Surprising Grace

One of my earliest memories of my father is of him driving me to school. I must have been about 7 or 8. I have never been good at early mornings, and was half asleep in the car. When we got to the school’s side gate, he stopped the car and I managed to get out, blinking sleepily on the pavement. He got out too, came round the side of the car, and bent down to give me a good-bye kiss. Then I walked up the school steps, knowing he would watch a while and then get back into the car and drive off to that mysterious place called “work”. What he did there we never knew, but we knew we would see him again when he came back in the evening. As a child I was always aware of “Dad” as a faithful and tender presence. He could always be relied on to drive us around when we needed a ride, to school or to church. He never went to church himself, not being Catholic, but must have spent countless hours waiting around outside for us to finish. He would be persuaded to come in, though, for special oc...

Last month I went "on retreat" to a beautiful place on a hill overlooking a lake. A group of teenagers were there at the same time on a retreat programme organised by their school. I was by turns annoyed, when the noise they were making made it difficult for me to experience the silence I was hoping for, and sympathetic, when I overheard their emotional sharing with each other about their lives, not without tears. It reminded me that teenage life is not easy! One evening I was sitting quietly by myself in the garden. The sun was setting to the west, a fiery sphere of liquid gold descending gently into the silhouettes of trees cresting the hill, coloring the veils of cloud streaming across the sky a shimmering red, yellow, orange, and purple. The glorious beauty of it touched me somewhere deep inside. If I hadn't already believed in God, I would have at that moment. Into this sacred moment, of course, barged a bunch of chattering teenagers... though the beauty of th...