I have spent some considerable time over the past three decades writing about building communities where age, and the wisdom of age is valued and celebrated. All of us need to both narrate our story and have it heard and even valued. Sometimes we need to tell that story to ourselves as we come to terms with the complexities and regrets that make up even the best life well lived. Memories shift and drift and even become distorted or perhaps rewritten. Human hearts are complex and not always reliable.

Sacristy Press have built up and developed their range of authors and books with some skill and they produce their books rather beautifully and this volume is no exception. Dales looks back with gratitude to many who have influenced and shaped his life for the good. The stability and security of his education opened a wide range of doors for his formation in ministry and careful skill as a historian. What we see and hear in this book is a priest who has endeavoured to put scholarship at the heart of his vocation. It is also eight chapters of testimony of how individuals shape our lives for the good beyond the measure.

These individuals include Cicely Saunders, Henry Chadwick, Michael Ramsey, Donald Allchin, and Mother Mary Clare. Both author and reviewer share a long journey with the Sisters of the Love of God in Oxford and like many others have been influenced for the good by their witness and teaching. The chapters are not straightforwardly biographical and Dale uses these encounters with these great figures to recount and share some of his own experiences of ministry, travel, ecumenical encounter and theological learning.

So the reader learns about the importance of developing and cultivating artistic sensibility, the absolute necessity in Christian discipleship to be a good and wise listener who is both sympathetic and critical though never uncharitable. We learn about Church history, the particular ministry of Allchin and his fervent ambassadorial work for Welsh Christianity. We revisit the life changing work of Saunders particularly through her development of systematic pain control and how this was shaped by her own Christian conviction about what it means to be human in the face of death.

Through these portraits, we understand a little more about Anglicanism and ecumenism. We are reminded of the importance of looking beyond this island of ours towards the way in which the inheritance of Christianity has taken so many shapes and forms across Europe and beyond. At the heart of it, we see a priest open to change and challenge and committed to a pastoral ministry of encounter and conversation. The book not only takes us on an intellectual journey of discovery for the author but also a pilgrimage to places that are key to the way in which the Christian tradition has been nurtured and handed on. Rome, Mount Athos, Canterbury, Durham, Bardsey Island and Lindisfarne are amongst the places that have shaped his ministry and prayer for immense good.

This book is of course not an autobiography in any conventional sense. It may be unreasonable for this reviewer to have expected a little more reflexivity about the gaps and a nod in the direction of the regrets or failures that are present in all of our lives. Dales is certainly blessed by the comfort and privileges of his family and upbringing, but I wonder whether any reader has the right to wonder about the shadows or even mistakes that a good life well lived in the light must surely cast over our memories, expectations and curiosity. To be fair to Dales this may not have been his brief but attentiveness to the tapestry of experience may well have enriched this spiritual memoir.

To end on a positive note. Dales in his conclusion. ( pp98-117) offers his reader the most wonderfully generative exploration of contemplative intercession shapey his experience at Fairacres, and the holy Mountain of Athos. I shall return to this for further reflection and contemplation. These reflections are especially profound and challenging an equal measure.

Do read Communion and Contemplation. It will open doors for you!