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Father Joe, a quiet and humble Benedictine monk, was a giant in my life: my guide, my parent, my brother, my guardian angel, my only bulwark against despair and self-destruction. When he died he left a void in my life I thought could never be filled – until I began to write about him, how he lived, what he said, what he did. This book is an act of resurrection: an imperfect attempt to make him live again and this time not die, both selfishly for myself and I hope for others, too.
There he stands on the muddy clay of the little promontory, hands under scapular for warmth in the chill, his wide rubbery mouth beaming serenely at the gray turmoil of the English Channel. Hooked over vast ears, framing a fleshy groundhog nose and battered granny glasses, is his black monk's cowl, ancient and rudimentary shield against the blustery rain. Farther down: irredeemably flat feet in black socks and big floppy sandals, these emerging from scruffy black robes whipped by the squalls and revealing – if you're lucky – glimpses of white English knees so knobbly they could win prizes.
Dom Joseph Warrilow is his formal monastic name, but everyone calls him Father Joe. I have seen him in this pose and place countless times down the years, in the flesh or in my mind's eye. Never once have I been able to stop a smile from coming to my lips. He's as close to a cartoon monk as you could imagine. And he is a saint.
That poor, weary, once-powerful word – bowed and enfeebled by abuse – is not used lightly. 'Saint' does not mean merely dedication, or selflessness, or generosity, though it subsumes all those. Nor does it mean the apogee of religious devotion, though it can subsume that too – sometimes. There are many pious people who believe themselves to be saints who are not, and many people who believe themselves to be impious who are.
A saint is a person who practices the keystone human virtue of humility. Humility in the face of wealth and plenty, humility in the face of hatred and violence, humility in the face of strength, humility in the face of your own genius or lack of it, humility in the face of another's humility, humility in the face of love and beauty, humility in the face of pain and death. Saints are driven to humbling themselves before all the splendour and horror of the world because they perceive there to be something divine in it, something pulsing and alive beneath the hard dead surface of material things, something inconceivably greater and purer than they.
This man is one of those rare, rare creatures. Gentleness and goodness come off him like aftershave. For all his irrepressible curiosity and concern, for all his love of talking and listening and then talking some more, a great stillness surrounds him in which he will fold you without your knowing it, numbing the pain of your most jagged obsessions, soothing away the mad priorities of your world with the balm of his peace.
For more than forty years, since I was not much more than a boy, this lumpy gargoyle of a man has been my still center, the rock of my soul, as steady and firm as the huge oak on the curve of the hill where the monastery stands, the hill that runs down to the sea. I have lost and found him more than once, gone far, far astray from the haven of his presence, but never ceased, however dimly and distantly, to love and revere him and hunger for his company. His was the wisdom I craved – though it was never what I expected; his judgment alone I feared – though never once did he pass judgment on me.
All my conscious life he was my strongest ally, the cherished gatekeeper of my lost Eden, a lighthouse of faith blinking away through the oceanic fogs of success and money and celebrity and possessions, my intrepid guide in the tangled rain forest of human love, my silken lifeline to the divine, my Father Joe.
Years ago the promontory of clay where he stands was much farther out, but the waves' erosion is relentless. He's gazing at the gulls swooping and diving for their lunch. He turns to me and smiles that fond crooked smile:
Tony dear, I was just thinking of you. How are your beautiful children?
More beautiful than ever. Happily as they grow older they bear less and less resemblance to their father.
And you, dear?
Still alone, Father Joe.
You are not alone, dear. We are never alone.
I remember. And every time you said that, I felt God's presence. But I felt it in you, through you. Now I am a void.
He smiles again, the old 'no' smile – a 'no' which has always meant 'yes'. Taking it as an invitation, I move a little closer. Hoping. Just this once... But he melts away, still smiling, into the eternal rain. The bare ruined trees drip their drizzle, chill my aging body. The tide snaps and tugs at the reluctant clay. How to make my dear, good friend live again? Roll back the rock from the tomb, take him by the hand, and lead him out into the light. See him laugh and teach and heal once more...
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