The Gift of the Ordinary

I will begin with an extract from “How the Light Gets In: Writing as a Spiritual Practice” by Pat Schneider

"What I want back is the common everyday walk in awareness of the presence of mystery. Mystery isn't always strange. What is strange is how seldom we see it, how seldom we hear it. Mystery is as common as the gravel road and the blackberry hanging ripe on a vine in August heat in my childhood; it does not have to be paid for by any particular belief. It doesn't go away. I'm the one who goes away. Walks away. Runs away. Crashes away. The mystery is as common as the beam of light, spruce-filtered, falling on the fifth step of the stair this morning in my house in Amherst, Massachusetts. It is the common, seen uncommonly. When we see, when we hear, when we intuit how much we are loved, it is the common that is uncommon. It is the ordinary that is the body of spirit, the physical presence of mystery. I think I was reaching for this understanding when I wrote this poem:

"The Patience of Ordinary Things"

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How sales of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

Lovely isn’t it.

I was chatting with a friend on a beautiful early summer evening when I noticed a flower tree in the gardens. I hadn’t noticed it before. It had white petals and yellow centre, with a gentle pink around the edges. It had thorns like a rose tree. I said to my friend I hadn’t noticed it before that day, I don’t know why. We didn’t know what type of flower it was, so my friend got out her phone and through her camera looked at “Google Lens”. It said it was a “Dog Rose”. It certainly looked like one, although apparently they are not meant to be climbing bushes and this was standing alone. Whatever it is it is beautiful and it doesn’t really matter that much what name we give it. It reminded me of a conversation I had a few weeks ago with friends who had obsessed with an app that told them what bird was singing around them. I remember thinking and saying at the time how that didn’t really interest me, I was much more interested in the song and perhaps joining in myself. By the way I am not decrying knowledge here, I am interested in many things, I just don’t want to get too interested in the intricacies of things that I lose sight of feasting on their natural beauty. This some thing that is so easy do.

I went for a walk around Altrincham on Monday evening with Molly. As I walked around I had the words of e.e. cummings singing in my heart “I thank you God for most this amazing day”. I had been carrying this feeling with me for a couple of days. I was not ignoring the troubles of life, I was just experiencing the giftedness of simply being alive. We had been out a couple of times already that day drinking in the gifts of the ordinary. We bumped into a couple of half drunk people who I know from the gym who were sitting in the sun outside the ”Con Club”. They told me how lovely Molly is and how lovely dogs are. They both had perfectly white teeth and perfect skin, it made me smile and wonder at my love for imperfect beauty of nature. We walked on and passed the town hall. There was a choir performing, I think it was part of “Pride in the Town Hall”. It was beautiful to listen from the open windows taking in these angel voices. When they had finished, I called out a bravo and applauded their efforts. We walked home chatting with a neighbour about the delights we had listened to before bumping into more friends who delighted in Molly.

It brought to my mind the following from “Small Graces” by Kent Nerburn. “We seldom pause to shine a light upon the ordinary moments, to hallow them with our own attentiveness, to honour them with gentle caring. They pass unnoticed, lost in the ongoing rush of time. Yet it is just such a hallowing that our lives require… For though we may not live a holy life, we live in a world alive with holy moments. We need only take the time to bring these moments into the light.”

There is a beautiful gift in the ordinary. It brought to mind a wonderful book, “The Gift of the Ordinary” by Katrina Kenison. At its heart is an encouragement to appreciate the simple, everyday moments and aspects of life that can so easily be overlooked and taken for granted. It's about finding beauty, wonder, and value in the unremarkable, and recognizing that the ordinary act of living itself is a gift. In essence, "the gift of the ordinary" is about shifting perspective and finding joy and meaning in the everyday, rather than always seeking out extraordinary experiences. It's about recognizing that true richness can be found in the simple things. Something I noticed while simply walking with Molly the other evening. Something I offer to us all as we step into the summer.

“The Gift of the Ordinary” is at the heart of “Ignation Spirituality”. Which is a form of Christian Spirituality developed from the teachings of St Ignatius of Layola. He was the founder of “The Society of Jesus” (The Jesuits) in the 16th century. At its heart is spirituality centred around seeking “God’s Will” through every day, life and prayer; to seek through the ordinariness of life, through love and service. Its emphasis is on finding God in all things and forming a personal relationship with God through this. It is so easy to miss the beauty and the divine nature of a flower because we are like Dorothy always looking for whatever is beyond the rainbow. It is about being fully present to everything right here and now and recognising the sacredness of everything.

I see parallels to the Buddhist concept of mindfulness. Not exactly the same of course, but there are similarities. A key component is to be present to everything, to most ordinary aspects of life. The following contemporary tale illustrates the point. A Buddhist student was trying to stay present to life but was struggling with why he had to do so. He was aware that the lessons he needed to learn could from any place, if only stayed open to everything. So, he was going about his day practising doing so, while not understanding exactly what that meant. Now while he was walking round town, in this open and aware mood, he heard a loud noise from what seemed like hundreds of people in a large hall he was passing by. It took his attention and so he walked into what turned out to be a Bingo Hall. There was a big game going on. He looked up at the wall of the hall and there in front of him was the lesson he was seeking. There was a huge sign that said, in large block capitol letters “YOU MUST BE PRESENT TO WIN”.

It is said that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Well, the teacher is always present, if we are awake and paying attention to everything. There is another lesson too. It is up to us to choose to be present, or you won’t notice these simple gifts of the ordinary. In fact if you search for the wisdom on some mountain top you might just miss it, because you are too focused on the peak. The lessons are everywhere in life. As Rob says it is in Tesco’s in Baguley just as much as some spiritual site in the back of beyond. It’s about where we are at within ourselves as opposed to where we are at geographically.

It is about being present, being open, paying attention to everything. As Mary Oliver has pointed out “Attention is the beginning of devotion”. There is something beautiful, simple and humble in her poetry. Her work was so real, something I identify with deeply; the spiritual has to be real for me, or not at all. Her beautiful and often life affirming poetry grew from her empathically observing her own life and experiences. Having observed the life in front of her she asks about life and how to live it. To her this is religious, devotional living, “attention is the beginning of devotion”. To love this world is to pay attention to the simple gifts of the ordinary.

Here follows one of Mary’s great poems. This one is essentially about Spring, and what a beautiful Spring we have lived through. It is also a poem about how we ought to live our mortal lives. The poems simply describes a black bear awakening from hibernation, coming down the mountain, and showing her perfect love by simply being a bear and doing what a bear does. For Mary there is only one question, “how to love this world”. How do we love the world, by paying attention, by recognising the gift of the ordinary.

"Spring" by Mary Oliver

Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring

down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring

I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue

like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:

how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else

my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its glass cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her—
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.

This loving the world, seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary is a concept explored by the great Rabbi of the later 20th century Abraham Joshua Heschel who said “Let us love the ordinary. Let us love the closeness of God and the sacred, here and now. Let us cherish the everyday, the every breath, the where we are.” He also said “It takes three things to attain a sense of significant being: God, A Soul, and a Moment. And the three are always here.”

You see we live by breath, by moment and if we do so attentively we can know and experience the Divine in this life, in the extraordinariness of each and every ordinary moment.

How Heschel viewed the extraordinariness is exemplified in the following story from his life. It is something he would say when he gave an evening lecture. As he began he would say the following words.

"Ladies and gentlemen, a great miracle has just occurred!"

As the audience began to stir in puzzlement, the great theologian would elaborate…

"Ladies and gentlemen, a great miracle has just taken place...the sun has gone down."

Of all the things we take for granted in life, perhaps the fact that the day begins and day ends might be the greatest. Life is the greatest gift of all.

We can cultivate the miraculous out the ordinary out of what may seem mundane, the everyday. The sunrise and the sunset. Just simply being here with one another. This is the gift of the ordinary. We can help create and find the miracle and magic in the ordinariness of life, by simply truly being here and being present in life. We can help one another to do so too. We can find ways to plant little bits of magic in life for one another and for ourselves. We can leave little clues for one another too, things that can point the way. I am going to end this morning’s service by sharing a little story from “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” that Annie Dillard published in 1974, over 50 years ago. There is a beautiful peace of wisdom in this that for me brings to life “The Gift of the Ordinary”, a simple act with the humblest of objects, that can transform lives. I will leave it with you, with no further explanation.

She wrote:

“When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. It was a curious compulsion; sadly, I’ve never been seized by it since. For some reason I always “hid” the penny along the same stretch of sidewalk up the street. I would cradle it at the roots of a sycamore, say, or in a hole left by a chipped-off piece of sidewalk. Then I would take a piece of chalk, and, starting at either end of the block, draw huge arrows leading up to the penny from both directions. After I learned to write I labeled the arrows: SURPRISE AHEAD or MONEY THIS WAY. I was greatly excited, during all this arrow-drawing, at the thought of the first lucky passer-by who would receive in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe. But I never lurked about. I would go straight home and not give the matter another thought, until, some months later, I would be gripped again by the impulse to hide another penny.”

May we all find ways to discover the gifts of life in the most ordinary places. May we know the “Gift of the Ordinary”

Let us learn to bless this world with our extraordinary ordinariness.

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

The Gift of Small Things: A Living Gratitude List

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The Gift” by Mary Oliver

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

Below is a video devotion based 

on the material in this "blogspot"

That's what friends are for

One of my favourite childhood films was “The Jungle Book”, the Walt Disney version. I loved it so much that I didn’t go and see the remake that came out last year, for fear it my ruin my memory of the original. We even had an album of the movie soundtrack which I used to love to listen to on a Sunday afternoon at my grandma’s. I loved the songs, so many classics.

One of my favourite songs came back into my memory the other day. It was sung by the quartet of vultures who had a more than passing resemblance to the “Fab Four” “The Beatles”. They sang it to Mowgli who was feeling very lost and lonely in the jungle, without any friends. The song was of course “That’s what friends are for.” Composed by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman

"That's what friends are for!"

Friends and friendship have been on my mind quite a bit these last few weeks. It

was sparked off by a posting by my oldest and maybe dearest friend on Facebook. It had taken him months to pluck up the courage to do so and it touched me and many of our mutual friends deeply.

A few months previously he had been diagnosed with a form of Asperger’s Syndrome and had written this post to let his friends know. He talked about many of his struggles with certain aspects of communication throughout his life and apologised if he had ever offended anyone of us. The many responses from friends, of some 40 odd years of life, were beautifully moving. He is a deeply loved man and the reason for this is that he has always been a caring and loving friend to so many people, if a little “different”, from the so-called “norm”. He certainly has never done anything to offend me. I cannot say the same about me offending him by the way.

As I read the many loving and supportive posts I remembered our friendship and the many friends we had shared together. Going right back to second year at Batley Grammar school. I remembered going to watch Leeds United, our first terrifying encounters with the opposite sex and making music together and many other years that followed. We have not been as close for the last dozen or more years, but my goodness we shared so much together. When I think of many of the friends we shared and hung out with we were mostly misfits, never quite the norm. They say birds of a feather stick together, I think that there is a lot of truth in that.

As I remembered all the many friends I have shared over the years the quality that stands out the most is the level of acceptance of one another, despite all our peculiarities. This still stands today. Joan Chittister was so right when she said “Acceptance is the universal currency of real friendship. . . .It does not warp or shape or wrench a person to be anything other than what they are.” Acceptance is the true sign of friendship, radical acceptance of one another, exactly as we are. Perhaps that’s what a truly open religious community is, a collection of real friends. Friends who accept one another exactly as they are.

I think the greatest blessing of my life has been my friends. I have many friends, loyal friends and loving friends. Friends who have stood up for me and loved me at some pretty dark times in the past.

Friends have always stood up for me, going right back to primary school. I remember an incident when I would have been about 11 years old and had just begun to be allowed to do sport again. I was pretty useless, but very determined and others appreciated this. I remember there being an inter schools cross country event and all the schools in the district entered. Each had to pick a team and this was selected over a series of races. I wanted to compete, I don’t know why today as there was no chance of me getting into the team, on athletic ability. Each week though I ran in the race and each week I scored few points, certainly not enough to qualify, but I stuck at it. It came to the final race and I went for it. I was not doing well enough though as another lad who also wanted to run was ahead of me. Then something amazing happened. The star athlete of the school decided to help me out. He did it in a rather unsporting way by convincing this other lad to let me beat him and thus qualify at his expense. I do not know to this day why he did it, but I will never forget Darren’s gesture. Yes I felt bad for the other lad, but I can’t tell you how much it meant to me to run in the team. We ran, we didn’t win and I didn’t come last, actually about half way, better than I could ever have dreamed of. I just ran and ran as best I could across the muddy fields, lap after lap. I even lost one shoe half way round but just kept on going not daring to stop to pick it up for fear I wouldn't be able to begin again. One lad crossed the line a little after me with my shoe in his hand looking rather puzzled. I just grinned and thanked him as I claimed it back. I can think of countless other times when friends have been there for me, protected and helped me in so many ways. Other times when they have encouraged and spurred me on to be a better me. Too many to mention here today. It happened recently after something I posted on line, which irritated someone, who became quite critical of the comment and me personally. I chose not to respond to the criticism, but some of my friends did. Their responses were beautiful and touched me deeply. I am a lucky man, to have been blessed by so many good and loyal and loving friends.

Thank you

I have always been blessed with wonderful friends…What about you? Perhaps that’s something to think about…the friends who have blessed and continue to bless your life…

There is a phrase about friendship that has always irritated me, “Merely friends”, or “We are just friends”, as if being a friend wasn't important, didn't matter. Friendship matters oh so much. Friends are the people we share our lives with, who in so many ways make our lives what they are. Friends are, to quote Fredrich Buechner, the people we choose to “make part of our lives just because we feel like it.” There is no such thing as “Just friends”

Aristotle said, “What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”

A friend is someone you can trust, you can rely upon, someone who will be there for you. Certainly my friends have always been there for me. We have laughed and we have cried together. We have enjoyed some wild and crazy times together and we have grieved as we have lost one of our number. I have lost a lot of friends over the years, far too many.

A friend will stand by you of this I am certain, but that does not mean they will not criticise you or hold you to account. My best friends have shown this kind of love to me during my life. In fact sometimes your best friend is the one who is unafraid to call you out when you are wrong, when no one else will. This is the kind of friend who will help you learn life’s lessons.

Emerson also wrote, “Let us approach our friend with an audacious trust in the truth of his heart.”

This brings to mind the following tale:

From "The Heart of the Enlightened A Book of Story Meditation: 250 stories from many religions and cultures on spirituality" by Anthony DeMello

"There was once a rabbi who was revered by the people as a man of God. Not a day went by when a crowd of people wasn't standing at his door seeking advice or healing or the holy man's blessing. And each time the rabbi spoke, the people would hang on his lips, drinking in his every word.

"There was, however, in the audience a disagreeable fellow who never missed a chance to contradict the master. He would observe the rabbi's weaknesses and make fun of his defects to the dismay of the disciples, who began to look on him as the devil incarnate.

"Well, one day the 'devil' took ill and died. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief. Outwardly they looked appropriately solemn but in their hearts they were glad for no longer would the master's inspiring talks be interrupted or his behavior criticized by this disrespectful heretic.

"So the people were surprised to see the master plunged in genuine grief at the funeral. When asked by a disciple later if he was mourning over the eternal fate of the dead man, he said, 'No, no. Why should I mourn over our friend who is now in heaven? It was for myself I was grieving. That man was the only friend I had. Here I am surrounded by people who revere me. He was the only one who challenged me. I fear that with him gone, I shall stop growing.' And as he said these words, the master burst into tears."

A friend helps you become a better person, certainly my friends have helped me to do so, they have spurred me on by their example and encouragement and occasional criticism. This was a central claim of Aristotle’s “Ethics” who envisioned an escalating competition in goodness. He suggested that people try to do their best so as to be valued and respected by their friends thus inspiring them to do likewise.

Friendship is a key component of Buddhism. This is illustrated in the following tale a friend recently sent me:

One day while the Buddha was out walking with his attendant Ananda, who declared, “Teacher, to have companions and comrades on the great way is so amazing! I have come to realise that friendship is fully half of an authentic spiritual life.” They continued walking in silence when eventually the Buddha responded. “No, dear one. Without companions and comrades, no one can live into the deep, finding the true harmonies of life, to achieve authentic wisdom. To say it simply, friendship is the whole of the spiritual life.”

Could this be true? Is friendship the whole of the spiritual life?

Jesus said to his disciples, in John’s Gospel “I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything.” To me this what a true relationship with God is about, friendship. Something that we are meant to mirror in our lives. This if you like is the Kingdom coming alive in our lives. We gain knowledge of the spiritual life through living in such an intimate relationship with God, with life and with one another.

I’m with the Buddha and Jesus, I believe that friendship is the whole of the spiritual life. In fact to live spiritually is to truly be a friend to life. This is how knowledge is truly revealed. This is the kingdom of love, coming alive in our lives. This is how we make our lives a scared space. This is how we manifest love in our lives, by being a friend to life. This is what being a part of a spiritual community is. Becoming a friend to life and to all that we meet.

It begins with radical acceptance. To accept those we meet as they are, exactly as they are. This does not mean we don’t point out when someone is in the wrong, no it just means we love and accept them right or wrong. It’s also about raising one another up through our example. You see by being the best we can be, in loving friendship, we automatically encourage our friends to be the best version of themselves that they too can be.

So my friends I invite you to join with me in the sacred space of friendship. I invite you to remember the friends you have known in your lives, the ones that touched and sometimes broke your hearts, the ones who accepted you just as you are and the ones who inspired you to be the best you, you could be. I also invite you to be the best fiend you can be to life and thus inspire all that you meet on your journey through life, to be the best version of themselves that they can be too.

Let’s become good friends, not just friends, not merely friends…Let us become friends to one another and friends to life…

I'm going to with this lovely tale from a short term friendship from Kent Nerburn ...some friends are just passing through...

From "Small Graces: The Quiet Gifts of Everyday Life" by Kent Nerburn

“A Neighbour and a Friend”

"I see her standing in her front yard, glowering. She is jabbing at a patch of offending leaves with a rake.

Myra is ornery, hard to like. Raised on the plains of North Dakota, she asks no quarter and gives none. The world as she sees it is full of fools, damn fools, and crooks. I am not sure into which category I fall. Our relationship has been an uneasy truce. Though we are neighbours, we have never become close.

“She had a hard life. She’s got a good heart,” I tell myself. “Treat her with kindness.” But it is not so easy. She turns every conversation to herself, berates people that I know to be gentle and generous, and shoots at cats with buckshot.

I would dismiss her altogether if it were not for Craig, and the lesson he taught me long ago.

Craig passed through my life briefly but intensely – much the way he did everything. He was one of those people who brought energy and life into any room he entered. He had an uncanny ability to focus his entire attention on you while you were talking, so you suddenly felt more important and more responsible than you had before he was listening. He made you better by being around him. People loved him.

One autumn day we were sitting together; half talking and half working on some now forgotten projects for our graduate degrees. I was staring out the window when I noticed one of my professors crossing the street. He had been away all summer and we had not parted on good terms. I had taken great offence at some suggestion he had made, and had in turn given great offence in my answer. We had not seen each other since that day.

“Damn it,” I said to Craig. “I don’t want to see him.”

“Why not?” Craig asked.

“We don’t get along,” I said. “The guy just doesn’t like me.”

Craig looked down at the passing figure. “Maybe you’ve got it wrong,” he said. “Maybe you’re the one who’s turning away, and you’re just doing that because you’re afraid. He probably thinks you don’t like him, so he’s not friendly. People like people who like them. It’s that simple. Someone’s got to break the cycle.”

His words smarted. I walked hesitantly down the stairs into the parking lot. I greeted my professor warmly and asked how his summer had gone. He looked at me, genuinely surprised. He put his arm over my shoulder. We walked off together talking. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Craig at the window smiling broadly.

It was so simple, yet I had never seen it. I was coming to all my encounters with a fear that others were judging me, when in fact, they were worrying about how I would judge them. We were all living in fear of each other’s judgement, while the empty space between us was waiting to be filled by a simple gesture of honest caring.

Craig understood this. He knew that all we need is to open our hearts and show a genuine concern for others and what is important in their lives.

That was what made him so special. He basked in people like basking in sunlight. Their lives warmed him and they loved sharing themselves with him.

Myra has gathered the offending leaves and dispatched them to a pile in the corner of her yard.

“Damn leaves,” she says as I pass.
“A conspiracy between God and gravity,” I respond.
Then I think.
“That’s a pretty sweater,” I say.
She snorts.
“If I didn’t have a wife,” I continue,” we’d go out dancing.”
She snorts again. I continue on my way. But as I pass, I see her push an errant strand of hair back into place and adjust the collar on her sweater.
She looks around to make sure that no one was watching, then returns to her raking.

Blue Moments: Epiphany Moments

"The Gift of the Blue Moment," an excerpt from “SMALL GRACES” by Kent Nerburn

Her garden has fallen to ruin. Irene is old now, maybe ninety. Her memory has fled, leaving her eyes like lights in an empty room. I always try to say “hello” to her when I see her. She is guileless, full of wonder, a child in awe of the universe.

Her garden used to be the most beautiful around. She took such pleasure in tending its flowers and plants. She and my wife would share knowledge of bulbs and buds.
There is no such knowledge in Irene now. Her eyes are watching other worlds. When she answers at all, it is in response to questions only she can hear.
I listen to her closely. What remains alive in the dim chambers of her memory?
She thinks I am her son, goes on about her mother. A story about a little dog. It makes no sense.
But this is not about sense. She has woven other tapestries from the threads of her life. She is responsive to other colors, moved by other winds.
I would leave, but there are echoes here.

I am carried back to a time years ago when I was living in the medieval university town of Marburg, Germany.

I was 25, penniless, alone, frightened, and ill. I was living in a garret. I had no friends and I was far from family. My days were spent working in an antique restoration shop of an embittered alcoholic man, and my nights were spent wandering the streets watching the passing lives of people who neither spoke my language nor knew of my cares.
I had never been so alone.
The mother of the man for whom I worked was a very insightful woman. As a child of twelve she had watched the Nazis come into her classroom and take the Jewish children away. No one spoke of it and class went on as if nothing had happened. But day by day, night by night, she saw her friends and playmates disappear.
She became a watcher and a survivor.
For months she watched me struggle with the demons that were driving me. She would see me sitting with the neighborhood children, drawing cartoons in the shadow of the castle. She would see me staring vacantly into the distance when I thought no one was watching.
One day she took me aside.

“I watch you,” she said. “I see the loneliness in your eyes. I watch your heart running away. You are like so many people. When life is hard, they try to look over the difficulty into the future. Or they long for the happiness of the past. Time is their enemy. The day they are living is their enemy. They are dead to the moment. They live only for the future or the past. But that is wrong.
“You must learn to seek the blue moment,” she said.
She sat down beside me and continued. “The blue moment can happen any time or any place. It is a moment when you are truly alive to the world around you. It can be a moment of love or a moment of terror. You may not know it when it happens. It may only reveal itself in memory. But if you are patient and open your heart, the blue moment will come. My childhood classmates are dead, but I have the blue moment when we looked in each other’s eyes.”
I turned and stared into her lined and gentle face.
“Listen carefully to me,” she continued. “This is a blue moment. I really believe it. We will never forget it. At this moment you and I are closer to each other than to any other human beings. Seize this moment. Hold it. Don’t turn from it. It will pass and we will be as we were. But this is a blue moment, and the blue moments string together like pearls to make up your life. It is up to you to find them. It is up to you to make them. It is up to you to bring them alive in others.”
She brushed her hand through my hair and gave me a pat on the side of the head.
“Always seek the blue moment,” she said, and returned to her work.

Irene’s mind is wandering now. A little dog. Her sister. Names I’ve never heard.
I smile and nod. She smiles back and continues. The blue moments are calling to her, filling her memories with light.

I recently attended “Summer School” at the Nightingale centre at Great Hucklow. This year’s theme was “This changes everything”. It was a fantastic week and one in which it was a pleasure to participate in. I gave a theme talk and led a “Singing Meditation”.

Here is a audio recording of the "Theme Talk" I led. Here I talk about many of my "Epiphany moments", moments that changed everything. Just click on the link to hear it...

This changes everything

 I also participated in an engagement group led superbly by Rev Margaret Kirk and Rev Cody Coyne. The title of the group was “Taken at the Flood – Epiphany Moments”. The title comes from Shakespear’s Julius Caesar Act 4 scene 3

Brutus:

There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

Julius Caesar Act 4, scene 3, 218–224

Words suggesting we must go with the flow of life, that this is where the power is. If we do so we can make each moment precious, we can bring it to life. That each moment can become momentous and perhaps life changing. The key is to “ learn to seek the blue moment,” that Kent Nerburn spoke of in the earlier reading and to string these moments together and bring them alive in the lives of others.

The purpose of the engagement group was to encourage us to look at our lives and uncover life changing, epiphany moments. Now an epiphany is a moment when you suddenly feel that you understand, or suddenly become conscious of, something that is important to you. It can be in the nature of a sudden and profound religious or spiritual experience or less dramatic. I suspect that the “Blue moments” described in Kent Nerburn’s earlier reading are another way of naming such moments.

Now Epiphany was originally understood and is celebrated as the 12th Day of Christmas, when the Magi saw the Christ child and were filled with the presence of the divine, an epiphany. The understanding has broadened over time. We can all experience them. We can all experience moments when we glimpse the essential nature of things in ways that change the course of life dramatically and powerfully for the better. We can all experience moments of sudden discovery and or revelation when things seem to seamlessly fall in place and a new clarity is gained. We can all experience epiphanies.

During the week we were given a variety of tools to explore our lives. The image that they came up with was to describe our lives like a journey through a forest, a deep dense forest, in which there were moments of clearing and illumination where sudden realisations would come. Throughout the week many “blue moments”, many epiphanies came to mind. As I traced my life I saw how these moments seemed to stitch together. The moments of illumination have seemingly accelerated in recent years. I have shared many of these moments with over the years in my "blogging. I wonder as you look back over your lives if you too can uncover similar moments in your lives. What have been your epiphanies your “blue moments”? Can you see a thread through them, do they seem to seamlessly stitch together? Perhaps you could think about them in the coming days and weeks.

As I look back at my life I can bear witness to many “blue moments”, moments of illumination or as I prefer see them moments of awakening. You see every moment our lives can become such moments if we would learn to seek them and learn to bring them alive in our lives and in the lives of others. We just need to be alive and awake to these possibilities.

During the week many sources of material were shared. One being extracts from “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” by Carl Jung from chapter “First Years” pgs 21 and 22

Here Jung is recalling experiences from his early childhood, epiphany moments that shaped his whole life. Moments of illumination, moments of wholeness and connection when he felt safe and protected and finally at one with life and moments that shaped his whole life. He wrote:

“One memory comes up which is perhaps the earliest of my life, and is indeed only a rather hazy impression. I am lying in a pram, in the shadow of a tree. It is a fine, warm summer day, the sky blue, and golden sunlight darting through green leaves. The hood of the pram has been left up. I have just awakened to the glorious beauty of the day, and have a sense of indescribable well-being. I see the sun glistening through the leaves and blossoms of the bushes. Everything is wholly wonderful, colourful, and splendid.”

“From a somewhat later period comes another memory. My mother took me to the Thurgen to visit friends, who had a castle on Lake Constance. I could not be dragged away from the water. The waves from the steamer washed up to the shore, the sun glistened on the water, and the sand under the water had been curled into little ridges by the waves. The lake stretched away and away into the distance. This expanse of water was an inconceivable pleasure to me, an incomparable splendour. At that time the idea became fixed in my mind that I must live near a lake; without water, I thought, nobody could live at all.”

Seemingly these are moments, epiphany moments, “blue moments” that helped to shape him and which he carried with him all of his life. I remember as I read these accounts familiar words from William Wordsworth came to mind and the following words from poem “Prelude” that has been singing in my soul these last few years. The phrase is “spots of time”. Wordsworth wrote:

“There are in our existence spots of time,

That with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating virtue, whence–depressed
By false opinion and contentious thought,
Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,
In trivial occupations, and the round
Of ordinary intercourse–our minds
Are nourished and invisibly repaired;
A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,
That penetrates, enables us to mount,
When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.”

William Wordsworth, The Prelude (Book XI, ls 258-278)

“Spots of time” are “blue moments”, epiphanies, those moments when life not only feeds but truly nourishes us on a deep, deep level, deeper than the marrow of our bones; moments when the common becomes uncommon,; moments when the veils we create ourselves seem to slip away; moments when we seemingly see beyond the ordinary; moments when we experience reality on a deeper level.

These “spots of time” are sacred moments that are made holy by their mysterious ability to nourish us and perhaps even repair us in body, mind, heart and soul. These moments are so special because they seem so rare. They are a kind of grace; they seemingly come to us, from a place somewhere beyond ourselves.

These moments can happen anywhere. For Wordsworth these “spots of time” occurred primarily in nature. We all experience them in different ways, in different states and in different settings. Those moments when time seemingly stands still; those moments that touch us at the core of our being; those moments that transform our lives; those magic moments. Time seemingly becomes compressed or concentrated in these moments when the senses become heightened, when life seemingly has a deeper meaning. Moments when life becomes denser and deeper. These are not necessarily supernatural moments by the way; no they are firmly grounded in reality.

In these moments time appears to be slowing down, although obviously it does not. Time does not so much stop as become compressed, the moment becomes concentrated. There just seems to be more of life in that moment, but it lasts just as long. Maybe the moment is deeper, not longer. Time is time after all.

When I look back at my life I can think of those moments when deep powerful meaning has emerged seemingly out of nothingness and all of life has felt connected. I can see a thread running through these moments, these “blue moments”, as Nerburn wrote in the extract at the beginning of this "blogspot":

“Listen carefully to me,” she continued. “This is a blue moment. I really believe it. We will never forget it. At this moment you and I are closer to each other than to any other human beings. Seize this moment. Hold it. Don’t turn from it. It will pass and we will be as we were. But this is a blue moment, and the blue moments string together like pearls to make up your life. It is up to you to find them. It is up to you to make them. It is up to you to bring them alive in others.”

We have all of us experienced such moments in our lives, moments that we carry with us, throughout our lives. Moments when time has seemingly stood still, moments that have changed us or as I prefer to see it woken us up or woken something up within us. If we look back through our lives perhaps we can see a pattern form, a thread or string running through it all, or perhaps not. I certainly can when looking back at my own life.

The question is though, what can we do with them? And can we “bring them alive in others”?

I believe so. I also believe it is our task to do so. This is where the meaning comes in our lives. This is the thread and this is how we become a part of the Divine, the “Golden Thread”.

So this is what I’d like you to do. To look back through your life and recall such moments. Moments like Nerburn, Jung and Wordsworth described, moments that have stayed with you. Perhaps you could look for a pattern in moments that either woke you up and or put you to sleep and perhaps think of ways in which you can bring these moments alive in others.

Seasonal Inspiration 5

Happy Christmas. May the spirit of the season be with you this day and in all your days to come.

This is the fifth collection of material based around the Christmas season that has inspired me...I hope it fills your soul to overflowing as it has mine...

The first piece highlights the spiritual importance about waiting, about allowing the season to settle into us and to prepare ourselves for the magic that is to come, but to do so in a watchful and wakeful sense. I have come to believe that in order to truly experience the spirit of Christmas we need to take time to look over the lives we have lived and the world in which we live today; to examine our whole lives, both the light and the dark; to take time in the dark and prepare ourselves fully to open up to what has been, what is now and what might just be; to find the light that we can travel and live by and to not only follow that which is beyond us but open ourselves fully to it and invite it to grow within and through us and to wander on.

“Waiting” by Burton Carley

Teenager Mary waited. She waited to know the meaning of her pregnancy. She waited for the moral judgement and its shunning effect. She waited for the verdict from a man she hardly knew except for his reputation for righteousness.

Troubled Joseph waited. He waited to understand the meaning of Mary’s pregnancy. He waited and he knew not why, for it was clear what was expected of him. He waited to quietly end the planned wedding.

Mary and Joseph waited and both dreamed. Mary dreamed of wanting her child and how that child might have a future. Joseph dreamed of not keeping the letter of the law but keeping Mary. Now they found themselves waiting to arrive at Bethlehem on a journey they did not want to take, compelled by dreams and a census.

In the overflowing town, Mary and Joseph waited for a place to stay. They waited as all parents wait for the birth of a child. They waited without knowing how the mystery of their dreams would unfold. They waited while listening to the cry of the newborn, relieved and strangely joyful.

Mary and Joseph waited and watched as their first-born grew in stature. Mary waited as she saw keener perceptions revealed in his eyes. Joseph waited and watched as he saw in the driving of a nail some grace and strength beyond the rough-hewn skills of a carpenter.

The couple waited as the spirit took their child. They waited in the destiny of dreams and decisions, still wondering what they had done. They waited in hope and fear, as parents do, for him to find his place in the world.

And the child who was theirs and not theirs at the same time, could not wait. He went into the world seeing its wonder and sorrow, and he urged those about him not to wait any more for their place in it. Everywhere he went he carried with him the experience of love that waited for him and would not cast him out. He waited with compassion for the least and welcomed them, giving them a holy place, all the while remembering Bethlehem.

...This piece explores the wandering nature of the Christmas mythos, suggesting that this is a universal experience and that we spiritual seekers today are perhaps still wandering and a little lost...Aren't we all still looking for that star? Aren't we all still searching for Hope?


“Christmas Eve” by Kathleen McTigue

All these centuries after the story of the star,
the wise men, the baby born in the stable
And the angels singing him in with their mysterious alleluias,
we are lost and wandering still.
We stumble at every step over our own greed or need, our ignorance or fear.

Bethlehem is not a gentle city tonight.

Its people are wise in the ways of the clenched fist, the broken truce.
Marked like them with the scars of ignorance and sorrow we come to Christmas baffled as any shepherd by the music that sounds so high above us, the syntax foreign to our sceptical hearts.

Yet we try to speak the language of hope, lifting ourselves toward the future with a dream of what yet may be.

We remember that the heart of Christmas is hope:

hope that a child. Born homeless and in danger, may grow up to be wise and kind;
that the stars, serene in their darkness, have something to teach;
that there are mysteries around us, among us, singing thereal harmonies.

New hope in ourselves rise then, too:

That we will learn, one day,
and in the nick of time, how to walk our paths with truth and justice,
how to bring peace to life on this earth, how to sing for ourselves the angels’ songs of praise, wonder and joy.


This next piece is about discovering what me might really want for Christmas..."What do you want?"

“All I want for Christmas” by David S. Blanchard

This is the time of the year when we ask – and are asked – what do you want? Shall it be another tie, a new pair of gloves, a book? We ask and we answer. We shop, we wrap we ship. And the season usually comes and goes without us ever really answering the question: What do you want?

Some of the things we want we might be afraid to ask for because we can’t be sure what we would do if we got them. Many things we want we don’t know enough to ask for. Most things we can’t ask for because we know no one can give them to us.

Most people ask the question without any interest in really knowing, yet it can be a question for each of us to hold on to for a time in mind and heart. What do we want? Not what would we like, but what do we want to give us a deeper connection with life and to help us give expression to our love? Not a long list of things, but a sense of clarity that illuminates what it is we are doing and why. Not outward signs of generosity, but an internal sense of caring that guides us to give in any season, not just the reflex of always giving, but also the courage to truly answer some of those people who ask us, “What do you want?”

Dare to answer. Think of the things you want, and the things that others close to you would want.

Imagine the ways they might be given and received.

What do you want?

The next pieces are about Angels, they are amongst us you know. The first is an example of how we might become angels. Maybe this is what we really want; maybe this is what we ought to be preparing ourselves for. We can become angels to those we meet in our daily lives and we can hear the angels as they speak in our daily interactions. All we need to do is prepare ourselves. Maybe this is what we are really waiting for; maybe this is what we are truly watching out for. Maybe?

Maybe we become angles by being both watches and waiters, like those shepherds in the ancient story “that glorious song of old”. Maybe we do this by preparing ourselves both to hear those voices that carry that universal message of love and to also become those messengers in our daily interactions. Maybe all we need to do is prepare ourselves each and every day and to be ready, because we never know the next encounter might be the one that changes our lives and or the person which we encounter, just as it for Kent Nerburn in that timeless and universal story that follows.

“The Cab Ride I’ll Never Forget” by Kent Nerburn From Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace: Living in the Spirit of the Prayer of St. Francis

There was a time in my life twenty years ago when I was driving a cab for a living. It was a cowboy’s life, a gambler’s life, a life for someone who wanted no boss, constant movement and the thrill of a dice roll every time a new passenger got into the cab.

What I didn’t count on when I took the job was that it was also a ministry. Because I drove the night shift, my cab became a rolling confessional. Passengers would climb in, sit behind me in total anonymity and tell me of their lives.

We were like strangers on a train, the passengers and I, hurtling through the night, revealing intimacies we would never have dreamed of sharing during the brighter light of day. I encountered people whose lives amazed me, ennobled me, made me laugh and made me weep. And none of those lives touched me more than that of a woman I picked up late on a warm August night.

I was responding to a call from a small brick fourplex in a quiet part of town. I assumed I was being sent to pick up some partiers, or someone who had just had a fight with a lover, or someone going off to an early shift at some factory for the industrial part of town.

When I arrived at the address, the building was dark except for a single light in a ground-floor window. Under these circumstances, many drivers would just honk once or twice, wait a short minute, then drive away. Too many bad possibilities awaited a driver who went up to a darkened building at 2:30 in the morning.

But I had seen too many people trapped in a life of poverty who depended on the cab as their only means of transportation. Unless a situation had a real whiff of danger, I always went to the door to find the passenger. It might, I reasoned, be someone who needs my assistance. Would I not want a driver to do the same if my mother or father had called for a cab?

So I walked to the door and knocked.

“Just a minute,” answered a frail and elderly voice. I could hear the sound of something being dragged across the floor. After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman somewhere in her 80s stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like you might see in a costume shop or a Goodwill store or in a 1940s movie. By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The sound had been her dragging it across the floor.

The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.

“Would you carry my bag out to the car?” she said. “I’d like a few moments alone. Then, if you could come back and help me? I’m not very strong.”

I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman. She took my arm, and we walked slowly toward the curb. She kept thanking me for my kindness.

“It’s nothing,” I told her. “I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated.”

“Oh, you’re such a good boy,” she said. Her praise and appreciation were almost embarrassing.
When we got in the cab, she gave me an address, then asked, “Could you drive through downtown?”

“It’s not the shortest way,” I answered.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” she said. “I’m in no hurry. I’m on my way to a hospice.”

I looked in the rearview mirror. Her eyes were glistening. “I don’t have any family left,” she continued. “The doctor says I should go there. He says I don’t have very long.”

I quietly reached over and shut off the meter. “What route would you like me to go?” I asked.

For the next two hours we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they had first been married. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl. Sometimes she would have me slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, “I’m tired. Let’s go now.”

We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico. Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. Without waiting for me, they opened the door and began assisting the woman. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her; perhaps she had phoned them right before we left.

I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase up to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.

“How much do I owe you?” she asked, reaching into her purse.

“Nothing,” I said.

“You have to make a living,” she answered.

“There are other passengers,” I responded.

Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held on to me tightly. “You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,” she said. “Thank you.”

There was nothing more to say. I squeezed her hand once, then walked out into the dim morning light. Behind me, I could hear the door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life.

I did not pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly, lost in thought. For the remainder of that day, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away? What if I had been in a foul mood and had refused to engage the woman in conversation? How many other moments like that had I missed or failed to grasp?

We are so conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unawares. When that woman hugged me and said that I had brought her a moment of joy, it was possible to believe that I had been placed on earth for the sole purpose of providing her with that last ride.

I do not think that I have ever done anything in my life that was any more important.

...So who was the angel in this story? I suspect they both were...they both encounted an angel, one of God's messengers...

I love the following reflection by Billy Collins on questions we might want to ask about angels...Do we ever ask them?

“Angels” by Billy Collins

Of all the questions you might want to ask
about angels, the only one you ever hear
is how many can dance on the head of a pin.

No curiosity about how they pass the eternal time
besides circling the Throne chanting in Latin
or delivering a crust of bread to a hermit on earth
or guiding a boy and girl across a rickety wooden bridge.

Do they fly through God’s body and come out singing?
Do they swing like children from the hinges
of the spirit world saying their names backwards and forwards?
Do they sit alone in little gardens changing colors?

What about their sleeping habits, the fabric of their robes,
their diet of unfiltered divine light?
What goes on inside their luminous heads? Is there a wall
these tall presences can look over and see hell?

If an angel fell off a cloud, would he leave a hole
in a river and would the hole float along endlessly
filled with the silent letters of every angelic word?

If an angel delivered the mail, would he arrive
in a blinding rush of wings or would he just assume
the appearance of the regular mailman and
whistle up the driveway reading the postcards?

No, the medieval theologians control the court.
The only question you ever hear is about
the little dance floor on the head of a pin
where halos are meant to converge and drift invisibly.

It is designed to make us think in millions,
billions, to make us run out of numbers and collapse
into infinity, but perhaps the answer is simply one:
one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet,
a small jazz combo working in the background.
She sways like a branch in the wind, her beautiful
eyes closed, and the tall thin bassist leans over
to glance at his watch because she has been dancing
forever, and now it is very late, even for musicians.

The next piece explores the giving of gifts rather than merely presents. It speaks powerfully to me, right in the soul of me. Christmas is about the hope and potential of what human life can be. We can bring that love alive in our lives, but it aint easy. It takes real courage to rise above the cynicism of our age and time. Hope takes real courage. Maybe this is the true gift of Christmas, I have come to believe this to be so.

We can bring the gift of Christmas alive and it comes by giving our whole hearts, whole heartedly. In so doing we can once again truly know and experience joy, but not in childish way, in a childlike and yet mature way.

You see the true gift of Christmas is to truly experience joy, something that can easily be lost in life. Joy you see is at the heart of all of this. Joy is the real gift of Christmas and it is the joy that so many people have given me in my life that I need to bring into being and thus allow the gift of Christmas to incarnate in the present moment.

Whatever I have been given materially in my life has never lasted and has certainly never enabled me to connect to all that is, all that has ever been and all that has ever been. That said the joy and love I have been gifted throughout my days, when I take time to really feel it, has truly allowed me to not only celebrate but experience every precious moment.

This is the gift, to bring joy to our world, because by gum it needs it…I think David Blanchard describes this beautifully in the following piece...

“The Gift” by David Blanchard

Sometimes I think I can teach my children things that will make life better for them as they grow up. I want to believe I can protect them, or that there is some way for me to do their learning for them. This line of thinking is routinely floored, not because I am not always the best teacher. Despite my efforts to avoid repeating mistakes, I’m still learning things I thought I knew. Just last year I mistook a gift for a present.

This gift was a homemade potholder woven of colourful scraps of cloth. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t beautiful. It wasn’t particularly unusual. Accepting it as a present, I placed it into service besides the stove.

Four days before Christmas I was called to officiate at a memorial service for a friend. Talking with her five–and nine–year–old daughters, I asked what things they liked to remember about their mom. What things they did together? What had she taught them? They were busy, deep at work on a gift-making project, but they expressed some memories that mattered, and recounted some gifts their mother had shared with them; making cookies…snuggling in bed…being their Brownie leader…planting bulbs. Then the nine year old looked down and said, “And she taught us how to make these potholders!”

Of course! A gift! How could I miss it?

Presents are the sort of things that fit on lists, complete with size and color preference. Presents are the sort of things we are smart enough to ask for. Gifts are altogether different. We don’t usually think to ask for them, perhaps because we think we don’t deserve them, or don’t want to risk expressing the need. Maybe we don’t even recognize the need ourselves. Gifts differ from presents because no matter what form they take, they always represent something greater, something deeper, something more enduring; they are about things like love. Respect and affirmation.

Gifts given are often woven into some simple token. And sometimes protecting our won comfort, we give them in disguise. They can be easy to miss.

Now I try to give more gifts than presents, and without too much camouflage. Be gift bearers yourselves. Give them along with presents, and look carefully for the gifts others are trying to give you.


...Finally here are a couple of pieces that I suspect are at the heart of this day...If we can do it for a season, maybe we can for eternity...


“To Live a Life – Not Merely a Season” by John Haynes Holmes

The wonderful thing about Christmas is that it fulfils all our dreams. It suspends our indifference and selfishness and fears and hates, and makes us for an instant spiritually kin. No one must be hungry or homeless on this day, no child forlorn, no heart forsaken, no race despised, no nation outlawed.

Christmas is the demonstration that no hope is vain, that the highest vision may be made real. It is as tho a spell were cast upon us, to save us...from our cruelties and lusts and make us ministers of love. The spell is fleeting – it passes quickly! But this means not at all that it is an illusion but that, real for this one day, it may be caught by the spiritual conjuration of our hearts and made real forever.

This our task – to seize and hold and perpetuate the Christmastide! To live a life, and not merely a single day or a season, which is delivered by prejudice and pride, hostility and hate, and committed to understanding and compassion, and good will! Then there will be no more Christian and pagan, Jew and gentile, black and white, native and alien, or any division – but only the human family, one as God is one, and heirs of that promise.

“If only for the season” by Edward Searl

If only for the Season…
Let us banish cynicism
and welcome wonder.

If only for the Season…
Let us downplay our differences
and discover the bonds
of common origins and continuing cause.

If only for the Season…
Let us set aside worry
and smile and laugh and sing.

If only for the Season…
Let us deny apathy and indifference
and truly live by loving.

If only for the Season…
Let us subvert covetousness and jealousy
and be both good gift getters and givers.

If only for the Season…
The brief season
of light,
life,
love,

Let us be wise enough to be
a little foolish
about candlelight and children and
matters of the heart…

If only for the season


...I wish you a very Happy Christmas, let's try and keep it's spirit alive throughout the whole year...

Encountering Angels

Please watch this video clip before reading the rest of the blog...it's a re-enactment of an encounter Kent Nerburn had when he was a taxi driver. He wrote about it in his wonderful book  “Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace: Living in the Spirit of the Prayer of St. Francis"

As each year passes I seem to believe in Christmas more and more. Far more than I ever did as a child. I rejected it all at a pretty young age and became the cynical sniper dissecting it all and saying it’s all humbug…Bah Humbug, Bah Humbug, Bah Humbug…

I believe in Christmas, the soul of Christmas, the spirit of Christmas, the heart of Christmas the religion of Christmas more today than I ever did at any other moment in my life. Today I believe everything about Christmas and a whole lot more than everything that we think we know.

Now don’t get me wrong here I am not suggesting that I believe that everything that the Gospel accounts recounted actually happened. I really can’t answer that, I wasn’t there. Were any of us who argue about it actually there? No of course not. What I mean when I say I believe in Christmas more today than I have ever done before is that I believe in the universal mythos that lies in the soul of the story. I believe in the story and what it has to teach humanity regardless of time and or space.

Waldemar Argow put it near perfectly when he wrote

“Christmas is not a day, really. It is light, I think. It comes when days are shortest and darkest and hearts despair, and it reminds us that winter death is a temporary thing and that light and life are eternal.

And it is hope. For it demonstrates how kind and generous and self-forgetting human beings can be. And we know that what people can be sometimes, they can, if they will, be most times.”

“And assuredly, it is love. Its symbol is a newborn babe, warm and safe in his mother’s arms. To be sure, he was born a long, long time ago. Yet through the ages his influence as he became a man and the truths he taught and the love he incarnated have proved stronger and dearer in matters that matter most than all the kings and armies and governments of history. Oh, whatever else it may be, Christmas is indeed love.”

...this is what I mean when I say I believe in Christmas more today, than I ever did before...

Yes I believe in Christmas more today than I ever did before. I also believe we need Christmas more now today than at any other time before, for we mock the bells at Christmas time probably more today than we ever did before. The problem I suspect is that we do not hear the message at the heart of Christmas…Maybe we have forgotten how to listen or perhaps we have forgotten how to deliver the message…

And who are the messengers of Christmas? Well the angels of course. Now there are angels throughout the Christmas mythos as they are throughout the Bible. By the way they are not just in the Judeo Christian tradition, you will find them in others too.

In Islam they are depicted as messengers of Allah. Belief in angels is one of the six articles of the Islamic faith. The Baha’i faith depicts angels as beings who have been released from the bondages of self and become endowed with the attributes of the spiritual and therefore revealers of God’s Love and Grace. In Buddhism it was a Brahmin angel that instructed the Buddha that after receiving enlightenment he must go teach to others what he had learnt. In Zoroastrianism angels are not seen as messengers of the divine but are instead associated with different aspects of the divine creation, in this sense they are similar to the Hindu Deva’s. Zoroastrians believe that each person has their own guardian angel.

Angels or their equivalent are found in many other traditions too, both ancient and modern. Belief in angels is not some relic from the past that has been dismissed in the modern age. I have met many people in my life who have said that they have had encounters with angels.

So who or what are angels? Well I believe that they are the messengers of that spirit that Waldemer Argo mentioned earlier. They carry the message that light can be found in the darkness, that hope can overcome any despair, that love can incarnate in all our hearts and that peace on earth and good will to all can once again come. Our task is to listen and to look for them, to ensure that “the ears of our ear are awake and they eyes of our eyes are open.”

A friend of mine said something rather lovely to me at 6.30am this Tuesday morning, just before we began our weekly meditation. He said “You know the birds sing much more joyfully and loudly round here.” They do you know and as I left our meditation time together, just after the sun had once again risen I noticed those winter roses in the gardens of the chapel…Messengers of love and hope if there are any.

I went to a coffee shop in town after the meditation as as we talked about all manner of things, some spiritual and some definitely not so I heard in the background one of my favourite Christmas Carols“It Came Upon the Midnight Clear”, by Edmund Hamilton Sears,

Edward Hamilton Sears was an American Unitarian minister from the mid-nineteenth century. He wrote "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" after meditating on the account of the Nativity in Luke’s Gospel and it would appear it was the angel's message to the shepherds that spoke to him.  He was touched deeply by the message of peace that the angels brought, as he opened himself up to “that glorious song of old”.For him it was a song as much for his time and not merely of the past; it was not just a song for the shepherds or Mary and her babe in arms. Instead he saw contained within it  a song that was a message to those of his time and place who were engaged in war. It was a message of peace and love for all humanity. It was a kind of lament about the lack of peace and goodwill on earth.

I would suggest that this song applies perhaps even more today than it did even then. There is very little sign of peace on earth and good will to all now than even in Sears time. If only we could hear the angels as they sing "O hush the noise, ye men of strife and hear the angels sing."

At the beginning of this blogspot is a re-enactment of an account from “Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace: Living in the Spirit of the Prayer of St. Francis by Kent Nerburn. He recounts a  time when he was a taxi driver trying to scratch a living, of an encounter with a woman whose life was coming to an end and who he was taking on her final journey to a hospice. Nerburn says that he was deeply affected by this fare and described it as perhaps the most important encounter of his life.

Surely this was an encounter with an angel, although it is not exactly clear who was the giver and who was the receiver here. I suspect, like many such encounters it worked both ways. They were both givers and receivers of peace on earth and goodwill to all, both brought hope to the other and both were deliverers of love.

At the end of the short film Nerburn reflects that "Compassion is a learnt skill. Through empathy with another person's situation you can exercise compassion and you can give something too them. People feel they are are living in a mean world. We're selling self-reliance as a virtue and really what we are selling is a kind of selfishness. Giving is ultimately an act of creativity. It's the act of creating something new where there was nothing before. You're loving the world into existence when you give. And that to me is the artistry of ordinary living" Now surely this is the voice of an angel, surely here is being delivered a message of love and hope. Here is the message of Christmas that I believe in more and more each year, nay each day, nay each moment.

I believe that we can all become both the receiver and deliverer of the messengers of love, just as Kent Nerburn was.That said in order to do so we need to be open and alive and awake, to those angel voices however and wherever they speak. We need to prepare ourselves for them. We need to truly become channels of love and peace.

We may not be able to bring peace on all the earth but we can do something about our own little worlds. We can become angels to those we meet in our daily lives and we can hear the angels as they speak in our daily interactions. All we need to do is prepare ourselves.

And how can this be achieved? Well we do so by becoming both watches and waiters, like those shepherds in the ancient story “that glorious song of old”. We need to prepare ourselves both to hear those voices that carry that universal message of love and to also become those messengers in our daily interactions. We need to prepare ourselves each and every day and to be ready, because we never know the next encounter might be the one that changes our lives and or the person which we encounter, just like it did for Kent in that timeless and universal story we heard earlier.

We are here for a reason…each and every one of us…that reason I believe is to both givers and receivers, to become messengers of that universal song of love…We are here to bring hope to our world…so let us become the light of the world…Let us manifest hope in our hearts, minds and souls, let us become the hope of the world…

Let us hear the messengers of love and let us sing “that glorious song of old”

The language of the heart is universal. It can break through any barrier...

The key is to listen for it and learn to express it and to let love have its way...