Make Straight the Path: Brian Quail — A Voice in the Wilderness
He came to mind the way the desert prophets do — a little wind-burned, a little out of step with the world, and wholly unwilling to soften the truth. John the Baptist, with his wild honey and locusts, his rough coat and rougher message, never tried to belong to polite society. He prepared a way. He made straight the path. He unsettled people into honesty. Brian Quail lived like that. There was in him the same stubborn, luminous refusal to compromise — the same sense that faith was not meant to be tidy or respectable, but alive, inconvenient, and burning. The old Russians had a word for such people: a Fool for Christ. Not foolish in mind, but foolish in the eyes of a world that mistakes comfort for wisdom. The holy fool speaks plainly, lives simply, renounces applause, and becomes, just by existing, a quiet rebuke to complacency. We had one of our own. I first met Brian on the evening of 19 March 2003, at a Scottish Socialist Party rally in Greenock opposing the second Iraq War. Within ...