[Dialogue] Spong 6-29

[kroegerd@aol.com]

June 29, 2005
Lessons Learned Walking 192 Miles Across England 

It had its ups and downs, its heights and its depths. My wife, her daughter (my stepdaughter) and I set out on May 21st to walk the Coast-to-Coast trail across England. We began at St. Bees on the Irish Sea. Eighteen days later, weary, limping but unbowed, we placed our feet in the waters of the North Sea at a place called Robin Hood's Bay. 
On our journey we ate some of the worst English pub food imaginable. I have come to the conclusion that frozen green peas are best used to reduce swelling in one's aching joints. They should never be confused with edible food. But we also met an Englishman who runs a "Bed and Breakfast" in the town of Richmond in Yorkshire only because he is a gourmet chef. His "Restaurant on the Green" is reserved for those people who stay at his bed and breakfast, a maximum of four, and who choose to have him prepare their evening meal. He takes orders before 5 p.m. from a rather lengthy menu and at 7 p.m. produces an elegant four-course meal individually created according to each person's selection. It was the first time any of us had had a personal chef prepare our dinner. 
We stayed in some comfortable B and Bs with all the amenities one could desire. But we also stayed in a farmhouse where the three of us shared a single bathroom with a family of four. Some of the beds we tried to sleep on would have caused even that perennial college freshman, well inebriated on Spring break at Daytona Beach, to complain about the sleeping facilities. Others, however, were wonderfully firm. 
We battled the elements on four of the days of this walk. A driving rain pelted both the countryside and us for the first three days as we trudged along treacherous mountain trails in the Lake District. Every path was flowing with water, sometimes ankle deep. Every rock was slippery. On that third day, walking along the south side of Ennerdale Water, we confronted the fact that streams draining from the mountain into this lake were in full flood. Normally these rivulets were trickles over which walkers stepped easily. Now they were rushing torrents six to eight feet wide as they crossed our path alongside the lake, forcing us each time to climb 25-50 yards up the mountain until we could find a place narrow enough to jump over. They seemed to come about 10 times every mile. On that same day, gale force winds were added to our woes and a major crossing that we had to navigate to get to our evening destination was impassable, forcing us to walk over Scarth Gap and down to Lake Buttermere. That descent was steep, slippery and treacherous. The winds blew my hat off never to be seen again. The gusts picked up my plastic rain gear and swirled it around my face, blinding me momentarily. My glasses were so wet that they became an impediment to seeing and had to be removed. Three times I fell on that downward trek. Once it was the wind that knocked me over spraining my hand. On the second occasion my two feet literally went out from under me, sitting me down on the rocky mountainside so hard that the residual pain is still with me. The third time, only one foot slipped twisting behind my back as I hit the ground. I lay there for a few moments, the rain pelting down, trying to assess the damage. The ankle was painful, but I still had at least a mile left to go to reach the bottom of that mountain, so regardless of the injury, there was nothing else to do but persevere by placing one foot in front of the other. It took me two hours to reach the road where I was picked up and taken to Keswick to the home of friends. When I was safely in a warm house, I discovered the ankle to be badly swollen. Every step was now difficult. A trip to the hospital the next morning confirmed a sprain not a break for which I was grateful. The ankle was bound but this meant that I was not to walk again for three to five days. On the third day of my involuntary withdrawal the swelling was down enough to try again. I walked about four blocks, every step excruciating, and retired again. On the fourth day, I did more than a mile. Things were improving. On the fifth day, I rejoined the hike and went ten miles. Finally the weather was also improving. I walked at a slower pace than my walking companions, but we all arrived at our destination each day after that. The ankle would swell every night but be back to normal by morning. 
At my age I don't worry much about mortality but I do worry about stupidity. On the top of those slippery mountains I wondered why I had agreed to what at that point seemed like a nonsensical ordeal. Given the elements, I knew that I had not the skills, the training or the strength to do in these circumstances what I was trying to do. I would have given up then and there but this trip had been my wife's dream for years. Our daughter had joined us to celebrate her return from service in Iraq as a member of the United States Marines. I did not want to let them down. If I left, they would leave. Being together, they said, was more important than finishing the hike. I read that as pressure. They read my response as "pride." It was a tense moment. I would never voluntarily place myself or those I love into what was a state of physical danger, perhaps of life, certainly of limb. The human mind and the human ego are strange indeed. But finally we decided that the hike would continue. My wife and daughter, with a great sense of accomplishment, completed every step - probably more than the announced 192 miles since they got lost on several occasions and walked extra miles to get back on the trail. With my time out to allow the ankle to heal, I nonetheless managed to do more than 150 miles. It was not complete, but it was sufficient to know that given better weather and a slower pace, I am quite sure I could have gone the full distance. Indeed, I have no sense of failure for a journey by foot of over 150 miles for a person 74 years old still feels like a major accomplishment. 
This walk forced many thoughts into my consciousness. First, I wonder why it is that some human beings, and I must be one of them, feel led to press the limits of their endurance. It is a trait as old as human history. Human beings are, by definition, boundary-breaking creatures. We climb Mt. Everest or go to the moon simply because they are there. We explore the Arctic and Antarctica because they cry out to be explored. If our name is Magellan we sail off in ships on an ocean even when we do not know what, if anything, lies at the edge of that sea. If our name is Abraham we leave Ur of the Chaldees to form a new nation. If our name is Moses we leave Egypt for the wilderness. If we are astronauts we leave this earth drawn by the mystery of space. It seems to be part of our human nature to vacate the secure for the insecure. Sometimes, the results are disastrous. Remember the Challenger. Sometimes the journey opens a whole new world. Remember Columbus. But some part of humanity always seems to operate on the boundaries. More and more I have come to believe that it is precisely on these very boundaries of our humanity that we experience that dimension of life that we call 'transcendence,' 'holiness,' and 'God.' I note that our words describing God, omnipotent, omni-present, infinity, immortality, omniscient, and many more, are actually framed when we reach the limits of our humanity. That humanity seems to bind everything but our ability to dream, to entertain visions and even to soar among the 'gods.' Realizing that, I could not help but wonder why organized religion so often develops into a system that impedes dreams, shuns mystery and diminishes consciousness. That was the content of my first meditation. 
Second, I marveled at the fact that every English village seems to have a parish church in its center. Many of them are not active in the way they once were. One church sign advertised Sunday worship at a different hour of the day on each of the Sundays of the month. Secularity is clearly the major religion of the western world today, but what a powerful symbol it still is to see a village built around a church. Buried in the churchyards are those earlier citizens of each village and in that revered building all the people of the village are baptized, married and buried. Forgetting for a moment the life-repressing theology that so often emanates from holy places today, church buildings, nonetheless, point to dimensions of life that cannot be contained in human forms; they also are the places in which our lives touch this transcendence at least at our births, our marriages and our deaths. As such church buildings still possess great power for me. 
Third, I was deeply impressed with the downright goodness of the people that we met on this walk. Fellow walkers helped one another over difficult terrain time after time. Experienced walkers advised inexperienced ones. People along the way were ever gracious when we knocked on their doors and asked for help. Sometimes they provided a ride, sometimes a phone, sometimes information and sometimes a cup of tea. No one ever seemed to be annoyed. On the day I sprained my ankle, the care I received was amazing. Random acts of kindness do not make the daily press, so we tend to think that life is bestial, base and corrupt. However, when one goes out into the world, one discovers that there is still a kindness about humanity. I returned vowing to see that this quality finds deeper expression in my life and to be ashamed of those times when my needs are greater than my ability to be sensitive to others. I also learned that tiredness and irritability go hand in hand. So, one way to increase the love present in this world is to stay in good physical condition and not to press the boundaries of my endurance. 
The walk from the Irish Sea to the North Sea was for me a spiritual act that involved self-knowledge, repentance, confession, forgiveness, exhilaration, transcendence and worship. Do I recommend it to you? I recommend it to those who have the stamina, the training, the wisdom and the maturity to take it all in stride. I will never forget it but I never want to repeat it! 

-- John Shelby Spong 
Note from the Editor: Bishop Spong's new book is available now at bookstores everywhere and by clicking here! 
Question and Answer
With John Shelby Spong
Peter Coates from New Market, Ontario, writes: 
Have you read Tom Harpur's The Pagan Christ? What are your thoughts concerning his belief that Christianity was copied from pagan religions that existed many years before Christ? Mr. Harpur, probably the most well-known and popular religious writer in Canada, even says there is no historical evidence for the existence of Jesus. So many of the events reported in the Bible have a very similar event in the pagan religions (e.g., dying on a cross, rising on the third day, miracles, etc.) Your thoughts? 
Dear Peter, 
I know Tom Harpur and admire him. His latest book, The Pagan Christ, has been on Canada's best selling list since it came out. It is well written and exciting to read. Tom bases his case on two primary sources, which he quotes at length. I am not convinced that either his sources or Tom Harpur make his case. 
When you read The Epistle to the Galatians, you will discover that Paul gives a rather graphic account of his activities since his conversion. The noted Church historian Adolf Harnack has dated that conversion not less than one year or more than six after the crucifixion. This would mean that if we date the crucifixion about 30 C.E., which is the best estimate of scholars today, that Paul came into the Christian Church somewhere between 31 and 36 C.E. Paul writes (Gal. 1:17,18) that following his conversion he went to Arabia for three years. This would bring us to 34 to 39 C.E. After those three years he says he went to Jerusalem to consult with Cephas i.e. Peter. He describes that conversation which also included James, who Paul calls 'the brother of the Lord.' Next Paul says "after 14 years, I went up again to Jerusalem." That would bring us to somewhere between 48 and 53 C.E. Most scholars date Galatians in the early 50's. I go over these first hand Pauline references to demonstrate that Paul knew the people who knew Jesus, which makes the idea that Jesus was a mythological character created by inventors of a religion a rather preposterous claim. Myths take far more time than that to develop. Paul certainly did not think that he was being told about a mythological figure. He was talking to people who knew the Jesus of history. 
Of course an interpretive framework was placed on Jesus by the time the Gospels were written (70 to 100 C.E.). This framework was drawn from many sources. In the book I am working on at this moment (scheduled for publication in 2007) I will try to cast light on those interpretive sources. 
I think you can debate the accuracy of the claims made about Jesus in the Gospels, but I do not think the historicity of Jesus is in doubt. 
My best wishes. 
--John Shelby Spong 
 
Dick Kroeger