“The hill we climb if only we dare”

Reverend Paul Cowley talks about how in these difficult times there is inspiration all around us for how to make our lives better

(Rev Cowley)

At the inauguration of the 46th President of the USA in January, the world watched the Youth Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman, read her sublime poem, The Hill We Climb. 

Gorman’s rich use of scriptural references, including the vine and the fig-tree, did not go amiss and her reference to ‘the hill we climb if only we dare’, speaks of the risk we take when we step out on the journey to share our story.

After all, it takes courage to expose the injustices and inequalities that she has had to traverse in order that ‘a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president.’ 

How humbling is that and how exciting for Gorman and for all of us. Despite obstacles of poverty, war, class or prejudice, we can dare to dream of becoming something more than we first expected.

My own journey, as recounted in my autobiography Thief Prisoner Soldier Priest, was inspired by my work within the prison system in the UK and around the world over the last twenty-five years.  Driven by a mission of allowing prisoners sitting in their cells to hear of a story of hope, my wife  Amanda and I decided to write it down.

We sat together for many years under a proverbial fig-tree and wrote of the hills I’ve had to climb to go from thief to priest. It is a landscape pitted with dangerous terrain including being expelled from school, prison, two divorces, two tours of Northern Ireland and The Falklands Campaign, and the tragic death of a friend on a mountain in Kenya, before I had my own spiritual experience on an Alpha course.

Poetry and prose have the ability to cut through politics, institutions and even prison sentences. A testament to my own story is receiving numerous letters from inmates who have identified with my journey and who also have a desire to climb up and out of their own failings and into the light where they will not be judged by their previous convictions but be liberated by a God who sees them with all their guilt and shame and still says, ‘Do not be afraid’.

We can all dare to dream, dare to rise up and take our place in the world, from whatever start we had in life, seeking forgiveness from those we have harmed and going forth with a desire to do good, as Amanda Gorman concludes, ‘For there is always light, if only we are brave enough to see it, if only we are brave enough to be it.’

Rev Paul Cowley MBE is the Bishops’ Advisor on Prisons and Penal Affairs for the London Diocese. Thief Prisoner Soldier Priest is published by Hodder & Stoughton and available through all good bookshops