The Ugly Duckling Company

The soul is the “deep” and “natural longing that we have to address those questions of purpose and meaning” in Bishop Martyn Snow’s mind. This definition of ‘soul’ in particular intrigues me, because I feel that everybody is searching for at least some level of truth in their lives. Snow’s statement implies that humanity’s search for truth, however great or small, is part of our souls and therefore not simply our genetic coding. Up to this point in the session, the main thing that had stuck with me was the talk of ‘parrots’ and ‘peacocks’. A ‘parrot’ was defined by Nigel (the programme facilitator) as “that voice on the shoulder”, the words that have stuck with us from points in the past, that impact us negatively. Conversely, the ‘peacocks’ are the voices of encouragement we remember, the words that give us confidence. I have to admit, I really struggled to remember too many of either on this occasion, yet one idea from the group did stick out: maybe we can be our own ‘parrots...

Every eye in the room is glued to the little pink head. The baby can barely keep its eyes open, but it pokes out its tongue, time after time. The screaming of another child out of shot deters no-one: we’re all transfixed. The clip ends. It was at the start that the Dad, out of shot, had explained he would poke his tongue out at his child and observe the response. The baby was only an hour old. Facilitator Nigel now explains that we’re hardwired to respond to other people, even from such a young age, which is why the baby responded as it did. As we move on, we’re set an exercise: work in a group of five so that we have a square each, all the same size. The one catch: we’re not allowed to communicate. I found this to be a generally enjoyable task: everybody in my own group moved their own pieces into the centre where we constructed them together. In no time at all, we were pulling them back towards us, all perfectly the same size. I noted that one person took charge from the star...

The word ‘kindness’ had already been floated around before we all came into tonight’s meeting: being mentioned quite a lot in relation to the idea of gratitude. We jumped straight into it this week: dividing into groups to put together an image of what a happy person might look like. One of the symbols used in all three images was the heart; often associated with the idea of love. There was a general mutual agreement that kind people were generally loving and welcoming. One of the ideas that struck me most, however, was the image of a human face made up of fragments of different kinds of people: to show that anyone can be kind. Kindness is not represented by someone’s appearance, rather it is determined by how they behave. Perhaps that should go without saying, but the image represented that anybody can be kind. Conversely, someone suggested later on that actually kind people have an attractive quality about them: they’re instantly noticeable and tend to “fill up the room.” I w...