Openness and Humility: Hearts, Eyes, Minds and Hands

Once upon a time there were six blind men. They lived in a town in India. They thought they were very clever. One day an elephant came into the town. The blind men did not know what an elephant looked like but they could smell it and they could hear it. 'What is this animal like?' they said. Each man touched a different part of the elephant.

The first man touched the elephant's body. It felt hard, big and wide. 'An elephant is like a wall,' he said.

The second man touched one of the elephant's tusks. It felt smooth and hard and sharp. 'An elephant is like a spear,' he said.

The third man touched the elephant's trunk. It felt long and thin and wiggly. 'An elephant is like a snake,' he said.

The fourth man touched one of the legs. It felt thick and rough and hard and round. 'An elephant is like a tree,' he said.

The fifth man touched one of the elephant's ears. It felt thin and it moved. 'An elephant is like a fan,' he said.

The sixth man touched the elephant's tail. It felt long and thin and strong. 'An elephant is like a rope,' he said.

The men argued. It's like a wall! No, it isn't! It's like a spear! No it isn't! It's like a snake! They did not agree. The king had been watching and listening to the men. 'You are not very clever. You only touched part of the elephant. You did not feel the whole animal. An elephant is not like a wall or a spear or a snake, or a tree or a fan or a rope.'

The men left the town still arguing. A little girl heard them and said 'Each of you is right but you are all wrong … but I know what you are talking about!'

Maybe if they learned to listen to each other, been open to another then together they might just have learned the truth of what an elephant is.

I received many lovely gifts for my birthday. Some arrived through the letter box , others given to me directly a few were left on my doorstep. I was given a wonderful book on Ralph Waldo Emerson written by a former member of Dunham Road Chapel Alexander Ireland, the father of the composer John Ireland. Alexander Ireland and Emerson were great friends. As Emerson said “The only way to have friends is to be one”, inspired by their lifelong friends. On my birthdays I often think that he greatest gifts I have in my life are my friends, the folk I get to walk the journey of life with. One friend sent me a lovely WattsApp message which included the following that opened my heart.

“When asked about the lens through which she chooses to see the world, Quaker songwriter Carrie Newcomer shares her practice of seeing with the eyes of love:

My life as a songwriter and a poet has asked me to consider how I look at the world on a daily, moment-to-moment kind of way…. Our first job is to pay attention and then to take in what we see with a certain kind of spirit and for me, a certain kind of love. I think it’s a practice and the more you practice it, the more you see; the more you see, the more you see with love….

The big things I love: I love my husband. I love my daughter. I love justice. I love mercy…. I love so many big things, but my life is also filled every day with all these glorious little loves…. There can be great meaning and great love in small things. I love blueberries and I love the smell of lilacs and I love how little kids hold each other’s hands when they go across the street….

In looking at the small moment and the small thing through love, it’s not always completely joyous…. You take it all. When you decide I’m going to be here, I’m going to be present, and I’m going to be present with love, you take it all.”

Thank you, Carrie, and thank you my friend for sending me this on my birthday.

It is not always easy taking it all, but there is no other way I have discovered. You have to look at it all with eyes wide open and heart, mind and soul too and then respond with hands open to all that is.

Like Carrie, I know it is often the little things that bring the greatest blessings in our lives. I continue on day by day. I share my blessing every morning upon awakening with friends on social media. I have a little quiet time, in prayer and then I reflect and share. I was thinking of the little blessings as I reflected on my birthday gifts and greetings, including a few friends, with mixed ability singing happy birthday on voice notes. As I did I looked down at my little blessing Molly who I collected 3 years ago. As you know I had gone for one of her sisters, but she insisted on coming home with me. A day of deep sorrow as it was also the day that our youngest cousin Cheryl died. Molly kept my heart open in that time of grief, as she does every day. I need to keep it open as sometimes I am tempted to close it to all the pain, anger and suffering abound, those things that trouble me deeply day by day.

I had a beautiful experience of open hearted conversation on Wednesday at the Urmston “Common Search for Meaning” Group. We were exploring and sharing about memory. It was a beautiful conversation and lifted several folk present out of their worries and anxieties as they connected with each other and the moment they were living it. We spoke with open minds and hearts. One thing that came up in the conversation was how folk can remember things so differently. How we experience life oh so differently. How vital it is to remain open to the experiences of others. A bit like the blind men and the elephant, we only get the full picture if we listen to one another, if we listen with the ears of heart to one another’s experience and somewhere in there we might discover something that resembles the truth. This is not always easy though. It is vital to remain open, or as open as possible and to remain humble too, especially when it comes to truth claims.

If I have learnt anything about spiritual living I have learnt that the key is openness; the key to spiritual living is to live with open hearts, open minds, open eyes and open hands. These four are spiritual living in practice, which I have come to believe is the essence religion. Not creed like religion but truly living breathing practising religion. A religion, a lived spiritually, that not only brings us to life, but it enables us to live truly alive and awake in this our shared world.

Unitarian minister James Vila Blake (1842-1925) wrote the following covenant, "Love is the spirit of this church, and service its law. This is our great covenant: To dwell together in peace, To seek the truth in love, And to help one another." I think in many ways this covenant articulates the essence of what it means to come together in love as a worshipping community. It has been adopted by many Unitarian Universalist and Free Christian communities. It expresses beautifully what it means to live in an open, living breathing spiritual community, what free religion ought to be about.

Openness is at the heart of my understanding of our Unitarian tradition. I have come to believe the essence of openness is humility, especially when it comes to truth claims.

Openness is very much a doing word. It’s not so much that you are open, more that you live openly. To do so religiously, is to be open in four ways. To live with open hands, open eyes, open hearts and open minds. To live faithfully is to do so with open eyes, an open heart and an open mind and so doing our hands will open so as to accept one another and to serve one another, this life and the living breathing spirit that connects all life, what I name God.

Now to practise the first three open mind, open heart and open eyes so as to enable us to live with open hands is no easy task. In fact to master them is virtually impossible. The key is to begin and to continue; the key is intentional practice. To live with open eyes is to see the world as is truly is; to see reality as it really is, warts and all and in its beauty spots too. To live with open eyes is to not turn away from the suffering present in life but also to pay attention to life’s beauty too, to notice those little things. To live with open eyes is to see the reality of the whole of life. This is not easy, so often we are tempted to turn away. To live fully connected lives, we need to live with open eyes, to see life with all its blessings and curses. This is my morning practice of sharing the little things I notice in life.

To live with an open mind is to be able to search for truth and meaning while maintaining an awareness of the tension between certitude and curiosity. It is the balance of being receptive to what is new and foreign, while at the same time holding onto what is most dear. It is to try to know while in the presence of the unknown and unknowable. This can make others feel uncomfortable and they may try to close an open mind or put their things in it. This does not mean that we do not discern that we don’t come to conclusions, quite the opposite actually. It is vital to come to conclusions, so that one can act in the world, it’s just that after the decision the openness must be maintained, it is never too late to change our minds. So, keep your minds open but please do be careful what you put in it.

The key to living with a loving and open heart is live with all our senses, including our sixth sense, our soul open to all the wonders and mystery of life. There are though dangers to this. Living with an open heart exposes us to pain and fear. To truly live with an open heart is to allow ourselves to be touched in the most tender of places. This can hurt sometimes. Remember Cupids arrow had to first of all pierce the flesh before it could penetrate the heart, love hurts. To live with an open heart is to follow the great commandment, it is Agape. It is to love others, no matter who they are what they have done, where they have come from, it is to love without condition. It is to follow the Golden Rule. It is to love our neighbour as we would wish to be loved ourselves. This requires love and compassion for ourselves of course, which can at times be the greatest challenge. It is to feel a deep connection with all that is, all that has been and all that will ever be. It is to recognise that in order to feel this connection requires that we share of ourselves. To love is to practice forgiveness, over and over again. Practicing living with a loving heart is to live willing to be transformed by what we encounter in our daily lives.

By living with these three open eyes, open minds and open hearts we can then practice living with open hands. Hands that welcome, hands that humbly accept our interconnectedness, humble hands and hands that are willing to do what they can do to serve, to play their part in the world.

This means being willing to practice committing and recommitting to use my hands, my abilities, in the service of life. To take responsibility for attempting to create the kin-dom of love right here right now. Living with open hands is about being a loving presence, regardless of the world we inhabit. Our open eyes allow us to recognise where our hands can be of use in the world, if our minds and our hearts are open.

Open hands though are not just about what we do, they are also about connection and perhaps more importantly humility. It is humility that is the key to living openly.

Now humility is a word that is often misunderstood. To be humble is to be at home in our true humanity, to be grounded in our own reality and shared humanity. The key to humility is to recognise that we are a part of something larger than our singular selves.

Humility is not about being meek and mild and bowing and scraping, it is not about being self-deprecating or denigrating. Too often humility is seen in this way, particularly from a religious perspective, as an excuse for suffering and or meekness. To me this is not true humility; true humility is about living with open hands and doing what we can in the world, we can only do this if we live with open hearts, open minds and open eyes and by recognising our common humanity.

I believe that Dag Hammarskjold, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, expressed the true meaning of humility when he said:

"Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is self-exaltation. To be humble is not to make comparisons. Secure in its reality, the self is neither better nor worse, bigger nor smaller, than anything else in the universe. It is-nothing, yet at the same time one with everything."

Humility is an interesting word, when understood correctly. It has its roots in the word “humus” which means earth. It also shares the same linguistic root as human and humanity. To be humble is to be grounded in this life; to be humble is to recognise our honest place in the world and life in general, whilst recognising that life itself does not revolve around us. Humility is the core of my chosen Unitarian faith. I believe that we are a humble faith. Our tradition is open and accepting, we welcome diversity, we honour one another’s points of view. Are these not by their very nature acts of humility? And in doing so are we not accepting that each of us have limits to our own individual perspectives; that we need to be open to one another in order to see new and deeper truths; that we cannot make sense of anything alone. This is free religion in its essence, this coming together and experiencing more than we could have imagined alone, by coming together, in love. We honour and acknowledge that on our own we cannot know everything and that by being open to others who may see and understand things differently we are challenged to expand our understandings, doing so in love and respect and honour these differences. Humility is about rejoicing in the challenge that others who see things differently can reveal to us and therefore expand our understanding.

The key is to live openly and of course the key to openness is humility. No one lives apart from anyone else we are all interdependent. Also, none of us knows everything, we all see through the glass dimly. There is limitlessness in openness. Who knows how much we can truly change and learn to love if we just stay open, in our hearts and minds and eyes. Who knows what we can do with our loving hands if we live with truly open eyes, open hearts and open minds.

The key is to live with open eyes, open hearts open minds and open hands; the key is to live with true humility, to see that we are grounded in our shared humanity; the key is to see that we are a part of something far greater than ourselves and that through recognising this we will know the love present in life and begin to bring that love alive, right here right now.

Every day is a day when we can bear witness to a Power Greater than ourselves. We do this when we love one another with open hands, when we see the world with truly open eyes, when we live with minds that are truly open and heart open to the love waiting to enter and to be poured out onto our world that really needs it.

I believe it is our task to live truly open lives. This is real spiritual living, this is true religions. I believe it is our task to bring love alive, through our openness. It is our task to allow God to incarnate through our lives. To do so we need to live with open hands and love this our shared world.

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

Emptiness and Fullness: Living by Heart, Mind and Soul

You may remember that in the last video I offered a simple suggestion for us all. Well, there has been a lovely response and that’s just the things I know about. I asked us to explore our lives, to think of a few of our favourite things, to let them fill our hearts and then respond in love in some small and if you like big way in this our world. To share a little thing with someone, or some aspect of our world, and to bring that love to life. I know it won’t change the world, but it will do something and it might just change the world for someone. Well, what lovely responses I have borne witness to.

Looking at the world it is easy to see all that is wrong. Our minds, our hearts and souls are bombarded with darkness. There is much darkness, let’s not pretend. It is so easy for our hearts and minds to be filled with fear about it all. That though is not all there is and as I go through my daily life, this is not what I experience. I bear witness to loving generosity everywhere and every day.

Last Sunday I received so much that filled my heart. After the service at Altrincham. Will Pitcher gave me some wonderful gifts of behalf of his family, for helping them through the loss of both of their parents Hugh and Pat. It was a lovely book “The Complete Winnie the Pooh Collection” and music box that played “You are my sunshine, you make me happy when sky’s are grey”. Inside it read “There is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think”. The family noticed I had a Winnie the Pooh diary. I get one every year. Now the reason they noticed it was due to one of my empty headed moments. The first time I went to visit them I accidently picked up last years diary. I only noticed this as I was about to set a date to meet again. It brought much mirth and human connection and it was obviously something they held in their hearts. They responded in love from their hearts and wanted to pour out that love in gratitude. They are a credit to Pat and Hugh.

That evening I met with friends as I always do. As they were leaving one said he wanted a word with me. We spoke for a short while and then he presented me with a gift. It was another thank for something many years ago that has led to so many wonderful things. It is crafted from glass cup in the shape of a pile of books. It is of deep significance to him and countless others and I cannot begin to tell how much it meant to me.

I returned home in the beautiful summer sun and unpacked the gift. I didn’t at this moment know what it was going to be. As I picked a knife from the draw I must have put my keys down. I opened it up and was so moved I decided I wanted to take a picture and share with people. I thought it would be better to go outside. I did and then returned home put my hands in my pocket and no keys were there. I had locked myself out. Thankfully I was able to call on an angel who let me into the chapel where there is a spare kit. I had to wait a while though and as I did I sat and talked with a friend who was still there, they had been talking with someone. It was a beautiful evening. I also took a video of the gift, so moved by it all, my heart full to bursting. I was also laughing at my gormless self. I shared it with friends, passing on the generosity.

I awoke on Monday morning and beautiful morning it was. I shared a gift of “Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day, I’ve got a beautiful feeling, everything’s going my way”. I added a little extra about even if it isn’t all going my way, it still feels like a beautiful morning, a beautiful day. The truth is not everything is, but there is love and my heart feels filled with love. Perhaps a bit too filled it seems. I have noticed that the fuller the heart, the emptier the head. There are plusses and minuses to this. If your head is too empty, then you can too easily find yourself locked out of your own house and this can be an inconvenience for you and others. Yes, my heart was full, but my “gorm” was not. I was gormless and not gormful.

The week off I had enjoyed had done me the world of good. The last 12 months have been very full, a near perfect example of the blessings and curses that come with “Choosing Life”, to paraphrase good old Moses. There has been professional fulfilment too, as I get increasingly involved in helping to shape and develop future ministry. There have been personal and professional challenges, including so much grief. It has felt like too much at times. My mind has felt filled to bursting at times and this has left my heart almost empty. It’s a strange feeling to be filled up to brim with life and yet at the same time to feel almost empty in my being at the same time. A very strange paradox indeed. I know I am not alone. We need to find stillness and not be too full in order to fully function in our own lives, to feel alive.

I am reminded of a story of a university professor who visited a Japanese master to inquire about Zen. The professor began to ask questions while the master just sat quietly, listening. After a while the master began to pour tea into the professor’s cup. The cup soon filled up, but the master did not stop pouring. The tea soon began to spill over on to the table. Initially the professor just sat there in stunned silence, he did not know what to do. Eventually he could take no more and shouted out “It’s overfull. No more will go in!” The master stopped pouring and simply said “Like this cup you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

It would appear that a full cup ,an overflowing cup, is not such a great thing. Whether it is filled with things or filled with fears. Well certainly this is true when it comes to our minds and perhaps our responsibilities and certainly our fears and anxieties.

That said the last few days have also reminded me of another image of an overflowing cup, that is a beautiful and vital thing.

The image comes from the 23rd Psalm.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths
Of righteousness for his name sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley
Of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:
For thou art with me.
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou prepares a table before me
In the presence of mine enemies:
Thou anointest my head with oil;
My cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me,
All the days of my life:
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord
For ever.

The Psalms are attributed to King David. Here he sings of God as a shepherd who will see him safely through the Valley of Death. “Thou prepares a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.” In the psalm the overflowing cup is an excess of goodness, a symbol of abundance, a source of joy. Something you can never have too much of. Can you ever be too full of love?

I am reminded here of the gifts I was given, good old “Pooh Bear” and that cup of love and knowledge, this cup will no doubt be filled and poured out many times. A cup I will drink from, as will many others.

Two cups of contrasting meaning; two cups overflowing: One depicting a mind that is too full and therefore unable to focus or learn something new, or too full that is paralyses us with so much fear; the other depicting a cup overflowing with love that will enable us to live full loving lives, despite the very real troubles present.

Is there a contradiction here, is this a dilemma? Well only if you get lost in the metaphor, the curse of the literalist. The two images are of course depicting different aspects of our humanity.

The Zen story is describing the mind, whereas the Psalm is depicting the heart. It is talking of God’s infinite love. So yes, we can be full abundantly with love and yet still have a mind that is clear. Experience has revealed to me that it is the full heart that enables me to clear my mind and not a clear head that leads me to a full heart. By emptying my mind, I do not fill my heart and yet as my heart becomes full, my mind and soul do indeed begin to settle.

As I look back at my life, proved once again in the last few weeks, I can see clearly that it is when my heart is filled with love that my mind begins to clear. There have been times when my head has been so full that there just was no more room for anything else; times when my life was just too full and I couldn’t create space, when prayer and meditation was not enough. My head doesn’t spin these days, thank God, but I can still begin to not feel life again, as my body becomes detached from my soul.

This has happened again in recent months. I so needed last week. I needed to stop, my soul needed to catch up with my body. I needed to let my heart be filled; I needed to once again be touched by the joy of living, as I was in danger of becoming detached from life. Then there was last weekend and the love I was offered and gratefully received.

Love is one of those commodities that multiplies by subtraction, the more you give it away the more all receive as it encourages others to the same. I have borne witness to this all week long, in the people around me. I saw a wonderful example of anonymous generosity this week. Someone responding in love, but ensuring I didn’t know who it was. I believe that we can all live fully aware of the abundance that is open to us in life. We can live as though are cups were overflowing with abundant love. We can give our love freely. We can truly throw caution to the wind and live with true gracious abandon. I know that sounds some what awkward, but I know we can, we just need to be encouraged. We just need to encourage one another.

I do not believe that I am the only dreamer I am sure that you have all felt this at times. We have all felt full up with the abundance of life, if only for brief moments. We can trigger this in others too. It can begin with a smile at a stranger in the street. Or just by responding with spontaneity. I have talked many times of my belief in the chaos theory of compassion, the source of which is this abundant love that can be poured out from us all. I have seen proof of this once again in the last few days of my life.

The wonderful thing about this abundance is that unlike any other resource it is not finite it truly is infinite. The more we express it, the more we give it away, the more are cups are filled. The key is to share it extravagantly to pour it out onto one another.

That said you do need to be careful not to over do it too. I know I can exhaust myself. There is always need for balance in life. If your mind gets too full of things then you lose all sense of clarity and or connection. You find that you forget everything and lock yourself out of your house, like I did.

So you do need to have a clear mind, a cup that is not overly full in order to focus on what life is offering you. That said in order to do this you need an open heart, you need this to allow this abundant love to fill you up and to flow from you, to let it pour out into your life. We were all born to love.

So sing and rejoice abandon yourself to love and anoint one another regardless of the troubles that may come your way. Will it take all our troubles away. No, but it will bring love to life in our humble human being. Isn’t this the greatest gift of them all.

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

Living Spiritually Alive: With Open Hands, Eyes, Hearts & Minds

I will begin with a short extract from an interview of Kurt Vonnegut discussing his book “A Man Without a Country” when it was first published in 2005.

DAVID BRANCACCIO asks Vonnegut : There's a little sweet moment, I've got to say, in a very intense book-- your latest-- in which you're heading out the door and your wife says what are you doing? I think you say-- I'm getting-- I'm going to buy an envelope…What happens then?

KURT VONNEGUT: Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.

I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around.

And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.

I came across this marvellous little piece the other day. In some ways this attitude is central to my view of what it means to live spiritually alive in this world. The spiritual life for me is about meeting life and each other in this way. It is about openness. It is central to my view of ministry in so many ways. I try to live by invitation, by inviting the other to be who they are. People think that openness is about telling people who you are, being open about who you. I’m not convinced. Openness to me is about inviting others to be who they are with you. Openness is about invitation.

My car has been in the garage for a few days. This meant I have had to make use of taxi’s. I experienced four very different taxi rides. All of the drivers spoke freely and openly with me, all in different ways. My invitation enabled them to do so. They talked a lot about their views of the world, about religion and spirituality. I had a particularly fascinating ride with one between Urmston and Altrincham last Sunday. He had very strong views about religion, formed from his upbringing. I listened with interest and interjected very occasionally. By the end of the ride, just twenty minutes later, we had openly shared so much with each other. His parting conversation went something like this, I have never met a clergy man like you before. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. I felt listened to and understood, thank you.

I felt blessed by our open conversation. We were simply meeting one another, but it felt like the spirit was alive and well between us. As I got out of the cab I felt spiritually alive and led the service in the same spirit.

If I have learnt anything about spiritual living I have learnt that the key is openness; the key to spiritual living is to live with open hearts, open minds, open eyes and open hands. These four are spiritual living in practice, which I have come to believe is true essence of religion. Not creed like religion but truly living breathing practising free religion. True religion, intentional spirituality in community, should not only bring us to life as individuals but enable us to live truly alive and awake in this our shared world.

Unitarian minister James Vila Blake (1842-1925) wrote, "Love is the spirit of this church, and service its law. This is our great covenant: To dwell together in peace, To seek the truth in love, And to help one another." I think in many ways this covenant articulates the essence of what it means to come together in love as a worshipping community. It has been adopted by many Unitarian Universalist and Free Christian communities. It expresses beautifully what it means to live in an open, living breathing spiritual community, what free religion ought to be about.

When I am asked what it means to be a Unitarian, the first word that comes to mind is “openness”. It seems to me that we are an open tradition. Now as I have come to believe the essence of openness is humility. We are a humble tradition.

Openness is very much a doing word. It’s not so much that you are open, more that you live openly. To do so religiously, is to be open in four ways. It is to live with open eyes, open hearts and open minds and open hands.

Now to live with these four open eyes, open minds, open hearts and open hands is no easy task. In fact to master them is virtually impossible. The key is to begin and to continue; the key is intentional practice.

To live with open eyes is to see the world as it truly is; to see reality as it really is, warts and all and in its beauty spots too. To live with open eyes is to not turn away from the suffering present in life but also to pay attention to life’s beauty too. To live with open eyes is to see the reality of the whole of life. This is not easy, so often we are tempted to turn away. To live fully connected lives, we need to live with open eyes, to see life with all its blessings and curses.

To live with an open mind is to be able to search for truth and meaning, while maintaining an awareness of the tension between certitude and curiosity. It is the balance of being receptive to what is new and alien, while at the same time holding onto what is most dear. It is to try to know while in the presence of the unknown and the unknowable. This can make others feel uncomfortable and others may try to close an open mind or fill it with their things. To live with an open mind does not mean that we do not discern that we don’t come to conclusions. Quite the opposite actually. It is vital to come to conclusions, so that one can act in the world it’s just that after the decision the openness must be maintained, it is never too late to change our minds. So, keep your minds open but please do be careful what you put in it.

The key to living with a loving and open heart is live with all our senses, including our sixth sense, our soul, open to all the wonders and mystery of life. This too brings its dangers. Living with an open heart exposes us to pain and fear. You see to truly live with an open heart is to allow ourselves to be touched in the most tender of places. This can hurt sometimes. Remember Cupids arrow had to first of all pierce the flesh before it could penetrate the heart, love hurts. To live with an open heart is to follow the great commandment, it is Agape. It is to love others, no matter who they are what they have done, where they have come from, it is to love without condition. It is to follow the Golden Rule. It is to love our neighbour as we would wish to be loved ourselves. This requires love and compassion for ourselves of course, which can at times be the greatest challenge. It is to feel a deep connection with all that is, all that has been and all that will ever be. It is to recognise that in order to feel this connection requires that we share ourselves. To love is to practice forgiveness, over and over again. Practicing living with a loving heart is to live willing to be transformed by what we encounter in our daily lives.

By living with these three open eyes, open minds and open hearts we can then practice living with open hands. Hands that welcome, hands that humbly accept our interconnectedness. Open hands are willing to do what they can do to serve, to play their part in the world. It means committing and recommitting to use our hands, our abilities, in the service of life. With our hands, our actions, we take responsibility for our part in working for what is just, to create the kin-dom of love right here right now, to create a better world, the beloved community. With open hands, we offer what we have and do what we can.

Our open eyes allow us to recognise where we can act in the world, if our minds and our hearts are open. It is these three that tell our open hands where they are needed.

Open hands though are not just about action, they are also about connection and perhaps more importantly humility. Humility is the key to openness and to my eyes the essence of this my chosen Unitarian faith. I say chosen but I’m not sure if I chose it or it chose me. Who knows?

Now humility is a word that is often misunderstood. To be humble is to be at home in our true humanity, to be grounded in our own reality and shared humanity. The key to humility is to recognise that we are a part of something larger than our singular selves.

Humility is not about being meek and mild and bowing and scraping, it is not about being self-deprecating or denigrating. Too often humility is seen in this way, particularly from a religious perspective, as an excuse for suffering and or meekness. To me this is not true humility; true humility is about living with open hands and doing what we can in the world, we can only do this if we live with open hearts, open minds and open eyes and by recognising our common humanity.

I feel that so many of our troubles are caused by our inability to be truly open to one another and to new ideas; our troubles are caused by our arrogance and belief that we know best. Therefore, by not living openly we fail to understand and therefore empathise with each other and we remain trapped by what we think we know. We are too closed down and we need to open up, to one another, to life and to God. We need to be opened up like the Buddhist Monk, arms out with his begging bowl. An image which as Thomas Merton explained “represents not just a right to beg, but openness to the gifts of all human beings as an expression of this interdependence of all beings...Thus when a monk begs from the layman it is not as a selfish person getting something from someone else. He is simply opening himself to his interdependence.” The key is to live openly and of course the key to openness is humility. No one lives apart from anyone else we are all interdependent. Also none of us knows everything, we all see through the glass dimly.

I remember the first time I heard Forrest Church’s assertion that humility and openness are the two keys to religious living, how much this struck me deep inside. I saw the truth in it. There is limitlessness in openness. Who knows how much we can truly change and learn to love if we just stay open, in our hearts and minds and eyes. Who knows what we can do with our loving hands if we live with truly open eyes, open hearts and open minds.

The key to true spiritual living is openness, to live with open eyes, open hearts open minds and open hands. To key is to live with true humility, to see that we are grounded in our shared humanity. The key is to see that we are a part of something far greater than ourselves and that through recognising this we will know the love present in life and begin to bring that love alive, right here right now.

Every day is a day when we can bear witness to a Power Greater than ourselves. We do this when we love one another with open hands, when we see the world with truly open eyes, when we live with minds that are truly open and hearts open to the love waiting to enter and to be poured out onto our world that really needs it.

I was reminded of this last Sunday morning on that taxi journey between Urmston and Altrincham. What a beautiful gift that was. Who knows it may have opened the eyes, the heart, the mind and the hands of the taxi driver who had never met a clergy man quite like me before. We shared a journey, where we lived spiritually alive.

I believe it is our task to live truly open lives. This is real spiritual living, this is true religion. I believe it is our task to bring love alive, through our openness. It is our task to allow God to incarnate through our lives. To do so we need to live with open eyes, open minds, open hearts and open hands.

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

Turning Presents Into True Gifts

We are now fully into the Advent Season, the days that lead to Christmas Day. These are the days of waiting of preparation. The music is playing, we can hear all the familiar songs in every shop as we no doubt begin the process of selecting presents for our loved ones.

Have you done all your shopping yet? I’ve not even begun. I will soon, but not just yet. I’ve got too much to do.

Have you experienced any “Bah Humbug” moments yet?

I noticed one from a friend of mine. She posted a “Meme” on Facebook. A cartoon depicting two figures. The first is putting up Christmas decorations and saying to the other “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” to which the other responds in far less enthusiastic way “It’s not Christmas though is it Barbara, because it is still XXXXXXX November.”

The Meme was a protest against how soon Christmas had begun this year, especially in the shops etc. I replied to the ”Meme” stating “Just to be an annoying pedant. It’s Advent, it began on Sunday. If you want to be truly liturgically accurate Christmas doesn’t actually begin until sunset on Christmas Eve. None of us want that, so please no more Bah Humbugging. “There followed many other complaints about the celebration of Christmas coming too early, people putting up their decorations too early etc. I put up mine on Tuesday night. I have gone much further than I usually do. Molly is certainly enjoying this. It seems she loves stealing baubles from the tree and playing with them. I have had to move Father Christmas and his little helpers out of her reach. Many folk have been telling me off all week for doing so, telling me I wasn’t allowed to until Thursday 1st December, to which I replied that Advent had already begun. It’s funny how folk suddenly get all Puritanical about these things from time to time.

I get where this all comes from, especially as it has been Christmas in most of the shops, since the beginning of November. There has been a Christmas tree in Café Nero for weeks. I know this because Molly stole a bauble from their tree several weeks ago. It has been her favourite toy since then.

The “Bah humbugging” about the early celebration of Christmas stems from this sense of over commercialisation and the thought that the spirit of the season will be lost. It seems that for many Christmas has become an almost secular exercise. Afterall less than half of the population now identify as Christian, at least according the figures published this week, from last year’s census.

Is it true though. Have we killed the spirit of the season with this over commercialisation? I’m not convinced. I think the spirit lives on and actually is present in the very act of such celebrations and even the buying and commercial activities.

If we look purely at the surface, there appears little evidence of my view. The Christmas season appears to be mass consumerism gone mad. The worst excesses of which seem to form in that most hideous of American imports “Black Friday”, which in reality is linked to the American holiday of “Thanksgiving”. We have not taken that part on, just “Black Friday”, not the giving of thanks bit. This occurred over the weekend that Advent began. And yet there is the spirit of Christmas in the spiritual elements of “Thanks Giving”. This is surely something that can be extended into this Advent season and on into Christmas itself. The spirit of Christmas is surely about giving thanks for the gifts we have been given and expressing this thanks in our lives by using our gifts in this our lives. We can become gifts to this our world, we can live in and through gratitude.

This can be exemplified in the presents that we buy for our loved ones, as they can become gifts. If chosen and wrapped with loving intention, then surely even this commercial activity is spiritual in nature.

In “The Gift” by David Blanchard, distinguished between a gift and a present. How the gift has a far more deeply spiritual and heartfelt significance than merely a present. It touched a part, deep in the heart of me.

Now of course the word “present” is something the spiritually inclined are obsessed with in our current age. So many talk of the gift of the present moment, that this is where life is. I’m certainly not one to wish to argue with these thoughts. That said I wonder if sometimes we become so obsessed with the present that we forget about the gifts we carry with us that we have been given in those many moments in the past. Too often we wish to lose what has gone before in our intense focus on the present that we fail to embrace the gifts that have come throughout our lives. I have come to believe that to truly embrace the moment, to be truly present requires me to be fully engaged with every moment of my life, for there the true gifts of life emerge.

Perhaps to truly live in the present moment is to bring our whole selves, every breath of our lives and perhaps every life that has made our life into this sublime moment.

This year I have reflected much on my life, perhaps more than I have for a while. I have thought much about the gifts I’ve been given throughout my days. Gifts I have not always appreciated at the time. In fact, many I failed to notice when they were given. The gifts of the love given by the precious people I have shared my life with, some who are no longer physically with me. The things they took the time to show me, how to do things and just how to be; the times they made me laugh and cry; the joy that they brought to my being. Gifts given freely from their heart to mine.

I’ve also been thinking of the many gifts I was simply born with, that I have not always made best use of, the Graces of life. I have been contemplating how I can make better use of these, the ultimate of free gifts, not just for myself but for the good of all?

Here's an extract from a prayer I shared during the Advent service.

Now is the moment of magic,

and here's a blessing:
we already possess all the gifts we need;
we've already received our presents:
ears to hear music,
eyes to behold lights,
hands to build true peace on earth
and to hold each other tight in love.

How do we make good use of the gifts we have been given from the beginning and throughout our lives? How do we bring these gifts to life in this beautiful present that is right here, right now? How do we make best use of the gift of life?

I will leave that one with you to ponder…

For most of us Christmas is about the giving and receiving of presents, but not necessarily about the gifts we both give and receive.

I suspect that the tradition of giving and receiving gifts at Christmas time is linked to the three gifts of the Magi “Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh”. Gifts of great value 2,000 years ago, although only gold has retained its worth today. Now in early Christianity the journey of the Magi was celebrated on the Feast of the Epiphany on the 6th of January, the 12th day of Christmas, hence the Carol “On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a partridge in a pear tree”…etc...)

The early Christian church did not celebrate Christmas as we do today. The tradition of giving Christmas presents is really a modern one. By Victorian times the culture of gift giving and the mythos of Father Christmas, St Nicholas or Santa Claus was beginning to take hold, immortalised in the fiction of Dickens and the like. As the twentieth century moved on into the twenty first this culture developed into mass consumerism. Today it would seem that buying, wrapping and giving gifts has become nothing more than a mechanical chore and one of the worst examples of mass consumerism going. Is this really what Christmas is about? Is this really giving by heart? Is this really the spirit of Christmas? Well it is if we select, give and receive these gifts in the spirit of love. In so doing we bring the spirit of season alive, by incarnating the words from my favourite Carol “In the Bleak mid-winter”…

“What shall I give him? Give my heart”

I believe that the true spirit of Christmas is the heart, that this is the gift of the season. Christmas above everything else truly is the season of the heart. When we truly give our gifts to others we are giving them our hearts and when we truly give from our heart to another we are somehow bringing that heart of God alive and that spirit is once again incarnating in life.

This is the religion, the spirit that can still be discovered beneath the ribbons and the wrapping paper. This is the spirit that can once again come alive if we engage in the giving and receiving of gifts and not merely presents. This is one way in which we can truly begin to become a gift to the world.

When I really think of the gifts I have been given the greatest is of course life itself. This is of course the ultimate free gift. The ultimate unearned grace. It is easy to say we are grateful, for the gifts we have been given, whether at Christmas or throughout the year; whether they are material or spiritual in nature. But I am not so sure that this is what gratitude actually is. Gratitude is anactive thing, it is more than giving thanks, it is doing something with the gifts we have been given.

This is something to reflect on over the coming weeks as we approach Christmas. To consider the gifts that we have been granted and to perhaps think of the gifts we would like. To remember, but not passively, let’s instead make it an act of remembrance, of all that has been freely given to us, gifted to us. Let’s also make from these gifts a true act of gratitude for all that is our lives. Let’s become a part of the gift that is life itself and express this in our being. Let’s become the gift to the world. And pour out this gift on one another and to all life, in all that we feel, all that we think, all that we say and all that we do…

Below is a devotion based on 

the material in this "blogspot"

Deep Is Your Treasure

At a recent “Living the Questions” Adie Tindall led an excellent conversation on how art speaks to us. Art does have a way to reach those parts of ourselves, deep in our hearts, that other media perhaps cannot, maybe this is why we value it so much. So many of us treasure such works of art and artists too. During the conversation John Poskitt told of a limited edition copy of a piece of Bob Dylan’s art that cost him a lot of money and that he was paying for in instalments. John is a great lover of the arts.

Art had been in the news earlier that day. A work of art by “Banksy had sold for almost £10,000,000. It eclipsed anything else he had produced in the past by more than five fold. As someone pointed out whoever was behind “Banksy’s” promotion was a genius. He had after all begun as a gifted graffiti artist. Now no doubt the piece had gone up in value due to its subject. It goes by the title “Devolved Government” and is an image of a Parliament of Chimpanzee’s arguing in the “House of Commons”. I don’t believe it would have raised such a price a few months earlier. I wonder what raised the value so much?

Now as talented as “Banksy” is, and regardless of his mystique and clever promotional work, and regardless of the satire of the piece, how the heck can a painting be worth £10,000,000. It just seems obscene to me. Although it is not just painting’s and other art treasures that seem valued way beyond reason. Football is another example. I love football, but surely no footballer is worth £200,000,000. It seems ridiculous but this is the market value for the best of the best.

Now I am sure there are things that we all value above anything else in life, that we treasure beyond measure. I wonder what it is that you treasure the most? What is beyond value in your life, your pearl of great price, that you would sell all that you have for. Is there anything or anyone that you treasure so much that you would give everything for. Something to ponder perhaps. Some folk devote their whole lives to these things that they treasure the most

The great stories of human history speak of heroes going on epic journeys in search of great treasures. “Mythos”, from a variety of cultures, tell tales of questing for such treasure whether they be material objects or perhaps attempts to reach a certain goal or to manifest a dream. Think of the Arthurian legends, particularly the quest for the Holy Grail. Think of the biblical accounts, Moses and the Israelites, or Jesus's journey into the wilderness for forty days and forty nights, a journey of sacrifice and transformation. Or perhaps the Native American initiation tradition of Vision Quests. Such journeys often included climbs to the summit of mountains, like the climb to the summit of Parnassus, the ancient mount of the Muse. While watching the rugby the other morning I noticed the symbol depicting Mount Fuji with the Red Sun rising behind it. The Japanese people consider Mount Fuji, to be the point of contact between heaven and the underworld. Perhaps the ultimate journey, the final one.

Many of these great adventures described mythical themes depicting great feats such as climbing a mountain, or going off in solitude into the desert, or perhaps going into the heart of a forest forever searching, seeking, and questing. Until it is time to return home with treasure to share.

It’s not just the great heroes that go on such quests, ordinary people do too. Increasingly people are going on Pilgrimage. It’s nothing new by the way. All the great religious faiths have a tradition of pilgrimage within them. What is interesting though is that there seems to be a growing need to seek pilgrimage in our time and space, in these secular times. I even attended a Unitarian pilgrimage recently, as I led worship at the triannual “Rivington Pilgrimage”. I have to be honest though and say that it isn’t a true pilgrimage as we didn’t really walk very far. Although for some of us it was a journey just getting to Rivington due to the severe flooding. Several folk could not get there and had to return home in the end. And of course there was the amazing trip earlier this year to Israel and the magic that Sue and I shared by the Sea of Galilee. The whole trip was life transforming on so many levels. A deep and beautiful treasure of the heart.

I know several people who have walked the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route. The Camino is a path to the shrine of Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. Since medieval times, people have made the pilgrimage to the cathedral there. And pilgrimage is of course central to Islam, where, every believer is called to make at least one pilgrimage to Mecca in his or her lifetime.

At the core of these calls to pilgrimage is a universal human longing for growth, for becoming more than we were by going father than we ever dared. Now in these physical pilgrimages these longings manifests themselves in walking and somehow in this walk transformation occurs. The destination of such pilgrimages is a new horizon, the one we glimpse from a distant and are drawn to. Like the sun rising behind Mount Fuji.

Now while such physical pilgrimages can be beautifully transformative I have discovered another for more important pilgrimage. This is the pilgrimage to the heart. Not a physical journey but a deeply arduous one. A journey not only to the heart, but of truly awakening the heart, the true frontier of humanity. I suspect that most of the ancient pilgrimages were really about this. The stories were certainly journeys of transformation.

I suspect that this is our greatest treasure of all, our hearts. The Talmud says, 'God wants the heart.' All life stems from and through the heart. In ancient times is was believed that the heart was the center of human intelligence and the seat of the soul. According to Augustine of Hippo the heart was a metaphor for our deepest and truest selves, believing that union with God could only be achieved through it.

It is through the heart that we begin to connect to our truest and deepest selves. And through connecting to our deepest selves and thus awakening our hearts we begin to act in loving meaningful ways in the world. We will not act with compassion without our hearts. We will not act with true reason without the heart. In fact reason can be deadly without compassion, without being led by the heart. This is the true pilgrimage, the journey to the heart. As Howard Thurman once said 'the longest journey is between the heart and the head.' Thurman, the great mystic, theologian and educator was critical of the tendency in the modern age to separate the heart from the intellect. You see it is not only the body that is nourished through the heart but

our whole humanity. This is why it is so vital to take care of not only our physical heart but the heart of our spirit too and this requires an inner pilgrimage, that of silence.

Silence has become an important and treasured aspect of Unitarian worship. I spend time in communal silence several times a week. It enables me to reach that treasure at the core of myself and others too, it is vital to my life as food, water and exercise. We shared a special moment in silence last Sunday at Dunham Road. Some thirty or more human hearts and perhaps twenty dogs all sharing in reverential silence together for several minutes in the middle of the “Blessing of the Animals” service. You could feel a deep power at work in this pure silence, so deep I could almost hear our hearts beating. It was one of the most beautiful silences I have ever shared. Although when I think of it I have shared many such moments with strangers and friends throughout this year. It has been the year of the heart. Last Sunday I was not the only one to feel it either. Several people commented to me afterwards just how special the experience was. 50 hearts beating as one, is there a greater treasure in life. It was a beautiful spiritual journey to share together as we entered the caves of our hearts and helped awaken something beautiful within each and every one of us.

We each of have a great treasure within us, a treasure that needs to nurtured and cared for and brought to life. It’s a treasure that the world needs us to share with it. We need to take care of this priceless treasure and live from it. And if we do we may just begin to bring alive that love that is Divine. To bring the Kin-dom of love alive that dwells within in each and everyone of us, in everything.

The world awaits us, let's take that great journey together.

What do you give your heart to?

We live in an increasingly secular age. Less and less people attend places of worship. I am from this generation myself. For most of my life I had no interest in religion. I didn’t see the point. I only became interested due to several spiritual experiences that I wanted to make sense of. I have never found the answers just a life beyond imagining.

I am a religious person and I am also spiritual one too. It was not enough for me to experience my spirituality alone. I needed to find ways to express it and people to share it with. This is why I needed to community and this is why I eventually found a home with Unitarians, a community that does not demand that I conform to what it told me was the truth, more a space where I could live with my truth, my faith and doubt and to share that with others.

Thank you.

I recently conducted my first funeral with Sue. It was for the mother of a mutual friend. It was a deeply emotional occasion and I was moved observing family and friends coming together in mutual love and support. Like most families there was history and complication but I observed the members coming in devotional support for one another. The father of the grandchildren is Muslim and he and the whole of his family had come to offer respect to the loss in the family and of course to support the three children. This is something I see often in this work and it suggest to me how much we still need places where we can come together in love and share loving support. I believe that we humans need to offer devotion to one another and to life itself, whether we believe in God or not. We also need to worship. Well the truth is that we do in fact all worship, even if we are unaware of the fact that we are doing so. We all hold something of highest value in life, even if we are not fully aware of it.

For as it says In Matthews Gospel Chapter 6 v 21 “21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” What we treasure the most, what we offer our heart to is what we worship.

Ralph Waldo Emerson the great 19th century Transcendentalist had something interesting to say about worship. He wrote:

“A person will worship something, have no doubt that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behoves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.”

These words by Emerson have been vibrating in the core of my being, the marrow of my bones for quite some time now. Like I have said, a few years ago I would have dismissed them out of hand. I would have simply rejected them and said I don’t worship, how can I worship I don’t believe in anything. That said things did dominate my imaginations and my thoughts and they did determine my character, by falling into non-being and nothingness, by rejecting life I had become nihilistic and this did dominate my thoughts.

But is this worship?

Well let’s take a look at what we mean by worship.

Worship has its roots in Anglo-Saxon English “worthscipe” or similar variations and meant a condition of being worthy, honoured or renowned . It only became connected to reverence paid to a supernatural being during the 13th century. Worship is not something that is only conducted in places such as here at certain times of the week. We worship all the time; we worship whatever it is that we hold in highest regard. As Mr Emerson says what we worship is what dominates our lives our actions. Therefore it is important that we are careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping me are becoming.

I remember a while ago coming across a “Meme” on facebook that read “If money is the root of all evil why does the church keep asking for it”. Now I know that this was a critique of organised religion, especially the wealth of churches etc and I’m certainly not one to argue against such a critique. That said the Meme is misquoting badly here and failing to understand what the passage from 1 Timothy ch 6 v 10 is saying. The actual quote is “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil...” It is not so much money that is the problem, but the love of it. By loving money you make it the thing of greatest value in your life. You place its value above anything and everything else and therefore by doing so you may begin to neglect everything else; everything else decreases in value. In Matthew ch 6 v 24 Jesus said something similar when he stated “no one can serve two masters. Either you will hate one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

I do not actually believe that these quotes are really about money at all by the, they are more about what we value the most in life, about what is of ultimate worth to us. We need to pay attention to the things that matter in our lives. We all worship, even if we do not believe that we do. We all give our love, our attention, to something and it is this that dominates our lives.

What we treasure, what we offer our heart to, what we worship really matters. For we all worship something or perhaps someone. By the way I suspect the worship of individual people is perhaps the most dangerous form of worship. I was recently in a rather shocking conversation with someone who suggested that as far as Demagogues go Donald Trump isn’t so bad. I found myself half agreeing when compared to some of the demagogues of the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century and then thought, hang on a minute there is no such thing as a good demagogue. A demagogue is a demagogue and the a personality cult of any kind is so often deadly dangerous.

You who come and worship together here, do not all believe alike. Something that I believe we all celebrate, certainly something our free religious tradition celebrates. Our tradition, I believe is not so much believing alike, but loving alike. It’s about celebrating difference and working towards acceptance. This is not easy. To me it requires deep faith.

To be a Unitarian is both a blessing and a curse. To be a Unitarian religiously is not easy. To believe in and follow the Unitarian religious ethos is not the easier softer option. Far from it!

As Burdette Backus said "We sometimes hear it said by some of our own members that you can believe whatever you please. Actually we are confronted with a paradox; we are not free to believe what we please, we are free to believe what we must."

Yes we do believe that everyone has the right to seek truth and meaning for themselves and that each individual’s life experience and their reflections upon these experiences must form their own understanding of their own truth. Our communities accept people as they are warts and all and beauty spots too. That said to truly call yourself a Unitarian is not just to believe whatever you like. We as individuals must stand by what we believe. Reason and rationality are as much cornerstones of our tradition as are freedom and tolerance.

It is not easy being a Unitarian, but then who ever claimed that life was meant to be that way. That said it can be incredibly rewarding because to me it's the only way I've found that can reveal what I would describe as acceptable truth and perhaps most importantly give my heart to that that which I believe, to devote my life to it, to worship.

So what is it that you give your heart to? What do you worship? Where is your treasure to be found? For what you give your heart to will shape your life? Something to ponder perhaps.

What we worship matters, as Emerson said “A person will worship something have no doubt about that...that which dominates our imaginations and thoughts will determine our lives and character...for what we are worshipping we are becoming.”

What we worship, what we love, what we give our heart to dominates who are and we how we are. Therefore it is vital that we are mindful, attentive and critical about our habits. We need to understand what it is that we hold of highest value in our lives and why we do so. This is why we need to pay attention to our lives. This is why communal worship is of such high value to me. Yes ok it was life changing spiritual experiences that brought me in search of answers in spiritual communities, but it is not this that held me there. I found so much more by coming to commune, to worship with others. I discovered that by worshipping with others , if only for one hour a week I was then better able to focus my attention to what really matters during the rest of my time.

Everyone desires and we all possess imagination; everyone holds something of highest value in their lives. We worship whatever it is that dominates our hearts. This is why it is important what we worship, because as Emerson said “What we are worshipping, we are becoming.”

So be careful what you worship because we all do so, whether we care to admit it or not.

Our Rituals of Christmas Time

We are well and truly into Advent now, well into the festival of light at this the darkest time of the year. How are you doing? Are you in the spirit of the season or are you struggling a little. It can be a difficult time for some folk in so many ways. It’s just so easy to get lost in a variety of things. So much so that we fail to fully experience what this time of year is all about. We all have a bit of Scrooge within us do we not, we all have a little bit of “Bah Humbug”.

Christmas means different things to each and every one of us. Do you know what, it always has. People often cry that it’s not what it used to be. Well do you know what it used to be many years ago is not what it used to be many years before then. That said despite all the ever changing rituals and celebrations there does appear to be a universal spirit that has always existed. Do you know what the spirit has existed longer than the Christmas story and stories. Christmas is the ultimate Universal mythos of the heart.

For many people Christmas is a time of love and compassion of bringing to the surface our better selves. For others it is about family (however we understand family) coming together. For some it is about God’s Love incarnating perfectly in life, in the Christ child. For others it is the celebration of the end of winter and the coming of life and renewal in the spring time. I think it is all of this and a whole lot more. It seems to me that Christmas is the ultimate universal festival of the heart. It is a mixture of so many traditions and it has altered so much over time, embracing and incorporating so much of this simple spirit of light and love. Christmas is the ultimate festival of the heart, perfectly placed in the deep mid-winter when we need it the most.

As the years go by the meaning of Christmas has changed for me, as the meaning of life has. I suspect it means more to me today than it has ever done. Every year this meaning grows. Christmas is not just another day to me, in fact it has truly become a season, the season of the heart come to life. Religiously it means more to me too. As time as gone by I have connected more to the many and varied rituals of Christmas and there are many. Ok some may see these rituals as secular, but I am not convinced. I see the spirit at the heart of Christmas incarnating in all of them. I love Christmas, I truly do. I love it because it fills my heart with nostalgia, generosity and goodwill, it connects me to life, to God and to the people around me, it connects me to the past, to my ancestors and to those who touched my life, many who are no longer here. I shed many tears around this time of year. All this allows me to feel more alive. It opens up the present, the ultimate gift of life. The spiritual life is not about passively living in the moment, but truly bringing the moment to life.

Christmas is the heart of the year. Christmas is about Kairos time, not Chronos time. Time slows and our experiences thicken, if we allow them to. If we open our hearts truly to the spirit at work in the experiences. If we open our hearts to one another our relationships will deepen. What is more religious than this? For me to be religious is to increase our connections through they way we live our lives and to be spiritual is to increase our sensitivity, our experience of life.

An example of this are the many rituals that we all engage in each and every year. One example is going to buy a new tree, or fetching the artificial one from where ever we store it in the house. Getting out the decorations and placing them around the home. For so many people this connects us to our past and those who have touched our lives. There are so many memories tied up in these rituals. The memories will be mixed, as life is mixed, to misquote good old Moses “The blessings and curses of choosing life”. How many of us laugh and cry as we engage with these rituals and of course pass on the memories, rebind them, bring them to life, remember, reincarnate them. Isn’t this love incarnated. To me this is the very essence of religion.

Then of course there is the music, whether that be carols and carol singing or the many and numerous pop songs and classic songs from the old movies. For every service during December the congregations I serve insist on only singing carols and I’m with them all the way. The "pop" songs are no less religious, no less spiritual to me. They connect me to my past and those I’ve heard and sung these songs with and they help bring the moment more fully alive. They increase my experience of life too, they open my heart, they incarnate love. A taste of heaven.

Then of course there are the films, those great Christmas stories. For so many of us this is the heart of Christmas. What is your favourite? What film is at the heart of Christmas for you? I will be going to see a couple on the big screen in the next couple of weeks. It’s wonderful to go and see a classic film on the big screen and to do so in company, sharing that experience with folk that you love.

All these rituals to me are deeply religious and spiritual also. They connect us to one another, to life, that spirit at the heart of life, they connect us to our past and those who have touched our lives and they bring the gift of Christmas to life, the ultimate gift of Christmas, the present, the Christmas present. It truly increases our sensitivity to life itself.

Another universal quality is the journeying of Christmas. There is of course the "chronos" journey through the Advent season as we open our Advent Calendars and count down the days. There are the journeys to buy the gifts for loved ones. There is the journey to events and parties. There is the journey home also. Journeying is of course at the heart of the Christmas mythos. Whether that is the journey of the Holy Family of Joseph and Mary, carrying the Christ child in her womb on the road to Bethlehem, of the refusal and the rejection, of the magical birth and adorations and then of course having to flee for their lives, a journey we can all relate to in so many ways. Journey’s people have been travelling on for generations. Then of course there is the journey of the Magi, the wise men, who were called out to cross many lands in order to follow their bliss and bring gifts of love to the beloved.

These are journey’s of distance. But also journeys of depth. They are both "Chronos" and "Kairos" journeys. I will be doing some journeying over the next few weeks. As I am sure you will all be doing so too. They will be journey’s of hope and of sorrow, of joy and laughter and some pain. They will be religious journey’s and spiritual journey’s, journeys of the heart. Journey’s that will increase our sensitivity to life and deepen our connections to one another, to life, to our past, our present and the future. It will open our hearts and in so doing incarnate love here in our lives.

So let’s journey on through this Christmas season and truly open our hearts and engage in its spirit. May our hearts open wider, at this the heart of the year. May our experiences deepen as we remember to slow down as we rush through the business of our days May we know the true gifts of the season; gifts of love, compassion and acceptance. May we bring the spirit of the season alive and in so doing learn to make it Christmas in the days yet to come.

If we want to make it Christmas everyday, then we need to live by it spirit every single day...It is up to us...

Becoming The Gift We Have All Been Waiting For

We are now fully into the Advent Season, the days that lead to Christmas Day. These are the days of waiting of preparation. The music is playing, we can hear all the familiar songs in every shop as we no doubt begin the process of selecting presents for our loved ones.

Have you done all your shopping yet? I’ve not even begun. I will soon, but not just yet. I’ve got too much to do.

Gifts of course come in many forms. Not all are wrapped in paper and tied up in ribbons. Some come in other forms, some wrapped in flesh, human flesh. I remember at primary school once being asked what was my favourite Christmas present had been, to which my answer was “Our Natalie”, my youngest sister had just been born a few days before Christmas. Her life has proved to be a wonderful blessing, even if she is a little too well named. Our Natalie never stops nattering. That said she is a gift beyond gifts.

When I look back at my life I have known some wonderful gifts in human form. Some of whom I have known for only a short time and others all my life. I’ve been thinking of these folk quite a lot these last few days. While I may not carry those people with me physically, their love is tied up in my heart. I do not forget these things, in fact in many ways my life is an act of remembrance of the love they gave, and certainly my ministry is.

Last week an old friend, someone who I have begun to see a little of once again in recent times, reminded me of a book I had given him as a gift 12 Christmases ago. He told me he had been re-reading it in recent weeks and reminded me of an inscription I had written in it, some simple words of gratitude, simply for being himself. He told me that reading it had led him on a path of spiritual discovery and wanted to thank me for it. I could have wept, I would have wept if I had not being in company. Now while this boy does cry, he rarely does so in the company of others, I am always the minister.

The conversation brought to mind another gift of a blessing that a dear friend gave me 11 months later, on the day my heart was broken, as I lost the most precious gift that ever entered my life, my friend Claire’s son Ethan, my Immanuel. The one who showed to me that God is indeed with us.

The day Ethan died I was utterly broken. I was alone with nowhere to go and ended up with friends from the Cross Street congregation, three in particular Alan Myerscough, Wynne Semeter and Peter Sampson. John Midgley had already come to the hospital and ministered to us as best he could. I will never forget what John gave that day, even though I have since learnt that he felt he let me down, nothing could be further from the truth. What I remember the most though about that day is a simple bowl of soup that Wynne warmed for me, sat me down and made me eat. It didn’t change anything about the hell I was in but the love warmed me physically, emotionally and spiritually. I felt God was with me, expressed in human form, incarnated in those around me. I also remember how much others were friends to me in the coming months, particularly my friend Derek.

The Christmas that followed was a hard for so many people, but in so many ways it was beautiful. A beautiful example of people coming together in love, a glimpse of the kingdom of love that I believe is at the core of the true Christmas message. It is certainly the message I read in Matthews Gospel, to me this is what it means to follow that yonder star the wise men from the east were seeking. I pay homage to those gifts of divine love that I have known in human form, that have blessed my life and shown to me that God is with us indeed.

Christmas is a time of celebration, of family and others coming together once again in love. It is a time when everything is heightened and illuminated. This can be difficult for some people, particularly Christmas Day. For some people who are not feeling so joyous, Christmas can actually increase those feelings of isolation and loss. As we sit round the Christmas dinner table we may notice not so much the ones that are there, but the ones who are not there. Often those we have lost due to death’s dark shadow, but also those who are not there due irreconcilable differences. I notice the empty chairs around my own family’s table. I always have done. I fully feel the joy of the day, but also its sadness.

Yes Christmas can be hard for some people. We need to remember this as we engage in our joy. And if we really want to bring the love at the centre of the season to life, we ought to perhaps think of ways in which we can bring a bit of love into their lives. One simple act of love can change a person’s life for ever. It certainly has mine.

There is a tradition that has developed in recent years that has begun to recognise that Christmas has its shadow side as well as its light. Many places of worship now conduct what are called “Blue Christmas” services. They are held at this time of the year for those who have lost a loved one during the year, or who are remembering losses from previous years.

Grief can sting more sharply at this time of the year because such feelings stand in contrast to what is the ideal of this Christmas season, namely, a time of the fullness of the heart, a time when one is united to all that one loves.

Christmas is about the heart, the ties of the heart, the loves of the heart, the dreams of the heart, the yearnings and longings of the heart. At Christmas we are called to concentrate on the heart; we are called to concentrate on what the heart wants, what it needs, and how it calls us to live. This is not easy if your heart is broken by grief.

By the way grief may not be the loss of person to death, it may be the end of a relationship, or the loss of livelihood and or health.

Sometimes the light of Christmas can illuminate this suffering in our hearts and lives. This can make the lives of some appear more dark and dreary as we are burdened with the memory of too many failures, too many defeats, too much sorrow. Sometimes loneliness, fear, selfishness, discouragement, and resentment turn the bells of Christmas into bitter mockery.

We need to remember this in this season of the heart. Such people need to gift at the heart of this season more than others.

So what can we do?

Well we can give the greatest gift of the season, we can give our heart. How do we do this by giving just a little bit of time and attention to someone who really needs it. In so doing we will truly begin to sanctify this season by giving one another perhaps the greatest present of them all, our true presence. A pearl of great price, a gift beyond material value. The most priceless commodity of them all.

Do you know what we can all bring the spirit of Christmas alive in our hearts and lives. It’s quite simple really, it is not even difficult. Anyone of us can do it. All it requires us to do is to open our hearts, to become the gift that we have all been waiting for. How do we begin? Well again that is quite simple too. All that we have to do is look all around us, in our own families and our own communities. You don’t need to look above to find the star to follow, you just need to look around, find the need around you and invite those suffering around you into your hearts and lives. Unwrap the greatest gift you have been given, your own heart. Become a memory that may change someone’s life forever. You have that power within you. Go use it.

This will be my focus this season, I invite you to come and join with me,  in this giving of our true presence, the ultimate present. To open our hearts to those around us. To pay attention to those close at hand. To bring the heart of Christmas alive, to incarnate love in our own lives. To become one another’s Immanuel’s, to show that God is indeed with us.

It really is that simple. We can bring the spirit of the season alive once again. We can bring Christmas alive in the presence of each and every day. We can become the greatest gift that anyone could wish for.

We no longer have to wish it could be Christmas every day, we can make it Christmas every day. By simply blessing each day with our presence, by giving our whole hearts to those who really need it.