Francis Etheredge’s Publications

What makes a writer? Writing. But about what? What matters. And so while I came out of a multi-talented family, which was well read, artistic, academic and practical, it was not automatic that I would be a writer; indeed, my first thoughts were very varied, including many failed attempts to find a course or a skill that I wanted to pursue, even abandoning early attempts at writing, all of which died or dwindled to nothing and were overtaken, year in year out, by the wearying search for an identity which, in the end, was the Christian identity of being a child of God, a sinner and loved by a redeeming love which made it possible for me to marry and found a family. Over many years of writing essays, for a variety of courses, the words of a one-time director of studies came home to me: that I was not the best student but that I had something to say and that, to put it simply, a book is a collection of essays. So, over the years, that search that is God searching for His lost sheep, those unanswered questions concerning the moment of our first beginning to exist, what constitutes an adequate account of the wholeness of human personhood, drawing on the culture of a country to see what it can contribute to welcoming life, that widening awareness of being married, a parent and all the facets of a Christian family life, pilgrimages, prayers and the society in which our young people grow up – has led to a body of work which, while relatively late in life, draws on that mixture of life experience, learning, the help of others, the word of God and the life of the Catholic Church, all of which in the providence of God is drawn upon.