A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUALITY

January 2020

I recently read a book entitled ‘The Art of Rest’ by Claudia Hammond in which she writes about a global survey, ‘The Rest Test’, completed by 18,000 people across 135 countries in which they were asked to name the three activities they find most restful. They were accessed through two BBC Radio shows, one on Radio 4 and the other on the World Service. Rest clearly means different things to different people, and I think the survey left people to define it as they would, but respondents who said that they felt fully rested had well-being scores twice as high as those who said that they needed more rest. So, however you define it, rest appears to be good for us.  

Two things in the survey stood out for Hammond. First, “the top 10 activities in the list are all often done alone, as if we need to escape from people in order to rest”. Secondly, many of the activities named “bring about some kind of change in our awareness, we adjust our focus & our chattering minds begin to quieten”. 

The top 10, with the % of people choosing the activity as 1 of their 3 choices is:

1          Reading.                                              Almost 60%

2          Being in the natural environment.    Just over 50%

3          Spending time alone                          Just over 50%

4          Listening to Music                              Just over 40%

5          Doing nothing in particular                40%

6          Walking                                               Just under 40%

7          Having a bath or shower                    Just under 40%

8          Daydreaming                                       Just under 40%

9          Watching tv                                         Just over 35%

10        Meditating or practising mindfulness            Just over 20%

I am struck by how much the top 10, with exception of No 9, mirror the answers people give as to what they’d do and where they’d go if they needed to pray but couldn’t use words or enter a religious building.  

I wonder if by ‘rest’ people are alluding to what the Judeo-Christian tradition would refer to as ‘.Sabbath’ time ?   I wonder if people often choose to spend this time alone, because they are seeking the Divine, the Other, although again they probably wouldn’t consciously use that language ?  I wonder if their change in awareness, adjusting of focus, and quietening of their chattering minds is much different from Sister Wendy might have called contemplative prayer.

If there is some truth in these reflections, then there is a lot more praying going on than we realise: God is more graciously active in peoples’ lives than we could have dreamt.