It was a bit wild last Sunday. I was impressed by the number of people that still managed to join us for worship despite the impact of "Storm Ciara". Ths weekend we have had to face another yet another, "Storm Dennis". I learnt last Sunday, just as I was arriving at Queens Road Urmston for the first service, that they had called the football off that afternoon, so it would appear that the congregants were hardier than those football fans. Actually the truth is that it was not safe to travel from London to Manchester and trains and trams were being cancelled.
As I left Urmston at 11am to return back to Altrincham Storm Ciara really took hold. It was the wildest weather I can ever remember driving in, there was debris all over the roads and the wind and the rain buffeted the car. I remember thinking to myself I’m glad I’m not driving over the top of the M62 today. I suspect that things were far worse in Yorkshire. I heard the next day that my sister and her husbands canal boat was a casualty and had sunk, thankfully they were not on board and they have insurance. Still very distressing all the same. They are a hardy pair and all will be well, but still they have invested some much love into their life together on that. By the way I also learnt that they had taken the journey over the top of the M62, earlier that day, as they had driven back from Liverpool.
Now maybe I am somewhat foolhardy, but as I drove down the Flixton mile road I felt little fear; I felt alive, and safe, and protected; I felt at one with the car and the weather. If truth be told I cannot remember ever feeling more awake and alive as I did for those twenty minutes. Now I had actually felt that way from the moment I had awoken that morning. I had not had a great deal of sleep, I had gone to bed later after a deeply fulfilling day, and yet felt incredibly refreshed that morning as I woke, I could feel it on the taste of my own breath.
Why was this you may well ask? Well I just had this deep sense of connection with everything in life. I was awake. I had spent quite a lot of time in prayer and meditation that week and I had been fully engaged in the stream of life, so this must have had something to do with it. When I ponder the purpose of prayer and meditation I always think of the following “Prayer doesn’t change things, prayer changes people and people change things.” Over the years I have discovered that it is prayer that enables me to open and connect to life in all its joy and suffering, it allows me to increase my sensitivity to life and thus be touched by life and in return respond in more loving and open ways. Prayer for me is a kind of opening of myself to something larger.
So, as a result, as I drove through the storm, I cannot remember ever feeling more connected and awake to everything. Over the years I have had many similar experiences. They do not seem to last forever, at least not in this heightened state, that said afterwards I have never been quite the same again.
This morning the following poem appeared as a facebook memory, it seemed to fit in with my thoughts here...
“A Journey” by Edward Field
When he got up that morning everything was different:
He enjoyed the bright spring day
But he did not realise it exactly, he just enjoyed it.
And walking down the street to the railroad station
Past magnolia trees with dying flowers like old socks
It was a long time since he had breathed so simply.
Tears filled his eyes and it felt good
but he held them back
Because men didn’t walk around crying in that town.
Waiting on the platform at the station
The fear came over him of something terrible about to happen:
The train was late and he recited the alphabet to keep hold.
And in its time it came screeching in
And as it went on making its usual stops,
People coming and going, telephone poles passing,
He hid his head behind a newspaper
No longer able to hold back the sobs, and willed his eyes
To follow the rational weavings of the seat fabrics.
He didn’t do anything violent as he had imagined.
He cried for a long time, but when he finally quieted down
A place in him that had been closed like a fist was open,
And at the end of the ride he stood up and got off that train:
And through the streets and in all the places he lived in later on
He walked, himself at last, a man among men,
With such radiance that everyone looked up and wondered.
The great traditions often spoke of this need to wake up, to awaken. Now this awakened state was not meant to be purely for ourselves. It was meant to enable us to act in the world, in this awakened state, and thus encourage others to do the same, leading them to act in loving and compassionate ways, to create a true sense of oneness. That there is no separation only a great unity in life. That there is no us and them. Certainly my understanding of the teaching of Jesus was that at its core it was all about this. Whether that was to release the prisoners and serve the underprivileged as in Luke’s Gospel or in a more spiritual sense as in Matthew’s. I felt this sense powerfully as I walked around Capernaum and Galilee this time last year. It was a year last Wednesday that Sue and I were there and I proposed to her. That day I felt powerfully the feeling that life should always be interpreted by love. During our visit to Galilee there were many moments like that feeling I experienced last Sunday. There was no storms to experience although I did witness the problems that can stem from we humans not seeing other humans as one. I witnessed it as I saw the division between those who see the land as Palestine and those who see it as Israel, I saw it in the past, the present and sadly the future. A deeply spiritual place and yet a land shaped by violence and division.
Some 600 years before the ministry of Jesus the Buddha began his search for enlightenment in India. Some suggest that Jesus had developed his belief system because he visited India himself and was thus exposed to Hinduism and Buddhism. It is not a story I accept personally. Instead I reckon that similar principles have manifested in many human forms throughout our history. I suspect that all of us are capable of awakening to this deep love. We can all wake up and realise the love at the core of all life. We may interpret it different due to the culture we are born into, the myths and stories may not be the same, but the essence is
Now while the lives of the Buddha and Jesus have parallels there was one crucial difference. The Buddha was born into privilege which he rejected and went off to discover, to his great dismay, both grinding poverty and death. By contrast Jesus was born into those very daily realities. They shared a path to wisdom through mindfulness, prayer, contemplation into an inner journey to their central core, to love, to God if you will. They became compassionate witnesses to the world of pain and suffering around them, taking into themselves the world’s pain, and they returned infinite compassion and boundless love embodied in the reassurance of resurrection and hope.
When the Buddha was asked, “What are you, a God, an angel and saint”, he answered no to each question. They persisted, and he replied enigmatically, “I am awake” as Jesus was to the duel reality of living in the face of death. Both intuitively understood that suffering could be turned to joy through sacred living, following the Dharma as Buddha put it (to salvation and Nirvana). Jesus called this eternal life. Through the lives they lived they modelled a better way of living, both examples to what we can be if we were to awaken the love within us.
Now this is all very interesting you may say, but what does it mean to wake up? What do we need to wake up to?
Well I would say look around you and within you. Take time in contemplation and it will awaken the senses that you have been given and enable you to respond to the needs around you.
Or to quote Rabindranath Tagore, a man deeply influenced by eastern and western traditions and who became a great influence both here and in India.
“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”
As I left Urmston at 11am to return back to Altrincham Storm Ciara really took hold. It was the wildest weather I can ever remember driving in, there was debris all over the roads and the wind and the rain buffeted the car. I remember thinking to myself I’m glad I’m not driving over the top of the M62 today. I suspect that things were far worse in Yorkshire. I heard the next day that my sister and her husbands canal boat was a casualty and had sunk, thankfully they were not on board and they have insurance. Still very distressing all the same. They are a hardy pair and all will be well, but still they have invested some much love into their life together on that. By the way I also learnt that they had taken the journey over the top of the M62, earlier that day, as they had driven back from Liverpool.
Now maybe I am somewhat foolhardy, but as I drove down the Flixton mile road I felt little fear; I felt alive, and safe, and protected; I felt at one with the car and the weather. If truth be told I cannot remember ever feeling more awake and alive as I did for those twenty minutes. Now I had actually felt that way from the moment I had awoken that morning. I had not had a great deal of sleep, I had gone to bed later after a deeply fulfilling day, and yet felt incredibly refreshed that morning as I woke, I could feel it on the taste of my own breath.
So, as a result, as I drove through the storm, I cannot remember ever feeling more connected and awake to everything. Over the years I have had many similar experiences. They do not seem to last forever, at least not in this heightened state, that said afterwards I have never been quite the same again.
This morning the following poem appeared as a facebook memory, it seemed to fit in with my thoughts here...
“A Journey” by Edward Field
When he got up that morning everything was different:
He enjoyed the bright spring day
But he did not realise it exactly, he just enjoyed it.
And walking down the street to the railroad station
Past magnolia trees with dying flowers like old socks
It was a long time since he had breathed so simply.
Tears filled his eyes and it felt good
but he held them back
Because men didn’t walk around crying in that town.
Waiting on the platform at the station
The fear came over him of something terrible about to happen:
The train was late and he recited the alphabet to keep hold.
And in its time it came screeching in
And as it went on making its usual stops,
People coming and going, telephone poles passing,
He hid his head behind a newspaper
No longer able to hold back the sobs, and willed his eyes
To follow the rational weavings of the seat fabrics.
He didn’t do anything violent as he had imagined.
He cried for a long time, but when he finally quieted down
A place in him that had been closed like a fist was open,
And at the end of the ride he stood up and got off that train:
And through the streets and in all the places he lived in later on
He walked, himself at last, a man among men,
With such radiance that everyone looked up and wondered.
Some 600 years before the ministry of Jesus the Buddha began his search for enlightenment in India. Some suggest that Jesus had developed his belief system because he visited India himself and was thus exposed to Hinduism and Buddhism. It is not a story I accept personally. Instead I reckon that similar principles have manifested in many human forms throughout our history. I suspect that all of us are capable of awakening to this deep love. We can all wake up and realise the love at the core of all life. We may interpret it different due to the culture we are born into, the myths and stories may not be the same, but the essence is
When the Buddha was asked, “What are you, a God, an angel and saint”, he answered no to each question. They persisted, and he replied enigmatically, “I am awake” as Jesus was to the duel reality of living in the face of death. Both intuitively understood that suffering could be turned to joy through sacred living, following the Dharma as Buddha put it (to salvation and Nirvana). Jesus called this eternal life. Through the lives they lived they modelled a better way of living, both examples to what we can be if we were to awaken the love within us.
Now this is all very interesting you may say, but what does it mean to wake up? What do we need to wake up to?
Well I would say look around you and within you. Take time in contemplation and it will awaken the senses that you have been given and enable you to respond to the needs around you.
Or to quote Rabindranath Tagore, a man deeply influenced by eastern and western traditions and who became a great influence both here and in India.
By waking up we will know the joy of living, through simple loving service. Isn’t this what it means to follow the great examples. To be awake, is to awaken to the world. Let us wake up to this world we live in; to its beauty and wonder, and also to its tragedy and pain. Let us wake up to the reality in which we live and to respond in loving ways. Let us wake up to the idea that our wholeness, our lives, are only as complete as the lives of those around us, of those we are inextricably tied to in a great web of mutuality, of which are all a part and to which we all belong.
Let us wake up and let us stay awake.
Now for some people waking up can be a terrifying feeling. There have been times in my life when I have not wanted to wake up and face another day. So many people experience this on a daily basis; so many people wake up frightened for a variety of reasons. To be truly awake is to be compassionate towards them; to be truly awake it is vital to acknowledge this suffering in life and be with those who suffer.
That said it is just as important to express the beauty of life and to express gratitude for the incredible joy that can be human living. This is precisely what I was experiencing as I was driving between the beautiful congregations I serve, in the wild wind and rain. I was living in the joy of service.
With this in mind I am going to leave you with another question, I know I keep on doing this. It is a question that comes from the Sufi tradition of Islam, from the beautiful poetry of Rumi. It is a kind of antidote to the feeling that might come on those days when we wake up empty and frightened, as many people do and no doubt most of us have done as some point in time.
So here’s a question for this day, perhaps it’s a question for every day, what might to you, to “kneel and kiss the ground?”
Here are the verses
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Rumi
What might it mean, to "kneel and kiss the ground?"
Let us wake up and let us stay awake.
Now for some people waking up can be a terrifying feeling. There have been times in my life when I have not wanted to wake up and face another day. So many people experience this on a daily basis; so many people wake up frightened for a variety of reasons. To be truly awake is to be compassionate towards them; to be truly awake it is vital to acknowledge this suffering in life and be with those who suffer.
With this in mind I am going to leave you with another question, I know I keep on doing this. It is a question that comes from the Sufi tradition of Islam, from the beautiful poetry of Rumi. It is a kind of antidote to the feeling that might come on those days when we wake up empty and frightened, as many people do and no doubt most of us have done as some point in time.
So here’s a question for this day, perhaps it’s a question for every day, what might to you, to “kneel and kiss the ground?”
Here are the verses
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Rumi
What might it mean, to "kneel and kiss the ground?"
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