Happiness is a spirit that visits us, but how do we speak of it

"So Much Happiness" by Naomi Shihab Nye

"It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

"But happiness floats.
It doesn't need you to hold it down.
It doesn't need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records. . . .

"Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.

I was recently asked by a member of the Urmston congregation I serve Mary to explore happiness during our recent “Common Search for Meaning” group. I will be honest with you, I wasn’t quite sure where to begin. How do you talk about happiness? What on earth is this thing we called happiness?

As Naomi Shihab Nye writes 'With sadness there is something to rub against,' It is easy to speak of sadness, it feels embodied, there is a deep weight a heaviness to it. It has a power that feel like it is pushing you down. Sometimes just raising your head can feel impossible when weighed down by sadness. The sadness can feel so locked in that that no happiness can break through.

Happiness is more of a “willow the whisp”, like a little sprite. It seems to come and go almost unbidden, out of your control. All you can do with it, according the Nye at least, is to simply “shrug, . . . raise your hands . . . take no credit. . . .”

Happiness seems to lack a body, a weight, it is hard to put your finger on, it is not a static state of being. It seems impossible to name and or even talk about. It seems to go against the very grain of our modern materialistic age. How do we talk about happiness?

I am reminded here of something I once read by Henri Nouwen on why it so much easier to speak of our troubles than of joy and happiness. It seems it is not only a British thing. He wrote of his university days:

"I vividly remember how one of my university teachers spoke for a whole year about anxiety in human life. He discussed in great detail the thoughts of Kierkegaard, Sartre, Heidegger, and Camus and gave an impressive exposé of the anatomy of fear. One day, during the last month of the course, a few students found the courage to interrupt him and ask him to speak a little about joy before the course was over. At first he was taken aback. But then he promised to give it a try. The next class he started hesitantly to speak about joy. His words sounded less convincing and penetrating than when he spoke about anxiety and fear. Finally, after two more meetings, he told us that he had run out of ideas about joy and would continue his interrupted train of thought. This event made a deep impression on me, especially since I had such great admiration for my teacher. I kept asking myself why he was unable to teach about joy as eloquently as he had taught about anxiety.

It is the same with happiness. We have no trouble describing our sadness, what is wrong, what sickens us as individuals and as a society. Nouwen observed there are far “more words for sickness than for health, more for abnormal conditions than for normal conditions. When my leg hurts, my head aches, my eyes burn, or my heart stings, I talk about it, often in elaborate ways, but when I am perfectly healthy I have little, if anything, to say about those parts of my body.”

Think about the word resentment. It comes from resentere which literally means to re-feel something. Now when we re-feel something a memory from our past life it doesn’t have to be a painful memory, something that makes us angry and yet the word resentment only has negative connotation. We do not have a word that means to re-feel something that made us happy. There is no specific word for this in the English language.

Now please do not get me wrong. I am not for one moment suggesting that we ought not to talk about our troubles. My word we all have them. Whether that is our personal ones, our health, physical, emotional, mental and or spiritual. Our families, our communities, our wider world. We all live with fears and anxieties and pain brought to our being due to these sufferings. I have plenty myself. In fact sharing our troubles often helps and connects us with one another and through this we may find a freedom that allows happiness to visit once may. We do need to be careful not to become weighed down and enslaved by our struggles though, to the point that this is all that we are.

I was out an about on Monday morning, walking through Altrincham with Molly towards Stamford park. This is how I begin my week probably 9 times out of 10. I left the house with a variety of troubles on my mind. Concerns about the communities I serve. Family issues, folk close to me. Worries about the wider world, both within this country and conflicts in other places. I watched folk as I passed through town and connected. I was also thinking about this subject, how to talk about happiness. I said hello to a few folk and we exchange pleasantries. As I was walking Angela Fowler came into my mind. What a wonderful person she was an example of someone who lived with many struggles in life and yet lived with a sense of joy and happiness in life too. How she was one of those people who was genuinely pleased for others. She had such a wonderful quality about her.

I enjoyed the park, as did Molly. I enjoyed watching those exercising and young parents with babies and pre-school children. I spoke with a few folk and enjoyed the dogs playing together in their delightful way, they were naturally happy. There is something about watching labradors and spaniel’s in particular frolicking in the park. As I got lost in the moment of their play I was visited by that spirit I call happiness.

I walked home smiling with one or two ideas forming. I passed a woman I talk to from time to time. She has a tiny Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. It has had health troubles. It is doing well she tells me and it was a delight to see the happiness on her face as she spoke of her dear sweet dog. As I walked away, I felt that spirit of happiness taking over me. As I reached the crossing, a little later, I heard my name called out. Rosemary Donaldson approached me. She began telling me about what she was doing and then began to speak to me about Angela Fowler, how much she missed her how she had been such an inspiration to her. I told her I had been thinking of her too and we stopped and spoke of Angela for quite some time. As we did, I could feel that spirit of happiness working through us. I walked home with the biggest beaming smile and then got down to some work.

As I did, I thought of seeing and witnessing happiness in folk over the last few days. Observing people lost and absorbed in what they were doing. How in so doing it seems that this spirit of happiness had taken them over. I thought of the Mayor’s Civic Reception I had been invited to last Friday. It was a moving evening, especially listening to people share their stories of struggles and living with M.E. At the same time, I enjoyed experiencing a variety of talented people sharing their artistic gifts. I observed them lost in their work, being visited by that spirit of happiness and sharing it with others. It was strange evening in someways. There were tables full of people in their finery and others sharing gifts and sharing stories. I was happy to be a part of it, although I did experience a little bit of imposter syndrome. I thought to myself, how did I end up here. It made me smile. I felt a sense of happiness.

Here’s another wonderful poem

“HAPPINESS” by Jane Kenyon

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

I am not sure that happiness is something that we can pursue and catch. The foundation of the American Republic is “Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. I am not sure that this is the right objective in life. It seems very self-centred and if not achieved fully sets folk up for dissatisfaction and envy. I suspect that if what your aim in life is to feel happy you will rarely achieve it; if one day you do, then your focus will be on holding onto it. I am not convinced that this is possible. Yes, live the good life, the worthy and meaningful life as they great philosophies teach, but happiness ought not to be the aim in itself, only the product of living this way. When I think of Angela, she seems to be an example of this. Yes she had her struggles, but she knew happiness.

I suspect that the key maybe to find ways to savour the experiences of being alive and to share these moments with others. This is certainly when I experience being visited by the spirit of happiness. It is when I feel free and most alive. It certainly has been the last week or so, despite my real worries and concerns.

I live in the real world and the real world concerns me greatly I carry the same worries we all do. I awake each day with same dilemma that E.B. White wrote of “It’s hard to know when to respond to the seductiveness of the world and when to respond to its challenge. If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between the desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

Now I cannot save the world. That does not mean I avoid it. No instead I do what I can, put my whole self into it and in so doing I am visited. by the spirit of happiness. Not constantly, but when I let myself go and give myself fully to it. The spirit visits me and this spirit sets me free.

This makes me happy and this is my best way I know how to speak of it.

I am going to end with a bit of wisdom from Mary Oliver. A moment of happiness that changed her life. Here she describes being visited by that “sprite” of happiness. She puts the experience in such a beautiful way. She savoured this life, despite the very real struggles she faced and she found a way to share what she experienced. As a result, she knew happiness and others experienced it too.

"Once, years ago, I emerged from the woods in the early morning at the end of a walk and — it was the most casual of moments — as I stepped from under the trees into the mild, pouring-down sunlight I experienced a sudden impact, a seizure of happiness. It was not the drowning sort of happiness, rather the floating sort. I made no struggle toward it; it was given. Time seemed to vanish. Urgency vanished. Any important difference between myself and all other things vanished. I knew that I belonged to the world, and felt comfortably my own containment in the totality. I did not feel that I understood any mystery, not at all; rather that I could be happy and feel blessed within the perplexity — the summer morning, its gentleness, the sense of the great work being done though the grass where I stood scarcely trembled. As I say, it was the most casual of moments, not mystical as the word is usually meant, for there was no vision, or anything extraordinary at all, but only a sudden awareness of the citizenry of all things within one world: leaves, dust, thrushes and finches, men and women. And yet it was a moment I have never forgotten, and upon which I have based many decisions in the years since."

From "Long Life: Essays and Other Writings" by Mary Oliver

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

May We Be Known by the Fruits of Mother Nurture”

The celebration of Mother has a long history. It dates back to the time of ancient Greece and Rome. It is not merely, as some would suggest, a creation of the greeting cards company to make money out of us. The celebrations of mother and motherhood has been with us for many centuries. It is said that Mothering Sunday was about returning home either to family and or the Mother Church. Returning to a place of total acceptance and love, a place where the love within us can grow, a place of nurture.

These days Mothering Sunday has become known as Mother’s Day, following the American tradition that is celebrated in May, and not the middle Sunday of Lent. During the twentieth century and due in no small part to the promotion of Constance Smith Mothering Sunday began to be marked on the fourth Sunday of Lent known as Laetare Sunday, which means “rejoice”. It grew in popularity after the first world war and no doubt was linked to this idea of folk returning home to place of safety, nurture and love.

Mothering Sunday, Mother’s Day, whatever its actual true origins is enshrined in this image of returning home, and this sense of belonging to something more than ourselves. Whether that is actually of children returning to the family home having been working away or of people returning to the mother church, or those returning home after conflict. At its heart it seems to be about returning home to a place of safety; it is about returning home to a place of renewal, of re-birth, not only for ourselves but for others too; it is about returning to a place of love and total acceptance of who we are, exactly as we are, no matter what we have done or where we have been, we are accepted with open loving arms. It’s about returning to that place where love is not only born but nurtured and grown and brought into true being.

Mother’s Day is the celebration of being held and nurtured in the spirit of love. Mother’s Day is about celebrating the spirit of mother. I have been thinking and remembering those folk who have accepted and cared for me; I have been remembering how they nurtured me in my life, how they offered unconditional love, regardless of gender or familial link. It is the care and nurturing love that matters most to me.

Someone dear to me has been unwell in hospital this week. They offered me nurture and care on one of the most heartbreaking days of my life. They gave me that simple and humble bowl of soup and sat me down and let me settle and be. They nurtured and cared for me. I know them by the fruit they gave to me, and it has fed and sustained me for the last 20 years come this November. It is the fruit I have attempted to live by during my own ministry; it is a fruit I will never forget.

Gospel Matthew 7 v 20 “Thus you will know them by their fruits.”

That bowl of soup to me is the ultimate example of the Divine love alive in human form, manifested. This to me is what days like today are about, they are about celebrating this nurturing love and finding ways to bring this love alive through our being. Not perfectly, in fact falteringly, but the heart of what we live by. Now even if those who have shared this love with us are no longer physically with us, we can still hold that love, nurture it with our hearts, our minds our spirits, our souls, held lovingly by the one eternal soul of life. This is the love that I try to live by and hope we can all live by. We need to live by love and accept one another in the way that the mother, or at least the ideal of maternal love does. May we reach toward that, even in fear, may we find the courage to offer one another such love.

Today we celebrate the spirit of mother; today we celebrate and give thanks to those who gave birth to our being, but we do more than that. Today we celebrate those who have nurtured and brought to life the love within us whether they are the ones who gave birth to our bodies or helped nurture and bring to life something within us. Today we celebrate the spirit of mother; today we celebrate those who have nurtured our lives whether in body, in mind, in heart or spirit. This is surely the fruit we would want to be known by.

Today as we celebrate the spirit of mother we acknowledge our responsibility to one another as individuals and a community, to nurture, to bring to life, the love within ourselves, one another and the wider human community. Can we be known by this loving nurturing and life sustaining fruit.

The truth is that we are always known by our fruit and as the old saying goes, it never falls far from the tree. To use a maternal metaphor we are constantly giving birth to something each and every day. We are all a part of the Divine Creation and re-creation it is really important to recognise this. As Annie Dillard wrote “ We are here to witness creation and to abet it…We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are all around us and to praise the people who are here with us.”

This is nurture, this bringing alive the spirit of mother, this is what we celebrate this day. This is the fruit at the heart of this day.

Mothering Sunday, whatever its actual true origins is enshrined in this image of returning home; it is about returning home to a place of safety and I believe sustenance, whether that be actual physical food or spiritual food; whether that be simnal cake, a bowl of soup or the bread of heaven. It is about love in whatever form it comes. May we be known by that fruit.

They say “There’s No Place Like Home”.

Now this instantly brings up two images into the heart of my mind. One is of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. In the film she begins by singing of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” a place away from the drudgery, of the mundainity, of life where she could set her free, but at the end she clicks those ruby slippers and says those immortal words. "There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like like home.” Dorothy has been on a spiritual journey and encountered all manner of fascinating friends along the way. She has also fought off enemies who wanted to destroy her. She has experienced and learnt so much, but in the end she just wants to return home.

For many home is the embodiment of safety and acceptance, the heart and the hearth of a loving family. Robert Frost wrote that “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." Sadly this is not the case for everyone, for many people home and family is not a place of safety at all. In fact it is a place of struggle and suffering.

Home is a tiny word but a powerful one and one so rich in meaning. It is a word that can hold such dreams of possibilities or nightmares of hurt. It is more than a physical place it is an idea, a feeling, a vision. It is something that we carry with us as we journey through life; it is not just something that we seek. For some it is a place that they are fleeing from, a place of repression and not a place of loving possibility. That said whatever it is we are fleeing from in the end we all must return home, just as Dorothy did. “There’s no place like home”

“There’s No Place Like Home” comes from John Howard Payne’s nineteenth century operatta “Clari, or the Maid of Milan”. The full verse reads as follows

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
Which seek thro' the world, is ne'er met elsewhere.
Home! Home!
Sweet, sweet home!
There's no place like home
There's no place like home!

These are the words that Dorothy repeats as she clicks her Ruby slippers and wishes to return to that place of safety.

When I think of Motherhood and or the Mother Church this is what I think of, of returning to a place of sentience of nurture where one feels that they can recharge. A place that is known by those loving fruits.

These do not have to be physical places or people actually. The truth is you need not go anywhere. This place of nurture of sustenance can only really be found in the ground where you find yourself, in fact the truth is what we really need to do is find ourselves at home within our own being. We can enjoy these fruits and share them with others.

If you remember at the beginning of Lent I spoke of not giving things up, but seeing what we can give, nurturing what we have, so as to be in a better place to share our fruits. That we make a place within us that is a welcome to others, to find ways to be better prepared to truly use these gifts, to be of service to the world in which we find ourselves. We just need to nurture that which we already possess and share that fruit. It also teaches me if things get too much I can always do a Dorothy and click my own ruby slippers and be transported to the loving arms of “Warm mother God”. We all need a place of shelter at times when it all goes wrong or seems too much. This is spiritual community to me. That bowl of soup reminds me of it always. If feeds and sustains me every day.

This “Mothering Sunday”, this “Mother’s Day”, may we remember those who have loved and cared for us, those who nurtured us, those who shared their fruit. Those who helped us feel at home. Let us remember this love. May we also find ways to live by that same love, to bring it alive through our human being. May we be known by these fruits, may we become places of welcome, of nurture and love. For our world surely needs that as we need it too.

May we be known by such fruit…

On this day set aside to honour Mother’s let’s remember those who have offered us the unconditional and wholly accepting love of the mother ideal. Those who have offered their unquestioning love to us, those who have offered their nurturing heart and encouraged us to begin again in love. Let us also commit to living this way ourselves to offer this love to all that we meet. To not just tolerate the people we meet as they are, but to love them and accept them, Let’s offer to them the nurturing hand of love. May we be known by these fruits.

I invite you to join with me in prayer

"Prayer for All Who Mother"

We reflect in thanksgiving this day for all those whose lives have nurtured ours.

The life-giving ones
Who heal with their presence
Who listen in sympathy
Who give wise advice ... but only when asked for it.
We are grateful for all those who have mothered us
Who have held us gently in times of sorrow
Who celebrated with us our triumphs -- no matter how small
Who noticed when we changed and grew,
who praised us for taking risks
who took genuine pride in our success,
and who expressed genuine compassion when we did not succeed.
On this day that honours Mothers
let us honour all mothers
men and women alike
who from somewhere in their being
have freely and wholeheartedly given life, and sustenance, and vision to us.
Dear God, Mother-Father of us all,
grant us life-giving ways
strength for birthing,
and a nurturing spirit
that we may take attentive care of our world,
our communities, and those precious beings
entrusted to us by biology, or by destiny, or by friendship, fellowship or fate.
Give us the heart of a mother today.

Amen

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

Synchronicity:Living Life on the Mobius Strip

I recently headed back home for the day. It was mum’s birthday and I thought I would take her out to her favourite place for lunch, The Mermaid fish and chips restaurant in Morley. A place she has been going to for fifty years. We had a lovely time and later returned to her home and a couple of my sisters came round and we talked and shared all kinds of stories. Some I can repeat here and others I cannot. One that I cannot repeat was a local name for a common pastry product. Stories from a bygone time.

During the conversations one of my sisters had asked me if I had heard of the “Heptonstall Coiners”, a notorious story from Yorkshire history. This then led to a conversation that a congregational member Geoff Little had mentioned about a visit to Birstall. His wife Megen grew up, as did I. It was a story about her cousin who died trying to rescue his friend from drowning. There is a plaque dedicated to his memory outside the Presbytery of the Catholic Church there and next to what used to Lionel and Dorothy’s sweet shop. Another favourite place from my childhood. My mum remembered the tragedy. We decided to look into it and eventually found an account. What was somewhat spooky about it was that Megan’s cousins surname was Heptonstall. We had just been talking about the Heptonstall coiners.

We shared many other stories and had a lovely time, there were so many connections in the conversations, not least between ourselves and our lives. We do not get enough opportunities to have these conversations. I left in great spirits. My outer world had touched my inner world deeply as our inner worlds had shared so much with one another.

Connections and coincidences have been on my mind quite lot of late. I’ve been thinking about meaningful coincidence and synchronicities, times when the inner life and outer life are in synch. At such times the whole of life seems to be speaking to me constantly. I am going through a time that feels much like this of late. I feel I am in good relationship with life external to me, my inner life and that spirit that runs through life, that I name God.

The spiritual life is about relationship. We need to be in what I have often heard called right relationship, with ourselves, with others and with whatever it is we believe connects all of life, what is often called the Divine, to live spiritually alive.

I can usually get a good measure as to where I am at spiritually by simply checking where I am at relationally with myself, with others and with God, they are all interconnected and interrelated. Do I see myself in others and do I see others in myself. I have felt a deepening connection in recent weeks and as a result I am experiencing meaning and meaningful coincidence in and through life.

I recently came across a fascinating coincidence. It involves a character who is just a couple of years younger than my mum, Dennis the Menace. On the 12th of March he will be 75 years old. Now you may well ask which Dennis, the one from the Beano or the American comic strip. Well, the answer is both. Yes, unbelievably both characters first appeared in print on the 12th March 1951. Neither knew about each other as the characters were being developed and they were published independently without either influencing the other. Both Dennis’s are pranksters, who get themselves into trouble. The British Dennis is a true Menace, where as the American version seemingly gets himself into trouble by accident. Both Dennis’s were given their names independently. The Beano’s editor George Moonie got the name of the British Dennis from the lyrics of a “Music Hall” song "I'm Dennis the Menace from Venice". The American Dennis was created by illustrator Hank Ketcham, who based his character on his son who, would you believe, was called Dennis!

The British Dennis the Menace, created for The Beano, is officially dated 17 March 1951 as the comic's cover date, but copies were on sale from 12 March 1951 - the same day Ketcham's strip appeared. When the coincidence was discovered both creators agreed not to go to war over the name, there was no plagiarism disputes, although the British Dennis goes by a slightly different name in the US “Dennis and Gnasher.” The 75th Anniversary here in the UK is being celebrated in many ways. One being a special 50p coin being specially made in colour with Dennis and his black and red striped shirt, by the Royal Mint.

When I discovered this coincidence the other day, I was reminded of another similar one, that I was told about when I was a student minister. This was that the American Unitarian Association and the British and Foreign Unitarian Association began on the very same day the 26th May 1825, 200 years ago. This was a coincidence, but it does highlight a shared, yet largely independent development of liberal theology on both sides of the Atlantic. Interesting how their outer and inner worlds came into synch on exactly the same date. What is the meaning in such coincidence?

Now of course this maybe just total coincidence and random chance. Like people say even a stopped clock is right twice a day. My rational mind certainly believes that. Having said that I am one of those people who does feel at times that everything seems to be connected and when I am in tune with this I see such coincidences everywhere. It feels like life is communicating with me. I experience the Divine speaking to me through life. My inner life and my outer life are at one.

Now some folk have called this Synchronicity. According to Phil Cousineau "Synchronicity is an inexplicable and profoundly meaningful coincidence that stirs the soul and offers a glimpse of one's destiny."

Most folk talk of experiencing moments of synchronicity. Such as the anticipation of a phone call from a person just seconds before it rings; the chance meeting with someone from the past who has the answer we have been looking for; that feeling of deep connection with someone when something happens to them although they are physically miles apart, we feel their pain and or joy deeply. It is these feelings, if we pay attention to them, that will call us to engage with life in deeper more meaningful ways. If we do more meaning and intuitive connection emerges. This is certainly my experience, although not always a good one. Several people have been speaking to me of such experiences quite a lot recently. Now is this happening more frequently or am just aware of this currently. Is it because my out and inner world are in synch? Who knows!

The psychologist Carl Jung coined the phrase synchronicity in an attempt to explain what he called "meaningful coincidences ", that occur due to seemingly unrelated events. His concept of synchronicity came about through the many baffling coincidences his patients shared with him in his practice, especially as he began to realize that the occurrences went beyond what could be attributed to mere chance. His interest has also been attributed to a series of conversations, over many years, that he had with Albert Einstein.

Synchronicity suggests that events we experience as human beings are more than mere chance, that there is more going on; that we humans and all of life are connected and at a deeper level than would outwardly appear. Suggesting that who we are, what we think, feel, imagine, react to, are interrelated with the things going on around us in our environment; that at times who and what we are, how we appear to be to others and how, who, and what they are and how they appear to us converge together. Our inner and outer worlds are in synch.

Here is a wonderful reflection by Parker J Palmer on “The Mobius Strip”.

“Life on the Möbius Strip” by Parker J. Palmer

Here’s a brief meditation on life on the Mobius strip, a curious concept to be sure, but no more curious than life itself!

This curious object is a Möbius strip.

If you take your index finger and trace what seems to be the outside surface, you suddenly find yourself on what seems to be the inside surface. Continue along what seems to be the inside surface, and you suddenly find yourself on what seems to be the outside surface.

I need to keep saying “what seems to be” because the Möbius strip has only one side! What look like its inner and outer surfaces flow into each other seamlessly, co-creating the whole. The first time I saw a Möbius strip, I thought, “Amazing! That’s exactly how life works!”

Whatever is inside of us continually flows outward, helping to form or deform the world — depending on what we send out. Whatever is outside us continually flows inward, helping to form or deform us — depending on how we take it in. Bit by bit, we and our world are endlessly re-made in this eternal inner-outer exchange.

Much depends on what we choose to put into the world from within ourselves — and much depends on how we handle what the world sends back to us. As Thomas Merton said:

“We don’t have to adjust to the world. We can adjust the world.”

Here’s the question I’ve been asking myself ever since I understood that we live our lives on the Möbius strip:

“How can I make more life-giving choices about what to put into the world and how to deal with what the world sends back — choices that might bring new life to me, to others, and to the world we share?”

Now as you are no doubt aware Parker is one of my favourite human beings, one of my ministerial inspirations. I love how he connects the inner and outer world, it speaks powerfully to my condition, as Quakers like Parker would say. He suggests that “The Mobius Strip” is a useful metaphor for our inner and outer lives. How these are interrelated and how they affect each other. He claims that the onstage life is how we appear in the world, how we impact on the world, what he describes as the ego questions. While the backstage life is more about intuition and instinct and value and faith. These are those deeper aspects of ourselves, what is called soul, that greater reality that makes who we truly are. He claims that we are born in wholeness. That there is no separation between our inner and outer lives but as time goes by and we become increasingly influenced by the external world we lose touch with our souls and disappear into our roles. He suggests that as we grow up into the world we realise that it is not safe to be our backstage selves in the onstage world, that we somehow have to hide who we truly are and we begin to build a wall of separation. This he says becomes painful due to the disconnect between the inner and the outer life. Due to this, for so many, often the spiritual seekers, there is the desire to bring our lives into the classic shape of the circle. Which he says means I want what is important to me internally to be the values by which my external life which surrounds revolves. Thus, bringing a sense of unity to my life. Thus, my external life becomes authentic as I become centred.

Palmer acknowledges that this "centering" is a step forward and I personally see that this is where so much contemporary spirituality takes us, the kind that frustrates me. The problem with it is in the circle itself, it’s a kind of circling of the wagons, a wall of separation a kind of spiritual “gated community”, a walled garden of myself, that nothing and no one can touch. Yes, we create our own sanctuary that no one can enter, unless of course they agree with us. Those who do not share our core beliefs and principles are excluded, thus avoiding the messiness and trouble of such relationships. This circle he suggests is just another kind of wall of separation and protection and does not in the end solve the real problem that we all suffer from, it feeds the sense of separation and does not truly allow for a deep spiritual intimacy that we all crave, it does not bring about true wholeness true relationship with ourselves, with others and with God.

Palmer suggests that there is another way, an alternative, which allows us to be both authentic and open. It is achieved by reshaping into the “Mobius Strip” which has the feature of being continuous and unbroken. By simply tracing your finger around what appears to be the outside of the surface you soon find yourself on what appears to be the inside of the surface. As you continue round you soon find yourself on what appears to be the outer part of the strip. He says that it only appears this way because one of the key features of the “Mobius strip” is that there is no inner and outer the two seem to co-create each other. That this is how life is. That whatever is inside us mergers with what is outside and vice versa and both influence each other and in that exchange, interaction, coming together we co-create what we call reality.

This Palmer says leads to one question that ultimately we have to ask “As I travel this Mobius strip between my onstage life and my backstage life, constantly co-creating, how can I become so aware of that exchange that co-creative transaction, moment by moment, that I can increasingly make choices about it that are life giving rather than death dealing?”

For Palmer this is the question that links the inner life with the outer life. It is this that brings that sense of connection of oneness and brings us closer together. It is this that brings the pieces of the jigsaw together and begins to bring about completeness maybe one day, that yokes all life together, that is Yoga. In so doing we return to the wholeness, the natural state, in which we were born. Or perhaps to put it more religiously we return to paradise, we return to the natural state, the original goodness and blessing into which we were born. We find completeness. We create the Kingdom of God, the Kin-dom of Love, right here right now.

So to answer Palmer’s question “How do we make choices that are life giving rather than death dealing?”

Well it really does depend on what we put into the world and what we take in too.. It is about how we relate to one another, to life and to our inner selves. It’s about relationships. It’s about not building walls of self-protection, that soon become isolation, that cuts us off from everything, unless we agree 100% with it or them 100% of the time, in which case we will find ourselves completely alone.

It’s about learning to dance on the Mobius strip. This is the spiritual life, both personal and in community. This is integration of both personal and communal. This to me is purpose of communities such as the ones I serve, imperfect free religious communities. This is how we develop relationships that are healthy and live affirming. Relationships with our true selves, one another and whatever we believe is at the heart of all life. This is how we live spiritually alive. In so doing it can some times feel that the whole of life is speaking to us.

May we find ways to live and dance on the mobius strip.

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

Stories are never just stories. We become the stories that we tell ourselves.

“The Two Tribes” by Mark Nepo

“In the beginning, when the first humans came across each other, it went two ways. Upon seeing someone different, the more fearful one said, "You're different. Go away." The other, upon seeing someone not like him, said, "You're different. Come, teach me what I don't know." While our reasoning has grown more complicated throughout the centuries, it's essentially the same. "Go away" or "Come, teach me."

Since the beginning, the two tribes have had their philosophies. The "Go away" tribe has always believed that human beings, by their nature, are self-serving and untrustworthy, in need of control. The "Go away" tribe believes in stringent laws and constraints, both moral and legal, to ensure that people don't run amuck. The "Come, teach me" tribe believes that human beings, by their nature, are kind and trustworthy. The "Come, teach me" tribe believes in empowering laws that cultivate freedom, to ensure that people actualize their web of gifts through relationship.

The truth is that we are born into both tribes and can move from one to the other, depending on the level of our fear. The times of genocide throughout history mark the extreme, malignant manifestation of the "Go away" tribe. Distorted by fear, it's not enough just to say, "Go away." For unbridled fear turns to anger, which normalized turns into prejudice and hate. Such deep, embedded fear dictates that we need to make sure that those who are different can't return. And so, we exile them, jail them, hurt them, and in extremely ugly cases, persecute and kill them.

However, the times of enlightenment throughout history mark the extreme manifestation of the "Come, teach me" tribe, which through learning and wonder leads to eras of compassion and cooperation. Empowered by trust, curiosity turns into interdependence and a belief that we are more together than alone. When allowed to blossom, we realize that we need each other and our diversity of gifts to make life whole.”

“Stories are never just stories. We become the stories that we tell ourselves.”

A traveller was riding through the countryside. He was heading to the city for a wedding. He had been riding for some time when he realised he had become lost. He noticed a man sauntering along, happy in his own thoughts. The traveller thought he had better approach him and ask for directions. Unfortunately, he was unaware that the man he was approaching was Nasruddin. There may be trouble ahead…

The man approached Nasruddin and asked, "What is the best way to get to the city.”

Nasruddin looked up at the man and then looked ahead, before looking backwards. He looked up at the sky, before looking down once more and contemplated for some time. He then looked up at the man again before looking ahead, only slightly to the right this time. He then looked back at the man and began to speak: "Well, if I were going there, I wouldn't start from here."

Whenever we set out on a journey, it matters where we start from, where our journey begins. Yes, it isn’t the journey, but it will impact on how we travel.

We never step into anything without a past; we carry the past with us to some degree or another. How we journey in life will be influenced by our starting point, by what we are taught either subliminally or deliberately. How we see ourselves, one another, and or the world, will impact on how we journey and how we meet life. It matters how we greet the world and how the world greets us. Where we begin from will have a bearing on the journey, on how we live each day. Are we come teach me people or go away people? It matters how we greet one another and or greet life.

The other day the following post appeared in my Facebook Feed. It is by social historian I follow “Rutger Bregman” Published on 20th February 2026

The BBC just released a new adaptation of Lord of the Flies, the classic novel by William Golding. It's beautifully made, but it's still telling the wrong story.

A few years ago, I went looking for the *real* Lord of the Flies. I wanted to know: has it ever actually happened? Have kids ever been shipwrecked on a deserted island?

It took me a year of research, but I found it. In 1965, six boys from a boarding school in Tonga stole a boat, got caught in a storm, and drifted for eight days without food or water. They washed up on 'Ata, a remote, uninhabited island in the Pacific. They stayed there for 15 months, and what happened on that island was the exact opposite of William Golding's novel.

These boys set up a small commune. They built a food garden, stored rainwater in hollowed-out tree trunks, created a gym with improvised weights, and built a badminton court. One of them, Stephen (who would later become an engineer) managed to start a fire using two sticks. They kept it burning the entire time.

Of course they fought too. But when they argued, they had a rule: go to opposite ends of the island, cool down, then come back and apologize. As one of them told me: ‘That's how we stayed friends.’

Back home, everyone assumed that the boys – Luke, Stephen, Sione, David, Kolo and Mano — were dead. When they were finally discovered by an Australian captain named Peter Warner, he radioed their names to Tonga. After twenty minutes, a tearful response came back: ‘You found them! These boys have been given up for dead. Funerals have been held. If it's them, this is a miracle!’

Peter commissioned a new ship, hired all six boys as his crew, and named the boat the Ata, after the island where he found them. They remained friends for the rest of their lives – Peter and Mano even became soulmates. I tracked them down, and it became one of the central chapters of my book Humankind.

Here's what struck me most: William Golding (the author of Lord of the Flies) was a troubled man, an alcoholic who once said ‘I have always understood the Nazis, because I am of that sort by nature.’ I think he was projecting his own darkness onto children. And we turned it into a lesson about human nature that we teach to millions of kids around the world.

I think the real lesson is the opposite. When real children found themselves alone on a real island, they didn't descend into savagery. They cooperated. They took care of each other. They survived.

I'm not saying that the Tongan castaways were representative of all kids everywhere. But I am saying that every kid who has to read or watch the fictional Lord of the Flies also deserves to know what actually happened when it played out in real life.

Stories are never just stories. We become the stories that we tell ourselves.

I remember when I first learnt of this account back in 2020 at the beginning of lockdown it had a profound effect on me, as did his book “Humankind”. In the true story of the “Lord of Flies” when school boys were lost, stranded, on a desert island they did not descend into chaos and destruction. What they did do was take care of one another, in fact they found ways to not only survive, but to function as a community, until they were rescued. Why are we not taught this story? I didn’t learn about it in school. Why instead are we only taught the story of chaos and destruction, of distrust and greed. Why are we so carefully taught that we are by our nature wrong?

In the chapter “A New Realism” Rutger Bregman wrote in his book “Human Kind: A Hopeful History”

“Scenario:

An airplane makes an emergency landing, breaks into three parts, the cabin fills with smoke, everyone inside realises that they need to get out as soon as they can. Which scenario sounds more likely?

PLANET A: the passengers turn to their neighbours to ask if they’re ok, those needing assistance are helped out of the plane first, people are willing to risk their own lives to help random strangers.

PLANET B: everyone is left to fend for themselves, there is a mad rush for the exit, panic breaks out, there’s lots of pushing and shoving, the children/elderly/disabled are trampled by the mad crowd as they rush out

97% of people estimate that we live on Planet B, that mass panic is the most likely. But it has been found in almost every case that we live on Planet A – we are kind and we help each other where we can. If you watch the Titanic movie it looks like panic, but if you ask people who were actually there they say that the evacuation was actually quite orderly. Or think of September 11 – as the twin towers burned, thousands of people calmly descended the emergency stairs, even though their lives were in immediate danger. They stepped aside for firefighters, they let the injured be carried ahead of them. People would actually stop and say “no on, you go first” or “please take my place” – there was no madness.

There is a persistent myth that by our very nature humans are selfish, aggressive and quick to panic. Dutch biologist Frans de Waal calls this “veneer theory”, the notion that civilisation is nothing but a thin veneer that could crack under the slightest pressure. But in actual fact, in times of crisis (when bombs are being dropped or flood waters are rising), then we humans become our best selves. We may have a good side and a bad side, but there is considerable scientific evidence showing that in times of crisis we overwhelmingly turn to our good side.”

Much like Nepo highlights in the story I shared earlier we are both types of people “The come teach me people” and the “go away people”. The problem is that we seem to believe that generally speaking we are “Go Away People” by nature and so is everyone else. We believe we are the fiction of William Goulding rather than the Tongan schoolboys who created structures to take care of each other. They knew that their lives depended upon them cooperating together on the remote island of “Ata”.

I believe we have both aspects, both potentials within us, “The come teach me” and the “go away”, we inhabit both planet A and planet B. That the aspect that comes to prominence is the one we develop. It matters what stories we tell about ourselves and one another, as the stories we tell becomes the life we will lead and the world we live in. This is the place where we will begin every journey, every single day of our lives.

This is beautifully illustrated in the following story:

An old man said to his grandson, “there’s a fight going on inside me, a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil – angry, greedy, jealous, arrogant and cowardly. The other is good – peaceful, loving, modest, generous, honest, and trustworthy. These two wolves are fighting within you too… and every other person on the planet”

After a moment the boy asks “which wolf will win?”.

The old man smiles: “The One You Feed”.

It matters the stories that we tell of ourselves and one another. We have a natural reticence to speak of the good we do. In fact, those who do the most, prefer to do so anonymously. We do not follow the directive of Jesus from the “Sermon on the Mount”, we hide our light it would seem. The story we tell is not to speak of the good we do. Not everyone of course and actually those who do boast about their achievements can often overstate them. I don’t feel comfortable singing my praises or when others sing them to me. I know how uncomfortable I felt the other week when Jane Brophy the Mayor of Trafford did so publicly. This has been on my mind as have written and delivered eulogies for some wonderful folk recently. We seem to feel comfortable singing the praises of folk after they have died, but not while they are still alive.

How often have I heard people say when they do good things that they often disguise them behind some kind of selfish motive. Why do we tell these stories about ourselves, why do we make ourselves sound worse than we are? Why do we promote negative stories about ourselves? Why are we so uncomfortable with praise? I have seen examples only this week of people apologising for the good that they have done. It is charming and lovely and I recognise it in myself. That said it serves no one and actually leads to us telling negative stories about ourselves.

As Rutger Bregman noted in “Humankind”

“Unfortunately, this reticence works like a nocebo. When you disguise yourself as an egoist, you reinforce other people’s cynical assumptions about human nature. Worse by cloaking your good deeds, you place them in quarantine, where they can’t serve as an example for others. And that’s a shame, because Homo puppy’s secret superpower is that we’re so great at copying one another.”

Bregman suggest that we “come out” about our generosity as an example to others, to encourage them to do the same. To counteract the narrative of so-called human selfishness. That it is our nature to learn, to almost copy and mimic others, we like to fit in. therefore if we teach a frightening and scary and untrustworthy nature then this will be mimicked in others, thus creating a nocebo effect.

So maybe it is time to come out of the closet about who we are, to stop hiding our light. To stop suppressing our humanity. To recognise the instincts that are a part of our humanity. Yes, we are capable of hideous and heinous things. We only have to pick up any daily newspaper to see evidence of this, but this is not all that we are. We only hear the bad news about everything. We need to become the good news, the news the world needs to hear. Maybe it is time to start telling a different story about ourselves and one another.

“Stories are never just stories. We become the stories that we tell ourselves.”

I was recently talking to a young man. He is someone I have got to know over the last couple of years. It has been wonderful to see him grow as a person. That said he is like so many folk, he has a pretty cynical view of life and the state of the world. He tells me his generation is the hopeless one; he told me he had little or no hope for the world. I spoke with him and pointed out that humanity as been through much worse times that now and we have not destroyed ourselves. I told him that while I may not be a “cockeyed optimist” I do live in and by hope. I believe in our capacity. Yes, we are living through troubled times, but hope will carry us through, if we live by it, if it grows from our hearts. If we tell ourselves that all hope is not lost, that this can be the story we will live by and the road we can follow. I left him with the following quotation by Vaclav Havel

“Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul, and it’s not dependent on some observation of the world. Hope is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond the horizons.

Hope in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism.

It is not the conviction, that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. It is Hope, above all, which gives the strength to live and continually try new things.”

I know how vital it is that hope is the starting point of each and every journey. It is what makes my heart sing.

“Stories are never just stories. We become the stories that we tell ourselves.”

The other week I shared some of the story of Oscar Hammerstein II, at the interfaith entertainment evening. I spoke of his Universalism, a faith whose story is one of Hope; that this Hope inspired his life and work; that he wrote songs of love and hope and social change. Here’s a classic from “South Pacific”

"A Cockeyed Optimist" Lyrics

When the sky is a bright canary yellow
I forget ev’ry cloud I’ve ever seen—
So they call me a cockeyed optimist,
Immature and incurably green!

I have heard people rant and rave and bellow
That we’re done and we might as well be dead—
But I’m only a cockeyed optimist,
And I can’t get it into my head.

I hear the human race
Is falling on its face
And hasn’t very far to go,
But ev’ry whip-poor-will
Is selling me a bill
And telling me it just ain’t so!

I could say life is just a bowl of Jell-O
And appear more intelligent and smart,
But I’m stuck like a dope
With a thing called hope,
And I can’t get it out of my heart!
Not this heart!

Now someone who is considered a “cockeyed optimist” is often mocked as naive, Pollyanna-ish and maybe they are. Maybe optimism in the sense of expectation is unrealistic, that said so is cynicism in the sense that this is how something will work out, that it is inevitable. I wouldn’t start any journey from that place. That said if you step out in hope in a belief in the potential, in our capacity then you might step out on a very different journey. This is Hope rather than optimism.

“Stories are never just stories. We become the stories that we tell ourselves.”

Now of course the story we often tell of ourselves, even if it is done so subliminally, is one of distrust, that there is something wrong with our nature. I was recently talking with a friend who has a real problem with the word “sin” when he hears the word his toes curl. This is due to the story he was told growing up, that he was a sinner to the core. His problem is with the idea of “Original Sin”, the story that we are wrong by nature and can only be saved by a certain kind of faith. I do not believe in “Original Sin”, that said I do believe in “Sin” of a sort, in the sense of falling short of what I am capable of being. I am as human as the next person and I fall short. That said I reject any idea that I am permanently flawed in nature, that any of us are. Well, the rational part of me rejects it. Sadly, there is a part of me where this idea that there is something wrong in me, still exist somewhere beneath my rational mind. Why because this is the story I and others keep telling about ourselves and others. It is the story at the heart of the fictional “Lord of the Flies” and it is at the heart of many other stories we tell about ourselves, and yet it isn’t the whole story is it, and it certainly isn’t the story of the “The Real Lord of the Flies”. It is not the story of the boys on the island of Eta.

“Stories are never just stories. We become the stories that we tell ourselves.”

It seems we are being carefully taught that we are fundamentally and irredeemably flawed. Maybe it is time we started telling another story. The story of Hope. Maybe it is time to stop hiding the light of what we are capable of being. Maybe one day they will make a big budget movie about the 6 Tongan Boys who created a community and took care of each other on the island of “Eta”, who created a civilised society and not only survived, but thrived.

Where and how are you going to begin your journey. It matters you know, it really does. For “Stories are never just stories. We become the stories that we tell ourselves.”

I am going to end this morning with a bit more from South Pacific, another from Oscar Hammerstein II

"You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught"

You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught from year to year,
It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear—
You’ve got to be carefully taught!

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a different shade—
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate—
You’ve got to be carefully taught!
You’ve got to be carefully taught!

“Stories are never just stories. We become the stories that we tell ourselves.”

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