To Ask Is To Give

Sue and myself took a trip out to Cheshire Oaks, the other day. The plan was to purchase my wedding outfit. It was a successful couple of hours. Now even though we looked in every single menswear shop the suit I chose was the very first one that took my eye. As soon as I saw it I thought I like the look of that one and nothing we looked at afterwards came close. Now while Sue came along she knew I wouldn’t be overly influenced by her thoughts on things. I can be quite single minded over such matters, some might say stubborn. The suit seemed the easiest part of the process and the assistant was really helpful, without being too pushy. I had a mixture of experiences in other shops as I looked for a shirt, tie and shoes to complete the outfit. Now some of the shopping assistants we encountered were both encouraging and genuinely helpful, others were not, some were even dismissive, one or two were mocking. I know which I responded to and which just made me want to flee.

It is vital how a person responds when asked for help. I had an experience of this on Tuesday morning as I left the gym. I realised I needed to buy a card for my mum’s birthday. As I passed WH Smith’s I noticed an electric wheelchair, I felt I recognised it and discovered later it was Edna’s, a member at Dunham Road. As I continued on I noticed a large elderly woman struggling with her wheelchair, people seemed to walk on by, I was tempted to do as I was in a rush, but stopped, it was pouring down with rain.  There was a problem with one of wheels and she couldn’t propel herself. So I found myself pushing her to a shop at the other end of the high street. As we got there I asked the shop assistants to come out to help. She was not the easiest of people but I left her in safe hands. The woman needed help, was asking for it and gratefully received it when it came.

The two experiences led me to reflect on my own attitude towards asking for help. I am not someone who finds it easy to ask for help, pride is definitely my kryptonite. I am much more comfortable offering my hand than accepting that of another. That said the moments of the greatest personal spiritual growth for me have been those moments of humility, when I have felt powerless and completely lost and have had to surrender to the need to ask others to help me. It has happened on several occasions these last few years. I have learnt that asking for the help is not an abdication of responsibility, quite the opposite actually. The power of asking and gratefully receiving help has often been enough to lead to me to taking the appropriate action, to be responsible and to walk alongside others in mutual aid and inspiration. Asking for help is not about becoming dependent on others, it is actually a genuine act that recognises our human inter-relatedness. There is a time in all our lives when we need help from others and others need help from us. There are no singular givers and receivers in life, we all give and we all receive at times. Paradoxically the one who gives often receive abundantly in so many ways.  

That said I still find it difficult to humbly ask and receive help, it is my weakness, my kryptonite. Asking for help without giving nothing back in return is a real challenge. Maybe that is why I suit ministry. It is the same for others involved in caring work too, I have noticed.

I remember chuckling to myself a few years ago when I discovered the meaning of the word “minister”. To minister literally means to serve. I have wondered over the years if governmental minister’s grasp this. It ought to humble all who minister. Our Prime Minister, if they truly understood their work, ought to recognise that they are the number one servant to we the people, I doubt if many have.

Now within a free religious tradition, like the Unitarians, it is not only the appointed minister who serves, all who congregate together do so to some degree or another. All give and receive in such communities. Everyone has different gifts and talents and by combining together a loving community is created. It is the sum of all its parts that makes a spiritual community what it is.

I believe that is the point that the Epistle Paul was making in his first letter to the congregation at Corinth some 2,000 years ago (1 Corithians ch 12). In his letter he is pointing out that each of members possesses special gifts and that no gift is superior to the other. These gifts are there for the good of the whole. The key it would appear was to combine their gifts and use them together so that they could then build the Beloved Community that they sought.

This does not mean that the individual is lost in the whole, quite the opposite, in such an environment the individual can thrive and become all that they would hope to be, so long as thy do not surrender who they are in order the fit into what they consider the whole would want them to be. Spiritual autonomy and responsibility for our own journey is vital to the ethos of a free religious community. While each may lean on one another and ask for assistance when needed, each remains responsible for their own spiritual journeys. The minister is not some special, set apart mediator.  Each comes together in love and inspires one another, but no one conforms to will of another. Emersonian "Self-Reliance, in spiritual matters, is vital for the individual to thrive within such communities.

“Self Reliance”, at least in the context of Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of those phrases that have been misunderstood and misinterpreted over the years, I know that I have done so. It’s not about not caring for the needy and telling them that they need to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. It’s also not about refusing to ask for help, relying purely on their own resources. What Emerson meant by “Self-Reliance” was not what some economist would recognise it to mean today. What he was describing was more akin to cultural and spiritual autonomy and the need to know ourselves, to listen to our hearts and intuitions, to use these gifts given to us by nature, for the best purpose and not to use them lightly or selfishly. Self-reliance ought never to be confused with selfishness, they are in no way similar, although they have been misinterpreted over the years and understood similarly.

 No one pulls themselves up from their bootstraps completely alone, all by themselves. From the moment of our births others are involved in creating who we are and who we become. As the old saying goes “It takes a village to raise a child.” No one lives entirely from themselves we are all a part of an interdependent web of relationships. Life has taught me that asking for help is actually a sign of both strength and wisdom, rather than weakness. It is a sign of good, mental, emotional and spiritual health. Of course it is not enough to merely ask for health, true healthy humility is about accepting the help offered.

Asking for help usually begins in an acknowledgement of the need for help[ it is an acknowledgment of the truth that we are not an island. It comes as we look above and beyond ourselves and widen our purview. It brings to my mind the question that begins Psalm 121 “I lift up my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come?” Now in the Psalm the answer is that God will give the help. God who made the heaven and the earth as well as the hills that the Psalm is referring to. It seems that by looking up to the hills we raise our vision.

Now while the hills themselves may not be the power there is something powerful about both looking up to them and being up there looking down on life from them, something that is difficult when you live in flatlands. In many ways the thing I miss the most about Yorkshire are the hills, Cheshire is a very flat place.

Standing up on a hill top and looking down on the world in which we live and breath and have our being gives us space and perspective. It helps us rise above our worries and troubles and leads us to solutions that often cannot be found in the middle of the hustle and bustle of life. Somewhere in that space the answers as to what can be done, can be found. The answer though will never come until we acknowledge that we do not know the answer.

To ask is to give. From the cradle to the grave we need to keep asking for help and we need to make ourselves available to be of assistance to others in their need. Isn’t this the essence of human relationships. This is not to say that we become unhealthily dependent on others and society as a whole, no not at all. We are though a part of a whole, a complex whole that makes life and community. As we grow and change and become the people that we are this changes shape and reforms constantly, it seems that we are being born again and again to new versions of ourselves. Of course we cannot do this alone. We cannot give birth to ourselves, no one can. We need help and sometimes we need to ask for help from others and in so doing we are of course doing not only a service for ourselves, but for them also.

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

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

It is the purpose  of the communities like the ones I serve to be places where people practise serving one another. If I have learnt anything about the spiritual life I have learnt that at its core are two basic principles, love and service. Surely the spiritual life is not just about serving ourselves, but one another. By doing so we feed one another's spirits. I have learnt that in that relationship, in that space, we can experience the Love that is Divine.

So let us keep on asking and answering, giving and receiving, weaving communities of mutual love and understanding. Let us remember that to ask is to give, it is to begin to create that “Kin-dom” of love right here, right now. You do not need to seek heaven, you just need to awaken to that bit of heaven within each of others and give birth to it right here in life.

Shyness and Invitation

The Smith’s famously sang “Shyness is nice, and Shyness can stop you from doing all the things in life You'd like to… Coyness is nice, and Coyness can stop you from saying all the things in life you'd like to. So, if there's something you'd like to try. If there's something you'd like to try. Ask me, I won't say no, how could I?”

Rather cute lyrics, to a lovely and funny song.

...I love the people who are courageous enough to ask me...

I’m not so sure it’s so nice though, shyness can be excruciating debilitating at times. It has affected my life negatively over the years. How many times has shyness stopped me accepting the invitation of life, too many.

Some folk might find this hard to believe, but I can be quite shy. It takes me time to feel comfortable enough to be myself in new environments. There is a shyness about me. I’m better than I used to be. I'm sure folks who see me in my work find this hard to believe, but it is true all the same. It takes me time to feel comfortable in my own being, in new company and new situations. Thank God though that these days it rarely leads me to turn down the invitation.

There have been times when I have hidden myself from view, literally hidden my face, afraid to pop my head above the parapet for fear of being shot down. My mother knew this and saw how different I was to my siblings on my first day at school. She walked us all to school on the first day, but I reacted differently to my siblings who just joined the other children. I did not, I walked through the gates of Birstall County Primary School, swallowed hard and sat down in the corner utterly overwhelmed and bewildered by it all. I did in time adjust and found a level of comfort in the crowd, but it took time. It has been the same throughout my life. I do eventually become a part of the whole, but it takes time.

I don’t think I’m alone in these feelings, in fact I know I’m not. We all experience shyness in some form or another, especially when invited and take the first steps into something new, particularly if is something that might be wonderful, but will definitely make them feel vulnerable. By the way we are always vulnerable, that is the nature of life.

Think about how you felt the first time you walked into a new community you bacame a part of. It takes time to feel you belong and can be wholly yourself. I know it does for me.

Shyness is a beautiful thing, so long as it doesn’t stop us doing those things our hearts desire. It’s ok to feel the trembling excitement of shyness, but it can become unhealthy if it enslaves us.

David Whyte writes that “Shyness is the sense of a great unknown, suddenly about to be known. It is the exquisite and vulnerable frontier between what we think is possible and what we think we deserve”.

This is an exciting feeling actually. Yes there is fear there, but a kind of anticipated joy too. It is not in and of itself a negative feeling.

To me these feelings are the essence of the spiritual journey, which is not a safety first way of living and breathing by the way. No it compels us to deal with powerful feelings and discover new ways of being in the world. This can feel quite daunting at times, but should not cause shame. It is natural, healthy and necessary actually. To brashly step into anything without any shyness can lead to problems not only for ourselves but others too. These uncomfortable feelings are needed as we explore the great new mysteries life is offering us. This is the invitational nature of life. That said we are not alone in these feelings, no matter how alone we might feel, and this is why it is vital to be a part of a community that journeys on through these adventures, inviting us onto the great unknown that is our lives.

There is a place for shyness when it comes to spiritual growth. Carl Gustav Jung claimed that folks tend to be either introverted or extroverted. Now whether a person had an introverted or an extroverted personality depended on whether the individual increases in energy from being with others and is therefore an extrovert; conversely an individual who recharges his or her spiritual and emotional energy from being alone and recharging through solitary activities such as reading, prayer and or meditation tends to be introverted. I think ministers and those who serve tend to be introverts by nature. Yes we get meaning from giving to others, it is our purpose in life, but it’s not necessarily where we get our energy and connection with the divine from. Yes we have our peacock moments when we are listened to, but the solace and energy tends to come in those alone times.

Many of the great sages were introverted in nature and often highly sensitive individuals who needed time alone in prayer and meditation. Think of Jesus going off alone to pray, or the Buddha, Mohamad, Gandhi.

Now while they were introverted in some ways this did not stop them accepting their invitations by turning down their calls. The spiritual life is all about invitation. It’s about stepping out of ourselves, no matter how shy and or introverted, to serve our world and to fully become a part of the whole.

I was recently asked, by one of the folk I serve, why I don’t often talk about my understanding of God. I remember saying at the time that it was primarily about humility, how can anyone really speak adequately about the Divine. A bit of an evasive answer if truth be told.

So what do I think of when I speak of God? Well the truth is I see God as invitation really, that God offers itself to us, invites us to walk with. I cannot accept that God has pre-ordained everything that occurs in life and controls our every interaction. I do though believe in the Lure of Divine Love, that God invites us into life and love. An invitation I sometimes turn away from, although less so these days. I do not believe events are laid out before myself or others and yet I do experience synchronicity when I am truly in tune with life around me and spirit within me. Some days if feels like the whole of life is communicating with me, compelling me to follow. At such times it feels impossible to refuse such invitations. This year it has been immensely powerful and as it has been impossible to ignore the invitation, there really was no choice. It has been so powerful at times that it has felt like I have been directed. I’m not sure I truly believe this. That said my belief either way is irrelevant as to whether it is factually correct or not. Whether I believe something or not doesn’t make it true or not. I think it is important that we all remember that. I have felt powerfully directed at times and I have never known the presence of God more intensly.

The core of the spiritual life for me is invitation and I have discovered that the way to truly live this life is to became an invitation myself. It has mostly allowed me to transcend my own shyness and given me life deep and rich in meaning. It’s amazing what we can invite into our lives and encourage others to do the same. Do you know what, the invitation is often written all over our faces.

Our faces reveal who we are you know. In many ways our faces shape who we are and can actually shape our futures by what we invite into our lives through it; David Whyte in “The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship” states that:

“We do not often admit how much the shape of our face can be an invitation to others or a warning to keep away. Our face influences our future by what it invites or disinvites. The way we face the future actually creates our future as much as individual actions along the way.”

He illustrates what he means by telling the story of two guests at a party that he hosted at his home. He stood at his door with his eight year old daughter welcoming guests. He described his daughter as being very shy with strangers and of hiding behind his legs and just waving a hand at the guests as they arrived. This apparently all changed as one guest Satish Kumar, a former Jain monk arrived, a man who had achieved great things through his presence and openness and welcome. Whyte writes that:

“At sixty, his face was so full of life and happiness and welcome and happiness that my daughter ran out spontaneously from behind my legs and held her hands out toward him. I was taken aback by the sudden courage of my hitherto reluctant daughter, but I could see what she was running toward. Satish’s face was an invitation to happiness itself. Seeing him always makes me want to practice the set of my own face as a kind of daily discipline. I only have to see him and I want to be as naturally happy and appreciative as he is, and more importantly he makes me want to show it.”

Whyte then describes another face that was the polar opposite of Satish’s that sent his daughter scurrying once again behind his legs. Whyte writes:

“A man whose face seemed to carry not only past disappointments, but also a sense that it was only a matter of time before it was disappointed again. This man’s face seemed almost hungry for circumstances to betray him.”

Whyte writes that as he observed these two faces together, all night long he could see with absolute clarity that these two faces had radically different futures in store for them. It mattered not what they did or would do, or what would happen to them. He could see it in what they invited or disinvited into their lives. One was open and welcome, while the other was closed off and disappointed. He could see it, because it was written all over their faces.

Our faces say it all...

Yes shyness is nice, there is a cuteness to it, especially in the young. There is a healthy place for it too as we step over the threshold into something new. That said if it leads us to refusing the invitations of our lives, it is not helpful at all.

So I offer you the invitation to openness, an invitation that begins to be expressed through our all too human faces. May we become the invitation that encourages others to overcome their shyness and step over the threshold and join in the courageous conversation that is the spiritual life.