Integrity for life

In Beginning to Pray, Archbishop Anthony Bloom reflects on his fascinating upbringing that saw him living (and fleeing) throughout Russia, Switzerland, Persia, Kurdistan, India, Spain, France, Austria, Yugoslavia and probably a host of other interesting locales. His father, who was a Russian diplomat prior to the revolution, never returned to his old standards of life, choosing instead to work as an unskilled labourer for as long as his health permitted and then in simple clerical duties. He was a strong man who felt that as a Russian he ought to share responsibility for what had happened in his homeland.

Here are a couple of Bloom's memories of his father:

I remember a certain number of his phrases. In fact there are two things he said which impressed me and have stayed with me all of my life. One is about life. I remember he said to me after a holiday, 'I worried about you' and I said, 'Did you think I'd had an accident?' He said, 'That would have meant nothing, even if you had been killed. I thought you had lost your integrity.' Then on another occasion he said to me, 'Always remember that whether you are alive or dead matters nothing. What matters is what you live for and what you are prepared to die for.' These things were the background of my early education and show the sense of life that I got from him.