To Life: I could do with a bit more Zeal

There are times when I become aware of just how British I can be, it makes me chuckle and occasionally cringe.  A classic example would have been the day of my proposal to Sue at the water’s edge of Capernaum, looking out on the Sea of Galilee. Now this is not what exposed my Britishness,  that was an unexpectedly romantic moment, I surprised myself that day. No it was what followed that showed up my Britishness. The first example was a couple of hours later as we ate in a famous fish restaurant in a local kibbutz. Sue and myself were the only people there and as we were chatting with the waiter, I discovered that we shared an unexpected passion, a love for Leeds United. Because of this I decided that he should be the first person to know our news. Well he went crazy with excitement as did all the other staff working in the restaurant, with cries of “Mazel Tov”. There were other such reactions over the next few days including several young people picking up Jewish horns, in the shop where we went to buy the engagement ring. On hearing our news they ran around the shop, danced and celebrated in joy. Complete strangers just sharing in the joy of the occasion and wishing us well. It was wonderful, but a bit overwhelming and it made me realise just how British I actually am. This would not have happened back home.

Don’t get me wrong I am not a shrinking violet, but my passion is not displayed so publicly. Mine had been displayed in the search for the perfect spot, I had been on, as we reached the Sea of Galilee. I had stuck steadfast to the task, spurred on by passion and not satisfied until I had found the perfect place and moment. I also have a growing passion for life, as folk have heard me say many times. I “Choose Life” in all its blessings and curses. I sing the joy of living in all of its mystery.

I have noticed that within my own spirituality there are some Jewish flavours. Now while I am tee-totaler I do toast life..“To life” is a toast within the Jewish tradition. It is powerful representation of the faith, which at its core is about how to live more than just what to believe; at its core it conveys an optimistic attitude toward life, investing energy in living rather than in worrying about dying. It promotes the pleasures of life rather than focusing on all that is wrong. The emphasis is on this world rather than pinning our hopes on finding satisfaction in some world to come. The toast "to life" emphasises the original blessing that is life that God has given and seen as good. Think of Genesis I and its emphasis on the goodness of creation rather than what followed and the fall of Genesis II. As the sages teach 'in time to come, everyone will have to account for all the good things God created which he refused to enjoy.'

So it is no surprise that all the people we met following the proposal wanted to dance and sing and join in the celebration. It also showed me just how British I am. Oh how I wish I could release a little bit more of that zeal that I know is within me. Maybe we need to rescue British Zeal and not just British Steel.

Now “Zeal” is one of those words that is given a bit of a bad press. Too much passion in spiritual circles can be mistrusted. Also no one would want to be called a Zealot. I heard a lot about the Zealots as I learnt more about Jewish history particularly at the time of the destruction of the “Second Temple”. During the first century “The Zealots” were a political movement who sought to incite the people of the Judea Province to rise up against their Roman rulers. The word Zealot meant one who is zealous on behalf of God.

In the New Testament you see an example of Jesus acting in such a manner. This in the Temple when he turns over the tables and chases out the money changers who are trading in the Temple that was destroyed just a few decades later. Accounts of which were all written after the destruction of the “Second Temple”, may years after Jesus' death.

Today a “Zealot” is understood to be “a person who is fanatical and uncompromising in pursuit of their religious, political, or other ideals.” So not someone you would expect a person of liberal spiritual leanings to be singing the praises of.

I am not of course. What I am talking of is “Zeal”.

I drink a non-alcoholic toast to life each and every single day. I need zeal for life to do so. Zeal is a natural aspect of our humanity. To awaken each day enthused (filled with Divine Spirit) and anticipation, wholeheartedly and with gusto to attend to what is in front of us is an innate human quality. Yet so often that light, that spark can be absent.

The key is to harness this zeal, this enthusiasm, in order to propel our lives with courage to their rightful purpose. Zeal is the toast to life, brought into being in our daily activities. By the way by not harnessing this zeal, and thus acting in life in loving ways, is to deny the greatest gift of all, life itself.  Life is the ultimate free gift, the ultimate Grace. What did we do to deserve it? Well nothng. It is gifted to us freely.

To live with zeal is essentially to be aroused by life itself. This is not a singular cellular experience, but a uniting one. It’s that expression of spontaneous joy even for strangers, as we experienced in Israel. It is to truly feel kinship with other people. In fact one sign that that zeal is not awake is to fail to see this kinship, is to see the other as different from self. A sign that our zeal is aroused is to feel a deep connection with all life. As Anais Nin has said “What everyone forgets is that passion is not merely a heightened sensual fusion but a way of life which produces, as in mystics, as ecstatic awareness of the whole of life.”

To live with zeal is about creating and repairing the fabric of life, beginning with our relationships with each other. It is love in action, which is a powerful and creative force, something we all possess, even if it is latent within us.

To live with zeal is to give of ourselves in loving service. It is the essence of the religious life. It is about doing our little bit for our human family. By the way it begins, and in many ways ends, with the little things. As Helen Keller so beautifully put it “I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.”

It comes in the little things, thus saith the Lord.

This though is far from easy, to live a toast to life, every day, takes real courage. How many times do we get knocked down each and every day? I reckon it’s even harder if you re British, we do not like too much exuberance, too much zeal. It makes us feel a little too uncomfortable and self conscious.

Mark Nepo put it this way...

"In the face of this gritty, mysterious, and ever-changing dynamic we call being alive, it's nothing short of heroic that we are asked to choose life and living, again and again. Not just to put a good face on things while we're here, but because saying yes to life is how the worm inches its way through earth. It's how salmon leap their way upstream. It's how flowers grow out of stone. The word for such flowers, saxifrage, from the Latin, means stone breaker. Saying yes is the way the flower of the soul breaks through the stone of the world.

"But how do we do this? Some deep part of us knows and needs no instruction, while the part of us sore for meaning needs to uncover the practice of saying yes. . . .”

But how do we say yes?

Well it begins and it ends with the little things. With the things and the people in front of us. It is about giving ourselves and our attention to what is simply before us. This requires faith in life itself, despite those oh so many times we have fallen.

It begins by paying attention to the little things in front of us and all around us. This is what the Zen Buddhist would call our “Semu”, our work practice, our work. For as the “Sandokai”, says 'Each thing has its own intrinsic value.' This kind of activity affects other people in positive ways it begins to bring healing, no matter how small the task is. That said it isn’t just what we do it is the spirit in which we do what we do, with love for life, in zeal.

So today I’m going live my life as an offering, a toast to life, in all its mystery. I know I will falter many times. There are no doubt going to many sufferings ahead. I offer a toast to mortality and the original blessing that is life itself. And when my time comes I hope I can offer a good account for all the good things that life has offered for all to enjoy. In so doing I know I will  become a light of the world and in so doing I will begin to bring healing to the many tears in the fabric of this our shared world.

We all belong here.

Come and join in the celebration, come with me and lets sing a toast to life. A toast to the Majesty of mortality.

I’m going to end with this lovely little poem by Dawna Markova “Wide Open”

“Wide Open”

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

By Dawna Markova

Joy and Suffering: Opposites and Equals

During my time in Israel – Palestine I found myself quoting Moses’s well known words from Exodus, during his final sermon just before the people entered the “Promised Land” without him after 40 years in the wilderness. The words are of course “I lay before you life blessings and curses, therefore choose life”. To me this is what it means to live truly alive, to live spiritually; to live spiritually alive to embrace the whole of life as it truly is. Now my use of the phrase has been questioned, especially the choice of the word “curses”. What is questioned is the idea that life’s troubles are seen as curses. I have to say I kind of agree with the protest, as to see life’s troubles as curses is to see them as something that has been bestowed upon you , a kind of punishment and burden that you have to live with. So I’m trying to come up with an alternative to curses that means the troubles and sufferings that we live with each day. You can’t pick and choose I know that. To know the joy of life, you also have to know the sufferings, for as the Buddhist say, life is Dukkha.

Life by its nature is paradoxical, it is full of contradictions. Some of the days of greatest joy also contain some suffering. Actually a day of celebration for one set of people can be one of utter dismay for others. Life truly is Dukkha. Choosing life for me is to embrace this, to live in the middle of the paradox of joys and sufferings, this is the nature of life, this is what it means to live spiritually alive. As Barry Lopez has said:

“One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once, life would collapse. There are simply no definitive answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.”

To live spiritually alive is of course to lean into the light, or perhaps its more than this it is to let the light shine out of us, to truly become our destiny and become the light of the world.

Now a classic example of the mixed nature of life came on the day I proposed to Sue at Capernaum at the water’s edge of “The Sea of Galilee”. A day that will probably be the most joyful in memory had actually begun in heartbreaking tears. I had awoken to the news that a woman I have called “Auntie Hilda”, or “Auntie Hazel” as she preferred as she didn’t like the name she had been given, had died. She had been my beloved grandfather’s partner since I was two years old and her children Samantha and Troy were like cousins to us as we grew up. So that morning I wept for her, her children, my loved ones and of course my grandad who died a few years ago. In many ways it was the tears that opened my heart fully to the experiences of the day and helped me find the spot and moment on that rock at Capernaum as we stared out at Galilee that beautiful day. As auntie Hilda’s children Troy and Sammi said a few days later she would have been so happy for me to hear of mine and Sue’s engagement, I will go and say my farewells to auntie Hilda next Friday. I hope there is Walls Vienetta at the funeral, something she always gave us for "afters" when we went for "tea".

Capernaum will be forever etched in my heart, but last weekend I had a very different experience of the place. This time it was watching the Oscar nominated Lebanese film “Capernaum” which according to its opening credits means “Chaos”

The film tells the story of a 12 year old boy named Zain who is growing up in poverty in Beruit. He is deeply embittered by his situation, he has no official identity and he and his family struggle to survive.

The film is told in flashbacks. He had been imprisoned in the notorious “Roumieh” prison for attempting to kill the man who is responsible for the death of his sister Samar who had been sold to him for marriage at just 11 years old. From the prison, encouraged by a tv programme,  Zain launches a lawsuit against his parents, suing them for the fact that he has been born.

Zain is a modern day anti-hero, cynical despite his years. Foul mouthed and living on his wits, but with a caring heart. Following the sale of his sister he runs away and meets all kinds of characters. He ends up looking after an Ethiopian cleaners child, who is also on the run, while she works. She is arrested and he is left with the child alone, struggling to survive. In the end circumstances lead to him having to give up the child to a people trafficker. Zain returns home to find identity papers in an attempt to escape Lebanon but the family has none. He learns of the death of his sister which leads to him attacking the man responsible and he ending up in prison.

There is some hope the in films ending, as Zain gets his identity papers and the Ethiopian woman is reunited with her child. That said it also ended in a deep feeling of sadness too. A sadness for the plight of so many people caught up in poverty and violence in this world. It led to a sense of powerlessness too for the plight of these people and all those who suffer.

This is real life though. Something that cannot be avoided. It brought myself and Sue back down to earth too. It brought more tears.

Joy and suffering go hand in hand. To know joy is to also know suffering, you cannot have one without the other. Being in a place of joy opens your heart and it should make you more aware of the sufferings around you. It can make you very vulnerable too, an open heart is a vulnerable heart and an awakened heart. It’s also worth noting that just because you are filled with joy, it does not mean that others will necessarily share in this. There has been a small amount of negativity towards Sue and mine’s loving announcement and we both have our share of suffering amongst our nearest and dearest even in our joy.

Does this mean we should inhibit our joy? I do not think so. It does not serve the world and actually only feeds the darkness ever more. It is easy to be cynical to hide the light, this is a betrayal of God given life. I know only too well the dangers of this.

A memory came back to me over the weekend as I was talking about Capernaum both the film and our time there as well as the challenges of life. It was from my childhood. I remembered being at a youth club, I would have been 12 or 13 and it was a challenging time in my family life. I remember I felt safe and free at the club and was just enjoying watching the others dancing. I felt happy, I felt free for the first time in quite a while and this broad beaming smile spread across my face. Suddenly, for no reason known to me, a boy just hit me in the face. I was in utter shock. The leaders spoke with him about it afterwards and asked him why he did it, to which he said “I don’t really know I just hated the fact that he looked so happy, it made me feel so bad.”

It’s strange how it came to me as I was talking over the weekend as I haven’t thought about it for years. It reminded me of a scene from that nihilistic film “Fight Club” and the leading character saying that he was going out to destroy something beautiful, because he felt so terrible inside.

Sometimes seeing the light can remind us just how dark things truly are and can lead to ever darker responses. Light doesn’t always encourage others to seek ever more light. It can lead us to turn away, reject life and sometimes lead to the destruction of light and life.

To live fully alive, is to accept life in its entirety, both the joys and sufferings. It is to walk with others in their sufferings too, to hold them in their time of need and to let them hold you when you need comfort too. It is not to hide your light. This serves no one, although it might not always be appreciated. How often in human history have we destroyed the lights that have shined the brightest. That said sometimes you can spend too much time basking in that light and that serves no one too.

We did that day at Capernaum. So much so that it meant we didn’t get to stand on the ground that is said to have been where the “Sermon on the Mount” took place. We didn’t quite get there. We were a bit like the grand old Duke of York, we only got half way up the hill, before we had to turn back as the car park was closing.

We didn’t need to in order to live the message that was delivered there. A message that is central to my simple faith, particularly verses 14, 15 and 16 (Matthew chapter 5).

“14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

Life is full of opposites. There is joy and there is suffering, there is love and hate, there is hope and despair and there is light and dark. To live fully alive is accept all and to respond appropriately and to them and not be afraid to weep for all.

To live fully alive, spiritually alive, is to live with your heart burst open, it is to live with a vulnerable heart. A vulnerable heart can be easily hurt and easily wounded, it will carry many scars.

Do not be afraid to shine your light, or to show your scars for those around you need to see them.

This brings to mind a story I heard a few years ago. Like all great stories it is one of mythos, it may be apocryphal, it may not be 100% true, but there is a deep truth within it.

It is the story about the soldiers who survived the battle of Agincourt. How each year, on the anniversary of the battle, they 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. Scars they were not afraid of, that they were not haunted by.

As they stood there they stood proud, fully alive, shining their light for the whole world to see.

They chose life in all its joys and sufferings.

Amen