Summits of Vision
A Journey through the Mountain Peaks of My Life
“What is it that draws us to the tops of hills and mountains? How can we explain that special thrill of touching the stones of the summit cairn? Whether our aspirations roam the Alps or Himalayas, or are content merely with the humble hillsides of our neighbourhood, there is something powerfully attractive about the top of a hill. Not surprisingly, hilltops are significant landmarks in our human search to connect to the divine.”[1]
I’m reading a book at the moment. I picked it up in a charity shop, one of those lazy buys that look like they might be interesting and cost only pence so, well… why not?
I’m glad that I bothered with this one. It’s called ‘Sacred Spaces: Stations on a Celtic Way’ and it’s by a lady named Margaret Silf who is, apparently, a “writer and retreat leader” and has been described by the Tablet as “one of the most talented spiritual writers”.
The book posits that, for the Celts, certain places were sacred. As a confirmed pilgrim and seeker out of thin places, that caught my eye. I expected a run down of top Celtic holy sites but Silf takes a different approach. Instead, she introduces seven types of sacred space and then explores how they can help us on our life’s pilgrimage.
The place types are locations such as wells, groves, springs, and so on. But the chapter that has most inspired me has been the one on hilltops.
Despite being rather rounder than my doctor says I should be, I actually enjoy climbing hills and mountains. It’s damned hard work but, on the summit, so long as the day is clear, the reward is worth it. Any veteran of the Camino Frances will long remember the views from the slog over the Pyrenees, as well as the climbs and descents to and from the Cruz de Ferro and O Cebreiro. Just as memorable for me was when I ascended Croagh Patrick in Ireland, the holy mountain where the famous saint once spent forty days and nights, and Cader Idris in Wales, a peak that it is said, he who attains the summit shall return either a poet or a madman (I shall leave you to decide which I am). I loved the view from the top, a stunning vista all around, picking out recognisable landmarks like Mt. Snowdon to the north, Bardsey Island in the Irish Sea, Barmouth where I spent my childhood holidays and the distant peak of Pen-y-Fan to the south. A familiar world seen from a whole new perspective.
In her book though, Silf sees the mountain peaks as something more as a metaphor.
“A friend once spoke to me of what we might call ‘seasons of the heart’. He pointed out that very often the course of an individual’s life reveals a number of cycles, commonly lasting around seven years… These thoughts led me to ponder the nature of the ‘seven-year cycles’ in my own life, and I found it helpful to picture each such cycle as a ‘hill’ in my inner landscape. This chapter is an opportunity for you to walk the range of hills that your own life has set before you, and notice what they reveal of your journey so far, and what vision they open up for the years to come.”[2]
I liked this idea, particularly when, as she expanded upon it, Silf stressed that the cycles are about seven years long, but can be both longer or shorter, and also that they always seem to begin with what might be called a “life-giving moment”.
So, after reading the chapter, I retired to the sauna which is where I go several times a week to ruminate, and had a think about the life-giving moments and cycles of my life. And, as I thought about them, they emerged with clarity and, I began to feel that they might be a useful way of reviewing one’s spiritual journey, both as a mental exercise or also, whilst on an actual pilgrimage (for example, each climb on your Camino could become an opportunity to reflect upon a spiritual peak in your life).
All of which left me with a problem, namely that I don’t like doing listicle articles, considering them to be lazy writing. But I can’t see a way around it, so here goes, journey with me over the seven peaks of my life thus far. And we start at the place where Silf suggests all of our lives begin, that most significant moment of them all: our birth…
Peak #1: Birth
11/09/1977, Maternity Ward, City General Hospital, Stoke-on-Trent, UK
“We can all begin our stories with the same ‘life-giving moment’. Whatever the pattern of our subsequent lives, however the unwelcoming circumstances of our birth, we all came into existence as a result, quite literally, of an outpouring of energy between our parents. Our lives began with that fusion of two living cells, carrying a unique mix of genes, and energised by a power that we can, perhaps, most truly call ‘desire’.”
So, I choose my first peak as the moment of my birth. Maybe conception would have been better (there always seems to be two or three options for these “life-giving moments” that are related) but this one is more easily fixed. Besides, I remember neither, but it was important so here we are. I entered the world at that time and in that place and so began my first cycle of life, that of innocent early childhood, dependent on my parents who, thanks be to God, were both good and kind people. My memories are vague from this period, but they are not unhappy. My parents and other family members cared for me and taught me and prepared me for the next cycle when I would start to think and act for myself as an independent being…
Peak #2: Over the Horizon
c.1984: Draycott-en-le-Moors, UK
When you’re a kid you don’t record things. You’re too much in the moment. That makes it harder to pinpoint a peak though. However, I know mine. It occurred when I was around seven years old. I grew up in a small village in Staffordshire. I went to the local primary school and my friendship circle was all from the same streets around me. We’d go to one another’s houses to play or, in the summer, knock about on the street itself.
But when I reached around seven something changed. I began to be allowed out of my mum’s sight. I went with some of the other boys into the fields behind our house or at the top of the road. There we would roam about, playing games of make-believe, imagining that this clump of trees was actually a fortress and that stream a mighty river. Filled with the adventures of the Famous Five that I would read late at night, my mind went into overdrive.
However, after a short while, even this was not enough. My mates were cool, I guess, but they were never as adventurous as me. There was something about the horizon that called, particularly the one at the top of the road to the north. I knew that beyond it, somewhere, were the wild hills of the Pennines and then, beyond them, Scotland, a country that I had never been but heard much about. When we went to Wales on holiday with its mystical mountains and legends about dragons, I was told that, whilst Wales was beautiful and wild, Scotland was something else. And beyond Scotland, lay the cold sea and, beyond that, the North Pole.
Yes, I was, am, and always shall be, a romantic.
So, one day, I forgot my friends and set out alone. I walked north, through the familiar fields to the Sinking Pond that Jason Fowell had shown me, but then I carried on further. I headed for that horizon and before me opened up a great vista, a wide valley just waiting to be explored. Over the summers that followed I traversed every field, charted every pond, and fought my way through every forest (well, copse…). This was my kingdom to explore, and I was the Hiram Bingham or Dr. Livingston of my day. That day a spark of independence and a passion for exploration was lit. After the fields of my village, it morphed into riding the rails to such exotic destinations as Matlock, Crewe, Grantham and, later on, North Wales. The world was mine to roam and it was beautiful.
I don’t think I have ever been happier.
Peak #3: Steaming Ahead
1991: The Foxfield Light Railway, UK
An odour of grease and steam filled the air as I entered into the large shed through the metal door. I was excited yet afraid. This was a different world, one that I was totally unaccustomed to. A world away from the corridors of high school, the cottage core of home and the green fields of my childhood explorations, this was a man’s world, populated by people named either Bob or Dave who referred to one another as “Gaffer” or “Youth”. They ate food called “snapping” and were well-versed in the differences between a Whitworth and a metric screw thread.
All my life, I had been obsessed with trains. One of my earliest memories was of drawing a picture on my first day at school. “What a lovely picture of a train going over a bridge!” my teacher, Mrs. Holliman had exclaimed. “It’s not a bridge, it’s a viaduct!” I had retorted.
So, it was that several months before I was legally able to do so, on the recommendation of one of the Daves (he had been my granddad’s apprentice at Creda years before), I had joined as a volunteer at the local steam railway. All my life I had dreamt of driving a train; now I would have the opportunity to do so. It was something that I wanted to do so very much, but I was also petrified. I was a boy entering a man’s world; a world of engineering and practicality whereas I had always been more of an artistic bent. But I was determined to do well even though I was too shy to look the Daves and Bobs in the eyes, let alone refer to them by their names.
I stayed as a volunteer at the Foxfield Light Railway all the way up until university and it taught me much about adult life. I learnt that, try as I might, I was never going to be an engineer and that my practical abilities were limited at best. Becoming an engine driver was never my destiny although I did manage it once, driving the 0–6–0ST ‘Wimblebury’ on a Friends of Thomas day when the platform was crammed with people. However, instead I found my niche. In the shop and the booking office; restoring old coaches and walking the track. And I am still a member. Indeed, I currently edit the railway’s magazine.
Foxfield introduced me to the world of work and the world of men. But it also did something else. It taught me that it was okay to be different. So what if my mates at school cared more for Nike Air trainers than Peckett tank engines? Who cares if my classmates could recite the latest WWF wrestlers whilst I was better-versed on industrial locomotive manufacturers? They might not get me, but Foxfield taught me that there were other people who did. That it is okay to be eccentric. That your tribe is out there waiting for you…
Peak #4: Greek Night
03/07/1996: Taverna Gloupos, Corfu, Greece
The moment I read of the concept of life-giving moments, this is the one that sprung to my mind. It is the seminal one. Even at the time I knew that it marked a profound change. It is the highest peak of them all, perhaps the moment when I grew up and became a man.
I’d just finished Sixth Form at the time and was on a package holiday with my mate Wozza to the Greek party isle of Corfu, a reward to self, saved up over many months, for completing my A-levels before I entered university. It was my first foreign trip alone and only my second time on an aeroplane.
When we’d arrived at the airport, we’d been greeted by our Kosmar rep. Her name was Linzi and she was a perma-tanned scouser who would have done well on Love Island had such a show been on our TV screens back then. Wozza fancied her and so, when she offered a trip to a “traditional Greek night” at which she would be attending, he signed us up.
When the coach arrived though, there was not one rep but two. The other was a stunning blonde with a Lancashire accent who introduced herself as Melissa. I sat next to her on the bus and found her to be engaging and fun. We wangled it so that when we arrived, we were also sat alongside our two favourite reps for the meal. We chatted, danced and had fun.
And I was in love.
My life was changed irrevocably. But it wasn’t just dreams about a lifetime spent on the beach with Rochdale’s most desirable damsel, although I did mope about thinking of her and even write an awful poem in her honour. It was more what she said:
“What do you think about it here in Corfu?”
“I love it! I wish I could stay longer than just a fortnight.”
“Why don’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why don’t you? I came four years ago on holiday and liked it and so stayed. Lots of people do. There are plenty of jobs in bars or tavernas. Repping isn’t my main one; I work for the local doctor in the day. You could do the same. Just find some work, rent an apartment and don’t go back to the shitty life in Britain.”
It all sounded so simple… and appealing. Life is a beach… well, it is if you are brave enough to make the leap. What’s stopping you? Do you wish to stay miserable like all the folks back home, or spend your life with sun, sea, sand and, who knows, maybe even some sex with sirens like Melissa and Linzi?
Needless to say, I did not stay. I had a ticket back and my parents would be worrying about me. But Melissa and I did become friends. I spent most of that trip hanging out with her at the local doctor’s surgery, drinking fruit juice in the day and cocktails at night. And when I did return home, something had changed and the more I asked myself, “Why not?” the more I struggled to find a riposte. So, only a couple of months later, I boarded the plane again for Corfu, this time to stay.
It didn’t work. I hadn’t thought things out. Corfu is a summer-only destination, and the season was drawing to a close. But I had an amazing time partying with Melissa and the other reps and living the island life. And when I did return home a second time, the worst having happened, I did not feel disheartened. If that was as bad as it gets, what would the good outcome be like? I took a year out of life and changed my outlook forever. Several months later I was on a plane to Tel Aviv to volunteer on an Israeli kibbutz and after that the rest was history.
Put simply, before the Greek Night and before Melissa I had always followed the trodden path and never thought outside of the box. Afterwards, I was ready to take a risk…
Peak #5: Settling Down
06/08/2003: Heathrow Airport, London, UK
Of all the life-giving moments, this next one was both the hardest to pinpoint and to explore. And the reason for that is clear, as Silf explains:
“If any of your dreams has appeared to end in disappointment, don’t throw it away! Receive it now into your sacred space, and let it show you how the experience of that disappointment has also shaped the years which followed. Probably, if you can distance yourself from the immediate pain of it, you can begin to notice how that difficult time has helped to form you into who you really are, more surely than the easier conquests might have done.”[3]
The fact is that the next cycle in my life was one of the most difficult and, ultimately, unsuccessful. It is harder to pinpoint the life-giving moment, but the truth is, life has its ups and downs, and not every day is rosy, nor every choice made the right one.
The peak that I have chosen was boarding a Singapore Airways plane at Heathrow Airport on the 6th August 2003 and the title I have given this moment is ‘Settling Down’. That may seem a little strange since the location may seem to be more one of action and adventure but let me explain.
Ever since that memorable Greek Night in Corfu when Melissa invited me to live out my dreams, my life had been one of adventuring. I had lived in Corfu and also out in Israel on a kibbutz. I had been introduced to the world of backpacking and I had learnt that my passion for travel, begun when I first wandered over the horizon in my home village, was unquenchable. Even though I later returned to the UK to attend university, I spent every holiday travelling and sought out friends far afield. And after university I moved out to Japan where my adventures and explorations continued, before then taking an epic two-month backpacking trip across Asia to Bulgaria where I then lived for another year.
In Heathrow I had just finished another backpacking expedition — two weeks overland from Bulgaria to the UK — and I was about to fly out to Vietnam where I intended to live but this time it was different.
Very different.
It hadn’t worked with Melissa. We became friends and still are. She was my first serious crush and not the last. But when I was living in Japan, I got involved with a Vietnamese girl named Thao who lived in the next village. We started dating and got engaged. I had some misgivings, but I pushed them to one side. I had my employment in Bulgaria already arranged but I made a promise to her: I would be there a year and then I would come to Vietnam, and we would marry. Me getting on that plane at Heathrow was the fulfilment of that vow.
Looking back, we probably should never have married. We were good together but not wildly in love. I was still recovering from being abandoned by a girl at university whom I had fallen for truly, madly, and deeply. We were good together, Thao and I, we had fun, but, upon reflection, we were always probably better friends than partners.
But there were other factors at play. As a child, I had always been close to my father. He shared a very close and happy marriage with my mother. When I’d asked him what was the best value for money he had ever received, he said the five pounds that he’d spent on his marriage licence. For him, life had been fulfilled through marriage and the message was clear: the route to happiness is to wed the girl, have a couple of kids and settle down as a nuclear family.
If he were alive today, I’d take issue with him on this, but he isn’t. He died in a car crash after that Greek Night and before the Heathrow departure. To be fair to him though, we all speak from our own experience, and he was only advising what had worked for him. My brother, who is quite similar to dad, took that route and it worked for him too.
We are not all the same though and, after I flew out to Vietnam, I slowly learnt that. I did marry Thao and I did live with her. I kept all my vows and respected her family and culture. The result though, was not bliss and contentment, but frustration. I dreamt of being out on the road, of freedom. She dreamt of creating a home. We moved back to the UK, but it didn’t really change things. We weren’t exactly unhappy, but we weren’t in marital bliss either. It was as good as it gets, a resignation to the fact that life isn’t perfect.
I am not married now, but I’ll tell that tale in the next peak. However, looking back, I believe that I had to go through it. I had to try the route that I had been prepared for my entire life if only to learn that it wasn’t for me. Some people say that it was Thao, the wrong girl, and that is partly true, but the greater truth is that it was me. I am not a homebuilder, not the marrying type. Even as I climbed onto that plane, I probably knew it deep down. I was not excited about going, but I did it anyway.
Which is another point of self-learning: when I make a vow, I keep it. I had promised Thao and so, even though I was extremely happy in Bulgaria and did not want to leave, I did so. I am a man of my word.
And generally, that is good although, as the example of Ram in the Ramayana shows, sometimes it can be harmful too. His rigid adherence to duty hamstrings him and causes great injustice to befall Sita, his beloved. So, another learning from this period is to be careful what you promise; you might regret having to keep the vow…
Peak #6: Fatherhood
25/12/2007, Maternity Ward, City General Hospital, Stoke-on-Trent, UK
It’s weird when you think about it, that two of life’s peaks should have taken place in the same location, and a pretty nondescript location at that, but any parent will tell you that the birth of a child is a miracle, and so maternity hospitals are naught less than miracle factories.
On Christmas Day 2007 my son Thomas was born. I can’t remember much about the birth, even though I was present for the entire thing. Thao had been in labour for a long time before he came out, an unmatchable Christmas present. No, all I recall is an intense feeling of love and emotion for this new little person in my life.
Yet Tom’s birth was more than just him. On the day he arrived, my mum split up with her long-term boyfriend. He’d demanded she do something with him, and she’d told him that family come first and walked away. And, looking back, I also realise that his birth signalled the end of my marriage with Thao which is why I cite this date as my next peak.
We had both wanted a child intensely and had not been finding it easy. She’d got pregnant before and miscarried which had hurt deeply and caused us to be cautious with announcing this one. But the pregnancy went full-term and Tom came out healthy.
And it was with his arrival that the glue that was holding our marriage together was broken. We’d got what we wanted from one another and so why stick around? I know that sounds like the opposite of most traditional narratives on wedlock — children are meant to reinforce the union — but we were not like other couples. I take my vows seriously and so I had lived for Thao, but now someone more important had come along.
Not that I would have ever left Thao, for that would have meant abandoning my promise. But she had an affair and left me and, unlike the girl at university, I was almost glad of it. Not at the time of course; at the time I felt a failure and angry. But looking back, her affair gave me back my freedom.
But it was a different freedom. Freedom with a purpose and I poured myself into fatherhood. All the things that had annoyed me about my own dad — how he wanted to do everything as a family whereas I longed for one-to-one time — I now rectified with Tom. We became best mates and all my youthful adventures I could now share with someone else. As he grew we went camping, I fed his interest in Roman history, railways, Vikings and castles. We got a camper van and rode around Europe; I introduced him to my eccentric friends, and we made silly YouTube videos together. Even though I longed to be abroad, away from a despondent and directionless Britain, I stuck around for him and was rewarded with his love and laughter. On Christmas Day 2007, my life changed forever. I now had a purpose…
Peak #7: Spiritual Awakening
25/12/2018, Camino de Santiago, nr. Refuge Orisson, France
I was a bit torn with this one, my final peak thus far in my life. Immediately, when I read about the concept of a life-giving moment, climbing the Pyrenees on my first Camino jumped to mind, but then so did another moment, one that took place right across on the other side of the world three years earlier.
I was in North Korea of all places, fulfilling a lifelong ambition of exploring the hermit state. We were on a homestay in a fishing village and our group had been invited to participate in some traditional wrestling with the villagers. I had joined in and when grappling a local suddenly I felt a surge of pain rush through my body and my leg crumpled beneath me.
It could not have happened in a worse place; the one country that no travel insurance covers, miles from the nearest hospital. Thankfully, one of our party was a doctor and he had a look and assured me that I had no broken anything, it was most likely a torn ligament. However, the immediate thought that had gone through my mind as I’d fallen was one of horror: I shall never be able to walk Camino now!
I’m not sure when the idea of walking the Camino de Santiago first entered my head, but it was probably after reading Paulo Coelho’s ‘The Pilgrimage’. Slowly it had grown from a vague notion to a definite desire, but there in North Korea, it seemed like the dream was to be destroyed and I was devastated.
It took me several months before I could walk normally again and a couple of years before I actually travelled out to St. Jean Pied de Port to begin my walk. On my first day I did a few easy clicks to the Hunto Albergue. I woke up early the next, full of vim and vigour, confident of conquering the twenty kilometres or so to Roncesvalles. Here’s what happened next:
“I had barely walked a hundred metres when I had to stop. The gradient was steep, and I could barely manage it. I continued but it only got worse. Every few metres I needed to halt, sweat cascading from my brow, my heart pumping like never before. And, to make matters worse, all the time a steady stream of pilgrims passed me by. Young and old, from all over the world, male and female, all walked faster, and all were fitter. I felt awful. I wanted them to go away. I needed to be alone in my misery and exhaustion. I kept stopping, as if the views were so spectacular that one just couldn’t resist drinking them in fully. They were spectacular of course, but it was all a lie. I stopped because, physically, I could not continue. My nightmares of the previous two evenings were coming true. Forget even the mountain hut, I wouldn’t even make it to Orisson, the last albergue in France, only two kilometres further on. I grimaced and continued but it was hopeless. It was pathetic. Less than seven kilometres into a journey of eight hundred and I had failed. My long-held Camino dream was always going to be just that: a dream, unobtainable. St. Peter would not be opening the gates to this particular heaven.
‘Are you alright?’
It was a female voice. She was, as all pilgrims aside from me seemed to be, thin and sporty and not suffering as I was.
‘Yeah, thanks,’ I grunted. ‘I’ll manage; I’m just struggling a bit.’
She stopped and smiled. ‘It helps to talk you know.’
‘I don’t think I can talk; I’m struggling to breathe.’
‘Then I’ll talk at you.’
‘I’ll only slow you down.’
‘Don’t worry about it. My name’s Jacquie, what’s yours?’
And in that moment my Camino changed.”[4]
More than any other, this truly was a life-giving moment. Jacquie saved me from turning back and gave me the courage to continue. More than that though, she became my first Camino Amigo, and, during the following days, we opened up to one another emotionally. And on top of those boons, I learned something deep about myself: I had a deep fear of dependency. My first thought was about slowing her down. I was petrified of being dependent on others and having them dependent on me. Further meditations and conversations made me realise that this was due to both losing my dad in a car crash when I was in my early twenties, and then having a relationship where the lady I loved had left me for another. The subconscious message was clear: people leave you either by choice or fate. You cannot rely on them and they on you, so fear dependency. It leads only to misery.
What that moment began was a period of opening up emotionally. As I walked and talked with peregrinos and then back at home, I allowed myself to be vulnerable. I also explored issues from the past, including dad’s death, that I’d never really dealt with at the time. I opened myself up to the opposite sex again and began several serious friendships with girls who have changed my life. It also reignited my faith life, not only through pilgrimage but exploring the Divine Feminine and new directions as eclectic as past lives, monasticism, and Sufism. These essays are a result of that day. The day when I truly awoke spiritually on the road to Santiago.
Summing up the Summits
But what can you learn from this quick journey along the peaks of my life. Well, in short, I guess the obvious answer is to use this example to examine and explore your own life. Does it have cycles roughly equivalent to seven years? What were the life-giving moments for you?
As you investigate them, bear in mind these points from Silf’s book about her “life-giving moments”:
· They begin from desire;
· The desire results in a fresh outpouring of energy;
· The energy fuels the living out and working out of the initial desire;
· The surge of energy seems to be given for a purpose, which will be worked out in the years ahead.
All of mine were connected with desires. The desire of my parents that resulted in birth; my desire to explore beyond the horizon, my desire to work with steam trains and so on. And all resulted in a surge of energy which took my life in a new direction, sometimes anticipated, usually not. If the life-giving moment worked and resulted in a progression in your life such as mine in Taverna Gloupos, why was this? And if not, such as when I was boarding that plane at Heathrow, what can you learn from the experience?
And so those were my peaks. I hope that you learnt something from climbing them with me. Now let me look at those six other types of spiritual place; crossing places, thresholds, hmm…
Written 22–29/05/2024 Smallthorne, UK
Copyright © 2024, Matthew E. Pointon
[1] Sacred Spaces, p.52
[2] Sacred Spaces, p.53
[3] Sacred Spaces, p.60
[4] Adapted from my account of walking the Camino, ‘In Search of Lyly’.