We can inspire and we can dispirit; it matters how we be

Last Sunday Molly and myself will be travelled to Hucklow to spend a few days with new and upcoming ministers at “Ministry in the Making”. We have some great people coming through and it feels good to help them in their development, in the ways that I can. The theme this year is “The Ministry of all believers: How do we believe in our people”. I will be leading a workshop exploring how we have been inspired, who have been our inspirations, who believed in us, who didn’t, who dispirited us. It is an opportunity to look at ways in which we might inspire and help develop others as they step into their own ministry’s. It got me thinking about some of the inspirations in my life. There are many folk who inspired me throughout my life; sadly there has been who have dispirited me too. This is life of course. It is vital to discern who we listen too.

I recently shared the following story with friends: “Do you know who I am?”

Journeys today on public transport have a sort of regularity about them, but there’s always someone who thinks they can beat the system – especially when things are busy. Like on a Bank Holiday weekend.

Picture this scene at Manchester Airport – travellers, airport personnel, aircrew, people looking for the loo or a bar – thousands thronging the concourses.

At one of the check-in desks for a long-haul flight there was a snaking queue of people with lots of luggage. The attendant was doing her best to get people through the process as quickly as possible and most were good humoured about the wait. Except, apparently, for one man – towards the back of the queue.

He was getting more and more agitated and finally he barged through, headed straight for the desk and demanded to be served.

The attendant said patiently: “Sir, there are lots of people ahead of you and we’re doing our best to get everyone through – trying to jump the queue will only delay things even more for you and everyone else. Please go back to your place.”

The man went puce in the face, leaned over the counter and shouted so everyone could hear: “Do you know who I am?”

The attendant blinked, took a deep breath and picked up the public-address microphone.

“Ladies and gentlemen, there is a gentleman at check-in desk No 212 who does not know who he is. If anyone is able to identify him and assist him, please let us know.”

I got some interesting response from folk. Most were amused and several responded with a video of a character who came into public consciousness about 10 years ago. He gets into an awful dispute with someone on the road, he utters the immortal line “Do you know who I am, I’m Ronnie Pickering”. It brought back some awful childhood memories of growing up with a man like that. A totally dispiriting character. In the video there is a child sat in the car with him, looking terrified and trying to hide. A feeling I remember only too well.

The next day I met up with my writer friends. One’s husband was shown the video and he was appalled by it. We began to talk about characters and the folk that people look up to, the folk we remember. Those that lift us up with their example and more notorious characters. I talked of a friend who’s six year old son told him he wants to be a gangster when he grows up. My friend said he tried to explain to his son that this is worse thing he could aspire to. I talked about a notorious character when I was growing up who instilled fear in all he met This was Paul Sykes, the notorious hard man from Wakefield. The conversation then turned to other characters from our childhood that left us with a very different feelings.

I spoke of a character who would walk around the roads of West Yorkshire dressed as a monk just smiling and waving at people, spreading good cheer. I described the feeling he would instill in me whenever I saw him. How he filled me with a very different spirit. He was a mystery, but one that filled my good feelings, even though I never met him.

I thought I would look him up. I though there must be something on the internet about him. If he had that impact on me, he must have had it on others. Well there was all sorts of interesting stuff on line. It seems he was called Jeffrey Brindley, known as “The Jesus Man of Bradford”, or “Holy Joe”, “The Airedale Monk”. He died in 2015 having spent 50 years walking the roads around Bradford spreading love. He was a harmless eccentric and when he died money was raised to give him a funeral at Bradford Cathedral, following a huge parade through the city. There are plans to build a statue in his memory in Baildon where he lived. There were hundreds of messages from people speaking of him and memories of what he brought to ordinary folk dating back to the 1960’s. I shared on-line myself about this conversation and several of my friends shared memories of him and the cheer he brought to the people he met as he walked around sharing the good spirit with those he passed by. Yes, he was an eccentric, but harmless and one who people remember with fondness. Maybe the world needs more holy fools, certainly more than it needs characters like Paul Sykes and Ronnie Pickering. I’m glad I remember “the smiling, waving, monk” as I called him and the way I felt when I saw him passing by on the road. It filled my heart with love and joy, if inspired something good in me. Something I have been re-feeling and remembering all week.

I was talking about this on Tuesday evening at “Living the Questions”. Geoff who lived in Bradford for a time, talked of “Holy Joe” as he called him. There was also a few jokes and suggestions of what the folk of Altrincham might call me. I do spend a lot of my life walking around the town, meeting and greeting folk, although I suspect most of them remember Molly more than me. I hope I share joy, love and respect, I hope I lift folks spirits. There are many others in the town that offer similar feelings. I am sure there are many in every community. Unfortunately they do not get the attention they deserve, the notorious it seems have too string an appeal. Sadly those who do good are too often viewed with suspicions.

I have been thinking of late of the people who have inspired me, who lifted my spirit, there have been many. As there have been many who have diminished me, made me feel useless, discouraged me, told me I was no good at things, pretty useless. I am sure it is the same for every single one of us. We have know those who have inspired us and those who have dispirited too.

I wonder who and what has been significant in our lives? Who and what has touched and shaped our lives? Who are the significant people, what are the significant moments and events? We might not remember the events fully, but we do remember how they made us feel. Our lives are shaped by every moment and every person that we share our lives with.

I’ve been thinking of the people who have inspired me. Who filled my spirit and kept me going in my darkest days. I was sat with several of my early ministry inspirations after David Copley’s funeral the other week. Folk who lit the light in me. They and many others remind me of that famous quote by Albert Schweitzer:

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”

There are many people who have inspired me, who have lit the flame within me, who have inspired me to make the best use of what I have and to give back to others. To serve in little and sometimes bigger ways in this our shared world.

There is inspiration everywhere, there are many folk who have no doubt inspired us all. What though do we mean when we say “inspire”.

“Inspire” is an interesting word, it is one of those, like so many in common usage, that has been reduced in meaning as time has gone by. We have reduced its power as our lives have become secularised. It originally meant “immediate influence of God”, especially with reference to the writing of a Holy book. Coming from the French “inspiracion meaning “inhaling, breathing in inspiration”, coming from the Latin “inspirare” meaning to breath in, to inflame. To inspire means to breath upon, to blow into, to excite, to inflame, to affect, to arouse, but to do so through spirit or soul, it is a Divine activity. Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that when we inspire others we are engaging in Divine activity. To inspire others is to engage in one of the highest forms of love, as it is Divine love in human action.

So if you are walking round the place you live, sharing love, lifting spirits, you are in fact involved in Divine activity, well you are in my eyes. Likewise if you are going around dispiriting or instilling fear in others, you are engaged in the opposite. It seems to me that Divine activity takes place in the most ordinary, not the grand and loud and showy. It comes to life in the most humble of activity.

Now not everyone agrees with me, in fact throughout history it has always been the great figures that have been seen as the real inspirations. It is they that they usually build statues to. Thomas Carlyle saw the great figures of history as the ultimate inspirations, to him they were geniuses. Nowadays many people are labelled as geniuses, some say that is overused. I think that actually it is an under used word. I think that it ought to apply to anyone who inspires another to be all that they can be. For surely the real genius of anyone is to inspire another to truly come alive, for in so doing you are breathing new life into another. Maybe we ought to build monuments to each and every one of them, like the folk of Bradford would like to do for Jeffrey Brindley. Now wouldn’t our towns and cities look interesting if we did.

Everyone we meet, and everything that we absorb through our senses can be an inspiration. There are inspirational people all around us, as there has been throughout human history. Some have been the greats, those that have shaped history, they even had statues built in their memory, but most were probably never recognised., except in our own hearts and memories. Nevertheless they inspired us, they awakened something within us and helped to become the people that we are today.

We can all be inspirations. We all have the genius seed within us. We are all born, we are all graced, with certain gifts. The real genius of course is the one who can give birth to theirs and inspire others to do the same with theirs.

Now throughout human history this genius within us has been understood in different ways. Many, beginning with Plato, talked of each of us being born with a companion, what some might describe as a spirit that remembers our true nature and therefore "calling" and which can guide us back to our greatest animation. It is this that truly brings us alive, that animates our very being that enthuses us. This inner spirit animates our soul, this is the genius within each and every one of us. It has been called by many names such as muse, inner voice, still small voice, higher self, guardian angel or what the ancient Greeks referred to as Daemon. It breathes its life into us and inspires us and through acting from it we too inspire others.

The gifts life has bestowed upon us, our genii are not meant to be kept or selfishly horded. They are meant to be given away, they are meant to be shared with others. Our task is to make the most of these gifts, to enjoy them and to share them with others, thus inspiring them to make the most of what life has given them. This I believe is the point that the epistle Paul was making in is first letter to the Corinthians chapter twelve.

aul wrote the letter because each member of the congregation, in their struggle to be the perfect congregational leader, was getting in the way of the others. Each one of them wanted to possess all the good qualities that make up a good leader, to become the perfect leader and to leave the others in their shadow.

Paul taught that the spirit does not allow even the possibility that one person can possess all the talents. That said if people come together in love, live interdependently and inspire one another with their gifts they will create a community for the good of all.

We all have gifts, talents that have been bestowed upon us and I believe we have a responsibility to learn to use these gifts well and to recognise that the same spirit that gave us these gifts requires us to use them cooperatively with those who have different gifts to us. They are not to be used lightly and selfishly, neither are they to be despised. In so doing we will inspire others to do the same, to make the most of what they have been freely given.

Let us be grateful for the gifts that have been bestowed upon us. Let us make the most of these aspects of our humanity that have been given us. Let us learn to share them with one another. Let us be inspired by one another’s gifts and create a true kin-ship of love right here, right now.

Let’s breathe our inspiration into one another.

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

When has the night ended and the day begun? Awakening from the Hour of Dog and Wolf

There is a story told of a rabbi in ancient times who gathered his students together very early one morning, while it was still dark. He put this question to them: "How can you tell when night has ended and the day has begun?"

One student made a suggestion: "Could it be when you can see an animal and you can tell whether it is a sheep or a goat?"

"No, that's not it," answered the rabbi.

Another student said: "Could it be when you look at a tree in the distance and you can tell whether it is a fig tree or a peach tree?"

Again the rabbi answered: "No."

After a few more guesses the students said: "Well, how do you tell when night has ended?"

The rabbi answered: "It is when you look on the face of any man or woman and you see them as your brother or sister. If you cannot do this, then, no matter what time it is, it is still night."

The nights are becoming longer, as I am sure you have noticed. This often brings with it a sense within us to seek hibernation, to go into ourselves. We need to be careful here, as tempting as it is. If we hibernate we are not awake, we are falling asleep.

It can become difficult to awake from our slumber on these cold, darkening mornings that the Autumn brings. The temptation is to stay in and not awaken to life, to turn inwards and not to live in the world.

This last Tuesday I experienced a lovely example of this. I regularly attend an early morning meditation. Now when my alarm went off early on Tuesday morning a part of me didn’t want to get up and step into the cold darkness of the morning. But I did. I prayed my morning prayers; I sought inspiration from the great mystery and listened to the birds outside my window. I got ready for the day. I brushed Molly’s hair and took her to the toilet. We then went to join in meditation. Molly shot in and greeted the folk and also greeted each individual as they arrived. We humans greeted one another with humour and coffee and then we enjoyed silence together in complete darkness as Molly settled down in her bed. As the silence ended the light was just starting to appear. We then began to share about our own personal joys and troubles, our own spiritual journeys. As everyone spoke I looked at their faces and connected with them and saw in them as my own brother and sister, I saw myself reflected back at me. I saw a reflection of the Divine in their eyes and heard it in their words.

It is so tempting at times to separate people into those that are for me and those that are against me; that there are those that are my friends and those who are my foes. That we need to keep an eagle eye out for the ‘foes’, because if we do not they may well cause us harm; that these people are dangerous, even “toxic” and you must keep them out of your life. This is not helpful or healthy. We are all formed from the one flesh and we all have the same spirit flowing through us. Divisiveness does not help anyone.

There is a French saying...Please excuse my accent... “L’heure entre chien et loup” which translates as “The hour between dog and wolf”. The saying is basically describing the time just as the sun is setting, the twilight hours when you cannot really differentiate between dog and wolf, between who is a friend and who is a foe.

Has anyone heard this phrase before “The hour between dog and wolf?”

It first came into my consciousness a few years ago because it was the title of a New Model Army album, as well as a documentary film that was made about their strange and enduring career.

“Between dog and wolf, between water and wine, between wine and blood.” This brings to mind some lyrics from a really old songs of theirs “Better than them” and the words of the chorus...

Divided we were born,divided we live

divided we fall,yeah,divided we die

still we tell ourselves over and over again

we're better than them... (we're better than them)

we're better than them..

We’re not like them, we’re better than them...

“Them” are whoever we think are somehow separate from us...

The song is essentially a rant against this sense of superiority and separation that all groups of people and individuals feel from time to time, that sadly some feel permanently; this sense that somehow we are better than, or less than other people. It seems to go on in all sections of society and throughout human history. It is there in religion, but also secular society. Some religious groups talk about the saved and the unsaved, others talk of being God’s chosen people. When they speak this way they are talking of a God I do not recognise. The God I know accepts and loves all universally. Experience has revealed to me that we are all chosen by God, it’s just that so many of us turn away and cannot believe that there is a spirit that is there in all life.

Then of course there are the anti-religionists who reject any kind of faith at all; who see it all as purely infantile projections. They mock, they poke fun, they separate people into the stupid and the wise. They say we are not like them, we’re better than them.

I am no better by the way; I do it too. There are days when I feel superior to other people and there are days when I feel less than them. That said thank God most days I recognise the truth that there is one human family. We are made of the same flesh and we have the same spirit within each of us.

Something I felt powerful as the dark turned into light on Tuesday morning. In that hour of dog and wolf as the night turned into day.

If we see others as separate from ourselves, we see us and we see them. As Walter Kaufmann, who translated Martin Buber into English put it, when we use words like “Us-Them”, “'the world is divided in two: the children of light and the children of darkness, the sheep and the goats, the elect and the damned.' It is this that leads to a lack of empathy for all people and thus their suffering can be ignored. In such a state any form of barbarity and abuse can become acceptable, something we have seen throughout human history. It still goes on today, we continue to dehumanise, breeding hatred and violence.

As the Nobel Peace Prize Winner, author of such greats as “Night” and Holocaust Survivor Elie Wiesel put it " 'Hatred, is a cancer that is passed from one person to another, one people to another.'

There is one human family, we are each other’s keepers. In “Conversations with Elie Wiesel” Wiesel sees the Biblical question Cain poses to God after killing Abel “Am I my brother’s keeper?” becomes a lens to see brother and sisterhood in broadest humanist sense. As he reflects:

We are all our brothers’ keepers… Either we see in each other brothers, or we live in a world of strangers… There are no strangers in a world that becomes smaller and smaller. Today I know right away when something happens, whatever happens, anywhere in the world. So there is no excuse for us not to be involved in these problems. A century ago, by the time the news of a war reached another place, the war was over. Now people die and the pictures of their dying are offered to you and to me while we are having dinner. Since I know, how can I not transform that knowledge into responsibility? So the key word is “responsibility.” That means I must keep my brother.

When the epistle Paul talked of the oneness, the unity in Christianity, he wrote that in Christ “there is no longer Jew or Greek.” He did not say that there are no longer Jews or Greeks more that people are no longer separated by these distinctions; that they are all one in love, in body and in spirit; that if all people are viewed in the light they are brothers and sisters to one another.

As Tenzin Gyatso XIVth Dalai Lama has said “Mentally, physically and emotionally we are the same. We each have the potential to good and bad and to be overcome by disturbing emotions such as anger, fear, hatred, suspicion and greed. These emotions can be the cause of many problems. On the other hand if you cultivate loving kindness, compassion and concern for others, there will be no room for anger, hatred and jealousy.

These words very much chime with that favourite story of mine, which seem appropriate today, “The Two Wolves”

Do you recall it?

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life.

“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

“It’s a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, ego and it makes me cynical about life.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, faith and it fills me with enthusiasm for life. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

Where does this sense of superiority come from, this sense that we are somehow better than other people? Where does this fear come from? Well I believe it comes from habit. We are taught to fear the stranger who is not exactly like us, we are taught to separate one another, to see the difference. Habits, especially fear based ones, are hard to break.

So how do we get to the place where we can tell when the night has ended, where when we look into someone else’s eyes we see our brother and our sister. How do we get out of the habit of separating people into one camp or another? Well I believe it begins by us waking up to reverence in one another and to practise loving kindness each and every day. This is not easy. I know this from personal experience. Every day I find myself putting up the barriers of separation; every day I find myself doing all I can to ensure that they come tumbling back down again. It is perhaps a whole life times work and perhaps beyond, this moving from night to day. That said I believe it is possible and we can begin aspiring to it right here right now. We just need to wake up.

Why don’t you try it now? Why don’t you offer a blessing to one another?

Give it a go. Go to one another, look one another in the eye and recognise yourself within each other. Then why don’t you bow in reverence, shake one another’s hand, or if you feel really brave you could even hug your neighbour. As you do why not say to each other...”I honour your sacred humanity, we are made of the same flesh and have the same spirit running through us.”

Now of course this is easy to do amongst friends, people you know. This is perhaps less easy out there in the world outside our window. A hug might be a bit much for a stranger. That said we can practise recognising the sacred in each of us. We can bring an end to the night and a beginning to a new day. We can wake up.

I am going to end today with this story from the life of the Buddha

It is said that soon after his enlightenment that the Buddha passed a man on the road who was struck by the Buddha's extraordinary radiance and peaceful presence. The man stopped and asked, "My friend, what are you? Are you a celestial being or a god?"

"No," said the Buddha.

"Well, then, are you some kind of magician or wizard?"

Again the Buddha answered, "No."

"Are you a man?" "No."

"Well, my friend, then what are you?"

The Buddha replied, “I am awake”.

The night has ended and the day has begun.

We need to be awake.

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

The winds of grace are always blowing, but you have to raise the sail

I have two friends who are writers, primarily comedy writers. I was chatting with one the other day, about life and everything, the things we have known and experienced as well as the spiritual aspects; we were talking about the gifts and talents that folk have, as well as other traits, some of the more difficult aspects of life and the burdens some folk have to live with. As we were walking and talking, whilst Molly played in the park, I said something that could easily have been taken the wrong way. I said that our mutual friend had a special gift, something I suspect she was born with. I then said that the friend I was walking with was talented, very talented, but that the other was gifted. What was interesting was they didn’t disagree or take offence. He agreed. Now what is particularly wonderful is how well the two of them work together. Her gift and his talent combined together create wonderful gifts for the world to share in.

Now of course my friend’s giftedness is not all that they are. Something I have noticed about gifted people is that they are often cursed with other challenges in life.

I was talking with another friend the other day who is a gifted singer. They were once a singer song writer but gave up that life. We were talking about singing and the blessings and curses of having perfect pitch. A person with perfect pitch can hear anything that is slightly out of tune, if it is it can really irritate. I know I get frustrated in myself when singing and anything goes slightly awry. I’m very sensitive to sound generally. I struggle with karaoke as terrible singing hurts my ears. Unfortunately, I cannot hide the pain from listening to the truly tone deaf. Very few people are actually tone deaf and very few have perfect pitch. Most people can sing, so long as they can hear and most people don’t get disturbed by those who are slightly off beam. I have one such friend who just cannot hear and I was recently reminded of his murdering of “Viva Las Vegas” which was utterly out tune and out of time. So much so it was hilarious. We were laughing about this the other evening at another friends 40th birthday celebration.

I love to sing, I love all kinds of singing. I am enjoying the birds again at the moment. My favourite of all time was the blackbird that lived on my roof. He sang to me and I to him. He raised my voice and I raised his. He was of course the greater singer. His is was the more perfect gift and a beautiful grace to me.

“Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch alike me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.”

I have recently been gifted the beautiful grace of conducting and attending the wedding of both a friend and of course our youngest brother. They were wonderful experiences. While conducting my friend’s wedding I was taken back to another friends wedding from a few years ago. It was held in an Anglican church and I gave the blessing at the end I also sang the classic hymn “Amazing Grace” acapella, Something I have done several times on special occasions. I have sung it at several heartbreaking funerals and I still don’t fully know to this day how. I suspect that was a form of grace.

Amazing Grace is a classic hymn that has grown in popularity over the years. Some of the words can be challenging. That said it is one of those pieces that can send a shiver down my spine. The hymn itself may well be a grace.

Amazing Grace has been described as a classic. David Tracy claimed that classics are "those texts, events, images, persons, rituals and symbols which are assumed to disclose permanent possibilities of meaning and truth”. Amazing Grace certainly fulfills this requirement. It has been doing so for over two hundred years. It is quoted in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" It was adapted by Cherokee Native Americans during their forced migration, known as the trail of tears. It became and remains a favourite amongst the civil rights movement.

Amazing Grace is usually sung to the hymn tune "New Britain". It has been recorded by a rich diversity of artists including Rev J.M Gates, Judy Collins, The Royal Scottish Dragoon guards, Aretha Franklin, Kylie Minogue and Joan Baez. It was even played by Mr. Scott at Mr. Spock's funeral in the film Stark Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. I recall President Obama bursting into a rendition of it whilst delivering the eulogy at the funeral of Clementa C Pickney who had been the pastor of the church in Carlston, the scene of a mass shooting. As he sang he shed tears. Surely a moment of pure grace. Amazing Grace keeps on surfacing and resurfacing in a variety of forms, both religious and secular and across the generations and there seems little doubt that it will continue to do so.

“Amazing Grace how sweet the sound”

I hear Grace, been hearing it all week, but what is it?

The Sufi mystic Rumi wrote:

Something opens our wings.
Something makes boredom and hurt disappear.
Someone fills the cup in front of us.
We taste only sacredness.

The something or someone I believe is Grace.

When I speak of Grace I mean than something that exist beyond the confines of ourselves, that something more that makes life real, special and alive. That something that exists beyond our individual efforts that makes our efforts almost effortless. I have noticed that when I live in a Graceful state life does indeed seem effortless. Indeed when life seems a slog or a struggle it is precisely then that I feel blocked off from the Grace that surrounds me. Grace seems to exist in the spaces of life, therefore when I am blocked it seems that there are no spaces where Grace can thrive and live. To live in a Graceful state is to trust in that which exists in those spaces and allow it to energise our lives. Over the years I have learnt to trust in this when the hard and dark times have struck. It is Grace that keeps me moving forward. Grace is the “Wow!” of life that can energise us if we would but trust in it. It is Grace that gives us a sense of belonging to life itself. When I began to live in Grace I became fully a part of life.

“Grace” has both secular and religious connotations. We can be given a period of grace with regard to payment of goods procured. We can be in someone else “good grace”, meaning we are in someone’s good books, we have gained their favour. We might compliment a person by saying they are graceful in the way they hold themselves or gracious in the way they act with others. In music a composer may add “grace notes”. These are added extras that are not essential but may add an artistic flourish to the piece.

Now of course classically speaking the “Grace of God” is a freely given gift of spirit that is unearned and undeserved; something that comes to us, from beyond ourselves. You can’t touch it, but you can know it. You could say that grace is a favour or perhaps a fortune that comes to us unbidden. It does not come because we have done anything to deserve it or not deserve it, it just comes. The part we can play is in recognizing it when it comes and making the most of what it offers. Life itself is probably the ultimate of graces. Think about it we did absolutely nothing to deserve the gift of life itself, in all its joy and suffering.

When I think of my two friends the gifted writer and the one who has perfect pitch. These were gifts they were simply born with. Yes they have nurtured those gifts and developed them, but I suspect mostly they are simply gifts that they were born with.

I suspect that Grace is something you just can’t avoid, even if you don’t always recognise it. It is always there, that said there is a part that we must play. As Ramakrishna said “The winds of grace are always blowing, but you have to raise the sail.” It is our task I believe to receive the wind and the waters in the right way.

You see Grace isn’t just going to come in and save us, to take our troubles away. To change the natural world, just for us. Just look at the world, at our lives, this just doesn’t seem so now does it? I believe that grace works in and through us; that it comes to life in and through us when we live in a “State of Grace”. While we need not do anything to deserve it, we must do a great deal to bring it to life. As the Buddhist Joanna Macy observed “Grace happens when we act with others on behalf of our world.” Yes it exists in those spaces between our lives and we experience it as it works through our lives, encouraging others to engage with it too. To dance in the spaces as the music plays.

The Unitarian and Process Theologian Henry Nelson Weiman, while rejecting traditional notions of God, did believe that there was a process which he observed had the capacity to transform us into beings capable of doing good, that can enable us to live up to our ideals and therefore relieve us from what some have described as the meaningless despair at our lives. He called this process “Creative Interchange”. He believed that this “Creative Interchange” comes alive as individuals or groups bring new meanings to life and that as it comes to life the richness of the world expands and a deeper sense of integration occurs. For Weiman this was Grace.

James Luther Adams expanded on these ideas believing that this creative power finds its “richest focus” when we work together to serve the divine reality and bring to birth freedom and justice in our world. He believed that God transforms us with “a love that ‘cares’ for the fullest good of all.” It is this then that compels us to act with it in service and thus re-create Grace.

I see real truth in both Weiman’s and Adam’s view of Grace, they help me make sense of my own experiences.

Grace is not about the things we receive in life. We have all been given life, the ultimate free gift. Grace is about what we do with the gift we have been given; Grace is what we create from what we have been given; Grace is what we bring to the table of life with this life we have been given. It is not for us alone. The gifts we have are given to share for the good of all. I was thinking of this as I talked with my writer friends the other day and the gifts and talents they have been given and how they are coming back to life again, how they are setting their sails once more.

No two people are exactly alike. We all have our gifts, our different abilities. We are all born with certain aptitudes and innate ability. We all have something to offer the world, to share with life, but they are not all the same. Thank God. I myself have always been a communicator, but never an athlete. My mum often tells me I could talk long before I could walk. That you could hold a conversation with me as toddler long before I took my first steps. There were two reasons for this. My mind is wired for communication and also because I was born with underdeveloped nerve endings in the base of my spine. This made physical activities difficult as a child. Therefore I could talk early and walk late.

We are all given different gifts. Our task I believe is to make the most of these gifts, to enjoy them and to share them with others, thus inspiring them to make the most of what life has given them. This I believe is the point the epistle Paul was making in is first letter to the Corinthians chapter twelve.

He wrote the letter because each member of the congregation, in their struggle to be the perfect congregational leader, were getting in the way of the others. Each one of them wanted to possess all the good qualities that make up a good leader, to become the perfect leader and to leave the others in their shadow. As a result they appeared to be nothing like a group of people living in the image of Jesus.

Paul taught them that the spirit does not allow even the possibility that one person can possess all the talents. That said if people come together in love, live interdependently and inspire one another with their gifts they will create a community for the good of all.

We all have gifts, talents that have been bestowed upon us and I believe we have a responsibility to learn to use these gifts well and to recognise that the same spirit that gave us these gifts requires us to use them cooperatively with those who have different gifts to us. They are not to be used lightly and selfishly, neither are they to be despised. In so doing we will inspire others to do the same, to make the most of what they have been freely given.

Let us be grateful for the gifts that have been bestowed upon us. Let us make the most of these aspects of our humanity that have been given us. Let us learn to share them with one another, let us be inspired by one another’s gifts and create a true kin-ship of love right here, right now.

In so doing we will begin to live in a “State of Grace”.

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

Impermanence and Eternity: What can sustain us in the uncertainty of life?

A famous spiritual teacher begged an audience with the king, and was shown into the palace.

“What can I do for you?” asked the king.

“I would like to spend the night here in this hotel,” replied the teacher.

“But this is not a hotel,” said the king. “This is my palace. You cannot stay here.”

“May I ask who owned this place before you?”

“My father.”

“And where is your father now?”

“He’s dead.”

“Who owned the place before him?”

“My grandfather.”

“And where is your grandfather now?”

“He’s dead.”

“So, this is a place in which people live for a while and then move on. How is it different from a hotel?”

 

Many years ago an American tourist visited the famous Polish rabbi Hafrez Hayyam. He was astonished to see that the rabbi’s home was only a simple room filled with books. The only furniture was a table and a bench.

“Rabbi, where is your furniture?” asked the tourist.

“Where is yours?” replied Hafez.

“Mine? But I’m only a visitor here.”

“So am I,” said the rabbi.

 

However many years we have lived it is important that we remember that we are merely visitors on this earth…Nothing is permanent…Nothing lasts for ever…The only thing that is permanent in life is change…

For better or for worse the end of an old year and the beginning of a new one is often a time of measurement, or it is for many of us. Not than you can actually measure life, or even take stock in the way you would in a shop. Life is not mathematics, it is far more than the sum of its parts and the problem with such measuring is that we end up reducing our lives to those material components and thus begin to reduce the meaning of our lives. Besides which those material aspects are always subject to loss, they are impermanent we cannot hold on to them. We are, all of us, merely guests in this life. Welcome guests, wanted guests and loved guests, but just as we came into life, one day we come out of life also. There is nothing in this life that is permanent that we can absolutelty rely on and cling to, surely 2020 has taught us this.

The only thing permanent in life is change. “Nothing ever lasts for ever” as Echo and the Bunnymen once sang. Life is impermanent. We are all guests in life. We cannot cling to anything. Whatever we are feeling or experiencing right now, “This too shall pass”.

 
Impermanence is the beauty and the energy of life. Life is forever changing and transforming and turning into something new. Nothing ever stays exactly the same and nothing is ever repeated in exactly the same way again. This was wonderfully expressed by the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus some 2,500 years ago. Who said, among many other things, “Everything flows, nothing stands still.” “No one ever steps into the same river twice.” And “Nothing endures but change.” He was saying that the only constant in life was and is change, that life was constantly in flux and that everything is impermanent.

So often in life we try to cling to things, to hold on to things to maintain things exactly as they are. This seems to be going against life and the nature of things. Nothing stays exactly as it is in its current nature, everything changes from moment to moment and to resist this is to resist life. Yes everything changes but life goes on.

The mistake we often make is to try to cling onto things, whatever that might be, in fear. In so doing we fail to experience life itself. We resist the beauty and the power of life.

When we stood at the beginning of 2020 we had no idea that the year would pan out as it did. I’m sure if we had known there may well have been a temptation to stay hibernating. We do not know what 2021 will bring. It is hard to make plans of any kind. There is hope that the many vaccines will slow begin to allow us to mix once again as we once did, but there is no guarantees. It certainly is not going to happen in a matter of weeks. The last months have shown once again how we cannot really cling to anything in life, there are no guarantees.

It is so easy to look at the year just gone, to see all that has gone wrong and to therefore face the future in fear and or dread of how things might turn out. We really do not know, the future truly is unwritten.

So how do we overcome the power of this debilitating fear? How do we find the courage to continue to “choose life”?

Well it takes just a little faith, a little hope and a little love to create the courage to just be, to accept what is in front of us. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Which of course it is, but it is far from easy. I believe in love and I believe in life and through living in love and remaining open to life, despite its difficulties I find the courage to “choose life”, to overcome the power of unnatural fear. Love will always overcome fear; love will always enable us to find the courage to truly be all that we can be.

We cannot escape the pain and suffering that accompanies the joy of living. If we want to know the love present in life we also have to accept the pain and suffering we all experience in life too, no one is exempt from this. As we all know only too well.

Life is constantly changing, nothing ever stays exactly the same and no moment is exactly like any other. We all experience these moments differently too; we each bring our pasts with us into each moment and this always impacts on the present.

So what can possibly sustain us in this ever changing life? Well Paul of Tarsus in his first letter to the Corinthians chapter 13 named three eternal and universal truths, faith, hope and love. I have to say that looking back at my life and these last few months these three have sustained me. But what do these three mean? What do we mean by faith, hope and love?

Faith is about trusting in life itself; it is about living as openly and honestly as possible; it is about accepting that there is pain in life, but that there is also so much joy; it is realising that the mere fact that we exist at all is life’s greatest gift. This allows us to sing the joy of living, in all its mystery. It is also about seeing that we are all in this together and to take care of that which sustains us through the vicissitudes of life. Life does not offer much certainty, but we need not despair at this, or at least not live in a state of despair.

Hope is the second of those eternal, universal truths. Hope is rooted in despair; it grows from the same place. To live in hope is to believe that if we live with conviction and compassion that we can effect positive change in our world, even if we ourselves do not get see to see its full fruition. Hope is about planting those seeds when and where ever we can.

To live with hope is to live with the attitude that the future is genuinely open and to work with and not against life. The God of my understanding works with us and guides us but leaves life open, it is not pre-ordained. “The Lure of Divine Love” draws us out of ourselves, but it also allows life to develop freely. The past does have power, I have a strong sense of history, this is very important. That said I do not believe that the past defines the future, not everything is inevitable. The future is unwritten. We play a significant role in how life develops. Everything we do and everything we do not do has an impact, there is no neutrality in life. If virus has taught us nothing else it has shown just how interdependent and interconnected we all are.

Life is definitely a journey worth taking, even during its toughest moments. Yes we all despair at times and we all live with uncertainty, but the beacon of hope is always there. The writer of the book of proverbs reminds us “Where there is no vision (no hope) the people perish.” Hope is a vital lifeline it both holds and sustains us. It is an eternal and universal principle and one that also requires nurture.

What about love? How can it sustain us? When I say love I am speaking of spiritual love, Agape. Spiritual love is that power that connects us to our true selves, one another, the life we share and whatever it is that connects all life. What I myself call God; that power that is greater than all and yet present in each. It is love that at our best powers our lives. Love is about caring deeply and passionately about life itself. This of course requires attention and nurture. Love reminds me that we do not live for ourselves alone or by ourselves alone. “no man is an island” or as Kurt Vonnegut once put it “one human being is no human being”. The universal and eternal truth is that we need the love, the care, the companionship of others in order to fully experience what it is to be alive. By ourselves we are never fully alive.

If we live by these three faith, hope and love we will know what it means to truly live and experience the joy of living, even in the dark days. They will sustain us in the ever changing uncertainty of life, they will enables us to live in the time that we get to live here, in this life that is lent to all of us.

So here are at the beginning of a New Year. Let us step forward in faith, hope and love with a commitment to life itself in its glorious impermanence, let us love this precious life that has been lent to us.

Whatever this year brings us, let us resolve as individuals and as a community to build a home of faith, hope and love.

Let’s begin again this day and every day in faith, hope and love.

Lonely but not alone: Alone but not lonely

From "The Great Failure: A Bartender, A Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth " by Natalie Goldberg

A conversation between Natalie Goldberg on her Zen teacher about ways to deal with loneliness.

" 'Roshi, now that I am divorced, it is very lonely.'

" 'Tell me. What do you do when you are alone in the house?'

"I'd never thought of that. I became interested. 'Well, I water the plants,' I faltered, then continued, 'I wash a few dishes, call a friend.' The momentum built. 'I sit on the couch for hours and stare at the bare branches out the window. I play over and over Paul Simon's new album about New Mexico — I miss it there.'

"His attention encouraged me: 'Lately, I've been sitting at my dining-room table and painting little pictures.' I looked at him. Suddenly my solitary life had a texture.

" 'Is there anything wrong with loneliness?' he asked in a low voice. I shook my head. All at once I saw it was a natural condition of life, like sadness, grief, even joy. When I was sitting with him, it didn't feel ominous or unbearable.

" 'Anyone who wants to go to the source is lonely. There are many people at Zen Center. Those who practice deeply are only with themselves.

" 'Are you lonely?' I entreated.

" 'Yes,' he nodded. 'But I don't let it toss me away. It's just loneliness.'

" 'Do you ever get over it?'

" 'I take an ice-cold shower every morning. I never get used to it. It shocks me each time, but I've learned to stand up to it.' He pointed at me. 'Can you stand up in loneliness?'

"He continued, 'Being alone is the terminal abode. You can't go any deeper in your practice if you run from it.'

"He spoke to me evenly, honestly. My hunger was satisfied — the ignored little girl still inside me and the adult seeker — both were nourished.”

...We all experience loneliness from time to time...

Christmas and New Year is a very busy time for folk in my line of work, everything feels ramped up. I certainly spent a lot of time with people, doing and giving of myself. I also spent quite a bit of time socialising with others. This continued all of last week, up until Sunday night. As I went to bed on Sunday night I craved so much for solitude, to be alone. I awoke on Monday exhausted and feeling a little disconnected. I needed space to be alone, to connect with my God and thus allow myself to connect with others and life again. I was beginning to feel that inner loneliness that always comes when I’m exhausted or have spent too much time with others. Like most ministers I am an introvert in the Jungian understanding. I am the kind of person who re-energises from spending time in solitude. I tend to give my energy when in the company of others and recharge in solitude.

As I spent time in silent solitude that morning a phrase came into my being. It went something like this “Lonely but not alone: Alone but not lonely”

There have been times in my life when I have been surrounded by everyone I could have to be around and yet felt utterly alone. There have been other times when I have been physically alone and yet I experienced not one semblance of loneliness. Being alone and experiencing loneliness may look similar, but they could not be more different. One is about connection and the other disconnection.

John O'Donohue wrote beautifully about the importance of solitude in "Anam Cara". He wrote:

"Solitude is one of the most precious things in the human spirit. It is different from loneliness. When you are lonely, you become acutely conscious of your own separation. Solitude can be a homecoming to your own deepest belonging. One of the lovely things about us as individuals is the incommensurable in us. In each person, there is a point of absolute nonconnection with everything else and with everyone. This is fascinating and frightening. It means that we cannot continue to seek outside ourselves for things we need from within. The blessings for which we hunger are not to be found in other places or people. These gifts can only be given to you by yourself. They are at home at the hearth of your soul."

...John O'Donhue had a beautiful gift in the way he used language...  

January can often be the toughest months for many people. The joy and celebration of Christmas and New Year is over. Winter has set in and there seems only dark days and nights and cold ahead. It can be a time of isolation when we don’t spend much time with others. I remember how many times last winter I said “it’s been a long one this time”. For many folk this can feel like the loneliest time of year. It need not be so. If we utilise this time in the right way, it can actually help us to connect to those deeper harder to reach parts that can come to life when spring comes once again. I was thinking of this as Sue pointed to the bulbs just sprouting a little bit on the cold morning last Tuesday. They are creating life, ready to fully sprout in the cold dark earth. They need this time to come fully to life, just like we do. I bet those bulbs have never known the ache of loneliness.

Loneliness is something that everyone experiences at some time in their life. We need not fear it, I suspect it just a part of the human condition. That said it’s not something that you ever get used. It ought not to be feared, it does not mean that there is something wrong with us and it is not a terminal condition. Just talk and listen with your neighbour and you will find they have felt like this many times too.

There are many causes for this sense of loneliness. If we lose someone we love dearly, a spouse, a partner, a parent, a dear friend, that loss can lead a deep loneliness. We feel like something is missing in our lives, which of course there is, our loved one. If we suffer a debilitating illness we can often become cut off from social contacts, this can lead to a sense of isolation. When we move house or change jobs a loneliness can set in too, we feel like a fish out of water. Even the seemingly self confident can feel lonely at such times. When these things happen the mistake we can often make is to draw further in and isolate even more, thus increasing this sense of loneliness.

Now this experience of loneliness may not be as negative as we might realise, for it can lead to new opportunities. It offers a chance to connect to those often untouched parts within ourselves, to connect to those inner resources and of course it can help us to understand the loneliness that others suffer too. It develops empathy and help us connect with others in deeper more meaningful ways.

Loneliness is not the end of anything. It can actually be the beginning. It is an opportunity to see and experience life in new ways. It is call to ourselves to help alleviate the loneliness and suffering in others. It has the capacity to transform our lives. Loneliness need not be seen as an affliction, instead it is an opportunity to transform both your own life and that of others. As Dag Hammarskjold said 'Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.' "

Our experiences of loneliness can become a gift that can transform our lives and the lives of others.

The Epistle Paul had something interesting to say on loneliness in his timeless first letter to the Corinthians chapter 13. He wrote 'For now we see in a mirror, dimly (as through a glass, darkly), but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.'

Here he is contrasting how we view life now with the life that will be enjoyed in what is called “God’s Kingdom, yet to come”. Suggesting that in our current state we do not see things clearly and that this is a cause of loneliness. The problem is that we do not see God, each other or life fully (‘face to face’) and thus we feel cut off, separate and alone. He is suggesting that only after death will we see fully. Paul is of course drawing on the Jewish tradition here, that no one can ever see the face of God, that it is always partially hidden behind a veil.

In the “Sermon on the Mount”, the moment where Jesus declares his mission in Matthew's Gospel, he says that, 'Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.' Suggesting a way to see clearly the face of God and thus one another. Could this be the bridge that relieves ours and others loneliness? This to me is what it means to create the Kingdom of God, what I prefer to name the “kin-dom of Love” right here right now. This is what it means to live spiritually alive. This is what it means to remove from our being the veils, mirrors, fears, fantasies, selfishness and unreality that separate us from the Divine, from life and the people around us thus relieving the ache of one another's loneliness.

The problem is, of course, that so few of us want to go there. How many of us want to experience what it means to be alone. We need not fear being alone. As my time alone proved last Monday. You can be “Lonely but not alone” and you can be, “alone but not lonely”.

Last Monday, as I sat alone in silence I found myself utterly surrendered to the power of the moment I was in. As I sat there the following poem by David's Whyte's came onto my being

“Sweet Darkness” by David Whyte

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone,
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your home
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

...I do love David Whyte...

The line that sang in my heart was the following: “Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness…” 

So many people fear these two things, especially at this time of year "darkness and the confinement of our aloneness." The truth is that we need to experience this in order to truly connect with what is at the core of all being and to fully connect with life itself and the people we share our ives with. In so doing we see life as it really is and we begin to build that kin-dom of love, we live together one and all.

It is quite possible to be, “lonely but not alone” and you can find yourself completely “alone but not lonely”. The key is connection, connection to ourselves, to life, to the people around us and to whatever we believe is at the core of all life, what I call God. Sometimes it takes an experience of deep loneliness to allow us to know this, to see clearly.

Loneliness is something we will all experience in our lives. I bet we have all felt it at some time in the last week. The problem isn’t the feeling itself, but how we respond to it. It may well be an opportunity to connect. To connect to those deep places within us, to connect to the core of all life and to truly connect to one another. The problem is not the feeling of isolation and loneliness, but how respond to this experience.

We all feel lonely at times. Loneliness is the one thing that you are not alone in, feeling. May our shared loneliness lead us all to deeper connections.

Seeking a Moral Compass in a Post Moral Age

“It Matters What We Believe” by Sophia Lyon Fahs

It matters what we believe. Some beliefs are like walled gardens. They encourage exclusiveness, and the feeling of being especially privileged.
Other beliefs are expansive and lead the way into wider and deeper sympathies.
Some beliefs are like shadows, clouding children's days and fears of unknown calamities.
Other beliefs are like sunshine, blessing children with the warmth of happiness.
Some beliefs are divisive, separating saved from unsaved, friends from enemies.
Other beliefs are bonds in a world community, where sincere differences beautify the pattern.
Some beliefs are like blinders, shutting off the power to choose one's own direction.
Other beliefs are like gateways opening wide vistas for exploration.
Some beliefs weaken a person's selfhood. They blight the growth of resourcefulness.
Other beliefs nurture self-confidence and enrich the feeling of personal worth.
Some beliefs are rigid, like the body of death, impotent in a changing world.
Other beliefs are pliable, like the young sapling, ever growing with the upward thrust of life.

The other Sunday afternoon and evening Sue and myself attended a friends birthday celebrations. It was an interesting time. It began with yoga sessions at the center in Altrincham. he yoga was followed by a meal at a Sushi restaurant followed by a Gong Sound bath. This was what I was looking forward to the most. From early in our relationship Sue and I have shared these wonderful things together, led by lovely couple that we have nicknamed the “Wizard and his Wife”, they could quite easily be characters from a Tolkein novel and they do love what we call them this.

By the way a Gong sound bath is created from a selection of Gongs that are played over an hour while you simply lie there sinking into the ground. It is a wonderful and powerful experience, I highly recommend it to anyone.

Now as we arrived we greeted the Wizard and his wife, they welcomed us in, and Sue took out her phone and found her compass. She wanted to find East. So she found due north and we took our spot. We then shared with many others in a truly wonderful experience.

As I lay there, sinking into the ground and the sound washed over me, I began to think about her compass and its northward facing needle. As I was doing so the phrase moral compass came into my mind. How we do we find our moral compass, how do we find the right direction in life, the way to face in order to make the appropriate moral decisions in life? Sounds simple, I know, but I’m not certain it is so easy.

Now morality has been on my mind quite a lot in recent weeks. I have just finished reading Bob Woodward’s (of Watergate and all the President’s Men fame) excellent new book “Fear: Trump in the White House”. It is an incredible and frightening book. The president’s morality has come into question for various reasons. The suggestion is that it is not so much that he is immoral, more that he is amoral; that essentially he is not ruled by a particular foundational moral code, other than the situation he is in. If he has a moral compass he is ruled by fear and instilling fear. There is a quote on the back of Woodward’s book in which Trump says “Real power is – I don’t even want to use the word – fear.” The suggestion being made is that if he lives from a moral compass it is one based on fear.

It brought to mind something I read many years ago “Leviathan” by Thomas Hobbes, written just after the English civil war. It is a striking, disturbing and bleak view of human nature.

Hobbes wrote

"Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre (war), where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short."

I will just repeat the last few words

“And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short” Gosh that is hard.

For Hobbe’s what is required to overcome this state of fear is an ultimate authority to bring order to wayward humanity and subjugate our anarchic and brutish nature.

I suppose that you could say that this is some form of moral foundation, that this is something to aim for, but I am not convinced, although I do from time to time struggle with human nature, mine and others too.

Now while I reject this fear based view of humanity, I do have a sense that there is a goodness at the core of life, an ok-ness, I acknowledge that it is not always easy to find a guide. How do we find our true north? How do we find the right direction and make moral decisions about life, so as to give positively to the melting pot of humanity. It is suggested that there is no longer a single meta-narrative, that the foundation stones that we once built our lives on no longer have value. I am not convinced, I do find certain truths that have been with us for centuries and keep on resurfacing. I do believe that there is an ultimate goodness that we can connect to, a goodness that can be found in everything, in you, in me and in everything. A love that can always overcome any fear. For fear ultimately corrodes the soul and reduces life to nothing.

Last Sunday John Midgley led a wonderful service at Dunham Road, celebrating 50 years since he took up ministry here and at Queens Road, he will be delivering something similar at Queens Road next month. John was my first Unitarian minister at Cross Street in Manchester. While there he introduced me to the wonderful Carl Scovel. Now at the heart of his faith was something he described as the “Great Surmise” at a talk he delivered at the 1994 Unitarian Universalist General Assembly he described what he meant by it:

“The Great Surmise says simply this: At the heart of all creation lies a good intent, a purposeful goodness, from which we come, by which we live our fullest, and to which we shall at last return. This is the supreme mystery of our lives. This goodness is ultimate-not fate, not freedom, not mystery, energy, order, finite, but this good intent in creation is our source, our centre, and our destiny...Our work on earth is to explore, enjoy, and share this goodness. Neither duty nor suffering nor progress nor conflict-not even survival-is the aim of life, but joy. Deep, abiding, uncompromised joy.

Life really is about how we see things, our perspective. Is life “Nasty, brutish and short”...Maybe, maybe not?

Or is it a “Deep, abiding, uncompromised joy ”...Maybe, maybe not?

I have discovered the simple joy of living even in life’s most challenging times. I have found that there is a love at the core of life. It is our moral task, I believe, to find it and being it to life through our own human being. To me this is essentially what Jesus meant when he spoke of the Kingdom of God, what I like to call the kin-dom of love. This is no easy task, but then again it never has been. There has never been an idealised time for any of us. The people Jesus spoke to 2,000 years ago were not living easy and comfortable lives. Those people knew about conflict, oppression, tragedy and almost constant grief. He told them that all that was wonderful, life-giving, life affirming, all that is meaningful was theirs. He said to them “Enter into my kingdom with joy.” He also told them that “This is my commandment, that you love one another.”

So maybe this is the key, to live by the “Golden Rule”, to love one another, to love our neighbour as ourselves. That though requires a belief that there is a love at the core of all life, our lives. Do we see this when we look in the mirror, do we see this when we look into each others eyes?

It matters, it really does.

I think the greatest danger to humanity, past present and future looking forward, is this idea that some people are superior to others, have greater value. It is a voice that we hear more and more, a voice that leads to separation, that breeds this idea of us and them. It is there in religion, but also secular society. Some religious groups talk about the saved and the unsaved, others talk of being God’s chosen people. When they speak this way they are talking of a God I do not recognise. The God I know accepts and loves all universally. Experience has revealed to me that we are all chosen by God, it’s just that so many of us turn away and cannot believe that there is a spirit that is there in all life.

Then of course there are the anti-religionists who ridicule people of faith; who see it all as purely infantile projections. They mock, they poke fun, they separate people into the stupid and the wise. In so doing they are saying that they are better than them.

When the epistle Paul talked of the oneness, the unity in Christianity, he wrote that in Christ “there is no longer Jew or Greek.” He did not say that there are no longer Jews or Greeks more that people are no longer separated by these distinctions; that they are all one in love, in body and in spirit; that if all people are viewed in the light they are brothers and sisters to one another.

As Tenzin Gyatso XIVth Dalai Lama has said “Mentally, physically and emotionally we are the same. We each have the potential to be good and bad and to be overcome by disturbing emotions such as anger, fear, hatred, suspicion and greed. These emotions can be the cause of many problems. On the other hand if you cultivate loving kindness, compassion and concern for others, there will be no room for anger, hatred and jealousy.

These words very much chime with a favourite story of mine, “The Two Wolves"

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life.

“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

“It’s a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, ego and it makes me cynical about life.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, faith and it fills me with enthusiasm for life. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

Maybe this is how we can find a foundation on which we can make moral choices and decisions. It begins by believing that at the core of life is a goodness and that if we feed that in the right way it can grow within us and that we can live in ways that will serve life in loving and positive ways. It will require us to believe that this same spirit is all life. It will require us to live from a place of love and not of fear.

The choice is ours. Do we live by the power of fear, of hate, of separation or do we take the risk to live by love? It’s up to us…Our lives and all life depend on the choices we will make.

It matters, it really does…But then again everything matters…Every feeling, every thought, every word and every deed.

The Essence of the Truth

“Guarding the Rock of Truth” taken from "The Truth in 60 Seconds: 99 Tales to Set Your Clock By" by Art Lester

The Guardian of the Rock of Truth was entertaining his grandson on the mountain top. After several millennia he felt the need of a little company, and it wouldn’t hurt the lad to learn a few things about what grandpa did all day. They sat and watched as various humans below attempted to scale the mountain where the large Rock gleamed in the sunlight. They watched them as they got side-tracked or discouraged. Sometimes people actually fell in their attempts.

“Why do you need to guard the Rock, Grandpa?” asked the boy.

“Because the truth is dangerous to humans.”

“Why is that?”

“I’ll explain another time,” said the Guardian. He was looking closely at a human who was getting very near the summit. They watched as a man scaled the last few feet of the climb and stood unsteadily blinking in the sun.

The Guardian walked over and stood between the ragged and exhausted man and the Rock. “I’m afraid you can’t go any further,” he said.

“But I want the truth,” complained the man.

“Sorry. Out of the question,” said the Guardian.

He turned back toward his grandson, and the man dashed forward. In a second he had picked up a small piece of the Rock and jumped back onto the trail. The Guardian watched him head down with a sigh.

“Another poor fellow,” he said.

“But, Grandpa, he looked happy!” said the boy.

They looked down at the man. He was holding the tiny piece of the Rock of Truth over his head, a look of ecstasy on his face. Far below him they could see a crowd of cheering people who watched as the man made his way down the mountain. The Guardian clucked his tongue and shook his head sadly.

“Are you afraid he will fall, Grandpa? Is that why it’s bad for him to have a piece of the truth?

“No.” answered the old man.

“Is it because it will make him ill?”

“No,” said the Guardian.

“Then why?” asked the boy impatiently.

"Because now he will take that small piece of truth and start another religion.” The Guardian said.

"A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing…You can wear a crown, it doesn’t make you king, beware the trinkets that we bring"…"For all that glitters is not gold"…Beware the dangers of shiney things…perhaps the most dangerous being the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth…Or perhaps the delusion that you believe that you hold the whole truth in your hands...

The Buddha reputedly said “Three things cannot be long hidden, the sun, the moon and the truth”. Now while these things are not long hidden we never see the whole of them from where we stand "whole of the moon", despite what the “Waterboys” sang, the whole of the sun and certainly not the whole of the truth.

None of us know the whole truth, we can only get a glimpse of it and even the small aspect that we get to glimpse upon we do not see directly. Any bit of the light we gaze upon is refracted…As Paul said in his famous words on love we only see into the glass dimly. No one sees the whole truth…It is important to remember this and it ought to breed humility…

People can be very funny!!!

I recently posted a comment on facebook, it was meant for my more theologically inclined friends. It read “Has anyone else ever noticed that when ever you type "panentheism" into Word it wants to correct it to pantheism...They are not the same and one is not a mispelling of the other...”

...The responses I received were hilarious, mainly from people who just made jokes about the terms, which they'd never heard of...

Now I’m not going to talk about their differences here, they are vastly so by the way, although one does seem not to be recognised by Microsoft. No the reason I mention this is that I was recently sent a questionnaire by a friend who was asking me for my views on God and Love amongst others things for her thesis titled “Models of God and the Meaning of Love”. The word panentheism had come up in my attempt to describe my own beliefs, as I attempted to share my experiences and my truth. I found the exercise both useful and deeply moving as I recalled and attempted to put into words experiences that are beyond the limits of my language and seemingly way beyond the limits of Microsoft spell checker, or this "Blog" by the way. Google blog keeps on wanting to correct "Panentheism" to "Pantheism" too. I was merely trying to attempt to share my truth from my experiences, my own understanding of the little aspect of the light I have glimpsed upon and only dimly…my partial truth…my imperfect truth...

I was also recently asked a question by another friend about faith, I think she was trying to work me out. She thanked me for my truth but I could tell it made her a little uncomfortable as it didn’t fit into her own model it would seem. I was also asked by someone at the gym, who I’ve been chatting to in recent weeks, “What I was doing later today” to which I replied “Mainly working, got a lot a of visiting today”. They then asked “Oh what do you do?” to which I replied “I’m a minister”. They then asked, with that slightly shocked look that people often give me when they discover what I do, “Oh are you very religious?” To which I replied, “Well it depends what you mean by religious?” We then had a very interesting conversation about matters of faith etc, in which they did most of the talking and I listened and shared a little of my truth. We then carried on with our workouts and I smiled to myself as I thought about the truth I’d just heard.

Truth is an interesting concept, especially in matters of faith, belief and disbelief. So often people see it as a rock that must be clung to, that is absolute and must not be questioned. It can often lead to argument as people find that in order to hold on to their truth they must disprove the truth claims of another that differs from their own. Such reasoning lacks humility, because the truth is that whatever we believe or disbelieve about truth we never see the whole truth completely, instead we merely glimpse through the glass dimly or maybe get a hold of only a tiny piece of the truth. Who can honestly say that they know the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Well I suppose some can say it and even believe it, but that doesn’t make it true. Whether that is a person in the gym or coffee shop or the leader of an institution or nation.

This brings to mind this little snippet from Anthony DeMello’s “One Minute Wisdom”

"To a visitor who described himself as a seeker after Truth, the teacher said: “If what you seek is Truth, there is one thing you must have above all else.” “I know,” answered the student, “an overwhelming passion for it.” “No,” said the teacher, “an unremitting readiness to admit you may be wrong.”

To seek the truth one needs humility and openness and enough self-esteem to see that we are wrong sometimes and of course the capacity to admit to this. If we cannot, we will not be able to see the truth, even when it is right in front of us. It is so easy to become blinded by what we think we know. We need the openness that comes with true humility, it’s a truth that will set us free.

According to the Gospel of Thomas Jesus said, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

Whilst Lao Tzu wrote in the “Tao Te Ching”

“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”

You will never bring forth what is within you while ever you are afraid of what is within you. There have been times when I have been afraid to bring forth what is within me and I have witnessed the same fear in others too. After all isn't it a little less scary to receive our truth from elsewhere rather than to let it come forth from within ourselves?

It can appear safer to accept the truth offered to us, rather than to seek it out ourselves. So often in life we want certainty, absolutes black and white and not a thousand shades of grey. So often we seek the illusion of certainty. This though just closes us in, builds those walls and keeps us cut of from what life offers to us.

The key to truth seeking is openness, born from uncertainty and humility. Openness is a way that enables us to experience new previously unseen truth; a truth that will set us free. It will allow us to bring forth what is within us and by doing so we might just uncover what will save us from the delusion of what we think we know about ourselves, one another and life itself. It will build bridges between the walls we build around ourselves.

There’s an ancient Chinese proverb that goes something like this: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” I suspect it’s the same with truth. Is it better to be given something that will feed us for a short time or is it better to be given a way that will enable us to keep on feeding ourselves and one another? Do we want to be given a fish that will fill our bellies for now or do we want to be given a method that will keep on feeding us; a method that will enable us to seek the truth that will set us free and continue to set us free?

Do we trust ourselves enough to seek out the truth and therefore to bring forth what is within us or would just rather stick with the safety of what we think we already know of what someone has taught us or told us is the truth.

In John’s Gospel Jesus said “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” when I first read DeMello’s wisdom shared earlier in the "blogspot" these words immediately sprang to mind. What I have discovered is that we are only truly set free by living in the truth. Not by accepting the truth we are given but by fishing for the truth and by seeing that some of the fish that we catch are of no use at least today and throwing them back. As DeMello taught if you want to be a seeker of truth then above everything else what you need is an unremitting readiness to admit that you may be wrong. Remember we only get a partial glimpse of the truth. Can we even trust this? Can we trust our own eyes?

Well we can trust what we unearth if we learn how to truly live in the questions of ours and others truth claims. Trust is vital. We have to learn to trust what we discover, what we unearth, what we catch, whilst not putting a fence around what we see as the truth today; the key is an open attitude whether that’s in finding your own truth or in offering truth to another. Now the challenge of course comes in dwelling in the ambiguity of truth without becoming overwhelmed or paralysed by it; the challenge comes in maintaining a deep commitment to the openness that truth seeking requires and not allowing yourself to become closed down.

This is not for the faint hearted. This takes courage. This is not the easier path, but it is definitely the one worth taking, for it is the one that will set us up to live in and through truth.

You know its ok to get it wrong to make mistakes. It’s ok to feel lost and confused about life at times. That is so human. There is something both glorious and beautiful in this.

If we want to be a seeker of truth then above everything else what we need is an unremitting readiness to admit that we may be wrong. .

The truth is of course. Once you can see you are wrong about something, admit you are wrong about something, do whatever you can to put right what was once wrong, then you are no longer wrong, you are right. The key is to feel right enough in your humanness to be able to admit that you can only ever vision the partial truth and to be open to the truth of others…

The key is in being right enough to be wrong...For that is essence of the truth...