All you need is love: Inspiring tales for the new year from the Archbishop of York's book of love stories

Those of the Mills & Boon variety feature heaving bosoms and pent-up passions. The Archbishop of York’s love stories are a little different. Because there are, of course, different types of love.

There’s romantic love. But there’s also the love of parent for child, child for parent, friend for friend. And then there’s what the Greeks call agape, the love of one’s fellow man: a term which in the Christian church is used to represent God’s love for man and man’s love for God.

It’s this kind of love which features in Dr Sentamu’s latest book Agape: Love Stories. Launched last month in York, the book is a collection of 22 personal stories about overcoming doubt and loss or finding meaning or fulfilment through forgiveness or working for the good of others.

All you need is love: the people whose stories are told in the Archbishop's book gather in York for the launch

The people whose stories are told, in the first person, range from Richard Taylor, the father of murdered 10-year-old Damilola Taylor, to Janet Morley, who for 30 years worked at York’s St Leonard’s Hospice.

Each story features an introduction from the Archbishop himself. Here are extracts from a few of them to put fresh hope and heart in you as the year begins...

The debt adviser

Claire Daniels. Photo: office of the Archbishop of York

“My mother often used to say - always be careful when you point a finger at others - because you’ll see that three fingers are pointing back at you,” writes Dr Sentamu, introducing the story of Claire Daniels, who runs the Rainbow Money project in Scarborough.

Claire, right, admits that, when she was young, she could be quick to judge. “If years ago you had asked me why the majority of people are in debt, I would have said, because they are or have been irresponsible with money,” she says, in her story.

She’d never known what it was like to live on the bread line herself, however. And her views changed when she ‘stumbled’ into debt advice while working for an advice, information and support service connected to her church in Reading. The stories she came across opened her eyes: elderly people who had been scammed out of their life savings; families struggling to get by on basic benefits; residents of the local estate who couldn’t even get benefits because they couldn’t fill out the forms required.

“Many of the stories were heartbreaking and I was hearing them from people of all ages and from all walks of life,” she says.

She worked for the charity for five years, before suffering what she describes as burnout. She took an accounts job. But after moving to Yorkshire for a change of pace, she joined the Rainbow Centre in Scarborough as a debt advisor.

Many people who get into debt panic, she says. “They are terrified that their children will be taken away, that they’ll be sent to prison, or that bailiffs will show up and take all their belongings.”

Just finding someone to listen can be a help, however. “Even if I’ve done nothing else, the fact that I’ve taken their paperwork, I’ve listened and I’ve said there’s an answer, that’s enough for them to begin to feel better.”

She’s now helped more than 700 clients - and long ago ceased to be judgmental. Fewer than five per cent of the people she helps are in debt because of frivolous spending or mismanaging money, she estimates. “Could we live on £73.10 a week? People I work with who are, and who aren’t getting into any more debt, are my heroes.”

The dementia friend

Jill Quinn

Imagine not being able to tell someone how you liked to drink your tea, says Jill Quinn, the founder and CEO of North Yorkshire charity Dementia Forward. “You like strong white tea with sugar and every day I bring you milky tea with no sugar because I don’t know any different.”

You might be thirsty, so you take a sip, she says. But it tastes awful, and in frustration you throw the cup on the floor. “And I write on your care plan that you are aggressive (and) uncooperative.”

That may be a caricature of what life is like for someone with dementia, she says. “But when parts of someone’s identity begin to fall away, it’s our job as family, friends and neighbours to help.”

Listening is a huge part of that, Jill, inset above, says. And often it’s the small things that make a big difference. It’s common for the partner of someone in the early stages of dementia, for example, not to allow them to have any money for fear they’ll lose it. But for someone who’s always carried a bit of cash around, putting a hand in your pocket and finding none there can be upsetting. So she might ask the wife of such a man ‘How much would it be worth to you, if you could make Fred happy... Would you be willing to let him lose £5 a week?” Usually the answer is yes.

The vital thing, she believes, is for people with dementia to feel included. “I wish that communities could be more dementia-friendly so that people with dementia could join an established singing group, a walking group, whatever activity they are interested in,” Jill says. “That would be the ideal.”

The mobile church

Emily Finch

“We have often heard the cliché ‘if you want to be able to love others, you have to learn to love yourself’”, Dr Sentamu writes, introducing Emily Finch’s story. “Like many clichés it has a core of truth.”

It certainly did have in the case of one young man Emily met.

Emily, inset right, grew up in Filey, and as a young woman she began thinking about how to get the message of the church out into the community. She heard about an old double-decker bus that St Michael le Belfry church in York owned but seldom used. She inquired, found it was for sale - and bought it. In 2015 she used it to set up The Bus Stop - a charity which helps churches reach out to young people, communities and schools.

The bus was painted a vibrant purple. Seats were taken out, and upstairs a kitchen, comfy seating and a TV were put in. The downstairs operates as a community café.

The bus now regularly parks outside a local primary school in Selby on Wednesday evenings. “After school we get lots of mums coming on board with their children,” Emily says. “In the evening our focus shifts to young people and ...we have a youth drop-in and youth Alpha group.”

At one such event, one boy sniggered and joked throughout. Afterwards, trying to control her irritation, Emily invited him to go for a walk and asked him to write down all the things that were good about himself. “There’s nothing good about me,” he told her. “I can’t think of one thing.”

“I could tell by his eyes that he believed this to be true and suddenly I saw him in a completely different light,” she says. “Here was the class clown, the loud-mouth who moments earlier was difficult and uninterested, telling me that he couldn’t think of a single good thing about himself. My heart went out to him.”

The hospice worker

Janet Morley

When St Leonard’s Hospice opened in 1985, Janet Morley was looking for something to do. She’d just moved to York, and was at a loose end. So she volunteered. “I like people, and thought I’d enjoy that side of it,” she says. “I didn’t give too much thought to how I’d feel when those same people died... I’d never seen a dead body.”

Her first experience of someone dying at the hospice came as a shock, therefore. “It’s not the kind of thing that you can leave at the office,” she says.

During the course of 30 years with the hospice, however - first as a volunteer, then care assistant, administrative assistant, fundraiser and ultimately deputy chief executive - Janet, inset, came to realise the huge importance of what the hospice does.

Being there for those approaching the end of their life is a very special thing, says Janet, who retired in 2015. “It’s almost one of the final things you can do for somebody.

“Often, when people know they are nearing the end of life, barriers come down and people talk about how they really feel. All being well, there is a need to not leave things unsaid and to be a part of that, to experience a person without the many artificial barriers we can place around ourselves, is a marvellous feeling.”

Damilola’s dad

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,” writes Dr Sentamu, quoting St Paul to introduce the story of Richard Taylor. Mr Taylor has had a great deal to endure. In 2001, his son Damilola was murdered just three months after he arrived in the UK from Nigeria. He had set off from school at 4.30pm after going to computer club, but never arrived at his aunt’s house in Peckham. “CCTV footage shows him running in that direction, but only 500 yards from his front door he was attacked and stabbed in the thigh with a broken bottle,” Mr Taylor, right, says. A workman found Damilola slumped in a stairwell. The glass had severed an artery and Damilola died from blood loss on the way to hospital.

How can any father endure that? Mr Taylor wasn’t interested in revenge. Damilola’s killers were two boys aged 12 and 13 who were part of a violent gang culture. And over the years, Mr Taylor gradually found a kind of resolution through the work of the Damilola Taylor Trust, set up in his son’s name to work with disadvantaged young people. “The Trust has developed many projects to guide children and young people... particularly those who may otherwise be vulnerable to gang and knife crime and those at risk of being kicked out of schools,” Mr Taylor says. “There is a role to be played by everybody. As a result of Damilola’s life, we now have a part to play.”

• John Sentamu’s Agape Love Stories, published by Darton, Longman and Todd, is available priced £9.99 from bookstores and online, or via Norwich Books and Music (orders@norwichbooksandmusic.co.uk).