If I look back honestly at my teens and early adulthood, I would not have described myself as deeply spiritual. In truth, I was not especially interested. Life was full, busy and structured. It felt easier to keep things rational and contained, with ideas placed neatly into their own compartments. Perhaps, at the back of my mind, I thought there might be something bigger, but there were fewer invisible elements to wrestle with if I just ignored it.
We live in a world where things are judged to be “perfect” or “imperfect”. These words can have a positive and useful meaning. For engineering or design, for example, it’s important that things fit together perfectly or that we can make perfect copies of plans. An imperfection can lead to a fatal flaw in which an aeroplane crashes or millions are lost on a project through faulty measurement. When we get down to the microscopic level, we see that in reality nothing is ever exactly perfect.
In face of all the needless suffering created by humans beings on this planet – war, poverty, injustice, oppression, exploitation – we may wonder if we can ever find a solution where we can live together in peace and harmony. We may despair how people of goodwill never seem to have their voices listened to, how the cruel and the greedy seem to triumph. It’s enough to make anyone give up. And many do.
We tend to think of peace as a state of rest. Some tranquil place where nothing happens. But peace is neither static nor passive. Rather, it is active. A deliberate choice. It is not the absence of war, which is often nothing more than an uneasy peace. It’s not about compromise or capitulation either, where to avoid conflict we keep the peace. Instead, it’s a state of calm readiness, in balance with ourselves, others and the world.
Few people know of Thecla today, but in the early Church this 1st century woman missionary was famous, working alongside Jesus’ key follower St Paul, a man whose preaching and writing shaped much of Christian thinking. She was even called “equal-to-the-apostles”. Yet she challenged not only the accepted position of women in Roman society but the entrenched patriarchal views of women’s role within the Church. She was also venerated as the first female Christian martyr and became a saint. So what was her story?
There have always been conspiracies. We only need to think back to Roman times, to the conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar, immortalised by Shakespeare. A group of Senators successfully plotted to kill him, accusing him of tyranny. The event was recorded by his respected contemporary Cicero and subsequently confirmed by half a dozen later Roman historians. The Senators had the motive and the means. No one seriously doubts it happened.
When I was 15, I was sent to a special educational unit for young people who, for different reasons, had found mainstream education difficult—and whom mainstream education had often found difficult too. Before I came to the educational unit, my life was already difficult. I had a very troubled home life and no real support system outside of education. There wasn’t anyone at home who could offer stability, emotional support, or help me make sense of what I was dealing with, and that inevitably showed in my behaviour. I was navigating situations and emotions that felt far bigger than me, without the support or language to explain what was going on.
Although it is commonly thought that in medieval times women and men who were healers were often accused of being witches, at village level people clearly distinguished between benevolent practitioners of “natural magic” often called “cunning folk”, “wise women” or “wise men”; and malign users of magic which were usually identified as “witches”. In his book Instruments of Darkness, the historian James Sharpe identified four services provided by cunning folk:
Imagine you are a nun in mid-17th century Mexico. You’re a brilliant scholar in an age where the best a woman can hope for is an advantageous marriage. A precocious child, you’re reading at three. At nine years old, with astonishing speed, you learn Latin and Greek and quickly absorb theology, science, and classical literature. Imagine you are a nun in mid-17th century Mexico. You’re a brilliant scholar in an age where the best a woman can hope for is an advantageous marriage. A precocious child, you’re reading at three. At nine years old, with astonishing speed, you learn Latin and Greek and quickly absorb theology, science, and classical literature. As a young teenager you join the household of the viceroy of Mexico City, who pits you against a roomful of renowned scholars. You hold your own.
This is the story of a man who wouldn’t fit into a box. In an age of increasingly entrenched and intolerant religious beliefs, his was a free spirit. The story of his life is one of searching, evolving, awakening till he arrived at an understanding of the spiritual world that we would recognise today. Yet in his time was denounced by the Catholic Church as a heretic and his books were burnt; and the Protestant leader Martin Luther called him "the devil's most cherished slanderous mouth".
As the political and media world are gripped with the issue of immigration and resurgent nationalism, it is ever more important that a clear spiritual vision is set out that offers a constructive way forward for humanity.
The Catholic Church did its level best to destroy not only every last Cathar but every last trace of them and very nearly succeeded. The whole machinery of Church and state – military, administrative, legal and religious – was employed to crush the ‘heresy’ that at one time seemed likely to undermine the power of Catholicism in southern France. Even so, it took over a hundred years to supress Catharism and a few their writings still survived. It is these that give voice to the movement that so terrified the Catholic establishment.
Leaders of nations are supposed to work for everyone’s good. At the bare minimum they should strive for political and economic stability and justice for all. Some may drive reform or promote social revolution. Others may be peacemakers. But what about forging a spiritual path for their people? Should leadership encompass a spiritual element? How would it benefit a political environment?
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