Reading through Brother Cyril's book

 There's a variety of different reasons why someone might write a book, but a fairly common one is because the writer wants to read a book that doesn't exist.

That happened to me. I am a slow and unenthusiastic reader, generally speaking. If I find a book I can relate to, I read with complete absorption — but still not fast. I don't skip through, I read very carefully, frequently stopping to think over what I'm taking in, and consider it. So I do read, but very selectively; and I don't like most fiction. Most of my reading is about health and nutrition or psychology; and I enjoy reading books meant for children.

But I wanted a world to retreat to, somewhere to go. I am not an especially likeable person and almost everyone finds me intimidating. I loathe pretence, and that goes down as well as you might imagine. I remember once when I was taking part in a healing course (learning not teaching), our tutor exhorted us to look at the person to whom we were ministering. To me, he said: "I said look, don't glare!" 🤣 Yes.

So if I want somewhere comfortable to be, where I am welcome and understood, where I belong, I often have to invent it — so I did, and that's how I came to write the books about St Alcuins.

In consequence, although it may seem a little odd and self-obsessed for a writer to read their own books, I often do; because it feels like going home, and I feel both alien and redundant in this world.

Just now I've been reading Brother Cyril's Book — and Brother Cyril was someone else with a specific motive for writing, wasn't he? 

For the times we're now passing in, as we watch the bewildering speed of societal change, and take not of the sense of threat, the polarisations and antagonisms and suspicions, I wrote the last two of the St Alcuins books (St Luke's Little Summer and The Light of one Lamp), but when I came back to read Brother Cyril's Book in these recent days, I was surprised by how it's steadied me and comforted me, helped me find my balance again, find my way back to peace. I suppose you're not supposed to say that about your own book, are you? But hey, it's still true.

So if, in this fairly ghastly season of global humanity, you're looking for a refuge, a place to catch your breath and tend your lantern, and regroup, find some peace and strength, Brother Cyril's Book might help put you back together and get you ready for the next wild round of political joy. Just a thought — and I apologise for so unashamedly advocating for my own work; I'm not spamming you, just saying it helped me.