Editorial

I recently had the pleasure of watching James Lovelock being interviewed during a conference on The Future of Global Systems Thinking, held here at the University of Exeter. The event was a celebration of Lovelock’s 100th birthday and of his pioneering approach to thinking about planet Earth as a living system.¹ Although Lovelock’s (1979) ‘Gaia hypothesis’, which proposed that the Earth is a single, self-regulating entity, has been a major influence on the subsequent interdisciplinary development of Earth system science, it was initially met with considerable resistance and ridicule from the scientific community.² It seemed, nevertheless, to capture the imagination of large numbers of people in a way that Lovelock later said had surprised him (Joseph 1991, 70). Within less than a decade, the political and other implications of Gaia were being explored and advanced by a number of influential writers (Thompson 1987 summarises).

Whether or not people understood or accepted even the basic premise of the scientific hypothesis, the evocative image and name of Gaia – the ancient Earth Goddess – that Lovelock attached to it seemed to offer a rallying cry for those seeking to understand the world in terms and structures other than those of the so-called ‘clockwork universe’. The clockwork worldview became dominant in Western societies in the wake of Cartesian and Newtonian physics which suggested that all phenomena could be explained in terms of mechanics (Dolnick 2012). The notion that, like the universe itself, human society can also be understood in clockwork, machine-like terms remains embedded in much political and organizational thinking. This is due, in part, to F.W. Taylor’s work on ‘scientific management’ at the turn of the twentieth century. Whitehead says of it:

Taylor made little distinction between the human and non-human parts of the organization; indeed he viewed human workers as parts of the machine itself. His goal was to improve the efficiency of each and every part of what he considered to be an entirely mechanical system. (Whitehead 1999, 91)

From this perspective, it is easy to see how education, including university degree courses, can be framed in political terms as mere preparation for work in a vast and efficient ‘society machine’; and how professional practices, including those associated with spirituality, have become subject to outcomes-based measurements and quality assurance procedures that often seem better-suited to the manufacture of goods than the provision of services.

I became interested in these contrasting worldviews and their implications for practice whilst working in community education in the 1980s. There were two reasons for this. First, educational policies emerging at that time were predicated upon ideas about competition and individualism that appeared to be diametrically opposed to the co-operative and participatory values of community education. Second, I was trying to articulate something of the felt-reality of being ‘in community’³ and why this was rarely acknowledged in the academic discourses of community education. To cut a long story short (Hunt 2001 contains more) I began to explore the concept of ‘interconnectedness’ which seemed to lie at the heart of community. It led me to Gaia – and is now central to my personal understanding of spirituality which, in many respects, accords with Capra’s view that:

When the concept of the human spirit is understood as the mode of consciousness in which the individual feels a sense of belonging, of connectedness, to the cosmos as a whole, it becomes clear that ecological awareness is spiritual in its deepest essence (Capra 1997, 7).

Interconnectedness was, and remains, a key feature of Gaian and ecological thinking. However, in the 1980s and ’90s, thinking – and especially speaking – about spirituality outside the confines of theology and religious studies was fairly unusual (and, in my experience, certainly not encouraged in academia). Discussion of ‘spirituality’ per se (including its expression in secular terms, and the notion of ‘spiritualities’), as well as of different routes that might be taken towards understanding the concept and its implications for professional practice, is a relatively recent development. The Journal for the Study of Spirituality (JSS) was designed to be part of that development by providing a forum where emerging discussions, practices and understandings may be brought together to identify and facilitate connections across disciplinary, professional and international boundaries.

The first article in this issue, ‘Genealogies of spirituality: An historical analysis of a travelling term’, is a contribution from Switzerland in which Simon Peng-Keller provides a useful reminder of just how far our collective understanding and articulation of spirituality has come – not just in the past few decades but over centuries and across different cultural spaces. He suggests that, precisely because it bridges gaps between different times, cultures, and disciplinary contexts, spirituality is what Bal (2002) terms a ‘travelling concept’: a meta-concept with ‘meaning-transforming’ properties derived from use in multiple contexts. Peng-Keller argues that such concepts can ‘serve as a creative driving force for research – on the condition that the travelling and the transformations are noticed and discussed’. Discussing, as an example, the implications of spirituality’s travels and transformations in the field of health, Peng-Keller concludes: ‘An improved understanding of the many pasts of spirituality can make a valuable contribution to the perception and understanding of the fluid, emergent and sometimes contradictory phenomena associated with the concept’.

One increasingly important phenomenon associated with contemporary spirituality is the emerging role of the spiritual care practitioner. This is not necessarily, as some assume, the same as that of pastoral care practitioners or hospital chaplains and, as Mark LaRocca-Pitts points out, is generally the least understood of all the specialisms involved in transdisciplinary models of care. Drawing on his own experience in healthcare settings in the USA and Ken Wilber’s work on the ‘three epistemologies’ of spirit, mind and body, LaRocca-Pitts entitles his article ‘The board certified chaplain as member of the transdisciplinary team: An epistemological approach to spiritual care’. He demonstrates how ‘spirituality, and thus the care of people’s spirits, is a unique domain of knowledge that is subject to its own epistemology and has its own criteria for knowing and validating its specialized domain’. He argues that there are particular ‘epistemological requirements’ that spiritual care specialists should meet. The contradictory aspect of the argument, of course, is that placing emphasis on different kinds of knowledge and to whom it ‘belongs’ could lend itself to the fragmentation rather than enhancement of holistic care.

Jacques Cherblanc and Marie-Anne Risdon tackle a similar issue in another context. Their article focusses on ‘“Spiritual life” as the heart of the professionalization process of Spiritual and Community Animators in Quebec, Canada’. Animators are expected to ‘promote the spiritual development and community involvement of all students [in Quebec schools], whether or not they are affiliated with a religion’. However, paralleling the concerns of LaRocca-Pitts about spirituality in healthcare, Cherblanc and Risdon illustrate how the evolution of the spiritual animation service has resulted in great diversity in the training of practitioners and ‘in their understanding of the meanings of the terms that define their work’. The authors make a case for professionalizing the animators’ role by placing a strong focus on its unique spiritual components. This, they argue, does require practitioners both to articulate and to ‘claim’ their own particular knowledge.

Knowing how, and with whom, to articulate and share experiences and understandings of spirituality can be hugely problematic. This is not just because of confusions about how to initiate such discussion and, in professional settings, about whose job this might be and how best to go about it, but because, to borrow Peck’s (1990, 60) terms, this is ‘a realm where words are never fully suitable and language itself falls short’.

Catharina Norberg, Regina Santamäki Fischer, Ulf Isaksson and Kristina Lämås illustrate several aspects of the problem in an article entitled ‘Something wonderful and incomprehensible: Expressions and experiences of spirituality among very old people’. Reporting on a study undertaken in Sweden with participants aged between 86 and 99, they note that ‘participants expressed a desire to talk about spiritual experiences and personal beliefs but regarded spirituality as an uncommon topic’; they ‘usually did not talk about their spiritual experiences’ because these were ‘difficult to put into words, and they feared being deemed suspect or labeled as religious’. Norberg and her colleagues add that ‘the fact that Sweden is one of the most secularized countries in the world may have affected the acceptability of talking about spirituality’.

The experience of spirituality is inevitably personal and, whether or not it is culturally acceptable to talk about it, many people deliberately choose not to do so. Indeed, as Karenne Hills notes, the mystical disciplines of silence and solitude have traditionally been seen as a means of enhancing spiritual awareness. Drawing on a qualitative study undertaken in Australia, Hills takes up this point in her article ‘Spirituality, silence and solitude: A reflective interpretation regarding mystery and people with nonverbal autism’. She addresses a number of grossly under-researched questions concerning the spirituality of people who are unable to talk about their experiences because they have difficulties with social communication and/or physical speech. Hills concludes that ‘the life context of this population can be seen as conducive to spiritual aptitude rather than as a neurological deficit’.

The final two articles in this issue emanate from the UK and, in very different ways, consider the nature of contemporary society and its implications for the study and practice of spirituality. Whether or not society can be likened to a machine, David Torevell and Martyn Percy both refer to its current focus on consumerism. In an essay on ‘Distractions, illusion and the need for a contemplative spirituality: A critique of Thomas Merton’s advice’, Torevell argues that ‘we now live in an age of mass consumerism which depends for its success on tempting people away from what really matters towards narcissistic distractions which do not satisfy or fulfil’. In these circumstance, he argues, the work of Merton, a Trappist monk who lived in the first half of the twentieth century, remains relevant. While Torevell supports Merton’s premise that ‘contemplation of the natural order allows practitioners to intuit a divine presence to the world which allows them to see through and correct any illusionary or reductionist understandings’, he also provides a critique of Merton’s approach and points to some of the potential pitfalls of contemplation.

In the Forum section, Martyn Percy’s article, ‘Sketching a shifting landscape: Reflections on emerging patterns of religion and spirituality among Millennials’ draws on his own observations, as an academic and clergyperson, of ways in which the religious/spiritual landscape appears to be shifting in response to increased consumerism generally, and the changing attitudes of young people in particular. Pointing to the evident interest of many young people in ‘personal experience and spiritual fulfilment’, he asks: ‘What types of religious sentiment will be uttered by a generation that is, in all probability, non-conversant in the language of formal religion, but fluent in the many dialects of spirituality?’ The question returns us, full-circle, to the notion of spirituality as a ‘travelling concept’, shaped by and giving new shape to, the changing contexts and conversations through which it passes.

The study of spirituality in academia is no longer, in Frost’s (1916) well-known phrase, a road ‘less traveled by’. The road is becoming increasingly popular and now features on many more disciplinary and professional maps. The ever-growing number of submissions to JSS is testimony to this development – and suggests that the journal’s aim to facilitate interconnections across traditional boundaries is being fulfilled. Your on-going readership and contributions will ensure that the journey JSS began almost 10 years ago will continue. Together, we can continue to create and enrich the road we travel by.

Although it has some way to go before, like Lovelock, it reaches its centenary, the tenth anniversary of JSS will be an occasion for celebration at the sixth international conference of the British Association for the Study of Spirituality (BASS) in 2020.⁴ With a focus on Spirituality in Research, Professional Practice and Education, the conference has been designed to facilitate conversations about the many ways and fields in which spirituality is currently being studied. You are warmly invited to participate and to share and explore further how spirituality is understood, applied and researched in your own and others’ personal and professional contexts. Come and make new connections!

Acknowledgements

My grateful thanks are due, as always, to members of the Editorial Board who have undertaken reviewing for this volume; and to the following colleagues who have generously acted as guest reviewers: Edi Bilimoria, Adam Boughey, Daniele Carrieri, Janice Clarke, Larry Culliford, Bernadette Flanagan, Anna Gatmon, Sophie Mackenzie, Michael O’Sullivan, Christina Prinds, and Jacqueline Watson.

Notes

1 A recording of the interview is at: https://www.facebook.com/exeteruni/videos/650231085471735/ [Accessed 03/08/2019].

2 Lovelock’s work has remained controversial. Nevertheless, as Tyrrell (2013, 209) puts it, Lovelock’s ‘audacious concept has helped to stimulate many new ideas about the Earth, and to champion a holistic approach to studying it’. For Lovelock’s own comments on the name Gaia and its reception, see: https://www.theguardian.com/society/1999/aug/04/guardiansocietysupplement5 [Accessed 02/06/2019].

3 I endorse Peck’s (1990, 60) observation that

Community is more than the sum of its parts, its individual members. What is this “something more”? Even to begin to answer that, we enter a realm that is not so much abstract as almost mystical. It is a realm where words are never fully suitable and language itself falls short.

In my view, this is the ‘realm’ of spirituality.

4 See the conference announcement in this issue and details at: yorksj.ac.uk/BASS2020 [Accessed 30/08/2019].