For many of us, the journey through life will be the ultimate pilgrimage. It is part of the human condition that we often view the mundane through the lens of the mythic; my first experience of this was a vision of the ‘abyss’, which came to me when I was two-and-a-half years old at a time when we were in the throes of moving house. I was undoubtedly profoundly unsettled by the change, but paradoxically, I now find myself drawn to—and reassured—by the many mythic settings that feature such a landscape.

My first taste of living in a multifaith community began when I was three. We had moved yet again, this time into a house where our neighbours were Jewish, Roman Catholic and Seventh Day Adventist. Being brought up in the Scottish Presbyterian faith, for years I secretly suspected that—as they openly displayed statues of the Virgin Mary—our Catholic friends were the ‘idolaters’ of the Old Testament. The house next door was the manse for the local Seventh Day Adventist Church; all I knew about their beliefs was that they were vegetarian and made the most wonderful unleavened bread, and that their ‘Sunday’ was in fact on a Saturday.

Although I went through the ritual of joining the Church, I never truly became a Presbyterian. I can’t remember exactly how old I was when I parted company with that religion, but it was probably around the time I was told that non-believers went to hell—I hasten to add that I know this dogma is not the true essence of Christianity. I had spent too many hours pouring through the Goldstein’s Encyclopedia Britannica while doing my homework; there was no doubt in my mind, they were far too smart to do anything that could lead to their eternal damnation.

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