Stealing and Positive Role Models…

I cried at the ending of The Song of Bernadette. I just sat and wept my young eyes out whilst my elder sister watched on, somewhat disturbed by my outburst.

When I was a child, such outpourings of emotional excess were embarrassing, especially for a boy. It’s a good job that my father had not returned from work or I would have caused him to sigh with exasperation at the thing that he had fathered, the thing that was called his son. I was highly strung, but not high enough to act as warning to others. From my earliest years, I was constantly practicing my empathy, I could put myself in almost anybody’s shoes and walk around in them.

It was some time back in the dark ages that I started to pray to God. It felt like the normal thing to do. I would have been at school by…