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Walking Alone
This book didn’t make it, so it’s a bit of a cheat to put it here in my books section: but it’s not my fault. It was commissioned by the Methodist Publishing House as part of the ‘In Conversation’ series they were publishing under the ‘Inspire’ imprint. The first two were Jane Craske’s Being Human: in conversation with … Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials and John Inge’s Living Love: in conversation with … the Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency. This book was to appear next, with the title Walking Alone: in conversation with … Wainwright’s Guides and it was timed to coincide with the flurry of books in 2007 on the centenary of Wainwright’s birth. Sadly, problems began to occur at the Publishing House, and this book and my Who is this Jesus who was born of Mary? were caught up in its demise. Fortunately, Truro Cathedral published that one on the Birth Stories in Matthew and Luke and the Prologue in John, but as this one was really part of a series I didn’t think it worth trying to get it published as a stand alone book, and all attempts by the series editor to get the series taken up by another publisher failed. So here it is.
Contents
Alfred Wainwright died on 20th January 1991, aged 84, so this book is obviously not a conversation with the man himself. It wouldn’t have been easy to have had a conversation with him anyway, for on the hills this great fellwalker valued silence and solitude, and off them shunned the fame which his guide books soon brought him. Therefore this little book, like the other titles in this series, is a conversation with a set of books. My conversation partner is the famous seven volume set of ‘Wainwright’s Guides’. AW himself gave each of them a much longer and, in character, very precise title. They all carry the same hand-written heading, ‘A Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, being an illustrated account of a study and exploration of the mountains in the English Lake District, by A Wainwright’. Under that is a drawing, the book number and the name of the fells it covers. ‘Book One, The Eastern Fells’ appeared in 1955, two years after he started the project, and its cover drawing was of Striding Edge on Helvellyn. Eleven years later, in 1966, the last Guide looked exactly the same, though the edging was a different colour and Book Seven on The Western Fells naturally featured a different fell in its cover drawing (this time it is Steeple). There had been nothing like these Guides before and there hasn’t been since. They continue to be best-sellers and indispensable companions for every Lakeland fellwalker. Over a million copies have been sold. Judicious updating has been done and a new edition is available, but the updating in only concerned with changes on the ground. The inimitable comments remain. I suppose that this book ought to be hand-written and illustrated with detailed line drawings like the Guides themselves, but as my handwriting is not quite as neat as Wainwright’s and I can’t draw at all, it isn’t. Alert readers will have already spotted that I’ve called the author of these Guides by four different names already – Alfred Wainwright, AW, A Wainwright and Wainwright. From now on, and in common with much of the literature about him, I am simply going to refer to him as ‘AW’. This brings us straight to a paradox about the man. Outside his job as Borough Treasurer in Kendal, and the public duties in which that involved him and in which he obviously gave of himself freely – he tells us that he had accumulated the secretaryship or treasurership or both of thirteen voluntary organisations in the town by the time he retired (Fellwalker) - few knew him by name or were let into his life. On the hills he was notoriously solitary, even to the point of moving off the path to avoid having to speak to another walker or saying ‘No’ when asked by eager questioners on the tops if he was indeed the elusive ‘Mr Wainwright’. But his Guides are quite different; they are warm, human and open, even ‘intimate’ as the flysheet of Fellwander puts it. Few met AW on the hills and if they had he would barely have shared the time of day with them, let alone share anything of himself: but in the Guides he gives himself openly and freely. He shares his hopes and fears, likes and dislikes, passions and values, as well as providing detailed descriptions of routes and comprehensive diagrams of views from the summits. The Guardian ran a feature on AW on 18th December 1982 and gave it the headline, ‘The guide who shuns his followers’. One paragraph of that feature speaks of him like this, He carries his aversion to human company to extreme lengths. He is frequently accosted on the fells by people who claim to recognise him, and no doubt wish to offload some of their adulation of him. His attitude is cavalier, to put it mildly, and often more than curt. ‘I’d rather not meet them. I don’t tell them who I am. Very few people know who I am, even in Kendal.’ At least he is not a vain man, despite his achievement. Yet a thin streak of disdain for his weaker brethren runs through his books. He has no time for the ‘irresolute,’ for fools or for clumsy people, indeed for a large slice of humanity. ‘I don’t care two hoots for the human race. I think there’s a lot of greed and selfishness in them.’ Confirmation of that, outside the Guides, can be found towards the end of his autobiography Ex-Fellwanderer, written in 1987, where he writes with passion about humanity’s inhumane treatment of animals, Man is the bully, the biggest and cruellest predator of all. I lost my faith in the human race when the loathsome disease of myxamatosis was deliberately introduced to rid the country of its innocent rabbits, condemning them to a painful and lingering death, and doing so without shame. Or again, a few pages later, I feel sorry for posterity. The world is sick, and getting worse. Moral standards and strict disciplines have gone to seed. Few seem to care two hoots about the old virtues of pride and dependability and respect for others. Self-interest is good and necessary but has turned to greed at the expense of honesty and decent behaviour; the murmurings of conscience are stifled and ignored. Violence and terrorism and vandalism are rampant. Clever men are engaged in devising instruments of mass destruction. The world is not only sick, but mad. His final word, intended to counter this impression, rather confirms it instead, But enough of griping and grousing; I did not intend the book to be a catalogue of criticisms and grumbles. I have been described recently as being crusty and intolerant in my old age. I am not, really, but just wanted to get a few niggles off my chest before signing off. In fact I have very little personal interest in what is going on in the world; I am a detached observer, not involved, keeping everybody and everything at arm’s length. I am unperturbed by wars and famines and have no time at all for party politics. My hackles rise only when I hear of cruelty to animals. Man’s cruelty to man is not my concern. I live in a shell of my own making. Hints of these attitudes are found in the Guides, but this extreme and in parts very unpleasant grumpiness only comes out fully in this autobiography, written by someone who was then 80 years old. In the Guides themselves there is humour, wit and a real sense of fun, not all of which, admittedly, is ‘politically-correct’. They were, of course, written before that term was invented, and one can easily imagine what AW would have thought about it. In them walkers are always men, and the third person pronoun used is always ‘he’; though his jokes about the ‘ladies’ show that he would at least allow them on the hills. Other dated features are that in the days of the Guides railways ran to Keswick and Coniston, buses ran to places which have not seen a bus service for years, roads could still be described as ‘motor-roads’, ‘ponies still went to work in coal mines’ and ‘Sellafield’ was still ‘Calder Hall’, about which AW has much to say. There is no mention in them either of modern mountain phenomena like the mountain-bike, paragliding and sat-nav. What AW would have made of two of these can be easily imagined. Despite all of this, Wainwright’s splendid and unique Guides are classic texts in twentieth century culture. They are not just guidebooks containing routes and walks on the mountains of the Lake District. They do contain all that, and they are still the best guidebooks to walking in the Lake District there are, despite some increasingly good competition: but they are more than that. They are important cultural icons in a major sector of popular culture, and their author is a significant twentieth century character. There is now even something of a Wainwright industry, of which he would have disapproved immensely for sure. The centenary year of his birth, 2007, was marked in a variety of ways, prominent among them by the Wainwright’s Walks television series commissioned by the BBC and featuring the ubiquitous either you-love-her or she-annoys-you-beyond-measure Julia Bradbury. Books about AW continue to be written [1]. All that adds up to the reason for this book and its conversation with Wainwright’s Guides. They are not, of course, religious textbooks, nor works of theology or philosophy. They tell us nothing about AW’s religious views or practices, and the few comments he does make in his two later autobiographical books tell us little more. He wasn’t a religious man in the conventional meaning of that expression in his lifetime. It’s also pretty clear that he didn’t go to church on Sundays, as every weekend, come rain or shine, was taken up with walking the fells or exploring the valleys, taking the photographs and making the notes which he would write up during the week and from which he would produce his drawings. It is, however, equally clear that he had a rich ‘spirituality’ in today’s sense of that vague, overworked but none-the-less useful word. Marie McCarthy’s definition of it is probably as good as we can get, Spirituality is a fundamental component of our human beingness, rooted in the natural desires, longings and hungers of the human heart. It is concerned with the deepest desires of the human heart for meaning, purpose and connection, with the deep life lived intentionally in reference to something larger than oneself [2]. Given that definition, the Guides are full of it! They are, in fact, works of spirituality, above all, a spirituality of place. They reveal AW’s own spirituality and invite others to discover what Lakeland has to offer for the enrichment of their own lives. In that sense AW was an evangelist. He had Good News to share. The Guides are his sermons or power-point presentations, though with more humour and passion than the average sermon and less gimmickry than the average power-point session. In the fells of Lakeland he discovered something real and life-transforming, and that will be the main subject of our conversation. In the Introduction to the first one he sums it up like this, Surely there is no other place in this whole wonderful world quite like Lakeland … no other so exquisitely lovely, no other so charming, no other that calls so insistently across a gulf of distance. All who truly love Lakeland are exiles when away from it. Many are they who have fallen under the spell of Lakeland, and many are they who have been moved to tell of their affection in story and verse and picture and song. This book is one man’s way of expressing his devotion to Lakeland’s friendly hills. It was conceived, and is born, after many years of inarticulate worshipping at their shrines. It is, in very truth, a love letter. In what follows I will mainly refer to the seven Guides, though there will be occasional references to three later books which he also called ‘Pictorial Guides’ and to his two ‘autobiographical’ notebooks. I will use the following abbreviations in my references: 1 Book One, The Eastern Fells (1955) 2 Book Two, The Far Eastern Fells (1957) 3 Book Three, The Central Fells (1958) 4 Book Four, The Southern Fells (1960) 5 Book Five, The Northern Fells (1962) 6 Book Six, The North Western Fells (1964) 7 Book Seven, The Western Fells (1966) PWC Pennine Way Companion (1968) CCW A Coast to Coast Walk (1972) OFL The Outlying Fells of Lakeland (1973) Fellwanderer Fellwanderer – the Story behind the Guidebooks (1966) Ex-Fellwanderer Ex-Fellwanderer – A Thanksgiving (1987) (Memoirs of a Fellwanderer (1993) combines these two) The original seven Guides only give page numbers per mountain, rather than consecutive page numbers through the book, and the pages in the Introduction to each book and the Personal Notes at the end are not numbered at all. So for AW’s little drawing of what most folks are likely to be doing on the summit of Coniston Old Man the page reference is (4 Coniston Old Man 13), ie Book Four and numbered page 13 of the section on Coniston Old Man. But for AW’s list of the six best fells the reference is (7 Personal Notes 4), ie Book Seven with the italics indicating the fourth unnumbered page of the Personal Notes at the end. Fellwanderer and Ex-Fellwanderer have no page numbers at all and there is no way of identifying the pages of any references to them at all, such as the one above about the voluntary work he was doing when he retired. The standard biography is Wainwright: the Biography by Hunter Davies, published by Michael Joseph in 1995.
Orrest Head, for many of us, is ‘where we came in’ – our first ascent in Lakeland, our first sight of mountains in tumultuous array across glittering waters, our awakening to beauty (OFL 26). I lift up my eyes to the hills (Psalm 121.1) [1]. It happened for AW on Orrest Head. It was his first visit to Lakeland, on holiday from the mean streets of Blackburn when he was 23. He describes the scene from that little hill on the outskirts of Windermere as a pageant of loveliness, a glorious panorama which held (him) enthralled (Ex-Fellwanderer) and says of that experience that it was the first time (he) had looked upon beauty, or imagined it even (1 Personal Notes 2). It happened for me on a train at Wallthwaite in 1964, on a diesel, new but already tatty, on the line from Penrith to Keswick. It was just after Easter. I was in the fifth-form, preparing for ‘O’ Levels in the summer. And it was Blencathra which did it. It did it to all of us. The open-plan carriage went very quiet as we looked across the valley. We were impressed, moved. It was ‘scary’, though that word hadn’t been invented then. What moved us was mighty Blencathra, its summit white with snow, towering over a tiny village, its great ridges dropping steep and sharp into the valley. I had never seen anything like it. This was my second walking holiday with the school, but the previous summer in the Cairngorms had shown us nothing like this. Yes, the Cairngorms were big, but they were round. There had still been bits of snow in some of the corries, but those hills had not had this effect on any of us. Fred Batham, our woodwork teacher who ran these walking tours, broke the silence. ‘We’re going up there the day after tomorrow’, he said. At that point I think few of us wanted to do anything of the sort. The effect of what happened to AW on Orrest Head in 1930 and to me near Threlkeld at Easter 1964 was a lifetime’s enchantment with ‘the hills’ and a life experience greatly enriched by them, Afterwards I went often, whenever I could, and always my eyes were lifted to the hills. I was to find then, and it has been so ever since, a spiritual and physical satisfaction in climbing mountains (1 Personal Notes 2). These were ‘life-changing moments’ in which both AW and I were, in his words, ‘awakened to beauty’. The Bible talks a lot about new beginnings. Its story line is the story of God calling a people into being, and then guiding them through a journey which was many centuries long. Time and again they went wrong and new beginnings needed to be made. Very often the story focuses down on individuals, and the Bible contains many tales of individuals who changed direction, made new starts, and discovered new ways of living. The Church has taken up this way of speaking of Christian life and faith. It says that our spiritual journey, our ‘pilgrimage of faith’, begins with Baptism which is a new beginning. After that we continue on our journey regularly nourished by bread and wine in the service of Holy Communion, by whatever name we call that particular act of worship. Sometimes becoming a Christian can be a very dramatic experience, and some Christians can give the time and the date of their ‘conversion’ just like AW can of his ‘awakening’. For others the whole process is much longer, with highs and lows but no particularly magic moment. Paul’s ‘awakening’ or ‘conversion’ on the Damascus Road is a good example of the first kind of experience; the experience of Peter and the other disciples a good example of the much longer, slower and less dramatic way. There is no doubt about it, AW had a ‘Damascus Road’ experience on Orrest Head, an experience which changed his life completely. It’s as if he was asleep, says AW, before that view from Orrest Head woke him up. Before then he had walked many miles over the paths and moors around Blackburn and walking had obviously been a great leisure pursuit for him, but something so dramatic happened to him on Orrest Head that the word he chose to use for it was ‘awakened’. The Bible usually uses this word in the ordinary sense of waking up in the morning, but there is one place where it is used more dramatically. Paul writes to the Romans and tells them that now is the time for them to wake up, to stop sleepwalking through life, as it were, and to be wide awake (Romans 13.11-14). English translations of the Bible doesn’t use the word ‘conversion’ very much, and for many Christians today that term has a rather Victorian feel to it, but what happened to AW on Orrest Head was most certainly a ‘conversion’ in the best sense of that old word. Or we might say, using an interesting modern phrase, that what happened there and then to AW was that he had a ‘disclosure moment’ in which he saw something for the first time and his life was changed by what he saw. In his own words, it was a moment of ‘awakening to beauty’, in particular to beauty as seen in a place. The Bible and many forms of Christianity are not very interested in that sort of beauty, or in many other sorts if it comes to that. There are no Bible passages that I can think of where anybody admires the view, stands in awe of waves crashing on a shore or says ‘wow’ at a sunset. There is Psalm 8.3 where the psalmist is moved to silence and awe by the night sky, but that's maybe the exception which proves the rule. Jesus recognises that some people find the sight of colourful lilies in a field after rain beautiful (Matthew 6.28), and that the disciples admire the splendid architecture of Herod’s still uncompleted Temple in Jerusalem (Mark 13.1), but I’m not sure that the second one counts or that there is much else. Towards the end of the book of Job there are two visions of natural grandeur in chapters 38-39 and 40-41, but Job is not expected to find anything in that natural history tour beautiful. People can be beautiful, and that is certainly how the two lovers in Ecclesiastes see each other; friendships can be beautiful, like the one between David and Jonathan (1 Samuel 18.1); and character or virtue can be beautiful, and Paul invites us to reflect on such beauty (Philippians 4.8): but beautiful places and beauty in nature is much harder to find in the Bible. Perhaps that accounts for the limited interest in beauty and beautiful things in some strands of the Christian Church where church buildings are very plainly decorated, worship lacks any colour and the only bit of nature’s beauty to be seen is in the flower arrangement on the Communion Table? Other churches might have a splash of colour in their liturgical vestments and altar cloths, or in banners and even paintings: but the paintings are hardly likely to be landscapes. In many churches it is only at Harvest Festival that nature gets any kind of a look in at all. There are some splendid exceptions, of course, and ‘Celtic Christianity’, that wonderful invention of the 1970s, is one such. St Francis of Assisi is another, and his great hymn of praise, ‘All creatures of our God and king’ with its lines about sun, moon, wind, clouds, water and the flowers and fruit of ‘mother earth’ features in most hymn books; as does ‘All things bright and beautiful’ and its ‘purple-headed mountains’ with their ‘river running by’. We’ll look at what AW thinks about God later, but he does talk of a ‘Creator’, and he would have given qualified approval to the last line of the last verse of that one,
Perhaps this is the place to let AW himself tell the Orrest Head story in full, as he does in Ex-Fellwanderer, An event in 1930 made all that had happened before of relative insignificance and settled my destiny. I was 23, and having saved £5 from my spending money, which had increased with annual increments, decided to take a holiday away from home, the first holiday I had ever had. Acquaintances had told me of the beauties of the Lake District and I had seen photographs of the scenery, which promised good walking. The Lake District was only 60 miles distant, but until now was another world, beyond reach, unattainable. I invested in a map, planned an itinerary and recruited the company of a cousin, and off we went in a state of great excitement, each carrying a shilling haversack: we walked down into the town and boarded our bus with an air of nonchalance as though going away on holiday was quite a usual experience. Inwardly we were a little uneasy; suppose we got lost, or had an accident or were killed on the mountains? We felt like explorers going into the unknown. Alighting from the bus, our first objective, according to my itinerary, was Orrest Head, a recommended viewpoint nearby. Our way led up a lane amongst lovely trees, passing large houses that seemed to me like castles, with gardens fragrant with flowers. I thought how wonderful it must be to live in a house with a garden. The sun was shining, the birds singing. We went on, climbing steadily under a canopy of foliage, the path becoming rougher, and then, quite suddenly, we emerged from the shadows of the trees and were on a bare headland, and, as though a curtain had dramatically been torn aside, beheld a truly magnificent view. It was a moment of magic, a revelation so unexpected that I stood transfixed, unable to believe my eyes. I saw mountain ranges, one after another, the nearer starkly etched, those beyond fading into the blue distance. Rich woodlands, emerald pastures and the shimmering waters of the lake below added to a pageant of loveliness, a glorious panorama that held me enthralled. I had seen landscapes of rural beauty pictured in the local art gallery, but here was no painted canvas; this was real. This was truth. God was in his heaven that day and I a humble worshipper. My more prosaic cousin went to sleep in the warm grass. I forgot his existence. I felt I was some other person; this was not me. I wasn’t accustomed or entitled to such a privilege. I was an alien here. I didn’t belong. If only I could, sometime! If only I could! Those few hours on Orrest Head cast a spell that changed my life. This is what, in religious terms, would be called a ‘testimony’. The whole thing is a story of a life-transforming ‘encounter’, a ‘moment of magic’ which ‘changed (his) life’, and it is full of ‘religious language’ - ‘destiny’, ‘curtain torn aside’, ‘a revelation’, ‘enthralled’, ‘truth’ – as well as that telling sentence, ‘God was in his heaven that day, and I a humble worshipper’. AW speaks of this experience in terms of being gripped by something outside of himself, and he refers to that something as ‘beauty’. It was the view northwards from that little hill which triggered the experience, but the experience itself seems to have been more than one of being delighted by a splendid view. His cousin dozed on the grass, AW was ‘enthralled’. This was, to use another modern phrase, his ‘encounter with transcendence’, transcendence which manifested itself for him as beauty. Dictionary definitions of ‘beauty’ fall short here – ‘qualities which please the aesthetic, intellectual or moral senses’ (OED) – and the word seems to demand a capital ‘B’. If we ask what it was that woke him up to beauty, the answer he gives is that it was the view. What he saw from Orrest Head was his first sight of mountains in tumultuous array across glittering waters (OFL 26), and a pageant of loveliness, a glorious panorama which held (him) enthralled (Ex-Fellwanderer). It is very clear from the Guides that the view of the fells and the views from the fells are both very important to AW. In his descriptions of routes he will frequently point out the best viewpoint – ‘cameras out at this corner’ he says on the way up Hart Side (1 Hart Side 2), and he calls for the camera again on Lingmoor Fell for the ‘perfect view of the Langdale Pikes’ which can be had from the larches en route (4 Lingmoor Fell 5). In his discussion of Skiddaw Little Man he enters into one of those ‘Which is the best?’ controversies, and suggests that for many the view from that peak down into the Jaws of Borrowdale is the best view there is in Lakeland (5 Skiddaw Little Man 13; OFL 177). His diagrams from the summits also illustrate the importance that views have for him, and both the 360-degree diagrams and the profile ones are meticulous in their detail, to say nothing of his occasional note that the best view of x from the summit of y is from a point 35 yards west of the trig point! That is precision – you might of course also call it obsession – but for AW precision matters, not least when it comes to something as important as views. Views are not the only reason for climbing mountains – more on that subject in chapter two – but they are certainly important to AW. This can be seen in the adjectives used about them in the Guides where ‘magnificent’, ‘unforgettable’, ‘superlative’, ‘splendid’, ‘impressive’, ‘beautiful’, romantic’, ‘dramatic’, ‘lovely’, ‘supremely beautiful’, ‘glorious’ and ‘superb’ occur frequently and say as much about the effect that the views in question have on their viewer as they do about the views themselves. Three examples show this well. Speaking of the view south from Helm Crag he writes, … and this fair scene is at its best when the shadows of evening are lengthening, with the Langdales silhouetted in rugged outline against the sunset. Tarry long over this exquisite picture of serenity and peace, and memorise it for the long winter of exile! (3 Helm Crag 4). Loughrigg Fell offers … splendid views and contrasting scenery, consistent only in its loveliness, (which) make this the most rewarding short climb available from Skelwith Bridge (3 Loughrigg Fell 10). The view south-east from it is one … of classical beauty, an inspired and inspiring vision of loveliness that has escaped the publicity of picture postcards and poet’s sonnets, a scene of lakes and mountains arranged to perfection (3 Loughrigg Fell 6). These rewarding views will stay in the mind of the one who has seen them ‘through the long winter of exile’ and they will continue to ‘inspire’. AW had seen other views, the moors above Blackburn are not unimpressive and their Pennine scenery has its own qualities, but in the Guides he makes it clear that for him the scenery and views of Lakeland are superlative. Walking on the far eastern fells towards Shap it is very clear that you are on the edge of Lakeland, with heaven to your west and something much more ordinary to the east. There are particular delights to walking in limestone country with its distinctive colours and texture, but they are inferior ones to what Lakeland has to offer. The Scottish Highlands are most certainly worth a visit, but they do not compare with Lakeland either, as far as AW is concerned. In Ex-Fellwanderer he writes about his first visit there when he had retired, I returned home to a Lakeland where the heights seemed stunted. The Highlands were infinitely grander. But I did not switch my affections. Nowhere in Scotland had I seen loveliness to compare with the Lakeland valleys nor sensed their romantic charm and the friendliness of the fells. The Highlands were grim, austere, brooding: they had no welcome for me And he concludes that The Lake District remains supreme in my affections. In terms of natural scenery it has not the grandeur of the Highlands, nor the underground challenge of the limestone country, nor the sweeping landscapes of the Pennines, yet surpasses all in innate loveliness, valley, lake and fell blending so sweetly in perfect harmony. All of this is, for AW, the beauty of ‘creation’, of ‘Nature’, and as we shall see in chapter 4 that he makes much of Nature’s beautiful creativity which contrasts starkly with humanity’s destructive activity (‘Nature creates; man destroys’ PWC 84). Only occasionally does he talk of the ‘Creator’. In the Personal Notes at the end of Book 3 on the Central Fells he describes,
Writing about the view from Great End he says,
And in Fellwander, that There is no worshipping of false idols on the mountains, but, instead, deep awareness of a Creator. Christianity takes over from its parent body, Judaism, the idea that God is our ‘creator’ and the ‘creator’ of the universe. The Nicene Creed starts off with it when it says, We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. Most Christians since Darwin have been happy to leave the ‘how’ of that to the scientists, recognising that the mechanics and logistics of the universe are their area of expertise. Recently the strange idea of ‘Creationism’ and its daughter ‘Intelligent Design’ have appeared on the scene, sponsored by American fundamentalists who take the Bible’s pictures of creation literally, or rather, take one of them literally. Most mainstream European Christians, on the other hand, rightly see the Bible as exploring a different set of questions entirely, questions not of ‘how’ the universe was formed but of ‘why’ we are here, ‘what’ it’s all for, and what it means to be human in a universe like it is. Those questions are not easy either, of course, but they are both important and relevant. AW recognises, without claiming any kind of Christian faith, that if you think about the natural world as a ‘creation’, as his experiences in Lakeland repeatedly encourage him to do, then the consequence is that you will live in one kind of way rather than another and adopt certain kinds of attitudes rather than others. The New Testament has relatively little to say about ‘creation’ or about God as creator, simply because it can take the Old Testament as read on this issue, as it can on a variety of others [2]. The Prologue to the Gospel of John speaks of the divine Energy or Idea or Reason which brought the universe into being and which continues to sustain it, though most English translations obscure that by persisting in translating the key Greek word as ‘Word’ [3]. The startling teaching, which would have jerked the original hearers wide awake, comes in John 1.14 where the writer claims that this Divine Reason which energises the universe ‘became flesh’ in Jesus Christ. Sadly traditional English translations have lost their hearers or readers long before then. The Letter to the Colossians makes a similar and equally bold claim that all things were created in and through Jesus, the image of the invisible God (1.15-17). Elsewhere in the New Testament the idea of God as creator is simply taken as read (for example Mark 13.19, Romans 1.25, Ephesians 3.9, 1 Peter 4.19, Revelation 4.11 and 10.6). The Old Testament treats the topic in much greater depth and does so by using four quite different Creation pictures, parables or threads, and all of those terms are preferable to the word ‘account’ or ‘accounts’, as we shall see after we have looked at them. The first picture can be called the picture of a Designer World and it is the familiar one with which the Bible opens in Genesis 1.1-2.4a. God speaks the universe into being a day at a time. ‘Let there be’, he commands, and it is so. In six days it is done, and the verdict day by day is that it is ‘good’, and at the end that it is ‘very good’ indeed. The climax of it all is not, as is sometimes said, the creation of humanity as the ‘crown of creation’ on the Friday afternoon, but the creation of the Sabbath, the day of rest for God and his great blessing to his creation. This is a dramatic and powerful picture. From the chaotic raw materials of wind, water and darkness God produces order, with everything in its place and everything good. The universe is indeed designed by the greatest Designer of all. The second picture – let’s call it a Gardeners’ World – follows on and is found in Genesis 2.4b-3.24. Here the scene changes and the focus is not on the world and all its life, with humanity sharing with God in its ongoing creating and shaping, but on a Garden in the East and its first and then second human occupant. The man, Adam, has an easy life looking after the garden, a few roses to be dead-headed now and again but no digging nor anything like that. It’s not quite the ideal life, though, for he’s lonely and, if you read the story carefully, he can’t cope very well. So Eve appears to help him cope. But there is no happy ending. Things go wrong, they blame each other, and at the end they are evicted from the Garden. And here the story speaks of the real world as we know it: men and women at odds with each other, humanity at odds with nature, humanity at odds with God. It’s all gone wrong. Now it’s back-breaking digging and fighting against the weeds. Much less well-known and much older is a creation picture preserved in fragments in Psalms 74.12-17 and 89.5-18 and in Isaiah 51.9-11 (see also Job 7.12, 26.12 and 38.8-11). It is a very odd picture of God doing battle with Chaos Monsters. He defeats them, and reigns as King of Creation. It is actually a very powerful picture, as we see if we put our own names on these Monsters and call them ‘Darkness’, ‘Evil’ and ‘Death’. These forces of chaos are still around. They attack and destroy life even now, just as they always have. People still need defending from them, and cry out for help against them. The picture points to a reality that we can identify, the ongoing battle between Light and Dark, Good and Evil, Life and Death. It also contains the good news that God wins, and that the last word lies with Light, Good and Life. The fourth Old Testament picture of creation is also fragmentary. Let’s call it Wisdom’s Playground. We find it in Proverbs 8.22-31 and Job 28.20-28 (see also chapters 38-41). It comes from the ‘Wisdom’ traditions of ancient Israel and speaks of ‘Wisdom’ personalised as God’s helper. Creation is to be enjoyed and celebrated, provided that life is lived wisely and well – live foolishly and you’ll find all sorts of things going wrong. There’s wisdom, purpose and plan at the heart of things, and what matters most is to tune in to it, for that will lead to fulfilment, satisfaction and life! It’s this picture, especially, which lies behind John 1.1-4 and Colossians 1.15-19; which see Jesus as that very Wisdom which was God’s ‘Helper’ or ‘Craftsman’ at the beginning. If you want a little exercise look at Psalm 104, which is a Creation Hymn, and see if you can find all these four creation pictures, parables or threads woven in there. You can find this Creation theology in other parts of the Old Testament too: in the Wisdom literature generally (note the reference to ‘Creator’ in Ecclesiastes 12.1); very clearly in Isaiah of Babylon (especially Isaiah 40.12-26 and the word ‘Creator’ at 40.28 and 43.15), frequently in the Psalms (eg 8, 19, 24, 29, 33, 93, 95, 96, 98, 136 and 148) and in the ancient hymn quoted by Amos in 4.13, 5.8-9 and 9.5-6. It is because of this variety that I dislike the word ‘accounts’ and much prefer to speak of creation ‘pictures’ or ‘parables’ or ‘stories’. The word ‘account’ also sounds too scientific and can encourage that completely unnecessary debate between ‘Science’ and ‘Religion’. These four pictures are not compatible. I don’t just mean that they don’t fit together, for it has long been recognized that when you look at the first two pictures which sit side by side at the beginning of Genesis the details don’t tally, and it is obvious that there is no sign of a Chaos Monster in three of the four. No, what I mean is that they paint rather different pictures of what the world we live in is actually like. The Designer World and Wisdom’s Playground pictures are both sunny and optimistic; the world is a fundamentally good place, life is good, thank God for it. Looking at the view from Orrest Head AW saw the world and life like that and concluded, ‘God was in his heaven that day, and I a humble worshipper’. The Battle with the Chaos Monster picture is quite different; here the world we live in is the scene of a life and death struggle between Good and Evil; here is a world where pain, fear and distress are terrifyingly real. The Gardenener’s World picture is equally, though less dramatically, pessimistic or realistic, if you prefer. The world is not a wholly good place. It is not as God intended it. For whatever reason it is ‘fallen’, to use the word Christians have traditionally applied to that story. Life is full of ambiguity and struggle, pleasure and pain, hope and fear. Each of these four pictures looks at the world from a different angle, as it were, and each has a perspective worth noting. The view from Orrest Head moved AW deeply, and his response there chimes in well with the picture in Genesis 1. We shall see later, although we have already had a hint of it in that comment on Calder Hall, that generally he takes a dim view of what humanity does with its creative powers and responsibilities, much more in line with the Genesis 2-3 picture. Each has something to show us of the world in which we live and of how we should live in it, and more of that in chapter 4. At the beginning of this chapter I wrote that Orrest Head for AW and the sight of Blencathra for me were ‘life-changing moments’. Most religions suggest that we most certainly need such moments and the reorientation and renewal of life which they initiate, and Christianity is no exception. In the Guides AW hints at the changes that followed his Orrest Head experience. In Ex-Fellwanderer he says in passing that for him religion had never provided any such life-changing experience. He had gone to chapel as a lad and continued into young adulthood, largely out of respect for his chapel-going mum, whom he obviously loved dearly. It was Orrest Head, however, which released him into something bigger, better and brighter than he had ever known or expected before. What that led to, in terms of a changed life, we shall look at in the next chapter.
For the fellwalker the ultimate objective must always be the highest cairn (3 Loft Crag 6). This is it: the Mecca of all weary pilgrims in Lakeland; the place of many ceremonies and celebrations, of bonfires and birthday parties; the ultimate; the supreme; the one objective above all others; the highest ground in England; the top of Scafell Pike (4 Scafell Pike 23). … because they’re there (anonymous) [1]. Orrest Head changed the direction of AW’s life. It changed his aims and goals. It gave him a new purpose and a new ambition. It brought a new horizon and a new perspective. Afterwards I went often, whenever I could, and always my eyes were lifted to the hills. I was to find then, and it has been so ever since, a spiritual and physical satisfaction in climbing mountains – and a tranquil mind on reaching their summits, as though I had escaped from the disappointments and unkindnesses of life and emerged above them into a new world, a better world. (1 Personal Notes 2). It led to a change of job and a house move from Blackburn to Kendal. It also contributed to what must have been an increasingly strange marriage, though nowhere in the Guides does AW disclose any details or even allude to it. To anyone who is familiar with the Guides, however, these stark sentences in Ex-Fellwanderer somehow come as no surprise,
For AW, to use a common word in contemporary spirituality and an important image in the Bible, Orrest Head started him on a ‘journey’. ‘Mind and Body’ bookshelves in today’s bookshops are full of books in which people tell the stories of their ‘life journeys’, or their journeys into ‘true selfhood’ or full self-awareness, or their journeys through illness or trouble. Many of the books offer maps for others to follow along the particular way of discovery which the book is promoting. The ways, paths and journeys on offer are many and varied, and some are quite bizarre; but the metaphor of life and spirituality as a journey is now a common one. It’s also a traditional one in the Church, though the ease with which people tell their stories and recount their ‘journeys’ in cappuccino culture isn’t often matched in mainstream Christianity. Going on a journey and ‘walking’ are also common images in the Bible. Individual journeys begin with Terah, Abraham’s father, who journeyed from ‘Ur of the Chaldees’ the six hundred miles north-west to Haran (Genesis 11.31), and continue with Abraham as the first real pilgrim who set off ‘not knowing where he was to go’ and walked south to Egypt, in and out of the Promised Land in the process. They end with Jesus who invited people to ‘follow him’ on the journey of discipleship and to take the narrow path rather than the broad road (Mark 1.17, 8.34, 10.21; Matthew 7.13-14). God’s ancient people journeyed from Egypt through the wilderness and into the Promised Land with Moses and then Joshua, and centuries later journeyed out of it into exile in Babylon and then back again. Christianity itself soon became known as the ‘Way’ (Acts 9.2) and Paul travelled all over the place encouraging its journey from Jerusalem to Rome. Well-loved psalms speak of God as a shepherd guiding his flock from place to place (Psalm 23) and as one who knows our paths and our ways (Psalm 139). So here is a rich metaphor of human life, and an important image in spirituality, illustrating what Marie McCarthy calls our need for ‘meaning, purpose and connection’ and our need to live by ‘reference to something larger than oneself [2].’ AW found that ‘something else’ in Lakeland and especially on its fells. Christianity finds it in the Journey of Faith. Mountains and hills feature significantly in the Bible story – there’s Moses up and down Mt Sinai, the prophet Elijah on the top of Mt Carmel, the Temple in Jerusalem is built on Mt Zion; and there is the Mount of Transfiguration, the Mount of Olives and the Hill of Calvary in the New Testament - but climbing them is never used in the Bible as a metaphor for faith or spirituality, nor is it, to the best of my knowledge, used in that way in later Christian tradition either. That tradition can speak of ‘mountain-top experiences’ but these are essentially one-off or at least rather infrequent moments of particular significance. Christianity, or the spiritual journey, is not spoken of as a ‘climb’. AW writes, however, that he found ‘a spiritual and physical satisfaction in climbing mountains’ (1 Personal Notes 2). Others would agree that there is something ‘spiritual’, however you might define that elusive word, about the hills; and agree with AW when he writes in Fellwanderer that ‘… with climbing comes an uplift, not only of the body but of the spirit and the mind’. Reflecting on the perennial question behind all mountain-climbing, AW asks,
Here AW identifies four possible reasons why people climb hills. One is that they are searching for beauty, which the hills offer in plenty as we saw in the last chapter. Another is that they are seeking the ‘solace of solitude’ (OFL 237) which the hills also offer; and we will look at that in the next chapter. Another is that they seek the satisfaction and sense of achievement, enhanced by the hard work involved, which climbing gives. The other is, simply, that being among the hills is a good place to be; it is like being among friends. In his section on St Sunday Crag he gives his own version of that other and classic reason - ‘because they’re there’ - when he writes, Every walker who aspires to high places and looks up at the remote summit of St Sunday Crag will experience an urge to go forth and climb up to it, for its challenge is very strong (1 St Sunday Crag 2). Once upon a time, AW says several times, people climbed hills for the view, the Victorians especially. Old favourites were Bowscale Tarn, Glenridding Dodd and Lanthwaite Hill. These are delightful spots, AW insists, but now they are rarely visited. Before that, of course, no one except shepherds and miners climbed the hills at all, not even the small leisured class. The fells were thought of as dangerous, evil places, best avoided unless you were a Roman road planner looking for the best route between the garrisons at Ambleside and Brougham. Times began to change and the Lakeland poets were influential in changing that attitude, and so the Lakeland tourist industry was born. And although, as we saw in the last chapter, the ‘view’ remains important for AW and for many others, it is, as AW asserts here, only one motive among many for climbing the hills. Views delight the eye and enlarge the mind. They bring great pleasure at the time; remembering them sustains the walker through long dark winter evenings at home and the effect of such beauty must not be underestimated, AW suggests, especially ‘as the world grows uglier’. Sometimes, of course, there are no views at all. It rains a lot in the Lakes. Cloud levels can hang around at 900 feet for days or even weeks on end. There are few sights more depressing to a walker than that solid, stationary, straight line of grey which can cling to a British mountainside. Then there are sometimes no views even when you can see for miles. AW himself admits that not every summit is a viewpoint, and that not every view is glorious. Views can be ‘dreary’, ‘displaying little of interest,’ ‘unimpressive’, ‘lacking’, even ‘exceptionally dull’ (most of the view from Nab Scar – 1 Nab Scar 4) even in this ‘heaven that (has) fallen upon the earth’ which is Lakeland. In some views you can’t avoid blots on the landscape like Calder Hall, Sandale television mast or the latest vandalism by the Forestry Commission or Manchester Corporation; but totally bad views are almost impossible to find for there is usually a redeeming view in another direction (like parts of the view to the south and the west from Nab Scar). Views, however, are not the only reason for climbing the fells. AW admits that more often than not climbing hills is a matter of forcing a tired and sweating body upwards, though some might do it just for ‘the joy of exercising muscles that modern ways of living have cramped’. He doesn’t suggest that being tired and sweaty, and also no doubt out-of-breath, is a good thing in itself, rather that it’s the price you pay for the reward of the bigger experience. Fellwalking is the healthiest and most satisfying of all outdoor exercises. Climbing the hills and tramping over rough country makes a man strong and keeps him fit (it cleans his mind and does his soul good, too). But many enthusiasts, the author one of them, are nevertheless quite happy to reach the tops with a minimum of effort, short of being carried upwards on the backs of their wives or other companions, which is simply not in the best traditions of fellwalking. Easy paths are more to their liking than steep scrambles. (5 Great Sca Fell 3). I disagree a bit here and would argue that the effort and its effects is itself part of the reward. I don’t simply mean that exercise is good for you, though in moderation at least I’m sure it is. And here, of course, it is worth observing that exercise on the hills is free, whereas being tired, sweaty and out-of-breath in the gym costs money, and quite a bit of it. I mean that sweat, tiredness and lack of breath is putting you in touch with something real about the human body; and that that is a good experience in itself. Christianity, through the centuries, has often gone the other way. Putting yourself in touch with your body was the last thing it wanted you to do. It all started with the Gnostics, round about the time of Christ, with their very influential philosophy in the Greek world which suggested that the body was bad, a prison for the soul, which was good. Bodies were the source of sin, lusts and temptations. Bodies were the enemies of piety and religion, if not of civilisation itself. Bodies were part of that ‘evil empire’ of ‘the world, the flesh and the Devil’; arch-enemies of God and everything good. Gnosticism posed real threats to theology in the early centuries, for example if bodies were bad then Jesus couldn’t have been embodied like we are, and so he only ‘seemed’ to be human. That idea was declared to be a heresy, but it was a close-run thing. Other legacies of this deep suspicion of our bodies down the centuries are clerical celibacy, the veneration of virginity, asceticism in general and the idea that sex is sinful. Contrast that with the healthy earthiness of the Old Testament, with its teaching that sex and feasting are both good, based on that profoundly life-affirming picture of creation in Genesis 1, The Old Testament celebrates life and the world. Even Ecclesiastes, with its dreary beginning ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity’ and the pessimism that runs through many of its pages, can still say that the meaning of life is to be found in taking life’s pleasures when they come, ‘Eat, drink and be merry’ (8.15 in the Authorised Version, and also 2.24, 3.13, 5.18 and 9.7). Then there is the Song of Songs which is a vibrant and explicit celebration of human sexuality, sensual and unashamed. This is all part of the Old Testament's positive attitude to life and to the world in general, including material things. Life is the gift of God, and he is a very bounteous giver. Life is good, sex is good, food and drink are good: they are given to be enjoyed [3]. Sweaty bodies and rasping lungs may not come into the category of sexual or gastronomic delight, but they are real and remind us of our God-given earthiness. They also make the cup of tea and slice of fruit cake followed by a hot shower at the end of the walk especially welcome. They are also honest, without making a fetish of exercise in the pursuit of a healthy life or an attractive body, and unlike those adverts which keep telling us that ‘(we’re) worth it’ but only after artificial and expensive cosmetics have made us look different than we actually are. Bodies are real, climbing hills helps you to know that. There is something especially satisfying about a hard slog up a hill, even before the feeling you get at the top that you’ve actually earned the reward of the tremendous view, if there is one. And on that kind of reward AW rightly says, in this case about the view from Middle Fell, that ‘it is fitting that a reward such as this should be earned only by effort’ (7 Middle Fell 2); and that this is a proper sense of satisfaction because ‘the harder the task the greater the reward, which is as it should be’ (OFL ix). Another benefit from or reason for climbing hills for AW is what he called, in that quote used earlier, the ‘tranquillity of mind’ which can be experienced on the hills. A telling insight into what he means here is found in the phrase which follows in which he speaks of this tranquillity as ‘(escape) from the disappointments and unkindnesses of life’. The hills are a place where ‘Friday’s worries are seen to be nothing, after all’ and where ‘there is no competition here with one’s fellows, no silly jealousies of the man in the next salary grade’ (Fellwanderer). One suspects that he has his home life in mind here somewhere too. The benefits of withdrawal from the strains or routines of daily life is a long-standing feature of Christian tradition. The roots of this are found in the Old Testament idea of the ‘Sabbath’, the weekly day of rest which mirrors God’s ‘rest’ at the end of his six days work of creating the world (and we’re back to that first Creation picture again); and this ‘sabbath’ almost certainly was originally a day of rest before it became a day of worship. The Old Testament sees this as a gift and a blessing, a far cry from the dismal Christian Sunday of the early twentieth century in which any kind of fun was forbidden. Jesus supported this human-focus of the Sabbath in his day with his bold statement that ‘the Sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath’ (Mark 2.27). Human well-being includes ‘tranquillity’, restfulness, and tranquillity needs space, which the Sabbath provided. Such space has taken many forms in Christianity down the centuries, from the weekly day of rest and worship on Sundays, through the ‘holy days’ of the Christian festivals which eventually became ‘holidays’, to shorter or longer pilgrimages and to the total seclusion found in some monastic communities. Today a major expression of this need is in the popularity of Retreats and Quiet Days, and this itself reflects an interesting development in recent Christianity. The kind of Methodism into which I came as a teenager, for example, was very strong on action. Christianity was a religion of action. It was a new way of life which involved doing things: house-to-house collecting for Christian Aid, raising money for the Ivory Coast Hospital Appeal, and decorating old people’s houses, to name the three that I got involved with almost immediately. And all that was extra to the ‘going to Church’, joining the Youth Fellowship and getting down to Bible Study kind of actions which were to be done as well. This kind of action-based Christianity has a long and honourable history. More recently, however, a change in perspective has become popular, insisting that the Christian life is about ‘being’ as well as about ‘doing’, and even in some quarters that it is more about ‘being’ than about ‘doing’. I suspect that this trend, which is not in my view entirely to be welcomed, has been encouraged by the me-focused and narcissistic culture of the ‘Me Generation’ of the late twentieth century. Whatever the case, the Bible recognises that six days of work need a seventh of rest, where ‘tranquillity of mind’ can be found and equilibrium restored. That can certainly be found on the hills, says AW. So, AW writes, people climb hills for the view, the exercise, the sense of achievement, tranquillity of mind, the ‘solace of solitude’ and the challenge presented by them simply being there, but there is something else, more elusive and in his view more enduring and rewarding. It is that being among the hills is a good place to be; it is like being among friends. There you experience the ‘friendliness’ of the hills themselves, their companionship. … it may be, and for most walkers it will be, quite simply, a deep love of the hills, a love that has grown over the years, whatever motive first took them there: a feeling that these hills are friends, tried and trusted friends, always there when needed (4 Scafell Pike 24). In the Introduction to the first Guide he shares what Lakeland means to him and why he has started on the project of writing these Guides [4]. He ends his explanation by saying that, ‘in very truth’ this first Guide is a ‘love letter’. It is as if Orrest Head gave him his first sight of his loved one, across a landscape rather than across a crowded room, as it were, and it was love at first sight. He describes what came next in less romantic terms, In those early Lakeland days I served my apprenticeship faithfully, learning all the time. At first, the hills were frightening, moody giants, and I a timid Gulliver, but very gradually through the years we became acquaintanced and much later firm friends. (1 Personal Notes 2). So it was that Great Gable ‘starts as an honourable adversary and becomes a friend’ (7 Great Gable 5). Looking back in Ex-Fellwander he writes of that view of ‘Lakeland’s friendly hills’ (a phrase from 1 Introduction 2) from Orrest Head that
In the hills AW found the reliability, dependability and familiarity of long-established friendship in which there is nothing to prove or assert, a place where he finds himself accepted and at ease. Being among the hills fulfilled his need for the ‘comfort’, with all the richness and beauty implied in that old word, of friendship. There is, however, something else offered by the hills, though it is perhaps better thought of as a by-product of being in the hills rather than as a reason for it. From the distance of Orrest Head the Lakeland fells were enthralling, but on closer inspection they turned out to be forbidding; just as Blencathra looked forbidding to me the first time I saw it. Elsewhere AW writes of experiencing ‘awe’ among the hills, that sense that indeed these places may be friendly, but that that friendship has an edge to it. I’m reminded here of what Tumnus the fawn said to Lucy about the great Lion, Aslan, in C S Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, that ‘he’s not a tame lion!’ So it was that on the day after Orrest Head AW recalls in Ex-Fellwander that ‘we walked up the Troutbeck valley, still entranced by all we saw and in awe of the towering mountains that soon closed in around us’. He writes of Great End, that the cliff on this ‘tremendous northern buttress’ of the Scafell Pike mass is ‘awe-inspiring in its massive strength’ (4 Great End 2). He writes that the hills may even be ‘savage’, for example that the cliffs of Kentmere Pike ‘give to the dalehead a savageness that contrasts strikingly with the placid sweetness of the Sadgill pastures just out of their shadow’ (2 Kentmere Pike 2). Most telling of all, he writes of Scafell crags which offer, the greatest display of natural grandeur in the district, a spectacle of massive strength and savage wildness but without beauty, an awesome and a humbling scene. And goes on to say that A man may stand on the lofty ridge of Mickledore, or in the green hollow beneath the precipice amongst the littered debris and boulders fallen from it, and witness the sublime architecture of buttresses and pinnacles soaring into the sky, silhouetted against racing clouds or, often, tormented by writhing mists, and, as in a great cathedral, lose all his conceit. It does a man good to realise his own insignificance in the general scheme of things, and that is his experience here (4 Scafell 2). In 1923 Oxford University Press published their translation of a little book which was to exercise considerable influence in theology during the middle of the twentieth century and which is enjoying something of a revival of interest at the moment. It was called The Idea of the Holy, and its author was Rudolph Otto. It is a book about religious experience, and it claims that an important type of religious experience is that of being gripped by ‘awe’ and the sense almost of being frightened which comes with it. One example Otto gives is of being alone in a church without any lights on as night falls. He invents a now famous Latin phrase for it – mysterium tremendum et fascinans. Mysterium is ‘mystery’, something just beyond us, different, other than us, outside our normal experience, but intriguing, a secret waiting to be known, full of life and power. Tremendum is ‘tremendous’, the first of the two adjectives qualifying that ‘Mystery’ and pointing up its power, strength, awesomeness, depth and intensity. Fascinans is ‘fascinating’ but in a fuller sense than simply being intriguing and attractive. This is ‘fascinated’ as a rabbit transfixed in the stare of a stoat is ‘fascinated’, it’s in a dangerous place yet it can’t break off and run because it is somehow attracted to the very thing which is terrorising it. Add all that together, Otto suggests, and what you have is the religious experience of encountering the Holy, or the ‘Wholly Other’, or the ‘Numinous’, which is another word he coins for it. This is a far cry from the easy-going and informal religious experience found in some modern churches where people chat with God as if they were chatting to a friend. It is an experience of ‘awe’. Its effect is that we are ‘awe-struck’. We can accurately say that it is ‘awesome’. Here is a profound experience which exhilarates and challenges at the same time, which both attracts (we want it and we like it!) and repels (we’d rather not be here or feel this!). Lord’s Rake on Scafell (4 Scafell 4) and Jack’s Rake on Pavey Ark (7 Base Brown 3, 7 Personal Notes 4) are, for AW, guaranteed to evoke that precise feeling, but other places can do it too. Otto gives two examples of this experience from the Bible. The one is the recommissioning of Isaiah as a prophet in the Temple around 740 BC which is found in Isaiah 6, though it’s more often simply called Isaiah’s ‘Call’. This experience takes the form of a vision either in or of the Temple. Isaiah sees God, high and lifted up, seated on a throne and surrounded by flying seraphim who call out,
The Temple shakes at the noise, and is filled with smoke. Isaiah’s response is to say, Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts (Isaiah 6.5). Isaiah does not want to see this. It is too much for him, yet he is held spellbound by the experience. Its immediate effect is to make him acutely aware of his frail and flawed humanity. Otto’s other example is the story of the Transfiguration in which Jesus takes three of his disciples up a mountain where ‘he was transfigured before them’ (Mark 9.2-8, Matthew 17.1-8, Luke 9.28-36). His clothes become dazzling white. Elijah and Moses appear with him. A cloud overshadows them – clouds in the Bible are almost always about God and only rarely about the weather, by the way – and they hear God’s voice. Peter stutters something about making three tents for Jesus and the two visitors, and Mark explains, He did not know what to say, for they were terrified (Mark 9.6). We cannot get behind this story to what actually happened and it is pointless to try, but it is the classic ‘mountain-top experience’ story in the Bible, beating Moses on Mt Sinai easily into second place. As the Gospel writers tell it, the three key disciples have some kind of mysterious, frightening and powerful experience of God’s presence which confirms and strengthens their faith. A week or so before, Jesus had put them on the spot and asked them what they really believed about him. Peter had answered that they believed that he was the Messiah (Mark 8.29, Matthew 16.16, Luke 9.20). Now, a week or so later, comes this confirmation or sign. We usually ask for the proof before we’ll believe, but that’s another story. Then the story ends. They can’t stay on the mountain. They must go down. This verse from an old hymn puts it nicely,
In flowery and Victorian language that hymn reminds us that although we might have ‘mountain-top experiences’ in our Christian lives they are rare! They are the exception, not the rule. When they come we must thank God for them and consider ourselves blessed: but they are exceptional, unusual. And that is not what many today want to hear, in this age of the spirituality industry and the post-modern stress on feelings and experience. Mark thinks differently. He knows that most of our life is lived on the plain, in the ordinary and the humdrum, and that it is there where discipleship has to be lived out. In his story the disciples are often puzzled by Jesus, and sometimes amazed or afraid of him; but only once – here – does he speak of them having a heart-warming and faith-confirming experience of the presence of God. Only once; but once is enough. Returning to AW, as we have seen he suggests that the hills, in some places at least, can do something similar. They can evoke an experience of the ‘Holy’, put you in touch with ‘the Numinous’, ‘the Other’, in a profoundly moving way. One effect of this is to humble you, and make you aware of your own insignificance or mortality. This is not an entirely pleasant experience, but it is certainly a moving one and a life-enhancing one. If that is putting it too strongly, being on the hills can at the very least restore perspective and equilibrium and equip us to return to those things which ‘lie below’. AW recognises that not all walks are stimulating, all climbs invigorating, or all routes entrancing. Although at one point he writes that ‘there is no mountain not worth climbing’ (6 Wandope 2), at another he recognises that a few might not be worth the effort, one of which is definitely Armboth Fell (7 Armboth Fell 2). High Seat to Bleaberry Fell is ‘a walk to wish on one’s worst enemy’ (3 High Seat 7), as is climbing Blencathra via Doddick Gill (5 Blencathra 20). Most of the high ground on the west bank of Thirlmere is best avoided unless you enjoy getting your feet wet. It is interesting too, how often in the Guides AW uses the evocative word ‘trudge’ and the adjectives ‘dull’ and ‘dreary’. From them too you learn how many ‘Mosedales’ (= ‘Dreary Dale’) there are in Lakeland, the ‘wettest and dreariest’ of which is the little one between Mellbreak and Hen Comb (7 Mellbreak 2). So there is definitely some rough to be taken with the smooth, but none of that deters AW from the view that Lakeland in general is a heaven that had fallen upon the earth (Ex-Fellwanderer), a phrase he had first used about the Southern Fells (4 Personal Notes 1), and that, Mountain climbing satisfies an instinct all men should feel: the urge to get to the top. It is natural for a man to look up, to strive to attain something higher and out of his immediate reach, to overcome the difficulties and disappointments of his upward progress, to exult at his ultimate success. Mountain climbing is an epitome of life, and good practice for it. You start at the bottom, the weaklings and the irresolute drop out on the way up, the determined reach the top. Life is like that (Fellwanderer). This brings us nicely to a look at AW’s ambivalent views about his fellow human beings.
The Caldbeck and Uldale Fells, remote, quieter and lonelier now than they have ever been since men first made their homes nearby, have never received much attention from visitors. Guide books have ignored them completely. It is true that for excitement of outline and challenging situations and beauty of scenery they fall far short of the mountains to the south, yet there is a strong appeal about them not found in (or lost to) the more popular areas of Lakeland – they are unspoilt, serene and restful, a perfect sanctuary for birds and animals and fellwalkers who prefer to be away from crowds … (5 Introduction 4). … (where) every prospect pleases, and only man is vile [1]. You shall love your neighbour as yourself (Leviticus 19.18 and endorsed by Jesus in Mark 12.3). AW was notoriously solitary, and for him one of the great blessings of the hills is the ‘solace of solitude’ which they offer. He often mentions the ‘discerning’ walker, and for him this ideal fellwalker for whom he writes is also a solitary walker. That is why he so dislikes parties of people on the hills and school parties in particular - to which of course, I and many others owe their introduction to the fells, Okay, so I do not like large parties on the hill. They spoil the paths. They leave litter. They get under the feet. Half of them always seem to be on the point of dropping dead. Many are obviously not enjoying themselves, and should not be there at all. Leave the hills to those who most appreciate them is my motto (Fellwanderer). Yet despite this he wrote guidebooks to introduce others to the fells. Not only that, but in these guidebooks he points out the especially lonely and beautiful undiscovered places, like Dash Falls in the ‘Back o’Skidda’ and commends quiet places for their very quietness, like many of the Northern Fells covered in Book 5. He values the hills for the ‘solace of solitude’ which they bring, or at least which the discerning walker can find in them away from the ‘hordes of pedestrians’. For him Eskdale is a ‘sanctuary of peace and solitude’ (4 Introduction 3); off the beaten track to Helvellyn, the path via Nethermost Pike offers a ‘solitude where few men walk’ (1 Nethermost Pike 5) and one advantage of the two paths up Skiddaw from Applethwaite is that it is ‘free from the two great despoilers of mountain solitude – litter and chatter’ (5 Skiddaw 14). The far-eastern and the northern fells, especially, offer solitude and Book 5 on the Northern Fells is dedicated to ‘the solitary wanderers on the fells, who find contentment in the companionship of the mountains and of the creatures of the mountains’. That dedication is accompanied by two line drawings of empty mountains, one with a solitary walker and a few sheep, the other without the sheep. He rarely says what it is about solitude which he finds so appealing but we can put a small list together. In addition to ‘contentment in the companionship of the mountains and of the creatures of the mountains,’ solitude simply offers quiet, silence and the absence of noise. In its absence of people it offers refuge, ‘balm for jangled nerves’ and ‘escape from the clamour and tumult of everyday existence’ (4 Scafell Pike 24). It offers ‘contentment’ (5 Personal Notes 3). It also offers the opportunity for ‘contemplation’, not only of the views, but of such fundamental questions about the meaning of life as why people climb mountains at all (4 Scafell Pike 24). After countering the health and safety objections to walking on the hills alone he writes in Fellwanderer that, It is the man or woman who walks alone who enjoys the greatest rewards, who sees and feels and senses the mood of the hills and knows them most intimately, and it is no coincidence that they are people of abundant common sense and initiative and imagination. To the man in a conducted party the mountains are prose, to the man travelling alone they are poetry. Of course he has nobody to talk to, which is an advantage, and there is nobody to talk to him, which is a bigger advantage; he has nothing to distract his attention and nobody to consult or argue with, he goes where he pleases, makes his own pace, halts when and where he likes, responds to nature’s demands on the spot without red-faced apologies. Absolute freedom includes freedom from the presence of others. Many people will agree with AW about much of this. I certainly do. Just as an opportunity to stop in the midst of a busy life is life-enhancing, as we saw in the last chapter; so is the opportunity for being quiet in a noisy world and being alone in a crowded one. Solitude is freedom from those things which crowd in on us or those things which drown out the ‘still small voice of calm’ or the life-giving ‘sound of silence’. Solitude is therefore another of the spaces we need for health and well-being; and you don’t need to be an introvert, a loner, or a Victor Melldrew to appreciate or value solitude. And there is of course, a huge difference between being alone and being lonely, between solitude and isolation. Like AW, Christianity recognises the value of solitude, even though, as we shall see, it majors on the fact that human beings are social animals rather than solitary ones, that humans belong together rather than exist separately, and that community is an essential component of human life. The Bible contains a number of stories which point up the value of solitude. Moses meets God in a burning bush (another one of those ‘disclosure moments’ or ‘encounters with transcendence’ which we looked at in chapter 1) when he is alone in the desert (Exodus 3). The prophet Elijah does the same in a cave on Mt Horeb (1 Kings 19). Jesus begins his ministry with a period of solitude in the desert (Mark 1.12-13). Later on, in the middle of a very busy programme, Jesus recognises that the disciples need some solitude and so he takes them away to a deserted place by themselves so that they can ‘rest awhile’ (Mark 6.30). Likewise he himself seeks solitude (eg Luke 6.12) and on one occasion we see him withdrawing before dawn to a secluded spot in pursuit of it (Luke 4.42). Thinking about solitude in the Christian tradition one immediately thinks of the ‘Desert Fathers’, those strange hermits of the third and fourth centuries who went off into desert places to be alone. Popular though that view is, however, it isn’t quite true. As far as these characters were concerned the desert was not an empty place at all and their reason for going there was not to find solitude. Quite the opposite. They believed that the desert was a very busy place, populated by demons and all kinds of the Devil’s agents; and they went out there to engage them in battle, in a spiritual war, in which their weapons were prayer and fasting. So the Desert Fathers aren’t, I’m afraid, much of an advert for the value of solitude. The enclosed orders of monks and nuns which came along later might be a better example, but their solitude was permanent and total and thereby, I suspect, ceased to be much of a relief and a blessing. The popularity of Quiet Days and Retreats today testifies to the rediscovery of the value of solitude in Christian circles, not least for the relief, renewal and blessing that it brings. We need solitude if we are to be truly human, to find ourselves and to enjoy any kind of fullness of life, both AW and Christianity insist, as do most other religions and most books on those ‘Mind and Body’ bookshelves. Places where solitude can be found are to be treasured, and for AW the mountains of Lakeland are his ‘holy’ or ‘sacred’ places. In this respect AW is typically English. His Guides and his whole spirituality echo the well-known line from a very minor English poet, Dorothy Frances Gurney, that ‘(you’re) nearer God’s Heart in a garden, than anywhere else on earth’ [2]. We have all probably heard people say things like ‘you don’t need to go to church to be a Christian’ or ‘I can worship God best by going for a walk’, or instead of ‘walk’ they substitute their favourite recreational activity or their favourite sort of ‘sacred space’. And there is a lot of truth in that, not least because so many official sacred places like churches don’t feel very sacred at all, and because so much of the so-called worship which goes on in them is pretty dire in quality. There is quite a bit of anguish these days about how few people go to church, but given what they so often get when they get there, I’m amazed that so many people still keep doing it: but that’s another story. On the rare occasions I get out and about on a Sunday morning, I’m always pleased to see how many people of all ages and how many family groups have headed to Dartmoor for a walk, or are taking a stroll along the Cornish Coast Path, or are just sitting on the beach. The popularity of some of these beautiful places means, of course, that they sometimes offer beauty and recreation but not solitude. That can rather defeat the object, but there is something about the natural world and its beautiful or special places which offers to many the space and place for renewal, and solitude is an important part of that offer. There is also, however, something negative in AW’s search for solitude, and that is the second area to explore in this chapter. For him solitude is largely about getting away from his nasty fellow human beings. He writes often and appreciatively about the legacy of previous generations of Lakelanders whose skill and hard work can be seen in the stone walls, sheepfolds and old mine workings of the area. At the same time he writes bluntly about the failings of his contemporaries, and as we saw in the quotation in the Introduction some of the things he says about humanity in his later books are nothing less than vitriolic. On the fells people are noisy; they leave gates open and vandalise cairns; they spoil paths and zig-zags by walking carelessly. They drop litter, so much so that the shelter on the summit of Helvellyn is ‘ankle deep in the remains of previous lunches’ and needs its own incinerator (1 Helvellyn 19). Corporately they are responsible for serious ecological and environmental damage, as we shall see in the next chapter. They chase foxes and shoot grouse and deer for so-called ‘sport’, and for AW their single greatest act of bullying was the deliberate introduction of myxomatosis to eradicate the rabbit population (Fellwanderer). He found that act absolutely unforgivable, and it caused him to lose his faith in humanity. In Ex-Fellwanderer he adds the clubbing of seals, gassing of badgers, factory farming of chickens and vivisection to the list of humanity’s beastly behaviour. Here AW is touching on one of humanity's central problems, and although he doesn’t use the religious word ‘sin’ for any of his tirades, that little and greatly misunderstood word covers much of what upsets him, from the huge global issues to the tiny personal ones. Christianity uses many different words for this fundamental problem but ‘sin’ is the main one. Others are wickedness, evil, wrong-doing, transgression, iniquity, failure, error, vice, trespass and offence; and closely related are words like guilt, crime, immorality and impurity. Sin provides one of the Bible’s main story lines as well as the theme for many of its stories. The Bible also makes lists of actions or attitudes which count as ‘sins’, symptoms of the underlying disorder itself, and although these lists may be revised from time to time with new sins added and older ones removed, the reality and realities of which these words speak is as evident today as ever, just as AW saw. Sin is not, of course, the whole story, for running alongside it as a story-line in the Bible is also the ‘old, old story’ of God and his love, of his work to save and deliver his people, to rescue them and remake them, to give them peace; the story of salvation. But that sin is a real part of the story, and equally a real part of our story cannot be denied. Whether it is defined as ‘missing the mark’ and ‘falling-short’ of what we ought to be, or whether it is deliberate rebellion against God, breaking his rules and going against him, or whether it is simply being wrong or doing wrong hardly matters, for it can be any or all of these, and more. And it is not confined to human wrong-doing either, it is somehow woven into the very fabric of the world's life. For the Bible sin is a fact of life; it is there, and life is marred and spoiled by it. This is fact; this is the way the world is and the way we are. Both the Bible and Christian tradition agree with AW that there is something seriously flawed in humanity, of which litter, selfishness, cruelty and global warming are symptoms and consequences. Christianity would, however, add something else at this point. AW writes about ‘sin’ from the outside, as it were. He sees himself as a good fellwalker, one who shuts gates, leaves no litter and respects the fells; and as a good human being, who works hard, behaves responsibly and does his bit to put right the wrongs that others do, especially in his concern for animal welfare. He doesn’t, however, see himself as contributing to the underlying problem very much, if at all. Christianity, on the other hand, would point out that there are no exceptions to sin or exemptions from it, and therefore AW is caught up in it too, the same as the rest of us. A much overused Bible text, which is none the less true for all that, is what St Paul writes in Romans 3.23, For all have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God. This is what that second Creation picture, the one in chapters 2 and 3 of Genesis, is partly about and why Christians call that ancient parable the story of the ‘Fall’. It is not, it should go without saying, an account of an ancient place or of the first two human beings. There never was a Garden of Eden, nor two original human beings called Adam and Eve in that sense at all, and that is not the way to understand the story. Instead the parable is about Everywhere and Everyone. Human beings are full of potential, life is a great gift, the earth is a wonderful place, we need each other, we belong to the earth and have responsibilities towards it and for each other – these and more are its themes. So far, so good. But the story doesn’t have a happy ending. Things go wrong, for whatever reason. Once they have gone wrong the blame culture kicks in: Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the snake. Adam and Eve fall out. Weeds start to grow. Snakes start to bite. Life gets painful. God doesn’t drop by for a chat any more. The couple are evicted from the Garden. Paradise is lost. Look around you, the parable says, and that’s the way it is! Everywhere and for Everyone. We are ‘fallen’ people in a ‘fallen’ world. Life is not like it ought to be. Things are amiss. Our lives are messy, and some are messier than others. We mess up other people’s lives, sometimes in small ways and sometimes in big. Things have gone wrong and continue to go wrong, and we are all caught up in it and affected by it. That is what all the talk about ‘sin’ is about. We can, and parts of the Church often do, take this much too far in some directions and not far enough in others. An example of doing the first is to see human beings as absolutely dreadful creatures who are evil through and through, ‘miserable sinners’ with no good in them at all. Much Church worship reinforces this impression, demanding that almost the first thing we must do every time we go to worship is ‘confess our sins’, even if the last time you went was only a few hours before. I remember a student in the theological college where I taught in Ghana taking me to task on this. ‘Osafo (‘Respected Teacher’ – they were respectful there!), why do we have to confess our sins every time we go into the College chapel? We have morning prayers and evening prayers, and you make us work so hard in between them that we don’t have time to sin, so why do we have to say prayers of confession every time?’ I think he had a point. We can overdo the confession of sin business, and one result is that ‘sin’ gets trivialised. It is one thing to recognise that we are ‘fallen’ – and thank goodness the Church has ways of offering real forgiveness when there are really serious things for which forgiveness is essential – but it can be overdone. Much better, in my view, to see ourselves as ‘weak and frail,’ like Psalm 103 sees us, rather than ‘sinful and nasty’ [3]. An example of the other failing is to forget that systems and structures can be sinful too, destructive of human life and harmful to society and human wellbeing. The great Jubilee 2000 campaign, the ongoing ‘Fair Trade’ versus ‘Free Trade’ debate and the whole issue of ‘trade justice’ arise because, campaigners argue, the whole world trade system is fundamentally ‘sinful’, flawed, because it is a system rigged in favour of certain people (the rich, the consumers, the North) and against other people (the poor, the producers, the South). Nearer to home the Cornish farmers near me growing cauliflowers or producing milk will say the same thing, that the whole price system is ‘sinful’, structured in favour of the big supermarkets against the small producers. It was this kind of social, economic, ‘structural’ sin which the Old Testament prophets had in mind when they spoke out against injustice. Although today’s church is perhaps better than it was in speaking out against such things today, its voice is still often rather muted, and in Ex-Fellwanderer AW has very strong words to say about its failure to speak out on animal welfare issues. Without going over the top and getting things out of proportion, however, it seems to me that Christianity is right to say that we should recognise that all of this ‘sin business’ applies to me, as well as to everyone else. Not only am I caught up in flawed systems and my life damaged by them, but I also make my own contribution to fouling things up both for myself and other people. There are things about what I am and what I do which are less than they might be, as well as things about what I am not and what I don’t do, for all of which I need the help of God to show me a better way. And Christianity claims, as most religions do, to be able to help. It provides guidelines for action, values, attitudes, standards and lifestyle. It provides help when things go wrong, help in those prayers of confession and assurances of God’s forgiveness to the truly penitent so that a new start can be made, help from God’s Spirit to walk in new and better ways, and help by pastoral support when we try again. Its message is that ‘sin’ is not the first thing about us or the last word about us, but that there is a God of love who can help us become ‘better’ people living more fulfilled, satisfying and useful lives, that we can be ‘made whole’, that we can experience life ‘and have it abundantly’ or ‘in all its fullness’ (John 10.10). Most of us don’t reach the end of that particular journey in this life, and some don’t even seem to realise that such a journey is possible, but this is an important part of the ‘Good News’ of Christianity and of its mission message. To hear it, though, you have to recognise that all this does apply to you as well as to others. And if we do that, this then helps us to keep the second of the two great commandments that Jesus reiterated from the Old Testament - the one about ‘loving your neighbour as yourself’ – not least by making the same allowances for other people that we make for ourselves. This brings us to the third area to be covered in this chapter, that it is a fact of life that other human beings exist and cannot really be avoided. AW much prefers to walk alone and has reservations about humanity en masse off the fells as well as on them. Many readers, I’m sure, will agree with him and share those reservations, especially those of us who find ourselves wanting to crawl under the pew when we find ourselves in one of those churches where they get enthusiastic about ‘sharing the Peace’ in Holy Communion services. Little though I like that kind of thing, Christianity is inescapably a corporate and communal religion, just as life itself is corporate and communal. There is a prayer which I sometimes use at funerals which I think sums this up nicely, Eternal God, we thank you that you have set us together in families and communities, and that you have given us so much joy through the lives of those with whom our lives are shared … I’m not sure where I got this prayer from, or whether I even adapted it myself from one of the traditional funeral prayers, but I think it says some important things. Like it or not the vast majority of people are ‘set together in families and communities’ and those who for reasons beyond their own choice aren’t ‘set together’ - ‘the orphan, the widow and the stranger’ (to use the Bible’s way of putting it) – are at a real disadvantage and need, according to the Bible, special care and help. To hark back to those Creation stories again: in the first one God creates men and women equally and together (Genesis 1.26) and in the second he creates a woman because ‘it is not good for the man to be alone’ (Genesis 2.18). These stories come from a tribal society in which the family plays a key role, and today our patterns of living together are much more varied, but they do none-the-less point up the truth that, by and large, human beings are social animals. We need other people, or at least most of us do, and we flourish best when we are with others in some kind of close, committed, mutual and supportive relationship. What form such relationships take is a very secondary question. The other point the prayer makes is that our lives are ‘shared’ – and the prayer gives thanks for that. I have to be careful, therefore, at which funerals I use this prayer, for sometimes sharing our lives with others in families and communities is not anything to give thanks for. Negatively it can be anything from stressful to very seriously damaging; and we can end up hurt or even almost destroyed by ‘those with whom our lives are shared’, or they by sharing their lives with us. And that is, of course, back to what the Bible means by ‘sin’, our ability to damage, mar and spoil. AW is very aware of how much spoiling human beings can do, on and off the fells, and he finds it impossible to see any benefit at all in being in a group of such people. But, reading between the lines, he had his friends, his occasional climbing companions, and he valued the ‘four good men and true’ who worked hard to prepare for his Pennine Way walk (7 Personal Notes 7). He also worked with people to fulfil his charity work responsibilities, at least during his working life. And then, towards the end of his life, he found a true companion in Betty. So he was not, then, entirely solitary: but he was certainly no enthusiastic joiner of groups. To those who are like AW the ‘groupiness’ of Christianity can be a problem because, like it or not, ‘groupiness’ has been part of Christianity from the start, and even before then. Back in the Old Testament’s stories of the beginnings of things, God calls Abraham and promises to give him descendents and a lot of them (Genesis 12.1-3). Later on God makes a covenant with Moses that he will be the God of this ‘people’. Faith, in the Old Testament, is about belonging to the ‘People of God’, and you were all in it together. That’s where Jesus starts, and in his work to renew that ancient religion he calls twelve disciples together, and spends much of his short ministry living and working closely with this group of men and the small group of women who accompanied them. They were a motley crew and a real mixed bag and you don’t have to read far in the Gospels to pick up hints of the tensions and difficulties of life in this group at times. After the resurrection of Jesus this small group expands and Christianity begins to appear. It is a movement which people ‘join’ and belonging to it involves meeting in small groups, ‘churches’. As the movement spread and a wider variety of people joined, life in some of these churches got quite lively. We know most about the church in Corinth because Paul had to write to it to sort it out, and from his letters it is clear that staying together was a real problem, they were all for splitting into smaller groups and having nothing to do with the others (1 Corinthians 3). But despite all the problems that this ‘groupiness’ caused, and which can still be found in one way or another in almost any church, the New Testament insists that Christianity is not a matter of personal spirituality or privatised piety, but that it is about a shared journey and a corporate life. It is about meeting together. It is about ‘loving one another’ (John 13.34). It is about ‘bearing one another’s burden’s (Galatians 6.2) and sharing one another’s joys. It is about getting together to worship. It is about ‘fellowship’, partnership in a common enterprise. The Christian journey is not one that you walk alone, there are companions on the way, and from them you receive help, support and encouragement, just as you give it to them. It might be tempting to spend your Sundays on the hills or in the garden, and you will find God in both places, but Christianity suggests that you need to ‘go to church’ as well because that is where these other people are who need you, just as you need them. There are many ways of ‘doing church’ today, and not all of them actually involve Sunday at all. The old and familiar ways are still around but there are many new styles of ‘church’ which do things quite differently, many ‘fresh expressions’ of church – to use the jargon term – which offer new menus to suit different tastes. If I lived in the Lakes I might invite you to join me on a Sunday ramble up Skiddaw, off the beaten tracks of course, and we might share bread and wine looking over towards the Caldbeck Fells. If we did it regularly we could call ourselves a ‘Fresh Expression of Church’. Why not? We might not sing hymns or say prayers (though we might do that, discreetly) but we would ‘build each other up in faith, hope and love’ and ‘grow in grace and in the knowledge and love of God’, and we would in that setting be ‘lost in wonder, love and praise’ – and that is ‘church’. Here Christianity disagrees with AW, for it believes that humans need each other and flourish best in ‘community’, and so we try, however inadequately, to do what Jesus showed us, to accept one another, to love one another, to share with one another, to give and receive from each other and to value one another because, at the end of the day, we know we are all in this together, like it or not.
5 Calder Hall, Ennerdale and the A65 The only blot on the wide landscape is Calder Hall Atomic Power Station, a reminder that, down on the plains, men’s thoughts are not, as they are up here … (4 Great End 15). Valley and lake scenery is of the very best vintage, excepting Ennerdale, where natural beauty has been sacrificed to material gain, an irretrievable mistake (7 Introduction 7). The present road policy in the Lake District … is surely wrong (5 Blencathra 8). AW wrote these comments in the early 1960s before ‘the Environment’, ‘Climate Change’ and all things ‘Green’ were on anyone’s agenda, or at least before they had come to much public notice. We can’t claim him as some sort of early eco-warrior, or a pre-David Bellamy environmentalist: but he was alert to threats to the environment of the area which he loved and concerned about its proper preservation. In the Guides he pulls no punches about what he sees as disturbing acts of ecological and environmental vandalism, especially those perpetrated by the two great ‘predators’ (OFL 225) the Forestry Commission and Manchester Corporation (‘Big Brother’ – PWC 158). Of the two he is less hard on Manchester Corporation Water Works and he tends to speak of their water projects with regret rather than anger. He writes of the ‘tragedy of Mardale’ (2 Branstree 5) with the drowning of the village of Mardale Head (‘shame!’ 2 Harter Fell 2) and the loss of one of his favourite pubs, the Dun Bull, to create the new Haweswater. He fears the plans for a reservoir at Swindale will damage that beautiful and unspoilt valley and says ‘Manchester leave it alone!’ (2 Selside Pike 2). Fortunately they did. At the end of Book 2 he writes, Perhaps I have been a little unkind to Manchester Corporation in referring to Mardale and Swindale in this book. If we can accept as absolutely necessary the conversion of Haweswater, then it must be conceded that Manchester have done the job as unobtrusively as possible. Mardale is still a noble valley. But man works with such clumsy hands! Gone for ever are the quiet wooded bays and shingly shores that nature had fashioned so sweetly in the Haweswater of old; how aggressively ugly is the tidemark of the new Haweswater! (2 Personal Notes 3). In Book 3, however, he is far less gentle when he writes about what Manchester has done in developing the expanded reservoir at Thirlmere, Hidden away in the gloom of the Thirlmere plantations are many reminders of community life here before Manchester condemned the area to a slow death and an everlasting silence … Now all is buried beneath a green shroud (3 Armboth Fell 3). But he can also give credit where it’s due, Give credit where credit is due. Manchester Waterworks have made a splendid job of concealing their extraction plant at Pooley Bridge. They said they would and they have (OFL 215). Just occasionally he can also say a good word about the Forestry Commission. They can, on occasion, show good sense in their planting, mixing deciduous trees and conifers in a way which, in time ‘will make a colourful picture’, as in Eskdale (4 Harter Fell 2). They can, sometimes, tackle their work with imagination and ‘with due regard to amenity’, as on Dodd which has been ‘given a new look and is a more interesting, and certainly a more fascinating, place than ever it was in the past’ (5 Dodd 2). Their forest roads are not only useful but also give ‘an insight of the enterprise and achievement of the Commission’ (5 Dodd 7). They can give a new look to an old area with ‘nature trails, forest walks, picnic places, a tree nursery, a wild life museum, a camp site, an information bureau, a high observation tower for the study of birds and animals, even a theatre for celebrity concerts’, so much so that ‘forestry and tourism go arm in arm in Grizedale’ (OFL 91), that is Grizedale as in Grizedale Forest. Most generous of all is what he says about Caw Fell and Blengdale, The Forestry commission suffer much criticism on amenity grounds in connection with their schemes of afforestation, and it is pleasant to record their pronounced success in Blengdale, where the older sections of the forest alongside the river are now transformed into a lovely woodland with magnificent trees and charming glades. The scenery is not characteristic of Lakeland, being more reminiscent of a Scottish glen, but does not offend on that account and is a very good example of landscape gardening on a big scale. The Commission have created beauty here, and nobody should object if they want to tackle the further three-mile wilderness of marshy ground up to the head of the valley, which at present is no good either to man or beast, but, if irrigated and planted discreetly, could make Blengdale attractive throughout its length (7 Caw Fell 8). Mostly, however, he is extremely critical and his ire is focused on what the Commission had done in Ennerdale, though their doings at Whinlatter and Thirlmere also get mention. Afforestation in Ennerdale has cloaked the lower slopes on this side in a dark and funereal shroud of foreign trees, an intrusion that nobody who knew Ennerdale of old can ever forgive, the former charm of the valley having been destroyed thereby. We condemn vandalism and sanction this mess! Far better the old desolation of boulder and bog when a man could see the sky, than this new desolation of regimented timber shutting out the light of day. It is an offence to the eyes to see Pillar’s once-colourful fellside now hobbled in such a dowdy and ill-suited skirt, just as it is to see a noble animal caught in a trap. Yet, such is the majesty and power of this fine mountain that it can shrug off the insults and indignities, and its summit soars no less proudly above. It is the admirers of this grand pile who feel the hurt (7 Pillar 3). Where there are now forest roads in Ennerdale there was once a solitary shepherd’s track; where there are now plantations of conifers there used to be fellsides open to the sky, singing birds and grazing sheep: it was Herdwick country, Cumberland at its best. Those of us old enough to remember the valley as it was are saddened by the transformation. Lovers of trees paradoxically will not like the hundreds of thousands that make up Ennerdale Forest: deformed, crowded in a battery, denied light and air and natural growth. Trees ought to be objects of admiration, not pity. Trees have life, but thank goodness they have no feelings else here would be cruelty on a mammoth scale (CCW 16). Things are not what they used to be, in Ennerdale. They never will be, ever again (7 Steeple 4). He is concerned about large scale changes which fundamentally alter a local environment – the cloaking of open slopes with monotonous rows of alien trees. He is angry about the loss of amenity – what was once good, open, walking country is no longer so. In this area, and others like it, open walking and established footpaths have been covered with forestry planting in which paths are soon overgrown and lost, and the plantations surrounded by barbed wire fences without stiles (3 Armboth Fell 2, 7 Blake Fell 7, OFL 155). Afforestation presents ‘an insidious and growing threat to the freedom of the hills’ (OFL xii). He is concerned about the loss of habitat – the birds no longer sing and the animals are no longer there (5 Dodd 10). He is saddened by the sheer monotony of the planting, huge acres of the same dreary species of conifer. These forests are sombre, silent and dead; and what he says about Wark Forest on the Pennine Way simply echoes what he says often in the Guides, Down in the forest nothing stirs. The atmosphere is akin to that of a graveyard. One feels sorry for these densely packed spruces, not one growing as it would wish, living the life of battery hens. A tree starts its life wanting to be a noble and beautiful object but these are deliberately starved of sunlight almost from birth. Of course, by man. It’s always man who commits the affronts to a natural and fulfilled existence. He’s top dog in this world, and don’t you forget it (PWC 35). Who to blame is clear, The forest is a prison, the fell is liberty. The one is artificial, as man made it; the other natural, as God made it (PWC 33). The contrast between humanity’s creative abilities, or lack of them, and nature’s comes out again in AW’s many references to Calder Hall Atomic Power Station. This was the world’s first commercial nuclear power station, opened by the Queen in 1956. In its time it was also called ‘Windscale’ and we know it as ‘Sellafield’. The actual buildings seen by AW in the 1960s were closed in 2003 and demolished in 2006, but otherwise it’s business as usual on the site. For AW it was ‘too conspicuous’ (4 Scafell 15) and a real blot on the landscape (4 Great End 15), Most people who climb the Old Man, not being fellwalkers, fix their eyes in this direction (south and west), and squeals of joy announce the sighting of Calder Hall Power Station, Blackpool tower, Morecombe Battery, the monument on Ulverston’s Hoad Hill, Millom and sundry other man-made monstrosities. This book does not deign to cater for such tastes (4 Coniston Old Man 17). Again, Intruding in the fine array of mountains and lakes and valleys and sea (seen from the top of Crinkle Crags) is a comparatively new feature – the cooling towers of the Calder Hall atomic power station … The summit of Crinkle Crags is ageless, the cooling towers are symbols of one particular age. Here, on this rugged mountain-top, is an everlasting permanence, something simple, and we can understand; but there, on the horizon, is something that is temporary, and complicated beyond our comprehension. Those modern structures, out of place in a landscape that is constant and unchanging, will vanish from the scene with the passing years. The mountains, nature’s symbols of power and strength, will remain (4 Crinkle Crags 19). And again, The most arresting sight (from Crag Fell) is the grotesque collection of towers and minarets of the Calder Hall Atomic Power Station strangely tormenting the land horizon southwest; it is seen along the valley of the Calder, with the sea beyond, in a frame of serene fells. The contrast is striking; a modern toy and the timeless hills! A pleasanter prospect is the green strath of Gillerthwaite, but even here, man, learning nothing from nature, has let loose his fancy ideas of tree-planting and done his damnedest to ruin the scene (7 Crag Fell 6). Last of AW’s environmental issues is the new A65 and other projects like it,
Here AW objects not only to the changes brought about by relatively small road improvements - he would, of course, object to them being called that – but also to the bigger changes they bring about. Improve access and that brings more people, more cars and so more change to the environment and to the very feel of Lakeland itself. Part of AW’s environmental concern seems to be that he dislikes change and anything new. For example, a major feature in his comments on Calder Hall is that this development represents new and intrusive technology. A similar point of view is found in his comments on Sandale television mast (5 Longlands Fell 2), a much smaller blot on the landscape which also ‘(disgraces) the skyline,’ this time on the northern horizon. This is a ‘horrible object’ (5 Longlands Fell 6) which ‘isn’t a very inspiring sight’ (5 Great Calva 9). It is another example of modern technology and AW disapproves of it strongly. It is a little odd, however, that he doesn’t seem to disapprove so much of the ‘modern technologies’ of yesteryear or say such negative things about what ‘man’ was doing when we were drastically changing the environment then. In contrast to what he fears about the proposed A65 (which doesn’t seem to me to have turned out to be environmentally damaging at all) he can say that the railway line from Threlkeld to Keswick is ‘a masterpiece of railway construction and of considerable visual appeal’ (5 Loughrigg 6); and anyone who walks or cycles nowadays along the old trackbed will agree entirely. The best example of this, however, is his approving comments on the old miners and his disapproval of their modern counterparts. This example from his description of the Caldbeck Fell mines illustrates this clearly, Imagination cannot start to comprehend the skill and industry of the miners of those days (some of the old mines here go back to the sixteenth century or before) and one is left merely wondering why the fortunate workers of today are prepared to debase their vocations and professions for greater personal rewards. The Caldbeck miners had little schooling yet had nothing to learn about the dignity of labour or of loyalty in service (5 High Pike 3) AW recognises that the old mines themselves disfigure the landscape. The old lead mine on Sheffield Pike makes that side of the fell look ‘hideously scarred and downright ugly’ (1 Sheffield Pike 2). Old copper mining and modern quarrying scar, mutilate and disfigure Coniston Old Man (4 Coniston Old Man 4). There is no beauty in the ‘despoliation and devastation’ caused by the slate quarrying on Fleetwith Pike, though there can be ‘dramatic effect and interest’ (7 Fleetwith Pike 5). One must therefore keep a sense of proportion,
It is also true that Nature is not entirely helpless here. At the lead mine at the foot of Bannerdale Crags nature has done its restorative work and ‘(cloaked) the ravages of man with her own processes’ (5 Bannerdale Crags 2). Given time ‘Nature is a great healer’ and few of the previously extensive workings of the Caldbeck Fell mines on High Pike are now visible (5 High Pike 3). Even the ongoing and large scale quarrying on Coniston Old Man and the most extensive mining operations in the district cannot, as we have just seen, rob this mighty mountain of its grandeur and charm. All that having been said, however, AW’s repeated point is that human beings present the single biggest threat to the environment; and that is a point which the vast majority of contemporary environmentalists would simply confirm. Christianity has an interest in this debate for a variety of reasons, not least because the rise of sea levels or other serious effects of rising ambient temperatures affect Christians worldwide no less than they affect everyone else. The world is our home, even if it might not be our eternal home, and what happens to it matters to us. We believe, too, that it matters to God who created it, sustains it, ‘owns’ it and loves it and all who live on it, as the psalmist wrote,
We said quite a bit about the doctrine of Creation in chapter 1, and in chapter 3 we observed that AW takes a generally dim view of humanity. Here we must spend time on the big issue that AW raises about human responsibility on and for the planet. AW frequently contrasts the achievements of ‘man’ and Nature. The sharpest example of this is in this extract from the Pennine Way Companion, A scene of desolation can be very beautiful; a scene of devastation is always downright ugly. Nature fashions desolation; man causes devastation. Nature’s wildernesses often have charm; man’s wildernesses are without charm. The desolate Sleightholme Moor impresses; the derelict Air Ministry site depresses. Nature creates; man destroys (PWC 84). But he also acknowledges that sometimes human beings can get it right, Man rarely beautifies nature, but the exception most certainly occurs in the cultivated valleys of Lakeland. Every walker on the hills must often have been stopped in his tracks by some entrancing glimpse of beautiful green pastures and stately trees in a valley below, a perfect picture of charm and tranquillity in utter contrast to his own rugged surroundings. So delightfully fresh and sparkling, those lovely fields and meadows, that they seem to be in sunshine even in rain; so trim and well-kept that they might be the lawns of some great parkland. But they were not always so. Before man settled here these same valleys were dreary marshes (4 Grey Friar 5). Admiring the splendid view from Slight Side, made better by the fact that another mountain blocks off the view of Calder Hall from this summit, he uses a telling phrase. Looking down into the valleys he writes about the ‘winning of land by man from nature’ (4 Slight Side 4). Much more preferable, as we shall see, is what he writes about Borrowdale, that ‘Man and nature working together have made a good job of Borrowdale’ (CCW 23). Two pages earlier he contrasts that with the scenery in Honister, The landscape here has been savaged both by nature and man. What a contrast to their joint efforts in nearby Borrowdale (CCW 21 – my italics). Here is the contemporary debate about humanity and the environment in a nutshell; and here is where many contemporary environmentalists point the finger of blame at Christianity. The accusation that Christianity is really to blame for our ecological crisis was first made by an American, Lynn White Jr., in a short article in the magazine Science in 1967. His article, which soon became very influential, was entitled ‘The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis’. In it he argued, first, that if we are to address the ecological problem properly we must look straight away at our attitudes towards nature, and, second, that our attitudes towards nature are rooted in our religious beliefs. He suggested that what we do and how we live depend on where we think we fit in the great scheme of things or, in other words, on our beliefs about our nature and destiny. Our religion, he suggested, goes a long way in making us what we are, in making us do what we do and in making us think what we think. In his analysis of the ecological crisis he then argued that the human capacity to wreak damage and destruction on the environment grew out of western technological and scientific advances made in the last three or four centuries, and that these were fuelled by the Judeo-Christian tradition. Western Christianity, he insisted, is the most human-centred religion the world has ever seen; and this ‘anthropocentrism’ has encouraged human beings to think that they have the right to exploit nature, a ‘right’ which they have grabbed with both hands. White argued that Christianity teaches that nature exists for our benefit, and that this Christian arrogance towards nature has got us where we are today. Christianity, he accuses, is guilty of causing our ecological crisis. Needless to say this thesis sparked a huge controversy which continues to this day, with loud voices shouting on either side: but the accusation made by Lynn White Jr. will not go away. AW does not trace the blame back to Christianity, but he does agree with White that human beings are the real villains when it comes to environmental damage. He says, cynically but I suspect accurately, that human beings only jump up and down about something when it affects them directly; and one can imagine his wry comments about global warming were he still here. There is one area, however, where AW would suggest that Lynn White Jr.’s criticisms do not go anywhere near far enough. In his indictment of humanity over myxamatosis in Fellwanderer he says that that crime elicited no protest, nothing like a march to Aldermaston or a demonstration in Trafalgar Square because ‘man marches in protest only to save his own skin’ [1]. In a number of places in the Guides he registers his disapproval of hunting and shooting, but this paragraph in Ex-Fellwanderer contains his strongest indictment of humanity’s abuse of the natural world, It was during my lonely wanderings on the mountains that I developed an admiration for the birds and animals who shared my days: the sheep, the fell ponies, the occasional foxes and deer, the ravens, the hawks, the buzzards and recently the Mardale eagles. I admired them for their uncomplaining acceptance of the harsh conditions in which they lived, for their independence. They are content with little, wanting only to be left in peace. Their greatest enemy is man, sharing the same world but refusing to acknowledge that these creatures are neighbours with equal rights to existence. It is a shocking indictment of the human race that wild animals and birds flee in fear at the approach of man, who, endowed with superior intellect, abuses this gift by treating all other creatures as objects to be exploited as he wishes for his own benefit. Man is the bully, the biggest and cruellest predator of all. One Bible passage features prominently in this debate, and it is three verses from that first Creation parable in Genesis chapter 1. It is the Friday afternoon, the last working day before God crowned creation with its blessing of Sabbath Rest. God turns to his heavenly court – the ‘angels and archangels’ and all that - and says to them, (verse 26) ‘Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ (verse 27) So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (verse 28) So God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth’ (Genesis 1.26-28). White, and many others, argue that two parts of this passage lie at the root of humanity’s abuse of creation: the bit that says that humanity is created in the ‘image of God’, and the bit that tells us to ‘subdue the earth’ and ‘have dominion’ over its creatures. Theologians have had a field day down the centuries with what it means to say that human beings are made ‘in the image of God’. All kinds of suggestions have been made. Most of them are along the lines that what differentiates us from the rest of creation is that human beings are thinking beings and can reason and understand, or that we are spiritual beings and can worship and pray, or that we are moral beings and can know the difference between right and wrong, or that we are conscious beings and can reflect and analyse our own actions. All of that is true. Human beings are like that and can do those things. It is another question, however, whether ‘image of God’ in Genesis 1.26 means anything like that at all, and there are no clues in the passage to suggest that it does. On the other hand, Biblical scholars who pay close attention to the text, unlike theologians who frequently don’t, find something rather different here. They say that this expression means something else, that it does not refer to what we are (thinking, praying, moral, conscious beings etc) but to what we do. They see parallels within these verses which are to be taken seriously. In verse 26 God announces his intention – to make human beings ‘in his own image’ and let them ‘have dominion’ over the other creatures. In verse 27 he carries out that intention and creates human beings ‘in his own image’ and makes them male and female. In verse 28 he looks at what he has done, blesses these humans and tells them to ‘be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion’ over its creatures. Noting the two parallels in each verse and putting it all together, they conclude that being made in the ‘image of God’ is to do with our creativity (‘male and female he made them’) and our responsibility (‘have dominion’ etc). It looks very much as if that phrase speaks of our God-given responsibility and task to share with God in his on-going work of creation, that in creating us God has entrusted us with a share of responsibility for creation, that we are even ‘co-creators’ with him in the work of moulding and shaping creation and life itself. Unlike the theologians, the Biblical scholars think this idea refers much more to what we are to do as God’s agents or representatives in the world than to any of our attributes. And that’s the problem. Looked at from one point of view this is a bold and challenging statement of humanity’s very high calling. Looked at from another, this is about the best example of human arrogance that you can find. The other part of the passage is easier, though no less controversial. ‘Have dominion’ is mentioned twice and the second time expands it a bit, adding the command or commands to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. There is no doubt about what this means. It is about taking command, controlling, having authority and exercising power. It would be nice and reassuring to say that this is about acting as God’s agents or ambassadors, and that as he is King of Creation so we are to share in his loving, caring, gentle and responsible oversight of creation. That could well be what is meant here, but the word for having dominion’ (which is translated as ‘ruling’ in NIV and as ‘being masters’ in NJB) is not the usual word for a king ruling a country. It usually means dominating something by force, as when a king defeats his enemies, and the Israelites are specifically commanded on a couple of occasions not to do this to their fellow Israelites! If it is used positively in this verse in Genesis, then this is an exception to its usual meaning. There is no such question about ‘subdue’ – it means exactly what it says - ‘bring into bondage’! These two words don’t sit at all well with a positive and eco-friendly reading of the passage, and they do rather support White’s criticism of it. Mainstream Christianity has, to be fair, usually taken both of those words in a positive sense and understood that our human task in the world is that of being good stewards of God’s creation. Some support for that is found in the parable itself, in that it goes on to say that human beings should be vegetarians, eating plants and fruit (verse 29). There is no mention of killing animals for food, permission to do that only comes much later, when things have already gone pear-shaped (Genesis 9.3). Likewise in the second Creation parable in Genesis 2-3 Adam’s job is to look after the garden, to tend and keep it, and the picture is of taking care and exercising careful stewardship. Many Christians have therefore taken a positive view of nature, and the special relationship that humans have with God, and understood that we are called to be wise stewards, or caretakers, of the earth. Recently even this apparently benign idea about ‘stewardship’ has come in for criticism. Its opponents claim that even this picture suggests that somehow humanity is separate from, and thinks itself above, the rest of creation; and that stewards manage on behalf of someone else with the aim of making a profit and gaining maximum advantage from whatever it is they manage. True enough, I suppose: but then every metaphor has its limitations. There are those who would argue that humanity is only one species among others, and that it’s time we learned to recognise that and live accordingly; and providing those who say that practice it as vegans who shun every kind of exploitation of animals, that’s fine. Most of us, however, recognise that human power in nature is real and therefore that it makes sense to work out how to use it for good and not for ill; and that if we’ve got to find a word or an idea to express this, then ‘stewardship’ is about the best we’re likely to come up with. And, after all, most people recognise the difference between ‘good stewardship’ and ‘bad stewardship’, just as AW does. Good stewardship is what he calls ‘man and nature working together’, a ‘joint effort,’ and we can get it right, even though most of the time, according to AW, we don’t. There are also two other criticisms made about Christianity here. One says that Christianity has had a bad effect on the natural world because it believes that the natural world is itself somehow evil, or at least that it isn’t good. This attitude arises out of the idea that we mentioned in chapter 2, the one which says that the body and the flesh are bad and the soul and the spirit are good. If you think like this you think that anything physical is inferior to anything spiritual, and so will not be that concerned about the care of the planet or the natural world. As we saw, this is fundamentally a heresy, but it has been an influential idea. The other criticism, and it is a very contemporary one, is of those Christians who believe in the Second Coming of Christ and so don’t think that issues like global warming and so on matter very much at all. The most notorious example of this, and a deeply worrying one, was the attitude of James Watt, the United States Secretary of the Interior in the Bush administration, who encouraged logging and mining in America’s wildernesses on the grounds that Jesus would return soon and who said that that made any long-term management of resources irrelevant. One of the reasons why it took the United States so long to take our ecological crisis seriously is that this fundamentalist Christian viewpoint is prevalent in the USA. To most British Christians this is both nonsense and dangerous nonsense, but it is still being said, here as well as there! This is, without doubt, the biggest practical issue and one of the most significant theological issues facing humanity at the beginning of the twenty-first century. At the very least we have to listen to the criticisms made by Lynn White Jr. and AW, listen and acknowledge that there is something in them. Then, without any doubt, we have to change our ways and find sustainable ways of living on our little planet in partnership with the natural world and the rest of its living creatures. That will not be easy. The Biblical picture of human beings as God’s ‘stewards’ of creation may not be to everyone’s taste, but it does at least recognise that we are the stewards of the planet and not its owners, and that we have a responsibility to its Owner to manage it well, according to his best hopes for it, so that all his creatures may flourish.
The monument (on the main route up Skiddaw) is a memorial to three men of the Hawell family, shepherds of Lonscale. It is inscribed with this epitaph:
Simple, sincere and moving words that will appeal to all lovers of the fells (5 Skiddaw 11). This (ie the summit of Latrigg) is a grand place … especially for fellwalkers on the retired list: here they can recline for hours, recalling joyful days when they had energy enough to climb to the tops of all the mountains in view. Strange how all the best days of memory are to do with summit-cairns … Will there be mountains like these in heaven – or is this heaven, before death, and will there never again be hills to climb? (5 Latrigg 8). … and outcrops that will be grittier still when the author’s ashes are scattered here (7 Haystacks 10). Occasionally in the Guides, as in these three quotes, AW reflects on his own mortality and what, if anything, might follow after this life is over. He writes a little more fully in his two mini-autobiographies. In 1966 he concluded Fellwanderer like this,
And if you, dear reader, should get a bit of grit in your boot as you are crossing Haystacks in the years to come, please treat it with respect. It might be me. And in 1987 he concluded Ex-Fellwanderer, published to commemorate his 80th birthday, with these paragraphs,
Here is a reflection written near the end of his life in full awareness that he would probably not have too much longer to live. He makes it clear in that little book that he will not be sorry to die, given the state that the world is in – bad and getting worse – but that he will miss the mountains and all the other pleasures of this life all the same. There is a touch of fear, and a wistful hope that there might be something beyond, but his conclusion is that there isn’t. Common sense tells him that the end is the end, and then it is goodbye for ever. At this point, Christianity would challenge AW to think again and would say that he can indeed dare to hope that ‘there will be another Orrest Head over the threshold of the next heaven’ (OFL 26). For most of their early history, however, our forebears in the Faith, the people of Israel, would have agreed with AW that this life is all there is and so we should make the most of it. There is nothing at all beyond, for AW, and nothing beyond except fading away in Sheol, which amounts to the same thing, for the Old Testament faithful. Until, that is, we come to the latest book in the Old Testament, the Book of Daniel, written about 160 years before the birth of Christ. And there we get this crucial little verse, Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt (Daniel 12.2). The book was written during a crisis. Judah was part of one of the great Greek empires which ruled most of the world as they knew it, and Antiochus Epiphanes, the Emperor, had decided that Judah should be made to conform to the rest of civilisation. Judaism was outlawed. Circumcision was made a crime. Possession of a copy of the Torah was a capital offence. The Temple was turned into a temple to Zeus, and pigs were sacrificed on its great altar. The result was the religious rebellion we know as the ‘Maccabean War’ and against the odds the Jewish guerrillas won and secured independence for Judah. But it was a hard-fought and costly business, and lots of good, young, Jewish men died for their faith in their One, True God. And that brought to a head a theological crisis which had been brewing for centuries. Traditional, orthodox Jewish thought believed that this life was all you got. It also believed in a simple formula that ‘Righteousness is Rewarded and Sin is Punished’. The reward for being good and faithful and all that was, therefore, a long and prosperous life; just as the punishment for being wicked was a short and painful one. But the cracks in the theory had been obvious for centuries and protests had come from old psalmists and the writers of Job and Habakkuk. Why, then, do the good die young and the wicked prosper, they asked? With the death of so many good, faithful, young men who were being killed precisely because they were good and faithful the theory really came unstuck. And at that point someone hit on a solution. The theory could still work provided there was life after death, where the scales could be balanced, and righteousness properly rewarded and sin properly punished. It was a novel idea and it began to catch on, but it was still controversial at the time of Jesus. Many ordinary Jews welcomed it, as did the Pharisees. The traditional Sadducees rejected it completely. Jesus threw his weight behind it, as did the Early Church, who found another reason to believe in life after death as well as that one. That other reason, of course, was the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus was ‘crucified under Pontius Pilate’. Fact. What happened next is disputed. Some of this rabbi's followers claimed that after they had seen him crucified on a Friday afternoon, he actually met them three days later on the Sunday, and on and off for a few weeks after that. They didn't say they had seen a vision of him, but that they had met him. Their stories didn't tally, and they had all sorts of questions about it all, but they obviously weren't rogues who tried to doctor their stories to make a neat fit. One thing is certain, that within a few years of this rabbi's death his Jewish followers were calling him their Messiah and even their Lord, and saying that he had risen and ascended in power and glory and was seated at God's right hand. This is not the place to explore the historical questions about what might, or might not, have happened: but the New Testament explains Jesus’ status on the basis of his resurrection. This is put clearest of all in Romans 1.3-4 where Paul is introducing himself and his letter. He is talking about the ‘gospel’, the good news of Jesus which it is now his life's mission to tell. This gospel, good news, is about God's Son: on the human level he was a descendent of David, but on the level of the spirit - the Holy Spirit - he was proclaimed Son of God by an act of power that raised him from the dead: it is about Jesus Christ our Lord. The earliest teaching in the New Testament about the resurrection also comes from Paul. Fifteen years or so before the first Gospel was penned he writes to the church in Corinth about the resurrection and all that it implies. He sees the resurrection as crucial: no resurrection, no Christianity
He knows that the idea is impossible to grasp but he is adamant, But the truth is, Christ was raised to life ... (verse 20). For Paul, and for the New Testament as a whole, the resurrection is the historical event on which the Christian Faith is founded. Without the resurrection Jesus would be remembered, if he would be remembered at all, as nothing more than another rejected prophet. Without the resurrection the crucifixion would be remembered, if it would be remembered at all, as just another martyrdom. What makes Jesus remembered, what accounts for the titles given to him and what explains the remarkable growth of the Christian Faith in the first century is the resurrection. Christianity is Easter Faith. The first Christians were Easter People. Put all this together and you have the explanation of why Christianity believes that death is not the end and that there is something beyond, even though it all sounds so impossible to believe [1]. Can we, however, say anything more about this ‘life after death’? I certainly agree with whoever it was who said that we do not know the furniture of heaven or the temperature of hell, but nevertheless I think we can indeed say something more. The two traditional words ‘Heaven’ and ‘Hell’ are probably not the most useful words by which to say it, but perhaps we need to begin with them anyway. Let’s start with the easier of the two and here I would support the 79% of Anglicans in that Church Times survey who believe that Heaven really exists, bearing in mind, of course, that all our words, ideas and pictures here are going to fall very far short of the reality. One of the things that I believe it is important to say at the funeral of a Christian is that we get it the wrong way round if we think that the person who has died has passed from life into death. It is the other way about. At such a funeral we are marking the passing of someone from death into life, from this world of passing shadows to the real world. We are saying that Heaven is real whereas in this life, even in its most glorious and precious moments we have only briefly glimpsed reality. These brightest and most beautiful of our experiences are ‘intimations of immortality’, and only glimpses of what really is. This is put beautifully in C S Lewis's book The Great Divorce. It tells the story of a bus trip from Hell to Heaven. Hell is like Manchester on a wet Thursday afternoon in November - grey, dismal and dreary. The bus goes every week. The trip is free to anyone who wants to go. When you get there you are free to stay if you want. First of all you see the people getting off the bus and covering their eyes to protect them from the brightness of the light. The coach park is only on the very edge of town and the city centre is over the hill, but still the light which comes from it is too dazzling for their eyes. They are not used to real light. Then you see them covering their ears because they are not used to real noise, even though all that they are hearing is the trickling of a little brook beside the road. Then you see them staggering around trying to carry something. They are trying to pick up heaven's pebbles which are, of course, diamonds; but even these tiny precious stones are so heavy that the best they can do is stagger along bent double with their weight. You can read the rest for yourself. The point that Lewis is making is that Heaven is real and that even the best of us, the most mature, kind, whole and loving of us are but shadows or pale reflections of the reality that God wishes to make us. Here and now we are nowhere near the people we could be or the persons we will be in God's future for us. But then and there in the life beyond death in ways that we cannot begin to imagine our little lives will find their ultimate fulfilment in the purposes of God's love. There are, of course, all sorts of questions here that we want to ask but for which there are no answers. If we ask what this life after death is like then the only word that I can use is the word ‘fulfilment’, which is what I was trying to say in the last paragraph. When the Corinthians asked Paul for more details he was quite rude (1 Corinthians 15.35-36). It is beyond our imagination, he said. If you hold a seed of corn in one hand and look at it, what do you see? Something tiny, hard and grey-brown. If you hold a stalk and ear of corn in the other what do you see? Something tall, hairy, soft in parts and green-golden. If you didn't know you would never guess that the one is the fulfilment of the other. That is the nearest that Paul is prepared to go in trying to say what life after death is like. In reply to AW, therefore, Paul would tell him to get his camera ready, his pen out, put his walking boots on and be ready for some unimaginable hills, far and away better than that first view from Orrest Head! But there is more to Heaven than our personal fulfilment as truly human beings. This is why the Bible ends with pictures of a ‘new heaven and a new earth’ where ‘there is no more sea’ (Revelation 21.1). In that picture the sea represents death, evil, chaos and disorder, and those things will be ended when God's kingdom ‘comes’. Then ‘mourning and crying and pain will be no more’ (Revelation 21.4). In other pictures this ‘new kingdom’ is one in which there will be a peace and harmony which includes all of creation, where ‘the wolf will live with the lamb’ (Isaiah 11.6). There is more to the fulfilment which is Heaven than the human and personal: more, but not less! And here too, questions like – How? Where? and When? are the sort of questions which Paul gets rude about. And so to Hell. Much traditional Christianity has talked a lot about Hell, and I know some Christians who will say that Hell is going to be AW’s fate because there is no sign that he was ‘saved’. In 2000 the Evangelical Alliance produced a major statement called ‘The Nature of Hell’ in which it claimed to reiterate the traditional view of the Church down the centuries. The document insisted that Hell is more than mere annihilation at the point of death; that it is both separation from God and severe punishment, a conscious experience of rejection and torment, with different degrees of suffering related to the severity of sins committed on earth; and that it is eternal conscious punishment [2]. Like many other Christians, I cannot accept any of that. In 1929 the poet and hymn-writer Percy Dearmer wrote, The legend of hell is … a powerful enemy of the Christian religion, as it has for generations been the most general cause of the widespread repudiation of the Churches which marks the modern era. In 2002 the American theologian Walter Wink put it simply, Belief in a place of eternal torments is unworthy of the highest forms of Christian faith. And in a major book of 2005 on Jesus and the resurrection the New Testament scholar Dale Allison said, Dives, after death, saw his mistakes, felt remorse, and sought to serve others (Luke 16.27-28). This must be God’s hope for even the worst of us. Nothing else rings true if the Transcendent Pity sincerely wills that none of these little ones should perish [3]. I believe in Hell but I do not believe in eternal punishment, the very idea of it is completely at odds with the idea of an eternal, loving God and I could not worship a God who subjected anyone or anything to ‘eternal conscious punishment’. But I still believe in Hell. If Heaven is fulfilment then Hell is oblivion. I have to believe in Hell because I also believe that God takes us seriously and gives us the freedom to make our own real choices, a freedom which he respects even when we use our freedom as badly as we do. There is a picture in the New Testament of God standing outside the door of our life and knocking. He will come in if invited but will not barge in uninvited (Revelation 3.20). I take this to mean that those who wish to keep the door closed against him will have their freedom to do so respected. The result is that they miss out on the fulfilment of life with God which is Heaven. This, as I see it, is the starkness of the choice that lies before us which the Bible is putting before us when it talks about Heaven and Hell. Oblivion, which the Evangelical Alliance report specifically rejects, or fulfilment are the choices that face us. ‘Hell’ is our name for the one and ‘Heaven’ for the other. But does anyone ever ‘go to Hell’? Is it possible for people to keep themselves so closed to God that his love can never get through to them? Traditionally Christianity has taught that we have to respond to God here and now for there are no second chances after death. I find that idea very difficult. The old rabbis used to do theology by putting Bible verses side by side, and the New Testament writers do that sort of thing too. So let me try that method here. Let me put the famous verse from Hebrews 13.8, that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever beside that verse which says that in his life Jesus came to seek and save the lost (Luke 19.10). If we do that we have a picture of Jesus as eternally the Friend of Sinners, the Saviour who will always and for ever welcome all those who come to him, the one who is forever seeking to save the lost. Then, if you like, add to that the picture of God as the father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son who runs to welcome his erring son home and then kills the prize calf for a celebration feast (Luke 15.11-32). And finally add to that the saying of Jesus that It is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost (Matthew 18.14). The result, surely, is the possibility of second, third and umpteenth ‘chances’ for people to respond to this infinite and generous love? Yes, I believe in Hell, and that it is empty! There is one other traditional point which needs a mention and that is ‘Purgatory’. This too is another of those ‘pictures’ which must not be taken literally but should not be dismissed either. Building on hints in the New Testament traditional Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christianity recognises the need for ‘refining’ or ‘purging’ after death [4]. Likewise the old hymn also recognises that we cannot stand the ‘burning bliss’ of God’s bright love without some acclimatisation first,
Cardinal Basil Hume put it beautifully like this, A priest started his homily at a funeral saying, ‘I am going to speak about judgment’. There was dismay in the congregation. Then he went on, ‘Judgment is whispering into the ear of a merciful and compassionate God the story of my life which I have never been able to tell’. Many of us have a story, or part of one at any rate, about which we have never been able to speak to anyone. Fear of being misunderstood, inability to understand ourselves, ignorance of the darker side of our hidden lives, or just shame, make it very difficult for many people. Our true story is not told, or only half of it is. What a relief it will be to whisper freely and fully into that merciful and compassionate ear. After all that is what He has always wanted. He waits for us to come home to him. He receives us, His prodigal children, now contrite and humble, with an embrace. In that embrace we start to tell Him our story, and He begins that process of healing and preparation which we call Purgatory [6]. There is no proof for any of this, of course, neither for the resurrection of Jesus nor for life after death. AW may well be right when he says that common sense tells him that there is nothing to follow death. I just see things differently. I believe in life after death and a full Heaven and an empty Hell and I believe it for many reasons. And so, because of Jesus, I do ‘dare to hope that there will be another Orrest Head over the threshold of the next heaven’. I’ll end this chapter with a little poem I wrote when I was asked to say something at the funeral of a very old and crotchety neighbour. I called it ‘At our best’. The poetry isn’t very good, but I would defend the theology!
Reading the Guides you certainly meet AW the man, and in this little book we have engaged in conversation about some of the things that mattered most to him. We have seen his passion for the natural world, principally for the fells themselves and everything about Lakeland, but also his love of animals which led him and Betty to dedicate all the proceeds from his books to Kapellan, the animal welfare centre which they established together at Kendal. The books also reveal his foibles, and his last one, the autobiographical Ex-Fellwanderer almost embarrassingly so with its misanthropic stance and its extreme right-wing views. In his later life he felt that he belonged to an age which was rapidly passing and that the world was all the poorer for it. His world was one where the old-fashioned values of thrift, hard work, personal responsibility, pride in one’s job and workmanship, integrity and self-reliance were the order of the day; all of which he saw as being under increasing threat. His books show no interest in religion or the Church, and the only mention of the Church is in Ex-Fellwanderer where we noted that it comes in for strong criticism for its spineless silence on cruelty to animals. His personal integrity and morality are, without any doubt, expressions of what he would regard as the traditional and everyday morality of common decency; and in that respect he is pretty typical of many if not most in his generation. For those, inside and outside the Church who believe that those values still matter, however, there is an increasingly urgent issue to be faced: how are such values to be sustained if the Christianity which underlay, promoted and encouraged them also disappears from our national and cultural scene? Whether or not AW believed in God is an interesting question. The answer would appear to be that he did. If we ask what kind of a God he believed in the answer seems to be that he believed in a Creator, a God who lies behind the universe and operates in and through Nature, a word which he often uses with a capital ‘N’. He writes that on the hills ‘men’s thoughts’ are of mountains and peace and the bountiful goodness of the Creator of this lovely district (4 Great End 15) and There is no worshipping of false idols on the mountains, but, instead, deep awareness of a Creator (Fellwanderer). He hopes that falling satellites and other fancy gadgets of man’s invention don’t blow God’s far worthier creations to bits (3 Personal Notes 2). This Creator God is encountered in the beauty and peace of the countryside and in the awesomeness and solitude of the fells. He is worshipped in the appreciation of the views and the bird song. Believing in him involves living your life responsibly, usefully and with integrity. Here too AW is pretty typical of many if not most of his generation. This God does not require much, if any, church-going. He does not ask for any of the kinds of overt religiosity demanded by the more fervent forms of Christianity. He doesn’t make too many demands, and he is certainly not a God to be unduly afraid of. This is a benign God who is in the background and whose presence is unobtrusive. This kind of God and this kind of faith is not new. We see it in the story of the spread of the Church in the Acts of the Apostles where St Paul encounters this kind of belief in ancient Athens. In his speech in the public debating forum there he quotes from two Greek poets (Acts 17.28). The first quote talks about God as the one ‘in whom we live and move and have our being’. The second says that ‘we too are his offspring’ [1]. Paul himself wants to go much further than this and to introduce the Athenians to Jesus Christ, the ‘man whom God has appointed’ and who he ‘raised from the dead’. Some of the Athenians politely decline his invitation to think about this a bit more. Others scoff at the very idea (Acts 17.31-32). Many modern Christians would follow Paul and suggest that the faith of the Athenians was missing something, and would no doubt say the same about that of AW. They would want, at the very least, to put some serious mention of Jesus Christ into the discussion. They would also, almost certainly, begin to disagree amongst themselves fairly quickly about what they would want to say about Jesus, as Christians have always tended to do that once they have gone beyond calling him ‘Lord’. I suspect that that tendency explains the widespread prevalence of the kind of attitude to religion which AW had. Prior to the Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries our Christian forebears both died for and killed for their Faith, sometimes doing so over what we would now regard as details of very little consequence. AW’s kind of belief, very common then and still around now, wants nothing to do with such controversies or the strong emotions and feelings they arouse. The world has changed since the Guides, however, and perceptions of God have changed with it. The most recent and most dramatic changes have brought God and religion out of the background and placed him and it back, for good or ill, centre-stage. The benign and unobtrusive God of the Guides, the God of the English countryside, who required little more than that people behaved decently, acted considerately and didn’t make a fuss, and that they acknowledged him, if at all, in occasional moments of formal English religion – that God has gone. 9/11 was the moment when the western world began to realise that its friendly but rather distant old God might not be the only one around, and that religion as a consuming and demanding reality for which people would both die and kill was very much alive after all. I wrote about some of the consequences of this change in a note for the Bishop of Truro, It seems to me that perhaps the biggest change that has taken place in the relationship between the Church in England and the society in which we live in the last five years is that religion is constantly in the news now and that it is constantly getting a bad press. In the old days religion was hardly ever in the news, for who was interested in that harmless and eccentric hobby of those inadequate enough to be bothered with it? Clerical misdemeanours merited an occasional cartoon, and the Archbishop of Canterbury was always good to fill an odd column inch now and again, but that was it. The Church of England was a bit of a figure of fun, usually treated with affection, sometimes not. That has gone. Religion is now portrayed as dangerous, a threat to our English and civilised values: seen most clearly in the way that religion caused the London bombings! And it is not just Islam which is getting caught up in this kind of demonising backlash, because as some forms of English Christianity stand up and speak out (defending ‘Christmas’ or the right of the Evangelical Christian Union at Exeter university to be recognised as a university society or on medical ethics issues) they are lumped together and seen as another manifestation of that ‘fundamentalism’ which is a threat to civilisation as we know it. Religion is back on the agenda, but very dangerously [2]. What has happened since 9/11 is that religions and religious people are increasingly demonised. This is not entirely new, but it has grown alarmingly in recent years. It started with Islam, but in the British media it quickly spread to include all religions. Religion, it is now widely said, is a dangerous business. It is bad for your health. It is bad for the health of society. God, whichever one you mean, is bad news! Militant atheists like Richard Dawkins have jumped on the bandwagon [3]. God is a dangerous delusion and religion is dangerous nonsense. And there is enough truth in that, of course, for the militant atheists and secular fundamentalists to get a hearing. Some of what goes on in the name of religion is dangerous. Some religious people do do hideous things. There are cranks and fanatics. There are sinister interests at work. Some religions can be manipulated to some very nasty ends, one example being the way Christianity is used in some circles in the USA to justify American policies in the Middle East. Another is the way that Islam can be perverted and the Koran abused by fanatics to produce suicide bombers. Society is right, some religion and some religions are dangerous and need to be exposed and condemned as such. And that’s not a new phenomenon, the Bible is full of stories of good religion going wrong, being abused and manipulated, and needing to be reformed. The history of the Church is equally full of such examples. The Bible and Church History teach religious people that they need to be very critical of their religion because it can so easily go wrong. Here, therefore, we need some rigorously honest and clear thinking, both about our own religion and about all religions. We need to remember this simple truth,
The challenge today is serious, because all religion, all faith, and every God is now tarred with the same brush. For a variety of reasons the twentieth century saw an increasing ‘secularism’ in western Europe. Church attendance declined seriously almost everywhere. The public role of the Church similarly declined. Increasingly few people took any notice of church pronouncements on moral questions, and an increasing number voiced their objection in principle to the Church making them at all. Opinion polls continued to report very high levels of belief in God in British surveys, but it was also clear that the vast majority of people who expressed such belief obviously didn’t feel any great need to belong to any kind of faith community. That, it seems to me, is where AW probably was. There has been no shortage of interest in ‘spirituality’ in recent years, judged by the way that the ‘Mind and Body’ bookshelves of major booksellers have increased in size, but interest in ‘Religion’ has dwindled. What has happened since 9/11 is that this steadily growing indifference to religion which saw the Church increasingly marginalised as ‘irrelevant’ has changed into a real hostility towards Church, God and organised religion, at least in some prominent and influential quarters like the media. There are at least three possible ways that the contemporary Church can respond to these radically changed circumstances of the secularism of the twentieth century and the hostility of the twenty-first. One response is that made by Christian Fundamentalism which deliberately and militantly takes on this secularism and hostility. What is needed, the Fundamentalists insist, is to take the Bible literally and to see these things as predicted features of the ‘Last Days’. Christians must oppose them totally. This view is powerful, widespread and growing, promoted and funded from its bases in the USA. Its appeal is easily understood – it offers certainty and security in a dangerous and frightening world. It is also, however, fundamentally wrong, not least because its basic belief that the Bible is ‘without errors’ doesn’t stand up when you actually read it [5]. Its god and its beliefs simply fuel hostility against religion and confirm the opponents of religion in their view that all faith is indeed both intellectually empty and socially dangerous. The mainstream churches in Britain rejected the first assault of American fundamentalism in the early years of the twentieth century, when the first Fundamentalists were opposing the modern science of Darwin and company and the serious study of the Bible emerging from the universities. Today’s mainstream churches would be wise to do the same again with the second wave of it now making its powerful bid for the mind and soul of the Church [6]. A much healthier response is that the Church has begun to rediscover its sense of ‘mission’. It has come to see that simply maintaining its buildings, its systems and its traditional ways of doing things will no longer do; and that the twenty-first century needs to see and hear again, or in many cases to see and hear for the first time, just what Christianity is about, what it believes and what it offers. This response recognises that there has been a cultural revolution in the western world and that we now live in a radically different world in which, for most people, ‘Church’ and all it stands for is simply irrelevant. Therefore, to use some jargon, ‘new ways of being Church’ and ‘fresh expressions’ of Christianity are needed for today’s world [7]. This response insists that the Church must move from ‘maintenance’ to ‘mission’ and in so doing must put evangelism, the sharing of the Good News of Jesus, and Apologetics, the explanation and defence of its beliefs, back on the agenda as priorities. Another response might be to begin where AW was, because people still buy the books and still walk on the hills, and do so in greater numbers than ever. It could even be argued that in some ways Leisure has itself become a new religion, that it is now the area where people put their energies, make their commitments, and find meaning, companionship, depth and purpose in their lives. To use Marie McCarthy’s words, Leisure is now where for many the ‘natural desires, longings and hungers of the human heart’ are satisfied and the deepest desires ‘for meaning, purpose and connection’ are met. On the hills, or wherever Leisure leads them, is where people find that ‘something larger than oneself’ which sustains their inner life [8]. Have the Guides even become a new Bible, the fells new churches and walking a new Faith? Perhaps that is so for many people; and if that is the case, I would add, there are worse choices that could be made, including some which are much more traditionally ‘religious’. Be that as it may, I suspect that there continue to be many people who are where AW was. They have little or no interest in ‘organised religion’ but they do have a leisure-based ‘spirituality’, interests, hobbies and commitments which give meaning and direction to their lives and which operate against a backdrop which says that life makes sense and that life, the universe and everything does have a meaning. AW concludes his last Guide like this, So this is farewell to the present series of books. The fleeting hour of life of those who love the hills is quickly spent, but the hills are eternal. Always there will be the lonely ridge, the dancing beck, the silent forest; always there will be the exhilaration of the summits. These are for the seeking, and those who seek and find while there is yet time will be blessed both in mind and body. I wish you all many happy days on the fells in the years ahead. There will be fair winds and foul, days of sun and days of rain. But enjoy them all. Good walking! And don’t forget – watch where you are putting your feet (7 Personal Notes 8). The big issue for the Church is to connect with people like AW and those to whom this final word is addressed, and the challenge is to show what difference to their well-being, if any, a more focused belief in God and a personal commitment to the Way of Jesus might make.
INTRODUCTION 1 The latest offerings include The Best of Wainwright: a Personal Selection by Hunter Davies (Frances Lincoln 2008), Wainwright’s TV Walks by Eric Robson (Frances Lincoln 2007), the DVDs of the two series of the BBC’s Wainwright’s Walks, Wainwright: the Man who loved the Lakes by Martin Wainwright (BBC 2007) as well as a Wainwright Anniversary Boxed Set of the Guides (Frances Lincoln 2007). 2 Marie McCarthy, ‘Spirituality in a Postmodern Era’ in The Blackwell Reader in Pastoral and Practical Theology, ed. Woodward and Pattison, Blackwell, 2000, p196. CHAPTER 1 1 What the full first verse of Ps 121 actually means is far from clear. All the modern translations read it as a question, eg NRSV, ‘I lift up my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come?’ and that is certainly how the Hebrew should be read. The Authorised Version, however, read it as a statement – ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help’. The next verse says that our help comes from God. So it is possible that the familiar words I have quoted here mean that the psalmist, possibly on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, looks up at the threatening and dangerous hills through which he must pass, and is comforted that God will look after him as he travels through them. Generations, however, have seen this verse differently and read it as referring to the inspiration we receive from the hills. My old tutor, John Eaton, puts it like this in his book on the Psalms published posthumously, ‘It is as though we look up to the hills from a valley of troubles, wondering where help is to come from’ (Psalms for Life, John Eaton, SPCK, 2006, p314). 2 The consequence of this is that if the Old Testament is neglected the result is a distorted form of Christianity. The Bible is indebted to the Old Testament for treatment of many of the big issues of life and faith, the ‘green’ agenda, for example, or issues of justice and peace. The New Testament says little or nothing on these and read by itself can produce a very narrow kind of Christianity preoccupied with personal spirituality and the life of the Church. The Old Testament lives on a bigger map. See my Let us bless the Lord: rediscovering the Old Testament through Psalm 103, Inspire, 2006. 3 See chapter 6 in my Who is this Jesus who was born of Mary? Truro Cathedral Ltd, 2009. CHAPTER 2 1 When George Mallory was asked why he wanted to climb Everest prior to his ill-fated attempt to climb it in 1924, his reply was simply ‘Because it’s there’. 2 See the quotation in the Introduction. 3 Pages 15-16 of my Let us bless the Lord: rediscovering the Old Testament through Psalm 103, Inspire, 2006. 4 See the quotation in the Introduction. 5 Verse 3 of ‘Stay Master stay, upon this heavenly hill’ by Samuel Greg (1804-1876). CHAPTER 3 1 This is the way the line is most often quoted these days, but the original read ‘Though every prospect …’. The line comes from the hymn ‘From Greenland’s icy mountains’ composed by Reginald Heber (1783-1826) on the eve of Whit Sunday in 1819. After dinner his father in law, who was Vicar of Wrexham, asked him to compose a hymn for the missionary service next day. Twenty minutes later it was done. 2 Dorothy Frances Gurney, 1858-1932. The poem is ‘God’s Garden’. 3 For a fuller treatment of this see chapter 4 of my Let us bless the Lord: rediscovering the Old Testament through Psalm 103, Inspire, 2006. CHAPTER 4 1 For a very similar quote about myxamatosis see the quotation from Ex-Fellwanderer in the Introduction. CHAPTER 5 1 The Church Times conducted a survey among Anglicans in the spring of 2001. 88% believed that there is life after death, 10% were not sure and 2% did not believe there is. 79% believed that heaven really existed, 17% were not sure and 4% did not believe. 46% believed that hell really existed, 34% were not sure, and 20% did not believe. For all the survey results see L Francis etc, Fragmented Faith, Paternoster, 2005. 2 The Nature of Hell, Evangelical Alliance, 2000, points 6, 7, 8 and 18 of the Conclusions and Recommendations. 3 These are the concluding words of his essay ‘The Problem of Gehenna’ in Resurrecting Jesus, T&T Clark, 2005, p100. The quotes from Percy Dearmer and Walter Wink are from pp57 and 58. 4 Particularly 1 Corinthians 3.13-15 and 1 Peter 1.7 with the Old Testament text of Malachi 3.3 being an important one in the background. 5 Verse 3 of ‘Eternal Light! Eternal Light!’ by Thomas Binney (1798-1874). 6 ‘Thoughts from Cardinal Hume – After Death’. Sorry but I’m not able to trace the source of this photocopy that I was given. CONCLUSION 1 There is some doubt about where the first quotation comes from. It is usually attributed to Epimenides of Crete (who lived around 600 BC and is also responsible for the rude quote about Cretans in Titus 1.12). There is also a poem, which may or may not be the one by Epimenides, in which the god in question is Zeus. The second is from the opening lines of a poem by Aratus or a similar one by Cleanthes, again referring to Zeus. 2 Included in pp29-30 of With God We Can, by the Rt Revd Bill Ind, Bishop of Truro, published in 2007 by the Truro Diocesan Board of Finance. The paragraph was reproduced in my quarterly column in the Coracle, news from the diocese of Truro, in May 2007. 3 The most famous of the contemporary ‘militant atheists’ is Richard Dawkins. He used to be an excellent scientist, a biologist who wrote with passion and clarity about his specialised subject in a way that ordinary mortals like me could both understand and think about. Recently, however, he has become something else. To the embarrassment of his scientist and atheist friends, he has become a ranter against religion. His latest best-seller The God Delusion (2006 – various editions) is written at the top of his voice. In it he gives examples of bad religion to demonstrate that all religion is bad – bad for the individuals who practice it, and for the wellbeing of societies and communities. There is, of course, some bad religion about, and those of us who know the Church from the inside could give Dawkins some better examples than the rather tired old ones he uses. But Dawkins doesn’t stop to listen, he belts out his case against God and religion with gusto, and many will hear it and agree with it. Fortunately he has been answered in a very good little book written by someone who is both a competent scientist and a competent theologian, Alister McGrath. His book, The Dawkins Delusion, co-written with Joanna Collicutt McGrath (SPCK 2007) isn’t a rant, but a careful reply which shows that Dawkins has got carried away by his own rhetoric and that this has distorted his science as well as his views on religion. Both are books to be read, and if you’ve got friends who’ve read Dawkins, then you should get them to read McGrath as well. There is also Deluded by Dawkins: A Christian Response to the God Delusion by Andrew P Wilson (Kingsway 2007). 4 Another one of my little ditties I’m afraid. 5 My Why Bible-believing Methodists shouldn’t eat Black Pudding (Southleigh 1996) is long out of print, but it can be downloaded free from this site. 6 Although they are both over twenty years old, the best books on Fundamentalism are the two by James Barr, Fundamentalism (SCM, second edition, 1981) and Escaping from Fundamentalism (SCM 1984). 7 One of the best recent books which alerts us to the issues here is Martyn Atkins splendid book, Resourcing Renewal, Inspire, 2007. The ‘Fresh Expressions’ website at www.freshexpressions.org.uk is full of examples of what can be done, not all of which will appeal to everyone of course. There is no blueprint or formula by which the Church can ‘serve the present age’ rather than the previous one, or even the one before that. What matters, surely, is that we recognise the urgency of the present situation and then, without panicking, think, talk and pray about it. 8 See the quotation from Marie McCarthy in the Introduction.
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