Rhwng: the Point Between (journal-blog)

On June 1st, 2007 we had another Rhwng: the Point Between event at Canolfan Ucheldre Centre, Holyhead. Jane Williams led the session on ‘Harmony and Authentic Human Beings’. Apart from being a woman with a wonderful voice – that’s how we know her – she taught Aikido for 20 years and so her session outlined some of the benefits in daily life of this practice. Asked what the single most important thing was that we could apply to our lives, from what she had shared with us, Jane said: “Learn to focus attention on your one-point,” which is about two inches below your navel. It is considered in Aikido, and other Eastern traditions, to be the body’s centre of balance.

Thanks Jane for an excellent session.

To open and close this event, poet Meredith Andrea, from Birmingham, read some of her work. Her pamphlet Grasshopper Inscriptions is available from Flarestack (www.flarestack.co.uk). Her use of language is vivid, supple and alive – wonderful! Thanks Meredith.

Here, to finish, is one of Meredith’s poems, read that evening:

Tuner

He arrives with his blank marble eyes,
in a tweed jacket and a tight old-fashioned tie,
with red hands and a black bag.

Opens the polished piano-lid, props the room up reflected
on a stick. It is a dance he knows each step of.

Inside the box, that sweet balsamic smell
but dusty, dry.

She watches his ears see

and how he’s calibrated, taut.

Each interval
tenses or untenses his face; his hands
know where to go with the key exactly

climbing up and down in octaves, chord
by chord through bright-dark dominant, chromatic.

She tries to lip-read how he hears, to see it
in an eyelid’s twitch or wince.

He’ll play a bit of the Moonlight where
it fingers water, then something Ragtime,
his whole body syncopated,

and Ravel, clotted like laurel thickets
in a thunderstorm; then Rhapsody in Blue.

He breaks
the music off in chunks as if composers wrote

only to prove his tuning;

throws them all together with the wedges and the key
into his bag and snaps it closed. He’ll refuse tea,

take the notes she counts into his palm on trust.

Leave her to play on in the dark.

Theism and Atheism
Tim Miles

What appeals to me particularly about Rhwng is its message of reconciliation – not ‘either/or’ but ‘both/and’. I have always been interested in reconciling seemingly contradictory views, and although on the face of it theism and atheism are not easily reconcilable, I shall make some attempts in that direction, particularly by trying to remove misunderstandings about belief in the supernatural. I have found over the years that in many seeming disputes there is not disagreement so much as misunderstanding. In this connection I have spoken and written in the past about what I have called the communication principle. This principle states that if two parties, A and B, are in disagreement then the best starting point for minimising the harmful effects of the disagreement is that A should state B’s position to B’s satisfaction and vice versa. One has only to read a newspaper or listen to news on television or radio to appreciate how frequently this principle is ignored. Given the world as it exists today, what I am suggesting seems Utopian; however, I hope in the future that to say that one’s firm or group subscribes to the communication principle will be as common as it now is to make clear one’s commitment to the principle of equal opportunity.

The main thrust of my talk is to suggest that on the issues of theism and atheism there has been argument at cross purposes in relation to disputes which centre round the word ’supernatural’. It is supposed by many of those who call themselves atheists that belief in God commits one to belief in a being who is ’supernatural’. This is what I wish to dispute. I have looked up the word ’supernatural’ in the Oxford English Dictionary and found some interesting entries. Here are a few of them: (i) Supernaturall heate distrayeth appetite (1533). (ii) Conserning the supernaturall teeth it is sometimes dangerous to draw them (1594). (iii) Hee flyeth above those inferior and naturall concauses vnto the supreme and supernaturall Cause (1619). (iv) If a woman that is a naturall, cannot finally forget the child of her wombe, God which is a father supernaturall will not forget you (1555).

I have no quarrel with any of these uses of the word ’supernatural’. Problems begin only after the age when scientific ways of thinking became prominent in the public mind. This kind of thinking is reflected in entries in the Oxford English Dictionary from the 19th century onwards, for example: ‘The Apostles considered supernatural power as something resident in Jesus’ (1892), and ‘When the Word was made Flesh, a supernatural Being entered what we call the world of nature’ (1907). The writers of these two passages seem to me to have imported ideas from 19th and 20th century western Europe and then assumed that in the first century AD people thought in exactly the same way. We find similar thinking in the writings of the Christian apologist, C.S Lewis. Lewis clearly believed that there were two kinds of power, one natural and one supernatural. A miracle, according to him, is a case of ‘interference with nature by supernatural power’ (note 1). It seems to me that the idea of a supernatural causal agent is unacceptable for the following reasons. In the first place, if we do not know what caused an event it is unhelpful to say that it was caused by God or a supernatural being; this explains nothing. It is a variant of what was known as the ‘god of the gaps’ argument – the suggestion that we are entitled to bring in God to explain gaps in our knowledge. By common consent this is agreed even by scientists who are committed Christians to be unsatisfactory (note 2). Secondly, if we wish to invoke a supernatural explanation we are logically committed to specifying what would count as such an explanation. If, for instance, prayers for rain were regularly followed by rain (which I do not believe they are), one would be entitled to infer, not that a supernatural agency was at work, but that some unknown cause was affecting the weather. This is in effect to say that the dichotomy ‘natural’ – ’supernatural’ if it functions in this way serves no useful purpose. To say this, of course, is different from accepting the dichotomy and then saying that supernatural events do not occur – a claim which would leave one open to the charge of being arrogant and blinkered (note 3).

When I consulted Cruden’s Concordance to the Bible I found that the word ’supernatural’ does not occur even once! Jesus is never described as a ’supernatural’ being – the expressions used include ‘the anointed one’ and ‘God’s holy one’, while the miracles are described as ’signs’, and ‘wonders’, but not as ’supernatural events’. In refusing to use the word ‘ supernatural’, therefore, one is not doing away with anything biblical. For interest I also looked up the word ’supernatural’ in a Concordance to Shakespeare. I found two entries. The first was from Macbeth: ‘These supernatural solocitings Cannot be good, cannot be ill’. The second was in All’s Well that Ends Well: ‘Things supernatural and causeless’. I would suggest that people wanted to distinguish the ‘natural’ from the ’supernatural’ only after the advent of scientific ways of thinking. In western Europe these started to appear in about the 16th century. During this time, it made sense to contrast explanations in terms of possession by devils and explanations in terms of the influence of the stars on human lives with explanations in terms of mechanical or biological principles. Since, however, there is now no use for the former, the distinction between the ‘natural’ and the ’supernatural’ has had its day. Sir Walter Scott, writing in the 19th century, captures the change-over in a very interesting passage in Kenilworth,where the scene is set in the reign of Queen Elizabeth 1st (16th century) (note 4). The unscrupulous Varney, follower of the Earl Leicester, has engaged a man named Alasco to poison the Earl of Sussex, Leicester’s rival. Alasco is portrayed as an expert in poisons but also as one who imposed on the Earl of Leicester and others by professing to tell their fortunes from the stars. The attempt to poison Sussex is foiled by Wayland Smith, a former servant to Alasco. When Varney takes Alasco to task there is the following conversation:

‘Tell me at once how came thine art to fail thee at this great emergency?’
‘The Earl of Sussex’s horoscope intimates,’ replied the astrologer,’that the sign of the ascendant being in combustion – ‘
‘Away with your gibberish,’ replied Varney; ‘think’st thou it is the patron thou speak’st with?’
‘I crave your pardon, replied the old man, ‘and swear to you I know but one medicine that could have saved the Earl’s life.’

Unknown to Alasco, Wayland Smith had in fact supplied the antidote. However, in reply to Varney, Alasco is reduced to saying: ‘I must need suppose his escape was owing to such a constitution of lungs and vital parts, as was never before bound up in a body of clay.’ This, at the time, might have been regarded as a ‘natural’ explanation, as opposed to a ’supernatural’ one. In the present century, however,this contrast has become unnecessary. It is unfortunate, therefore, that the contrast still persists some of the time in discussions of religion. In particular, some of those who call themselves atheists assume that the theists whose views they profess to be attacking are still in thrall to this pre-scientific world-picture, since belief in God, on their view, commits one to belief in the supernatural. I suspect, though I am not sure, that the objections to theism on the part of the Oxford biologist, Richard Dawkins, are based on this misunderstanding. I regard it as unfortunate that those who indulge insuch disputes have failed to take seriously the communication principle. When John Robinson published Honest to God in 1963 (note 5) this set the stage for the recognition on the part of Christian thinkers that acceptance of the dichotomy between the natural and the supernatural was unnecessary. It is now recognised that talk of God need not be taken literally; one need not assume that it refers to the actions of a ’supernatural being’. We now recognise that talk of God is the language of myth, story, or parable, and loses its point if taken literally. This view is not that of ‘modernists’ who are trying to water down the Christian faith so as to make it acceptable to ‘modern man’; it has been the view of some Christian thinkers since very early times. In my book, Speaking of God: Theism, Atheism and the Magnus Image (note 6) I provide many illustrations of this point. Here, for reasons of space, I shall limit myself to a single example. It is taken from Scotus Erigena, writing in the 9th century AD (note 7): ‘When it is said that God wills, loves, cares for, sees, hears, and the like, we must suppose that his ineffable essence and goodness are being conveyed to us in human terms, lest our true and devoted Christian faith should so far be silent about the Creator of all things as not to dare to say anything of him at all’.

My conclusion is that we should not think of theism and atheism as two diametrically opposed views. I have stressed the need for the communication principle, which in this case implies the need to listen carefully to what those who call themselves theists are saying and not to assume that they are all stuck in the mire of the ‘natural’-’supernatural’ distinction. It is not that the atheist has got his facts wrong, nor that the theist has got his facts wrong; the alleged issue of fact as to whether supernatural events do or do not occur is a non-issue.

I thank the organisers of Rhwng for giving me the opportunity to remove some misunderstandings from seemingly conflicting views.

End-notes

Note 1. C.S.Lewis (1947) Miracles: A Preliminary Study. London: Geoffrey Bles, p. 15
Note 2. See, for instance, D.M.Mackay (1952) Symposium on men and machines. Aristotelian Society Supplementary volume xxvi, p.86. Professor Mackay was a brilliant scientist who died, sadly,at a relatively young age. He was a committed Christian.
Note 3. Compare: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy’. (Hamlet, Act 1 scene 5, lines 166-7).
Note 4. From Sir Walter Scott, Kenilworth, vol. 1 p379 (Waverley Novels, ed. Adam and Charles Black, 1859).
Note 5. John Robinson (1963) Honest to God. London:SCM Press.
Note 6. T.R.Miles (1998) Speaking of God: Theism, Atheism and the Magnus Image. York: Sessions. See in particular chapter 7, pp.40-46.
Note 7. From Scotus Erigena, De Divisione Naturae, Book I.

Tim Miles
2006

Tim Miles was Professor of Psychology at University of Wales, Bangor, from 1963 to 1987 and is now Professor Emeritus. His main research interest has been in dyslexia, and in 2003 he was awarded the OBE for ’services to those with dyslexia’. He has also published books on behaviourism and on the philosophy of religion. He has been a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) since the early 1960s. He served in the army from 1942 to 1945 but in 1945 resigned his commission to become a conscientious objector.

Tim kindly gave a talk to Rhwng entitled ‘Theism and Atheism’ on Friday May 5th 2006. This article expands the ideas he presented that evening.

Thanks again, Tim!

Cauldron of Transformation: The Healing Nature of the Arts
Pauline Down

As I consider what led me to using the arts towards health and well-being, I remember one of my most significant early influences was listening and singing along to songs on the radio that really lifted my spirits. I was only about 8 when I discovered the joy of performance, thrilled by the electrifying atmosphere created between performer and audience; how good it felt and often how cathartic! There was a strong positive social element to the process of creating a play or musical performance: the cast would bond and develop close relationships as a result of the creative intensity of this shared activity.

Also influential was working as a teenager with people with severe learning disabilities and discovering the joy of using the arts to enjoy creative processes with them. In my twenties, I began to get involved in arts workshop projects with all sorts of people who had life challenges or special needs. This was perhaps the first time that I had used the arts consciously as a creative tool that could be seen as being part therapeutic and part educational and intended to help each individual’s process of development and change.

The relationship that developed always felt so immediate and uncluttered and was often intense and very moving. It was love without the emotional attachment; simply a pure and deep connection.

So how could this be?

After some reflection, I realised that in order to feel safe enough to enter into a creative activity, most people needed to experience unconditional acceptance of themselves. So I would try to meet people without expectation of what they may or may not be able to do, what mood they might be in and so on. I would try to be as neutral as possible when I met them and offer acceptance of who they were and how they were at that time. Then I would explore ways of acknowledging this affirmatively. For example, through simple mirroring, I might mirror back someone’s posture or vocal expression; if someone was either very still or very restless I might try to tune in to the quality being presented and mirror it with my voice or through a musical instrument. Once, when a young man was involved in a repetitive rocking movement, I began to vocalise in rhythm with the rocking motion. All of a sudden he stopped rocking, so I stopped too. Then after a quick sideways glance in my direction, he began to rock again and I began to vocalise again. After following him like this for a while, I then began to initiate; I was delighted when he followed. Very soon we were simply together in the joy of spontaneous play and I felt we had moved beyond mirroring into a rich and humorous communication.

Mirroring is something that we do naturally and unconsciously when we meet with another person, especially when building relationships with babies and small children. The only difference is that I was developing a way of mirroring consciously – with full awareness in the process. Also, I was expressing my own creativity into the process; perhaps moving in response to someone’s vocalisations, gently vocalising in response to someone’s breathing pattern, using musical instruments, coloured scarves or other simple tools when appropriate.

When two or more people are fully involved and aware in a shared creative activity, there occurs a very potent meeting place in the middle. My dear friends and colleagues at the time, Sue Rennie and Sally Jones, and I began to refer to this as ‘The Third Thing’. When it occurs, every participant is conscious of it and somehow carried by it. It enables people to let go fully into the moment and occurs because they already have. It is the result of each participant being able to simply ‘be’ with the process and as a result each feels connected to the whole. People lose any inhibiting self-consciousness they might have had and yet they remain fully conscious both of themselves and of their sense of unity with everything around them.

This perhaps most commonly occurs in a circle. A fine example is during singing; either when a song has taken on a life of its own and those singing are carried on the wave of sound created or when an improvised singing activity has ‘taken flight’ – which can be incredibly potent for those involved. Some of the most wonderful and memorable moments from my Bangor choir are when we are standing in a circle and improvising. Either improvising from scratch or sometimes letting a song really cook before beginning to improvise around it, the piece goes on a little journey, gathering its own rhythm and momentum, all the while encouraging our listening to become more sensitive and more refined. Then suddenly something quite tangible can be felt in the middle as the song fully takes on a life of its own.

It can be similar when a circle of people are improvising with simple tuned and rhythmic percussion, and it happens in many other creative contexts as well. It doesn’t require a big group, only two or more people. For example, just two people playing musical instruments together, the instruments can become a bridge for dialogue and after a while a profound meeting can occur; sometimes informal, unstructured instrumental/vocal jamming with others in a bigger group can lead to an occurrence of ‘the third thing’; a group painting, sculpture, or other artwork where people are relaxed and open enough to respond to and spark off each other; dance or movement improvisation; theatre performance when the music, sound, visuals, emotion projected from the stage ignite a moment of heightened awareness in which audience and performers meet.

Perhaps the most exciting experiences of ‘the third thing’ are when a meeting between different art forms is taking place such as voice and movement, visual art and dance, poetry and music – which is why theatre performances embracing several expressive art forms together can be so potent.

No wonder those who have discovered these extraordinary moments become addicted to the activity providing them! I think once people have had a taste of such moments they become hungry for the experience of wholeness and unity and are more ready each time to let go and catch the wave of spontaneous creative expression that arises.

They become more able to ignite off one another and become like sparks from a bubbling cauldron: the cauldron of transformation at the centre of creative play.

I run a course in Bangor that introduces how the arts and arts therapies can be used towards health, well-being and social inclusion. Different therapies (dramatherapy, music therapy, art therapy in particular) have needed to develop a clinical language base as a means of becoming more recognised by mainstream health bodies and professionals. Also, their focus is usually on using clinical assessments to help clients move from A to B—from a position identified as being dysfunctional or unhealthy to one identified as being more functional and healthy. Nevertheless, when you strip away all the clinical language and requirements, the success of each therapist’s work depends upon their relationship with their clients via that art form and the spark in the middle of the creative process. This is absolutely fundamental and for me makes the concept of ‘The Third Thing’ all the more exciting.

The Buddhist meditation practice called ‘mindfulness’ has a lot to offer this way of working with the arts. Mindfulness teaches one to be fully aware of each moment, fully aware of oneself in each moment and of all that is going on around one; ie grounded in consciousness of one’s own body at the same time as being conscious of other people or things happening outside. To be at once aware of both inside and outside is something that may be difficult at first and yet can be cultivated through practice. In daily living most of us habitually lose this awareness as we get caught up, for example, in completing tasks, getting anxious when personal relationships intrude and upset the feeling of equanimity we need to complete our goals etc. Mindfulness meditation practice, ideally at regular intervals throughout the day, can help us to loosen our grip on the compulsions and neuroses that drive us and help us to be more in the moment and to remember the things that are really important to us.

Creative activity itself encourages mindfulness. When one fully meets another through it, one is at once aware of oneself, aware of the other and aware of the meeting place—the spark in the middle. When this moment occurs we often talk about ‘getting lost’ in the activity or about ‘losing our self-consciousness’. This may seem like a contradiction but I think that what we really mean is we lose our inhibitions, our censors, the negative voices that say we can’t. Rather than ‘getting lost’ we let ourselves ‘go with the impulse’; we catch the wave and surf on it. In order to surf and stay afloat we must remain fully aware and not go unconscious. The sheer joy and magic experienced at such times comes as a result of being fully conscious of self and other and that ‘third thing’ all in the same moment. Some of us call it ‘bliss’!

It is important that arts activities are accessible to all (no matter what their arts background), designed to be fun and age/ability appropriate. Then they can gently and safely steer us towards mindful awareness and profound meetings. In this way we are nudged into gracefully shedding our hang-ups and blocks often without even noticing it, so that we are more able to move into aware creative relationships. I believe that if we were still using drama, dance, music, singing, art and so on as functional daily tools in our society, as we did once upon a time, we wouldn’t be suffering from so many mental health problems. We wouldn’t need arts therapists either, because the arts would be at everybody’s disposal every day as a means for expressing life’s joys and sorrows, seasonal rituals, significant family and community events and rites of passage.

For most people in our culture, the arts have become separated from daily life and placed on a pedestal. Those who have talent in certain art forms are often singled out when they are quite young and groomed to be the performers or the exhibitors whilst those who haven’t had the opportunity to excel in the same way become the audience or the viewers. Many people do not even feel that drama, music, dance, art, the theatre, the concert hall or the art gallery have anything to do with them at all. It is only for this reason, because of the separation that has occurred, that we need to bring the arts back in the form of therapy.

Perhaps we might do well to re-cultivate a traditionally held African belief that moved me intensely when I first heard it expressed by the beautiful Kenyan singer and musician Luzili Mulindi King. She said, “In Africa we see it as our moral obligation to immerse our babies and children (even before they are born) in drumming, music, song, drama, dance, stories in order that they may grow into healthy whole individuals.” Or put more succinctly by my great friend Ben Baddoo, “If you stop singing and dancing – your spirit die!”

Pauline Down
August 2006

Pauline Down has been working in the arts for 25 years as a teacher, workshop facilitator, trainer, performer and songwriter. She has been particularly inspired by her work experience in the community with people of all ages and abilities. She is currently course director of Dryw, which provides a local Arts in Health training, and artistic director of Bangor Community Choir.

Pauline kindly contributed a session entitled ‘The Healing Nature of the Arts: the Cauldron of Transformation at the Centre of Creative Play’ to Rhwng on Friday 3rd March 2006. This article expands on the ideas she presented that evening.

Thanks again, Pauline!

Rhwng: the Point Between

This is an article written to explain the genesis and orientation of the society known as Rhwng: the Point Between.

Rhwng: the Point Between is a society that meets at Ucheldre Centre, Holyhead, Anglesey. ‘Rhwng’ is a Welsh word and means ‘between’, with the ‘between’ standing for what is shared ‘between us’ as people and also that often elusive ‘between’ place, between opposites/polarities, that is spiritually dynamic, experiential and that which the various wisdom traditions testify to being the most subtle, profoundly alive and richly meaningful place in us. The exploration of ‘rhwng’ encompasses an on-going, interdisciplinary programme of talks, workshops, discussion groups and performances. The guiding idea behind this society – that of ‘rhwng’ – aims to promote exploration in a broad sense. The spirit of the society is one of open-minded enquiry, which emphasises a move from ‘either/or’ to ‘and’ language. It aims to explore what it means to be sentient, creative beings embedded in mysterious life.

The word ‘rhwng’ has a resonance that defies easy definition and yet seems potent. It came to me via the Welsh-language poet-playwright Aled Jones Williams, in his book Oerfel Gaeaf Duw (God’s Cold Winter). After reading this book (with help, as I am not a fluent Welsh speaker/reader), the word ‘rhwng’ lingered in me. Gradually, it began to shape itself into the idea for the society. The Ucheldre Centre is an ideal ‘home’ for this society.

I must also acknowledge another influence. I have been subscribing to Resurgence magazine since the early nineties. The editor, Satish Kumar, has worked hard to encourage his readers to think in terms of ‘soil, soul and society’. These principles certainly feed into Rhwng. Kumar has written a book about the Buddhist notion of dependent co-origination, reminding us that nothing happens in a vacuum; everything is a shaping force. He writes:

there can be no individual person without the context
of community, environment, tradition and culture.
Individuality and universality are complementary.

In his book You are, therefore I am, Kumar overturns Descartes’ dictum ‘I think, therefore I am’, which reduces the experience of being alive into the realm of abstracts and an autonomous sense of self and positions context as disposable ‘other’. According to Kumar, it is this kind of mindset that is ‘at the root of the ecological, social and spiritual crisis of our time’. For him, it is an example of ‘Separational Philosophy’. Buddhism is an example of what Kumar calls a ‘Relational Philosophy’. We exist as a community of relationships and through these relationships, we learn about ourselves and the world. Rhwng: the Point Between is a forum for ‘relational philosophy’, where we develop ‘response – ability’ through ‘conversation’ (‘to turn with’), because we are ‘interested’ (inter = between, esse = to be).

Fiona Owen

Email: fiona@rhwng.com
www.rhwng.com

Croeso Cynnes/Welcome to all

References
Some of the material here is adapted from my article ‘Touching the Earth for Witness’, published in Planet: The Welsh Internationalist, Issue 174 (Dec 05/Jan 06) on Buddhism, the environment and a song by Super Furry Animals.

Kumar, Satish You are, Therefore I am (Green Books, 2002)
Williams, Aled Jones Oerfel Gaeaf Duw (Gwasg Pantycelyn, 2002)