In this podcast, Herman Van Rompuy, lifelong Belgian politician, joins Laurence Freeman in a conversation on the current pandemic crisis and all the questions it is challenging our society to address, together with the editorial board behind the WCCM Contemplative Through the Crisis Programme (Vladimir, Leonardo, Thomas and Sarah).

The health crisis we’re living is more than just a health crisis. The pandemic has accelerated the sense of urgency which we feel with regard to, for example, democratic institutions or towards how governments and people relate to each other, to the place of spirituality and the place of religious traditions globally. In this conversation, questions such as: What is a contemplative conscious mind? – Is the current technology fuelling this polarisation? – What is the role of religion in all of this? – are all explored and investigated.