WE SHALL NOT CEASE FROM EXPLORATION
Always drawn to those who go the whole way, in anything from rock-climbing to religion, I began looking at the Carthusians, the one order that has never needed to be reformed because it is as absolute now as it was when it was founded. Philip Gröning's wonderful film Into Great Silence thrilled me, and I have to taken to reading -- in between detective stories and the poetry of Sir Philip Sidney -- some texts signed, characteristically, 'a Carthusian'. It all makes me feel as I did when I first started climbing and found myself meeting, and reading texts by, those who had climbed El Capitan or Annapurna: small, awkward, and clumsy. But fascinated, and surprisingly engaged in a new adventure. None more serious; none greater.