Give me this Mountain

Helen Roseveare

• Publisher: Christian Focus Publication
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781845509347

1

Getting to the Start

‘Either you join us, or you go down by yourself: it’s your own affair.’

The nursemaid moved away. I swallowed hard, my eyes misting with tears. Five minutes before everything had been so different as I had run and scrambled up the wooded pathway with my elder brother, gathering wild flowers, happy in the flickering sunlight, chattering and unconcerned. I had noticed Bob’s face set in a quiet determination and had wondered. Then we came out from the trees at the top of the ghyll and stood on the flat rock overlooking the rushing stream, silenced, as always, by the noise of the waters and a sense of power and awe at its depth. Suddenly, quietly, so unexpectedly, Bob drew back a few paces, ran and jumped the ghyll. My eyes followed him with silent admiration, and yet with horror glancing down at the fury below. He had done it—our much-discussed exploit of jumping the raging torrent from the rock. Determinedly I drew back, clenched my fists, closed my eyes, ran up to it and stopped dead!

Bob had run on into the woods, suddenly a man, alone, successful. Then the nursemaid struggled up, carrying my four-year-old younger sister. She stepped over the narrow channel with one easy stride, and told me to hurry up and join them; they couldn’t wait all day. Then she moved on, to follow Bob down the pathway the other side.

Despair, loneliness, tears, I could not do what Bob had done, and jump across. The more I longed, the greater the noise and depth and width and horror. I was terrified of that water. With a wild sense of defeat, I turned and rushed back down the hill, burning tears of shame choking me. What would he think? Would he play with me again? I was just a sissy, a girl, afraid—yes, that was it—afraid of water and heights.

This longing to be accepted, this need to be loved, to be wanted, so often a part of childhood, came early to me. There was that day in Cornwall two years before, when suddenly a hush fell on the crowded beach, and Mother noticed all eyes being drawn in one direction. Way up the sheer face of the cliff on a narrow ledge, unable to go up or down, she saw the round, diminutive figure of her four-year-old, trying to defeat this sense of inferiority, longing to shine in the eyes of her adored six-year-old brother.

As a child I was endlessly active, restless with animal spirits, always in mischief, with an urge to excel, to be noticed, to be the centre of the group, an inner need to be admired—and life often seemed very hard and unsympathetic. Often blamed for trouble that was not of my making, I would despise the others in my heart for not owning up to clear me of the accusation.

School soon absorbed much of my excess energy, but the work came easily. Books were a fascination, so much so that, when my younger sister whispered, ‘Read to me, Peggy’, in the dark of an evening, I could forget the whipping I had earlier suffered unjustly. Lying side by side, by torch light, under the blankets, we devoured many of the thrills of Long John Silver, the White Rabbit, Pooh and Henry Esmond, and the world took on new silvery lights of happiness and mystery.

This air of mystery laid the foundation of Sundays. I loved this day and the sense of difference—dressed tidily, walking up the steep, narrow road past the curio shop, where two white stone cherub bookends smiled at me each Sunday as I ran ahead of the family, till I had saved enough to make them my mother’s birthday present. The cool, dim building, with high, carved wood pews; the thin, tall candles flickering below the amazing coloured east window; the vases of austere white lilies; the choirboys in surplice and ruff, the acolytes and servers, the cross and incense; the priest in his beautifully embroidered linen vestments; the pealing organ and rich strange music that filled the building right up to the great carved dome; the long, difficult words folded into the lilting chants; the sermon with its grave cadences; all these I loved, absorbing almost unconsciously a lasting impression of beauty and solemnity. Then home we would go to a family dinner, so often the only day Dad was with us, and after that off to Sunday school, held locally at the teacher’s home. I vividly remember that wonderful day (my eighth birthday) when she talked to us of India, and we cut out pictures of Indian children and stuck them in our ‘Missionary Prayer Book’. It was then that the quiet resolve was made. When I grow up, I will go to tell other boys and girls about the Lord Jesus—a child’s determination that never faded.

Odd incidents stand out clearly like beacons, all pointing to the absorbing necessity of being loved and wanted. There was the day I had a new dress, in velveteen, plain, dark, with three silver buttons set obliquely each side of the chest, just what I longed for, quite different, smart, commanding. I recall a visit from an American cousin to my school when I was ten and my being sent for by the headmistress who introduced me as ‘an exceptional pupil with a brilliant mind’! I had to look up ‘exceptional’ in a dictionary afterwards, and was very puzzled to know if it was complimentary or not, but it had obviously impressed these important relatives!

The following year, exam-time came round and I woke up feeling ill one morning. Despite it, I struggled to school, starting on a glorious, straightforward maths exam, and then was violently sick after completing only one of the ten questions. I shall never forget the bitter disappointment of having only 10 out of 100 for my best subject, or the subsequent radiant joy when it was not included in the averages and I once again received the form prize for the year. These little things mattered so much.

During these years three memorable summer holidays added to the scenic background of life. The first—through France and Switzerland, then south to Pompeii—had the added joy that my beloved godfather, ‘Uncle Ray’, accompanied us in his own car. I glowed with happiness at being specially ‘his’, sometimes travelling on my own with him. The second, with family car and camping equipment, took us through Germany (where we joined the crowds in Berlin to watch the Olympic Games), Hungary (and the Budapest Music festival, with everyone in national costume), Bulgaria (with its back-to-front writing, and nods for nos), to Istanbul (all minarets and tramcars). But it left less impression. The third stands out clear in my memory—the majestic beauty of Norwegian fjords girded by mighty mountains; the deep clear depths; the coastal steamer. Up and on we journeyed through to the far north, where we saw the aurora borealis, splendid in all its magnificence of heavenly colours. There were reindeers and moose; Laplanders, shy and colourful; and the sharp cold of the Arctic. Then back again, through festoons of lakes and stately crimson pines, reflected in glory in the evening sun. Last of all came a few days in Leningrad, travelling by train; guarded by soldiers, sight-seeing by permission!

Then it was my twelfth birthday—and boarding-school. I insisted on changing from my pet name, Peggy, to my real name, Helen. The former now seemed childish, an obstacle to my determination to be a success, to grow up, to be popular. For here at boarding-school, too, the urgent ‘need’ was to impress, to be loved, to be wanted—a need that grew steadily stronger through these formative years. My vivid imagination found plenty of food for exaggeration in all the experiences of recent holidays, magnifying out of all proportion the happenings and personalities. I boasted of my introduction to Hitler at the Olympic Games in Berlin—weaving truth (that we saw Hitler at the lighting of the torch) and fiction (that I was introduced to him) so cleverly that I myself failed to remember where one ended and the other started. Linked with all this, there was a funny sort of feeling in the back of my mind that I had been sent to boarding-school because I wasn’t wanted at home. I do not now think this was true, or fair to my parents; but these are the things that eat their way into a child’s mind. It became a must to be popular, to impress; I was hungry to be loved and wanted, yet I just wasn’t that type. And so I lied, and magnified still further my fabulous stories. It didn’t work. In fact, it had precisely the opposite effect, and I found myself more ‘unwanted’ than ever.

There were growing needs at other levels too, not least the demands of a quick mind. I found a great urge in me to lead, and there just had to be an outlet for this. Even as a child I could see in a flash a possible line of action—how it could be accomplished—and its consequences! This led me into endless mischief, a scheme for ‘escaping from the school block if a fire broke out in the basement cloakroom’, for example. Needless to say, the route—through the gymnasium window, across the tiles behind the sewing-room, down a drain-pipe, on to a small flat roof over the music wing—had to be demonstrated; and the severe reprimand that followed when we were found halfway was well merited! I wanted to lead in ‘good things’, too, but seemed to lack the opportunity and outlet for the healthy, buoyant energy of youth.

Then, again, the urge to learn began to burn in my heart. I would have learnt anything they put in front of me! I longed to grasp knowledge, particularly proven facts, mathematical and scientific, with their orderly reasoning and accurate method. I wasn’t, at that stage, interested in the ‘end’, or the out-working; I just longed to assimilate knowledge for its own sake. With this went a ‘need’ to win, to dominate, not others, but the facts themselves, to get a 100 per cent not in order to defeat other pupils, but simply for the satisfaction of knowing I had mastered the subject. If I didn’t succeed, if I didn’t gain the form prize, I’d failed—failed myself. And I probably also felt, deep down, that if I didn’t do well I would fail to win the love and respect of my parents and brother, always so deeply important to me.

I joined the school dramatic society. As a youngster at home I had always been fascinated by acting and had organized productions of various plays which were performed in an oasthouse loft with footlights, curtains, stage props and everything else all meticulously correct. The actors were my sisters and any local friends I could inveigle to join us. Proceeds were in aid of mission funds. The school dramatic society, however, was a very different kettle of fish. But still I must be good at everything; I must succeed and be in the limelight. Even though I dreaded every moment of every rehearsal and, when it came to the actual performance, dreaded being in front of people, scared that I would make a fool of myself, yet this inner sense of need drove me on.

Somehow, in the middle of this, I became conscious of God. I’ve no idea what I thought of God, or who I thought He was; but there was Somebody, God, who was bigger than everything around me, and I needed Him. I needed something big. I needed Someone who was so big He could be bigger than me! And so God came in, and I was confirmed, along with the rest of the Upper IVths. It may not have meant very much. I’m sure I didn’t understand the real meaning or full significance of it. But it was a sincere intimation that I realized my need for God. In a stumbling way, it was the conscious start of my search for Him. I had to take hold of this God. Confirmation appeared to be the way people got God, so I was confirmed. God knew, and accepted, and leant towards me to draw me steadily nearer Himself. I wasn’t ‘converted’, it’s true. But I’m not sure that God is as interested as we sometimes seem to be in the precise order of the steps that lead to true conversion. At any rate God drew near to me in it all, because He knew that my decision to be confirmed indicated a search for Him, for Someone bigger than myself, Someone I could draw on and depend upon, Someone to deal with all my complicated ‘needs’, all the complexes and worries that burdened my heart.

Sure enough, shortly afterwards I began to get guilt-stricken about the everlasting troubles I was in—talking in prep., talking in corridors, talking after lights-out—all necessitating a journey to the headmistress on Monday morning. Mounting that dreaded flight of stairs from hall to platform before the assembled school was a weekly affair for me! Not that I was really so much worse than the others. It was just that, when asked, I had to own up. Our school was run on a principle of trust and honour, with no staff supervision, particularly of prep. periods. The form monitor, a girl appointed each term from her own class, was responsible for maintaining discipline. I didn’t even need to think when the inevitable question came; I knew perfectly well I must have talked, because I always talked. My great friend Kath and I used to sit together in class. The Monday came when Kath was ill and mine was the only hand that responded to the Form Mistress’s ‘Anyone talk in prep. on Saturday?’ Oh, she said, so you’re talking to yourself now, are you? But at break she sent for me, and over a cup of hot milk and a slice of marvellous currant cake in her little study, she had a heart-to-heart talk with me about the stupidity of breaking rules, the value of hard work, and above all, the preciousness of strict honesty. She taught maths, and from then on I was her star pupil!

There was a growing hunger for honesty from this time on. I had to have Someone big enough, above it all, outside, so to speak, who could cope. And I gradually became conscious that I could reach Him only if I were absolutely honest.

At this time, too, came a hunger for beauty. It was wartime, and everything was rather drab—plain white china, blacked-out streets, school uniform clothes, and the tragedy of war. My school was in North Wales, but my home was in Kent. I used to travel through London, and many times saw the blitz, and its awful horrors that, along with the poverty and filth, shocked me bitterly. I remember travelling back to school one day, crossing from south to north London in a bus, when an air raid occurred and panic broke out. Before we could even halt, women leapt from the moving bus, running for shelter in the nearest building. Suddenly a bomb fell on that very house, which crashed in a blazing mass. I watched with horror as Civil Defence men tried to reach the screaming women.

Young though I was, I was deeply upset by the meaning-lessness of it all, feeling that something was fundamentally wrong. Surely Somebody was big enough to get all this into focus. I didn’t then know who this Someone was. It was just a search going on inside me for Someone who could cope with all the world’s needs, as well as with mine. There was a growing consciousness that everything seemed so useless, so pointless. One went on talking in prep. and reporting to the Head. And on the larger scale, bombs fell and men and women were being killed. Others were hungry and nobody was really bothering to provide them with food. People in other lands had so little, and no-one seemed to care. We read the newspapers, we discussed in school current-events lessons, and through it all was this growing impression that life was meaningless. Where was it all leading? As I tried to probe deeper, I became scared. There was no-one to turn to, no-one to guide one through the rocks.

All this led to an intense reaching out after the Unseen, a developing perfectionist attitude that shrank alike from the sight or sound of destructive suffering, unalleviated poverty, and superficial insincerity. In the summer of 1941 I cycled from school to attend a Society for the Propagation of the Gospel summer school.

Shyness kept me from joining in many of the activities, but I’ll never forget the short, daily, devotional sessions led by the chaplain, Father Charles Preston, a ‘brown’ monk of the Anglican Franciscan order. His face shone with an inner light. His words were always quiet and kindly, never tinged with sarcasm or frivolity, obviously utterly sincere and quietly satisfied. He drew me. He was never hurried or impatient. We sat in the still hush of the chapel and he talked of God, and my heart was filled with longing. Our surroundings melted and he carried me away into the great mysterious Presence of God, and showed me the nail-pierced hands and the out-poured love and the wooing heart of the Saviour.

One evening, with an inexplicable hunger after God, in absolute simplicity and forthright honesty, I made my first ‘confession’. An overwhelming sense of release poured into my heart that now God knew all. He knew the very worst about me, and it was now up to Him. The burden of sin and failure and shame rolled away. I went back into the nave of the chapel walking on air. In the dim light, I knelt and read that lovely hymn:

‘Take my life, and let it be

Consecrated, Lord, to Thee …

Take myself, and I will be

Ever, only, all for Thee.’

I meant every word. I walked out quietly into the moonlight, across the grounds, and a great joy flooded my whole being. I felt I could have jumped over the rooftops!

Home I went again, to put much right, with apologies and a real effort to be useful and part of the family. Then back to school, to pull with authority instead of against, to apologize for past wrongs, and above all to make an all-out attack against the spirit of lying, driving myself to confess every time to the one concerned, till very shame began to close my lips against the fantasies. I became a school prefect, and the head of my house. I longed to lead, and to lead well and rightly. I longed to be respected, not now for myself, exactly, but that I might lead others to put God first.

I tried earnestly to help others, to be kindly, to be sincere. I was an ardent Anglo-Catholic, regular at the confessional and the mass, every part of me stretching out after the Unseen Power who could meet all needs. And yet I was acutely conscious that He was not doing so. The needs were getting bigger; the hopelessness was more hopeless; the futility of life itself at times became almost unbearable. Whilst in church, I could lose myself to all the problems, bathed in the strange mysticism and pious ritualism; but on leaving the service, I had nothing—no power, no companion, no help to answer the daily needs and meet the daily problems.

It was this sense of emptiness and futility which led me to become a cinema fan in my holidays, to try to escape from the pointlessness of life. Every week-night and twice on Saturdays, if there were seven different films, I would try to lose myself in a make-believe world—anything to drown reality. Sometimes I would even go twice to the same film rather than suffer the boredom of an empty evening. There was a great emptiness, a great void in my life.

I helped at times at the Franciscans’ headquarters in Peckham. Because of the blitz, there were no Sisters living in that area, but I loved to stay in the guest-room of the Order’s Home. There was a lovely church opposite, very still and quiet, in the midst of the rush of traffic, the whine of the air-raid warnings, the sufferings and poverty of the people around. Flickering lights burned in the red crucibles in front of each altar. All else was dim, with a vague sense of the unreal. I would creep in, and upstairs to the gallery, along to the Lady Chapel, many times in a day, seeking an explanation, a companion, a comfort to my heart’s loneliness. Every three hours, the Franciscan monks had prayers there, and I knelt in the shadows, and drank in of their piety. Then back I would go to the poor tenement building opposite, with its rickety stairs, uncarpeted floors, peeling paint, and its many and varied visitors—mothers in distress for sons missing in the war; mothers in dire need of coal or food or clothing; mothers in depravity, in immorality and loose living—all came, and were helped, and went away comforted. In the evenings, there was the ‘Club’ for young people, teenagers who had been turned away from the Civic Centre Club for one reason or another, young men and women often from most unsavoury backgrounds. The dancing, endless records, and open rottenness; the weakness, and weariness and emptiness of life—I saw it all, but took no part. I had no interest, no awakened desires, just an apathy.

And all the while, God was driving me to see that in myself there was nothing, absolutely nothing of any worth. It became at moments almost a desperate fight—the knowledge that God held the key, the answer; that He could make sense of it all; that without Him, it was a weary, stupid, empty, pointless, useless life. The burden of the world’s need was crushing, overwhelming. Only God could meet it, could answer it; and yet, where was He? How could I find Him? How could I become part of His pattern, and lose myself in Him?

2

Climbing to the Top

I left school a few weeks before the end of the summer term 1944, in order to have a short holiday and prepare to go to Cambridge for the ‘long vac’ term. This was a war emergency measure, enabling doctors to complete their nine-term university course in two years by making compulsory the fourth term from July to September each year, during the long vacation. My father met me in London and took me to a show—one of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

It was the time of the V1 ‘doodle-bugs’ and everyone was tense and fearful. There was little chattering in the streets and shops. When the siren alerted us of an approaching raid, everyone hurried quickly on their own business. Then someone caught the high whine of a V1 and stood still, looking up. The action was infectious. We almost felt the very traffic stand still and draw in its breath, and all London waited. The whine grew; faces were strained. Each one knew we should make for shelters, but we had done it too often, and even shelters were not proof against these new weapons. A fascination was on us. Suddenly, there was a sharp silence—a great pause hung in the air-then an explosion, a rumble, and a gentle sigh caught up and multiplied, as each walker hurried on his way, secretly ashamed of the first thought, ‘I’m safe this time.’ The urgency of self-preservation amidst all the fear and uncertainty, almost pushed into second place the thought, ‘Poor beggars, I wonder who got that one?’

And so I reached Newnham College, Cambridge, at the end of July, found my way to Clough Hall, and discovered from a list on the noticeboard that I had been allocated room 8a, a small room, usually the bedroom attached to the larger sitting-room. The latter was to be a bedsitter for this extra term, to enable the new ‘freshers’ to be accommodated. The place seemed vast and empty and silent. A cold fear of loneliness clutched at my throat. Why had I come? I felt that I would never fit into college life. I knew no-one. My trunk was pushed against the communicating door and, to try and calm my yearning to run away and leave it all, I started urgently to unstrap and unpack. Having piled everything on the small bed, and pushed books on the two small shelves over its head, I turned to place things in the drawers of the chest. I glanced at my pale sallow face in the mirror, and the untidy plaits hanging down over my shoulders—and noticed a card stuck in the frame. Leaning forward, with my arms full of clothes, I read, ‘If you don’t know anyone, and have nowhere to go after supper, come and have coffee in my room, no. 12, at 8 p.m.’ It was signed ‘Dorothy’. My eyes blurred, and a lump filled my throat. I quickly finished unpacking, my mind excited, homesick and fearful by turns.

A bell sounded, and I slipped into the corridor and watched and waited. Others walked by, chatting and nonchalant, and I joined the stream towards the ‘hall’. It was still war days, and food rationing was strict, yet a good meal was served us at the serving-tables, each one collecting what they wished individually. The other students were friendly and would have drawn me into their conversation, but an overwhelming shyness (from a sense of inferiority, or a fear of not being able to hold my own) kept me a grim prisoner. Soon their conversation drifted into their own channels, and my monosyllabic replies became unnecessary. Tears pricked my eyes—my very first day, and I had raised up a barrier that I had vowed should never stand again! I wasn’t hungry, yet didn’t dare to leave, not knowing the rules. So I made a mockery of eating, following the lead of others.

Back in my room after supper, my loneliness and fear of this vast place with its swarms of intellectual students became so intense, the feeling of being submerged and lost in it all so real, that I lay numbly on my bed and planned how to write home and ask them to let me leave.

I must have dozed from sheer weariness of mental strain. Wasn’t that a clock striking ? Glancing quickly at my watch, I remembered the invitation—8 p.m. at no. 12. I ran to the bathroom, washed my face, and made my way along the corridor. Knocking at the door of no. 12, I entered, and Dorothy glanced up, her face red, smoke swirling around her, as she knelt by the hearth, trying to coax a fire into existence! ‘Can you make a fire?’ The straight forward, urgent appeal, the complete acceptance of a total stranger in her room, the absurdity of the...

Table of contents

• Title
• Indicia
• Contents
• Joshua 14: 12-13
• Foreword - by Noël Piper
• Introduction
• 1. Getting to the Start
• 2. Climbing to the Top
• 3. Enjoying the View
• 4. Down into the Valley
• 5. Trudging On
• 6. Made It!
• 7. Further Vistas
• 8. Slipping Back
• 9. Fresh Vision and Triumph
• 10. Treasures of Darkness
• 11. Nearly Exhausted
• 12. Gloriously Worth It!
• Epilogue
• About the Author
• Christian Focus