Well-being | Contemplative Inquiry

August 26, 2025

BOOK REVIEW: BOURNEBRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATERS

Highly recommended, especially for readers interested in local initiatives to address the climate crisis. Bournebridge over Troubled Waters (1) is a sequel to Tony Emerson’s Unlikely Alliances, which I reviewed in October 2022 – (https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2022/10/27/book-review-unlikely-alliances/). Although the new book stands on its own, I think it works best after reading Unlikely Alliances, now republished as Creating Hope in the Valley of the Bourne. The setting continues to be a fictional community on England’s south coast.

In the new book, we have reached the year 2030. The publisher’s blurb describes it as ‘a story of love and friendship’ as well as commitment to climate action. On my reading, the ways in which people do ‘love and friendship’ are integral to the action itself.

This is shown in a group of leading characters who gradually assemble together in an old rectory building. This is less by design than the need for decent housing and a belief that larger dwellings should be fully occupied. But the rectory evolves into a strong base for its residents’ flourishing.

In many ways they are a diverse group. But they all, sometimes with a little tlc, reveal themselves as naturally affectionate and ethically grounded. The culture of the house nurtures these co-operative qualities. It is a creative and supportive place to live. As part of the life of the house, the residents develop a system of peer mentoring for their work in the wider world. There’s also a concern, for some of them, about a progressive Christianity that honours the world and the flesh and is ecologically aware. I am reminded of Matthew Fox’s use of the term ‘original blessing’.

As was the case in Unlikely Alliances, the government is committed to climate action. The earlier book describes their Climate Action Plan, which has put serious wealth taxes in place, rationed fuel and food (especially meat), placed restrictions on air travel, created a Civilian Community Service Corps to provide training and jobs for the unemployed and 2 years national service for school and college leavers. Housing policy is not all about new build, but also addresses better use of existing resources.

The fields covered by our band of rectory activists and their colleagues include agriculture, hospitality, renewable energy, relevant university research, transport, housing, trades union development, clothing (new and renewed), second hand shops, and renovation, repair and maintenance services of various kinds. These are practical needs and also model a cultural shift away from throwaway consumerism. All of this work is depicted as dynamic and gaining momentum.

Temperatures are continuing to rise, and there is an unprecedented level of flooding to contend with. At the same time, vested interests and violent climate deniers, branded as ‘True Britannia’, continue to undermine the Climate Action Plan. Life goes on. Lovers get together. Children are born. Older people die and are lovingly remembered. Music is made. Rugby is played. Hospitality is exchanged. Events are organised and enjoyed. People maintain contact with family members further away, travelling throughout Britain and Ireland, though rarely further than that. It is not clear what the future will hold, but there are some grounds for optimism.

When I finished reading Bournebridge over Troubled Waters I felt as if pitched back into my own timeline. It’s as though my 2025 couldn’t be the one that led to their 2029-2034. I didn’t feel that way even when I read Unlikely Alliances in 2022. My reading of books like this seems to depend not only on who I am but when I am. If I become timeless, I can respond to these books as parables reminding us that we have the power to be better than we are. We just don’t use it enough. That’s a call to respond to whatever the outward circumstances or likely outcomes.

(1) Tony Emerson Bournebridge over Troubled Waters UK: The Conrad Press, 2O24 (www.the conradpress com)

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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 27, 2024

HOW WE INTERPRET PAIN

Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters at the End (1) is about life when independent living is no longer an option, and also about the end-game. I intend to review the book fully in a later post. Here, I have extracted a passage about how we evaluate the experience of pain and suffering, and how they vary according the the stories we tell about ourselves and our lives. The author draws on his experience as a physician, a teacher and a family member.

“The brain gives us two ways to evaluate experiences like suffering – there is how we apprehend such experiences in the moment and how we look at them afterward – and the two ways are deeply contradictory. … People seem to have two different selves – an experiencing self who endures every moment equally and a remembering self who gives all the weight of judgement to two single points in time, the worst moment and the last one.

“The remembering self seems to stick to the Peak-End rule even when the ending is an anomaly”. In a hospital-based experiment (2) “just a few minutes without pain at the end of their medical procedure dramatically reduced the patients’ overall pain ratings even after they’d experienced more than half an hour of high level pain. ‘That wasn’t so terrible,’ they’d reported afterward. A bad ending skewed the pain scores upwards just as dramatically. …

“Research has also shown that the phenomenon applies just as readily to the way people rate pleasurable experiences. Everyone knows the experience of watching sports when a team, having performed beautifully for nearly the entire game, blows it at the end. We feel that the ending ruins the whole experience. Yet there’s a contradiction at the root of that judgement. The experiencing self had whole hours of pleasure and just a moment of displeasure, but the remembering self sees no pleasure at all.

“If the remembering (or anticipating) self and the experiencing self can come to radically different opinions about the same experience, then the difficult question is which one to listen to. …. In the end, people don’t view their life as merely the average of all of its moments – which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people’s minute-by-minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human experience. A seemingly happy life may be empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves. Unlike your experiencing self – which is absorbed in the moment – your remembering self is attempting to recognize not only the peaks of joy and valleys of misery but also how the story works out as a whole. That is profoundly affected by how things ultimately turn out.”

(1)Atul Gawande Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End London: Profile Books in association with Wellcome Collection, 2014 (UK edition)

(2) NOTE: Gawande describes research by Daniel Kahneman and Donald Redelmeier involving 287 hospital patients who underwent colonoscopy and kidney stone procedures while awake. The patients were given a device that let them rate their pain every sixty seconds on a scale of 1 (no pain) to 10 (intolerable pain), a system that provided a quantifiable measurement of a moment-by-moment experience of suffering. At the end the patients were also asked to rate the total amount of pain they experienced during the procedure. The procedures lasted anywhere from 4 minutes to more than an hour. The patients typically reported extended periods of low to moderate pain punctuated by moments of significant pain. A third of the colonoscopy patients and a quarter of the kidney stone patients had a pain score of 10 at least once during the procedure. Patients’ final ratings were not based on the whole experience and its duration but by what Kahneman called the ‘Peak-End rule’, an average of the pain experienced – the single worst moment of the procedure and the very end. This research is described in Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow.

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October 27, 2022

BOOK REVIEW: UNLIKELY ALLIANCES

Highly recommended. Unlikely Alliances (1) is set in the years 2029-2033, in a fictional town on England’s south coast. It offers a degree of hope about the climate crisis, presenting a positive response to its challenges at the global, national and, especially, local levels. Towards the close of the book, one of the characters reflects on a benign economic austerity that includes social justice: “limited food in the shops, clothes and shoes having to last many years, trips abroad requiring special license … but look around us, are we really worse off?” The answer is a qualified no, on the grounds that everyday life has become less constrained and less stressful, thanks to the choices that have been made.

Unlikely Alliances offers a gentle, compassionate and good-humoured lens on a subject that can seem grim and edgy. The title refers to the changing political, professional and above all personal relationships of people working on adaptation goals in their Bourne Valley community. They are from a wide variety of backgrounds, including local government, academia, trade unions, churches, the voluntary sector, management consultancy, the hospitality industry, sports organisations and farming. Unexpected synergies are generated. The novel shows how its band of protagonists find themselves, each other and a new sense of purpose in this work. As fiction, the book has the space to be about lives as well as issues. New culture, adapted to new times, is created in the lived experience of friendship, romance and community building.

The Climate Action Plan of a progressive coalition government provides a political framework, drawing on ideas from the US 1930’s New Deal and the UK reconstruction post World War 2. It is in power because of a wake-up call resulting from a huge inundation in the Netherlands and the presence of a large number of Dutch refugees in Britain – a disaster too close to ignore. For the first time since the mid twentieth century, serious wealth taxes are in place. Food and fuel are rationed: everyone gets at least something at an affordable price. There are new approaches to housing. A Civilian Community Service Corps provides training and jobs for the unemployed and a two-years national community service for school and college leavers.

In crisis conditions, this government is broadly popular. Even so, it is vulnerable to defections within its own Parliamentary ranks, the vigorous opposition of vested interests and those who speak for them, and the violence of militant climate denialists on the street. These struggles are not minimised, and they are vividly portrayed in the book. But most of the focus is on resource and resiliency building at the local and regional levels, and on the changes in the lives of the main characters, as they open up to each other’s influence and affection. It is their efforts that prevail, since they come to make practical sense to more and more people.

A brief review cannot do full justice to a book that deals with a civilisation at the edge, presented from a stance of generosity and warm commitment to human flourishing. Tony Emerson has long experience of working with environmental issues and is also an accomplished storyteller. I found Unlikely Alliances heartening and enjoyable to read, and a well-informed glimpse into a possible near future.

(1) Tony Emerson Unlikely Alliances https://FeedARead.com 2021 – e-book created by White Magic Studios – http://www.whitemagicstudios.co.uk 1922. Available on Amazon (UK and USA).

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November 5, 2021

BEING IN PLACE

The first days of November were kind to me, with bright sunshine and temperatures good for walking. I have felt fitter and healthier than for awhile, and completed a 7 mile walk on 1 November without much sense of wear and tear. I felt alive in an everyday kind of way and appreciative of the spaces I moved through. My main focus was movement itself, and I took photographs only of places beyond my current ‘normal’ range. Nothing mystical: just the simple pleasure of being in place.

1 November gave me autumn at its best rather than any sign of winter. The canal had, in places, a kind of dappled intimacy, aided both by unmanicured foliage and architecture on a human scale. The quality of light was heart-lifting too, always significant for me.

There were also other spaces, more open, allowing an overview of the canal landscape. The picture below gives an indication of how much blue sky there was, on the day. It was a delight to be able to see so far, and so clearly. I realise how much my resilience, at times wobbly, is supported by simple experiences like this.

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April 11, 2020

SPRING ABUNDANCE AND PUBLIC HEALTH

April growth, when it gets going, is abundant and exuberant. When the days are clear and warm and anticipate summer, I feel a surge of celebration. We are, at last, moving in the direction of Beltane and the merry month.

Since I last wrote, I have recovered my pleasure in outdoor walking. My body’s wish to be outdoors and moving, enjoying the gifts of the season, is stronger than any doubt or anxiety. My pleasure in taking pictures, for the last six months integral to my walks, is part of this. I am glad that my essential phone incorporates a conceivably non-essential camera.

I took the picture above specifically because it shows the lovingly cultivated flower bed in my local public park. This flower bed, and the park itself, exist to be seen and enjoyed, without any entrance charge, by anyone who wants to be there. They are examples of a highly pro-social resource. As we move towards an uncertain future, I hope that we continue to value such spaces, and take collective care to preserve them.

This morning, looking at the news, I see my view supported affirmed by current research. “Meredith Williams, a postdoctoral fellow at the London School of Economics’s school of geography and environment, said access to green space was vital to public health. ‘Even before the pandemic, there was an increasing focus on research on the physical and mental benefits of green space. Having access to nature gives us a sense of calmness and tranquillity … that helps with reducing the stress that comes especially from urban living'” (1). The context is rumours of enhanced lockdown in London’s parks, where the residents of poorer boroughs have less access both to private gardens and public parks, putting more pressure on the public spaces that do exist.

Yesterday I found Stratford Park in Stroud almost deserted, its carefully tended flower beds unobserved and unenjoyed. For me, publishing this picture honours the work of its gardeners. Their creativity deserves to be recorded and shared, both for what it is, and what he stands for, as the wheel of 2020 continues to turn.

(1) Guardian 11 April 2020 Coronavirus park closures hit BAME and poor Londoners most

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April 8, 2020

LOOKING THROUGH WINDOWS

There is a world through my window. April has often been a magical month in my year, and 2020 need not be an exception. I link April with intensified and palpable greening, of soft sunsets at an attractive time of day. It is still happening out there and when I lose myself in the image it is happening in here too. Essentially there’s no difference. It is wonderful. of an evening, to follow the sunset process through its many stages of development.

I notice that, here in the UK, some attitudes to the current lockdown have been utilitarian to the point of puritanism. It is not enough for our behaviours to be safe in relation to Covid-19. They have to be ‘essential’, and it seems that essential activities can’t be tainted with any suggestion of idleness or pleasure. I can jog through a beauty spot, but I’m letting the side down if I sit down to rest or enjoy it – even if there’s no-one else around. This goes against everything we know about mental and emotional wellbeing, where such opportunities can be vital resources in the face of stress and depression.

I don’t like this and I am confident that I am right. Yet something in me has been influenced by this atmosphere and has started to feel that outdoors is a forbidden zone. When I do go out, I have to push against this and feel slightly transgressive. Of course, something else in me quite likes that, too. But it’s not the sort of enjoyment I’m really looking for, and I’m experiencing this whole cultural overlay – one that’s arisen so quickly – as saddening.

I like my home and garden and I can enjoy looking out through upstairs windows. I’m concerned that others don’t have this advantage and may be deprived of a vital safety valve. I am also aware that the lockdown has to work, especially since it was initiated later and more haltingly than the pandemic requires, and not in tandem with the testing and contact tracing that have been working well elsewhere. I understand the public policy difficulties in the place where we are.

One way or another, indoors or out, I will not miss out on the magic month of April and the merry month of May. After a rugged winter, I will open myself to nature’s change of energy.

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March 21, 2020

SPRING EQUINOX 2020: IMAGES OF HOPE?

A lone fawn protected by a dolmen. Boxing hares. A drill bow kindles a flame. As I move beyond the equinox into the second quarter of the year, what are these images telling me?

I am working with the Wildwood Tarot* as a resource for my journey through the wheel of the year. I’ve done a three card reading to intuit themes for the three months ahead. Each card is a lens on the whole period, revealing different aspects of the year’s second quarter, perhaps with an element of progression.

The key word for the 4 of stones, the one with the fawn, is ‘protection’. The supporting Wildwood text is largely a reflection on spiritual warriorship, with themes of testing, endurance, ethics and compassion. They help me to understand our public health crisis as also a spiritual crisis. Fortunately, the dolmen holding the fawn in immobilised physical safety can also be a space for spiritual renewal.

The 2 of stones, with its boxing hares, is another earth card and stereotypically seasonal. Its key word is ‘challenge’. In the traditional universe of the Tarot, One becomes two, and then three, and then the multitude. The opportunity for I-Thou relationship, diversity and the world of interbeing have been created. At the same time stress, tension and potential conflicts of interest have been born along with them. Interconnectedness sounds rich, creative and dynamically supportive. So it can be. Yet relationships involving dominance, submission, predation and parasitism are also forms of interconnection. Viruses too.

I don’t know what it’s like to be a hare. I have been told by other humans that boxing hares are playing a mating game, enacting a mating ritual, or demonstrating that female hares are capable of seeing off unwanted advances from males. Perhaps all of the above. They certainly demonstrate the complexities of interconnection. Currently I describe myself as ‘self-isolating’, and this is likely to go on for at least the whole quarter. Actually, I am self-isolating with my wife Elaine, and we are very conscious of needing to take active care of our own relationship and to maintain good distance links with others. The health of the interconnectedness within which we live is more important than ever. I take some comfort here from the boxing hares. Their energies are successfully held in balance. Their collective life and its continuation over the years are enabled. They are resourceful creatures and our traditional lore about them speaks of shape shifting capabilities and closeness to the Otherworld. They are survivors.

The key words for my third card, the Ace of Bows, are ‘spark of life’. In a reading without major trumps or court cards, this stands out as the fountainhead of the fire suit and in the Wildwood Tarot it points to the later stages of this quarter, from Beltane to the Summer Solstice and indeed beyond. It introduces human agency and technology, and is associated with creativity, enterprise and science: “The drill bow suggests the human element, our partnership with the environment in which we live and the mastery of its gifts”. I find myself placed in a somewhat passive position, but I am part of a wider community. I do have confidence that creatively scientific and genuinely enterprising efforts will be brought to bear on the current health crisis. ‘Spark of life’ resonates favourably for me, without saying anything specific about my individual future.

The three cards together encourage a strong focus on my contemplative inquiry, including this blog. The inquiry is personal, and in the language of Wildwood maintains my link to the Otherworld. It is also public, because of the blog, and can therefore play a role in a larger effort to use blogging and social media in the service of healthy interconnection. Wildwood’s suit of bows talks of ‘philosophical and esoteric pursuits’ as a form of “skilful ability fuelled by will”, along with the creativity, science and enterprise already noted. I would like to think of my contemplative inquiry as a manifestation of this, and I hope that it can be a form of service in the forthcoming quarter and beyond.

*Mark Ryan & John Matthews The Wildwood Tarot Wherein Wisdom Resides London: Connections, 2011. Illustrations by Will Worthington

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March 14, 2020

SPRING, GRATITUDE AND COVID-19

On Friday 13 March I tasted spring in its fullness. I was flooded with gratitude. Yet ‘gratitude’, especially in religious settings, was for a long time a tainted term in my life.

Growing up, I faced demands to be grateful whether I felt it or not. Over time I came to link this idea to formal performance and competitive public piety: being seen to be ‘good’. It also left my natural feelings of gratitude, when they came up, unrecognised and untended. In this stunted state I developed a cynicism about how language is used, rather than finding ways about how, authentically, to identify and cultivate my own sense of gratitude.

I am sad about this, because, even from a self-referential perspective, the capacity for gratitude is linked to wellbeing, happiness, self-acceptance and a sense of purpose in life. Psychological studies (1) show that gratitude is an active agent and not simply the result of already existing wellbeing. Exercises in gratitude work for many people, for much of the time. There are now considerable academic and self-help literatures on the subject.

Most spiritual traditions recommend gratitude, and for many of them this is linked to a sense of the divine, or some other ultimate point of reference. But this isn’t necessary. Gratitude is named as the third of thirteen principles in Atheopaganism (2), which is based on an entirely naturalistic, science-based cosmology. Here too, gratitude is seen as a habit that has to be learned and practised. The practice can alter both our internal dialogue and our behaviour. “It is good for ourselves, our relationships, our society and our world”.

I came late to gratitude, in the sense being discussed. But I’m a convert now. Being older has somehow helped. There was a decisive moment just under fifteen years ago, when I was 56 years. I was diagnosed with a cancer that might have killed me and I started to ask myself how I was going to maintain my quality of life remaining if I found myself on a downward slope.

I concluded that I would need to do what I could to count my blessings whilst I still lived. I recovered – with the insight still in place. I have built on that with greater awareness over the years, especially since beginning my contemplative inquiry. Now I’m nudged by the coronavirus and the same principles apply. I’m enjoying the experience of spring, usefully aware of my mortality, and grateful to be here, now.

(1) Rupert Sheldrake Science and Spiritual Practices Coronet, 2017

(2) Mark A. Green Atheopaganism: an Earth-Honoring Path Rooted in Science Green Daragon Publishing, 2019 (Foreword by John Halstead)

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July 20, 2018

WELL-BEING: CONTEMPLATING ACTION

“In The Spirit Level Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett put inequality at the centre of public debate by showing conclusively that less equal societies fare worse than more equal ones across everything from education to life expectancy. The Inner Level explains how inequality affects us individually, how it alters how we think, feel and behave. It sets out the overwhelming evidence that material inequities have powerful psychological effects: when the gap between rich and poor increases, so does the tendency to define and value ourselves and others in terms of superiority and inferiority. A deep well of data and analysis is drawn upon to empirically show, for example, that low social status is associated with elevated levels of stress hormones, and how rates of anxiety and depression are intimately related to the inequality which make that status paramount.” (1)

What links contemplation and action? My answer is creative and powerful ideas. In a recent post (2), I cited Brendan Myers (3) proposition that a flourishing life is ethically desirable and good (a powerful, creative idea), and that it depends on us supporting each other’s well-being and that of the biosphere and the Earth itself (another powerful creative idea). The Spirit Level and The Inner Level concern ‘developed’ countries in the 21^st century and to an extent the last two decades of the 20th. They paint a depressing picture, especially for the U.K. and the U.S.A, and for me it shows the need to champion a social ecology that supports health and well-being.

For some years I worked at the interface between public health (i.e. population-based health, largely concerned with prevention work and the creation of more supportive environments) and mental health. So, I am interested in the recent publication of The Inner Level (4) and may write further about it. Thinking about ‘health’ in the bigger picture (with service provision as only one aspect) is a positive way into social justice work, where powerful ideas can (in principle) be realised through ethical passion and political will informed by scientific evidence. It is a notion of how to do public policy that needs to be kept alive.

I know this doesn’t happen much, now, in a culture like ours with high levels of bullying, confusion, distraction and misinformation. We seem to be living with an orchestrated dumbing down of political discourse in the service of oligarchic interests. So, my first action – not always recognised as action – is personal resistance to any onset of cynicism, numbness and despair within myself. My second action – also not always recognised as action – is to work at maintaining an adequate level of knowledge and understanding of what is happening in the world, using the lens of ‘powerful ideas’ to make sense of the information I digest. This includes having an historical perspective – both backwards and forwards – on current events. My third action is to place myself within networks that share my concerns and are responding to them in diverse ways – hopefully modelling cultures of: compassion (including ruthless compassion); openness and creativity; curiosity about the world; and criticality (deconstructive where necessary and appreciative where possible) in the realm of ideas and action. Further developments will come from there, and I will write about them within this blog.

Over time my contemplative life has moved towards a blend of energy work and meditative connection to source, with the practice forms kept simple. It is also the clear, awake space out of which I act in the world.

(1) https://www.equalitytrust.uk/

(2) https://contemplativeinquiry.wordpress.com/2018/07/02/ethics-and-civilization/

(3) Brendan Myers Reclaiming Civilization: A Case for Optimism for the Future of Humanity Winchester, UK & Washington, USA: Moon Books, 2017

(4) Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett The Inner Level: How More Equal Societies Reduce Stress, Restore Sanity and Improve Everyone’s Well-being

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Tag: Well-being