�鶹��

Available for over a year

Good Morning. “When you go into someone’s house, you’re not the one who sets the rules. You don’t put your feet on their table”. So said Jean Marc Peillex, Mayor of St Gervais, in response to the astonishing number of tourists who are littering the summit of Mont Blanc, some even leaving random objects behind. The French President Emmanuel Macron went to look for himself this week following complaints to the Elysee Palace from the Mayor that a free for all on the mountain was risking lives and damaging the environment. The President announced new security measures and fines to stamp out the high level environmental pollution. Each day, around 300 people manage to reach the summit of Mont Blanc: the vast majority are simply there to marvel at the spectacle. Mountains are inherently places of true perspective. They are where we go if, or when, we want the bigger view, not only of a far-reaching landscape, but of the context of our own life and existence. Whether mountaineering, skiing or just climbing more leisurely to a summit, the high point of a mountain is always somewhere to see things differently. It is quite something to experience the combined exhilaration and excitement either with others or, as if often the case, as a place of solitude and encounter. As such, mountains play a key role in many world religions. Indeed, the Holy Land is littered with mountains; of all shapes and sizes. What they have in common is that each stands out from what lies below. They play a massive part in the story of salvation from Mount Nebo in the east [from where Moses decided which direction to take] to Hermon in the north as well as the diminutive Mount of Olives in the heart of the City of Jerusalem – the venue for Jesus’ triumphant entry into the City for the last time. Bruce Chilton, who taught me in Sheffield, was clear that the Old Testament understanding of mountains as places of revelation was built on by the evangelists in the New Testament. Key things in the books of the bible mainly happen on a mountain. And, more often than not, it is on the mountain top that God communicates his message to his people. In the emerging, fast-moving environmental narrative, Mount Blanc this week became the latest icon to represent two simple things. First, that there is no limit to the height of human folly in polluting the earth. And secondly that, as the local mayor in France was so quick to point out, countering anti-social-environmental behaviour wherever it happens, is all of our business in order to ensure that our view of the world isn’t further distorted.