Turn towards the sun, sideways into the light, not away from life

A good friend Rob planted a load of beautiful flowers in gardens at Dunham Road. Gardening is a new love for him; a love born from the grief of the loss of his father, who was an early Covid death. He had nurtured the seedlings and had so many that he was giving them away as gifts. He wanted some to come to the chapel, as it means so much to him. It is where his soul came back to life. He also wanted to thank me for helping him along the way, not least when his father died. He planted the flowers on the second anniversary of his father’s death back in the Spring.

He planted many sunflowers and some are now blooming. I was admiring them early the other morning and thinking of how they always turn towards the sun. How it is a source of everything to the sunflower. They need to turn towards the sun not only to survive, but to thrive. I don’t think I am that different myself, are any of us?

When I think of my friend and his flowers, particularly those sunflowers I see a love born from pain and suffering. The way his father died and the way so many others did and still do, in such tragic isolated ways, without the ability to grieve this love as they would have normally done so. My friend has created something beautiful from that suffering, something meaningful that he can share with others. I see pure joy born from the pain and rich meaning too. Thus, there is no despair, no empty shell, no lingering destructive resentment. Thinking of this turns my heart towards the sun, just like those sunflowers he so lovingly planted do.

I was thinking of this the other morning as I walked down and round to Dunham Massey. I had much weighing heavily on my heart that day, things are would rather not face. Not least the news that my cousin has only a few days to live. I was travelling to see my auntie and uncle that day. Cheryl is now home, where she is being cared for as her life comes to an end.

It was a beautiful sunlit morning in Dunham. I bumped into another friend and his wife, they were out running. I had never actually met her before. We had once spoken on the phone, when he was in his darkest hour, a few years earlier. So, it was lovely to actually meet her, in the sunshine. Things are very different for them now, thank God. There lives have certainly turned around, they turned towards the light and back to life.

As I wandered in the morning sun I was reminded of Mary Oliver’s poem “The Sun”.

Here it is

“The Sun” Mary Oliver

Have you ever seen

Anything

in your life

more wonderful

than the way the sun,

every evening,

relaxed and easy,

floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,

or the rumpled sea,

and is gone--

and how it slides again

out of the blackness,

every morning,

on the other side of the world,

like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,

say, on a morning in early summer,

at its perfect imperial distance--

and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love--

do you think there is anywhere, in any language,

a word billowing enough

for the pleasure

that fills you,

as the sun

reaches out,

as it warms you

as you stand there,

empty-handed--

or have you too

turned from this world--

or have you too

gone crazy

for power,

for things?

Mary had such a beautiful pastoral way about her. Her poems were very real and earthy, there are no bromides and yet there is a deep sense of love and care, and devotion to life, they are spiritual in every sense of the word. There is a sense of the sacred in anything and everything she described. She reminds me how vital it is to sanctify life and let life sanctify me, by simply being alive. Like my friend and his sunflowers. I feel so carried and cared for by Mary’s words in “The Sun” and yet brought to a halt by the final lines which asks if we have turned away from  the world or gone crazy with power for things. Both will be destructive, it matters how we live in this world and how the world lives in us, it really does. It matters how we turn in life, is it in love, towards the sun, or do we turn away from life or perhaps even worse get so crazy with power we try to destroy everything in our way.

As I continued my walk round Dunham I was reminded of another poem of Mary’s, I thought of my friend and his flowers as I remembered a few lines from “Morning Poem”: “Every morning the world is created under the orange sticks of the sun the heaped ashes of the night turn into leaves again and fasten themselves to the high branches…”

How important it is whenever the pain gets too overwhelming, when, to quote another line from the poem, that “heavier than lead” feeling comes, that we keep on turning back to life. That we do not let our ego control the lives of others. That instead we turn to life and play our role in everything. Afterall this is what life needs and in so doing meaning always emerges right there in the ashes of suffering.

Walking in nature brings solace to me, it is not the answer to the troubles both close at hand and in the wider world but my heart and soul needs it in order to return to whatever is my responsibility. In so doing joy is born deep in the heart, even in the very real suffering. The suffering is not transcended, it is transformed into meaning and love. Gosh have I known love this week.

On Tuesday after talking through some very difficult and painful experiences with someone another favourite poet came to my heart, this time as I watched dogs frolicking in the park. This time it was David Whyte and his poem “Tobar Phadraic”, again it is a poem about turning, only this time sideways into the light. Here it is:

TOBAR PHADRAIC

Turn sideways into the light as they say
the old ones did and disappear
into the originality of it all.

Be impatient with easy explanations
and teach that part of the mind
that wants to know everything
not to begin questions it cannot answer.

Walk the green road above the bay
and the low glinting fields
toward the evening sun, let that Atlantic
gleam be ahead of you and the gray light
of the bay below you, until you catch,
down on your left, the break in the wall,
for just above in the shadows
you’ll find it hidden, a curved arm
of rock holding the water close to the mountain,
a just-lit surface smoothing a scattering of coins,
and in the niche above, notes to the dead
and supplications for those who still live
.
But for now, you are alone with the transfiguration
and ask no healing for your own
but look down as if looking through time,
as if through a rent veil from the other
side of the question you’ve refused to ask.

And you remember now, that clear stream
of generosity from which you drank,
how as a child your arms could rise and your palms
turn out to take the blessing of the world.

I love the line, "Turn sideways into the light." It is just so beautiful . it comes from a Celtic myth about a tribe of people who went into battle knowing they would be defeated. They stood facing the enemy and as the enemy charged toward them, they turned sideways into the light and disappeared.

There is much more to the poem of course, but that is perhaps for another day.

“Turning sideways into the light” reminds of another way to face life and conflict; it reminds me that in war no one wins. Yes, one side may lose more, but no one wins. There is so much conflict in life and it grieves my heart. I was reminded of this last Monday and shared deeply about it on Tuesday. To “turn sideways into the light”, suggests another way, one that is relational, what Whyte would call conversational. You do not have to have the confrontational conversation that those who come towards you want. It is about turning down another path, not the one the antagonist wants you down. “Turning sideways into the light” is another way of saying Jesus’ teaching in Matthew ch3 v 38 “But I say to you, do not resist the evil doer…love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” “Turning sideways into the light” is like turning the other cheek. In so doing the hatred and aggression is transformed and disarmed. This takes courage and deep integrity. It is a shift of consciousness akin to Gandhi on the “Salt Marches.” In so doing suffering is transformed into meaning and love. It is a better way that recognises how sacred everything is, not least ourselves. It brings healing too.

So it matters which way we turn in life, it also matters how we turn. It matters what we do and how we do it. It matters whether we turn towards the world or sideways into the light, rather than grasping for power and creating conflict. It matters how and which way we turn. I prefer to be a sunflower always turning towards the light, the warmth of the sun. Rather than someone who charges towards life and others, head down causing destruction. In so doing it enables me to turn to life in a loving way.

It is a curious phrase to turn, or to turn again or even to return. Did you know that to turn or to re-turn was the original meaning of the religious word “conversion”. Conversion is rooted in the Latin word “convertere”, which meant to turn around to transform. Today I choose to turn towards the light and not away from life and in so doing whatever suffering is there begins to be transformed into love and meaning emerges, thus there is no despair. I have felt this powerfully all week, right down in the core of my being, it is why I have known such joy.

This brings back to my mind Victor Frankl and that wonderful and simple equation D=S-M

Despair equals suffering minus meaning...Despair is suffering without meaning.

In “Man’s Search For Meaning” Frankl wrote “Man is not destroyed by suffering; he is destroyed by suffering without meaning.” He discovered that if we have a “why” to live for we can endure anything. More than that actually it is this that allows us to thrive, to be all that we are born to be. To not only improve our lives, but to serve our world. In so doing, despite living with real suffering we can know joy, in even the tiniest of things, our hearts will seek it out, that is what hearts are for.

The question this raises though is how do we uncover meaning? Where do we find meaning in our lives? What about those who tell us that life is essentially meaningless? Is there one meaning? Is there one truth?

Now Frankl would suggest that it is for each of us to discover our own meaning in any given situation. That this is our task; that this meaning may not be in the given moment but in some place in the future; that it is to be found in some purpose or meaning yet to come.

What are the things that hold us and sustains when life seems too much?

Remember Frankl’s equation D = S-M. Despair is suffering without meaning. How do we find and develop meaning in our lives, in spite of the inevitable suffering that will always be present?

Well, that is up to each of us. I know my friend found it in those flowers he has been nurturing ever since his father died, sharing that love and beauty with others. I find it in simply being in life, but also in accompanying others in their grief and suffering, as well as refusing to play the game of destruction. I would much rather live authentically from love and turn sideways into the light.

So many ask why, when suffering occurs. I cannot answer that, at least not fully. All I can do is encourage folk to keep and turning towards the sun, or sideways into the light and walk side by side, to accompany each other. Maybe that is the answer, to not turn away from life, even when it really hurts and to keep on turning towards light and love and truth and in so doing meaning will emerge and the suffering will be transformed into love.

Please find a video devotion based on

the material found in this "blogspot"