MINDFULNESS, the MULTIVERSE, and CLIMATE CHANGE

This article appeared in the bimonthly The Wychwood magazine in February/March 2016. Website views have since reached 18,000... 

2016 will see the Wychwood Circle entering its fifth year as our own home-grown discussion group, based in Milton’s library but drawing participants from around the Cotswolds - from Bourton to Enstone.  This year we are booking the village hall for our more well-known and sought-after visiting speakers, starting on March 6th with a talk on Mindfulness – a practice which has become ubiquitous from classrooms to Parliament – by Professor Mark Williams, best-known for his much-read guide subtitled ‘Seeking Peace in a Frantic World’.  

The bigger picture

Not for the first time Wychwood Circle has poached ideas from BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day: in April we welcome John Bell of the Iona Community and in May Angela Tilby from Christ Church Oxford.  Back in the more intimate setting of the library we turn on July 3rd to the most horizon-widening topic of all with a discussion of Cosmology and Religion:  the ‘new physics’ of parallel universes and multiple big bangs challenges the boundaries of both science and theology.  Come and help us think this through.

  

  

From Paris to the Wychwoods

As we assess the success of the Paris climate talks last December we look forward to a challenging discussion in June introduced by the recently retired White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford.  In addition to his academic career John Broome has worked for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and so is something of an expert on both the ethics and the practical politics of climate change agreements.

Thought for the Day

At Wychwood Circle we discuss a range of serious topics about how we see the world and how we choose to live.  Maybe our defining characteristic, given that we are open to all comers and most topics, is that we are not afraid, in Alastair Campbell’s terms, to ‘do God’.  People come with or without faith and with many different worldviews and experiences.  Discussions, both philosophical and ethical, may be explicitly religious (eg ‘The Faces of God’ – April 10th) or secular (eg ‘The Ethics of Climate Change’ – June 5th).  

Our events always appear on the village website, and our own website keeps the wider world involved in our current topics, attracting to date some 12000 views, from Alaska to Japan.  You can keep up to date with our events and reflections and add your own comments.  Or come along in person any time.

IONA'S JOHN BELL COMES TO THE WYCHWOODS

MARK WILLIAMS ON MINDFULNESS

THE SHAPE OF LIVING

THE SHAPE OF LIVING: Spiritual Directions for Everyday Life has, according to its own blurb, become ‘a spiritual classic’.  Written in 1997 by David F Ford, Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge and Director of the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme, it was reissued in 2012 with a new preface.  He quotes liberally from the contemporary poet, Michael O’Siadhail (as well as the Bible).  As he says in the preface:

‘Poetry,with its potential for combining head and heart, density of meaning with musicality, is for me the core form of human language’.  

Of his subject matter Ford says it was ‘liberating to be thinking as directly as possible about what matters most in life’.  He admits his debt to, amongst others, a psychotherapist at Broadmoor and a priest and theologian whose enthusiasms were Thomas Traherne and the L’Arche communities for people with learning disabilities. 

No surprise then that the book’s Introduction is about ‘coping with being overwhelmed’.  Those ‘overwhelmings’ both shape and distort our lives and he is keen to recognise and confront them.  Whoever we are, we often ‘fail to cope, at least by the standards set by us or by our families or by others’.  His way of coping is to ‘answer the big questions of life, death, purpose, good and evil’, and his main task ‘to stretch our minds, hearts and imaginations in trying to find and invent shapes of living’.

Thus Chapter 1 is about people and how they shape our identity: Who are the faces and voices that concern us daily? Who are the people from the past and from the present who are always in our hearts even when we are not thinking of them?  Before whom do we live?  Who is welcome and who is shut out? Whom do we try to please? Whom do we fear? 

Chapter 2 is about desires; chapter 3 about virtue and character; chapter 4 about ‘secrets and disciplines’; and so on.

When he asks in the Introduction what are the resources for answering his questions, the answer is the religions – to which 4 billion people around the world subscribe, sometimes (as he well knows and as befits something – ‘like families, the single biggest arena of conflict’ – which goes so deep) with violent consequences.  And which religion? The religion of many in our society could be described as ‘a form of polytheism’, he says, with ‘many shifting objects of esteem and desire’. And since the great questions about life ‘do not allow for neutral statements’ -– ‘Everybody stands somewhere!’ he says -- Ford unapologetically uses his own religion (Christianity) to explain where he is coming from and to offer some shape to the discussion.

 At Wychwood Circle we have always been open to all views and all faiths (and none) – so we will trade on the fact that Ford’s discussion is also open to the less (or the not) ostensibly religious. (In chapter one, despite his introductory warning, there is no reference to God until page 19!)  And at Wychwood Circle we would no more dismiss the Bible than we would reject Shakespeare, or for that matter Michael O’Siadhail’s poetry. 

The Shape of Living (Introduction and Chapter 1) will be our theme for the first meeting of 2016, beginning at 7pm on February 7^th at Wychwood Library and ending no later than 9pm.   The question, How are our lives shaped, seems a good starting point for 2016 and we will decide after this initial discussion whether we want to return to all or any of the remaining chapters later in the year. 

PARIS TALKS AND ADVENT THOUGHTS

Praying for the climate - Advent 2015

In an interesting coincidence but a propitious juxtapostion the Paris Conference of the Parties (COP21) - or UN Conference on Climate Change - gathers at the same time as Christians begin the period of preparation and reflection known as Advent.  Though Christmas has been hijacked by our consumerist culture, with more people probably aware of 'Black Friday' (the first big day of sales) than 'Advent Sunday' (the first day of the Advent season), some of us will be doing our best to retain that attitude of quiet reflection and humility before the 'mystery' of the Incarnation.

This year we have one of the biggest issues there is to meditate on - the future of our very tangible but possibly not sustainable world resources - and to decide what action we should take, now and going forward.  Many people fast for the climate on the first day of each month: December 1st inevitably took on a special significance this time.  Others have marched to Paris, or led demonstrations, or decided that their faith led them to 'pray and fast for the climate'.  There are also climate-related Advent Calendars available, such as this one by A Rocha UK: no chocolate - just inspiration from a different voice each day. 

Blog and discussion

David Soward has elaborated on the facts, the motivation, and possible responses to damaging global warming for the Chase Benefice website. 

At Wychwood Circle we have a discussion planned on 'The Ethics of Climate Change' on June 5th 2016 - with an illustrious guest speaker in the shape of the recently retired White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford University, John Broome.  John Broome has first-hand experience of world climate conferences and international efforts to come to some political agreement on what can and should be done about the climate.  We are lucky to have him on our list for 2016. 

2015-2016 PROGRAMME

A MESSAGE FROM MONAWAR HUSSAIN - November 14th 2015

Our good friend Monawar Hussain, who came to talk to a large audience in Wychwood Library last year about 'Islam - mainstream or extreme', has issued the following statement this weekend:  

FROM THE OXFORD FOUNDATION 

 

Paris terrorist attacks utterly despicable 

The following statement has been issued by Imam Monawar Hussain, Founder, The Oxford Foundation, following the terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday, 13^th November 2015:

 

“We are deeply shocked and saddened to witness the appalling acts of violence perpetrated against innocent civilians enjoying an evening out with their friends and families in Paris.

 

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families, friends and the people of France. 

 

“Many will be asking how do we defeat those committed to such acts of cowardly violence against unarmed civilians?  We will defeat the scourge of contemporary terrorist movements through being absolutely united in the values that underpin our societies – democracy, freedom, rule of law, human rights and compassion for the vulnerable.”