John Butler - Interview Only - Nomad N322 - June 10, 2024 - Finding Stillness in a Chaotic World

Full Nomad episode: https://www.nomadpodcast.co.uk/john-butler-finding-stillness-in-a-chaotic-world-n322/

Blog entry about this interview: https://www.mavismoon.com/blog/john-butler-finding-stillness-in-a-chaotic-world

His website: https://spiritualunfoldment.co.uk/

His YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SpiritualUnfoldment

Transcript

So John, welcome to Nomad Podcast. I want to speak with you today about your experience of stillness and of meditation and how that shaped you. Is stillness something that you've always felt drawn to?

Yes, I guess that's so. Always. I remember as a little boy, I never knew, in company, I never knew what to say.

People would say, why don't you say something? I'd say, answer, I don't know what to say. I feel rather like that now. Here I am confronting a, a new friend, a young man who's driven a long way to come here, into a new situation, and I'm meeting him for the first time. What do I do? Instinctively, I come to stillness.

I always feel comfortable with silence. I don't know what to say. I don't know what he's going to ask me. He's got all his equipment out. It all looks rather formidable. God knows what's going to happen. So for safety, I come back to silence. This unchanging reassurance, like a unfailing friend. Ever with me.

Silence.

We were talking earlier about your years as a farmer and how you enjoyed the silence and solitude that came with that way of life. What led you from that into a more kind of structured meditative practice? How did that come about?

When I was 26, rather an idealistic young man, the first advertisements were then beginning to appear for what was then called the third world.

There were pictures of little children with their ribs showing, you know, hunger. And as a farmer, I thought, well, this is just up to my street. And I went off to South America. And, uh, after many experiences there, after about a year there, some success, but not much, I was sitting alone up on a mountainside, and it seemed to me I heard a little voice saying, to make whole, be whole, which of course I didn't understand at the time.

But I'd recently received a book which mentioned meditation. Meditation was really unknown at that time. I'd never heard of it before. I didn't know what it was, but my curiosity was aroused, and I saw myself then as an immature young man trying to make the world a better place, trying to teach people older and wiser than myself how to live, and I thought maybe meditation would help me, so when I came back to England, I looked for and I found a school of meditation.

There was only one place in the whole of England that I knew, and it was in London, I had to go down to London. I attended the school for a long time, and to my amazement, almost immediately as soon as I began to practice, I realized that the great spaces, the great silences, the deserts, the stars that I saw.

I'd always looked for this silence. It's actually within myself. I don't have to even leave London to find it. That was quite a discovery for me, meditation. So I loved meditation from the start and I practiced it ever since. That's over 60 years. Night and morning, never failed. And at that time, of course, I was thinking a lot about Well, all the big questions that one does think of as a young man, the more deeply you go into silence, and you then look out at the world, you can see nothing like flying an airplane.

You can look down and look at all these apparent trouble spots of the world. And from that point of view, you get a quite different perspective. Here and now, we're in it, aren't we? No matter how many things we say wise or stupid, the silence is undisturbed, isn't it? It was silent when you left home this morning.

You had a long drive. You come here and the silence was with you all the time, but most of the time you were probably unaware of it. That doesn't mean to say it isn't there. It's there. We may acquire the ability to live in the presence of this. Abiding silence, this abiding stillness, which if you keep on expanding it, you come to realize is peace, is freedom.

Where do these things end? You can describe them, and don't they merge into what we call spirit?

So John, when you began this meditative practice and you started to get deeper into silence, what did you begin to discover about yourself?

I was never that interested in discovering things about myself. When I first heard the word self realization, I was really quite put off.

Even now I'm not sort of lit up by that subject. If I have to name, name what has motivated me, it's always been love. So more than interest in myself, it was discovering how meditation connected with what I loved. And as I grew up, all through my school days, I always loved quietness, I suppose, the quietness of the fields.

Many, many times as a young man from noisy companionship, I, I just wanted to get away by myself and be quiet, because I found the comfort in the fields with nature then. The companionship of just animals and plants, I loved cows, horses, anything that lived. So when meditation showed me this within myself, it was a natural extension into what I loved.

I've loved many things, many people in this life, many disappointments, and after many disappointments in love, I gradually, in this very gradual process, began to realize that this spiritual presence is actually also love, not demonstrative love, but a You can just feel it now. If you feel this silence that's holding us now, it's comfortable, isn't it?

It's comfort. I was lucky at school that I picked up many of the sort of biblical phrases, the everlasting arms, unfailing love. Our human experience is that love comes and goes, doesn't it? Here today and gone tomorrow, this love is always with us. And then much later, I suppose, I remembered the words of Jesus, I'm with you always.

And what is it in life that is with us always, in this transitory world, in which beauty fades, in which we grow old, what is it that never changes? So I've come to rely on this more and more, really, love it more.

Do you ever have doubts? about a loving presence? Is it something you ever question?

Well, I've only got to look out of the window. I love the sky. Um, I go up early in the morning to meditate and look up at the sky. I often feel that's the most important time of my day, really. Immersion in the infinite.

Extraordinary how our, our sort of voice is compelled, infinite what, we always want to bring the higher down to the lower, we always want to humanize everything, we're always trying to humanize God, humanize spirit, explain these things with our minds, which are much too limited. That's why we may start with silence, we tend to end with silence also, because it's beyond words.

If I just look at you, if we look at each other eye to eye. There's communication there which is not of words, isn't there? There's actually, if we took the time to just dwell there, the only communication is love. The love that passeth understanding, the love that asks no questions, that is just obvious.

I read your book, Wonders of Spiritual Unfoldment, and in that you document a number of profound mystical experiences that you had. You traveled the world for many years, and one mystical experience you had was in the Californian desert, where you sensed the presence of Jesus with you. I'm wondering how that experience of Jesus then shaped your life and spirituality. How did it shape your meditation practice?

My experience of Jesus has been developing all my life. And, um, far more important, really, than that meeting in the Californian desert was an occasion as a young farmer, I suppose I was in my mid twenties then, on a snowy April morning, walking down the field and, finding my first lambs.

And as I, Considered much about the fate of lambs, that these heavenly creatures are born, they live a few months, and then they go to be the butcher. And my thinking sort of widened out to see all nature similarly killed for man. You know, I was a farmer, I grew vegetables, potatoes, carrots, and things. I can't pull a carrot from the ground without killing it, can I?

And then sending it off to be Put in a supermarket itself and sold as a commodity, people who don't think of it as a living creature and, uh, I remember walking across a field of grass and with a shock realizing how my heavy boots crushed and hurt the grass. Why do I hurt everything I touch in that way?

So these thoughts were all sort of latent in my mind. And then I saw these lambs, and I was the instrument of this happening, I was the farmer. So who's to blame for all this? And I saw the blame came back to me. Well, I didn't really understand about levels of consciousness then, or spirit, but I was sort of groping, I was on my way.

And then what is this Jesus dying for our sins, what's all that about? Lamb of God, slain for us. Is the lamb Jesus? Is the grass crushed beneath my feet Jesus? Isn't every flower that I pick a mini Jesus slain for me? What is this thing we call Jesus? And you see, because I was never very much a social person, I was always more of a nature boy.

I was found it very easy to sort of disassociate Jesus from the human portrayal in the Bible. And see Jesus in nature, in all the creatures that I interacted with in nature, particularly the ones that were destroyed for me. Isn't it all Jesus on an ever expanding scale? Where does Jesus end? We talk about the endlessness of silence, but just link together with that sequence of silence, present spirit.

Jesus is ever with us. Isn't that Jesus? Isn't Jesus here now? Aren't we in Jesus, like a fish in the sea? What is not Jesus? Isn't that what is with us ever, Jesus? So this is how my thinking about Jesus evolved. And then when I was, how old was I? I was in the middle of my 50s, a long time after that, I went through a long period of depression and awful, awful loneliness and depression.

And at one time I was drifting around America. I was actually working in a caff there as a cook. Sort of saved my life, really, but, uh, I was in the lowest state of my life then. I really was afraid I was going out of my mind, and one day I walked up a mountainside and there, a million miles from anywhere, all alone, sitting on a rock I had a sort of experience.

I wrote a poem about that. Much, much later, Jesus came to me, unasked for. Unexpectedly, without religion, simply there, a presence in the desert where I sat alone in misery. No incarnation seen or heard required believing, no word, no church procedure intervened or man took part.

No art interpreted another's view. I simply knew. The desert scene remained unchanged. Depression didn't end. But from then on, I had a friend.

And I don't know now, was it Jesus? I don't know. What is Jesus? Who knows what Jesus is? But. I don't know about the Jesus prayer, do you?

I was, I was taught to meditate with a traditional, um, Sanskrit mantra, which I was very happy with. And over a few years I sort of wobbled around a bit between that and the Jesus prayer.

I, I was completely happy with either, I never found any, any difficulty. Still do a bit, but, um, I think particularly, I spent several years in Russia, and Jesus Prayer is widely used in Russia, and, um, I got into using it there. Those of us that are brought up in the faith, it's our tradition, it's our, um, it's our inheritance, isn't it?

Jesus, the whole church, is however much church may be out of favor now, it's there, and here in the little town where I live, I go to meditate every day, twice a day there, it's the focal point of the town, stands on a hill, you can't miss it, inspired reaching up to heaven. And so it's sort of, it's part of my cultural heritage, and so I feel comfortable with this.

I don't know any better mantra, any better way of meditating than the name of Jesus. But what, uh, like all mantras, mantras are. They're really like a spiritual vehicle. I like to describe mantras rather like an aeroplane. The mind is full of thoughts, rather like the sky is full of clouds. And how do you deal with them?

Most people sort of spend half their life struggling with their thoughts, and people struggle endlessly, you know, want to be closer to God because they've just come up against this, this blanket of clouds, and they worry about how to deal with them. I try to sort them out, good thoughts, bad thoughts, but actually If you think of them just like clouds, clouds serve a purpose, they're sometimes threatening, sometimes lovely little clouds.

But when you get in an airplane, you just go through them, don't you? Into what's beyond, there's this space, this infinite space beyond the clouds. Well that's a perfect illustration of what a mantra is, a mantra is just an airplane. It serves to, it helps take you through the mind, into beyond the mind, which is spirit.

Of course, to anybody that meditates, with the songs I have, it doesn't happen all at once, it takes a long time to develop. But when you get up beyond the clouds, you see, all is well. There's no problem up there. Problems down in the airport, where you're worrying about your ticket and, you know, the other people, and will there be room, and are you going to be airsick, and all this.

You get up above all that, and don't even sit in the aeroplane, go out of the window into the, into the sky. There's no problem up there at all. You get up and you get up into a higher point of view, and that makes all the difference. And you then see how you can best serve the world below, because you can see it from a better point of view.

Most of what's happening down here at this level is the blind leading the blind. What happens? You both fall into the pit. But if you can get above and see it from a higher point of view, things become much clearer. And then you come onto this great understanding of sin. What is sin? What's it all about?

Why is man in this mess? In the first place, because he's fallen from a higher point of view, he's fallen in consciousness, and this ever presence is, of course, that missing dimension. When you begin to function from that rather than from duality, then things begin to fall into place. You begin to understand what you can do about it, how you can best serve and help.

And then Jesus, you see, becomes ever more significant. And you realize that it's a cosmic Christ, and that everything reflects that.

Clearly, meditation is absolutely foundational to your spirituality. I wonder, do you ever pray in a more traditional, kind of intercessory way?

Very, very early in my experience, um, Tim, I thought, well, this is prayer.

I think as a, as a school boy, I, when I was taught to make a list of names, I thought, well, this is a bit silly, doesn't God know better than I do? Who am I to pray, giving God a shopping list of, of who to do good to? Doesn't God know better? Who am I?

For something so simple, and seemingly so effective, and something that's advocated for across so many religious and spiritual traditions, why do relatively so few people meditate then, do you think?

Meditation is only an artificial substitute, really, for nature. It's a thing for unnatural man. Almost everybody loves nature to some extent, don't they? We get many tourists come to this little town, and sit by the river, just look up at the lovely woods on the hillside opposite, maybe kick a ball around, have their fish and chips, but basically something of that presence is conveyed, isn't it?

There's a lot of people who start, get thoughtful about life, start asking the big questions, they get into confusion in the mind, they may think meditation may help them, probably will. It's become fashionable, hasn't it? Probably as a reaction to the hyperactivity of life. Talk, talk, talk, words, words, words, action, action, action.

Meditation provides rest, even physically speaking, it just brings the body to, if you just sit still for a while, it helps the body come to rest, doesn't it? You know, when you first arrived here, don't mind my making a personal example, after a drive and meeting a new person, you were agitated, you couldn't do anything still, you were working at high speed, weren't you?

But now, after an hour, you're all rested. More attentive now, looking at me.

That's one of the first things you said, let's have a time of stillness.

Yes. Well, meditation does help to, to bring, so first of all, bring the physical body to rest, and then, uh, if we listen to the mantra, it'll help the mind to come to rest, to some degree.

The mind's a restless creature. But, um, it's a good way of starting to bring rest to the mind. Then there are ever deeper levels of rest, because, again, if you come back to this sequence of silence, stillness, freedom, spirit, rest, you see, did Jesus say, come unto me, I will give you rest, spiritual rest, the rest, not only rest meaning less action, but the rest of life, you see. We live in partially, don't we? That's why we're always hungering for more. We want more, we want the rest, we want the rest of it. You come ever deeper into this rest, and you'll find you're complete. Not only you are complete, but everything's complete.

You've already mentioned, um, the value of having a mantra, and I wanted to ask you for a few kind of practical tips for people that aren't familiar with meditation. So I'm wondering if you could sort of describe a bit more of the practicalities of how you meditate. So firstly, what, physically, what do you do?

What do you do with your body as you're preparing to meditate?

I'm a bit shy of giving specific answers to these questions because they all relate to the infinite. And I certainly don't like being too specific when I'm talking to a, to an audience, I don't know, because traditionally meditation instruction is given one to one.

This is how I was taught and how I continue the tradition. I have made a few videos on meditation, but um, well obviously it's helpful just to sit still and comfortably. I know people make all sorts of efforts to stand on their heads or sit cross legged and all that. I did myself at one time. I could meditate cross legged.

But to begin with, these things are of little importance. The main thing is just to sit still, sit comfortably. You need to. If possible, sit in a straight back chair. It's Indian tradition, there are things called chakras that go up and down the spine, which are meant to be energies, and that's meant to be helped by an upright position.

Yes, that's a good way to meditate, just sitting in an upright chair, straight back if possible. Close your eyes and just say your mantra. Listen to the mantra. And then immediately you come up against thoughts. What do you do? Well, you come to realize that it's almost impossible to be attentive, fully attentive.

As a little boy, I remember my father telling me to, he liked carpentry, taught me to use tools. And when I would try to bang in a nail, it would go crooked. He'd say, watch, watch what you're doing. Give attention to the hammer and the nail. Bang, bang, bang, the nail would go in straight. Pay attention. I remember in another case, Dad was an artist.

I loved to draw horses, I loved horses as a boy. One day I was trying to draw a horse. And I said, Dad, how do you do it? Because Dad was marvelous at drawing horses. He said, well, look. Look at a horse and draw what you can see. That's it. Really look at the horse. I wonder how many people have ever really studied a horse's legs.

Very interesting. People just draw straight lines, don't they? Full straight lines. That's a horse. Like in children's books. Horses legs have got all sorts of curls and bumps and things. You'd never believe unless you really looked at it, studied it carefully. And even more, how they move. Yes. You can see.

Look, look, look and listen. My goodness me, what a lesson. In the days of craftsmanship, when men worked by hand, of course, people knew all about giving attention. Pay attention, tend to what you're doing. Then you can't do something straight. You draw a straight line. Another exercise I used to do that I was taught at meditation school was to try to draw straight lines in it.

Take a pencil and a bit of paper and see if you can draw a straight line. Most of them were wiggling, weren't they? Because it's very difficult to give attention, and even more difficult to try to draw a circle. Now that's a good test of how attentive your mind is. That's why the old monks in the old medieval monasteries would practice calligraphy, wasn't it?

Beautiful writing, to keep their mind steady. Now when the mind is quiet, you see, then it becomes reflective, and then it reflects the presence. That's why it's so helpful. This is another aspect of meditation. The inner aspect is to follow the mantra inwardly. The outer aspect is to be attentive to whatever you're doing.

The two are complementary. But to come back to the mantra, that's why the key instruction is listen to the mantra. And it's funny, I can say to someone, listen, oh, I am listening, of course they're not listening with 1 percent of their attention, maybe 5%, maybe quite unusually 10%. If you listen to something with full attention, you'll find yourself beyond description.

I guess it's easy to see the connection between meditation and stillness. I mean, you've already kind of touched on this, but I wonder if you could say some more about how that translates into the everyday kind of hustle and bustle of life. Like, what does stillness and a sense of loving presence look like? Out there, in a busy street, for example.

Well, try it and see. Very good exercise. Just go and stand out in the street and be still. You'll immediately see the human condition as you've never seen it before. And you'll realize why the world is as it is. How can we realize presence unless we are present? Who is present?

Are you present? Am I present? You see, this is the effect of meditation, first of all, on yourself, because you begin to understand these things. You realize how we are not present. We may even begin to put two and two together and say, well, maybe sin is just not being present. Absent from the presence of God.

Absent from paradise. Where is paradise? The kingdom of God is with us.

You said that in your book, you said the first and only sin is thinking that we're separate. So that, that kind of relates to what you're saying, that sense of connectedness and presence, that's what it means to kind of overcome, in quotes, sin.

In my understanding, this is what I've come to realize in my life,

And I wonder as well whether that relates to that message that you had back in the 60s, to make whole, be whole. That's where the kind of the healing comes from, that sense of connection, that sense of a loving presence.

Exactly. As I understand it, yes.

Your relationship with church is an interesting one. You say at one point that as I began to search for the meaning of life, the church did not rise to the spiritual direction of my young self. But you now, I believe, meditate in a church building and you attend a communion service. So I'm wondering, how do you relate to church now?

Very soon after I learned to meditate, I It realized that, uh, I, I said, this is spirit. This is spirit made practical. That was such a revelation to me that it suddenly became practical. It wasn't all these words about the Holy Spirit, calm Holy Spirit, you know, But for heaven's sake, it's here. It's present.

This is it. This is what it's all about. So I went off to the Bishop of Lincoln. I was living in Lincolnshire then, and I wanted to become a priest. I wanted to share this knowledge with the church. And he listened attentively, and he didn't accept me. And three times in all, over quite a number of years, I applied to become a priest.

And I was finally told by another bishop, you are not sufficiently Christian. Which hurt me very deeply at the time. So I've always felt I haven't rejected the church, but the church has rejected me. And, um, the reason I go to the church to meditate, I've lived several years in Russia, and at one point during my life in Russia, I seem to receive an instruction rather like that make whole be whole to go and pray in a certain building that was being converted into a church.

You may know that through the communist era in Russia, 99 percent of Russian churches were destroyed or desecrated. She kept going secretly in the underground. But anyway, I, I lived in Russia through those years of spiritual reawakening, of religion coming back. And I was told to go and pray in a certain building, which I did, and after some time when I came back to England, I continued the practice here, and the vicar at that time was sympathetic and gave me a key, so I continued the practice.

I was desperate. I've never felt really welcomed by the church as it is today. You see, the church is very much centered on, you mentioned intercessionary prayer, um, this form of, of inner prayer, prayer of the heart, which is another way of describing meditation. It is not generally known, still less practiced.

So the sight of this man just sitting there hour after hour in silence, why don't you get up and do something, do something useful, you know? Now I, I find more service in, in what I call, well I do call it the work of prayer, but most people think I'm, I'm not really Christian or, I don't know what people think now.

So I've always encountered quite a bit of hostility, really, from the church, which has caused me much sadness really. But there we are. I, I know all the words I, 'cause I brought up with the old prayer book, the old translations of the Bible. I know large passages by heart. I love to quote from it. I can't really get on much with a modern church.

But, um, yes, I'm there in the building. There's a thousand years of prayer there. It's a good, lovely place to sit. I have my own corner where I sit, lovely oak, old oak pews, and the chancel. I go up early in the morning, there's nobody there. One or two other people come to meditate with me. I get in the afternoon.

Most of the time I'm there alone. I sat alone in the church for, um, nearly 20 years. Hardly anybody knew anything about me, just a handful of people who'd come and share meditation. I still continue the same practice.

I find it so interesting that people accused you of not being Christian enough, because I was going to ask you a question from the other kind of angle, really, that Jesus has been such an important focus of your meditation and your mystical experiences. I was wondering how you understood the path towards stillness, and loving presence that other religious traditions offer.

There was a young man, I dabbled in philosophy and read a bit about other religions, but I'm not a very studious man. I'm not really a book man. I, I don't really like words. You know, I've never felt much drawn to human knowledge.

I prefer to look at the sky and grass. That's my book of God. So, uh, all these spiritual discussions, I've never really bothered much with them.

You're 86 now, so in the sort of latter stages of life. I'm wondering what your time in nature and your time in meditation has taught you about death.

Oh, a lot, a lot. I must have been middle 20s, I suppose. I kept sheep then. A large flock of sheep. Loved sheep. I'd been working on a, on a hill farm. I went up there for a visit and there was a couple of caged lambs, little orphan lambs.

It was just a nuisance really, because they, they demand, you know, being fed, and to a busy farmer, they just, they seldom make, make good animals for the butcher. Anyway, he said, you can have them, so I came away with these two little lambs. One of them was a little ewe lamb, and she was very fey. I like that word, fey, sort of fairy like, you know, hill sheep are quite different characters to lowland sheep, they're, they're all a bit fey, they go their own way, they're independent characters.

And this little sheep was a real hill sheep, mountain sheep, She was always on her own, on her hind legs trying to find a tender morsel in the hedge. Anyway, she was in the lab with her first lamb, and she decided to lie down and die. And as a young farmer, I was, oh, what can I do about it? And I tried to do various things to her to help her, but nothing worked.

And she just lay there up by the fence, up on the hillside. And I just would go and sit with her. And, uh, I did that every day for a couple of weeks or so while she faded away. And then she just, one day she was dead. And I always felt that was one of the great lessons about death. Because there was a lovely young, oh, a girl in the prime of her life.

With her first lamb, who died without, without fretting about it, calm, there was I, a farmer, fretting, what can I do about it? She just lay there at peace, completely trusting, not questioning, drifted away. I think from then on, I loved death. It seemed such a perfect answer to life, to all the troubles and difficulties of life.

Finally, it all comes to pass, doesn't it? It's transient, we come to death. And that really is how I feel now, only, of course, the peace has now expanded infinitely. So it is now really more home to me than this is, and now I'm at that blessed time of life when mortality, that which dies, is dying out and releases, just like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon, releases the spirit.

And through long practice, acquaintance and becoming familiar with spirit, ever more familiar to spirit. Spirit is now infinitely more alive, the real life, than this limited thing we call mortality, we call alive, which isn't really alive at all compared to this life. So, uh, I'm only too thankful now for my many, many years of spiritual practice, which have, which has given me this confidence in spirit, this absolute surety that I am with you.

And that, uh, this world, like the old story, once upon a time it came to pass. There was a world. Where is it now? Do we wake up? Is it just a dream? I never like to go around calling the world illusion, because the time is real, isn't it? It's totally real. I don't know. God knows. I don't.

So I die in full face.

This spirit that I talk so confidently about, to someone that isn't accustomed as I am to self immersion in spirit, for whom the body is the only reality, is it real? Is it real or not? You may believe it, but that doesn't make it real, does it? But if you experience it as reality, it comes into operation, doesn't it?

What is the effect of it? What is the effect of the sun? It shines, doesn't it? It's radiation. Everything has an effect. The subtle radiation. Of course it spreads, doesn't it? Mother used to say, smile and the world smiles with you. Where does peace come from? Peace comes from people who are at peace. Most people may not recognize it, but these things work subtly.

Power behind the scene. When you don't see, we have eyes and we don't see. And meditation is a way of clarifying. First of all, clarifying the mind, purifying the mind, and then the more you see, the more you see it. Gradually, over many, many years, it becomes clearer and clearer and clearer.

That seems like a really good place to leave it.

John, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and experience with us today.

Thanks be to God, my dear.

Discussion after interview:

Tim Nash with Nick.

How was it, Tim?

It was a very pleasant morning, I have to say. He's a lovely man, very warm, very present, very peaceful, if you'd imagine. Yeah. He said in the interview that he was kind of a bit socially anxious, didn't he? That he kind of returns to stillness often, when there's kind of social interactions and stuff.

But he didn't come across that way. that way at all. Oh, really? Yeah, very kind of present guy. Like in the interview, he really sort of held eye contact, which is quite rare in an interview. Like he was really speaking to me, you know. And, uh, he had one of these handshakes where it kind of reminded me of this, this guy in the church that I grew up in, where they give you like a really kind of firm handshake and then continue to hold your hand while they say how pleased they are to meet you.

And you're like, Oh, wow. Like, I think he actually might be pleased to meet me. Do you know what I mean? As he sort of said in the interview, I came in, like when you come into a new room like that and you're caught, I'm immediately kind of surveying the room, like where can I set up and I'm pulling cables and mics and putting my mic stands up and stuff.

And he just kind of came over and quietly said, should we just slow down for a bit, Tim, and just find some stillness? Let's have a cup of tea together. And I was like, Oh, okay. And you'll like this, Nick. He gave me Redbush. with oat milk. Did he? Really? Like, so he drinks redbush with oat milk and he has a difficult relationship with the church.

That's our kind of guy, isn't it? Like, what more do you want?

We've found our spiritual elder wise guru. I know, yeah. Wow. And he's so kind of tuned in with his surroundings. Like when I was setting up, there's this old chair next to me, this old wooden chair, and I just kind of dragged it and pulled it over and plunked my digital recorder on it.

And at the end he kind of dragged the chair. In the same manner that I did and he said, can you hear the creaking when I dragged that chair? That's the chair complaining like it doesn't want to move that way. This is like a really old chair. This chair has seen a lot of life, a chair like this. You need to put your hands underneath it and just lift it up.

Oh,

I was like, Oh, He's connected so deeply with that chair.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So there's all these little kind of clues that just, I just kind of thought, wow, like he's just, he's moving through life in such a kind of careful, deliberate and sort of present way. Yeah. Yeah. It was quite, it was quite moving.

Yeah.

And was he nice to chat to you before and after?

Yeah. We had a long chat before and after he was talking a lot. I was asking him a lot of questions about his farming days. So he was farming back when they were using like horse and plows and they were like ongoing debates about, um, mechanical farm machinery.

And he was of the kind of opinion along with many other people that it would ultimately kind of destroyed the soil and it'd be bad for the environment and that they wanted to kind of preserve the traditional methods and stuff. But, you know, he sort of said within a few years, it's obviously just impossible, or it mechanized.

And he was talking about how they used to talk about husbandry of the land, that you'd care for the land. And he said, like, another debate that was going on at that time is, was farming a lifestyle or a business? Because they were worried it was becoming a business, whereas for him, it was, it was a lifestyle.

He was kind of working with the land and he just found the idea of it being a business just kind of abhorrent, you know. Wow. So yeah, we had a fascinating conversation before and after. He's a lovely guy. Yeah, cool. Yeah. What were your kind of impressions listening to it?

I think, did you say that, was that mentioned in the interview about having a moment of stillness?

Did he refer to that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and you just think like, it's like another level, isn't it? It's not that someone's written a book on something or it's just who they are, isn't it? It just came through that that is who he is. Yeah. And I thought it was really interesting when he was talking about like, not really being, Being into reading books, and this is his thing, isn't it?

He's found his groove and he's devoted himself to it. Yeah. Yeah, and just his voice, just the way he spoke, like I say, it was just, um, like that expressed it, didn't it? He personifies that whole thing, doesn't he? Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Before we kind of, you know, go through the interview and draw out the things we've found helpful, I'd be really interested to know what your relationship with silence is as a form of prayer.

Like, did you inherit a faith where silence was kind of a natural expression of spirituality? And if not, why did that emerge for you later on?

Yeah, no, I didn't inherit it. within my spiritual formative years at all. Like, people talked about quiet time, but I never had a quiet time. I had a loud time. I'd stick on Soul Survivor in 94, or even my Soul Survivor and New Wine 93 tape.

I could imagine you preaching on that as a zealous young Christian. You know, they talk about quiet times. Mine's a loud time. It's true. I would have said that. I think I heard someone else say it and I just stole it. Yeah, I would like, uh, annoy myself. My sister, she crawled out of bed because I'd be down there on the landing, shouting to worship music in my bedroom.

So occasionally there'd be like moments of silence, but I just found them so boring. And as my life went on, and as I got older. I just couldn't do silence. I remember having a few little attempts at different times and I just could not do it. Like not for more than a few minutes, just found it like impossible, boring, irrelevant.

What's the point? I remember when I was a youth worker, I used to join some friends from a local Salvation Army church and they were pretty Evangelical. They invited me to join them on a Tuesday morning. So I used to go really early on a Tuesday morning. It's very nice, but they would largely sit in silence.

Then occasionally someone would pray. And I just used to think, what is the point of this? Like, if we're going to pray, let's pray. Like we'd sit there for, I don't know if it's 45 minutes or an hour, but like, 50 percent at least would be in silence. I used to say, actually, I had to think another embarrassing little preachy thing that I had, which is about kind of prayer meetings.

And I used to say like, if we're going to get together and pray, let's pray, let's talk. We could all be at home being quiet. Do you know what I mean? I just didn't have a concept of it. I remember once going to a Quaker church and again, I just thought like, there's no point. Why, why are we doing this? So it was a mixture of feeling irrelevant and also my mind was just, I think partly with like addiction and stuff, partly the whole kind of FOMO, fear of missing out thing. If I wasn't listening to music or listening to a talking book or whatever. It was like I was wasting time a bit or just my mind was too bored. And then I don't know when around it, it started like, so through like my deconstruction journey, I'm trying to think when it would begin.

I suppose I maybe got into it a little bit more through, you know, celebration of discipline. I remember being really inspired by that and the way he described silence as a, as a spiritual discipline. So I probably tried it a bit, like, earlier on in my life, but found it hard. But then, yeah, at some point, and I really can't remember when, at some point in the last sort of seven or eight years, I just started to get into silence and just kind of think this really works and it kind of makes sense. And then increasingly just embracing it as a, as a kind of spiritual practice rather than just a kind of mindfulness experience or something. Although it's a bit difficult to entangle them. Do you know what I mean? Exactly. So that's how it, yeah, that's how it all started really.

Did you have an experience of it growing up?

No, not at all. I think the faith I inherited was definitely suspicious of meditation. I mean, there's a lot of negative things that I. picked up on that we're never kind of preached about. You just kind of pick it up from the culture of the place, don't you? But I can remember this specifically being talked about, that you shouldn't empty your mind, because if you empty your mind, anything can get in.

Evil spirit will come in. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So you need to fill your mind with God, not empty your mind. Otherwise you could potentially be in danger. I think another thing is like, I really kind of felt I knew who God was and I knew how God worked in the world. So I could speak to God. Confidently about who God was and about what God should be doing in the world I mean some words were like really really kind of important

Yeah, I suppose in more kind of charismatic spaces there were times of silence, but I don't think we valued silence in itself It was just kind of a prelude to God saying something or something happening But yeah, in the last few years, like meditation and silence, it's become quite a natural and sort of necessary result of deconstruction for me, I think, I mean, for one thing, I don't feel like I know who God is, and I'm not sure how God works in the world.

So words have become harder and harder. I've found. Uh, like I really struggle to pray with words now. And so silence feels like a much more natural expression of my spirituality. I think. Yeah. And I think it, for me, it's just kind of a shift towards sort of rebalancing my spirituality, I think, because like I said, the faith I inherit was very Doctrine heavy is very theology heavy.

And that's what I found so interesting about john was that experience came first I've been so suspicious of that.

Yeah, like even sort of 10 years ago, you know, yeah

Yeah, I think ideas are always gonna be really important to me like theology and philosophy is always gonna be really important But I just feel like over the last few years spending more time in silence and trying to accept experiences without analyzing them too much.

That's just become an important part of kind of rebalancing my spirituality, I think. So yeah, silence and sort of meditation has become quite an important part of my deconstruction, I think. And also, I've read a few books recently about the kind of science behind the benefits of meditation. So Lisa Miller's The Spiritually Awakened Brain, I interviewed her a few years ago.

Another really important one for me was Andrew Newberg's How God Changes Your Brain, and just how good it is for your mental health, for one thing, you know, along with things like sleep and exercise and social connections, like silence and meditation are just really, really important.

But yeah, in terms of when it actually started as a regular practice, it was when I interviewed Cynthia Bourgeois about Centering Prayer, whenever that was.

Oh, yeah. A few years ago. So that's when it actually became a practice.

Yeah. For me.

So what, practically, what does it look like for you as a practice?

What's interesting is that I realized when I was listening to this, I probably realized a day or two earlier that I just hadn't done it for ages, like for weeks and weeks.

So I'm just kind of, uh, confessing, Tim. Sure. Can you, I'd like you to hold me accountable.

Because that always works really well, doesn't it? That's interesting, I'm sorry to interrupt, but it is interesting, isn't it? How there's so many things that we know feel really good, And feel really healthy and feel really kind of connecting and grounded, like exercise, like good diet.

And you and me are just on that every single day, aren't we? And yet we know meditation is really good and it feels good and it has all these benefits. And yet it's so hard to do, isn't it?

Yeah.

Why is that? Why are we so disciplined and find it so easy to eat well and to exercise and have good social connections?

And then it comes to this practice, which is on the, on a par in terms of how good it is for us. And we don't do it. Yeah, it's interesting. Well, maybe it's like this will act as a reminder and inspire us to do it more. I wonder if that for me, it's a bit like eating chia seeds in that you don't feel it's like that delayed gratification thing.

Yeah. Like, After a while, I'm like, Oh my gosh, I haven't eaten any Cheez Its for ages. I need to do that. And then I do it and then it's like a noticeable benefit. And I think a bit with silence. So as something happened last week and I just thought, Oh yeah, I haven't sat in silence for ages. Oh, no wonder I'm a bit kind of not all over the place, but I'm not quite where I should be. So when I do it, though, I sit somewhere really comfortable, like in bed, like propped up with some pillows or in on my sofa. And my practice really is just to let my Mind go and just observe my thoughts so I don't tend to have a mantra or anything I do tend to say thank you quite a lot and I do kind of notice my thoughts I remember read something once I don't know if it was around I saw someone else Talking about one form of like meditation just being like noticing.

It's like your thoughts being leaves on a stream, and you're just watching them float past. So I find that the most helpful thing, because I find it gets away from that, I don't know whether it's that I'm undisciplined and lazy, and can't be bothered to kind of. Have a mantra, but I feel that when I just let my thoughts go and when I dwell in that silence, it's away from any kind of like petition or forcing it or being strict on my brain or something, you know, it's kind of the opposite of like concentrating on something is concentrating.

But it's more just enjoying the silence and getting into it. And there's a bit of, um, yeah, just noticing the thoughts and thinking that's interesting. There's something that I always experience as sort of transcendence. I think it's just because you stop being tethered to whatever you're listening to, or, like, concentrating on.

And you're suddenly, like, More aware of the wonder of the experience that you're reflecting on your own thoughts and that you're concentrating on your breathing and what I generally find is that I feelings of gratitude and a feeling of transcendence that almost kind of puts things in perspective a bit more.

Like often happen and I find it fairly easy these days to like do it for a decent length of time. So I usually set a timer just because then I'm not thinking to check my phone as to how long I've been doing it. So I usually set a timer for like, I don't know, like I often do it for like 20 minutes or half an hour.

Sometimes the time drags but more often than not it kind of flies by and I'm always surprised. That time is up. So that's literally what I do. Yeah. How do you do it, Tim?

Yeah, similar in terms of sort of regularity. It's, it's sort of hit and miss and I'll do it for a few months and then it will drop off for a few months and I'll come back to it for a few months.

So since I interviewed John, I've been doing it again every day. Right. Generally about 15 minutes. I use, um, like a kneeling stool. So I kind of kneel down for it. I don't know how that started. Possibly actually when I went on retreat and I sort of observed other people doing that. But for me, I don't know what it is, but that makes a big difference.

Like just because it's a, it's a position that my body wouldn't normally be in. It just then becomes associated with, with meditation. So just kind of getting into that position, like very quickly just gets me kind of ready for it. And then, yeah, usually kind of 15, 15 minutes. And sometimes I just observe my breathing.

And sometimes I'll use like a word just to kind of come back to if my mind really kind of goes off. Like you, I do sometimes go with my thoughts because I feel like when I'm really relaxed and there's kind of no agenda, sometimes really surprising and interesting things just kind of pop up. So if something like that pops up, then I'll kind of go with it.

But if it's just the usual kind of mundane chatter, then, um, I just kind of come back to, I just might breathe in or to kind of a particular word.

Yeah.

Yeah. But in terms of what it kind of does for me. Well, I suppose the most obvious thing that it does for me is just brings to my awareness how much attention my thoughts demand, like how much is going on in my brain all the time.

Like, it's quite alarming when you when you first kind of notice it, there's this constant conversation going on in your head. And then I think occasionally, fleetingly, I become kind of less aware of the kind of boundaries of my own kind of being, if that makes sense. Like usually I'm super aware of my individuality.

I'm super aware of my sense of self and that I'm in a world trying to connect with that world and I'm trying to connect with other people. But sometimes when I'm meditating, that blurs slightly. And the piece I kind of feel is a piece that comes from the kind of softening of that sense of individuality.

Like there's just this feeling that I'm connected. to kind of everything.

Yeah.

That sounds a bit pretentious. No, no, no. I really got that. I really got that. I can relate to that experience.

Definitely.

But like I say, it's kind of, it's occasional and it's fleeting. There's a lot of peace I find comes with that.

Definitely. I mean, John sort of described the peace he feels as kind of rising above the clouds, didn't he? For me, I kind of picture it almost as kind of sinking down deeper into myself. Yeah. Like people often talk about the sea, like all the kind of craziness of your thoughts are like the waves, but if you The war is calm underneath and that's how it feels for me.

Like the deeper I go into myself, the more kind of peaceful it feels. So that's my experience. Yeah. I should just say that, uh, I know that's not everyone's experience. I can remember when I first started getting into meditation, I was kind of extolling its virtues to a colleague. This is when I was a pioneer minister of the Methodist Church, and she said that she works with a lot of women that are coming out of domestic abuse situations, and she started introducing them to contemplative practices, and some of them found it really kind of traumatic, that when they kind of entered the silence and those kind of feelings of trauma came back up, it was quite sort of overwhelming for her.

She quickly realized that that just wasn't kind of appropriate. So I know it's not everyone's experience, but for me, As I kind of sink into myself, it kind of feels quite peaceful. Yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah.

The other thing for me is that it almost feels like a bit like defragmenting your brain. Do you know what I mean?

Defragmenting your hard drive. Yeah. Remember those days? Yeah, I do. I feel like that, that there's that sense of just coming back to myself, like re establishing myself. I feel more patient and more connected to myself.

Yeah. Which then helps in generally life and everything. Yeah.

Do computers still need defragmenting?

Because I've had an Apple Mac for years now and they kind of do all that automatically. Do you still have to defragment your hard drive? I don't know. I think it happens automatically. Okay.

I've no idea.

That's always a mission, wasn't it? Defragmenting your hard drive. It was like tick away for hours. C cleaner.

Yeah. Things like that. It was quite satisfying. It was actually, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

There's loads of things that came up in the interview. Like a lot of the things that stood out for me were just like little passing comments. So at one point I thought he gave a perfect summary of the kind of folly of a lot of Western missionary trips.

Like he said, I was trying to teach people older and wiser than myself how to live. But I just thought that just summed up so many of my kind of experiences of short term missions because I did loads. I mean, most notably in terms of the length was in Romania and Zambia.

Yeah.

And I was like a, you know, ridiculously young kind of I think I was early 20s, very kind of zealous.

And I was asked to preach and to teach and to lead groups and to pray for leaders. And these people were like twice, sometimes three times my age, do you know what I mean? Yeah. And they saw more of the complexity of life in an average month than I've seen in my entire life. Do you know what I mean? It's like white savourism to the max.

Yeah.

I mean? So I just thought that was such a great little summary of how kind of crazy that can be.

Yeah, definitely.

And how he's come to a place of just such kind of natural humility. So that experience he had of Jesus, which completely reshaped his spirituality, I think, was it later on in the interview, he kind of said, was that actually Jesus?

I don't know. That's so beautiful. Like he, he trusted his experience. But you held the interpretation of that experience really lightly, and I found that really inspiring because, you know, I've had experiences along the way, and I'll just kind of endlessly analyze them. What does this mean? How does this fit in with my theology?

You know, whereas he just seemed to trust the experience. But just not overanalyze it. Yeah. Not worry too much about the interpretation. Yeah.

I thought that was beautiful. Well, again, that comes from a different perspective away from like dogma and like orthodoxy or something, isn't it? Yeah. That we grew up with, which was you had to have accurate thoughts about things, didn't you?

Yeah.

I remember even like in the DICU, which is the Durham Intercollegiate Christian Union, people would talk often about, um, like at evangelistic events afterwards, they'd say, and did he, did he, uh, preach the gospel faithfully? Yeah. Maybe people say things like that, gosh, but that's what it is, isn't it?

So if you have an experience, you've got to interpret it properly because an accurate interpretation is what your whole faith is built on, isn't it?

Yeah, because the Bible is the word of God. Everything is kind of judged against the Bible, isn't it? So your experience is only legitimate if it kind of lines up with the way we understand the Bible.

I thought from that perspective as well, in sort of a contrast with the faith that I inherited, I just think it's really interesting when he talks about connection. I'm trying to think how he sort of described it like, Oh, that whole thing is the only sin to talk about not being connected to God. Is that right?

Is that how he said it? And it's sort of like, the faith that we grew up in, that was the opposite, wasn't it? It emphasized and re emphasized and heightened every disconnection you could think of.

Yeah, we were all disconnected with God because of our sin. We're all in our heads often. I mean, I suppose charismatic Christianity is a bit different, but often in our heads and disconnected with our body.

We certainly had big issues about physical stuff, didn't we? Yeah. Disconnected with other people, especially if they weren't Christians or weren't the kind of Christians we thought they should be. disconnected with the natural world because, well, it's all going to go away anyway. So, so it was the whole thing was built on disconnection, wasn't it?

Yeah, very much so. Yeah. The other thing that I thought that really struck me and that kind of made me think a little bit about my own practice of silence. I don't know what you thought about this was when, I think, did you ask him what has it taught him about himself?

Yeah.

And he said, Oh, I don't know, really, like self actualization.

It's more just about love. It's not about me thinking more about myself. And I just thought that was really interesting because I sometimes wonder whether my spirituality these days is quite about me finding more peace, more self actualization, becoming more of who I am. I should be. Do you know what I mean?

It's very interesting to hear someone who's so experienced talking about silence and meditation as a practice that takes him away from himself. Because I think the danger is that it just takes you deeper and deeper into yourself. That is interesting. Yeah. And more about your own thoughts or your own feelings.

Like that whole thing about noticing your thoughts can be a bit introspective. I can be a bit introspective. Well, I can be very introspective a lot of the time. So I thought that was really a helpful thing for me to think about in terms of how my practice of silence pushes me out towards others.

Yeah, I think I have both experiences.

Like I said, I do become more aware of myself in terms of what's going on in my mind. But as I kind of get deeper into the practice and as I do it day after day, sort of, With a, for a few weeks, then I started to get that sense of connectedness, but kind of a broader sense of connection. So yeah, hopefully that would kind of lead to greater love.

I mean, that's not a bad kind of, um, Plum line. Is it for any sort of practice?

No, definitely. Is it leading to love? Is it to create a connection?

Yeah. Yeah. I like that.

Um, have you been drawing straight lines or circles? No, I haven't. Or horses?

No.

Yeah.

Yeah. Elliot would love that. He loves anything sort of arty.

Yeah. Yeah. I gotta do that. Cause I was thinking, how can I get Elliot into this? Superficially, it's not the most attractive thing, is it, to say to a kid, should we sit and do absolutely nothing for 15 minutes? Well, I used to force my kids to have silence when they got home from school.

Yeah.

How did that work out?

Not great. No. They used to laugh a lot and then I'd send them out of the room and then we'd just like come home from school. But when they were like, Six, seven, eight. Wow. Ah, so silly. I was just a bit zealous about, like, having a bit of space in your mind. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, and you want to, you want to share things with your kids, don't you?

Yeah. And then they'd get home and they'd be like, Come on, let's just do two minutes tonight. And we're like, no, we're doing three minutes. The bit that I got to was that, it suddenly struck me one day, that they practiced, uh, sort of silent meditation a lot more than I did because they just spent ages coloring in.

Or playing with Lego on there just quietly.

Yeah. Lego is like super meditative.

Yeah. And I just thought, oh gosh, here I am really trying to force them to do three minutes when they'll sit and like color silently for like an hour.

Yeah. That's a good point. I do like the idea of introducing Elliot to it though, because his life is just constant activity.

Yeah.

Like much more than mine was at his age. Like there were long periods of boredom. Yeah. When I was a kid. Yeah. Yeah. But Elliot just goes from one really kind of engaging activity to another.

Yeah.

So I do like the idea of trying to encourage him to sort of find peace and contentment in doing nothing.

Yeah.

But I'm not sure how, but yeah, maybe just sort of, I think he'd quite enjoy trying to draw a straight line or trying to draw a circle.

Yeah.

That's a good idea. Thanks for bringing that back to my mind. Hey, that's okay. Or horse legs. Yeah, yeah. Horse legs.

So on Saturday, I had a day of doing nothing until someone came around for a cup of tea in the evening.

And I was reflecting on the fact that I was getting a little bit stressed thinking about How many pleasurable things I could do during the day?

Mm-Hmm. .

So I was watching that Beatles documentary Get Back.

Yeah.

I was watching another show, started watching on Disney called The Veil, and I was like, shall I watch another episode of The Veil or shall I watch Get Back?

Oh no, I don't know what to do. Okay, well it's nearly half past the hour. I could fit another episode of the very, and I just suddenly realized that even on a day when I had nothing to do, I was kind of structuring my day according to the time. And according to how much I could pack into it. And as I've thought about that, I've just thought about how our culture, like you're saying about Elliot, and it's the same for me.

Firstly, it's so convenient not to have silence. Like with smart speakers, Bluetooth headphones, phones, wifi, 4G. All those streaming platforms, BBC Sounds, Pocket Nomad, and other podcast things. Like, it's amazing, isn't it? And I don't want to get, because I get a bit bored and people are like, Oh, we just worship at the altar of entertainment and sport.

And you're just like, well, it is all good. But there's also the, the added thing around that is this whole thing around productivity. Where so often I'll swap voice notes with people and you'll say, Oh, and how you've had a productive day or, Oh, I've had a really productive day. I did, I've hung the washing out and I've hoovered through, and then I did work, then I ran for half an hour, then I, and it's all like.

So often for me, that is the measure of whether the day has been good or not.

Oh yeah, I can relate to that. That's that kind of capitalist mindset, isn't it? Yeah, exactly, exactly. It's just kind of bleeding into our leisure time, isn't it? Exactly. Like, you've got to kind of max out your leisure time, haven't you?

Yeah. So more activities, more adventures, more experiences. You've got to kind of rinse every drop out of your leisure time, haven't you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally stressful, isn't it? Yeah,

it is. It is. That's how I was feeling on, on Saturday. On one hand, you could say the, uh, practice of silence. Therefore, it's really, really difficult.

But the other way of thinking about it is that just by doing a bit of silence, you're smashing that, aren't you? You're like totally driving in the opposite direction and smashing into it. Yeah. I think that's why even like a short bit or a small and often, or a couple of times a day for a few minutes, it's so counter cultural.

And I think then you begin to experience the benefits of that, like in your head, and then it all goes from there.

Yeah, very good mate. I like that.

I thought he gave a great answer when I asked him about the sort of path that other religions might offer. He said, well, I just look to the sky and the grass. That's my book of God. When he said that in the interview, I kind of thought he was just sidestepping the question, like he didn't really want to answer it. But the more I thought about it, that was quite a Jesus-y sort of answer, wasn't it? Because if kind of wisdom and peace, a sense of a loving present comes from nature, then that's available to everyone, isn't it?

And religion's got very little to do with that. Like, religion might give you a language to put to it, or kind of a worldview to understand it through, which could be helpful or not. But if your spirituality essentially emerges from nature and emerges from the kind of peace that you find within yourself, anyone can access that.

Yeah. Yeah. So for me, like the incarnation was all about always 100 percent the person of Jesus, like Jesus was the center of it all. And so that made the way I related to other religions really difficult because it was all about Jesus. Whereas what John was talking about, he said that he found it quite easy to kind of disassociate Jesus from the human portrayal in the Bible, didn't he?

And he found it quite Natural to see Jesus in nature because nature is kind of his first love. So I guess it's that kind of cosmic Christ idea, isn't it? That Jesus was the kind of human incarnation of a loving presence, but that loving presence can be seen all over the place. You know, John kind of discovered that purely through his experience of the natural world and through meditation.

I kind of discovered it through reading books. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, I just thought it was just. Such a beautifully simple answer to like a really difficult thorny complex question. It's like, well, you just look to the sky and look to the grass. Yeah. Oh yeah, of course you do.

Yeah, definitely. I think that's why people say that the more you kind of move to the mystical end of any religion, the more kind of agreement there is.

Yeah, right. That people at the mystical end of religions talk about a loving presence, a sense of oneness with all things, a sense of mystery, a kind of a humility. But the more you kind of move to the kind of doctrine, the theology, the philosophy end, the more disagreement there is. I think there's a lot in that.

Yeah, definitely. You know, your issues that you've explored with nature and the cruelty of nature and stuff, have you resolved that now? Not really. No, but it's not weighing on me. No. Like it was. Because it was about, like, the cruelty of nature, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah. And whether that is an issue when we talk in these terms about the beauty and love of nature.

I wasn't sure what I kind of made the sort of comment he made about death as well. I found it quite kind of, um, surprising when he said it. And then I thought, gosh, like I really need to think about that. Well, I asked him about death at the end, didn't I? And he said that death is the perfect answer to life.

Yeah. I was, I thought that it's very interesting. Wow. Like, gosh, I've never heard that before. Yeah. Uh, he said all the troubles and difficulties of life. Finally, it all comes to pass.

Yeah, I have thought about that sometimes and wondered about, like I was at a funeral last week and I wondered about whether it was possible and whether I might have a chance by the time I die, who knows when I might die, to sort of feel like, oh, there we go.

I hope so. Didn't have to worry about that. Because he was talking about that experience he had with that sheep, wasn't it? Yeah. And that, that kind of plays into the issue of the problem of evil.

Yeah. So that is exactly the situation that would really upset me.

Yeah. Like the sheep gets ill and it's dying and he's trying to save it.

Like nature is such a cruel, horrible place. But from the sheep's perspective, it just let go. It didn't struggle. It wasn't fretting. It just let go and just slipped away. You know, so for him, that was a real kind of moment of peace and a real moment of release. Whereas for me, my mind would be just whirring with all the questions, but what does it say about God?

And what does it, do you know what I mean? It's total, like, turn your world upside down way of thinking about it, isn't it?

Yeah.

That is like a very different perspective. Because I often think about it like in terms of, um, like when you're stressed about something, maybe like something's playing on your mind and you just think, oh well, it's time to go to bed.

Yeah. And I can just, and I know sometimes you are like kept awake by things, but also sometimes it's just comforting, isn't it? To be under your duvet and just snuggling down and you can just go to sleep. Yeah. And I sometimes wonder whether you could think about death in that way.

Yeah.

It's all got kind of difficult connotations in my head though.

Have you ever watched Yeah. And they go and see those rabbits who like. Get all the food, but then get killed and they're like, we've just learned to accept it. And they're like, we've got to get out. We've got to get out. They're just happy to die.

It's a bit fatalistic. I suppose that's the thing that the negative side of it.

It's like in those natural disaster movies, isn't it? There's always like one couple in their house that just don't want to leave. Yeah. We've lived here all our lives. We're not going anywhere now. We're just happy to die. Yeah. Get out! The car's packed. Yeah, I think in terms of theology, that kind of open and relational theology about how God isn't in control.

God isn't omnipotent in the way that we kind of assumed, you know, that things do just kind of play out the way they play out. And like John kept referring, there's a loving presence. there. But that presence isn't in control. It's not like dictating the course of events. For whatever reason, the world just is what it is and suffering occurs.

Like John was the kind of loving presence with that dying sheep. You know, he didn't have any ability, any control to change the outcome, but he could just sit with that sheep and be with it as it passed away. And so maybe God's like that. Yeah, that's helpful, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. I like that, Tim. I like that idea.

where he talked about we're in Jesus, like a fish is in the sea. It's all like nature imagery, isn't it?

Yeah.

I've been thinking that way for a while now that I used to kind of think that God was like the biggest fish in the sea. Like God was the shark or the whale or whatever. And you could kind of call on God to swim over and sort out your problems.

But that idea that rather than God being the biggest fish in the sea, that God is the sea itself. That the sea kind of holds life and nurtures life and nourishes life. So God isn't kind of a being alongside other beings that God is just kind of the source of all being like God is existence itself by God is what holds and nourishes and nurtures everything.

I think that's a really helpful image. And then other times I think God probably doesn't exist. It's hard to know for sure, isn't it? It is hard to know, you're right. I was interested that you were so surprised about his experience with the church. He's generally had a, not a great experience with church, hasn't he?

Well, yeah, because I kind of, in my mind when I was reading his book and then subsequently speaking with him, because he was talking a lot about Jesus and how his spirituality had been sort of radically reshaped by that experience of Jesus, I was thinking like, he's really Christian, you know, and then when he said that the church said he wasn't Christian enough, to, you know, be a priest or whatever.

That's what kind of surprised me. I was like, wow, like I asked him that question about other religions because I was thinking you're quite kind of Jesus centered. So how do you understand other religions? But the church was saying, you're not Christian enough. Yeah. That's kind of what I found surprising.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah. There was part of me that thought like, surely there's a, you know, a contemplative liberal church that would just love him. It'd be like their hero.

Maybe we should start one. He could be the guru, couldn't he? Yeah, we could sit at his feet. But then on the other hand, it made me, it reminded me how marginal this kind of stuff can be in sort of mainstream Christianity in the UK.

Yeah, it's easy to forget that, isn't it? Because like we kind of exist in that world, I suppose to a degree. We just start, you just start to take it for granted, don't you? If we went back 10 years and we're talking this kind of nonsense to a young Nick and Tim would be what? Talking about be outraged.

It's a waste of time.

Absolutely. Waste of time. Literally some prayers. Literally, what is the point? Do some petition petitions. Yeah. Get the intercessory prayers going. Proud warriors

Getting nowhere with this stuff. Jericho Force. Get Ron Cannoli on the CD player. We're going up to the hype. Let's go up.

We're going up. Did you ever listen to that when you were praying? No. Come on, church. Let's go up. Going up to the high places. We're going to tell the devil's kingdom down. Who's report church? Will you believe we shall believe the report of the Lord? Let's go up. etc.

That's powerful stuff, mate. Yeah, it was.

On track to some pretty powerful petitionary prayer back in the day.

Should we leave it there, Nick? Yes. For two reasons. I think I've said all I want to say. I suspect you might have done as well. Yeah. Plus there's some football on tonight, isn't there? And, uh, you know, while I don't want to suggest that the beloved listener isn't our first concern this evening, there are other things going on, aren't there?

There are. Yeah. Yeah. Football is a close second. So close. So there you go. That was John Butler. Definitely one to listen to a few times, I think. Yeah, I think so. Wouldn't you agree?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I agree.

In a couple of days time, Nick, I'm going to be attempting to record four therapists answering listener questions.

No way! Yeah. So, assuming that goes well, that'll be the next episode.

Wow, cool. Yeah. So until then, beloved listener, goodbye. Goodbye.