It takes love, it takes courage, to open our hearts, to continue to rise: A reflection for Palm Sunday

This last week has been one of those weeks, that has been filled with conversations. Yes, the eyes of my heart have been awakening to the beautiful Spring all around me. Meanwhile the ears of my heart have been opening as I have walked and sat and listened to so many. The conversations have been filled with those blessings and curses that come with “Choosing Life”. I was talking with a friend the other day about a woman I had met when I was a student minister at Macclesfield who she had recently met herself. A little later I got a phone call from another woman I had met during my time in Macclesfield. I had not spoken to her for over 15 years. She had traced me down as she needed to talk about a difficult family situation. She talked and I listened I couldn’t change anything, but I was able to accompany her as she came to her own conclusions. She just needed an ear. A little later I was talking to another friend, who I know baby Eileen through, who I told you about recently about. I was talking a dear friend also named Eileen who had died during Covid, she was friends with both the Macclesfield women. I have been thinking a lot of Eileen recently for many reasons. Her example to me as a person and many the struggles that she had been through in life, yet she remained a woman of faith and dignity. No matter how many times she fell in life, she always seemed to get back up again. No matter what happened, still she would rise.

I received some wonderful gifts from my auntie this week. Some old family photographs and data stick that contained a video shot by my dad’s partner Alan when we were small children. It is something that has brought back so many memories this week, memories that have brought many emotions alive in me. I talked a little about this during the Urmston “Common Search for Meaning” group. Where we shared a wonderful hour and half exploring and sharing about the things and people that have brought solace and comfort to our lives during times of challenge and struggle, fear and disappointment, times when life seemed to have let us down or it seemed too much. It was a beautiful conversation to be a part of.

Yes, the awakening Spring has opened the eyes of my heart this week, but I have also been blessed by so many beautiful conversations too; conversations that have awakened so much in my heart.

Now of course this is nothing new, happens all the time and yet things feel even more alive this spring, it feels like there is something new in the air. I thought this is I have watched the flowers appear and the first cherry blossom too, so beautiful.

One of blessings of my work is that people tell you things, they really tell you things; things that they perhaps cannot tell other people. They open their hearts to you and somehow find the ability to expose their all too real and vulnerable humanity. I’m not just talking about the people I serve, but people I meet in general. Now I say it is a blessing of my work but actually this has happened all my life. People, for whatever reason talk to me.

Now there was a time in my life when this bothered me somewhat, I did not see it as a blessing. I would take on board and absorb the pain of others and it would weigh me down. There was a time when I wished above all things to be freed from this sensitivity, it was too much. I saw it as a serious handicap and one I wished I didn’t have.

Thankfully this is no longer the case. I am as sensitive as I have always been. if not more so. I feel more today than I ever done. The difference is that I no longer carry the burden of the suffering of others around with me. This for me is one of the great gifts of faith and living openly. Life passes through me as I believe it is meant to. It is this, I have come to believe, which allows me to truly be of service to others. I am not a machine though, I have been quite emotional this week.

Most of us carry much pain around with us, many disappointments, so many experiences of betrayal. Yes we all know joy and love and acceptance, but we also know betrayal both by others and of course by ourselves. Stories I have heard again this week.

What I love about the conversations, as hard as they can be at times, is that what I witness in so many people is true courage, as they continue on living and loving despite the many struggles, worries and disappointments. Something we don’t always recognise in ourselves.

What I see in the people I meet and share life with is something I fully recognise in myself. I recognise our full and complex humanity. That we are all made up of many things, we have all fallen short and fallen down many times but still we rise oh still we rise.

Brings to mind this beautiful poem by Maya Angelou, who is sadly no longer with us.

“Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise
I rise
I rise.

Now of course I am not an African American woman, I have not walked in her shoes but I identify, as so many of us can I am sure, despite the struggles and sufferings that happen in our lives and our shared world we continue to rise.

Today “Palm Sunday” marks the beginning of “Holy Week”, regarded as the most important in the whole Christian calendar. It begins with Jesus entering Jerusalem riding on the back of a humble donkey or Colt. He is received by the crowds waving palm branches and shouting “Hosanna, hosanna in the highest heaven” The crowds welcome Jesus who they believe will save them. This though does not happen and just a few days later he is betrayed, rejected, brutalised and killed. The body is killed, the figure dies, but the love that is left behind lives on. It is this love that I believe is true Easter mythos. A love that can live on and once again incarnate in the lives of all people. On Easter morning once more we see the love rise.

There is though more to the Holy week narrative than the concept of universal love. It is not just a mythos about Jesus, it is also about the crowd and all the people around him. People just like you and me. Just like them we can all get caught up in the crowd mentality can we not? We can all identify with the crowd despite the world in which we live being very different today. We share a common humanity with them. We are all formed from the same breath of life, we all have the Divine spark within us; well at least I believe that we do. We are not God’s though, although we can become the light of the world if and when we live in love. We are fully human just like those folk on the side of the street waving their palms grateful for any reason to celebrate. People looking for joy, looking for meaning, looking for love. People who just like us are prone to disappointment, who fail to live up to the very ideals they would like to strive for. People who fall short, get ill, and become bogged down in little and bigger things, finite human beings. People who are looking for hope, to lift them out of their suffering. People looking for someone or something to lead them to better things, to give them another chance to live better lives.

How many times have we fallen short, messed up and wished we could live up to our ideals? Well we can. Earlier I shared a wonderful poem, “Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou. I’d like to share with you now some other words by her, words that strike deep into my soul, on forgiveness:

I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes – it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, ‘well, if I’d known better I’d have done better,’ that’s all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, ‘I’m sorry,’ and then you say to yourself, ‘I’m sorry.’ If we all hold on to the mistake, we can’t see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can’t see what we’re capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one’s own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you, when a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white, or too poor, or too fat or too thin, or too sexual or too asexual, that’s rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don’t have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.”

This is so key I believe, this sense of forgiveness and wholeness this sense that we are ok, they are so essential if we wish to keep on rising. We all fall down at times, we all give in at times what we need is a sense of true forgiveness to come if we want to start over again.

What I sense so often when I listen to people is that they are not just wanting to unburden themselves but are looking for a real sense of forgiveness and acceptance to be able to start again, to be redeemed from all those things that hold them back from being the loving people we are all capable of being.

Here lays the essence of the story of Palm Sunday and the week that follows that leads to the new beginning that is Easter. We can begin again we can start anew, we can forgive and be forgiven for our very human mistakes and shortcomings, for our betrayals of love however it manifests in this our imperfect world. It means that we will get things wrong sometimes, lots of times, but that, if we pay attention, maybe next time, we’ll do better. If we work at it, we can see our own glory in the mirror; we can begin to see what we’re capable of being; we can begin to recognise that we truly are children of love; we can begin again in love. No matter how many times we fall we can rise again.

This week begins in glory and celebration, before moving onto to betrayal, denial, torture and brutal death. Love and compassion is destroyed by the end of it, only to rise again and far more powerfully than ever before.

For love will always rise again.

Still Love will rise, still love will rise, still love will rise

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

Finding the Courage to Journey in Love

Fear and division do seem to be abound. It is not just in this our land but other lands too. It bothers me greatly as it ought to and I know that it troubles most of the people I speak with from day to day. We as, a people, just seem to be becoming ever more anxious.

Now fear is common to most folk in one form or another and we respond to it in a variety of ways, the two most common being fight or flight. To turn away in fear is no less damaging than turn towards it in anger and hate. How we respond to one another and to life really matters, as I so often say everything matters, every thought, every feeling every word and every deed. How we are with each other matters a lot. No, we can’t change the whole world, but we can effect one another and inspire one another in ways of loving courage.

Yes, we are living in fearful and distrustful times. It matters how we respond to this fear and distrust. Do we turn away in denial? do we respond in anger and make things worse? Or do we live in faith and love and thus overcome the fear with courage, an act born of love.

I remember a while ago chatting with an old friend. We got talking about our early childhoods and how we were aware of fear being present even at four and five years old. He told me of his first day at school, that when his mum left him at the school gates, as he walked into the playground, a kind of panic took over him. In the noise and confusion of the children playing he reacted badly and in the midst of the maelstrom he bit another child. He told me that for many years, as he was growing up, this was his response to fear, to attack, to fight. As I listened I recalled a painful memory that my mum always shared about my childhood. It obviously upset her as she took me to the school gate at Birstall County Primary School. She watched me walk in and look at all the children running and playing and screaming, just having fun. Like my friend I was utterly overwhelmed by this, but my reaction to the maelstrom was the opposite to his. I just went and sat in the corner on my own, searching desperately for the courage to join in. Eventually I did, as I have always done, it just took me time to adjust to something new. Last summer I revisited my old school as I showed Sue the places where I grew up. It looked so small but the biggest difference was the cages built around the walls of the school and the security gates you had to pass through to enter. I'm not sure if the gates were to stop intruders from entering or to keep the children in. I remember thinking to myself what a sad sign of the times we are living in. The school is just a few hundred yards from the spot that the M.P. Jo Cox was murdered.

Fear is an ever growing presence in our times. It troubles me greatly and we all respond to it in different ways. Fight and flight operate in a variety of ways. I suspect that fear will always be a part of our human make up. We are meant to experience certain forms of it for it points out danger. The solution to fear is not to get rid of it, the key is to find the courage to over come it.

So how do we overcome the power of this debilitating fear? How do we find the courage to just to be all that we are born to be?

Well it takes just a little faith and a little love to create the courage to just be, to live the life that 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 and fear present I find the courage to truly be, 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.

Now a powerful example of finding the courage to face what is in front of you is Jesus, particularly the Holy week narrative whose beginning is marked today on Palm Sunday. A week that ends with Easter Sunday a day of re-birth, resurrection and new beginnings. But before this we see love, betrayal, pain, humiliation, fear, courage and faith. I remember trying to imagine this experience as I walked around the narrow streets of the old city of Jerusalem and as I myself entered the city through several of its gates; as I watched the pilgrims visiting the holy sites as the local people just getting on with their ordinary lives.

The Gospel accounts say that as he entered Jerusalem Jesus did so with the knowledge of what he was going to have to endure. He knew and accepted that his journey was going to be hard in which he would endure a great deal of suffering, but he accepted what was ahead of him; he accepted the reality of the situation. He did so but not without fear and doubt, both were present during this final week of Jesus’ life. In Gethsemane, just before he was betrayed he went off to pray alone, as he often did to commune with God (Mark 14.36). He threw himself to the ground, wept bitterly and prayed a simple prayer “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet not what I want, but what you want.” He was in turmoil and genuine fear, for he knew he must face what was ahead of him alone, but eventually he surrendered to what he must do. He found the courage in silence, in prayer.

Five days after the triumphant entry of Palm Sunday Jesus was crucified. He accepted that this was part of his journey, but not without fear and doubt. How could there not be fear and doubt? He had to face this agonising death alone, he had been rejected by everyone, even his closest companions. Moments before the end he did not cry out the comforting words of the 23rd Psalm “I shall walk through the valley of the shadow of death and fear no evil for thou are with me.” No, instead he quoted the much starker 22nd Psalm “My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me? He did not quote the comforting words “My cup runneth over”, instead he cried out “I thirst”.

This though was not the end the real power came from those final words, born of love, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” In those words lay the courage to be who he truly was; in those words he expressed his faith; in these words he expressed the power of love; the love of God and the love of neighbour as for self. In this moment he surrendered himself to his purpose and to his God as he uttered those immortal words “Father, I commend my life unto thy spirit.”

Now it may be difficult for we who live in 21st century Britain to identify with this. What can the Holy week narrative teach we who live in our time and place? Surely we will never endure such agony and surely we will never be abandoned by everyone to face our struggle alone?

Well let’s look a little more closely. Haven’t we all experienced paralysing fear from time to time and haven’t we all experienced that sense of utter abandonment as we have had to face our struggles alone, which in the end we all have to do from time to time. Yes of course we all have love and we have support, but sometimes we have to face the pain and struggle alone. No one else can give us the courage to be who we truly are, this only comes in facing up to life’s vicissitudes.

And where do we find that courage? Where do we find the courage to be, to live open and faithful lives, in spite of all the difficulties? Well no doubt we all understand that differently, but for me it always seems to begin in and through prayer. When I stop fighting life and reconnect through prayer I always find the courage to be. As I remember John Midgley once say in a sermon at a time when I was crippled with grief and resentment and was struggling to find the courage just to get out of bed and face life, that “The prayer for courage is the one prayer that is always answered.” I have seen the truth in this statement over and over again, although we still have to walk through the fear with the courage that is born again within our frail human being. As I have also heard it said “Prayer doesn’t change things, prayer changes people and people change things.

We will always know the emotion of fear, we will always feel it. We need it, it is a natural instinct. That said we need not be enslaved by it. We need not live in fear of fear itself. To be free all we need do is live with integrity, live in love and the courage to be will begin to be given birth once again within us and it will shine out of us. In doing so not only do we liberate ourselves, but we also become a light to others who in turn may be inspired to liberate themselves and others too.

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.

Just look at the last 12 months of your own lives. I’m certain you have all experienced success and failure this year and that you have also known the joy of new life and experiences too, I know that I have. I am certain too that all our lives have known the pain and suffering of illness and death, if not in ours, then in the lives of those we hold most dear. Life truly is awry.

When the difficulties come we all cry out in pain and ask why is this happening to me? We ask for our own cup of suffering to be removed, but eventually we accept reality, we surrender to reality and in our own ways cry out “Thy will, not mine, be done”. We get what we get in life, whether we deserve it or not, we certainly can’t avoid some things and if we try to all we really avoid is life’s beauty. No one can escape the suffering that is present in life. It’s not what we are here for. What we are here for, I have come to believe, is to give birth to the love within us, to find the courage to fulfil whatever it is we are here to fulfil , and to truly become all that we were born to be.

Easter is nearly here. Easter a day of re-birth, resurrection and new beginnings. So let’s give birth to the love that is within us and bring a little light to the dark places of our world. It sure needs it. Our world needs us to live by faith and hope and love…It needs us to find the courage to become all that we were born to be…And in so doing we automatically encourages others to do the same…Remember you are the light of the world and this world needs you to let your little light shine…