Elizabeth Oldfield takes a closer look at the various themes from The Sacred’s Autumn 2022 series. 30/11/2022

Elizabeth 

Hello, and welcome to The Sacred. My name is Elizabeth Oldfield, and this is a reflection on the series that closed just a few weeks ago. I wanted an opportunity to listen back to really try and retain what I’d learned from these amazing guests, and we also have a few exciting announcements for you at the end. First, looking back, I’m really struck by the vastness of the different conversations that make up what we mean by ‘the public conversation’. It’s such a joy to be able to be a bit nosy actually and dip into the world of documentaries or regenerative farming or what it takes to lead a Muslim civil society organisation. I find it really good to be reminded about these other worlds which I know nothing about, that have their own dramas and satisfactions and struggles and ethics and narratives going on.  

If I think back to the very first episode of the series with Paul Kingsnorth, he said his sacred value was nature, which is something that’s come up quite a lot over the years. And we had a really wide ranging and interesting conversation but the impression that I was left with is just his really felt frustration, and I really felt for him, in how easy it is to misrepresent people when there’s these issues that are very very polarising, like vaccines. I worry that even I partly did it, perhaps in my wrap–up. The issues are so complex, and the feelings around them are so intense that it just, is really a big mess. You know, hearing him say, it was so helpfully challenging, that he can write an incredibly careful 5,000 word essay in which he is carefully, carefully unpacking the particularities of his position and worries, and still, he’ll just get written off as an anti–vaxxer and put in a particular box and associated with a bunch of people who doesn’t agree with and a bunch of issues, a bunch of positions that he doesn’t hold. You know, that tendency, and I guess it comes from sort of cognitive shortcuts that we don’t have enough room in our head for the entirety of each person. We barely do with the people that we actually know in our real lives. And so, when we’re kind of surveying the landscape, we have to use these shortcuts, these kind of oh, they’re that, they’re that, they think that, they probably agree with them, this constant sorting that we do. But that there’s such dangers with those shortcuts and the patience to slow down a bit and listen to what someone’s really saying, is so, so important. And I really, I felt Paul’s kind of personal hurt and frustration about his experiences in that area. And just learned a lot about the some of the themes and threads in his perspective around vaccines. I really enjoyed hearing about his conversion, actually, and the windy path to that.  

With Sathnam, I loved his sacred value of just like not being cool, and trying to be balanced and careful. Which really left me with this question about writing personally, that writing personally is so powerful, and that his career has been a move from writing about issues to writing more about himself. And now, you know, his editors are like, there’s not enough of you in this column. But also how exposed that leaves you and when I shared that episode on Twitter, about the abuse he received, the very first reply was someone saying, basically, ‘stop moaning, he doesn’t get any abuse.’ And I was really shocked. And I thought, I know I’m going to wade into this. And went and searched for a few key terms, and you don’t have to dig very far to see Sathnam’s not lying, he really does get an enormous amount of abuse. But the fact that that was the very first response that I got, someone denying his experience of that was, you know, troubling. And it came up with various guests in the series actually, with Prue as well and obviously with Paul this sense that it can be morally very coarsening, I think, if you let it, being in public and just dealing day to day with the, the deluge of abuse. And one of the key kinds of spiritual growth or moral and ethical questions for those people is, okay, where are you going to ground yourself? How are you going to deal with this? How do you avoid just becoming very thick skinned and cynical and dismissive, but stay open hearted? And I really did, you know, I think Sathnam’s thinking deeply about that. I really enjoyed hearing about his Sikhism, and his commitment that you can’t just say, Empire’s evil/ empire’s brilliant, that there’s always granularity, there’s always particularity. It’s always more complicated than that, in that slightly annoying Ben Goldacre phrase. But it’s the only way to truly inhabit the world, I think, having a tolerance for that.  

I really enjoyed speaking to Zara, Zara Mohammed who’s clearly going around the world one day. Her sense that, you know, you have to start where people are, that, you need to she said, you need to respect people’s traditions, customs and cultures, even if they don’t mean your societal standards. So if you really want anyone to change, they need to see you as someone that respects them, and is willing to take people on the journey. And that seems like such a key thread, that people don’t change their mind. If they feel disrespected. People don’t care what you think, unless they think that you care. You know, that posture towards people is so fundamental in any conversation across difference any attempt to persuade anyone, and yet it is so hard to do and to practice. And it came up as well in Sarah Langford’s. Her sacred value is work. I really heard that, kind of, do something with your life call. Both with farmers who she’s spending a lot of time with now, and with criminals in her previous career when she was a barrister. It came through with the same thing, really this echo of treat people with dignity. Treat people with empathy. Understand that their stories are much more complicated than the two–dimensional stories that we tell, and resist patronising. You know, resist particularly demonising them. Because that’s so, so harmful in any attempt to connect with someone and see someone as fully human. Or in the case of regenerative farming, you know, help them understand why they might need to change the way they’re doing things.  

Speaking to Danté, his sacred value of family, which he said at the beginning really came through everything he said. His connection with his family, his connection with his black Pentecostalism, the disconnect he felt therefore, when he was in a white Reformed Church when he was baptised again. And now this kind of, what does it mean to raise children in a world where being African American still feels dangerous? In the US, in particular, I think, but definitely not uniquely. And I want, I want to keep having those conversations, I want to keep trying to listen deeply, to try and be honest about where I am about, you know, part of his struggles have been with white Christians. And that’s one of the many labels that you could use for me. I’m a white Christian and staying in the tension, I didn’t really want to ask that. I often just want to have these conversations very theoretically, about language and issues and divisions that are out there. But making myself name the hard thing is often scary, but fruitful. And the more I do it, the more I realise my desire to kind of land what I think about all this to go, to join one of the teams you know, the war on woke guys, the you know, all identity politics is evil, or the those who are saying it’s only through fully understanding these identity issues that we can embed justice in our societies. And actually, these identities are really important, and this is a helpful frame through which we are thinking. That I need to give up on coming to a conclusion on that and, again, go back to particularity and context and the relationships that we’re actually in and the people that we actually know and how we treat each other, how we listen to each other and the language that we use in those settings. This desire to kind of universalise an approach to difference, I think it’s probably tripping me up. I won’t generalise there.  

I loved speaking to Rowan Deacon and her sacred value of this commitment to human connection and it was sort of meta when I talked to Rowan, because so much of what she’s doing in documentaries is exactly what I’m trying to do when I talk to people; this sense of keeping a posture of curiosity and listening. And I was particularly struck by how boundaried she is and how you have to be boundaried. I’m less boundary than her because many of my guests end up friends, and I am very fine with that. It’s bought me some really interesting and very different from me, friends. But I did get that sense that there is a continuum that even though often she’s dealing with really painful, difficult issues, and I’m generally not, that it’s a vulnerable position to put someone in, to self reflect, to tell their story. And there’s power there. Jonathan Pageau, again, this sense of crisis of meaning, which comes up a lot. This sense that he and others in his world are tapping into such strong yearning for there to be meaning, for there to be forms of belonging, for a kind of re–enchanted world, for the hope that we could be part of a bigger story than ourselves. And what he really left with me was this great analysis about those on the left tend to dehumanise people in time, that kind of older traditions, older societies, less kind of progressive, developed liberal in air quotes, societies, if you’re not if you’re not from there, if you don’t feel at home in them, then you’re kind of somehow less than everyone else. And those on the right tend to dehumanising space and geographically, they’re much more nervous of a geographic other of different races. And Jonathan’s commitment to resisting that and knowing where you have a tendency to de–humanise others and resisting it was a really helpful call, I think, for all of us.  

Zing, who was so warm and lovely, I was quite intimidated by her because she’s just very, very cool and she quickly made me feel at ease. And she reminded me that journalists actually often have these, some of these bridge building skills, and they’re using them more instrumentally, often, but that there is something slightly magical in an ability of a journalist to find a connection point with almost anyone, and to help them open up and listen to their stories and Zing clearly knows how to do that as much as any other. And I hate the way this stuff sounds cheesy and simple when it’s vitally important. But sometimes it does. But it doesn’t mean it’s not important. And Prue Leith. I was a bit nervous about this one, to be honest, because she was doing on the fly in the States. And as you might have heard, the audio wasn’t up to our usual standards. And at one point, I asked her to stop tapping because she was sort of fiddling in a way that you might have heard then some tapping come through, and it did feel like trying to tell off the headmistress. She’s so self–assured that my normal levels of assertiveness went right down. But I managed it and she was very gracious. I just loved her direct she is I really did find it very, very refreshing. And it left me wondering how much is just temperament? And she says, you know, she’s a fairly straightforward person. She’s not very tortured. She has this just do attitude that she shared with her son, Danny. You know, roll your sleeves up, get stuff done. How much of that is just temporary, how much is generational? Because she was reminding me of my grandma. The matter of fact, slightly sardonic, just get on with this stuff. And we have gained a huge amount, I think in a change in an attitude to emotions and our ability to talk about trauma and to create space for vulnerability and our mental health struggles. And I in no way want to decry any of that. But I wonder if… do I mean, something’s been lost? Or do I just mean, is there a way of having both? Is there a way of holding space for our vulnerability and our woundedness, and sometimes just pulling our socks up and cracking on rolling up our sleeves and being a bit more Prue.  

So, there were some themes really coming through. As I said, Jonathan’s challenge about how do we tend to dehumanise people and who do we tend to dehumanise, the self–awareness to notice that in ourselves and not to tolerate it, I think is really important. So many people affirmed this thesis that just shouting at people calling people names. dismissing them, pouring contempt on them, telling them they’re wrong, doesn’t work. It’s a terrible tactic. It feels good. It feels it’s like slightly addictive, self–righteous rage, we feel like we’re doing something to fix the problem. And we have somewhere to channel our big feelings. But it actually makes it work. What works is doing the hard thing, which is the commitment to staying in a conversation, to treating people with respect, trying to understand where they’re coming from. And we can build those muscles, I think. Yeah, again, and again, the sense that there’s stereotypes of people. And the person that you perceive in their public persona is always, always radically more complicated and usually more vulnerable than the person you see in public. And that’s hard to hold in our heads, but really important. And just this stuff about abuse, you know, Sathnam, and Paul, and Prue in particular, it feels deeply troubling to me, and I wish I knew how to fix it.  

So, those are my reflections on our guests. And I wanted to say thank you to all of them for taking the time to talk to me. It is a privilege, and it does feel like a spiritual practice for me. This is my tiny act of resistance against the way society is trying to for me to hate people more easily. There’s a wonderful book called The Sabbath by Rabbi Heschel, Joshua Heschel, anyway, that talks about Sabbath as an act of resistance. And I have come to believe that listening to people different from me, is an act of resistance against the dehumanising tides of our society, I want to push back in a tiny, tiny way against that polarising tide. I want to be more like Jesus in the New Testament, (Bible bit coming here) about I think no matter what you believe about Jesus, this is something we can emulate in him. All over the Gospels, the person that Jesus goes to be with the person is curious about the person who is asking questions of, and seeking to care for, is usually the biggest outcast, the lowest status, the most despised person, in any room. I’ve come to see it like that. I don’t know how many of you have watched Fleabag. But I’ve come to see it as like, explicitly mischievous what he’s doing that he sometimes walks into a scene and then winks to camera, and then go to the tax collector, and then goes to this sort of collaborator with Empire, and then go to the woman who has a lifelong period and is bleeding all down her legs, and then goes to the leper. You know, goes to the rich and despised, goes to the poor and despised, goes to the Samaritan who is despised for their race, goes to the woman at the well who is despised for her sexual choices. And it doesn’t have to be, you know, the most outsider person, but I want to have that mischievous wink to camera more in my life and not just hang out with my tribe, not just hang out with people who build up my ego by agreeing with me and make me feel comfortable because I fear if I do that I will be very boring and have a very adventurous life and won’t grow. So that’s my commitment.  

I really valued the person listener who told me that she is in now, as she called it, a ‘Sacred style intentional friendship’ with someone who is a different generation and religion and race from them and how life giving and sometimes tricky it is to be in that friendship. I just wanted to cheer. And I want to say thank you to the listener who worked from Australia where they’re working with government on large scale global conflicts, and how much listening to the Sacred steadies them and reminds them what is possible on the small scale. These kinds of encouragement really do help. Do let me know what’s going on in your life in this area and what you’re thinking about, and what if any small acts of resistance you might be practising. We’re going to take a break now, over Christmas. Our next series will be out early next year and the first episode will be with a drumroll. Wonderful Irish journalist Sean O’Hagan and the person he has written a new book with, Nick Cave. That book is called Faith, Hope and Carnage. It is my book of 2022. Go put it on your Christmas list if you are interested in creativity. If you’re interested in grief in if you’re interested in theology, if you’re interested in two friends who don’t agree on either religion and politics by the sound of it, staying in a tender and loving conversation it’s a really beautiful book. I can’t wait to share the conversation that we had with you, we all cried. And it was really moving and meaningful. And we’re also excited that we’re going to have our first Sacred Live events since before the pandemic, and we have a great guest lined up for that with just pinning down dates. And so, we’ll will be able to announce that probably in the new year, so please do follow us on social media channels, and stay in touch. Finally, as his traditional, if you are enjoying this and would like to support us in some way. Please go now leave us a review and a rating on Apple podcasts, send an episode to a friend, introduce them have a chat about it, and we’d love to hear how you get on. Until next year, I’m Elizabeth Oldfield, and you’ve been listening to The Sacred. 

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