Rowan Douglas Williams was born in Swansea,
south Wales, and was educated at Dynevor School
in Swansea and Christ’s College Cambridge
where he studied theology. He studied for his
doctorate at Wadham College Oxford, taking
his DPhil in 1975. From 1977, he spent nine
years in academic and parish work in Cambridge
before returning to Oxford. In 1991 Professor Williams accepted election and consecration as bishop of Monmouth and in 1999 he was elected Archbishop of Wales. Thus it was that, in July 2002, with eleven years experience as a diocesan bishop and three as a leading primate in the Communion, Archbishop Williams was confirmed on 2 December 2002 as the 104th bishop of the See of Canterbury.
Dr Williams is acknowledged internationally as an outstanding theological writer, scholar and teacher. His interests include music, fiction and languages. Dr Williams is married to Jane Paul, a lecturer in theology, whom he met while living and working in Cambridge. They have a daughter and a son.
 One by one, the marks join up: easing their way through the broken soil, the green strands bend, twine, dip and curl and cast off little drops of rain. Nine months ago, the soil broke up, shouting, crushing its fist on houses, lives, crops and futures, opening its wordless mouth to say No. And the green strands stubbornly grow back. The broken bits of a lost harvest still let the precious wires push through to bind the pain, to join with knots and curls the small hurt worlds of each small life, to say another no: no, you are not abandoned. The rope of words is handed on, let down from a sky broken by God’s voice, curling and wrapping each small life into the lines of grace, the new world of the text that maps our losses and our longings, so that we can read humanity again in one another’s eyes, and hear that the broken soil is not all, after all, as the signs join up. |
