the slightest reassurance,
And I’ll open a bloom, I’ll flower
At every chance.
Then praise me all the way to the sky,
Praise me with light, lover,
Oh praise me, praise me, praise me
And I live for ever.4
He had a remarkable gift and capacity for seeing the light and potential in other people and situations and, somehow, to anticipate the light: to hope, believe and trust in it, and to discern and nurture it in such a way that things and possibilities you never dreamed were in you could come into being. He was intrigued by ‘how the Divine reaches within people and forms new life within them. How does it happen in the “inmost texture” of people? How does it lift and transform them?’
That is what it was like when you knew that you wanted to talk and think about something, but had no idea yet what that thing might turn out to be. He could stay with you in what were often very pregnant spaces: long, awkward, silences; waiting and not knowing, without ever imposing himself or any of his ideas until you were ready. But at other times, when whatever it was that you wanted to explore with him was more developed in you, it meant subjecting yourself to a rigorous and sometimes seemingly relentless critique and scrutiny: that ‘spirit that searches everything – even the depths of God’ (1 Cor. 2.10). It was a hugely demanding and refining process but a necessary part of getting to the essence of whatever it was. He was never prepared (or let you be prepared) to settle for less than the best.
It became well known within a certain Cambridge graduate community that being put through your paces in supervision with Professor David Ford was only a shade of things to come on the day you were deemed ready for a meeting with Professor Dan Hardy . . .
He was a critical judge, but one who knew what it was to be ‘the judged’,5 and whatever rigour he might require you to apply to your (or another’s) thinking, he first applied it just as thoroughly to his own. He asked a lot of himself. As a child I often wished he would be gentler and more compassionate with himself, but he did change and mellow quite a lot in latter years. He became less dogmatic, less rigid and abstract and more embodied and accepting of his own and other people’s limitations: more compassionate. As well as being judge, he was also advocate, utterly on your side.
I remember an occasion when I had just passed my driving test. I was a rather unsure 17-year-old, who nevertheless thought that she was pretty clever for passing her test the first time. I slowly built up my confidence – often taking the dog with me for moral support – and gradually undertook more challenging and adventurous journeys. But the really big thing was that I was now allowed to drive not only our family estate (which I felt to be a bit of a banger), but also my father’s car. He had a very beautiful and special 1930s’ Mercedes, which had been passed down to him by his mother. She had shipped it all the way from America. It was shiny polished grey, with wonderful leather seats, and he was very proud of it. So you can imagine how chuffed I was that I was now considered trustworthy enough to drive it too. I took it out a number of times, purring through the streets; it was a dream to drive, and I loved it too. Until one day I suddenly found myself rather too close to the cars parked on either side of the road which I needed to manoeuvre through (it was quite a wide car and happened to have a left-hand drive) – it suddenly seemed a very narrow gap – and I was going too fast to be able to do anything about it. I took a deep breath in (as if that might make us smaller), but then scraped (and screeched) against the side of the car parked to my right. What made matters even worse was, when the driver of the car emerged from within, and asked me (rather surprised) what was going on . . . I soon noticed that, because his car was a Land Rover, the external knee-height ‘step’ accessing the passenger seat had gouged and grooved its way down the entire length of my father’s car. We had come out by far the worse. The driver was surprisingly nice about it, but it’s hard to describe how awful I felt: simply wretched, the shame and guilt at the consequences of my own poor judgement and recklessness, but even more so at the disappointment my father would feel at my damaging the precious car that he’d entrusted to me. I decided I had to confess immediately and drove straight (and very carefully) to his office. To my relief he happened to be there. He was rather surprised to see me, but when I finally blurted out the reason, he simply said, ‘Well, never mind . . . We’ll sort it out.’ No anger, no harsh judgement, no retribution. I couldn’t really believe it. And he never mentioned it again. It may seem a rather trivial example, but I can assure you it wasn’t. The depth of love and mercy in his response was overwhelming.
He was humble, endlessly generous and giving of himself and his time and energy, but he was always there if you needed him – especially at the end of the day when he often worked late into the night. No matter how ordinary or insignificant something might seem to you to be bothering him with, whatever mattered to you mattered to him, and he was endlessly patient in listening to it. He never made you feel small or ignorant or stupid; he listened and attended to you in a way that raised you up to a fuller dignity and stature. He called it ‘engaging people from within’. His face was gentle and kind: rich, warm brown eyes with a loving smile and light in them – that ‘apple of my eye’ look.
In recent years we had an ongoing conversation that went something like this: ‘I’m bored, Dad: I love my work and all that I do, but intellectually I’m bored.’
‘We must do something about that,’ he said.
I had tried to talk about it with other people. but had not got very far. People had been kind and thoughtful, but somehow either too full of their own ideas of what they thought I might be interested in, or too reticent about even exploring the possibilities, unable to stay open to encouraging the as yet unrecognized raw potential or longing within. It became increasingly urgent, as he became iller and the windows of opportunity for deep conversation narrower. Until one day we finally got straight to the point (although, as was so often the case, only in response to my initiative).
‘What is it that you want to think about?’ my father asked.
‘I’m not sure . . . That’s the whole problem . . . I can’t decide.’
We sat in silence together, deep calling to deep, anticipating and trusting something to emerge; some deep hope, dream or desire that I had not yet been able to recognize. ‘Maybe laughter . . . or silence . . .’ (We had already decided that ‘remorse’, on which I had already written, had had its day.) But they soon fizzled. We sat some more. (There was something very Quaker about it.) And then suddenly, from almost out of nowhere, yet also deep within myself, I knew: ‘Imagining!’ I said. ‘That’s it! That’s what I want to think about for the rest of my life: not imagination, but the act of imagining.’ It had happened and I was full of excitement, energy and wonder.6
One of the great sadnesses to me was that we had very little chance to take the conversation any further. In the months to come, my father’s illness consumed him more and more, and he had to preserve whatever energy he had for what mattered most: particularly communicating the contents of this book. So it was only able to be a beginning – something that would have to be taken up and carried on with others beyond his life – and yet hugely significant in all that it had accomplished in opening up possibilities yet to come.
There was something very solid about him, but you were plunged into deep waters with him, too. He had a yearning for truth – and always (then) for fuller and deeper wisdom and truth: ‘I’m always interested in everything: that’s one of my problems!’ His favourite summer ‘book bag’ – always
