Fully Alive – Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times

A few readers will have heard Elizabeth speak about her life and this book on our webinar platform and at our day about the future of humanity. She brings a searing honesty and passion to bear on spiritual questing in our time, reminding us of the riches of the Christian tradition in which she herself lives, also in intentional community. She asks how we can live a meaningful and fulfilling life, becoming the kind of person that the world needs. Our sense of disorientation was shared by Bede Griffiths in the 1920s and Thomas Merton in the 1930s. Being fully alive is a search for depth, roots, connection, luminosity and spiritual core strength.

Elizabeth recasts sin, using a phrase from Francis Spufford – as the human capacity to fuck things up, something we can all recognise in ourselves. If, as Martin Buber suggested, all living is meeting, then sin works against connection; she argues that in excising sin, we may have abandoned forgiveness. She frames the rest of the book around the seven deadly sins, each with its own transformative path:

• Wrath – from polarisation to peacemaking

• Avarice – from suffocation to gratitude and generosity

• Acedia – from distraction to attention

• Envy – from status anxiety to belovedness

• Gluttony – from numbing to ecstasy

• Lust – from objectification to sexual humanism

• Pride – from individualism to community

There are many themes that one could highlight. Among them, a discussion of eulogy virtues as the imprint we leave on others; the importance of rhythm and protected time for prayer and contemplation exemplified in the Rule of St Benedict; the need for real rest as opposed to passive leisure consumption; the tempting varieties of addiction; the hollow experience of sex without connection and consent, especially given its inherent vulnerability; the decline of commitment as well as connection – this is required in both long-term relationships and community, and is an essential component of stability, inner and outer. Community is a real school of life – even a covenant - not only in terms of moving beyond individualism, but also from pride to love. Elizabeth quotes Byung-Chul Han as saying that ‘What we need most are temporal structures that stabilise life… stability comes over long stretches of time: faithfulness, bonds, integrity, commitment, promises, trust. These are the social practices that hold a community together. They all have a ritual character.’ (p. 221) One could add that they are also components of civic virtue so precipitously in decline and in need of recovery. The book as a whole is a rewarding personal journey towards becoming more fully alive and human.