Learning to heal – Long Covid

Brian gives an overview of his mission and ministry 

Gillian and Brian talk about labyrinths and a day that Brian facilitated for the Guild. 

They discuss connecting with God in creation and Brian shares some practices he facilitates with people in the outdoors. 

Being present and unpacking the Hebrew word Hineni – here I am. 

Brian shares about the challenging experiences he and his family have endured over the past two years. 

He shares how spiritual practices and the online community who engage with his content have been. a rich source of support and encouragement. 

Gillian and Brian reflect on the individual and collective wisdom to be learned from those who have experienced illness and adverse life experiences. 

The healing power of storytelling along with the vulnerability of doing it. 

Brian shares his wisdom on both letting go and how to embrace living well in the present. 

Finally Brian gives an overview of how he will live soulfully, in community with others, across 2022.  

Links 

Brian Draper https://www.briandraper.org/ for information about the Lent series and other retreats Brian talked about on the podcast. 

Soulfulness and Soulful Nature books www.briandraper.org/books-1 

Brian’s Thought for the Day from May 2021 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p09jftqc 

Healthy Healing Hubs, GoHealth https://gohealth.org.uk/hhh/ 

GoHealth Community https://gohealth.org.uk/gohealth-community/ 

Books referenced 

Sacred Journey – spiritual wisdom for times of transition byMike Riddel 

The Solace of Fierce Landscapes – mountain and desert spirituality by Beldon Lane 

I am Gillian Straine and welcome to the Go Health podcast. So we are in season two of the podcast exploring learning to heal. It’s a clever title because it has a double meaning, learning to heal by listening to the stories and experiences of others, we might be learning to heal ourselves or learning to be a source of healing for others. In fact, in this episode, you will hear I experienced some healing myself from the trauma of lockdown by hearing the story of our guest. Live in action healing on the podcast, you can’t ask for more than that. 

If you haven’t done so already please rate and subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform you listen to it. This will help others to find us. In this episode, we are exploring the theme of learning to heal with the amazing Brian Draper. Brian has been described as Britain’s foremost popular spiritual thinker, so it was a delight to welcome him onto the podcast

Brian Draper is author of numerous books. He’s a regular speaker at Greenbelt and other festivals, and he has presented on Thought for the Day on BBC Radio four Today program for over a decade. He’s published many books. We will link to them all in the blurb.  O ne of his most popular has been his recent book called Soulfulness, which is fantastic. And he has another book coming out this year called Soulful Nature, a spiritual field guide written by Brian with his friend, a botanist, Howard Greene. Brian also leads walking retreats. I’ve been in one myself. He’s a labyrinth guide, and he also runs the lent and advent retreats. 

We had a fantastic conversation. It’s always a real privilege to spend time with Brian and to sort of soak up some of his wisdom. He’s one of these people that walks the walk and talks the talk, if you know what I mean, you can tell he’s on a deep spiritual journey to find out for himself how to live a profoundly joyful and spiritual life. And as he also a great communicator, he can help us with the same pursuit. Last year, Brian has had a number of serious health problems. And in this episode, he talks really openly and movingly about what he has learned.

There are some pearls of great price in this podcast, dear listener. So please enjoy it and let us know what you think over in the GoHealth community facebook group. Right let’s get on with the episode. 

Gillian: So, Brian, thank you so much for giving us your time to come on to the GoHealth podcast. How are you this afternoon? 

Brian: Yeah, this afternoon, I’m okay, thank you. I’m a little tired. I’ve done a, had an online business meeting this morning, so I’m a bit tired out from that. But generally I’m in good spirits. Thank you. 

Gillian: Well, can you tell us, can you put into your own words, your, your work, your ministry, your mission, however you describe it, what do you do? What is your day job? She says in inverted commas. 

Brian: Yeah. Good question. Good question. Well part of it does involve working with organisations. I’ve just had a conversation with someone about running a labyrinth for them. So, you know, organisations are becoming much more open to the kind of practices that we have used for for a long time now in order to help their people, to reconnect with, with, with deeper stuff. 

And I’m a writer, so I write books. I’ve written a book called Soulfulness and Soulful Nature most recently. I love to write and I lead people on walking retreats, seasonal walking retreats, when I’m able to walk, I haven’t been able to walk very far for the last couple of years. But when I’m fit and well, I lead people on seasonal walking retreats. I speak at churches and organisations and different things like that. What I really, really love to do is explore our soulful connection, I suppose, between faith and life. It’s about everyday spirituality and and human flourishing. 

Gillian: And just you mentioning the labyrinth, you reminded me that, well, actually, I’ve been a groupie. Do you have groupies? I think you might? I mean, coming, I went on one of your soulful walks through London I remember once. And then you did a labyrinth in St Paul’s Cathedral I remember. Didn’t I come, I think I came to the launch of that? 

Brian: Yeah, that was that was just, it feels like another life, you know, pre-covid, but that was, oh, we had some beautiful days at St Paul’s Cathedral, where we ran, we ran a number of labyrinths retreat times. Where we put this huge temporary labyrinth, cloth labyrinth, which is based on the Chakra labyrinth in France, down. And all sorts of people came to hear more about labyrinths and to walk it under that incredible dome. So that was that was a brilliant experience. 

Labyrinths are wonderful and I find very healing. There’s one on the top of the hill up in Winchester where I live, that’s been there for about 300 years. I mean, there’s

labyrinths popping up all over the place, but it was very special to walk under the dome of St. Paul’s. 

Gillian: I remember that. We’re not talking about one of our other projects of the Guild of Health is the healing hub project, which is to make every church a place of health and healing for the whole community and the logo for that is a labyrinth. And what I love about that logo is people say, ‘Oh, that’s really interesting. You have a maze as your logo.’ And I say ‘it’s not a maze, it’s a labyrinth. There’s only one way through a labyrinth, all leads, all paths leads to God. So you can make this brilliant theological point straight away, which I just love. 

Brian: Absolutely, absolutely wonderful things. 

Gillian: And you very kindly do the day for us in the Guild. Right at the very start when I came on board, we did a day wandering around Regent’s Park, do you remember? And then we popped into Marylebone parish church and talked about nature. 

Brian: Yeah. That was such a happy day, I mean, it was yeah, we spent some time thinking about kind of our soulful connection to life, what it means to live soulfully and then went out into into the park to just do some really simple practices. I think that kind of the simpler the better in some respects. But, but they take us to some profound places quite, quite quickly. And it was wonderful to stand with people and and to do some cloud watching and some breathing and some, some just simple acts of awareness.

People drew plants, didn’t they and other people wrote poems. There’s something about being outside that just really brings you alive, I think. And as we explore matters of spirituality being outside, I think, I think you just stand a little taller and you kind of open your shoulders and you open your heart a little wider.

And, you know, because you’re out in creation, you’re connecting with the Creator in a slightly less mediated way. You know, you just there and you know, I think we did one exercise where I encourage people to see the beauty of the scene and then to take two steps back in their mind and to see themselves as part of the beauty within it. And that’s always just a really profound thing to do because it reminds us that we are part of all this. We’re not just viewers, we are a part of God’s great ecology of life.

Gillian: I remember being really struck on that day was we did all this in the heart of London. You know, we don’t have to go that far to find nature to contemplate. And also it felt like a real freeing. I wasn’t sad to go back into the church, but I sort of was,  like we should just stay outdoors because I think as Christians, we have this idea that salvation is Jesus and you get Jesus in church and that’s the only place to go to appreciate soulfulness, but almost, I remember, is a really beautiful hot day, and we had to go back into the cold, dark church. That felt really symbolic in a way. 

Brian: Yeah, absolutely, I think. And the more we can get people outside to connect, you know, I mean what I love to do on my walks and one of the things that I love is that not everyone who comes along is Christian, most people are. but you certainly get a lot of people who are very much on the fringes. And and for for some of them, it’s the first time they’ve realised that actually there is this deep and ever deepening connection that we can make with God’s creation. And it’s in establishing that, that we can do that we come more fully alive, I think. And there’s I mean, spaces are wonderful. I mean, I love, you know, from the dome at St Paul’s to this tiny little ancient chapel in Winchester. You know, human spaces that have been made beautifully are wonderfully soulful and sacred and set apart. But, but equally, you know, sitting under a tree, I think one of the things that we did when we went on our St Paul’s Cathedral walk through Green Park, which you came on, was to just sit under these great London plane trees and stare up into the space between the branches. It’s a really simple exercise, but a cathedral like space begins to open up within them, and it’s an amazingly restorative thing to do. You know, it feels like, oh, just doing nothing. But actually, you are intentionally pressing into this, this space, you’re seeing the space around you and actually the space begins to open up within you, and you can think about just carrying that beautiful kind of sacred space with you wherever you go for others to benefit from, too. So it kind of overflows and overflows. 

Gillian: And I can remember now so much is actually what also struck me is the experience you just described of opening up space and finding God. But the poem that you use, I’m going to get it wrong, I should have looked it up before we started. I think it was Mary Oliver,  ‘what are you going to do with your one precious life?

Brian: One wild and precious life. 

Gillian: Yes, I use it with my kinds, I use it myself in meditations. We’ve got that connection between nature and beauty and God right back to what are we going to do with our lives? Haven’t experienced or remembered all this? What do you do? It really connects into the personal doesn’t it.

Brian: Oh, it so does, and I think, one thing that I that I love to explore with people when we’re outside is to remember first, being outside helps us, helps to remind us that we are present. It helps us to be present and it takes quite a while just sometimes for that, for the constant sort of thinking in our minds just to quieten down and for us to find ourselves lying under an old London plane tree and being present. And you kind of are able to say, ‘I am here’, but then you go almost like a step deeper into the space by saying, then here I am. Is that lovely Hebrew word Hineni – which means ‘here I am’. And some of the Old Testament characters use that when God calls to them, Abraham and Samuel, Moses, Isaiah. God says, you know, where are you? ‘Here I am’. And there is a sense of bringing yourself to the space, of bringing yourself to others, bringing yourself to God within it all and bringing yourself to, to life – this one wild and precious life that we’ve been given. So it all kind of converges into this beautiful place of presence, really for me. 

Gillian: So this is the first podcast of 2022, we’re midway through our podcast season. We have seasons. This is the second season, this season’s subtitled Learning to Heal. And of course, in January, it’s time for New Year’s resolutions, planning, looking ahead in our Go Health Community which this podcast especially engages with, our tagline is Together We Flourish.

So in the GoHealth community, we’re asking questions this month, particularly what does it mean for us in 2022, how do we want to flourish? What resolutions in a positive way might we want to do to deepen our spirituality and to look at our health more holistically?

We’re obviously not a diet and fitness club, we’re, we’re talking about something much deeper, much more profound – is how to live a deep connection with God, whatever our season of life is. In what way could you inspire others to live more soulfully?

But first, before we look forwards? I wonder if we can look backwards a bit because you’ve had quite a year in 2021, haven’t you? 

Brian: Yes. Yes. And bleeding back into 2020 as well.

Gillian: You have long covid now?

Brian: That’s well, yes, that’s right. So, so we were some of the early adopters back in March, April 2020. Both my wife and I got it and we both had it pretty mildly, you know, just a sort of flu kind of thing. But then we realised that we weren’t well and we were both really suffering from fatigue. She was suffering from lots of shortness of breath in particular, me, from lots of muscle ache and fatigue and having to sleep all the time and everything. And gradually, you know, the news began to emerge, didn’t it? Over time, about long COVID and there was more anecdotal evidence and then little bit of medical evidence. So we’ve we’ve been we’ve been living with it, not, not as dramatically as as many people have had to live, but it’s been, I describe it a little bit as trying to drive with the handbrake on – it’s really, really limited what we can do, how much I can work, how far we can walk, which hasn’t been very far and all of that. So that’s kind of stretch…We both feel as though we’re we’re making some progress now, but I’ve had my own, my own progress hampered by a few things, such as acute gangrenous appendicitis last summer, which was a little bit of a setback and not very pleasant. And then just as I was recovering from that, I managed to tear my cartilage quite badly in my knee and in a bizarre nocturnal accident when I turned in my sleep and woke up with a cry. And so I was then on crutches for about three weeks, which took us to the beginning of December when we both got COVID again. We, we, we were some of the earliest adopters of Omicron. So so it it…I mean, by that stage, it did feel like it’s been a little bit of a relentless sort of set of waves really pounding in upon our shore. But, you know, all of that said, it’s we’re very much mindful that others have had it so much worse.

Gillian: Have you had a Job moment – whyall this stuff?

Brian: Literally never, and and that’s something that I find quite interesting and a lot of people who know us and love us…because it has been, I think one of the things that intensified the struggle that we’ve had little bit is that, you know, both Katherine and I have had at the same time, we’re a family of five so we’ve got to try and keep the show on the road. But you know, our poor kids have been very, very, very patient. As we’ve had to say day after day, we’re so sorry, we’ve got to go back to bed and all of that kind of thing, can’t go out. We can’t do this, can’t do that. But I’m really, really grateful that at no point have I actually thought, why me? And I think that I mean, I think all sorts of things come into play with that. I’ve actually never really expected God to give me special protection from, you know, the slings and arrows of of of of life. I expect them to come and and I’ve had such a blessed life. You know these this this last year and a half has been a real struggle on many levels – psychological, emotional as well as physical. But but I think just being prearmed with that thinking, well, actually, I, I’ve never expected God to keep me from that particular experience – really helped me to think, well, OK, so what is it that lies within it now for me that I can be present to.

Gillian: And when you were really struggling and frustrated…it must be incredibly frustrating not to have the energy you’re used to and to wonder when, when is it going to get better. Spiritually what have you found is it that helps you in that in those moments? 

Brian: I think honesty is one thing, just just being really, really honest with myself about kind of how I feel, so I haven’t had the Job moments, but you know, when I when I sitting in a wheelchair full of the pain of that appendicitis and waiting for an MRI scan, I burst into floods of tears and, and, and and it was like it was just welling up from a place of, well, here I am. And this is this is this is where I find myself. And I think I think there are a number of things have have helped to sustain us when it’s felt like kind of the walls were coming in. I mean, this is all on top of obviously, everyone’s experience of COVID  of lockdown and restrictions as well. So it’s been such a strange time for us all on so many different levels, hasn’t it? But, but but giving thanks, finding finding things to, you know, it’s the simple stuff that…the stuff that we’re all beginning to know now, giving thanks each day for what we can appreciate, being honest about where you find yourself, you know, things like welcoming prayer, that kind of that simple, contemplative practice where you just sit still and just notice what’s happening in your body, not just the feelings that are arising as a result of kind of where you find yourself and actually being willing to welcome those feelings and sit with them, just helps to take some of the power away from kind of any, you know, that you move from that kind of brace position to one of embrace. And I think that that kind of spiritual posture for me has has shifted from brace to embrace in all its forms. And you know, I haven’t been able to walk very far, but I have been to stand outside and orient myself and, you know, just simple practices like watching the sunrise. 

During my lent series, I do a…it’s wonderful community that’s sort of dispersed across the world, but that gathers through my email series and some YouTube live videos that I do from time to time and during Lent and Advent, and I did one or two extra series during the pandemic, we found an amazing sense of togetherness, that that for me, I think almost more than anything was what helped to get me through. And within that, doing things like practicing for one day, what we would do is just all at Sunrise Point A towards the rising sun and and reflect on on something you know about what we’re awakening to. At noon, when the sun is at its highest, it points south and orientation ourselves at noon and just standing under the light and life and love of God collectively, even though we’re all apart. At twilight, just just seeing that the Sun is setting, even if it’s from behind the clouds and and and entering that kind of twilight place between knowing and not knowing between conscious and unconscious, between light and light and dark and night and day. And then finally, in the evening, just looking for the pole star together at a particular time and remembering that actually we have a fixed point and standing upon the firm ground of perhaps some scripture or something. Small practices like that, but the ones that we did together gave me an enormous sense of well-being, connectedness, encouragement.

And I learned so much from people who are, you know, they’re very interactive, these things that I run and I learned so much from people who have been there before or who are going through difficult times or having a different experience. So that whole richness of the human experience comes together. 

Gillian: It’s been fascinating to me….well, how online community stuff in general at the beginning of the pandemic we thought ‘Well, this is as good as it gets, we might as well do some online community, remote stuff, but I also discovered that it’s not just, you know, a second best. It’s been very profound ways of connecting with other people and maybe we’ll discuss that later, but just with your, with your experience in the last year or so, Brian, of sort of physical limitations, limitations because of COVID and the serendipity around your severe appendicitis as well, which I know is really serious. as up to that point you were a well and fit man – I assume, I don’t really know you [Laughter]

Brian: Relatively speaking! [Laughter]

Gillian:  It’s remindedme that at the beginning of the lockdown, when we had to do church online, the very loud voices from people with ME, people who are housebound, people with mental health conditions who can’t go to church were all saying, Well, now you know what it’s like. And suddenly we’ve become much more aware of those who have been excluded, and that includes those with physical and mental conditions as well. So, so, I just I wondered if you reflected on on on your experience as terrible as it’s been and you would never have chosen it I imagine, but it has opened up to you…maybe, you know, the experience of other people and what they’ve been going through as well, perhaps not as noticed as they should have been by our church leaders and so on.

Brian: Massively, and I think one of the one of the interesting things for me with the long COVID was that it wasn’t a dramatic form of illness. It was a quiet, almost gentle form of limiting illness that that could go, you know, almost entirely under the radar. And, and I was I was really, really kind of challenged about about, first of all, you know, I’m sure that I, like so many other people, can sometimes have quite judgmental attitudes towards, you know, people who who are suffering with chronic fatigue syndrome or whatever it is. You can be almost impatient and kind of think, ‘well, come on, you know,’ and and I was really, really challenged by that and challenged by the quiet way that so many people have to embrace their suffering and get on with it. And, you know, it gets quite boring I think, for I mean, I’ve been supported by a wonderful group of people, particularly the online community of people who’ve been praying and writing-in and just really, really supportive. But but but I know it almost gets a bit boring for people when they ask you, how are you doing now? You know, and you think, well, much the same, really.  And and you begin to feel guilty for saying that you begin to feel as though you’re a burden for saying that you don’t. You feel as though there’s something wrong with you, that you should be getting better. So that sense of just having your eyes, I think until you experience something like that, it’s only the most empathetic people who are able to put themselves in the shoes of somebody else. But, yes, absolutely, it’s something that was very, very stark for me there.

Gillian: And another couple of words you’ve used are sort of physicality and in talking with your experience of appendicitis, sort of fleshy and soft and squidgy and so on. Your… I mean, we don’t notice we’ve got bodies until they go wrong. I think there’s a good famous quotation of how you only know what health is until you lose it. And our understanding of the body in Christian circles anyway, has been quite ambivalent over the years, hasn’t it?

Brian: Yeah, yeah, it really has, hasn’t it? Yeah, no, I think I think that’s interesting on a number of levels because, you know, through the work that I’ve done on the soul-ful-ness, you know, I’ve really come to appreciate the soulfulness for me is that embrace between the so-called spiritual and the physical. You know, Teilhard de Chardin said ‘the way to Heaven is through Earth’. And you know, when we’re beholding a sunset, when we’re drinking that beautiful cup of coffee, when we’re, when we’re painting, when we’re listening to music, we find connection and in that beautiful, rich physical way. So, so so we ignore our physicality at our peril in terms of our faith journey. But then you’re so right that you suddenly reach this threshold, whether it’s just because you’re getting a bit older and a bit creaky and you know, your knees start to go and all of that or you have some kind of sudden trauma or illness or whatever it is. And then you do realise and certainly for me. I mean, the long Covid had warmed me up. But by the time we got to…I got to at hospital on that night and really acute discomfort and I just began to realise how soft and fleshy I was and how vulnerable. And gosh, it just gives brings a new dimension again to what you can see, what you can feel. 

Yeah, and not not always in a, you know, not in a…I don’t want to romanticise this, because I was really scared. You know, I’ve shared with you in our chat before we did this that, you know, one night I was coming off the morphine and very confused and and thought that I might be dying, and I didn’t know I wasn’t. It’s just that I was coming off the morphine, but I was very, very confused. And for a little while that just confronted with just how vulnerable everything is and it wasn’t enjoyable. 

Gillian: Oh it’s horrendous. I had to experience at the start of the pandemic. I’m a cancer survivor, and at the very beginning of the pandemic, I was gnawing sense that I’ve been here before this, you know. When they when they shut the schools, I couldn’t believe it when they shut down. I lived in central London at the time. I couldn’t believe it, the pubs were shut, the tube,  you know, everything was shut, I couldn’t believe it. And people were obviously reeling from the unexpected way their life had just been turned off for a bit. I thought…I’ve…and it took me about a week to figure it, and then I figured it –  I’ve been here before. 

I’ve had this experience of my entire life being turned upside down in a moment and not knowing what to do with that. And another words, you’ve used a couple of times in this conversation is around power and you know, you moved the power so you retain some control. And there’s always a sense, I think that we, we, we have power to choose what we do and how we live and what we’re doing, all the time, it’s a very western concept of how to live our lives, but experiences of severe illness, sudden traumatic illnesses or long term illness really challenges that concept, doesn’t it?

And I found in the early days of COVID, I actually had tools to cope with this, you know, very imperfectly. But you know, I’d be here before. 

Brian: Well, and I think that that’s so important to acknowledge. And if we if we are savvy as kind of a Christian community, I think we would, you know, press into this, which is what we’re doing now, which is what you’re doing very much with your with your work. But but actually to press in to say, OK, what? What are those tools? What what deeper wisdom have we learned from those whose lives have been shut down already? What, what do we learn from this disruption that can happen to us at any point we know that we kind of live our lives almost as if it were into a hoping that it won’t. But but actually, we, you know, we know that it could happen at any, at any moment. And you know, I think that sense of listening to those who have been there is is just so important, I try to do that more and more in terms of listening to the people who are, you know, walking through the valley of the shadow of death or who have survived some kind of terrible trauma and have faced into that and come through it. Perhaps they walk with a limp but they, they have some things that I don’t because they faced into it. And and that’s where I think we begin to cultivate wisdom, isn’t it not just wisdom for our own individual lives or what happens if I

suddenly get that awful diagnosis? But actually, collectively, how are we living in such a way that, that death is part of life, that illness or injury is part of it all, that, that, you know, the, the light and the dark meld and produces beautiful colours. And and I hope that enough of us are still staying within that initial shock of being shut down for the first time because collectively, I think it’s even though it was difficult, it’s, you know, there’s much to learn from it.

Gillian: And I wonder if we’ve got something to learn by understanding that what we’ve been through,  either individually or as a community is trauma. I was listening to podcast recently by the man who coined the term post-traumatic stress disorder,  psychologist whose name has gone out of my head. Now he said the people that were able to recover from  trauma and not get stuck with post-traumatic stress disorder were those who were able to somehow embody their story, embody the story of the trauma. And he studied at the time of the Vietnam War veterans, and those who remain traumatised were those who were stuck in the moment. Those who recovered were somehow able to meld the experience, the negative experiences who they are now. It changed them and they were able to accept that change and go on, and they lived without the same psychological impact of what they’ve been through. So I think the healing is in the storytelling, perhaps. And you know, and how we tell a story and maybe that will take time to emerge -it’s not an immediate thing perhaps. The storytelling must be part of the healing Christian healing, wouldn’t you say.

Brian: Well, I think it’s really interesting that you say that, I mean, one of the things that I’ve slightly struggled with, is how much do I tell other people about what what I’ve been going through  – because you don’t want to just be , you don’t want to be self pitiful. And you always want to honour the fact that there is always somebody who’s going through far worse than you as well. And yet, you know, part of the spiritual practice I’ve kind of discovered really, within my own kind of longer term, you know, chronic fatigue or whatever it is, is, is, that it’s crucial to find expression, to to give…not just to give expression to, but to find expression for what you are experiencing. So the finding expression for helps you to process –  whether that’s writing a journal or being, you know, being artistic or creative or speaking to others or whatever, but it then also enables other people to join that conversation. And so when I, you know, I had to think long and hard about…I do thought for the day on Radio four every now and again, and I had to think long and hard about whether it was appropriate for me to talk about my long COVID experience on that. But I felt that it was and I was encouraged by my producers to do so. And it was certainly the biggest, you know, in how many years I’ve been doing it, 17 years or something I’ve been doing Thought for the Day, it was the biggest response I’ve ever had from people – lots of people just saying it really, really, really helped or it gave me permission, or, you know, one lady said, I feel as though I’ve been heard for the first time in several years, which which made me really sad on one level. But, but on another level, to give expression to, to embody, somehow both for yourself and for the community is important. Whatever that, I mean, what does that look like? I guess that looks different for each of us, doesn’t it? I mean, I can, I can write and I can do bits and pieces, but I guess it looks different for each of us.

Gillian: I think it does look different for each of us but there’s something special, I think about telling a story and listening to a story – now there’s difference…you know, there’s listening and there’s listening, isn’t there? You know, am I really listening or actually thinking about what you’re having for dinner. But if you really listen to someone, you can connect. And it’s interesting  – we will link to your BBC Radio four Thought For the Day on this podcast so people can then click on that and listen to it, because I just listened to it before, we’re having this chat and I was moved to tears. Now that’s that’s not just because I’m a really emotional person. I think it’s also because you express something deep and it released something in me. And I was able to express some of the lockdown sadness and tears about my experience of lockdown or illness or whatever it might have been, it was real. And so it was a little bit more of my healing journey, able to hear a bit of yours. So I think when we share our stories and connecting with others and there’s an interesting sort-of discussion to have around neuropsychology as well, you know different bits your brain will fire when someone is really listening to you. There’s genuine pastoral ministry listening well to somebody can genuinely change their neurological makeup that will boost their immune system. So actually listening to each other, listen to these stories, connecting can can be a healing thing as well. And we’ve got such opportunity, I think, to tell our stories. But this thing is…what’s that Shakespeare thing, the rub is you’re then you’re not in control of the story, are you? You can’t predict how people are going to react to it. And I wonder if you’ve had experiences of negative reaction. I certainly have as a cancer survivor telling, my husband said that I should stop telling my story quite so much, but I talk about it all the time, it can upset people, it can make people angry. It can make people feel that they want some kind of magical power that you have as a survivor, for themselves. So you’re not really in charge of what happens when the story is let out. And that can be scary, I think. 

Brian: I think it can be, and I think it challenges people’s, you know, I’m…I’m sure because, because you live and move and have your being within this area, you’re exposed to a lot more nuanced thinking than, than a lot of people out there. But I think illness challenges people’s perception of healing, doesn’t it? And am the nature of God. And I think that, you know, I’ve definitely experienced a few people who are wonderful, who are lovely, but who have felt, you know, I’ve heard the word ‘frustrated’ with God, angry with God, ‘I’ve been shouting at God on your behalf’. And I’m not trying to, you know, for a moment, say, I’m kind of some saint because I haven’t felt angry or frustrated with God. But I think that, but it is interesting to notice, notice the reactions that you can just provoke just by kind of not being well, I guess. And I think part of, you know, part of the story that I’ve tried to tell is to say, look actually it, it really is all right. I’m not angry with God. And that doesn’t mean to say that I’m sort of just surrendering to just being ill for however long I need to be. I don’t. I want to be well. I want to be running, I want to be walking, I want to be working and leading retreats and all of that. But I’m aware that actually wishing it was different at this moment, it’s just going to increase my suffering with it. It is just going to make me feel more more frustrated. If I can relax my shoulders and just kind of seek to embrace what’s here, then that – I’ve felt that might be part of my own gift to other people as I’m just reflecting quietly and gently out loud about what it means to be, you know, not well physically and to encourage people that actually maybe God’s role within this wasn’t to be some genie who’s going to click his fingers and make me better. But maybe, just maybe there is a deeper richness to be discovered here. And I know there is because I’ve seen, I’ve read the testimony and the stories of people, coming back to the stories, of people who have faced into all sorts of difficult things and found something richer there. And it’s through their inspiration that I want to have the courage, not just to hope that my journey of healing kind of progresses in a linear way towards better physicality. But at the same time, immediately, that I go on a journey of healing inwardly straight away, regardless of the outcome of my physicality. That takes me into a deeper and richer understanding of relationship with God through it.

Gillian: So I want to ask you one more question, and I’m only…I’m asking you, Brian, because you are an experienced and wise spiritual leader. I don’t generally ask this question of people, but I think you can handle it. OK, so I’m going to ask anyway, OK.

Brian: Aww go on then…

Gillian: I’m reading a book on, at the moment, it’s a theological book about the spiritual healing of fierce landscapes, i.e. going into nature to find healing. And the writer has put this theological book alongside the story of the death of his mother,  through a kind of cancer, but ultimately dementia. And he describes his mother’s journey, his mother’s healing journey towards death as the slow and courageous act of letting go. The slow and courageous act of letting go. So I wonder whether you, speaking personally or generally, you know, just for what you have taken from the year that’s gone past? Whether there is good stuff here to help us learn about our own journeys towards death. You know, as we go towards our ultimate healing with God, so much of our living is sort of railing against the dark, dark night, isn’t it? Which comes with its own psychological elephants in the room because we all know our lives going to end. And I wonder if there’s some gems in your experience that you might share with people who are listening. 

Brian: Yeah, I think it is, it is in that, it is in that letting go, isn’t it, that we are, we prepare ourselves, we are prepared for the final act of letting go. I remember reading that from a guy who Mike Riddell a long time ago, in this beautiful book called ‘The Sacred Journey’. And he said that every goodbye that we say is, is practice for the ultimate goodbye. And that can feel a bit morbid. But actually, that’s always stayed with me. Yeah, that is really, really, really good practice. And I am, I am intensely nostalgic myself so every time the school holidays end, every time you know, we say, you know, say goodbye to that particular season of my life, I think, Oh no – but actually it is all good practice. And and so I think just, just simply practicing letting go is one of the biggest things we can do spiritually to you , not only to prepare for that, that big moment whenever that may come, but also to live well within, within this particular present and to live through it well. And I think it is the inspiration of those people who, for instance, find joy within sorrow in their final days or weeks or months or whatever, and intentionally lean, lean into that and, and embrace where they’re at that give me the strength to think, well OK, whatever my circumstance today, even if it’s just that I’m feeling frustrated with a busy schedule, whatever it is, even if it’s that I’m sitting at a red light and I should have been somewhere five minutes ago, it’s just start to loosen my grip on that and just to practice relinquishing that in the moment and just being here and looking and and finding. I think, I think for me, you know, one small thing is just, just to find the beauty and the difference that my, you know, my life is different all of a sudden. And but there is goodness, there is beauty. There is joy. People have been amazing. There is so much love, you learn to receive kindness and it’s, it’s, it’s life is all about that, I think, isn’t it? It’s all it is all about preparing for that final, letting go and goodbye. But but bringing the goodness of that into the here and now living that kind of forward into now so that we’re not holding so tightly to everything, to our grudges, to our possessions, to our expectations of what life should be. We’re living in a soulful community where God is at the centre and we are loving each other and helping each other to let go as we go.

Gillian: Oh Brian I already want to listen to this podcast again, and we just recorded it. Such good stuff – I need to write this down, so when I’m on the school run next I don’t get frustrated because I’m trying to do everything too quickly. Thank you so much. 

So look as we come to the end of time together, I wonder, can we look ahead 2022 – how are you going to live more soulfully, how can we get involved with your work? 

Brian: Ah well, good question. I’m still so much in that liminal space of not knowing, that I’m kind of getting used to not quite knowing what’s going to be coming up. But I’m, I’m, I’m just really…for me, it is being really present to the rhythms and seasons and cycles of the year. So, you know, first of all, we’re kind of bracing ourselves for these cold, dark January days. Most of us hate them, but within that, there’s a real opportunity. February the second is Candlemass and that’s and that’s the date when the pre-Christian communities in the British Isles would celebrate that the light is lengthening, it is exactly halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. We celebrate Simeon, I believe, on Candlemass and his meeting of Jesus in the temple and Jesus being the light for the Gentiles. And so you’ve got this wonderful, rich kind of progression through the year. First, to Candlemass just taking it slow week by week, appreciating the dark, not ,not wishing it away, but just sitting within it and then from Candlemass through to the spring equinox. You get lent landing there, March the second, which is this gorgeous time of preparation of stripping away, right up to Easter and and so for me, I will be running my my my lent series. And if you haven’t as you come across that before, there’s more information on my website and you can sign up to, to, to get details nearer the time. But it’s a daily reflection that’s interactive, we cultivate a community. So I’ll be doing that and I’ll be doing some YouTube, YouTube Live events usually do them on Fridays for a little series, and we mentioned earlier that, that the potency of actually being able to connect online. And I’ve found that just a half hour reflection on YouTube, that’s live – where we gather and we say, well, look, we will light a candle, we’ll give thanks, we’ll reflect on just a small thing. And we’ll say the Lord’s Prayer together has has just helped to cultivate and embed a community of people around the world. It doesn’t have to be me, it might be somebody else. But actually, we can nurture these relationships when we can’t meet face to face. So I’ll be doing some of those as well. And and I really, really, really hope, I’ve been speaking to the guy who I wrote my book Soulful Nature with, Howard Green, who’s a botanist and what we’re hoping to do – if I’m feeling a bit more physically better and I’m sure I’m going in the right direction now – is to create a walking retreat all about trees. So, so, so, so, so he’s going to teach about the kind of different types of trees and what you’re seeing and what’s going on with the trees. And I’m going to be exploring the spirituality of our relationship with trees and what they can teach us. So watch this space for that. 

Gillian: Aw that sounds fantastic. We will link to all of that in the website of the podcast, both your lent series and your recent books. And listen, thank you, 

thank you so much for telling your story and being honest about your experience with COVID and everything else that hit you last year. I’m sure you’ll be a blessing to many people who are listening to this, who are struggling themselves with it. And, you know, no pressure, but I’m looking forward to the book, we need a book from you, Brian, on the, the the spiritual wisdom of healing from Long Covid, I think it speaks much more deeply, speaks not just to this, this condition that’s affecting so many people, but actually to the condition of just being alive and having to cope with the vagrancies, all the randomness of what we all have to go through. So thank you so much for giving us your time and sharing your story. We pray for your continued recovery from all that you’ve been through and thank you again. 

Brian: Thank you so much. It’s been an absolute pleasure. 

Gillian: So that was my conversation with Brian Draper. Thank you so much for listening. What did you think? You know, it was actually really moving to record and I think that’s because Brian right now is really on the edge of exploring his profound physical experiences with Long covid and appendicitis. He’s exploring what he’s been through and what’s happened to him. And so I certainly got the sense we were glimpsing some really profound spiritual truths around how to live well right now, given the unpredictability of our times. We would love to know what you thought of the podcast. Now this podcast is freely available to anyone on any platform, but we pick up the conversation in the GoHealth community. If you’re not already a member of the GoHealth community. Why not join us? It is only £4 a month. As a community member, you will get a monthly bundle of resources, there’s also free events, free courses and a really fantastic online community and we…I can’t say too much yet but we’ve got some really exciting stuff planned for 2022. It’s going to be a fantastic year in the GoHealth community. Our tagline is together we flourish and that’s what we try to do. Whether it’s through those resources, through the events, through the conversations, together we flourish for our good, but also for the good of the communities we live in, in the name of God. Anyway, it’s all on the website, GoHealth,org.uk, check it out and there’s links in the blurb to everything. And finally, please rate and subscribe to the podcast, why not share it, this episode, Brian’s episode – why don’t you share it on Facebook or Twitter? We want as many people as possible to hear what he said, to learn how to flourish through his words and his reflections. That would be amazing. And so in the meantime, God bless, let’s connect and keep the conversation going let’s keep learning to heal because together we flourish.