I got Jewish friends, I got Christian friends, I got Hindu friends, I got Muslim friends, I wanted to have a Parsee friend but Freddy Mercury died. It has to be said that most of my friends are infact climbers, or Climbers. Strangely they are fairly tolerant for religious nutters, they tend to be not very orthodox. They can split into sub groups, and then we tend to look at each other with a bit of a shrug, we get new prophets, it's not fixed, or finished this new religion.
I myself have been a boulderer an ice climber, a mixed climber, an alpinist, a himalayan climber and a trad climber, I worshiped in all the churches, if there was a god I surely didn't want to take the chance of being wrong, so I hedged my bets and tried them all.
But I always come back to the thing that took me to this worship, or this belief in something greater than myself, it was beauty. Colour, sparkle, the shimmer of the ice, the sky changing tone, my skin burning on the stone, my knees buckling as my god scared me, and warned me that if I didn't take him seriously I would die.
I do like my religion, I worship stone, and sky, Snow and slopes, and sweat and sacrifice, and now I can't think of any words starting with S, I'am going to do a few sets of pull ups, and offer them up as prayer. May your God go with you.
