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Good morning. The Davos conference is underway - the rich and powerful are gathering in the mountains for the 52nd World Economic Forum, with the theme being 'Cooperation in a Fragmented World'. I am always struck by the choice of the Alps for this annual summit, as we might appropriately refer to it. In many traditions mountains are associated with divinity, revelation and insight. The Greek gods dwell on a mountain. Moses goes to the mountaintop to converse with God. And Nietzsche - not a religionist - went to the mountains to rise above the everyday, to look down on the world and to think more clearly in the clear blue air. But though Jesus goes up a mountain for what is termed his transfiguration, the most important thing about that story, I think, is that Jesus very quickly scoots down the mountain. Peter, who in the Gospel stories tends to get it either very right or very wrong, here gets it wrong by offering to build some shelters so Jesus can stay on the mountain. But Jesus hastily and deliberately goes from the height to the depths - from the majestic mountain tops, down to a scene from low life. At the foot of the mountain a father has brought to Jesus a boy who shrieks and foams at the mouth in convulsions. It is not pretty - and if we saw it happening in a market square near us, we would probably turn away in revulsion, or with that most English of sentiments, embarrassment. But Jesus takes the boy by the hand, and returns him, healed, to his father. Money, success, power - the things that count for glory in the world and get you a cherished invitation to Davos - are about rising above the plains, scrambling up the slopes, and coming out on top. It is on the peaks, in lonely and isolated splendour, that true greatness is thought to dwell. But Jesus was committed to a quite different creed - greatness is found not in living on the mountaintops above the plains, but in living with and for those who exist in the lowland. True humanity is found not in lonely magnificence, but in fellowship and solidarity even with the distressed, the diseased, and the disconcerting. The world we have is not one built on this creed. Imagine life were a game - and you could choose to play or not to play. Looking soberly at the life chances of most people on the planet, you would at least pause before you decided whether or not you would join in, and looking at the lack of life chances for the least well off, you might just choose to give this game a miss altogether. I will lift up mine eyes to the hills' - or 'mountains' - says the Psalmist, and asks - 'from where shall my help come?' That question, posed by the world's poor, hangs over the Davos conference.