Awakening to the hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground

It was a bit wild last Sunday. I was impressed by the number of people that still managed to join us for worship despite the impact of "Storm Ciara". Ths weekend we have had to face another yet another, "Storm Dennis". I learnt last Sunday, just as I was arriving at Queens Road Urmston for the first service, that they had called the football off that afternoon, so it would appear that the congregants were hardier than those football fans. Actually the truth is that it was not safe to travel from London to Manchester and trains and trams were being cancelled.

As I left Urmston at 11am to return back to Altrincham Storm Ciara really took hold. It was the wildest weather I can ever remember driving in, there was debris all over the roads and the wind and the rain buffeted the car. I remember thinking to myself I’m glad I’m not driving over the top of the M62 today. I suspect that things were far worse in Yorkshire. I heard the next day that my sister and her husbands canal boat was a casualty and had sunk, thankfully they were not on board and they have insurance. Still very distressing all the same. They are a hardy pair and all will be well, but still they have invested some much love into their life together on that. By the way I also learnt that they had taken the journey over the top of the M62, earlier that day, as they had driven back from Liverpool.

Now maybe I am somewhat foolhardy, but as I drove down the Flixton mile road I felt little fear; I felt alive, and safe, and protected; I felt at one with the car and the weather. If truth be told I cannot remember ever feeling more awake and alive as I did for those twenty minutes. Now I had actually felt that way from the moment I had awoken that morning. I had not had a great deal of sleep, I had gone to bed later after a deeply fulfilling day, and yet felt incredibly refreshed that morning as I woke, I could feel it on the taste of my own breath.

Why was this you may well ask? Well I just had this deep sense of connection with everything in life. I was awake. I had spent quite a lot of time in prayer and meditation that week and I had been fully engaged in the stream of life, so this must have had something to do with it. When I ponder the purpose of prayer and meditation I always think of the following “Prayer doesn’t change things, prayer changes people and people change things.” Over the years I have discovered that it is prayer that enables me to open and connect to life in all its joy and suffering, it allows me to increase my sensitivity to life and thus be touched by life and in return respond in more loving and open ways. Prayer for me is a kind of opening of myself to something larger.

So, as a result, as I drove through the storm, I cannot remember ever feeling more connected and awake to everything. Over the years I have had many similar experiences. They do not seem to last forever, at least not in this heightened state, that said afterwards I have never been quite the same again.

This morning the following poem appeared as a facebook memory, it seemed to fit in with my thoughts here...

“A Journey” by Edward Field

When he got up that morning everything was different:
He enjoyed the bright spring day
But he did not realise it exactly, he just enjoyed it.

And walking down the street to the railroad station
Past magnolia trees with dying flowers like old socks
It was a long time since he had breathed so simply.

Tears filled his eyes and it felt good
but he held them back
Because men didn’t walk around crying in that town.

Waiting on the platform at the station
The fear came over him of something terrible about to happen:
The train was late and he recited the alphabet to keep hold.

And in its time it came screeching in
And as it went on making its usual stops,
People coming and going, telephone poles passing,

He hid his head behind a newspaper
No longer able to hold back the sobs, and willed his eyes
To follow the rational weavings of the seat fabrics.

He didn’t do anything violent as he had imagined.
He cried for a long time, but when he finally quieted down
A place in him that had been closed like a fist was open,

And at the end of the ride he stood up and got off that train:
And through the streets and in all the places he lived in later on
He walked, himself at last, a man among men,
With such radiance that everyone looked up and wondered.

The great traditions often spoke of this need to wake up, to awaken. Now this awakened state was not meant to be purely for ourselves. It was meant to enable us to act in the world, in this awakened state, and thus encourage others to do the same, leading them to act in loving and compassionate ways, to create a true sense of oneness. That there is no separation only a great unity in life. That there is no us and them. Certainly my understanding of the teaching of Jesus was that at its core it was all about this. Whether that was to release the prisoners and serve the underprivileged as in Luke’s Gospel or in a more spiritual sense as in Matthew’s. I felt this sense powerfully as I walked around Capernaum and Galilee this time last year. It was a year last Wednesday that Sue and I were there and I proposed to her. That day I felt powerfully the feeling that life should always be interpreted by love. During our visit to Galilee there were many moments like that feeling I experienced last Sunday. There was no storms to experience although I did witness the problems that can stem from we humans not seeing other humans as one. I witnessed it as I saw the division between those who see the land as Palestine and those who see it as Israel, I saw it in the past, the present and sadly the future. A deeply spiritual place and yet a land shaped by violence and division.

Some 600 years before the ministry of Jesus the Buddha began his search for enlightenment in India. Some suggest that Jesus had developed his belief system because he visited India himself and was thus exposed to Hinduism and Buddhism. It is not a story I accept personally. Instead I reckon that similar principles have manifested in many human forms throughout our history. I suspect that all of us are capable of awakening to this deep love. We can all wake up and realise the love at the core of all life. We may interpret it different due to the culture we are born into, the myths and stories may not be the same, but the essence is

Now while the lives of the Buddha and Jesus have parallels there was one crucial difference. The Buddha was born into privilege which he rejected and went off to discover, to his great dismay, both grinding poverty and death. By contrast Jesus was born into those very daily realities. They shared a path to wisdom through mindfulness, prayer, contemplation into an inner journey to their central core, to love, to God if you will. They became compassionate witnesses to the world of pain and suffering around them, taking into themselves the world’s pain, and they returned infinite compassion and boundless love embodied in the reassurance of resurrection and hope.

When the Buddha was asked, “What are you, a God, an angel and saint”, he answered no to each question. They persisted, and he replied enigmatically, “I am awake” as Jesus was to the duel reality of living in the face of death. Both intuitively understood that suffering could be turned to joy through sacred living, following the Dharma as Buddha put it (to salvation and Nirvana). Jesus called this eternal life. Through the lives they lived they modelled a better way of living, both examples to what we can be if we were to awaken the love within us.

Now this is all very interesting you may say, but what does it mean to wake up? What do we need to wake up to?

Well I would say look around you and within you. Take time in contemplation and it will awaken the senses that you have been given and enable you to respond to the needs around you.

Or to quote Rabindranath Tagore, a man deeply influenced by eastern and western traditions and who became a great influence both here and in India.

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”

By waking up we will know the joy of living, through simple loving service. Isn’t this what it means to follow the great examples. To be awake, is to awaken to the world. Let us wake up to this world we live in; to its beauty and wonder, and also to its tragedy and pain. Let us wake up to the reality in which we live and to respond in loving ways. Let us wake up to the idea that our wholeness, our lives, are only as complete as the lives of those around us, of those we are inextricably tied to in a great web of mutuality, of which are all a part and to which we all belong.

Let us wake up and let us stay awake.

Now for some people waking up can be a terrifying feeling. There have been times in my life when I have not wanted to wake up and face another day. So many people experience this on a daily basis; so many people wake up frightened for a variety of reasons. To be truly awake is to be compassionate towards them; to be truly awake it is vital to acknowledge this suffering in life and be with those who suffer.

That said it is just as important to express the beauty of life and to express gratitude for the incredible joy that can be human living. This is precisely what I was experiencing as I was driving between the beautiful congregations I serve, in the wild wind and rain. I was living in the joy of service.

With this in mind I am going to leave you with another question, I know I keep on doing this.  It is a question that comes from the Sufi tradition of Islam, from the beautiful poetry of Rumi. It is a kind of antidote to the feeling that might come on those days when we wake up empty and frightened, as many people do and no doubt most of us have done as some point in time.

So here’s a question for this day, perhaps it’s a question for every day, what might to you, to “kneel and kiss the ground?”

Here are the verses

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Rumi

What might it mean, to "kneel and kiss the ground?"

Wilderness: A Lenten Reflection

This is a story from the native American, Comanche tradition, “She-Who-Sits-Alone”.

A terrible time once befell the Comanche people. It was a time of drought. The land was dying and the people were dying too. In their despair, they called upon the Great Spirit.

“Great Spirt,” they implored, “our land is dying and our people are dying. How have we angered you? Bring an end to this drought and save your people, for soon there will be nothing left alive.”

And so they prayed, and they danced. They waited, and they prayed. But no rain came. And the little ones and the old ones suffered, and no one knew how to end the suffering.

But there was one small girl who had not yet died of hunger. Her name was She-Who-Sits-Alone. Sitting alone, she watched her people pray and dance, and she held her beloved doll in her arms. The doll was her ultimate companion, her second self, dressed in its warrior clothing, with a bone belt and beaded leggings, and bearing the feathers of the blue jay on its head.

She-Who-sits-Alone watched, with her doll, as the elders went to the top of the mountain to receive the wisdom of the great Spirit. Several times did the sun rise above the mountain, and several times did the light fade behind the mountain’s bulk before they returned. On the mountain top, the people gathered round to hear the message of the Great Spirit, and this is what the Great Spirit said to them:

“For many generations, the people have taken from the earth whatever they needed and wanted, but they have given nothing back to the earth. Now the earth is in distress, and the people must make a sacrifice. They must bring to the fire of sacrifice their most treasured possessions. The ashes of the sacrifice must be scattered to the four winds. When this has been done, the rains will come and the earth will live again”

The people gave thanks and then returned to their teepees to search out their most treasured possessions.

“surely the Great Spirit does not want my bow,” said the archer. “Nor could the Great Spirit possibly desire my treasured blanket,” said the mother.

“I know that the Great spirit could not be asking for my herbs,” said the medicine man.

And so it continued. Everyone had a reason not to give the Great Spirit their greatest treasure.

Meanwhile, She-Who-Sits-alone took her warrior doll into her arms, held it tight and whispered, “It is you the Great Spirit desires. I know what I must do.”

So that night, when everyone slept, She-who-sits-alone threw off her sleeping blanket and climbed to the top of the mountain, carrying her warrior doll in one hand, and a lighted stick from the campfire in the other. When she reached the mountain top, she spoke to the Great Spirit.

“Great Spirit,” she said, “here is my warrior doll, the gift of my mother and my father before they died, and my most treasured possession. Please accept it,” As she kindled the fire, she wept, and she remembered her parents and grandparents and friends who had died of hunger, and she thrust her doll into the flames.

Soon the fire died down. She gathered the cooling ashes and cast them to the four winds. Exhausted, she lay down on the mountain top and fell asleep.

When the rising sun kissed her awake the next morning, she looked around, dazed. There, where she had offered her sacrifice, lay a shinning feather of the blue jay. And as she knelt to look more closely, the first drops of rain caressed her face.

From then on, She-Who-Sits-alone was given a new name by her grateful people. she became known as One-Who-Loved-Her –People.

Today marks the beginning of Lent. Lent reminds us that there are journeys we all have to make in life; physical journeys, spiritual journeys. Some journeys we can share with others, but other journeys lead us into the wilderness alone.

The New Testament accounts tell us that Jesus was baptized in the river Jordon. At that very moment the heavens opened and he heard God accepting him as “my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

You would have thought that this would have been a moment to savour and enjoy; a moment to soak up this incredible realisation; a moment of total bliss and happiness, but it wasn’t. Instead what happens is that he is led “by the spirit” into the wilderness to be tested. There is no time to rest on his laurels and enjoy this moment of connection and wholeness. For some reason Jesus had to immediately live out his calling, rather than sit around and enjoy his moment of blessing.

This journey that was forced on him was not a pleasant jaunt through the Cheshire countryside, like I have begun to enjoy in my time living in Altrincham, it was not a saunter through Dunham Park. It was in no sense a picnic or walk in the park. Instead he spent forty days enduring extreme deprivation and confrontations and endured a great deal of self examination. The Biblical accounts describe him being tested by the devil, by temptation. He suffered greatly and he struggled with this suffering and he suffered alone. His solitary struggle to remain true to his covenant and his calling echoed those of his ancestors who had spent forty years in the wilderness establishing a religious community after they had escaped the Pharaoh and Egypt.

Jesus and his struggles are a great metaphor for our common human experience. Entering into a time of wilderness is something that every person’s soul must journey through. At some point we all have to leave our childhoods behind and enter into adulthood. We cannot live in our childish Eden forever, we are all cast out into the wilderness at one point or another. We gain knowledge of life and when we do, this hurts. So what do we do? Well we discover the resources that we need in order to live, or we flounder.

I have experienced this sense of being cast into the wilderness many times in my life. Sometimes I have risen to the challenge and overcome the obstacles, sometimes alone and at other times with friends. On other occasions I have not. I have run away and I have hidden from whatever life has thrown at me, thus destroying my “self worth”.

During the last few years I have generally risen to the occasion, less and less do I run from life. This is what faith, the religious life, has given me above anything else. It has given me the strength to be who I am and to live with honesty and integrity. I can look the world in the eye today and say, this is who I am. I do not hide in shame, I speak my truth in love. I no longer need someone else to define who I am. That is the power of faith!

The journey into the wilderness reminds us that we are alone and yet we are not alone. Neither are we where we have been or where we are going to. The time in the wilderness is a time of danger and possibility, a time of risk and a time of promise. While we wander in the wilderness the spirit may well descend like a dove and lift us up on its wings of hope and then drive us down into the depths of despair. It may affirm us with gifts of grace and then challenge us to change. In all the great religious traditions of both the east and the west this journey into the wilderness represents a time when we both pursue and resist the Holy.

I love the following poem “A Journey” by Edward Field

When he got up that morning everything was different:

He enjoyed the bright spring day

But he did not realise it exactly, he just enjoyed it.

And walking down the street to the railroad station

Past magnolia trees with dying flowers like old socks

It was a long time since he had breathed so simply.

Tears filled his eyes and it felt good

but he held them back

Because men didn’t walk around crying in that town.

Waiting on the platform at the station

The fear came over him of something terrible about to happen:

The train was late and he recited the alphabet to keep hold.

And in its time it came screeching in

And as it went on making its usual stops,

People coming and going, telephone poles passing,

He hid his head behind a newspaper

No longer able to hold back the sobs, and willed his eyes

To follow the rational weavings of the seat fabrics.

He didn’t do anything violent as he had imagined.

He cried for a long time, but when he finally quieted down

A place in him that had been closed like a fist was open,

And at the end of the ride he stood up and got off that train:

And through the streets and in all the places he lived in later on

He walked, himself at last, a man among men,

With such radiance that everyone looked up and wondered.

The poem portrays that sense of letting go of something at the end of the journey and how this is often a struggle, to open up the clenched fist. How even at the end of something when we are about to release these pent up emotions, we can often still be afraid of how vulnerable and exposed we can appear to others. I love and identify strongly with the man hiding behind his newspaper before he is able to allow the tears to roll from his eyes.

“He hid his head behind a newspaper

No longer able to hold back the sobs, and willed his eyes

To follow the rational weavings of the seat fabrics.

He didn’t do anything violent as he had imagined.

He cried for a long time, but when he finally quieted down

A place in him that had been closed like a fist was open,”

Powerful imagery

In the story “She-Who-Sits Alone” has to go up the mountain top to let go of her doll. The rain fall, like tears on her face, only comes at the end of her journey. Jesus, of course, often went away from his people to commune openly and honestly with his father.

I have had similar experiences myself. I often go away on my own, either in the countryside or sometimes in the chapel to have those private moments, and I live alone. I do sometimes experience them while walking in a busy bustling street, but it rarely feels appropriate; I am still haunted with the age old saying “boys don’t cry” One of my demons.

This time in the wilderness is meant to be seen as one of purity, that is why one element of Lent is this idea of fasting, of giving something up. It is of course worth noting that virtually every religious tradition throughout human history has a period of fasting. There is value in this cleansing purifying commitment. It’s not just about food though, that is symbolic.

This time in the wilderness is not only a time of purity of letting go of things it is also a time of self sacrifice. Lent has a double meaning, it is about purification of the self and self sacrifice, universal religious principles. In the story “She-Who-Sits-Alone” is prepared to give up her doll her most prised possession, given to her by her now dead parents. She calls this doll her second self. She gives up this doll as she wanders into the wilderness and to the top of the mountain and sacrifices it. She falls asleep and when she awakens she finds the feather of a Blue Jay, just like the one that had sat on her dolls head. The rains soon follow, falling on her face, like tears, which save her people. From that day she becomes known as One-Who-Loved-Her –People. It is important to realise that she does not give her life, only her prized possession, this is because she loves her people more than her doll, her other self. Her people are more important to her than herself identity.

Most of us though cannot do what “She-Who-Sits-Alone” achieved. We are unwilling to let go of those things that we believe define and protect us, remember her doll was her id and it was her warrior too. Most of us are more like the archer, the woman, or the medicine man, unwilling to give up our blanket or bow or herbs, we are human. We believe these possessions identify and protect us.

Jesus, the great example, is difficult for us to live up to. He endured many tests during his time in the desert and was offered many temptations, but he resisted each time. I do not always resist these temptations, but I no longer beat myself up about my imperfections.

I do not think that Lent is asking us to be perfect; it’s a mistake to view it that way. That said it can be interpreted this way and there are real dangers in this. Trying to be perfect can create a paralysing fear that leads us to flee life and stops people doing the simple things they are more than capable of.

I love this line from the song “Purity” by New Model Army.

“Purity is a virtue, purity is an angel, purity is for madmen who make fools of us all...so forgive yourself my friend all this will soon be over what happened here tonight is nothing at all”

This constant gnawing need for perfection, to transcend our humanity does us no good, in fact it can paralysing...I firmly believe in the mantra “progress, not perfection”...progress is tangible...where as perfection is something that seems way beyond my means.

Like everyone I will keep wandering off into the wilderness and experience the pain of battling with my demons. I will give what I am able to give to others too, but I won’t do it perfectly...I do not know what perfection is. That said I will do what I am able to do and perhaps that’s the real message of Lent, to give or give up what you can.