want to shave all my hair off and enter a monastery, or at least go on a retreat, or at least shave off all my hair. The hair thing feels quite important – perhaps it’s having been raised on Kung Fu – although I’m less sold on the monastery (that would actually mean having to sign up to some kind of dogma, right?). Are there Unitarian retreats? I’m looking for something upon a mountainside…

I’m having quite a stressful time with work at the moment, hence my yearning to get away from it all, throw off the trappings of the material world, shave my head … etc. I was thinking about visiting a friend who, along with his wife, lives alone on an island in the Baltic but he is the father of an ex-girlfriend and I really think I should be moving on; I’ve got another friend in a Russian Orthodox seminary on Kodiak Island in Alaska, but I worry about the bears… still if worse comes to worse I could do worse: I’ve always found Orthodox worship the most beautiful form of Christianity, and Googling I notice there are even some Unitarians on Kodiak – Hello Kodiak!

This was (and less commonly these days is) something monks and nuns acknowledged with their closed orders –the sense of well-being that comes from opening ourselves up to the spiritual dimension is often short-lived. A fragile thing, it is crowded out by the stuff of life, so the only way to sustain it, they believe, is to avoid distraction. In a way Islam seeks to address this issue with distraction – its five-times daily prayer – an attempt, almost, to disrupt the disruption, and at the back of my mind I wonder about checking out that Sufi place featured in the Channel Four programme The Retreat. Maybe… but that doesn’t resolve the essential problem (short of converting to Islam, which of course has all sorts of other implications): the here and now.

I could try meditating of course, or simple prayer. Although I don’t believe in what Nick Cave would call an interventionist God, I recently entered a small side chapel at my local church, got down on my knees and bowed my head in communion with what I nonetheless consider God – that greater connection. This seemed to help me at a time of high anxiety but on the whole I’m not the praying type, and neither has meditation ever really done it for me – I’m too impatient, to be honest.

Another reason why I’ve never regularly prayed or meditated outside church is because it feels a bit like “dial-up” spirituality to me, when my experience of the sacred has always tended to be more constant – “wireless-broadband” if you like, in that’s it’s always on, even if, paradoxically, I don’t necessarily notice.

Churches, mosques, temples are human structures, more: societal constructions designed for structured worship, to contain, if you like, our divine experience within the boundaries of the group, whatever that may be. I love to attend my Unitarian church for the sense of fellowship and the often inspirational sermons, but when I walk away my spiritual identity doesn’t stay at church: it leaves with me.

I think we need to be aware of what church meant – it was as much to sustain and contain spirituality as connect individuals with God. Traditional church attendance has dropped not least, I suspect, because neither the persecution that built the first churches, nor the power of the church to impose its own vision, any longer exists.

Along with the structures and rituals that formalise the orthodox religious experience – be it Christian, Muslim, or Hindu – it also of course seeks to dictate what is and is not spiritually acceptable.

Prayer, meditation, singing is in – all preferably under the roof of the church, mosque or temple, and within the particular creed of the faith. Going for a walk, a swim, a run, shopping on the other hand is by implication largely ruled out as authentic spirituality.

Yet I have had some of my most profound revelations sitting beneath a beach umbrella on a week away. Even while waiting for my partner to choose the right kind of shoes (certainly a form of meditation for her) I have journeyed to other spiritual realms…

It’s true, at the moment I am fighting to retain my spiritual essence amidst the pressure and office politics, which is precisely the kind of space church can provide, but a walk around the block can also help, or a pint with a mate. Why shouldn’t these moments of peace, reflection and intimacy count for anything less, spiritually, than a million Hail Marys?

So maybe it’s not a Sufi retreat or spell on Kodiak I need, just a holiday. And there’s nothing necessarily any less spiritual about that, although I may indeed get a haircut. A very shor haircut.

So, it turns out I can blog about spirituality reasonably confidently, although whether this actually has any relevance to anyone else I’ve really no idea as no one ever comments…

In the “real world” I come across pretty confidently too, doling out advice to clients who appear mostly satisfied, and it would be false modesty for me to claim deep down I secretly doubted myself in this regard because if that was true then I simply wouldn’t feel comfortable. I’ve always been a hopeless bullshitter, a bit of a handicap for a consultant, but I’ve built up a solid enough record to be able to occasionally utter those heretical words ‘I’ve no idea’ and clients seem to like it – perhaps it’s the novelty.

Yet there is one question over which I am having a real crisis of confidence – whether to be Nick or Nicholas.

It matters because I’ve got a book coming out in Spring and I have to decide, finally, who I am, or perhaps more to the point – who I will be. I could of course just dispense with the Nick/Nicholas issue by calling myself John, Diego or Lu Qi but I think that would be avoiding the issue, and in any case – it’s just not me.

It matters because I want to give my slim volume the best possible chance of being read and impressions matter. Would you be more likely to pick up a book by a Nick or Nicholas? And by you, I mean you – Us and UUs* – who are my target audience, although I would of course be delighted if it had a wider appeal. But let’s not beat around the bush – no one targets a book at Unitarians and rubs their hands in expectation of seeing it atop of the New York Times bestsellers list.

So I have to segment my audience – open-minded spiritual types as I see them. My ideal reader would be a 22-year-old skater who picks it up one summer and slips it in to his or her back-pocket as they Greyhound across the flyover states then passes it on to College friends until it ends up on a bookshelf in a backpackers hostel in San Francisco from whence it is randomly plucked by a disenchanted middle-aged nun who, after reading it, converts to Unitarian Universalism and becomes a Minister, even, who knows, goes on to become a future General Secretary who reconciles the great monotheisms to liberal spirituality (note to publisher – format must be back-pocket size and appeal to cool kids and disenchanted nuns).

Given this then, the name matters. Now, I was reasonably content with Nick, which is as my friends know me, and even for blogging seems to work pretty well – Nick is young, of the moment, in such a hurry that it has had to shorten it’s name. I don’t have time for Nic-ho-las!

Nick is also “funny” – Nick tells jokes, and the book has quite a few.

And yet… I’m concerned Nick is in danger of not being taken seriously enough, because the book is, secretly, serious. It uses humour and narrative to explore big issues – how we are, what we’re doing here, life, death, all that jazz. One friend said Nick, in the spiritual context, sounded like a trendy vicar – touchy-feely, a bit false: God loves you but your Gay friends will go to hell. Well screw that.

Nicholas is my birth name, Nicholas is my real name. The only people who have ever truly loved me have called me Nicholas – my parents, a couple of exes, my current partner. While Nick is the name I’m happy for others to know me by, Nicholas is the name by which I know myself. If Nick is my armour, Nicholas is my soul and ultimately the reason I think it matters is because the question has developed an existential dimension: I write lots of stuff, but my spiritual output is closest to my heart. I don’t do it for fame or fortune, I do it simply because I feel the obligation to speak – I considered Ministry but rejected it because I knew deep down that this was what I should do.

And I don’t think it’s just me – I notice the Director of UK Spirituality, my friend Andy Pakula, is known “professionally” as Andrew. Our given names may be less of the moment, but perhaps that is their virtue.

I think then, for the book, and perhaps henceforth for this blog, I will be Nicholas. I’ll leave Nick for the action-adventures and, who knows, the Porsche.

*Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists

You haven’t changed a bit!

I found myself saying this upon reconnecting with an old friend after many years. You haven’t changed a bit!

I suppose it’s what we say because we are so indoctrinated in the sense that aging is bad that we want to suggest that our friend has somehow avoided the changes that all mortal things undergo.

And then I remember from my science background that the molecules in our bodies are constantly being renewed. Most parts of your body have been around for only seven to ten years, and ten years from now most of the molecules that you think of today as you, will be somewhere else entirely – many of them part of other beings.
Haven’t changed a bit?

To be alive is to change.

Of all the many choices we can make in our lives, one option we do not have is to remain the same. The question is not whether to change, but how. Isn’t a great challenge of our lives to guide our own change – making our path one that leads toward love, toward openness, toward connection. We know that there are paths that lead to much darker places – where fear and suspicion grow in us like a cancer.

And certainly one of the reasons to come here to be part of a spiritual community is to seek out the positive paths – paths that will lead us to spiritual growth and wholeness.

We use this term often – spiritual. It’s a popular word today – not just with us. An awareness and connection to spirituality has grown along with the decline of the religions that once held it captive. Spirituality cannot be owned and brought out for display on special occasions like the withered relics of saints. It has a life that is independent of any tradition.

Spirituality – of the spirit. It may be fair to ask exactly what spirit we’re talking about here! The holy spirit of Christianity? The spirits of animism? The spirit within us? The spirit around us?
It may be confusing. It should be. I will be quick to confess that I don’t know exactly what I mean by spiritual or ‘the spirit.’ And I would also insist that this is no reason not to use these words. In fact, their very ambiguity may be why I like them so much. So, I’m proud to say that I can’t begin to define spirituality and I neither want to nor plan to.

After many years, I have come to be comfortable with – and even grateful for the not knowing.
In his poem, The Gift of Tongues, Sam Hamill writes: “A way that can be named is not the way. Each word reflects the Spirit which can't be named.” Echoing the ancient author of the Tao Te Ching, he touches on the ineffable nature of the sacred in nearly all the world’s religious traditions.

The sacred cannot be fully captured in words or concepts. And not, as I once understood, because we are so small and he, it, she, or they so superior – no.

It is more that the sacred is delicate and elusive. It is as hard to catch and hold as air. The very attempt to put a face or a label upon the sacred alters it and changes it. Like catching something dim out of the corner of your eye, try to look directly upon it and it vanishes.

Catching air…

The word spirit comes from the Latin, spiritus, meaning breath. The Hebrew Ruach and the Greek Pneuma, have the same meaning. Breath – the invisible, intangible, indispensable stuff of life.

The word spirit also has another wonderful ambiguity – perhaps a meaningful one – it describes something that is within and also outside of each individual.
We can be a part of spirit and yet it can be larger than any individual. Spirit flows between and through us. “The spirit likes to dress up like this”, writes Mary Oliver in her poem entitled simply Poem. “Airy and shapeless”, it “needs the body’s world.”

Wendell Berry, in his poem, ‘The Hidden Singer’ writes of:
‘…a spirit that needs nothing but its own wholeness, its health and ours. It has made all things by dividing itself. It will be whole again. To its joy we come together -- the seer and the seen, the eater and the eaten, the lover and the loved. In our joining it knows itself.’

This is the language of the mystic – the ones who approach the sacred and recognise that no language can begin to capture it. Only in approaching sideways – with metaphor and symbols, with story and myth - can a sense of the elusive sacredness begin to emerge.
I do not know what this spirit is, but I know what it does. I know that it connects us. I know it that it enables us to be part of everything living. I know that its growth brings serenity and peace as our fearful sense of aloneness eases.

How does the spirit grow? How do we shape and strengthen what we cannot see or describe? Let’s start by not trying to catch it or name it – the etymologist’s nets and bottles and pins are of no use for such elusive prey.

The spirit grows when we give it room – when we give it space – when we give it peace. And it grows when we enter into the connection that the spirit offers – through our care and our love.
We are here to create a place for the spirit to grow – both within us and around us. The work for us is not to try to catch the spirit, but to create an environment where the spirit is welcome. The spirit grows with every loving word. It strengthens with human connection. Every sincere smile and tear nourishes it. And our compassion and service entice it to settle with us and upon us, and to make a home in our hearts.

May it be so.

Watching the footage of the latest pro-democracy demonstrations in Iran, I meditated on the nature of bravery.

Despite the shootings, show trials, the two hundred who remain behind bars, the beatings, rapes, “ring leaders” sentenced to death, some brave souls continue to demonstrate.

The footage shown on the BBC was smuggled out – there’s a media blackout now – although in the butterfly-minded West, interest has largely waned.

Dictators learn the lessons of history too – time and greed forgive all post-Tiananmen – and curiously the very wealth of information today serves to drown out clarity and concern: there is always another cause, another point of view, it seems, to distract us.

And don’t forget evil too can be modern: Italian fascism gave birth to its own art form, futurism. Joseph Goebbels was the first proper spin doctor, combining the insights of Machiavelli with the dawn of the mass media:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

And it is precisely this principal Iran’s Islamist government practices today on the streets of Tehran. Truth must be suppressed, whatever the cost.

So evil can be, often is, cutting-edge. Yet modernity itself is something of an illusion.

As John Gray remarks: Human knowledge grows, but the human animal stays much the same.

This is the problem with Jacobinism, Fascism, Bolshevism, Maoism, Neo-Conservatism, Islamism – all Utopian creeds that seek to impose heaven here on earth.

When Man assumes the role of God, he builds little more than a pile of corpses to the sky.

Yet despite all the odds, the protestors in Iran persevere.

Now, as a former journalist and some-time spin doctor myself, I suppose you could say I’m a pretty cynical person, although I prefer to call it “realistic”. So realistic in fact I have got in to trouble at more than one dinner party for suggesting those pro-democracy protestors in Tiananmen were not only pro-democracy but as largely middle class students the very people who would benefit from an end to (the then) communist regime.

And self-interest I suppose could also be said to figure in the motivations of Iran’s Green Movement. But what struck me about the latest protests in Iran was that they now had next to no hope of success. The Tiananmen protestors believed they were riding a wave of reform and when the crack-down came it was unexpected. The one’s in Tehran can be under no such illusion – the regime is firmly in place.

All the protestors can hope for at present is that they are not injured, imprisoned, raped or murdered. The West will not come to their rescue.

So to still protest is true bravery in my book, a kind of compulsion to act in truth despite the likely consequences.

Truth – an eternal value that transcends human frailty. It is not negotiable, self-interested, a matter of opinion: argument avoids the firing squad.

To risk all for the truth is something like an act of faith.

Which is precisely what the men who claim to speak for God are so afraid of.