Yesterday someone asked me the million-dollar question, ‘How do you find strength in times of personal and collective suffering?’ Only, ‘a million dollars’ is not enough: this is a matter beyond all price, at the very core of life.

I had no chance to ask, ‘Why are you asking?’ no opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of what pain lay behind the request, and no way to escape responding.

Which of us knows the answer to such a raw and penetrating question in these cruel times (to which I make no specific reference in what follows)? What can one say? One can only speak from one’s heart and pray that one’s words will be true, that, in the unknown heart-space where they land, they will, at least, not cause further hurt.

There’s deep strength in our ancient prayers. I say Shema, Listen! – the opening of Judaism’s twice daily meditation. It’s not about what I mean when I cover my eyes and utter the words. It’s the presences which meet me. I enter a timeless soul-space; without speech or gesture they greet me, our ancestors, generation before generation, who’ve lived through all the travails and tribulations of history. They take my consciousness into their custodianship. For a blessed moment, I am a drop of water drawn into a great pool of spirit, and all the anxious thoughts of my ‘I’ are obliterated, washed clean. This happens for me only rarely. But that’s enough, because I know that this can be, that this is so.

There’s another way to follow the path of Listen. Kalonymus Kalman Shapiro, the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto, taught that God speaks in two ways in our world. One is Torah, the language of Judaism’s, and humanity’s, great spiritual traditions. The other is creation, life itself. These two modes are in truth one, because through both, if we are aware, we can hear the ceaseless flow of sacred life, ‘in the chirping of the birds, the lowing of cows and the tumult of human discourse.’ (Esh Kodesh, Warsaw Ghetto, July 1942) Therefore I tell myself:  Stop and listen. I say in my heart, ‘You there, goldfinch, squirrel, beech-leaf,’ and, recognising that they belong to the source of all life, am calmed and strengthened in the knowledge that I belong there too.

Sometimes, it’s nothing at all; no effort, no intention. It’s simply what the beloved speaks in The Song of Songs: ‘I sleep, but my heart wakes.’ For precious moments I live from my heart, not my head, and know the Psalmist’s truth: ‘To You, God, silence is praise.’

Therefore, my most urgent prayer to God, people, all the life around me is simply: don’t shut yourself off when I seek you.

But the challenge does not lie elsewhere. It’s in myself. No passport or permission is required to visit the places where God’s spirit flows. Access, the only access, is through our own consciousness and heart.

Here lies the challenge: how do I find the way to myself? How do I still myself enough to listen when I say Listen. That’s why I often say when people ask me about inner strength: What brings a touch of calm into your day? Yoga, prayer, dog-walk, coffee, friends, music, park-walk, crossword, swimming, moments of pure nothing? Do it! Because that’s what takes you to your unique entrance to the pathway to the infinite, the inexhaustible and unfathomable, the source of strength and life.

This all sounds very private. But it’s about community and friendship too because they give us the space, support and encouragement to seek to what lies beyond all space, the spirit from which we draw the strength to live, to care and love.