Faith & Spirit Quote by Thomas Keneally

Keneally’s line has the rough-hewn candor of memoir: two institutions entering a life early, not as ideas but as atmospheres you breathe in - sometimes against your will. The first is medicine, introduced through bodily vulnerability. “Frequently sick,” “asthma,” “no proper treatment then” anchors the sentence in a mid-century reality where illness isn’t a manageable condition so much as a recurring emergency. That lack of treatment matters: it frames medicine less as benevolent science than as a zone of authority that can’t quite deliver, leaving the patient to live in a state of dependence and frustration.

Then he swivels to religion, and the parallel becomes clear. He doesn’t describe doctrine or comfort; he describes structure. “A strong sense of there being a patriarchy” is a child’s diagnosis that’s also a novelist’s. It’s not that patriarchy is argued; it’s felt, ambient, woven into rituals, language, and who gets to speak for God. By pairing medicine and religion, Keneally quietly links two gatekeeping systems: both claim expertise over the body and the soul, both traffic in fear and hope, both ask for submission.

The intent isn’t to denounce either outright; it’s to mark how formative power is when encountered through need. Asthma teaches him about dependency and limits; religion teaches him about hierarchy and permission. The subtext is origin-story material: a writer learning early to notice who holds the cures, who writes the rules, and what it costs to be on the receiving end.