An Easter reflection: Let Love continue long

I remember as a young boy being terrified by the death of my sister’s rabbit. I was in the house on my own, one Saturday afternoon, probably watching Grandstand. The rabbit was left in the living room with me and I was told to keep an eye on it. Suddenly I heard this violent scream, which made me jump out of my skin. I hardly dare look, but look I did. The rabbit had died and I was terrified. For one thing I’d never heard a rabbit make a sound before, let alone such a terrifying one  and for another I didn’t know what to do. So what did I do? I went into denial and left the house. I fled in terror and guilt no doubt, as well as a whole bucket load of shame.

I have only ever seen and touched two dead bodies in my life, both of whom were people I loved beyond words. The first was my father who I helped nurse through the last months of his life. He had died just moments before I awoke to see him that morning. I touched him and kissed him and told him that I loved him. I will never forget the look on his face, just moments after his death. My father had been in great pain, probably all his life, but the stress and strain was all gone as his life had gone. I have the very same frown lines on my forehead that he had. Those lines and all the other lines had disappeared as I looked down at him and touched his face.

The other person was Ethan, Claire’s son, who in his short life taught me everything. I saw him that day shortly after he had been killed and again a month later when they released his body for burial. Again these images and the way that his body felt will always stay with me.

A few months after Ethan died I remember Claire having a conversation with a nurse we know who works in casualty and her asking why after he had died the nurses kept talking to him as if he were alive. From what I can remember she said that they did this because it is understood that the spirit of the person is still there immediately after death and therefore this is how they act with someone who has just died. At least this is what I thought she said. I may well have misheard or misunderstood.

Although I have a powerful experience of God in my life now, I cannot say with any certainty, what happens after we die. I suppose I have to remain fairly agnostic with regards to what happens when life ends. This does not diminish my faith in God it just means I have to be honest and I say I do not have knowledge of the afterlife. So no I do not know where those we love reside after they leave us. Having said that I do know where we can experience them. They can be felt and known every time we talk or remember them, at every family gathering or when old friends come together for whatever reason. On such occasions their spirit does indeed reveal itself. The more sensitive amongst us often talk of feeling their presence. I think my sister Mandy is one of those people and I know of others too.

Those we have loved and lost often live on in our dreams and memories; they are imprinted on our conscious and sub-conscious. Their impact can be felt in our daily actions and our waking thoughts and feelings. I am sure that I am not the only one who imagines them being with us from to time. I remember my father fondly and un-fondly at times and Ethan impacts on just about everything I do and say. If I had not met that remarkable little boy I am not sure I would even be here today. His life certainly revealed God to me.

Those we have loved and are no longer with us have clearly had a profound impact upon us and as such are always with us. The love that we shared never dies. Yes their death changes our relationship with them, but the love that we have known will always live on, will always be with us, it is an eternal force. The love has created a bond that can never be severed. No one can take that love from us. Its influence on us is still there and impacting upon the people that we meet in our lives today, people our loved ones may never have met.

In Luke’s Gospel (Ch 24 vv 1-5) Jesus’ disciples return to the tomb to prepare his body for its final burial, but when they get there the tomb is empty.  Then two men in dazzling clothes arrive. We are told that the women are frightened and bow their heads, they do not know what to do. They are then asked the question “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

What a question. I suspect that it reflects powerfully the experiences of the early followers of Jesus “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” It reflects their struggles to come to terms with and understand an unmistakable presence that was still there amongst them after he died and that was still impacting upon them and holding them together long after he died. It is still echoing and impacting on humanity today.  Whatever we may or may not think of the idea of a bodily resurrection I do not think that anyone can deny that the love that Jesus embodied in his life lived beyond Good Friday.

Some call it resurrection and others call it beloved or blessed memory but something ties us to those we have loved and have loved us, those that have impacted and shaped who we are. As Forrest Church said:

“The greatest of all truths is that love never dies, that every act of love that we perform in this life is carried on into another life and passed on into another life, so that centuries from now the love carries, and that is the work of religion. The opposite of love is not death. It is fear. Fear is what armours our hearts. If our hearts are armoured, they’ll never be broken, and I have seen so many people get hurt in love and then try to protect themselves against it, and when they protect themselves against love, they protect themselves against the only thing that is worth living for.”

This is the hope in Easter that has birthed from the despair of Good Friday; hope and despair are formed from the same root and yet grow in opposite directions.

For love to live on and continue to show us the way we have to let it embody itself within and through us each and every day. For love to incarnate all that we have to do is to be open to it and that begins by first of all opening our hearts to one another and to God.

“Let love continue long and show to us the way and if that be strong no hurt can have a say.”

Are you a Christian? Gandhi, Jesus and Professor Dawkins

My sister contacted me the other day to tell me that she and my mum had been arguing over whether or not I was a Christian. She wanted me to settle the argument, to answer whether or not I was. By the way she contacted me by text, so my answer had to be brief. I said “well it depends what you mean”. She replied a little later to say “well we’ve stopped arguing now and have both agreed, that you are an awkward bugger”...well at least they’d stopped arguing about me, I thought.

No doubt the conversation had been kick started by the findings of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. During last year's census it conducted a survey on religious attitudes in Britain. It found that only 54% identified themselves as Christian, compared 72% in 2001. Almost three quarters who described themselves as Christian said they did so because they were born into the faith rather than it being their current belief. Only a third believed that Jesus was physically resurrected and that one in five did not believe in the resurrection, even in a spiritual sense. Almost half did not believe that Jesus was the son of God, while one in twenty five of those who declared themselves as Christian did not believe he existed at all.

The findings have concluded that most people who identify themselves as Christian turn out, when questioned on what they actually think, to be overwhelmingly secular in their attitudes on issues ranging from gay rights to religion in public life. It concludes that these people who identify as Christian are not actually Christian at all. The report triumphantly heralds the end of faith in this country and the victory of secularism.

During a a recent conversation on Radio 4’s “Today Programme”, between Professor Dawkins and Rev Giles Fraser, the former Canon of St Paul’s, Professor Dawkins announced triumphantly that an “astonishing number (of Christians) couldn’t identify the first book in the New Testament. In Professor Dawkins view people who identified as Christians and yet were not fully conversant with the bible and did not follow and subscribe to the teachings and or doctrines of the church were wrong to do so. Rev Fraser questioned these conclusions claiming that people had the right to identify as they saw fit. There then followed a brief interchange...

Rev Fraser: Richard, If I said to you what is the full title of “The Origin of Species”, I’m sure you could tell me that.

Prof Dawkins: Yes I could.

Rev Fraser: Go on then.

Prof Dawkins: On the Origin of Species...uh...with, oh God, On the Origin of Species. There is a sub-title with respect to the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.

Rev Fraser: You’re the high pope of Darwinism...if you ask people who believed in evolution that question and you came back and said two percent got it right, it would be terribly easy for me to go “they don’t believe it after all.” It’s just not fair to ask people these questions. They self identify as Christians and I think you should respect that.

I heard an awful lot of hysteria from all sides during the debate over the findings of Professor Dawkins foundation. I occasionally heard a little sense. My favourite quote came from Linda Woodhead, a professor of Philosophy and religion at Lancaster University. She said:

"There's nothing new in Richard Dawkins's findings about the British way of being religious. But it's always good to be reminded of the findings of a poll commissioned by his Foundation for Reason and Science: that most of us are not "true believers" in either religion or in secularism and that Britain is neither a religious country nor a secular one, but an interesting mix of both. That doesn't make us muddled, or woolly, or confused – it just makes us British."

 “It just makes us British” I love that.

What has always troubled me about the fundamentalists either of religion or secularism is that they believe that they have the right to define what makes a person a believer or not. I find such positions arrogant. Who decides whether a person’s is a believer or not? Who has the right to set the boundaries? Of course no one is immune from this; I know I’ve done it myself. I could be accused of it in a previous blog (naughty me).

Anyhow I'd just about given up on them all when something remarkable happened, during a debate between Professor Dawkins and the Arch Bishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams at Oxford University. The two men politely discussed “the nature of human beings and the question of their ultimate origin”. They also touched upon the meaning of consciousness, the evolution of human language and the Arch Bishop’s beard.


For most of the discussion the Arch Bishop quieltly listened to Professor Dawkins explanations of human evolution and said that he was inspired by the elegance of explanation for the origins of life and agreed with much of it. Professor Dawkins told the Arch Bishop "What I can't understand is why you can't see the extraordinary idea that life started from nothing - that is such a staggering, elegant, beautiful thing, why would you want to clutter it up with something as messy as a God?" Dr Williams replied that he "entirely agreed" with the "beauty" of Professor Dawkins argument but added. "I'm not talking about God as an extra who you shoehorn on to that."


And the something staggering happened, Professor Dawkins acknowledged that he was less than 100% certain of his conviction that there is no creator. At this Sir Anthony Kenny, who chaired the discussion, interjected: "Why don't you call yourself an agnostic?" to which Professor Dawkins answered that he did. To which the flabbergasted Sir Anthony replied: You are described as the worlds most famous atheist." Professor Dawkins went on to say that he was "6.9 out of seven" sure of his beliefs that the probability of a supernatural creator is very low.

Later the Arch Bishop said that he believed that human beings had evolved from non-human ancestors but were nevertheless “in the image of God” and added that the explanation for the creation of the world in the Book of Genesis could not be taken literally. Stating that “The writers of the Bible, inspired as I believe they were, they were nonetheless not inspired to do 21st Century physics,” he said.

Sanity at last after a week of madness. The God of surprises does indeed appear to be alive and well and at work in the most remarkable of places. I do wonder though if some people will now accuse Professor Dawkins of not being a proper Atheist and if others will claim that Dr Williams is not a proper Christian...I wonder what my sister and mum think...

We have now entered into the season of Lent, perhaps the most important period of the Christian calendar. For many Lent is about giving things up, it is about self sacrifice. It is about that central religious message of self giving love.

According to the Biblical accounts at the beginning of his ministry Jesus is “led by the spirit” into the wilderness, a place of transformation and temptation. He is taken to the pinnacle of the temple and to the top of a high mountain. Here he is offered the world, but rejects the allure of an easier showier more obvious path. Instead he chooses the road less travelled, the heroes path.

This is a universal tale; many of the great sages went on similar journeys, before embarking on their missions to heal their people. The Buddha had to leave the comforts of home, abandon his weeping family, shave his head and don the robes of a world renouncing ascetic when he began his journey to discover a cure for the pain of the world. Long before his revelations Muhammad use to retreat to Mount Hira, outside of Mecca, where he fasted, performed spiritual exercises and gave alms to the poor. He did this in an attempt to discover a remedy for the troubles of his time. When Ghandi began his mission he left the comforts of the elite in which he had lived his whole life and travelled India carefully observing the plight of the ordinary people.

During their own times in the wilderness the great sages found their answers. Through taking the road less travelled, the hard road, the difficult road, the answers came to them. They discovered the knowledge they needed to impact positively on their people in their time and place.

This is the spiritual life in its essence. It is often the hardest most difficult path and it can certainly appear to be the loneliest. That said it is the one where the answers are usually found.

Now none of these meanderings answers my sisters initial question I know. I promise I am not being evasive. I’d like to explore one of the more recent great sages Gandhi and his relationship with Christianity and specifically Jesus in an attempt to answer her question.

Gandhi saw Jesus as an ideal Satyagrahi, which is resistance to evil through soul force . Gandhi studied the Bible everyday for years and was greatly impressed with the New Testament particularly “The sermon on the Mount”. Like many Hindu’s it was the gentle figure of Jesus that he admired, who taught his followers not to retaliate and to resist violence. For him it was not the historical event of Jesus that mattered, but what the example of the message of his life had to offer humanity.  For Gandhi Jesus exemplified what it meant to serve your fellow humans and saw this as the guiding principle of his life. He saw the cross as being the perfect example of this sacrifice. 


He said:

 “Of all the things that I have read what remained with me forever was that Jesus came almost to give a new law – not an eye for an eye but to receive two blows when only one was given, and to go two miles when they were asked to go one...The message of Jesus as I understand it is contained in the Sermon on the Mount unadulterated and taken as a whole...If then I had to face only the sermon on the Mount and my own interpretation of it, I would not hesitate to say, “oh, yes, I am a Christian.” But negatively I can tell you that in my humble opinion, what passes as Christianity is a negation of the Sermon on the Mount...I am speaking of the Christian belief, of Christianity as it is understood in the west.”


Gandhi saw Jesus as the example to humanity, for Gandhi he pointed the way to liberation through self giving love. He believed that within all of us is this impulse for compassion and that this spark of divinity will one day burst into full flower and that Jesus was the personified example of this to every person. As he said “I believe that he belongs not solely to Christianity, but to the entire world; to all races and people, it matters little under what flag, name or doctrine they may work, profess a faith or worship a God inherited from their ancestors.”

So to answer my sisters question as to whether or not I am a Christian my answer is still the same, “it depends how you define Christianity.” For me, like Gandhi, Jesus is the example of self giving love that I aspire to. If being a Christian means following Jesus as the example to humanity then I am a Christian; if it means that I have to believe in the teachings of the established church then I am not. I am sure that by the definition of the fundamentalists of Christianity or Secularism then I am not. That said I do believe in the Jesus that Gandhi held up as the perfect Satyagraha. I see him as the embodiment of self giving love, as the example to us all. That said I do not see him as the only one, many of the great sages have also shown the way too and I also see those same heroic figures in my world today. We are all capable of being them.

Lent for me is about attempting to practise this in my life day by day. It’s not about giving up sweets or chocolate etc, it’s about giving of myself to life each and every day in whatever small ways that I can. It’s about practising non-violence not only with myself but others too, it’s about facing up to my own demons, those within and those without and about attempting to build the commonwealth of love here on earth. It’s about self transcendence; it’s about the full realisation of the truth that it is giving that we truly receive and that it is in these moments that we can know God.

Let Life Be Your Prayer

I love this song it speaks to me in so many ways and about so many different times in my life...


For most of my life prayer meant nothing to me. I did not see its purpose or point and therefore never engaged with it, well except in those dark deadly moments. Things have changed in recent times and prayer is now something that is a vital part of my life. I pray a lot, perhaps constantly. I see this blog as a prayer if I’m really being honest; I see everything I do as a form of prayer.

The first prayer that I intentionally wrote was at a World AIDS day service I attended a few years back. I was trying to heal some of the wounds left by my dad’s life and death. He was a gay man who I am told had died of an AIDs related illness. Near the end of the service the vicar asked if people would like to write a prayer. I wanted to say something, but didn’t know how to. I just simply wrote a message of love to my dad, I expressed my regret for all that had gone on between us and hoped that he had now found peace. Looking back now that was probably my first sincere prayer and it has had a lasting effect.

So what exactly is prayer? I do not think that there is a simple answer to this. If we explore the different faith traditions there are a variety of examples. Not all prayers are addressed to a diety or deities. Some address God, but still others speak to the earth or the universe and there are others that simply invoke a blessing. Some prayers address a masculine understanding, others a feminine one and still others invoke a purely impersonal image.

It’s funny but this makes me think of a facebook update that I wrote recently. I ended it with the phrase God bless and stay free, it’s something I say a lot. A colleague replied “And Goddess bless too”. I remember feeling ever so slightly irritated by this because when I think of God I don’t think of a person male or female. That said she did make a good point, because when many folk think of God they do put human characteristics to this image and male one’s at that.

Not all prayers are spoken. In the Japanese Shinto tradition prayers and blessings are calliagraphed on paper streamers and tied to the braches of trees and bushes. As the streamers wave in the wind the blessings then fly out over the world. In Tibet prayers are carved into wooden band wheels which are spun like a top sending the prayers up into the sky. Sometimes the wheels are positioned in a stream so that the current of the water spins the wheels and the prayers are then carried off without the need of human assistance.                

One of the five pillars of Islamic practice is to pray facing Mecca five times every day, here it’s not so much the words but the direction of the prayers that matter. During the middle ages monastic orders that took vows of silence considered work done by the hands as a form of prayer – therefore everything that was done in life was considered a prayer to God. This seems very similar to the mindfulness practiced by Zen Buddhist – in which every action is practiced with deep attention. 

And what about singing – something I love. I believe it was Augustine of Hippo who said that singing is praying twice. Now I’m not one to agree with Augustine, all the time, in fact rarely to be honest, but here I do. When I am singing I feel closer to God than in virtually any other activity I engage with. Singing for me is a deeply mindful and yet at the same time liberating activity. “How can I keep from singing?”

I have in recent time begun leading Singing Meditations and I have to say I love them. I feel utterly connected during this simple practise of song chants interspersed with silence. Each session takes on a life of its own depending on the participants. The singing is a prayer which builds with power and deepens the connections between the participants and the divine; the silence is a form of meditation, when the divine speaks to those participating. By the way this practice is fun too, I find it incredibly exhilarating. It touches those parts that are are rarely reached.

Prayer takes many forms and it need not be seen as a purely solemn activity, practised in isolation. Yes we can close ourselves away and pray in isolation, but it’s not essential. Neither do we have to necessarily use words when we are praying, every activity we engage in can be a form of prayer.

But what about the atheist, how and why should they pray and what could they possibly gain from it? As I have already stated prayer in many human religious traditions is not always directed at a deity or deities. It can be seen as a form of concentrated thought or an attempt to connect to that greater reality within our own humanity.

Prayer is that hidden treasure that we don’t often see. In fact we can easily view it as a weakness and denial of our humanity to even engage in the practise, I know I once did. We can easily despise the need for it and yet prayer can enable us to do what we may well have considered humanly impossible. It’s certainly given me the courage to face what at one time I would have considered humanly impossible obstacles.

All of us at one time or another experience moments of crippling fear, or feel the need for personal confession. We are all hit by moments of regret, inadequacy, alienation and loneliness. We all at times become aware that we have hurt others. We also experience moments of awe, wonder and absolute bliss, when the simple beauty of life just overwhelm us. There are other moments when we experience the frustration and utter dejected desperation of life’s tragedies, when we would invoke every single power that the universe has to offer to change the course of some event. Whether these feelings, emotions, these elemental responses are addressed to a personal God or whether they are experienced inwardly in a more meditative sense, the substance and the need is still there. Why else would prayer, in one form or another, have developed in every culture throughout human history?

For a religious life to be full and rich it has to deal with every element of human existence, from joy and celebration, to grief, frustration, anger, bitterness and utter desperation. For the religious life to be authentic surely it must give voice to every aspect of the human experience. The religious life has to involve prayer.

Rheinhold Neibuhr once said “Prayer does not change things; prayer changes people, and people change things...Prayer is not hearing voices, prayer is acquiring a voice.”

Prayer is vital to me because it unlocks my potential and loosens the chains of fear; prayer allows me to fully function in the world; prayer allows me to live in a way I didn’t think possible until I began to fully experience it; prayer enables me to connect beyond the confines of myself to a greater reality; prayer gives me strength and direction and allows me to give myself fully to what I am doing; prayer enables me to see the things in me that need to change. Cold hard logic, simply sitting and thinking does not seem able to do this, nor does conversation and counsel alone. I have discovered that I need to connect beyond the confines of my human experience to truly experience my full humanity. Prayer enables me to know that something in the corner of my life that I cannot quite see.

Life is becoming my prayer. It is opening me up to every encounter in every moment and enabling me to experience the divine in every aspect of my life.

I thank God for discovering the power of prayer...my life is becoming one big prayer...