How do you go from trading currencies on the floor of an investment bank to leading a centre dedicated to building peace? Justine Huxley, chief executive officer of St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace and a practicing Sufi,  shares the story of how she swapped  a career in finance to pursue a vision bringing different faiths and spiritualities together to face the urgent needs of our time.

Based in a church in the heart of the City of London, on a site consecrated more than a thousand years ago, the centre honours the courage and spirit of service embodied by St Ethelburga, a 7th century abbess who gave her life caring for  victims of the plague. Today, St Ethelburga's is on a mission to build community resilience in the face of our contemporary social and ecological emergency. 

Matt and Justine discuss a variety of themes including mystical experience, the impact of trauma and  the millennial leaders Justine met while writing her new book Generation Y: Spirituality and Social Change. Those encounters inspired Justine to find new ways to hold conversations between generations, aiming to find the kind of language that would allow a spiritual dimension to emerge without alienating or excluding people.

Matthew shares his experience with the generational and collective legacy of war, and Justine discusses how we can unearth the kinds of psychological and spiritual resources we need to build inner and outer resilience, and face the full reality of climate breakdown.

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St Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace

Generation Y: Spirituality and Social Change

After the fire: Sourcing hope in a landscape of collapse