Lent: A time for giving not giving things up

Towards the end of  “12 Steps to a Compassionate Life” Karen Armstrong writes

"...the attempt to become a compassionate human being is a lifelong project. It is not achieved in an hour or a day - or even in 12 steps. It is a struggle that will last until our dying hour. Nearly every day we will fail; but we cannot give up... We must pick ourselves up and start again. If you have followed the steps carefully you have come a long way. But the process is not over. You will have to work at all twelve steps continuously for the rest of your life: learning more about compassion, surveying your world anew, and struggling with self-hatred and discouragement. Never mind loving your enemies - sometimes loving your nearest and dearest selflessly and patiently will be a struggle!"

Been thinking about the following sentence for the last few weeks...

“Never mind loving your enemies – sometimes loving your nearest and dearest selflessly and patiently will be a struggle”

Love is not as easy as those cards and adverts make it out to be. This is because love is not some sentimental or mushy feeling. Love is tough and love is disciplined and it can really hurt sometimes, too much sometimes...

Love is one of those easy to say words, that are so hard to truly live by. How often do we say each day I love this or I love that? By the way how often do we say I hate this or I hate that? These are very strong sentiments but do we really mean what we say when we say I “love” or “hate” something? Think about it?

Last Thursday 14^th February was Valentines Day, the great love fest. Now this festival is about the celebration of romantic love, but this is not the only form of love there is. When the ancient Greeks spoke of love, they were not necessarily talking of romance. They used four different words for love: eros, romantic love; philia, friendship love; storge, a familial love; agape, spiritual love. This final type of love is the form that the great religious traditions talk of. This is a different kind of love as it is meant to be none exclusive, it is open to all, it is suppose to have no boundaries. It is meant to build bridges between the walls we create around ourselves. Whereas the other types of love suggest partiality in one sense or another.

Agape is the love that Jesus spoke of in the Gospels. He commanded his followers to “Love one another as I have loved you.”  He is not talking about something soft and mushy here though, please do not be fooled. 

When Jesus preaches that we should love our enemies he is commenting on the commandment in Leviticus “You must love your neighbour as yourself.” As Karen Armstrong has stated “Leviticus is a legal text and any talk of emotion would be out of place as it would be in a Supreme Court ruling. In the ancient Middle East, ‘love’ was a legal term used in international treaties: when two kings promised to ‘love’ each other, they pledged to be loyal and to give each other practical help and support – even if this went against their short term interests”. When Jesus spoke of love he was talking about an action that put someone or something else at the centre of their life, rather than ourselves; he is talking about yielding for the good of all, instead of self interest.

This message is of course not unique to the Judeo-Christian tradition it is the essence of all the “Great Faiths”. It would appear that selfishness and self-centredness has been the root of so many of humanities troubles, throughout our history, therefore it is hardly surprising that the idea of yielding for the good of all is at the core of the great faiths; that putting something other than our selfish needs at the centre of what we do is vital to human survival. The great Chinese guide to statecraft “The Daodejing”, authored by Lao Tzu made similar claims. As Armstrong highlights, the Dao states that “The only person who is fit to rule is the man who has overcome the habit of selfishness.”

The Dao further states that...

“The reason there is great affliction is that I have a self.

If I had no self, what affliction would I have?

Therefore to one who honours the world as his self

The world may be entrusted,

And to one who loves the world as one’s self

The world may be consigned.”

Ah The Golden Rule of Compassion...the rule of love...the essence of true religion...the essence of the spiritual life... 

Agape requires love for all, without conditions and without borders. This is the love expressed in 1 Corinthians 13 which perfectly describes the qualities of such love. It states “Agape is patient. Agape is kind and is not jealous. Agape does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice with unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth, bears all wrongs, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, agape never fails.”

Agape was the foundation of Rev Dr Martin Luther King’s ministry, the great champion of civil rights in 1950’s and 60’s America. He saw it as an abundant overflowing love that seeks nothing in return, that is open to all and rejects self interest. It is not sentimental and has nothing to do with whether we like a person or not. It is the kind of love that recognises our common humanity and reveres the other as our self; it recognises the sacred mystery in everyone. It is this that forms the beloved community that he spoke of. You may call it the Kingdom of God, or the Commonwealth of Love, or simply “Fellowship”.

Although Agape is not soft, mushy or sentimental it is still a condition of the heart, it is a way of being that encompasses all aspects of our humanity; head and heart as well as mind, body and spirit. It is about how we are and how we act. In his sermon titled “Love in action” Dr King preached that “one day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right if the head is totally wrong...only through bringing together head and heart, intelligence and goodness – shall man rise to a fulfilment of his human nature.”

It is a mistake to believe that Dr King's ministry focused purely on the injustices of society external to him. He also talked of healing humanities inner violence. None violent action, motivated by love, that he adapted from the teachings of Gandhi was about committing not only to non-violent resistance externally but also internally. Both he and Gandhi knew how vital it was that we transformed our inner lives first before we looked to the world. Gandhi named this Satyagraha (soul-force). They both knew that in order to transform society for the better, they first had to develop themselves spiritually.

Why was this? Well they knew that if a person did not heal the violence within themselves that when they did overcome the injustice they were experiencing they may well end up replacing it with something just as destructive. Just look at the revolutions of the past two hundred years. They began as a protest against tyranny and yet in many cases they replaced the former tyranny with something worse. We must all be wary of the “dark side of the force”, of how corrupting power and self righteousness can be. The last two hundred years are littered with examples of this.

Love is a way of being. It is not sentimental, it is not soft and mushy, it is tough and it requires effort and discipline. It is something that I will be attempting to focus on this Lenten season.

It always amazes me how something like Lent, which in my view is about self sacrifice, about giving of self for others, has somehow become so self centred. Today people give up things for Lent, but they seemingly primarily do so for their own good. People often given up certain food stuffs, for their own vanity, they do it for themselves. Is this what Lent is about? Well it doesn’t seem to be the right focus to me. Surely it’s actually about Agape, about self giving love, about loving all without prejudice, about recognising the “inherent worth and dignity of all” Isn’t this the example that Jesus gave to humanity, in the same way that Gandhi and Dr King did, they gave themselves wholeheartedly for others. Sadly they were murdered for it. That said their message did not die with their physical bodies; their message survived their physical deaths, it lives on today. 

This loving spirit is timeless, it is immortal, but it needs a body, it needs to be embodied. So I’ve made a decision. This Lenten season I’m going to attempt to let this spirit live through my body; this Lent I’m going to focus on giving, instead of giving up. This Lenten season I’m going to see what I can give to life instead of what I can give up; this Lenten season I’m going to live in what I consider the solution is as opposed to what the problem is. I am going to give love, even if it’s in small ways. I am going to do so while recognising how difficult that is, even to my nearest and dearest. By doing so I know that my outer world is bound to improve and my inner world will continue to heal.

My question to you, who read this blog, is what are you going to give, instead of give up, this Lent?

I will leave you with that one.

Tragic Optimism

The following is an extract from "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl...

“By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive characteristic "the self-transcendence of human existence." It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself--be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself--by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love--the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.”

I've been pondering these words quite a lot over the last few days as I have witnessed the suffering throughout our world and much closer to home, as I have attempted to make sense of it all...

Socrates is credited with saying that “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I think he is right. To live life fully we do need to know ourselves. That said we can go too far with this. It is so easy to get lost within ourselves in our search for self understanding. I have learnt in recent years that an over examined life is no life at all.

I have wasted so much of my life trying to make sense of the suffering I and those around me have endured; I have wasted so much time looking at the world thinking there is no hope for humanity; I wasted so many years saying what is the point of any of this is? Thankfully I do this far less these days.

We will all experience times in our lives when nothing makes sense; when no matter how hard we try we will be unable to get to the root of the trouble. This is often the case with suffering, both are own and other people’s. How often do we cry out, why is this happening to me. Well the truth is it isn’t happening to you and me, it is happening to everyone and becoming obsessed with trying to find out why this is happening may well stop us from living and learning from what has happened.

Viktor Frankl said:

“What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.”

I’ve been contemplating these words for quite some time now and looking at my life in retrospect I can see the truth in this claim. I have discovered that by trying to help others come to some understanding about their lives my own life has begun to make sense. I have come to understand, accept and even love who I am by helping others come to terms with who they are. My life today is rich in meaning. It is not devoid of pain I promise you, no life is. There has been real pain these last few days as I and other loved ones have been coming to terms with our Allen’s diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. A form of cancer that I know is untreatable.

I know that there is nothing that I can do to help Allen, I cannot take away his suffering. That said there is much that I can do to help those I love in their time of need and I know that in doing so I will help myself come to terms with my own suffering.

I have deep affection for Viktor Frankl. He wrote what I believe is the most important book of the second half of the twentieth century, “Man’s search for Meaning”. The book is based on the three years he spent in Auschwitz Dachau and other concentration camps during the Second World War. I do not wish to go into detail about the book now nor give an over view of “logotherapy” which he developed both before and after the war years. What I would like to briefly explore is the concept of “Tragic Optimism” which he describes at the end of the book.

“Tragic Optimism” is about saying yes to life despite its tragedy and suffering, claiming that deep meaning can be unearthed even in the most horrific of circumstances. Remember Frankl’s ideas grew in the hell of Auschwitz.

“Tragic Optimism” describes a “tragic triad” stating that life involved three inevitable kinds of tragedy. These being the pain and suffering present in human existence; guilt for the things we have done or failed to do, the bad choices we have made; and death, knowing that our lives and the lives of those we love are transient. He says that it is hard to find meaning in the face of such tragedies, but that we must in order to live to our true human potential.

He noted that western society had advanced immeasurably during the latter half of the twentieth century and yet people still complained of living empty and meaningless lives, noting that people “have enough to live by but nothing to live for.” He believed that the lack of meaning in modern life was a direct cause of the increase in depression, aggression and addiction, claiming that it was this existential vacuum that led to the cries of “no future”.

Frankl though does not leave us in this existential black hole, he offers a solution. He suggests three ways in which we can find meaning in life. He claims that meaning can and does emerge through our work and or deeds; through experiences and or encounters with other people, through love; and finally and perhaps most importantly through rising above and growing through our suffering.

Frankl suggests that it is easy, in face of the inevitable tragedies of life, to fall into nihilism (meaninglessness) or to chase after happiness, success, power etc instead of allowing meaning to find us. By the way he is not really saying that meaning is the goal, more that meaning emerges as a result of meaningful action. He gives several illustrations, claiming that you can’t just make yourself find meaning in the same way as you can’t just make yourself laugh. We laugh as a result of finding something funny, not because we are told that it will be good for us. The problem it would seem is that we focus on the goal rather than the action itself.

We want to be happy, we want to find meaning, we want to self actualize and we do all we can to strive for this. In striving for these things we fail and yet by giving of ourselves to others, by transcending our own suffering, our lives begin to become rich in meaning.

It is the meaning that emerges from suffering that speaks most powerfully to me.  By the way please do not misunderstand me I am not suggesting that suffering in and of itself is a good thing. As Frankl said if suffering is avoidable then the meaningful thing to do is to do all that can be done to avoid it.

This brings to mind two stories that I recently heard. The first I read in Karen Armstrong’s “12 Steps to a Compassionate Life”. Karen gives the example of Christina Noble as someone who rose above her personal suffering to become a positive force in the world. Christina discovered meaning in her suffering by helping others to a solution to theirs. She is the founder and driving force behind “Christina Noble Children’s Foundation”, which was set up in 1989 to help Vietnamese street children.

Christina herself is no stranger to poverty and homelessness. Following the death of her mother, when she was just ten years old, she encountered a catalogue of horrors, beginning with being separated from her siblings, believing them to be dead, and living under horrific conditions in Irish orphanages. She fled the orphanage at the age of fourteen and learnt to fend for herself in the poorest parts of Dublin. Following a series of  assaults and after being rejected by everyone including the church, she left for London at the age of 18 and suffered further abuse in an unhappy marriage, where she had three children of her own. During this low point, amongst a life time of low points, she had a dream about Vietnam. She says that:

“I don’t know why I dreamed about Vietnam, perhaps it was because the country was so much in the news at the time. In the dream, naked Vietnamese children were running down a dirt road fleeing from a napalm bombing. The ground under the children was cracked and coming apart and the children were reaching to me. One of the girls had a look in her eyes that implored me to pick her up and protect her and take her to safety. Above the escaping children was a brilliant white light that contained the word “Vietnam”.

This vision stayed with her for the next twenty years, it would not go away and it kept her going through some bleak days in her life - In much the same way that Frankl’s vision of his wife kept him going in Auschwitz - The vision finally began to come to fruition in 1989 when she was able to set up her foundation in Ho Chi Minh City. The foundation has grown over the years and has expanded beyond Vietnam into Mongolia and other countries.

The second example that I would like to share with you is much closer to home. It is that of a friend who has watched her father die of sclerosis of the liver in recent weeks. She has herself recovered from alcoholism and is sober many years. That said the pain of watching her father die in such a way has been deeply traumatic. She recently recounted the last hour of his life to me. What touched me the most was that during this last hour, as she watched him slip away, she was able to turn to a young man in the bed next to her father, who is himself in the grip of alcoholism, and offer a helping hand. She was able to help another in the moment of her deepest suffering. She could not do anything to help her father but she could find meaning from his death and her own suffering by turning to offer a hand of love to someone else despite the tragedy in her own life.

Both my friend and Christina were able to find hope, to find meaning, as a result of their own suffering. It was seemingly a suffering which could not be avoided at the time and one which offered no real meaning while they were in the midst of it. That said from their own personal tragedies true meaning did emerge as they offered a helping hand to others who were suffering from a fate they had themselves emerged from. These are just two beautiful examples of hope and meaning emerging from the suffering and tragedy of life.

These are powerful messages of hope, nay even optimism. No one can escape the pain and suffering in life but that does not make life meaningless. We all have to face unavoidable suffering from time to time and yet meaning can be created from this. It is created when the suffering inspires us to attempt to alleviate the suffering in the lives of others. In these very acts we suddenly find our lives are rich in meaning and we can once again look to life through the eyes of optimism even when it is surrounded by tragedy.

Give thanks for life: Receiving each day as an invitation

“To Receive Each Day as an Invitation” by John O’Donohue

"One night recently I visited our family farm. A calf had just been born. It had slumped to earth in a wet, steaming mass. At midnight, I went out to look at the cow again; by this time she had licked her new calf dry and he had sucked his first milk. Everything was mild and gentle, illuminated by the moon’s mint light. What a beautiful night it was to arrive on earth. Even if this newborn were a genius, it could never possibly imagine the surprise of the world that was waiting when the dawn would break in a miracle of colour illuminating the personality of mountains, river and sky

The liturgy of dawn signals the wonder of the arriving day. Magic of darkness breaking through into colour and light is such a promise of invitation and possibility. No wonder we always associate the hope and urgency of new beginning with the dawn. Each day is the field of brightness where the invitation of our life unfolds. A new day is an intricate and subtle matrix; written into its mystery are the happenings sent to awaken and challenge us.

No day is ever the same, and no day stands still; each one moves through a different territory, awakening new beginnings. A day moves forward in moments, and once a moment has flickered into life, it vanishes and is replaced by the next. It is fascinating that this is where we live, within an emerging lacework that continually unravels. Often a fleeting moment can hold a whole sequence of the future in distilled form: that unprepared second when you looked in a parent’s eye and saw death already beginning to loom. Or the second you noticed a softening in someone’s voice and you knew that a friendship was beginning. Or catching your partner’s gaze upon you and knowing the love that surrounded you. Each day is seeded with recognitions.

The writing life is a wonderful metaphor for this. The writer goes to his desk to meet the empty white page. As he settles himself, he is preparing himself, for visitation and voyage. Each memory, longing, and craft set the frame for what might emerge. He has no idea what will come. Yet despite its limitations, his creative work will find its own direction to form. Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and creative our time will become."

“Give thanks for life, the measure of our days,

Mortal we pass through beauty that decays,

Yet sing to God our hope, our love and praise:

Alleluia, Alleleluia!”

This is one of my favourite hymns from “Sing Your Faith”, more commonly known, by many Unitarians, as the Purple Hymn Book or new Hymn book. Words by Shirley Erena Murray set to “Sine Nomine” by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The words offer a simple and yet beautiful sentiment, to give thanks for life itself. After all it is the ultimate of graces. It is a truly free gift. It is given to us and involves no effort, at least at the beginning, on our part. Now what happens throughout our lives, well that’s a different story entirely.

I wonder how often we give thanks and praise for the fact that we draw breath at all; I wonder how often we give thanks and praise for all the things in our lives that are given to us through no real effort on our part. I believe if we saw each second as a precious grace, a free gift, we may just begin to see life as an invitation; an invitation to who knows what?

It is so easy to take life for granted and to just simply consume what is there, without really paying attention to how it got there in the first place. It is often less easy to be grateful, to offer genuine thanks for all that we are surrounded by.

To give thanks, to be grateful for what is here in our lives takes real discipline. To pay attention is a labour in itself, but it is one that truly bears fruit. It begins by paying attention carefully to just one thing, perhaps your next meal or conversation or the people in the street that you pass by. If we are able to pay attention to one thing, our attention will eventually begin to pay attention to everything that is connected to that one thing and that is everything. Everything in life truly is connected and interconnected. This has never been more true than today.

In “12 Steps to a Compassionate Life” Karen Armstrong suggests a mindfulness practise that can help us engage with this interconnectedness. She suggests that we begin by paying attention to our homes and bring to mind all the people who were involved in building them. Not just the team that put them together but those who created the brick, the cement, the timber. Those who installed the plumbing and the electricity, those who created the many fabrics that adorn the interiors of our lives and those who laboured to supply these things. She also suggests that we pay attention and consider where the tea and coffee we consume in the morning comes from, as well as the food on our table. To think of every slice of bread we place in the toaster and consider all the efforts that went into getting it there. She further suggests that as we leave our homes we pay attention to the transport systems we travel by. To think of all the workers who built and maintain our roads, our cars, buses, trains and planes and to continue this exercise as we move through our day, paying attention to everything and offering a moment of thanks for all the labour that has gone into making all that we enjoy possible.

This mindfulness practise brings to mind a talk I recently heard at the R.E. Summer School I participated in at Great Hucklow. It was a talk delivered by Bill Darlison. Here Bill was encouraging us to engage with a variety of spiritual practises. He began by defining what he means by spiritual and spirituality. For Bill spirituality is about increasing our sensitivity to life. One of the many things that he spoke of was the Irish tradition of the Angelus prayer. This has been practiced in Ireland for many years and is a moment when the people are meant to pause for a moment and send a message of good will to everyone on earth; at 6am at 12 noon and at 6pm. He said he was particularly struck by the 6pm one as it preceded the 6 o’clock news and the world’s horrors that followed. Bill suggests that in our daily lives we create our own Angelus moments; moments when we pause, give thanks and offer good will to all. Bill said that whenever he hears a siren in the street he will pause for a few seconds and offer a silent prayer to whoever is obviously in distress.

Life is the greatest gift of all and one that ought to be revered. If we offer simple moments of gratitude for this ultimate of graces, we will notice the many blessings we are surrounded by. I am grateful for the many gifts I have been given. This work I do with you wonderful folk, the home I have in Altrincham, my little black car, my health, physical, mental and spiritual and the love I know in life. Above all I am grateful for the people I know and have known. That said I could do more to appreciate these many gifts. I could pay more attention and could offer more prayers of thanks for all that life offers me. This is why I am committing to the suggestions of Bill and Karen and why I commend them to everyone. I will practise paying attention and I will practise offering little prayers of thanks giving and of concern for those in distress.

Afterall we are all connected; we are a part of the one undivided whole.

Let us all give thanks for life; it is the greatest gift of all.

Amen

"Spots of Time"

“There are in our existence spots of time,

That with distinct pre-eminence retain

A renovating virtue, whence–depressed

By false opinion and contentious thought,

Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,

In trivial occupations, and the round

Of ordinary intercourse–our minds

Are nourished and invisibly repaired;

A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,

That penetrates, enables us to mount,

When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.”

 William Wordsworth, The Prelude (Book XI, ls 258-278)

“Spots of time” I wonder what on earth Wordsworth meant by this.

I suspect that they are those moments when life not only feeds but truly nourishes us on a deep, deep level, deeper than the marrow of our bones; moments when the common becomes uncommon,; moments when the veils we create ourselves seem to slip away; moments when we seemingly see beyond the ordinary; moments when we experience reality on a deeper level.

These “spots of time” are sacred moments that are made holy by their mysterious ability to nourish us and perhaps even repair us in body, mind, heart and soul. These moments are so special because they seem so rare. I suspect that they are a kind of grace; they seemingly come to us, from a place somewhere beyond ourselves. They cannot be forced; I do not believe that we can just simply create them for ourselves.

These moments can happen anywhere. For Wordsworth these “spots of time” occurred primarily in nature. We all experience them in different ways, in different states and in different settings. Those moments when time seemingly stands still; those moments that touch us at the core of our being; those moments that transform our lives; those magic moments. Time seemingly becomes compressed or concentrated in these moments when the senses become heightened, when life seemingly has a deeper meaning. These are not necessarily supernatural moments by the way; no they are firmly grounded in reality.

In these moments time appears to be slowing down, although obviously it does not. Time does not so much stop as become compressed, the moment becomes concentrated. There just seems to be more of life in that moment, but it lasts just as long. Maybe the moment is deeper, not longer. Time is time after all.

Now for Wordsworth it was nature and his ability to connect to it that had the power to nourish in a deep and profound way; it was nature and connecting to it that created those nourishing "spots of time". It was these moments that held him through the vicissitudes of his later life. For a while, as a boy, the Lake District had been his little paradise. Those days that he spent running free, climbing the craggy rocks, the fishing lakes, wading the streams, walking over the moor and hill, in sun and cloud, wind and storm. That time when nature drenched into him like the rain soaking his skin. The intensity of this pleasure remained with him and sustained him always:

“There was a time when meadow, grove and stream

Earth and every common sight

Did seem apparell’d in celestial light

The glory and the freshness of a dream”

These recollections held him through all the difficulties that life threw at him, it’s sustaining power never diminished.

When I look back at my life I can think of those moments when deep powerful meaning has emerged seemingly out of nothingness and all of life has felt connected. It occurs today when I get lost in certain songs that I sing and it occurs in worship too. It frequently happens when people open themselves up to me in conversations, especially when they describe similar moments that have happened in their own lives, when they describe their own “spots of time”. They also happen when I go off on my own and get lost within myself while quietly engaging with life as it flows all around me. That said I cannot just make those “spots of time” happen, they are not created through force of will. I have come to believe that they are a gift of grace, from something more than myself, even if that is just another person.

As a younger man I would often go off on my own and wander the streets of local towns and cities. I would spend the day travelling around within my own little bubble. I would barely say a word to anybody all day along, unless I had to. It was seemingly a strange thing to do and I never discussed it with anyone, it was just something I needed to do when life was becoming too much, when I was feeling wounded and overwhelmed. Now in those days those moments were about withdrawal rather than connection, I was fleeing life.

These days when I go off on my own I am not withdrawing I feel that I am connecting and renewing myself. In these moments I believe that the core of my being is connecting to a power far greater than myself, that is present in all life. Yes these moments have happened throughout my life, it’s just that these days I seem to uncover more meaning in them. They seemingly teach me something about myself, about life and about the greater reality that I experience at the core of life, they teach me something of God. These are moments of wisdom, something new is revealed in these moments. And perhaps more importantly I am able to act on these moments of enlightenment too.

Karen Armstrong takes an interesting view of these “spots of time”. In “12 Steps to a Compassionate Life” she claims that we are constantly creating these spots of time in each other’s lives. She extends the idea beyond the personal experience to a communal one; she extends it beyond a personal spiritual experience to a religious one; she extends it beyond the confines of the self to others.

“The Golden Rule of Compassion” challenges us to practise loving-kindness all day and every day without prejudice. This is no easy task, well not for me in any case. Armstrong points out that it is not a doctrine or notion that you either agree with or make yourself believe.  Compassion, loving-kindness, is not a belief it is something you either practice or you do not.  It can become a “spot of time” that lifts someone up or puts them down. As C. Neil Strait wrote “Kindness is more than deeds. It is an attitude, an expression, a look, touch. It is anything that lifts another person.”

We all have the capacity to change; anyone can live more compassionately. One of the great joys of leading the “12 Steps to a Compassionate Life” reading groups is that it has allowed me to watch those who have engage with them begin to open up and to change.

As Armstrong has highlighted each “spot of time” in which we refrain from doing what we would not wish to have done to us, and each “spot of time” in which we do unto others what we would wish done to us, we achieve “ekstasis, a momentary `stepping outside’ of our egotistically confined self”.

So these “spots of time” are not necessarily experienced alone. In fact maybe we only truly know them in communion with others. Also while we may not be able to create these “spots of time” in our own lives, we can create them in lives of others. This is Armstrong’s point. Everything that we do and everything that we do not do matters. We do not know if the next interaction we have with someone could well become a “spot of time”, a moment that transforms their life forever. This ought not to breed pressure, quite the opposite, instead it should breed meaning.  Every single moment matters, even if we ourselves cannot immediately unearth its meaning.

No one lives a trouble free life, we all face difficulties each and every day. We all suffer pain in our lives and often there seems no justifiable reason for it. It just seems so unfair. Sadly these can often become the “spots of time” that rule our lives. They certainly did for me for many years. I believe the mistake that we often make is that we get stuck seeking out the reasons for our troubles instead of making reasons out of what has happened. You see by looking in the past we isolate ourselves, we say look this is my suffering and pain and we look for someone to blame. When what we ought to doing is seeing how we all share pain in life, it’s a part of existence and seeing what we can give back to life from our shared experience. I have discovered by doing so meaning begins to burst out of the seeming nothingness. And life enhancing “spots of time” begin to appear more and more frequently.

We don't get to choose our troubles, but we can choose how we respond to them and we can pass those lessons on to one another. We can create "spots of time" for one another. No one can take that away from us. It is perhaps our one and only true freedom.

Silence is Golden

Four monks decided to meditate silently without speaking for two weeks. By nightfall on the first day, the candle began to flicker and then went out. The first monk said, “Oh, no! The candle is out” The second monk said, “Aren’t we not suppose to talk?” The third monk said, “Why must you two break the silence?” The fourth monk laughed and said, “Ha! I’m the only one who didn’t speak.”


While silence sounds simple, it is far from easy and don't we all like to point out when others fall short of the mark...we all break the silence...

I have fond memories of childhood birthday party games when quite often we would play sleeping lions or statues or silence. We became very competitive over these games. We reacted just like those four monks. As soon as someone made a noise, we would begin one by one to point out that they had broken the silence. Yep I have no doubt that a six year is at least if not more enlightened than any monk. To be still and to be silent is no easy task for anyone, whether you are child who's eaten too much sugar or a monk in search of enlightenment.

During a recent session of the “12 Steps to a Compassionate Life” reading group I decided to give space for silence. We were looking at the fifth step “Mindfullness”.  There has been a lot of lively and intimate conversations during these groups and we have spent a long time listening to one another. In this step it is suggested that we invite someone to lead the group in mindfulness meditation but I decided to keep it simpler and thought we would benefit from sitting in silence together, if only for ten minutes. It went well, we all gained from that time and I believe that it enabled us to engage more deeply for the rest of the session. The space enabled us to listen to one another, to follow Kahlil Gibran’s direction and “Let the voice within your voice speak to the ear of his ear.”

Before I began attending Unitarian worship I explored a variety of other religious communities. I attended several churches, meditation at local Brahma Kumaris and Buddhist centres, as well as Quaker meeting for worship. I had become a bit of a religious tourist I suppose. I was also reading lots of “New Age” literature such as the “Conversations With God” series by Neale Donald Walsch, “The Power of Now” by Ekhart Tolle and other similar writers. I was trying to make sense of the life transforming spiritual experiences that had occurred over a period of a few months. I settled on the Quakers for a while, I liked where they were coming from, their approach to religion, which seemed very open and humble. After a while I sensed that something just didn’t feel right about it though. I wanted to do something, I wanted to be involved, I wanted to sing and move perhaps. Maybe something was quaking inside, perhaps if I’d allowed this to flow free I may never have discovered Unitarianism, but I did not. I did not wander down that road. Instead I continued to search and discovered Cross Street Chapel in Manchester and the rest is history. The ethos and approach to religion I found there was very similar to the Quakers and yet somehow I found Unitarian worship more engaging. There was focus, if a varied one, that I was able to relate to. I also rediscovered my voice during worship, I began to sing again. When I sing I feel oh so close to God, this seemed to be missing in Quaker worship. I know today that I am just too noisy and energetic to be a Quaker.

By the way this is in no way a criticism of the Quakers, who are the most beautiful people; I just know that I am not one. I also believe that silence has a vital role in worship. We share a time of communal silence each Sunday during worship. I lead a regular singing meditation, which is about the sharing and intermingling of of the human voice and silence. I engage with other forms of meditation too, both with others and on my own. I love silence; I love stillness. I truly appreciate those words from the 46th Psalm “Be still and know that I am God”. This is an internal experience I believe; it’s about faith and trust. It is serenity; it is calm in the storm. Meditative practise helps me develop this stillness in my daily life. It helps me to be present, it helps me to connect.

 Many people find silence challenging, especially extended periods in company with others. How do you feel when you sit with people and suddenly everything goes quiet? How do you feel when no one speaks? It’s uncomfortable isn’t it? We want someone to break the silence and of course usually someone does so, with an anxious or awkward remark.

Silence is vital and we need not fear it, instead we should befriend it, we need not fill the space between our bodies or our words.

I have learnt, over the past few years, to befriend the silence. I have to say that at first I found it embarrassing, rather silly actually, but then I did not really understand its purpose. I had a very busy mind in those days and I did not like the thoughts that would often appear. In time those thoughts settled, became manageable and the silence began to speak to me. I found these moments of silence inspirational. I found clarity and the ability to make sane decisions in the silence. I believe that during this time my connection to God, to the ground of all being, to that which runs through and connects all life, developed in the space of silence. The still small voice voice of conscience deep within began to develop during this time. What the Quakers describe as “That of God in everyone”

During the Gospel accounts there are several depictions of Jesus going off on his own, to pray, to embrace silence. At the beginning of his ministry he spends 40 days and nights in the wilderness alone, where he comes face to face with temptation. In Mark 10 vv 30-46, Jesus spends time preaching, teaching and then feeding the crowd that gathered around him. It is worth noting that before he does so he and the disciples attempt to spend time in solitude and afterwards he goes off to pray alone. It would seem that he knew that to be of service to and for others he had to spend time alone, he needed to nourish himself spiritually.

The great sages understood the need for silence. The Sufi mystical poet Rumi wrote “Silence is the root of everything...if you spiral into its void, a hundred voices will thunder messages you long to hear.” Kahlil Gibran said “silence is painful, but in silence things take form, and we must wait and watch. In us, in our secret depth, lies the knowing element which sees and hears that which we do not see nor hear. All our perception, all the things we have done, all that we are today, dwelt once in that knowing, silent depth, that treasure chamber in the soul. And we are more than we think. We are more than we know. That which is more than we think and know is always seeking and adding to itself while we are doing -  or think we are doing -  nothing. But to be conscious of what is going on in our depth is to help it along. When sub-consciousness becomes consciousness, the seeds in our winter-clad selves turn to flowers, and the silent life in us sings with all its might.”

“Silence is Golden” it is so vital to the active life. We all need time alone, in silence, in solitude; a time to commune with that greater reality, a time alone with God; a time alone with our deeper selves. Prayer and meditation is as vital to me today as air, food and water. My body and mind cannot function without these elements; my body and mind cannot maintain good health without my soul being fed by prayer and meditation.

The spiritual and religious life has to be both active and open. To give ourselves fully to the lives we live, we need to ensure that we ourselves are in fit spiritual condition. Therefore like the great sages sometimes we all need to wander off into the wilderness, commune with our God and feed our souls.

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,

Till all our strivings cease;

Take from our souls the strain and stress,

And let our ordered lives confess

The beauty of Thy peace.