Choose Life: Whatever Path You Follow

I woke up on Monday to two beautiful emails from the daughters of Alan Hardman whose ashes had been scattered in the Garden of Remembrance the day before. Just simple emails of thanks. They didn’t have to do so, but it was rather touching that they decided to. I stepped into the day, began my journey, with thoughts for the day and week ahead. I could have chosen to focus on work that day, but instead I chose friendship, some of which could have been named pastoral work. After taking Molly for a long walk. I went to see Helen Redhead at her mums. She was there with her powerlifting trainer Jason, a larger than life character in every sense. Helen had recently taken the courageous decision to start a new life in Kent, in order to primarily pursue her sport of “Power Lifting”. She had been in Manchester competing in the “British Powerlifting Union Championship” and had won her age group setting two British records. Helen had followed her bliss, took the courageous step to try something new in life. Yes, it had in some ways been birthed in tragedy, following the death of Andrea, but she had chosen to go down a new road and it was wonderful to see her choosing life. I was glad I was able to celebrate with her. She will be back on 18th of July to compete in Manchester, I plan to go along and cheer her on. I didn’t stay too long as I had to get home, to take Molly for a walk and do some work before heading to Stockport cemetery to attend the funeral of another friend John, who had died tragically. It was a moving but deeply sad service. I saw many friends who I have known over the years and remembered times we had shared together. One thing I have noticed about myself is that I am very quiet at funerals I am not involved in. I think some people take this the wrong way, but I think it is just a mark of respect. As I was driving home I remembered something I used to say to John when he was going through a bad time following the end of a relationship. I said to him to not see it as the end, but as a new possibility, “that all bets are open”. It helped him at the time and he would often say it back to me “All bets are open.” Yes, all things are possible, there is always time to change. Sadly, this is no longer the case for John.

My friends Martin and Jade weren’t working on Monday and had taken Molly for a few hours. I had just changed and was about to go and collect her when my phone rang. It actually rang three times, but it was the first phonecall that I would like to share about. It was a young man, at a similar age and crossroads as John was when I first met him. The young man was suffering with fear and uncertainty, unsure about life and which direction to go in. I listened for a while and then I told him about John. I told him that “All bets are open”. That he was free to choose whatever direction he wished. I also told him whatever choice he made mistakes would happen, things would go wrong, may even be a disaster. That this was ok and that he would be ok provided he could learn from the mistakes. He was about to go on holiday for two weeks and then would be returning to begin his next journey. I told him to enjoy himself and then I quoted good old Moses, I said choose life. I even gave him the full Deutronomy 30 v 19 quote:

19I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.”

I had moved outside in the gardens at the chapel by this time. I was stood by the wind telephone. I was going to sit there for a bit and be quiet before going to pick Molly up. I was thinking about a few souls that have been lost in recent times. I was stood in front of it by now and was looking directly at it while talking to the young man, when I noticed something that broke my heart, the phone wasn’t there. Someone had ripped it from its bracket. This has happened once before. This time though they had not only damaged it, they had taken the old style phone away. I finished my phone call and then just sat down and wept for a while. I then took a picture and shared about it on social media, before going to collect Molly. I stayed for a while at Marti’s had tea and chocolate hobnobs and then we went for a walk. When I returned, I checked out my phone. My goodness me I was overwhelmed by the loving response form so many people. So much loving support and some anger. By the end of the evening different friends had gone to extra lengths and three new versions of the phone had been ordered. Tow have already been delivered to two different friends and another soon will be. So a replacement will be fitted in the next few days, with two spares if this happens again.

The phone means a lot to so many people in the community, as do the gardens at the chapel and myself. So many people have sat in that space and connected with those they have lost. It seems that soon the lines will be open again.

I went to bed that night touched by so many people I know, by their loving care and friendship; touched by how people will go out of their way at times; touched by how in general people choose to making loving decisions, decisions that are primarily about life. I also smiled as I found I had done the same I had chosen life, in all its joy and suffering, in all it’s blessings and curses. I also thought of John and those words “All bets are open”.

It seems a bit of no brainer to choose life, who wouldn’t? Well sometimes we do choose to stay in fear and avoid life. Whenever we turn from our God given gifts or fail to live authentically I suspect we are refusing life. Not that we should give ourselves too hard a time for this, as we can always turn back to life again; we can turn back down the path of life again. No one lives perfectly without ever being held back from fear.

To choose life is to accept life in all its joys and troubles. At John’s funeral there were many people who have courageously come through difficult challenges, two who have recently come through severe and life threatening forms of cancer. They carry their scars, both physical and emotional, but they were there and they were choosing life in every sense. One asked me if I was going to the wake afterwards, I said not. I often prefer not to. They were going, but primarily to ensure that John’s ex-partner was ok. Another decision based on love and care, despite their own suffering.

Choosing or refusing Life is a decision that we all make. It is not always obvious which one to take; fear in its many forms can often paralyse us in our decisions. So much so that we make no decision and thus do not choose life at all. Like the young man I was talking to on Monday, there is a fear that we could get it wrong, that “all bets are not open”, “That all bets are in actual fact closed.”

This brought to my mind the often misunderstood, misquoted and even mistitled classic poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost.

I will share it with you:

"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The poem is a gentle satire on indecisiveness. It is not primarily a celebration of rugged individualism and courageously striding on without fear, that many believe it was written for. This is why it is truly an every person poem, as I am sure we can all relate to this fear we feel when faced with such decisions. Frost himself said of the poem “ I wasn’t thinking about myself there, but about a friend who had gone off to war, a person who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn’t go the other. He was hard on himself that way.” The friend was Edward Thomas who Frost had sent the poem to privately in a small envelope, under the title “Two Roads”. Frost had been inspired to write the poem by Thomas’s habit of regretting whatever path the pair took during their long walks in the countryside, Thomas would torturing himself over the decisions to turn one way or another, or not. Frost equated this indecisiveness with the romantic predisposi­tion for “crying over what might have been.” Frost understood that we all feel this fear, that we don’t always choose life and not to be too hard on ourselves for doing so. He believed that his friend would take the poem as a gen­tle joke and would respond and protest against Frost’s teasing. It seems that he didn’t see the joke initially at least and Frost had to direct him back to his point.

Whatever path we choose it will not be smooth, it will be full of challenges, full of life and if we find it is not the right move, we can always change direction. It is ok to give up sometimes and start all over again. This surely is choosing life.

There will always be some indecisions in life, fear we will get it wrong. The truth is that we will get things wrong. Every day I say or do something, or fail to do or say something I should have. This though does not cause paralysis. Every day we have to make decisions about little things and sometimes monumental things. In so doing we choose life.

To choose life requires discernment. Discernment formed from the Latin word “discernere”, which means to separate, to distinguish, to sort out. Just think of prospectors panning for gold or sifting through the rocks and dirt in search of gem stones. They are separating, they are sorting through the muck for the jewels, they are distinguishing, they are discerning. Discernment is about choosing life.

Discernment is the key to making those wise choices. We need to discover what is of value and what needs to be discarded in our minds. We need to discard the dirt and muck to uncover the gold, the gems, to have clarity of thought, so that we can “choose life”. This is not easy, especially when we think of all that information that swims around in our lives and our consciousness; information like an enormous shoal of fish swimming round and round aimlessly in a small tank and not really going anywhere. Our lives, our heads are just so full of stuff. How do we discern what is healthy, what is right? Well we need silence, we need time away from all this information and all these things that pull us in so many directions. We need time to be still, time to be silent, time to connect to our bodies and our breathing; time to hear that still small voice of calm. A voice less than a whisper, but somehow more than silence. The voice of love, the voice of life, the voice that overcomes fear. The voice of God within.

We need to awaken to our true consciousness in order to make those sane and sensible decisions about life. We need to learn to separate those things that are of value and those that are not. We need to do this in order to hear that voice, that is less than whisper but that is somehow more than silence; that voice that has spoken down the centuries, to those who had ears that could hear it; the voice that spoke to the people of Israel and said “I have set before you life and death, a blessing and a curse. Therefore choose life”

The choices we make matter. It matters what we are and what we do. I do not think that God chooses this for us. Yes, God offers guidance, “The Lure of Divine Love” but it is up to us to choose the path that we follow. Remembering always that we can always change direction if we find that the road we are on is not one of life.

Let‘s choose life, by choosing the road in front of us. The road of love and the road that will bless all our lives. It won’t be pain free there will be joy and suffering, but above all there will be life.

Please find below a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"