We can inspire and we can dispirit; it matters how we be

Last Sunday Molly and myself will be travelled to Hucklow to spend a few days with new and upcoming ministers at “Ministry in the Making”. We have some great people coming through and it feels good to help them in their development, in the ways that I can. The theme this year is “The Ministry of all believers: How do we believe in our people”. I will be leading a workshop exploring how we have been inspired, who have been our inspirations, who believed in us, who didn’t, who dispirited us. It is an opportunity to look at ways in which we might inspire and help develop others as they step into their own ministry’s. It got me thinking about some of the inspirations in my life. There are many folk who inspired me throughout my life; sadly there has been who have dispirited me too. This is life of course. It is vital to discern who we listen too.

I recently shared the following story with friends: “Do you know who I am?”

Journeys today on public transport have a sort of regularity about them, but there’s always someone who thinks they can beat the system – especially when things are busy. Like on a Bank Holiday weekend.

Picture this scene at Manchester Airport – travellers, airport personnel, aircrew, people looking for the loo or a bar – thousands thronging the concourses.

At one of the check-in desks for a long-haul flight there was a snaking queue of people with lots of luggage. The attendant was doing her best to get people through the process as quickly as possible and most were good humoured about the wait. Except, apparently, for one man – towards the back of the queue.

He was getting more and more agitated and finally he barged through, headed straight for the desk and demanded to be served.

The attendant said patiently: “Sir, there are lots of people ahead of you and we’re doing our best to get everyone through – trying to jump the queue will only delay things even more for you and everyone else. Please go back to your place.”

The man went puce in the face, leaned over the counter and shouted so everyone could hear: “Do you know who I am?”

The attendant blinked, took a deep breath and picked up the public-address microphone.

“Ladies and gentlemen, there is a gentleman at check-in desk No 212 who does not know who he is. If anyone is able to identify him and assist him, please let us know.”

I got some interesting response from folk. Most were amused and several responded with a video of a character who came into public consciousness about 10 years ago. He gets into an awful dispute with someone on the road, he utters the immortal line “Do you know who I am, I’m Ronnie Pickering”. It brought back some awful childhood memories of growing up with a man like that. A totally dispiriting character. In the video there is a child sat in the car with him, looking terrified and trying to hide. A feeling I remember only too well.

The next day I met up with my writer friends. One’s husband was shown the video and he was appalled by it. We began to talk about characters and the folk that people look up to, the folk we remember. Those that lift us up with their example and more notorious characters. I talked of a friend who’s six year old son told him he wants to be a gangster when he grows up. My friend said he tried to explain to his son that this is worse thing he could aspire to. I talked about a notorious character when I was growing up who instilled fear in all he met This was Paul Sykes, the notorious hard man from Wakefield. The conversation then turned to other characters from our childhood that left us with a very different feelings.

I spoke of a character who would walk around the roads of West Yorkshire dressed as a monk just smiling and waving at people, spreading good cheer. I described the feeling he would instill in me whenever I saw him. How he filled me with a very different spirit. He was a mystery, but one that filled my good feelings, even though I never met him.

I thought I would look him up. I though there must be something on the internet about him. If he had that impact on me, he must have had it on others. Well there was all sorts of interesting stuff on line. It seems he was called Jeffrey Brindley, known as “The Jesus Man of Bradford”, or “Holy Joe”, “The Airedale Monk”. He died in 2015 having spent 50 years walking the roads around Bradford spreading love. He was a harmless eccentric and when he died money was raised to give him a funeral at Bradford Cathedral, following a huge parade through the city. There are plans to build a statue in his memory in Baildon where he lived. There were hundreds of messages from people speaking of him and memories of what he brought to ordinary folk dating back to the 1960’s. I shared on-line myself about this conversation and several of my friends shared memories of him and the cheer he brought to the people he met as he walked around sharing the good spirit with those he passed by. Yes, he was an eccentric, but harmless and one who people remember with fondness. Maybe the world needs more holy fools, certainly more than it needs characters like Paul Sykes and Ronnie Pickering. I’m glad I remember “the smiling, waving, monk” as I called him and the way I felt when I saw him passing by on the road. It filled my heart with love and joy, if inspired something good in me. Something I have been re-feeling and remembering all week.

I was talking about this on Tuesday evening at “Living the Questions”. Geoff who lived in Bradford for a time, talked of “Holy Joe” as he called him. There was also a few jokes and suggestions of what the folk of Altrincham might call me. I do spend a lot of my life walking around the town, meeting and greeting folk, although I suspect most of them remember Molly more than me. I hope I share joy, love and respect, I hope I lift folks spirits. There are many others in the town that offer similar feelings. I am sure there are many in every community. Unfortunately they do not get the attention they deserve, the notorious it seems have too string an appeal. Sadly those who do good are too often viewed with suspicions.

I have been thinking of late of the people who have inspired me, who lifted my spirit, there have been many. As there have been many who have diminished me, made me feel useless, discouraged me, told me I was no good at things, pretty useless. I am sure it is the same for every single one of us. We have know those who have inspired us and those who have dispirited too.

I wonder who and what has been significant in our lives? Who and what has touched and shaped our lives? Who are the significant people, what are the significant moments and events? We might not remember the events fully, but we do remember how they made us feel. Our lives are shaped by every moment and every person that we share our lives with.

I’ve been thinking of the people who have inspired me. Who filled my spirit and kept me going in my darkest days. I was sat with several of my early ministry inspirations after David Copley’s funeral the other week. Folk who lit the light in me. They and many others remind me of that famous quote by Albert Schweitzer:

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”

There are many people who have inspired me, who have lit the flame within me, who have inspired me to make the best use of what I have and to give back to others. To serve in little and sometimes bigger ways in this our shared world.

There is inspiration everywhere, there are many folk who have no doubt inspired us all. What though do we mean when we say “inspire”.

“Inspire” is an interesting word, it is one of those, like so many in common usage, that has been reduced in meaning as time has gone by. We have reduced its power as our lives have become secularised. It originally meant “immediate influence of God”, especially with reference to the writing of a Holy book. Coming from the French “inspiracion meaning “inhaling, breathing in inspiration”, coming from the Latin “inspirare” meaning to breath in, to inflame. To inspire means to breath upon, to blow into, to excite, to inflame, to affect, to arouse, but to do so through spirit or soul, it is a Divine activity. Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that when we inspire others we are engaging in Divine activity. To inspire others is to engage in one of the highest forms of love, as it is Divine love in human action.

So if you are walking round the place you live, sharing love, lifting spirits, you are in fact involved in Divine activity, well you are in my eyes. Likewise if you are going around dispiriting or instilling fear in others, you are engaged in the opposite. It seems to me that Divine activity takes place in the most ordinary, not the grand and loud and showy. It comes to life in the most humble of activity.

Now not everyone agrees with me, in fact throughout history it has always been the great figures that have been seen as the real inspirations. It is they that they usually build statues to. Thomas Carlyle saw the great figures of history as the ultimate inspirations, to him they were geniuses. Nowadays many people are labelled as geniuses, some say that is overused. I think that actually it is an under used word. I think that it ought to apply to anyone who inspires another to be all that they can be. For surely the real genius of anyone is to inspire another to truly come alive, for in so doing you are breathing new life into another. Maybe we ought to build monuments to each and every one of them, like the folk of Bradford would like to do for Jeffrey Brindley. Now wouldn’t our towns and cities look interesting if we did.

Everyone we meet, and everything that we absorb through our senses can be an inspiration. There are inspirational people all around us, as there has been throughout human history. Some have been the greats, those that have shaped history, they even had statues built in their memory, but most were probably never recognised., except in our own hearts and memories. Nevertheless they inspired us, they awakened something within us and helped to become the people that we are today.

We can all be inspirations. We all have the genius seed within us. We are all born, we are all graced, with certain gifts. The real genius of course is the one who can give birth to theirs and inspire others to do the same with theirs.

Now throughout human history this genius within us has been understood in different ways. Many, beginning with Plato, talked of each of us being born with a companion, what some might describe as a spirit that remembers our true nature and therefore "calling" and which can guide us back to our greatest animation. It is this that truly brings us alive, that animates our very being that enthuses us. This inner spirit animates our soul, this is the genius within each and every one of us. It has been called by many names such as muse, inner voice, still small voice, higher self, guardian angel or what the ancient Greeks referred to as Daemon. It breathes its life into us and inspires us and through acting from it we too inspire others.

The gifts life has bestowed upon us, our genii are not meant to be kept or selfishly horded. They are meant to be given away, they are meant to be shared with others. Our task is to make the most of these gifts, to enjoy them and to share them with others, thus inspiring them to make the most of what life has given them. This I believe is the point that the epistle Paul was making in is first letter to the Corinthians chapter twelve.

aul wrote the letter because each member of the congregation, in their struggle to be the perfect congregational leader, was getting in the way of the others. Each one of them wanted to possess all the good qualities that make up a good leader, to become the perfect leader and to leave the others in their shadow.

Paul taught that the spirit does not allow even the possibility that one person can possess all the talents. That said if people come together in love, live interdependently and inspire one another with their gifts they will create a community for the good of all.

We all have gifts, talents that have been bestowed upon us and I believe we have a responsibility to learn to use these gifts well and to recognise that the same spirit that gave us these gifts requires us to use them cooperatively with those who have different gifts to us. They are not to be used lightly and selfishly, neither are they to be despised. In so doing we will inspire others to do the same, to make the most of what they have been freely given.

Let us be grateful for the gifts that have been bestowed upon us. Let us make the most of these aspects of our humanity that have been given us. Let us learn to share them with one another. Let us be inspired by one another’s gifts and create a true kin-ship of love right here, right now.

Let’s breathe our inspiration into one another.

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