Reflections on a global Groundhog Day

In my last Editorial I wrote about the need ‘to hope for the best whilst preparing for the worst’ in relation to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and social and political disruption in various forms around the world. I invited consideration about the role and relevance of the study of spirituality in such times. Six months later, with the UK several weeks into its third ‘lockdown’ in an attempt to slow further spread of the virus, many similar restrictions in place elsewhere, and dangerous political tensions still in evidence in places as far apart as Myanmar, Russia and the USA, I sometimes feel as though we have all become trapped in a global ‘Groundhog Day’.

That term entered the popular lexicon of the English language as a result of the 1993 film of the same name in which the lead character, Phil Connors, is caught in a time loop which forces him to re-live the same day repeatedly. Many people living in lockdown conditions, unable to socialise outside their own immediate household or to travel further than the nearest grocery store, will undoubtedly be able to relate to the time loop image as they contemplate the apparently repetitive ‘sameness’ of each day. However, it is worth looking beyond the cliché that ‘having a Groundhog Day’ has become because the event which gave its name to the film, as well as events within the film itself, bear some relationship to the study of spirituality and perhaps point to its particular significance at the present time.

The time loop in which Phil Connors becomes trapped centres on a small town called Punxsutawney in Pennsylvania, USA. As a television weatherman, Phil is there to report on a ceremonial gathering and ritual which takes place each year on 2nd February. Cynical and egotistical, he makes no secret of his contempt for this assignment and everyone in the town. Much of the film is about how Phil comes to terms with his relationships with others and learns to understand himself.

The event on which the film is based is a real one: what is now known as Groundhog Day has been celebrated annually in Punxsutawney since 1887. It is the day on which a groundhog is woken from its hibernation, ostensibly to predict the weather. Tradition has it that, if the day is sunny and the groundhog can see his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter weather; if it is cloudy, and he therefore has no shadow, there will be an early spring.¹ The tradition appears to have been imported by settlers from Germany where hedgehogs (or badgers, depending on which version of the story one reads) were deemed to have the power of weather prediction.

The date is significant because, in the northern hemisphere, it is poised between winter and spring. The division of the year into segments, marked by the apparent movement of the sun across the sky and the associated seasonal changes, is a common theme in all human cultures since planting and harvesting depend upon it. Falling mid-way between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, 2nd February is known as a ‘cross-quarter’ day. In the Pagan ‘Wheel of the Year’ it marks the festival of Imbolc² which honours the Fire Goddess, Brigid.

According to one Celtic myth, Brigid’s arrival would awaken a hibernating serpent whose energy would then course through the hidden pathways of the earth and bring it new life. The symbolism is reminiscent of that in Eastern esoteric traditions of the awakening of Kundalini, the divine feminine energy which resides in each individual. Carl Jung is credited with introducing the concept of Kundalini into contemporary Western understandings of both psychology and spirituality by drawing on it to explore transformations of inner experience in the individual, including the relationship between the unconscious mind and ‘higher consciousness’ (Jung 1999).

Preparations for Brigid’s arrival involved cleansing and purification – preparing for the future by removing what is no longer needed from the past (hence the tradition of ‘spring-cleaning’). Her role in the re-awakening of the earth, the transition from darkness into light and the emergence of new life in both physical and spiritual form was acknowledged by the lighting of fires and candles during the festival. With the advent of Christianity, rituals associated with Brigid the Fire Goddess were melded into those celebrating the Feast Day of St Brigid. Legend has it that St Brigid was the foster-mother of Jesus and helped the Holy Family to escape the slaughter of male infants instigated by King Herod by fashioning a wreath of candles, placing it upon her head and dancing in order to distract the soldiers’ attention. The dates do not add up, of course, since the ‘real’ St Brigid was not born until nearly 500 years later – but the legend may speak to her role in establishing the Christian faith in Ireland, where she is a patron saint. Interestingly, the Christian festival of Candlemas involves the lighting and blessing of candles and, like Imbolc, it is associated with cleansing and purification: it occurs on 2nd February.

With the traditions of diverse faiths and cultures intertwined on the same date, it is easy to see why, as the journalist Alex Kuczynski observed, the film Groundhog Day ‘has become a curious favorite of religious leaders of many faiths, who all see in [it] a reflection of their own spiritual messages’.³ According to Glausser (2019, online), even secular humanists ‘can embrace Phil as a philosophical hero: facing a godless world that seems empty and pointless, he takes responsibility for shaping his own sense of purpose, and finds fulfillment in the secular good of improving life in this world’.

Glausser’s analysis of the film draws on a typology of literary genres which aligns them with the four seasons. Thus, within both the story-line of the film itself and the documented tensions that arose during the making of it, he sees clear evidence of the ‘tipping point’ which Imbolc celebrates between winter (associated in literary terms with satire) and spring (expressed as comedy). He also draws attention to unintentional parallels between Groundhog Day and a novel written in 1915 by P.D. Ouspensky: The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin.

Ouspensky was heavily influenced by the work of the philosopher and mystic, George Gurdjieff, who urged people to recognise the machine-like quality of much of their behaviour, and that it occurred in a condition of what he called ‘waking sleep’; he taught that it is possible to awaken to a higher state of consciousness and thereby achieve one’s full human potential (Ouspensky 1949). In Ouspensky’s novel, Osokin is sent back by a magician to re-live crucial life-decisions but always makes the same mistakes. Eventually, the magician offers Osokin some Gurdjieffian-style advice: ‘You know that everything repeats again and again. If you could change something in yourself, you would be able to use this knowledge to your own advantage’ (Pecotic 2012, 336).

If we are, indeed, living in a global Groundhog Day, perhaps that is the message for our time: we have to invite change. Individually and collectively, we are at a tipping point where we can either fall back into the sleep of our old ‘normal’ – and continue to repeat the mistakes of the past – or we can invite change by ‘spring cleaning’ and discarding the personal and political assumptions and practices that no longer serve us, or the planet, well. Such a process will require us not only to ask questions about ‘What?’ we need and should do, ‘How?’ we should do it, and ‘Why?’ certain things should (or should not) be done – but also to ask the deeply spiritual question about ‘Who?’ is the self that thinks and does (cf. Palmer 1998, 4).

In the 1990s Ó Murchu (1997, viii) pointed to what he called a ‘new upsurge of spirituality’ as ‘one manifestation of a world undergoing global transformation on a scale not known to humanity for many millennia’. He argued: ‘we need to bring new tools of investigation and exploration to this field of research. No one discipline … will enable us to comprehend this new upsurge; it requires a multi-disciplinary analysis’ (13). The Journal for the Study of Spirituality (JSS) was founded on precisely that premise so it is no coincidence that the articles in this issue approach the theory and practice of spirituality from a range of different perspectives. At a time when the process of global transformation is more in need of a spiritual dimension than Ó Murchu could possibly have imagined, they illustrate how the study of spirituality can contribute to a better understanding of ourselves and our cultural norms – and how these combine to give shape to what we do in our personal lives and professional practices.

Melanie Rogers, John Wattis, Rachel Moser, Rachel Borthwick, Phil Waters and Rose Rickford present a qualitative evaluation undertaken in the UK of ‘Views of mental health practitioners on spirituality in clinical practice, with special reference to the concepts of spiritually competent practice, availability and vulnerability’. The authors use the concept of ‘spiritually competent practice’ (SCP) to highlight ‘the place of spiritual care in person-centred, holistic care through an emphasis on personal and relational qualities’. ‘Availability’ includes, amongst other factors, being ‘available to ourselves; continuing as a practitioner to be self-reflective and self-accepting, embracing spirituality (broadly defined as understanding of one’s meaning, purpose and direction in life) as key to our inner journey’. ‘Vulnerability’ involves being ‘teachable; accepting the vulnerability of our role and the reality that within our work we will never “know all”’. Overall, participants in the study found these three concepts helpful in developing their professional practice. In particular, SCP helped them in ‘distinguishing spirituality from religion and not imposing personal beliefs’, although some had reservations about ‘cultural appropriateness’ in dealing with such issues.

Jerry Chia-wei Hsu, Katherine Hall and Chrystal Jaye also consider the provision of holistic care in ways that are culturally appropriate – but offer a very different perspective on how it might be approached. Drawing on their work in New Zealand, their article, ‘Patient-Physician spiritual interactions and ethics in end-of-life care’, addresses the vexed question of how physicians should respond if asked by a patient to join with them in prayer. Using casuistry, together with an analysis of current literature, the authors present a range of possible responses which take account of the context and circumstances of patients’ requests. They illustrate how, in engaging ethically with prayer requests, physicians may be able to respond ‘in a way that does not impose their own beliefs on the patient’ while ‘maintaining and respecting professional boundaries, and at the same time not feeling obligated to compromise their own beliefs’.

The issue of not compromising one’s own beliefs whilst also acknowledging and living with cultural norms and ethics is at the heart of the article by Joseph Goh. Entitled ‘Trans/imagining God: Articulations of individualised spirituality among Muslim and Christian transgender men’, it addresses the ‘suspicion, discrimination and rejection from their religious institutions’ suffered by transgender people living in Malaysia. Goh provides historical and political background to the way in which religion is understood in the country and then indicates why ‘an individualised spirituality which both informs and is informed by religious identity supplies Malaysians with an indelible and secure sense of belonging within a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural state’. Drawing on interviews with four people to provide ‘vignettes’ of their lives, Goh offers an analysis of how his participants’ individualised spiritualities are ‘built on a reconfiguration of official religiosities, negotiations with romantic relationships, and a sense of obligation in terms of reaching out to others and acting ethically towards them’.

More than a decade after Ó Murchu’s (1997) identification of the ‘new upsurge of spirituality’, Kourie (2009, 169) claimed that we were ‘witnessing a renewal of interest in perhaps what is one of the oldest traditions in human history, namely, the transmission of spiritual wisdom’. However, as he noted: ‘We cannot deny that problems still exist in the academy with respect to the new discipline of spirituality. The study of “experience” still sends shudders through some esteemed professorial bodies!’ Although the study of spirituality is now more firmly established in many professional and cultural contexts, its ‘shudder effect’ within the academy remains palpable. Nevertheless, speaking and writing from experience is undoubtedly a valid and valuable way both of communicating with others and of better understanding oneself (Hunt 2016), as the next three articles all illustrate.

Richard White’s ‘Teaching spirituality: A personal view’, set in the context of higher education in the USA, is based on an interdisciplinary course in the humanities which he devised. Entitled ‘Ultimate Questions: Spirituality’, this actively encourages students to learn by drawing on their own experiences. White considers some of the theoretical issues involved in teaching spirituality and notes that, although this course includes the study of important works from Buddhism, Christianity, Daoism, Stoicism and other spiritual traditions, it is not about deciding which tradition is ‘best’. Rather, the study of texts from different wisdom traditions, as well as from classical and popular literature and film, is a way of ‘getting into a spiritual topic so that we can continue our own discussion’. Coincidentally, White includes the film, Groundhog Day in the curriculum. He suggests that, by portraying the stages Phil Connors goes through in constantly re-living the same day, it provides ‘a parable of one man’s spiritual progress … and it offers an encouraging message for the end of the course’.

‘Encouraging messages’ associated with spirituality tend to be in short supply in academia where the ‘shudder effect’ combined with increasing pressures from an outcomes-driven audit culture can preclude open discussion of the topic. As Christine Nganga, Makini Beck and Joyanne De Four-Babb indicate, this can be particularly problematic for people of colour ‘for whom spirituality is deeply rooted in their social and cultural traditions. … [and] often a source of power from which they find strength, hope, and clarity’. In their article, ‘Making sense of spirituality in our academic lives through co-mentoring’, Nganga and her colleagues discuss how, taking a collaborative autoethnographic approach, they deliberately explored the question ‘How does spirituality inform the work we do as Black women faculty?’ (in the USA). In an environment where ‘the presence of hegemony, sexism, and racism … intersect to inflict wounds, particularly on the minds and spirits of Black women’ the authors explain why they now understand spirituality as ‘a means to heal self and others, and as a source of resistance and courage’.

Dinesh Bist and Peter Smith, both of whom are based in the UK, describe how they, too, link spirituality with healing and finding courage in their personal lives. Their article, ‘Music and spirituality: Reflections on the role of music and the natural environment in healing’, includes narrative accounts of how they have each come to terms with disability and ill-health, drawing on the power of music ‘to repair the soul and the body’. It also illustrates how the authors turned to literature – mostly previously unknown to them and ranging from ancient texts to research in areas as disparate as music, neuro-musicology and spirituality – in an attempt to locate their experiences in a wider context and to understand better the processes of healing in physical, mental and spiritual terms.

In addition to these articles, this issue includes welcome contributions to our regular book reviews section, and two important announcements. The first concerns the forthcoming conference of the International Network for the Study of Spirituality (INSS): Spirituality in Research, Professional Practice and Education. Originally due to be held in York in June 2020 but postponed because of the Covid-19 pandemic, it will now take place online from 7 to 8 June 2021 (so no need to book planes, trains or hotels!). You are warmly invited to participate, not least because it will include a belated celebration of the 10th anniversary of JSS!

The second announcement documents the history of INSS (formerly BASS – the British Association for the Study of Spirituality) and invites membership. More details, as well as a wide range of information about the study of spirituality and links to other organisations in the field are on the new INSS website: https://spiritualitystudiesnetwork.org/. There is more information about JSS too, including a list of almost 100 books reviewed in the journal to date – and full details of our newly-restructured Editorial Board. Many Board members have been involved with the journal since its inception and, as always, I extend to them my grateful thanks for all that they do to contribute to the success of the journal. My particular thanks at this time go to Barbara Pesut and Christina Puchalski who are retiring from the Board after a decade of service; their wisdom and constructive advice will be much missed.

We are always thinking about how to expand the reach of JSS, both conceptually and geographically. To this end, as the journal moves into its second decade of publication, we have created two new ‘named’ roles. David Hodge from Arizona State University, USA, will become our North America Editor; and Sophie MacKenzie, an INSS Executive Committee member based at City University, London, UK, will take on the role of Social Media Editor. In addition, I am delighted to welcome more than a dozen other new members onto the Board from places as far apart as Europe, North and South America, and New Zealand. I look forward to working with them all.

Whether or not this is a global Groundhog Day, I trust that the upsurge of spirituality of which JSS is a part will help to bring about a global awakening to new perspectives on what we each can do – and be.

Notes

1 In 2021, the ceremony had to take place virtually because of the pandemic. Some 17,000 people watched on YouTube as ‘Phil the Groundhog’ was awoken - and predicted six more weeks of winter See: https://www.groundhog.org/about. [Accessed 13/02/2021].

2 In the southern hemisphere, the Wheel is generally advanced by six months to map onto the seasons appropriately, so Imbolc occurs on 2nd August.

3 Alex Kuczynski, ‘Groundhog Almighty,’ New York Times, December 7, 2003. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/07/style/groundhog-almighty.html [Accessed 19/02/2021].