There was a knock on my door on Monday afternoon. I was upstairs but Molly made sure I was fully alerted. I went downstairs, picked Molly up and opened the door. There was no one there. I looked down to see a bunch of sunflowers on my doorstep and a card. I was about to bend down, to pick them up, when I noticed a redheaded woman near the vestry of the chapel. She was looking towards me and I asked her “If she had left the flowers.” She clearly hadn’t. She was looking for the “Depression and Anxiety Group” that has begun meeting in the small schoolroom. She was lost and told me she had followed the person who left the flowers on my doorstep and who had left by the time I opened the door. I went out with Molly and showed her where the group meets. I then returned home and picked up the flowers and card.
The card was beautiful, self-made with a water colour painting of Molly on the front. They are clearly a gifted artist. The card was signed, but I will not name the person. The card explained that Hallmark don’t do cards like this, with a quote “sorry life is always moving and sometimes it moves too fast for us to keep up with it.”
There was a beautiful thoughtful message contained within it and a thank you for the work I do and for generally being ace, which I loved. The person was acknowledging a difficult time personally for me.
They were inspired by a sermon I had delivered in September 2022. They reminded that sunflowers had been left on my doorstep, and that brightened up my week. So much so that I delivered a sermon in which I suggested that we should turn to joy where we can, like the sunflower turns toward the sun.
I was so touched by this lovely thoughtful gift and personal card, they themselves have been through some recent deep loss. I had been touched at the time in 2022 by a similar gift, which led to the service, which obviously left an impression, upon which they acted. They took time and care to do so too. It proved once again that the things we do, both positive and negative can lead to positive and negative things in life for ourselves and others. The butterfly effect is very much alive. It can lead to wonderful deeds and it can lead to grotesque destruction. We have seen the destruction over the last couple weeks, as those who are intent to breed fear and cause destruction have spread hate filled and destructive lies. We have also seen another response too, communities coming together and standing against the divisive and destructive violence.
On Tuesday morning my friend Oliver James Lomax sent me a poem he had just written for his brother and family. It is titled ‘“Be” for Ben, Lauren and Genie’. The father, mother and sister of Be King one of the three girls murdered in Southport. “Be” is Oliver’s niece. The family have responded with dignity and love. It was supposed to be a time of celebration for them all as they were joining together for Oliver’s sister wedding, which was meant to be held the day after the murders. A day that was instead marred by those who exploited the grief to cause destruction and breed fear. Oliver’s dad posted a beautiful and loving tribute on Tuesday and I know most people in the town and area and responded with real love. As Oliver said to me on Tuesday “What survives us will be love”. He is correct, but it will only do so if we live by it and through it.
It matters how we respond to life, what we do and how we do it, what we say too and how we say it, and in what spirit. We weave webs of love throughout life, or we weave webs of destruction. We create by love or we destroy by hatred and fear. What are the threads that make up our lives, the threads that run through us. The threads that guide us in joy and in sorrow and how do we weave these threads into the other threads of life
There are many threads that make up my life and the web of creation, made of infinite threads that both holds and creates all life. We each of us have this very same thread in us, in fact maybe we as individuals are one thread on the universal web of all life, that without our thread and every other thread the web would not exist. The web is what creates, holds and sustains us, but at the same time we create the very same web of existence. Many of the great stories of the ancient traditions speak of this. In the Christian tradition I always think of the Kingdom of God, as being an example of this. You see the Kingdom is not some place we wish to arrive at some day, but something we build or maybe weave right here, right now. We are the builders, we are weavers or we are the destroyers of the web, the kingdom or as I prefer to call it these days, the “kin-dom”, for we are all kin afterall. Surely this is the central message that Jesus weaved through his ministry.
Now in many traditions there is the mythos of “The Spirit’s Thread” You will find it in the Navajo tradition, and in traditions found in Alaska and Japan. By the way there may be good reason for this, as studies of migrational history suggest that all three peoples’s originate from a tribe that dispersed from Siberia. Both Navajo and the Japanese traditions share a reverence for the larger interconnected net that holds all of life together, the web of life.
It is vital that we take care of this thread that is our life, body, mind, heart and soul and that we continue to weave into the web of all existence. That we fully play our part in creating and recreating the web. For if we do not we will not be playing our part in the whole and we will feel disconnected, no longer a part of the whole.
Now at times our thread may become a little threadbare, an aspect may become weakened. When this happens we need to take stock and perhaps do what is required to fix our thread or perhaps do more work to repair the damaged whole.
The web does not only exist only in the present moment. It began to be weaved at the beginning of time and will continue on into eternity, when we are all long gone. That said we have played our role in co-creating the whole. As our ancestors did, those who came before us. As I look back at my own life I can see a kind of personal tapestry being weaved and not by myself alone. I did not create this wholly alone, so many other lives have weaved their way into my life and helped create who I am, just as I have weaved my way into the lives of others. There is no neutrality in life, everything is connected. Everything that we do and do not do matters. Every thought, every word, every feeling. It matters for we are all part of the great interconnected whole.
We are the creators or destroyers of life. “What you do to the least of them, you to do me”. If we damage one aspect of life, we destroy every aspect, just as if we repair one aspect we repair the whole. Nothing is separate in life and yet the destroyers seem to want to do so.
Now for me the main purpose of spiritual community, of religion, is to aid and encourage both the repair and enhancing of our individual threads while also creating, repairing and beautifying the whole. This is what Rev Dr Martin Luther King called “Beloved Community”, the Kingdom of God right here right now. This is the kind of faith community that is based around responsibility in humility. Not one that expects God to do the weaving alone but for each individual to bring their uniquely beautiful thread and weave it into community, turning up, entering into relationship willingly, learning how to weave their individual gifts to make the most of the whole, which is greater than the sum of its parts. To me this is true religion. Religion comes from the word religiere which meant to bind together and create more than could be done alone with the individual parts. Our single threads, no matter how well developed, no matter how powerful and beautiful can achieve very little alone, in fact they are pretty useless and certainly lonely on their own. This is the greatest problem of spirituality without community, in truth it doesn’t really work. Yet each individual thread weaved into the whole, playing its part, can create something way more beautiful than any of us could ever have imagined.
All life is interconnected, what Thich Nhat Hahn named “interbeing”, this is at the heart of “Beloved Community”. Luther King’s concept, Nhat Hanh explained it like this all of us are connected, as if each of us has a cord around our waist and from that cord an innumerable set of other cords radiate outward, connecting to all other beings. He stated that:
“True compassion … is much more than just knowing that I’m connected to you. Self-interest alone can govern my behavior in a world that is interconnected but not perceived to be interpenetrating. Compassion literally means ‘feeling with,’ and my capacity to feel with you — or with a caribou, or with a dying star — stems from the reality that the caribou is calving in me, that the star is flinging its elements into the space around it in me.”
“What you do to the least of them you do to me.” If we harm one aspect of life, we destroy the whole. If we alienate one person, we alienate all. Do we weave love or do destroy with hatred and fear. It is up to each and every one of us.
We are here for a purpose, there is meaning to our lives. Our lives and the lives of all depend on each of us taking care of the threads that make up our individual lives and the weaving of our threads as deeply as we can into the web of all existence. As we look at ourselves, our families, our communities, our world, no doubt we can see may tears in the web of existence, tears that won’t heal themselves. It is our task to repair the damage by weaving our threads together. In so doing we not only repair the whole, but we also beautify and strengthen our own threads. In so doing we will begin to create the “Kin-dom of Love” right here right now, we become the “Beloved Community”, we become the ones we have all been waiting for.
Please find below a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"
