THIS is an account of a year in which the author is appointed bishop amid the furore of another candidate’s withdrawal. It tells of his early months in post, which coincided with his diagnosis with bowel cancer and its treatment. It was an astonishingly testing year by anyone’s measure.
My reading is personal; for I have been similarly tested. Forgive my lack of convention: I find I want to address the author, directly:
Cathy, your wife, gives you away when she says the book is “sanitized”; for we can only infer from your understated text just how raw your emotion must have been. How did it really feel to have the tendrils of ambition curl around the heart of a good man? Where was the pain of the split between those who recognise women’s priestly ministry and those who don’t; the vile wrangling behind the coyly named “living in love and faith”: the merciless media attention?
In truth, how deep was your fear at the dawning prospect of mortal disease; the dread nausea and exhaustion as the treatment pinned you to your sofa; Cathy’s heartbreak as she watched and felt and prayed with you, but could not take your pain from you; your daily heroic determination to meet your public obligations?
How could you make your wrenching year sound so like a report for the General Synod?
In the end, though, I really loved you, Pete, precisely because you were so unutterably modest about your suffering. Some things moved me to tears: the buzz of the doctor’s call during your consecration; stowing your biblical commentaries; the pitiless car-park fine. You made me ashamed of how much fuss I made about my own cancer.
But . . . understate the pain, and you also make light of the grace and joy received by means of it. You did not take me to the depth of your pain, and I could not, quite, credit your transformation. The crucifixion was real; without it, there could be no resurrection. I believe you discovered that in your year of grace, but it was underneath the lines that you wrote, not in them.
Dr Claire Gilbert is the author of Miles to Go Before I Sleep (Hodder & Stoughton, 2021) (and several Synod reports). Notebook
A Year of the Lord’s Favour: Grace in times of need
Pete Wilcox
Church House Publishing £12.99
(9781781405086)
Church Times Bookshop £11.69
