Everyday Spirituality

Weaving a week part 2.

This essay continues the story of a week – a big week, where so much happened it left me overwhelmed. After my weekend in Dublin, at the psychoanalytic conference and visiting the Quakers, I left for London that Sunday evening. I arrived late and found a café near my old home in London’s East End, where I sat with Bangladeshi/English men and women, and ordered my favourite fish curry and chai. 

Travelling to London is a powerful, often beautiful, and always painful experience. It was whilst living in Whitechapel that I heard of the violent death of my son Fynn, and I spent over a year in deep trauma and grieving, wandering the streets of East London. The shock of that time stays with me today. Whenever I visit London I am drawn back to the East End, to where I used to live, where I cried, where I am embraced by my melancholy which is re-ignited in the cafes, streets, markets and parks of Whitechapel, London Fields, Brick lane, Dalston. Alongside the grief, is the pleasure of being in multi-cultural, vibrant cosmopolitan London….. Why are people so afraid of diversity?….It’s such a joy!!

On Monday morning I went for a run before breakfast, passing my old flat and heading for the water. There is something about the river Thames and the docks that always draws me in. I had grieving routes that often took me to the river, stopping to light candles in churches on the way. The river offers movement and it is one of the few places in London where you can see big skies and light. I used to collect fragments of pottery and coloured glass polished by the river, some of it very old. Collecting fragments from people’s past lives spoke to my condition at that time, I never made sense of why, but why didn’t matter... it was just something I was drawn to do and which I found strangely comforting. I have kept all the pottery/glass I collected, and perhaps one day the fragments will become a beautiful mosaic.

On arrival at Whitechapel Tube in London, the graffiti was the first thing to grab my attention. Some political, some just made me laugh.

Monday morning I met an old friend/colleague and we caught up on work, and life and planned new possibilities. I went to Save the Children's head office to meet a few people. The Eco-Leadership Institute has a partnership with the Humanitarian Leadership Academy (which is linked to Save the Children) and we have been working closely with them for over 18 months. I met with the UK Humanitarian Director and we had a buzzing and creative conversation about the radical changes needed in the sector, and how they could manifested. These two warm and creative meetings raised my morale.

Next, I had a third meeting with a very good friend/colleague who works for a technology company in Silicon Valley.  We talked mainly about faith, social challenges and the need for a paradigm change…. We have worked together in many companies and contexts, and always return to the big picture - society needs awakening, and it needs a spirit-based approach!

I entered the large East London Mosque on the way back to my hotel, seeking peace from the busy streets. I sat on the carpet, read a bit of the Koran, and enjoyed being with Muslims undergoing their prayer rituals. Islam gets a bad rap these days in many quarters, yet when you enter a mosque (as a man) there is a calm-peaceful world inside. It reminded me how important spaces and architecture are. Churches are filled with benches, and tell a story of hierarchy, with everything facing the raised front of the church, the place of the priest- the one who has greater access to God than the lay people sat below.

The mosque is more egalitarian, with no chairs, just carpet and the only point of reference is Qibla, the direction of prayer to Mecca. The non-democratic piece is the gender-specific maleness of the mosque. Sometimes gender division can create spaces where brotherhood and sisterhood can be experienced differently too mixed spaces, which my feminist sisters recognize. The problem in this mosque and much of Islam is the space for women is restricted, and the power imbalance between men and women undermines the egalitarian ethos of Islam.

The following day I went to St Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square to meet Rev Richard Carter, who offered me spiritual support when Fynn died. St Martin’s invited me on two occasions to talk about Fynn to an annual gathering of families who have suffered bereavement of children through violence (I will share these talks on substack sometime as they may be helpful to those mourning the loss of a loved one). Richard has become a friend, and it was lovely to attend morning prayers in the church and go for a coffee.  We did a podcast together recently sharing stories of grief, love and grace.

Composting 1.

Grieving for a lost loved one, particularly a child, is a continual journey. I return to places to be with Fynn, to feel and experience him in my body and soul. It makes me very sad, but in the sadness I find some love and solace. I believe this processing and grieving sustains my parallel life, one that is filled with the love of my family in Galway. Holding these powerful feelings together, the past and present, and with the demands of work are not easy. 

Real places and emotional spaces somehow bring our souls to life. Another reflection is how select workplace relationships become deep friendships. This return to places took me on the next leg of my journey.  

Mount St Barnard Monastery 

Leaving London I travelled to Birmingham by train to be picked up by a Doug, a church of England Priest I met when I taught leadership at theological college.  We drove to this Cistercian (Trappist) monastery where I would spend the night before going onto Leicester to offer a workshop for 36 Church of England Priests on a leadership training programme.  

The setting of the monastery is beautiful, I was there 13 years ago, a few months after Fynn died. The monks begin their day at 3:30 for prayers and I recall sitting with them in the middle of the night, finding a deep peace and weeping, whilst the world slept. Doug and I walked and talked, about our different work, about the changing role of faith and the church in society. 

My time at the monastery was a little troubled, my emotions were stirred, memories of my last visit rose in my body, and I struggled as I had a number of work commitments that needed dealing with. I had a sleepless night, and wondered if I had tried to pack too much into my schedule (something my psychoanalyst picks up often!)  Coming to the monastery requires a letting go, and I hadn’t given myself time to let go, for the next day I travelled to Leicester. I accepted that my monastic visit was to be less than perfect. I prayed with the monks and fellow pilgrims, I was grateful for the beauty, the peace and the chanting of the psalms, and I ordered my taxi early to step into a different space and prepare for my leadership workshop.

Composting 2.  

The monastery is a place I have found which resonates with my soul. Benedictine monasteries, with their prayer rhythms, contemplative silence and love of work have profoundly influenced me. To see work as prayer, and putting a high value on manual labour, enabled me to enjoy gardening more and when making bread, hedgerow picked jams, and chutney (following my Mother’s lead), but to see it as prayer was a transformational moment. I try and see all my work as prayer, (when stressed unsuccessfully) and on this trip, this has been my experience. The monastery also offers a counter-point to the busy world. To take the vows of stability (never to leave the monastery), celibacy, and poverty, is a radical counter-cultural stance, that challenges us all to live more simple lives.

Church of England Leadership Training

I arrived in Leicester to lead the training session for the Church of England leadership programme. Leicester is a place of ethnic diversity and a vibrant city with a friendly face. I ate South Indian vegetarian dosa for lunch and felt blessed. I walked in the sun and then caught up with work meetings and prepped for the following day. Sitting in front of 36 priests can feel quite intimidating, and I shared this experience at the beginning of my workshop. I find that if I share my anxieties rather than try to cover them up, they often disappear, and I also bond more easily with the group I am teaching. I think this is because it immediately creates a human connection and makes a statement that I am not pretending to be some expert hiding behind a role…. just another human with strengths and vulnerabilities.

In the room, Evangelicals, liberals, and Conservative-traditional Christians were working in many diverse church roles; sharing a belief and also holding diverse interpretations of Christianity.

Composting 3.

How often do we lump together groups and categorise them in a way that suits us? Christians are like this…. they believe this…The Church of England is …Muslims are…. British people are…. French people are…. This trip re-awakened me to the plurality of diversity we experience if open to it. From ethnic diversity in cosmopolitan cities to the diversity of Christian beliefs, even in a ‘homogenous group’ of Church of England priests.

Another theme of this trip was my engagement with different parts of the Muslim community, beginning with the Pakistani cricket fans, then staying in Whitechapel and spending time with the Bangladeshi men and women in cafés, sharing their food and spending time in their place of worship, and then later in Leicester which has a very large Muslim community. I feel very at home in these places, I am not sure if it is the difference itself I feel very at home with, or multi-culturalism, or specifically to certain cultures. I have always felt very ‘at home’ in the middle east i.e. eastern Turkey, Syria, and Palestine; perhaps it’s the café culture and lack of alcohol, the architecture of Islam, or the call to prayer, then there are the vibrant markets I love, and great food (I am a big fan of flat breads). If I believed in past lives, I would assume my past life was spent in a community like this.  Reflecting on this, I also love being in India/Nepal in Hindu cultures, I pray in the Krishna temples in Dublin and Soho often…

Psychoanalysts, Quakers, Muslims, Monks, Christian Priests ….  Grieving, mourning, celebrating and praying, working, and watching Cricket with my family….. it felt like a big trip!

Final Composting Everyday Spirituality

One reflection I have is that I think the centrality of spirituality in daily life is something important to me, and why I am drawn to some cultures more than others. I feel more at home where the spirit collectively runs through our daily lives, and is not worshipped in a separate service on a Sunday, or in some hierarchical, dogmatic or fundamentalist way. Modernity and secularism have disenchanted our worlds, and as in the title of these substacks, I believe a vital task is to Re-enchant our worlds, which in part means bringing the transcendent back as an everyday spiritual experience. Prayer, gratitude, love, and work as prayer….

NOTE  Exploring Leadership Spirit - This November in Spain

For those interested, I am planning a 3 day event in Spain in November exploring leadership spirit. More on this later, but get in-touch if this interests you.