I immediately decided that this couldn't be some sort of junk mail, offering me better Broadband, or ready-prepared meals, or some service connected with my health, or my financial affairs. It was going to be an approach on a more personal subject.
Curious to find out, I opened the envelope. This revealed a folded sheet of what seemed to be exercise-book paper, the kind of paper a schoolchild might write an essay on. Why was a child, who knew where I lived but didn't know my name, sending me a letter on piece of lined and holed A4 paper?
Unfolding this, all was instantly clear. The sender's address, squashed like an afterthought into the top right-hand corner - just as a child might write it - was 'Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses' in Burgess Hill, the nearest town. That was an immediate turnoff. Still, it might still be something important connected with children, so I read on.
It began 'Dear Neighbour'. But Burgess Hill was ten minutes' drive away: was this then 'Dear Neighbour' in the Biblical sense, as in 'love thy neighbour', which could mean every person one encounters? Presumably yes.
Well, it was an invitation to get online and attend a 'free virtual event' - a 'convention' - called 'Powerful by Faith'. It would consist of 'short talks and videos' and would be streamed on the JW website 'throughout July and August'. The letter was undated, but today was 2nd August, so I hadn't by any means been among the first contacted. Which suggested a long list, with people likely to respond at the top, and the rest further down, to be contacted later.
Was I then something of a long shot, but still worth a try? I used to get occasional visits from JW people - it would generally be a couple of earnest and totally respectable women - who would try to get me to accept a leaflet about their beliefs. I simply couldn't be rude to them, and so would do the polite thing and take the leaflet. No doubt that counted in their eyes as a semi-success, a seed planted that might, with further encouragement, grow into a tree. I think that in recent years they have called again only to find me out shopping, or on holiday, and so no face-to-face follow-ups have been possible. Then the pandemic came, and doorstep conversations were out of the question. Hence this different, online way of getting me interested in faith, and improving my life by overcoming all the things that might be dragging me down.
The letter began its pitch in this way: 'With so many challenges to face on a daily basis, life can be a struggle. Having real faith can help us to be more powerful than our challenges'. The online convention would 'discuss what real faith is, why having it is beneficial, and how we can strengthen it.' Then, further down in the letter, 'If you are intrigued and would like to learn more or view the convention, then please visit...' and website details were given.
Well, their pitch fails.
I dare say I have challenges in my life (who hasn't?) but they are well under control. And if they ever get out of hand, and I fall into a dark hole, I won't sit at the bottom and cry. Nor will I grasp at some belief. I will make a sensible plan. And then claw my way back to the sun bit by bit. It will just need patience and determination. I totally believe in myself, and the power of self-help. And so I won't be responding to this invitation.
I am still left wondering why the invitation was disguised as a child's letter. Was this thought especially likely to appeal to women living on their own? Was it because children are supposed to be simple, honest, and untainted? (Though surely not any real-life child over six!)
Or was I mistaken? Although it did look like a genuine schoolchild's hand, perhaps an adult had written it, an adult who had never developed their handwriting style further after leaving school. Wetting a finger, I got the ink to smear. So it was a one-off letter, written to me personally, and not a mass-produced photocopy. Unusual!
There was one disturbing aspect. The general look of the handwriting, and in particular the formation of some of the letters 'f' in the letter, reminded me of how my younger brother Wayne had written. He died twenty-six years ago. Wayne had been very religious, beginning with the Baptist Church back at Southampton, but in later life embracing a rather 'high' version of the Anglican Church. He was fascinated with ritual, and all things to do with the soul and the right way to live. Shortly before his death in a car accident he had gone to Goa, and I have no doubt that while there he had broadened his spiritual experience.
He hadn't been interested in developing a mature hand, and throughout his life wrote as he had when a teenager. To see something resembling his handwriting now, so many years after his death - as if somehow, impossibly, he had written to me from the grave - was unsettling to say the least.
