David Doel obituary

In his late teens, my father, David Doel, had a Damascene experience when he climbed Todmorden moor in West Yorkshire. Depressed, he lay down in the bracken, surrendered to his fate and, as he wrote in a later poem: "Love found me like water from a spring, not open to my grasp but flowing as a gift through arid ground, refurbishing and making new."

The course of his life changed. David, who has died aged 87, determined to become a minister of religion and rose to be a leading light in the Unitarian denomination.