Humility and the sacred in One Health

The secularisation of education has led to the progressive sequestration of the sacred to its present ghetto on the margins of Western mental life. This means that that which is of the highest possible value is no longer central to our lives and we are left struggling to assert the dignity and respect owed to the living. Abraham Heschel asserted that mankind will not perish for want of information but only for want of appreciation. Such appreciative respect is the uncommon ground we need to somehow reclaim. To do so, however, requires us to learn to shift our source of attention and turn to the I-Thou, thereby exploring what Buber has described as genuine dialogue. This presentation will provide insights into these deep listening practices, drawing on learning from five years of teaching on the Innovative Approaches to Health Challenges Across Disciplines postgraduate course offered to students on the MSc in One Health. A fundamental starting point for this course is humility. This can be viewed as a suspending of judgement, a willingness to listen and a move into curiosity. It can involve a sacred pause, a slowing down and a modulation of the nervous system to allow us to become more receptive. In deepening this attentiveness, a shift from curiosity into wonder becomes possible. The I-Thou turn involves a shift in which we listen not from the head but from the heart. Cynicism is suspended and compassionate listening invited in. Such listening is predicated on humility and this presentation will therefore emphasise this as a starting point that allows us to recover the uncommon ground that is the field of possibility and where playfulness and hope for emergent futures can be co-created. This includes the possibility of re-sacralising our relationships with ourselves, each other and the more-than-human world.