Peace | Contemplative Inquiry

March 25, 2024

MENTAL HEALTH UNDER SIEGE

“In Gaza, there is no ‘post’ [traumatic] because the trauma is repetitive and ongoing and continuous.” Dr. Samah Habr is Head of Mental Health Unit, Palestine Ministry of Health. She wrote these words in 2021, after the 11 day Israeli day air assault carried out in May of that year. It was the fourth war since the beginning of the blockade of Gaza in 2007. Recently I attended a Zoom event, predominantly for Amnesty International volunteers (1). Dr. Habr gave a presentation about mental health in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967, with a focus on Gaza from 2007-2021, where there is good enough data to process scientifically. Clearly the situation is much worse today.

The blockade itself created deep poverty, an ongoing water crisis and a severe curtailment of opportunities. A mental health study of children at that time showed that 80% of Gaza’s children had experienced personal trauma and 54% met the official diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Dr. Sabr describes this prevalence of psychological trauma as ‘the disaster of helplessness’ and identifies three forms of it at play:

chronic trauma prolonged. pervasive distressing events such as poverty and institutionalized discrimination
inter-generational trauma psychological trauma experienced by the descendents of a person who has survived a traumatic event
acute trauma an extremely distressing individual event

She goes on to use the word ‘humiliation’ to describe “the pervasive and fundamental experience of the Palestinian people as a whole, under occupation, underlying the varied military, social, economic, and human rights violations that have been imposed over generations”.

One of Dr. Sabah’s principles is that “we cannot treat what we do not acknowledge”. A psychiatrist herself, she says that the Western-based medical model of mental health, codified in the DSM series, is over-individualised. Palestine has few resources for mental health provision, and few mental health practitioners. (There have been some, even in Gaza – 12 of the 67 children killed in the 2021 action were participating in a trauma recovery program.)

Dr. Sabah introduces the concept of Sumud and defines it as a combination of of endurance and steadfastness, both individual and collective. A mental state as well as action oriented, it:

is prosocial and community oriented
fosters endurance and steadfastness
enables defiance against oppression
promotes solidarity
is committed to keep loving despite injustice

Dr. Habr suggests that historical/collective trauma needs to be reprocessed collectively. “It can be alleviated through cohesive and collective efforts such as recognition, remembrance, solidarity, creativity, community psychology and mass cooperation. In youth work particularly (the Palestinians are predominantly a young population), a suggested model is that trauma informed-teachers, medical staff and parents offer community-based interventions in safe spaces – open studios, symbolic expression, theatre of the oppressed).

Dr. Sabr concludes that positive mental health cannot be achieved without justice. “Human rights are the cornerstone upon which mental health flourishes. Without dignity, without freedom, without justice, our emotional well-being is torn apart, leaving us adrift in a sea of suffering.”

All of the crimes in Israel/Gaza from 7 October 2023 have haunted me. This is my second second post about ongoing destruction of Gaza and the deadly consequences for its people (2). Do such posts have an appropriate place in my contemplative inquiry? Yes. If I am held within interbeing (3), I cannot separate myself from these events. If they enter my head, heart and dreams, they are present anyway. I am asked to be conscious and mindful or I will be prey to disabling distress and unskilful ideation. In an outer ripple kind of way, they become an issue for my own mental and emotional wellbeing.

There’s not much I can do other than be conscious and bear witness. But that, at least, is something. On behalf of her people Dr. Habr has asked the people of the West not to abandon them. So today I am moved to write about an aspect of Palestinian experience even in ‘normal’ times.

I believe that Dr. Habr has also given a gift to us. Reading her account of Sumud, it seems to me that its population based take on mental health is portable. I am confident that it can be applied with appropriate cultural modifications in other settings with potentially emancipatory results.

(1) Amnesty International, as anon-partisan human rights organisation, does not take a position on what an eventual settlement in Israel/Palestine should look like. But it does advocate an immediate cease-fire, an embargo on military sales, and a dismantling of the apartheid system operating in the whole territory both for Arab Israelis and Palestinians living under occupation. The event I attended included presentations on possible pathways to peace and Jewish opposition to the current war. For general information about Amnesty in the UK, see https://amnesty.org.uk/

(2) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2023/12/11/poem-if-I-must-die/

(3) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2018/05/10/the-notion-of-interbeing/

Picture Credit: Dr. Samah Jabr

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January 19, 2024

UNFREEZING (SLOWLY) IN WINTER SUN

Yesterday – 3.30 pm or so – I was walking home swiftly from a shopping expedition. I was slowed down and halted by the water in Gloucester docks. It drew my eye and asked for a closer look. It had clearly been iced up in the previous cold night, and had been slowly melting in this bracing but above-zero day.

The sky is clear and I experience a strengthening sun now. I recollect that we are now several weeks beyond the solstice. The balance of light, shade, stillness and fluidity sends me into a more deeply meditative state, entirely trumping my original sense of domestic mission and wanting to be home.

Ice and water are made of the same stuff, manifesting in different ways. The patterns on the surface look still but tell a story of transformation – here, from fixed to free. Another drop in temperature could easily end and indeed reverse this process. In this space I see the same essence adopting different forms under different conditions. But here the change is gentle. The contemplative moment extends itself. I am open to the magic of nature. In such beauty, I find peace and stillness within my own being.

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January 7, 2024

POEM: SUCH A LONG JOURNEY

We had a theory. It meant travelling westward.

At first, simple. We each had resources.

We lost most of them on the Straits of Hormuz;

our boatman betrayed us to pirates.

Perhaps that was the moment to turn back

after we’d bargained our release for gold and incense

leaving only a few coins sewn into an old hat.

But we had come so far

and a theory

can become a story you would wander the world to tell.

We were in trouble, sometimes, misunderstood,

always there for each other – always walking westward,

taken on by an Ethiopian eunuch, even though by then

only one of us was fit to work – slipping away

by night when we sensed we were near.

He was a philosopher and carried his own coffin;

we raided it for myrrh. Took millings

from the edge of one of his ingots,

saved a last joss-stick. We had read our Isaiah.

And we had a theory

that a some place under a setting star

three gifts could be exchanged for peace

passing all understanding. What we ended up giving

were some much-needed hints on run-routes

for a family of refugees.

From the collection Losing Ithaca by Christopher Southgate Nottingham: Shoestring Press, 2023

In the Christian year, the twelve days of Christmas are over. 6 January is the festival commemorating the Epiphany, the manifestation of Christ to the the three Magi, the wise men from the east who came to pay homage to him. Their story is told in the Gospel of Matthew Chapter 2, verses 1-12.

Christopher Southgate is described as “a bio-chemist, a house-husband, a chaplain in university and mental health contexts, and a teacher of theology. He lives with his wife Sandy on the edge of Dartmoor and works at Exeter University”. Elaine and I attended an event at Gloucester Cathedral on the evening of 6 January this year, where he read a selection of his poems, naturally including this one.

The title references T. S. Eliot’s poem on the same theme, Journey of the Magi, but in other ways I find them very different. Southgate’s companions-with-a-theory have a considerably harder time than Eliot’s magisterial Magi. They arrive like refugees and meet with a family about to become refugees. Matthew describes King Herod’s efforts to eliminate any potential rival, as he sees it, to his throne, and the families’ consequent flight to Egypt.

I like the way in which Southgate shows how a somewhat transactional attempt at acquiring a “peace passing understanding” runs up against the realities of the world we live in. I also like the way he doesn’t invalidate the companions’ intent or their journey. They still had a gift to offer, sharing their experience and opening their hearts. Peace was present in that shared space.

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January 3, 2024

2024: INQUIRY AT THE DAWN OF THE YEAR

It is 3 January 2024, around 8.30 am. I repeat my best wishes to all readers for 2024 from inside the new year, as it begins to unfold. I contemplate the sky, uncertain about what this new year may bring. At some level I feel open and uncluttered, free of over-determined intentions. It is as if I have surrendered to a current.

My Contemplative Inquiry, once a formal structured project, has gradually evolved into a simpler and more natural-seeming contemplative inquiry in no need of capitalisation. This inquiry is wired in, no longer in need of much external input or formalised internal effort. I am aware of owing a debt to the formal structured project, with its inputs and efforts, for it enabled this evolution to occur.

The result of the early, more formal, years is recorded in my ABOUT section. It was simultaneously a gnosis and the discovery of a place to stand that felt right and made sense. “My inquiry has been a pathway to greater understanding, healing and peace. In the contemplative moment, I am living presence in a field of living presence, at home in a living world. This is not dependent on belief or circumstance, but on the recognition of what is given, joy and sorrow alike. I find that this simple recognition moves me towards a spirit of openness, a fuller acceptance that nothing stays the same, an ethic of interdependence and a life of abundant simplicity”. My inquiry today is about deepening, and living more congruently and confidently from this place. It is part of me now, and I foresee no end.

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November 14, 2023

POEM: BOATING ON A RIVER

Cranes called through the spray of surging waters

Ch’u skies were free of clouds and rain

at the end of a quiet day of boating

I was fishing among green rushes

when petals landed on my outdoor robe

a light breeze was blowing upstream

as I worked my way to their unreachable source

among distant trees I saw a hint of green

From: In Such Hard Times: the Poetry of Wei Ying-wu Red Pine (Translator) Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2009

Wei Ying-wu was a poet of the later 8^th. century CE, as we count time. It was a period when the later-remembered-as-glorious T’ang dynasty had begun to unravel (a hesitant centre, Mongol incursions, Warlordism at home). Translator Red Pine says that “Wei lived his life wondering what went wrong”, giving a melancholy tinge to many of his poems. He was distantly related to the Imperial family, a scholar in both the Buddhist and Confucian traditions who spent many years as a state official without much enjoying it. This poem was written in 785 – in England, the time of the Venerable Bede and eight years before the Viking sack of the monastery at Lindisfarne.

In the background of this poem is a traditional story about a fisherman who traces peach petals upstream and discovers them coming from a hidden world where people live in peace. But after returning to his village to tell others, the fisherman is unable to find the way there again.

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October 20, 2023

PHILIP CARR-GOMM: PEACEMAKING

I was moved and inspired by Philip Carr-Gomm’s recent Peacemaking podcast on his Tea with a Druid. In the first five minutes he checks in with his live viewers, as is his custom, and finds a theme of anxiety and distress about world events. He speaks of the need for ‘islands of sanity’ – enclosures of calm and peace. He introduces the hope that the people gathered together by the podcast itself can become one. A guided meditation later in the podcast does the job. The gathering becomes an enclosure of calm and peace in real time. It still worked for me well after the event. Such is the magic of Druidry.

Before the meditation, Philip explains the role of Druids, ancient and modern, as peacemakers. The ancient Druids were exempted from military service and had a pan-Celtic authority. A Roman author depicts Druids as walking between warring tribes, urging calm and asking the fighters to put down their weapons: they were “shaming Mars before the Muses”. The God of war and destruction had to bow down before the Goddesses of creativity and inspiration. The Druids of that time were also lawmakers and judges. In Ireland, St. Patrick valued their Brehon Laws so highly that they were written down and continued in force. Peacemaking, peacekeeping and jurisprudence worked together.

In modern Druidry, Philip emphasises the attention given to peace in ritual, where the intention is to begin and end in peace both inward and outward. Our Druid prayer asks for justice, because where there is justice in the world there is also peace. Justice isn’t about killing. It’s about peace: right action, right speech, right thought, right behaviour. We trust the power of prayer and of consciousness directed by love. Sitting in meditation or prayer influences the people involved, and creates a field of consciousness and energy which acts as a patch of calm and peace in bad psychic weather.

I recommend readers to watch the video and, if you are willing, enter into its meditative space. I also include The Modron Prayer (Modron being the Ancient Mother) in this post, as a way of ending it:

“Deep within the still centre of our being,

May we find peace.

Silently, within the quiet of the Grove,

May we share peace.

Powerfully, within the greater circle of humankind,

May we radiate peace.

May peace prevail on Earth.

May it be so. May it be so. May it be so.”

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December 31, 2022

A DIRECTION FOR 2023

I am writing on the last day of 2022. My very best wishes for 2023 to all readers. Many blessings for the year ahead!

The picture above was taken on 26 December (in England called Boxing Day/St. Stephen’s Day) – this year a chilly day of bright blue sky. The truncated spire* of St. Nicholas Church, Gloucester, reaches up towards the vivid sky, despite its history of damage. For me, this image of spire against sky is one of clarity, definition and spaciousness. It is a breath of fresh air.

I don’t know what 2023 will bring. I do want to bring clarity, definition and spaciousness to whatever unfolds. As my contemplative inquiry continues, I find that it subtly modifies its purpose. Discovering and re-discovering the purpose involves an element of divination, since my thinking personality is not exactly in charge.

It is as if authentic clarity and definition come out of the spaciousness itself, not out of cognitive review or ‘brain-storming’. These may be aids, but I have also to wait for signs. When I began this blog, I surprised myself by calling it ‘contemplative inquiry’ rather the ‘contemplative Druidry’. I see now that contemplative inquiry is the root description for my path.

For me, contemplation is a yin quality, an open and receptive engagement with experiences – most especially, with forms of relationship. Inquiry is a yang quality, actively deepening knowledge, refining understanding and seeking meaning. Together they support my path. Druidry is a vehicle that supports spiritual self-direction, and also challenges disastrous social norms concerning both nature and culture. Today I have revised the ABOUT section of this blog, on the eve of 2023, and my key statements are below:

“My contemplative inquiry began in 2012. It is grounded in modern Druidry, though not wholly defined by it. I acknowledge the influence of other sources, especially the wider turn towards an eco-spirituality that meets our historical moment. The inquiry process itself is my core practice, from which others radiate out.

“Over my inquiry years, I have found an underlying peace and at-homeness at the heart of experience. Here, it is as if I am resourced by a timeless, unboundaried dimension from which I am not separate. I find myself guided towards a spirit of openness, an ethic of interdependence and a life of abundant simplicity.”

*NOTE ON ST. NICHOLAS’ SPIRE: the church was first built in 1190 and added to over the centuries. A 200 ft. spire was built in the fifteenth century, but received a direct hit from cannon fire in 1643, during the English Civil War. The final repair waited until 1783, when the spire was reduced in height and capped.

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September 21, 2022

ALBAN ELFED: A TIME FOR RECEPTIVITY?

Blessings of the season! Where I live, the sun is descending but still has a certain power. We have entered the period of the Autumn Equinox, honoured by modern Druids in the festival of Alban Elfed. Traditionally, the emphasis has been on harvest, but Dana O’Driscoll (1) suggests ‘receptivity’ as a resonant theme, “because with receptivity, rather than cultivating an expectation of what we want and expect to come, we are open to what is and what comes our way”.

She relates her approach to the changes that the world is experiencing now. “It is a counter balance to the effort-reward cultural narrative that is tied to the Fall Equinox and themes of harvest. There is one enormous problem with the effort/reward theme on a larger cultural level. It belongs to a different age. It belongs to the Holocene, an 8,000-11,000 year period of stable climate that allowed humans to develop agriculture, allowed humans to have some predictability about their surroundings, and allowed us to develop symbolic understandings like those drawn upon for the modern wheel of the year. … But we are not in the Holocene any longer, both climate-wise and culturally; we’ve moved on to the Anthropocene … characterized by human-driven planetary changes which destabilize every aspect of our lives.”

I find the call to receptivity challenging. Part of me wants the late Holocene back, in a reformed version – socioeconomically, culturally, technologically. Part of me accepts that it has gone for good but doesn’t want to acknowledge the speed and severity of the transition. Currents of anger, fear and grief cry out for recognition. These are as much part of my life-world as are the climate crisis itself, initiatives for adaptation, and the forces undermining those initiatives. I somehow have to find a receptive space for all of the above, without being overwhelmed.

The good news is that my ‘receptivity’ seems to be sourced by a deep peace at the heart of experience, a peace that grows rather than diminishes with time. In my daily practice as a modern Druid I call for peace in the east, south, west, north, deep earth & underworld [below], and starry heavens [above]. Then I say: “I stand in the peace of the centre, the bubbling source from which I spring, and heart of living presence”. These words are vibrant with life for me however often I declaim them. I experience this deep peace as a fruit of my contemplative inquiry. Perhaps there is a harvest aspect here after all.

Certainly, to stand in such peace empowers my receptivity, linking it to other qualities like reverence, delight and awe. None of this changes the world. But it allows me to contemplate it with an underlying confidence, and to face its challenges in a more resourceful way. I am very happy to mark Alban Elfed as a feast of receptivity.

(1) https://thedruidsgarden.com/ – see Fall Equinox: a Spirit Walk and its internal reference to Equinox on Receptivity

NOTE: Pennsylvania-based Dana O’Driscoll is steeped in Druidry and the US homesteading movement. She is Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA) and an OBOD Druid. She is a Mount Haemus scholar, lecturing on Channeling the Awen in 1912.

For AODA, see: https://aoda.org/

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August 13, 2022

STOPPING FOR THE ANCESTORS

“I remember one morning contemplating a mountain in the early light of dawn. I saw very clearly that not only was I looking at the mountain, but all my ancestors in me were looking at the mountain as well.

“As dawn broke over the mountain peak we admired its beauty together. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do. We were free. We needed only to sit there and enjoy the sunrise. Or ancestors may never have had the chance to sit quietly, peacefully, and enjoy the sunrise like that.

“When we can stop the running, all our ancestors can stop at the same time. With the energy of mindfulness and awakening, we can stop on behalf of all our ancestors. It is not the stopping of a separate self alone, but of a whole lineage. As soon as there is stopping, there is happiness. There is peace.” (1)

When Thich Nhat Hanh tells this story, he shows us ‘mindfulness’ as an art of living. He stops, looks at a mountain at dawn. His contemplation becomes a relationship, and the relationship is extended to the ancestors. For him, mindfulness sits together with interbeing, his word for interconnectedness. It is not a personal accomplishment, but the portal to an expanded, more inclusive, experience of life.

Thich Nhat Hanh was a great advocate and teacher of formal sitting meditation. But he didn’t fetishise it. The Mahayana Buddhist world view, and particularly its ethics, mattered more. I once heard a senior Vietnamese follower (also a psychiatrist) say that she was cautious about teaching meditation in Vietnam. She said that even in the 21st century, decades after the Japanese, French, American and Chinese wars, with elements of civil war thrown in, many people in Vietnam are too traumatised to benefit from meditation. What works best is participation in the Buddhist community and its ceremonial life, in a spirit of generosity and compassion. Mindfulness is essentially a value, not a contemplative technique.

I stop for my own ancestors, of both blood and other inheritances. I become aware of holding them in my heart. I let them in as I let in the world around me, and I experience that world with them and for them. We share a brief period of deep peace, and then let it go. For me, it feels mindful, Druidic, and very natural. Something to return to, whenever the moment feels right.

(1) Thich Nhat Hanh The Art of Living London: Rider, 2017 (Rider is an imprint of Penguin Random House UK)

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July 9, 2022

REFLECTIONS IN A PRIORY GARDEN

In my formative years, high summer presented me with a world of manicured green. Mown grass dominated both private and public spaces. Garden lawns, parks, tennis courts, cricket grounds, golf courses, bowling greens: all highly managed. Much water was lavished on their severely cropped verdure, given its enhanced tendency to dry up in hot weather.

This is still happening, but fashions have changed to a degree. The photos above and below show the grounds of the Llanthony Secunda priory in Gloucester. In line with new custom, space is now given to a limited urban rewilding. I am inspired by this small miracle of growth and abundance.

This is an odd summer for me. I am at ease in a congenial place. My wife Elaine and I have moved house successfully. I have stabilised after a period of illness. But this is a transitional period. We are not at our destination, and anticipate more upheaval in the second half of the year. I am divided between here-and-now enjoyment of my surroundings, and concern over possible futures, strategising next steps and feeling the tensions of uncertainty.

In the ABOUT section of this blog, I write of “an underlying peace and at-homeness in the present moment, which, when experienced clearly and spaciously, nourishes and illuminates my life”. That statement is a fruit of my inquiry – it wasn’t there at the beginning. That is the nature of contemplative inquiry: my understanding changes over time, in line with deepening experience.

I am finding that my peace and at-homeness have room for both my day-to-day contentment and my anxiety about possible futures, personal and collective. I don’t strip out my ‘future’-based concerns (themselves part of my present time experience) to tidy up my mental and emotional states. That seems like a superficial understanding of here-and-now acceptance. I find, rather, an invitation to embrace the turbulence too, as part of what is given. The peace arising from innermost being makes room for turbulence, for such peace is not just another passing state. In some hard-to-understand way, it has the capacity to be infinitely spacious, and present in the flux of time and events. All I have to do is trust this peace and let it in.

I do not think of myself as a person of faith. I am more of a ‘philosophical’ Druid rather than a religious one, though I don’t believe that we have to choose between the two. But trusting the peace of innermost being is certainly, in part, a matter of faith, where ‘faith’ involves harmonising with my deepest intuition rather than signing up to statements of belief.

OBOD liturgy includes the words: “deep within my innermost being may I find peace”. This resonates powerfully with me, but I have recently let go of the word ‘my’, because ‘innermost being’ no longer feels exactly personal – it seems, experientially, to be more like being resourced from a timeless, unboundaried dimension from which I am not separate. This realisation, if it is a realisation, is now at the core of my spirituality. I am reluctant to make metaphysical truth claims about it, but it is firmly implanted in my experience. The opportunity, now, is to give it the freedom to grow, within my inquiry and my life.

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Tag: Peace