Alumnus John Symons publishes Love is His Meaning: Two lives, one marriage

Exonian John Symons (1964, Literae Humaniores) has published a new book, Love is His Meaning: Two lives, one marriage.

The book tells the story of two people, born in poverty, who found each other and married in a world at war. They brought up and educated a family, but while their two sons were still very young, the father, a strong man who had served for twenty-five years in the army in India, developed the symptoms of Huntington’s disease. This cast a deep shadow over the family as his condition deteriorated over the next twenty-five years, but their faithful experience of God’s love and their deep love for each other gave them the strength and sense of purpose that brought them safe to the end, a meaning expressed in the words of Mother Julian of Norwich: “Do you want to know what our Lord meant in all this? Love is his meaning. In this love our life is everlasting. All this we shall see in God without end.”

Love is His Meaning draws together the stories of John Symons’s parents and of their families, before they were married, the story of their marriage and of his mother’s long life after his father’s death. This treatment, of parallel lives, gives a picture of life in our country over the whole of the twentieth century, allowing the reader to grasp what life was like for many ordinary families in those days when the power of the Christian Faith was more influential and widely experienced.

This England magazine wrote of Love is His Meaning, ‘The quiet courage of a family in dire adversity could not be better demonstrated – John Symons describes the tragedies that struck at the heart of a poor but devoted family. Humanity and the valour of the human spirit shine from every page.’

You can read more about Love is His Meaning and order a copy here.