I Didn’t Understand a Single Word That Man Said

Pronunciation can be tricky. We learn to speak by listening to others. We repeat what we hear. This is probably why both accents and dialect are to some degree disappearing. We hear so many different types of speech today than we did in the past. As a minister of religion it is vitally important that people can understand what I am saying, that I can articulate. Now of course it is not just the words I say that need to heard and understood, more importantly it is meaning beneath the words that mean the most. Now I know sometimes this does not happen. From time to time people have repeated back to me things they have heard me say, which have been almost the exact opposite of what I meant. Not very often thankfully.

I and others have had a little fun with mine and others troubles with pronunciation recently. It began a couple of Sunday’s ago with Derek’s troubles with “phenomenom”. A word no matter how hard he tried he could not say. Afterwards I offered him a tip, one I have suggested to others, that if you are struggling with this word then you may find help from the Muppets. You may remember the song “manam mana”. I got over my struggles with phenomenon by saying over and over again “Manam mana” and hey presto I could say phenomena. By the time I got to Altrincham I thought I would give Penny some help as she was delivering the same reading as Derek. It was a mistake I think I put her off and I am sorry for that. Sometimes all of us can get too worried about coming across perfectly when what actually matters the most is authenticity and the meaning between what we say.

I have got frustrated with myself at times, because I have been unable to articulate myself perfectly. One word I regularly struggle with is the word “regularly”, it just seems to get stuck on my tongue. I shared about this on Facebook and received some interesting response. I am not the only one who regularly struggles to pronounce “regularly”. Others shared words that they struggled with. Several folk struggle with “phenomena” or “phenomenon”. Other words included “Music”, “behavioural”, “statistics”, “disorientated”, “immediately”, “meteorological”, “Tsunami”, “Ibuprofen”, “Cardigan”, “Abominable”, “Hilariously”, “Enthusiasm and so many more. Apparently Benedict Cumberbatch can’t say penguin, but then who can say Benedict Cumberbatch. I remember the former Leeds United manager Marcelo Bielsa struggled with Ipswich and Leicester and Americans famously struggle with Worcestershire Sause. Now you have just heard me struggle with a few of them.

It was fun and connective to share these common struggles. It is especially difficult if English is not your first language. Not that pronunciation is the most important thing. What matters the most is at the heart of what we say, the meaning beneath the words we say and use. That said it does help if people can understand what you are saying. Sadly accents and dialect can at times get in the way. I have been humbled on a couple of occasions when speaking publicly. Thankfully I was able to laugh about it later. One time was when I was in Transylvania and had delivered a sermon that was translated into Hungarian. There was a TV company there filming for a local news channel. After the service they interviewed Carolyn Jones, who speaks clearly and without an accent. Afterwards she asked if they would like to speak to me, to which they replied “Oh no I didn’t understand a word that man said.” Another time was when I was asked to deliver a workshop and talk in the West Midlands. I read the poem “The Layers” by Stanley Kunitz. Afterwards one or two people didn’t quite understand what I meant as they heard me saying “lair” and not “layer”, they thought I was suggesting that they live in the “lair” of a lion and not the “layers” of life. This is purely about accents. “lay-er” where come from is pronounced “lare” as in “make sure you where plenty of lares today, as it is perishing cold outside.

Now all joking aside. Yes people don’t always understand every word, as it is not always articulated correctly. What is worse though is when someone doesn’t get the heart or meaning behind what is said. Or worse than that they are hurt by words spoken; that the heart and soul does not reach their heart and soul.

Tuesday evening saw the American presidential debate. Two people offering visions for America. It was pretty clear to me what was at the heart and soul of the two and their vision. I hope it has the appropriate impact on those who will vote in the future.

Words matter and the language we use matters too. They can be used creatively or destructively. Minister’s of religion are often referred to as minister’s of the word. This comes from a Greek word that occurs more than 300 times in the New Testament alone. The word is “Logos”. Now traditional trinitarian Christians would see Logos as meaning Jesus Christ, the classic example being in John 1 v 1 and the following line “In the beginning was the word and word was with God and the word was God.”. I don’t believe this is the case. Logos is used in a variety of ways, throughout the Bible. They follow two basic lines of thought though. One is mind and the products of the mind, such as reason, logic is related to logos. The other is an expression of that reason as a word, like a command. Here are some of the examples:

Account, appearance, book, command, conversation, eloquence, flattery, grievance, heard, instruction, matter, message, ministry, news, proposal, question, reason, reasonable, reply, report, rule, rumor, said, say, saying, sentence, speaker, speaking, speech, stories, story, talk, talking, teaching, testimony, thing, things, this, truths, what, why, word and words.

There is something Divine and creative in the way we use words; when spoken in the right way they can be Divine in activity, they do at least if they are spoken with loving and creative extent. The Sufi’s see an association with Divine creative power and words spoken from the Beloved’s lips. So, when you speak such words in love you are part of the Divine creativity. Here is an example from Sana’i

The souls of all the lovers
are mobilized before Your lips;
With You, they are all and everything:
devoid of Your lips, they are nothing.

It matters how we speak what we create with our lips. Our words will become our actions and they certainly speak of our intent. The relationship between and action in an honourable existence is what Hannah Arendt examined throughout her book “The Human Condition” (published in 1958). She wrote:

“With word and deed we insert ourselves into the human world, and this insertion is like a second birth, in which we confirm and take upon ourselves the naked fact of our original physical appearance. This insertion is not forced upon us by necessity, like labor, and it is not prompted by utility, like work. It may be stimulated by the presence of others whose company we may wish to join, but it is never conditioned by them; its impulse springs from the beginning which came into the world when we were born and to which we respond by beginning something new on our own initiative. To act, in its most general sense, means to take an initiative, to begin (as the Greek word archein, “to begin,” “to lead,” and eventually “to rule,” indicates), to set something into motion (which is the original meaning of the Latin agere).”

We create or destroy life through our words and actions, Our meaning, our purpose our love and hate are shown through them. Hopefully this comes through, this is articulated, what is at the heart and soul, even if at times our words and actions can be clumsy, even if we stumble through our words and deeds from time to time. What really matters is our intent, what is our meaning our true logos.

The language we use says a lot about our meaning both personally and culturally. Those who study language learn a great deal about humanity by the way we use words and the emotions those words carry with them. They speak of the meaning as a “Frame”. That these frames are mental structures that shape the way we view the world. The way we see the world affects how we act in the world. Now of course we cannot see these frames they exist at all almost unconscious level. Certain words and language fire us up, they activate an aspect of our brain, almost unconsciously.

What matter is our intent, the meaning beneath what we say. How we articulate that matters. I hope I am making sense today. I hope you can understand my meaning, the meaning in my words, my Logos.

I am reminded here of a joke I once heard about a preacher.

There car had broken down after the Sunday service. Come Monday morning, the Reverend managed to drive the vehicle to the town’s one garage for repairs. “I hope you’ll go easy on the cost,” he told the mechanic. “After all, I’m just a poor preacher.” “I know,” came the reply. “I heard you preach yesterday.”

I hope there is value in the words I preach, even if it is not articulated perfectly.

The ability to speak publicly is a vital tool of ministry, so if a minister loses their voice or ability to speak their effectiveness would be seriously compromised. Well just this did happen to one of the two father’s of British Unitarianism, Joseph Priestley. For many years Dr Priestley struggled with a stammer.

I have a personal affection for Priestley, which has nothing much to do with his actual achievements. No, I have affection for Priestley because he comes from Birstall, in West Yorkshire, where I grew up and he attended Batley Grammar School, where I went. There the comparisons end I’m afraid. I have never been a leading radical, politically and I have never been particularly scientifically minded. That said thankfully I have never suffered from a stammer. I wonder sometimes what Priestley’s accent would have been like. No doubt very different to a man from Birstall these days (B’still as a local would pronounce it)

Joseph Priestley struggled with a stammer for years. It must have been terribly difficult to preach with such an impediment. He did overcome it as it did not affect his later career. That said it did cause him much distress although, as he said, it saved him from being “seduced by the love of popular applause as a preacher”.

My tradition lays great emphasis on the word and the preaching of it. Ok today we may not place authority at the door of scripture, this has been replaced by the conscience of the individual. That said the preached word, articulated correctly is still central to our worship.

Is this though the most important element?

Many people can speak well and articulately. I myself have had some training, but I know I will never be perfect and absolutely clear. I do not wish to be. I need to remain true to who I am, to speak my truth in love and in a language that hopefully others will understand.

To truly minister people need to hear what my heart and soul has to say. I need to speak the language of the heart, but not from someone else’s book of life and experiences. No! These experiences must come from my own; otherwise how can I expect others to relate to what I have to say.

I hope that by continually speaking my truth in love I am able to encourage others to do likewise and that they in turn continue to speak their truth in love. I trust you can understand my intent, my meaning, my logos. I hope that by sharing my truth in love I encourage you to do the same. To me this is the purpose of worship to help you speak and act your truth in love. To me this is what this is all about.

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

Life is a Circle: Tradition is not the Worship of Ashes but the Preservation of Fire

Cynicism can be very seductive, to get caught up in all that is wrong with the world. To put down those who speak with a hopeful voice. To say we’ve tried this before, there really is no point to this. It is easy to get caught up in fear and negativity about the world, to say what’s the point; to think what’s the point in doing my little bit, it will make no difference. Well, I don’t believe that for one moment. I live in and by hope. There maybe no point to things, but then life doesn’t work like this. There is no end goal, life is a circle. We are not heading for some unknown place, we are moving in circles and the point is how we live. This is a great universal truth, a truth told by every great story ever told. There is no end to this.

As I mentioned last week I enjoyed much of Summer School. One of the many treasures are the daily “Theme Talks”. Michael Allured was minister of the week. He held the last talk, which began with a story that Michael is well known for telling. The story is the “The Starfish Story”. I have told it myself many times. Here is a version:

A young boy is walking along the beach when he sees hundreds of starfish washed up on the shore. In dismay, and realizing that many of them are still alive, he begins chucking them back out to sea so they won’t die on the beach. A man comes along and asks him, “Why are you throwing those starfish back out into the sea? You can’t possibly save all these starfish! What difference can you make when there are so many to be saved?” After thinking about it for a moment, and throwing one more starfish back out into the water, the boy replies, “I just made a difference for that one!”

As I spoke of last week you never known what one little action can begin to trigger. I know that hope is often born from despair, often a new hope is born. What I kearnt to call respair, a new hope a fresh hope, but it is up to us, inspired by the spirt. There is never an end to anything, the world keeps on spinning round. What the world is though depends on the way we live this day.

As I said I enjoyed the theme talks at Summer School. I can’t talk about them all. I will just talk of some of the aspects of one led by Lizzie Kingston Harrison, who is our Congregational Connections lead and Liz Slade who is our Chief Officer. Lizzie Kingston Harrison is also training for the ministry and is one of several talented people coming through. Whenever Lizzie speaks she impresses me. I had a wonderful conversation at “Ministry in the Making”, that inspired my thinking around some of my own foundational theology. She gave a fascinating talk on Joseph Priestley at the General Assembly. Her contribution to the theme talk was both moving and inspiring. She is rooted in classic Unitarian theology, but with her feet firmly grounded in the present and vision toward the future. She looks forward with real hope. She describes herself as natural optimist, nay radical optimist. She talked about the importance of not focusing on some perceived goal, but to understand that we are grounded in a great historical tradition, a part of history, but that this is not linear, heading toward some unknown promised land. She instead highlights that journey is circular. That all life is circular, that we are not looking for some promised land, some Nirvana, somewhere beyond the rainbow. Well, that is at least how I interpreted her talk. That the Unitarian approach to religion, is real, grounded in this life. That we sanctify in and through this life. That the likes of Priestley and our forebears, in rejecting “Original Sin”, and thus the need to be saved from ourselves, embraced the humanness of Jesus and this life, the sacredness of this life, and as I would see it, that we are here to sanctify in and through life. Throughout her talk she repeated a wonderful phrase. “Tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire.” That ours is a living tradition, that can inspire all who live today.

Behind her, as she spoke, was this wonderful image of Hildegard of Bingen’s Mandala, which was a beautiful circular pattern, inspired by one of her mystical visions. It shows the cosmic connection of all angels, all people, and all beings celebrating the creation that God has made for us. It is from the “Second Vision of the Second Part of De Operatione Dei.”

The emphasis of her talk was on the circular nature of life, claiming that this is the wisdom of Ecclesiastes and quoted the following verse from Ecclesiastes 3 vv 1-8

3 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
7 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

I love Ecclesiastes and the idea that life moves in seasons and that there is time for everything in life, it is every changing and impermanent. To quote the wisdom of Soloman, “This too shall pass.” Now one mistake that is often made with Ecclesiastes is to think that in suggesting there is a time for everything, it does not mean that we can do everything, or that we should even try to do everything. This can be a mistake we make in life and was a repeated theme during Summer School, that it is important to understand what you can do, but not try to do everything, joy and fun and pleasure are vital to the soul. Also, that you need to leave space for others to, live too.

This brings to mind a wonderful poem, a reaction to Ecclesiastes, “A Man in His Life” by Yehuda Amichai

A man in his life has no time to have
Time for everything.
He has no room to have room
For every desire. Ecclesiastes was wrong to claim that.

A man has to hate and love all at once,
With the same eyes to cry and to laugh
With the same hands to throw stones
And to gather them,
Make love in war and war in love.

And hate and forgive and remember and forget
And order and confuse and eat and digest
What long history does
In so many years.

A man in his life has no time.
When he loses he seeks
When he finds he forgets
When he forgets he loves
When he loves he begins forgetting.

And his soul is knowing
And very professional,
Only his body remains an amateur
Always. It tries and fumbles.
He doesn’t learn and gets confused,
Drunk and blind in his pleasures and pains.

In autumn, he will die like a fig,
Shriveled, sweet, full of himself.
The leaves dry out on the ground,
And the naked branches point
To the place where there is time for everything.

We cannot do everything, but we can do something. Also, we can fall and mess up a thousand times, but still begin again in love. I am reminded here of that great nineteenth Unitarian Edward Everett Hale and his famous quote:

“I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.”

Going back to Ecclesiastes and its wisdom, despite its limits. The main point of Ecclesiastes is that is there is no point. Now this is not negativity or pessimism. The point so to speak is that there is no end to this. There is no end point we are aiming for, no places where we come to rest. Not a promised Land, a Heaven, a Nirvana, an Oz, an Ithaka. Remember the point of Ithica is that it gave us the beautiful journey. This is the massage of Ecclesiastes, that there is no point to this, so enjoy the tasks we have before us, this is heaven to find our meaning as Frankl highlighted. That heaven is found in the living, not some places at the other side of the rainbow. Yes, seasons come and go, but the fire remains in all the changes, the spirit is alive in and through us and all life. This is the radiant core at the centre that we circle around. No one knows what the future looks like or will be, but that is not what fires and inspires us, what inspires us is the love of what and where we find ourselves, to love it, to follow the example of Jesus and his message of radical love and radical optimism. To bless and sanctify this life. Not perfectly, but with love, imperfectly. Even if we have fallen short a thousand times, to paraphrase Rumi.

What is important is to recognise that we are temporal beings, but that life itself is eternal and our task here is to enjoy this life as part of this life and to take care of what is ours to take of. To bless this life and fully part of it, is what will sustain us, this is where the spirit lives. The mistake is that we focus on some perceived goal, a destination that may not be reached. The key is to sanctify life, one another and in so doing we live sacred lives. To paraphrases good old Forrest Church, to live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for by the love we leave behind. The wheel continues to turn, and we get the beautiful journey.

Ecclesiastes, particularly those verses from the third chapter, speak an eternal and universal truth that generation after generation have found that they can relate to. The power of this ancient source lays in its ability to link we who live today with the generations that have walked the earth before us. We all of us have travelled many and varied journeys and lived through all the seasons of life. Nothing is permanent and nothing lasts forever. No one will ever escape the pain of life, but that ought not bring despair because if we remain open we will also know life’s joy. Yes, there is a time to mourn, but there is also a time to dance; there is a time to weep, but there is also a time to laugh.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. ”There are many seasons in our lives, just as there are many different emotions. Yes, sometimes we can experience all those emotions in one single day, just as we can experience four seasons in one day. There is a time and perhaps a place for all of them, for to diminish any of them is deny what it is to be fully human. Yes, there is a time to weep, just as there is a time to laugh and there is a time to mourn, just as much as there is a time to dance.

I have wept several times in recent weeks and have held others in their suffering too, that said I have also laughed many times too, I have seen joy and I have seen how life continues on. As Ecclesiastes says in Ch1 v 4 “Generations come and generations go, but the earth abides forever”.

Life is circular, everything changes, but life itself goes on. This is the ultimate teacher, my guru if you like. No person can be as nothing in life is perfect. Remember perfection original meant complete, well nothing is ever complete. Ecclesiastes teaches this so powerfully. There is no end point, the circle is never complete. We need to live with our senses fully awake and alive to everything around us, including our sixth sense with that spirit alive. Look and see for yourself; experience all life yourself; taste everything, bare witness to the impermanence and ever changing nature of life. Summer is ending, autumn is coming; experience everything that is under the sun and all beyond, but experience it yourself, know reality. Investigate life’s true nature, your true nature, experience it yourself. Take in every breath, for each is fleeting and yet so very precious. Love this life and let the spirit inspire your living.

We are a part of a living tradition. To quote Lizzie one final time “Tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire.”

Let us be lit up by that living flame.

Below is a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"

No one is an island

I have just returned from a week at Summer School. It was quite a week away at Great Hucklow with 50 Unitarians and three dog’s. Molly had a wonderful time, a little spoilt perhaps. The subject this year was “Sustainable Living: Changing our ways and saving our world?” With an explanatory quote by Wendell Berry ‘The real work of planet-saving will be small, humble, and humbling, and (insofar as it involves love) pleasing and rewarding. Its jobs will be too many to count, too many to report, too many to be publicly noticed or rewarded, too small to make anyone rich or famous.’

I myself co-led a daily engagement group with Angela Maher titled “No One is an Island”. It was great to work with Angela, I think we complemented each other. We explored the things that sustain us as individuals and how we are connected and interconnected through a myriad of relationships. It was a wonderful group to work with and deeply enriching week. We have some fascinating people within our free religious tradition. I would recommend Summer School to anyone.

You may recall I was struggling a few weeks ago with the loss of a friend. I was carrying so much, it was weighing me down So much so that I wasn’t sure I would be able to lead the group for a whole week. The Saturday night, a week before Summer School began, I emailed the co-ordinator to inform them of my struggles. The next day, after leading worship, I spent time walking and sharing with a friend, the only person I was able to talk openly about the situation with. By Monday I was feeling much better. I had reached out beyond myself and connected. I admitted I couldn’t overcome my struggles alone. I spent time in prayer and meditation and in that place of humility and connection I found the strength, the resilience required to do what I am here to do. It was a truly wonderful week and I feel I have grown and been strengthened by it. As a result I feel better prepared to continue on with my ministry. I suspect though that if I hadn’t found the strength and humility to reach out for help, this may not have been the case. In fact in so doing it actually helped illustrate the subject we explored during the week.

No one pulls themselves up from their bootstraps completely alone, all by themselves. From the moment of our birth’s others are involved in creating who we are and who we become. As the old saying goes “It takes a village to raise a child.” No one lives entirely from themselves we are all a part of an interdependent web of relationships that are made of both visible and invisible helping hand. Life has once more taught me that asking for help is actually a sign of both strength and wisdom, rather than weakness. It is a sign of good, mental, emotional and spiritual health. Of course it is not enough to merely ask for help, true healthy humility is about accepting what is offered. We give to others when we allow them to give to us. Those numerous free meals we are given do not only feed us, they feed all. We eat and we are filled by the relationship. Maybe this is what is meant by the old clichéd saying, “there is no such thing as a free meal.” It isn’t true of course, sadly it is a cynical cliché that suggests that you shouldn’t trust generosity. Please don’t fall for it, give and receive abundantly so we can all eat and be filled. If you do it with joy, joy will be your reward. In fact if truth be told both those feeding and those being fed receive from the relationship. This is the strange arithmetic of giving, where the commodity increases the more we give it away. When we give from the heart, love grows and abundantly for all, giver, receiver and all who come into contact with them. This is the butterfly effect of love. No one is an island, everything is interconnected.

So to repeat the subject we explored was “No one is an island”. Here is the poem that inspired our week. “No Man is an Island” by John Donne

“No Man Is an Island” by John Donne

No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were:
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were.

Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

John Donne, who wrote these words, lived from 1572 until 1631, deeply turbulent times in British history. He lived through many lives. He trained as a lawyer and became both an adventurer and a soldier. He grew up in a devoutly Catholic family which became illegal under the reign of Elizabeth I. He became a Protestant and was ordained at the age of 43 as an Anglican priest. Six years later he was appointed Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, the original one, that was burnt during the “Great Fire of London” of 1666. It was while he was Dean of St Paul’s that he wrote “No Man is an Island”. Earlier in his life he had written powerful love poems. He had an ability to express ideas that spoke to people in a none judgemental way. No doubt the death of his brother Henry from the plague whilst in prison and the torture and murder of a priest that his brother sheltered no doubt got the bells tolling for Donne. “No Man is an Island” speaks of a common humanity that transcend religious systems or anything that would separate us. A message powerfully relevant back then and today. We may not go to war over whether we boy to the Roman Church or the Church of England, but still we divide ourselves and still we persecute those considered to be the “other”. “What you do to the least of them, you do to me.”

No one is an island, no one lives completely from themselves, what affects one affects all. No one lives wholly from themselves, without care for another. We live interdependent lives. That said there is a danger here of relying on others in an unhealthy way. While absolute self-reliance is a delusion, there is another problem with depending unhealthily on others. This is especially true when it comes to matters of faith. We must never comply without reason. I do believe that the seat of authority in matters of faith must always lie in the heart of each of our consciences, something that could lead to torture and murder in Donne’s time. As we explored in our engagement group it is vital that we take care of our thread in order to play our role fully in the inter-connected web of life.

There is a place for self-reliance, at least in the sense that Ralph Waldo Emerson discussed it. To live fully in this world it is vital to listen to wisdom of the wise when they speak, to learn from to others, to learn in community. That said it is just as vital to trust in your own inner voice and to speak your truth for others.

Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay “Self-Reliance”, published in 1841 wrote:

“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost.”

What concerned Emerson was the ease in which people accepted the judgments and opinions of others as objective truth while dismissing their own. This seems to speak powerfully to us who live today in this our 24hour multi-media world where we are bombarded with all kinds of truth. It amazes and troubles me how easily people follow the opinions of so called “Social influences” and figures on line. It is vital that we learn to trust our own heart and soul, whilst at the same time not living entirely from ourselves. We need to take care of our thread and interweave it with others. That said it is our own personal responsibility to discern what is true and not blindly follow and become unhealthily dependent on others.

Self-reliance, as it is understood today is not at all what Emerson was speaking of. Of course we have to learn to trust are own reasoning mind, this though does not mean that we live entirely separate lives. All gain when we come together in the spirit of love, we learn together and strengthen one another. The strength is in the relationship. Yes, we need to be responsible for who we are and the key to that is to build strong and healthy relationships. This is the key to sustainable living and it will guide and hold us through the storms of life when they come. There will be times when we will need help and there will be times when we need to be available to help one another. This to me is the whole point of spiritual community, to strengthen these ties so that we help one another when the time comes. Not in unhealthy co-dependent ways, but healthy interdependent ones.

Early in the week of our engagement group we talked about how vital it was to take care of our individual strings to guide us through the mazes of life, but also the storms too. At the end of the week we shared in a wonderful exercise that involved a ball of wool that we passed amongst ourselves, creating a web that moved between us all. The strings connected us together. When one was pulled it vibrated and several folk felt the vibration. The strings did not live wholly from themselves and they connected the ties between us without binding us down. That said we were all responsible for taking care of our string.

From the cradle to the grave we need to keep asking for help, when we need it and we need to make ourselves available to be of assistance to others in their need. This is not to say that we become unhealthily dependent on others and society as a whole, no not at all. We are though a part of a whole, a complex whole that makes life and community. As we grow and change and become the people that we are this changes shape and reforms constantly, it seems that we are being born again and again to new versions of ourselves. Of course we cannot do this alone. We cannot give birth to ourselves, no one can. We need help and sometimes we need to ask for help from others and in so doing we are of course doing not only a service for ourselves, but for them also. I experienced this again just a couple of weeks ago and it began to reform once again during that week away in summer school, in spiritual community with 50 other like hearted people and three dogs. People who were responsible for coming to their own terms in regards to matters of faith, but who gained so much from one another, by coming together and sharing in the spirit of love. Not one of us was an island in and of themselves. We loved and cared for one another, made space to become. When the bell tolled, it tolled for each and everyone one of us. Oh by the way we also had an awful lot of fun doing so. We sang and danced together, we told stories and jokes, we walked in the beautiful countryside and we ate together and were certainly filled. I am sure all were blessed by this time together.

No one is an island. We are communal beings entirely inter-dependent on each other and life itself. As Martin Luther King said in his final Christmas sermon “We are interdependent…all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” This has never been more true than today. When someone reaches out in a time of need it is our God given duty to help and when we need help we need to be faithful to ask for help too. Interdependence is a physical fact, but it is also a spiritual reality.

This to me is the whole point of spiritual community, of religious living. To see, understand and experience this oneness, this Divine Unity. To see that we are all one. To be of help to one another and to seek the help when it is needed. In this way we all grow and become the best that we can be and serve life to the utmost of our ability.

I will be carrying these thoughts and no doubt be nourished by them as we enter into the autumn together. I have already been asked to come back to “Summer School” next year, as has Molly. The subject is going to be “Finding My Religion”. It has been suggested I might have something interesting to say on the subject.

I think they might be right.

I will end this morning with following meditation “The Web of Life” by Robert T Weston. I would like you to listen to this words prayerfully. Therefore I ask you still yourselves in silence…let us pray…

"The Web of Life"

There is a living web that runs through us
To all the universe
Linking us each with each and through all life
On to the distant stars.
Each knows a ­little corner of the world, and lives
As if this were his all.
We no more see the farther reaches of the threads
Than we see of the future, yet they’re there.
Touch but one thread, no matter which;
The thoughtful eye may trace to distant lands
Its firm continuing strand, yet lose its filaments as they reach out,
But find at last it coming back to him from whom it led.
We move as in a fog, aware of self
But only dimly conscious of the rest
As they are close to us in sight or feeling.
New objects loom up for a time, fade in and out;
Then, sometimes, as we look on unawares, the fog lifts
And there’s the web in shimmering beauty,
Reaching past all horizons. We catch our breath;
Stretch out our eager hands, and then
In comes the fog again, and we go on,
Feeling a ­little foolish, doubting what we had seen.
The hands were right. The web is real.
Our folly is that we so soon forget.

By Robert T Weston

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