14 hours ago
‘Sexual abuse drove me from the Kirk, now I've found bliss as a shepherd'
A mong the green rolling hills of Perthshire, in a small one room cottage, Helen Percy has found her paradise.
In the nearby fields her flock of Devon and Cornwall longwool sheep graze and around her feet dart four dogs 'of varying degrees of usefulness', while the most recent addition to the menagerie is a duckling newly hatched.
In the hills, a short ride away on Percy's pony, is a small hidden lochan, where she likes to rest by the peaty water. The vista conjures up Psalm 23:2: 'he makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters'.
Helen Percy: 'This is my cathedral, it's where my soul can breathe'
NATHAN BEATTIE
As a former minister in the Church of Scotland, Percy is only too familiar with this passage from scripture. Yet to reach these 'still waters' she first had to battle through misery, pain, abuse and rejection endured within the church.
