You've spent many years at St Martin-in-the-Fields, a church on the edge of one of the world's most public and busiest squares. How is living at this threshold, where the sacred meets the constant noise of the city, shaped your understanding of what it means to be present?
Revd Richard Carter Well, what an interesting question. Trafalgar Square is probably one of the most exciting places in London where you can live, because something is always happening.
Last week, for example, we had the Eid al-Fitr, the celebration of the end of Ramadan with thousands of Muslims gathering and we’ve been sharing food with them. We have celebrations from all around the world. Of course, it’s the square where if anything major happens in the country, people come to demonstrate or to grieve or to express their feelings. And so our church is constantly involved with the life of this city, the life of London. And yet, as I lived here and as I worked here, I began to realize the importance of my own spiritual life, that can easily run dry. And what can a church offer? Well, a church can offer a place, a sacred place, where people can come and actually replenish their souls.
So my house looks out over Trafalgar Square, a place where the energy and life of the city never stops. And so even early in the morning, there’s still noise, movement, it’s always busy. However, increasingly contemplative prayer became really important to me, finding those times of stillness, finding those times where my soul could be replenished. As well as the realization that all around me there are people who are very stressed by living in this modern world, stressed by their work, stressed by what is happening in the world, stressed simply by the amount of busyness that they find themselves caught up in.
Your work involves close contact with the homeless and refugees. In a world that often looks away from these populations, how have these specific encounters informed your "100 Reasons for Living", the book you’ve recently launched?
I want to remember one of my first encounters with a group from The Connection, the charity here at St Martin, which works with homeless people. I was talking about homeless people and someone in the group said: why do you call us homeless people? I said: well, what do you mean? She said: well, I don’t call you in-house person, we’re all just people.
And I thought that was a really important lesson for me as I began my work here, that we’re all just people and each person who comes into the church, whatever their life situation has so much to offer and so much to share. And the great thing that I’ve learned from being here at St Martin is that people who are facing homelessness often have the most to share. Many have made journeys from other parts of the world.
Many have faced crises in their own lives. Many have encountered all different situations in the world and in life. And somehow being present here with them opens our own lives to a greater vulnerability, a greater truthfulness, a greater ability to see God at work in our own lives and in our own struggles.
I see the people who live in and around and come into St Martin and many of those who live on the streets as my community. They’re the people who have informed me and helped me to see God in the midst of this city, constantly aware of the goodness of people. There’s a lot of, at the moment, a lot of anger, fear, frustration and prejudice in the language we use to talk about people who are often the most vulnerable, but it’s not my experience.
You mention being inspired by Archbishop Dom Hélder Câmara, who woke early to listen to "voices drowned out by daytime pressure."
In our modern, 24/7 digital world, why is this specific practice of silence so radical and necessary for our mental and spiritual survival?
Well, Dom Hélder really inspired me. I used to wake up right in the middle of the night and at first I used to panic thinking: I’ve got to go to sleep. Like many people suffering from insomnia, you kind of think: I’ve got to force myself to go to sleep. Then I began to think that perhaps this time early in the morning is a time where the city is still. Perhaps it’s a time too where I am still. Perhaps it’s a time, like Dom Hélder says, where I can pray and think about the day. And so I no longer saw those times of waking up as stress, but as a time of quiet and a time of prayerfulness. And I sat here in my front room looking out of the square.
And I felt the silence and the peace of God and all the things in my mind and all the anxieties in my mind stilling. And often it was a creative time, it was a time where I was listening. And I think the problem in the modern world is that we often are trying to survive, we don’t listen.
Dom Hélder taught me that actually whatever time of the day it is, it’s really important to give God the chance to reply and the chance to listen deeply. So my meditation practice has developed. It’s developed all the way through the period of the pandemic where London did really become like a monastery, a very great silent place.
Now many people may find that a strange idea that you can listen to God, but I deeply believe if you give God space, then the will of God becomes clearer in your own heart and things begin to open up. In order for God to enter, you need to give God space. And so from your community and from people like Father Laurence Freeman and from other great inspirational writers and thinkers and meditators, I’ve learned to listen more in my prayer, to say less and to listen more.
You will be leading a retreat titled ‘Reasons for Living’ at Bonnevaux, WCCM Centre for Peace in France.
Many people see meditation as a way to "escape" the world, but you seem to suggest that meditation - and this something people will have the opportunity to experience at your retreat - leads to a "deepening compassion for the world." How does sitting in silence actually make us more effective at helping those in need?
I think it’s so important to be centered. I think the modern world is constantly calling us to be distracted and broken up into tiny pieces. Take for example social media which is pulling us in all directions at the same time. But meditation and contemplative practice actually helps us to find our center.
I think of that passage at the beginning of Genesis where God’s spirit hovers over the chaos of the waters and I often think of the Spirit of God in those times of silence, hovering over my own sense of confusion, chaos, fear, worry and pain for the world, especially at this time with so much violence. And it’s in those moments of stillness that we begin to see the world in a different way. We begin to see the importance of God’s presence at the very center of all that we are. And to remember that in Christ’s life too, he lived under occupation. He lived in a time of extreme violence. He lived in a time of great poverty. He lived in a time where there was sickness on the streets and a huge number of people in need.
And yet he lived God’s love there, right in the midst of the world. And I think that the contemplative practice is not an escape. It’s actually teaching us how to live with Christ’s love in the midst of the world.
Your book explores finding hope even during struggle.
Can you share a moment from your diary where you found a "reason for living" in a place or situation where most people would only see despair?
Well, there are countless times of hope, and what I explain in this book is not to escape the world, but to look into the world, even in situations of great struggle, pain, need, and find reasons for hope. I’ll give you an example there.
We brought a speaker across from Bethlehem in the Holy Land. She spoke here at St Martin and then when she finished, she told me it was her little daughter’s birthday. I said: how wonderful is that? And she said: it’s been so hard for us in the Holy Land in this recent time that we wanted to give my daughter a wonderful birthday present. So we all clubbed together and we got her some money, some money that she could spend on something she really wanted and then we had a party to celebrate her birthday. My daughter has been living under great fear in a time of great fear where the future of everyone in Bethlehem was not certain. We gave my daughter this present and the following day she came to me and she said, mommy? She said yes. She said, I’d like you to use half of this money to pay for the party, because I know you mommy, you haven’t got much money to pay for the party for me for my birthday. And I’d like you to send the other half of the money for the children of Gaza so that they can have something to eat too.
Now there’s a situation where you’re right in the middle of a struggle and you’re in pain and a little girl opens her heart in charity and love both for her family and for the people who are in struggling and in pain. And there are many examples of that all around me. I broke my ankle quite badly when I was leading a pilgrimage to Assisi and I was lying in hospital bed. I was really upset because I planned this pilgrimage for weeks and suddenly I wasn’t able to do it. And then I thought to myself, if my meditation and my practice is going to mean anything, then I must see good in every situation. And I began to see that the woman who was coming in to look after her husband, she had a very elderly husband who had a a bad hip, a very painful hip. His wife came in every day and brought him beautiful food and looked after him and cared for him. And then she saw me and she couldn’t speak a word of English and I couldn’t hardly speak a word of Italian but she started looking after me too. So I noticed that she’d tidied up the table by the side of my bed. And then when I went to the toilet, I came back and I saw that she’d made my bed for me. I thoought even in the midst of a hospital, to someone she couldn’t even understand, here was a woman showing the love of God and kindness. And I thought, wow, that’s so special. And all around us, there are acts of grace, goodness, acts of kindness. When I came back from the hospital where my leg had been set with a metal piece in my ankle, one of the refugees who’s been through a really painful, tragic time, turned up at my house with a huge bunch of flowers. He came in looking a bit embarrassed and said: this is the first time I’ve ever bought flowers in my life. He came in with a bunch of flowers and I just looked at those flowers on my table thinking: here’s a man who I know his story is a story of violence and torture that he suffered, terrible suffering in his journey. And yet he has shown such kindness and compassion to me and bought the first bunch of flowers that he’s ever bought in his life. So what I’m trying to do in this story is to look at the world in which we live and find the moments of God’s grace.
Because if we see only anxiety, then we’re feeding ourselves with anxiety, we’re feeding ourselves with a kind of algorithm of misery. And if you look at our news at the moment, it is absolutely focused on the algorithm of tragedy, misery, unhappiness and failure. Now, I’m not denying that those things are taking place in our world, but they’re not the only things taking place in our world. God’s love is still at work all around us. And my book is an encouragement, even in times of trial and struggle, to see the work of God.
I was thinking of a writer called Etty Hillesum. Even when she was in a concentration camp during the Second World War and shortly before her death, she could still say, my heart still sings when I see the sun setting. What I’m saying is that the goodness of God does not get snuffed out.
And perhaps in times of struggle and in times of difficulty, we’re called to live that love of God even more than ever.
Revd Richard Carter will be leading the retreat ‘Reasons for Living’, 21 – 26 July, 2026. Based on his new book 100 Reasons for Living: The Diary of a Grateful Heart, Richard will explore how we find meaning, beauty and hope even during struggle.
