What is your question? Maybe by asking it one another we can live our way in answers

A friend recently asked me a tricky question. He asked me how he should answer a difficult question posed by his son. His son wanted to know what happens to us when we die. A difficult question to answer, an impossible one perhaps. One I cannot answer honestly. I think it is important not to just to pretend that you can answer a question, if you cannot do so honesty. Sometimes silence is the only truly honest answer.

It brought to my mind the rather wonderful poem “The Afterlife” by Billy Collins that was shared at both Angela Fowler’s funeral and the scattering of her ashes last week. Here it is:

“The Afterlife” by Billy Collins

While you are preparing for sleep, brushing your teeth,
or riffling through a magazine in bed,
the dead of the day are setting out on their journey.

They’re moving off in all imaginable directions,
each according to his own private belief,
and this is the secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal:
that everyone is right, as it turns out.
you go to the place you always thought you would go,
The place you kept lit in an alcove in your head.

Some are being shot into a funnel of flashing colours
into a zone of light, white as a January sun.
Others are standing naked before a forbidding judge who sits
with a golden ladder on one side, a coal chute on the other.

Some have already joined the celestial choir
and are singing as if they have been doing this forever,
while the less inventive find themselves stuck
in a big air conditioned room full of food and chorus girls.

Some are approaching the apartment of the female God,
a woman in her forties with short wiry hair
and glasses hanging from her neck by a string.
With one eye she regards the dead through a hole in her door.

There are those who are squeezing into the bodies
of animals–eagles and leopards–and one trying on
the skin of a monkey like a tight suit,
ready to begin another life in a more simple key,

while others float off into some benign vagueness,
little units of energy heading for the ultimate elsewhere.

There are even a few classicists being led to an underworld
by a mythological creature with a beard and hooves.
He will bring them to the mouth of the furious cave
guarded over by Edith Hamilton and her three-headed dog.

The rest just lie on their backs in their coffins
wishing they could return so they could learn Italian
or see the pyramids, or play some golf in a light rain.
They wish they could wake in the morning like you
and stand at a window examining the winter trees,
every branch traced with the ghost writing of snow.

(And some just smile, forever on)

The honest answer to my friends son is I don’t know. My honest answer is that I prefer to focus on this life and learning to live fully alive before I die. I can come to answers to the question how should we love, but I will pretend to have answers to questions I do not have. Silence is sometimes the only answer. Or perhaps more honestly, I don’t know.

This brings to mind a story I once heard about a medieval saint. Every day, people came to ask the saint questions about life, the world, faith, the heart, the path, politics, and more.

One person came and asked a question about the law. The saint simply answered, “I don’t know.” Another had a philosophical question. The saint, again answered, “I don’t know.” All in all, 29 people came and asked questions. To each and every one the saint answered, “I don’t know.” It was when the 30th person asked a question that the saint said: “Oh, I have something to answer about this one.”

One out of 30. The rest of the time, the saint realized that silence was an improvement over words.

Now I don’t think this would work in our age, “when I don’t know” seems an unacceptable answer. Certainly not for public, figures, politicians etc. A humble honest I don’t know seems to be unacceptable in our time and place. There seems little room for humility in our modern age.

“I don’t know” is surely the starting to seeking answers to any questions. “I don’t know” and maybe we could begin to explore together, perhaps more so. It wouldn’t work the public spear though sadly. It might not work for ministers of religions or dads of 9 year olds, but it is honest and humble though. A humble honest “I don’t know” would opens us to the possibility though. But hey, what do I know?

Now as I said what happens when we die is not the question I am most interested in asking. My questions are more focused on how better to live in this life. I have found so often we end up asking the questions that others ask of us, instead of our own questions. In order to truly live alive in this world you have to begin with your own question, the one that comes to you, you need to begin there. This is beautifully portrayed in David Whyte’s beautiful poem “Start Close In”

“Start Close In” by David Whyte

Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way to begin
the conversation.

Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people’s questions,
don’t let them
smother something
simple.

To hear
another’s voice,
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
becomes an
intimate
private ear
that can
then
really listen
to another.

Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,
don’t take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

There are questions we ask ourselves, there are questions we ask one another and there are questions we ask of life. There are many questions and numerous ways to ask them. I suspect that in order to live fully alive begins with seeking our own questions.

The word question is a fascination in and of itself. It dates back to the thirteenth century meaning "philosophical or theological problem;" becoming an "utterance meant to elicit an answer or discussion," also as "a difficulty, a doubt," it is rooted in the Anglo-French questiun, Old French question"question, difficulty, problem; legal inquest, interrogation, torture," from Latin quaestionem(nominative quaestio) "a seeking, a questioning, inquiry, examining, judicial investigation,"

I find this fascinating. Even in its roots there are examples of good or bad questions. In one form it is meant to elicit an answer or discussion and another it suggests that a question is a form of interrogation or even torture.

It brought back memories of watching Monty Python as a child and the “Spanish Inquisition” sketch. “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.”

A question can be an invitation or it can become some form of interrogation. It matters how me ask a question and how we respond to any question asked. It matters in what spirit we ask, whether the question is of ourselves, of others and or of life.

There is an art to asking questions.

David Whyte has said that “there is an art to asking the beautiful question.”

The beautiful question is one that has the power to shift our thinking, to be the catalyst to inner change and open us to new possibilities aligned with our deepest longings and truth. As he explained in an interview with Krista Tippet for “On Being”

“The ability to ask beautiful questions, often in very unbeautiful moments, is one of the great disciplines of a human life. And a beautiful question starts to shape your identity as much by asking it, as it does by having it answered. You just have to keep asking. And before you know it, you will find yourself actually shaping a different life, meeting different people, finding conversations that are leading you in those directions that you wouldn’t even have seen before.”

The beautiful question ignites curiosity and encourages meaningful inquiry. As he has said “what would my life look like if I was to drink from a deeper source” and “what would it be like to start a conversation with myself that my future self would thank me for – what would it be like to become the saintly ancestor of my future happiness”.

Whyte’s point is that the conversations we are having with ourselves, both consciously and unconsciously, are the foundation of our future. By asking ourselves “beautiful questions” we can begin new inner conversations, expand what is possible, and open up new interior frontiers that align with our deepest purpose in the world.

e.e. cummings said “Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question."

In the Gospel accounts you find Jesus over and over engaging people with questions, he had a question for everyone he met. Such questions were an invitation to follow him. Blind Batimaeus being an example, the Samaritan woman at the well another, and the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Asking beautiful questions is not about opening a dialogue on equal terms. For example Jesus didn’t tell Bartimaeus what he thought he wanted he didn’t diagnose his problem for him, instead he asked’ Instead he asked, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’” It is a humble invitation, based around the principle of love and service.

What are the beautiful questions that you need to ask yourself, those you encounter and life itself? They will open you up to new and wonderful experiences. Be curious about and in an open way.

A beautiful question is open in nature. Parker J Palmer asked the following question “When was the last time someone asked you an honest, open question — one that invited you to reflect more deeply on your own life, asked by a person who did not want to advise you or “fix” you but “hear you into speech,” deeper and deeper speech?”

When was the last time you were invited by an open question, invited to quest with the other? An open question is a beautiful question and it is a wonderful gift that we can offer to others. This is beautifully exemplified in Denise Levertov’s poem “The Gift”

Just when you seem to yourself
nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of your hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes, perhaps
this gift is your answer.

An open question, the beautiful question is a wonderful gift we can offer to ourselves, to one another and to life. It is a beautiful invitation to journey on to something new, to quest together. Of course it is not enough to merely ask the question, to truly invite the other requires us to walk with them and truly listen to their answer, to join with them in their struggles with the answers they uncover.

It seems to me that a good, beautiful and open question is an invitation to the other to journey and quest together. In many ways this is how I beleive a good sermon ought to be. It is an invitation to go on a quest. It is not so much an offering of a definite answer, but instead it is an invitation to journey, to quest together with others. It is an aspect of the creative interchange whose impact may not be felt immediately and hopefully will lead to more beautiful questions along the way. As Fran Peavy has observed “A very powerful question may not have an answer at the moment it is asked…It will sit rattling in the mind for days or weeks as the person works on an answer. If the seed is planted, the answer will grow. Questions are alive.”

The key is to be alive, awake and involved with the beautiful and open questing and questions. The key is to keep on inviting one another to journey on the beautiful journey, with the beautiful questions.

We need not quest alone. We gain so much more than the sum of our individual parts if we join with fellow travelers. We may not discover the same answers, we may not even have the same questions, but if we invite one another to join in the beautiful quest we will uncover incredible treasures in our own lives, beautiful gifts. Together we can support one another joyfully as we seek together. We can become companions to one another as we share our experiences in the beautiful quest.

So what is your beautiful question of yourself, of this life. Asking and maybe together we can find a beautiful way to live our way into it and find a way to live more beautifully in this world. In so doing whatever follows will take care of itself.

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

To live our lives like water

I will begin with a poem by Denise Levertov called “The Fountain”

“The Fountain” by Levertov

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water

to solace the dryness at our hearts.

I have seen

the fountain springing out of the rock wall

and you drinking there. And I too

before your eyes

found footholds and climbed

to drink the cool water.

The woman of that place, shading her eyes,

frowned as she watched — but not because

she grudged the water,

only because she was waiting

to see we drank our fill and were

refreshed.

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.

That fountain is there among its scalloped

green and gray stones,

it is still there and always there

with its quiet song and strange power

to spring in us,

up and out through the rock.

I have witnessed and experienced the power and majesty of water several times these last few days. Last Saturday night, as I drove back from Yorkshire, it was siling it down. It was pretty frightening as I drove over the top of M62. It is the highest point of any motorway in England. On several occasions when the rains come down it can flood the motorway as it all pours down. Thankfully it wasn’t quite that bad on Saturday, at close to midnight. It was pretty scary though, as I turned on the fog lights came on we slowed to 30 mph. I also noticed another kind of precious water, that formed from love. There were a few tears as I reflected on the evening that had passed. I had been over for my mum and Greg’s 25th wedding anniversary. It was lovely to be with loved ones, this time on a happy occasion. We have been through a lot together. On the way to Hucklow on Sunday I got caught up in it again, twice in actual fact. Molly does not like rain, or being wet.

I have been thinking a lot about water these last few days. It’s awesome power, its majesty, its love too. Water, water everywhere.

Water the most basic element of life, both of the external life and our own bodies. We are made of water. We live on planet earth and yet truth be told if we look at picture of our world from space should we really call it planet earth, surely it is planet water. The surface of our planet is two thirds water. Physically we are mainly made up of water. It is said that we humans are basically cucumbers with anxiety.

We are like water. Yes, our physical form is solid and unbending but our psyche is not. It can be bent and shaped in all directions, much like water. The bending and the shaping does not really occur at the physical level, more the metaphysical one. People change, although physically they may well look the same.

Although our world is mainly water so many people live without this basic resource. I’m very aware how fortunate I am to live in a time and place where clean, hot, running water is readily available. A hundred years ago this was not necessarily the case in this country and it is not the case for so many people who live in many parts of the world today.

I remember being made aware of this during my trip to Transylvania several years ago. I noticed that there were wells in several of the yards of the homes I visited in Maros St George. Now as it happens these were no longer in use as the town now had a general water supply. That said this was not the case for the more remote village of Icland. The homes there were still supplied by well water. I wonder if this is still the case.

For many folk in many parts of the world the situation is far more desperate. How many lives perish each year because of the lack of clean or any water at all?

We cannot live without water, well not for more than one week they say. Just look at me on a Sunday morning, I’m utterly dependent on it. I am constantly having to replenish myself as worship progresses. I could quite easily consume a couple of pints in an hour as I engage with you in worship. What that is about is a mystery to me to, maybe it’s that living breathing spirit coming out of me? God knows!

With water being so central to life it is hardly surprising then that it would play such a large role in the many religious traditions of humanity. It is central to many of rituals of most faiths. It symbolises birth and re-birth and is seen not only as a sustaining substance but as a cleansing and therefore purifying one.

God or the Divine is often portrayed by water. This is hardly surprising when you think of its many qualities. It can bend into any shape and cover and over power all life. It is life giving and sustaining and can be immensely powerful. It brings to mind some words by Forrest Church on God. Forrest said “God is not God’s name. God is our name for that power that is greater than all and yet present in each.” Isn’t that what water is a power that is greater than all and yet present in each.

The spiritual, the religious life, is about living in a certain way. The question I suppose is what is the right way? Well maybe water or the qualities it possesses can teach us a way. Perhaps a way is to live like water; to live with the qualities that water has.

Taoism teaches that we ought to live like water. This does not mean that we blindly “go with the flow”. It is not about being passive. Taoism is about nonviolent action. What it actually does is invite us, as Parker J Palmer wrote: “to flow quietly but persistently around the obstacles that stand between us and the common good, wearing them down as a river erodes boulders.”

Nothing in the world is softer than water,
Yet nothing is better at overcoming the hard and strong.
This is because nothing can alter it.

That soft overcomes the hard
And gentle overcomes the aggressive
Is something that everybody knows
But none can do themselves.
Therefore the sages say:

The one who accepts the dirt of the state
Becomes its master.
The one who accepts its calamity
Becomes king of the world.

Again to quote Parker J Palmer “rightly understood, Taoism is an important corrective to the Western obsession with force, even violence, as the way to get things done — which often results in little more than an escalation of violence.”

The Martial Artist Bruce Lee offered similar advice when he said:

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You can put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You can put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

I believe that there is real wisdom in this. We can’t physically bend and shape much like water does, but I don’t think this is what is being meant here. I think this is talking about how we live. It’s our persona, our spirit, it is this that needs to bend and shape in order to be in harmony with all life and that eternal spirit that flows like water through all life.

It does bring to my mind a rather amusing story from my good old Nasrudin

A neighbor came running to Nasrudin's house with the news that the Hodja's mother-in-law had been washing her laundry in the river when she fell into the water and drowned. "And we cannot find her body," he continued. "We searched everywhere downstream for her, but all to no avail."

"You should have searched upstream," replied the Hodja. "My mother-in-law is so contrary that she would never go with the flow."

There is something in this formlessness and the bending and shaping that speaks to me of truth, particularly religious truth. In the introduction to “One River Many Wells” Matthew Fox states:

“Meister Eckhart says: ‘Divinity is an Underground river that no one can stop and no can dam up.” Fox himself says that “There is one underground river – but there are many wells into the river: an African well, a Taoist well, a Buddhist well, a Jewish well, a Muslim well, a goddess well, a Christian well, an aboriginal well. Many wells but one river. To go down a well is to practise a tradition, but we would make a grave mistake (an idolatrous one) if we confused the well itself with the flowing waters of the underground river. Many wells, one river. That is Deep Ecumenism.”

Again this teaches something of the qualities of water that we can learn form. We can access water as we can access truth but we can never get the full picture, the whole truth and how ever we access the truth is always limited. That said if we come together we can drink from one another’s sources and share the one universal river of life.

We are one we are interconnected as we are with all life.

Water is the basic element of life. We are mainly made from it and we depend upon it. It unites everything that lives on this earth and links us not only to one another but to all that is. It is a power that we can work with and therefore live successfully or against and therefore struggle with. If we remain rigid in all things we will struggle but if we can be moulded and bend ourselves to fit with life and that spirit that permeates all life we can be in harmony with everything.

Today I offer praise to water, that power that is greater than all and yet present in each.

Water the most basic ingredient of all life, may we absorb the lessons you offer us.

Bend us, shape us, form us in your image.

Below is a video devotion based on the material in this "Blogspot"

How Do We Ask The Beautiful Questions

“Are you well?”

Are you well? It’s a strange greeting I probably hear several times a week. I don’t like it, as a casual greeting, I never have. It is direct and closed, not an open and welcoming greeting. It seems far too specific a question for a casual and friendly greeting. It also suggests that there might be something wrong with you.

The other day I responded to the question in a less than appropriate way. I said, “Oh yes my umeres are in perfect balance, and you?” The person looked at me as if I was mad.

Yes trying to be clever doesn’t always go down well and my friend was obviously not in the same humour that I was.

By the way it’s not that I think a question as a greeting is inappropriate. I quite like to be asked “how are you?” or “how are you doing?” These feel like open and invitational questions. They are welcoming and not closed greetings. It matters how we greet one another and the questions that we ask of each other and life itself. That said it’s not just the questions that we ask, but the spirit in which they are asked too.

This all got me questioning my questions. My questions about life, myself and the folk I meet. The adventure began by exploring the word question itself.

I found something interesting in the etymology of the word “question” It dates back to the thirteenth century meaning "philosophical or theological problem;" becoming an "utterance meant to elicit an answer or discussion," also as "a difficulty, a doubt," it is rooted in the Anglo-French questiun, Old French question"question, difficulty, problem; legal inquest, interrogation, torture," from Latin quaestionem(nominative quaestio) "a seeking, a questioning, inquiry, examining, judicial investigation,"

This fascinated me. Even in its roots there are examples of good or bad questions. In one form it is meant to elicit an answer or discussion an open and inviting form of communication and in another it suggests that a question is a form of interrogation or even torture. There are good and bad questions, there always was.

It brought back memories of watching Monty Python as a child and the “Spanish Inquisition” sketch. “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.”

A question can be an invitation or it can become some form of interrogation. It matters how me ask a question and how we respond to any question asked. It matters in what spirit we ask, whether the question is of ourselves, of others and or of life.

There is an art to asking questions.

David Whyte has said that “there is an art to asking the beautiful question.”

The beautiful question is one that has the power to shift our thinking, to be the catalyst to inner change and open us to new possibilities aligned with our deepest longings and truth. As he explained in an interview with Krista Tippet for “On Being”

“The ability to ask beautiful questions, often in very unbeautiful moments, is one of the great disciplines of a human life. And a beautiful question starts to shape your identity as much by asking it, as it does by having it answered. You just have to keep asking. And before you know it, you will find yourself actually shaping a different life, meeting different people, finding conversations that are leading you in those directions that you wouldn’t even have seen before.”

The beautiful question ignites curiosity and encourages meaningful inquiry. As he has said “what would my life look like if I was to drink from a deeper source” and “what would it be like to start a conversation with myself that my future self would thank me for – what would it be like to become the saintly ancestor of my future happiness”.

Whyte’s point is that the conversations we are having with ourselves, both consciously and unconsciously, are the foundation of our future. By asking ourselves “beautiful questions” we can begin new inner conversations, expand what is possible, and open up new interior frontiers that align with our deepest purpose in the world.

This is beautifully portrayed in his poem “Working Together.”

Be taught now, among the trees and rocks,
how the discarded is woven into shelter,
learn the way things hidden and unspoken
slowly proclaim their voice in the world.
Find that far inward symmetry
to all outward appearances, apprentice
yourself to yourself, begin to welcome back
all you sent away, be a new annunciation,
make yourself a door through which
to be hospitable, even to the stranger in you.

David Whyte

e.e. cummings said “Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.”

In the Gospel accounts you find Jesus over and over engaging people with questions, he had a question for everyone he met. Such questions were an invitation to follow him. Blind Batimaeus being an example, the Samaritan woman at the well another, and the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Asking beautiful questions is about opening a dialogue that leads somewhere. For example Jesus didn’t tell Bartimaeus what he thought he wanted he didn’t diagnose his problem for him, instead he asked’ ‘What do you want me to do for you?’” It is a humble invitation, based around the principle of love and service.

What are the beautiful questions that you need to ask yourself, those you encounter and life itself? They will open you up to new and wonderful experiences.;Such questions will lead to a new curiousity,

A beautiful question is open in nature. Parker J Palmer asked the following question “When was the last time someone asked you an honest, open question — one that invited you to reflect more deeply on your own life, asked by a person who did not want to advise you or “fix” you but “hear you into speech,” deeper and deeper speech?”

When was the last time you were invited by an open question, invited to quest with the other? An open question is a a beautiful question and it is a wonderful gift that we can offer to others. This is beautifully exemplified in Denise Levertov’s poem “The Gift”

Just when you seem to yourself

nothing but a flimsy web

of questions, you are given

the questions of others to hold

in the emptiness of your hands,

songbird eggs that can still hatch

if you keep them warm,

butterflies opening and closing themselves

in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure

their scintillant fur, their dust.

You are given the questions of others

as if they were answers

to all you ask. Yes, perhaps

this gift is your answer.

An open question, the beautiful question is a wonderful gift we can offer to ourselves, to one another and to life. It is a beautiful invitation to journey on to something new, to quest together. Of course it is not enough to merely ask the question, to truly invite the other requires us to walk with them and truly listen to their answer, to join with them in their struggles with the answers they uncover.

It seems to me that a good, beautiful and open question is an invitation to the other to journey and quest together. In many ways this is what a good sermon ought to be. It is an invitation to go on a quest. It is not so much an offering of a definite answer, but instead it is an invitation to journey, to quest together with others. It is an aspect of the creative interchange whose impact may not be felt immediately and hopefully will lead to more beautiful questions along the way. As Fran Peavy has observed “A very powerful question may not have an answer at the moment it is asked…It will sit rattling in the mind for days or weeks as the person works on an answer. If the seed is planted, the answer will grow. Questions are alive.”

The key is to be alive, awake and involved with the beautiful and open questing and questions. The key is to keep on inviting one another to journey on the beautiful journey, with the beautiful questions.

We need not quest alone. We gain so much more than the sum of our individual parts if we join with fellow travelers. We may not discover the same answers, we may not even have the same questions, but if we invite one another to join in the beautiful quest we will uncover incredible treasures in our own lives,  these are often life's beautiful gifts. Together we can support one another joyfully as we seek together; we can become companions to one another as we share our experiences in the beautiful quest.

So I’m going to end with a question. What is your question? What is life asking you today? Would you like to share it with me and others, would you like yo engage with me and others as me seek our answers to the beautiful questions of life.

I invite you to join with me and each other on the beautiful quest. Lets adventure together on the beautiful quest. Let begin with our beautiful question,

The "Miracle" of Letting Go

I have a confession to make. Now please try not to be too shocked, but I have something to confess, which might trouble the most rational amongst you who read this "blogspot". I have to tell you this truth, that I didn’t know I believed in, but I do.

I believe in miracles…

Now don’t get me wrong I am not talking about the kind of miracles that are described in the Gospels , that are said to have taken place at Capernaum, by the Sea of Galilee, possibly the most beautiful place on earth. No, I’m talking about every day miracles that seem to come to life as we struggle and resist and then we surrender and something new emerges,

These thoughts came to me as I struggled with finding a way to begin this piece that you are reading. The hardest part of creating anything is how to begin and how to end. By the way it’s the same in life. The hardest thing is to begin something new, or perhaps, in actual fact, the hardest thing is to end something old.

Which one do you have the most trouble with, beginning something new or ending something old?

There was one thing that I experienced in Israel – Palestine that I’m glad I did, but am not sure that I would like to repeat. Can you guess what it was?

Well it was floating in the Dead Sea, the lowest inland spot on earth. By the way it is something that none of us will probably be unable to do in at some point in the future as it is disappearing.

So, I’m glad I did it, but it was not a very pleasant experience. That said as I have reflected on it, it has revealed something of myself to me.

Now I had a feeling I was not going to enjoy the experience as soon as I discovered I had to wear flip flops, something I do not like doing. Actually I’m not a great lover of beaches full stop. I love walking by the sea and staring out at it, but I do not like beaches very much.

Anyhow we booked into a resort and took the trailer down to the Dead Sea. Everyone else there seemed to be from eastern Europe and were having a wonderful time. I took off my robe and began to walk out into the warm water. It was a windy day and the water was choppy. The ground beneath my feet was rocky. I struggled and stumbled in unfamiliar footwear that began to slide off my feet. I stumbled over a couple of times and cut my foot slightly on the rocks. Not something to do in salty water. I had been careful not to shave that morning as I was warned not to have exposed cuts. So I kept on stumbling and struggling and not at all enjoying the experience and then I found myself up to my waist in warm salty water and I began to lay down, holding onto a post with one hand and one of the flip flops, that had fallen off, in the other. I let go of the post, I let go absolutely and let the salty water support me. Wow! What an amazing experience. There I was floating on the water, being moved around by the tide and the wind. I waved and laughed and just floated. It was lovely, if only for a few minutes. I eventually moved back to the post, struggled to put on the flip flop. I succeeded and then struggled to my feet and stumbled back to shore. I did fall over again, but made it back without too much trouble. I then washed all the salty water away and let Sue have her turn. She had similar struggles, but not with the flip flops.

It was a new and perhaps magical experience, but not one I am desperate to repeat. Now you may ask where was the miracle? Well the miracle was in the fact that I was able to let go, to let the water support me and to experience floating on water. Like so many folk, I do not let go, I do not surrender easily to anything. I’m getting better at it.

I was chatting about this with a friend the other day, about the sweet surrender that comes when we let go. As we talked they mentioned the following poem “The Avowel” by Denise Levertov

“The Avowal” by Denise Levertov

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.

Gosh if only it was that easy. If we could just lean back and let ourselves fall, believing that this love would sustain us. How often in life do we trust anyone or anything, how often do we trust life at all? How often do we feel we have to control everything and everyone just to get by? Do we trust life? Do we trust each other? Do we trust that the Creator Spirits deep embrace will hold us? Rarely I suspect. The miracle comes, I have come to believe, whenever we act in faith, play our own part in life and not try to control everybody else’s.

Now some people tell me that the struggle is a lack of faith. I do not agree at all. In many ways the struggle is the most faithful thing we ever do.

M. Scott Peck famously wrote in his seminal work “The Road Less Travelled” that “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

In some ways living faithfully, spiritually alive, is the most difficult thing we do. It is not easy, it is a struggle. Searching for truth is difficult, understanding what we are here to do is difficult, beginning something new is terrifying and letting go of something old even more so. The answers only really come in the struggle as we fight, and wrestle until we finally surrender and often it just comes, from nowhere, as if it were some kind of miracle.

And when the sweet surrender comes, the same conclusion always follows. A voice somewhere in the core of my being gently speaks to me in a voice less than a whisper, but somehow more than silence "Just keep on doing what you are doing Danny, all is well. Just keep on doing what you are doing." It is not a voice I hear but a deep knowing.

Whenever I think of such struggles with ourselves, with one another, with life, with God I think of Jacob and his struggles in Genesis ch 32.

In the passage Jacob is depicted wrestling with a mysterious man, who it turns out is probably God, although is not clear. As he wrestles with this being, he is grievously hurt, but he fights on. As the night ends and dawn breaks the being tries to leave but Jacob holds on and demands it blesses him as the price for ending the struggle. The being relents and blesses Jacob by giving him a new name “Israel” meaning “one who struggles with God” or as I once heard a friend say “one with whom God struggles.”

Don’t we all wrestle and struggle with ourselves, with others, with life, with God, or perhaps its others, life and God who struggles with us? So many times I have struggled to just experience what was on offer to me for fear of trying something new, or letting go of something old. I am not alone, I know.

What about you? Maybe, maybe not? You decide…

Sometimes we try too hard, sometimes we over think things instead of just allow ourselves to go with life. This seems to happen when we are caught up in storms and or troubles, we try to force it. I am certainly guilty of this, but again I know I am not alone.

I have witnessed a wonderful example of the miracles that can occur when we are able to stop fighting against ourselves, especially our own bodies. I have on a couple of occasions observed and spoken with Martin, an elderly member of one of the congregations I serve. Martin has for some time struggled with walking due to the onset of Parkinson’s disease. Well it seems that his family have discovered a new technique that has helped sufferers to improve their gate and thus reduce falling, the technique is simply to listen to music while moving, it seems that the rhythm helps the sufferer to walk. Who knew that ABBA, Martin's favourite, could bring about miracles. From what I have been told the technique stops the individual from focusing too much on their struggle to walk, instead they get caught up in the rhythm of the music and thus can walk more naturally, it sets them free. It reminded me of “King’s Speech” and how in the film the King was able to overcome his stammer by listening to music while he spoke. It also reminded me of being distracted while taking my driving test and how this allowed me to let go of fear and to simply drive the car. Somehow when we relax and just let things go we somehow find ourselves able to do things that over concentration stops us from doing.
Simple, ordinary, everyday miracles. Not the walking on water types, but the simple walking, speaking and driving kind.

Sometimes all you’ve got to do is surrender to the struggle and suddenly you find yourself able to do the things that you thought you could not.

It’s simple, but it sure aint easy.

Now comes the hard bit, how do I end this "blogspot"? Well the truth is I don’t know. How do I end when the journey continues on? So I thought I’d end with a piece on miracles by Walt Whitman. I will leave it with you and let you form your own conclusions. So please lean back and fall into these words.

“Poem of Perfect Miracles.” By Walt Whitman

REALISM is mine, my miracles,
Take all of the rest—take freely—I keep
but my own—I give only of them,
I offer them without end—I offer them to you
wherever your feet can carry you, or your
eyes reach.

Why! who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward
the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in
the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love—or sleep in
the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at the table at dinner with my mother,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of an
August forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,

Or birds—or the wonderfulness of insects in the
air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down—or of
stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new-
moon in May,
Or whether I go among those I like best, and that
like me best—mechanics, boatmen, farmers,
Or among the savans—or to the soiree—or to
the opera,
Or stand a long while looking at the movements
of machinery,
Or behold children at their sports,
Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or
the perfect old woman,
Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to
burial,
Or my own eyes and figure in the glass,
These, with the rest, one and all, are to me
miracles,
The whole referring—yet each distinct and in its
place.

To me, every hour of the light and dark is a
miracle,
Every inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is
spread with the same,

Every cubic foot of the interior swarms with the
same;
Every spear of grass—the frames, limbs, organs,
of men and women, and all that concerns
them,
All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion
of the waves—the ships, with men in them
—what stranger miracles are there?

A Fourth Anniversary Waltz

This blogspot is a collection of material that has inspired my blog writing this year. With each piece I will add a link to the blogspot it helped inspire. I am putting this together to mark the fourth anniversary of "I Dream of the Ocean"...I hope it speaks to you

This first piece ended the first "spot" of the year, titled Do not fear the future: It is unwritten

“Beginning again on the continuous Journey” by Marta I Valentin

By the grace of the Divine Power,
which is larger hearted than we can ever imagine
we are constantly given the opportunity
to begin again
as the signposts along the continuous journey
suggest twists and turns we had not brought into view,
for the focus was on the mountain just up ahead
beyond the ridge….

By the faith of the Divine Power
that lives through the trust of our human ability
we are constantly offered the challenge to test the waters,
not just smooth the inevitable ripples
to a satiny gloss finish as if
that were the goal in life,
losing all character by not realizing:
the swells are what make life
interesting, intriguing, and indescribable.

By the law of the Divine Power,
whose very core is compassion
for our earthly missteps on this journey,
we are constantly given an opening
to remember that we each have a place
in the kin-dom* of humanity,
and the knowledge”
and courage to begin again toward a faith-filled,
loving grace that is our birthright.

*from Ana Maria Isasi-Diaz

The second "spot" explored the importance of maintaining spiritual well-being Spiritual Well-Being

It ended with the following by John 0' Donohue

At the End of the Day: A Mirror of Questions" by John O’ Donohue

What dreams did I create last night?
Where did my eyes linger today?
Where was I blind?
Where was I hurt without anyone noticing?
What did I learn today?
What did I read?
What new thoughts visited me?
What differences did I notice in those closest to me?
Whom did I neglect?
Where did I neglect myself?
What did I begin today that might endure?
How were my conversations?
What did I do today for the poor and the excluded?
Did I remember the dead today?
Where could I have exposed myself to the risk of something different?
Where did I allow myself to receive love?
With whom today did I feel most myself?
What reached me today? How deeply did it imprint?
Who saw me today?
What visitations had I from the past and from the future?
What did I avoid today?
From the evidence – why was I given this day?

The following "spot" is titled There are tears of laughter too

The following helped inspire it...

“Tears” by Frederick Buechner

They say that whenever the great Protestant theologian Paul Tillich went to the beach, he would pile up a mound of sand and sit on it gazing out at the ocean with tears running down his cheeks. One wonders what there was about it that moved him so.

The beauty and the power of it? The inexpressible mystery of it? The futility of all those waves endlessly flowing in and ebbing out again? The sense that it was out of the ocean that life originally came and that when life finally ends, it is the ocean that will still remain? Who knows? . . .

Maybe it was when he looked at the ocean that he caught a glimpse of the One he was praying to. Maybe what made him weep was how vast and overwhelming it was and yet at the same time as near as the breath of it in his nostrils, as salty as his own tears.

“Create Laughter Memories” by Donald Altman

Start a laughter memory journal to record your laughter memories. Write down your laughter memory at the end of the day or when the memory is fresh. Having these stories will help prime your laughter pump when you need a lift.

Here are several suggestions for locating laughter memories. Share funny articles or comic strips with others who like to laugh. You can also seek out "laughter yoga" clubs, where movement and laughter are combined to create daily, communal laughter memories. Another useful way to create a laughter memory is to simply recall a hilarious film or TV show. Make a list of your top-five funny films and watch them again. You can also combine a problem you are experiencing with laughter. By doing this, you are integrating two apparent opposites and creating an entirely new mind-body feeling state. Since no situation is completely bad, this laughter memory can help you develop a broader and more humorous perspective on almost anything.

At the end of the week, look over your journal and review your laughter memories.

The next went by the title Somebody To Lean On

And was inspired in some way by the following...

“Telling Secrets” by Frederick Buechner

“Trust”

I remember sitting parked by the roadside once, terribly depressed and afraid about my daughter's illness and what was going on in our family, when out of nowhere a car came along down the highway with a license plate that bore on it the one word out of all the words in the dictionary that I needed most to see exactly then. The word was TRUST. What do you call a moment like that? Something to laugh off as the kind of joke life plays on us every once in a while? The word of God? I am willing to believe that maybe it was something of both, but for me it was an epiphany. The owner of the car turned out to be, as I'd suspected, a trust officer in a bank, and not long ago, having read an account I wrote of the incident somewhere, he found out where I lived and one afternoon brought me the license plate itself, which sits propped up on a bookshelf in my house to this day. It is rusty around the edges and a little battered, and it is also as holy a relic as I have ever seen.

This "spot" explores the idea of looking for people who don't so much think alike, but do love alike. It goes by the title Looking for like hearted people

The following are pieces that helped inspire it...

“Love” Stephen Lingwood from “The Unitarian Life: Voices from the Past and Present

Freedom, reason, tolerance and pluralism aren’t enough, not on their own. We need a message to give to people, good News to preach. What good News can Unitarians give to the world? Just this: Love. A Holy Love that transforms, that is powerful and prophetic and justice-seeking. This message has always been at the heart of our faith: from Francis David, who said “you need not think alike to love alike”, to the Universalists who knew that nothing will ever separate anyone from the love of God, even to today when Unitarians work to support the rights of gay couples because we know that love is always a blessing, regardless of gender.

From "Bringing God Home: A Traveler's Guide" by Forrest Church

"Universalism is an exacting gospel. Taken seriously, no theology is more

challenging-morally, spiritually, or intellectually: to love your enemy as yourself; to see your tears in another's eyes; to respect and even embrace otherness, rather than merely to tolerate or, even worse, dismiss it. None of this comes naturally to us. We are weaned on the rational presumption that if two people disagree, only one can be right. This works better in mathematics than it does in theology; Universalism reminds us of that. Yet even to approximate the Universalist ideal remains devilishly difficult in actual practice. Given the natural human tendency toward division, Universalists run the constant temptation to backslide in their faith. One can lapse and become a bad or lazy Universalist as effortlessly as others become ice-cream social Presbyterians or nominal Catholics."

This "spot" has been central to my whole thinking and feeling for the last few weeks and months. It comes from the line spoken by Jesus on the "Sermon on the Mount"...The words are "You are the light of the world" The whole "spot" can be found here You are the light of the world

Matthew 5 vv 3-10

3 ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
5 ‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
6 ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
7 ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
8 ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9 ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
10 ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 ‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely* on my account. 12Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
13 ‘You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
14 ‘You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden.15No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

This "spot" explores belonging, asking who or what we belong too Belonging: Be-Your-Longing 


The following helped to inspire it...

“The Trap of False Belonging” from Anam Cara by John O’Donohue

The heart of the matter: You should never belong fully to something that is outside yourself. It is very important to find a balance in your belonging. You should never belong totally to any cause or system. People frequently need to belong to an external system because they are afraid to belong to their own lives. If your soul is awakened, then you realize that this is the house of your real belonging. Your longing is safe there. Belonging is relating to longing. If you hyphenate belonging, it yields a lovely axiom for spiritual growth: Be-Your-Longing. Longing is a precious instinct in the soul. Where you belong should always be worthy of your dignity. You should belong first in your own interiority. If you belong there, and if you are in rhythm with yourself and connected to that deep, unique source within, then you will never be vulnerable when your outside belonging is qualified, relativized, or taken away. You will still be able to stand on your own ground, the ground of your soul, where you are not a tenant, where you are at home. Your interiority is the ground from which nobody can distance, exclude or exile you. This is your treasure. As the New Testament says, where your treasure is, there is your heart also.

This "spot" explored perfectionism and imperfectionsism Imperfecting Perfection

The story taken from the vault of Mulla Nasruddin helped inspire the "spot"

One afternoon, Nasruddin and his friend were sitting in a cafe, drinking tea, and talking about life and love. “How come you never got married, Nasruddin?” asked his friend at one point. “Well,” said Nasruddin, “to tell you the truth, I spent my youth looking for the perfect woman. In Cairo, I met a beautiful and intelligent woman, with eyes like dark olives, but she was unkind. Then in Baghdad, I met a woman who was a wonderful and generous soul, but we had no interests in common. One woman after another would seem just right, but there would always be something missing. Then one day, I met her. She was beautiful, intelligent, generous and kind. We had everything in common. In fact she was perfect.” “Well,” said Nasruddin’s friend, “what happened? Why didn’t you marry her?” Nasruddin sipped his tea reflectively. “Well,” he replied, “it’s a sad thing. Seems she was looking for the perfect man.”

This blogspot explore humility and humanity and the importance of being grounded in reality Humility: Grounded in our Common Humanity

The following by David Whyte helped inspire the "spot"

“Ground” by David Whyte

Ground is what lies beneath our feet. It is the place where we already stand; a state of recognition, the place or the circumstances to which we belong whether we wish to or not. It is what holds and supports us, but also what we do not want to be true; it is what challenges us, physically or psychologically, irrespective of our hoped for needs. It is the living, underlying foundation that tells us what we are, where we are, what season we are in and what, no matter what we wish in the abstract, is about to happen in our body, in the world or in the conversation between the two.

To come to ground is to find a home in circumstances and in the very physical body we inhabit in the midst of those circumstances and above all to face the truth, no matter how difficult that truth may be; to come to ground is to begin the courageous conversation, to step into difficulty and by taking that first step, begin the movement through all difficulties, to find the support and foundation that has been beneath our feet all along: a place to step onto, a place on which to stand and a place from which to step.

This "spot" made the claim that we are all genius's that we each have the seed of genius within each and everyone of us and that it is our task to bring that to life Genius: Nurturing the Kin-dom of Love

The following helped inspire the "spot"

Matthew Ch 13 vv 31-32

31 He put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; 32it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.’

Matthew Ch 17 v 20

20He said to them, ‘Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a*mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there”, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.’

“On the Parable of the Mustard Seed” by Denise Levertov

Who ever saw the mustard-plant,
wayside weed or tended crop,
grow tall as a shrub, let alone a tree, a treeful
of shade and nests and songs?
Acres of yellow,
not a bird of the air in sight.

No, He who knew
the west wind brings
the rain, the south wind
thunder, who walked the field-paths
running His hand along wheatstems to glean
those intimate milky kernels, good
to break on the tongue,

was talking of miracle, the seed
within us, so small
we take it for worthless, a mustard-seed, dust,
nothing.
Glib generations mistake
the metaphor, not looking at fields and trees,
not noticing paradox. Mountains
remain unmoved.

Faith is rare, He must have been saying,
prodigious, unique—
one infinitesimal grain divided
like loaves and fishes,

as if from a mustard-seed
a great shade-tree grew. That rare,
that strange: the kingdom
a tree. The soul
a bird. A great concourse of birds
at home there, wings among yellow flowers.
The waiting
kingdom of faith, the seed
waiting to be sown.

This "spot" explore courage and how to live from our whole hearts Courage: Living Wholeheartedly 

The following by David Whyte helped inspire it

“Courage” by David Whyte

Courage is a word that tempts us to think outwardly, to run bravely against opposing fire, to do something under besieging circumstance, and perhaps, above all, to be seen to do it in public, to show courage; to be celebrated in story, rewarded with medals, given the accolade, but a look at its linguistic origins leads us in a more interior direction and toward its original template, the old Norman French, Coeur, or heart.

Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous, is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. To be courageous is to seat our feelings deeply in the body and in the world: to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist, with things we find we already care deeply about: with a person, a future, a possibility in society, or with an unknown that begs us on and always has begged us on. Whether we stay or whether we go - to be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made."

This "spot" explores memory and how memory brings the moment to life Memory: The Power of Not Only Now

The following, also by David Whyte, inspired it

“Memory” by David Whyte

"Memory is not just a then, recalled in a now, the past is never just the past, memory is a pulse passing through all created life, a wave form, a then continually becoming other thens, all the while creating a continual but almost untouchable now. But the guru’s urge to live only in the now misunderstands the multilayered inheritance of existence, where all epochs live and breathe in parallels. Whether it be the epochal moment initiated by the appearance of the first hydrogen atoms in the universe or a first glimpse of adulthood perceived in adolescence, memory passes through an individual human life like a building musical waveform, constantly maturing, increasingly virtuosic, often volatile, sometimes overpowering. Every human life holds the power of this immense inherited pulse, holds and then supercharges it, according to the way we inhabit our identities in the untouchable now. Memory is an invitation to the source of our life, to a fuller participation in the now, to a future about to happen, but ultimately to a frontier identity that holds them all at once. Memory makes the now fully inhabitable."

This final piece explore the beauty of Cherry Blossom and seeing the world as it really is Cherry Blossom: With Eyes Wide Open 

The following helped inspire the "spot"

Open Eyes by Victoria Safford

To see, simply to look and see, is an ethical act and intentional choice; to see, with open eyes, as a spiritual practice and thus risk, for it can open you to ways of knowing the world and loving it that will lead to inevitable consequences. The awakened eye, is a conscious eye, a willful eye, and brave, because to see things as they are, each in its own truth, will make you very vulnerable.

Think of yourself as a prism made of glass, reflecting everything exactly as it is, unable to exist dishonestly -- reflecting beauty where there is beauty, violence where there is violence, loveliness and unexpected joy but there is joy, violation where there is violation.

Here's the front page of the paper; here's that seedy, gossipy conflict at your job; here's a memory, unblurred by wishful thinking; here's a perfect afternoon in spring, and buds now on the trees, and blackbirds in the marsh. Here's the world, just as it is -- now look!

That kind of seeing is a choice, and it is sacred practice.

And then there is refraction -- taking into yourself, as a prism takes in light, the truths of what you see and hear and transforming it somehow, changing its direction, acting on it, rendering it somehow, anew. That again is holy work. The spring day, received, comes out again as gratitude (dispersed into a spectrum); a sorrow, yours or someone else's, fully realized and received, not denied, not covered up, not justified or explained away, ignored -- some sorrow clearly, previously seen is taken in, absorbed and felt, and reemerges, bent now into compassion. To see clearly is an act of will and conscience. It will make you very vulnerable. It is persistent, holy, world transforming work.

A few of my favourite things

This blogspot is a selection of material, written by others that I have shared during worship this year...

The opening poem by Al Young maybe my favourite thing I've come across this year. He wrote for a woman he worked along side who was struggling with grief following the death of her mother. She explained that although her mother had died six months previously she had only just begun to grieve properly as her and her mother ever really got on. Her grief was as much for the their lack of relationship as for her mother's death. Grief you see comes in many forms. It is rarely simple and often complex as all human love is complex. So all wrote the following beautiful poem.

“How the Rainbow Works”

(for Jean Cook, on learning
of her mother's death)

Mostly we occupy ocular zones, clinging

only to what we think we can see.
We can't see wind or waves of thought,
electrical fields or atoms dancing;
only what they do or make us believe.

Look on all of life as color -
vibratile movement, heart-centered,
from invisibility to the merely visible.
Never mind what happens when one of us dies.
Where were you before you even get born?
Where am I and all the unseeable souls
we love at this moment, or loathed
before birth? Where are we right now?

Everything that ever happened either
never did or always will with variations.
Let's put it another way: Nothing ever
happened that wasn't dreamed, that wasn't
sketched from the start with artful surprises.
Think of the dreamer as God, a painter,
a ham, to be sure, but a divine old master
whose medium is light and who sidesteps
tedium by leaving room both inside and outside
this picture for subjects and scenery to wing it.

Look on death as living color too: the dyeing
of fabric, submersion into a temporary sea,
a spectruming beyond the reach of sensual
range which, like time, is chained to change;
the strange notion that everything we've
ever done or been up until now is past
history, is gone away, is bleached, bereft,
perfect, leaving the scene clean to freshen
with pigment and space and leftover light.

 by Al Young

The following pieces explore grace from a variety of perspectives. What is Grace this phenomena that strikes just when we need it the most>

From “Shaking the Foundations” by Paul Tillich

"

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when year, after year, the longed for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsion reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness. If that happens to us, we experience grace. After such an experience, we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed."

The following is by a dear friend and colleague who is serious ill and who I am holding in my heart and soul right now...She certainly hits the spot beautifully as she talks here about Grace

“Grace” by Rev Jane Barraclough

“I once attended a course on Dying Well, given by a friend who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and had become a Buddhist monk. I believed he might have something to teach me; and you never know when these lessons might come in handy.

I can’t remember anything of what he said. What I remember was a young woman who had come to Brighton from London, especially for the course. She was Afro-Caribbean and I would guess her religious background was some form of Pentecostal Christianity. Her father was dying and she said something that has stayed with me all these years. She said, “I would like my father to die in a state of grace.” I didn’t know what she meant then, and it has taken me a long time to come to some sort of realisation.

Grace is a gift. It comes from outside ourselves. It has nothing to do with how virtuous we are, or aren’t. We cannot demand it; there are no special prayers.

Last summer we were on a family ramble, complicated somewhat by the fact that the natural pace of walking varies a great deal. At one point I was waiting, with my mother, for my father and his grandson. My father, using a tall stick, walked hand in hand with the little boy, in no hurry to get anywhere. By the distant snatches of conversation, they were discussing the miraculous inner workings of the combustion engine. I looked at my mother and she murmured, “Yes it is difficult to tell who is leading whom.”

In that moment, I knew we were blessed. I was blessed to see the peace my parents had found, with their grandchildren, in their old age. It was a moment of grace. Grace is around us all the time, the moments of grace come when we know it, when we remember that everything comes to us as a gift.

So what was it the young woman wanted for her father, as he was dying? She wanted him to know that he was loved by God, knowing that he was blessed.

To experience grace is not about virtue, it is not about any sense of having worked for the blessings that we have. Nor is it about being abjectly humble, as some religious traditions would have you believe it is. Augustine argued that we are miserable sinners that we could only be saved by the intervention of God, which he called grace. I think he missed the point of grace because he went on determined to be deserving all his life, in a rather life-denying way. Whether we deserve it or not, has nothing to do with it.

The world is simply here for us as a gift. We can choose to receive the gift with gratitude or we can decide it is never enough for us, or we can decide that we receive what we receive in life because we somehow deserve it. The last has always been a favourite among those most privileged in society. Those with an overpowering sense of their own entitlement to all the good things in life are also often the most difficult to satisfy. Those who can live their lives in a state of gratitude are more likely to know when they have enough.

To experience grace we have to be open to the possibility of its existence. The winds of grace may always be blowing but we need to have our sails up if we are to make any headway.

The following is by the great Maya Angelou

“When Great Trees Fall"

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.”

Finally something that appears frivolous and humorous and yet makes a deep point.

“A Gratuitous Duck” by Barbara Merritt

Maybe I don’t get our much, but I have always heard the word gratuitous associated with “gratuitous sex and violence” in movies I don’t want to see. Other negative connotations include gratuitous humiliation. The definition I always assumed was that gratuitous meant unnecessary, arbitrary, indefensible, senseless, and unjustifiable. Until I purchased a gratuitous duck. On my day off, a friend and I were visiting a an art gallery. I was not intending to buy a duck. I did not need a duck. I was not looking for a duck or any other sculptures of farmyard animals.

But there that duck was, with soulful eyes. Standing a full sixteen-inches tall, made with a hand-carved wooden body, a metal neck and head – a handsome piece of primitive folk art. While it clearly belonged in the mallard family, the colours were a beautiful blend of gold and green. I was surprised to find out that the duck was not very expensive. Completely on impulse, caught up in some whimsy I did not understand, i purchased said duck, intending to place it in the foyer of our home. But this duck gives me such delight that it is now sitting in our living room. Every time I see it I smile.

It has been hard to explain to my family why i felt the need to purchase this rather large, multi-coloured, aquatic bird. And then someone told me it was a “gratuitous duck.” I assumed initially that this was an insult, a way of saying that the purchase had been frivolous and indulgent. But no. I was introduced to the other meanings of the gratuitous.

Gratuitous comes from the same root as gift, pleasing, gratitude and grace. Latin: gratis. Something that comes to us as a free gift, a spontaneous and unmerited, unlooked for and unbidden gift is a “gratuitous gift.” Theologically, grace is often referred to as “gratuitous grace.”

I had not earned this duck, hoped for it, or searched for it. I wasn’t even conscious that I wanted it, let alone needed it. Yet there it sits, in a central place of my living room, offering a blessing that partly has to do with beauty and partly to do with something more mysterious.

The universe offers many uninvited gifts. Some seem unnecessarily harsh and capricious. I’m never happy with such “gifts” – I resist them, resent them, wail against them, and fiercely wish they had not found their way to my address.

And then other gifts are sheer grace, absolutely gratuitous, in the best sense of the word. A smile from a stranger, the first warm day of spring, a flower coming up through an old icy snowdrift, an email from a long-lost friend, a word of encouragement from a colleague. I just need to focus on the truth that grace shows up in surprising ways.

I have a duck to prove it.

We often receive gifts on our birthdays. The following piece by Henri Nouwen speaks of the spiritual importance of birthdays

Henri Nouwen “Birthdays”

Birthdays are so important. On our birthdays we celebrate being alive. On our birthdays people can say to us, “Thank you for being!” Birthday presents are signs of our families’ and friends’ joy that we are part of their lives. Little children often look forward to their birthdays for months. Their birthdays are their big days, when they are the centre of attention and all their friends come to celebrate.
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We should never forget our birthdays or the birthdays of those who are close to us. Birthdays keep us childlike. They remind us that what is important is not what we do or accomplish, not what we have or who we know, but that we are, here and now. On birthdays let us be grateful for the gift of life.

The next piece is by one of my favourite writers he talks here of how vital the laughter is the a person spirituality. Sadly the spiritual life can sometime get a bit too serious and life is far too serious a business to be taken too seriously


“Laughter” by John O’Donohue

"I think that laughter is one of the really vital dimensions of the divine presence that has been totally neglected.

I often feel when the Divine One beholds us obsessed in our intricate maze of anxiety and planning and intentionality, that She can’t stop laughing.

It’s great for people, actually, to laugh, too. I love a sense of humour in a person. It’s one of my favorite things, because I think when somebody laughs, they break out of every system that they’re in.

There’s something really subversive in laughter and in the smile on the human face. It’s lovely and infectious to be in the company of someone who can smile deeply.

I think a smile comes from the soul. And I also love its transitive kind of nature—that if you’re in the presence of someone who has a happiness and a laughter about them, it’ll affect you and it’ll call that out in you as well.

Your body relaxes completely when you’re having fun. I think one of the things that religion has often prevented us from doing is having really great fun. To be here, in a way—despite the sadness and difficulty and awkwardness of individual identity—is to be permanently invited to the festival of great laughter."

But to get a little more serious once again. I think that following is one of the most beautifully moving poems I have ever read. It is by Denise Levertov

"The Fountain"

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water
to solace the dryness at our hearts.
I have seen

the fountain springing out of the rock wall
and you drinking there. And I too
before your eyes

found footholds and climbed
to drink the cool water.

The woman of that place, shading her eyes,
frowned as she watched — but not because
she grudged the water,

only because she was waiting
to see we drank our fill and were
refreshed.

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.
That fountain is there among its scalloped
green and gray stones,

it is still there and always there
with its quiet song and strange power
to spring in us,

up and out through the rock.

By Denise Levertov

I think that perhaps the holiest of all holy waters must be tears. I the following two pieces the first by Robert Walsh and second by Forrest Church captures this near perfectly...


“Tears”

Sometimes tears come to my eyes.

Is it about the war?

Is it from getting older?

Or is it just autumn?


I’m self conscious about it,

Afraid people will think I’m grieving,

Or that I’m a sentimental fool.

I guess they’d be right if they thought those things.

It happened when I had lunch with a friend I

Hadn’t seen in a long time.

It happened when I saw a bright orange maple tree

Outside my office window.

It happened when I saw a bride, whom I have known

Since she was six, kiss the groom.

It happened when one of my granddaughters

Held out her arms to me.


It happened when I heard a song about a lost dream.

It happened when I recalled a promise I had broken,

And a thank-you I had not spoken.

It happened when I thought of a friend

Who died in autumn.

It’s happening now, as I write these words.


I wipe the tears away

And go on as if everything is normal.

But it’s not normal, it’s intense, full of joy and sorrow,

And the joy and sorrow are together

In the same moments.


This is the life, and the world, I have been given

For this short times, this blink of an eye.


Thank you

by Robert Walsh

"...the ancient Hebrews honoured suffering, viewing it as a sign of a deeply felt experience, a symbol of their passion. I encountered an intimate expression of this on a recent visit to Israel.

The Israel Museum in Jerusalem contains a collection of tiny ceramic cups. These were sacramental vessels. People cried into them.

Your mother has just died. Someone you love has cancer. Your spouse has left you. You are struggling at work. More likely, you have simply broken down. You burst into tears. So you pick up your tear cup, put it under your eye, and weep into it. When you are finished weeping, you cap it and put it away again. It is a way to save your tears.

Why save them? Because they are precious. It doesn’t matter why we cried, your tears are precious, for they show that you care. A full cup of tears is proof that you have felt deeply, suffered, and survived. Their value is ratified by this simple parable from Jewish lore. When his student complained that he was suffering and so deeply confused that he could no longer pray and study, Rebbe Mendl of Kotzk asked him, “What if God prefers your tears to your studying?”

By Forrest Church

Tears are symbol of compassion and of course they are formed in the eyes. Of all the characteristics of Jesus it has always been his eyes or the way he looked at people that has stood. Whenever he looked on people he showed them love. He never gave a hard look. John O'Donohue seems to capture his eyes in the following poem

"The Eyes of Jesus,"

I Imagine the eyes of Jesus
Were harvest brown,
The light of their gazing
Suffused with the seasons:

The shadow of winter,
The mind of spring,
The blues of summer,
And amber of harvest.

A gaze that is perfect sister
To the kindness that dwells
In his beautiful hands.

The eyes of Jesus gaze on us,
Stirring in the heart's clay
The confidence of seasons
That never lose their way to harvest.

This gaze knows the signature
Of our heartbeat, the first glimmer
From the dawn that dreamed our minds,
The crevices where thoughts grow

long before the longing in the bone
Sends them towards the mind's eye,

The artistry of the emptiness
That knows to slow the hunger
Of outside things until they weave
Into the twilight side of the heart,

A gaze full of all that is still future
Looking out for us to glimpse
The jeweled light
in winter stone,

Quickening the eyes that look at us
To see through to where words are blind to say
what we would love,

Forever falling softly on our faces,
His gaze plies the soul with light,
Laying down a luminous layer

Beneath our brief and brittle days
Until the appointed dawn comes
Assured and harvest deft

To unravel the last black knot
And we are back home in the house
That we have never left.

By John O'Donohue

How we look at others is so important. Whether we give a hard look or whether we look with compassion can make all the difference to how we interact with the world. The following two pieces seem to catch this near perfectly,

I recently came across the following in Bill Darlison's wonderful book of short stories "Concentration and Compassion".

“The Dog in Hall of Mirrors”

"There once was a dog who wandered into a room filled with mirrors. The dog looked around, seeing what appeared to be lots of other dogs, growled and showed his teeth. When he saw the other dogs do the same, he got frightened and cowered. When he noticed the other dogs cowering, he once again growled and started barking. A similar reaction from the others made him cower and become very frightened once again. This continued over and over again until the dog finally fell over, dead from emotional and physical exhaustion.

I wonder what would have happened if the dog had, just once, wagged its tale?"

“Glad To See You!”

The drivers on the island of Dominca blow their horns a lot. I was there for a week and drove a rented car over truly terrible roads, and on the left side too. The roads are narrow mountain roads with no centre lines, no speed limits, and lots of curves.

The car rental guy explained. When they blow their horns, they may be warning whoever or whatever might be around the corner, but more often it’s in the nature of a greeting – they are just glad to see you. I think maybe they’re also glad to be alive, to have a destination ahead, and to have all four wheels on the narrow road, passing through the beauty of the rain forest and the misty mountains.

Soon I got into the spirit of it and began to give a little honk when I met another car. Eventually, I learned to wave at the other driver as I steered with one hand.

At first, I was suspicious of the friendliness of the Dominicans. I assumed they wanted something from me. I assumed they wanted to sell me something, or ask for a handout. Some of them did. But most were just, as the man said, glad to see me. After a while, I began to trust their essential goodwill and relax.

The “kingdom of God” is a mysterious idea to me. I’m not sure what it means. But if it came to be, I imagine as one of its characteristics that people would always be glad to see each other. They would react to the presence of another human being with joy and awe. They would smile and wave and maybe blow their horns or pluck their harps in greeting. Even if the person they met was a stranger, even one of another race or nationality or lifestyle, they would show with their greeting that they really believed that the other person had inherent worth and dignity”

by Robert Walsh


I love the following poem on joy by Annie Sexton

Welcome Morning

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry "hello there, Anne"
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,
dies young.

I couldn't end without a little more wisdom from Forrest Church. This is taken from "The Cathedral of the World: A Universalist Theology” from the chapter “The Search for Meaning"

“I live according to a few simple principles. One I call “nostalgia for the present” (embracing each day as it passes rather that ruing it after it’s gone). Another way you might put this is “looking forward to the present” (enjoying what you have as if in a state of anticipation rather than aching longingly for that which very likely will not be). By focusing one’s energy, to the extent that is possible, on the present, one is liberated from fears of the future and also liberated from regrets about the past. I have seen people in the last weeks of their lives live every minute more fully than they have before, because they recognise what most of us don’t in our daily living; that each moment is precious.

The opposite of wishful thinking (wishing for something you lack) is thoughtful wishing (thinking to wish for what you’ve got right now). What we have right now is this day with the wind blowing and mottled light on the mountains in this beautiful place, carrying on a conversation with another human being who is also going to die. It’s very precious. It’s a miracle that we’re even able to converse. We tend, I think, to take our lives for granted rather than receiving them daily as a gift. I would hope that each day I live I might, through some encounter, be born again to an awareness and appreciation for the gift, the mystery of being, the wonder and the miracle. Not the miracle out there, but the miracle in here.”