FDS Insight Magazine Aug - Oct 2022

44 and specifically at Kings Cross. However … “ a tree will grow in fertile soil”. The inspirational section with Ted Noffs follows and then the Ashfield period. The story of The Loaves and Fishes restaurant is inspirational. For some reason I was strongly reminded of two Anne Tyler novels that some readers might find useful and supportive on this subject; Dinner at The Homesick Restaurant and Saint Maybe . Both books (although totally fictive) speak of a similar love and compassion for others, and of ways of atonement. Readers could do worse than finding these in the local library (or in any reasonable bookshop). The highest point of the journey for me is the story of Beer, the young Thai who contracted AIDS. I wept unashamedly, yet I hardly knew him and he occupied barely two or three pages of the book. The Voice and its accompanying caveats, and meetings with the amazing Father Bob, don’t deserve to be simply reduced here to some kind of monosyllabic narrative, so I urge readers to read them in their relevant chapters. Out of order and out of power they’d offer far less than they deserve. Be tempted! I do need to offer one more insight though, as a card-carrying atheist: I’d like to allow readers to judge for themselves the effect this book has had on me. There’s not much advertising for Jesus or his Crew (sorry, I just couldn’t resist that one!) and yet the love that permeates the book’s flow is obvious, as they say, to Blind Freddy. I would suggest that such an impact on someone as I am, emphasises the book’s strength: this is a very beautiful autobiography. I am uncertain how much work Roger Joyce has put in, but he too must be regarded as a fine writer and as somebody with an eye for the finest human detail. And I mean “finest” in, indeed, its finest detail. A man of kindness and love, The Reverend Bill. It shines through every page. I refer you to Isaiah 53:4 which seems to me an ideal indicator of the human person we find in these pages.