Mindfulness for revolutionaries

For me, as someone who leads mindfulness sessions is a modern unviversity, this article The mindfulness conspiracy | Life and style | The Guardian is interesting, provocative and challenging. However, perhaps not in the way the author (Ronald Purser ) would expect because I actually agree with him in most respects but one. I think that perhaps the heart of his critique can be seen in this paragraph

It is a fundamental tenet of neoliberal mindfulness, that the source of people’s problems is found in their heads. This has been accentuated by the pathologising and medicalisation of stress, which then requires a remedy and expert treatment – in the form of mindfulness interventions. The ideological message is that if you cannot alter the circumstances causing distress, you can change your reactions to your circumstances. In some ways, this can be helpful, since many things are not in our control. But to abandon all efforts to fix them seems excessive.

And the truth is that I agree that mindfulness can be used as a kind of shoring-up of individuals and distract attention from the arguably more insightful and humanly-beneficial work of analysing the structural reasons for distress and to reinforce the privatising and individualising of finding solutions to it that don't involve changing the 'system'. I don't think we should acquiesce in the idea that the real benefits of mindfulness should only be used by big business or its equivalents for their own own ends.

Well, I don't necessarily agree. I do agree that mindfulness can be and often is used as a kind of sticking plaster over a big wound that needs a more corporate treatment. So to be clear, I do believe that the kind of stress that university staff whom I host sessions for would be well served by changes in governmentally-driven regimes which marketise HE and starve it, in effect, of funding. In turn this means that staff are having to do more with less and face greater precarity in greater numbers than before. I'm not saying that there were not faults in the previous systems. Some reforms are helpful but those that are have been overwhelmed by those that are not.

So why do I continue to offer mindfulness within our university? Well, there are several reasons and I'll mention some here that address the critique that Ronald Purser helpfully offers in the article.

Probably the most pressing is that by doing so I think that I am helping people. The research and informal feedback indicate that doing this stuff genuinely does help people to cope. And while I do not think that mindfulness sessions are the ultimate or only thing that should be done, if it helps some people then its usefulness as a kind of first aid, let's say, justifies doing it. Where I would be remiss would be if I were colluding with the forces of market disciplinary ideology but in itself mindfulness is not this: I do point out to people in wider conversation that I believe the more important long-term work is to change the system to be more humane and not to dump its labour-related externalities on its own workers.

In fact, I think that mindfulness can help in this more 'revolutionary' work. The flip side of the critique of mindfulness as co-optable into marketisation prop is that it can assist those working to change things. If mindfulness can help develop resilience for profit, then it can help develop resilience for change-making. If mindfulness can help people to work more efficiently for someone else to profit, it can help people work more efficiently for change. If it helps greater clarity of thought and reaction for profit, it can do so for analysing root causes of distress and help conscientisation.

If we took the message to be, 'mindfulness is being used as a tool to pacify workers in inhumane working conditions, therefore we should stop people learning mindfulness techniques' then I would say we are missing the possibility that mindfulness could be part of wider strategies to change things. It can be part of a message which says, 'use your greater clarity and ability to gain space to not simply react to consider how to make the conditions better and not to need to work so hard to adjust yourselves to unreasonable and inhumane conditions: notice you are not at fault, but the system you are in is. Direct the anger you find to changing the conditions'.

So, I suppose that I am disagreeing with the very next bit of what Ronald Purser writes:

Mindfulness practices do not permit critique or debate of what might be unjust, culturally toxic or environmentally destructive. Rather, the mindful imperative to “accept things as they are” while practising “nonjudgmental, present moment awareness” acts as a social anesthesia, preserving the status quo.

Let's look at it a bit more closely. 'Do not permit critique' -I'd agree if it was 'in the usual format on offer by the mindfulness industry'. However, I would say that it is perfectly possible for a mindfulness group leader to have conversations about this and to have conversations about how mindfulness permits us to gain insights which can inform critique and can help us to gain a degree of resilience to take action on those insights. After all, if the problem is that people are being overworked, in effect, then asking them to take more action to resist or overturn things is going to require from them more than they may feel they can do: mindfulness techniques can be something that helps with that.

'Accept things as they are' -yes this can be co-opted into social anaesthesia. But only if it is tied to a conservative no-change vision of the way things are. This may be implicitly what wider society and media do but it is not inherent to mindfulness. Mindfulness can support those engaging in social, political and economic change and is not inherently conservative. In fact, by helping us to be more aware of our own reactions we can begin to be clearer about what is, in fact, our own baggage and our own capability and what needs wider and collective action. Ironically, many businesses want workers to be more creative and to think more widely -but then they may have to work to try to keep that within the bounds of their own enterprise. Creativity could cut both ways and come up with ways for working people to subvert the system. 

'Non judgmental present moment awareness' can lead/help us to be aware that actually it's not us, it really is 'them', that the 'promise/hope' of better life or conditions if we just endure this, work a bit harder etc is not serving us in the present and maybe never will; it can strip off those ideological illusions that keep us being well-oiled cogs in the profit-machine. The task is to provide alternative voices to assist the potential conscientisation that mindfulness can be the midwife for. Don't let the business leaders have all the best techniques for helping us to live a little better -let's harness them to socially transformative work.

Activists can burn out too. If these techniques can help those working for change, let's not write them off by only thinking about them as they work within the exploitative frame of mind. We can imagine differently: we can imagine groups of people better able to challenge injustice because they can identify and channel their rightful anger more effectively and learn to have space to properly care for each other by attending to the present experience of hearing the person in front of them and being present to them.

One things this article has done for me is to consider how best to redesign my support leaflets for mindfulness sessions to highlight the importance of not just individualising our responses to workplace stress. And perhaps I will open up conversations with the union activists in our place around this.

Chaplaincy: secular and global ministry?

I was recently asked how I thought about chaplaincy as a Christian minister given the secular context, multifaith nature and impacts of globalisation. This was my response. Perhaps I should remind readers that I'm in Britain working as a chaplain in a university and we work within a framework of human rights legislation particularly equality and diversity.

It’s not quite right to say that chaplaincy is a statutory requirement for equality –although it seems that most HEIs interpret it in a way that chaplaincy seems to be a main way to try to address the appearance of religion (including non-belief) as a protected characteristic.

I’m also keen to question the terms ‘secular’ and ‘secularisation’. It is often seen as a bad thing but we should recall that some of the impetus for it grows out of the European religious wars following the Reformation –it became evident that moving religion (indeed, in the fullness of time any strong ideology) away from absolute power moved it away from the apparently strong temptations to murder opponents. One of the things about the Baptist and many other non-conformists is that, as people who were mostly persecuted, they have a strong ethos of separation of religion and state and of religious tolerance –it is interesting to note that the oft-persecuted Shi’ite Muslims tend in the same direction. 

In addition to this practical response to abuse of power by religious agents (and later by agents of ‘secular’ ideologies) there are theological reasons for supporting secularism at least of a certain kind. I’d note here the distinction between hard and soft secularism and I’d making a theological case for the latter. Hard secularism is a way to characterise anti-religious ideology –the immediate aftermath of the French revolution is an extreme example: the replacement of a religious ideology of governance by anti-religious. Hard secularism can be more tolerant than that: modern France and Turkey operate hard secular regimes (in theory) by excluding all religious expression from the public sphere (government, education, publicly owned space etc –hence debates about hijab-wearing or crosses on classroom walls).

Soft secularism (in theory the state of India) recognises that people come into the public sphere with religious identities and commitments and rather than excluding them, seeks to be impartial about their claims (perhaps the USA is this too) and to make sure that they don’t become co-ercive.

I think that latter approach can be defended theologically. The idea of doing as you’d be done by in Jesus’ teaching seems to indicate that if we would like the right to practice our faith, we advocate for all to have that right –even those who are our ‘enemies’. If we want to be able to commend our faith to others, we must allow them the same privilege. Furthermore, as I read the teaching of Christ and of Paul I find a scepticism about religion particularly where it becomes a legalistic thing (and state religion has to be legalistic –by definition). I’m also interested to note that in the first chapters of Genesis the duty of humanity is to tend creation and there is no temple. The impetus towards religiosity flows from the conversation with the serpent and its aftermath. So I’m in favour of trying to help the churches to think about secular life as the arena of Christian mission and effort: our tending of creation and society is our religion. Chaplaincy might be a way to help promote this insight among the churches.

This impacts on chaplaincy in several ways in my view. One is to alert us to our own faith’s impetus towards treating others hospitably, with dignity and to do so particularly when they are in some way our ‘enemy’ (that is, they oppose us or what we stand for). This does not mean downplaying our distinctive message and its challenge to consider Christ as the one to be followed, it means doing that in a way that is appropriate and respects the humanity and dignity of others.

At its best an organisation’s policies and systems are ways to make sure that people are dealt with even-handedly, with justice and dignity. So in broad terms, as chaplains it is appropriate that we abide by an organisation’s ethos etc when we work with it. It is also appropriate that where it becomes clear that polices and systems are prejudicial, harmful or unjust, we should find ways to challenge that. Ways that will be effective. Sometimes that means, as in all small-p political matters, being prepared to be patient and pragmatic, finding allies and seeking to build momentum for change and finding right timings. All the while trying to find the best ways to support those who are badly done-by and to advocate for them in the best ways we have at that time. This is a dimension of the prophetic side of chaplaincy. I think that the personal spiritual challenge for chaplains is to love the institutions and their people appropriately –that is without it becoming a wilful blindness to faults and especially faults that can be rectified. I think also it means being realistic too about human nature which is also capable of subverting the best schemes. So sometimes the prophetic dimension of chaplaincy could involve being, in effect, a whistle-blower or supporting those who are speaking out about misuses of power and privilege. We should also be wary of our own tendencies to subvert the good and cultivate a certain lightness to our perceptions and agenda and practice self-examination.

From where I am at the moment, globalisation appears to mean a series of mechanisms for allowing capital to maximise its returns while creating a race to the bottom for labour. Universities have been subjected to this regime. I’m convinced, theologically, that human systems and organisations are purposed by God to serve human welfare (which also entails the welfare of the ecosystem) and so I’m not happy about the way that a particular set of views about marketisation and metrics have come to dominate the running of Higher Education because I think that in the longer term they tend to have negative impacts on important things like human welfare and quality of education. So I tend as a chaplain to try to encourage questioning of systems that ensue from that kind of globalisation agenda. (That's not to say that some aspects of HE didn't need some shaking up -there are positives things about improving teaching and research and putting the student experience much more at the heart of thinking -however, I dissent about the means currently employed ostensibly to achieve these ends).

I also try to encourage human-welfare-centred interpretations of legislation and policy. For example in our HEI, I support vocally and in meetings, interpretations of the Prevent duties that focus on safety of students rather than more authoritarian and politically paranoid interpretations. I also try to encourage thinking based in properly thought through evidence rather than prejudice and ill-founded fears.

Ministering among the Powers

I've at last finished -more or less- my article on Walter Wink's notion of the Powers, laying the foundation for conceiving of them in relation to institutional/organisational ministry.

In it, there is a brief review of Walter Wink's work on the Powers is related to an understanding of emergence, related briefly to Agamben's work on apparatuses and noting a congruence with Amos Yong's work on the Spirit in Creation . Then an outline is given of how this could begin to help those involved in Christian ministries to organisations and institutions by making appropriate analogies with other emergent creatures.

You can find it here. I'd be happy to have of comments and questions arising: they'll help me as I write further about the topic. I'm aware that there are various dimensions to what I'm exploring that need filling out. That's the next project.

The real challenges of chaplaincy ...

I discovered I'd drafted this a few months back and then forgotten to post it. So....

The bishop of Newcastle, at my interview for the post of co-ordinating chaplain to the University of Northumbria, said, “I reckon this is the hardest job in the diocese, why on earth do you want to do it?”* A good question; why did he think it was hard? I supposed that he meant something like: being a university chaplain in a large and secular university means that you don't have a settled congregation to pastor and your role is widely misunderstood and you are in a very pioneering situation with regard to discerning the mission of God and playing your part. So it's hard because you need to have a good degree of resilience, imagination, ability to cope without the normal encouragements of working in ordained ministry.
The lack of a settled congregation may be a surprise to some -remembering chaplaincies from student days as vibrant nexuses of Christian gathering and growth. Not so now: the demographic concern for falling numbers of young people participating in church life is showing up acutely in university chaplaincies; they rarely attract enough people for a critical mass of consistent and regular activity. young people who do identify as church-actively Christian tend either to go to the RC chaplaincy (by dint of a strong 'brand loyalty' on the part of the catholics and even here the numbers can struggle) or they are attracted by the vibrancy of the Christian Union -and whichever churches are most fashionable among the CU's members.
The role is misunderstood quite often because of this: the assumption is that a university chaplain is concerned mostly with students. And while some of it is, often in a quite expanded role working within teams concerned for student welfare, international students and religious equality and diversity, much is also concerned with staff and with broader institutional matters. I sometimes in the past described my role as being “an industrial chaplain to a knowledge-based industry” to try to get over the idea that it was a more institutional~ and staff-related ministry than many might have realised.
It is a pioneering role in that, with the traditional student role being less to the fore, more scope is given to encouraging wider and different forms of participation and offering different forms of ministry. In Bradford, I organised faith-related art-exhibitions, text-prayers, spiritual direction, meditation training as part of a de-stressing programme, vigils for peace at the time of the Iraq conflict, group facilitation services, life coaching, and fair trade advocacy among other things.
I am aware that this kind of institutional and staff-related ministry is much more like chaplaincy work in other sectors. In common with them I would also say that part of the role is to affirm and to facilitate ministry in Christ's name by 'ordinary' Christians in the workplace. The chaplain by their presence says, I hope, “your workplace is somewhere that God is active, a big part of the wider church's mission takes place there”.

*Interestingly, in the diocesan newspaper version of this, I toned down the actual quote; I was worried that some clergy in the diocese might take it amiss that the implication could be construed that he didn't think their job was. But of course, that would be an unfair implication; I'm sure that he was indulging in conversational hyperbole.