Falling Leaves: Loving What is Mortal

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

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

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

“What To Remember When Waking”

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

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

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

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

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

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

By David Whyte

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

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

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

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

Here is the poem:

“In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

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

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

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

nameless now.
Every year
Everything
I have ever learned

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remember as Mary wrote:

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

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

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

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

Below is a devotion based on the

 material in this "Blogspot"

Who Knows You, Who Do You Know?

"Awakening Rights"

We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are
when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved
and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed
and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time.
Our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world
but to unglove ourselves so that the door knob feels cold
and the car handle feels wet
and the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being
soft and unrepeatable.

–Mark Nepo, Book of Awakening

Last Monday I conducted the funeral service of Nev Marchbank Smith. I had only met him briefly at his brother Tony’s wedding, which I conducted at Queens Road Urmston last October, so it is fair to say he was a man I did not know. I had of course got to know Tony somewhat and of his now wife Joanne, but I did not know Nev. I met with his siblings a week before the funeral service to see what their needs were. Like most families there were some complications but I got the idea of what they wanted. They grew up in a Unitarian family and held deeply Unitarian values. There was a great deal of humour and deep love between them all and I got a good idea of what they were looking for. The family spent some time collating the story of Nev’s fascinating life and sent details to me.

The day of the service came and I held them through it telling the story of Nev’s life as I did so, bringing his character alive, warts and all and beauty spots too. The family were deeply grateful, especially for bringing their memories and stories to life. Some even commented on how happy they felt and then apologised for feeling this way. There was no need to apologise. It is a strange feeling that we often share at funeral services. Yes there is the deep grief and sadness of losing a loved and yet there is a sense of love and joy and togetherness that balances these heartbreaking feelings. The goodness at the core of life does seem to come to alive in the most challenging of times.

A few days before the service I had visited another member of the Queens Road congregation, Betty Bloor. She had attended her own sisters funeral, conducted by the minister in Hale Barns Jeff Gould. She complimented him on the service and how he seemed to know her so well, even though he didn’t. We also talked a little about preparing funeral services and the challenges of creating them for people we know and ones that we do not know. Some people like to prepare every detail and others do not. Our approach to such things perhaps reveal something of our humanity.

Now Sue conducts many funeral services, usually for people she does not know. She has a real skill though in bringing alive the person’s life, as if she did know them. It is a real challenge of our time. How do we create such rites of passage for people who we do not know, for most of us no longer belong to spiritual and or religious communities?

It got me asking a question of myself and others, who knows anybody? Who knows you and me? Who can say that they truly know themselves? If we were to create a eulogy for someone else what would we want to say about them? What would you want to say about yourself, if you were to write your own eulogy? Who would you want to speak of your life, what would you like them to say?

Who knows you, who knows who, who knows anyone? We all move through life in our own little bubbles, circling around each other and life like tiny little planetoids on which only we belong. The spiritual practices, that the great traditions taught, were meant to turn us into that inner little world so that we can know ourselves well and not live with illusion and delusion. Perhaps more importantly those same practices were also meant to bridge the gap between the self and the other, through such practices; through such practices what it is to be a mortal human is meant to be revealed. However different we may seem to be we are animated by the same breath of life. As we live by the same breath of life, we all know what it is to long, to fear, to doubt and hope. We all know joy and we all experience guilt and regret. We all know the challenges and the joys and by truly knowing ourselves and one another we can celebrate the joys and overcome the challenges. This is the “Good” that I believe is being spoken of in Genesis I. Yes life is very good indeed if we allow ourselves to truly know it; yes very good but not without challenges. The good is in the overcoming of the challenges together.

The problem is of course that due to the near death of religious community where do we uncover these practices that allow us to know ourselves and to truly know the other? For we cannot know the other if we find the practices but still stay alone in isolation. I suspect that one way to know the other and therefore truly connect with them. To truly know ourselves is to know what we in essence and waht we are in essence is what I all life is too, I have come to believe

The ancient Greeks believed that the ultimate aim for a person of virtue was to know themselves. There were many aphorism on this theme such as “The unexamined life is not worth living.” The key for the ancient Greeks was to know yourself. Now “Know thyself” has been understood in many ways but ultimately to know oneself is to know that you are mortal and live in such a way, fully a part of mortal life. In so doing you will fully play your role as a part of mortal life. They constantly guarded against the dangers of hubris, the idea that human beings were God’s. Yes we are made in the image of the Divine but we are not God’s and it is vital that we recognise our finite mortality. In many ways this is the beauty and the energy of our lives, the fact that they do not last for ever.

Know yourself, know that you are mortal. That is what it means to be truly human. The word human is etymologically linked to humility. We are not god’s we are finite, we are mortal. We cannot live wholly from ourselves, no one is totally self-reliant, self sufficient and we do not live for ever. To truly know yourself is to accept the finite nature of your humanity. This is a stepping stone to discovering yourself and your unique place in the circle of life. By knowing ourselves we not only begin to know life, but we also connect more deeply to it too, for we become less afraid.

Now this may lead to the question, what is the essence of humanity, of ourselves, of one another. Genesis I spoke of humanity being made in the image of the Divine. What does this mean? Well image, from the Latin “imago” means reflection or portrait it does not mean exactly the same. Now I believe that this passage is suggesting that each of us has something of the Divine within us, that we are a reflection of the divine and that this brings a duty to humanity to reflect this image into the world in which we live. This is a real responsibility, to reflect the divine love into life, to incarnate it to bring it to life.

I believe that most of our human problems stem from our rejection of this, from our inability to see that we are children of love, formed from love. That this Divine spark is an aspect of our very human being. Now this puts a great responsibility on we human beings, to make our lives matter in the short time that we have here on earth.

This got me thinking about what this essence might be, what it might mean. Some have called it soul, but waht on earth do we mean by soul?

I love the way that the 1996 Polish Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska imagines the soul. Something that is capable of being summoned but only in moments when we are fully attuned to receiving its charms.

A Few Words on the Soul

We have a soul at times.
No one's got it non-stop,
for keeps.

Day after day,
year after year
may pass without it.

Sometimes
it will settle for awhile
only in childhood's fears and raptures
Sometimes only in astonishment
that we are old.

It rarely lends a hand
in uphill tasks,
like moving furniture,
or lifting luggage,
or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out
whenever meat needs chopping
or forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations
it participates in one,
if even that,
since it prefers silence.

Just when our body goes from ache to pain,
it slips off-duty.

It's picky,
it doesn't like seeing us in crowds.
our hustling for a dubious advantage
and creaky machinations make it sick.

Joy and sorrow
aren't two different feelings for it.
It attends us
only when the two are joined.

We can count on it
when we're sure of nothing
and curious about everything.

Among the material objects
it favors clocks with pendulums
and mirrors, which keep on working
even when no one is looking.

It won't say where it comes from
or when it's taking off again,
though it's clearly expecting such questions.

We need it
but apparently
it needs us
for some reason too.

I’m not sure that answers the question of what we mean by soul, but then again perhaps it does. Some of us may well have strong views as the what we mean by soul, some may say there is no such thing. Certainly, to think of soul as being like the heart is not what most folk mean when they speak of it. Like so many things in life we are too fixated on the word, as Parker J Palmer has said (soul is) “a word to be held lightly, in open hands. It points to the mystery at the heart of being human – a mystery known by many names whose true name no one knows.

Secular humanists" call it “identity and integrity.” Hasidic Jews call it "the spark of the divine in every being" Thomas Merton called it "true self" Quakers call it "the inner light" Buddhists call it, paradoxically, "Big Self" and No Self""

What name we give it is not that important, what matters is that we recognise this essence, that is good, at the core of our humanity. You see trouble begins when we fail to recognise the true “being” in the human being, when we fail to recognise our common humanity. If we do not recognise this, we will treat ourselves and one another as objects as commodities to be used and abused. We need to recognise the sacredness in all of us or the violence and division in society and ourselves, will continue to grow.

But how do we do this? How do we begin to recognize this sacredness, in this increasingly secular age? Well it begins by getting to know ourselves and to know the other, to unmask the illusions and delusions. We need to find or build the bridge to our true being and to recognize the true human being in each other. To know that despite the real troubles of life there is an essence of goodness that needs to be brought to life. Remember that however different we may seem to be that same wind of life blows though us all. We live the same breath of life, we all know longing fear, doubt and hope; we all know joy and we all experience guilt and regret; we all know the challenges and the joys of living. We need to truly know ourselves, one another so that we can celebrate the joys and overcome the challenges. I believe that it is up to us to bring the “Good” to life, to make life very good indeed, not only for ourselves but for one another.

So I’m going to end with a question for you take into the week ahead. “Who knows you? Who do you know?”