was elated, but also freezing. I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes, but I continued to stand in the dark village lane, telling the exec that I wanted to accept the offer and move to Nashville.
He said I’d need to get a US work permit, so he’d give me the phone number of Nashville’s best immigration lawyer. “Do you have a pen and paper, so I can give that to you now?” he asked. Not wanting to admit that I was standing in a pitch-dark country road, surrounded only by a field of cows, I said, “Absolutely.”
I scanned the street for something to write on, or with. My only option was the village notice board—but that December night it was covered in thick ice. As he read out the phone number, I licked my finger and wrote it into the layer of frost. I planned to grab a pen later from my parents’ house and return to the notice board to copy it down.
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