No Pain No Gain

“Tattoos!”

A man went to a tattooist to have a lion tattooed on his back. He’d always wanted a picture of a lion on his body, because he thought himself to be fierce and brave like a lion.

The tattooist hadn’t been working for long before the man shouted, “Ouch! You’re hurting me! Which part of the lion are you doing now?”

“I’m doing his tail,” said the tattoo artist.

“Well you’d better leave the tail off, I don’t want a lion with a tail.”

The tattoo artist continued, but not for long. No sooner had he felt a few more needle pricks than the man shouted again, “This is killing me! Which part of the lion are you doing now?”

“I’m just getting started on the mane,” replied the tattooist.

“don’t bother with the mane,” I don’t want a lion with a mane!”

The tattooist complied with the man’s wishes, and began work on another part of his back. Once again, after a few moments, the man shouted, almost weeping. “This is intolerable! I can’t bear the pain! Which bit of the lion are doing now?”

“I’m doing the belly.”

“Then stop doing the belly! I don’t want a lion with a belly!”

The tattoo artist put down his equipment. “You want a lion with no tail, no main, and no belly! Who could draw such a creature? Even God couldn’t do it! I think you should leave and come back when you are a bit braver.”

from "The Shortest Distance" by Bill Darlison

My personal trainer works me really hard. It is tough at times but I do stick at it no matter what. The results we are getting together are quite amazing. He told me recently that he had never worked with anyone so determined. I smiled at this. If there is one thing that has grown in me these last few years it is the capacity to stick at things no matter what. To me this is the essential ingredient of the faith I have found. The God of my understanding enables me to do things and stick at things no matter what. In the past this is the one thing that was probably lacking in my life. God doesn’t do it for me, God enables me to do what life asks of me. I have faith to stick at anything despite the pain and suffering involved, whether that be mental, emotional, physical or spiritual.

Well the other day he came to our session in some obvious pain and discomfort. He had recently had a new tattoo done, on his scalp. As he described the process, he had gone through, I found myself wincing at the pain of it all. It has only just begun as well. He will be going through even more pain before it is fully completed. I said to him “No pain, no gain” and he grinned knowingly and then spent the next hour putting me through a gruelling regime. As he did so and as I have continued my daily exercises that little mantra has kept on ringing in my ears. I am continuing to gain in health and fitness and flexibility day by day. I’ve even grown about an inch as my posture has improved and spine has straightened, something I never thought would be possible. The work we are doing is relieving me of some deep rooted pain and shame dating right back to childhood.

Facebook reminded me of a pain I went through last year. only the other day. It was right at the beginning of my weight loss journey. I used to spend a great deal of time in coffee shops. Often meeting and talking with people but also writing. I still do quite often but my habits have changed. Just over a year ago I would probably consume at least a dozen full fat Café Lattes a week. I used to drink an awful lot of milk and it was one of many contributing factors to my weight problem. Well a year ago I decided that I would, at least for a short time, give them up. I thought I’d go the whole hog and give up caffeine completely. Well I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for. The first few days were agony. It began with the headaches but then the pain spread to my whole lower body, the symptoms were very similar to a severe bout of flu as my lower back and upper legs were in agony. Historically the two areas of physical weakness and shame in my body. This lasted about five days but eventually subsided and I was soon reaping the benefits of becoming more energised and sleeping beautifully. I have stuck with being caffeine free and am loving it. Yes I had to go through pain to get there, but my word the results have been wonderful. Yes the gain was most certainly worth the pain.

I remember a few years ago, early in my ministry, a colleague telling that when they were a student a senior colleague had warned then to be careful not to reveal to much about themselves to the people they serve, especially when creating worship. I don’t know if they were attempting to subtly warn me about being too open. If they were I ignored them. I don’t think I could do this work without bringing my whole self into the worship I create. How can others relate to something unless you put human flesh on the words. I have not been afraid to show my pain and joy and struggle and confusion at times, to reveal all that I have gained and learned too. Hopefully this has not been in a self-indulgent way, but in an attempt to show to others that I am as human as they are and to encourage faith in them. If I can anyone can I am as human as the next person.

I don’t pour out my pain on the people I serve. Instead I have people to turn to to in my pain and confusion and joy and suffering. In fact in recent times I have noticed that I can do this more easily than perhaps in the past. I thank God for this. The worst kind of pain is the pain of loneliness and isolation. There are many blessings of ministry but one of its curses is the loneliness that can be experienced at times. This I know is caused by not owning and coming to terms with your own suffering.

These thoughts bring to mind some beautiful hard earned words of advice from Henri J. M. Nouwen in his beautiful book “The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey through Anguish to Freedom” written as he reflected on his various struggles. In his meditation “Own Your Pain” he wrote:

“The main question is “Do you own your pain?” As long as you do not own your pain—that is, integrate your pain into your way of being in the world—the danger exists that you will use the other to seek healing for yourself. When you speak to others about your pain without fully owning it, you expect something from them that they cannot give. As a result, you will feel frustrated, and those you wanted to help will feel confused, disappointed, or even further burdened….

…For you to be able to share your struggle as a service, it is also essential to have people to whom you can go with your own needs. You will always need safe people to whom you can pour out your heart. You will always need people who do not need you but who can receive you and give you back to yourself. You will always need people who can help you own your pain and claim your struggle.

Thus the core question in your ministry is, “Is my sharing of my struggle in the service of the one who seeks my help? This question can only be answered yes when you truly own your pain and expect nothing from those who seek your ministry.”

I believe that I can answer yes to this. I have learnt to own my pain.

No one can escape the pain of life. It is as much a part of living a full life as joy. In trying to avoid pain all we ever succeed in doing is cutting ourselves off from the joy that accompanies the pain of life. In fact there are times in life when we must walk faithfully through the pain to fully experience the joy. . Herman Hesse saw the truth in this when he said:

“Love your suffering. Do not resist it; do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.”

It is this aversion that causes the suffering within the suffering. It is this that causes much of what so many people describe as the loneliness of modern life. In trying to suppress our pain all we succeed in doing is to cut ourselves off from the joy of life.

While life does involve pain and suffering, it does not have to involve “the suffering within the suffering”.

Life itself is not suffering.

We need not be identified by our suffering.

Eckhart Tolle suggest that we create needless suffering when we blame others for all our personal pain. He claims that the habit of blaming and cultivating outrage, anger, resentment and other negative emotions, what he has termed our “pathological ego” is what blocks us from knowing the truth about ourselves and the human condition.

He explains that although we do suffer, we are not our suffering, it is not our whole identity. The trouble is that we can become trapped in it and then it identifies all that we are. He calls this the “pain body”. He claims that we can step outside of this and become children of love with worth and dignity. This though is not achieved by simply ignoring the pain and hoping it will just go away.

That said we do not need to go looking for it and it does not justify receiving unnecessary pain and or abuse. There are forms of suffering that cannot to be justified. There are times when passive acceptance of all forms of suffering is not the answer. Dorothy Soelle , amongst others, criticised the claim that suffering is justified because it was the only way to achieve Salvation or Nirvana. As she said

“No heaven can rectify Auschwitz”.

She did not believe that suffering was ordained by God. Instead she saw God within the suffering. For her God suffered with humanity. For her salvation was achieved through experiencing God within humanities suffering, not as a result of it. She saw God as being in solidarity with the victims of oppression in human society. Therefore in her view to fully experience salvation is to work for liberation of the oppressed and to end man made suffering, not passively endure it.

That said we cannot escape all suffering it is a part of life. In fact perhaps it is through our shared suffering that we can come closer together and develop compassion for one another and all living beings, as the Buddhist suggest.

May Sarton saw the truth in this when in “Recovering, A Journal” she wrote

“I woke before dawn with this thought. Joy, happiness, are what we take and do not question. They are beyond question, maybe. A matter of being. But pain forces us to think, and to make connections, to sort out what is what, to discover what has been happening to cause it. And, curiously enough, pain draws us to other human beings in a significant way, whereas joy or happiness to some extent, isolates.”

It is through owning our pain and suffering, growing through it faithfully and passing on what it has taught us that compassion grows and we can truly serve, minister, to one another and the wider world. In many ways this the purpose of a spiritual community. A religious community has to be one of compassion.

Compassion means to suffer with. We can learn to be with others in their suffering and with ourselves in our own. Interestingly the opposite of compassion is apathy.. To be apathetic to the suffering not only of ourselves but to the pain of others is the worst kind of hell any one can suffer from, it’s inhuman, it creates our loneliness and it creates our isolation.

To suffer with is to experience compassion it is the gateway to love and service.

So let us stand in solidarity with ourselves and with one another in our pain and suffering. In doing so we will know the full meaning of compassionate living and in doing so we will fully experience the joy that life offers to us.

And when we do we will know God, we will know love.

Amen and blessed be.

Memory: The Power of Not Only Now

The following appeared on my facebook feed last Sunday evening. It was one of those wow! moments! It seemed to encapsulate near perfectly some of the thoughts that have been forming in my soul of late.

“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."

It's been singing in my soul all week...

A couple of weeks ago, actually it was Easter Saturday, I discovered I had a whole day off. My appointments were cancelled and I announced on “Facebook” that I had a fully open day and wondered if anyone had any suggestions about how I ought to spend it. Many suggestions came my way. One friend suggested I ought to get some sea air in my lungs and I thought to myself, what a grand idea. Anyhow I went to bed that night and thought to myself I will see what the morning brings.

I was awoken very early by a phone call from a dear old friend who said “Why don’t we go to the seaside”, to which I answered yes. How could I refuse? So off we went to Crosby, a favourite place and not just because of the name. I love it because I enjoy joining all those other Anthony Gormley figures staring out to sea. I love staring out into the ocean, opening myself fully to the experience and the great power and mystery of the sea. I stared and I took pictures as I waked along Crosby Beach. I had been instructed to take pictures of my day by another friend. I guess it’s the modern way, you have to take pictures of your day and post them on facebook for the world to see. No pictures, no experience it seems.

It was a day when I was totally in the moment and experienced all that was occurring I felt every drop of life. That said it was also a day filled with memories. I have experienced an awful lot of life with the friend I shared the day with, every emotion really. From the most gut wrenching despair to the most beautiful loved filled hope. I also felt and almost relived my whole life as I walked on that beach. Childhood memories came flooding back. I remembered family holidays, particularly in Scarborough. I remembered the unbridled joy and the sadness of those times.

As a child I would often go wandering off alone. Actually this continued into adulthood. Well one year I wandered off on Scarborough Beach and it seems I got completely lost, not that I realised it at the time, I had wandered off into another place in my mind. The family had to go of searching for me, eventually they found me. I was totally oblivious to being lost and to the fact that I had filled them all with worry and panic. The story of my life really, or at least it used to be. These days when I wander it is not by mistake and these days when I wander I don’t really get lost.

Memories are snapshots of life, whether we physically take pictures or not. It always fascinates me how these memories take shape and form and often reshape as time goes by; it amazes me how these memories seemingly re-incarnate as time goes by. We should not fear our memories, they are precious in so many ways, it is these very memories that make the present moment truly come alive. I have discovered that sometimes you can lose some of the true richness of the moment by becoming purely engrossed in it. That might sound like a counter intuitive thing, but I think not.

I remember in my early days of ministry exploring the “Power of Now” and the idea that life is to be found in the present moment and how the great traditions had taught this for millennia, that there was nothing new in the new age. I remember that after the service a member came to speak and they spoke passionately about the importance of memory and all those memories that she carried with her into her life and how they enrich her daily experience of life. I remember at the time feeling defensive about this, which I did not need to be. What she said has stayed with me and has been forming in my soul ever since. I now see that in many ways to truly experience the richness of the present you have allow the memory of all time to flood into it.

By the way please do not get me wrong, my current truth is no way a rejection of the power of the present moment, quite the opposite actually. What it is really about is bringing the present moment alive by enriching it with our whole selves. It’s a kind of active experience of the present moment. It’s about opening our whole selves up to the present moment and not just passively experiencing what is there. It’s about wholly living in the moment and then carrying that snapshot of the moment into the future. It’s about truly living on the threshold of life. The truth is of course that this is how we are always living, on the threshold of something, as one moment ends another begins.

I love the way that David Whyte almost perfectly encapsulates this in the reading on “Memory”, I shared earlier. The piece ends with the following “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.” It’s not just about living in the moment, but about bringing the moment to life.

Now of course this is fine in theory but what if our lives are filled with painful memories. What if when we sit our minds are just filled with pain from our pasts? It is said that the very reason that people cannot inhabit the present is because it is polluted by painful thoughts and memories from the past and projected fears about the future and that the key to freedom from this is to let go of them and therefore live fully in the present.

Now I am not sure that the proponents of the power of the present moment are actually making such claims; I do not believe that they are claiming that we need to reject the past and future in order to live in the present moment. Instead what the likes of Ekhart Tolle are suggesting, correctly in my view, is that much of our suffering is created from wrong thinking and that the key to being relieved from this self-created suffering is to change our thinking. How is this achieved? Well I believe it begins by truly coming to terms with who we are and by fully engaging with our past present and future. It is not achieved by running from our past and becoming a false slave to the moment, for we all of us carry our pasts with us. By attempting to run from it we allow it to have a false power over us.

I learnt, purely from experience, that to be fully alive in the present I must first of all be alive in my past. I need to come to terms with all that I am and all that I have been as well as all that those I have shared my life with have been too, for none of us live singular isolated lives. This can be scary by the way. It is important to tread carefully when you do and it’s also important to not do so alone. A trusted friend and or guide can help here and spiritual practise is vital here too…prayer has held me through so many frightening encounters in the wilds of my memory. I never go there alone, God is ever present, always with me.

There are so many seams of richness waiting to be mined in our memories, that we can bring into our present moment and can come alive in our lives. Not just for our good either, but also for the good of all. We should not fear them. We should not feel shame about our scars either, we do not need to cover them up and hide them away; we should bring them into the open, into the present and proudly bare them as evidence of life lived well.

This brings to mind a story I once heard about the soldiers who survived the battle of Agincourt. How each year, on the anniversary of the battle would stand up on their tip toes and proudly bare their scars for all to see. Scars of battle, scars of a life fully lived that they brought into that moment and in so doing became fully alive in it; scars they were unafraid of, that they were not haunted by.

There are lessons in all of our lives; lessons waiting to come alive in the golden present; lessons that we can pass on to others too. I am great believer in living in the present, but by this I mean really living in the present. I have learnt, and I hope to God I never forget this, that to truly be alive in the present we have to open our whole selves to our past, our present and our future. We have to let the floodgates open and allow the tide both in and out.

This came to me as I stood and stared out to sea on Crosby Beach; this came to me as I stood as a living breathing example of one those Anthony Gormley statues. That said it came to me in an ever slightly different way. I do not want to adopt their stance. I want to stand and face the sea in another way. I want to stand with my arms out stretch to the world, like one of those Agincourt survivors, unafraid to show my scars and live fully present in this moment. To bring every memory to life. To be fully alive on threshold of everything.

So my message, in this “Golden Moment”, is to see our memories as an invitation to the source of our lives; to bring our memories fully alive, so that they enable us to fully participate in the now; to understand that it is memory that makes the now fully inhabitable. For it is not just about living in the moment, but about bringing the moment to life.

This is the power of memory; this is the power of not only now.

“Spiritual History” by Mark Belletini

Let my body remember.
Let my hands and feet remember.
Let my breath remember those who came before me, those who have come before us.
Didn’t Muhammad wait quietly in his cave?
And didn’t Jesus sigh silently by the blue lake?
And Guan Yin, didn’t she sit in silence thinking that what to do before doing it?
And what was Siddhartha the Buddha doing anyway under that tree if not sitting quietly?
And Susan B. Anthony, didn’t she push back from her desk, and take a breath now and then?
And Florence Nightingale, didn’t she put down her nurse’s hat and think silently about what to write in her essay on mysticism before she actually wrote it?
And Sophia Fahs, didn’t she stop telling stories sometimes and just sit there?
And didn’t Black Elk just notice the sunlight glancing on his chair sometimes?
And Starhawk, does she only talk and write, or does she too keep silence?
Let us remember them all with our bodies.
Let us remember them with the silence they too knew.

Lessons from the Animals

Please watch this wonderful animation based on "Guardians of Being: Spiritual Teachings From Our Dogs And Cats" by Eckhart Tolle and Patrick McDonnell before reading the rest of this blogspot...

I was talking with a friend recently about the animal service that the congregations I serve host annually We were talking about animals and spirituality and got into deep conversations about the soul etc. This is the kind of thing that ministers are supposed to engage in (tee, hee, hee!).

The friend told me how much their dog had taught them, about how to live spiritually, particularly how to live in the present moment and how not get lost in regrets about the past or fears about the future, how walking with their dog allowed them to connect to life and to be set free from the million and one thoughts that can swarm around in their mind. As we walked together with their dog I really got what they were saying, I connected deeply to it. It also reminded me of the time when I was a student minister when I would walk in Platt Fields Park Manchester and watch the geese there and how they helped me connect to life in a deep way. I fell in love with geese during my time, it is a love that has never diminished and whenever I see them flying overhead I always feel a deeper sense of connection and belonging. I feel at one with all that is, all that has been and all that will ever be. I feel alive and awake.

Mary Oliver captures this beautiful in her poem “Wild Geese”.

"Wild Geese"

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

The conversation also brought to mind the following words from Matthew’s Gospel chapter 6 vv 26-28

“Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?”

...Worrying certainly never added a single hour to my life...

Now a little while later I was recounting this conversation with another friend who recommended a book to me. This was by Eckhart Tolle. It wasn’t “The Power of Now” or “A New Earth” but something completely different that he had co-authored with the illustrator Patrick O’Donnell, author of the comic strip “Mutt’s”. The book goes by the title “Guardians of Being: Spiritual Teachings from our Cats and Dogs”.

Reading the book and getting caught up in the delightful artwork, brought a huge broad beaming smile right across my face. It brought back lovely moments when I myself have become caught up in nature and the way that animals just be. Meanwhile the joy and humour in the pictures somehow enabled me to connect at a heart level with the thought provoking and soul-searching words of Tolle.

In the book Tolle writes

“Millions of people who otherwise would be completely lost in their minds and in endless past and future concerns are taken back by their dog or cat into the present moment, again and again, and reminded of the joy of Being” (pg 60) This is delightfully accompanied by an illustration of a dog taking his owner for a walk and another dog appearing from behind a rock asking “Where are you taking him?”…where are you taking him indeed? well out of himself.

Or another example “Nature will teach you to be still, if you don’t impose on it a stream of thoughts. A very deep meeting takes place when you perceive nature in that way, without naming things.” (pg 98) Again this is delightfully accompanied by an illustration of a cat sitting in nature surrounded by the words “Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes and the grass goes by itself. Zen Proverb”. There are countless other examples throughout the book also, such as “I have lived with many Zen masters all of them cats”.

In describing the form of the book Tolle says it is like “the oldest from of spiritual teachings: the sutras of ancient India. Sutras are powerful pointers to the truth in the form aphorisms, or short sayings, with little conceptual elaboration…the advantage of sutra form lies in its brevity. It does not engage the thinking mind more than is necessary. What it doesn’t say – but only points to – is more important than what it says,”

“Guardians of Being: Spiritual Teachings from our Cats and Dogs” is a wonderful book that speaks a deep universal truth. The pets in our lives and all the animals do not worry about what might happen. Instead they just simply eat and play and love unconditionally. They just are, they just be. They can teach us how we could better live this beautiful gift of life that we have been so freely given.

Finally what it left me thinking and feeling as I next walked with my friend and their dog was, it’s not we who take the dog for a walk, but the dog who takes us for a walk and if we let him he will enable us to see the world in a whole new light. 

I'm going to end this little chip of a "blogspot" with three little pieces of wisdom on the spiritual lessons that our pets can teach us...All three were shared in this Sundays worship service...enjoy...

“Dog Days” by Gary A Kawalski

Everyone needs a spiritual guide: a minister, rabbi, priest, therapist, or wise friend. My wise friend is my dog. He has deep insights to impart. He makes friends easily and doesn't hold a grudge. He enjoys simple pleasures and takes each day as it comes. Like a true Zen master, he eats when he’s hungry and sleeps when he’s tired.

He’s not hung up about sex. Best of all, he befriends me with an unconditional love that humans would do well to imitate.

Of course my dog does have his failings. He’s afraid of firecrackers and hides in the closet whenever we run the vacuum cleaner. But unlike me, he’s not afraid of what other people think of him or anxious about his public image. He barks at the mail carrier and the newsboy, but, in contrast to some people, I know he never growls at the children or barks at his spouse.

So my dog is a sort of guru. When I become too serious and preoccupied, he reminds me to frolic and play. When I get too wrapped up in abstractions and ideas, he reminds me to exercise and care for my body. On his own canine level, he shows me that it might be possible to live without inner conflicts or neuroses: uncomplicated, genuine, and glad to be alive.

Mark Twain remarked long ago that human beings have a lot to learn from the Higher Animals. Just because they haven’t invented static cling, ICBMs or television evangelists doesn’t mean they aren't spiritually evolved. Let other people have their mentors, masters, and enlightened teachers.

I have a doggone mutt.

“Cat Calling” by Elizabeth Tarbox

The cat entered our lives with her tail up and her eyes alert for possibility, stalking her calling in our home, in our chairs, up the chimney, in every closet, and behind every impossible obstruction.

She stares with magic eyes, inscrutable, all-knowing. She is all cat: stealthy as a winter breeze that skims the top of the snow bank, impertinent as the sudden blast that blows smoke down the chimney and out into the room.

She seduces, lying back in our arms with the wanton abandon of Aphrodite. She exhorts, rumbling like an old volcano or yowling like an exorcised poltergeist.

I am seduced by her unabashed affection, mystified by her eyes which steal my secrets, envious of her unquestioning delight in the warmth of an armchair. It is serious, this partnership between the cat who stalks her calling and we who are called. I am in the presence of Isis, our home is her temple, and we are called to serve.

...And finally a little bit more of Mary Oliver...

“How it is with us, and how it is with them” by Mary Oliver

We become religious,
then we turn from it,
then we are in need and maybe we turn back.
We turn to making money,
then we turn to the moral life,
then we think about money again.
We meet wonderful people, but lose them
in our busyness.
We’re, as the saying goes, all over the place.
Steadfastness, it seems,
is more about dogs than about us.
One of the reasons we love them so much.

The Ache of Loneliness Continued: Grief & Suffering

No person on this earth is immune from suffering and grief, it is part of human life as is joy and love and of course mystery and wonder. Everyone has experienced the loss of someone they have loved with all their heart. If we have not, then we have never truly loved; if we have never truly loved, then we have never fully lived. This sounds like the worst kind of suffering of them all.

While life may well be simple it is not always easy. M Scott Peck began his seminal book “The Road Less Travelled” with these words: “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.”

Life is awry, there is pain and suffering in life and no matter how hard we try this cannot be avoided. Modern day attitudes to grief and death highlight this growing immaturity. We live in a death denying culture that so often wants to rush people through grief and sorrow to some imagined place at the other side of the rainbow, where there is no pain. Oz does not exist! Sorrow and suffering are conditions that we must acknowledge and accept. They cannot be simply let go of and thrown in the bin of life. Not only can they not be thrown away it would wrong to do so and disrespectful to those we have lost and claimed to have loved. Where is the love in this?

In trying to flee our suffering we actually intensify the pain. Herman Hesse saw the truth in this when he said:

“Love your suffering. Do not resist it; do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.”

It is this aversion that causes the suffering within the suffering. It is this that causes much of what so many people describe as the loneliness of modern life. In trying to suppress our pain all we succeed in doing is cut ourselves off from the joy of life. While life may well be difficult and does involve grief and suffering, it does not have to involve “the suffering within the suffering”. Life itself is not suffering. We need not be identified by our suffering.

Eckhart Tolle suggest that we create needless suffering when we blame others for all our personal pain. He claims that the habit of blaming and cultivating outrage, anger, resentment and other negative emotions, what he names as our “pathological ego”, is what blocks us from knowing the truth about ourselves and the human condition.

He explains that although we do suffer, we are not our suffering, it is not our whole identity. The trouble is that we can become trapped in it and then it identifies all that we are. He calls this the “pain body”. He claims that we can step outside of it, but not by simply ignoring the pain and hoping it will just go away.

There are other forms of suffering that can never be justified. We should not simply passively accept all forms of suffering. Dorothy Soelle rightly criticised the claim that suffering is justified because it was the only way to achieve Salvation or Nirvana. As she said

“No heaven can rectify Auschwitz”.

She did not believe that suffering was ordained by God. Instead she saw God within the suffering. For her God suffered with humanity. For her salvation was achieved through experiencing God within humanities suffering, not as a result of it. She saw God as being in solidarity with the victims of oppression in human society. Therefore in her view to fully experience salvation is to work for liberation of the oppressed and to end man made suffering, not passively endure it. 


What is required is a compassionate response to suffering.

Compassion means to suffer with. We can learn to be with others in their suffering and with ourselves in our own. The opposite of compassion is apathy. To be apathetic to the suffering not only of ourselves but also that of others is the worst kind of hell any one can suffer from, it’s inhuman, it creates our loneliness and it creates our isolation.

To suffer with is to experience compassion and of course to grieve is to love.

Forrest Church claimed grief is not really about death at all but more about life and the courage to love. Grief is truly about love and therefore it is not an end point, it is not a land of sorrow and regret in which we become lost, but a bridge that leads us back to life from death. He claimed that grief is so intensely powerful that it has the capacity to lift up our lives to the most sacred of moments and remind us what really matters. That said it loses its power if the grief is suppressed or silenced or neatly packaged and sanitised. Life is not neatly packaged so why on earth should we expect grief to be?

When grief is allowed to speak its truth it does so powerfully. It is personal in its power to change individual lives and it is also universal as it will visit all who dare to love what is mortal.


 I agree with Forrest’s belief that the choice is not between love and death but between a life lived in fear of love, because of the reality of death and loss, and a life lived courageously with love despite death’s presence.

Love and grief have the power to change us forever. 


As Forrest has reminded me once again, from the grave, the purpose of life is not to avoid grief and death. Instead the “purpose of life is to live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for by the love that we leave behind.”

The Power of Now: There's Nothing New in the New Age

This a re-telling of an ancient Zen Buddhist tale

A man was walking across a field when he heard a rustling in the tall grass beside him, and turned to see the hungry eyes of a large tiger staring at him. The man began to run, fear giving him greater speed and stamina than he knew he possessed. But always, just behind him, he could hear the easy breathing of the hungry tiger. Finally, the man stopped, not because his strength had failed but because he had come to the edge of a high cliff and could go no further. "I can let the tiger eat me, or take my life in my own hands and jump." The man turned and saw the tiger slowly walking toward him, licking its mouth in anticipation.

Resolved to take his own life, the man stepped to the edge of the cliff and bent his legs to jump, when he suddenly noticed a thick vine growing out of the side of the cliff, several feet from the top. Carefully, he let himself drop down the cliff face, catching hold of the vine as he slid past, and thanked God when it was strong enough to support his weight. Hanging now, the man looked up and saw the tiger's eyes peering over the edge of the cliff. It roared down at him, then began to pace back and forth along the top of the cliff. For the first time, the man looked at the vine that had saved his life. It was thick enough for him to wrap his legs around, resting his arms, and long enough that he might be able to let himself far enough down to jump safely to the ground below. And the moment he had this thought was the same moment that he saw the second tiger, pacing back and forth at the foot of the cliff, licking its mouth, and looking hungrily up at him. Well, thought the man, if my strength and the strength of the vine are great enough, perhaps I can outwit the tigers. Surely, they'll go some place else to eat when they're hungry enough. And the man prepared to settle in for a long wait. His preparations halted quickly, however, when he heard a scurrying, scratching sound close to his own face. Glancing upwards, he saw two mice, one white and one black, emerge from a small hole in the cliff. They made their way swiftly to the base of the vine, and began to gnaw through it with their small sharp teeth. There was nothing else he could do, a tiger above, a tiger below, and the vine that kept him from their jaws about to break. The man was closing his eyes to begin his prayers, when he noticed, a little to his right, a tiny patch of red colour on the face of the cliff. He reached toward it precariously, pulled, and brought his hand back beneath his eyes. There, in his palm, was a luscious, red strawberry. The man swiftly pressed the strawberry between his lips, onto his tongue, and hanging between those still visible tigers, he enjoyed the finest , juiciest, sweetest meal of his life.

The idea that the gift of life is found through experiencing the joy of the present moment is not a new concept. The faith traditions have been teaching it since the early days of human history, it is one of the great universal principles. There really is nothing new in the “New Age”

While there is something rather beautiful about this ancient Buddhist tale of the man the tigers and the strawberry, there is also something sad. In many ways it is a powerful metaphor for life. How we often only really stop and appreciate the gifts that are there when there’s nothing else to do nowhere else to turn. The tiger chasing the man could be our past, which often we are on the run from; the tiger at the bottom of cliff could be our futures which we are in fear of, the unknown, the unpredictable. The vine could be our minds which we often believe can sustain us through all that life throws at us and the mice could be that corroding thread that eats away at our rationality, our fear and anxiety...seen this way the story does indeed seem a little scary.

And yet there is the strawberry, the beautiful juicy strawberry that can be enjoyed regardless of all that is going on all around us. The problem is of course that we don’t see the fruit until the point of death or at least this man didn’t. It wasn’t until he had surrendered to his fate that he could see the strawberry and then enjoy it.

Is this what happens in life? Do we fail to enjoy its fruit because we try to overcome fear by thinking we can either out run or outwit it? Should we instead simply surrender to the reality of the life we are currently experiencing so as to fully enjoy whatever fruits are available?

Jesus (Luke 12 vv 22-31) reminds us not to worry or be anxious about life, to be like the ravens or the lilies of the field. He suggests that what we need is to have faith and to concentrate on building the Kingdom of God. But what is the kingdom of God? Where can it be found? Well it seems that it can be found by surrendering to the present moment, to the reality of the life in which we find ourselves rather than fleeing it or trying to overcome our anxiety of it with our minds. Perhaps we simply need to accept nature, life, the kingdom of God as it truly is and to trust.

Ralph Waldo Emerson echoed this in the nineteenth century, he said.

“...man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.”

Eckhart Tolle, in “The Power of Now” describes an experience he had which led him to transcend his anxiety riddled life. For him the change happened one day while listening to himself think. He realized in that moment that there was more than a single unified and separate him. There is who we are in our daily actions and then there is the part of us that witnesses what we are doing, thinking and feeling. The part of us that watches is our true self. That bears witness to what we are doing without getting trapped in it. It is not wrapped up in the past and is connected to the greater whole. Or put more simply, we are not always what we think we are.

Descartes said, “I think therefore I am.” According to Tolle this is the most fundamental error of our time. It is what has set us apart from each other and the rest of creation. We “think” we are somehow separate and therefore unique; unique in our suffering, unique in our troubles, unique in our feelings, and thus utterly alone. The moment we start watching our thinking is the moment we realize there is more to existence than us and what we think. We are not all there is of beauty, love, grace, creativity, joy and peace. Well thank goodness, thank God for that.

How many of us can say that they truly give their full attention to what they are doing? Tolle claims that this is the key to happiness and peace, giving our full attention to what we are doing. When we are truly present in what we are doing we are totally at peace and we are happy, we are not in fear and we are not in anxiety. Being present is life’s gift. That’s why it is called the present. I occasionally get glimpses of this; I occasionally get a taste of this in my life. It happens when I am in the company of some people, in my personal life and also in ministry. One of the great joys of ministry are the conversations I have with people. I become totally absorbed in them at times, especially when people speak from the heart. I also experience it while singing, especially during singing meditation. Here I feel I am floating above time, here I feel I am transcending self. I can experience it in worship too. We all experience it in the activities we love, when we totally abandon ourselves to whatever it is we are doing. Tolle says we can experience it in all that we do. We can give ourselves wholeheartedly and be present in everything that we do; whether that is washing the pots or cutting the grass, or reading a book or watching children play or watching birds flying above our heads, or considering the lilies of the field.

These are the moments that we can truly experience the Divine, in the moment in the NOW. Not in the past which no longer exists; nor in the future, which is yet to come. Fear and anxiety only exist when our minds are not with our bodies in the gift of the eternal now. This is what Tolle is suggesting in our present age; this is what Jesus was teaching when he talked about building God’s Kingdom in our time and not just the time to come; this is what Emerson was teaching and this is what the Buddhist story is teaching too. There is nothing new in the “New Age”, it is an eternal truth.