Father Joe by Tony Hendra
This book revolves around a monastic personality, Father Joseph lovingly known as Father Joe, living in a St. Benedictine monastery Quarr Abbey, in the Isle of Wight London. Father Joe, a humble, calm, God loving, preacher, enigmatic personality, probable acquaintance of Princess Diana in late 90s and as claimed a spiritual guide to Rowan Williams (former Archbishop of Canterbury) acted a strong pillar in another celebrity’s life, Tony Hendra, the author of this book. The story begins with quite an unusual situation leading to Tony’s first encounter with Father Joe, as Tony was caught red-handed by a Ben in a compromising situation with Ben’s wife. Being a teenager and having an illicit affair with a married woman in the times of mid-20th century, Tony describes his hesitance at first to accompany Ben to Quarr for retribution of his sins committed, according to Catholicism. The first meeting with Father Joe was nothing but eventful, Tony’s scepticism was washed away quickly as Father Joe held his hands and he felt the positivity and warmth flowing from Joe’s hands to that of his, and Joe makes him believe the sin he committed, although grave but is not unforgivable in the eyes of Lord.
This encounter with Joe, turns life around for Tony as he decides to pursue the monastic life and starts preparing for his future as a Monk. All his time begins to be dedicated to learning the history, traditions, and lives of monastic dwellers. His family begins to worry for his future as he came from a middle-class family, his father being an artist of ancient art with losing clientele in the modernising world and his mother trying to support the family financially. There came a time, when after his school Tony gets shortlisted for St. John’s College, Cambridge. At the time him being in the monastery, Joe convinces him to go and get a degree and think about monastic life later. He goes to the college unwillingly but as life moves on so does, he from his monk life. The change brings his life to being a normal family-man and socially active person.
The next stage in life brings Tony to New York, working and making parodies of works of people such as Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Michael O’Donoghue, and getting death threats from their fans to such an extent, a fan mailing live dynamite to Tony’s office. Parodies, not being his first work in the entertainment field, still proves to be highly fulfilling for Tony, as he is later found explaining to Joe about them, as a modernised tool for awakening masses of people against the tyrannies of oppressors or at least as he considered them to be of such importance. The work although fulfilling, affects his personal life negatively, as he is seen getting farther and farther from his wife and kids to a point, Tony begins to enjoy and seek out opportunities to evade his family. The struggles of work and personal life force him to contemplate suicide and he even tries but fails because he had much more destined to his life than just popping in handful of pills.
The divorce from his first marriage leaves him seeking love once again, although he was never wired for committed relationships as discovered later, Tony falls head over heals with an Italian beauty named Carla, his wife and mother to his children till the end of his life. Even their affair was an eventful relationship as fighting and swearing never ceased to be. After losing his unborn three-month child, Tony seeks Joe’s wisdom yet again. After decades, the now get-together with Father Joe proves once again a turning point in his life as he is made to see things in new light and achieve new perception of his otherwise disturbed life. It can be said that Father Joe never let him down during his life, but such are monks, the people of God.
Father Joe, being a monk but still being a human, pass away eventually and Tony being on a work-related voyage misses the news. On learning of the drastic news, he reaches the monastery at the earliest to pay his tribute to the lighthouse of his otherwise dark life, to someone he considered like his father, to the person giving him the best of life advices, to visit once more the frail and old yet strongest pillar of his life. On reaching Quarr, Tony wanders to the last possessions of Joe where he discovers that he was not the only one getting the preaching from Joe. Father Joe had been the light thrower in the paths of thousands if not millions of people around the globe, one of whom was the British Royal Princess Diana.
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