The Lost and Found Come Knocking at the Door, Looking for a Better Way

There are many varied people that knock on my door. They do so for all kinds of reasons. There have been several this week. People usually do so unannounced. Some seem to have lost something and others appear to have found something.

Last Sunday, after saying goodbye’s to folk after the service, I noticed a water bottle and phone on a seat at the back of chapel. Well actually it was Nigel who spotted it. I quickly realised it belonged to Joe, a young man who is a regular attender. I knew why he had too, we had been speaking for a few days as he had been preparing the eulogy for his grandmother’s funeral. I knew I couldn’t contact him so I took the items home and looked after them. A couple of hours later there was a knock on my door and there was Joe. He had realised what he had done. It took him some time I guess as he is not one of those people who is not constantly on his phone.

We talked for a while about grief and how the mind can be like Swiss Cheese at such times. Memory of simple things goes out of the window. You feel utterly lost and lose things constantly. I remember once leaving my wallet in the post office. Glasses in Tesco’s and another time after taking the service at Styal I realised I couldn’t find my car keys. I search around, but no sign, I retraced by steps from the chapel all the way back up the pathway to the main road, all the while cursing myself for my stupidity. When I got to my car I approached the door to find them there in the door. I had at least locked the door but for some reason, but I did not take them out of the door. I shared one or two other occasions too, like the time I thought I’d lost my car. I hadn’t I’d just parked it elsewhere. There are many occasions when I thought I had lost my mind. It has always been in times of grief. It is very common. So many people share similar experiences when grieving. We feel lost and do not know, to some degree, who we are. Life is unfamiliar, so of course we feel a little lost. Afterwards life is never quite the same again.

A friend told me this morning that she had lost the keys to her house. She had to got to her brother’s to get a spare set before returning home. When she arrived her home there were her keys in the front door. It happens to us all I reckon.

What I have found is that the key to getting through times of grief and loss is to keep on turning faithfully to life. To not hide away for too long, to not fully hibernate. To take care of the basics and to lean on to the folk around you and of course to your God, however you understand that. That which sustains you in the storm of life. In time you will come through this time of loss and feeling lost and come to a new world. Greater meaning and understanding often comes as we walk faithfully through the valley of the shadow of death. Life changes you, but so does loss. It has changed me, throughout my life. Living spiritually alive is not about transcendence, it is about transformation, formation, reformation. The key is to keep a little faith and to keep on turning. It is also vital to remember that we do not journey alone, even though grief can make you feel this way at times. We all get caught up in the storms of life. This is why it is so vital to remember that we do not sail this ship alone, we travel in this ship of love together.

Humour helps too. Sometimes you just have to laugh at your humanity and absurdity. I was reminded this week of some advice I once heard about losing your mind and car. “Do not worry if you lose your car, that isn’t the problem. You are in trouble only when you forget that you have a car.”

There was a lovely moment on Wednesday as I was writing the address this is based on, just before these exact words actually. It was a beautiful reminder of how lovely people can be. There was another knock on my door. It was one of my neighbours Lucy, her daughter has a dog called Molly also and I know them well from Café Nero and just out and about. I had walked into Altrincham with her earlier as she was on her way to a charity shop with a few things. She told me she was concerned that they wouldn’t take them as four had refused her last week. They said they weren’t taking any more things. She is a person with a deep social conscience. She was concerned about distributing unwanted things to those who need them. Anyhow an hour or so later she knocked on my door to tell me that they were taking things and that there is a distribution system in place. I was so deeply touched that she remembered the conversation we had and that she needed to tell me that things were ok. How vital it is in life to remember just how ruddy lovely folk can be. This is something that is so vital in life. It is in mine. I had also that morning had another conversation with a very lost soul who likes to give Molly biscuits. She was so caught up worry about the world. She spends most of her day wandering around lost and struggling to get through the day. We talk most days. I know it lifts her spirits just a little bit to give Molly those biscuits. It is so important to remember these things; how much we all need such things.

I received an email from a person anonymously they had lost something dear to her, vital to their well being. It read:

“Hi there,
I lost my navy bunny soft toy yesterday morning in Stamford square and I’m desperately trying to find her. I really need her back. Would you be able to keep an eye out for her or be able to put up her missing poster somewhere? Thank you ever so much.”

I obviously am not naming the person. This little toy may seem like nothing to most people, but it gives the person support with their social anxiety. I hope that they find what they have lost.

I have felt lost in grief at times these last 18 months. I don’t just mean at the loss of so many folk I know, so many friends as well as congregants. So many folk I have known and love. Also, a sense of loss and bewilderment at the world. We do seem to be living through divisive times. We forget we are all far more human than otherwise, that we are formed from the same flesh and have the same spirit in us.

This is something that no matter what happens in life we must never forget. Our lives, humanity, depends upon it. If we lose that, then we truly are lost.

Memory is a mysterious thing. Memory loss is a serious thing too. Our minds are affected by many things that can interfere with some basic brain functions. There are of course the many and varied forms of dementia which we are seeing and understanding more and more. I see it in folks I know, and I see the affects it has on those who care for folk becoming lost in such worlds.

I sometimes wonder about my own memory too, especially around traumatic times in my life. I was reminded of a peculiar memory recently. My brother’s eldest son Theo has recently begun University They broke their foot trampolining and were obviously struggling. There were some jokes on a family Wattsapp about how lucky they were that my former stepdad wasn’t there as he would have wiggled it about and told him to stop being soft and get on with it. This had happened to my youngest sister when she broke her arm roller skating. I had lived most of my life with a guilt about this. The way I remembered it was that I was the one that did this to her. I remember a few years ago apologising to her for this. She looked at me like I was a complete idiot, in fact she told me so. Telling me this is not what happened at all. That I had cared for her and it was her dad that did this and that I was there as it happened. I witnessed the act, but did not do it. I still struggle with accepting this reality. My mind does not fully remember this at all. I cannot find the whole truth of the memory. It tells me something about the state of my mind and memory at that time in my life. It also teaches me something about how memory so easily gets lost and that the truth can be hard to find especially in times of emotion, loss and trauma. Something we could all do to remember in these times we are living through.

It is also vital to keep a hold of the truth of beautiful memories of moments of deep care and love and attention too. Of what is good and loving and beautiful. Of every tiny bit of humanity. Our lives, our world depends upon it. I have been thinking of these a lot these last couple of weeks as I celebrated an important anniversary recently. I have been remembering so many people that offered so much love and acceptance in darker days. In days when I was very lost.

Now I know that this might sound counter intuitive, but being lost and feeling lost is not always such a terrible thing, especially if it leads us to look for a better way. I reminded here of a mysterious little poem by William Stafford “Cutting Loose”. Here it is:

“Cutting Loose” by William Stafford

Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose
from all else and electing a world
where you go where you want to.

Arbitrary, a sound comes, a reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that sound
will tell you where it is and you
can slide your way past trouble.

Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path—but that’s when
you get going best, glad to be lost,
learning how real it is
here on earth, again and again.

As Parker J. Palmer highlights whilst reflecting on this poem. Maybe “the way of being lost” is important, perhaps even necessary at times, if we are to “cut loose” from business as usual and reach beyond for a far better world. Perhaps what is key is that vital reminder that “a steady center is holding all else,” and if you know where it is, “you can slide your way past trouble.”

It is just as vital to remember that the “twisted monsters” that always bar our path, need not defeat us but can prod us to “get going” amid the complex mix of horror and beauty of which reality is made. As we “get going,” our acceptance of being lost can turn to gratitude for being lost. Because if we didn’t feel lost then we wouldn’t look for a better way.

How vital it is to remember that even when we feel lost that all is not necessarily lost, we just need to find a better way.

I find something deeply reassuring in the fact that “lost and found” are paired together. I love that lost property boxes are often referred to as “The lost and found”. There is something very powerful in the journey of faith here. There is something beautifully paradoxical in all of this. It reminds me that if you want to be found you have to first of all get lost. It is the “Hero’s Journey”.

If I have learnt anything in life it is that the problem isn’t whether or not we will get lost at times, the question is how will we live when we get lost. Now of course the first step towards finding my way again is to recognise first of all that I am lost. This doesn’t necessarily mean literally lost, but lost in myself, whether that is lost in fear, self-doubt, self-pity, basically lost in my own underpants.

When I am lost in myself and find myself truly “lost at sea” I find that what has really happened is that I’ve separated myself once again from what I know to be true, about what is at the heart of me and the heart of life and have blinded myself to the light both within and without and I have once again walled myself in and I begin to feel alone and utterly lost. I have cut myself off from others and the love present in life. In such a state I can really hurt myself, I have done so in the past. I know when I am lost, internally I find myself giving in to guilt, to loneliness and defensiveness. While externally I will begin to blame others for this sense of lostness, resentment grows as does confusion in others. Don’t we all? When I am lost the solution might not be to go back to where I come from, the answer might be to find a better way.

We all feel lost at times. I have re-learnt once more how important that is. It keeps you connected to life and allows you to grow, to be transformed. This is the point of the spiritual life. This year I have re-learnt once again the importance of vulnerability. Everyone of us is vulnerable to the troubles of life. No matter how comfortable life might be at this moment that can be quickly shaken and all can be lost. There could be an unexpected knock at the door, or phone call one cold autumn day with news you don’t want to hear.

The problem isn’t getting lost, we all get lost at times. The problem is in losing faith that you can be found once again. The key is how we live when we find ourselves lost. Do we close down and get lost deeper in our fear, or do we pause and reach out and ask for help from those loving forces that are all around whether visible or invisible. Do we look for the better way.

I’m going to end with one final poem, by my favourite farmer poet Wendell Berry. It’s his “Sabbath Poem II”

Sabbath Poem II (1995) by Wendell Berry

The best reward in going to the woods
Is being lost to other people, and
Lost sometimes to myself. I'm at the end
Of no bespeaking wire to spoil my goods;

I send no letter back I do not bring.
Whoever wants me now must hunt me down
Like something wild, and wild is anything
Beyond the reach of purpose not its own.

Wild is anything that's not at home
In something else's place. This good white oak
Is not an orchard tree, is unbespoke,
And it can live here by its will alone,

Lost to all other wills but Heaven's -- wild.
So where I most am found I'm lost to you,
Presuming friend, and only can be called
Or answered by a certain one, or two.

From Wendell Berry’s This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems, Counterpoint, Berkeley 2013: 195.

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

Choose Life: Learning to Live from Regret

This last Thursday 8th May marked “VE Day”, “Victory in Europe Day”; a day that must have been of the most incredible celebration 80 years ago, as the war in Europe ended, as the liberal democracy overcame Nazism. The Second World War had not yet fully ended, that was not until August 15 when Japan surrendered, with the formal ceremony taking place on 2nd September. It is important to remember such times as these, I have come to believe. That said it is not just that we need to acknowledge, to remember them, but to live lives of remembrance, in the hope that we do not repeat the horror that led to the Second World War again. It is vital to learn the lessons from the mistakes of those who came before us. I am not sure we have. I think we human beings have a long way to go before we can make the claim that we have learnt how to live in peace. I don’t just mean on global scale, but also much closer to home, including our own lives.

I have been thinking about memory quite a lot of late. Much has happened in my own life and the life around me, that has caused me to pause, to reflect. It has brought memory to the surface. At the same time, I have felt some of my own memory getting a little fuzzier. I have struggled to remember exact details of events. Whilst at the same time I have experienced real clarity in some deep old memories, and yet other more recent ones seem less clear. I know what this is, what is causing this, it is grief. I have experienced a lot of losses these last few months, tragic ones to be clear. I travelled home to Yorkshire on Friday for the funeral of a dear old friend.

I have found myself reflecting on so much, recently. Yes, good times, but I’ve also been visited by a few ghosts of the mistakes I have made and the regrets I live with. These are very common feelings when grieving, for myself and many others. I am not someone who claims that they have no regrets. I am not sure that is either helpful or honest. Regret is ok, so long as you do something with it, turn it into something beneficial for yourself and others, learn from the mistakes, live with regret, rather die or stagnate in it. This counts for individuals, communities, nations and the whole of humanity for that matter. The key to everything is to learn to live with regret.

You may recall a couple of weeks ago that I spoke of spending a bit of time talking with the new and upcoming ministers at the recent General Assembly Annual meetings. What I didn’t say is that I also spent time with some colleagues, who are precious to me, who are now retired. I spent some time in the company of Rev Dr Ann Peart, the one who loves Hope’s ankle in the stain glass window at Dunham Road. Ann and myself have a deep care and affection for one another and it was lovely to see her. We are both very different people, have our faults and our qualities. Talking with her brought back memories of my time at college, the challenge, the characters and the lessons learnt. One thing I remember was a little sign of Ann’s door that read “I have learnt so much from my mistakes that I think I am going to make a few more.” I was smiling as I remembered this, as I know that the only way to do so, is to keep on journeying, “Choosing Life” to paraphrase good old Moses and Wham of course. Yes, making some mistakes at times, but doing mainly good, certainly doing whatever I can for the creation of life and not it’s destruction.May we all choose life every day.

Some say that they have no regrets about anything. It is interesting that perhaps the most heard song at funerals is “My Way” by Frank Sinatra and that famous line “Regrets I’ve had a few, but then again too few to mention” or perhaps the famous Edith Piath “je ne regrette rien” no regret. A more modern version would be Robbie Williams’ “No Regrets”

Is this really true though? Can any of us truly say that we have no regrets? I’m not sure I can. I cannot make the claim that I have no regrets at all. There have been many failures and mistakes along the way. Most folk live with regret and struggle with parts of their past. Like King David I am sure we could all write our Psalms of Lament.

Regret is an interesting word, originally it was a kind of lament, from the Old French word ‘regreter”, meaning “one who bewails the dead,” which comes from a Germanic root meaning “to greet.” As Mark Nepo has said of regret “We always face these two phases of regret: to bewail what is dead and gone, and, if we can move through that grief, to greet the chance to do things differently as we move on.”

Nepo notes something of real value here, it is a lesson from grief. Yes, regret is a lament for what has gone, what has died, but if we greet it fully with love we can learn from the past and do things differently in the future. The response to regret is both of life and death. The choice is ours. By the way this is the one choice we have in life. We do not choose what happens to us but we can choose how we respond to what happens to us. This is the one ultimate freedom, that is open to all of us.

To quote Viktor Frankl:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”

So, the response to regret is ours. We can either choose life or death. We can close in and shut down or we can create with love.

There are two powerful examples of responses to regret in the New Testament. They are found in the Easter narrative, following Jesus’s betrayal. Luke’s Gospel (Ch22 vv 60-62) depicts Peter regretting his betrayal of Jesus. He wept bitterly for his fear based denial and yet how did he respond. Well, it was on Peter that the earlier Christian Church was built. For Peter Hope was once again born. Matthew (Ch 27 vv 3-5) depicts a very different response to regret that of Judas Iscariot. This is much closer to the original meaning of regret, which meant to bewail the dead. His response was to take his life. Both Peter and Judas can be seen as examples of how we can act with guilt or from shame over the things we regret in life. One chose life and the other turned away from life. One chose to create and the other to destroy. One turned further inward in shame and other turned out to do something creative with their guilt and regret. Peter lived with his regret, where as Judas died with his.

Regret has its place; we need to feel it and to respond in life giving and affirming ways. It matters how we live with regret, is it in life affirming ways, or shame based life denying ones. We can learn from our mistakes if we choose life.

As Joan Chittister wrote in “The Gift of Years”

“The burden of regret is that, unless we come to understand the value of the choices we made in the past, we may fail to see the gifts they have brought us.

The blessing of regret is clear — it brings us, if we are willing to face it head on, to the point of being present to this new time of life in an entirely new way. It urges us on to continue becoming.”

We all have regrets. It is delusional to say that we should never have them, in fact a person who never feels regret or guilt has something missing in their humanity. Yes, regrets, fuelled by shame, can gnaw away at our souls, but it we are wise, regrets can be powerful teachers. We need a lot of humility and curiosity to learn from our regrets rather than simply allowing them to whittle away at the spirit. Above all we need hope: if we regret something but are willing to learn from it, we must dare to hope that we can learn from it. All humility is, in some sense, a thing of hope: when we humble ourselves, we are living in the hope that we can do better.

Of course, before we move on we need to put right what we have done wrong. This may just take an acknowledgement, or it may take more, an action. Once we put right what is needed and wanted though we can begin again in love, in so doing we are choosing life once more. Not only for ourselves, but for all humanity. This is the key to everything, I have come to believe, to “Choose Life” once again.

So, I say let’s face and truly know those things we regret, no matter how many times we have failed to live up to our ideals. Let’s be powered by appropriate guilt and not fetted by inappropriate shame. We need not be paralysed lamenting the past, nor do we need to close the door on it. Let us instead move through the grief of regret and greet the future with its possibility of what might yet be.

Let’s choose life and infinite possibility. Let’s make lives of remembrance from the ashes of what went wrong before. Let’s do so as individuals, communities, nations and humanity.

I’m going to end this "Blogspot" with a meditation, with something to reflect on. It is adapted from “The Land of Regret” a spiritual practice created by Steven Charleston from the book “Spirit Wheel”

Steve invites us to enter into the mystery of the following words asking us to hear “What Native America has to say, to teach, to share…. When you enter into the mystery of these words for yourself, do so without preconception or judgment. With honesty and humility. Enter the deep earth of our ancient longing and reach for the highest branches of our collective hope…. Take each message as you find it. Let it speak to you directly. Ponder its meaning.”

So I invite us to still our thoughts, quieten our minds, connect to our bodies, to our breathing…Let us be still and silent together…

I have visited the land of regret more than once
But have never lived there, for the land is barren
And no person would make their home there

Unless, as the elders say, they have been so focused
On their sorrow and shame
That they have lost their way to forgiveness
The sacred well in any desert

Lost their way to repentance and reconciliation
So they haunt the wild lands of their own memory
Seeking responsibility like a mirage.

Better, the elders say, to let regret do its job:
Be a teacher with a lesson that must be learned.

Then make your cairn to mark your passing
To express your regret, to accept the teaching
And walk on, keeping to the straight path before you

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

No Matter What and Bridget Jones: Stories about the Eternity of Love

I will begin with a favourite story a story about love and the eternity of love really.

"No Matter What" by Debi Gliori

Small was feeling grim and dark. Playing toss and fling and squash, Yell and scream and bang and crash. Break and snap and bash and batter… “Good grief,” said Large. “What is the matter?” Small said “I’m a grim and grumpy little Small and nobody loves me at all.” “Oh Small,” said Large. “Grumpy or not, I’ll always love you no matter what.” Small said, “If I was a grizzly bear, would you still love me, would you care?” “Of course,” said Large, “bear or not, I’ll always love you no matter what.” Small said, “But if I turned into a bug, would you still love me and give me a hug?” “Of course,” said Large, “bug or not, I’ll always love you no matter what.” “No matter what?” said Small, and smiled, “What if I was a crocodile?” Large said “I’d hug you close and tight and tuck you up in bed each night”. “Does love wear out” said Small, “does it break or bend? Can you fix it, stick it, does it mend?” “Oh help,” said Large “I’m not that clever I just know I’ll love you for ever”. Small said “but what about when we're dead and gone, would you love me then, does love go on?” Large held Small snug as they looked out at the night, at the moon in the dark, and the stars shining bright. “Small look at the stars – how they shine and glow, but some of those stars died a long time ago.” Still they shine in the evening skies. Love, like starlight, never dies”.

A beautiful story don’t you think.

By the way apologies, I have a really heavy cold. I hope you can understand me.

Molly was full of life and love on Monday morning. I think she spent the best part of two hours running and playing in the park. It was a joy to see her running alive and enjoying the joys of spring. It did feel like it was in the air. I spent some of the time in conversation with a friend and her dog Ronnie, Molly’s favourite. They had a ball together. We also spent time talking about a few things, particularly friends who we have some concerns about. As is often the case I spent most of my time listening, I generally follow the suggestion from James 1 v 19-20 “You must understand this, my beloved:[g] let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20 for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. “ Something we could all do with paying attention to in this day and age. I did share a little about a sense of weariness this winter, that I felt surrounded by grief. Both congregations have lost several people this winter.

So, it was lovely to find myself walking in love and life and watching the signs of spring all around me, particularly in this sweet little dog.

I have been to the pictures a couple of times in recent weeks. I enjoyed both occasions, sharing with friends and enjoying the whole cinema experience at “Everyman” in Altrincham . I have been to see two very different films. The first being “A Complete Unknown” the Bob Dylan biopic, which was superb. The second being very different “Bridget Jones; Mad About the Boy”, the fourth instalment in the Bridget Jones series. I think I have seen the original and perhaps another one. I have to say it is not something that has been high my lists of interests.

So, I began to watch, with not a great deal of expectation. I surprised myself though as I got caught up in the humour, which was easy to engage in and the quality of the actors and characters. It is of course a romantic love story, these films always are. That said what got me, what held me, was when I realised it truly was a love story, but not the kind you would expect. It was a story about grief. Grief of course is all about love. In fact grief is the price we pay for love. We all love and thus we all grieve when that which we love is lost.

It is a story of about Bridget beginning to live again after the loss of her husband Mark D’Arcy, the father of two children Billy and Mabel. It is a funny and poignant portrayal, sweet and painful at times. It also has this rather lovely ability to explore all the experiences and stages of grief; all the different conversations and reactions to grief and those who grieve; it explored the spiritual, religious, psychological, social and plain old human experiences that all who grieve and begin to live again will experience. It is not only a journey about Bridget’s grief though, but also that of her children, particular her son Billy. His journey through grief was threaded through the whole story. Yes, obviously it is Bridget who gets all the focus and attention, this is the film. That said it was his journey through grief that spoke powerfully to me.

There is also the rather lovely relationship that eventually forms between Bridget and Billy’s science teacher Mr Wallacker. Now as their relationship, initially not romantic develops, there is a wonderful interplay between the secular and spiritual about life and death and what lives on. As I watched one scene the following from Forrest Church’s “Love and Death: My Journey Through the Vally of the Shadow” floated through my mind:

“Whatever happens to us after we die, life doesn’t end in oblivion. It continues in love, our own love, once given, everlasting. After death our bodies may be resurrected. Our Souls may transmigrate or become part of the heavenly pleroma. We may join our loved ones in Heaven. Or we may return the constituent parts of our being to the earth from which it came and rest in eternal peace. About life after death, no-one knows.

But about love after death, we surely know. The one thing that can never be taken from this world, even by death, is the love we have given before we die. Love I swear it, is immortal”

This is the beautiful message of the film. A similar message to that of the beautiful “No Matter What” by Debi Gliori, that I shared earlier “Small look at the stars – how they shine and glow, but some of those stars died a long time ago.” Still they shine in the evening skies. Love, like starlight, never dies”.

These were feelings expressed throughout the film, or at least this is what I heard, regardless of individuals foundational beliefs.

The film also humourously portrays what to do and what not to do when journeying with someone through grief. How to be a friend, or collegue or doctor. The key I have learnt is similar to those lessons from James 1 v 19 “You must understand this, my beloved:[g] let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak…” So many folk wanted to get Bridget and the children through the grief, offered terrible and good advice, when the best thing to do is to simply accompany another through grief. If a person is allowed to do so, in time, life will continue one. The grief and love within it becomes a part of you and you live again. You feel what I felt on Monday morning watching Molly playing so alive in the park. Spring coming life, after another winter.

To live fully alive is to live with the whole of life, even the great sorrows. You don’t get to filter life

The Sufi mystic said to be as a ‘guest house’ and welcome each new arrival, even if it be a crowd of sorrows. Invite them in, Rumi says. Meet them at the door laughing, treat each guest honorably. They may be clearing you out for some new delight.

How many of us can say that grief is a welcome guest at our door? None I would suspect. And yet how many of us would not invite love in. Grief of course is the price we pay for love. It can seem too high a price at times. Grief is a hard companion. In her book “Companion through the Darkness” Stephanie Ericsson says,

“Grief is a tidal wave that overtakes you, smashes you up into its darkness, where you tumble and crash against unidentifiable surfaces, only to be thrown out on an unknown beach, bruised, reshaped.”

I once hear grief described as being like a vast and lonely plain where all the echoes are of only one sound; or that grief rises suddenly, in unexpected moments; or that it is a constant ache, ever present. C.S. Lewis once exclaimed, “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” Grief is not easy and I’m sure none of us would wish to invite in this unwelcome guest. How many of us welcome it in others? How many can welcome it for a short while, but not for too long?

It is better by far to share it, to speak of it, though it is wrenching to do so. William Shakespeare noted: “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.” The difficult path through grief is the only path that exists. “Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture,” invite it in. Don’t run from it, because you can’t escape it.

Grief does not always appear as tears, it affects people in different ways. Grief can make us cry uncontrollably and it can make us go numb. Grief can make us feel guilty or depressed or fearful or angry. Grief can cause emotional problems in our hearts and physical problems in our bodies. Grief can put us in a state of disbelief; it can make us withdraw; it can make us feel like we are going crazy. In other words, no matter what the textbook tells you, the stages of grief do not offer a direct route.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s model from her 1969 book suggests the passage is: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. It is often forgotten that Kubler-Ross also said the list is not comprehensive and can happen in any order.

There is a funny moment in the Bridget Jones film when her friends wanting her to get through the grief say she is going through the different stages, but not really understanding what they are. They want her get through, want her laughing again, but is so doing they are not allowing her to journey as she should. Grief is not some clinical journey that follows a set pattern. Grief is about love, human love, so how on earth could it be.

Grief is not an illness that we need to get over and recover from and then just leave behind. Remember grief is about love and the loss of the physical aspects of love, so to leave it behind, would be to let go of love. As Megan Devine has said:

"Grief no more needs a solution than love needs a solution. We cannot 'triumph' over death, or loss, or grief. They are immovable elements of being alive. If we continue to come at them as though they are problems to be solved, we'll never get solace or comfort in our deepest pain."

Grief is not an illness, unless you think that love is a disease in need of a cure.

When we lose someone we love, our lives are changed forever. Our lives will never be the same again. We don’t rise above our pain. We don’t pretend it’s not there. We don’t get over it. We live through it, and we are changed by it. Grieving, then, is more about transformation than transcendence. It is not about explaining loss or understanding why something happened. Grieving is about finding meaning in the absence of an explanation. Let me repeat that. Grieving is about finding meaning in the absence of an explanation.

And what is the meaning? Well the meaning is in the love that lives on. The love that is immortal. So beautifully portrayed in this delightful Romantic Comedy “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” and articulated in the children’s story “No matter What”. I will repeat the final line to end this morning. “Large held Small snug as they looked out at the night, at the moon in the dark, and the stars shining bright. “Small look at the stars – how they shine and glow, but some of those stars died a long time ago.” Still they shine in the evening skies. Love, like starlight, never dies”.”

Love like starlight never dies.

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

Empathy, guilt, shame, they are not exactly the same

You may recall that last week I discussed a conversation I had with colleagues at “Ministry in the Making”. I’m not going to repeat it now. I just want to talk about one aspect of the conversation, something that has been a primary motivation of my ministry. I talk with lots of people, well actually I listen in conversation with lots of people. It is my life. One thing I notice often, is that so many people struggle or have struggled in their lives with feelings of guilt or shame. The feelings of shame are often without cause. It seems to come from some place deep within them. I know that these feelings are often preyed upon with so many places offering easy alternatives. That whatever people feel is wrong with them could be easily cured. There is lots of money to be made. The truth is we are not in need of fixing. Yes there is healing for just about all of us. Most of us wander around with some wounds that need healing, but I do not believe that we are fundamentally flawed. Yes, we do wrong, but we are not wrong at the core of our being. We should feel appropriate guilt for the things we do wrong, but never feel shame, because we feel that we are wrong.

I would like to make a space where people can come without shame and explore these feelings in an open and safe environment and perhaps find a way to heal these feelings. A space where we can come to terms with themselves and put right whatever it is they need to put right in themselves and this world. To come to right relationship if you like. “To forgive ourselves, to forgive one another, to begin again in love.”

I am sure all of us have done things we wish we hadn’t or said things we wish we hadn’t or not acted when perhaps we should have acted. I was talking with a friend this week, out walking our dogs. We both shared about times when we have remained silent when we should have spoken up. We discussed how this made us feel. There was a sense of appropriate guilt, a vital feeling. It comes from this sense of conscience. That seed of the Divine, that believe is there in all of us. A healthy feeling, something we should try to develop, to live from. I feel that empathy grows from this, another vital aspect of our humanity. Empathy and guilt are vital emotions, when they are alive within us. We have them for important and vital reasons. We have them for good reason and they need to be developed if we are to live the good life. They are a response to life. Shame though is something very different. It a purely negative feeling and instead of being a response to life, seems to come from a rejection of life itself. Where it comes from, I am not wholly sure. What I am sure if is how destructive it is.

Guilt is a common feeling for most ministers. We rarely feel that we are doing a good enough job, we wish we could do more. I feel guilt around the suffering of others. Now in its healthy form this manifests as empathy, in its unhealthy form it can manifest as shame. I do wish I could do more when around those suffering, I feel guilt for those suffering and their loved ones. I feel it around family and friends too, particularly old friends. I wish I had more time for them. I feel it too sometimes when in a joyful state, when I feel so much joy at simply being alive. When I see others suffering and struggling, there is a part of me that feels bad. I also experience some survivor’s guilt too, with my fellows in recovery and when I think of friends and loved ones that have died far too soon. I then feel a little bad for feeling guilty about feeling joyful.

It is crazy isn’t it, but oh so very human. I don’t think I’m alone in these feelings. It does suggest I’m not some kind of psychopath, which I am pleased about. No, I’m a human being who experiences the same emotions and feelings as everyone else. Thank God. The feelings come from empathy, which is vital aspect of healthy humanity. The problems can come when such feelings can overwhelm folk. Or they tap into feelings of shame. Shame will lead a person to shrink away from pain, empathy and healthy guilt will often allow a person to be with others in their suffering.

Feelings of guilt come in many forms, helpful and unhelpful. To feel remorseful after saying or doing the wrong thing, is healthy. It compels us to do what we can to put things right. That said if this feeling lingers even after putting right what was wrong, if we dwell and beat ourselves up for unskilful action or word then the feeling is probably coming from another place, from this sense that fundamentally there is something wrong with us. This is shame.

I suspect that the key is where the feeling comes from. Does it come as a result of our actions, thoughts and or words, or lack of them, or is it a feeling that comes from some other place and almost dictates our thoughts, feelings, words and actions and regardless of these things we just feel bad.

Where does this feeling of being wrong come from? Why does it control so many of our lives?

Now in our culture some put it down to our Judea Christian heritage, the core of our culture, even in these secular times. Often folks who grew up in deeply religious homes will argue about who feels the most guilt. Now although the Judeo-Christian tradition seems to be seeped in guilt, the bible both the Hebrew scriptures and the Gospels make no reference to guilt as it is commonly understood. As Mark Belletini points out in “Nothing Gold Can Stay: The Colours of Grief”

“…I confess to being surprised that the word guilt itself, as in the feeling of guilt, is not found any place in either the Jewish or the Christian testaments. Not once. The few times the English word can be found in more antique translations, it refers only to the kind of “guilty” that courts speak about, which is not a feeling so much as a legal category.

I am convinced that families of origin, cultural and ethnic patterns, and categorical realities play a far greater role in how much guilt we feel than does religion. I certainly have known folks raised without religion of any kind – including the “shopping mall spirituality” created by cultus consumerism – who have struggled with guilt as much as anyone raised in a particular denomination of religion, Western or Eastern.”

The feelings of guilt coms from a place within us. When it is in appropriate proportion it is a good thing. It connects us to one another and to life, it keeps us humble and therefore human and saves us from the dangers of destructive hubris. Such guilt is a function of conscience. This is key to my understanding of my faith as a Unitarian, this concept of living revelation that is an aspect of my humanity, if I can tap into it and allow it to lead me. When I do I see this same spark in others too. You see in opening myself to the divine spark within I open myself to that same spark in everyone and everything. This is key to my understanding of religion, my attempts to live my life in the company of others and through which I attempt to shape an ideal that I strive for, but suspect I will never attain. I always fall short of this ideal, in this sense I sin (from sinare which meant to fall short of the mark). This though is not original sin, it is actually more original blessing. I feel guilt, appropriate guilt, because I fall short of the mark, although I do at times feel shame too, in doing so I deny my true nature. I also occasionally fall short in shaming others too, something I strive not to do. I sometimes fail to recognise the divinity in my brothers and sisters, but hey these short comings save me from becoming too pious and separating myself from brothers and sisters.

What is key is to develop this feeling so it can used in good purpose in this world. The key is empathy and bring empathy to life, to act upon this empathy. Active empathy is about opening our whole being to others. We do this not by forcing ourselves upon them, but by allow them to be themselves around us. This is true openness. This is invitation. When I say come as you are m exactly as you are, this is what I mean. When I also say, “but do not expect to leave in exactly the same condition.” This is the purpose of religious experience, that of transformation. This is not to suggest that we are fundamentally wrong, no it is more that we can become who we are wholly and at the same time invite others to do the same. Empathy and particularly active empathy is the key.

Now Shame is something else. Shame is destructive and it keeps us separate from ourselves and one another. Shame is not formed from our actions or inactions, but from some other place in our being. It’s that place that people have tapped into throughout human history. Yes religion has used this, the classic example being the concept of Original Sin, but then so has the secular world. Advertising is the classic example it’s how they sell lifestyles to us and it’s how they get so many of us to feel we have to change who we just to be acceptable. How many people suffer from a sense that there is something fundamentally wrong with them? I know it’s crippled me over the years. Thankfully it does so less and less as I grow faithfully.

When I look at myself in the eye these days what I see is a man who gets things wrong from time to time and I feel appropriate guilt for this. This enables me to act in the world positively. Yes I wish I could do more, but hey I am only human. I feel less shame about my being, but I must confess that I am not completely free of this. There is a part of me that is ok with this. Why? Well because it keeps me grounded, for I know that every single one of us is still living with these feelings. Maybe this too helps with the empathy too.

When you look at yourself in the eye, what do you see? Do you a decent person who makes mistakes? Or do you see someone who is fundamentally wrong to the core.

It matters you know, it really does. For it will affect how you interact with the world and how the world interacts with you.

Let us recognise these feelings within ourselves and begin to understand them in others. Let’s develop active empathy and invite others to do the same. In so doing we will live lives of love and purpose and encourage others to do the same.

I’m going to end this morning with a bit of Mary Oliver, her classic poem “Wild Geese”

“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

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

Falling Leaves: Loving What is Mortal

Each morning when we awaken we do not know what the day will bring, there will no doubt be some kind of ying and yang to it, there will be blessings and curses, joys and sufferings. Last Saturday was one of those such days. I spoke with my auntie Lynne, she told me that my cousin Cheryl’s life was coming to an end. I then met with friends. An hour or so later the news came through that Cheryl had died, I was fortunate to be with those friends. Although we knew what was coming, it was still a shock to the system, losing dear Cheryl.

An hour later I set off on a long car journey, alone. I was going to pick up a puppy dog, the lovely Havanese Molly. It was a day the reminded me so powerfully of the impermanence of life, although of course not of love, that always lives on. Physical life though comes into being and sadly comes to end. Those that remain are left to grieve. Of course as a nation we are currently grieving the loss of Queen Elizabeth II after a 70 year reign.

Each morning when we awaken we do not know what the day will bring. So how do we prepare ourselves for the unknowable? This is a question that brings to my heart the following poem by David Whyte

“What To Remember When Waking”

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
In the trees beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine for yourself?
In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?

By David Whyte

When we awaken, we have no idea what the day will bring. The day is a blank page. It is in that first hardly noticed moment, when you open your eyes again, that the sacredness of life is born; a sacredness which we lose when we make plans that deny that things are always changing. In that moment we close the moment, the reality, of what it means to be human, to be alive.

I have been watching the leaves falling these last few weeks. They have fallen earlier this year, no doubt a consequence of a hot summer. Watching those leaves falling reminds me of the impermanence of life, something that is hard to accept for most of us, including myself at times. Marina Popova has described this as ‘that perennial heartbreak of beholding the absurdity of our longing for permanence in a universe of constant change’.

It brought back to my mind the first of those Delphic Maxims “Know Thyself”, to know yourself of course meant to know that you are mortal, that your life will come into being, but will also come to an end. Mortality is the beauty and energy of our lives, it reminds me just how precious life is. I have watched my new puppy Molly come to life and confidence these last few days, she is a great responsibility. Being a dog it is likely that I will watch her grew and develop and become who she is, but I will also have to live with the knowledge that I will one day witness the end of her life. It will break my heart. For now I will enjoy her and my responsibility for her life. She is the most joyful of blessings.

This brings to my mind one of my favourite Mary Oliver poems “In Blackwater Woods”. I have named my puppy Miss Molly Malone. Now everyone has assumed that she is named after the Irish folk song. Well, if truth be told, she isn’t she is actually named after Mary Oliver’s life partner and wife “Molly Malone Cook”.

Here is the poem:

“In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
Everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.

I love Mary Oliver, she had such a real spirituality, connected to the ground in which all being exists. She saw the beauty in life, without ever hiding from the shadow, the darkness. In many ways she found God just as much in the darkness and suffering of life as the beauty of the natural world, expressed so beautifully in this poem, as she reminds us here “that, thankfully, the other side of the river of loss is salvation”. By the way she was in no way sentimental about the natural world. She was a very real observing and writer about life and at the same time truly soulful.

This poem reminds me how vital it is that I follow her instruction to “love what is mortal, to hold it against our bones, as if your life depends upon it (because I have learnt my life does) and when the time comes, to let go.” Sounds simple doesn’t, but it is far from easy. That said I agree with her, it is the only way to truly live in this world. I will repeat again her final words: “To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”

It brings to mind some other words from another hero Forrest Church:

“The fact that death is inevitable gives meaning to our love, for the more we love, the more we risk losing. Love’s power comes, in part, from the courage required to give ourselves to that which is not ours to keep: our spouses, children, parents, dear and cherished friends.”

It takes courage to love what is mortal, to hold it to your bones as if your life depended upon it and when the time come to let it go, it takes true faith and courage.

The falling leaves remind me of this. They are letting go of what is mortal. Why do we find it so hard? Why do we wish to cling on forever to what is mortal.

The Buddhist say that life is dukkha, that there is suffering in life, that nothing last forever, is permanent, that everything in life is impermanent. I was thinking of this as I looked at those fallen leaves, as I watched Molly playing with them and noticed how many we were accidently carrying into the house. I thought of the cycle of life, how this time next year it will have gone full circle. There will be loss, there will be new life, there will be suffering and above all there will be love.

Remember as Mary wrote:

To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.

I am holding these words in my heart at the moment. They teach me how to live spiritually alive. They teach me a beautiful reverence for life, how sacred life is, how vital it is to recognise this. To love as deeply as you can this life, to love fiercely and hold those you love tightly to your heart and when the time comes, when they breathe their last breath, to let them go. You have to in order to love this mortal life that we are all a part of. This is the only way to live spiritually alive.

This is what we are here for, to live and to love what is mortal, our lives depend upon it.

Below is a 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"

 

There is always time to laugh and cry, you don’t have to wipe the tears from your eye

Last Tuesday was All Souls Day, a time to remember those that we have loved and lost. Those souls who touched our lives in so many ways. It is always a difficult day for me personally. Not least because it was on the 2nd of November 2006 that I experienced what has been the most significant loss of my life. A soul that reawakened a dying love in me, died that day. I re-felt that feeling whilst experiencing shared silence with friends in meditation as the sun rose that morning. I spent the day working on the service, that this devotion has come from, but also in conversation with many dear friends new and old. I also had a long overdue phone conversation with my mum. She has been quite worried of late as her beloved auntie Sheila is in Pinderfields hospital in a Covid ward on a ventilator. She also has all the other worries that mothers carry with them, not least of all for me one of her sons. It was good to talk, to love, to care. That afternoon, just when I needed it the most, I received a message from a dear old friend. She apologised for the lateness, but sent a rather lovely couple of pictures of myself with her and another dear, dear friend, from so long ago. I had requested a few weeks ago when I turned 50 if friends would send pictures and memories. It came at just the perfect moment as I recalled and re-lived so many memories. It brought tears to my eye. Tears of joy and tears of sadness. It brought a broad beaming smile to my face and no small amount of laughter. It reminded of what it means to truly live life as it actually is. You must accept all the blessings and curses of choosing life, to paraphrase good old Moses. Earlier that day I had met another friend for coffee. We had been trying to meet for weeks, but things kept on getting in the way. We shared about grief and about the joy of living. He is coming up to the first anniversary of the loss of his nephew. He will be spending a few days with his brother, whose son died last year. I shared the significance of the day with him. It was a rich and deep conversation. My life is filled with such things. It was a time of sorrow and yet there was a strange joy in the connection and no small amount of laughter. Of course we were interrupted several times by people we know, which again brought spontaneous laughter.



As I returned to my office those old familiar words from Ecclesiastes, were singing in my heart, as they were throughout Tuesday. They always touch that place deep in the soul of me, the place of joy and sorrow too. Words that are fitting for all seasons, but particularly autumn and especially November, this season of Remembrance. Ecclesiastes speaks, that truth of truths,that whatever we are feeling or experiencing at the moment is always fleeting and that “this too shall pass”; that nothing is permanent in life, it is forever changing and however you feel about a situation right now, you will feel differently soon. This is both good and bad news, well actually it is just reality. The key is to not deny the experience to know the joy and blessing as it truly is. For there is a time and place for everything under the sun. Do not deny this, for in so doing you are denying your full humanity.

The service that night was beautiful, it touched those parts that needed to be touched. It was wonderful to be together with others for this. November is the season of remembrance in so many ways. At this time, we remember those who have touched our lives in deep and special ways. Yes, we remember those who are no longer with us, but it is also important to remember those who are still with us too. Those two pictures of dear old friends helped me to remember this too. Actually, over the last few months I have had the gift of reconnecting with so many dear friends. It has been very special as my life has been blessed again by tears of pain, but laughter too.

In this season of remembrance tears come for so many reasons. Some are very obvious to us, tears of grief. That said they come for many other reasons too. This brings to mind the following rather wonderful piece on “Tears” by Frederick Buechner

“Tears” by Frederick Buechner

They say that whenever the great Protestant theologian Paul Tillich went to the beach, he would pile up a mound of sand and sit on it gazing out at the ocean with tears running down his cheeks. One wonders what there was about it that moved him so.

The beauty and the power of it? The inexpressible mystery of it? The futility of all those waves endlessly flowing in and ebbing out again? The sense that it was out of the ocean that life originally came and that when life finally ends, it is the ocean that will still remain? Who knows? . . .

Maybe it was when he looked at the ocean that he caught a glimpse of the One he was praying to. Maybe what made him weep was how vast and overwhelming it was and yet at the same time as near as the breath of it in his nostrils, as salty as his own tears.”

Who knows why the tears come. Does it matter? I don’t think so. They are precious sacraments though, every single one. They are far more than water leaking from our eyes. Emotional tears help to cleanse us. Their composition is different from those that result from cutting onions or from irritations in our eyes. We cry not because there is something wrong with our eyes. Tears created from emotions contain more toxins, much like sweat does. They help to cleanse the body and also contain leucine enkephalin, an opiate. Tears created from felt emotion not only cleanse us, but ease us too.

Brings to mind the following “Going On Together” by Yehuda Amichai

"Above the hotel gate, I saw a sign:
'International Conference on Inflammation of the Eye'
for those who have cried too much or not cried enough.
All of them with name tags on their lapels
like temporary nameplates in a cemetery or markers
in a botanical garden.
They approach one another as if sniffing, as if checking,
Who are you where are you from and when
was the last time you cried?
The subject of the morning session is 'Sobbing:
The end of Crying or the Way It Begins.' Sobbing
as soul-stuttering and griefstones. Sobbing
as a valve or a loop that links cry to cry,
a loop that unravels easily, like a hair ribbon,
and the crying — hair that fans out in profusion, glorious.
Or a loop that pulls into an impossible knot —
sobbing like an oath, a testimony, a cure.
Back in their cubicles, the women translators are busy
translating fate to fate, cry to cry. At night they come home,
scrub the words from their lips, and with sobs of happiness
they start loving, their eyes aflame with joy."

An interesting take on tears on sobbing.

In ancient times tears were considered sacred. So much so that they were stored in bottle like containers called “lachrymatories”. They are mentioned in the 56th Psalm of David verse 8, who prays to God 'Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?'. In ancient Rome mourners filled small tear bottles or cups with tears and placed them in tombs as a symbol of respect for the departed. The volume of tears attested to the status of the deceased individual. Mourners were recruited and paid for the specific purpose of producing and collecting tears for these containers. You can find Lachrymatories in museums thoughout the world. They reappeared during the nineteenth century, when many of our modern customs around grief and mourning were established. Tear bottles were made with special openings to collect the tears and when they evaporated it was thought that the appropriate period of mourning was over. It would seem that the practice has re-emerged in recent years. You can have your own made by a specialised craftsperson and or have your tears enclosed in a glass necklace.

I am not sure what I think of all this. I wouldn’t want to store and enclose something as sacred as a tear, shed from the deepest aspect of our humanity. It’s a bit like the butterfly collector who wants to pin the butterfly down. A butterfly is a butterfly when it lives for a short time in a garden and flies. Just as a tear is precious as it is a spontaneous reaction to a lived emotion. Once we store these things we kill them of real meaning. You cannot freeze a moment, its beauty is in the lived experience. That said mementos, like photographs, can help us reconnect to an experience shared with a loved one, so they do have an important value. Like I say I am not entirely sure how I feel about such things as tear cups and their like. What about your good selves?”

Tears of course are not always about sadness. There are tears of joy too. There are other expressions of emotion as well. One being laughter. Now one thing we do not do is store is our laughter. Well I suppose there is canned laughter, but is there anything more artificial and soulless? Nor am I great believer in fake laughter. People do things like Zen laughter groups. Laughter for me should always be spontaneous, otherwise it just isn’t real; laughter for me is just as sacred as any tear. We recognise one another often through our laughter. I have shared much laughter recently, with some dear old friends. Such sacred moments.

Laughter is so important. I recently discovered the following amusing poem “Bad news about my vocation” by Koertge

Bad News About My Vocation

by Ron Koertge

I remember how the upper crust in my hometown
pronounced it—care-a-mel. Which is correct, I guess,
but to everybody else it was carmel.

Which led to the misconception about the order
of Carmelites.

I imagined they served God by heating sugar
to about 170 C, then adding milk and butter
and vanilla essence while they listened
to the radio.

I thought I could do that. I could wear the white
shirt and pants. I knew I couldn’t be good
but I might be a good candy maker.

So imagine my chagrin when I learned about
the vows of poverty and toil enjoined
by these particular friars.

I also crossed off my list the Marshmellowites
and the Applepieites, two other orders I
was thinking of joining.

I love this poem. For some folks poetry is a serious business, perhaps it is. It can also be seriously funny. Life is far too serious a business to be taken too seriously. It should be the same with poetry, or at least this ought to be the lot of the poet.

Some people find me amusing, I am please about that. I was asked to conduct a funeral for someone recently. I was asked because the deceased sister knew that I had a sense of humour and wouldn’t be poe faced. That said one thing I have never been any good at is telling jokes. In fact part of my ministerial training was to learn how to tell jokes really badly, or certainly that seems to be the impression I give. The Baptists students. got “stand up” comedy training, we got the opposite it seems. So please stop me, stop me, stop me. Stop if you think you’ve heard this one before. Please stop me…

A Vicar, a priest and a Unitarian minister were travelling together to an ecumenical lunch, they were trying to save petrol money. Sadly on the way, they were involved in a fatal car crash. Now while they all sadly died, there was some good news, they all made it to heaven, even the Unitarian, which surprised them all.

No that isn’t the joke.

As they were going through orientation. They were all asked, 'When you are in your casket, and friends, family, and congregants are mourning over you, what would you like to hear them say?' The Vicar said, 'I would like to hear them say that I was a wonderful husband, a fine spiritual leader, and a great family man.' The priest said, 'I would like to hear that I was a wonderful teacher and a servant of God who made a huge difference in people's lives.' The Unitarian minister replied, 'I would like to hear them say, "Look, he's moving."

I did warn you I was never a great teller of jokes. I am though blessed with a sense of humour, thank God. I promise no more jokes.

Life is not easy. It can often seem even more difficult at this time. If I was to just sit with the pain of life I would do nothing but weep. That said there is more to life than this. There is love, laughter and joy too, despite all the very real pain and suffering. I Suspect that one of the greatest paradoxes of life is that it is vitally important to learn to take ourselves seriously enough to take ourselves lightly. To realise we are not alone and that there is much love and joy to share.

“For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.” And the seasons turn and pass and come again. This last couple of years I feel that the line “A time to weep and a time to laugh” has taken on a deeper meaning. In recent weeks and months, as I have spent time with dear old friends and new ones too I wept more and by the same token I laughed more too. More of those barriers have come down. I know for a fact I have felt more. I suspect I am not alone in this. I Know it will make me more resilient and enable me to serve in a better and more open manner. My jokes though will not improve. So please forgive me.

I’m going to end this devotion with “A Recipe for Resilience” by Margaret Weis



“A Recipe for Resilience” by Margaret Weis



This recipe has been tweaked over time, so adjust as necessary.

Sometimes it yields more servings than anticipated.
Sometimes it needs a bit more of this ingredient or that.
It comes from generations who have gone before me, and I've added my own flavor along the way.

A Recipe for Resilience

One part courage
Two parts tears of failure and doubt
One part deep listening
One part each of both silence and laughter
A dash of trust
A pinch of wonder
A heaping scoop of naps and snacks

In a separate bowl, mix together family, friends, and those who challenge you to be your best self, those with whom you disagree.

Add slowly to the larger pot, add a bay leaf for … well, whatever it is bay leaves do, and let simmer for as long as you need (which is often longer than you realize or anticipate).

Keep the heat at an even temperature – hot enough to cook throughout, but not so hot it burns the bottom.

Can be served at room temperature, warm, or even cold if necessary.
Serve alongside your favorite soft blanket, dog, cat, or other soft item.

Make often,
Share with others,
Hold onto the leftovers – you’ll need them after a long day that challenges your soul.

Please find below a video devotion

based on the material in this "Blogspot"

The Wind Telephone: Connecting in Love and Loss

The cherry blossom is falling around us. I saw a car covered in it the other day, my car was too I noticed as I left for home the other evening. There is beautiful pink snow all around the grounds at the chapel, it will soon be gone. The cherry blossom does not cling on, it knows it must let go for new life to follow. For we human is it not so simple. We hold on to life, we hold on to our lives and we hold on to one another. We hold on to love that we have shared with those we have loved and lost. This is grief, the price we pay for love.

The beauty of the cherry blossom causes me some sadness, it makes me grieve, and yet I love the cherry blossom. That said part of its beauty comes in the fact that it only lasts for about a month and then it falls and it is gone. Even though I know it will come again, when it goes, my heart aches for the loss. This is grief.

Grief is about love and it is about the loss of someone or something that we love or have loved. This is why grief comes in so many forms, we lose so much in life. The most aching grief, of course, is caused by the death of those we love so dearly. The more we love them, the greater the grief. Grief of course is not something that you can just let go of, I am not so sure you ever should. We should hold that love close to our hearts. Yes, when someone we love dies, an aspect of them always remains in our hearts, that said when we lose someone we love we also lose a piece of our hearts.

I host a fortnightly grief group on zoom. We used to meet in person, but ever since the pandemic hit we have been unable to do so. The group is needed by those who join us. It helps us feel less alone and isolated in our grief. There is so much grief around at this time. I am sure we have all lost someone we love over the last year and none of us have been able to mark the loss and grieve as we would normally do. We have also been unable to live our lives as we would normally do, there is so much grief in this too. Grief is everywhere. That said if we had not done so how much more death and loss would there have been. We only need to look at India now to see the horror that could have happened had our health service become overwhelmed. I grieve so much for the suffering all around, it breaks my heart.

I have noticed that something that grieving people share in common is this need to still communicate in some way with those that they have lost. People go to places that are special to them and talk, it is common, but not something folk will share publicly. These one way conversations continue on and on. It is a way to keep the love shared alive, even after a loved one has gone.

I recently learnt of a powerful and beautiful example of this in Japan. When the garden designer Sasaki lost his beloved cousin in 2010, he found a unique way to come to terms with his grief, to call his loved one by telephone. He built a white telephone booth, in the style of the old red ones that were all over this county - I don’t know if you have noticed but in the countryside those old boxes often host defibrillators, bringing life to those who might lose theirs - Sasaki placed the phonebox on his hilltop garden. In it was an old Bakelite dial phone, unconnected to any earthly telecom system, his words were spoken to the wind, carried off like prayer flags, blowing in the wind. He did this to keep the memory of his cousin alive, by calling him and speaking to him regularly. As he told the Japanese public broadcasting network NHK, “Because my thoughts couldn’t be relayed over a regular phone line, I wanted them to be carried on the wind.” He called it “The Wind Telephone”

“The Wind Telephone” was build on the outskirts of Otsuchi a small coastal town in northern Japan. As Sasaki was finishing his project the region was hit by a magnitude 9.1 earthquake on 11^th March 2011. Even though the quake was off the coast and didn't inflict direct damage, it did lead to gigantic tsunamis and Otsuchi was hit by 30 foot high waves, destroying the town and killing one in ten of the 16.000 inhabitants.

Soon “The Wind Telephone” became a place of solace for thousands, it is thought that over 10,000 people visited the site in the next three years, to speak to their loved ones, that were now lost. Some of the dead were never found. It was not only the lost to the Tsunami whose loved ones came, others joined the pilgrimage too, including those who had lost folk to suicide, accidents and in other tragic ways. Many media outlets have told the story and some of the conversations on “The Wind Telephone” have been recorded. If you listen to them you will hear tears and laughter and deep conversations, a kind of unanswered confessional where loved ones speak their hearts into the wind, where their loved one can perhaps hear without judgement. There are voices crying out regret, the pain of loss, despair, guilt, frustration, the search for strength, hope, and the will to carry on without the loved one. Beautiful cries of the human heart.

It seems that there are versions of the “Wind Phone” in other parts of the world. In Oakland California one was constructed by Jordan Stern who in February 2017 constructed one to commemorate the 36 people who died in the Ghost Ship warehouse fire, one of which was his friend. This “Wind Phone” was created, according to the artist to comfort "a field of people grieving in Oakland".

In August 2017 an anonymous art collective in Dublin, Ireland named Altruchas build a “Wind Phone” on “Two Rock Mountain”. It was built without permission and from salvaged materials. Sadly it was destroyed only two weeks after its construction, there were many people who did not like the project.

Another replica red phone box was created by Tomohiko and Kazuko Katsuna. They named it “Phone of the Sea Breeze”. It was built in memory of one of Kazuko's students, an 18-year-old woman who took her own life in 2009.

In January 2020 another temporary “Wind Phone” was created in Provincetown Massachusetts, by an artistic collective. Whilst another was created in October 2020 in California by Susan Vetrone and sculptor Steve Reed. it was constructed in memory of Vetrones mother who had recently died.

Another “Wind Phone was created in response to the loss of life due to the Covid 19 pandemic. In March this year an artist who has remained anonymous built one on the Aspen mountains of Colorado. The artist has remained anonymous because it is forbidden to build shrines in US national forests. That said t has remained as an outlet for people mourning deaths caused by the pandemic.

I wonder how many more of these will be built in the coming months and years. I think we will need them. I am considering writing to the Prime Minister again or perhaps Andy Burnam the Mayor of Manchester, or even the local authority. I think we will need them, or something like them. We decided during our last grief group that Wythenshawe park would be an ideal venue, as one of our number goes there often to talk to lost son. Maybe I will contact the great British sculptor Anthony Gormley, perhaps he could construct them up and down the land. A place where can go individually and or collectively to grieve, to cry out in anguish to connect to live through our grief, to hold on to the love lost and to live our lives. We need to find ways to express our collective grief if we are to rebuild again, I don’t just mean our material lives, but our emotional, mental and spiritual lives too. Our souls are crying out. Yes, we may well be coming back to normality, but there is so much grief in this land and every land and people are still caught up in the horror of all this, just look at India right now.

We need to find ways to connect, to heal, to express our lost love, something that we have been unable to do for too long and there will be a price to pay if we do not. I don’t just mean for this generation but for the generations to come as well.

All of us belong to the largest community on God’s sweet earth, the community of grievers. Grief is the price we pay for love, it is a price worth paying, for what is life without love? It is nothing, it is meaningless, just an empty vessel. The only way to escape grief is to totally armour your heart and deny love. Now who would want to do that, to live without love, to live the life of a zombie?

When we lose someone that we love, it changes us forever. Life will never be quite the same again. We do not rise above the pain of grief, we cannot pretend that it is not there, we don’t simply get over it. What happens is that we are changed by it and as a result our hearts are enlarged by it and we grow as human beings, if the love has truly been realised. You see grief is really about transformation, rather than transcendence, by the way this is the true nature purpose of religion. Grief is not an attempt to explain the loss or even understand some meaning locked into what happened. Instead, it seems to me that grief is more about finding meaning in the absence of an explanation.

How do we create meaning from the loss of the last year or more? That is not an easy question to answer. Well perhaps it begins by creating space for us all to grieve. Perhaps something like these “Wind Telephones” is one way, I am sure there are many others. Perhaps communities like ours can become that kind of space. Perhaps this something for us all to think about, perhaps this is something we can focus on in the months and years ahead, perhaps we could become a space where folk can come and find solace in their loss and grief a place where they can share and express their love.

I would be interested to hear your thoughts and feelings.

It is up to us, it is up to all of us.

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind.

 A video devotion based on the material shared in this "blogspot"