I have just returned from a week away, first in London briefly, then in Naples. It really was a wonderful trip. I am planning a story set in Italy, and expect to plan at least the outline of it within the next few months. In order to see if my ideas are workable, I must do some research.

I have been to Naples before, in this spring just past, but this time I explored it in more detail, and also visited the coastline to the south, which includes such places as Positano, Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast. They are all gorgeous, but Amalfi was almost beyond description — exquisite. Even though it was the end of November, the weather was perfect — warm and still with dazzling sunlight, especially over the sea.

Amalfi is pretty-well vertical, all roads having corkscrew bends right down to the water’s edge, buildings seeming to hang on the cliff face with roofs and balconies, towers, gardens with flowers and vines even at this time of year. Hibiscus were out, bougainvillea and blue and purple morning glory.

Some of the churches have marvellous mosaics, pillars, domed roofs above narrow streets, sheer drops down to blue water, and always the light and the sense of endless space.

We came back from the drive in time to go up Mount Vesuvius before dark. I was amazed how fertile the soil is. Everything is green and full of growth. There are houses and villas at least halfway up to the crater itself. It all looks so peaceful it is hard to remember that two thousand years ago the whole thing blew up so violently that entire cities were buried and heaven knows how many people were killed. And of course it has gone on erupting at highly irregular intervals ever since. It erupted in 1929, 1933 and 1944 that I know of, and then silence for a long time.

Apparently the thing about Vesuvius, as distinct from Etna or Stromboli, is that it gives very little warning. It does not let off steam every now and then. It stays silent for ages, then lets fly in all directions in blasts that devastate everything in its path.

I met with great kindness from people willing to help me in my research. One person, Clemente Esposito, has been working on the excavation of the vast network of aqueducts, caverns and burial chambers beneath the city. It is the major work of his life, for which he gets no government funding, but he cares for the preservatiion of this fascinating area so much he dedicates his time and his means to it.

He was willing to conduct us (my UK agent, my US agent and one of our Italian friends, to translate for us) through many of the passages and vaults. One enters from the street by what looks like an ordinary door into a public building, a warehouse or storage block, and then you go down two or three flights of steps, and suddenly you are in the rock under the city.

Most of it is pale sand colour, is called tufa, and is volcanic and unique to Naples. The city was founded by the Greeks well over two thousand years ago, and of course was a famous resort in the time of the Romans before Christ. Some of these underground passages and caverns were created by the Greeks as burial chambers, and piles of skulls are still there, and memorials, with urns of beautiful shapes with scenes carved or painted on them.

Other narrow passages were once aqueducts. Every time the volcano erupted, it would shift things, break old paths and make new ones. Some were natural caves or ancient river channels anyway. The vaults are huge, some three or four storeys high like cathedrals, others so low you have to bend your head to pass through. There are graffiti on the walls from many ages, some of the most vivid from the years between WWI and WWII, with recognizable cartoons of Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill and Stalin because the passages were used for air raid shelters.

One glorious church we visited had a huge inner cloister full of sunlight, and near silence, even though we went in from a very noisy street full of shoppers. Another had steps beyond the church itself that went down three or four storeys into the excavation of a series of Roman streets with shops just like those in today’s streets above. The basins were still there in the laundry, the ovens in the fast food shop and the stone couches opposite for the patrons to lie and eat. They even had hollows underneath each couch where fires could be lit to keep the diners warm! Of course all was built out of the tiny, flat, ancient Roman bricks and would have been worn smooth by the passage of thousands of feet, long before Christ was born.

It was extraordinary how sense of time blended together until one almost expected to see someone come out of a shop doorway wearing a toga and speaking Latin or, since it is Naples, possibly Greek.

On the street above again our guide, a delightful Neapolitan lady, a senior profession at the University, whom I met on my previous trip, pointed out all kinds of landmarks to us. One was relatively recent — where Boccaccio, the famous Renaissance writer, met his love Fiametta. Far older than that, she pointed quite casually to the theatre where the Emperor Nero used to sing!

Another place, near where she and her husband have their villa on Capri, is the place where the Emperor Tiberius spent so much of his time in his later years.

How close to us the past is. All those people were God’s children just as we are. They had the same loves and hates, fears and dreams as we do. Many of them had glimpses of the truth, and hopes for eternity because of those they loved, the inequities here or the faith that somewhere there would be forgiveness, healing and a renewal of all that is beautiful, compassionate and created from love.

How sublime is the Gospel, which excludes no one at all, from any time or place. How can one worship a God who would shut people out because they were born in a time or place that gave them no chance? That must surely include the vast majority of the people who have lived on the earth. It would be monstrous. And yet there are many whose faith teaches them exactly that.

Walking in Darkness

Today was Fast and Testimony. I felt moved to say how very different I find it speaking with someone who has a belief in God from speaking with someone who has no belief at all. It doesn’t matter that the nature of their belief might be different from mine. How does one abide such a darkness?

Sometimes the world is full of joy, but so often it is not. We all have griefs to bear, as we are meant to. We have pain, fear, loneliness and loss. It is part of the pattern, and necessary. But what would it be to endure without the trust that when we seem to be utterly lost and without recourse, then there is someone beyond us who loves us, understands our fear and our failures, and can mend everything, in time, if we do all we can. We do not need to understand everything, we cannot!

How is it bearable to those for whom the darkness is empty?

I wish passionately that I could do something to convince people that there is a God. We are never alone, we only think we are because both our sight and our understanding are so limited.

Reason will not fill that void. You cannot argue someone into trust or the reaching out of faith, so that it will eventually be touched by the Spirit. The beauty of the earth, which in one place is so intense that it overcomes the mind, for some only begins to touch it. Our own faith may light a spark, or it may be seen merely as a delusion we create to comfort ourselves.

If anything can do it, it will be love: love that is patient, consistent, brave, merciful over and over again, but does not bend to accommodate the lie or excuse cruelty: love that never goes into hate or despair, the surety that light is stronger than darkness.

No Safe Place

It was my turn to teach Sunday School again, and the subject was the Epistle of Saint James, whom we believe to have been the brother of Christ in the flesh. What a marvellous letter it is, so simple on subjects of seeking knowledge by asking God in faith, and trusting that we will receive an answer. On bearing affliction with patience and grace. On being doers of the word, not hearers only. On guarding the cruelty of the tongue, being slow to anger, on practicing pure religion — the love of others.

One subject arose in a discussion that moved me greatly. I mentioned having gone up Vesuvius, close to the top, and somehow or other we touched the subject of how fertile the soil was, how far up the mountainside people had built beautiful houses. One of the sisters said that we need to learn that there is no safe place to set our feet, no ground anywhere that cannot give way, cave in and pitch us headlong into grief or loss.

We must accept that there is no sure footing in life — no path that avoids pain. The only certainty lies not beneath our feet, but when we look upward to the love and the help of God. There is no other certainty, nor should there be. Everything else can change or be lost, at least temporarily.

She did not say so, but I believe that she had witnessed pain during the week that had surprised her, even shocked her, and shown her very clearly how fragile are some of the things we take for granted — but how eternal is the love of God, and the promises which will never be broken.

And surely Christmas is above all the time to remember such things?

Another brother mentioned the parable of the talents, but from a point of view I had never considered before — that if we choose what we believe is the path of safety, as much without risk as possible (to have one talent and bury it so it cannot be lost) — then we will surely lose it in God’s time. Whereas those who take the risks of being hurt, of failing at times, but do all to be the very best they can, will double their spiritual wealth. And the only thing that matters in the end, they will be pleasing to our Father in Heaven, who gave us this sublime chance to learn, to grow, to be forgiven if only we will keep faith, and forgive others also.

This is the time above all others to be grateful for the chance of life, to seize it with all the strength we have, and do everything within our power to magnify it, and share it with everyone we can.

All the tomorrows lie ahead of us in which to try our best. It is never too late, here or hereafter. There is eternity in which to grow, and to become beautiful.

Happy Christmas,