In the 1970s the world was changing. New music was in the air and Hippies lived with a freedom unknown to our parents. Ancient institutions struggled to keep pace. After ten years I left the Jesuits to marry. We have five children.
All our children are now parents. None are religious. None are teachers. Geraldine, my wife and the mother took this photograph. She was both a Head Teacher and a senior Inspector of Schools.
My faith has changed. I would not want to throw the baby out with the baptismal water — but my faith has shrunk. Once it was the universe itself. Now it is closer to an electron. I no longer believe in beliefs as defined truth. Articles of faith can become dangerous weapons. Yet stripped of intellectual acrobatics, Christianity — like many religions — centres on love. In that, they are right. Love will be a recurring theme here.
Fracture and Walking
In 1991 I shattered my ankle. I fell down a staircase in a barn we were converting in France. I was carrying one of the children at the time. He was uninjured. I had an open fracture. Chronic osteomyelitis followed. Recovery took years.
“The Barn” in Normandy.
Alcoholism then took hold. It could have killed me. In 2000 I stopped drinking and my life restarted. Addiction destroys, but overcoming it can bring profound change. That too belongs in The Raft of Corks.
I am now divorced — twice. I live in Spain. I once kept goats. I divorced them, too. I left them behind to walk.
Between 2000 and 2020 I walked over 10,000 miles on long-distance pilgrimage routes across Western Europe. Nature and kindness met me everywhere.
You are invited to stay with me on the journey.
Perhaps you, too, will recognise some of the currents of life I have encountered. You may feel astonished, as I still do, to be alive.
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