Monastery volunteer, Gary McMormick, shares his story...
'He's not bleeding on my new carpet. If you're going to shoot him, take him somewhere else.'
It's the middle of a card game in a terraced house in Northern Ireland; Gary McCormick, born the year the Irish Troubles began, is dragged from a house to a rubbish tip in Belfast by four masked and armed men from the Ulster Defence Association. There he receives a punishment beating which keeps him in hospital for weeks. He's fortunate; the last person ended up with a hole in his head.
Gary's crime? He can talk for Ireland and he's opened his mouth once too often at the wrong time, in the wrong place, upsetting the paramilitaries.
This is the story of a 36 year old man who for much of his life just couldn't stay out of trouble; arrested for the first time at the age of 12 he climbed the penal ladder very adeptly, going through boys' home, remand home and young offenders centre in Ireland, ending up in prison on the Isle of Wight for an impetuous and ill-timed bomb hoax. It wasn't as if he was a hardened criminal; at every twist and turn Gary intended to make something of himself.
In prison Gary becomes a Christian and decides that now he really can turn over a new leaf, but it's a struggle; his personality works against him constantly and it doesn't help that he's hooked on alcohol, gambling and soft drugs.
This is the brutally honest and often painful story of Gary's attempts to survive in a world in which he is his own worst enemy. As he says: 'People think it's because I lived through the Troubles in Northern Ireland that I've had all these problems, but it's nothing to do with that - I was very good at creating trouble for myself.'
You can't help but like Gary; he knows his faults, tries hard to make amends, and he won't give up, or shut up for that matter, whatever's thrown at him. Even when the BBC put him in a monastery for six weeks with four other men, to see how they will react to the cloistered life, he ends up causing a stir. Vow of silence? Not for Gary.
His story infuriates, disturbs and frustrates. But in the end it is full of optimism and hope.
