Spirit in Action
Micro-credit, Simplicity, & Spiritual Activism - The World is our Cloister
Jennifer Kavanagh is an author, organizer, and spiritual activist. She's worked on and written about diverse topics including micro-credit finance, simplicity, and her recent book, The World is our Cloister: A Guide to the Modern Religious Life. Based in England, her work on the struggling East Side of London and in developing nations around the globe, has tied her spiritual center in transformation of the world.
- Broadcast on:
- 07 Apr 2013
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- other
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world alone ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeat. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world alone ♪ We're coming up on eight years of Spirit in Action, and there are a number of advances underway right now. We've been working together to incorporate Northern Spirit Radio as a non-profit and constitute our official board of directors, and these steps will likely be completed before the end of April. We also have today our first underwriter and the first of many we anticipate. So I have the privilege of noting that support for Northern Spirit Radio comes from Friends Journal, a monthly magazine whose mission is to communicate Quaker experience in order to connect and deepen spiritual lives online at friendsjournal.org. I'd also like to remind you before we begin that we strongly encourage you to support your local community radio station, providing an invaluable service to all listeners. Unbought by corporate advertising, community radio can only remain free by your support. As our guest today, we'll be talking with author, organizer, and spiritual activist Jennifer Kavanagh. A resident of England, Jennifer has powerful and compelling testimony of personal and societal change from Spiritual Foundation. Her five books address Simple Living, Microcredit Lending, Living and Engaged Life of Spiritual Activism, and much more. Her latest book is The World is Our Cloyster, a guide to the modern religious life. Jennifer Kavanagh joins us by phone from England. Jennifer, thank you so much for joining me for Spirit in Action. Pleasure, thank you. I understand that you're going to be coming to the U.S. from the UK, not too far in the future. You're going to Portland, Oregon. What are you going to be doing there? I'm going to go into a conference of Quakers. It's Quakers uniting in publications, so we're a group of publishers and authors I'm going to be giving a talk. We'll talk at the conference and also a couple of talks to local Quaker meetings and also a workshop on something called Quaker Quest, which is an outreach program for people who want to find out more about Quakers. Quakers reaching out, talking to people, isn't that a contradiction? Aren't we supposed to be the silent folks? Well, we're silent in our worship, but I don't think we have to be silent in the rest of the world, or as people don't know, we exist. We'll have very strange ideas, mostly taken from the package of poetry. You've been doing a lot of writing to get word out there, not about Quakers specifically, but just about the spiritual religious life. You didn't start out as a Quaker, did you? No, I didn't. I think we're late developers in our family. About 16 years ago, I was born Church of England, Anglican, but my father converted to Catholicism when I was five, and my mother was in agnostic June, so while I was a child, I was the only Anglican in the family, which was quite strange. And then I lost my faith, or it went underground, as people say, until about 16 years ago. So when you say you were the only Anglican in the family, does that mean that you actually went to church? I mean, did you practice? Yeah, I did. I went to church, I was in the Girl Guides, and I used to carry the flags for the Girl Guides in the church. I was in the church choir. Yeah, I was quite devout, actually. Did your parents just send you off with a note? How did that work? Well, I guess I was old enough to go on my own. I don't suppose I went on my own when I was about seven, but from about eleven onwards, I think. So you said you went underground for a while, and then at some point you got mixed up with this shady group called Quakers. Can you talk a little bit later about why that is? Because I do want to get into the main reasons that I contacted you, which include things like simplicity and micro credit work, all this kind of thing. So I won't be trespassing an area where you aren't willing to speak, if I ask you about that conversion experience? No, not at all. Well, let's do talk about simplicity first. You have children or a child at least, right? What was your family history like there? Okay, I was with the same man. We weren't married for the whole time, but we were together for 22 years. I have two children. I suppose when the marriage broke up, I went to all sorts of changes, as many people do, and my kids left home, and as children do, and the whole emptiness business, and I had another partner and so on and so forth, usual stuff. My latest partner and I went around the world for a year, 10 years ago. We backpacked. And when we came back, I took one look at all the stuff that I had, and I thought, "This doesn't actually relate to me anymore. This isn't who I am." Your experience of being in all these different countries, how did that play into that? I was a Peace Corps volunteer, a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa, lived there for two years. I believe my thinking was significantly impacted by that, because I saw people living with much less than what we have, and when I came back, I saw that we Americans are fat. In a way that I hadn't seen before, and I don't mean that just physically or in terms of weight, I mean that we have so much hanging off of us and cumbering our journey. So what was that part of your experience traveling around the world, or were you traveling in developed countries? Where were you going? No, it was very much possible. The reason we went around the world, certainly my reason for going, was when I first came to Quaker, the first thing they asked me to do was to coordinate the T-runs, the soup runs for homeless people that Quaker's are doing in London. I agreed, but I had never had any contact with homeless people, I had no idea, and that had all sorts of preconceptions. In fact, I think that one of the greatest moments, because typically, since I became a Quaker, was that first T-run, when instead of that kind of embarrassed feeling as you walk past someone in a doorway, a sort of blanket, feeling guilty, wondering what to do, just taking a cup of tea up to someone and asking if they take sugar, and you realize that it's the beginning of a human relationship and that it could be you. And in that moment, I realized there was no other. But my shock at the extent of homelessness, and then about a year later, when I started running a community centre in one of the poorest parts of London, the shock at the poverty there, that was the beginning. And I wanted to go to developing countries, because I wanted to extend my understanding of how other people live, because I realized that I'd been pretty sheltered. I mean, we have our difficulty, this is a family, everybody does, but we were reasonably comfortable. I had no idea of how people lived in my own country, so I wanted also to get a sense of how other people live, and whether there was some kind of lesson to me in how people with less lived. Your work on the East End of London, what was that part of? It's an organization called Quaker Social Action, which was set up about 150 years ago to combat poverty in the East End. I was asked if I would start a community centre from a big church that we'd been offered. I'd never had any kind of dealings in the East End. I'd never done any community work, so it was a huge learning curve for me. So we started this community centre, and we started all sorts of different projects, including community meals run by cooks, and different ethnic backgrounds, and inviting people who were isolated, and encouraging healthy eating, and all that sort of stuff. It was lovely, I really enjoyed it. It became apparent that unless there was some kind of financial intervention, local people were simply not going to get anywhere. It's an area where, at that time, a very big community of Bangladeshi people, it's always been an area where refugees come. It's the first port of call in London. So I remember reading about something called micro credit, which a professor of economics in Bangladesh called Muhammad Yunus started in the '70s. I've been so excited about it when I read it that I'd torn out the page. Despite the fact I was working in publishing, I never imagined that I'd ever have anything to do with something like this. Certainly never imagined that it could have any bearing in England. But I actually found the cutting, and I started researching micro credit, and we started the micro credit program in the East End. Is this a case of teaching them to fish instead of giving them a fish, or maybe in this case, loaning them a fishing pole? What's this about in terms of what you are doing? Yes, it is very much that. It is about enabling people to help themselves. It's an extremely beautiful model because it's about people forming groups. The group is about the wisdom is where the power is. A group of five women, they support each other. They guarantee each other's loans. But the money is not the most important thing. The money comes last. The money comes when everyone in the group, or certainly the first two, who take the first two loans, have understood what it is they're doing or excuse that they need to do. It's what their profit is going to be. So the business training, although I don't like those words, because it's not formal in the way that business training usually is, it's discussions in the group and people going away and finding out, doing their homework, finding out what the competition is and how much the raw materials are and how much they can send it for. Week by week, women develop, but they take off very, very quickly. The most beautiful thing about it is that you see the hope in somebody's eyes when you believe in them. When they see that someone thinks that they have something to contribute, that's when the magic happens. You mentioned groups of five women. Is that a specific feature of this model that you're working with? Yeah. Five seems to work very well. I mean, we would agree to have four or six, but five seems to work well traditionally, and this particular model has run in, I don't know, 60 countries. There have been millions of loans worldwide. You know, I was a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa, a country of Togo specifically. One of the things I observe there is how the women had all kinds of enterprises that they were doing, and I think that sometimes the image of women in these developing countries is that the men have all the power, do all the work, have all the money. In Lome, the largest city in Togo, the women there actually controlled the markets completely, and so actually women were in control of more wealth than the men, even though traditionally, you know, you had to have a man because that was wealth in your family. What kind of attitudes were you working with about this kind of thing with women you were working with? Well, in this country, and in African countries, I've worked in, the women seem to have the energy and the get up and go. I mean, certainly true of African women. But I guess you women less so. It was harder work because they are brought up to be more passive, I would say, to different kind of role. And they're not encouraged to work outside the home. And I also think when people move to another country, it's almost an extreme version of what can drop behind. Certainly, when I went to Bangladesh, the women I was working with in the UK said, "Oh, you'll find the Bangladesh things are much more free, much easier than they are here." And that was true. So they were a bit stuck. But gradually did count to believe in their own capabilities. We were working with a variety of nationalities. I think we worked with 22 nationalities in our first year. So was part of this in working with women? Is it because the women were the go-getters? Or is there an element in there that we want to liberate women, bring men and women to greater equality in the world? I think the reason that the bulk of the loans I made to women in micro-credit programs is because they are shown to repay better. And because they spend the money in the community and for the family. It's quite interesting that in Bangladesh, originally, I think 50% of the loans were made to men and women, which was revolutionary. No loans had been given to women in the past. And they found that it was the women who, as I say, repaid better and so on. But it is also to do with traditional wisdom that if you educate the women, you're educating the next generation. If you empower the women, you're empowering the next generation. You talked about repayment rates, what happened with men, what happened with women, and you said it with women, it's higher rates. What kind of rates are we talking about? I think people here in the U.S. expect a default and they expect to go repossess the house or the car or whatever it is when they make a loan. Well, it's quite extraordinary worldwide. I think that the history is something like 98% repayment. Because you're not asking for any kind of collateral. People don't have anything. What you're asking is that people join a group, that they commit themselves to that group, that they turn up every week. I think people don't like to let their hands down, and they also respond very well to being trusted. And what happens with this money when it's repaid? And is there interest on it? Is this going back to the founding organization or what? There is a low level of interest, traditionally about 10%. But it depends on which country you're working in and what the local rates are and so on. But very much less than any kind of bank rate, let alone the kind of loan sharks, which are usually their only opportunity. The 10% pays towards the admin of administering the loan and the training. It's a kind of nod towards the funders rather than, and it's been very significant. And then the main bulk of the money, where does that set? It just recycles. It just goes out to pay more loans. With the same five women? No, no, more and more and more women. I'm a great believer in only giving a couple of loans to any individual. I know that in other countries they go on and on and on, giving loans. And I think that leads to dependence. I think we saw our role as giving people the opportunity to show that they were credit worthy in world terms, so that if they'd repaid two loans, they would be more able to enter into the traditional banking system. So generally speaking, we would only give a couple of loans to anybody. The money comes back and it goes out to another five women. And so what happens with this money that's invested? What's the big deal about micro credit? Why is it such a big deal? It's a big deal because it's a bank for the poor. It's a bank that stands everything on its head. It's for the poor. It's for women. It's for people who have nothing. It enables people who have absolutely no chance of getting a job to make a living for themselves and to contribute to their communities. I note that you have five books out there. I've got two of them. I've got Simplicity from the Made Easy series. And I've got the world as our cloister, the Guide to Modern Religious Life. What I don't have is your book Small Change, Big Deal, Money as if People Mattered. Is that by any chance about micro credit? It is. It's also about the less that we're in financially. Money as if people matter, which is the subtitle, is really the theme. Money was a tool for something that happened face to face for relationships and related to goods and things that come from the earth. It was very tangible and was very face to face. More and more, it has become virtual. It's become huge. It's become dehumanized. And I think by taking the human being out of our financial transactions, that is where we've gone wrong. I think that's a large part of what is caused our problems. And micro credit is such a human way of dealing with money. I think it has lessons to teach us. And one of the community finance ways of doing things. There are many other corporative movements and credit unions and so on. So the book deals a bit with the background of money and the other community financial ways of working. And then goes into detail about micro credit and the experience I've had in different countries. And the stories of women who have benefited from it. Again, I'll mention that the name of the book is small change, big deal. Money as if people mattered. And it's one of five books that Jennifer Kavanaugh has written. It's actually six books that Jennifer Kavanaugh has written. You can find out about her via her website, jennifercavanaugh.co.uk is the website. And if you have trouble spelling as much as I do, it's maybe easier to come via northernspiritradio.org. My site, and I'll have a link to Jennifer. You have a history, Jennifer, 30 years in publishing, 14 years as an independent literary agent. Did you get tired of that? Or did you just decide to make it practical by writing your own books? What was the change that happened there? I think I've come to the end of I've worked in publishing since maybe 30 years, and I was beginning to think there's another world outside. I was also getting tired of the celebrity culture, which seemed to be impinging more and more on publishing, and which bores me. And the emphasis on the bottom line so that more and more really frustrate writers for finding it hard. And I found that I needed to get out of it. But it wasn't until faith found me. But I realized that I could just stop and just had to stop. So once I'd made preparations for the authors and made sure that they would have a good home, I stopped. And the important thing for me, spiritually speaking, was I had no idea what I was going to do, and it didn't matter. And that was the first time in my life that I hadn't needed to know what was going to happen because I knew that I would be shown, that I would be guided, and indeed I have been. It's been quite extraordinary. Maybe now is an appropriate time, if it's okay with you, to ask you about when you said faith found you, what you're talking about, how did that happen? Okay, I've already mentioned my marriage had broken up some time before. My daughter was diagnosed with chronic illness. When the next relationship broke up, I found myself in a strange place. I had no idea what was going on, but every time I went into a church for a christening, or to look at the architecture, I would burst into tears. I had no choice but to find out what this meant. I felt impaled, and so I started to go to churches, different ones around about, and I just didn't find what answered me, and so I ran out in some distress. And then some months later, I remembered seeing a sign out of a quick meeting house. I didn't know much about Quakers, or I thought I didn't know very much. Years later, I realized I had been signposts all along, and I hadn't been ready to see them. Anyway, when I got to a quick meeting house, I crept in very nervous and found peace. And I didn't speak to anyone for quite a while, because it was like treading on eggshells. This was a new part of myself that I didn't understand, and I felt very fragile, and so I borrowed books, and I used to read a book on the way to work, on the bus in the morning. I wanted to jump up and down. I couldn't believe what I was reading. I couldn't believe that this was religion. It wasn't like any idea that I had before. So that's what happened, and it completely transformed my life. In some ways, you've talked about the interior life and something about the external life, but I still have a sense that I don't know what the crisis was or what you found you were looking for. Can you name it now? I mean, you obviously had to go through a big search to find what you were looking for. All you knew is you were brought to tears when you were around the church. Well, exactly. But what I feel now is that I was cracked open by pain to access another dimension, and spirit entered my life. I allowed space for God, for the spirit, to enter. I think I had been quite defended, quite blocked in the past, preoccupied with other things, really. In this way, there was a space for something to happen inside me, and that is what happened. So that when I came to Quaker meetings and found myself sitting in silence, not only being allowed to be myself, but being required to be myself, sitting there, waiting on God, with nothing to hide behind. It's not an easy thing. I mean, you can't fool yourself. If nothing's happening, nothing's happening. There are no words, no rituals to go through that can hide you from what's happening or not happening. So I found God is what happened. But your language in these books tends to be very inclusive. You speak of God, you speak of spirit. I mean, Quakers are used to doing that. Higher power, it's all good. But the word God, I mean, you said you came from, was it agnostic or an atheist Jewish mother? Was there in you a distaste for the word God to start out with? Yeah, well, I don't know if it's taste, if comfort certainly. I found it, it wasn't word I could use at the beginning. I've grown into it. Mainly because it seems the most useful, the most commonly used sign towards what we're talking about. I'm very comfortable with spirit. I'm very comfortable with practically any word or phrase that people like to use about something that is all encompassing that is a higher power within and without. I know that one of the organizations you're involved with along the way is called street cred. Is that the London based one where you're doing micro credit? Is that what that was called? That's right, yeah. So people want to look up street cred to follow up on what's happened there. I assume you're not working with that anymore. Is that still flourishing or how is that going? Well, it lasted for 10 years. I worked with it for about three years and handed it on. After 10 years, they had a party to celebrate 10 years, but they also closed it down. And I was taught to get a surprise because it's quite easy, particularly in a developed country for a program like that to float upwards economically. It is very much easier to deal with people who are slightly better off and said that the people from whom it was originally started are much harder to deal with. Once you float upwards, you're just becoming another women's training organization and I think they found it hard to get the funding for that reason. So I wasn't told to get a surprise. What was very moving at that celebratory wake, or whatever you want to call it, was individual women standing up and saying how to change their lives. We helped some people. We sewed some seeds. It is very hard in a developed country. In the UK, we have a benefit system which is necessary. You need a net for people who really can't cope. But on the other hand, we make it very difficult for people to move from that particularly to self-employment. You're not allowed to earn more than a tiny amount of money before you start losing, for instance, your housing benefit. And if you're a full mother with three children, and you're very dependent on that housing benefit, you're not going to give it up. So there are barriers in developed countries which make it much harder to do than it is in developing countries. I find it very much easier in Ghana and South Africa. It was interesting to me. You said that when you got involved with the Quaker meeting, the first post-duty that they gave you was this T-run to the poor people. Yeah. Your literary agent, does that mean you're particularly good at T or what? I think the reason I was asked was I'd run a business and I thought you knew how to run things. They wanted someone to administer it. I was in the business of saying yes to things I was being asked to do because I was new and I wanted to be of service. But no, I had absolutely no idea about anything. A leap of faith that has happened in my life, a leap of faith from other people who have given me opportunities to grow. I just feel that when I said that I would be shown and I would be guided, that has been absolutely true, but it's largely being true to other people that has happened. Well, I want to go into the topic of simplicity, but first, I want to remind our listeners that they're listening to Spirit in Action, a Northern Spirit radio production on the web at northernspiritradio.org. I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and on our website, you can find almost eight years of programs for your listening and download. You can order copies of CDs, if you like, post comments. We love when you do that. There's a place there also to donate to Northern Spirit Radio, and you can also support us by underwriting our programs. Support for today's program comes from Friends Journal, a monthly magazine whose mission is to communicate Quaker experience in order to connect and deepen spiritual lives. Online@friendsjournal.org. We also encourage you to always support your local community radio station. Community radio is the spice and depth of life. Right now, let's continue our visit with Jennifer Kavanagh, spiritual activist and author of six books on a range of topics, including simplicity. So let's turn our attention there, Jennifer. One of your books, I think it was the third in your series, is Simplicity, and it's under the title Made Easy, which, of course, Simplicity Made Easy. I mean, really? Well, as I say, it's part of the series, so not my fault, that title. I don't think some interviews are that easy. It's certainly not just a one-off thing. It's a lifetimes journey. It's not just a lifestyle of choice. It is about a way of life. And it's something that's become very important to me. The way I think of Simplicity is about removing the clutter between one's self and God, or one's essential self. And that clutter can be anything. It'll be different for different people, different times of life. And I think that we identify it when we feel discomfort, when we feel a distance between our principles and our lifestyle, and when we feel that there's something that's getting in the way. And if we allow ourselves enough time, space, if we stop being quite as busy and have a chance to listen to that still small voice, we will identify that discomfort and get the chance to do something about it. You know, I've led voluntary Simplicity study groups here in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where I live. Certainly you've been an advocate for Simplicity out of your own personal experience about it. It's hard to get people to want to look at this. I mean, I think there's an aching need in a lot of people, but I think it's scary as I'll get out for them to consider leaving space or leaving an area on the wall blank or leaving 15 minutes in the day where there's nothing happening. I think that brings up terror. If you forget who it was, Isaac Asimov or one of the other's famous science fiction writers, he wrote a book Nightfall. It's a world which has, I don't know, five or six sons, so it's never dark. But there's an event that happens every thousands of years where all of the sun's set and for the first time you get to see the night sky and the stars. And people go uniformly crazy in this world when that happens. I feel like there's some kind of fear like that that happens in our society because orally and visually and tactily our lives are constant agitation. You take that all away and the sensory change I think is maybe overwhelming for people. Did you have that experience when you went to Quaker meeting? I'm going to go sit in silence for an hour. Well, I didn't really know what I was going to do. I didn't really know what to expect. I think I've always quite liked silence actually. My experience is that even though people are very caught up in all of what you've been talking about, they also know that it's completely overwhelming. They just can't find the fact that they're overwhelmed with information overload, noise overload, stuff, consumer stuff. I think there is a discomfort, but there's also a terror at letting go of it. I think we all have experience of a void that we're absolutely terrified of. And the fact is that if you give it a chance, if you give yourself a minute silence, just to switch off half a day when you don't have the computer off, I'm pretty addicted to the computer I have to say. But it is so beautiful. It is so wonderful when there is some space. You feel that you've regained something for yourself. You feel that you notice the birds singing. You notice the leaves coming out on the tree. If there is so much clutter, you don't notice anything anymore. And the more you have, the less you value it. You know, I say to people about material clutter, which is usually what people think of first. It isn't so much the amount you have, it's your attitude to it. You know how attached you are to it. But also, you know, do you take it for granted? There are pictures on the walls that you never look at. There are books on the shelves you never read. There's this stuff that you brought back because it was a bargain, but it's never really fitted to you. The stuff you're waiting to wear when you lose a bit of weight. And the stuff that you aren't gave you that you never really liked. You know, everybody can make their own lists of stuff that they don't want on the material front. And similarly on the noise front, you know, we have all this noise. And it's not just from other people, we make it for ourselves. I like the idea of thought experiments. And I first came in contact with the idea through Albert Einstein. He talked about what would the world look like if you were writing on a wave of light? How would things look if you're writing on light? I've sat with that idea and I've applied it to many areas of my life. And one of the thought experiments I did, I don't know, a dozen or fifteen years ago, I realized in terms of simplicity, if I have one of something, I have a laptop. Well, my laptop is valuable to me. It's important. There's some preciousness to it. If I have a hundred laptops, which is mainly what we experience in the Western world, we have an abundance of things, a laptop could be used as a Frisbee for all I care. It's true. Because there's 99 others there to take its place. Who cares? Yeah, it's like a flower in the desert. It is so precious. And I'm living in Central London, Swarflatt, Parliament. And out the back, it's sort of off this block, squeaks of concrete, bricks and so on. I mean, I don't mind it, it says Patches Sky. But it's fairly barren out the back. And one day I heard a black bird sing. It was so miraculous. Now, I can be in someone's government here, you know, a dozen, 20, 30 black birds sing, and I don't think anything much of it. But because I never do in that particular part, it was so precious to me. It's quite true. There's a specialness to Spanish that's really worth thinking about. We do value things more when we have fewer of them. There's also a period where I did a weight loss program back in 1996. And it was a liquid diet type of thing. And after three months, I was able to introduce something. I realized at that point that a crust of dried bread could be a sensory, you know, sensory adventure. And because we have meals not only three times a day, but snacks in between whenever we want it, because we live in that kind of incredible abundance, we mostly don't taste our food. We mostly don't experience it. And so I've been amazed to find out how much my life is enhanced by fasting periodically. I do that as part of our regional Quaker gathering. I do a three-day water fast. Okay. And I find it enhances everything where most people, I think, would be kind of frightened of that. A lot of people are. There's a small group of us who do this. And so that's just one level. You talked about computer fasting. I mean, let's get away from technology. Not listen to a radio or a iPod or whatever. I'd like to emphasize that we're talking about doing this by choice. There is nothing glamorous about poverty, you know, about people who don't have these things. It is certainly true that people who have very little can teach us a great deal, but one would not wish the lack of things on other people. We're talking about people who have a great deal making a choice. I think it's important to stress that, but it's freely chosen. What was your lead in to simplicity, Jennifer? I'm not sure that most people are naturally nowhere to go or feel the impetus to go into it. Yes. Well, it certainly wasn't my thinking, oh, I'm going to lead a simple life, and then trying to do something about it. I don't think it works that way. It is something that comes from within. And the first step was when I started working with homeless people, and then started working with people in the east end of London who had so little. And I was so shocked at the fact that there was such poverty in my own country, that I had no idea I had been quite sheltered. And then I went travelling around the world for a year about 10 years ago. And I wanted specifically to go to developing countries and have some sense of how other people lived and whether their ways of life had something to teach me. And so we went around the world for a year. We spent three months in Latin America. We spent three months in India. We did some volunteer work, some teaching in an Indian school. And we had such experience as people who had so little. And the dignity and the joy with which people lived and lived. And it certainly was a lesson that you really don't have to have very much to have a fulfilling life. It's not to say that I wouldn't wish them to have more. And then I've been travelling in Africa since I've been doing micro credit. And in Ghana we stayed in the village with no electricity, no running water. And you then really, really begin to value things, particularly water. The lack of electricity was interesting. It wasn't so much light that I missed but a fan in extremely hot temperatures. And the fridge, which meant you had to buy fresh food every day. And it was like, I don't know, five mile walk to the nearest village to buy it. So that kind of difficulty. And the women, of course, go and fetch water every day carrying heavy weight. That needs to be changed. And you certainly, I really value turning on a tap, a force that you would call it. I really value the fact that I can have water whenever I want it fresh water. I think you talked about that village in Ghana in your book Simplicity. When you were talking about it, Jennifer, I think you talked about the mixed feelings people had about some of this civilization coming to the village. Either electricity or running water. Yeah, I think it was electricity. I'm not sure they had mixed feelings. I think some of the volunteers thought, gosh, wouldn't it be good if, you know, what would it be like if we didn't have electricity? But then when I asked the woman I was working with, the micro credit worker, why she wanted electricity? She said, so that my children can do her work at night and said that I don't trip over things. It's my torch fail. Now, I'm not sure they had mixed feelings about it. I think I had mixed feelings about the impact that it might have on that village because it's already a huge amount of noise. They've been in generators, weddings, and things like that. And the idea of that being magnified times, it's so terrifying. You went through some kind of a conversion experience where all of a sudden the divine becomes extremely essential to you. I think it starts permeating every aspect of your life. Have you ever looked back and said, boy, I sure wish that I hadn't had my eyes so opened. I could have just been happy eating bonbons and going to the theater. No. Okay. I guess that answers that. I don't look back, you know, except to marvel at the fact that I've been given a new life. I just feel I've lived several lives. I don't regret anything in my life. No wonderful things about bringing up my kids. I enjoyed a lot about working and publishing. But I just love my current life. I just think the opportunity to do different things all the time to be free to perhaps choice that's real richness. And I think in the West, that's what we have. We do have choices. No, I think we're very fortunate if we have this opportunity to live different kinds of lives at different times of our life. In terms of your move towards simplicity, I'm sure that there's many of our listeners who are married, have partner, have children at home. And I suspect that the journey towards simplicity in that situation is much different than it is when you're footloose and fancy free. My question is, how would it have looked, do you think, in yourself, if you had this call towards simplicity back when your children were still at home? Yes, it would have been much more difficult. And I certainly know people I talk to who have spouses who like hoarding. When you live with other people, it's a constant compromise in efforts at finding a way that everyone can work with. It would be more difficult. And I have to say that my kids who obviously left home a long time ago have been very tolerant about my changed way of life. Quite amused, I think, and maybe quite kind about it, should we say. But yes, I think it is difficult. And I think that the crucial thing is it's not about an external should or must do the start of the other. It is about what's right for you at any given time of life, and it will be different for everybody. But even in the busiest life, full-time work, bringing up kids, all of that, finding a pause in the day, several pauses, even a minute. To me, it's absolutely crucial, and I would have managed that, I think. And I just commend it as something that just helps de-stress life. Well, speaking of having children and families and having the religious life, let's talk about your book The World is Our Cloyster, A Guide to the Modern Religious Life. Again, it's by Jennifer Kavanaugh. It's one of six books. I've only seen the names of five of them so far. You're aiming to enlighten me about that, Jennifer, aren't you? But one of the things that you talk about in this are the many different forms of religious life. We think of cloisters, we think of monks, we think of people living apart. But you explore East and West, history and current, all the different varieties of it. So I know people just need to get the book and read it to get this good summary, but can you give us a summary of the summary of the different forms? Well, that book is really about the multitude of people who are trying to live a traditional life in the world, not behind monastic walls. There are millions of them across the face, and I wrote it because I, partly in my travels, met so many of them. People who are all trying to live the same kind of life, a life of service and contemplation, trying to find the balance between engagement and withdrawal of service and contemplation, and some of the ways in which they were doing it. It was a wonderful journey in terms of interviewing people about their lives, of hearing all the things that people were doing and trying to do. I find it very exciting. It included people of all the named faiths, but also people without labels, and I actually found those, perhaps the most interesting of all, people who have struggled to find a community to which they can belong, struggled to find a religion into which they can fit. Maybe have gone beyond the need for a particular label, gone beyond the need of a particular religion, but nonetheless lead a deeply devotional, faithful life. You talked about some of the varieties out there, and I'm interested in, if you can give me a thumbnail sketch of some of them, historically and current. There are, of course, the people who are cloistered, who are behind walls, but there's people who live out there, the Third Order Franciscan secular, and could you give a little bit of this east and west, some of the varieties that exist? Hard to summarize, because it is such a vast subject, but monastic faiths that are essentially Christian and Buddhist Hindus don't tend to go into monasticism. The mystic life, the life of trying to relate directly to God is something different from monasticism, and that has not always been valued by the traditional faiths. So, many of the world faiths have a mystic end. Sufism comes from Islam, Kabbalah comes from Judaism. I think Quakers are the mystic end of Christianity, I mean one might argue about that, but mysticism is, as I say, about finding a direct relationship with God. The Sufists describe themselves as the east of all religions, so they see themselves, although they came from Islam, they see themselves as relating to all mystic people, and I think that that is true of all mystic faiths, that it is common. There's something in common that all mystic faiths have, which I really love. I am not quite so interested in the differences, the differences which are very real, differences in belief, differences in culture, differences in practice, but at the mystic level, there is very little to differentiate people. And if you read a series of writings by mystics, if you read a Christian mystic and a Hindu mystic and someone from the Orthodox Church or someone from one of the other denominations, you can't tell the difference. And I often do that in workshops, I read three passages and try to get people to say where they've come from and nobody can identify them. And for you, this has great importance, I think, because you've lived into this experience, but for the world is particularly important. Of course, I think it is, and so I'm just setting you up to give a rousing speech about why it's so important. For me, it's the essential, it is what we're here for. That direct relationship is the essence of being alive for me. It has a transformative effect on people. It enables them to know who they are. And when I talk about simplicity, the point of it is to become the person we are meant to be, to open ourselves up to the instruments, to know our true purpose. And of course, it's a lifetime's journey. It's not something that you can just manage with a click of a switch. But to me, the mystic experience is the most important thing of all. You're writing from the UK, as opposed to the U.S. where I'm sitting. In the USA, there has been a strong movement over the past 30 to 40 years, the growth of Evangelical Christians, a large number of whom are conservatives or fundamentalists. Those are circles that overlap. They're not identical. There's also been a decrease in the mainline churches. All of our varieties of Protestants and Catholics, those numbers have reduced. In the UK, have you experienced something similar? And does this have anything to say about the thirst that people have for that spiritual dimension in life? I think we have had the same. I mean, despite a lot of integration from Catholic countries in Eastern Europe and so on, I think we have had the same kind of dropping numbers in the traditional churches. But there is, if anything, a rise in the number of people who say that they are looking for something, certainly people identify as either believing in God or in feeling that life is spiritual or something. I think the word religion has negative connotations for quite a lot of people because they identify it with particular religions that cause some problems or that they see negative things coming from them. But the yearning, the seeking is still there. And certainly the people that come to Quake Quest, the outreach program that I mentioned, it gets people coming week after week. We've been going on for 10 years, every single week in London, as well as all other places in the US too, by the way. I mean, do look up Quake Quest. But you know, seekers come and they come and talk. There's an opportunity to share their own spiritual lives. And we are so enriched by hearing those spiritual lives. It is so moving. Can I give just one instance? There's a different subject every week and we have three speakers and then there's an opportunity for people to get into small groups and talk. The subject was God. We asked people in their small groups to talk about what the word God meant to them. Now, the general view, certainly of Brits and maybe Americans too, is that people don't want to open up on really profound subjects to strangers. These were people who had never met before. They sat in their small groups talking about this subject. And one woman said, when I was 19, I had a stroke. And I was in a coma and I could hear everything that was going on and nobody knew that I could. And she said, I was in the bubble and I was so lonely in my bubble and God came and sat next to me. And that was just unbelievably moving. It was so beautiful to hear it. And this was somebody, none of us had ever met before. She'd never met any of us. And she felt able to say that. And there are people over the world who are having experiences and who are dying to find somewhere that they can share it. And they'll certainly get some more ideas about that. If they read Jennifer Kavanaugh's book, the world is our cloister, a guide to the modern religious life. There's five other books by her. You can find them at her website, jennifercavana.co.uk or follow the link from nordanspiritradio.org. We've been speaking with Jennifer Kavanaugh. April 1st, 8th, she'll be in Portland, Oregon in that area. Speaking, you could probably connect up with her if you wanted to. She's got a lot of value to speak about and she speaks about it from experience. This isn't just heady stuff. This is what she's lived out. Jennifer, it's been great to know you. I'm sorry. I don't live closer to Portland so I could visit you in person when you're there. So am I sorry. But I do so much. Thank you for joining me for spirit in action. Thank you. I've enjoyed it very much. We'll take you out for today's spirit in action. Visit with Jennifer Kavanaugh by sharing a little music. But first, I'd like to note once more that support for today's program comes from Friends Journal, Monthly Magazine, whose mission is to communicate Quaker Experience in order to connect and deepen spiritual lives online at friendsjournal.org. And the music we'll close out with is on the topic of simplicity by one of my very favorite singer-songwriters, John McCutchen. Here's a portion of his song, Simple Man. I don't want to be a hero. I don't want to be a king. I don't need a lot of money. I don't need a lot of things. I don't need to be the boss man. Don't need to be no number one. I just need to know that I am needed. I just need to have a little fun. I haven't got a fancy history. I haven't got much of a plan. Sure, I've got hopes and I've got dreams. Still, I'm about what I might see. I'm a simple man. I need someone that I can talk to. Someone who knows my name. Someone who catches me when I'm falling. Someone who warned me when I am straight. I just need a little love. I just need a little say. And some quiet and cold one. At the ending of my day, I haven't got a fancy history. I haven't got much of a plan. Sure, I've got hopes and I've got dreams. Still, I'm about what I might see. I'm a simple man. A place to put my feet up and a nice, hot shout. And someone to reach out to in the darkest hour. Just need a place where I can hide. A place where I can turn. And when I'm lost and forgotten, I need a place where I return. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing. You