1.

Is it in the anthracite face of a coal miner,
crystallized in the veins and lungs of a steel
worker, pulverized in the grimy hands of a railroad engineer?
Is it in a child naming a star, coconuts washing
ashore, dormant in a volcano along the Rio Grande?

You can travel the four thousand miles of the Nile
to its source and never find it.
You can climb the five highest peaks of the Himalayas
and never recognize it.
You can gaze though the largest telescope
and never see it.

But it’s in the capillaries of your lungs.
It’s in the space as you slice open a lemon.
It’s in a corpse burning on the Ganges,
in rain splashing on banana leaves.

Perhaps you have to know you are about to die
to hunger for it. Perhaps you have to go
alone in the jungle armed with a spear
to truly see it. Perhaps you have to
have pneumonia to sense its crush.

But it’s also in the scissor hands of a clock.
It’s in the precessing motion of a top
when a torque makes the axis of rotation describe a cone:
and the cone spinning on a point gathers
past, present, future.

2.

In a crude theory of perception, the apple you
see is supposed to be a copy of the actual apple,
but who can step out of his body to compare the two?
Who can step out of his life and feel
the Milky Way flow out of his hands?

An unpicked apple dies on a branch:
that is all we know of it.
It turns black and hard, a corpse on the Ganges.
Then go ahead and map out three thousand mile of the Yantze;
walk each inch, feel its surge and
flow as you feel the surge and flow in your own body.

And the spinning cone of a precessing top
is a form of existence that gathers and spins death and life into one.
It is in the duration of words, but beyond words -
river river river, river river.
The coal miner may not know he has it.
The steel worker may not know he has it.
The railroad engineer may not know he has it.
But it is there. It is in the smell
of an avocado blossom, and in the true passion of a kiss.

~ Arthur Sze ~

(The Redshifting Web)

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My whole life has been one of constant change and movement. In the very early days it was held in the arms of loving parents but soon tumbled into WW2, separation and moving from house to house. Boarding school, musical career, marriage, children and divorce followed. Then, in my forties I discovered the (then new) personal and spiritual development movement. This eventually led to eleven years of committed and active discipleship with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh – now known as Osho. Those were powerful, meaningful and wonderful years. They caused both chaos and peace within and around me. Towards the end of our time in the large Oregon commune, Bhagwan told us to go back into the world, earn a living and live what we had learned with him. At least, that was the gist of it, remembered with my now very unreliable memory!

Living the life of a disciple had been, for me, a simple and totally nourishing experience. It had involved letting go of all preconceived notions of what was ‘necessary’ in a life. There was also a willingness on my part to take a huge jump into a lot of very hard work, on a practical, physical level as well as a spiritual, internal one. There was no separation between the two.

Arriving back ‘in the world’ was also simple and nourishing – but for different reasons that I cannot fully explain. Looking back, it appears that this new life lived itself . . .opening up and flowing all on its own. It flowed through the kindness and generosity of dear friends and family. It also flowed through unexpected, sometimes daunting, invitations – to which I said “yes”. One of these involved going to Australia to be with a man I hardly knew. I did not come back to the UK for over fourteen years!

I have been living here for the last ten, and can see that “extending one’s self into the life of this world” is unwittingly, what I have done. However I have also lived, until recently, the life of a part-time recluse. During these years, the quiet and peace of my small cottage in a small village by the sea, has provided the comfort and seclusion that my whole being longed for. My work has taken me out into the world, and my home has given me the escape and quiet I craved. I have come to understand the reason for these past ten years of reclusiveness. They have helped me to relax into myself, to stop looking outside for fulfillment.

Now, another invitation has come my way, in the form of a large, loving and ebullient scientist! This has opened further doors for me. As with all the jumps I have taken, there is an element of fear/excitement here also. However, the commitment we have made to each other is stronger than the fear. Through him I am opening more and more, not just to my immediate and now familiar life – but to new worlds of academia, science fiction, the Jewish community and many many new friends. I am also opening up to opinions and attitudes that are new to me, whilst my love gently and patiently holds my hand.

I also understand that my life has appropriately brought me here. Brought me to this place of acceptance of things as they are. No more separation, judging the spiritual life as more desirable than the temporal. Neither this nor that, as Bhagwan often said. The years spent as a disciple, and the leaps already taken have prepared me very well. My current life is not always comfortable, not always peaceful, but it feels ‘right’. Though sometimes a touch painful, it is just another period of change.

A few minutes ago, whilst writing, my email ‘ping’ sounded and there was a poem . . . it was written by Jane Hirshfield and called ‘To Hear the Falling World’. Here are the last three lines – which feel perfect for me to quote right now:

But they guard me, these small pains,
from growing sure
of myself and perhaps forgetting.

I do not want to forget.

. . . . Healing is an act of creating wholeness. Usually this means restoring broken connections, but sometimes it’s a matter of actually breaking old connections that no longer serve or that have become corrupted and then weaving new ones. On a social level, this is what we see happening in the Middle East right now.

. . . . In normal consideration, healing is paired with dysfunction; healing is a response to what is sick, broken and painful. But a healing relationship, seen as a relationship that promotes wholeness, is appropriate anytime. So I could ask, “What is the healing relationship with my coffee cup or my computer or my living room,” even though none of those things is broken. What is my healing relationship with my wife and children, even though none of them are ill? In this context, what I’m really asking is, “What relationship co-creates wholeness in this place, in this moment, with these things or these people?” Healing, as I said, isn’t about fixing but about producing wholeness.

Let’s think of an attribute of wholeness such as connectedness. The “healing question” then becomes, “What can I do or say that will increase a sense of connectedness between myself and the things and people around me?” Certainly whatever answers I come up with, love will be part of the equation, particularly that kind of love that lets another person feel recognized, honored, and accepted. This kind of connectedness is like an enhancement of the sense of “being present to.” That is, I am more present to you or to my coffee cup or to my computer.

This may not make sense until we realize how much we go through life in an abstracted manner, our thoughts darting about among many different topics, our attention distracted; our environment becomes merely a setting for our private dramas. The people and things around us are backdrops against which we play out our internal narratives. I may be physically present, but I am mentally and emotionally disconnected and thus most likely energetically disconnected as well. Some spiritual traditions call this “sleepwalking” through our lives, and if this is true, then we are also reducing others to being dream figments, without real substance or identity. We turn people and things into ghosts of themselves.

So a healing relationship, one that creates connection and thus enhances wholeness, is one that goes beyond this. It wakes up, and by giving attention and loving acknowledgement to our environment, gives it substance again. We are drawn out of our private world and into a shared world.

When I go into a hospital as a patient, something I’ve had more occasions to do over the past decade than I would have wished, I go to be fixed, certainly, but also to engage in healing. And if I think of healing as a relationship, then it’s not something one person does to another but something both people (or however many are involved) do for each other. It takes at least two to create wholeness by acknowledging and in some fashion honoring each other. The doctors and nurses may be there to “fix” what’s wrong with me, but we are all there together to create a field for healing.

So in a curious way, on the one hand I see myself as a patient—the one unto whom something is done, the one who is receiving the medical treatment—but on the other hand, I see myself as a colleague and partner to the doctor and nurses. So, my question becomes not “what can you do for me to heal me,” but “what can I say or do that will create an attentive connection and a wholeness-producing (“healing”) relationship between us?”

For me, this usually involves humor. I lie on the gurney being wheeled into the operating room or afterwards in the recovery room, and I make jokes. I honor and appreciate the doctors and nurses as fellow human beings as well as medical professionals and seek to show it as best I can. I seek to be loving.

Love is at the heart of wholeness. A healing relationship for me is a loving one. Oh, love can take many forms, and I’m not referring here to popular images of romance or infatuation. I mean a sense of caring for the other, a sense of appreciation and honoring, a sense of acknowledging a partnership. Hospitals are not happy places for the most part; there is bound to be stress present, as well as fear, anxiety, suffering, anger, pain, and all the rest of the thoughts and emotions that accompany sickness and death. This is the environment in which doctors and nurses—especially nurses—and orderlies have to spend their days. Their dedication sees them through, but as a participant in this environment, I have to ask what I can do to make it a more light-filled and vital place. How can I interact with my caregivers in a way that gives care back to them? How can I engage with them as partners in a healing relationship?

I’m not trying to portray myself as some superhuman patient who can rise above pain and be universally sweet and thoughtful while part of me actually wants to writhe in agony from what’s been done to my body. But the fact is a person can indeed choose not to let pain define his or her response to others and to an environment. Yes, in the hospital, hurting and at times panicky because the meds I’ve been given are causing scary heart and lung complications, I want fixing as much as the next person. But I also want healing, and that comes through whatever I can do, as little or as much as that is, to forge a relationship that heals—that makes wholeness—with the things and people around me.

I said at the beginning of this essay, there are larger patterns of trauma and suffering, struggle and liberation being worked out in the world right now. What is happening in Libya is a dramatic example of this, but it’s not the only example. The desires in some to oppress, to repress, to coerce and to control others are everywhere present, in all countries and among all levels and kinds of people; the contrasting desire for liberation, for justice, for freedom and for wholeness is everywhere present as well. We can interpret this politically, socially, or economically, but it would be just as accurate to say that that the deep struggle of our time is for healing. It’s a struggle for the capacity to form relationships that heal, relationships that create wholeness, relationships that connect in spite of all the barriers that hatred, greed and fear may erect. And not just with our fellow human beings but with all life upon this earth. Healing, not just fixing is what our world needs. Our ability to forge the relationships that heal may well be the key to creating a future we would want to live in.

I totally appreciate that quote, and on many levels it is true, unarguably so. However, as someone who has drifted through a long life, weaving my way through differing spiritual belief systems – I want to find out what I truly believe. If there is anything at all to believe in!

That, of course is a facetious remark . . .I believe (writing this on a Tuesday) that tomorrow will be Wednesday, and that in just over a week’s time, I shall become 78 years old. I believe that I shouldn’t kill any one, and should treat my fellows as my self. I believe that it is good to be kind, and to listen to others’ points of view. There are many such beliefs that could take up many paragraphs. Right now I want to write about spiritual belief – or not.

I was talking to a dear friend of mine this morning, and left the call feeling sad. This was because my hard-to-find spiritual belief system these days couldn’t be further away from hers if I tried! I stopped trying and just listened instead. This felt more true than argument. I could hear how deeply her beliefs were affecting her life, and helping her beautifully through a traumatic happening in that life – making sense of it in fact. Who am I to try and alter that, because I believe differently? However, our conversation was very helpful, making me think – and giving me a reason for writing this article.

I have been pretty clear for many years that I do NOT believe in an anthropomorphic god. But is it that simple? I guess being born to a Christian mother and an agnostic father was brilliant. They opened an inner argument within me many moons ago.

I was dutifully christened as a baby, obviously not able to disagree or agree at the time. At my Anglican boarding school my deepest longing was to ‘fit in’, so I went full tilt into the act of taking Confirmation, very proud of the small gold cross around my neck. Some hymns remembered from that time can still move me to tears, especially if come upon unexpectedly being sung at a choir practise in some cathedral or other. What are those tears about, if not the hidden longing for something beyond my very full mind’s boundaries?

Much later, that longing led me to a guru, Osho – much loved and faithfully followed. Those eleven years of discipleship were years that I am profoundly grateful for and will never forget. Not only did other potential spiritual doors open because of them, I learned that living a life could be quite wondrous, and conversely, very simple. We were not taught any particular ‘isms’ . . .but exposed to many teachings from differing ancient sages and religions. These were all in the context of relating to each other through our often very long, hard and ordinary work-day!

I wrote last month about what I see as the cult of speculation on catastrophe, a belief system to which I don’t care to subscribe. It appears to contain those who will be saved, and those who won’t, and seems to encourage believers to see them selves in some way as special or chosen – as do many other belief systems.

So, I ask myself, what DO I believe? And always the answer comes: “I don’t know anymore” . . .
What I do know is that I don’t know. However, there is a sense of mystery around what I don’t know. It does not appear to be finite. I have had brief and unexpected glimpses of something much larger than me that I appear to be servant to. There is no system, no god, no particular belief. Rather, more and more questions. I also recognise these glimpses when I see them in others.

About thirteen years ago, when still living in Australia, I was in one of those plunges into the deep that can be experienced from time to time. I went to see my counsellor/mentor/friend, a wonderful woman. I had collapsed in tears in the drama of not knowing what the hell I needed! She lent forward towards me with her arms held out and said these exact words: “Persephone, can you allow yourself to be held in the sacredness of not knowing?” Writing this article has brought them back to me – and today, the answer is a simple ‘yes’.

These days the emptiness of ‘not knowing’ is constant. I appear to have totally lost the desire to know – at least the desire to know what I believe in spiritually! I am still excitedly curious to know more about this world and this life. This is probably a safe place for me. I feel at peace here, and life keeps opening and offering anyway.

I could speculate that the scientific defence mentioned in the quote above does not apply to this ‘not knowing’. However, maybe it does. And, if so I shall eventually find out. I used to see science as a rather dull, formulated, difficult, but absolutely necessary occupation that I had no interest in whatsoever. I am discovering, almost each day, how smug and mistaken I was. In fact, it seems to me to be an art, an art that demands the courage for great discovery – delving deeply into what isn’t known, the unending and unequivocal mystery.

Each year, when New Year’s Day comes round, and I hear of people making resolutions, I wonder why it is we should think that this resolution is going to change our life, this year is going to be magically better than last year, this time we’ll find the answers we’ve been seeking.

Why imagine that this one day will make rather than break us, yet fail to notice what’s really happening with the passing of all the days in between? And why do I find it so hard to turn and change with the turning of the year?

Is it because I think my seasons must follow the seasons of the earth – with seeds lying dormant in the dark cold soil of winter; sprouting with the rain and gentle airs of spring; flowering in summer and fruiting in autumn; then returning to huddle in the cold dark of the dead time?

No. A little body like mine lives much faster than the earth and I cannot begin to comprehend how many long days the earth has known, or how many more it will live through before its end. Each earth’s day I experience is for my spirit a whole year’s turning. Each earth’s day holds part of my life in the dark winter, seeds waiting to waken and sap to rise. But each day also sees the sprouting of seeds, seeds I planted no more than a week ago. Each day my life blooms into colour and scent, and each day I harvest the fruits of my labours.

Yet while my mind is locked in a winter that matches the length of earth’s winter, my spirit cannot show me the passing of my own rich seasons. Every day is a turning of my year. Every day I store the seeds; I tend the soil; I plant, I water, I weed. Every day I watch bees visit my flowers. I watch the flowers drop and the fruit swell.

Each day of my life knows the cold of winter, the energy of spring, the heat of summer. Each day my life knows both frost and summer sun, spring showers and autumn gales. And each day I harvest what I have grown.

I do not need to turn with the turning of the year. Look at me – I am turning all the time.

Almost 20 years ago, Samuel Huntingdon forecast a ‘clash of civilisations’. In the past few months, this clash has become outright war.

Christian minorities, who have lived peacefully in Muslim countries for generations, are finding themselves subject to increasingly violent persecution. Churches are being attacked in Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Indonesia and the Philippines. The recent assassination in Pakistan of a Muslim politician who defended a Christian woman sentenced to death for ‘insulting’ Islam was particularly shocking.

Pakistan has had blasphemy laws since its inception, but never before have they been used to persecute Christians. The Church of England has had a bishop in Lahore since 1877 to minister to Pakistan’s three million Christians, but only now has this become a dangerous mission. The victims are not just Christians. In the last two years, the Muslim world has sought to expel most minorities. The Sufis and Ahmadis in Pakistan feel just as anxious as the Christians. The Baha’i in Iran have long been persecuted, while the West turns a blind eye.

What we are witnessing is a growing, violent, worldwide intolerance. Pakistan’s steadily more aggressive application of its blasphemy laws has been mirrored by an ominous enthusiasm for religious registration laws in many countries, from Serbia to Uzbekistan. Europe knows only too well what manner of evil can spring from a mania for registration.

President Sarkozy put it succinctly a few weeks ago. ‘We are witnessing a wicked kind of religious cleansing,’ he declared.

It’s all too easy to imagine what might happen next. Persecution will lead to counter-attacks which could spark a civil war. A civil war will claim far more lives than any straightforward battle between nations. When communities separate, bloodshed is seldom far behind. One of the most murderous events in postwar history was the partition of India, in which nearly a million lives were lost.

The casualties in any forthcoming conflict will almost certainly be largely Christian. A recent report suggests that Christians now account for three-quarters of the world’s persecuted religious minorities.

So what to do about it? The problem is so varied and so widespread that it seems impossible to imagine a political solution. It is not a state but a religion that is threatened, so how to respond? Christians can turn to the police — but in many countries the police have other priorities. Churches can hire security guards; that was the precaution adopted by the Church of Christ in Maiduguri, Nigeria. But the guard was killed on Christmas Eve by an al-Qa’eda-inspired Islamic sect, along with a pastor and two choir members who had been practising for a late-night carol service.

Of all the Christian leaders worldwide, the Pope has been the most outspoken about the suffering of Christian minorities — little wonder, as the Vatican is constantly fed reports from his dioceses worldwide. His Christmas homily may have seemed inappropriately macabre: ‘This child has ignited the light of goodness in men and has given them strength to overcome the tyranny of might,’ he said, quoting Isaiah. ‘But at the same time, the rod of his oppressor is not yet broken. Boots of warriors continue to tramp and the garment rolled in blood still remains.’ But his words proved all too apt when a suicide bomb killed 21 Coptic Christians in Egypt days later. When the Pope condemned the attack, Cairo recalled its envoy to the Holy See in protest at what they saw as ‘meddling’.

The 7th of January is Christmas day for the Coptic church and, given the violence of the preceding month, many were braced for another tragedy. What happened next is an extraordinary event which went unreported in the British press. As Egypt’s Christians made their way to mass, they found they had protection: hundreds of Egyptian Muslims who, in protest at the jihadis’ agenda, had come to offer themselves as human shields by gathering outside the church. The front pew of a church in the Cairo district of Omraneya was filled with Muslims taking a stand against terror.

Tales of religious persecution in the Muslim world are likely to abound this year. The struggle for religious tolerance may well become the defining conflict of the decade, and the best chance of defeating this evil lies with those brave Muslims who are prepared to risk their lives for their Christian neighbours. All power to them.

Editorial: Spectator, 15 January 2011 p3