MY EARLIEST memory is one in all petty larceny, which is sweet going for a vicar. I used to be about five years old, and I even have a transparent memory of stealing oranges from an orange grove near Sorrento, Naples, where I used to be staying with my parents. They had met in Naples through the war (my father was with the Royal Corps of Signals, running a communications network round Italy, and my mother was with the ATS within the Caserta Palace, where she developed an unhealthy taste for sunken marble baths), and so they often returned with my sister and me. Hence my Neapolitan crib set is hugely resonant of my life and spiritual journey. Over the years, I even have collected these terracotta figures — wearing scraps of woollen cloth, feathers, and velvet — and I like them. Each reflects a part of my past: Mary and Joseph and the child; the three kings (where the feathers are available in); 4 shepherds, one with a dog (naturally), and one with a set of the Neapolitan bagpipes called zampogna; and, most recently, an old woman selling vegetables. I add a figure or two each time I am going and see my wonderful friend the Revd Julie Cave Bergquist, the Anglican Chaplain in Naples (“Madre Jules”, as she’s known in her neighbourhood); and I’ve now reached the stage of acquiring the raffish, vernacular figures — shopkeepers, stallholders, urchins, washerwomen: all of the dodgy, Caravaggesque hustlers and bustlers of Neapolitan life. The crib set has a fountain with real, flowing water, too.
I’m a Catholic-minded Anglican, largely because I believe and feel through symbols: this crib set points me to my childhood, and the awakenings of religion; every 12 months, once I get it out, it points to the presence of the incarnate God within the mess, untidiness, and on a regular basis mayhem of human life; and to the indisputable fact that faith grows, develops, and deepens over time. I hate to place it away — this 12 months, I still haven’t, regardless that Candlemas is gone. Surely the incarnation is for all times, not only for Christmas?
Archbishop Michael Ramsey’s book The Christian Priest Today was, and stays, hugely formative for me. During my twenties, within the Nineteen Eighties, I had real doubts about presuming to be a priest. Finally accepted for training in 1985, I used to be still desperately in search of affirmation about this path, and Ramsey’s smart and mild book helped enormously. Published in 1972, it’s chiefly composed of addresses he gave during ordination retreats, and is devoted to the priests he ordained in Durham, York, and Canterbury between 1952 and 1974.
The chapter that has remained closest to me is chapter 3, on prayer, for 2 reasons. First, he tells us that we’re “as celebrant on the eucharist privileged with a singular intensity to ‘be with God with the people in your heart’”. That phrase crystallised my fragile understanding of what priesthood is, and has been my touchstone the 1000’s of times I even have approached the altar. The other is his famous remark on prayer: “You put yourself with God, empty perhaps. But hungry and thirsty for him: and if in sincerity you can not say that you just want God, you’ll be able to perhaps tell him that you would like to want him: and if you happen to cannot say even that, perhaps you’ll be able to say that you would like to need to want him!” It has carried me through many a wobble in my prayer life.
On my study wall, I even have a big and battered icon of the Taizé cross, cut out from a poster, and stuck on a chunk of hardboard. I purchased it in Taizé once I was a curate, and it has been with me ever since. Taizé is a tremendous place. With vibes of each prison camp and Shangri-La, it was founded just after the Second World War, in Burgundy, near the nice abbey of Cluny, by the wonderful — and tragically martyred — Brother Roger. An ecumenical monastic community, it has been a magnet to generations of young people from all around the world in search of an authentic spirituality.
I first encountered the Taizé community at my theological college through its music — gentle, contemplative chants, which create an environment of quiet reflection. I even have introduced Taizé evening and night prayer to each parish I even have been in, with this cross propped up on kneelers and surrounded by a pool of night-lights. As I had been brought up on a food regimen of Anglican matins and evensong, it got here as a revelation that contemplative worship could possibly be accessible and effective. I cherish the cross, and what it has meant in my 35 years as a priest.
The Revd John Wall is Rector of the Uckfield Plurality in East Sussex.
