The Spiritual life is Like a Flower

 

A friend Rob came on Monday to plant Sunflowers and other assorted flowers in the gardens at the chapel. He came for the first-time last year. This year he came a little later, due to one or two planting errors. The flowers are a legacy of love from his dad. His dad had died from Covid, right at the beginning of the pandemic. I had helped him create the service he conducted himself at the side of his father’s grave. It was filmed and broadcast around the world, his father had come to Britain from Zambia over 50 years ago. His dad loved gardening and since he died Rob has carried on this legacy. If you ever go to Southern Cemetery, on the edge of Chorlton, and notice an incredibly well kept grave, it is very likely to Rob’s dad’s. He devotes much of spare time taking care of it. He tells me even in his death his dad is taking care of him, keeping him on the straight and narrow. It is truly a labour of love, as was his planting here on Monday.

Last year Rob came on the second anniversary of his dad’s death. As he was planting he talked and I listened. The planting of the flowers was his gift to me and me witnessing him remembering his dad as my gift back to him. We both gave and we both received and the whole community benefitted from the beauty of the gardens, which blended beautifully with the loving beauty already here.

The planting of those flowers seemed to me to be the spiritual life in all its beauty and glory; it seems to me that the spiritual life is like a flower.

Now you may well ask, how is the spiritual life like a flower? It is a reasonable question to ask. I will attempt to explain.

The first thing that comes to my heart and mind is that the spiritual life is about opening up, as a flower opens up. That to live spiritually is to open up and to continue opening up day after day, season after season and year after year. Just as the flower opens and up to the light, so do we. How many times do we open up and reach for the morning light? Well infinite times it would seem.

That said we not only open many times we close down and shrivel up many times too. We seemingly close in, shrivel up and fade away many times in our lives only to rise and open once again in a new spring time. The spiritual life is about opening up and closing back in before opening once again, over and over again.

We are all of us like flowers in the garden of life. Each unique and yet similar. Each with something to offer if we grow and flower and be all that were born to be. Yes a flower looks beautiful when it stands alone. It has its own beauty and own unique qualities but it only truly becomes all that it is when it grows together with other flowers in the garden. It only truly becomes all that it is when it shares all that it is with all the other flowers in the garden of life.

It is the same with us and our lives. Yes, we are all uniquely beautiful and we all have our own qualities but we only truly express them and experience them when we come together in love and share them with others, encouraging them to do likewise. The spiritual life is never truly experienced or expressed alone. These things only really come alive in company and communion with others. Each of us have something uniquely beautiful to offer one another, things that only truly flower when we share them with each other.

The spiritual life is not only like a flower, but like a flower garden…The spiritual life comes alive in the garden of life…The garden of delights…

The spiritual life is not experienced alone, it does not exist alone. It only comes alive when we share it with others. No one life is an island. We cannot thrive or survive alone. We are interconnected, much like life in a garden is interconnected.

Margaret Silf captured this thought near perfectly in “The Way of Wisdom”. She wrote:

"We belong, not merely to the created order of things, but in a great web of relationship, and interconnectedness, in which every particle is intimately interwoven with every other, and in which, in some mysterious way, each particle holds and reflects something of the totality. This makes a huge difference to the way we live. Every choice we make, every response we offer, every reaction we reveal has an effect on that web of being. We are made for relationship. The Wisdom of creation insists on it. No single creature can disengage from the dance of creation without jeopardizing the eternal beauty of that dance. We are indeed created to be 'we'. To opt for merely being 'I' is to opt out of the creative process itself. It is only in interrelationship that we have our being and our meaning."

In my eyes this beauty of this interconnectedness is portrayed near perfectly in the observation of flowers growing together with all that makes up the nature of a garden. Our lives and all life is like those flowers in the garden.

You see nothing in life is separate, everything is interconnected. If we damage one aspect of life we damage all life, just as if we begin to heal one aspect of life we begin to heal all life. Or to paraphrase Jesus “What you do to the least of them, you do to me.” Everything is interconnected, nothing lives separately from all life and I believe that is all connected by a Great Universal thread from which all life exists. I call this thread God.

True reverential spiritual living, an awareness of the sacred in everything helps us to recognise the importance of everything. It helps us see that everything matters. Every thought, every feeling, every word and every deed. It helps us recognise the intrinsic value of our own lives too. It reveals how we see life and how we live in life impacts on everything, including our own souls, our own beings. I am recognising this more and more as I live and breathe and enjoy my own being and that in which I live and breathe and share my being.

In recent months as I have simply enjoyed walking round where I live with Molly I have felt more connected to the people and the nature that I pass and interact with. As my reverence and love for life has grown, so has my love for my own being too. This has helped to continue the healing of my being in so many ways. It allows me to thrive and live and dance in the garden of life and thus be of better use in this life.

By observing flowers in a garden we can see clearly the interdependence of all life…The life in which we live and breathe and share our being…

The spiritual life is like a flower. I experienced this once more this week. May we all grow together in the garden of life, the garden of delights.

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

 

“How Do We Remember? To Re-Feel Our Lives Again”

The Olympics end today. I find that they always bring up memories of years gone by. They connect folk with the past and times in history, both personal and universal. The Olympics are always caught up in their time and space. In years to come no doubt these Olympics will be known as the “Covid Games”. They have already been postponed for one year. These are the 2020 Olympics, but are taking place in 2021. They have taken place without crowds of supporters cheering on the competitors. They have also been the games that have highlighted various mental health issues that top class athletes, as well as ordinary folk, suffer from. Society has changed and is changing and this is reflected in all aspects of life.

I have been watching the Olympics, but not with the same interest and attention that I have in the past. I am not sure why. Someone suggested to me the other day that is probably because of the time difference. I am not convinced of this. As a child I loved the Olympics. My first sporting hero was Brendon Foster and this dates back to the 1976 Olympics at Montreal. I was only four years old at the time. Now when I say he was my sporting hero, I suspect he was more my mum’s. She loves the Olympics and I suspect I enjoyed watching with her all those years ago. The images I remember from 1976 are not of the actual events but images repeated over the years. My mum likes to tell the story of waking me late in the night so I could watch Brendan Foster’s race, he came third and won bronze in the end. What is strange is that I do have this felt memory of being woken. It is not so much a visual memory though, more an emotional one. This though does not surprise me as memory for me is much more a felt, an emotional experience, rather than a visual one. In many ways it’s the responses of competitors after the events that stay with me, not just the competition, I am touched by the joy and the emotion.  I am touched by the years of dedication that these people and those who have supported them have put into their lives. Not just the winners and medallists, but also those competing. It is inspiring and these feelings stay with me, stored in my heart and soul. No doubt others remember differently.

If I have learnt anything in life it is that people can experience events, remember events, that they were both present at very differently. There are many reasons for this, but one may well be how their senses take in the experience, another how they actually remember. Some people are much more visually minded than others, more spacially aware. I have noticed over the years how different my brother and myself are. We recall things very differently and I suspect that this is because we process and thus remember very differently. We human beings are very diverse creatures indeed. While my brother and me look alike, we are not very alike.

A Lot of my memories were lost for many years, but have over time been re-felt and re-experienced. This is never an easy experience, but it is a rich one in the end. When I say it isn’t always easy, I am understating things, in truth it can be excruciatingly painful. I have recently re-experienced some memories while visiting an old friend who was staying in hospital in the North West. Thankfully he has been able to return home and I hope that his mental condition will continue to heal. During our conversations he talked an awful lot of our days, when we were students. Events and people and experiences that just weren’t there for me, they were gone, seemingly lost, from my mind. Some amusing and wonderful and others less so. There was an awful lot camaraderie, friendships and the odd romance, that never ended well. The memories though were not particularly visual though, they were felt, they were emotional. I re-felt these memories, I re-sensed them, they were resentments. They keep on coming as the days pass.

As I have said, many times before, I wish we had a word for re-sensing things that didn’t only have negative connotations. Resentment means to re-feel, to re-sense something, sadly we do not have a word for doing so in a positive or even neutral sense. My memories are mixed experience, aren’t all of memories a mixture of blessings and curses, just as life is. To quote good old Moses, “I lay before you life, blessings and curses, therefore choose life”

I wonder how your memories manifest in your life. Maybe you could reflect on past Olympics and where you were in your life and the folk you shared those memories with. How do you remember? What senses come alive? Perhaps talk with those who shared those memories with you, how do they remember? I Bet that they don’t in exactly the same way.

Memory is a mysterious thing. The way I remember my own life and people I share my life with has changed many times. The changes seem to coincide with the way I have experienced and understood my own humanity. The truth is that my life is made up of those lives that went before me, my life is built on their lives and those that follow me, their life will be built on mine and my contemporaries. The ancestors who walked before me and those that follow me are actually a part of me. I find that incredibly humbling.

It 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 the days pass. In many ways it is memory that brings the moments I am experiencing to life, how these ghosts of the past in habit our lives. They follow us like headlights on our tales.

One thing I have never had a great memory for is names. I was talking with someone the other day who told me how much he hates it that some people forget the names of others, he said he thought it was disrespectful. I told him that am one of those people. I can remember details of a person’s life, if they have told me it, faces stay with me, even though I claim I don’t have a visual memory, but I suspect that is more spacial than facial the deficit I mean. That said for some reason names can easily get lost somewhere. By the way it is not only the names of people, but places and things too. The details are there, but not the name. I am told that this is only going to get worse, I have already seen the signs of what is yet to come. Billy Collins captured this perfectly in his poem “Forgetfulness” Angela Fowler recently shared this poem at our poetry night. She loves Billy Collins, as do many of us. He has the capacity to touch places deep within but in a simple easily relatable way. Interestingly when I remined of this on Thursday she had forgotten about it, which we all laughed about together, a beautiful moment of human connection.

Here is the poem

The name of the author is the first to go
Followed obediently by the title, the plot,
The heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
Which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
Never even heard of,
As if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
Decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
To a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
And watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
And even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
Something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
The address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
It is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
Not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
Whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
Well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
Who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
To look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
Out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

…Billy Collins captures something beautiful, if a little painful here, as he usually does.

Memory is a mystery, we all forget things. I keep on forgetting things at the moment, but I know that this grief and how it manifests in my life, how love and loss plays out. Thankfully I am keeping a sense of humour about all this. We have to maintain our sense of humour about such things. That said there are types of memory loss that less funny, tragic really. There is of course Dementia, in its many forms, the cruellest being Alzheimer’s. A disease which attacks the cortex of the brain forming bundles of tangled plaque that inhibit conversation between the neurons; as it takes away a persons identity and history as aspects of their humanity drift away. The longer we live the more likely we are to become one of its victims.

While the Alzheimer’s sufferer forgets, those who loved them never let them go. Those who shared memories with them hold their love, those feelings are felt in that deeper place that cannot be destroyed by time. Love is eternal, it is immortal. Perhaps some of us feel these experiences more deeply, depending on how we experience life. Sometimes they are so intense that we lock these memories away. Ghosts though have a habit of haunting you again when you least expect them to.

This brings to my mind the following verses from Isaiah (49 vv 15-16):

15 Can a woman forget her nursing child,
or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.
16 See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are continually before me.

These words came to me the other day as I was looking at the callouses on my hands caused by training at the gym. I then spent a little time looking at the palms of my hand. I looked at what are called the heart and lifelines and remembered the love I have known and the love I have shared, with those people who have made up my life. Such feelings are surely Divine. There are times when these feelings are too much.

This is beautifully illustrated by Thich Nhat Hahn, who wrote in “Present moment, wonderful moment”

“If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.”

Isn’t he right. All that has been before is a part of who we are.

Life awes me every single day, it humbles me also. The more I learn the less things make sense. Every day I have a growing sense of how truly ignorant I am. Nothing makes absolute sense to me. I have no idea why I feel what I feel or why my mind remembers and forgets things and then suddenly the memory is more alive than it has ever been. Clever people try to explain these things to me, but they seem to get it even less I. The sum of the parts they describe do not even begin to scratch the surface of the whole.

I am grateful to be a part of this incredible mystery that is life itself; that I get to share with the people I do; that I get to experience the sensations of these memories coming to life in my body and spirit, enhancing my experience of life today.

I am grateful to have experienced this the most amazing trip that anyone could wish to be on. Thank you for being a part of it. What a ride, what a ride…

Please click below to watch a video devotion

based on the material in this "blogspot"

 

The Ritual of Life

I have recently been watching tutorials and attended a Q & A session on the new procedures for weddings. Come May it seems that folk like myself, who act as “Authorised Persons”, that our lives will be different, easier. Everything is finally going digital and onto a single schedule which will become a certificate to be collected from the registry office after the wedding. There will be several changes to the certificate, the main one being that they can now include up to four parents. In the past you only stated who your father was. So finally we are acknowledging the changing nature of families and family relationships. It is about time that this change came about. I am still frustrated that I can only conduct weddings in the two buildings I serve as minister, maybe one day this will change. We are making progress, but it is slow.

Within our Unitarian tradition we are free to create the marriage ceremony that fits the needs of the individuals. There are of course certain words that must be said within the service, for it to be a legal wedding, but beyond that the ritual is open. I recall there were one or two issues over the first wedding I had the pleasure to conduct for two women. They had to make their vows to wife and wife and one was a little uncomfortable with this, but there was no bending there legally. That said the rest of the ceremony allowed us to shape the service that they wanted.

I recently met a couple one of whom engages in Viking reenactments. With this in mind we are going to ensure that we include some of this tradition in the ceremony. This will include a particular ritual, namely a Viking guard of honour as the newly married couple leave the chapel, Covid restrictions permitting of course.

Obviously due to the circumstances of the last year or so our rituals around rites of passage and worship have had to adapt to a certain degree. I was thinking of this as I invited people forward to share readings, last Sunday. People are asked to sanitise their hands and remove their masks to speak. Other rituals have had to adapt too, such as how we greet one another. We do not hug and or shake hands as we would have done in the past. We have found other ways to greet and show affection. I have adopted the Eastern tradition of bowing, I like it and wonder if I will continue it once we finally get through all this.

This all got me thinking about rituals in general. We all engage in them, even if we are not aware of it. Life in so many ways is made up of rituals. Just think about your daily and weekly activities, they involve oh so many rituals. Just think about how you have had to adapt them over the last year or so.

There are of course formal rituals that take place in a time and place, such as wedding ceremony or an act of worship. Think of an act of remembrance or a funeral. There also less formal rituals that we engage in too. Are these rituals any less sacred or important? I don’t think so. The social anthropologist Edmund Leach has argued that ritual ought to be understood as existing on a spectrum, stating:

“Actions fall into place on a continuous scale. At one extreme we have actions, which are entirely profane, entirely functional, technique pure and simple; at the other we have actions, which are entirely sacred, strictly aesthetic, technically non-functional. Between these two extremes we have the great majority of social actions, which partake partly of the one sphere and partly of the other. From this point of view technique and ritual, profane and sacred, do not denote types of action but aspects of almost any kind of action.”

The suggestion is that every activity, even the seemingly mundane is a kind of ritual, if treated in that way. What makes it ritualistic, it would seem, is the pace and intention of the activity; it is about the attention and symbolism adopted; it is about the meaning we make in conducting the activity; it is about the meaning that we put into the activity and object, it is about intentionality; it is about recognising the sacredness of what we are doing.

If you think about some of the rituals we have adapted and adopted this last year or so, surely they have been done in recognition of the sacredness of life. In engaging in  them we are paying respect to each other, in love and consideration. They are deeply religious activities, they have a deep love and spirit flowing through them. The cleansing we have engaged in has become deeply ritualistic. They are not merely habit though, they are done in love and consideration of others.

I suspect that some of the cleansing rituals that are part of many religious traditions began for similar practical reasons. Yes, they are about respect for the Divine, but also one another. When I bow to others I am recognising their sacred uniqueness, I am doing the same when I cleanse my hands when using the equipment in the gym or wearing a mask when going food shopping at the supermarket.

I observed some fascinating rituals when sat in the barbers chair a couple of weeks ago. I visit this barber regularly and I almost know exactly what he will do next and how he will do so as he cuts my hair and shaves certain elements, including ears and even a trimming of the eyebrows. Some elements are more difficult at the moment due to the wearing of masks, especially around the ears. As he comes close to finishing I observe him putting a new blade on the razor as he shaves around the loose hairs and around my ears and hair line. It is a marvel to watch the attention to detail, a craftsman at his work, all completed in silence. I like him because he doesn’t speak as he works. There is care and attention, there is deep intention, it feels like a sacred ritual is taking place. Ok he is paid for the work, but there is more going on in this ritual. It is a deeply religious activity in my eyes. To this man the work really matters.

How we are in the world matters and the way we act toward others really matters. We can do so recognising the sacredness of each other and all life or we can do so without any care or attention at all. I suspect our little moment by moment rituals of living help us to do so with love and attention and with deep intention, a bit like the barber I go and visit every few weeks.

Ritual is about repetition, but it also about the care attention that we put into the repeated action. When such repetition is done through the spirit of love, those seemingly mundane activities become sacred action and in so doing we begin to sanctify life.

Sport is one area where you witness all kinds of ritual. Whether it is a golfer perfecting their swing, or a batsman his forward defensive stroke or in more modern times the reverse sweep. Or the different warm up rituals that teams go through before a game and again at half time. There also the other rituals that take place before the game begins as the team meet and honour one another. One that has stood out over the last year has been the taking of the knee, in acknowledgement of racial intolerance, again an act of love recognising the sacredness of life. It is response to the fact that some life is not treated equally due purely to the colour of someone’s skin. Something else that we humans ought to have evolved out of by now, sadly we have not yet done so.

Everything we do in life can be done ritually and thus can become meaning filled. Even the most simple basic task  can be done reverentially and thus can become meaning filled. We sanctify life, if we live reverently. If we see life as a deeply sacred thing. If we bless it with our true presence. The real beauty of life lays in the ordinary, in observing and experiencing the meaning of life in the seemingly mundane. By so doing the great moments are created.

Ronald L. Grimes captures this near perfectly in “Marrying and Burying: Rites of Passage in a Man’s Life”

"Ritual practice is the activity of cultivating extraordinary ordinariness. It is necessary, because human activity has a kind of entropy about it; life, like love, runs down. Things get tiresome and difficult. Body and soul cry out for something different, hence the impetus to ritualize. But if the ritually extraordinary becomes a goal or is severed from ordinariness, it loses its capacity to transform, which, after all, is what rites of passage are supposed to do."

To live spiritually alive, is to recognise the sacredness of the ordinary, the seemingly mundane. To do this all we need to do is pay attention to the world and the people around and truly inhabit the space in which we live and breathe and share our being. All we have to do is to pay attention, to live in such a way as to recognise the sacred in everything.

There is something very powerful about coming together in love; there is something very powerful in opening ourselves up to one another and recognising what connects us what makes us wholly human, by living ritually we can begin to do so. Worshipping together is one way to do so, but it can happen in all aspects of life. It can occur in deep encounters with others, when love and attention is paid.

The congregations I serve gather together seeking something, as we engage in the ritual of worship and other activities spiritual and secular, something that has been challenged over the last year or so. People come for a variety of reasons, some are not sure why they come, but if they don't they feelt hat soemthing is misssing. When we congregate for worship we attempt to create through words, music, silence, imagery and more a sacred time and space that will enable us to open our hearts and connect to the Greater mysteries of life, to the web of being, to know the spirit of life and love, to experience the Divine and for this to impact on how we live our day to day lives.

In this sacred space at the sacred time where generations have worshipped we opened their hearts to the greater mysteries of life. In so doing we begin to connect to the greater realities and mysteries of existence. It is this time that can help us to open up the lives we find ourselves in and to pay attention to the life around us and to touch the people we meet in our daily living. In so doing we make all life sacred, by blessing it with our presence.

The hope is that when folk leave this time and space that they are touched in those deeper aspects of their humanity and that they bless the world with their sacred humanity by recognising the sacredness of each person they we meet and bless life with their loving presence.

Here is a video devotion based on this "blogspot"

Having Moved Full Circle: 366 Days

“Having Moved Full Circle: 366 Days ”

“Epigrams” by Edwin Markham

Preparedness

FOR all your days prepare,

And meet them ever alike:

When you are the anvil, bear--

When you are the hammer, Strike.

Outwitted

He drew a circle that shut me out--

Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.

But Love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle that took him in!

The Avengers

The laws are the secret avengers,

And they rule above all lands;

They come on wool-soft sandals,

But they strike with iron hands.

 

We have travelled a complete circle, 365, well actually 366 days as it was a “Leap Year” since Sue and I married and since we had to go into our first lockdown. It has been quite a year. A hard year, a challenging year, a year of suffering on oh so many levels. The loss of life has been terrible, I cannot imagine what would have happened had most of us not responded as we had. Yes, mistakes have been made, but on the whole people have supported one another and done what they can. The cost has been phenomenal and it will take some time to recover on so many levels. As we slowly return to some kind of normality over the later Spring and summer, there is much that we must do for one another. I wonder where we will be on the second anniversary. I don’t just mean our wedding anniversary, but of this difficult time in human history. We have been through worse and we have rebuilt and no doubt we will again. So, let us build and rebuild, but let us do so in more loving and compassionate ways.

It is a time to widen our circles and begin to invite folk into more loving and compassionate ways. It begins with our individual circles and widens to our community and then to the whole of humanity. The last twelve months have brought to the surface many of the fractures in society, fractures that need healing and it begins by widening our circles of compassion and inviting folk in.

This brings to mind a favourite poem of mine by Rainer Maria Rilke. It speaks powerfully to me of what the purpose of living in an engaged way is all about, as we invite others into our lives we invite more of the true experience of living alive. Here is Rilke’s poem

"I Live My Life In Widening Circles" by Rainer Maria Rilke

I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world.

I may not complete this last one

but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.

I've been circling for thousands of years

and I still don't know: am I a falcon,

a storm, or a great song?

Rilke’s poem so beautifully evokes the image of ever expanding spheres, much like ripples on a pond, those concentric circles. It brings to my heart the idea of moving from the centre of the circle, expanding and stretching ourselves to include ever more of life. As we are expanded, we expose ourselves to new experiences and people, this is both exhilarating and frightening all at the same time. As the journey continues fear evaporates and though the circles are never completed, certainly not the last one. That said one is compelled to give their whole life to the experience. This is the classic spiritual journey, as it is not about the destination, this is not the gift, the gift is the journey itself. The beauty is not in the outcome but the experience. The poem beautifully reminds me how great it is to live in such a way, to ever widen the circles so as to include more people, more ideas, more experiences, rather than to live in contracting spaces that seek to cut out that which makes one feel uncomfortable. This just makes life smaller and less fulfilling.

This last year has created a distance between people. No doubt there is much anxiety about returning to life as it once was. There is a great deal of fear around, fears about personal safety. There has been a growing awareness of the troubles in our world, when some are rejected and or treated as if they were not equal citizens. There has been an awakening around race and gender this year, let us hope that we can truly begin to see that we are all made of the same stuff, born under the same earth, under the same sun, with the same spirit flowing through us. That our role in life is first and foremost to care for one another, to cause no harm. Let us hope that our circles will ever widen and that we finally begin to see that there is one circle of humanity, a circle that brings all in. There are other deadly diseases that humanity struggles with, ones of exclusion and unacceptance just because someone is different. There are not two types of people in this world there is one, there is one humanity. We need to widen our circles for if we do not then distrust and violence grows. We need to find ways to widen our circles and bring them all in. This was beautifully captured in middle section “Outwitted” from Edwin Markham’s “Epigrams”

Outwitted

He drew a circle that shut me out--

Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.

But Love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle that took him in!

So, what can we do? Well, I believe we can do much. Where does it begin? Well, I believe it begins in our own hearts and souls, in our own homes and in our own communities. We need to begin to expand our own circles. We need to begin to live more invitationally and openly, we need to invite the other into our circle. This is risky and scary I know but my goodness our world needs it. This to me is our ultimate religious role and task. In so doing we will not only allow others to be less afraid of us and who they are, but we will also liberate ourselves.

Now this is no easy task, of course it is not. That said I believe that it is one that is worth undertaking. I believe it is the challenge of our age. I believe that maybe it is the task and the challenge of my own open faith tradition. I believe that it is our task to ever widen our circle so as include all, for there can be no limit to love. This begins by putting love at the core of the circle and to understand that if we see love as the circumference we will see there is no limit, for no one can be excluded from love. For if they are, it is not love.

For love is eternal and love is perfect and love knows no limits.

I would like to share a poem by Wendell Berry “The Larger Circle.”

The Larger Circle, by Wendell Berry

We clasp the hands of those that go before us,

And the hands of those who come after us.

We enter the little circle of each other’s arms

And the larger circle of lovers,

Whose hands are joined in a dance

And the larger circle of all creatures

Passing in and out of life

Who move also in a dance

To a music so subtle and vast that no ear hears it

Except in fragments.

Here's a recording of a devotion based on the content of this "blogspot". Please click to watch.

Living on the Growing Edge

New Years Eve was a strange one this year. Not very surprising I know. We could not mark and celebrate as we would normally, so we had to adapt. I hosted the “Watch Night Service” as 2020 crossed over into 2021. The service was enjoyed by folk in person and on Zoom. The evening had begun on Zoom with our weekly poetry night “Consolation, Sorrow and Joy” I then kept the Zoom open until midnight. It was perhaps not the smartest move on my part, as I was only wearing a shirt and jacket and it was a cold night sitting for six hours in the chapel. A few people did log on to say hello and have a chat. Sue arrived at about 10.30pm and we enjoyed some lovely food together that she had lovingly prepared. That night as I crossed the threshold, in that inbetween space, that liminal space, I enjoyed my time alone waiting and reflecting on what had been and what was yet to come. I felt like I was on the edge of something, not just time and space but life, it felt like the growing edge of everything, of life.

The time alone in the chapel allowed me to reflect on the year that had passed and the year that we are all stepping into. These will be difficult days ahead for us all and we need to prepare ourselves to live through it. It is no point just clinging on and hoping for the day after Covid, we need to live now and live the best way that we can. Yes of course we need to plan for the future, but we cannot stop living while we do so. We have this time now and we must not stop living. These were the thoughts I was reflecting on as I sat there on the edge of the year, the living edge, the growing edge, wondering what we were all stepping into.

Earlier that evening, during the poetry night, I had decided to break protocol and share a short piece of prose, “The Growing Edge” by Howard Thurman.. Earlier that day I read a beautiful reflection via Facebook on the piece by Parker J Palmer posted for the New Year. Parker J Palmer along with Carrie Newcomer whose poem we read earlier host a wonderful online resource titled “The Growing Edge” which I highly recommend to you all.

The Growing Edge

That evening as I sat alone I could feel “The Growing Edge” was stirring in me. As I sat there that night I thought I might include Howard Thurman’s words in the service. So I printed it and a few other pieces off and had them in reserve along with the script I had prepared. I had a full reading desk that night, they were almost hanging off that ever growing edge.

From about 11.30pm folk began to arrive for the service, Sue greeted them as we followed all the usual Covid secure procedures. There was not the usual number but about a dozen of us joined together on that “Growing Edge” of the old and new year, while others joined us on Zoom. An old friend was present. He was in particular good spirits as his daughter had given birth the day before. I had heard of a couple other new births in the last few days, it has been suggested that they should be called “Lockdown” babies. Who knows, babies are born constantly. It was lovely to see the obvious joy on my fiends face, especially considering the fact that he had only reconciled with his daughter some 18 months earlier after a big family fall out. It was a beautiful reminder that life does go on despite all the real loss that we are all experiencing. Yes, loss by the death of loved ones but also loss of the things we would normally do in our lives. As we live through another necessary lockdown this is something, that we are all experiencing again. We are in the middle of a long, difficult winter. That said life goes on, it will always go on. We are living in and through this it is of no use to anyone to just live for the day when the pandemic will be over, to completely hibernate. We cannot live this way; we have to find ways to live in these times of challenge. Yes, plan for life in the future, but we still must live fully alive in this day, as difficult as it is. Me must of course stay physically distant, as much as possible, but that does not me that we shut down who we are. What is required is adjustment in how we live; what is required is adaptation.

Here are the words I shared, “The Growing Edge” by Howard Thurman

“All around us life is dying and life is being born. The fruit ripens on the tree, the roots are silently at work in the darkness of the earth against a time when there shall be new leaves, fresh blossoms, green fruit. Such is the growing edge!

This is the basis of hope in moments of despair, the incentive to carry on when times are out of joint and dreams whiten into ash. The birth of the child—life’s most dramatic answer to death—this is the growing edge incarnate. Look well to the growing edge!”

That night as I shared the “Watch Night” service I looked into my friend eyes, you could only see his eyes because of the mask. I am noticing peoples eyes more and more these days. As I looked into the joy and deep emotion in his eyes the line from Thurman came to me:  “The birth of a child—life’s most dramatic answer to death—this is the growing edge incarnate.” As I did, I knew then that I had to share the words of Thurman in the service. I certainly needed to remember that in this year that has known so much loss on so many levels, that new life is forever being born again. It is so vital to remember this at this time of lockdown. We need to keep on creating life, I do not mean babies necessarily, but in every area of existence, even in this time when we are restricted by what we can do. We need to create and build not only for the future but in the present too. Yes, we cannot mix physically but we can create ways to help one another and of course ourselves. So, let us look well to the growing edge, for this is life.

By the way, we are always living on “The Growing Edge”, this is the way of life. I had an interesting Zoom conversation with a member of the chapel who is also a regular in the poetry group on New Years Eve. It was suggested that perhaps we should rename it as “Consolation, Sorrow and Joy” seemed a little negative sounding as we have such fun in the group. Certainly, we do, but we do share all kinds of poetry some recognising the sorrows of life, some offering consolation and others uttely joy filled and of course some that are simply chuffing hilarious.  There is a lot of joy shared, even in difficult times. We could change the name and if a better one comes up then I am certainly open to it. Do you have any ideas?

The poetry night speaks so powerfully to me of the “Growing Edge”, for during that time we experience all aspects of it. To quote Parker J Palmer while reflecting on a conversation that he Carrie Newcomer had following the death of a dear friend and the news of another’s pregnancy:

“That afternoon, we talked about the way death and life, grief and joy, dance nonstop with each other around the world, day and night. It might not be a friend who dies; it might be a hope, or a work, or a relationship. It might not be a baby en route to being born; it might be a vision, an opportunity to learn or serve, or a small nudge towards who-knows-what.

To see life steadily and see it whole, we must find ways to hold the paradox of life-in-death and death-in-life. We can’t live lives of meaning and purpose if we succumb to the horrors of “apocalypse now” or fly off into the Aquarian fantasy of a day when “peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars.””

It is not just at the new year, or in the midst of a pandemic, but all days that we need to look to “The Growing Edge”. It is about living in and through hope. “The Growing Edge” seems like the perfect antidote to fatalism and cynicism, there is much we can do to bring hope, when hope is hard to find.

I wonder what your “Growing Edge” is, I wonder where you find it. Maybe this is the time to discover what can be done and I don’t just mean somewhere over the rainbow, when the pandemic is over, but right now. The seeds can be planted in the here and now, even if it is perhaps difficult to find. It is found only in the muck of life and there is plenty of that around at the moment. We don’t have to wait for the end of the rainbow, for the spring or the summer we can living on the “Growing Edge” now. We have the time as we have to be at home to prepare ourselves to begin planting those seeds, nurturing them, and help them grow. To quote Margaret Atwood “In the spring, at the end of the day, you shall smell like dirt.”. I suspect that if we live on the “Growing Edge”, even in the midst of winter we can live as though it were the spring or summer time. It will not be easy, but it can be done.

Life forever invites us to grow into new challenges, new adventures, new opportunities to learn and to serve. Maybe this is the time to look within ourselves and our world. Maybe we need to begin to live on the growing edge. If we do, we might find that we can help carry ourselves and one another through this difficult winter and as we do so bring new life to fruition.

Yes, we are living with deep restrictions and my word we need to be, for the good of all. That said it does not mean that we must completely hibernate, to stop living. We cannot live for that day, somewhere over the rainbow, after the pandemic, for that is not living and we don’t know when that magical day might come.

So instead let us live on the “Growing Edge”, for this is life. All around us life is dying and life is being born. So, let us live and look to the “Growing Edge”, for this is life and life goes on.

Work, Rest and Play

I have been asked many times what it is that you were least prepared for, what surprised and surprises me the most as I became & continue to become a minister? The answer, I have come to realise, is that I am never not a minister. Once folk realise what you are, you are always a minister to them. I suppose this is why a journey into ministry it is known as formation & in my experience continual reformation as I keep on turning, or do I mean returning to Love. To minister literally means to serve and to do so humbly and with love. It is hard to not be a minister, to find rest from this work.

Ministers are human beings and they need to rest, something I am still learning to do. I have been feeling tired, deep down in the marrow of my bones, these last few weeks, particularly since the weekend. Last Friday, took so much out of me emotionally, spiritually, physically and mentally. As some of you know I travelled to Yorkshire to conduct the funeral of my ex step dad, the father of many of my brothers and sisters. There were many complex emotions for us all as we said our farewells to this figure that had dominated so many of our lives. I was there to hold us through this deep challenge. I did my job, with Sue’s support. It was the most insane service I have ever been involved with, not helped by some pretty basic errors made by the funeral directors. Lots went wrong, including those who were waiting at the club for the wake afterwards being unable to see the service on the link provided. We came through it together and as friends and family left one another there were many tears and the hope to see one another once again, when we can return to normality. There was deep love, between siblings and family, deep deep love and it was noticeable that the tears came as we said goodbye to one another. There were very few tears shed during the service.

I have noticed that the hardest thing for me in ministry is witnessing the suffering in those I care deeply about. It is the same with congregants as it is with family. I felt deep emotion too at the wedding I conducted for Rosie Arnold and Tim Wigan. Rosie is the daughter of Fiona and granddaughter of Thelma, members at Dunham Road. A family I know well. It was lovely to conduct the service, particularly to be able to connect to family all over the world. The best man was in Australia, but with us via Zoom. As lovely as it was it still took its toll emotionally. As the Sunday service did too. Maybe it is the times we are living through, the things we can do, in spite of the restrictions of the virus, maybe it is just where I am at personally. I do know that I have slept a lot these last few days, as I have felt a deep tiredness within me.

By the way I know I am not alone. We are all feeling the weariness of the pandemic. Not surprising really is it. Where do we find rest from it? Where can we find a bit more playfulness in the seriousness of the situation? Last Friday’s funeral was full of laughter, far more than I had written. There was a lot of laughter and playfulness afterwards too. It helped us all through a difficult time. Maybe that’s something we all need to search for, a little more playfulness might just help. Afterall they do say that laughter is the greatest medicine; after all there is a time for everything under the sun.

 One of the things I love about the poetry night I am hosting weekly on Zoom “Consolation, Sorrow and Joy” is that through it we are sharing so many wonderful emotions, including a great deal of laughter. Yes it is serious at times and at others utterly hilarious. There is a great deal of fun about it all. It has been so needed.

I am sure that we are all familiar with the old saying, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” This old adage has stood the test of time and not just for Jack, but for us all. Yes, we all need work, activities that give purpose and meaning to our lives, but we also need play. If you are really lucky you get to play a little in your work. I get some opportunity there. I also get so much joy from the people I get to share my work with and deep, deep love.

Play can at times be the best way to rest from the troubles and tiredness of life, it is also vital to creativity. I know when I am tired, and little lost in myself, I find it hard to be creative, playfulness is an important aspect of creativity. The great film director Alfred Hitchcock would halt production of a film when something felt stuck. He’d tell a story, that had nothing to do with the film they were making, he would distract the crew and break into their minds that were so fixated on the work. He would be playful with them, he would break up their seriousness that would allow them to return to the production with fresh ideas.

I was thinking of this on Tuesday morning as I was concerned about my day ahead and all the things I needed to do that day, not least write this sermon. As I did I found myself distracted by the little dog as she played with all and sundry and found myself laughing and loving her playfulness.

The spiritual life should include a sense of playfulness. We are not dour Puritans. Why who would we want to crush the joyful spirit out our humanity and faith? Playfulness can be found in the spiritual traditions. Taoists understand being in the flow, of being in harmony with life. The yin/yang symbol is a perfect example of balance. Harmony requires a balance of work and play.

In the Hindu tradition, the deity Krishna is young at heart, forever playing games with humans, especially wiling away his time with attractive young women. Flirting, romancing, and sexuality can be quite playful. But manipulation, mean-spiritedness, or destructive, abusive behavior, sexual or otherwise, is not play. True play celebrates life and brings fun and joy to its participants.

In the Sufi tradition of Islam, the holy fool Nasrudin shows us the value of play. Nasrudin’s foolishness teaches truth by coming at it indirectly. We need these examples of play now more than ever. We need them so as to guard against getting too wrapped up in the problems of our world that we forget to play, For play will help us to build the reserves we need to face those problems, to do the work we are here to do.

As Taoism teaches life needs to be balanced. Balance though is not something that is easy to achieve. I suspect it isn’t a constant, static, state of being. We live more like a seesaw constantly moving from one end to the other, trying to find that balanced state.

We also need to be in good humour. Are your “umeres”, as the ancient physicians use to call them, are all four in balance? How is your health, your physical, your emotional, your mental and your spiritual health? These four could well be our present day “umeres”.

A balanced life is considered a good life. We are told that we need to balance the books, in the home and in the community. The treasurer here at chapel has to ensure that they are balanced too. A balanced diet is vital to healthy living. Power needs to be balanced in the public sphere, too much power in any individual or even groups hand is dangerous. Balance is vital to performing physical activities. Most athletes are admired for their balance as much as for their strength and speed.

Balance is seen as vital by virtually all spiritual and philosophical traditions, extremes in any sense lead to danger and destruction. As Robert Fulghum advises “Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.” The philosopher John Locke wrote “An excellent man, like precious metal, is in every way invariable; A villain, like the beams of a balance, is always varying, upwards and downwards.”

Aristotle proposed that the key to authentic happiness and not mere momentary satisfaction or pleasure arose from living a life of “Virtue” and that this could be achieved by the “Doctrine of the Golden Mean”, by living a life centred on a sort of dampened equilibrium. That virtue lays in avoiding excess. He saw courage as lying somewhere between cowardice and recklessness.

One of the great Greek myths illustrates this perfectly. Icarus was advised by Daedalus to fly somewhere between the sun and the sea, but he flew too close to the sun. Centuries later didn’t Goldilocks reject the porridge that was too hot and too cold for the one that was just right, she chose the middle way, thus following the virtuous life.

Now please don’t get me wrong I am not suggesting that we never rock the boat and must always live in the middle of everything. Remember balance is not a static thing. It is important to keep on stirring the porridge and to act out whatever our faith in life is. The key is to serve life and the harmony of all life in my view. The importance is to live humbly and to avoid the dangers of hubris that caused Icarus to burn and fall. We are here to fly, of course we are, just not too close to the sun.

The key to living in balance and harmony is about relationship with life, with each other, with ourselves and with God, another four modern day “Umeres” if you like.

Isn’t this what life is built upon, our relationships. I suspect above everything that this is the key. To ensure that our lives are in balance in these four aspects of our lives. That are relationship “Umeres” are inbalance. So how are your relationship “Umeres”? Are they imbalanced?

I need to think about the balance of these relationships as I live this life and my work. My work is vital to me, I know is some ways it never ends, you never stop being a minister. I am sure that the work we are all engaged in, whatever that might be is vital to all of us. That said our work should never be the measure of the value of who we are. Who we be in the world is what really matters. We are after all human beings and not merely human doings. It is not what we do but how we are, what we be, that speaks the most. We must never lose the sense of how vital we are to one another, as I was reminded last Friday as I spent time with people I love oh so dearly, as we helped one another in consolation sorrow, and joy. Isn’t this what love is all about?

So, let us never forget what we be, but let us do so with a lightness of spirit and lightness of being. For we need the lightness of being that will help us face up to the realities of life. That will help us to play at times, to sing and to dance, to laugh and to cry.

We need this lightness of being so that we can fulfil our task to do the work that needs to be done in our homes, our families, our communities and our word. To bring to life the healing that is needed.

Lightness of being is required to do the work that needs to be done in this our shared world.

We need lightness of being and to play sometimes in order to maintain our emotional, spiritual, mental and physical well-being, to balance our umeres, to be in good humour so that we can do the work that needs to be done.

I invite us to whistle while we work. Come play with me.

 

Amen