Moby Dick: To Resent or Rejoice

I recently returned from Summer School, at Great Hucklow. This year marked its 30th anniversary. It went by the title of “Finding My Religion: Being Unitarian in the 21st Century”. Over 50 of us gathered in person for theme talks, engagement groups and variety of other activities. Many others joined on-line for some of these. It was wonderful to be a part of, as it has been since I first attended over 15 years ago.

I was very involved this year, as it seems I am in so many areas of my Unitarian life. I co-led an engagement group and “Theme Talk” with Arek Maleki a wonderfully gifted minister serving the Leicester Unitarians. Our “Engagement group was titled “The Words We Speak Become the House We Live In”, words attributed to the Sufi mystic Hafiz. We actually built a house. I will speak more about this in the coming weeks, exploring some of the themes. Our theme talk was well received as we explored our journeys in our own unique and yet complimentary styles. We gained a nickname “Tweedledum and Tweedledee” from one of our group, who told us that all that we lacked were the caps. This was a bit rude to Arek who is 20 years younger than me. Interestingly one of the tutors at Luther King House would often call Arek Danny when he studied there. The tutor had taught me when I trained for the ministry. I also had a ballad written in my honour by Nick Maurice who was the musician of the week and came up with the “Tweedledum and Tweedledee” comment. The ballad was beautiful if slightly embarrassing to hear. Oh, and returned with a wonderful gift. A giant knitted whale. This was created by our own Ruby. I was slightly obsessed in my hunt for the whale and paid more than I intended too.

Birthday’s and anniversaries have been on my mind. I recently attended the Golden Wedding Anniversary of Bill and Morag Darlison. Bill is one of my ministerial heroes, I have loved being in their company many times over the years. I was travelling with a sense of sadness as I had the feeling that this might be the last time I would see Bill. When I arrived he greeted me warmly and then told me he was pleased I had come as he had a request. He told me that when his time comes he would like me to conduct his funeral. He told me it as all arranged and that I would be given some space in its creation. I of course agreed and he told me he would email the details. I then shared in a wonderful lunch with a speech from Bill. It was both moving and hilarious. There was not a hint of self pity, just deep gratitude and love for his beautiful wife Morag. As he said she is still the most beautiful woman in Pontefract, before adding that his friend said, “no Bill the most beautiful in England”. Morag is a native of Scotland and moved to nurse in Pontefract over 50 years ago.

Bill had been given a terminal cancer diagnosis over 20 years ago and recovered and there is no cancer currently. Treatment ended a few weeks ago and he looks well. I will of course do as requested, but it may not be in the immediate future, God willing.

As I was driving to Bill’s I witnessed something both dangerous and disturbing on the motorway, it didn’t ruin the day, but it has stayed with me. A large four-by four entered the motorway in a rather erratic manner. It almost collided with a motorcyclist who had to take evasive action. The motorcyclist pulled up next to the 4 x 4 and began gesturing the driver and hurling abuse. This was returned by the driver. What followed was the two of them pulling up and driving past each other in a very dangerous way. It could have easily caused an accident and was deeply dangerous to them and all around. I pulled back and let them pull away I thought to myself what a dangerous pursuit. It brought images of Ahab and Moby Dick and power of anger and resentment to my homiletic consciousness.

Summer School was very special this year. I have shared in beautiful, if somewhat eccentric company and heard the most wonderful of words in the last couple of weeks. This is in complete and utter contrast to some of things I have witnessed and heard in the world around me. Things that break my heart and disturb me greatly. I am reminded of those words by Hafiz “The words we speak become the house we live in.” I wish to build a house of love and not one of resentment and hatred. Resentment is oh so destructive.

Resentment is a negative emotion that is re-felt and replayed, over and over again until at times it becomes all consuming. At its most destructive it becomes an all-consuming repetitive rage. Frederick Nietzsche said of it, “nothing on earth consumes a man more completely than the passion of resentment.”

When I look at my life there have been examples, some serious and others ridiculous, that have consumed me for long periods of time. I know I am not unique in this, it happens to us all, things from our past can so easily control and even poison the life we are attempting to live today.

I know from truly looking at my own life and honestly acknowledging all that has happened to me and all that I have caused to happen that many of these resentments I used to carry were really just justifications for the mess I was in at the time. By blaming others for my troubles, the things they had done, real or imagined, I could somehow raise myself above them and place myself on a pedestal. The problem of course was that I just remained lost in this sea of anger and my life went nowhere other than become increasingly lost. I was stuck on a ship, created from my own ill feeling, heading for trouble and unable to change direction. The bitter feelings were so all consuming that I could not hear the voices that were offering a different directions and my senses were closed to the joy present in the life all around me. What a waste!

Yes, resentment is such a waste of life, as it so quickly becomes consuming. It can take over your whole life. You will find many examples of this in literature. The classic perhaps being Captain Ahab. In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick Ahab is consumed by his rage against the “white whale” “Moby Dick” who in a previous voyage had destroyed his ship and bitten off his leg. So Ahab vowing revenge sets out on a voyage to hunt down the “white whale”. He becomes so consumed by his rage and need for revenge that as time goes by he no longer sees “Moby Dick” merely as the perpetrator of an evil act but as the “devil incarnate”, as the sum and substance of all evil that occurs in our lives.

This is near perfectly illustrated in the following passage from “Moby Dick”

“Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue devil;- Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.”

Ahab grapples with the “white whale” until the end. He hurls his final harpoon and cries out “to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”

Words that a hundred or so years later echoed through the galaxies as they were uttered by Khan in the Star Trek movie "The Wrath of Khan"  

Now I know this is only a work of fiction. A great work of fiction by the way and one written by a man who had Unitarian links. I understand that Herman Melville worshipped at the “All Souls” in New York. There is something in this work of fiction that speaks to me and I believe to all of us when we look at the power of rage and the destructive nature of deep rooted resentment. We only need to look at the world we live in today to see example of this all around us.

Have you ever been consumed by such a rage?

The problem of course is that once you become consumed by such intensely powerful emotions it is very difficult to change direction. This is especially true if you believe the resentment is justified. Now while the anger may well be justified I am certain that the destruction it carries with it is not. Like the motorcyclist reaction on the M62 and the four by four drivers response to that. It could have easily led to a serious accident and loss of life, all because of the rage of two men, who believed their response was justified.

Resentment can close down all our senses to such an extent that we fail to heed all the warning signs around us and end up crashed against the rocks all alone. We may not end up with Ahab’s fate but we can easily find ourselves shipwrecked or lost at sea.

This reminds me of story I was once told of an old ship captain, in the days before modern communication, who one night saw the beacon of another ship headed straight for him. He asked his signal man to warn them and so he blinked to the other ship “Change your course 10 degrees south.” Moments later the reply blinked back “change your course 10 degrees north” to which the captain ordered the signal man to answer “I am captain change your course south.” To which the reply came back "I am seaman first class. Change your course north." This infuriated the captain, so he ordered his signal man to reply "I am a battleship. Change course south." To which almost instantaneously came the response, "I am a lighthouse. Change course north.”

If only we could just listen and perhaps change course for the good of our own and the health of those who share our lives. It’s not so easy though is it, especially when we believe that we are right and get a sense of superiority by this feeling of being right. If only we could see the damage that this does to ourselves and those around us, but alas once a person is consumed by rage, this is hard to do. Even if you yourself are a battleship headed towards a lighthouse.

Resentment is a destructive force.

So what is the alternative? Well it begins with the words we speak, the way we act towards others and the way we see others. For this will create the house, the world we live in. It begins with seeing the good in others, to see ourselves in others and not see them as enemy as other. Maybe it begins with seeing what is beautiful and joy filled in our lives and that of others. It is so easy to get stuck in what is wrong and to therefore fail to see what is good and rejoice in it. This is such a terrible state for our minds to get in. As the poet Milton said “The mind is its own place and in itself can make a Hell of Heaven, a Heaven of Hell.”

Perhaps the key is to change course and not sail into the rocks or to be sunk to the depths by the white whale. The key I suspect is to change our minds. The key is to rejoice, rather than resent.

How does this begin you may well ask?

Well I believe that it begins by learning ways to celebrate our lives; it begins by learning to savour every breath no matter what is dealt to us. This begins by learning to offer that unceasing prayer “thank you”. Something I witnessed powerfully at Bill and Morag’s Golden Wedding anniversary. It begins by following the advice of the Hopi elders who suggested that you should “Gather yourselves…See who is in the water with you and celebrate. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.”

Maybe this is how we begin to rejoice, by looking at those in the water with us and learning to rejoice in who they are.

Pema Chodron claims that “Rejoicing in the good fortune of others is a practise that can help us when we feel emotionally shut down and unable to connect with others. Rejoicing generates good will. The next time you go out into the world, you might try this practice: directing your attention to people- in their cars, on the sidewalk, talking on their cell phones – just wish for them all to be happy and well.”

Maybe this is a way to set ourselves free from the anger and resentful feelings that leave us all lost in the sea of life. Maybe this is one way to help us change direction and not leave us shipwrecked against the rocks. Maybe this is one way to begin to rejoice in life. Maybe it can begin by not so much looking for the things to be grateful for in our lives, but instead to offer gratitude for the good fortune of others who we find ourselves in the water with. Maybe it begins by wishing good fortune for the people we meet.

I have found that this really works as it begins to fill us with joy because when our minds are thinking of others good fortune it is difficult for us to be thinking of anything else. Why not give it a go? You never know you might just find that if you do your minds might just become freed from the shackles of resentments, and then you might just be able to learn to live and rejoice in the beautiful gift that is this day.

“The words we speak become the house we live in.” I wish to build a house of love and not one of resentment and hatred. The choice is our ways, which way are we going to turn today?

Please find below a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"

Anger is an energy: It can destroy or it can create

We live on an angry planet, or at least it certainly seems that way. Anger seems to be everywhere; people appear ever more angry.

A friend contacted me the other day troubled by the anger she had felt toward a friend who had been asking some rather personal, probing questions. She got very defensive. I don’t think her response was inappropriate, she dealt with things well, she certainly wasn’t rude or insulting. The trouble she had was dealing with how she felt afterwards, she was very angry. She asked me how I stayed so calm in such situations. I explained that I had learnt to be like this from a young age. It was my way of controlling the potential anger of others. What I also said was that I had not always dealt with my internal anger though over the years. The anger was still there, and the anger remained just as destructive. I have learnt over time that anger, like all other emotions has a place. It is not wrong to feel angry, there are times when it is entirely appropriate to feel angry, the key is what we do with these feelings, do they inspire us to creativity or do they become destructive.

There is a lot of anger about at the moment. I think the feelings have intensified over the last eighteen months as we have been hit by the Covid crisis. I have noticed that since lockdown ended folk have in strange ways struggled more. I wonder if this has been due in some ways to folk clinging on holding on through it all and now as some sense of normality has returned many of us have struggled more. There is anxiety and a sense of anger that so many of us are expressing.

Yes, folk are angry, but not necessarily at the same things. What I have noticed is that much of this anger seems to become obsessively focused on whatever the object the individual or group might be angry at. There is nothing new in this we humans have projected our obsessive anger on to people, places and things throughout our history. In time the anger becomes ever more deep seated and transforms into resentment, so deep it cannot be reasoned with.

Resentment is a waste of life, as it so quickly becomes all consuming. It can take over your whole life. You will find many examples of this in literature. A classic example would be Captain Ahab. My friend, who I mentioned earlier, produced a copy of “Moby Dick” from her hand bag while we were talking the other day. In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick Captain Ahab is consumed by his rage against the “white whale” “Moby Dick” who in a previous voyage had destroyed his ship and bitten off his leg. So Ahab, vowing revenge, sets out on a voyage to hunt down the “white whale”. He becomes so consumed by his rage and his desire for revenge that as time goes by he no longer sees “Moby Dick” merely as the perpetrator of an evil act but as the “devil incarnate”, as the sum and substance of all evil that occurs in our lives. Today there are many versions of the “White Whale”. Just spend a few hours on social media if you don’t believe me.

Ahab grapples with the “white whale” until the end. He hurls his final harpoon and cries out “to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”

Now I know this is only a work of fiction. A great work of fiction by the way and one written by a man who had Unitarian links. I understand that Herman Melville worshipped at the “All Souls” in New York. There is something in this work of fiction that speaks to me and I believe to all of us when we look at the power of rage and the destructive nature of deep rooted resentment. We only need to look at the world we live in today to see example of this all around us. Have you ever been consumed by such rage?

They say that anger is like fire. It can smolder for some time and then suddenly blaze or burn with fury. Anger, like fire, of course does serve a purpose, an essential one at times. It can bring warmth where cruel coldness once reigned. It can destroy what is harmful and oppressive, as it has throughout history. The problem of course is that sometimes the right healing does not follow, you have to build again after the destruction.

Anger itself is neither good or bad, it is what is done with this emotion that makes the difference. As Aristotle so wisely recognised when he asked not whether anger is “good” or “bad” but how it shall be used: directed at whom, manifested how, for how long and to what end.

Anger can be an example of care, deep care. I have noticed feelings of anger in myself this week. I have realised that in some situations I have remained too silent, afraid to speak out, when I should have. Some of the anger is frustration at myself. I am becoming aware that the feelings are also a nudge that I should act and speak out. The key is discovering the right and appropriate ways to achieve this and to do so in ways that add to life’s creation and not destruction.

In the Gospel accounts you will see examples of Jesus becoming angry at injustice. The gentle Jesus meek and mild image is not an accurate one. He raged against the religious leaders of his day who seemed to place observance of the law over caring for people. It seems that the heart of the law was missed in pursuit of following the rules. A classic example of this can be found in the Gospel of Luke chapter 13 of Jesus healing on the Sabbath. To Jesus what mattered were the people, that is what he cared for rather than these laws that had lost the spirit of the faith. So what did he do? He healed people on the Sabbath right in front of the Pharisees.

Jesus saw the law had lost sight of the people. He saw his purpose, as a good Jew, to return the law to the people.

I recently came across the following poem “Making a Fist,” by Naomi Shihab Nye

“Making a Fist,” by Naomi Shihab Nye

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
A drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
Watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past
the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.
“How do you know if you are going to die?”
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
“When you can no longer make a fist.”
Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the back seat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.

Anger can be creative, it is wrong to see the feeling as merely negative and destructive. Naomi Shihab Nye’s fist is a gesture of self determination, of the will to live, of a fury to stay alive. This power can become a seed that can compel us to act in ways to aid in the creation of life and not its destruction.

This is beautifully illustrated in the following verse from Thich Nhat Hahn

“For Warmth”  by Thich Nhat Hanh

I hold my face in my two hands.
No, I am not crying.
I hold my face in my two hands
to keep the loneliness warm—
two hands protecting,
two hands nourishing,
two hands preventing
my soul from leaving me
in anger.

He wrote it after the Vietnamese village Ben Tre, that he and his monks had helped to rebuild four times, had been destroyed once again by American bombers. Over time he tenderly cared for his anger, knowing that it could be turned into action needed for his country’s survival.

Anger is an important human emotion, we have it for good reason. You cannot live without it. The key is what we do with the energy. In “Women who run with wolves” Claressa Pincola wrote

“All emotion, even rage, carries knowledge, insight, what some call enlightenment. Our rage can, for a time, become teacher, a thing not to be rid of so fast, … The cycle of rage is like any other cycle; it rises, falls, dies, and is released as new energy.

… Allowing oneself to be taught by one’s rage, thereby transforming it, disperses it. So, rather than trying to behave and not feel our rage or rather than using it to burn down every living thing in a hundred mile radius, it is better to first ask rage to take seat with us. Have some tea, talk awhile so we can find out what summons this visitor.”

We can’t hide from our feelings of anger, nor should we destroy with them, but we do need to realise them and create something from this fire that burns inside our hearts. It is there for a reason and the reason needs to be found or it can actually destroy us. The key is to make good use of the anger. Now what that might be is for each of us to discover. You have those feelings, even if you don’t want to recognise them, the key is to understand them and see what they are compelling you to do in order to participate in the creation of life, for our world needs it. There is far too much destructive rage all around us. It is getting louder and more destructive as time goes by.

So know your anger, do not flee, understand it, make something useful from it, it become a part of the creation of life. Our world so desperately needs it.

I am going to end today with “Uselful Anger” by Stephen M Shick

“Useful Anger” by Stephen M Shick

A good anger swallowed
clots the blood
to slime
—Marge Piercy

But what is to be done with it,
this anger that dare not be swallowed?

Should it be diluted with denial, cooled with indifference?
Should it be sweetened with good intentions,
softened with lies?
Should it be spewed out red hot over searing tongues,
scorching the guilty and innocent alike?

What’s to be done with it,
this anger that dare not be swallowed?

Don’t dilute it, deny it, or cool it.
Don’t sweeten it or soften it.
But, pause for a moment.

Could you hold it before your eyes
examine it with your heart and mind?
Could you hold it
then touch it to your belly
that place where your soul rests?
Could you let it enter there knowing it is the part of you
that needs to be treated kindly
that needs to be listened to
that needs to be honored?

For it has the power to save you,
to save us all.

Below is a video devotion based on this "blogspot"

Resent or Rejoice

There’s a woman I know who whenever our paths cross, which they do quite frequently, always shouts out to me “resent or rejoice”. It’s been going on for months now and I’ve got no one else to blame for this other than myself. She once heard me talking about my wish to find a word like resentment, but that meant the polar opposite. A word that meant to re-feel a positive emotion or event. Now the word she came up with was “rejoice”. So every time we bump into one another she says to me “resent or rejoice”. I’m beginning to wonder if I actually resent or rejoice in these encounters. Usually I rejoice in the spirit of celebration that she is sharing and in the fact that she is developing something that has grown from a loving aspect of myself. I’ve even begun saying the phrase “rejoice or resent” back at her.

“Resent or rejoice”, it really got me thinking about attitudes and approaches to life. Do I rejoice in the life I have been given and those who surround me or do I resent this life that I am a part of? Do we resent or rejoice in life?

Now personally I would much rather rejoice than be consumed by poisonous resentment, although I'm not sure that this has always been the case.

Resentment is a negative emotion that is re-felt and replayed, over and over again until it becomes all consuming. Frederick Nietzsche said of it, “nothing on earth consumes a man more completely than the passion of resentment.”

When I look at my life there have been examples, some serious and others ridiculous, that have consumed me for long periods of time. I know I am not unique in this, it happens to us all, things from our past can so easily control and even poison the life we are attempting to live today.

I know from truly looking at my own life and honestly acknowledging all that has happened to me and all that I have caused to happen, that many of these resentments I used to carry were really just justifications for the mess I was in at the time. By blaming others for my troubles, the things they had done, real or imagined, I could somehow raise myself above them and place myself on a pedestal. The problem of course was that I just remained lost in this sea of anger and my life went nowhere other than more lost. I was stuck on a ship, created from my own ill feeling, heading for trouble and unable to change direction. The bitter feelings were so all consuming that I could not hear the voices that were offering a different direction and my senses were closed to the joy present in the life all around me. What a waste!

Yes resentment is such a waste of life, as it so quickly becomes all consuming. It can take over your whole life. You will find many examples of this in literature. The classic perhaps being Captain Ahab. In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick Ahab is consumed by his rage against the “white whale” “Moby Dick” who in a previous voyage had destroyed his ship and bitten off his leg. So Ahab vowing revenge sets out on a voyage to hunt down the “white whale”. He becomes so consumed by his rage and need for revenge that as time goes by he no longer sees “Moby Dick” merely as the perpetrator of an evil act but as the “devil incarnate”, as the sum and substance of all evil that occurs in our lives.

This is near perfectly illustrated in the following passage from “Moby Dick”

“Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung...All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.”

Ahab grapples with the “white whale” until the end. He hurls his final harpoon and cries out “to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”

Now I know this is only a work of fiction. A great work of fiction by the way and one written by a man who had links with my own Unitarian faith. I understand that Herman Melville worshipped at “All Souls” in New York. A congregation that was served for many years by my great hero Forrest Church. There is something in this work of fiction that speaks to me and I believe to all of us when we look at the power of rage and the destructive nature of deep rooted resentment. We only need to look at the world we live in today to see example of this all around us.

Have you ever been consumed by such a rage?

The problem of course is that once you become consumed by such intensely powerful emotions it is very difficult to change direction. This is especially true if you believe the resentment is justified. Now while the anger may well be justified I am certain that the all consuming destruction it carries with it is not.

Resentment can close down all our senses to such an extent that we fail to heed all the warning signs around us and end up crashed against the rocks all alone. We may not end up with Ahab’s fate but we can easily find ourselves shipwrecked or lost at sea in a myriad of ways.

This brings to mind a story I heard a little while back about an old ship captain, in the days before modern communication, who one night saw what looked like the beacon of another ship headed straight for him. He asked his signal man to warn them and so he blinked to the other ship “Change your course 10 degrees south.” Moments later the reply blinked back “change your course 10 degrees north” to which the captain ordered the signal man to answer “I am captain change your course south.” To which the reply came back "I am seaman first class. Change your course north." This infuriated the captain, so he ordered his signal man to reply "I am a battleship. Change course south." To which almost instantaneously came the response, "I am a lighthouse. Change course north.”

If only we could just listen and perhaps change course for the good of our own and the health of those who share our lives. It’s not so easy though is it, especially when we believe that we are right and get a sense of superiority by this feeling of being right. If only we could see the damage that this does to ourselves and those around us, but alas so rarely we do as we become consumed by the rage and the hate.

Resentment is a destructive force.

So what is the alternative? Well maybe it is to find a way to learn to rejoice in all that is life. How do we do that? You may well ask. Well I think it begins by learning to see the joy in things, if not in our own lives then in the lives of others. It is so easy to get stuck in what is wrong and to therefore fail to see what is good and rejoice in it. This is such a terrible state for our minds to get in. As the poet Milton said “The mind is its own place and in itself can make a Hell of Heaven, a Heaven of Hell.”

Perhaps the key is to change course and not sail into the rocks or to be sunk to the depths by the white whale. The key I suspect is to change our minds. The key is to rejoice, rather than resent.

How does this begin you may well ask?

Well I believe that it begins by learning ways to celebrate our lives; it begins by learning to savour every breath no matter what is dealt to us. This begins by learning to offer that unceasing prayer “thank you”. It begins by following the advice of the Hopi elders who suggested that you should “Gather yourselves…See who is in the water with you and celebrate. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.”

Maybe this is how we begin to rejoice, by looking at those in the water with us and learning to rejoice in who they are.

Pema Chodron claims that “Rejoicing in the good fortune of others is a practise that can help us when we feel emotionally shut down and unable to connect with others. Rejoicing generates good will. The next time you go out into the world, you might try this practice: directing your attention to people- in their cars, on the sidewalk, talking on their cell phones – just wish for them all to be happy and well.”

Maybe this is a way to set ourselves free from the anger and resentful feelings that leave us lost in the sea of life. Maybe this is one way to help us change direction and not leave us shipwrecked against the rocks. Maybe this is one way to begin to rejoice in life. Maybe it can begin by not so much looking for the things to be grateful for in our lives, but instead to offer gratitude for the good fortune of others who we find ourselves in the water with. Maybe it begins by wishing good fortune for the people we meet.

I have found that this really works as it begins to fill us with joy because when our minds are thinking of others good fortune it is difficult for us to be thinking of anything else. Why not give it a go? You never know you might just find that if you do your minds might just become freed from the shackles of resentments, and then you might just be able to learn to live and rejoice in the beautiful gift that is this day.

So what’s your choice to be today, do you resent or do you rejoice?