The MWS Podcast: Episode 8, Peter Goble

In this latest member profile, Peter Goble, talks about his career in nursing, his experience of living and working in Africa, his work as a Buddhist chaplain, both in prisons and hospices and why he joined the society.


MWS Podcast 8: Peter Goble as audio only:
Download audio: MWS_Podcast_8_Peter_Goble

Previous podcasts:

Episode 7: The author Stephen Batchelor on his work with photography and collage.
Episode 6: Iain McGilchrist, author of the Master and his Emissary.
Episode 5: Julian Adkins on introducing MWP to his meditation group in Edinburgh
Episode 4: Daren Dewitt on Nonviolent communiction.
Episode 3: Vidyamala Burch on her new book “Mindfulness for Health”.
Episode 2: Norma Smith on why she joined the society, art, agnosticism and metaphor.
Episode 1 : Robert M. Ellis on the skill of critical thinking.

About Barry Daniel

I live in the Lake District in the UK where I run a guesthouse with my partner Kate and my cat Manuel. I enjoy painting, hillwalking, reading, visiting and entertaining friends, T’ai Chi and playing the guitar. I’m engaged to a certain degree in the local community, as a volunteer with Samaritans and I’m a fairly active member of the local Green party. I’ve had a relatively intuitive sense of the Middle Way most of my adult life but it found a greater articulation and a practical direction through joining the society. It’s also been interesting and great fun engaging with other people with a similar outlook. My main contribution to the society is conducting the podcast interviews, something that gives me a lot of satisfaction and that I’ve learnt a lot from.

9 thoughts on “The MWS Podcast: Episode 8, Peter Goble

  1. Great to hear your voice, Peter, and to find out more about your life. I was especially interested to hear about your African experience and about your interest in drama. I’ve never been to Africa myself, but have quite an intense second-hand relationship to Congo, having had both a father and grandfather who were missionaries there. One day I must go and experience it for myself, as I’m sure that would open many avenues for me. As regards drama, I wondered if you might be interested in running something drama-related on the summer retreat?

    1. Hi Peter,
      I also enjoyed listening to your podcast and hearing about your work experiences. Your enquiring mind is packed with energy, you ask yourself ‘what’s going on’ when faced with all kinds of situations that must turn up surprising results sometimes . Knowing how to deal with people, sick and well and understanding their needs, often unspoken, in a thoughtful way, is a great talent.

    2. Thanks for your invitation to make some drama-related contribution at the summer retreat, Robert, that is something I would like to do, and I shall look forward to it.

  2. Robert and Norma, thanks for your generous comments on my interview with Barry.

    Listening back to it, I was quite chastened to hear myself rambling on in my discursive Brummie manner, but it made me smile too. Isn’t it fascinating how my verbal style is so very different from my school-masterish written one? Like two quite different people, but then “I am legion”.

    When I read back my words to myself, I “hear” them inwardly in quite a different voice from the voice I hear when listening to the podcast. Not so many ‘ers’ and ‘ums’, that’s for sure (and not so many repetitions, not so many repetitions….).

    Robert, it’s fascinating to know of your missionary connections. My wife’s father Loti Matipa Mulumbi (and her mother Silika Mwape) were denizens of Christian Missions in Many Lands in the Congo (and across the contiguous border with Northern Rhodesia) for many, many years, helping the missionaries to learn the local language, and to translate the Bible into CiBemba. It’s likely that your ancestors had dealings with them. Loti Matipa, the grandfather of our children, continued to minister in Zambia until his death aged 90. He was a most extraordinary man – and a dear shepherd and friend to me (we had such fun together!) – who lived a full, productive and charismatic life, despite being blind from the age of nine.

    1. Hi Peter
      Your comment about drama awoke my curiosity too. I’ve done a bit of amateur dramatics myself and have always thoroughly enjoyed it. I was in a production of Mike Leigh’s “Abigail’s Party” a couple of years ago, playing the taciturn git “Tone”. I felt I didn’t really have to act at all.

      1. Yes, Barry, I can well imagine…..! It occurs to me like a bolt from the proverbial (I’ve been discombobulated by Botticelli’s Primavera) that drama might be a very useful medium for promulgating the Middle Way to a wider audience………maybe Robert could draft the outline of a play, a kind of Migglers’ Passion Play , that we could take on tour (pop-up Theatre of the Middle Way, or Migglomime or Pantomiggle, in public places?), or put on YouTube, or summat like that?

        I’m sure Norma could do some artwork for whatever they call those curtains that drop down to change the scene, and everyone could chip in (who wanted to)…..

        Maybe this is taking networking too far LOL

    2. I don’t recognise my voice when it is played back to me, the first time I heard it was quite a shock, far too much like queen’s English!
      I have heard many times that a visit to Africa is never forgotten, because it is such a wonderful country. My brother -in-law went to Basotoland ( not sure of its name now) as a young doctor, to work in a mission hospital in the 1950s, where he was dropped in at the deep end and found himself performing complicated operations. His fiancee joined him there, they married and had their first child out there. He wrote a book about his experiences there. Have you thought of writing one Peter?

  3. I shouldn’t have type-cast you presumptuously as a back-stage artist, Norma, I’ve no doubt your stature as a thespian/thespienne is beyond question…………name your own role, I’ll willingly act your fool. 🙂

    1. Hi Peter,
      I hope a play is written for the summer retreat, if it could be filmed even better. I have no experience of acting I’m sorry to say, but I will happily paint a backdrop, then photograph it so that it could be projected onto a wall or whatever is required. You may have guessed that I am useless at doing anything technical, except taking photos and emailng them. Unfortunately I am not going to the retreat.

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