Eleanor Nesbitt in conversation with Jenny Hare
What do we mean by the word spirituality?
Another dimension; intuitions about death; morality, altruism, courage - all sorts of qualities. Then there is our response to aesthetics - in music, art, etc. 'Spiritual' is a word referring to all those areas.
Do you believe in God?
I'm not sure if there is another realm or a continuous reality which we find it easier to divide into different dimensions: 'God,' 'the world' and so on.
It brings me to animals: my most uplifting encounter today was with a baby squirrel - it was absolutely perfect. I stood watching him for a long while. He hadn't yet learned to be afraid of things. Then yesterday I was stung by a wasp. It was caught up in my hair but even so all I could do was empathise with the wasp, trying to get out of my hair.
You empathised or felt connected with the squirrel and the wasp?
Yes - and I understood why the wasp stung me!
Do you think animals are spiritual?
Well, in the case of (other) animals it may make even less sense than with humans to somehow separate off the ‘spiritual’ from other aspects of their being. But, yes, I do feel that, at rare moments, I have bonded with another creature at greater depth than in normal day to day experience, and these moments of encounter stay with me as powerful memories, and as certainties of a deep unity in creation.
I think stillness is important. I've noticed that often when I've kept still for a while, outside, a wild animal has come close. Is it true with human beings too - that in stillness we can come closer?
To each other?
Yes, and to our selves and God? But I don't know if animals - people included - are spiritual all of the time. What does spiritual mean? Is it that state of harmony when you feel in tune or at one? Animals are always completely naturally doing their own thing. We humans have this complicated thing of being conscious of being conscious and assume animals don't.
I see people in churches getting in touch. Perhaps animals do too.
You have personal experience of other faiths - do you find you can pray to or talk with God - or however you like to describe what you believe in - through the medium of different doctrines?
One answer is 'yes' - I do sometimes repeat words which are very dear to
Hindus and to Sikhs respectively, in the Hindu case the Gayatri Mantra and in the Sikh case the Mul Mantra. The Gayatri Mantra is an ancient Sanskrit prayer for enlightenment. The Mul Mantra is a declaration of the oneness of God as a being without fear or hate. But then one needs to be clear that 'prayer' has a whole bundle of associations from Christian culture, and these mantras are formulae for repetition, which still the mind and purify the reciter, rather than being chats with or petitions to God.
In any case 'God' too is a word with all sorts of connotations that people from a Christian, Jewish or Muslim background take for granted in line with their own religious conditioning. In the Sikh case 'ik onkar' gets translated 'There is one God' but can just as faithfully be rendered as 'Being is one' or 'One being is'.
What I find is that my way of 'praying' has changed, so that repetition of sacred words is a part of it, and the clamour of keeping up a conversation with God lessens. Who can say at what point 'prayer' and 'meditation' merge or part company? St Paul had something to say about the Spirit praying with our spirit, and this too implies a sort of waiting and openness and also an absence of attempts to find words.
I would hope that more and more of my 'prayer time' would be taken up with neither petition/praise/confession-type of prayers or ancient formulae, but be just an expectant stillness.
But you mentioned doctrines and I have never felt comfortable with those. I suspect that it's something to do with being a left brain rather than a right brain person, the (usually) male theological mindset and the more intuitive female one etc.
You were brought up in the Anglican Church. What drew you to the Quakers?
The fact that Quakers make a stand against the requirement to use creeds was one factor that strongly appealed to me. Instead of feeling guilty (as I did, Sunday by Sunday) that I could not repeat with integrity the words of the Apostles' Creed in my parents' Anglican church, I was now released into a community in which creeds were regarded as limiting and (historically) harmful in terms of how they had been used i.e. to exclude or denounce others.
Is being married to someone with a different faith spiritually rewarding?
Whatever religious label one's partner has there are going to be differences of perspective and emphasis. Knowing that the other person accepts a different label from one's own, and that upbringings have been different, means that instead of judging the partner as not living up to one's own ideals or the discipline of one's own faith, it is possible to just feel interested. I can be open to learning. If I don't feel on the same wavelength, or when I disagree about a detail, or on a matter of seemingly fundamental importance, it is easier to be inquisitive and non-judgemental. At least I can be critical of attitudes and behaviour but somehow regard these as intrinsic to another religion or environment rather than somehow the fault of my partner, or as unreasonable behaviour. Of course we could all do this even when we regard our partners as coming from the same background and following the same path as we do ourselves. Being married to a Hindu (who is also from a different generation from mine) helps me to relate to other people from a basis of interest rather than annoyance, puzzlement or whatever.
It's difficult to sort out the spiritual from the intellectual. I may read about Hindu concepts - such as dharma, for example - as part of my preparation for lecturing or writing, as the Hindu tradition is the focus of much of my professional work in religious studies and religious education. Then I can discuss my understanding with my husband. Or he may be asked by a school or by a local interfaith group to talk about some aspect of his faith, and he'll discuss with me.
This week he's been asked to talk about Hindu understandings of the relationship between one god and many gods. To people from, say, a Christian background it can been deeply perplexing that Hindus affirm that God is one and then worship many gods. What is challenging (and so enlghtening) for me is to realise that this seeming contradiction simply isn't an issue if you have all along accepted that God is both nirankar (formless) and also assumes many forms e.g. as the infant Krishna or as Shiva dancing (not least because it is hard for many humans to respond and show devotion unless their God has a form that they can visualise).
I can then understand my own contradictory bundle of God-related aspirations and misgivings in a new way. I can see that many insights about what is beyond human language can coexist, and that on our individual spiritual paths we need not bypass or trample images and explanations that don't yet fit our own mindsets or ancestral doctrines.
Also, it is being part of a Hindu family that has made me value more and more keenly my Quaker community.
Could you say what you have in mind?
What I have in mind is this: in part it's gladness that the community with which I identify, and among whom I 'worship' weekly, is itself open to 'light from whatever source it comes' and many Quakers are receptive to Hindu insights. But also, at times when the priorities of my community by marriage jar with me (love of display at marriages, for instance, and - for that matter - parents' sense of responsibility to ensure that their sons and daughters get married) I feel strengthened by knowing that I also belong to a community that affirms simplicity and which allows questioning of social norms. And, of course, it's reassuring to feel that my husband is valued and welcomed by Quakers, as himself and as a Hindu. (There are other communities in which one senses that the 'non-believer' is welcomed as a potential convert.)
How do you go about writing a book? Do you wait for inspiration or coolly choose a subject and research it?
I'm a reactive rather than a proactive person in so far as each book (apart from Turn But a Stone, my collection of poems) was requested. To take some examples, Listening to Hindus and Hindu Children in Britain were written at the suggestion of my co-author, Professor Bob Jackson, and in any case they were part of the batch of writing (articles in journals, chapters in edited collections) that resulted - and were expected to result - from a funded research project.
Rather differently, Interfaith Pilgrims was commissioned by the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) as the book element of the Swarthmore Lecture. This is an annual lecture and the lecturer/author is approached nearly 3 years beforehand. This sounds a long time but when you're working full-time it can be quite challenging to find the time.
Not just that, but for this book in particular, as it was to be an inspirational book rather than an academic one (not that the two categories need to be mutually exclusive) I needed times of clarity and a sense of being under guidance.
Where do you most like to write?
I quickly settle down to concentrated writing both at my desk at home (in the back bedroom) and in my office at the university (lined and almost floored with books and papers). But the very best environment of all for Interfaith Pilgrims was at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Selly Oak, Birmingham. I had a week there to draft the book and a weekend there to hone the lecture.
I have never worked anywhere in such a single-minded and refreshing (rather than exhausting) way. The fact that I was taking out time away from my husband was one reason, as I needed to be sure that time taken at a cost to someone else was spent as valuably as possible. Another reason was the beauty of the surrounding garden and the joy of a small, cosy, non-threatening library, full of books relevant to my subject. Then the fact that meals were laid on - and rather nice meals at that - and that I had nothing else to do other than write must have helped a lot. Most excitingly, I got to stay in the room in which Mahatma Gandhi had stayed briefly when he visited Birmingham. Call me a romantic - for me this was wonderfully uplifting.
Do you get a sense of flow when your writing is going well?
Yes - there has to be a sense of flow. One thing I am (normally) is fluent. But that means I have to write early in the day as of an evening I'm usually (though not in Woodbrooke!) too tired.
Do you ever suffer from writer's block?
Yes, for completing my inland revenue return, for filling in forms in general, and for churning out a few work-related items! But generally, no. I have more of a reader's block, as some of the material that I need to absorb is so turgid. Rather, I am turned off by various types of material - the very quantitative (in terms of research reports), the overly jargon-riddled (in relation to, for example, education, or (in the realm of fiction) stuff that is full of bad language.
And as a poet?
As for poetry-writing, it's not that I have a block so much as that I spend months on end without a tremor of inspiration at all. Then a poem arrives, almost ready made, and others are likely to follow for a few days in a more tentative fashion.
Sometimes a poem arrives just as I should be urgently producing something much more prosaic. I guess the poetry writing is a displacement activity. Poems that have come through rather dramatically include 'Elephanta' (in Turn But A Stone). I was crammed on the back seat of an Indian bus after a long day's travel to and from another temple from the one that is the subject of the poem, and I had, totally unexpectedly, to start putting down the words on whatever scrap of paper I had to hand.
Do you experience a spiritual connection when you're writing poetry?
I can't do better than refer to the various poems that seek to convey (to me) what is underway when a poem emerges on to the page. One of these poems is 'Creation', which describes the long slow process and the sudden one. (A friend, Alison Mukherjee, who wrote a beautiful first novel, Nirmal Babu's Bride, used this poem of mine to describe how she herself experienced writing.) In another poem I draw out the similarity, subjectively, between feeling prompted to stand up and speak (or 'minister' in Quaker terminology) in Meeting for Worship and feeling compelled to write a poem. Both are a mystery to me. Perhaps for 'mystery' I should substitute 'spiritual experience'.
There is also the healing aspect of writing, especially of writing poetry.I wrote this poem in response to a healer telling me that when I was healed I would write no more poetry - a very odd thing to say, I still think:
Healing
'Healing means you may write
No more poems', she says.
Are poems diagnoses or symptoms
Of malfunction, malaise,
Emotional imbalance?
Are poems pain, or at least
Pain remembered?
Is verse cleansing discharge
Or the abcess's swelling
And throbbing? Is verse welling
Of tears? Is it weeping
And wailing, or the calm
After sobbing?
Are poems a day or two's scabbing
Or permanent scarring?
Are they pain relief capsules
Or laser lines searing,
Cauterising and cutting?
Is healing anaesthetised
Numbness or enhancement
Of feeling? A stumbling and
Dumbness,
Or songful cartwheeling,
Or silent at-oneness?
Poets aren't always sick or demented,
Tormented or torn. Let my healing
Bring hymns - hymns brimming with wholeness,
Verse velvet as summer bees,
Humming in sunlight,
Homing through stillness.
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