DAVID BRANCACCIO asks Vonnegut : There's a little sweet moment, I've got to say, in a very intense book-- your latest-- in which you're heading out the door and your wife says what are you doing? I think you say-- I'm getting-- I'm going to buy an envelope…What happens then?
KURT VONNEGUT: Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.
I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around.
And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.
I came across this marvellous little piece the other day. In some ways this attitude is central to my view of what it means to live spiritually alive in this world. The spiritual life for me is about meeting life and each other in this way. It is about openness. It is central to my view of ministry in so many ways. I try to live by invitation, by inviting the other to be who they are. People think that openness is about telling people who you are, being open about who you. I’m not convinced. Openness to me is about inviting others to be who they are with you. Openness is about invitation.
My car has been in the garage for a few days. This meant I have had to make use of taxi’s. I experienced four very different taxi rides. All of the drivers spoke freely and openly with me, all in different ways. My invitation enabled them to do so. They talked a lot about their views of the world, about religion and spirituality. I had a particularly fascinating ride with one between Urmston and Altrincham last Sunday. He had very strong views about religion, formed from his upbringing. I listened with interest and interjected very occasionally. By the end of the ride, just twenty minutes later, we had openly shared so much with each other. His parting conversation went something like this, I have never met a clergy man like you before. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. I felt listened to and understood, thank you.
I felt blessed by our open conversation. We were simply meeting one another, but it felt like the spirit was alive and well between us. As I got out of the cab I felt spiritually alive and led the service in the same spirit.
If I have learnt anything about spiritual living I have learnt that the key is openness; the key to spiritual living is to live with open hearts, open minds, open eyes and open hands. These four are spiritual living in practice, which I have come to believe is true essence of religion. Not creed like religion but truly living breathing practising free religion. True religion, intentional spirituality in community, should not only bring us to life as individuals but enable us to live truly alive and awake in this our shared world.
Unitarian minister James Vila Blake (1842-1925) wrote, "Love is the spirit of this church, and service its law. This is our great covenant: To dwell together in peace, To seek the truth in love, And to help one another." I think in many ways this covenant articulates the essence of what it means to come together in love as a worshipping community. It has been adopted by many Unitarian Universalist and Free Christian communities. It expresses beautifully what it means to live in an open, living breathing spiritual community, what free religion ought to be about.
When I am asked what it means to be a Unitarian, the first word that comes to mind is “openness”. It seems to me that we are an open tradition. Now as I have come to believe the essence of openness is humility. We are a humble tradition.
Openness is very much a doing word. It’s not so much that you are open, more that you live openly. To do so religiously, is to be open in four ways. It is to live with open eyes, open hearts and open minds and open hands.
Now to live with these four open eyes, open minds, open hearts and open hands is no easy task. In fact to master them is virtually impossible. The key is to begin and to continue; the key is intentional practice.
To live with open eyes is to see the world as it truly is; to see reality as it really is, warts and all and in its beauty spots too. To live with open eyes is to not turn away from the suffering present in life but also to pay attention to life’s beauty too. To live with open eyes is to see the reality of the whole of life. This is not easy, so often we are tempted to turn away. To live fully connected lives, we need to live with open eyes, to see life with all its blessings and curses.
To live with an open mind is to be able to search for truth and meaning, while maintaining an awareness of the tension between certitude and curiosity. It is the balance of being receptive to what is new and alien, while at the same time holding onto what is most dear. It is to try to know while in the presence of the unknown and the unknowable. This can make others feel uncomfortable and others may try to close an open mind or fill it with their things. To live with an open mind does not mean that we do not discern that we don’t come to conclusions. Quite the opposite actually. It is vital to come to conclusions, so that one can act in the world it’s just that after the decision the openness must be maintained, it is never too late to change our minds. So, keep your minds open but please do be careful what you put in it.
The key to living with a loving and open heart is live with all our senses, including our sixth sense, our soul, open to all the wonders and mystery of life. This too brings its dangers. Living with an open heart exposes us to pain and fear. You see to truly live with an open heart is to allow ourselves to be touched in the most tender of places. This can hurt sometimes. Remember Cupids arrow had to first of all pierce the flesh before it could penetrate the heart, love hurts. To live with an open heart is to follow the great commandment, it is Agape. It is to love others, no matter who they are what they have done, where they have come from, it is to love without condition. It is to follow the Golden Rule. It is to love our neighbour as we would wish to be loved ourselves. This requires love and compassion for ourselves of course, which can at times be the greatest challenge. It is to feel a deep connection with all that is, all that has been and all that will ever be. It is to recognise that in order to feel this connection requires that we share ourselves. To love is to practice forgiveness, over and over again. Practicing living with a loving heart is to live willing to be transformed by what we encounter in our daily lives.
By living with these three open eyes, open minds and open hearts we can then practice living with open hands. Hands that welcome, hands that humbly accept our interconnectedness. Open hands are willing to do what they can do to serve, to play their part in the world. It means committing and recommitting to use our hands, our abilities, in the service of life. With our hands, our actions, we take responsibility for our part in working for what is just, to create the kin-dom of love right here right now, to create a better world, the beloved community. With open hands, we offer what we have and do what we can.
Our open eyes allow us to recognise where we can act in the world, if our minds and our hearts are open. It is these three that tell our open hands where they are needed.
Open hands though are not just about action, they are also about connection and perhaps more importantly humility. Humility is the key to openness and to my eyes the essence of this my chosen Unitarian faith. I say chosen but I’m not sure if I chose it or it chose me. Who knows?
Now humility is a word that is often misunderstood. To be humble is to be at home in our true humanity, to be grounded in our own reality and shared humanity. The key to humility is to recognise that we are a part of something larger than our singular selves.
Humility is not about being meek and mild and bowing and scraping, it is not about being self-deprecating or denigrating. Too often humility is seen in this way, particularly from a religious perspective, as an excuse for suffering and or meekness. To me this is not true humility; true humility is about living with open hands and doing what we can in the world, we can only do this if we live with open hearts, open minds and open eyes and by recognising our common humanity.
I feel that so many of our troubles are caused by our inability to be truly open to one another and to new ideas; our troubles are caused by our arrogance and belief that we know best. Therefore, by not living openly we fail to understand and therefore empathise with each other and we remain trapped by what we think we know. We are too closed down and we need to open up, to one another, to life and to God. We need to be opened up like the Buddhist Monk, arms out with his begging bowl. An image which as Thomas Merton explained “represents not just a right to beg, but openness to the gifts of all human beings as an expression of this interdependence of all beings...Thus when a monk begs from the layman it is not as a selfish person getting something from someone else. He is simply opening himself to his interdependence.” The key is to live openly and of course the key to openness is humility. No one lives apart from anyone else we are all interdependent. Also none of us knows everything, we all see through the glass dimly.
I remember the first time I heard Forrest Church’s assertion that humility and openness are the two keys to religious living, how much this struck me deep inside. I saw the truth in it. There is limitlessness in openness. Who knows how much we can truly change and learn to love if we just stay open, in our hearts and minds and eyes. Who knows what we can do with our loving hands if we live with truly open eyes, open hearts and open minds.
The key to true spiritual living is openness, to live with open eyes, open hearts open minds and open hands. To key is to live with true humility, to see that we are grounded in our shared humanity. The key is to see that we are a part of something far greater than ourselves and that through recognising this we will know the love present in life and begin to bring that love alive, right here right now.
Every day is a day when we can bear witness to a Power Greater than ourselves. We do this when we love one another with open hands, when we see the world with truly open eyes, when we live with minds that are truly open and hearts open to the love waiting to enter and to be poured out onto our world that really needs it.
I was reminded of this last Sunday morning on that taxi journey between Urmston and Altrincham. What a beautiful gift that was. Who knows it may have opened the eyes, the heart, the mind and the hands of the taxi driver who had never met a clergy man quite like me before. We shared a journey, where we lived spiritually alive.
I believe it is our task to live truly open lives. This is real spiritual living, this is true religion. I believe it is our task to bring love alive, through our openness. It is our task to allow God to incarnate through our lives. To do so we need to live with open eyes, open minds, open hearts and open hands.
Please find below a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"
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