Pilgrim's Progress: The Legacy, by Janet Ferguson

Backwards and forwards, they passed the stories between them. My non-sighted grandmother would sit still, head slightly bowed, hands resting gently on her knees. My towering grandfather would pace and read, turn and swivel excitedly, always caught up in the challenges and the tribulations of Christian's flight from the City of Destruction to the brightly beckoning Celestial City.  

I listened to the vagaries of Temptation, the wiles of Mr. Worldly Wise, and the frequent intervention of salvation extended by Help. My five-year-old self came to know each character, their not too subtle representations of good and evil. An early warning signal of the perilous journey that is life. 

Looking back, I wonder, what was the appeal of this Pilgrim's Progress, now carefully preserved in worn, brown, hand-smoothed paper? Why did it hold a pride of place that eclipsed the Bible, the most prized of all books in every village home?  

One or two generations away from enslavement, my grandparents were transfixed by the seditious allegory nestled between these covers, a 1678 story of defiance written by an imprisoned John Bunyan– the Puritan who took on the tyrannical Church of England before the discovery of a New World freedom that presided over generations of religiously fervent enslavement.

Maybe they knew that, much like the hero Christian, they, too, were on a perilous journey, navigating  the edges of a declining British Empire. Defying tradition, they had married across religious boundaries. Flying in the face of all the "know your place" expectations, they read voraciously,  consuming a far away world one book catalogue order at a time. Each arrival lovingly covered for preservation, with the pride of ownership carefully inscribed … now, beautifully cursive penmanship reaches out across the years, a tender touch point.  

My grandmother's sight had gone, yet her gaze was on the liberating hope of a Celestial City, her heart was in the journey as they passed these stories between them backwards and forwards. This story, this account of life, is more than just an allegory; it was, and it is, a navigational tool, a legacy of narrative courage that I must now pass on.