Welcome to my blog which begins with good news for humanity. The granite faced woman across the road and I have made peace!! We’ve smiled at one another. We’ve apologized. We’ve both taken the blame. Northern Ireland, Palestine, here we come.
One of these days I’ll ask her her name. I bet she knows mine.
Not much done this week. Had a word of praise on Monday and promptly ground to a halt. Here are further thoughts on the Emperor’s new clothes.
In my last piece on spirituality I was objecting to the multi-headed Typhon that spirituality has become and saying that my disquiet about this arose when I discovered that spirituality and its progeny, eg spiritual needs, had swanned their way into a supposed bastion of scientific orthodoxy, something that religion which for so many years held sway, now only manages to do, ironically, by being regarded as some sort of spirituality subset. Spirituality, I have declared, is a johnny-come-lately version of cultural Christianity that has adopted pseudo-universal values and costumed itself in old clothes to make itself look ancient whereas in fact it is less than fifty years old. To confirm this, turn to your fifty year old shorter oxford dictionaries and look up both the words spiritual and spirituality. Here are the first meanings of both:
SPIRITUAL: Of, pertaining to, affecting or concerning, the spirit or highest moral qualities, esp, as regarded in a religious aspect.
SPIRITUALITY: The body of spiritual or ecclesiastical persons; the clergy.
SPIRITUALITY. (Catholic dictionary) Positive immateriality; the property of being intrinsically independent of matter at least in essence and in some activities.SPIRIT: The animating or vital principle in man (and animals); that which gives life to the physical organism, in contrast to its purely material elements
The Catholic encyclopaedia defines SPIRIT:- Used in several different but allied senses: (1) as signifying a living, intelligent, incorporeal being, such as the soul; (2) as the fiery essence or breath (the Stoic pneuma) which was supposed to be the universal vital force; (3) as signifying some refined form of bodily substance, a fluid believed to act as a medium between mind and the grosser matter of the body.
So how is the word spirituality used now? How isn’t it? Remember, if you want to follow me, that in my opinion the word spirituality was used to define against religious Christians who the people defining against them, people like me that is, thought were narrow minded and literal in their understanding of non-material matters. In the same way that Dawkins now picks on particular beliefs that are clearly ridiculous or disprovable and mocks both the people that hold these beliefs and the religion that gave rise to them, we reacted against the dogmas that had lithified in Christianity and assumed that all religious people were equally incapable of separating useful myth from fact. This was both youthful hubris and a catalyst for change which now has removed nearly all the dogmas out of Christianity. Unlike Dawkins, however, the reformers remained desirous of religious experience which they then renamed spiritual. And therein lies the problem. Renaming something doesn’t make it different and having two names for the same thing can lead to confusion, especially if the names suggest that the named things are actually different from one another. Say we called religion, ‘chocolate’. Spirituality would then be called ‘Not-chocolate though may contain chocolate’. Someone may then ask, ‘So what’s in the non-chocolate that isn’t in the chocolate?’ or ‘what isn’t in the not-chocolate that is in the chocolate?’ The manufacturer might then have to answer, ‘Well actually they’re the same, just that some folks like one name and some folks the other.’
Which would be fine if that’s all there was to it. But it isn’t because there’s a whole array of people out there who know perfectly well what chocolate is and how to cater for a person’s needs for chocolate. What they don’t know is what ‘not-chocolate that may contain chocolate is’ or how to deal with someone’s needs for such a substance. To help NHS staff to do this task which only has semantic reality, trainings are initiated, studies made, books read, consultants consulted and chaplaincies trans-ethnically transmogrified.
Stop! You’re going the wrong way. It’s an epidemic of unreasoned reasonableness which is treatable by surgery. Slice the throat of spirituality. It’s done, had its time; we’ve all grown-up now, we no longer need to pretend that spirituality isn’t religion and if you doubt it for one moment please study the Harvard Human Rights Journal, ‘The Complexity of Religion and the Definition of “Religion” in International Law’ and tell me if after reading that you can think of anything which isn’t religion and anything that spirituality could be that isn’t covered in the definitions of religion therein.
Before I move on to looking at the chaos caused by the unnecessary rebranding of religion, I feel impelled to point out that this disavowal of spirituality in favour of religion isn’t entirely comfortable for me. I don’t like to feel I’m sticking up for religions; lord only knows how happy I’ll be when the priests of the world simultaneously defrock but I don’t see why nurses, doctors, cleaners, whatever, in our hospitals should be bothering themselves trying to sort out the spiritual, i.e. the religious, needs of their patients when -if the needs were couched as religious- individual staff members would not be expected, nor expect of themselves, to feel responsible for dealing with these needs beyond finding an appropriate religious authority – should there be one. Because these needs are defined humanistically, by the use of the word spiritual, individuals who are actually there to do other things, such as nursing, are put into an unnecessary stressful situations and asked, effectively, to act as priests and gurus and take upon themselves responsibility for someone’s spirit or soul. Surely this is too much. No-one doubts we all have some inner wisdom on our better days but in any religious tradition, in any learning situation in fact, the teaching and the guiding is usually left to those reckoned to have attained some knowledge themselves.
Once we’ve got spirituality off the agenda, we can ask why spiritual and religious needs can’t just be called psycho/emotional needs or plain human needs. One step at a time.
Oh, was just reading a piece advising consultants on how to address spiritual needs of their patients. It is suggested they ask:' Does your trust in God lead you to think about cardiopulmonry
resuscitation in a particular way?'That is funny isn't it?
And, for those who read my piece on Sativex, may I point you to yesterday's Observer which carried a report on magic mushrooms and cancer patients. Why has it taken fifty years?
EXTRACT 2 FROM PILGRIMAGE TO INDIA 1976
‘A warrior takes his lot, whatever it may be, and accepts it in ultimate humbleness.
He accepts in humbleness what he is, not as grounds for regret but as a living challenge. A warrior is impeccable.’ – Don Juan
Exalted truth imposes upon us
Heat and cold, grief and pain,
Terror and weakness of wealth and body
Together, so that the coin of our innermost being
Becomes evident. –Jalaludin Rumi
Monday September 20th
Hitching not very far with Stefan. Long waits. Great joy in the evening when got stoned and was momentarily in the here and now. Words in my head saying, I am not my voice or my photographer.’ The night was not so bad. A NIGHT OF SEEING.
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| Berne |
Tuesday September 21st
Slow hitching. A cold night out in Berne by the side of the road in my sleepingbag.. Sent postcard to R.
THE DAY I ARRIVED IN SWITZERLAND.
Wednesday September 22nd
Finally arrived by train from Lausanne to a sunny place. I pay the fares and buy the food, spending money in advance and now discover there is to be no work. All that money spent, none to come, on a fruitless journey. Don’t know what to do now.
-Am thinking thoughts now merely because I have the time and warmth to write. No plan has formulated yet. I’ll be here another day or two with or without work. My head is much better but I’ve developed a cold and bad cough. The cough reacts badly to the cold clear Swiss air. If no work comes I’ll aim for Chur.
-Seen that I have developed an attachment to my money. I must be careful of that. I have prayed less today. Do I have to be down and out before praying?
-Am much admiring of the german (physique?). Am very pleased to have Stefan as a guide to this part of the journey. Still thinking and dreaming of R. THE DAY THERE WAS NO WORK IN NYON.
Thursday September 23rd.
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| NYON |
Was just thinking that if I go to Chur I’ll try and borrow some money to have my beard (?)shaved off. Today has been relaxed and easy, messing about Nyon, looking at the lake and flashing on being by Galilee. Tried to go to Geneva but couldn’t get a lift. Pirette gave us money so I bought an envelope and stamp so I can at long last post my letter to Steve and Calla. No news of work yet, maybe on the road again tomorrow. No meditation yet. These are social days (which is, I guess, a poor excuse). Tried to visit a Sufi place mentioned in my book but couldn’t find them. My cold continues, runny nose etc. THE DAY I LOOKED DOWN ON LAKE GENEVA.
Friday September 24th
So it goes. An early morning telephone call & we’re off to work picking grapes high above Lake Geneva. Very hot. Enjoyed every minute of it – except when I got paranoid about the speed of my work. Was really good. And as much food as you can eat every 2 and a half hours. Have never seen people eat so much. Not that I starved myself. And wine all the time. A good day. In the evening we stayed out at the farm, penniless, bookless, diaryless. Went to bed where I dreamed of the war in Lebanon, Aleister Crowley, Idi Amin and other strange things. THE DAY I WENT TO WORK ON THE GRAPES.
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| Swiss Hippies |
Saturday September 25th
Much the same as yesterday except we finished at 6p.m. 80 Swiss francs richer. Back to Pirette and (?) who has packed in his job. Someone else’s story and not so happy. Tomorrow maybe I go somewhere, maybe I don’t. What I really need is rope for my bag but tomorrow is Sunday and I imagine the shops will be shut. Must post my letter to Steve and Calla. THE DAY I EARNED 80 FRANCS.
Sunday September 26th
More strange dreams; one about Christmas in which Steve and Calla had given me a history book but I just couldn’t see the magic in it. Anyway soon after waking Stefan and I conferred and decided we should leave. Pirette and Rato (?) were really nice. I owe them karma and like always I feel that all I have to offer is my prayers. Stefan and I parted at Nyon. I felt like visiting Geneva, maybe sussing out the Sufis before aiming for Chur tomorrow. To my surprise I was almost immediately spirited to Genf (?) & for a bonus a pipe of nice smoke. Then a bottle of wine opposite the lake. Felt very high. The guy went & I set off in the direction of the Sufis and the old cathedral. I’ve really been feeling the desire to visit a church. Thereupon I was met by a Malaysian guy who against my conscious will took me down back to the lake. Only later did I come to the conclusion he had been sent by the Sufis. He is a traveller – been on the road 18 months. At first I thought the message was to go to Fribourg and work but then he recommended me to speed up, wanted me going right around the world! Then he said I could stay in his room overnight. He has fed me. I have a headache but that could be no glasses, or my diet, or my head, just no telling.
-Has been really nice with this guy Mike: I’ve been as open as I’ve ever been with anyone. Been able to tell of my trip, even to talk of christ who I felt danced with Stefan. Went to bed but was woken up by a late visitor whose presence made my free room cost six francs. THE DAY I MET MIKE.
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