Looking In the Distance. Richard Holloway

the dusty road burdens have melted like wax,

      Soldiers have thrown down their rifles, misers slipped their packs;

      Yes, and the woman who left it there has sped

      With a lighter tread?

       Though I should save it, she said,

      What have I saved for the world’s use?

      If it grow to hero it will die or let loose

      Death, or to hireling, nature already is too profuse

      Of such, who hope and are disinherited,

      Plough, and are not fed.

       But since I’ve carried it, she said,

      So far I might as well carry it still.

      If we ever should come to kindness someone will

      Pity me perhaps as the mother of a child so ill,

      Grant me even to lie down on a bed;

      Give me at least bread.20

      The sudden, inexplicable kindness of strangers is the best thing in the universe and it is uniquely human. It is a break in the order of nature that tells us, with cold ruthlessness, that in times of terror and calamity each of us is bound to save ourselves and leave the world’s wounded to perish. Yet, throughout our history, there have always been those who have made these defiant challenges against the pitiless order of things. Never many, of course, but enough to disturb and influence the rest of us and rouse us occasionally to action. The French novelist Albert Camus understood our reluctance to get involved, but he also knew that, in the end, some people do act. At the end of his novel The Plague, we hear him meditating:

      Dr Rieux resolved to compile this chronicle, so that he should not be one of those who hold their peace but should bear witness in favour of those plague-stricken people; so that some memorial of the injustice and outrage done to them might endure; and to state quite simply what we learn in time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise. None the less, he knew that the tale he had to tell could not be one of a final victory. It could be only the record of what had had to be done, and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never-ending fight against terror and its relentless onslaught, despite their personal afflictions, by all who, while unable to be saints but refusing to bow down to pestilences, strive their utmost to be healers.21

      Camus’ Dr Rieux was not motivated by religion in his work of healing. But to be fair to Christianity, the religion I know best, down the ages it has produced countless people who have followed the way of Jesus in serving the poor and trying to heal the world. Christians are still to be found in the worst places on earth, trying to make a difference to the lives of the wretched. It is in its work of organised care for others, whatever its theological basis, that Christianity is at its most compelling. Secular spirituality is at a disadvantage here. Because it is diffused throughout society rather than separately organised within it, it is more difficult to get it engaged in systematic and coordinated methods to change society. The problem is not that there is a lack of purely secular bodies dedicated to human welfare and the mending of the world; it is that there is no obvious agency that can gather the godless together to motivate them for the work. There is, of course, a host of agencies in the form of campaigning organisations and highly committed individuals, but the godless don’t gather together once a week to be ethically challenged and spiritually uplifted. There have been attempts in the past by secular enthusiasts to copy the methods of the great religions and apply them to purely worldly purposes, but they were never very successful and have declined more dramatically than the Churches whose techniques they sought to copy. If the medium is the message, then it may be that secular spirituality will make a virtue of its diffused state, since it reflects humanity in its current situation, where community is increasingly something that is chosen rather than something that is given. Nevertheless, there are unifying instruments available to the committed that constitute a virtual community, such as the Internet, which was extensively used in mobilising opposition to the Iraq War, and which can be used to gather the new spiritual diaspora together on a functional basis whenever it is needed. Another increasingly significant gathering point for the human community is provided by music, which offers to its disciples not only moments of grace and transcendence but also opportunities for protesting against the excesses of the powerful. So it could be argued that the lack of any single organising authority is itself an important mark of contemporary human spirituality; and that the specific occasionality of its coming together is one of its most important strengths.

       Encountering presence in absence