MY LOVE of books goes back greater than 80 years, to once I was about five years old. I had began to attend Sunday school, and received a prize that was presented by our parish priest on the morning service. I recollect my name being called out, and, leaving the pew, I marched up the aisle, swinging my arms similar to the soldiers I had seen marching past our house. I couldn’t understand why a few of the congregation were laughing! The book was The Three Little Kittens, and I still have it today.
Today, our house within the country is filled with books, and there may be one author who, in recent times, has had a profound effect on my understanding of the spiritual life. Ian McGilchrist is a neuroscientist in addition to a polymath. His two volumes, curiously entitled The Matter With Things, provide — as one reviewer puts it — “a devastating repudiation of the strident, banal orthodoxy that claims it’s childish to consider that the world is alive with wonder and mystery”. McGilchrist provides a rational and reasoned understanding of the spiritual life. Although the 2 volumes are expensive, they’re price every penny.
Throughout my life, I actually have also been impressed by the good Russian writers, and the rituals and symbols of the Orthodox Church. Many years ago, I presented my local parish church, All Saints’, Blackheath, with a Russian icon of the Madonna and Child. I regret that today many church services resemble a tea party moderately than an act that touches the hem of mystery and opens up a latest depth of spiritual experience.
MORE than 30 years ago, while searching for the discharge of hostages, I personally was taken hostage, and spent almost five years in strict solitary confinement. For greater than three years, I had no reading material by any means, and it was then that I started to write down in my head. When anyone got here into my cell, I had to tug a blindfold over my eyes, and so I saw nobody for nearly five years. Eventually, I used to be allowed to have one or two books, and was given a small magnifying glass with which to read them.
On release, I used to be elected to a fellowship at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where I started to write down the book that I had began in captivity, Taken on Trust. When I used to be freed, I managed to slide the blindfold and magnifying glass into my pocket, and I took them with me to Trinity Hall. Once I had accomplished the manuscript, I put the 2 items into an envelope, and handed them to the faculty. Today, they’re housed in the faculty library as a souvenir of a time when, by some miracle, I used to be capable of transform the darkness of captivity into the sunshine of freedom.
IN THE kitchen of our house in rural Suffolk, there may be a small oak dining table. It should have been made more than100 years ago, and is as sturdy because it ever was. It is precious to me; for this was the very table at which I sat with my brother, sister, and fogeys for a lot of a family Christmas. I actually have vivid memories of Christmas Day when, for the one and only time within the 12 months, a roasted chicken took pride of place. The table brings back many positive memories, and provides me with a fabric link to the past, and my family, where, unconsciously, I used to be receiving an education in values which have sustained me throughout my life.
So, there it’s: a book by a author who has helped me enormously in understanding the importance of the spiritual life and the functioning of the appropriate hemisphere of the brain; two easy items that became symbols of transformation; and an bizarre kitchen table that brings back memories of values absorbed unconsciously, a few years ago.
Sir Terry Waite is an creator and human-rights activist.
