being drawn deeper into God’s light and love while on pilgrimage in the Holy Land.
This book draws on three series of conversations, which he sustained during those months with his co-authors: Peter Ochs, his friend; Deborah Ford, his daughter; and David Ford, his son-in-law. Of course there were many others too. It tells the story of his experiences on pilgrimage to the Holy Land just weeks before the diagnosis of an aggressive brain tumour; of his coming to terms with those experiences and his approaching death.
Daniel took this time very seriously and dropped many of the activities and commitments that previously took up his time and energy. There were painful decisions about whom to meet with (giving priority to family, graduate students and a few friends, with whom he was used to having sustained conversation); and one of the most agonizing decisions was to give up on the hope of writing a book on the Church he had contracted with Cambridge University Press, which during its long gestation (going back around 20 years to his time in Durham) had become a lens through which he thought about the whole of theology and society.
Yet the decision was made immeasurably easier by the offer of Peter Ochs to be his interlocutor and scribe for a book that would try to distil the key themes and thought of his ecclesiology, together with the understanding that those regular conversations with Peter would be edited with others into the present volume. Daniel showed massive, deliberate determination in giving high priority to these times and he was able to dictate Chapters 2 to 5 of this book, giving something of what would have been the main thrust of that monograph. The pilgrimage added surprising elements to it, as did his terminal illness. So this book was conceived directly in conversation with him, and he was deeply encouraged to know it would happen.
The problem with the density of the material for this book is that it has been quite a challenge to articulate it in digestible form. It is divided into four sections: Part 1 (Chapter 1) begins with ‘A Portrait of My Father’ by Deborah Hardy Ford and then moves into Daniel’s own voice and the story of his pilgrimage as he told it to her. (Different ‘versions’ of this narrative – as told distinctively to each of the three authors – continue to re-emerge throughout the book.) Part 2 is transcribed and edited by Peter Ochs. Each chapter (2–5) recollects and then reflects theologically on key moments and places during the pilgrimage for Daniel: from the headwaters of the Jordan; to Jericho; to St George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem; and walking through the tunnel under the Temple Mount. In Part 3 (Chapter 6, ‘Living Theology in the Face of Death’), David Ford meditates on the impact of Daniel’s thinking in this book, measured through their conversations both over years of rich collegiality (right back to those culminating in their book Jubilate in 1984) and through the intensification of their last six months. The book closes with Part 4 (Chapter 7, written and edited by Deborah Ford) and Daniel’s ‘Farewell Discourses’: conversations he had with Deborah about his own death and dying in the last weeks and days of his life. There is also an appendix containing a selected bibliography of Daniel’s writings.
It has been an astonishing privilege to be caught up in the spirit and movement of this work. We are indebted to many people in helping this book to come about: first and foremost, of course, Daniel himself. Without him, it would never have begun and we have been endlessly amazed and grateful for the gift he has given: for all we learned through our conversations with him and with one other as he gradually handed it over and entrusted his book to us.
And there are many others who have generously and lovingly supported and sustained us in different ways during the months of its coming to birth: particularly Perrin, Jen, Dan and Chris (Daniel’s wife and children, each of whom had profound conversations with him, but have not had the chance to voice them here); Jack, Ann and Dick (his sister and brothers); Rebecca, Rachel, Amanda, Daniel, Sarah and Matthew (his grandchildren); Vanessa and Elizabeth Ochs; Phyllis Ford; Micheal and Brid O’Siadhail; Gregory Seach; Aref Nayad; Yamina Mermer . . . It is impossible to do justice to everyone here, but we are deeply grateful to each one of them; as well as to Natalie Watson of SCM for her patience and encouragement; and to Emily Rowell for her work on the bibliography of Daniel Hardy’s publications.
PART ONE
1
A Portrait of My Father Daniel W. Hardy
9 November 1930 – 15 November 2007
Deborah Hardy Ford
. . . When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’1
On the day when he said, ‘I think I probably am dying . . .’, and shortly before he stopped being able to speak, my father and I suddenly started thinking and talking about colour. 2 He described how
[t]his light I’ve talked about and see infused in people and between people and things isn’t white light, you know. It is colour: colour in its full and wonderful range. How do you see colour? The colour in you and in the people you meet and how you relate to one another?3
And seeing as I’d never thought about it quite like that before, I had to say ‘I don’t know: I’ll have to think about it . . .’
‘What colour do you see yourself as?’ I asked.
‘Brown, I think,’ he answered. ‘Not too dark a brown . . . a warm, rich brown, probably with quite a lot of yellow, red, orange, and maybe some blue in it too: an earthy colour. What about you?’
My father never liked to talk about himself for very long: he was much more interested in looking outwards and discerning and recognizing God in the people and world around him, in the particularities of the people and systems he was part of. Quite early on I discovered that the best way to spend time with him was to talk about God. He could never get enough of that. ‘Here’s all this’ (as he put it). ‘How is it of God?’ Everything was related to God: whether it was the quantum measurement of subatomic particles or the details of Western intellectual thought or a Bach fugue or the hinge on a kitchen cabinet. It was Aquinas’ sub ratione Dei: understanding everything in relation to God:
I want to explore things in relation to one another: the intensity of the Lord and his presence and action in the world. Dedicated attention to the intensity of God: that’s the source of theology; it’s not about any academic contrivances. It has a doubling role: to explain but also to invite deeper into the mystery. It’s a form of prayer done deeply within the Spirit and it requires sustained inquiry in many directions, by testing the major theologies, philosophies and sciences of modernity.
True to the colour brown, he preferred to be in the background than in the limelight (‘behind the scenes’): complementing others and encouraging them to grow into the light in them in a rather hidden and underground way, creating an environment where new things could be cultivated and nurtured with the utmost patience, care and attentiveness. He was always ready and willing to encourage, praise and affirm the life and beauty deep within each person he met: captured in the spirit of this poem, written by one of his favourite poets and friends (who read another of his poems at his funeral):
Sunflower
The danger of tautening towards the sun:
To lose is to lose all.
Too much gravity and I’m undone;
If
