A Journey Into Myself

Head Table Guests

Alex Squires, Oil and Gas Consultant, Loewen, Ondaatje McCutcheon Limited and a Director, The Empire Club of Canada; Peter Hermdorf, Chairman and CEO, TV Ontario; Elizabeth Loweth, Executive Director, Canadian Centre for Ethics and Corporate Policy; Ted Roberts, Insurance Advisor, Imperial Oil; Tony van Straubenzee, President, van Straubenzee Consulting and a Past President, The Empire Club of Canada; Helen Roman Barber, Chairman and CEO, Roman Corporation Limited; Richard Northern, Deputy Consul General for Britain; Bishop Terence Finlay, Anglican Diocese of Toronto; Tom Little, Lawyer, Fasken Campbell Godfrey and a member, The Empire Club of Canada; Rich Bailey, President, YMCA; Maureen Farrow, Executive Vice-President and Director of Research, Loewen, Ondaatje McCutcheon Limited; Captain Walter Marshall, National Director of Church Army for Canada; and Bishop Victoria Matthews, Area Bishop for the Credit Valley Anglican Diocese of Toronto.

Introduction by John Campion

Prince Henry's Hair Shirt

It was a stormy day on the rocky cliffs overlooking the Atlantic. A man lay dead. He was wearing a hair shirt, turned inward. He'd lived like a monk and was reputed to be a virgin upon death. All his life he'd been torn between crusading and exploring.

His exploration was not just a physical adventure and a risk for the life of the body but it was a courageous trip through the wilderness of the mind.

Prince Henry of Portugal was born in 1394, the third son of King John the First. He settled at Sagres and became known as The Navigator. He applied the zeal and energy of a crusader to the modern exploring enterprise. His court was a primitive research and development laboratory. Sagres became known as a centre for cartography, navigation and ship-building. Sailors, travellers and savants, being Arabs, Italians, Germans, Scandinavians and tribesmen of the west coast of Africa, all contributed new fragments of fact, new notions of science, or some new interpretation.

From Marco Polo's map to Prince Henry's ship design of the Caravelle to the mariner's compass, each fragment and instrument was reviewed, studied and improved upon.

One of the real contributions of Prince Henry was conquering the wilderness inside men's minds. The use of the compass was haunted by superstitious fears of its occult power. The voyages beyond landfall required a dazzling display of mental courage by all of those medieval minds in the face of dogma of the ages about a flat earth and monsters in the sea.

While Henry did not live to see the full results of his work, the voyages of discovery that he made possible would never end. Terry Waite is in the tradition of Prince Henry. Terry Waite has been on a continuous journey. He was born in 1939 in Cheshire, England. He served with the elite English army corp called the Grenadier Guards. He entered the Church of England Army in 1958 and studied theology. In 1964, he moved to Uganda in Africa to advise the Archbishop. It was here that he first saw the coup of Idi Amin and barely escaped with his life.

In 1972, he moved to Rome where he advised the Roman Catholic church on health and education and in so doing, travelled to Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and North and South America.

In March of 1980, he joined the Archbishop of Canterbury as an advisor and as a result, journeyed through the entire world Anglican community. It was during these years that Terry Waite met his fateful destiny with the hostages in Tehran, Libya and Beirut. As you know, Terry Waite was captured in 1987 and remained in confinement, most of it in solitary confinement, for five years.

Terry Waite is in the tradition of all those who journey. It is at once a physical voyage and at the same time a central struggle of the mind. These dual aspects of the journey stand as a central heroic theme in our culture for all heroes from Ulysses in the Odyssey to Christ in the Bible, to Buddha; to Lancelot and Galahad seeking the Holy Grail, to John Glenn in space. Each journey is one of the body and one of the mind.

Terry Waite has had his extraordinary journeys of both body and mind. In body he has travelled the world in aid of a series of high callings. In mind, his ultimate test, he endured in solitary confinement for five full years. His courageous struggle of the mind stands out as an heroic adventure of historical significance.

Terry Waite was elected a Fellow Commoner of Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1992. He was made a Commander of the British Empire in 1992. He holds honorary degrees from the Universities of London, Kent, Liverpool, Durham, Sussex and Yale. He is involved in numerous charities and has received an extraordinary list of awards. Please welcome Terry Waite.

Terry Waite

Mr. President, thank you, sir, for your welcome introduction. I am pleased to say that I have left my hair shirt back in Beirut, so I do not wear it here today.

I am amazed at your introduction when you introduce the theme of a journey because (and I say this quite sincerely) without prior consultation you have, in fact, described for me what I want to talk about today. I want to discuss very briefly, because there isn't time to go into extensive detail, two things: first of all, the journey that caused me to be involved with hostages and with that particular form of terrorism and secondly, captivity, from my own experience of being in solitary confinement and having to take a very different form of journey, a journey, one might say, into one's self, a different form of journey into the interior. Both journeys, of course, were, in fact, life-threatening. Both journeys dealt very much with the question of survival. In the first journey, perhaps physical survival was to the fore. On the second journey, indeed spiritual survival, inner survival, was to the fore. Those are the two areas I shall try to discuss briefly today.

But let me begin with a more light-hearted story. People have often said to me, "What was it that you missed most during those years of solitary confinement, those four years of being virtually alone and one year in the company of other people?" They say, "Was it food? Was it drink?" Well, as you can see from my frame and my stature, I require a reasonable amount to eat and I've no objection to a drink now and again. In the days before captivity, I used to say to myself, "If I am denied these things, if I am denied food and drink, will I really miss them?" And the answer, of course, I gave myself was, "No, you wouldn't." But I never really knew. When I got into captivity and had very little to eat, with only two cups of tea a day and a cup of coffee probably every six months or so, I discovered that I didn't miss food and drink very much. Not at all. I could manage on a very meagre diet.

But I found it very hard indeed to live without books. I found it very difficult indeed to sit chained to the wall in a room with no natural light, no companionship, no news of the outside world, alone with my thoughts and nothing to read. I pleaded with the guards to bring me books, and, of course most of them, if not all were not book lovers. They hadn't been great readers in their lives, so they had difficulty empathising with someone who had been brought up in a literary culture. And, secondly, of course, it would be very difficult for them to go out and purchase English books. Had they been seen doing that in a second-hand book shop, they would have drawn immediate attention to themselves. And, thirdly, in the majority of cases, they could not read English and therefore they had no idea, if they ever came across a book, what it was. With those three handicaps, it meant that I didn't get books for over a year and a half.

Eventually, something happened. One day, there was a knock on the door, and that was the signal for me to put on a blindfold, for I was never allowed to see my captors. I always had to be blindfolded whenever they came into the room. So I put my blindfold on and I heard the guard cross the room and he said, "I have a book for you." I thought, "Oh, at last! Thank goodness." He put it on the floor and when he left the room and locked the door, I removed my blindfold, picked up the book, looked at it and laughed out loud. He had brought me Great Escapes, by Eric Williams. The story was of great escapes from prison camps in World War II. I'm afraid that it wasn't a great deal of help to me. It didn't, indeed, indicate how one might escape from a chained position in a hidden hideout in the middle of war-torn Beirut.

The story goes that Terry Anderson, the AP journalist, former bureau in-chief, in war-torn Beirut also asked for books and he specifically asked for large books. He wanted something, like all of us do, to get his teeth into. One day, a book landed on the floor. When he picked it up, he had been given Diseases of the Middle Ear. He claims to have read it from cover to cover. I know not how.

But to come to the heart of what I want to say, it is tragically appropriate that one should be standing here today and talking about terrorism and particular acts of terrorism. I was in the United States last week delivering a series of university lectures on the question of terrorism and conflict. I was there at the time of that disaster in Oklahoma, and, of course, my heart went out immediately to the victims of that particular disaster. I was pursued by the press and refused to give any speculation as to who had caused it. I've seen enough in my life not to jump to hasty conclusions. And when I was asked the question, "What link do you make between this particular situation and Beirut?", I said that the link I make is this: those who suffer are the innocent men, women and children. And in saying that, you put the whole problem into a nutshell with terrorism, because terrorism radically affects the innocent, and the terrorists who perform these acts of violence and outrage, in fact, at heart are cowards. Unfortunately, we do not realise what a dreadful impact terrorism has on individuals, on innocent individuals, until virtually it happens in our own back garden. Then we sit up, and then we take note. Some of the people in Northern Ireland have been saying, "Please, please, please help us stem the flow of arms and money that is supporting terrorism in Ireland." And how often have people in Northern Ireland seen their homes destroyed, their buildings destroyed, their communities threatened, and attempts made to destroy their very spirit? But, in fact, terrorism has not destroyed the spirit of the people in Ireland, and, in part, violence has been defeated in Ireland, because the vast majority of ordinary people came out onto the streets and said, "Violence is no way, no way at all, to resolve political problems." And they renounced it, and those who were, in fact, using violence to seek a political end, recognised that their strategy had to change, and that if they continued it, they, in fact, were being increasingly alienated.

Yes, we have something that can be done in the face of terrorism and I'll come to it in a moment. And yet, terrorism in all its manifestations, is but a symptom of a much deeper problem. It is symptomatic of a society and a world that is in grave disorder. We are seeing that in the United Kingdom--and I have no doubt we are seeing it in other parts of the world--our familiar, traditional institutions, are under attack from all quarters. Questioned are the monarchy and the government, familiar institutions that have been with my generation for a whole lifetime, institutions that carry history and provide some stability for society. Of course, they are not without their faults, but there is a large difference between criticising an institution and actually seeking to destroy it. Institutions, of course, have to evolve and develop. Do they, in fact, have to be knocked and smashed into the ground? And where we are getting this major change in society, we are, of course, getting the development of little groups who will pursue their ends outside the normal boundaries of the society which has held us together.

I remember very clearly going to Iran during the time of the Iranian Revolution to seek the release of British and Iranian church people who were held as hostages. My strategy of working in that particular case, and in many other cases involving direct contact with hostage takers, has been to try to establish a relationship, to try to develop some form of understanding--in other words, to try to open up communication channels and to find, if possible, a face-saving way whereby all parties can walk away from the situation with their dignity intact, and without compromising my moral position and my moral stand.

I remember being invited to the house of one of the revolutionary guards at a critical point in our discussion and in our negotiation. At the end of the meal, he produced the family album. He was one of several brothers and he pointed to the pictures in this album. This one, he said, was murdered by the previous regime, this one had his education finished, and so on and so forth. He went through the book and he recited the sad story of tragedy that had affected his family across the years. He said to me--and I can still see him saying it "You and your country supported that. You provided arms. You didn't do anything to help us in our struggle for better conditions. You did nothing for the poor. You don't care." Of course, I responded as any normal human being would respond, saying, "Do you really believe that by perpetrating injustice towards innocent people you are, in fact, going to achieve a situation of justice? Do you believe that?" Of course, he came back with a well-worn, time-worn, argument that the people whom they had captured were not innocent but spies. That was, of course, entirely without any substance whatsoever.

The only way in which, of course, anyone can do that sort of thing, is to treat the captives as symbols, symbols of the West, symbols of the rich West, symbols of the affluent West, symbols of the powerful West, against whom the poor seem powerless. Then the terrorist groups spring up and say, "The only weapon we have is terror, and we'll use it." And they use it to devastating effect on the lives of innocent people, who pay the price. They're the ones who pay the price. It could be you tomorrow. It could be any of us. The danger, of course, in terrorist movements, is that if you set out to achieve a political end by using violence, you will attract also into your ranks people of a psychopathic disposition. Perhaps you may be able to reason with the leaders of the group. In fact, it is possible to reason with the leader of the group, who have decided to use violence as a means of achieving a political end in a number of instances. We see in the Middle East, as we mercifully see in Ireland, a number of instances in which the leaders are beginning to renounce violence and say, "We have to find some other ways of resolving political conflict." And sometimes this political conflict is legitimate. The danger, of course, is obvious. The leaders frequently have lost control of the psychopaths in their ranks, who continue to kill and murder and cause mayhem and trauma to the innocent. That is a fact we have to take into account. It provides not only the victim with great problems and troubles, it provides the leaders of the organisations with great troubles. It says something about violence and the use of violence. Also, these expressions of small groups growing up in society as institutions change and crumble say something as to what we can do and what we ought to do in the face of this problem. In a sense, perhaps it is not too extreme to say that terrorism is, in part, a manifestation of a society that is sick.

One of the functions of the churches, and of the whole variety of voluntary groups, is to be able to build community in society, a community that crosses cultural boundaries, religious boundaries, and all the boundaries which divide man from man. That is the problem, of course, here in Canada with ethnic and cultural boundaries. How marvellous it is when communities can get together and you can see that, in fact, they will turn their conflict to that which is mutually enriching. What a marvellous combination there is to be found in Canada between, on the one hand, the whole tradition which comes from so many different parts of the world, and, I might say from my own country, and from the French tradition as well. What a marvellous mix that is. Any visitor to this country who goes to a town where there is both an English and a French tradition can say, "This is a lovely mixture." This is something to be proud of, not something to divide us. It is a marvellous mixture, and yet why does it divide? It divides basically because in this changing age, in this time of great change, people become afraid, and when they're afraid, they retreat into the ghetto, and when they retreat into the ghetto and close the windows and the shutters, and shut out the lights, then the fantasies begin. When contact is denied, then you have to face the demons within. Then the fantasies start and it isn't long before the fantasies begin to be acted out and we know the results of that.

In my own captivity, the lights were shut out. I was captured and taken as a hostage. I was frightened, and I said to myself, as that door closed behind me in an underground prison, and as I realised that my status had changed from being a negotiator to being a hostage, three things which years later seemed very pompous. But they were said almost defiantly because I was afraid, alone, vulnerable, and at the mercy of people whom I knew may not even hesitate about sparing my life. I said, "I do not regret." I have occasion to regret actions in my life, as any human being would have. I do not regret, in this instance, doing my level best for hostages. I will not allow myself to have self pity, because self pity will kill me, and I will not be over-sentimental. I will not say to myself, "Oh, if only things had been different, if only I had been a better husband, a better father, perhaps been less impulsive." The future was uncertain. One has to live with whom one is and get on with it. And those three seemingly pompous and perhaps simple resolutions were part of what enabled me to live through those days of darkness. It was a journey into myself. When you are alone, you have 24 hours a day to think. There was no light, no furniture, no books, no companionship, nothing, a unique opportunity. I said to myself, "Here is a unique opportunity to make a journey and to take time for that which I have been putting off for a long time: to go more into myself, to try to understand more of the complexity that I know to be me, the complexity of light and dark that exists within me, to understand more of that, to try to come to terms with it."

"Was faith a hope?" you might say. "What about your Christian faith?" It was a hope, but I don't believe it was a comfort, and there is a difference. Far too many people these days, I think, look to the Christian faith for something that they will never find. True faith should be based upon a growth towards truth, and truth when you face it will always restore you. And a first truth that, it seems to me, one must learn is the truth about oneself. And the truth about oneself is that the evil and disorder we project away from ourselves in fact resides within. The first step, I am sure, is to begin to deal with that. And it is hard. Faith enables us to be very realistic about our own human nature and about human nature in general. It enables us to maintain hope. And what happens in a situation of crisis, if it is an extreme situation of crisis, such as being in the type of captivity that I am talking about, sudden death, illness, separation, unemployment, whatever it may be, faith can enable us to maintain hope.

In the face of my captors I could and did, indeed, say this: "You have the power to break and destroy my body, you have the power to bend my mind, but my soul is not yours to possess." A small thing, a small point, and a true one. And through those dark days, and through that journey, one was enabled to maintain hope.

I want to conclude by reading to you a brief passage with which I conclude a book I have just written which will be published in England later this year. I think it sums up something that I have been saying about this inner journey. It is one message that I would leave with you. From my own experience, if we would deal effectively with some of the enormous problems that face us in the world, we must be prepared to deal with ourselves first. I said that one day I would write a book which would contain the truth to which I bore witness. What I would say was perfectly clear to me. It was this. Everyone is occupied in blindly pursuing his own ends, and yet beneath his aims and beneath his attempts to escape from solitude by conforming with the herd-like behaviour of those around him, he wants something quite different from his aims and quite different from the standards of human institutions. This thing which he wants is what all want: simply to admit that his is an isolated existence and that his class and nation, even the personality and character which he presents to his fellow human beings, are a mask. Beneath that mask there is only the desire to love and be loved, just because he is ignorant, miserable and surrounded by the unknowns of time, space and other people.

I concluded an address I gave in this city the other night by saying that as a result of these journeys, my own convictions have been strengthened. I can sum them up in three simple phrases. To enable the weak to be strong, to enable the strong to be just, but above all, I say, to enable the just to be compassionate, for if compassion dies, we are all dead. Thank you.

The appreciation of the meeting was expressed by Tony van Straubenzee, President, van Straubenzee Consulting and a Past President, The Empire Club of Canada.