Michael Ramsey

Checking, I find that official portrait paintings of recent Archbishops of Canterbury never seem to be that good. David Poole's of Robert Runcie makes him look like a cross between a minor official at the court of the Jade Emperor and a duchess on a commode. William Narraway's of Donald Coggan is at least appropriately dull, while June Mendoza's of George Carey manages to convert his usual expression, rather like someone who's just poured curdled milk in his tea, into something quite benign (I can't tell you what I think about Dr Carey as it's too uncharitable for this blog). These make the recent one of Rowan Williams by Victoria Russell look really very palatable.

My spiritual director has (or had before he retired and moved to his London flat, I can't recall whether I've seen it there) a sketch for George Bruce's portrait of the great Michael Ramsey, and that's not that good either. Ramsey is one of S.D.'s great heroes, and he's one of my 'minor patrons' as well. I'm not quite sure why, apart from his being such an attractive character, the most saintly occupant of the Throne of St Augustine, arguably, for many a century. The painting gives him a weaker character than in fact he had: this man looks so blithe you can't imagine him rocking any kind of boat or being a steadfast defender of one who needed it, whereas, while Ramsey was a gentle man, he was a strong one who was willing to defy nasty newspapers and challenge dictators. What the portrait does capture is his customary and endearing state of ramshackle disshevelment, stole, cope and hair all over the place. Ramsey was not the kind of Anglo-Catholic whose every pleat was a prayer and never made a gesture out of place: he was so clumsy he could barely handle a teacup. As a child he exhibited some very odd behaviour - running around his room hitting the walls being a favourite - and today he would almost certainly have been diagnosed with some dyspraxia-like condition.

I've just finished reading Owen Chadwick's biography of Michael Ramsey, a strangely old-fashioned book considering it was published in 1990, and Chadwick was only 74 at the time. I hadn't realised that Ramsey had been a very strong and political Liberal in his younger days, and had deliberately renounced the idea of a political career - which was offered to him - in favour of being a priest, on the grounds that the Christian life actually presented a greater opportunity for changing human relationships for the better than organised politics did. Something to reflect on as the UK enters another and entirely hopeless general election campaign.

I usually include Michael Ramsey in my prayers on Mondays, asking his intercession that I may keep focused on the things that are important. I need quite a lot of help with that.