Golgonooza

  Since traditionally one settles down with a ghost story or two on Christmas Eve, I decided to embark on reading about a real-life ghost hunt that began with the Fox sisters launching 'modern spiritualism' in Up-State New York in the 1840s and whose first phase was concluded in the first decade of the twentieth century with the death of the principal psychial investigators. In the interim, they had founded the Society for Psychical Research (and its American equivalent). Blum, herself, admits, in an afterword, both to having not a 'psychic' bone in her body, never having had any kind of anomalous experience, and, in writing the book, moved from a skeptical position to a more open-minded one. There may just be more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our (materialist) philosophies.  It is a well-arranged, artfully paced, and broadly judicious telling of the remarkable men (and one woman) who formed the backbone of the psychic investigators, their principal subjects...

Re-discovered this review I wrote and struck me as (momentarily hopefully) counter-cultural since our cover dancers are neither social distanced nor apparently masked ...!!! You are attending a Society of Friend's meeting. Gathered in a calm silence punctuated by occasional quietly spoken testimony, one of the attendees begins to tap out a rhythm with their feet, they begin to sway, stand up, dance on the spot, speaking in words ecstatic, occasionally intelligible but mainly sounds of intense feeling. How does the meeting respond? Does it allow itself to synchronize its rhythms with the enthusiast and join in the dance? Does it shuffle uncomfortably in its seats, stretching natural tolerance to breaking point? Or does the clerk of meeting, gently lead the enthusiast out to a quiet corner and a cup of tea, fearing in them some mental imbalance? I suspect it might be the latter and yet, as their nickname of 'Quakers' demonstrate, the origins of the Society of Friends were in ...

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, campaigner and celebrant, vibrant witness to an inclusive Church and polity, once remarked that he was too busy, challenged, and committed not to find two hours a day for silent, personal prayer! This might be a touch demanding for most of us but in a year that has demanded reservoirs of adaptability, flexibility, and resilience from all of us, something proximate might not be a bad place to start!  As I have known from long association with the Prison Phoenix Trust,  https://www.theppt.org.uk/  a spiritual practice makes a difference and can be practiced anywhere, even in the most difficult of circumstances. One of the surprising things, I first noticed about a prison is just how noisy they are for starters! Interestingly, at least in the early days of the pandemic with inmates locked down, one of our trustees, governor of a women's prison, noted that several women had mentioned how less stressful life was now, with the contacts with others limit...

I read Andrew Harvey's 'A Journey in Ladakh' at university, which is a while ago now, and, even though I have used stories and images from it subsequently, I was astonished on re-reading it both how much I in fact remembered and how beautiful it is. Why had I not re-read it since? First, it's beauty. Geoffrey Moorhouse is quoted on the front of my copy as describing it as a 'book of ecstasy as well as travel' and this it is.  Within a skillfully crafted unfolding set of narratives and observations, we observe the initial draw of the place, a draw that has the unsettling quality of either offering more than it can deliver or, paradoxically, the opposite of actually delivering more than can be withstood, assimilated. We are offered sketches of its radiant physical beauty, the charm of its people and their shadows, and its complex modern situation of a minority, indigenous culture administered by a different, and mostly indifferent, majority.  Slowly we are led, as...