Welcome to the Loved Called Gifted podcast. This is your place to come for musings about spirituality, identity and purpose. I'm your host, Catherine Cowell.

C: So I'm delighted for this episode of the podcast to be joined by Sue Saunders. Thank you ever so much Sue.

S: Thank you for inviting me.

C: Do you want to just tell us a bit about yourself and where in the world you are?

S: Sure, I'm currently in Dublin, I live in Dublin and I am retired from my career and I am now completing a PhD piece of research with Waterford University which is known as the South East Technical University.

C: Brilliant. Am I allowed to ask what you did before you retired?

S: Sure, sure. I had many different careers, mostly in either IT which was my original qualification and then in later years I trained as a psychotherapist so I did psychotherapy practice and I retired from that in 23 and not really being interested in playing golf or bridge or anything like that I thought it would be interesting to do a masters in applied spirituality and that's how I got into doing what I'm doing at the moment.

C: So where in your life did kind of spirituality begin to emerge for you?

S: That's an interesting question. I was brought up, I live in Ireland, I was brought up as a Catholic and I suppose in my late teens, early 20s I departed from that church and it was when my youngest son was born in my early 30s that I began to really feel I was looking for something. I was looking for something in my own life.

Probably it was precipitated by his birth and the idea that I wanted something for him, so I began to search for an alternative and where I ended up and where I felt really at home is I went to a local Quaker meeting.
When I experienced sitting in silence in that Quaker meeting I really felt I'd come home so that probably he's almost 40 now so that was almost 40 years ago now, and he became a Quaker with me. He is also a Quaker and I have been with the Religious Society of Friends which is the official title of the group since then and more recently I would say in the last 15-20 years I've played a much more active part. I got involved in the Peace Committee and I took up the role of clerk of the meeting and elder and so I've been much more involved recently.

So I suppose emerging out of the whole idea of psychotherapy I think, out of the inner search and the reflection and the contemplation that happens with psychotherapy I think that led me on to just to investigate the whole area of spirituality.
So I think the two combined, the actual practice of sitting in silence and my psychotherapy career combined to bring me to this point I think.

C: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So can you remember what it was about the birth of your son that caused this sort of emerging spiritual search?

S: Well I have two older sons and they were 11 and 14 when my youngest son was born so at that point we had been through what school do we send them to and do we send them to a religious school and things like that, and by the time I came to my youngest son I think I was very aware that this was the last child I was going to have, and I think the experience of being confused particularly in this country where at the time not so much now but at the time there was a requirement to declare yourself either a Catholic or a Protestant or a Jew or something else most of the schools at the time were religious based in some way. And I think out of that experience and out of trying to choose an inclusive school that began to include all religions I think it began out of that and I'm not wanting to box him into a particular view.

At the time there was a movement within Ireland which was called Educate Together which has hugely grown since then that's where my older two sons were educated but then when they got to secondary school we were then again presented with the same problem, and I didn't want them to have the very punitive restrictive judgmental upbringing that I had in the Catholic Church here at the time, I think it's quite different now by the way.
So maybe that was it, it was kind of looking to how was I going to instill some kind of loving spirituality, this kind spirituality to, to this youngster so I think that was that was probably it actually.

C: Yes yeah and then you had that sense of coming home.

S: Very much so very much so I think it was the people it was the atmosphere and it was so inclusive and permissive it was welcoming of everyone. And I really appreciated that, and I really appreciated the history of the Quakers and how they've been at the forefront of so much social change and how progressive they've been. I was always really impressed by the fact that back in the 17th century women could speak in meeting imagine.

C: Yes yeah.

S: So yeah I felt it really fit me like a glove so yeah.

C: I'm wondering what sustained you in that space in that practice for sort of four decades is it the same things that got you there or are there other things that have also grown?

S: I would go back to the intertwining of my work as a psychotherapist along with my spirituality because they overlapped hugely. One of the phrases that would be very pertinent within the Quaker tradition is to see that of God within everyone and that was something I brought into my practice to try and see and hear and speak to that which was God in any client who came to me and I think that was actually really important so I began to bring both together and I think that then led me on.

I wanted to know more about spirituality and so when I retired I went okay how do I do that? I had completed a postgrad in Quakerism, completed that during Covid, and that really I think developed my thirst for knowing more about more religions and more contemporary spiritual writers and just my own spirituality.
That's what led me to explore through a masters because I felt that that was a very structured way of doing it but that works for me having that kind of scaffolding like going to meeting every Sunday works for me.
Left to my own devices I'm afraid I'm like any human being and I'll fall by the wayside. So I make a habit of I go to meeting every Sunday that's just what I do, and then that masters I just enrolled in it and that was what led me to my PhD research.

C: Yeah so tell us about your PhD research.

S: The research is investigating how contemplative practices can support climate change activists. The current research around climate change has identified that one of the things that's missing in our attempt to tackle our behaviour around climate change is that that change has to start from the inside and as you get that inner change it then can manifest as outward behaviour change.
Particularly Lund University in Sweden has been very involved in but a lot of the Nordic countries have been involved in looking at this idea of inner change for outer change inner work for outer change.
They have looked at well what were the skills and capabilities that are needed climate change activist leaders and NGO leaders and what they have come up with is the idea of inner development goals. Goals to develop our inner resources in order to achieve the outer change of sustainability.
They surveyed thousands of professionals to see well what were the skills and the capabilities that were needed. They came up with 23 different skills and those skills then were categorized into five different areas and those areas were:
1. Being: which was the your relationship to yourself your your ability to have an inner compass your self-awareness your integrity
2. Thinking: your ability to think clearly critically to be able to have some kind of awareness of complexity that type of thing. Then on to relating how you relate to other people and your ability to relate to other people those soft skills that are required
3. Empathy and appreciation and then
4. Collaboration: your ability to collaborate with others because we're not going to achieve any of these goals without collaborating with one another and then finally
5. Activism: and the skills of courage and perseverance etc to continue with activism. So those five areas being thinking relating collaborating and activism are the categories for the inner development goals. So my research is going to look at what contemplative practices can help develop those skills.

C: Brilliant yeah and how far into it are you at the moment?

S: It's a four-year PhD I'm about 18 months into it at this point in time.
I've completed a first draft of a literature review and the idea behind this this research is that we would hold two workshops six months apart whereby a group of climate change activists would participate in this workshop and then complete some diary studies for a month afterwards and then six months later another workshop with diary studies afterwards and then we can analyse the results of their diary studies.
So at the moment what I'm doing is I am planning a pilot of those workshops of which I'm going to run with some staff and students hopefully and so that I can iron out any difficulties that I'm having or anything that didn't work so well and what worked well so that I can hone it so that at the beginning of next year I can actually run those workshops.

C: You're going to use a particular sort of contemplative practice aren't you which was the thing that made me think oh it'd be really great if we could have a conversation so do you want to tell us about that?

S: Yeah in looking at the contemplative practices and the group of people that I'm going to be working with climate change activists who are obviously very concerned about our planet and about nature.
So connecting that with a concern around not wanting to exclude anyone by using a particular religious if you like contemplative practice. So I wanted to come up with some way that would include anyone of any faith so I was looking for a secular spirituality of some kind and my supervisor a wonderful woman Dr Bernadette Flannagan in Southeast Technical University came up with the concept of adapting Lectio Divina which is the old monastic tradition of reading texts and contemplating on it to use nature as a contemplative practice and adapt the four stages of Lectio Divina using that with nature and then referring to it as Natura Divina.
The idea that the contemplation of nature in different forms can really help develop a secular spirituality if you like.

So the practices I'm going to ask people to experiment with are three different types of practices.
One is a stillness practice whereby someone just spends time in stillness in nature. Now it doesn't necessarily mean meditation but they may just sit somewhere and just take in the sounds and the sights of nature that could be just looking out a window if the weather is so inclement that you couldn't go outside or listening to the sound of rain or wind but hopefully focusing on whatever natural occurrences are outside whether that's animals or plants or trees or insects. It doesn't really matter but doing it from a stillness point of view because some people really like that kind of concept of being still in reflection.
The other option that people will have is a movement maybe is walking in nature so that they're actually moving in nature and while doing so that again that they take in the sights and sounds of nature and see what they can if you like read from nature and learn from nature and what wisdom can they amass from nature. So that's the second one and
Then the third one is using creativity. That could be spending time in nature and bringing your phone and taking a photograph of something and maybe then contemplating on it or reflecting on why did that aspect of nature really speak to you whether that's a photograph or maybe recording a sound from nature. I know one time when I was walking on a beach I recorded the sound of the sea on my phone or it could be birdsong or it could be anything.

So three different areas stillness, movement and creativity. So that's the idea behind it is that the participants would be able to choose one of those and maybe one the first six months and then do another one another six months and see how they get on with it because everyone's different.
Some people are much more comfortable with doing something like painting an aspect of nature or of walking in nature or sitting in nature so that's the idea behind the research.

C: Brilliant and you said that you've adapted those phases that you might have if you were looking at a text. So if I was going to do one of these practices how would I take myself through that?

S: Okay so it goes down in four different areas. The idea of Lectio Divina has four different stages to it and the stages are the first one is read, Lectico, the second one is Meditatio which is reflect on what you read, the third one is then respond to it, Oratio and then Contemplatio is rest with it and rest with the word or the phrase.

What we're talking about is using those four stages so going out in nature and reading from the external word, reading what you see, what you hear, what you experience within your body to reflect on wisdom coming from nature, the learning coming from nature, whether that's the change in seasons or whether it's the resilience of weeds that constantly come up no matter how many times we pull them up so whether it's something like that.
And then it's respond by selecting a phrase or something so for myself I would select perseverance in that situation and then just rest with the whole idea of it.
So if I take that example of the weeds I mean weeds are those funny things that we don't want in our garden and they just keep coming up and there was a time when I used to feel irritated with the weeds that kept on coming up. Whereas now I think I just see them differently they're just another part of nature and what I can learn is that no matter how many times I try and pull them out by their roots they somehow or another manage to come back again and that I can take that learning of perseverance over and over and learn from that.
And it actually reminded me during the week of that old story I think it was Robert Burns and the spider you know where he actually watched the spider constantly make his web as it broke he made it again and that gave him wisdom.
So I think that we can learn hugely from nature from the seasons, from plants, from the beauty of nature, from the resilience of nature, the wisdom in nature. It's all there in nature if only we would allow ourselves the time and the energy to go out and actually get the wisdom and get the nurturance from nature because it does nurture us and all of the research now speaks about spending time within trees or by water and how this actually lowers blood pressure and you know helps us relax helps us deal with stress so it's all there.
So that's the idea behind it is to take that research, psychological research and old spiritual monastic traditions and bring them together in these workshops.

C: Yeah, yeah it does as you were saying it does absolutely open it up to anybody regardless of what their sort of theological position or their beliefs are.

S: Yeah absolutely and I think that that's what's really important is that it is inclusive. It's inclusive of all faiths and none. It's inclusive of all ages. Even though I'm focusing on climate change activists this is something that can be done with youngsters and with elderly people with people in different countries of different backgrounds so very inclusive.

My hope would be that assuming that this research does show positive results for individuals that this can then be used with other groups apart from climate change activists it could be used with any group that is experiencing overwhelm and you know despair and overload which so many people in the world at the moment are.

C: Yeah, yeah. So have you had a go at this? Is it something that you've been practicing yourself?

S: Well yes I had to I had to give it a go myself. Yes and I've noticed noticed it over the last 18 months how my appreciation of nature has grown hugely.
I've never been a great gardener or someone who is out growing vegetables or anything like that. I have noticed that my own appreciation my home view of nature even if it comes down to insects or flies in the room. I have more appreciation that they are also part of this planet, and rather than dividing nature up into good and bad like flowers are good and weeds are bad or flies are bad and I don't know dogs are good.
Rather than dividing up or making judgments about different parts of nature. We all have a part to play and seeing that interconnection that we all have with one another as humans but also with nature.
Even if it's down to how important it is that the trees emit oxygen that we use and we then emit carbon dioxide that they use that that interdependence is there all over nature. I think for me it really has increased my own appreciation of that. And I do view the other creatures on the planet differently than I would have before. That's not to say that I particularly enjoy having loads of flies in my house but I'd be much more inclined now to open the door and let them out or open a window and let them out rather than spraying them with fly killer which I might have done 10 years ago or 20 years ago. I might have got into these are bad things you have to get them out and destroy things. They all have their part to play.

C: They do. So there's been a kind of an increased sense of that connection.
It's interesting because actually it's very common for us to kind of go and sit in a garden or go for a walk. I'm wondering whether this process of actually having a structured means of contemplating nature has sort of shifted that for you and it sounds like it has.

S: Oh it has. It has. So for instance if I'm planning to go for a walk a year or two ago I might have chosen to go to the shop. Now I choose to go to a park much more. I'm far less interested in you know going and looking around the local village than I am actually spending time in any of the parks that are around or going by the sea and just really connecting in with the sea and the life that is being supported by the sea and that's surrounded by the seas.
And when I'm there when I'm in nature now I'm much more aware of the interconnectedness as I said before but also I look for what learning can I take. And as I said before perseverance is the one that's working for me now because I think it does definitely take perseverance to complete a PhD.

C: Yeah,

S: I'm learning to just constantly be determined and just get on with it and go with it because it's these peaks and troughs. So yeah, and even the seasons. In the past I was a great lover of sunshine I loved my sunshine and I get quite, I wouldn't say depressed but I would be sad to see the summer go. Whereas now I'm much more appreciative of each stage of the year and how each season brings so much to us and gives us again, you know the understanding that things will die off in the wintertime.
I remember thinking of dying off I remember somebody talking about how now when people are coming to the end of their life how our approach now is about trying to keep them alive as long as possible. And I had the image in my head of taking leaves from the tree that were falling down and gluing them back onto the tree because you're not allowed to die off. And I was going, well you know that's the natural way of things is that leaves die off and fall and they fall to the ground and,
Even the learning around winter, the importance of rest, which is one I need to learn hugely. To take time out and to rest and to just allow all of the learning to just process through you and that you don't always have to be active. That taking time out and resting is as important to allow the seeds of spring to begin to emerge again. So in every way, I mean everywhere you look within nature there's lessons to be learned that we can learn from. That because we've separated, we've separated ourselves from nature, be disconnected from ourselves and not take care of ourselves very well.
Because I think almost like we see ourselves, well I have seen myself like a machine that I could just keep going and keep producing and keep working rather than actually saying yeah I need time out, I need to learn from nature. And because I am part of nature, why do I think I'm different? I am part of nature, we all are.

C: Yes, it's been really multi-layered for you this journey hasn't it?

S: Oh absolutely. I mean I'm only really starting this journey but I think yes it has, it has been multi-layered. It's really changed my whole view of the natural world and it has given me huge resources that I can draw on.
And hopefully it will do the same and it will bring about that shift for the participants, the climate change activists that I'd be working with and with others as well it would be great to see that because I do see this as a gift that I've given myself at this late stage in my life.

C: Yes, yeah. So do you want to tell us again what those sort of four stages of Natura Divina are if somebody wanted to go and give it a go?

S: Sure, sure.
So the first one is 'lectico' which means read but the idea behind that is to go out and to read, to take in from nature, to read the natural world if you like. Just view it and what you see, whether it's a tree or whether it's a squirrel or a bird or just take in the view and read it if you like, read the nature.

The next one is to reflect on what's the wisdom or the learning that I can take from this and as I say the example I can give is like the weeds or a leaf falling off a tree in autumn. That's the natural order of things, that things die off or aspects of you die off or old ideas die off, that things die off in order for new things to emerge. So to reflect on it and then respond with a word or a phrase.
As I say the one that is currently with me is this idea of perseverance but it could be rebirth, it could be loss, you know, through autumn, it could be anything. But just to come up with a word or a phrase that you can hold with you as you continue your day.

C: Would that always be as concrete as a word?

S: No. Or it might just be like? It might be an image, it might be a sound, it might be just a feeling. For me I suppose maybe it's because I'm writing and I'm very, you know, involved in the words at the moment. But no, it's to take something with you to nurture you for the rest of the day or the week or whatever.

C: So I'm thinking of when the monks used to kind of sit and listen to a passage, I read once somewhere that they would sit as somebody repeated and repeated the passage until they'd kind of noticed the thing that they were going to take with them.

S: Okay. So that's the being with nature until you notice the thing that you're going to take with you, whatever that is, whether it's a word or a phrase or whether it's an idea or a sight or an image or whatever.
And then it's to rest with it and to have it with you, to rest with it, to rest with the whole idea and have that with you as you go through your day and just see how that changes. Your view of your day and of whatever's going on, whatever's going on.

C: Yeah.

S: Does that explain it?

C: Oh it does.

S: It's not really very complicated. It's a very simple process and different people would see it in a different way. Yeah.

C: Yes. But it's really helpful though, isn't it, to have a structure.

S: And I think the idea of the diary studies as part of the research would be that their diary studies might reflect their time in nature, however that was, whether that was the creative time or the stillness time or the movement time.
Their diary studies would reflect the experience but also how it nurtured them through that particular day or that particular week or whatever.

C: Yes, yes. As somebody who loves to journal, I would find it very difficult to do this without wanting to come back and scribble. But I can think of other people I know who might kind of keep that record by taking a photograph or as you say, having a recording of a sound or something. And then I can imagine sort of looking back over a number of weeks and you get a kind of a track of where I've been and what were the nuggets that I took with me a fortnight ago.

S: Yeah. A friend of mine who doesn't like to journal, what she does, she just sits under a tree and records what she's thinking into her phone. So she does it verbally and then I think of course you can have that transcribed into words and into a journal. That could also be the way.

So whatever works for people.

C: Yes, yeah. And as you were saying, some people might draw.

S: Yeah, everybody's different. Yeah.

C: Yeah.

S: So whatever works.

C: Yes. Really, really helpful Sue. Thank you. Thank you.
And it's really interesting to hear about your research and those inner development goals and that sense that whatever we're going to do, you need that internal development.

S: Yeah. And I think that's where if I think about this particular research, it is actually bringing together both the development within psychology and the development within spirituality, which has been my own journey.
But that idea of doing the inner work that you need to do in order to develop some of those abilities that without doing that inner work, it's sometimes very difficult to develop those skills that are needed now in the world more than ever, I think.
To be able to work with others, to collaborate with others or to relate to others or just actually to be aware of yourself and your own values and what motivates you.

Yeah. What are the values that are driving your growth?
And I have to say that my Quakerism has hugely influenced all of that because I would have experienced that kind of growth with the stillness practice of contemplation week in, week out over a long period of time.

Just really feeling that it fed me.

It nourished my soul, I suppose is the way I would put it. Yeah.

C: Yeah. So how do you feel that you have changed and grown as a result of your Quakerism and your Quaker practice?

S: Oh, if I think back to myself before I became a Quaker. Oh, I think I was a, I was quite a judgmental woman, young woman at the time.
I think I was, I see some of my grandchildren who are teenagers, you know, who know everything. And I look back and I see myself a bit like that. I knew everything. I knew what was right. I looked down on other people. When I say look down on other people, it's like seeing what their beliefs were, were wrong and were out of date or something like that.
Yeah, I was quite a judgmental individual. And I think through my practice as a Quaker, because a Quaker meeting is such a mixture of many, many different kinds of people who hold very different views maybe to my own. That when I first went, I'd react to somebody's beliefs that weren't the same as mine. I'd react. And then over time I began to, I began to become much more compassionate and much more tolerant, tolerant of other people's beliefs.

That's where they're at. That's their belief. And I've seen that manifest then in my life with my family. I'm much more tolerant of my family and the routes they've taken in their lives, which were very different than mine.

Much more tolerant, I think, of my friends and of my neighbours.

So I think the one big thing I would have noticed is that lack of judgment and understanding. I think that's the piece is understanding the complexity of problems.

I think as humans, we look for very simple solutions. We want this is going to be the solution to this problem, but seeing that the problems that we have are very complex. And as a result, they're going to require very complex solutions, many different solutions. Not one would fix everything.

So, yeah, I would hope I am more compassionate. I'm a kinder individual. I'm more tolerant and have more empathy for people.

C: Yeah. I'm sort of imagining a bit of a similarity between sitting in a Quaker meeting surrounded by people with very different views and just kind of being there in that space and contemplating that the nature of the nature of the human beings with whom you are sitting and your description of becoming more tolerant of the flies and the weeds.

S: Yes, I haven't seen that correlation at all. But that is very good. Not suggesting that there are flies and weeds in a Quaker meeting.

C: No, no, no, of course not.

S: Well, it is literally the spectrum of humans from all different shades and colours and views. And then, yeah, all the different aspects of nature. I haven't seen that. That's lovely. Thank you.

C: So how do you think your psychological health has benefited from your Quakerism?

S: Psychologically, I think it's really helped with my stress levels. And I have really learnt through sitting quietly for an hour, I've learnt how just staying still can really help to get perspective on problems, to think more clearly, to stand back and see a big picture.

So it's helped in that way. So, for instance, other people's backgrounds will still be influencing how they're being in the world, just as my background is still influencing how I am in the world. And that creates tolerance. It creates understanding and empathy for other people.

But as a result, I think my stress levels and my irritation, "You've got it wrong and I've got the right answer," all that irritation, all that stress, has really been assisted and helped by just taking time out and stepping back and just allowing whatever comes to come.

And just, I see it as helping me get into what I call my observing self, the watcher that can observe my own biases, my own reactions, my own responses, and question them and analyse them and reflect on them, which is all a part of psychological work, of reflecting on your own judgements. So, yes, one has assisted the other hugely.

C: Yes. And similarly, I'm imagining that your psychotherapy background has influenced your spirituality.

S: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So, again, with my psychotherapy practice, I mean, I would have met so many different people with different views and different backgrounds than mine, different problems, different perceptions of what's a difficulty.

The fact that they were down to their last million was a big problem. That, for me, was, I don't really see that as a problem. But for them, seeing that for them that was a problem, whereas someone else would have huge traumas in their lives and belittle it.
And again, beginning to see that everybody's perception really colours how they see the world and how we are on the inside really affects how we are on the outside, how we see the world. We don't see it as it is. We see it as we are.

C: Yes.

S: So, they both have helped in very different ways, but I think literally they both nurtured me. They both intertwined with one another. One would help in one way and the other would help in another way. And I would hope I'm a better human.

I'm a more tolerant human anyway as a result.

C: Yes. Which does get rid of quite a lot of potential stress, doesn't it?
Because in the judgement mode, you sort of have almost a responsibility to sort everybody else out.

S: Fix them?

C: Yes.

S: And show them the error of their ways.

C: Or at least you have a duty to be justifiably annoyed with them.

S: Exactly. Which is stressful when you're annoyed. You can just let people be.
Let whatever learning that they need to come to themselves, let it emerge in their own time.
It doesn't mean to say that you can't maybe come up with some kind of phrase or thought that they could reflect on. But you don't have to go around fixing, sorting people out.

C: Yes! That saves a lot of work, it strikes me.

S: It does. It saves all that rumination.

C: Ah, yes.

S: If you can let that go, you're going to sleep better, your body will be more relaxed, your whole system will be in a better physical shape as well.

C: Yes. Yeah. For my own curiosity, I'm wondering what made you choose climate activists in particular?

S: Well, when you look at a cohort of people who are probably more despairing than any of the rest of us, I think the climate activists have just such a difficult job to do. They are doing their best to get the rest of us to see what's actually happening with the planet and we don't want to see it.
And people tend to fall into either complete despair on one end or just ignore the problem and just denial on the other end.
And really our place is in the middle of hope that there is something we can do.
It's not to fall into despair and it's not to fall into denial which is what tends to happen to humans because it's such a big problem. And that gap that goes between the despair and the denial is to somehow or another be able to stand in the middle and hold on to a sense of hope, which is one of those inner development, cold skills, optimism of some kind and to see, well, what can I do?
What can I do with this complete intractable problem that seems to be there?
And it's getting worse with changes in the political arena. It's getting worse.

And it is probably the biggest problem apart from wars which we've always had. But as a problem that the survival of the planet and the survival of humans on the planet is probably the biggest problem that we're facing at the moment. So they have a big job to do.

And I just think that as a cohort of people, they're a good grouping to see, can this help them? Can this nurture them? Can this help them stay in that gap in the middle between the despair and the denial?

C: Wonderful. I'm wondering, Sue, if it feels like there might be other things that you have not said that you would like to say.

S: I'd again acknowledge the assistance that I've got from the university in doing this research, particularly from Dr Bernadette Flanagan, who has been my primary supervisor, but also from my other supervisors, Dr Dean MacDonald and Dr Barrie-Carley, and the support I've got from the university. They have been really supportive. All the individuals within the university, helpful and supportive.
So it's certainly made the task easier and more enjoyable, knowing I have that support behind me.

C: Yes. Yeah. The other question, which is just sitting with me. So I wonder how your image of the divine has shifted over the years, if you have one.

S: Well, my image of the divine has never really been the old man up in the cloud with the beard, not since I was a young child when that's what was presented to me.

How has it shifted? I think what's shifted, I would have focused more on the divine within each one of us at one point. So that concept of speaking to that which is God and someone else. So the idea that we all have the divine within us.
And I think now it's shifted in that not only is it within people, but it's within every living being, every living thing on the planet.
The planet itself has the divine within it. So in that way, it's expanded. It's expanded to such an extent that, you know, I mean, if you saw me, I do things, silly things like talk to the plants, talk to them, say, oh, I'm sorry, I haven't watered you here, I have some water.

So it has expanded out to all living things and to the intelligence within all living things that all life has it. I think that's possibly how my sense of the divine has changed.

C: Yes. And it sounds as if coming along with that is a sense of increased relationship between yourself and all things.

S: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Feeling I'm part of nature rather than I'm here and nature's over there. I'm part of it.
We're all made from the same chemicals. So we're all made from the stars, really. We're all made from the universe. So, you know, that kind of sense of.
It's not just humans with human consciousness, it is much more than that, which has been delightful, actually. It has been a great pleasure to experience that.

C: Yeah. Sue Saunders, thank you very much. That's been a really wonderful conversation.

S: You're very welcome. And thank you for inviting me on your podcast. Sometimes in speaking things out, it actually helps clarify your own thoughts. So it has done that for me. So it's been a gift for me, too. So thank you.

C: You're welcome.

[Music] Hope you enjoyed this episode of the Loved Called Gifted podcast. If you'd like to get in touch, you can email lovedcalledgifted@gmail.com. You can find a transcript of this podcast at lovedcalledgifted.com. And that's also the place to go if you're interested in the Loved Called Gifted course, or if you'd like to find out about spiritual direction or coaching. Thank you for listening. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]