DON’T FORGET WE’RE HERE FOREVER: Michael Bartholomew-Biggs admires Lamorna Ash’s honest account of a spiritual exploration.
Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever
Lamorna Ash
Bloomsbury
ISBN: 978-1-52266-6312-2
332pp £10.99
Why should an elderly Christian – well past his Biblical allocation of three-score-years-and-ten – have picked up a book sub-titled A new generation’s search for religion? A small part of the reason lies in the author’s unusual – and therefore memorable – name. Following an enjoyable holiday in Cornwall, I had read and enjoyed Lamorna Ash’s previous book Dark, Salt, Clear which describes life in a Cornish fishing town. It was seeing her name again that made me at least pick up her new book to see what she was writing about now. And although it surprised me that she had chosen to tackle questions of religion and faith I was curious about what she would have to say. Despite what the book’s title suggests, I know very well that I am nearer my end than my beginning and I do often wonder how Christianity might express itself in generations to come. Perhaps this book will enlighten me.
I discovered straight away that this is a very honest and quite personal book. Ash begins by telling us she was a writer in urgent need of a subject when she learned that two of her friends had unexpectedly become Christians and were already contemplating ordination as priests. Here was something that could be investigated as the basis for (at least) an article; and so she “fired off a pitch” (to put it as bluntly as she does). From that beginning she describes how her investigation expanded both in scale (from article to book length) and also in personal involvement as the questions she was putting to other people began to seem relevant to her as well.
By spending time with her two newly-converted friends she discovers that faith shows more convincingly in someone’s manner of being than in their answers to questions of doctrine. Evidently belief can change your life. Ash may not want that to happen to her; yet she does learn quite soon that it’s possible to “believe in the belief of others”. But to gain one’s own belief simply by watching others is like trying to swim without entering the water.
Ash therefore decides to spend more than a year engaging with different churches and mixing with Christians, thus going well beyond her initial editorial remit. A first media piece appears but she still wants to explore further. She studies church history and notes the complex theological issues that have split the church along many fault lines. (In this, as in other areas, she does her research thoroughly and the text is underpinned by a substantial number of notes and references.) She is puzzled that a faith based on such huge and supernatural beliefs as Christianity could fragment into so many competing denominational products; and she soon becomes more interested in the lived experiences and beliefs that ordinary church members sustain day by day alongside whatever official positions are stated from the pulpit by the theological professionals. She soon finds that those ordinary members include more people of her own age than she would have expected and that, more broadly, her generation takes quite a tolerant view on matters of faith. She now reckons that her contemporaries haven’t been lured into atheism by Richard Dawkins’ attacks on a straw-man version of religion but have probably been drawn away from Christian ideas chiefly by the distractions of capitalism and consumerism.
Part one of the book describes Ash’s experience of attendance and participation in the activities of a number of churches. She begins, wisely, with a church that offers a Bible course because she admits she has been unable to understand the Bible by herself. She soon finds that a Bible course isn’t necessarily an balanced overview of the text but can be designed to emphasise a particular theological viewpoint. The one that Ash joins proves to have a conservative evangelical slant, meaning that its reading of the text feels too closed and unquestioning. She is also disconcerted by this church’s strict positions on chastity, sexuality and gender issues. And finally she doesn’t care for the way that the course leader would “swagger and quip” when giving his talks. She does however stick with the course for two months and afterwards admits that she has learned a lot, even though the church climate remains uncongenial. She can now approach the Bible in a way that seems freer than was possible with her own original suspicious attitude or with the particular built-in biases of the course she has just completed. A careful re-reading of the Gospel of Mark provides a helpful background to her examination of other churches and Christian organisations, in most of which she encounters leadership structures that are overbearing or even manipulative. These experiences prompt a change of direction described in the second section of the book.
Part two describes a more personal journey in which Ash begins attending Quaker meetings. Issues with leadership are thus avoided since Quakers – in whose meetings everyone is free to speak but hardly anybody does – have very few discernible leadership structures. For a while Ash seems mildly content with the Quakers (although possibly wishing that in the 21st century they would be as animated as they were in the 17th century when first founded by George Fox); but she varies her weekly attendances by going on number of quiet – or even silent – retreats in remote parts of the country.
At the first of these retreats, with the Iona Community, she comes across the notion of ‘thin places’. She gains a sense that, here, the boundary between the earthly and the heavenly might be quite porous; and this does indeed produce a measure of helpful self-revelation. A few weeks later she has another new and unfamiliar experience at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham where a Holy Week retreat involves her in Catholic devotional practices. She finds these quite an attractive contrast to the rather left-brained and word-based liturgies of the evangelical churches she has previously known. Finally, a third retreat at St Bueno’s in North Wales, where poet Gerard Manley Hopkins trained as a Jesuit priest, reconnects Ash with her own university days studying literature. Alongside a re-examination of Hopkins’ extraordinary and imaginative poetry Ash learns about Ignatian spiritual exercises which involve immersive reading of a Bible passage so as to enter as fully as possible into the emotional and spiritual experiences of the characters who feature in it.
The cumulative effect of these retreats is that Ash finds herself in a new state of openness where she benefits from reading Bible passages. But she adds “it’s not that I think, them true, but that they broaden the possibilities of Christianity’s scope, and so make it into something I am more able to appreciate, or could imagine wanting for myself.” The ground is now prepared for Part three.
Part three begins when Ash reaches the conclusion that no two Christians actually hold precisely the same belief! She then starts having conversations with people who are aware that their beliefs have changed over time rather than becoming established in an early stage. These conversations widen her conception of what Christianity is and enable her at least to imagine how faith might work in her own life … And at this point point it is probably best for me to avoid spoilers and simply to say that, at the end of the book, Ash brings us up to date about where her beliefs have now got to. She has composed a somewhat tangled story with a few loose ends; but she has told it with clarity, self-awareness and good humour and has included a lot of interesting detail and reflection within and hetweenbetween the episodes I have merely outlined above. The disarming honesty, which I mentioned earlier, is evident throughout: she quite freely confesses her mistakes, anxieties and preoccupations when they distract from her journalistic research and her own personal quest for belief. She is similarly frank in her quoted conversations with both believers and doubters; and it’s likely that many of these lively and exchanges would have been worthwhile and helpful for both participants.
This book sheds light on the spiritual hopes, fears and perplexities of generations, probably led to expect to live in a stable world, but whose growing up has been marred by austerity, a Covid pandemic, side-effects of wars fought elsewhere, a housing shortage and emerging threats from AI towards career prospects. Indeed, the book’s title may be a reminder of the vulnerability of these young people. Ash overhears the assurance “Don’t forget we’re here forever” being uttered by a leader at a college training young people for missionary work. Presumably the remark was intended as a reminder of Biblical promises of everlasting life; but if such assurances are delivered too glibly they may place too big a burden on a faith that’s not yet strong enough to bear it. Perhaps belief needs to begin at levels where experience can support it. Lamorna Ash has shown what some of those important first levels of belief might look like.
May 12 2026
DON’T FORGET WE’RE HERE FOREVER
DON’T FORGET WE’RE HERE FOREVER: Michael Bartholomew-Biggs admires Lamorna Ash’s honest account of a spiritual exploration.
Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever
Lamorna Ash
Bloomsbury
ISBN: 978-1-52266-6312-2
332pp £10.99
Why should an elderly Christian – well past his Biblical allocation of three-score-years-and-ten – have picked up a book sub-titled A new generation’s search for religion? A small part of the reason lies in the author’s unusual – and therefore memorable – name. Following an enjoyable holiday in Cornwall, I had read and enjoyed Lamorna Ash’s previous book Dark, Salt, Clear which describes life in a Cornish fishing town. It was seeing her name again that made me at least pick up her new book to see what she was writing about now. And although it surprised me that she had chosen to tackle questions of religion and faith I was curious about what she would have to say. Despite what the book’s title suggests, I know very well that I am nearer my end than my beginning and I do often wonder how Christianity might express itself in generations to come. Perhaps this book will enlighten me.
I discovered straight away that this is a very honest and quite personal book. Ash begins by telling us she was a writer in urgent need of a subject when she learned that two of her friends had unexpectedly become Christians and were already contemplating ordination as priests. Here was something that could be investigated as the basis for (at least) an article; and so she “fired off a pitch” (to put it as bluntly as she does). From that beginning she describes how her investigation expanded both in scale (from article to book length) and also in personal involvement as the questions she was putting to other people began to seem relevant to her as well.
By spending time with her two newly-converted friends she discovers that faith shows more convincingly in someone’s manner of being than in their answers to questions of doctrine. Evidently belief can change your life. Ash may not want that to happen to her; yet she does learn quite soon that it’s possible to “believe in the belief of others”. But to gain one’s own belief simply by watching others is like trying to swim without entering the water.
Ash therefore decides to spend more than a year engaging with different churches and mixing with Christians, thus going well beyond her initial editorial remit. A first media piece appears but she still wants to explore further. She studies church history and notes the complex theological issues that have split the church along many fault lines. (In this, as in other areas, she does her research thoroughly and the text is underpinned by a substantial number of notes and references.) She is puzzled that a faith based on such huge and supernatural beliefs as Christianity could fragment into so many competing denominational products; and she soon becomes more interested in the lived experiences and beliefs that ordinary church members sustain day by day alongside whatever official positions are stated from the pulpit by the theological professionals. She soon finds that those ordinary members include more people of her own age than she would have expected and that, more broadly, her generation takes quite a tolerant view on matters of faith. She now reckons that her contemporaries haven’t been lured into atheism by Richard Dawkins’ attacks on a straw-man version of religion but have probably been drawn away from Christian ideas chiefly by the distractions of capitalism and consumerism.
Part one of the book describes Ash’s experience of attendance and participation in the activities of a number of churches. She begins, wisely, with a church that offers a Bible course because she admits she has been unable to understand the Bible by herself. She soon finds that a Bible course isn’t necessarily an balanced overview of the text but can be designed to emphasise a particular theological viewpoint. The one that Ash joins proves to have a conservative evangelical slant, meaning that its reading of the text feels too closed and unquestioning. She is also disconcerted by this church’s strict positions on chastity, sexuality and gender issues. And finally she doesn’t care for the way that the course leader would “swagger and quip” when giving his talks. She does however stick with the course for two months and afterwards admits that she has learned a lot, even though the church climate remains uncongenial. She can now approach the Bible in a way that seems freer than was possible with her own original suspicious attitude or with the particular built-in biases of the course she has just completed. A careful re-reading of the Gospel of Mark provides a helpful background to her examination of other churches and Christian organisations, in most of which she encounters leadership structures that are overbearing or even manipulative. These experiences prompt a change of direction described in the second section of the book.
Part two describes a more personal journey in which Ash begins attending Quaker meetings. Issues with leadership are thus avoided since Quakers – in whose meetings everyone is free to speak but hardly anybody does – have very few discernible leadership structures. For a while Ash seems mildly content with the Quakers (although possibly wishing that in the 21st century they would be as animated as they were in the 17th century when first founded by George Fox); but she varies her weekly attendances by going on number of quiet – or even silent – retreats in remote parts of the country.
At the first of these retreats, with the Iona Community, she comes across the notion of ‘thin places’. She gains a sense that, here, the boundary between the earthly and the heavenly might be quite porous; and this does indeed produce a measure of helpful self-revelation. A few weeks later she has another new and unfamiliar experience at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham where a Holy Week retreat involves her in Catholic devotional practices. She finds these quite an attractive contrast to the rather left-brained and word-based liturgies of the evangelical churches she has previously known. Finally, a third retreat at St Bueno’s in North Wales, where poet Gerard Manley Hopkins trained as a Jesuit priest, reconnects Ash with her own university days studying literature. Alongside a re-examination of Hopkins’ extraordinary and imaginative poetry Ash learns about Ignatian spiritual exercises which involve immersive reading of a Bible passage so as to enter as fully as possible into the emotional and spiritual experiences of the characters who feature in it.
The cumulative effect of these retreats is that Ash finds herself in a new state of openness where she benefits from reading Bible passages. But she adds “it’s not that I think, them true, but that they broaden the possibilities of Christianity’s scope, and so make it into something I am more able to appreciate, or could imagine wanting for myself.” The ground is now prepared for Part three.
Part three begins when Ash reaches the conclusion that no two Christians actually hold precisely the same belief! She then starts having conversations with people who are aware that their beliefs have changed over time rather than becoming established in an early stage. These conversations widen her conception of what Christianity is and enable her at least to imagine how faith might work in her own life … And at this point point it is probably best for me to avoid spoilers and simply to say that, at the end of the book, Ash brings us up to date about where her beliefs have now got to. She has composed a somewhat tangled story with a few loose ends; but she has told it with clarity, self-awareness and good humour and has included a lot of interesting detail and reflection within and hetweenbetween the episodes I have merely outlined above. The disarming honesty, which I mentioned earlier, is evident throughout: she quite freely confesses her mistakes, anxieties and preoccupations when they distract from her journalistic research and her own personal quest for belief. She is similarly frank in her quoted conversations with both believers and doubters; and it’s likely that many of these lively and exchanges would have been worthwhile and helpful for both participants.
This book sheds light on the spiritual hopes, fears and perplexities of generations, probably led to expect to live in a stable world, but whose growing up has been marred by austerity, a Covid pandemic, side-effects of wars fought elsewhere, a housing shortage and emerging threats from AI towards career prospects. Indeed, the book’s title may be a reminder of the vulnerability of these young people. Ash overhears the assurance “Don’t forget we’re here forever” being uttered by a leader at a college training young people for missionary work. Presumably the remark was intended as a reminder of Biblical promises of everlasting life; but if such assurances are delivered too glibly they may place too big a burden on a faith that’s not yet strong enough to bear it. Perhaps belief needs to begin at levels where experience can support it. Lamorna Ash has shown what some of those important first levels of belief might look like.