Questions about life, before, during and after: An Easter reflection

I had a rare opportunity a couple of Sunday’s back of being present at Dunham Road as people began to arrive. This was because we could not conduct worship at Urmston as the town was cut off due to the Manchester Marathon. As I stood at the entrance of the chapel I found myself chatting with Martin and Carolyn. Carolyn was sharing her thoughts on an interesting talk she had heard that week given by a Hindu woman discussing her traditions perspective and understanding of reincarnation. Martin and myself listened with interest and I remember saying something like "I’m not sure what I believe about such things." We made the usual, probably inappropriate, jokes of hoping we don’t come back as a slug or something similar. I then went and led worship, interestingly we were exploring the subject of “What you give your heart to.” A little later I was thinking about the conversation and remembered a similar one I had only a few weeks earlier with a woman called Elaine. Elaine is very important in Sue’s life. She is someone who guides her spiritually and has led a women’s circle that Sue has participated in these last 12 months. Sue had asked me if I minded having my astrological chart "done" by Elaine. I agreed to, although part of me felt a little unsure about it. I gave my birth details, the time, date and place and then went to meet Elaine for the results. I enjoyed both a wonderful and fascinating conversation with Elaine, during which she asked me if I believed in past lives. I said “I just don’t know. I am truly agnostic about past lives and even what happens to us after we die. I said I suspect that some aspect of us lives on but in what form I have no clue, I have to declare myself as truly agnostic about these things, as I have no knowledge. That said I am open minded, open hearted and my spirit is certainly open to the possibility, but that I prefer to think about one life at a time. That’s more than enough for me. Whatever happens to us when we die it cannot be any stranger than this life, which day by day seems to be way beyond my imaginings. It’s funny I do not feel agnostic about a relationship with a Power Greater than myself in this life, I call myself a “Universal Theist”, but what happened before and after this life I can offer very little I am afraid. Although day by day, as I live more spiritually alive I find myself believing ever more in the possibility.

We humans often ask the question, what happens to us when we die, but how many of us ask what happens before we are even born? That may well be a far more interesting question.

Having professed my agnosticism about the afterlife I am now going to contradict myself as I believe strongly that loves lives on in the lives of those we have touched, even after our physical lives end. I know this from personal experience. So perhaps there is some formed idea here. They are part of us in spirit in some way, sometimes I can feel that powerfully. As the song goes, “The ghosts are part of us.” Forrest Church put it so beautifully when he said: “The greatest of all truths is that love never dies, that every act of love that we perform in this life is carried on into another life and passed on into another life, so that centuries from now the love carries, and that is the work of religion. The opposite of love is not death. It is fear. Fear is what armors our hearts. If our hearts are armored, they’ll never be broken, and I have seen so many people get hurt in love and then try to protect themselves against it, and when they protect themselves against love, they protect themselves against the only thing that is worth living for.”

I would add to that that the purpose of religion is to bring that love to life and to share it with our world. This is the work of transformation. This to me is the true message of Easter.

There are many layers to the “Easter Mythos”, that if we allow it to can touch all of us. In order to be touched by the magic of Easter you do not have to believe in the actual bodily resurrection of Jesus, you can believe in Easter without having to accept that this actually happened. In fact perhaps it loses some of its power if we focus purely on this. What is clear to me is that Easter is about the Power of Love that grew from that empty tomb. Whatever we may think about bodily resurrection, something definitely lived on beyond the physical death of Jesus. While his body may no longer have remained in the empty tomb, some beautiful aspect of his life certainly remained. Love was born again, even after the body was killed.

I believe it is the same with every life and the love that life leave behinds, something beautiful always remain.

This brings to mind those beautiful words often shared at funerals by that famous author “Unknown”

“Something Beautiful Remains” – Unknown

The tide recedes but leaves behind
bright seashells on the sand.
The sun goes down, but gentle
warmth still lingers on the land.
The music stops, and yet it echoes
on in sweet refrains.....
For every joy that passes,
something beautiful remains.

Every life leaves its mark. Every life impacts in some way. We should never think that we are insignificant, that we do not matter. We impact on everyone and everything around us. Everything that we do and everything that do not do matters. There are those who I have known and who have loved me, who have been gone many years, who are still impacting on my life. Of their lives, something beautiful remains.

Easter is a reminder to me that even after death something beautiful remains. It is an acknowledgement of life’s sacredness. It is a reaffirmation of life that not even death can end. Easter for me is about birth and re-birth, again and again and again…

But what about “Resurrection”? What can that mean? Well “Resurrection” for me is about bringing to life the love that was born again on Easter morning. I have come to believe that this is truly our religious task. I believe that this is what it means to bring to life the “Kingdom of Heaven” that is constantly spoken of in the Biblical accounts. What I have come to call the “Kin-dom” of Love”, for all are equal in such a Commonwealth. To live in such a way of being is to recognise the oneness of all life.

This actually brings me back to astrological thinking and Elaine’s charts. She suggested to me that I had lived many lives. and that that I was at a stage of real potential right now, if I was willing to take it. This got me thinking of Joseph Campbell and his views of mythos. He wrote of Easter: “It is very much the longing to be born anew the way nature is. All these elements fit together. Easter is calculated as the Sunday that follows the first full moon after the vernal equinox. It is evidence of a concern centuries before Christ to coordinate the lunar and solar calendars. What we have to recognize is that these celestial bodies represented to the ancients two different modes of eternal life, one engaged in the field of time, like throwing off death, as the moon it’s shadow, to be born again; the other, disengaged and eternal. The dating of Easter according to both lunar and solar calendars suggests that life, like the life that is reborn in the moon and eternal in the sun, finally is one.”

This got me thinking of Easter as a metaphor for bringing about this oneness of all life. That what Jesus was trying to teach humanity about  was oneness, about harmony. Isn’t this what the “Kin-dom of Love” is?

This brings to mind the following passage from the Gospel of Thomas, one of the many that was not included in the Bible:

Jesus said to them:

When you make the two one,
and when you make the inner as the outer
and the outer as the inner
and the above as the below,
and when you make the male and the female
into a single one
. . . then shall you enter [the Kingdom]

Now of course many believe that the Kingdom is the place that we go to when we die, if chosen. I do not believe that this is what Jesus was speaking of in the Gospels. Remember he said (in the Canonical Gospels) that the “kingdom is within you” or that it is “at hand” (here now). I believe that he was teaching that the key is to bring “The King-dom” alive within ourselves and to share that with our world, therefore building the beloved community of love. I have come to believe that this is the love that is born again as the stone was rolled away and seemingly found to be empty, because from that emptiness love was once again, born again.

From nothing comes everything; from Despair is born Hope.

We all have this day, we all have this time, what shall we do with it? The key I believe is to fully live it. To bring forth what is within us. To incarnate love in our lives is to become fully alive. The second century philosopher Irenaeus said “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” This to me is the word becoming flesh and dwelling amongst us, this is the divine love fully alive. This is truly bringing forth the kingdom that is within us. If you want to know the divine presence in life, then all you have to do is to find the courage to live fully alive and then to bless the world with your very presence and thus inspire others to do the same. And thus enjoy the kingdom of God, the kin-dom of love right now.

It’s time to bring the kin-dom of love to life. It is time to begin living this one wonderful life we have been given…

This is the Love that is born again on Easter morning. This is what grows from the emptiness of the tomb when the stone is rolled away…From nothing to everything…From Despair, Hope is born again…

Now I would like to end with these words of blessing by David Whyte.

“Easter Blessing”

The blessing of the morning light to you,
may it find you even in your invisible
appearances, may you be seen to have risen
from some other place you know and have known
in the darkness and that that carries all you need.
May you see what is hidden in you
as a place of hospitality and shadowed shelter,
may that hidden darkness be your gift to give,
may you hold that shadow to the light
and the silence of that shelter to the word of the light,
may you join all of your previous disappearances
with this new appearance, this new morning,
this being seen again, new now, and newly alive.

David Whyte: Easter Morning 2015
In Memoriam John O’Donohue

Self Portrait

“How could anyone ever tell you

You were anything less than beautiful

How could anyone ever tell you

You were less than whole

How could anyone fail to notice

That your loving is a miracle

How deeply your connected to my soul”

We sing these words in one of the song chants during the “Singing Meditation” I lead. I think that they are beautiful and yet deeply sad. Why sad? You may well ask. Well because there are many people who fail to see this truth. They believe that they are less than beautiful, they believe that they are less than whole, they live disconnected lives.

I suspect that this is why so many of us constantly crave attention and approval from others; why so many of us so desperately need to have ourselves and our love acknowledged and recognised. What’s even sadder though is that often when it is, it is still not enough. By the way I am not immune from it myself, I know this only too well. Got to keep an eye on this need for approval from others.

Every couple of weeks I have been updating my weight loss progress on Facebook. I have now lost 4 and a half stone in just 12 weeks and I feel fabulous. The encouraging replies from friends has been wonderful. Some, who haven’t seen me for some time, have asked if I would take a picture of myself and post it for them to see. My response has been “I don’t take pictures of myself”. Now some of my friends have mischievously replied claiming I have hundreds of pouting images of myself and that’s all I ever do all day long. Now while this is wholly untrue I have noticed a little vanity creeping into all of this. I am enjoying the positive comments made both through social media and real face to face contact. I am also aware that people only want to see pictures because they are interested, they care.

That said I do not take pictures of myself. I find the whole concept a little strange and self obsessive if I am honest and perhaps a sign of our ever growing preoccupation with ourselves in negative ways. It’s not just about posting pictures either, it seems to be about eliciting a response, a need for approval.

Where does this come from? Well I suspect that is comes from this deeply ingrained sense that there is something wrong with us. This feeling that we are in fact less than beautiful, that we are not whole.

This “Selfie” obsession of continually taking images of ourselves reminds me of the Greek Myth of Narcissus. The story of the boy who fell so in love with his own reflection that he fell into the water and drowned. I get the feeling that the “selfie” phenomenon is very much a modern day version of this “mythos”, but on a mass scale. That said, rather like in the original tale there is no real love at the root of all of this, more a need that we will recognised as beautiful. Why? Well because deep down in the core our being so many of us do in fact feel less than beautiful, do in fact feel less than whole.

Some say that the solution to this need for the approval of others is to no longer care what other people think of you. Now to me this seems just as unhealthy and lacking in a real sense of loving connection. Indifference has little or nothing to do with love and to a large extent is not real at all. There is a world of difference to not being ruled by the need of the approval of others and not caring, of becoming indifferent.

Now of course this taking pictures of ourselves and displaying them for the world to see is not a modern phenomenon. There really is nothing new under the sun. All that has happened is that this has now grown to mass a scale, we can all do it today. In days gone by only the artist could do so, as they painted pictures of themselves. The great artist all created self-portraits, many became utterly obsessed with it, it seems. Frida Kahlo being one, who explained why she did so saying "I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best." Maybe there's a little bit of Frida in all of us. Some of the great works of art are self-portraits. Perhaps the most famous of them all is the one of Van Gough, just after he has cut part of his ear off and allegedly sent it to a woman he believed he was in love with. A powerful image of unrequited love if ever there was one. Here Van Gough is making himself somehow less than whole, somehow less than beautiful and yet somehow in the image that he paints of himself there seems little self-pity, he just gives us the facts in stark imagery. Another destructive image of the self-portrait. I have seem similar images of friends on social media showing too much of themselves, that the world really doesn’t need to see. Images they no doubt regret publishing afterwards.

The “selfie” is not for me, I don’t really like taking images of myself. I have very few pictures. I was recently askrd by someone who came to speak with me in my vestry, where my picture was? They had noticed that all my ministerial predecessors adorned the walls all around me, but they could not see one of me. I could not answer their question. I am glad there isn’t though as I’m not sure I would want to see a picture of myself, staring back at me each day. There is a mirror in my vestry. If I want to know what I look like I only need to look into it.

Isn’t that a living breathing self-portrait?

Below is a wonderful poem “Self-Portrait” by my favourite poet David Whyte. He wrote it after seeing an exhibition of Van Gough’s portraits in Amsterdam. He was deeply moved by the images, particularly the one with his bandaged ear. After visiting the exhibition he returned to his hotel room, looked at himself in the mirror, got out a piece of paper and wrote at the top of it "Self Portrait" what followed was the poem below which just flowed out of him. Hie self portrait were the questions that he believed really mattered, were important.



"Self Portrait"

It doesn't interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.

David Whyte from "Fire in the Earth"

The poem is addressing someone he knows very well, himself. In so doing he is inviting us to do the same. The questions being asked are universal ones; questions we ought to be asking our true authentic selves. Not questions about the nature of God or God’s or even if there exists a greater reality, more about what it is to truly live, to be alive. Questions that most of us struggle with. Perhaps the most profound is the struggle to come to peace with trying to live up to the world’s expectations of each and every one of us whilst also trying to live authentically. How do we live authentically? How do we live freely? How do we live without being ruled by what others think of us, while not resorting to indifference to no longer caring about the opinions of others?

Whyte asks:

“I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living falling toward the centre of your longing.”

The poem is asking for absolute honesty here. For it is the longing that brings about transformation in the human soul.

Finally the poem asks the ultimate question about love and how we live with all that love brings, not just the joy but the suffering too. This is the Love that is at the core of all the great faiths and is the highest goal of humanity

“I want to know if you are willing to live, day by day, with the consequence of love and the bitter unwanted passion of your sure defeat.”

Finally, at the end, the poem he does return to God question, the question the poem seemingly rejects in its opening.

“I have heard in that fierce embrace even the gods speak of God”

Here I suspect is the real beauty of the poem. Here through love and loss, joy, pain and suffering. Through living and growing through these experiences we can truly explore the mystery and the unknown and perhaps the unknowable that is the transcendent.

Whyte’s Poem always brings me back to those opening verse from Ecclesiastes chapter 1

"Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity."

Perhaps vanity is one of the things that makes us human. I’m not just talking about the vanity of Narcissus or the “selfie” generation. There’s also the vanity that the world needs to know what I think about everything, my opinion on all and sundry. Often my opinion on things I know little about. It’s not just about expressing opinion either, there is also this need for the world to agree and validate this very same opinion. Again I suspect that this comes from this sense that there is something wrong deep within us, that we are somehow less than whole, that we are something less than beautiful. I suspect that it is this that leads to either the total consumption with the opinions of others or their total rejection and the statement “I don’t care what other people think of me.” Not caring what others think about us is in my view just the other side of the vanity coin.

“Vanity, vanity, all is vanity”

The biggest problem with vanity, whichever side of the coin we are referring to, is that it stops us truly living the life we have been given. The preoccupation with the need for validation from others or the total rejection of what others think of us stops us truly living our lives. There is an unhealthy self-absorption in and a rejection of the love waiting to be expressed through us. “Vanity” stops us being fully alive. It is not about love at all and more about fear. In the second century AD the theologian and philosopher Irenaeus said “The glory of God is the human person fully alive” To be fully alive is to recognise that each of us are beautiful and whole and all that we really have to do is allow our loving to be a miracle and ensure that we are connected soul to soul.

The key to bringing this love alive lies in living the questions expressed in that wonderful poem “Self-Portrait” by David Whyte

The key I believe is to give ourselves fully to the love that lies deep within each and every one of us and all life. The key is to melt, holding nothing back, into that fierce heat of living that feels like nothing less than falling toward the centre of your belonging, living day by day with the consequences and the commitments we have made in our lives. With that love that both nourishes and tears at our hearts, knowing that one day we will return to the dust from which we came.

Love is what really matters and recognising that love in each and every one of us. For if we do we will not need to seek it from others or reject it when others recognise it in us. What really matters is that we bear witness to the love, beauty and wonder of life, that love that connects everything and rejects nothing.

“How could anyone ever tell you
You were anything less than beautiful
How could anyone ever tell you
You were less than whole
How could anyone fail to notice
That your loving is a miracle
How deeply your connected to my soul”