Spirituality Shopper
First shown on Channel 4 in June 2005
Michaela has lots of friends and a rewarding job; Karen's life is overburdened and chaotic; Charlie feels he has lost everything that mattered to him. All three feel that something is missing from their lives. Christian athlete Jonathan Edwards offers each of them the chance to sample four practices from different religions. What will they learn from their spiritual shopping trips? David Rosenberg reports
In modern urban life it is easy to believe that happiness is just a shopping trip away. New clothes, a new hairstyle, a night out at a restaurant with friends. The only problem is, shopping trip solutions don’t last. A week later, a month later, you need a new fix.
People with well-paid and challenging jobs, lots of friends, and material comforts, can still feel an inner emptiness, a sense that their life doesn’t have real meaning. You may have lots of excitement but it can be like a rollercoaster that keeps coming back to its starting place; it's moving fast, but isn’t really going anywhere.
A sense of belonging
Channel 4's three-part series, Spirituality Shopper, addresses the idea that, while our attachment to the formal trappings of religion are weakening, our yearning for spiritual fulfilment is growing. Though we may not want to spend our time in a weekly religious service, intoning words dreamt up in a time and place we can’t really imagine, we are attracted to the sense of community, of attachment to something larger that has a deeper purpose.
Religion struggles in an age of intellectual enlightenment. Every day, science unlocks new secrets that challenge long-held religious certainties, and it seems irrational to develop a new-found faith in ancient 'wisdom'. Yet people's continued attachment to religious ideas suggests that religion offers its followers something more powerful than just successful marketing by Priests, Rabbis & Mullahs plc.
Off the shelf
Former Olympic medallist and devout Christian, Jonathan Edwards, who presents this series, believes that religion can fill a 21st century spiritual gap, even for non-believers. Not the religion of blind faith, where you are suddenly asked to suspend rational thought and believe in a grand design by one supernatural being or another, but rather an immersion in religious practices.
You don’t have to go on a long pilgrimage to find the truth you seek. Britain today is home to many peoples and many faiths, and their products are available on our city streets. And if you can shop around and choose from 20 different washing powders why can’t you pick ‘n’ mix your religious practices too?
Will Michaela's live have new meaning?
Jonathan Edwards' first customer is 29 year old, Michaela Newton-Wright, a media account manager for an advertising corporation. Her life is constantly busy, full of routines and activity, exciting but, she feels, devoid of meaning. She rarely has time to be calm and reflective, to put her work worries to one side, switch off and relax. When she does wind down it is through drinking with a regular bunch of friends. Her friendships are enjoyable but they don't bring her a deeper sense of human engagement.
Samples to try
Edwards offers her a set of practices to try over a period of a month, which he believes will bring a profound spiritual change to her life. He starts by introducing her to the Buddhist practice of meditation to provide her with inner calmness and the opportunity for reflection. Simple and safe to do in your own home, a few minutes in the morning could provide a different start to her day.
A more dizzying experience for the uninitiated is Sufi whirling, which he proposes for relaxation and unwinding. This branch of Islam developed a devotional dancing practice leading towards ecstasy. The idea is that as you whirl you unclutter your head of your everyday worries and home in on devotional messages.
For a deeper, more meaningful engagement with friends and the wider community, Edwards introduces her to Christian Lent and Jewish Shabbat. The Lent practice of giving something up forces Michaela to learn more about herself and to distinguish more clearly between her needs and her desires. She is persuaded to give up her vain and ungodly practice of straightening her hair and to walk and think instead of routinely jumping on a bus.
Her time which is so cluttered with work and social arrangements is now eaten into with a regular commitment: the church has arranged for her to support isolated individuals in the community. And her regular Friday night drink with her mates is replaced with something more demanding – a Jewish Sabbath meal, which provides food for thought as well as for the stomach. Spirituality Shopper follows her through the month and examines whether these changes in her life will have a lasting impact.
Can Karen find calm?
Brought up in a Jewish family, Karen Mercer has drifted from her religious roots. She shares her life with partner Gunther, 2-year-old Joshua and two large dogs. Present in spirit but not in person is Zamira, the daughter Karen miscarried. Perhaps it is the loss of baby rather than her hectic life that motivates Karen’s soulsearching. The miscarriage rocked any vestiges of her belief in a benign supernatural force.
Karen is the family breadwinner, and carries the burden of holding down two jobs. Gunther may be a ‘househusband’, but it is Karen who cleans the house before work, feeds the children and carries the shopping upstairs at the end of the day. Gunther manages not to let Josh’s crying disturb him when he’s busy on the computer – an objective outsider might think that in this household it is not just Karen who needs to change.
Nevertheless, she is keen to try the practices that Edwards has prescribed to bring calmness to her life. She also wants to rekindle her belief, to fill the spiritual vacuum left by her miscarriage. He starts with two practices to relax her mind and body: a visit to a Carmelite centre where she is handed the essential tools of Christian meditation – a story and a candle. A more physically demanding experience follows at a Hare Krishna temple, where she learns the moves of Hindu yoga.
One of Karen’s jobs is with a children’s puppet theatre, so Edwards finds a practice that combines her creative energy and desire to perform. But he wants her to do this in a communal context so she can gain spiritual nourishment from participating with others. He introduces her to gospel singing.
Doing with others, though, is not the same as doing for others. Edwards wants to convince Karen that giving to people beyond her immediate family will provide her with a sense of community. Once a week she works in the communal kitchen of a Sikh gurdwara, where needy people are given free food. She doesn’t relish the idea of adding more cooking and cleaning to her life but Edwards believes she will gain a new outlook from selflessly serving a community.
Edwards seems to be adding further commitments to Karen’s calendar but perhaps it will force her to question her priorities, if not those of her partner.
Will Charlie emerge from depression?
Two years ago Charlie Coughlan, a 42-year-old telecommunications manager, was a happily married father of two living in a new house and the proud owner of a Mercedes. Then his marriage ended and his father died soon afterwards. He feels he has lost almost everything. He lives alone and can't find a reason to get out of bed. Diagnosed with clinical depression, he hasn't been to work or seen friends socially for several months.
His withdrawal from life seems to typify the joke about how many psychiatrists it takes to change a light bulb. Well, first the bulb has to want to change… Charlie’s bulb is switched off. He is in a deep rut and doesn't want to emerge. Even his beloved Mercedes affords him little pleasure as he has become housebound. His self-confidence has taken a terrible blow and he has lost any emotional engagement with the world.
Edwards presents him with spiritual practices that will engage him physically as well as mentally and emotionally. The ancient Taoist practice of Tai Chi provides him with a set of daily exercises which are meant to maximise his energy.
A practice Charlie finds less alien is drumming. Formerly a guitarist in a band, he recognises the collective energy gained from making music with others. But this drumming is organised through a pagan group for whom it is not so much a means of developing musically as a tool for self-awareness. Losing yourself in the repetitive rhythms relaxes the mind enough for you to ask questions of your inner self and seek solutions.
Edwards believes Charlie has been shying away from asking the big questions about his life: how he has landed up where he is now, and how he might determine his future. He introduces Charlie to the Quaker practice of silent contemplation. Sitting in silence facing your demons in the presence of others is undoubtedly different from wallowing in self-pity at home alone.
Charlie’s life lacks any routine. Days can pass when he barely emerges from sleep. Edwards turns to Islam to provide the God of structure. Muslims are required to pray five times a day. An imam introduces Charlie to the rituals, routines and movements of Islamic prayer without requiring him to submit to a new belief system.
Early in the programme Charlie places himself somewhere between atheist and agnostic. Edwards doesn’t challenge that with new belief systems but promises a spiritual journey back to engaging with life. But is it a spiritual journey or just a set of strategies for getting up and out of the house?
But is it religious?
The argument for finding space in our busy lives for more reflective and meaningful activities, and locating the difference between quantity and quality in our existence is convincing. Whether these life changes need to be bought from a religious shop is more questionable. Secular commitments, such as joining a book club, taking up a musical instrument or mountaineering, joining an art class, or blocking time to go to a play or a concert every month seem just as likely to succeed in making life more fulfilling.
There is something ironic about the fact that Edwards' first customer works in advertising, since it is our advertising-saturated world that presents us with so many false gods promising a quick fix for happiness and fulfilment. An old Armenian proverb says: 'He’s looking for the donkey while sitting on it.' Maybe when Michaela stops whirling she will see the donkey.
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