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5 Questions for Tim Stead
After the phenomenal success of his book Mindfulness and Christian Spirituality, Tim Stead follows up with See Love Be. We chatted to him about his new book.
1. After the phenomenal success of your book Mindfulness and Christian Spirituality, what inspired you to write See Love Be?
I think the first suggestion came when my editor, Alison Barr and Mark Williams who wrote the forward for the first book were chatting at my book launch party. Both seemed to think that a more practical follow up book could be really valuable. This was the first aspect.
The second emerged when I started putting some ideas together and found myself a little uninspired by re-working the same sort of ideas simply for a practical handbook. By this time I had been mixing a good deal with people who were engaging with mindfulness and was finding a good many who were interested in the idea of spirituality but who found formal religion and theological concepts a turn off. So I began to wonder what spirituality might mean to these people and whether I could write something which was rooted in mindfulness wisdom but which opened out to a more generic understanding of spirituality – something which linked with some of the great spiritual traditions but was not driven or restricted by them. This idea really inspired me and everything seemed to flow from there.
2. You teach these practices as a mindfulness teacher – how have you seen it help your students?
I teach in a number of different contexts. I teach a course which is specifically geared towards supporting those who suffer from long term depression, anxiety and other mental health issues. For some of these mindfulness has been life transforming – some coming off medication for the first time in a decade, others gaining new and revelatory insights into their condition and how to manage it. But I also teach in non-clinical settings where participants have found that mindfulness has been a key way of helping them to manage stress or simply to better care for themselves in their intense and busy lives.
For those who come interested in prayer and spirituality, though, there seems to be a never-ending array of insights which emerge. Many are theological connections which people make for themselves but perhaps more important is the sense of space people find emerging in their spiritual lives through this kind of practice. Whatever kind of prayer people engage in, mindfulness practice leads people to an actual experience which they can then take into their own prayer lives.
The most profound feed-back form response I have had is that ‘mindfulness has helped me to see that I have more choices’. Mmmm … that seems worth the effort.
3. What do you hope readers will take away from See Love Be?
It is a practical book and so I hope it will be a very practical way of helping people who are interested in developing a spiritual aspect to their lives to do just that.
But I hope too that it will contribute to an understanding of what we might think spirituality actually is and what might be some of the underlying themes which unite all the spiritual traditions. Perhaps even it might be a book which enables people from different spiritual traditions to come together.
4. What was your favourite part of writing the book?
The reflections at the beginning of each main chapter were most energising for me as this was the really creative bit.
But I particularly loved the two sections (beginning and end) where I relate mindfulness to the experience of simply wandering round the beautiful but busy bay near where I was writing. Linking mindfulness and spirituality with a very ordinary daily activity felt particularly significant.
5. What advice would you give anyone who would like to write about mindfulness?
Write only out of your own experience. Let mindfulness practice seep into your very being – experience it, struggle with it, give up on it, come back to it, lose and find faith in it, experience all the things that very ordinary people (your readers) will experience and let that be your starting point. Dream of what might be, certainly, but never lose touch with what you know is true in practice.
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