In August 2012, Barbara Priestley was buried in Sheffield. Not many in IofC knew Barbara, a quiet, beautifully mannered lady in her eighties, who gave her life to MRA when she was about twenty. She was the daughter of a wealthy landowner in Lincolnshire whose family disowned her when she joined the Oxford Group. She once recounted to my wife and me the abandonment she felt standing at the end of the farm road with just her suitcase, waiting for her lift to London and to a very uncertain future. Such faith!
As I came away from the recent 2012 Forum on Human Security where I had met once again some of Barbara's contemporaries, it struck me just how much that generation of gifted, successful people had sacrificed to travel on the journey of faith that MRA demanded - and, how great their impact has been! For me, therefore, there is a fifth standard, that of real sacrifice, which gave them a credibility and substantiality which I and many others were instantly attracted to. It was, if you like, the Eric Liddell factor.
Barbara used to attend the student leadership courses that Krish Raval ran in Sheffield, and would sit quietly in the back as the sessions went on, with her friend Betty. At the lunch and tea breaks you would notice the students being drawn to them, especially the non-English girls. By the second day they would be surrounded with questions and confidences, and thoughtful looks. In other words, somehow, just being there was a blessing for the group.
That blessing emerged from the crucible of their sacrifice. Consequently, we need to ask ourselves, when we have not been influential, whether we have sacrificed enough to release the soul force that attracts people to the good life of absolute love, unselfishness, purity and honesty.
English
