Accepting this: There is no other place

"Accepting This"

Yes, it is true. I confess,
I have thought great thoughts,
and sung great songs—all of it
rehearsal for the majesty
of being held.

The dream is awakened
when thinking I love you
and life begins
when saying I love you
and joy moves like blood
when embracing others with love.

My efforts now turn
from trying to outrun suffering
to accepting love wherever
I can find it.

Stripped of causes and plans
and things to strive for,
I have discovered everything
I could need or ask for
is right here—
in flawed abundance.

We cannot eliminate hunger,
but we can feed each other.
We cannot eliminate loneliness,
but we can hold each other.
We cannot eliminate pain,
but we can live a life
of compassion.

Ultimately,
we are small living things
awakened in the stream,
not gods who carve out rivers.

Like human fish,
we are asked to experience
meaning in the life that moves
through the gill of our heart.

There is nothing to do
and nowhere to go.
Accepting this,
we can do everything
and go anywhere.

—Mark Nepo

One of my favourite places on earth is Crosby Beach. It’s not just vanity by the way, although I do love to stand next the sign that reads Greater Crosby. So maybe a little vanity…Maybe, maybe not…

What I love about Crosby Beach are the 100 identical sculptures, of those 7ft tall figures that go by the title “Another place”. There they stand staring out to sea, perhaps looking for another place, any place but here; these naked, lonely scarecrows staring out into the great big nothing, dreaming of another place.

Have you ever felt like that? I have. I have stood there staring out at into space so many times dreaming of something other than the life I was living. Who does not want to escape when the tides of suffering are coming in?

It’s a common hope, to dream of some other place beyond the life we have, beyond the suffering and pain we can all experience at times, or perhaps to dream of a place away from what can often be seen as the mundane aspects of normal life. We all at times hope for some Heaven, The Promised Land, Nirvana, the perfect life when all are troubles are behind us. It is common to all we humans to dream of some technicolour dream land, our own private Oz…


Someday I'll wish upon a star
Wake up where the clouds are far behind me
Where trouble melts like lemon drops
High above the chimney top
That's where you'll find me

Oh, somewhere over the rainbow bluebirds fly
And the dream that you dare to,
Oh why, oh why can't I?

Yes it’s such a common desire to dream of some other place beyond our current life. It’s dangerous though. Remember those words sung by Dorothy in the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz”, brought with them the Tornado and none of us want that. As I have often heard, “be careful what you pray for.”

Dorothy dreamed of another place somewhere over the rainbow, a place away from dull, grey, flat Kansas. Is there another place that we dream about, that we Hope for, a Heaven, a Nirvana? Who knows? I don’t. Nobody knows.

This is not how it is meant to be. It is a waste of this precious gift that is our finite human lives, to wish it away. We are not meant to live our lives dreaming of another place, a place beyond this life. Our task, I have come to believe is to create heaven here and it begins within each and every one of us. I much prefer to follow that simple message in the “Sermon on the Mount”, to become the light of the world. To create the Kingdom, the kin-dom of love, right here, right now. We are here to bring alive the light within us, to hold one another, to live in love.

We bring heaven alive through our loving living or we create Hell by fearing one another, fearing life, turning away and dreaming of some other place, somewhere over the rainbow, somewhere beyond this life. Why do we waste our days wishing our lives away?

“Another Place” contains 100 identical figures all placed in different parts of Crosby beach. Some are way out to sea and some close to edge of the beach, almost on land. They disappear as the tide comes in and eventually all are consumed by the sea. None can hold back the tide, they are always overcome by it. The sea is a powerful force, a power far greater than our singular human selves. Every single one of those statues is eventually overwhelmed by the sea. They teach me a lesson in humility.


Oh how I love the sea.


I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I love to go to the sea from time to time. Sometimes I hear it calling powerfully to me. It’s a song I hear singing in my heart. I hear it with the ears of my heart. Now what it is that I love so much I am not entirely sure, I cannot tell. Only my heart knows and I have not yet fully perfected the language of heart. Yes I hear it, but I cannot yet adequately put it into words. I am trying.

My love probably has something to do with the vastness of it. Like King Canute I am humbled by the sea. I know it is a power far greater than little old me, but it is more than that, I also find it deeply connective too. While the waves move individually, the sea moves as one. The sea speaks powerfully to me about the spiritual nature of life, both personally and communally.

Like Nepo said

Ultimately,
we are small living things
awakened in the stream,
not gods who carve out rivers.

Like human fish,
we are asked to experience
meaning in the life that moves
through the gill of our heart.

I am not alone in being overwhelmed by the sea's power, thank God. Frederick Buechner in his beautiful meditation titled “Tears” wrote the following about the great twentieth century theologian Paul Tillich

“Tears” by Frederick Buechner

"They say that whenever the great Protestant theologian Paul Tillich went to the beach, he would pile up a mound of sand and sit on it gazing out at the ocean with tears running down his cheeks. One wonders what there was about it that moved him so.

The beauty and the power of it? The inexpressible mystery of it? The futility of all those waves endlessly flowing in and ebbing out again? The sense that it was out of the ocean that life originally came and that when life finally ends, it is the ocean that will still remain? Who knows? . . .

Maybe it was when he looked at the ocean that he caught a glimpse of the One he was praying to. Maybe what made him weep was how vast and overwhelming it was and yet at the same time as near as the breath of it in his nostrils, as salty as his own tears."

...I think I get it...

I feel fully human when I open my senses to the sea, it humbles and connects me to life. It reminds me that I am not God and yet that mysterious power is very close at hand. God is with us, in us, running through us. We swim in a sea of love, in the waters of life.

I bow before the majesty of it all. It truly humbles me. I bow before life, before the waters of life. I bow before the ground of all being of which I am a part of. I am human and I am finite. In accepting this I see I am a part of life and I can live my life as one fish swimming in the ocean of life. I suspect that is what it means to live in heaven. Heaven on earth. This is what it means to choose life in all its blessings and curses. It is to be at home in the earth or the sea in which you find yourself, to be truly present in your being, to truly belong here and live in the time and space you find yourself and to serve the life in and around you.

A pretty picture you might think, but is this just a dream? How do we do this? How do we serve the life we find ourselves in? How do we begin to swim in that sea? How do we begin to create that kin-dom of love right here right now? Is this just another’s dream?

Well we can’t simply transcend suffering, ours or other peoples. I don’t think we are meant to. Pain, as much as joy is something we live with. We have to let life sink into our very human being…

“Come with me on a journey under the skin, oh come with me on a journey under the skin…All you’ve gotta do, all you’ve gotta do, all you’ve gotta do is surrender…surrender…surrender…

I love “The Waterboys”

We have to sink into the ground at our feet, surrender the ground of all being. To begin where we find ourselves, start close in…in the earth, the hummus, be fully human. Simple but far from easy…

We seem to be living in very troubling times. We see this clearly when we look nationally and globally, but also when we look close at hand. It’s been a long hard winter in the congregations I serve, we have lost several people after long illnesses. It’s been a difficult time within my own family. My step brother Daniel, the son of my mum’s husband took his own life last week, ripping a deep hole in my family. As I stand here now I feel the pain of so many people I love deeply, within my family and my communities. We cannot escape this suffering and I cannot take away the pain of my loved ones, as much as I want to. Gosh if I could only perform miracles but I cannot. Ministry truly humbles me and so it should. I cannot take anyone’s burden from them, but I can walk with them and be with them in their pain and of course their joy and celebration, the blessings and curses of “choosing life”.

To repeat those beautiful by Mark Nepo

We cannot eliminate hunger,
but we can feed each other.
We cannot eliminate loneliness,
but we can hold each other.
We cannot eliminate pain,
but we can live a life
of compassion.

I have spent much of this winter and early spring standing with people as we held each other. Last Wednesday I stood with two of my sisters and we held each other tight, broken with tears rolling down our cheeks.

As individual people we cannot end suffering, but we can do small little things. This is how we create that kin-dom of love. Didn’t Jesus say it begins with the little things, the mustard seed?

David Whyte, formed in the same soil of West Yorkshire I was formed in, only with an Irish soul, in his wonderful poem, talked about starting close in. This is how we begin the courageous conversation as he called it, this is how we begin to live, to create that kin-dom of love right here right now. Through the authentic, the courageous conversation, we dwell in our own being and connect with all of life…but it begins close in with the first step.


“Start close in” by David Whyte

Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way of starting
the conversation.

Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people’s questions,
don’t let them
smother something
simple.

To find
another’s voice,
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
becomes a
private ear
listening
to another.

Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,
don’t take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

By David Whyte in, “River Flow: New and Selected Poems”

We cannot take away the pain of the world, it’s not our task, but we can humbly walk with one another. Again to repeat those words by Mark Nepo, from his poem “Accepting This”

We cannot eliminate hunger,
but we can feed each other.
We cannot eliminate loneliness,
but we can hold each other.
We cannot eliminate pain,
but we can live a life
of compassion.

“Accepting this” is a poem that touches the soul of me so deeply. Yes we are small things, but we are significant and we are living things, who truly are awakened when we swim in the stream, in the water of life. No we are not God but we can be enlightened by that spirit and experience meaning. We can know what it is to be fully alive, we just have to let that water flow through the gill of our hearts. We do not need to wish for some other place or even travel to some other place. We just need to accept the reality of our beautiful and finite humanity and we can do anything and truly go anywhere. If we take care of these small things we may just begin to build that kin-dom of love right here right now.

So let’s stop dreaming of some other place, somewhere over the rainbow, let’s instead inhabit the ground at our feet, let’s open the gills of our hearts and swim in the water of life and let’s build a land where we’ll bind up the broken, walk hand in hand and hold one another tight…

This is heaven on earth…All is well…All is well…All is well…

Memory: The Power of Not Only Now

The following appeared on my facebook feed last Sunday evening. It was one of those wow! moments! It seemed to encapsulate near perfectly some of the thoughts that have been forming in my soul of late.

“Memory” by David Whyte

"Memory is not just a then, recalled in a now, the past is never just the past, memory is a pulse passing through all created life, a wave form, a then continually becoming other thens, all the while creating a continual but almost untouchable now. But the guru’s urge to live only in the now misunderstands the multilayered inheritance of existence, where all epochs live and breathe in parallels. Whether it be the epochal moment initiated by the appearance of the first hydrogen atoms in the universe or a first glimpse of adulthood perceived in adolescence, memory passes through an individual human life like a building musical waveform, constantly maturing, increasingly virtuosic, often volatile, sometimes overpowering. Every human life holds the power of this immense inherited pulse, holds and then supercharges it, according to the way we inhabit our identities in the untouchable now. Memory is an invitation to the source of our life, to a fuller participation in the now, to a future about to happen, but ultimately to a frontier identity that holds them all at once. Memory makes the now fully inhabitable."

It's been singing in my soul all week...

A couple of weeks ago, actually it was Easter Saturday, I discovered I had a whole day off. My appointments were cancelled and I announced on “Facebook” that I had a fully open day and wondered if anyone had any suggestions about how I ought to spend it. Many suggestions came my way. One friend suggested I ought to get some sea air in my lungs and I thought to myself, what a grand idea. Anyhow I went to bed that night and thought to myself I will see what the morning brings.

I was awoken very early by a phone call from a dear old friend who said “Why don’t we go to the seaside”, to which I answered yes. How could I refuse? So off we went to Crosby, a favourite place and not just because of the name. I love it because I enjoy joining all those other Anthony Gormley figures staring out to sea. I love staring out into the ocean, opening myself fully to the experience and the great power and mystery of the sea. I stared and I took pictures as I waked along Crosby Beach. I had been instructed to take pictures of my day by another friend. I guess it’s the modern way, you have to take pictures of your day and post them on facebook for the world to see. No pictures, no experience it seems.

It was a day when I was totally in the moment and experienced all that was occurring I felt every drop of life. That said it was also a day filled with memories. I have experienced an awful lot of life with the friend I shared the day with, every emotion really. From the most gut wrenching despair to the most beautiful loved filled hope. I also felt and almost relived my whole life as I walked on that beach. Childhood memories came flooding back. I remembered family holidays, particularly in Scarborough. I remembered the unbridled joy and the sadness of those times.

As a child I would often go wandering off alone. Actually this continued into adulthood. Well one year I wandered off on Scarborough Beach and it seems I got completely lost, not that I realised it at the time, I had wandered off into another place in my mind. The family had to go of searching for me, eventually they found me. I was totally oblivious to being lost and to the fact that I had filled them all with worry and panic. The story of my life really, or at least it used to be. These days when I wander it is not by mistake and these days when I wander I don’t really get lost.

Memories are snapshots of life, whether we physically take pictures or not. It always fascinates me how these memories take shape and form and often reshape as time goes by; it amazes me how these memories seemingly re-incarnate as time goes by. We should not fear our memories, they are precious in so many ways, it is these very memories that make the present moment truly come alive. I have discovered that sometimes you can lose some of the true richness of the moment by becoming purely engrossed in it. That might sound like a counter intuitive thing, but I think not.

I remember in my early days of ministry exploring the “Power of Now” and the idea that life is to be found in the present moment and how the great traditions had taught this for millennia, that there was nothing new in the new age. I remember that after the service a member came to speak and they spoke passionately about the importance of memory and all those memories that she carried with her into her life and how they enrich her daily experience of life. I remember at the time feeling defensive about this, which I did not need to be. What she said has stayed with me and has been forming in my soul ever since. I now see that in many ways to truly experience the richness of the present you have allow the memory of all time to flood into it.

By the way please do not get me wrong, my current truth is no way a rejection of the power of the present moment, quite the opposite actually. What it is really about is bringing the present moment alive by enriching it with our whole selves. It’s a kind of active experience of the present moment. It’s about opening our whole selves up to the present moment and not just passively experiencing what is there. It’s about wholly living in the moment and then carrying that snapshot of the moment into the future. It’s about truly living on the threshold of life. The truth is of course that this is how we are always living, on the threshold of something, as one moment ends another begins.

I love the way that David Whyte almost perfectly encapsulates this in the reading on “Memory”, I shared earlier. The piece ends with the following “Memory is an invitation to the source of our life, to a fuller participation in the now, to a future about to happen, but ultimately to a frontier identity that holds them all at once. Memory makes the now fully inhabitable.” It’s not just about living in the moment, but about bringing the moment to life.

Now of course this is fine in theory but what if our lives are filled with painful memories. What if when we sit our minds are just filled with pain from our pasts? It is said that the very reason that people cannot inhabit the present is because it is polluted by painful thoughts and memories from the past and projected fears about the future and that the key to freedom from this is to let go of them and therefore live fully in the present.

Now I am not sure that the proponents of the power of the present moment are actually making such claims; I do not believe that they are claiming that we need to reject the past and future in order to live in the present moment. Instead what the likes of Ekhart Tolle are suggesting, correctly in my view, is that much of our suffering is created from wrong thinking and that the key to being relieved from this self-created suffering is to change our thinking. How is this achieved? Well I believe it begins by truly coming to terms with who we are and by fully engaging with our past present and future. It is not achieved by running from our past and becoming a false slave to the moment, for we all of us carry our pasts with us. By attempting to run from it we allow it to have a false power over us.

I learnt, purely from experience, that to be fully alive in the present I must first of all be alive in my past. I need to come to terms with all that I am and all that I have been as well as all that those I have shared my life with have been too, for none of us live singular isolated lives. This can be scary by the way. It is important to tread carefully when you do and it’s also important to not do so alone. A trusted friend and or guide can help here and spiritual practise is vital here too…prayer has held me through so many frightening encounters in the wilds of my memory. I never go there alone, God is ever present, always with me.

There are so many seams of richness waiting to be mined in our memories, that we can bring into our present moment and can come alive in our lives. Not just for our good either, but also for the good of all. We should not fear them. We should not feel shame about our scars either, we do not need to cover them up and hide them away; we should bring them into the open, into the present and proudly bare them as evidence of life lived well.

This brings to mind a story I once heard about the soldiers who survived the battle of Agincourt. How each year, on the anniversary of the battle would stand up on their tip toes and proudly bare their scars for all to see. Scars of battle, scars of a life fully lived that they brought into that moment and in so doing became fully alive in it; scars they were unafraid of, that they were not haunted by.

There are lessons in all of our lives; lessons waiting to come alive in the golden present; lessons that we can pass on to others too. I am great believer in living in the present, but by this I mean really living in the present. I have learnt, and I hope to God I never forget this, that to truly be alive in the present we have to open our whole selves to our past, our present and our future. We have to let the floodgates open and allow the tide both in and out.

This came to me as I stood and stared out to sea on Crosby Beach; this came to me as I stood as a living breathing example of one those Anthony Gormley statues. That said it came to me in an ever slightly different way. I do not want to adopt their stance. I want to stand and face the sea in another way. I want to stand with my arms out stretch to the world, like one of those Agincourt survivors, unafraid to show my scars and live fully present in this moment. To bring every memory to life. To be fully alive on threshold of everything.

So my message, in this “Golden Moment”, is to see our memories as an invitation to the source of our lives; to bring our memories fully alive, so that they enable us to fully participate in the now; to understand that it is memory that makes the now fully inhabitable. For it is not just about living in the moment, but about bringing the moment to life.

This is the power of memory; this is the power of not only now.

“Spiritual History” by Mark Belletini

Let my body remember.
Let my hands and feet remember.
Let my breath remember those who came before me, those who have come before us.
Didn’t Muhammad wait quietly in his cave?
And didn’t Jesus sigh silently by the blue lake?
And Guan Yin, didn’t she sit in silence thinking that what to do before doing it?
And what was Siddhartha the Buddha doing anyway under that tree if not sitting quietly?
And Susan B. Anthony, didn’t she push back from her desk, and take a breath now and then?
And Florence Nightingale, didn’t she put down her nurse’s hat and think silently about what to write in her essay on mysticism before she actually wrote it?
And Sophia Fahs, didn’t she stop telling stories sometimes and just sit there?
And didn’t Black Elk just notice the sunlight glancing on his chair sometimes?
And Starhawk, does she only talk and write, or does she too keep silence?
Let us remember them all with our bodies.
Let us remember them with the silence they too knew.