Exquisite Pain; Exquisite Risk; Exquisite Love

Mark Nepo wrote “In truth, the work of love is tending to small things completely. Such tending opens the mystery. By the large-heartedness of our smallest attention, we enter the ocean of love that carries us all.”

Or to quote the song “it aint what you do it’s the way that you do it and that’s what gets results.”

I am continuing my daily practice of sharing each morning, the little things I noticed the day before. I have done so every day ever since my friend left those gifts of milky bar chocolates on my doorstep in early December. It is wonderful to see how folk are responding, moving me deeply. Just a little thing that is having a positive impact on the lives of others. Concentric circles of love spreading out into the world; a world that at times appears devoid of it, depending on how you view it, the angle of your vision.

I was visited by an angel again this week. A beautiful gift of an orchid with a lovely card left on my doorstep. The wingless angel was offering me loving and encouraging words of support in the card and the beautiful gift of a plant. I cannot begin to tell you how much they have meant.

It has been a very difficult few weeks, since we lost dear Andrea. Last Friday we shared her funeral. I was deeply moved by how many came together in love as we honoured her life and grieved her lost. It was an honest service as shared her whole person and one filled with love and appreciation for loss of someone who meant so much to so many and whose life touched so many others.

I have felt weighed down by the grief I have had to hold, for so many, these last few weeks, if I am honest. I have felt vulnerable, my heart has felt broken open. Thank God for loving support from so many people. I cannot tell you how much the little gestures of kindness and love have meant to me. They have touched me oh so deeply. Such exquisite love.

It has felt like I have had a layer of skin removed at times these last few days and yet I have been functioning as normal. It is my responsibility to do so, for so many people. No doubt my own grief will only really begin properly after Andrea’s funeral.

I could not sleep on Monday night, I had just written Andrea’s service that day, or at least the first draft. It was very much in my body. I woke at 3am and couldn’t get back to sleep. At 4am I decided that instead of lying there I would go for a walk. It was beautiful walking in the dark, with bird song in my ears. I still felt quite vulnerable, like I had a layer of skin removed. As I walked I re-felt a visit to Chatsworth House many years ago. It is an incredible place, full of the fineries of life. I remembered what affected me the most about the visit though wasn’t the exquisite fineries, but something more disturbing. Right there in the heart of the house I came across the chapel area. I remember entering it and noticing towards the back of the chapel, and just in front of the alter, stood a dark looking figure, a statue. In one hand it seemed to be holding what looked like some kind of blanket or cloth and in the other some scissors. The figure intrigued me, so I looked a little more closely and searched for some information about it. I soon found it.

The sculpture is called “Saint Bartholomew, Exquisite Pain” it is a bronze figure standing two and half metres tall and is the creation of the controversial Turner Prize winning artist Damian Hirst. He says that the inspiration for the piece “comes from memories I have of woodcuts and etchings I remember seeing when I was younger. As Saint Batholomew was a martyr who was skinned alive, he was often used by artists and doctors to show the anatomy of the human body and this is also what I’ve done. He holds his own skin over his arm and he holds a scalpel and a pair of scissors in his hands so that his exposure and pain are seemingly self-inflicted. It’s beautiful yet tragic and like Saint Sebastian his face shows no pain. I added the scissors because I thought Edward Scissorhands was in a similar tragic yet difficult position – it has a feel of the rape of the innocents about it.”

Not a pleasant image to carry with you I know, but it was there, it was how I was feeling at that moment and this is why I remembered it.

As a kid I was always considered overly sensitive, that I needed toughening up, to develop another layer of skin. For a long time I attempted to do so and of course it only made things worse as I attempted to be something I am not, to harden my heart. The truth is that all I needed to do was to learn not take things so personally and to allow my sensitivity to become perhaps an asset. These days I attempt to defend my heart less. Today my sensitivity may well be my greatest asset, my treasure, it is certainly where my heart is, although not without a cost at times.

The ministry group I belong to have a little covenant saying that we like to say to one another when we meet.

“I honour your gods
I drink at your well
I bring an undefended heart to our meeting place
I have no cherished outcome
I will not negotiate by withholding
I am not subject to disappointment”

Oddly these words come from traditional Celtic wedding vows. Hardly romantic, but perhaps they symbolise something deeper.

It is the line “I bring an undefended heart to our meeting place” that resonates with me the most. It is the key I believe to living the spiritual life, to live with an undefended an open heart. This can be extremely painful and difficult at times, but I have learnt how vital it is for me. When I close down or put on my suit of armour life soon loses its flavour. I suppose that this is why I’ve always struggled with the sentiment of Ephesians Ch6 vv 10-18, the passage commonly known as “God’s Armour”. I remember visiting an Anglo Catholic church once where I saw an image based around this passage. I remember thinking to myself “gosh that’s the last thing I would want.”

For me religion and spirituality are not about being at war or in conflict and the God of my limited understanding does not want me armour plaited. I know these kinds of images appeal to many and certainly to some of my own traditional Christian friends. Not to me though and it does seem in conflict with the message I find in the Gospels.

It seems to me that to truly live spiritually alive is to live “with an unarmoured heart”, easier said than done I know. It is the treasure though and wherever my treasure is I have come to believe that this is also where my heart is.

Just imagine what it might be like to live with an unarmoured or an undefended heart. We all have defence mechanism, things we do to protect ourselves from being hurt. I am sure we are all familiar with the fright and flight mechanism. There is another reaction that perhaps we are less familiar with, it is certainly one that is less talked about. I have come to call this the freeze mechanism. It is something I am very familiar with, for I have utilised it throughout my life. Basically, when trouble strikes a frozen person appears to continue to function normally on the outside, but inside, emotionally at least, they shut down, they internally hibernate. It is something I have come to learn about myself in recent years and I see it others quite clearly at times, perhaps too clearly. When it happens to me my neck and shoulders become stiff, my throat dries up, the base of my skull seems to warm up, my skin tightens around my face, I tend to blow out a lot and it feels like someone has just dropped a great rock into the pit of my stomach. These are the moments when I build up my walls and try to keep life out. I was doing this at five years old, no child should be like that.

How many of us spend lifetime’s building these walls that we think protect us? When in fact all we succeed in doing is block ourselves off from the love present in life, a treasure of infinite value. A love that is truly exquisite.

To live with an open heart is to live intimately with all that is life. It is to experience life through our felt experience to not be ruled by what our minds project from our past, those disappointments and fears that have been built over a life time. To live with an unarmoured heart is about connecting with all that is there. Zen Buddhism talks about intimacy with 10,000 things, meaning intimacy with all things, all phenomena, that nothing is left out.

I have discovered that I am living openheartedly when I am not at war with life, when I am not arguing with reality and not avoiding intimacy, especially with my own thoughts and feelings. I can find myself arguing with reality at times, I suppose some would call this living in denial, but thankfully by living faithfully I once again see the truth and let loose the prison of my own skin and move onto a newer and fresher reality; as my heart opens up and I experience a new reality. I do not remain armoured or frozen for very long. Faith sets me free once again. I shed another layer of skin.

It takes courage to truly engage in what Mark Nepo has called “The Exquisite Risk”, to live the authentic life, to join in the courageous conversation. I invite you to come and join with me on this journey under the skin, to lose the skin that you’re imprisoned in. Let us take together the exquisite risk, let us live by exquisite love.

Please find below a devotion based

on the material in this "blogspot"

Did the tortoise really beat the hare? St Batholomew & 1662

The Hare and the Tortoise

Once upon a time there was a hare and a tortoise. The hare liked to run and jump and roll in the flowers. The tortoise stuck to the ground looking always to the front, never to the left, never to the right.

One day the tortoise began to argue with the hare.

"You have no direction. You are aimless. You are wasting your life," the tortoise said. The hare chewed on a dandelion to see what it was like.

"Whereas I on the other claw," the tortoise continued, "have purpose. I have drive. I have ambition." The hare began doing backward somersaults.

"And I can prove it!" the tortoise shouted, getting angry. "We will race through the wood to the river. The first one onto the bridge is the winner!"

And so that's how the race began. All the other animals gathered to watch and the crow, who was a bird and could fly, agreed to be the invigilator. When all was ready the squirrel opened a nut as a starting signal.

"Crack!" The race was on! The hare was into the wood in a couple of bounds. The tortoise moved slowly forward looking always to the front, never to the left, never to the right.

The hare ran halfway through the wood. Then the hare stopped to watch a cobweb dancing in a patch of sunlight. The sound of music drifted by on the breeze. The hare hopped off to investigate. The hare loved music. Music always reminded the hare of food. The hare began looking for some baby grass shoots to nibble. The tortoise continued, always looking to the front, never to the left, never to the right.

The hare found an old, hollow log covered in toadstools. It made a great hide away and for a while the hare hid in it imagining the fox was outside. After that it felt good to jump and stretch, stretch and jump, and jump some more.

The tortoise plodded on looking straight ahead. To the left there was a wild raspberry bush so heavy with fruit that its top was brushing the ground. To the right a fledgling fell from its nest to lie helpless caught in some undergrowth. The tortoise noticed neither.

After the jumping and stretching the hare felt hot and thirsty. So the hare ran to the river and had a drink. Then finding a shady spot the hare settled down for a nap.

The tortoise left the wood and neared the bridge, looking never to the left and never to the right. The tortoise reached the bridge, looking never to the left and never to the right. The hare woke up. The tortoise crawled onto the bridge, triumphant. The crow reported to the animals at the starting line that the tortoise had won. Some of them cheered and then they all went about their business.

When it got dark and there was no one to see the hare as he climbed up carefully from under the bridge and went home. The moon was very beautiful.

Source www.wisehat.com

Now while it is certainly true that the tortoise won the race did he gain the most from the experience? Did he give most to the experience? Sometimes it’s nice to turn truth upside down and to look at things from an entirely different angle. I'm a great believer in uncommon sense as opposed to common sense. I'm a great believer in seeking truth rather than just accepting what I am told is true, without question...

I recently enjoyed a trip to Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. It is an incredible place, full of the fineries of life. In the middle of my meanderings around the vast rooms I entered the chapel area. Towards the back of the chapel and just in front of the alter stood a dark looking figure, a statue. In one hand it seemed to be holding what looked like some kind of blanket or cloth and a in the other some scissors. The figure intrigued me, so I looked a little more closely and searched for some information about it. I soon found it.

The sculpture is called “Saint Bartholomew, Exquisite Pain” it is a bronze figure standing two and half metres tall and is the creation of the controversial Turner prize winning artist Damian Hirst. He says that the inspiration for the piece “comes from memories I have of woodcuts and etchings I remember seeing when I was younger. As Saint Batholomew was a martyr who was skinned alive, he was often used by artists and doctors to show the anatomy of the human body and this is also what I’ve done. He holds his own skin over his arm and he holds a scalpel and a pair of scissors in his hands so that his exposure and pain are seemingly self-inflicted. It’s beautiful yet tragic and like Saint Sebastian his face shows no pain. I added the scissors because I thought Edward Scissorhands was in a similar tragic yet difficult position – it has a feel of the rape of the innocents about it.”

The 24^th of August is St Batholomew’s Day. On this day in 1572 there was a terrible massacre of defenceless Protestants in France. This became known as “Black Batholomew’s Day”. The Great ejection of 1662 is also sometimes referred to by the same name. Unitarians and other “dissenters” are currently commemorating the 350^th anniversary of this event. It was really the starting point of denominational non-conformity in England, from which the Unitarian and Free Christian tradition, to which I have chosen to belong, has developed. Next Saturday in Knutsford we Unitarians, from the Manchester District Association, will be re-enacting the events of 1662.

On St Bartholomew’s day 1662 The Church of England was reconstituted under the Act of Uniformity. This meant that every clergyman in the land would be expelled from his charge if he did not declare assent to everything contained in the revised Book of Common Prayer. Also anyone who had not obtained Episcopal ordination during the period of the Commonwealth was commanded to obtain an oath of canonical obedience. Many refused and as a result 2000 clergy were expelled from the church.

St Batholomew’s Day 1662 is regarded as the “Genesis” of English descent and it is from this refusal to subscribe to the book of common prayer that the seeds for the Unitarian denomination were sown. I believe that this principle of non-subscription is the central characteristic of the free religious tradition to which I have chosen to belong. To use advertising speak, it is our unique selling point. There is no requirement to subscribe to any pre-determined beliefs and practices to be a member of a Unitarian congregation. Each individual follows the dictates of their conscience in matters of faith.

Now I’m not here give a history lecture, this is not the purpose of this blog. That said it is important to understand the “rock from which we were hewn”. The key to the Unitarian religious path is freedom, freedom to believe as one's conscience dictates, but to do so in community with others who may see things differently. The seat of authority, in terms of religious belief lies within the individual’s conscience and not from other human created authorities. It is always worth remembering that all religions, just as all nation states, are human created. No one set of people are chosen above any others, although many have claimed to be.

I love the re-telling of the famous hare and tortoise tale by Aesop. Now the original moral of the story is “Slow and steady wins the race”. Of course in this re-telling the tortoise obviously still wins the race. He never once takes his eye off the goal he just keeps on taking one step after another without once looking to the left and the right. He reaches his destination well before the Hare does. Actually we are not told if the hare ever reached his destination. He receives a little applause and then everyone just gets on with their business. As somebody once said “Today’s headlines are tomorrow’s fish and chip paper”.

Now while I believe that there is great wisdom in Aesop’s original fable, there is also some wonderful truth to be revealed in this re-telling. The tortoise never once wavers from what he knows to be true; his gaze never deviates; he sees nothing but the finishing line, he keeps his eyes firmly set on his goal on the final destination. Is this the only way to live? Surely by always looking straight ahead we miss out on so much of the beauty and wisdom that is on offer.

It’s the same with truth I believe. How many folk are absolutely fixated on what they believe is true. So much so that they never look to the left or the right and take in what they are surrounded by, for the fear that it might deviate them from their path. I am always wary of absolutist truth claims, mainly because they lack humility. Sadly absolutism seems to be on the increase. We see it amongst the religious and we see it amongst the secular. The voices of intolerance do seem to be getting louder and louder.

The religiously inclined who believe that they have a direct link to God and know not only what God’s will for them is, but also what it is for anyone else appear to me to be suffering from arrogance, from hubris. Who has the right to say that they are chosen above anyone else, come off it?

Sceptics are no better. To belittle someone’s genuine faith by calling it a superstition or merely a crutch is disrespectful. It certainly does not honour their humanity. No one can ever truly know what it is to have walked in another’s shoes, to have lived their life, to have experienced what they have experienced, or to have seen what they have seen. It seems to me that the absolutists whether secular or religious are like the tortoise and are too fixated on their truth, so much so that they cannot appreciate the beauty of the truth that so many others are uncovering and experiencing, while they just stare, half blindly, ahead.

The question I need to keep on asking myself and I think everyone needs to keep on asking themselves is “are we tortoises or are we hares?”

I believe that the faith tradition that I serve is more like the hare. It is a faith that is open and is therefore fed by all the senses, including the sixth one. It is an ever evolving tradition. It is rooted in Liberal Christianity, inspired by the life and teachings of Jesus. The chalice symbol exemplifies this perfectly. It is a kind of cross, but an evolving one with the flames reaching out much further to a place way beyond any human imagination. So while it is rooted in the Liberal Christian tradition it has evolved beyond this starting point to embrace truth from a myriad of sources. That flame burning in the cup of love, the cup of sacrifice is deeply symbolic of the roots from which it has grown or from the rock from which it was hewn. The flames seem to symbolise something more too, something eternal, something way beyond human created earth bound limits, religious or secular.

It is said that we shall know the truth and that the truth will set us free. If this is true then surely it is everyone's task to seek that truth and to share that truth and set one another free. Our vision should never be limited by what is directly in front of us. Why you may well ask? Well because we will miss out on so much if it is. We will not see the whole truth, so how on earth could we then hope to be free?

Did the tortoise really win that race?