Alan Gallagher

Most of what I have learned, and continue to learn about work came not from training but from watching others fail and succeed in equal measure. Early on I mistook competence for confidence; later I understood that the quieter workers often carried more. Administrative work taught me that systems remember what people forget, and that small errors compound. I came to value procedure not as bureaucracy but as a form of care?a way of protecting those who come after you from the consequences of haste. The best professionals I encountered were not the most ambitious but the most attentive. I also learnt that there is value in every type of professional I have encountered - everyone can provide a moment of learning or being able to teach. This is what keeps me humble.

Conscience is not a feeling but a faculty, and like any faculty it must be trained. Mine was shaped first by my parents and family, then by life and failures, and finally by faith. I would love to say in that order but I have a strong suspicion the latter was there in the beginning; I was just too keen on the pints and the parties! I have done things I regret, and the weight of those acts has been more instructive than any sermon. What I learned is that morality is not a matter of avoiding wrong but of bearing responsibility for it when it comes. The examined life is not comfortable. But discomfort, properly attended to, becomes a kind of compass.

I was educated in one of the best state schools in the City of Bristol, at the time of attendance - on one of it's so called 'rough council estates', Lockleaze. I have wonderful memories of certain teachers who gave me language for things I had already intuited, but more importantly it taught me the limits of cleverness. The intellect is a tool, not a destination. I have met brilliant people who could not act wisely, and simple people whose judgement was unerring. What matters is not how much one knows but how one holds what one knows?with humility, and a willingness to be corrected. Similarly those amazing teacher taught me how to teach myself and put me in good stead for the trauma that like can throw at you. Losing my mother at the age of 15 had a massive impact but I'll never forget Mrs. Paganotto telling me in her deep German accent remember Alan, nothing in this life lasts forever, not even bad times. That lesson has stayed with me. There was Mrs Beer who made science lessons the most exciting thing since the permanent wave...God rest her soul and Miss Liss-Carless, the exotic American who chose Lockleaze as her home ground having had an exciting life living in Paris and teaching me French and Science in such a way as it means I still have a great interest. Lastly, there was my Parents - I honestly could not have asked for more support than that of my Mum and Dad - if I needed anything to get through schooling they supported and provided it.

There is a kind of knowledge that only comes through the hands: mending, building, maintaining. I grew up around people who fixed things rather than replaced them, and that economy of effort left its mark. Practical work teaches patience and proportion. It teaches you that most problems are not solved by force but by understanding how things fit together. I distrust abstraction that cannot be tested against material reality. The best thinking I have done has often come while doing something else?something slower, something with a visible result. Precisely because of the intellectual formation I had I was able to be practical when the time came. Not always immediately but the people in my younger life had given me a a way to think, to plan, to build solutions and systems. That has stuck with me my entire life and quite literally to this day those mantra's are still ingrained and hel me success. Remember, I'm the boy with no education who worked up to running by the age of 18, a hotel by the age of 26 by 30 I had four years of team leadership under my belt and through my thirties I looked up to 40 staff at a time depending on my role. I was very priveleged as many of those I managed were highly educated and I had greater respet for them - it was a humbling experience but one that taught me so much about people and how to get the best out of them.

The self is not fixed. It is shaped by habit, circumstance, and the slow pressure of time. I have been several people over the years, not all of them admirable, some of them shocking, some just a substance of the time and place I was at in my life. What remains constant is a certain orientation?toward order, toward quiet, toward fidelity to small things. Personal formation is not about self-improvement in the modern sense; it is about becoming someone who can be relied upon. That is harder than it sounds. It requires saying no more often than yes, and accepting that growth is often invisible, even to oneself. for someone like me who craves visible results, this has been a difficult lesson. But it is one I continue to learn.

Plans and notes for daily Scripture, catechism, and spiritual reading.

• Daily Bible Readings
• Catechism Plan
• Spiritual Reading Plan