More than a route check
When I notice a Big Issue seller sitting on the low wall by Sloane Square underground, there’s an urge to turn away. I almost don’t look at him. But something about the nature of the journey I’m on makes me stop.
On an ordinary day I’d be staring at cashflow forecasts, writing grant reports or trouble-shooting the everyday hiccups any charity faces. But today I’m walking from West London Buddhist Centre to Brixton Buddhist Community, checking the route for our upcoming London Mandala Sponsored Walk, on Sunday 13th September.
I’m seeing the city with new eyes, having been briefed by our Comms Officer to capture clips for her Tiktok campaign. From leafy trees and vibrant window boxes to opulent shopfront displays, the city teems with colour, sound and light. The 34 degree heat is making everything almost unreal. I’ve stepped out of my routines, my habits are loosened.
So when I reach the Big Issue seller I stop, and look him in the eye. It’s the start of a deeper encounter.
“Guess,” says the seller, when, after buying a magazine and chatting awhile, I ask where he’s from. With green eyes, golden skin and dark brown hair, I guess “somewhere in the Middle East.” But I’m a continent out, as Michael* is actually from Romania, although his ancestors were from Kazakhstan. I sit down to chat as expensively-dressed people bustle past, avoiding looking at Michael, just as I’d been about to do.
It’s only his second day on the job, and he’s shy and a little down. He tells me the previous day a man in a Ferrari hypercar stopped, gave him 50 pence, took a £5 magazine and drove off. Such cars cost millions. As I feebly try to bolster his sales pitch, I’m shocked by the way eyes just swerve away from us. It doesn’t feel good.
Later, recovering from the 7-mile walk in an air-conditioned cafe, I think about the fears that made me want to ignore this young man. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the unexpected. Fear that if I acknowledge him as another human, essentially no different to myself, I’ll have to do something radical. Should I have invited him home? What would my partner say? Where would it end? But perhaps sitting down and taking a genuine interest, seeing life through someone else’s eyes, even for only 15 minutes, is already radical.
On the London Mandala Sponsored Walk we’ll be raising money for people who are lonely and isolated, from all walks of life, all faiths and none. People who, for a whole range of reasons, find themselves on the margins of society. While GCP leaves tackling homelessness to the experts, many of the people we do work with live in acute poverty and insecure housing.
Starting at the London Buddhist Centre, original home of the Triratna Buddhist Order, we’ll be walking to the North London Buddhist Centre, the West London Buddhist Centre, the Brixton Buddhist Community, and back to LBC where it all began. Walkers can sign up for one leg, a few legs, or do the whole 24-mile journey, with rests and refreshments at each centre along the way.
As we trace this symbolic journey, drawing a protective mandala around the city, we’ll be honouring the handful of Triratna Buddhist Order Members who, in founding Globe Community Project, inspired a generation of people to bring their practice out of the Buddhist centres and into the local community, putting their values into action.
For 22 years, GCP has worked to support those Tower Hamlets residents who most need support. But the next 22 years are by no means guaranteed. As I go back to staring at the cashflow forecast, the trajectory is not so good.
So please, join us and step out of your everyday life to do something extraordinary. Walk along towpaths, through parks, up boulevards, down alleyways, across rivers, and past some of the most incredible architecture in the world. Invite your friends. Open up to the beauty of the city, the warmth of human connection and the power of community.
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Thank you to each of Triratna’s buddhist centres in London for their generous response in hosting us on the London Mandala Sponsored Walk!
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