Introduction
'What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.'
(Gerard Manley Hopkins).
Hillwalking became a serious hobby for me when I was 23, (back in 1994), began a full-time job for the first time and acquired a car. Hillwalking is all about desire: the desire to see what the top of that peak is like, to discover the inner recesses of this valley, to discover the next massif beyond. It's the expression of a simple and very strong urge which is to experience a sense of magic in the exploration of new territory.
Back in 1994, when I was 23, my first hillwalking book was David Herman's 'Walking Ireland's Mountains' and I was so enthused I said I would do every single of the 80 walks in the book. That is my nature: I like to get passionate and enthused about things. Herman is now a member of Keep Ireland Open (KIO) as I am and he is a front-line campaigner in the terrible access issue at the moment (September 2006). 'Hill Walkers Atlantic Ireland', a guidebook to the best of the west, came under legal challenge in Spring 2005. One of the routes described what Herman was reliably informed was a well established, though unsignposted right of way in Glencroff, a remote area in the northern Maamturks. Last Spring he received a solicitor's letter disabusing him of that notion and informing him that future editions must exclude any mention of a walk in that area.
At the time of writing access to Ireland's uplands is in a parlous state. KIO is looking for freedom to roam in 7% of the country's landscape, which is upland. Freedom to roam in mountainous regions is the situation that pertains in the rest of Western Europe. Visitors cannot believe the confrontational attitude of some landowners in this country. In Scotland you are even legally entitled to cross farmland as long as you keep between the cabbage patches. The recent issue of the "Lonely Planet" guide said that hospitality in Dingle was no longer what it used to be. Also in Spring, Fáilte Ireland produced a horrifying set of figures showing the drastic decline in incoming walking tourism, down to nearly a half between 1999 and 2003.
The Irish government is failing to act properly on this issue. They have appointed a body called Comhairle na Tuaithe to act on the matter, and Fáilte Ireland puts faith in the efforts of CnaT to come up with a voluntary code to allow access. It's hoped that within two years or so this will result in a large number of 'access points' on the borders of mountain land from which will develop paths through this land. This concept of 'access points' sounds less liberating than 'freedom to roam'. And thus far there has been little or no positive results from CnaT's deliberations. In truth, the Irish government should just follow the example of Britain and stop prevaricating.
One of the joyful things about hillwalking is freedom; I'm thinking of freedom from stress. When I guide people in the Wicklow Hills my clients are invariably cheerful and carefree (relatively speaking). I know they can't be like this all the time, because I know what the workplace is often like.
Another emotion associated with hillwalking is pantheism. This feeling was encapsulated perfectly by Albert Einstein when he wrote: 'The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.' In his book 'The World As I See It' Einstein said he was a deeply religious man. He wasn't thinking here of conventional religion with its sometimes bizarre rules and beliefs but rather of a knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate. Einstein said we cannot penetrate the Mind of God, but we can emotionally feel Him in his natural manifestations. The scientist said these natural manifestations revealed the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty. Einstein remarked that it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; 'in this sense, and this alone, I am a deeply religious man.' The Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood is also a pantheist and she said that God is not the voice in the whirlwind, but God is the whirlwind. Another famous scientist Stephen Hawking was asked if he believed in God. He said he does, if by God is meant the embodiment of the laws of the universe.
Carl Sagan wished for a new religion which would stress the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science and which might draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. 'I believe in the cosmos,' commented former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev. 'All of us are linked to the cosmos. So nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals.' Henry David Thoreau summed up the pantheist emotion perfectly in the following quotation. He summed up the addictive feeling which overcomes the hillwalker and makes him look forward each weekend to heading once again to the hills: 'We are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. We can never have enough of nature.' There is a World Pantheist Movement which can be found on the website www.pantheism.net
Now, before people start thinking that I am trying to promote a cult, let me add that I am not a member of the World Pantheist Movement (WPM); rather I am simply trying to write about a feeling which frequently sweeps over one when you are in the mountains hillwalking. The Pantheist position sits perfectly happily with my mind's construct. For example, there is the sense when you look at the Universe that there is something larger than the self or than the human race; there is a yearning, as a result, to engage in reverence; but there is no requirement, while doing this, to abandon logic or respect for evidence and science. This is spirituality without absurdity. It doesn't require faith in miracles, invisible entities or supernatural powers. It accepts and affirms life joyously and doesn't regard this life as a waiting room or a staging post on the way to a better existence after death.
Coupled with this, the Pantheist possesses a healthy and positive attitude to sex and life in the body. WPM adds that this aspect of mind 'teaches reverence and love and active concern for nature. Nature was not created for us to use or abuse - Nature created us, we are an inseparable part of her, and we have a duty of care towards her....Pantheism enthusiastically embraces the picture of a vast, creative and often violent universe revealed by the Hubble Space Telescope. We need a spirituality in keeping with this new knowledge, not one that seeks to deny or explain away parts of it....The WPM does not simply co-exist uncomfortably with science: it fully embraces science as part of the human exploration of the awesome universe. However, this does not mean we believe that science can answer all questions, nor that we endorse all modern technologies regardless of their impact on nature.'
In short then, Pantheism is the healthiest possible interpretation of existence and the universe. When we compare it to conventional human thought we quickly see how superior and how right it is. For example, if we briefly take the issue of sex: In rural Catholic Ireland there remains a deep-seated conservatism which looks unfavourably on sexual activity and casts aspersions on what it considers to be improper sexual conduct. On the other hand in the Ireland of 2006 there is a very strong liberal movement which is perfectly comfortable engaging in the copulation topic; but elements of this have forgotten about an essential aspect of the mating game, which is love; they have become so cynical and wounded that they will not open their hearts to the innocence and happiness of love. The happiest state of being for a human being, and the most natural, is to be in a state of love, for members of the opposite sex and for every fellow human being whether foe or friend; I am thinking of St Maximilien who walked to his death in the World War II gas chambers singing hymns. This state of universal love is always within us; we simply choose to ignore it.
Irish Catholics also believe in miracles. Some perhaps even imagine that God is a large, grey-bearded man gazing benignly down upon us from some astronomical region. They believe in an afterlife, in Paradise; though what this Paradise will be like remains vague. For the Red Indian of North America it was the Happy Hunting Grounds.
Most people have a deep need to belong to a community even if they disagree with many of the community's precepts. As a Catholic myself I enjoy the sense of community when I'm engaged with other Catholics in ecclesiastical events; and there is much to enjoy in large tranches of those events, such as calls to love one another, to be compassionate, to forgive each other's transgressions; but there is also a great deal of mumbo-jumbo which privately I don't agree with, but I don't share this disagreement with my fellow Catholics, because I don't wish to be ostracized and considered an outsider.
But of course, as a free thinking man, being an outsider is my natural condition. And I have been fascinated for many years with other outsiders and spent much time reading about their lives. (The best book on this particular subject is "The Outsider" by Colin Wilson, which was published in 1956).
So, to sum up then: What we have here is conventional, fashionable opinion on the one hand, which is sometimes true and which sometimes completely misses the point (occasionally with disastrous consequences); and on the other, unconventional but truthful thinking.
When we go out into the mountains the Truth is everywhere to be seen and our minds deepen into a beautiful, profoundly spiritual place. We instinctively know as we gaze on the splendour around us that the Universe emerged from Love and Beauty, and that life is not Hell or Purgatory, but could be made more Heavenly if we had the right outlook.
The English Poet William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850) spent a good portion of his life on foot, walking. His sister's journal shows us what a central part of his life walking was: Monday the 14th: 'William and Mary walked to Ambleside in the morning to buy mousetraps' (about five miles round trip); Tuesday the 15th: 'William and I walked to Rydale for letters' (about three miles round trip); Wednesday the 16th: 'After dinner William and I walked twice up to the Swan and back again (three miles), met Miss Simpson and walked with her to the Oliffs and then back to her house' (another three miles); Thursday the 17th: 'We had a delightful walk' (a couple of miles); Friday the 18th: 'Mary and William walked round the two lakes' (about six miles); Saturday the 19th: 'We walked by Brathay to Ambleside' (six miles). These walks took place from the 14th to the 19th of December 1801 when the weather was not benign. Dorothy (William's sister, with whom he lived) says that they walked when there was 'A very keen frost, extremely slippery'. She said there was 'Snow in the night and still snowing,' and 'the evening cloudy and promising snow.' Walking was a central position in their daily lives, even when the weather was inclement. In good weather there were longer walking outings such as that described by Dorothy on September 3rd 1800. This was a hillwalk upon a famous Lake District peak called Helvellyn which included Wordsworth, Coleridge and Jonathan Wordsworth. The three men left after breakfast and returned home at 10pm that night, having covered 15 to 20 miles. These men were well accustomed to such long undertakings. In brief then, Wordsworth habitually spent at least a few hours a day walking and it was not at all uncommon for him to spend entire days on foot.
Of course, in Wordsworth's time people walked a lot more than they do now. Horses were expensive and private or public carriages neither comfortable nor quick. However, the amount Wordsworth walked far exceeded that which was needed in the normal course of events. This was because he was a pantheist and, as mentioned above, for people of this mindset the outdoors beckons like a siren. Wordsworth evidently found that pragmatic people didn't understand this urge of the mystic to be in the presence of the beauties of God; therefore he qualified it, by saying that often when he was walking he was in fact working; in other words, that when he was on shank's mare he was gleaning inspiration for his poetry; this was only partially an excuse because he did produce poetry from his rambles.
In November of 1835, when he read in a newspaper about the death of his old friend James Hogg, he produced the famous 'Extempore Effusion on the Death of James Hogg', which recalled Wordsworth's many literary friendships, and which many consider his last great poem. In the poem Wordsworth recognises a fellow nature-mystic in Coleridge, who died a couple of years previous:
'The rapt One, of the godlike forehead,
The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth.'
Some would see these two lines as wishful thinking and omitting Coleridge's failings, including his opium addiction, but a great Poet like Wordsworth penetrates the surface and dives down deep to the loveliness at the core of the person. He perfectly describes the happy state of the nature-lover when he writes of him being 'rapt' and 'heaven-eyed'. We know that state of being 'heaven-eyed' when gazing on a beautiful spring scene from a hill-top and feeling a deep sense of contentment and peace enter our hearts and work upwards into our eyes. This conception of the human being bathed in the benignant light of God spreads to his forehead which is described as being 'godlike'. This is a state of mind I can ascend into at will.
In Book VI of 'The Prelude' Wordsworth describes crossing the famed Simplon Pass in the Alps with a friend. Here he has a profound moment of mystic-suffusion which he calls Imagination:
'Whether we be young or old,
Our destiny, our being's heart and home,
Is with infinitude, and only there;
With hope it is, hope that can never die,
Effort, and expectation, and desire,
And something evermore about to be.'
In this state of imagination, the Poet / hillwalker 'seeks for no trophies, struggles for no spoils' but is 'blest in thoughts that are their own perfection and reward.' In the Simplon Pass section of 'The Prelude' Wordsworth says the Creator of the Universe is infinite and is also the source of hope and good feelings; which means that no matter how stupid or ignorant other people may be, or how much suffering life brings to us, we just have to dwell in this sense of 'infinitude' & our minds will be infused with laughter and happiness. Hindu mystics tell us that this is our true state - Bliss. In a wonderful image Wordsworth compares the benefits of this state of Divine Imagination to
'the mighty flood of Nile
Poured from his fount of Abyssinian clouds
To fertilise the whole Egyptian plain.'
Our minds are the Egyptian plain and where once there was a desert of bitterness, envy, alcoholism, street-fighting, aggression, judgementalism, there is now creativity, contentment, brotherhood. Another marvellous pantheist poem is 'It is a beauteous evening':
'It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;
The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea:
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder - everlastingly.'
Of course, the mighty Being is always awake; it is simply that in certain moods we and nature co-join and we open up to the source behind and within nature. When the Poet mentions the word 'free' we imagine the contemplator being loosened from the tensions of daily human conduct and from the tyranny of fashion. Nature reminds us of what we are: Children of God, free from convention. Therefore, in a sense, society is anti-God because it shackles us. Ralph Waldo Emerson believed this as well and wrote: 'These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.'
For Wordsworth 'meadow, grove and stream, The earth, and every common sight' is 'apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream.' In 'Intimations of Immortality' he points out that we cannot remember where we were prior to our birth; it is a place of nothingness and it's likely that it will be nothingness after our deaths. However, when we are born 'The Soul rises with us, our life's Star', and this
'Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!'
This essentially optimistic philosophy tells us that we emerge into this world with the Queen of Peace invested in our hearts. However, the darkness of the world awaits us, with its harshness and suffering:
'Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.'
Wordsworth is determined to not let the light fade; he is determined to keep his mind open to nature mysticism.
So, to continue with this subject which I find so very fascinating and which I love writing about: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy comments that 'Pantheism is a metaphysical and religious position. Broadly defined it is the view that "God is everything and everything is God. The world is either identical with God or in some way a self-expression of his nature." Similarly, it is the view that everything that exists constitutes a "unity" and this all-inclusive unity is in some sense divine. A slightly more specific definition is given by Owen who says "Pantheism signifies the belief that every existing entity is, only one Being; and that all other forms of reality are either modes (or appearances) of it or identical with it."'
There are disputes as to how pantheism is to be understood and who is and is not a pantheist. Pantheists include Spinoza, some of the Presocratics, Plato, Lao Tzu, Plotinus, Schelling, Hegel, Bruno, Eriugena and Tillich. Among literary figures pantheists include Emerson, Walt Whitman, DH Lawrence, and Robinson Jeffers. Beethoven and Martha Graham have been pantheistic in their work. The book recognized as containing the most complete attempt at explaining and defending pantheism from a philosophical perspective is Spinoza's 'Ethics'. This was finished in 1675 two years before his death. In his book 'Pantheisticon', John Toland possibly coined the term 'pantheist' in 1720. Throughout history a common means of attacking pantheists is to use the manner in which Socrates was denounced; the Greek Philosopher was indicted 'for not believing in the gods the city believes in.' Philosophical Taoism is one of the best articulated and thoroughly pantheistic positions there is. The 'Tao' is the central unifying feature. In Part 42 of the 'Tao Te Ching' we are told 'The Tao engenders one, One engenders two, Two engenders three, and three engenders the myriad things.' The 'Tao' is 'the primordial natural force, possessing an infinite supply of power and creativity'. Not only does the 'Tao' create things - it is responsible for, or makes possible, their growth. 'It nourishes them and develops them, provides for them and shelters them.'
Schopenhauer criticized pantheism's identification of 'the world' with 'God', on the basis of what he took to be the meanings of both for the pantheist. He said calling the world 'God', or God 'the world', is 'superfluous', and redundant. He also ridiculed the idea that the world could be called God given our general notions of what God and the world are like. This is a very valid and important point because, in aesthetic terms, if God is beauty and expresses himself through the magnificence of alpine landscapes, sunsets and the ocean, then how could we call a contemporary industrial estate the work of God? It would probably be more accurate to call a modern industrial estate 'satanic.' Likewise, we can say with confidence that God expresses Himself in flowers, but could we say the same for computers?
A fascinating question that arises in philosophy is 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' The pantheist and theist reply that there was never nothing. There was always the Creator, who is immortal, who had no beginning and will have no end. At the dawn of creation the Creator decided to set in motion the Universe. This commenced with the Big Bang. Therefore, I can be an atheist if I wish to cock a snook at implausible religious theories but when it comes to scientifically examining the universe it is impossible to be an atheist. The Universe has to have had a Creator. Something cannot come from nothing. When I am in the presence of Art or the Sea then my heart informs me that this Creator is Love, Beauty and Peace. It is ignorance to discount this teaching of the heart. 20th Century writers such as John Muir, Robinson Jeffers, DH Lawrence and Gary Snyder stated that people's close association and identification with nature is necessary to well being.
When it comes to the existence of evil, the nature-mystic sees that much evil is directly attributable to the stupidity of human beings. There is a certain amount of pain and suffering in existence which cannot be discounted, but this doesn't mean the heart is incorrect when it senses the Creator's benevolence.
Pantheists often deny personal immortality and state there is no life after death in the sense that it is 'they' who survive. Historically, the denial of personal immortality is one of pantheism's most distinctive features; this is partly because it is in clear opposition to the theistic view, such as the belief in immortal life held by Roman Catholics.
The main significance in believing it is highly likely this is the only life, our allotted time on earth, makes us determined to live each day fully and as in good and creative a manner as possible. For some Roman Catholics, on the other hand, seeing death as a prolegomenon to another life, is a constitutive factor of the ultimate context in which they choose to live. The goals they choose to pursue, the relationships they have, their vocations, may to varying degrees be affected by their belief that death is or is not the permanent end of the individual. People who are interested in personal immortality are often interested in their continued existence in an impersonal sense. Impersonal forms of 'immortality' can include surviving in people's memories, being remembered for one's work, a bone in a reliquary, or becoming another part of the matter / energy cycle again. One may want to be remembered for what one has accomplished, or for the person one was.
Wonderfully, Robinson Jeffers suggests that what may be important to the pantheist, and regarded as 'a kind of salvation', is neither the realisation of the theist's hope for personal immortality, nor the atheist's or theist's desire to be remembered in certain ways. Instead, what is distinctively significant is the recognition of the individual as a part of the Creator, what Jeffers calls the 'one organic whole, this one God.' The 'parts change and pass, or die, people and races and rocks and stars,' but the whole remains. He says 'all its parts are different expressions of the same energy, and they are all in communication with each other, influencing each other, and are therefore parts of one organic whole. This whole alone is worthy of the deeper sort of love; and that there is peace, freedom, I might say a kind of salvation, in turning one's affections outward toward this one God, rather than inwards on one's self, or on humanity.' Therefore, when we open our heart to the Creator and dwell in His bosom, then we are happy, and are as happy as we ever can be on this earth.
A mountaineer's career can begin with hillwalking which then proceeds on to scrambling and from there to rockclimbing. When I began to regularly practise this wonderful hobby back in 1994 my first book was David Herman's 'Walking Ireland's Mountains.' Herman has written several hillwalking books about Ireland and they are all excellent providing rewarding days in this country's sublime and romantic montane regions. Many hillgoers stick to walking and don't progress on to the more adventurous stuff. Personally, there is something alluring about the adventurous mountain routes; there is a feeling which comes over me when scrambling in Kerry, for example, which is hugely enjoyable - I suppose it is something to do with the satisfying of my adventurous instinct. I believe that to suppress our adventurous instinct is wrong: Steve Ashton in his guidebook 'Scrambles in Snowdonia' commented that, 'Unroped scrambling, however exhilarating it may be, is potentially the most dangerous form of mountaineering. There have been times when - alone, unroped and in trouble half-way up some remote and uncharted face - I have vowed never to go into the mountains again. I break the vow regularly, but grow ever more cautious. There is no way of entirely eliminating the risk, only of reducing it. No mountain is worth a life, yet without mountains perhaps no worthwhile life remains to be lived.'
If you wish to proceed on to scrambling in Ireland, a number of books have been published by Collins Press. Several of these have been written by Barry Keane; 'Munster's Mountains' by Denis Lynch lists 30 walking, scrambling and climbing routes. If you want to try rockclimbing then the Mountaineering Council of Ireland have published a number of guides, including Dalkey Quarry and the Mournes. Obviously, acquiring the books is just the first step. Now you need to ensure you engage in these dangerous activities as safely as possible. Therefore you should attend courses in a mountain centre. Indeed, prior to going hillwalking you should do navigation courses in a mountain centre.
Another book I would recommend to hillwalkers is 'Mountains Of Ireland' by Paddy Dillon (Cicerone Press). In this Dillon lists 212 mountains in Ireland which are over 2,000 feet. I have climbed 130 of them so far and am presently in the process of climbing the rest: Catching the peakbagging bug is a good thing to catch as it motivates you to get out into the outdoors.
After walking and scrambling in Ireland the next step for many Irish mountaineers is winter mountaineering in Scotland. After that the great ranges beckon, the nearest to us being the European Alps.
'Journeys Through Elvish Realms' is about mountaineering expeditions in a number of regions including the Caucasus (Russia), Kilimanjaro (Tanzania) and the High Atlas (Morocco); it's about trekking trips in Nepal, Spain and Jordan with a day or two of mountaineering added for good measure. But it's also about me being a tourist, when I cast off my walking and climbing mantle, in places such as Greece and Turkey, about those times when I was simply a traveller.
The desire to go travelling is often described as 'Wanderlust' or 'Nomadic Yearning'. As we travel there are many pleasures which come upon us, which work on us in a non-logical, emotional, feeling manner (happiness cannot come through logic, it can only come through the heart). For example there is the experience of standing on the open-deck of a ferry crossing the sea. DH Lawrence described this sensation wonderfully in his novel 'Women In Love'. In this scene the two lovers Rupert and Ursula are standing on the open-deck of the Dover / Ostend Ferry in the darkness of the night and they are filled with the peace and contentment of the ocean and the night: 'They went right to the bows of the softly plunging vessel. In the complete obscurity, Birkin found a comparatively sheltered nook, where a great rope was coiled up. It was quite near the very point of the ship, near the black, unpierced space ahead. Here they sat down, folded together, folded round with the same rug, creeping in nearer and ever nearer to one another, till it seemed they had crept right into each other, and become one substance. It was very cold, and the darkness was palpable.
'They seemed to fall away into the profound darkness. There was no sky, no earth, only one unbroken darkness, into which, with a soft, sleeping motion, they seemed to fall like one closed seed of life falling through dark, fathomless space.
'They had forgotten where they were, forgotten all that was and all that had been, conscious only in their heart, and there conscious only of this pure trajectory through the surpassing darkness. The ship's prow cleaved on, with a faint noise of cleavage, into the complete night, without knowning, without seeing, only surging on.'
When they approach Ostend the magic of the ocean at night is compared with a bustling port: 'They stood up and looked ahead. Low lights were seen down the darkness. This was the world again. It was not the bliss of her heart, nor the peace of his. It was superficial unreal world of fact. Yet not quite the old world. For the peace and bliss in their hearts was enduring.'
There is a marvellous description of the Swiss mountains later on in the same novel, in the chapter entitled 'Continental': 'They came forth at last in a little high table-land of snow, where stood the last peaks of snow like the heart petals of an open rose....In front was a valley shut in under the sky, the last huge slopes of snow and black rock, and at the end, like the navel of the earth, a white-folded wall, and two peaks glimmering in the late light. Straight in front ran the cradle of silent snow, between the great slopes that were fringed with a little roughness of pine trees, like hair, round the base. But the cradle of snow ran on to the eternal closing-in, where the walls of snow and rock rose impenetrable, and the mountain peaks above were in heaven immediate. This was the centre, the knot, the navel of the world, where the earth belonged to the skies, pure, unapproachable, impassable. It filled Gudrun with a strange rapture.'
Finally, the proceeds of this book are also going to Birdwatch Ireland, which is a charity. The charitable instinct was excellently described by Dag Hammarkjöld when he said, 'You have not done enough; you have never done enough, so long as it is still possible that you have something to contribute.'
Derek Fanning,
Brendan House, Birr,
December 2006.
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