Sometimes I listen for your word and hear nothing. 

In the quiet of my room the only noise is the thump of my heart and voices arguing inside my head.

It's not that I don't give you a chance.   Sometimes I say nothing for as long as five minutes. Your silence is still deafening.

Then I open a book and out tumbles your voice.   And when I try to shut that up I find you can get a word in anywhere.

I've even heard you sometimes from the pulpit.

I hear you on the Nine O'Clock News saying What have you done with the world I gave you?

I hear you in the tabloids saying Whoever is without sin cast the first stone.

With the first burst of spring flowers you say Look—no hands!

With the most extraordinary sunset you say Look, just relax.

The shrunken face of hunger is you saying Feed me.

The beggar on the underground is you saying House me.

The dreaded diagnosis is you saying Heal me.

The valium prescription is you saying Free me.

The redundancy notice is you saying Value me.

The scream of the torture victim is you saying Father, forgive.

The priest staring down the barrel of a gun is you saying Love casts out fear.

When I am late and hurrying you are the face on the clock saying I am the beginning and the end.

When I am greedy you are the face on the banknote saying Treasure is in heaven.

When I am proud you drop your banana-skins in front of me saying Don't look down.

When I am lonely you are the stillness of the house saying I am with you, always.

And when I am grieving you are the voice at the graveside saying I am the Resurrection and the Life.

Sometimes I listen for your word and hear nothing.

And sometimes I hear nothing else.

Before you're old enough to answer back, I thought I’d better get in the advice a parent is supposed to give. By the time you're five years old, you'll know your dad is always right. At eight you'll know your dad’s usually right. At twelve you'll know your dad is sometimes right. At sixteen you'll know, with devastating certainty, your dad was never right about a single thing in his entire life. You'll be convinced there was a mix-up at the hospital. You couldn't be genetically linked to anyone with such appalling dress sense and disastrous taste in music. But that's all right. By twenty-five you'll realise he wasn't quite as hopeless as you'd thought, and by the time you pack him off to the Sunnydays Home for the Chronologically Gifted you'll almost have grown fond of the old fool. So before this tiny window of opportunity slams shut on my fingers, here’s something you ought to know. Parenting’s not easy. Even the word sounds like it’s on probation from a social worker’s handbook. It was much simpler once. Dads went out to work, while mums stayed home and looked after the kids. There was a canny granny who knew a thing or two about colic and could wield a nappy pin without malicious damage. Now mum's fulfilled by holding down a job, and dad's a new man rushing home to change the babygros, and both collapse at half past nine each night, racked with guilt and haunted by the ghosts of their inadequacy because Mum's not Anita Roddick and isn't running a small but profitable chain of underwear boutiques, and Dad's not Richard Branson (and frankly looks awful in those chunky sweaters) . Help, though, is at hand. For godparents we have Mothercare and the Early Learning Centre, and lots of good advice from educationalists, psychologists, anthropologists and out-of-work sociologists. All of whom suggest we don't interfere. Well, I’m going to. But the advice I’d like to give is not the things at seventeen I swore I’d never say to my kids. Like Stop making all that noise, or Don’t speak until you’re spoken to! (When you’re older you might reflect on what would happen if everyone obeyed that last instruction.) That sort of advice is for the benefit of grown-ups who’d like to judge you by appearances, and want you to stay securely in your cot where they can keep a watchful eye on you. But I’m going to be your role model. Tough, I know, but we’ll have to make the best of it. I’ll try to show you some useful things that I’ve been shown myself. It isn’t what you do that counts, but how you do it. So if you really want to dye your eyebrows turquoise, or set your heart on crossing the Gobi Desert on a camel, or even become an accountant, that’s ok. It isn’t who you are that gets you anywhere, but who you follow. So don’t be too concerned if, when your childhood’s done, your end-of-term report says your achievements are quite limited. You think two and two can make five. You suppose the kingdom of heaven has a place in geography. You mistake history for literature because In the beginning was the word. You believe relativity has something to do with keeping a sense of proportion. And in philosophy you hold the eccentric view that questions may somewhere have answers. All in all you will be quite ill-adjusted to the expectations of society. And if that’s the verdict then, dear son, I think that both of us can say we’ve come through pretty well.