Cultivating Grace

Here’s a beautiful poem by the farmer poet Wendell Berry

“Grace” by Wendell Berry

The woods is shining this morning.
Red, gold and green, the leaves
lie on the ground, or fall,
or hang full of light in the air still.
Perfect in its rise and in its fall, it takes
the place it has been coming to forever.
It has not hastened here, or lagged.
See how surely it has sought itself,
its roots passing lordly through the earth.
See how without confusion it is
all that it is, and how flawless
its grace is. Running or walking, the way
is the same. Be still. Be still.
“He moves your bones, and the way is clear.”

In the “Sacred Art of Lovingkindness” Rami Shapiro wrote

“Cultivating grace is a bit of a paradox. You cannot get what you always and already have. There is nothing you can or need to do to merit grace. All you need do is accept grace. The reason this is so difficult for us is that our hands are full. We are burdened by carrying the past and the future around with us wherever we go, and have no room for the grace of the present moment. Cultivating grace means putting down the burden of time, and opening our hands to the timeless now.”

It is hard to accept the giftedness of the life we have. This is often because we carry too many burdens of the past around with us. Shapiro is suggesting that to cultivate the gifts of life, all we need to do is prepare ourselves for it, to open ourselves to it. Or to put it another way, to catch the winds of grace, our task is to set our sails; we jus tneed to open our sails and to sail on that wind. The winds are always blowing, its just that we don’t always catch the wind. Now there is often a good reason for this, usually fear, caused from the past. We often prefer to batten down the hatches, than embrace the wind. The wind after all cannot be tamed, it can be a wild beast. As Hurricane Milton has proved once again this week.

As the wonderful hymn goes “Life is the greatest gift of all.” Something we don’t always treasure I know. I certainly haven’t in the past. Throughout our lives many things happen over which we have little say. I do not believe we choose what happens to us. What we do have a say in is how respond to what happens to us. The paraphrase Frankl it is our greatest freedom, perhaps our second greatest gift after life itself.

Neither do I think that life is predetermined, mapped out before us. That all things are inevitable. I do have a sense of the Lure of Divine Love, that if we take time in quietness, that we can connect to that Divine aspect within ourselves and life itself and can then make the wise choices in life, this tapping into this second free gift, this second Grace. If we are too weighed down by things it can be difficult to be open to this therefore cultivate Grace.

I have been marking 21 years of sobriety this week. I was offered the gift of new life having found myself in a dark hole. I accepted this second gift and continued to set my sails ever since. There’s been the odd storm, but generally speaking I have sailed in calmer seas. I have accepted the second freedom and made the most of what I have given, I have cultivated the grace and shared it with many others. Thank you.

Grace is one of those interesting theological terms, that has been understood in so many ways. The most common form is known as “Common Grace”. In the Christian tradition, this is the Grace that is given to each person by God, whether they are believers or not. That said it is not a word owned by this tradition, there are many and varied meanings. These include a type of movement, elegant and refined, like a swan of ballerina. Another would a talent or gift bestowed on someone like Mozart. It could be the condition of being favoured by someone. Or the way a person behaves, acting in good grace. Been given a grace period say in the payment of something. A grace note in music is an extravagant extra that could be played if the performer were so inclined to indulge. A prayer offered in thanks before a meal. A title of someone in high office, “Your Grace”. We can also honour someone with Grace. There are other and varied understanding from the many religious and spiritual traditions. So it is important to understand that when a person speaks of Grace, they may not mean exactly the same thing.

Now for me when I speak of Grace it is about openness, about being open and responding in a generous way. It is a gift offered freely to someone or life itself. It is a response from our heart. It is our ultimate freedom, our ultimate gift we are given. Although to truly cultivate this we need not to be too weighed down by whatever burdens we carry. If we are too weighed down we will struggle to respond to anything and or listen to our own hearts and souls. We will be unable to truly cultivate our grace. By the way we also need to be open to truly accept the grace offered to us.

Paul Brunton in “The Gift of Grace: Awakening to Its Presence” defined grace as the manifestation of God’s friendliness. I like this. That said I want to extend it to the friendliness in everything. Now for me God is at the heart of everything, a kind if panentheism, but still it is for us to engage with this friendliness and bring it to life, to manifest it through our lives. Again I see this as our ultimate freedom.

You can enjoy the grace of life each and every day if you are open enough to receive. It’s always there, its just that sometimes we are closed off to it.

Frederick Beuchner in “Beyond Words” said the following:

“After centuries of handling and mishandling, most religious words have become so shopworn nobody's much interested anymore. Not so with grace, for some reason. Mysteriously, even derivatives like gracious and graceful still have some of the bloom left.

Grace is something you can never get but can only be given. There's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.

A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace. Have you ever tried to love somebody?

A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace. There's nothing you have to do. There's nothing you have to do. There's nothing you have to do.

The grace of God means something like: "Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are, because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you."

There's only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it.

Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.”

The key is to be open to both the giving and receiving, it is our ultimate freedom, our ultimate grace.

What stops us often is a sense that we don’t deserve it. That there is something wrong with us, that we live with a sense of shame. It is shame that keeps us locked in and closed down. We become weighed down and closed off to the Grace of life and thus unable to respond in graceful ways.

Lewis B. Smedes in “Shame and Grace: Healing the Shame We Don’t Deserve” said the following:

“Shame is heavy; grace is light. Shame and grace are the two counter-forces in the human spirit: shame depresses; grace lifts. Shame is like gravity, a psychic force that pulls us down. Grace is like levitation, a spiritual force that defies gravity. If our spiritual experience does not lighten our life, we are not experiencing grace.”

It is the shame that holds us back, that closes us in. It doesn’t have to be like that. If we could only recognise that gift that is within us. What Mark Nepo has called “The Timeless Spot of Grace”. He wrote:

“Each person is born with an unencumbered spot, free of expectation and regret, free of ambition and embarrassment, free of fear and worry; an umbilical spot of grace where we were each first touched by god. It is this spot of grace that issues peace. Psychologists call this spot the Psyche, Theologians call it the Soul, Jung calls it the Seat of Unconscious, Hindu masters call it Atman, Buddhists call it Dharma, Rilke calls it Inwardness, Sufis call it Qalb, And Jesus calls it the Center of our Love.

To know this spot of Inwardness is to know who we are, not by surface markers of identity, not by where we work or what we wear or how we like to be addressed, but by feeling our place in relation to the infinite and by inhabiting it. This is a hard lifelong task, for the nature of becoming is a constant filming over of where we begin, while the nature of being is a constant erosion of what is not essential. Each of us lives in the midst of this ongoing tension, growing tarnished or covered over, only to be worn back to that incorruptible spot of grace at our core.”

Life is the greatest gift of all, for better or for worse. We don’t get to choose what happens. Our freedom, our greatest gift, our second grace is in how we respond to life and to others and of course to ourselves. It is our greatest gift, our second grace. We need to be and remain open and not too weighed down.

This requires us to pay attention. Simone Weil saw attention as a contemplative practice, through which we reap life’s deepest rewards, perhaps this is how we cultivate Grace. She saw attention as the rarest form of generosity. It is through attention that we open up to Grace. Attention as she saw it is something way beyond the mere will, which she saw as graceless. For Weil attention is an opening, like prayer, that is full of Grace.

So maybe this is where we begin, in attention. Maybe this is how we prepare ourselves, how we cultivate Grace. Attention is how we accept the giftedness of life. The winds of Grace are always blowing, all around us. We don’t get to choose what happens to us, but we do have the freedom to respond. This is our ultimate freedom, our second grace. We activate this, we cultivate this Grace, by paying attention. In so doing we get to bless each other, this world and in return it blesses us.

I’m going to end with some words of blessing. You know e need to bless more. We can all bless. WE bless by giving ourselves wholeheartedly to life.

“Choose to Bless the World” by Rebecca Anne Parker

Your gifts—whatever you discover them to be—
can be used to bless or curse the world.

The mind's power,
the strength of the hands,
the reaches of the heart,
the gift of speaking, listening, imagining, seeing, waiting

Any of these can serve to feed the hungry,
bind up wounds,
welcome the stranger,
praise what is sacred,
do the work of justice
or offer love.

Any of these can draw down the prison door,
hoard bread,
abandon the poor,
obscure what is holy,
comply with injustice
or withhold love.

You must answer this question:
What will you do with your gifts?

Choose to bless the world.

The choice to bless the world is more than an act of will,
a moving forward into the world
with the intention to do good.

It is an act of recognition,
a confession of surprise,
a grateful acknowledgment
that in the midst of a broken world
unspeakable beauty, grace and mystery abide.

There is an embrace of kindness
that encompasses all life, even yours.

And while there is injustice, anesthetization, or evil
there moves a holy disturbance,
a benevolent rage,
a revolutionary love,
protesting, urging, insisting
that which is sacred will not be defiled.

Those who bless the world live their life
as a gesture of thanks
for this beauty
and this rage.

The choice to bless the world can take you into solitude
to search for the sources
of power and grace;
native wisdom, healing, and liberation.

More, the choice will draw you into community,
the endeavor shared,
the heritage passed on,
the companionship of struggle,
the importance of keeping faith,

the life of ritual and praise,
the comfort of human friendship,
the company of earth
the chorus of life welcoming you.

None of us alone can save the world.
Together—that is another possibility, waiting.

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

Sabbath Time: Becoming Human Beings Rather Than Human Doings

“The peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

I vital it is to rest in whatever grace, with whatever peace we can find in this world. So often in life we find ourselves wrestling with someone or something, often ourselves. Like Jacob at the river side. In the end though I usually surrender and find myself resting in the presence of still water and find peace.

I have been somewhat tired and a little run down of late. This was probably caused by a bout of ill health, that was stomach related and drained a lot of my energy. I also had one or two difficult situations that drained my emotional, mental and spiritual energy somewhat. I have been physically resting, including avoiding the gym. I returned on Monday and I have to say it was a real slog. In fact last Monday was a slog in general. Later in the day ideas about what I might want to look this week began to form. I thought about the need to find, space, to rest, the need for sabbath time.

I felt much better on Tuesday. It began in silence in my meditation group. It felt wonderful to sit in silence with others, to rest and not wrestle. I then went to Urmston to join the “Common Search for Meaning” group. John Poskitt led a wonderful conversation on “Pleasure”, the things in life that bring us pleasure, especially in difficult times. It was a real joy for all who were there. I found it hit that lovely spot. It got me thinking not just about sabbath and rest as a form of recuperation, but also how much leisure and pleasure are vital to the soul. In some ways my greatest pleasure comes from space, from pause. I have also found that sometimes the greatest pleasure is pleasure delayed. We live in an age when we want things and we want them immediately, right here right now. We live in such an instant culture where pleasure must come on demand. There is though a joy and pleasure in patience and in waiting. In many ways this is essence of sabbath time and living by pleasure. We want it, we want it all and we want it now. So much so that we can race through life, feeling nothing.

This is wonderfully illustrated in a favourite story of mine. It is of a workaholic businessman who decided to take an African Safari. He plotted a course and determined a time-table. He hired workers from a local village to carry the various containers and cases. On the first morning, the entire party roused early, travelled very, very fast and went very, very far. On the second morning, they roused early, travelled very, very fast and went very, very far. On the third day, the same. On the fourth morning, the local tribesmen refused to move. The man gestured irately and fumed at the translator to get them going. “They will not move,” the translator relayed.

“Why not?” the man bellowed, thinking of all the time wasted and money spent. “Because,” the translator said, “they are waiting for their souls to catch up with their bodies.”

The story brings to mind a fantastic line from wonderful film “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” when the hero of the film Ferris Bueller utters “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

The pace of modern life can be quite frightening. People are always on the move. They always seem to be doing something or nothing, so long as they are not standing still or idling around. People always seem to be in a rush to be anywhere, but where they actually are, to be doing anything other than what they are doing and to be feeling anything other than what they are feeling. Seemingly we need to always be on the move; for fear that life might just catch up with us. So often we try to force things through, wrestle with everything to get our will, so much so that we tie ourselves and all around in knots. Sometimes we need to pause and to simply rest into the Grace of life.

I noticed myself doing this on Monday when I was out walking with Molly in the park. Instead of enjoying the experience of her enjoying herself. I was preoccupied with what I needed to do that day. I was wrestling and arguing with myself. Thankfully I let go of control and got chatting with folk there, while she ran around and played with the other dogs. I get great pleasure form Molly’s natural joy, friendliness and playfulness. It helps me to connect to and to allow my soul to catch up with my body, it feels like such a Grace. It is a spiritual practice as it increases my sensitivity to life, as I rest into life. Prayer and meditation do the same. They slow down my being and enable me to connect and somehow in that space I get to hear that still small voice of calm, that voice Divine, the “I am in everything”, including little dogs in the park. This Sabbath time in my daily life allows me to live more fully in the world, to rest into the Grace of life.

I remember a few years ago a friend invited me to Hale Synagogue to attend Friday evening Shabbat (pronounced Shabos). It was powerful, beautiful and moving, especially the singing as Shabbat was welcomed, like a bride. During the ceremony I felt like I was allowing my soul to catch up with me. I found myself resting in the Grace of the day and not wrestling with everything. I have also been in Jerusalem on the Sabbath and experienced virtually the whole sitting resting in silence. It was quite an experience, something we who live in the UK will probably never experience again. This shows to me how important it is to rest in sabbath in the busyness of life.

The Sabbath relates back to Genesis I, which depicts six acts of creation and on the seventh day, the climax, God rests, looks at his creation and sees that it is very good indeed. He pauses; he smells the roses and allows his soul to catch up with him. Why on earth would God need to do this? Why do we need to pause and look at our own creations, our own lives? Well maybe because it is only when we stop and look at our lives and our work that meaning begins to emerge. If our hearts, our souls, are not in what we are doing it is unlikely that we will make a good job of it.

How often do any of us stop and look at the meaning behind what we have created, what we are creating? How often do we actually spend time increasing our sensitivity to our own lives? When we do take time to stop wrestling with something and begin to rest into the Grace of life.

Rabbi Abraham Heschel claimed that “The Sabbath as a day of rest is not for the purpose of recovering one’s strength and becoming fit for the forthcoming labour. The Sabbath is a day for the sake of life.”

Maybe by welcoming in the Sabbath, we allow our souls to catch up with our bodies. It allows us to connect to life and I have found that in life itself the Divine speaks to me, through reality, somehow in that still small voice of calm, something incredible happens.

The Jewish people invented Sabbath, but it didn’t make them popular. Again according to Rabbi Abraham Heschel “When the Romans first encounted the Jews and noticed their habit of keeping the Sabbath, of refraining from labour every seventh day, their reaction was nothing but contempt.”

The Jewish people had escaped slavery. Exodus recounts their wanderings in the wilderness as they searched for a home. They knew that slaves never rested and perhaps, during their time in the desert they never rested too. Maybe on Sinai they realised that although they had escaped Egypt and slavery, they were still slaves in so many other ways. Maybe this is why Sabbath was created

Maybe the rejection of Sabbath is not progress at all, but a return to a more de-humanising culture, where human beings are seen as nothing more than commodities who do without ceasing; “human doings, not human beings”. Perhaps we have all become enslaved by this need to constantly be doing. By constantly doing have we actually enslaved our souls. Maybe we don’t actually need to let our souls catch up with us, what we really need to do is free our souls once again. We need to find ways to stop wrestling with everything all the time and simply learn to rest in the Grace of life.

We live in an instant culture, which demands instant results. I think we even demand this with our leisure and pleasure time. We have lost patience with everything it seems.

They say that patience is a virtue, but it seems it is one that most of us still seem to need to learn. When things seem difficult I think patience is the hardest spiritual practice of them all. We want all our troubles over and over soon. Something I’m feeling in this run up to the election, it seems to have gone on for ever.

Patience, silence, stillness, quietly, humbly and passively waiting is considered almost inhuman, uncivilised in our age, like the businessman in the earlier story. Something I experience when stuck in queue or in traffic, or waiting on the phone for some operative to finally answer.

This brings to mind a wonderful piece of wisdom from Wayne Muller from his book “Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest and Delight”

Here is tells a wonderful story about the wisdom of waiting and resting.

He writes:

“I was speaking with Hans-Peter Durr, who for twenty years collaborated with Nobel Prize winner Werner Heisenberg, discoverer of the famous Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics. Himself a noted quantum physicist, Hans-Peter told me that he often had long, impassioned discussions with Heisenberg when they were working together on a particular problem. "We would be talking excitedly about the problem from every angle, and then suddenly Heisenberg would say, 'Wait, I think we have touched on something very important here. Let's not talk about it anymore. Let's wait for two weeks, and let it solve itself.' Then, when we got back together two weeks later, it would invariably be solved. We would begin talking, and we both knew we had the answer."

There is something deeply humble about sabbath time, about rest, about not wrestling, fighting with everything, about waiting. This in many ways is the power of spiritual practice, as it is this humility that opens up to something more, to something beyond ourselves. Something that is so easily missed as we rush around frantically trying to get from where we are to where we want to be or to solve all our troubles in an instant. Instead of constantly struggling and striving, sometimes all we have to do is be still…be still and know we are not God, and to rest in the Grace of the world. Then suddenly, in time and rest and space the answers come. We let our souls catch up with our bodies, we connect with reality and find we can be of use once more.

We need Sabbath. We need to stop and take in life. We need to feel our feet on the ground. We need to be still and silent enough to hear that still small voice. We need to rest in the Grace of the world. We need to allow our senses to sense life and then and only then we will see the riches in our lives and give thanks for life. We need to practice patience And then what ever our work may be, we will do it well, heart and soul.

Patience my friends, patience. Let us find peace and rest in the Grace of the world.

I am going to end with a wonderful poem “First Sabbath” by Nancy Saffer. A wonderful reflection on that first Sabbath, that beautiful mythos that was the first creation story in Genesis.

“First Sabbath” by Nancy Shaffer from “Instructions in Joy”

Tell me: did you really rest?
You who made day and night
and sky that separated
waters above and below,
you who told the waters
below the sky
to stay in one place
and out of them
asked dry land,
who told the earth
to send out growing things
and then made sun
and moon and stars,
who made birds that fly
and everything that swims,
and cattle and all creeping things
and every animal untamed
and then made man and woman
and finally, supposedly, rested:
tell me: how —
in the midst of all that buzzing
and flapping
and slithering and stepping,
all that bursting forth of leaf
and fruit and stem
that never had known themselves
before — tell me:
how could you possibly have rested,
after seeing what no one
ever had seen before:
beak, hoof, pebble,
after losing yourself
in a thousand versions of blue:
water in sun,
sky against sky,
the horizon where
sky and water meet:
how did you shut your eyes,
how not keep
turning and looking?
Didn’t you long to caress
each small thing — notice
how toes work, and
stamens, and fingers?
Weren’t you hollering out in amazement?
Weren’t you so filled up glad*
you couldn’t sleep?

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

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" 

Happy Birthday: Thanks For Your Life

This "blogspot" begins with a few thoughts on “Birthday’s” by Henri Nouwen

Birthdays are so important. On our birthdays we celebrate being alive. On our birthdays people can say to us, “Thank you for being!” Birthday presents are signs of our families’ and friends’ joy that we are part of their lives. Little children often look forward to their birthdays for months. Their birthdays are their big days, when they are the centre of attention and all their friends come to celebrate.
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We should never forget our birthdays or the birthdays of those who are close to us. Birthdays keep us childlike. They remind us that what is important is not what we do or accomplish, not what we have or who we know, but that we are, here and now. On birthdays let us be grateful for the gift of life.

Last Saturday was one of those very busy days. I had lots of things to attend to. It didn’t start well. My car was frozen and wouldn’t start. I couldn’t do anything about it immediately as I had to open the Hilary Azzize for the Altrincham Court Leet. I was made a Freeman of Altrincham a few years ago, for services to the community, particularly in the area of mental health and addiction, and serve as chaplain to the Court Leet. I led devotions based on impermanence and the uncertainty of life. As part of the devotion we shared a time of silence to honour those who had died in recent times that were either members of the Court Leet or close friends and family members. I knew several of those named, two were close to my heart, one very much so. As I left I swallowed hard as I thought of those lost lives and the impact they had on my life and the lives of so many others. I then called breakdown recovery to get my car going. I had two birthday celebrations to get to, one in the afternoon and another in the evening. I called ahead to warn that I might be late for the first celebration. The recovery man arrived got in my car turned the ignition and it started first time. The car had thawed completely, it had been minus 4 when I got up that morning and I had foolishly not driven the car In days. It has not been a problem since. After much mirth and laughter I quickly got changed and went to the first birthday. A chapel Carolyn Jones was celebrating her 80th birthday and all the important people from her life were there to share in her celebration. Her son Richard gave a wonderful telling of the story of her life, her achievements and the things that mean the most to her. She has lived quite a life, including overcoming a severe form of cancer in recent years, and it was wonderful to share in her celebration. I left to get home to take Molly for a walk, I was feeling guilty as I wasn’t spending much time with her that day. I then went out to share a friends birthday meal. She is a recovery friend, and it was wonderful to celebrate her life, with two distinct groups of people. Her family and her long-term friends, along with a whole group of friends from recovery. It was a wonderful night, celebrating her life and of course her new life that she is embarking on. It has been wonderful watching this woman grow and thrive in recent times. Wonderful to share and enjoy her journey. I then went home to spend the rest of the night with Molly, who herself has recently had her first half birthday, she recently turned 6 months old. I certainly didn’t need to eat again. I had enjoyed two meals and three pieces of cake. Very nice cake indeed. The cake brought me right back to childhood and memories of baking with my grandma. It’s taste and texture were identical to the cakes and buns she baked. It was a lovely memory.

Birthdays are oh so important and they should be marked and celebrated. They are truly “Holy Days”; they are an opportunity to honour the sacredness of our lives; they are opportunities to recognise one another’s sacred uniqueness. As Henri Nouwen so delightfully said “We should never forget our birthdays or the birthdays of those who are close to us. Birthdays keep us childlike. They remind us that what is important is not what we do or accomplish, not what we have or who we know, but that we are, here and now. On birthdays let us be grateful for the gift of life.”

I regret not celebrating either of my birthday’s last year. I really wasn’t in the mood. It was wrong of me to do so and somewhat selfish actually. Please do not let me do so again.

Some people have two birthdays. I am not just talking about the Monarch here by the way. Folk in recovery also celebrate a second birthday. They celebrate their sobriety birthday as well as their belly button birthday, a kind of re-birthday if you like. Mine is the 10th October 2003. On these days they turn down a different path, they begin their life journey again. They turn from non-being to living. Forrest Church when talking about the beginning of his new life after finding sobriety wrote the following in the last few months of his life as he was succumbing to cancer:

"Taken literally (in Hebrew and Greek as well as Latin), "conversion" is not "re-birth" but "turning". Once converted, we re-direct our journey. The American short-story writer Raymond Carver turned his life around by a decision to stop drinking. From that point forward, he met life's trials with equanimity and grace. When dying of brain cancer at the age of forty-nine. Carver summed up the nine years of freedom he had enjoyed during what turned out to be the final decade of his life with the same word that lept to mind when I give daily thanks for a yearlong reprieve from my cancer: "gravy". When we see life as the precious gift that it is, when we celebrate our birthday as a truly holy day we see that everything is indeed “gravy”.

Here he is in his own words, the poem “Gravy”.

“Gravy” by Raymond Carver

No other word will do. For that’s what it was. Gravy.
Gravy these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. “Don’t weep for me,”
he said to his friends. “I’m a lucky man.
I’ve had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure gravy. And don’t forget it.”

They say we only get one crack at life; this is true to some degree. That said we can at times begin again. When all feels lost at times, sometime it’s just the beginning of the end of an old way of being that may lead us down another path. We can begin again in love.

This week I conducted the memorial service of one such woman. One who lived a life of love and service for the last 37 years of life, one remembered fondly by those she helped. She made great use of her life and many of her friends wanted to remember this. It is always fascinating what you learn about a person at their funeral and or memorial service. It was good to hear about Carolyn, from her son Richard, while she is still with us, something that was not guaranteed in recent times.

As I was reflecting on these lives, both lost and celebrated. I was reminded of a poem, very popular at funerals these days.

It's called the “Dash” by Linda Ellis

I read of a man who stood to speak
At the funeral of a friend
He referred to the dates on the tombstone
From the beginning...to the end

He noted that first came the date of birth
And spoke the following date with tears,
But he said what mattered most of all
Was the dash between those years

For that dash represents all the time
That they spent alive on earth.
And now only those who loved them
Know what that little line is worth

For it matters not, how much we own,
The cars...the house...the cash.
What matters is how we live and love
And how we spend our dash.

I know it’s a bit of a folksy poem, but its message is deep, powerful and meaning filled. The dash appears short and even thin and yet it can be deep and meaning filled.

Again this brought me back to another extract from Forrest Church’s masterpiece “Love and Death: My Journey Through the Valley of the Shadow”, written while he was dying of oesophageal cancer. He asked "knowing that we will die, what should we do?" To which he answered "we should live, we should laugh, and we should love." He then recalled a lesson he learnt from his children, about living. One day, when they were young, he was walking them to school, on a busy New York street. Suddenly a car swerved round a corner and almost killed them all. Forrest was incensed by this, but he remembers, "my kids just laughed, romping blithely down the sidewalk, jumping from tree to tree as they always did, trying to touch the leaves." The kids were celebrating, nay singing the joy of living, and they "had the right idea. Why didn't I think to jump and touch the leaves?"

Forrest believed that it was living, loving and laughing that took real courage, they required heart, while dying didn’t really take much courage at all, in his eyes that just came naturally. Something he was experiencing as he wrote these words.

Now to really live Forrest suggested a simple little mantra:" Want what you have. Do what you can. Be who you are." He didn’t suggest that this would be easy but it is the only way to live and in so doing we will live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for by the love we leave behind. There was a lot of love celebrated in the lives of those living and those who have died in the last week.

I believe that Forrest uncovered a simple little answer as to how each of us should live, a way to bring deep meaning to the ordinariness of our lives. This is how we should live. To want the things that make up our lives and not wish for something else and in so doing we might just begin to be who we truly are, instead of wishing we were someone else. In so doing we can do the things that we are able to do and thus bring deep meaning to the little bit of the dash that we are living right now.

This is the gift of life, the beautiful gift of being alive in this ordinary moment, a moment that can become deep and meaningful, not only for ourselves but for those we get to share our lives with. For we never know how long we’ve got left how close we are to the end of the line, the last part of dash. Nor do we know how close those we love are to the end of theirs. At the memorial service I heard of another friend who has been given a very bad cancer diagnosis, he is facing it with courage as he has so many things over the years.

So how do we end this little dash of a service. Well I will offer a ittle bit of wisdom by Kurt Vonnegut, towards the end of his life.

In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write to famous authors and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond. Here is his response. It is magnificent:

“Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!

Kurt Vonnegut

So, let’s go live our lives. It is the ultimate free gift, the ultimate grace, it’s gravy. Go live whatever time we have best, let’s do it in style.

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

“Resting in the Grace of the world: Bearing witness to the horror and finding the courage to do what you can”

“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

This short piece constantly sings in my heart. It nudges me, it comes often when despair begins to grow in me again. Such feelings grow inside every single one of us at times, there is nothing more human, well unless you have become utterly detached from your heart. This poem is often shared back to me by others and whenever it does how it lifts my heart. Sue recently contacted me to tell me that a family had asked for it to be shared at a funeral service she was creating and leading. How it lifted my heart, just as I was feeling the pain of the loss of someone.

I have recently found my own place, where I find a similar peace to Wendell Berry. I often wander down to Stamford Park in Altrincham. I like to walk around but really I like to go and see my favourite duck. The mystery has been solved as to what type it is. It is a Rouen Duck. The only one of its kind in the pond. It is a lonely displaced one, perhaps a refugee. Now while I don’t lie down where he lies down, I do rest in the grace of the world whenever I go there and I feel free.

There is so much grief, suffering and anxiety around at this time. I was talking with a friend the other day who had spent hours staring at the news, at the horror in Ukraine, fixated on the suffering, feeling utterly powerless. I had awoken slowly myself last Sunday, caught up the suffering, both close at hand and in the wider world, despairing at inhumanity. I worked myself into the day slowly and did my job, I always do, trying to carry three groups of people through worship, whilst constantly being contacted about the suffering of many folk, particularly two dear friends. Two more souls died last week.

In the midst of the suffering, I found myself surrounded by so many folk, doing all they can, coming together in love, living by that spirit and resting in the grace of this world whilst finding freedom too. Not turning from life. They were bearing witness to the horror and fear and then finding the courage to do what they could. No, we cannot change the world, but we can do something, we do not have to sink into the utter despair and suffering. The key is the find what that something is; our duty is to find out what that is and to do it.

Last Sunday several folk seemed to go out of their way to tell me how much they appreciated the worship I had created and shared with them. They too had awoken with a sense of despair, they felt lost and confused and were suffering deeply despairing at the world, concerned for their loved ones and due to the horrors they had seen on their tv screens, a horror that has continued. I thanked them and I thanked God for this work. It certainly lifted me out of myself, gave me meaning in the very real suffering, there was no despair. I had an extra service on Sunday, in Dukinfield, I go there several times a year, I have been doing so for years and I love the folk. The last time I was there I had heard of a lovely woman who had given up on life, she had stopped eating. Well this time I learnt that she had died, as a member said, a victim of Covid, but who had not died from the virus. There have been many more and there will continue to be many more. I was talking to her lovely partner, they had both been widowed and had been together these last 15 years. It was beautiful to listen to him, although distressing, I felt deeply his pain and I understood it. I have felt this pain so many times, this deep grief, the loss of love, the sense of being unable to do something for someone you love so deeply, except bare witness as their life slipped away.

Monday, I felt even more tired than I normally do. I awoke and slowly moved into the day, I had begun it in my usual manner. On returning from the gym I noticed a couple of missed calls and a message on my phone. The number read private, and the message was from an obviously distressed woman, who I do not know, asking me to call her back. Sadly, I was unable to do so as her number was withheld. I wonder who this poor lost soul is. It was one of those days when I felt somewhat hopeless against the suffering in this world, both close at hand and in other lands too. There is so much suffering in this our shared world. The horrors in the Ukraine being just one terrible example.

I know that the answer is not to stare at the rolling news all day long, that will help no one. The answer is in find a way to rest in whatever grace we can find in the world, where we can find our solace and then to turn back to life and do what we can. I have been doing that all week; I have been doing that for many years. I have turned and I have kept on turning toward the world again and again. As I find that peace, that love, that strength to do what I can, with what I have.

No one can take away the suffering that is a part of life, but we do not have to fall into utter despair. We cannot do everything, but we can do something, it is our task, our duty, our purpose, our meaning, to do so.

I hope you can find yours and I hope that you can share it with others. I hope you can offer them some of the grace of this world, something that that they too can rest in and share it with the world.

We have entered the season of Lent. I hope you all enjoyed your pancakes on Tuesday. On what some still call Shrove Tuesday, or as many prefer to call it “Pancake Day”, or as I prefer to call it “Flat Yorkshire Pudding Day. How do you eat yours?

The following day “Ash Wednesday”, for Christians, marks the beginning of 40 days of fasting, reflection, penitence and self-sacrifice that lead up to Easter, the day of re-birth re-newal and new beginnings.

Lent is a time of reflection, a time of temptation, a time to observe and find answers. It’s a time of preparation. These forty days or so are meant to be a barren time, where we strip ourselves down of luxuries and distractions to give birth to new treasures that can be symbolically born again at Easter time. Not an easy time and a time to experience a sense of loneliness as we enter our inner wilderness time.

Lent is not just about giving up luxuries. It is also a time of reflection a time to go inward and search out answers to the troubles we face as individuals, but also as families, communities, nations and the world. It is a time for repentance and for re-building relationships with those we share this world with.

Lent shares this focus on repentance with many other religions. Such as Yom Kippur, the Jewish New Year. where prayer and fasting accompany acts of atonement. There are parallels with Ramadan in the Islamic tradition, a time for fasting and spiritual engagement as well as charitable works and act acts of atonement. Both have a key focus on putting right relationships with God and the people around us. You see similar rituals in both Hinduism and Buddhism too, where fasting atonement, forgiveness and reconciliation are key components.

You can see clearly two key components in all these traditions that is at the core of Lent. These being fasting, denying oneself of life’s luxuries and therefore connecting with those less fortunate and the other healing relationships with one another and with whatever we believe is at the core of all life. It is a time to go in, but with the intention of going out and bringing healing to our shared world.

Our world is suffering, both close at home and in other lands too. We have all continued to witness the horrors in the Ukraine. It is easy to just despair and to give up, or to become utterly fixated by the suffering that all we can do is stare at our screens, paralysed by the horror. This is of no use. We need to find our way to seek solace in this world, to go and find our own “peace of wild things” and then turn back to the world and do whatever it is that we can. We do not need to wait for Easter, or some hope to be born in the future to do this. We can begin now, we can find our meaning here and now, we can give birth to that love right here and now, no special date in the calendar is needed. We are responsible for our lives and our world. It is up to us. The time is now.

Lent is about attempting to practise love in life. It’s not about giving up luxuries, not really, it’s about giving of ourselves to life each and every day in whatever way we can. It’s about preparing for the new love that can be born again in our hearts and lives and for this we are all responsible. The time is now. And because I cannot do everything

Like Wendell Berry we all feel despair at the world at times. We all fear for our own lives, our loved ones and the lives of others. We all seek to come into the peace of something. We can find that peace. I know this to be true and when the peace comes, provided we do not close down or close in, hope can once again come to life and we can begin to bring healing not only in our lives, but in the lives of those around us stretching out to the wider reaches of this our shared world. We cannot avoid suffering, but we can give birth to meaning in that suffering in the way that we live our lives. We need not despair, we can live in hope, we can live in love.

We can live in love. We can do so in all that we feel, all that we think, all that we say and all that we do.

I’m going to end with following I saw posted on facebook the other day. It is by John Roedel

I can’t make the
world be peaceful
I can’t stall tanks
from roaring down roads
I can’t prevent children
from having to hide in bunkers
I can’t convince the news to
stop turning war into a video game
I can’t silence the sound of bombs
tearing neighborhoods apart
I can’t turn a guided missile
into a bouquet of flowers
I can’t make a warmonger
have an ounce of empathy
I can’t convince ambassadors
to quit playing truth or dare
I can’t deflect a sniper’s bullet
from turning a wife into a widow
I can’t stave off a country being
reduced to ash and rubble
I can’t do any of that
the only thing I can do
is love the next person I encounter
without any conditions or strings
to love my neighbor
so fearlessly that
it starts a ripple
that stretches from
one horizon to the next
I can’t force peace
on the world
but I can become a force
of peace in the world
because
sometimes all it takes
is a single lit candle
in the darkness
to start a movement
“Lord, make me a candle
of comfort in this world
let me burn with peace”

Below is a devotion based on

the material in this "blogspot"

 

The Gift of Small Things: A Living Gratitude List

The other day I was chatting with a man, we often greet one another as we pass in the street. We did our usual of saying hello. I asked him how he was and he replied, “I am doing ok”. He politely returned the question and I answered “all is well”. He took a couple of more steps and then he stopped and said, “well actually things haven’t been ok.” He knows who I am, he continued saying “my wife has been quite ill with Covid and is in hospital again suffering from “Long Covid”, it is very worrying.” You could see he looked so very lost. Then he reached into his pocket and produced a “scratty” piece of paper with a list words on it. He showed it to me saying “These are the list of all the different doctors, consultants and other practitioners that have been to see her, to try to help. Not students or ones just to look at her, but who are trying to help her get well.” I thanked him for showing me his simple “Gratitude List”. I wished him and his family well and told him I would be thinking of them and holding them in my heart and my prayers. As he walked away, I wondered how many people he was sharing this list with; I wondered how many he had helped in so doing. I thought I am sure it is helping to sustain him in this difficult time. It had certainly helped me that day as I was returning from an upsetting and distressing situation myself. The conversation was a beautiful gift and I felt graced by what he had so freely given me, passing on gifts that had been so freely given to him and his wife. I wonder how many of these gifts, these graces bless our lives every day. I wonder how often we think about them, I wonder how often we share about them. Yes, we say thank you, but how often do we act with gratitude for these wonderful gifts that are freely given. What Kent Nerburn calls “The Small Graces”, those gifts of the ordinary, what I share as my “little things”

It is important to acknowledge the gifts that come freely in life, there are so many. We don’t always notice them. I know how much it helps me when I do. That said this is not enough on its own. I know lots of people who as a practice write gratitude lists. I am sure it helps them think about the blessings in their lives, I know it has for me. It is not enough though, just to acknowledge, just to say thank you. For the thank you to be true gratitude, what is required is for us to do something with these free gifts, these graces. We need to make acts of gratitude, like the man with his list. He is acknowledging and he is sharing with others the deep care his wife is receiving. This is why I say his “scratty” piece of paper is a “True Gratitude List”. In the same way that faith is dead, it is meaningless, unless it is shown through works; or that saying “sorry” doesn’t mean anything unless true acknowledgement of wrong doing is made; our thanks is meaningless too, unless it is transformed into acts of gratitude. I don’t mean grand gestures here by the way, I mean simple, humble meaningful ones. To quote good old Micah 'And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?' Well to me that is precisely what that man was doing while he was sick with worry about his wife. He was still able to create and share his “scratty” gratitude list; he was still able to create a humble act of gratitude. I’m sure that piece of paper is a lot scrattier today, due to how often he has removed it from his pocket and shared it with someone. It also answered a little riddle for me, I now know what my scratty little magpie has transformed into. Thank you.

Like all spiritual muscles “gratitude” needs to be exercised for it to grow and become more useful. I have noticed it developing in me every since that doorstep gift left by a friend and ever since I’ve been sharing about “the little things” or what Nerburn has called “The Small Graces”. The magic of exercising gratitude is that it enables us to look outward, it is an ”unselfie” approach as what it does is that it helps us focus our lens outward rather than inward. It helps us appreciate the small gifts around and us and to see where the work needs to be done. In so doing it enables us to live out our faith in life itself.

I wonder which way our lenses are focused each day. Are we taking in the world or our purely focused on ourselves. We are made to live in the world. We are relational beings. This is the spiritual life.

Living by Gratitude is not about the things we do or do not receive; it is about being in relationship. It is about being in relationship with ourselves, the life we have, the people we share it with, the planet we inhabit and the universe we are a small but vital part of. It is also about being in relationship with whatever we understand is at the core of this. For me this is God, others understand this differently or give it another name. What we name it is almost irrelevant. What is really important is how we respond to this mystery that is life. All of us can pray for a grateful heart, for the gift that is life itself, and for the opportunities that life offers to us, but it doesn’t mean much if we don’t do something with it.

One of my favourite quotations is the following by Meister Eckhart:

If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is “thank you,” that would suffice

I love it and yet I know that merely saying “thank you” is not enough. Yes it is faith, but it lacks the works for it to be an act of gratitude. Saying thank is part of it, acknowledging what is given is vital, but it is not enough. Yes, it is a vital component of living spiritually alive, but it is not quite enough; we do need to want what we have in life, but it’s not quite enough. For we do not live in the clouds we live here on earth and for faith to truly become vital we must transform it into works. Saying thank you is not enough, what matters is what we do with the thanks and praise we offer. What we do with the greatest gift of all, life, that we have been freely given. Something that we played no part in receiving. Life is the first free gift that we are all given, but it is not the last. How often do we see this. Certainly I have neglected it at times. Life is the first Grace, but not the last.

Gratitude shares the same linguistic root as grace, gift, pleasing, it originally meant goodwill. So, it seems to me that to live from gratitude to is live from goodwill, it is an act of goodwill. It is kind of like living in a state of grace, or gracefully if you like, which is a lot better than being a disgrace, which is perhaps a reflection of the ungrateful, those whose lens is purely focused inwardly, those who only really think of themselves. Those who only notice what is wrong with their lives and are unable to see what is around them. I bet they don’t have a “scratty” piece of paper to share, or if they do that theirs is a list of those who they resent and want to get back at.

So, what is your list like? What are you carrying around with you and sharing with the world?

When I think of sharing of the gifts that life freely gives, of a living gratitude list, I often think of poetry as being one form. One of my favourites is Mary Oliver who had a wonderful gift of sharing such things with the world; an ability to see “The Small Graces”, despite life’s very real troubles. She certainly had many herself, but she found salvation in “The Little Things” and she shared them with the world.

This is expressed beautifully in her poem “The Gift”, I particularly love the line “I wanted to thank the mockingbird for his song.” She describes doing this by playing him some music from Mahler and the mockingbird played some of it back to her. It is a bit like me and my blackbird, we sing back to one another, forever raising each another’s voices. My friend sharing his “scratty” gratitude list, is just like Mary’s mockingbird and my blackbird. Aren’t each of us singing our songs, in our own ways.

So here is Mary’s poem “The Gift”. It seems an appropriate way to end this devotion. I hope we can all be as grateful as she was, I hope we can all take the world as seriously as Mary did, and remember to turn our lens outward and see all that is in our world to savour and perhaps save and to share it. I hope we can all make living gratitude lists, to crumpled, no matter how scratty.

“The Gift” by Mary Oliver

I wanted to thank the mockingbird for the vigor of his song.
Every day he sang from the rim of the field, while I picked
blueberries or just idled in the sun.
Every day he came fluttering by to show me, and why not, the white blossoms in his wings.
So one day I went there with a machine, and played some songs of Mahler.
The mockingbird stopped singing, he came close and seemed to listen.
Now when I go down to the field, a little Mahler spills through the sputters of his song.
How happy I am, lounging in the light, listening as the music floats by!
And I give thanks also for my mind, that thought of giving a gift.
And mostly I'm grateful that I take this world so seriously.

Below is a video devotion based 

on the material in this "blogspot"

Please Help & Thank You

Last Saturday I was invited to speak at Midland Unitarian Union’s Annual General Meeting.  It was lovely to spend the day with many Unitarians from the district at the beautiful Kingswood Meeting House in Hollywood, just south of Birmingham. The talk went really well, I enjoyed myself. I was grateful to be there. During the AGM the district’s treasurer Sandy Ellis was honoured for over thirty years of service. In fact there were many votes of thanks given throughout the day, something that is entirely appropriate for such occasions. So much work is done behind the scenes both in congregations, districts and at a wider level that enables these free religious communities to function; tireless work that is done mainly out of love.

A few days before this I had come home to find a box on my doorstep, a very large box. I opened it wondering what it was. Inside was an extensive selection of the most wonderful fruit and a lovely note from “Slimming World”. A thank you for all I’d given freely to the Parliamentary Workshop aimed at combating obesity. A wonderful gift. I have received many gifts in recent weeks and some rather lovely letters and cards all saying thank you for little things I’ve done in my many varied ministerial duties and my life in general. Thank you.

This all got me thinking about "thank you", just those two simple words. I say thank you a lot if truth be told. I have this odd habit of thanking things, it seems I’m not alone as I’ve found others do it too. I thank the tram and the train as I get off and I thank the cash machine after using it. I thank people constantly and I offer silent thanks of praise and prayer throughout my day. It’s funny but after particularly frustrating and challenging spells in my life I find myself saying thank you an awful lot. It’s not the only prayer of course. I have noticed another prayer as I walk faithfully through the difficult times and that prayer is “Help me, please help me.” I offer thanks and ask for help to the great mystery but I also offer thanks and ask for help from the people I share my life with. This act of humility, of opening up connects me to all that is…

They do say that you should watch your “P’s” and “Q’s”, your please and thank you’s, well perhaps that is simply what prayer, or the act of prayer is about, recognising the need for assistance and reaching beyond ourselves. Maybe it is also a simple thank you and acknowledgement for all that life offers us, an acknowledgement of gratitude. The prayers in themselves do not change anything, other than perhaps our attitude, but they do play a vital role. Never forget that the action is always ours.

Meister Eckhart said “If the only prayer you said the rest of your life was thank you, it would be enough”. I see a great deal of truth in this, but not the whole truth. It does come close, but I have also come to believe that another prayer is just as vital; the other prayer is “please help”.

In terms of prayer these two are enough. That said prayer alone is not enough, faith without works is meaningless. It’s ok saying thank you, expressing gratitude but these are just empty words unless this gratitude is shown in how we live our lives. Meanwhile asking for help means nothing unless it is followed by appropriate faithful action. Prayer is the beginning and perhaps end of something, but what goes on in between is what really counts.

For me the spiritual life is about connection and interdependence. No one is an island, no one lives wholly from and by themselves. I was chatting with a friend the other day about how often in my life people have so freely given things to me, especially food. And yet I often hear it said that “There is no such thing as a free meal”. What utter tosh, I’ve received many free meals in my life, people just giving to me from their hearts without expectation. We are given free meals from the moment of our birth until our deaths. If we honestly look at our lives how many times have people given us free meals? Think about your first meal, given by your mother, that’s the ultimate example of a free meal. No one is purely self-reliant, we need one another and the world needs us to give freely of ourselves.

We constantly live lives of please and thank you, it’s that we do not always recognise these two and we don’t always show it. It is oh so easy for us to see what is wrong. I actually think when we offer thanks, when we offer the gift of ourselves and when we ask for help from each other, from the spirit of life. what we are doing is blessing the world by our presence, what we are actually doing is gracing life with our presence, we are actually living in a state of grace.

From the cradle to the grave we need to keep asking for help and we need to make ourselves available to be of assistance to others in their need. This is not to say that we become unhealthily dependent on others and society as a whole, no not at all. We are though a part of a whole, a complex whole, that makes life and community. As we grow and change and become the people that we are this changes shape and reforms constantly, it seems that we are being born again and again to new versions of ourselves. Of course we cannot do this alone. We cannot give birth to ourselves, no one can. We need help and sometimes we need to ask for help from others and in so doing we are of course doing not only a service for ourselves, but for them also.

No one is an island. We are communal beings entirely dependent on each other and life itself. We are interdependent and all life is interrelated, what affects one affects all. This has never been more true. When someone reaches out in a time of need it is our God given duty to help and when we need help we need to be faithful enough to ask for help too. Interdependence is a physical fact, but it is also a spiritual reality. And when we receive the help we need to offer thanks and praise for the gift freely given, not just merely in our words, but in deeds and in our simple daily living. This is what it means to live in a state of grace.

This to me is the whole point of spiritual community, of religious living, to create states of Grace. To see, understand and experience this oneness, this Divine Unity. To see that we are all one. To be of help to one another and to seek the help when it is needed. In this way we all grow and become the best that we can be and serve life to the utmost of our ability. In so doing we bring into being a state of Grace.

By minding our “P’s” and “Q’s” by asking for help and giving thanks and living with these attitudes to the for front of our lives we begin to create the Kin-dom” of love here, we create a state of Grace. We not only see that we are all one, we live in this oneness and in so doing we will begin to recognise life as the ultimate gift that it is, the ultimate free meal.

Life is the greatest gift of all, the ultimate Grace.

Grace comes to us unbidden. It does not come because we have done anything to deserve it or not deserve it, it just comes. 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, in all its blessings and curses. 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 gift we have been given.

Grace works in and through us. 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.” Grace an unseen force 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 of life plays. Grace creates the interconnection.

We can experience the Grace present in life if we are open to it, if we would just let go of the need to control, to open our clenched fists just a little and dance with it in the spaces that contain life. We just need to pay attention, to notice it in life and in the lives of those who live in a Graceful state. You see all life can become a disclosure of Grace. We can experience it in every moment of life. In the wild embrace of one we hold most dear, in those flocks of wild geese that fly overhead, in an act of reconciliation and forgiveness, and in a selfless act as we give of ourselves to life.

We can all live in a “State of Grace.”

It begins quite simply, by simply minding our “P’s” and “Q’s”, our please and thank you’s. By simply asking for help when needed and offer thanks for what is given and returning this in our daily living.

The Gift of Inspiration

“Inspiration” by Bernie S. Siegel from “365 Prescriptions for the Soul”

When I speak to respiratory therapists the words inspiration and inspire relate to the act of breathing, mechanical movements of the chest and diaphragm which pull air into our lungs. Yet these words carry a much more significant meaning as well.

In many languages the word for breath or inspiration relates to our spirit and spark of life. I do not think it is an accident that this meaning is shared. After all, God breathed life into Adam through his nostrils. That first inspiration brought life into a piece of clay. Dust became alive.

We are all dust and clay until we find inspiration in our lives. When we are inspired, we change the world, not by changing others, but by changing ourselves. If everyone on this planet felt inspired and breathed life into each other, we would have a world of companionship and love."

...Inspiring words me thinks...

The other Saturday was a rare gift for me. I got to spend the day with my brother. I had rung him the weekend before to wish him a Happy Birthday and during the chat he asked me what I was doing the Saturday afterwards. I checked my diary and said I am free from about 11am onwards. He then asked if I lived near Cheadle Hulme, which of course I do. He then proceeded to tell me that his daughter Scarlet and he would travelling up to Cheadle Hulme School as she was competing in the national under 11 girl’s chess championship. When I heard this news I instantly said “I will be there,” cheering her on. (I realised a little later that cheering someone on while playing chess might not be entirely appropriate...Tee, hee, hee...)

I rarely get the chance to spend time with my brother, one of the few people who have known me and who I have known all my life, so it was a real treat. It was a proud moment for him too. His daughter was captaining her county team Hertfordshire, on the top table and at eight years old in an under 11 tournament. My only concern was whether she would be competing against someone from Yorkshire, in which case my loyalties would be split. Thankfully this did not happen as Yorkshire do not compete in this competition. Apparently they like to do things their own way…something’s never change in the “Great County”.

My brother had a love and talent for chess as a child too, so I know how excited he was for his daughter and how her love for chess and her talent had reawakened a passion in him. He recounted how he had taught me as a child, but I had no real interest. I also remembering him telling me how he himself had been taught by our older step brother, “Our Allen”, who had sadly died a couple of years ago. The gift and inspiration Al passed on to him is living on.

It was a lovely day spending time with family, sharing in something that they loved. It was also a real blessing, a beautiful gift to witness these young people applying and enjoying themselves through the gift of a game that I have no understanding of. Chess is not a game for me. I know how to play, how the pieces work etc but I have no understanding of the game at all, my mind is just not wired up and tuned in that way. My mind, my heart and my soul work in very different ways. That said it was a beautiful gift, to witness them making use of what they have been given. I left inspired by these young people.

We all have our gifts, our different abilities. No two people are exactly alike. 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. There was even a time when I was not allowed to engage in sport during childhood, something I hated as I watched the other children run and play. I have been re-feeling these memories in recent weeks as I have been attempting to get fit and work with a personal trainer. The old problems are still there, only I’m much older now. That said the shame is no longer there and I am determined to make the most of my body, despite its limitations. While never being athletic and never being wired up for chess I have always been a determined person. I do try to make the most of what I have been given, no matter how limited and not only for myself, but for the good of all. Whatever we have been given, what life has been gifted to us is not for ourselves alone, but to share and for the good of all.

2016 has been a strange year so. One phenomenon I have noticed has been the high rate of “celebrity” deaths. Many icons of my age and my parents age have died this year, an unprecedented number in fact. From David Bowie, Alan Rickman and Terry Wogan in January to Victoria Wood and Prince in the last week and many many more. The Daily Telegraph, who maintain a gallery of famous people’s deaths, have recorded more famous deaths already in 2016 (75) than 2014 (38) and 2015 (30) combined.

Now this could just be put down as a one off, an unfortunate year, but it seems that actually this is a trend that is likely to continue. According to Nick Serpell the BBC’s obituary editor this is because “People who started becoming famous in the 1960s are now entering their 70s and are starting to die.” He also suggested that it will continue to rise because of the increasing phenomenon of celebrity. Stating that: “There are also more famous people than there used to be…In my father or grandfather’s generation, the only famous people really were from cinema – there was no television.”

Many of these celebrities, who have died this year, are from the baby boom generation, meaning that they were the first generation to experience fame in the era of TV. This is when the cult of celebrity began to take off, when people first began to be swept up by it and it has continued to grow ever since, even more so in this mass social media age. The trend will continue, we will lose more and more. This is because as Nick Serpell has explained: “Over the next 10 years, these people will get into their 80s and it is going to continue at this level…And that doesn’t count the surprise deaths, when people die that shouldn’t.”

It seems it’s something that we are all going to have to get used to.

Now of course this not something we should get too sad about. People like Bowie, Prince, Terry Wogan, Victoria Wood, Alan Rickman shone and inspired us in their own unique ways, making the most of their gifts and sharing them with us, bringing us joy and excitement along the way. Just as the people closer to us, ordinary people, have done so by sharing their lives and their loves with us. Just as we do when we do the same. There are many people who we have known in our lives who have no doubt inspired us to be all that we can be, as we have inspired others to be all that they can be.

Just think of the lives that you have touched and the lives that have touched yours…so many moments…Far too many to mention…

By making best use of the gifts we have been given we can inspire others to do the very same.

Inspire is one of those words, like so many in common usage, that has been reduced in meaning as time as 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 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 form of love, as it is Divine love in human action.

Now such figures such as David Bowie and Prince have been called geniuses. It is often an overused word but I think it is fair to apply it to those greats who have inspired us. For it has been through their ability to inspire that their genius came alive; their genius breathed its life into the lives of others.

They are not the only ones though. 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 the epistle Paul was making in is first letter to the Corinthians chapter twelve.

Paul 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. Each one was an actor trying to play the director and run the whole show. How often in life does this occur?

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 or loathed. 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.

Amen