Or to quote the song “it aint what you do it’s the way that you do it and that’s what gets results.”
I am continuing my daily practice of sharing each morning, the little things I noticed the day before. I have done so every day ever since my friend left those gifts of milky bar chocolates on my doorstep in early December. It is wonderful to see how folk are responding, moving me deeply. Just a little thing that is having a positive impact on the lives of others. Concentric circles of love spreading out into the world; a world that at times appears devoid of it, depending on how you view it, the angle of your vision.
I was visited by an angel again this week. A beautiful gift of an orchid with a lovely card left on my doorstep. The wingless angel was offering me loving and encouraging words of support in the card and the beautiful gift of a plant. I cannot begin to tell you how much they have meant.
It has been a very difficult few weeks, since we lost dear Andrea. Last Friday we shared her funeral. I was deeply moved by how many came together in love as we honoured her life and grieved her lost. It was an honest service as shared her whole person and one filled with love and appreciation for loss of someone who meant so much to so many and whose life touched so many others.
I have felt weighed down by the grief I have had to hold, for so many, these last few weeks, if I am honest. I have felt vulnerable, my heart has felt broken open. Thank God for loving support from so many people. I cannot tell you how much the little gestures of kindness and love have meant to me. They have touched me oh so deeply. Such exquisite love.
It has felt like I have had a layer of skin removed at times these last few days and yet I have been functioning as normal. It is my responsibility to do so, for so many people. No doubt my own grief will only really begin properly after Andrea’s funeral.
I could not sleep on Monday night, I had just written Andrea’s service that day, or at least the first draft. It was very much in my body. I woke at 3am and couldn’t get back to sleep. At 4am I decided that instead of lying there I would go for a walk. It was beautiful walking in the dark, with bird song in my ears. I still felt quite vulnerable, like I had a layer of skin removed. As I walked I re-felt a visit to Chatsworth House many years ago. It is an incredible place, full of the fineries of life. I remembered what affected me the most about the visit though wasn’t the exquisite fineries, but something more disturbing. Right there in the heart of the house I came across the chapel area. I remember entering it and noticing towards the back of the chapel, and just in front of the alter, stood a dark looking figure, a statue. In one hand it seemed to be holding what looked like some kind of blanket or cloth and in the other some scissors. The figure intrigued me, so I looked a little more closely and searched for some information about it. I soon found it.
The sculpture is called “Saint Bartholomew, Exquisite Pain” it is a bronze figure standing two and half metres tall and is the creation of the controversial Turner Prize winning artist Damian Hirst. He says that the inspiration for the piece “comes from memories I have of woodcuts and etchings I remember seeing when I was younger. As Saint Batholomew was a martyr who was skinned alive, he was often used by artists and doctors to show the anatomy of the human body and this is also what I’ve done. He holds his own skin over his arm and he holds a scalpel and a pair of scissors in his hands so that his exposure and pain are seemingly self-inflicted. It’s beautiful yet tragic and like Saint Sebastian his face shows no pain. I added the scissors because I thought Edward Scissorhands was in a similar tragic yet difficult position – it has a feel of the rape of the innocents about it.”
Not a pleasant image to carry with you I know, but it was there, it was how I was feeling at that moment and this is why I remembered it.
As a kid I was always considered overly sensitive, that I needed toughening up, to develop another layer of skin. For a long time I attempted to do so and of course it only made things worse as I attempted to be something I am not, to harden my heart. The truth is that all I needed to do was to learn not take things so personally and to allow my sensitivity to become perhaps an asset. These days I attempt to defend my heart less. Today my sensitivity may well be my greatest asset, my treasure, it is certainly where my heart is, although not without a cost at times.
The ministry group I belong to have a little covenant saying that we like to say to one another when we meet.
“I honour your gods
I drink at your well
I bring an undefended heart to our meeting place
I have no cherished outcome
I will not negotiate by withholding
I am not subject to disappointment”
Oddly these words come from traditional Celtic wedding vows. Hardly romantic, but perhaps they symbolise something deeper.
It is the line “I bring an undefended heart to our meeting place” that resonates with me the most. It is the key I believe to living the spiritual life, to live with an undefended an open heart. This can be extremely painful and difficult at times, but I have learnt how vital it is for me. When I close down or put on my suit of armour life soon loses its flavour. I suppose that this is why I’ve always struggled with the sentiment of Ephesians Ch6 vv 10-18, the passage commonly known as “God’s Armour”. I remember visiting an Anglo Catholic church once where I saw an image based around this passage. I remember thinking to myself “gosh that’s the last thing I would want.”
For me religion and spirituality are not about being at war or in conflict and the God of my limited understanding does not want me armour plaited. I know these kinds of images appeal to many and certainly to some of my own traditional Christian friends. Not to me though and it does seem in conflict with the message I find in the Gospels.
It seems to me that to truly live spiritually alive is to live “with an unarmoured heart”, easier said than done I know. It is the treasure though and wherever my treasure is I have come to believe that this is also where my heart is.
Just imagine what it might be like to live with an unarmoured or an undefended heart. We all have defence mechanism, things we do to protect ourselves from being hurt. I am sure we are all familiar with the fright and flight mechanism. There is another reaction that perhaps we are less familiar with, it is certainly one that is less talked about. I have come to call this the freeze mechanism. It is something I am very familiar with, for I have utilised it throughout my life. Basically, when trouble strikes a frozen person appears to continue to function normally on the outside, but inside, emotionally at least, they shut down, they internally hibernate. It is something I have come to learn about myself in recent years and I see it others quite clearly at times, perhaps too clearly. When it happens to me my neck and shoulders become stiff, my throat dries up, the base of my skull seems to warm up, my skin tightens around my face, I tend to blow out a lot and it feels like someone has just dropped a great rock into the pit of my stomach. These are the moments when I build up my walls and try to keep life out. I was doing this at five years old, no child should be like that.
How many of us spend lifetime’s building these walls that we think protect us? When in fact all we succeed in doing is block ourselves off from the love present in life, a treasure of infinite value. A love that is truly exquisite.
To live with an open heart is to live intimately with all that is life. It is to experience life through our felt experience to not be ruled by what our minds project from our past, those disappointments and fears that have been built over a life time. To live with an unarmoured heart is about connecting with all that is there. Zen Buddhism talks about intimacy with 10,000 things, meaning intimacy with all things, all phenomena, that nothing is left out.
I have discovered that I am living openheartedly when I am not at war with life, when I am not arguing with reality and not avoiding intimacy, especially with my own thoughts and feelings. I can find myself arguing with reality at times, I suppose some would call this living in denial, but thankfully by living faithfully I once again see the truth and let loose the prison of my own skin and move onto a newer and fresher reality; as my heart opens up and I experience a new reality. I do not remain armoured or frozen for very long. Faith sets me free once again. I shed another layer of skin.
It takes courage to truly engage in what Mark Nepo has called “The Exquisite Risk”, to live the authentic life, to join in the courageous conversation. I invite you to come and join with me on this journey under the skin, to lose the skin that you’re imprisoned in. Let us take together the exquisite risk, let us live by exquisite love.
Please find below a devotion based
on the material in this "blogspot"
