Relationships

I recently came across a review I wrote for The Tablet of the last book by Michael Mayne, the former Dean of Westminster Abbey. In 2005 he was faced with a diagnosis of cancer of the jaw which would, he realised, test his deepest beliefs. His book, The Enduring Melody is, as Alan Bennett wrote, ‘heroic, humbling and inspiring’.

Throughout his illness his wife Alison was his constant companion and it is this that leads him to write most movingly about all committed relationships, including same-sex relationships. He quotes from William Blake: ‘We are put on earth that we may learn to bear the beams of love’. In such relationships we become, he says, the occasion for each other’s self-realisation, for ultimately it is through one another and in each other that we may be entitled at the last to say, as God in the burning bush said, ‘I am who I am.’