And What Does All That Mean, Exactly?
Words; they’re tricky little things. So concrete, and black and white, and there. Yet this very thereness distracts you from the fact there’s a writhing mass of context and assumption and understanding desperately clawing its way through the slashing marks on the page or screen, a Lovecraftian horror of meaning breaking unnoticed into your mind and shaping your very world.
This makes it difficult to talk clearly about much in life, as we all carry so many unseen preconceptions that get in the way of understanding what the other person is actually trying to tell us, or, even more sinister, what we’re trying to tell ourselves. It gets harder again when talking about big, messy concepts such as meaning, or the why’s of existence, or of a life well-lived; concepts that may be as much a feeling as a clearly defined notion. These things often come with preconceptions which are, for better or worse, related to religion and spirituality. And no surprise, as religious and spiritual frameworks have had a millennias-long monopoly on wrestling with the big questions in life. By and large humans have framed their existential concerns in religious or spiritual terms.
While in recent centuries the scientific method has become the main way of understanding the world-out-there (and to a lesser extent the world-in-here as explored by neuroscience), these big, messy topics have often been considered unnecessary distractions from the clean, predictive world of science. Yet as people have become less religious (formally, at least) the anxiety of existence has not lessened its hold on the human psyche. There is still a craving for ways of being and communities that scratch bone-deep itches of understanding and belonging. With traditional religions no longer resonating for many, we have “unbundled” our existential concerns and constructed individual and collective worldviews from the near infinite offerings of a modern society flush with information and opinion.
So The Book is replaced by the books, namely of lay psychology and philosophy, which distill hundreds of years and thousands of peoples knowledge and ponderings into a personal gospel. Your regular gym crew instills a sense of the transformational value of discipline and suffering. Your mindfulness practice gives you a glimpse of the silence at the heart of existence. Your knitting circle embodies the fact we come into being in relation to the physical world. Your drinks with friends shows you the power of shared ego-blurring-and-merging experiences. And if the big questions begin to weigh with a distracting heaviness we go to a therapist, those most neutrally dressed middle class shamans who help us align ourselves with our very souls. But it's rare we think of these things as part of some larger concern. We read self-help books, we go to the gym, meditate, knit, hang out with our friends, hire a therapist, because it makes us feel… good? better? something? And, generally, that’s enough. But, sometimes, it’s not. And so where then do those with no external, ready made, overarching framework of understanding of how to be in the world - let's call them the non-religious for now - turn?
Someone tells you they're training to be a pastor and you visualise earnest religious types preaching at enthusiastic Americans. Mention existentialism and it brings to mind sharply dressed depression and cigarettes. The term humanism is one of those that you nod along with because you know what it means without actually being able to explicitly define it. So sharing with people that you’ve doing an MA in Existential and Humanist Pastoral Care tends to introduce a marked pause in the conversation, as they parse the various concepts contained in all those syllables. This is typically followed by either a nervous laugh or the obvious question - “and what does all that mean, exactly?”
A pastor is someone who supports individuals and a community's emotional, social and spiritual needs. Traditionally they have come from a religious background, some kind of Christianity predominantly, and are found working in healthcare settings, universities, prisons and the military, amongst other places. The MA, jointly offered by NSPC and Middlesex University, comes about because of the rather obvious point that social, emotional and spiritual support is not something only people who believe in a specific religion benefit from. Thus, training up a cohort of people with similar supportive skills, but rooted in a philosophical rather than religious background, would seem to make a lot of sense. And, indeed, organisations such as the NHS are beginning to recognise this need and have begun hiring specifically non-religious individuals into these kinds of roles.
While most of us don’t spend every (or any) waking moment worrying about why we’re here and what it means to be a conscious being, I think it still lurks there, in the background, like an uncomfortable shadow that gets thrown into stark relief by the blinding light of life events - depression, illness, ageing, death - events that force us into a confrontation with the fickle and fragile nature of our existence. Religions, spiritual practices, existentialism, humanism - these, I suspect, are all a heady result of both humanities powers of imagination and our collective failures of imagination. We are all victims of our own self awareness, just smart enough to realise that something is going on but not smart enough to be able to actually understand what. So we generate stories that make sense within the limited slice of existence we have access to. Some of these stories have predictive power and some of them are merely comforting, and some are certainly “truer” than others, but the more stories available to us the more chance we have of finding the ones that help us make some kind of peace with this fleeting moment of inexplicable awareness.
Back in the far distant past of my enthusiastically atheistic twenties, I shared a thought on social media which I randomly stumbled upon again after having started this MA:
“The fact that people are priests is mad. I mean, your actual day job is the maintenance and spread of tribal myths. I know priests do so much more, but to me it’s a shame it has to be tied up with organised religion. Imagine if people were paid to help with community “spirituality” (e.g. non-emergency mental health) in an accessible and secular way? I think that would be nice”
It was shocking re-reading these words as I had completely forgotten the sentiment. While I’ve thankfully softened the snarky attitude to poor priests, I still think that would be nice. And, more than a decade later, it turns out it might actually be a thing.
And so what does all that mean, exactly? I think partially I’m training to be a story teller or, dare I say, a poet, trying to spin meaningful metaphors from the rich fabric of consciousness. These writing are a way for me to put a shape on those poems for myself. But, more importantly, I think I’m training to be a poem-listener, giving people the space to share with me their personal Sutra, their Origin of Species, their Bible, their Tao; together to chant to life the dreamtime of their existence. Some people believe in a paradise of everlasting joy with departed family and friends; I believe my atoms return to the natural universe. On this deathbed of life we all find ourselves pinned to I’m not sure if there’s any meaningful difference between those two stories. But let’s talk about it all the same.