Grave stones and kipper ties

At The Open University we pride ourselves on being at the forefront of developments in distance learning. In the early days, this meant late night television programmes with mad scientists wearing kipper ties – the hallmark of what our University stood for. Today it is about high profile prime time television series such as ‘Coast’, but it is also about using the online environment creatively to deliver course materials to students in the best possible ways.

As academics at The Open University, we can feel cut off from our student body, and students can find the faceless course materials a little impersonal – never knowing who really produced the things they are studying. One of the ways we can overcome this is to build on the OU’s history of audio-visual expertise, and many of our online courses now have embedded within them carefully crafted video presentations so students can meet the academics behind the scenes, learn about their research, and get a sense of that face-to-face learning they might enjoy at a more conventional university. Of course putting yourself in front of camera requires certain skills and competencies, and the confidence that you can ‘get it right’.

So staff at the OU are offered opportunities to go on intensive ‘media training’, where they can learn how to record a piece to camera. And this is why yesterday afternoon I found myself striding through a graveyard, chucking tarot cards over my shoulder and talking earnestly into the lens of a camera held by a cameraman backing away from me; both of us trying not to trip over fallen gravestones in the process.

When I mentioned to the production team that I was thinking of using tarot cards as a prop they had immediately jumped on the idea of using the graveyard as the location. I found myself feeling a little ambivalent however. I was talking about my research - and my research shows that people’s relationship with spirit, otherworldly entities and the deceased is not all about graveyards and churches. The message from my research is that, for some, the power of spirit is all around in everyday places, and not restricted to stereotypically ‘spooky’ sites or encounters.

Yet there’s no denying that gravestones and churchyards speak symbolically of spirit and otherworlds, and I have to admit that shooting on location next to the church was a lot more appealing than sitting behind a desk in the recording studio. So there I was, pacing slowly forwards through overgrown grass and grave plots, wondering whether I was going to get to the end of my piece-to-camera without falling over, wondering how we might be able to use a similar technique in our new course, and wondering of course if I was 'getting it right'… But I think above all else, I was wondering whether I should have worn a kipper tie for the day.

Is there anybody there...?

'In a secularised Protestant society such as Britain, the living and the dead are separated not only physically, but also conceptually, with transgressors across the boundary (ghosts, prayers for the dead, appearances of the dead to the bereaved, spiritualist mediums) treated with suspicion’ (Walter, 2004. 472).

As I near the end of this particular stage of this project I have been reflecting on the process of crossing Walter's 'boundary' for research purposes. For those who regularly weave a ‘spirit world’ into their everyday living, it becomes a vital component in the fabric of their social and material worlds. As a researcher, seeking, encountering and interpreting these worlds, I know they cannot be extracted from how we think and theorise about the visible and material worlds we think we know.

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However, when speaking to an audience of peers - with both feet firmly planted on one side of Walter's boundary - I have found it is not only the transgressors who are treated with suspicion, but also myself for choosing to present them as valid research concerns. And so I have had to tread carefully in terms of how I present what I have found, to whom and in what context.

I am now fully immersed in the process of 'disemmination'. Of course the main 'output' will be the book with Palgrave Macmillan, but under pressure as academics always are to publish widely and present far and wide, I have to find as many different dissemination roots as possible, to make the most of every bit of data and every insight gleened.

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In this process audiences are of course diverse - I have included some of my research findings in a chapter on living with ME in a book on long term conditions coming out with Sage in the Autumn. The audience here is likely to be students and practitioners wanting to develop insight into caring for and coping with long term conditions, for whom the 'spooky' angle touched upon in my chapter may be pushed aside in favour of concentrating on more concrete matters of the here and now. I have presented at the Vital Signs Conference on 'Engaging Research Imaginations' at Manchester University, here the audience were a receptive mix of social scientists and humanities scholars, unusually open (for academics!) to the idea that for some people spirit lives alongside them in everyday spaces and places. And today I have a piece in the latest issue of The Journal of Paranthropology, the readership of which I should imagine will have no concerns about the legitimacy of crossing Walter's boundary.

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And then there is my day job. Senior Lecturer in Health and Wellbeing, where I work with practitioners and scholars who stand in high regard in their field and whom I admire considerably. But it is slightly more difficult sometimes amongst them to explain precisely what the place is of transgressing the boundary for those who use spirit connections to enhance their health and wellbeing. This is how a conversation went with one of my colleagues over coffee one morning:

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Sara: I’m interviewing people about their experiences with angel healing.
Colleague: Angel healing? What’s that?
Sara: It’s where the healer channels energy from angels.
Colleague: But angels don’t exist do they, so how can they heal? That’s just ridiculous! [Nervous but self-righteous laughter]

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Now according to our code of ethics, researchers within The Open University have to: ‘Treat all those associated with their research with respect.’ So how should I have responded to my colleague? I know how she was expecting me to respond. She wanted me to laugh it off with her, to support her own unease and discomfort, and say of course angels don’t exist and it is all nonsense. But how would that be showing my research participants respect?

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So as I throw myself back over the boundary, and into the very earthly process of dissemination, I find myself grappling with precisely how far, when and with whom, I can push against that invisible divide. For social scientists to be interested in their place in the world, it really doesn't matter whether angels 'exist' or they don't. What matters is the effect that believing in angels can have on a person's world of experience. And that, as I have been finding out, can be immeasurable!

Harvest Festivals: What does it all mean?

The Corn King gives his life for the land

We toast his sacrifice with ale in our hand,

And eat the bread, from the harvest made,

As sheaves of corn to the earth are laid.

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It's the harvest festival at my kids' school today. And I sent them off, no not with loaves of bread or bags of fruit, not even the tin of baked beans or bottle of stout that it used to be when I was a girl, but with a bag of loose change. For today when they learn about the annual celebration of what the land has given us through our sweat and toil, they won't be compiling food parcels for local people in need, but will be counting coppers to send to charity.

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Ok, so the end result might be the same - giving to help those who need it, and I don't object to that at all. But there are plenty of other opportunities for them to put pennies into buckets and boxes, or raise money for relief campaigns. What I wonder about is what the harvest festival is meant to signify. Isn't it about our relationship with the land? Wouldn't this be an ideal time for the school to discuss not just notions of 'Christian charity' (with a Pagan festival!), but also to raise kids' awareness of just how precious the land is for our survival. Rather than send the message out yet again that all that counts at the end of the day is hard cash.

ME Awareness Day: All in the mind?

Today is ME Awareness Day and people with ME everywhere (myself included!) are fighting to get wider recognition and understanding of this debilitating and often devastating condition.

As a strange coincidence I am also writing a chapter on ME for a forthcoming book on longterm conditions. For this chapter I'm particularly interested in finding people who use 'alternative' healing approaches for their ME, from the obvious homeopathy and accupuncture, to less conventional alternatives, such as crystal therapy or angel healing.

But what is interesting is that there seems to be quite a lot of animosity amongst ME sufferers towards any suggestion that such healing approaches might be of any benefit to them. It seems that because ME is already often dismissed as 'all in the mind' by some people, that many who are diagnosed with ME are then reluctant to subscribe to anything else which is seen as equally 'non-provable'.

Yet in my mind, does it matter if something has been scientifically validated if it exists or works in the lives of those it affects? By this I mean - I know I have ME and that it affects my life, regardless of how many scientists or medics might try and dismiss it as 'all in the mind'. As a student of Reiki I also know that when I receive or give myself Reiki healing it energises me and can ease pain. Now I have no idea either what causes my ME, or what it is that is happening when the Reiki relieves me. But I do know that for me, both have very real effects in my life, ragardless of their lack of scientific credibility.

Surely there must be more ME sufferers out there who would agree..?

Psychic Beliefs: do you share yours?

Let me introduce to you my great grandmother - who was a practicing spiritualist medium at a time when she could still have been convicted under the 1735 Witchcraft Act. Police officers would regularly attend her seances undercover, trying to prove she was up to no good. Unfortunately for them, her guides would always draw her attention to the fact that there was 'someone with big feet' in the room who shouldn't be - and she would calmly welcome 'the police officer amongst us' and scare the living daylights out of them!

Today Alan Power is going to court to claim that his psychic beliefs led to his sacking from the police. Alan is using rules designed to prevent religious discrimination in the workplace. His former employers are claiming his beliefs did not amount to a 'religious conviction' - despite Alan having been a member of the Spiritualist Church for 30 years. As the Spiritualist Church is one of only two legally recognised religions in Britain today, my feeling is that Alan has a point. Good luck to him.

The police regularly use psychic investigators to try and gain insight into problematic cases, but appear to prefer to keep this aspect of their work out of the public eye. In 2006 apparently 28 police forces denied using psychics at all - which still leaves many more who either do, or are unwilling to commit either way.

Given Alan Power's experience such silence is understandable. And I'm sure he is far from alone in facing discrimination in the workforce because of his spiritualist beliefs - namely, that there is life after death and it is possible to communicate with the dead. After all, wasn't there some other famous man who was meant to have returned from the dead and communicated with his people..? And I'm not sure any employer could get away with sacking someone for believing in Jesus; even in this secular age.

Divine guidance? Angels, tooth fairies and what we can 'know'

"Do we really know anything and, if so, what?

And how do we know it?

And how do we know that we know it?

And how do we know that we know that we know it?"

(Jones and Wilson (1987) An Incomplete Education. Page 302).

In a recent posting on the website of The Telegraph Christopher Howse reported on the possible presence of angels amongst us. Suggesting 38 per cent of Britons believe in angels he said ‘a university lecturer’ had criticised parents for dismissing their children’s reports of angel sightings.

Howse doesn’t say who that university lecturer is, but his article raises interesting questions and provoked heated comments from readers. These ranged from numerous reported angel sightings by both adults and children, to a fair number of postings expressing a huge degree of animosity, from those who hadn’t seen angels and knew they never would.

What is it that makes people so angry about the possibility of there being things we are yet to fully understand?

And even if angels don’t ‘exist’ (whatever that might mean), for those who believe they exist they have a very real impact on their lives.

One irate commentator said there has never been any tangible evidence of anything like Angels, Father Christmas or God. I’m guessing he would probably include the tooth fairy in that list. Yet thousands of lucky children have tangible evidence of the tooth fairy’s existence. They believe that if they put a tooth under their pillow at night the tooth fair will come and take it and replace it with a coin.

And thousands of children have their theory proved right by the very tangible evidence of a coin the next morning.

Who or what the tooth fairy may be is disputable, but their belief in the existence of a power which can manifest that coin is strong enough to bring that coin into being. The child who knows there is no tooth fairy refuses to put the tooth under their pillow. And hey presto they too have their proof of its non-existence because they don’t receive a coin.

If we believe there are people – or angels – out there who are there to generate good and positive experiences in our world, then chances are we will come across people and opportunities that generate those good experiences.

Whether or not there is ‘tangible evidence’ of the precise origin of that good experience seems somewhat irrelevant to those whose lives have benefited.

Spiritual spaces?

One of my research participants had an interesting experience recently. Upon trying to get his Tarot workshop advertised he was excluded from a particular publication on the grounds that it did not cover anything to do with 'spirituality'.

Upon a quick flick through said publication he came across an advertisement for a 'church walk'. He was informed by the editors that churches had not been seen as 'spiritual' and had therefore been included. Fairly ironic given the fact that they remain one of the most widespread physical expressions of spirituality in the British landscape.

My participant felt discriminated against.

I am sure many church goers would also be horrified to know their sacred spaces had been deemed non-spiritual.

What does consititute a spiritual space and can we distinguish between mainstream and minority spiritual interests in today's society?