MINA SMALLMAN’s life became public not when two of her daughters were murdered, but when it became known that two police officers had taken photos of their dead bodies and shared them with WhatsApp groups. Curiously, perhaps, but ultimately understandably, she has forgiven the murderer, but has not forgiven the police officers who took and shared the pictures — or the Metropolitan Police.
This memoir reveals not only how these shocking events unfolded and why they really are as vile as our emotional response first tells us, but also the nature of this mother’s response. It is a response that might not have been possible had Smallman’s life been marked not only by deprivation and abuse, but also by triumph and hope.
A Better Tomorrow is very different from any clerical memoir that I have ever read before. Smallman is an archdeacon emeritus, but there is relatively little here about her ecclesiastical career; nor are there endless ministerial anecdotes or retrospective reflections and theological controversies. Smallman’s faith journey to Charismatic Christianity is clearly and simply narrated. The Holy Spirit is regularly referred to — whereas God and Jesus are rarely mentioned. She says that her experience of the Church of England was “mostly positive”; but she does document a lot of negatives. When her time as an archdeacon comes to an end with a “medical retirement”, she writes that “it was my church family that finally broke me.”
But this really is not a book about a clerical career. It’s about life events and the qualities of personality and spirit that are needed to survive and to look forward positively.
As a dyslexic, Smallman was always going to struggle to write a book, and this one has been ghost-written after many hours of dictation and discussion. The result is powerfully clear, direct, and uncompromising. If she ever had a pair of rose-tinted spectacles, she threw them away a long time ago. And, just as she calls out authority figures and institutions, she does not spare the blushes of her loved ones — or herself.
Certain beliefs come through strongly: that traumatic harm has a deep impact and is passed down the generations; that dabbling with the occult is dangerous; that most harming behaviour comes from people who have themselves been harmed.
But positive beliefs abound, too: the limitless potential of children — if cared for and educated; the power of creativity; the transformation of capacity which comes from common care, respect, and decency; and the importance of having spiritual insight — the importance of the gift of “the knowing”.
What comes across most powerfully in the book is exactly what it says in the title: hope and strength. The strength represented here is not to do with positional or structural power, or the strategic application of knowledge or skills. It is something much deeper, more personal, and vulnerable than that. It is the strength that comes when suffering does not distract the sufferer from their purpose, their principles, their integrity, or their faith. And the hope here is the gritty, grounded, real sort, and certainly not a cheery optimism. It is hope that knows the face of evil and the experience of suffering at the hands of others, which is why the message of this book is surprising, mature, and extremely welcome.
The Revd Dr Stephen Cherry is the Dean of Chapel at King’s College, Cambridge.
A Better Tomorrow: Life lessons in hope and strength
Mina Smallman
Ebury Press £25
(978-1-5291-9971-0)
Church Times Bookshop £22.50