The best of times, the worst of times?

This issue marks the end of the first decade in the publishing history of the Journal for the Study of Spirituality. I trust it also heralds the start of many more decades of successful growth for the journal. But these are uncertain times. As readers in this latter part of 2020 will be only too well-aware, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic¹ has caused widespread disruption on a global scale. In consequence, many of us are having to reassess priorities as what was considered to be ‘normal life’ gives way to something radically different and may never return. In such circumstances, perhaps the approach is called for that Angelou (1984, 268) says her mother always took: she ‘hoped for the best, was prepared for the worst, so anything in between didn’t come as a surprise’.

The British Association for the Study of Spirituality (BASS) has recently been reassessing its own priorities and is ‘hoping for the best’ in rescheduling its Sixth International Conference, Spirituality in Research, Professional Practice and Education, which had to be cancelled in June because of the pandemic. As indicated in the announcement in this issue of JSS, the anticipated new dates are 7–9 June 2021. The venue (York St John University, UK), keynote speakers, and as many of the original presentations as possible will remain the same; proposals for new presentations are also invited. The 10th anniversary celebration of JSS will be part of the conference, as planned – but maybe with an additional toast to mark its 11th year! ‘Preparing for the worst’ will almost certainly involve online options.

The BASS Annual General Meeting, which should have been held during the 2020 conference, has already taken place online. It had a significant part to play in considering future priorities for BASS. In particular, a near-unanimous decision was taken to change the name of the Association to International Network for the Study of Spirituality (INSS). The reasons were as follows:

• The Study of Spirituality has always been, and remains, the primary focus of the Association’s ongoing work, including, of course, through the pages of this journal.

• It has long been felt that International better represents not only the scope and aspirations of this work but also the nature of the Association’s membership, participation in its conferences, and reach of the journal.

• After much previous discussion within the Executive Committee, ‘Network’ was proposed as an alternative to ‘Association’ because it suggests both inclusiveness and interconnectedness.

Since its inception, BASS has been concerned with the kinds of inclusive practices that promote what Swinton (2011, 13) calls ‘hospitable conversations’ – conversations that help to develop the study of spirituality by crossing professional, disciplinary and cultural borders in order to deepen understanding, create new syntheses, and encourage best practice in research and professional and community settings. In my own view, not only does the term ‘Network’ encapsulate such multi-faceted and evolving processes but the imagery associated with it seems particularly apt.

I have in mind an image of ‘Indra’s Net’, a concept derived from Vedic cosmology which is also a central principle of Buddhism. The net represents an infinite cosmos, spreading in all directions with no beginning or end. At every node of the net there is a jewel, each one reflecting the constantly-changing patterns in all the others ad infinitum. The imagery suggests that each entity in the universe contains within itself the stuff of the entire universe. Thus, the whole is not created by the coming together of individual parts which each has an independent existence; rather, the whole and the parts are inseparable.

A similar image underpinned the old Anglo-Saxon concept of the ‘Wyrd’, a vision of the universe ‘rather like a three-dimensional spider’s web’ such that ‘Any event, anywhere, resulted in reverberations and repercussions throughout the web’ (Bates 1983, 12). Modern scientific research, particularly in both quantum physics and ecology, indicates that the universe may indeed have such qualities. Drawing on influential work undertaken independently at the University of London, UK, by physicist David Bohm (a protégé of Einstein) and Karl Pribram, a neurophysiologist at Stanford University, USA, Talbot (1991, 2) refers to a ‘holographic universe’. He argues that this concept is not only compatible with quantum theory but it helps to account for ‘a wide range of phenomena so elusive they generally have been categorised outside the province of traditional scientific understanding’. These include phenomena that are experienced in so-called altered states of consciousness – many of which may be described as ‘spiritual’.

Such concepts and imagery are obviously radically different from those of the ‘clockwork universe’ which, as Dolnick (2011) illustrates, have dominated Western philosophical, political and scientific thinking since the seventeenth century. Many thinkers and writers have challenged the continuing relevance of this view – and argued that its emphasis on ‘separateness’ is not only incompatible with what is now known about the operation of complex systems, but its influence on human society has highly undesirable and unjust consequences. Goerner (1999), for example, points out that, while the science of the Enlightenment was helpful in its own time, it has created a mindset that values competition, control and dominance; it permeates approaches to everything from economics to urban planning. Interestingly, in arguing that the time has come to re-envision the future in ways that take account of complexity theory and human relationships, she refers to a ‘web world’. I am tempted to say the time has come ‘to re-invent the Wyrd’!

It is almost forty years since Russell (1984/1991, 89) illustrated how ‘We are deeply entangled in the most complex web of social, political, economic, ecological and moral crises in human history’. Taking a similar view, Myers (1990, 180) concluded that ‘we are at a hiatus in the course of human affairs. It is a unique time: a time of breakdown or breakthrough’. The coronavirus pandemic has now brought our interconnectedness, our wyrd nature, into sharper focus than ever before and poses a direct challenge to clockwork thinking. It illustrates painfully how singular events in one part of the world have reverberations and repercussions throughout the whole complex web of our human and planetary affairs. Whether or not it heralds an imminent breakdown of the clockwork universe or a breakthrough to a new way of understanding and being in the world remains to be seen – but it already seems to have proved the point that Russell went on to make: ‘crises may lead us to question some of our basic attitudes and values: Why are we here? What do we really want? Isn’t there more to life? This questioning opens up … the opportunity to change direction’ (Russell 1984/1991, original italics).

Observation suggests that the pandemic is currently providing fertile ground for such questioning and, in consequence, for the cultivation of what Rowson (2017, 11) terms ‘spiritual sensibility’: This involves ‘deepening our engagement with questions of being (death), belonging (love), becoming (self) and beyondness (soul)’.

While such questions are particularly significant in the context of a life-threatening pandemic, they will not be new to readers of this journal. Indeed, they are implicit in various forms in all the articles in this issue.

The first article also poses a very specific practical question in its title: ‘How is spiritual care/pastoral care understood and provided in general hospitals in Victoria, Australia? Staff perspectives’. Utilising semi-structured interviews in a study with participants from across a spectrum of staffing levels, the authors – Heather Tan, Bruce Rumbold, Fiona Gardner, David Glenister, Annie Forrest and Luke Bowen – found that spiritual care is seen as an integral part of whole person care but, as in many similar studies, concerns were raised about how it might be properly achieved in practice. More resources, improved referral systems, and better in-house education of staff which incorporates shared views about the nature of spirituality and spiritual care as a multidisciplinary practice are recommended.

Coincidentally, the second article, ‘Adding critical reflection to spiritual care: Complementing current pastoral care training’, is by one of the authors of the first. Fiona Gardner here explores how education and practice in spiritual care may be enhanced through the use of critical reflection. This involves the practitioner not only in listening well and deeply in a caring situation and attempting to understand her/his personal reactions, but also in learning to recognise the influence of the broader social and historical context on the shared experience. By examining assumptions and values that may underpin what is both said and heard, it can become apparent whether, and what kind of, internal and/or external work may be needed. As Gardner points out, the attitudes and values expressed in an organisation or culture can sometimes be more problematic than, and will interact with, the internal state of a client. Using critical reflection to complement existing training in listening can therefore foster greater capacity to seek change in the place where it is most needed, and to encourage the development of more socially just organisations and communities.

In their article entitled ‘Sources of weakened spiritual faith among Norwegian adults’, Mary Kalfoss, Marianne Nygaard, Tormod Kleiven and Marianne Nilsen also point to the influence that interactions between internal and external factors have on spiritual need and development, including observations of injustice in the world. Drawing on a typology of spiritual struggles, Kalfoss and her colleagues analysed 60 written questionnaires in which respondents described their own experiences of such struggle. Factors precipitating feelings of weakened faith were found to be multifaceted and to cover a wide array of sources. However, many were related to negative interactions concerning church life and church practice and/or specific relational conflicts with other people. The authors note that spiritual struggles often seem to involve ‘an unsettling state of disillusionment and broken trust that arises from experiencing a gap between one’s assumptions and what occurred in reality.’

Adam Possamai, Tony Jinks and Victor Counted explore some of the ways in which experiences of spirituality and religion interact with the reality that is popular culture, and with what consequences. In their article, ‘Conventional and unconventional forms of religiosity: identifying predictive factors and wellbeing outcomes’, they report on a large-scale quantitative study among Australian Facebook users. It indicates that spiritual experiences involving unconventional religious practices are growing and may be influenced by paranormal narratives. Relating various forms of belief to wellbeing and socio-demographic factors, the study suggests that a ‘rising tide of unconventionality within religious spheres is challenging conventional norms of religion and spirituality’. The authors urge further study of the health benefits and/or dangers of these newly-evolving practices.

In the final article, ‘Spirituality, sexuality and identity: A story of dis-possession’, Stephen Wright provides poignant illustration of what can happen when evolving cultural norms become entwined with an individual’s developing sense of self. Taking an autoethnograpic approach, he reflects on his experience of growing up in a working-class family in the north of England in the late 1950s, and on how his acknowledgement of ‘being gay’ impacted upon his relationships and lifestyle. For example, evidently experiencing the kind of ‘disillusionment and broken trust’ to which Kalfoss et al. refer, Wright left the church in which he had been brought up when it and its members could not accommodate his sexuality. In what sounds almost like a prefiguring of diverse spiritual explorations that Possamai et al. have seen among today’s Facebook users, Wright says he subsequently ‘swam the length and breadth of the new age river of spiritual experiences’. He describes how, in this process, teachings about the nature of non-attachment, identity and freedom led to his ‘spiritual awakening’ – and recognition that ‘an aspect of our being is not the whole of our being. Knowing that is true freedom, true humanity; the truth that sets us free. Free to dwell in the Being, and live life from there.’

In terms of the imagery I used earlier, I wonder to what extent such recognition is of the ‘jewel-like’ quality of our being; recognition that we each contain and reflect what we see in others, and that we are all affected by events and reverberations in the cosmic net that binds us. Whether or not one finds the imagery of Indra’s Net or the concept of the Wyrd appropriate or appealing, there can be little doubt that the ongoing pandemic provides a prompt for critical reflection on the images and ideas that underpin what we know, how we know it – and how that influences what we do.

The pandemic has brought despair and uncertainty into many lives, exacerbated political differences and discord, and highlighted injustices throughout the world. But perhaps it will have a positive outcome in inviting the kinds of questions that will encourage the growth of spiritual sensibility and the creation of a new, shared, vision for the future. The words of the English novelist, Charles Dickens, seem ready-made for the historians of the future when they write about the world of today:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair … (Dickens 1859, 1)

Can we hope for the best of times? How might we prepare for the worst? And what role does/can/should the study of spirituality play … ? You are warmly invited to participate in hospitable conversations on these and other topics in the pages of this journal – and in the creation of the new International Network for the Study of Spirituality.

Acknowledgements

My thanks are due, as always, to all the contributors to JSS and members of its Editorial Board. I am also indebted to the following colleagues for generously giving their time and expertise as Guest Reviewers: Laura Beres; Adam Boughey; June Boyce-Tilman; David Crawley; André Grace; Janet Groen; Anne-Christine Hornborg; and Steve Taylor.

Notes

1 See Accessed August 15, 2020. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019.