Seeing the light

ONE of the first tasks the new priest-in-charge of St John the Baptist Church faced was to clear the churchyard of the heavy drinkers and drug takers who were making a nuisance of themselves.

What most of them won’t have realised was that the vicar performing the clean-up in this Newcastle city centre parish was a former drop-out, who once had a serious drink problem and had also been a regular drug user himself.

The irony wasn’t lost on Rev Dr Nicholas Buxton:  “When I do engage with people drinking in the streets I do think, there but for the grace of God go I, and anybody.

“All of these people had backgrounds before they ended up in this position. Some are too far gone to be helped, and that is really tragic. I was lucky I was not so far down, I could climb out again.”

With long hair tied back in a ponytail and wearing an earring, Buxton, 48, doesn’t look like a typical Church of England clergyman. And his approach isn’t always conventional.

For a start, he hosts free monthly meditation sessions, something many wouldn’t normally associate with the Church of England but which he sees as a form of prayer and contemplation.

“Prayer isn’t just people asking a higher power to do something for them, it’s also about connecting with the deeper reality of what we are, and about making our relationships, with the world as well as each other, more harmonious and fruitful.

His meditation sessions grew out of his work with a charity helping people with addiction problems but have turned out to have much wider appeal. Buxton, who has also written a book, The Wilderness Within: Meditation and Modern Life, started out running classes for 12 people but is now adding extra sessions to accommodate more than 30 at a time.

It’s no longer just recovering alcoholics who come but men and women of all ages and from a wide range of backgrounds, including busy professionals:  “Some come because they are stressed or need a break, it enables them to take a step back and address things more efficiently and creatively.”

His group, which meets in a city centre office block, is made up of Christians and non-Christians, and he argues you shouldn’t have to buy into any religion in order to do meditation. Nor, he says, is it an exclusive indulgence for the better off: “You don’t need to travel to a retreat in the Bahamas or a beach in Bali in order to meditate.  It’s here and now.”

It’s about regulating your attention, and not allowing your thoughts to wander, he says, so you don’t get caught up in the busyness of your mind: “Harder to do than it looks.”

He is a meditation facilitator who just happens to be a vicar, he stresses. But he is also a shining example of how meditation can help turn your life around.

He was expelled from two of Britain’s elite boarding schools – Wellington and Haileybury College  – for taking cannabis and bomb-making. Although he says his behaviour was typical of a fairly inquisitive teenager, he felt he didn’t fit in at school.

“I am an all-or-nothing kind of person, who likes to push things to the limit, to see how far they can go. At parties I would always be one who would try and drink most, to be the most outrageous and do the craziest stunts. I do have this extreme tendency in my character.”

Rebelling against his parents’ expectations, he drifted between jobs as a labourer, cleaner, painter and decorator and barman while staying in squats and taking copious amounts of drink and drugs.

He dreamed of being a writer, artist or musician but, by the age of 27, was living on a boat on the Isle of Wight, where he started a boatyard management course. But, after falling in with a group of bikers and drug dealers, he dropped out of the course and reached a point where his drinking became such a problem he wasn’t capable of holding down a job.

“I used to drink beer stout, vodka, gin and wine. I would start in the morning and drink through the day, not every day, but I did drink a lot. I certainly had a problem.” He also took cannabis and speed and went through an acid phase but the alcohol was worse because, he says: “I couldn’t control it.”

His wake-up call came when his friend, Steve, who also lived on a boat, fell in and drowned while drunk:  “That could have been me. We used to hang out and drink together and I had had a few near misses, falling in. I was very upset. It made me realise I had to get out of that lifestyle.”

Buxton had been interested in Buddhism since studying it in RE at school: “In my twenties I was reading books about Buddhism and psychology. I was interested in philosophies and ideas. But there came a point where reading books wasn’t enough, I had the urge to explore something that seemed so important.”

Realising he needed to get away before he ended ‘washed up on a beach’ he sold all his possessions, including his prized punk rock and metal record collection, and headed to India, to ‘sort himself out’.

Once there, giving up alcohol was easy: “I got into yoga and meditation. I had turned my back on my old life and found something more worthwhile to live for than going to the pub and getting pissed every night. I had a positive reason, something else I wanted to do more.”

After two years spent in Indian ashrams and a Thai Buddhist monastery in New Zealand, he returned to the UK to continue his spiritual journey: “There was a sense I needed to do something but I couldn’t work out what.”

He began going to church and, after taking Open University and access courses, was accepted at Cambridge University to read theology and religious studies, going on to gain a PhD in Buddhist philosophy before becoming ordained.

After all his early rebellion, his non church-going parents were initially bemused: “It was the least expected thing. I think they thought: ‘What is he up to?’ But now they respect what I’m doing and are tremendously proud.”

His first post was as curate at Ripon Cathedral in 2008, before taking over at St John the Baptist in 2012.

Then, the churchyard was a magnet for antisocial behaviour: “People were drinking and drug taking and leaving litter, detritus and syringes, they were abusing the space. Other people did not feel it was a safe place, and I saw it as a priority to tackle that.”

His arrival was a breath of fresh air. The churchyard was cleaned up, a herb garden established, music events and barbecues held and beehives set up on the church roof.

When he first came, locals referred to the church as ‘the place where the tramps fight’. Now public perception has changed: “The events we hold are a way of changing the culture, reclaiming the space and giving it back to the community.”

He first developed the meditation sessions through working with the local charity Changing Lives, to help recovering addicts: “The 11th step on a 12-step recovery programme is, effectively, about meditation. It’s about changing yourself.”

Now he wants to try and inject the same sort of energy he sees in his meditation group into his church: “The meditation group is a really good mixture, a very healthy, vibrant group, made of up of people in their 20s and 30s up to their 60s, which has doubled in size in a year, while my church hasn’t.”

There are complicated reasons, he says, behind the Church’s struggle to grow its congregation. And he confesses that when he first started attending services, he thought it was boring: “I hated it to begin with.

“What I really do enjoy now is not so much the churchy stuff - although I do value that - but the opportunity to do other things like cultural events, concerts and exhibitions. Church can be a very creative public space. “

He wants to see more meditation centres on the high street and has set up a charity, justmeditation.com, to work towards this. Meditation aims to help us see things as they really are and, as a result, to live life more skilfully and intentionally, he says: “It is not a quick fix repair job. It should be at the heart of everyday life.”

*Meditation sessions are held in Commercial Union House, Pilgrim Street, Newcastle, usually on the third Saturday of the month, from 10.30am to 12.30pm and 1.30pm to 3.30pm

*The Wilderness Within: Meditation and Modern Life (Canterbury Press) £12.99

W: justmeditation.com