Sue and myself took a trip out to Cheshire Oaks,
the other day. The plan was to purchase my wedding outfit. It was a successful couple
of hours. Now even though we looked in every single menswear shop the suit I
chose was the very first one that took my eye. As soon as I saw it I thought I
like the look of that one and nothing we looked at afterwards came close. Now
while Sue came along she knew I wouldn’t be overly influenced by her thoughts
on things. I can be quite single minded over such matters, some might say stubborn.
The suit seemed the easiest part of the process and the assistant was really
helpful, without being too pushy. I had a mixture of experiences in other shops
as I looked for a shirt, tie and shoes to complete the outfit. Now some of the shopping assistants we encountered were both encouraging and genuinely helpful, others were not, some were even dismissive, one or two were mocking. I
know which I responded to and which just made me want to flee.
It is vital how a person responds when asked
for help. I had an experience of this on Tuesday morning as I left the gym. I realised
I needed to buy a card for my mum’s birthday. As I passed WH Smith’s I noticed
an electric wheelchair, I felt I recognised it and discovered later it was Edna’s, a member at Dunham Road.
As I continued on I noticed a large elderly woman struggling with her wheelchair, people seemed to walk on by, I was tempted to do as I was in a rush, but
stopped, it was pouring down with rain. There
was a problem with one of wheels and she couldn’t propel herself. So I found
myself pushing her to a shop at the other end of the high street. As we got there I
asked the shop assistants to come out to help. She was not the easiest of people
but I left her in safe hands. The woman needed help, was asking for it and gratefully
received it when it came.
The two experiences led me to reflect on my own
attitude towards asking for help. I am not someone who finds it easy to ask for
help, pride is definitely my kryptonite. I am much more comfortable offering my
hand than accepting that of another. That said the moments of the greatest
personal spiritual growth for me have been those moments of humility, when I
have felt powerless and completely lost and have had to surrender to the need to
ask others to help me. It has happened on several occasions these last few
years. I have learnt that asking for the help is not an abdication of
responsibility, quite the opposite actually. The power of asking and gratefully
receiving help has often been enough to lead to me to taking the appropriate action,
to be responsible and to walk alongside others in mutual aid and inspiration.
Asking for help is not about becoming dependent on others, it is actually a
genuine act that recognises our human inter-relatedness. There is a time in all
our lives when we need help from others and others need help from us. There are
no singular givers and receivers in life, we all give and we all receive at
times. Paradoxically the one who gives often receive abundantly in so many ways.
That said I still find it difficult to humbly ask
and receive help, it is my weakness, my kryptonite. Asking for help without
giving nothing back in return is a real challenge. Maybe that is why I suit ministry.
It is the same for others involved in caring work too, I have noticed.
I remember chuckling to myself a few years ago
when I discovered the meaning of the word “minister”. To minister
literally means to serve. I have wondered over the years if governmental
minister’s grasp this. It ought to humble all who minister. Our Prime Minister,
if they truly understood their work, ought to recognise that they are the
number one servant to we the people, I doubt if many have.
Now within a free
religious tradition, like the Unitarians, it is not only the appointed minister who
serves, all who congregate together do so to some degree or another. All give and receive in such communities. Everyone has different gifts
and talents and by combining together a loving community is created. It is the
sum of all its parts that makes a spiritual community what it is.
I believe that is
the point that the Epistle Paul was making in his first letter to the
congregation at Corinth some 2,000 years ago (1 Corithians ch 12). In his
letter he is pointing out that each of members possesses special gifts and that
no gift is superior to the other. These gifts are there for the good of the
whole. The key it would appear was to combine their gifts and use them together
so that they could then build the Beloved Community that they sought.
This does not mean
that the individual is lost in the whole, quite the opposite, in such an
environment the individual can thrive and become all that they would hope to
be, so long as thy do not surrender who they are in order the fit into what
they consider the whole would want them to be. Spiritual autonomy and responsibility
for our own journey is vital to the ethos of a free religious community. While each may lean on one another and ask for assistance when needed, each remains responsible for their own spiritual journeys. The minister is not some special, set apart mediator. Each comes together in love and inspires one another, but no one conforms to will of another. Emersonian "Self-Reliance, in spiritual matters, is vital for the individual to thrive within such communities.
“Self Reliance”, at least in the context of
Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of those phrases that have been misunderstood and
misinterpreted over the years, I know that I have done so. It’s not about not
caring for the needy and telling them that they need to pull themselves up by
their own bootstraps. It’s also not about refusing to ask for help, relying
purely on their own resources. What Emerson meant by “Self-Reliance” was not what
some economist would recognise it to mean today. What he was describing was
more akin to cultural and spiritual autonomy and the need to know ourselves, to
listen to our hearts and intuitions, to use these gifts given to us by nature,
for the best purpose and not to use them lightly or selfishly. Self-reliance ought never to be confused with
selfishness, they are in no way similar, although they have been misinterpreted
over the years and understood similarly.
No one pulls themselves up from their bootstraps
completely alone, all by themselves. From the moment of our births others are
involved in creating who we are and who we become. As the old saying goes “It
takes a village to raise a child.” No one lives entirely from themselves we are
all a part of an interdependent web of relationships. Life has taught me that asking
for help is actually a sign of both strength and wisdom, rather than weakness.
It is a sign of good, mental, emotional and spiritual health. Of course it is
not enough to merely ask for health, true healthy humility is about accepting
the help offered.
Asking for help usually begins in an
acknowledgement of the need for help[ it is an acknowledgment of the truth that
we are not an island. It comes as we look above and beyond ourselves and widen
our purview. It brings to my mind the question that begins Psalm 121 “I lift up
my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come?” Now in the Psalm the
answer is that God will give the help. God who made the heaven and the earth as
well as the hills that the Psalm is referring to. It seems that by looking up to the hills we raise our vision.
Now while the hills themselves may not be the power
there is something powerful about both looking up to them and being up there
looking down on life from them, something that is difficult when you live in
flatlands. In many ways the thing I miss the most about Yorkshire are the
hills, Cheshire is a very flat place.
Standing up on a hill top and looking down on the
world in which we live and breath and have our being gives us space and
perspective. It helps us rise above our worries and troubles and leads us to
solutions that often cannot be found in the middle of the hustle and bustle of
life. Somewhere in that space the answers as to what can be done, can be found.
The answer though will never come until we acknowledge that we do not know the answer.
To ask is to give. From the cradle to the
grave we need to keep asking for help and we need to make ourselves available
to be of assistance to others in their need. Isn’t this the essence of human
relationships. This is not to say that we become unhealthily dependent on
others and society as a whole, no not at all. We are though a part of a whole,
a complex whole that makes life and community. As we grow and change and become
the people that we are this changes shape and reforms constantly, it seems that
we are being born again and again to new versions of ourselves. Of course we
cannot do this alone. We cannot give birth to ourselves, no one can. We need
help and sometimes we need to ask for help from others and in so doing we are
of course doing not only a service for ourselves, but for them also.
No one is an island. We are communal beings
entirely dependent on each other and life itself. As Martin Luther King said in
his final Christmas sermon “We are interdependent…all life is interrelated. We
are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single
garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
This has never been more true than today. When someone reaches out in a time of
need it is our God given duty to help and when we need help we need to be
faithful enough to ask for help too. Interdependence is a physical fact, but it
is also a spiritual reality.
This to me is the whole point of spiritual
community, of religious living. To see, understand and experience this oneness,
this Divine Unity. To see that we are all one. To be of help to one another and
to seek the help when it is needed. In this way we all grow and become the best
that we can be and serve life to the utmost of our ability.
It is the purpose
of the communities like the ones I serve to be places where people practise
serving one another. If I have learnt anything about the spiritual life I have
learnt that at its core are two basic principles, love and service. Surely the
spiritual life is not just about serving ourselves, but one another. By doing
so we feed one another's spirits. I have learnt that in that relationship, in
that space, we can experience the Love that is Divine.
So let us keep on asking and
answering, giving and receiving, weaving communities of mutual love and understanding.
Let us remember that to ask is to give, it is to begin to create that “Kin-dom”
of love right here, right now. You do not need to seek heaven, you just need to awaken to that bit of heaven within each of others and give birth to it right here in life.
A Norwegian artist loved to make ice sculptures. When winter came he would travel to the Artic north and camp in a shack beside the frozen river. He would hack slabs of ice from the river and carve them into beautiful shapes.
People soon heard about his work and came from far and wide to see these sculptures.
“Doesn’t it sadden you”, they asked, “that, as soon as the spring thaw begins, your art will vanish back into the river?”
“Not at all”, he replied, “for this is our life. For a brief time we take material form, and have a unique opportunity to express something of the nature of the spirit within us. If we express that spirit truthfully and honestly, others will find inspiration from it. And then, when the time is right, we return peacefully to the river, and all is well.
by Margaret Silf
Last Monday, the 15th of January was a special day in the yearly calendar, did you mark it? In the USA it was a public holiday, Martin Luther King Day. A day when people remember the sacrifice he offered and the service he gave with his life and death. Now while it is a public holiday, it is a day that is not meant to be of rest, but a day of service. The idea is to follow the great man’s example and to be of service to the wider community.
Now while this is a special day, it is not the one we were supposed to mark here in the UK. Last Monday was “Blue Monday.” It is regarded as the hardest day of the year, the Christmas spirit has all gone, our bank accounts are empty and we are right in depths of winter. It is dark, it is cold and there is little light around, Spring seems so far away. There will not be another public holiday until Easter and that seems a long way away too. I am told that it began as a clever marketing ploy by a holiday company to encourage people to book a holiday in sun. I don't know if this true or not, but I do know that several of my friends are jetting off for a week in the sun this week. People will do anything to escape the cold and the dark of winter.
The day light hours will increase over the coming weeks but still we must face winter. January and February can be difficult as we feel stuck in the cold on these dark winter evenings.
Winter is not an easy time, so many of us want it over as soon as possible. We want spring and the new birth and life that it brings, but that is not the way to live and we know it. To live, always looking towards the spring yet to come, is to fail to fully experience what is present now. There is such richness in the dark cold of winter and we need to feel it and allow our eyes to adjust to the darkness. There is a beautiful wonder about winter that we would do well to embrace. There is a need to embrace and fully experience the darkness, the lifelessness and the starkness of this time of year. We should not wish it all away, for everything there is a season and a time for everything under the sun. We need winter, as hard it feels. All things need to properly come to an end in order for what is new to truly come to fruition. The beauty and the meaning of life comes in its finiteness.
Whenever I look at the winter world it looks barren and bleak. It looks bare as I look out there.
I was staring at a barren tree the other day. It looked vulnerable just standing there all alone and yet I knew it was alive as it stood there bold and upright. It reminded me of my own vulnerability and my exposure to the cold of winter and to the challenges of life, challenges I do not shrink from, even though I do from time to time feel tempted.
Like everyone I want to feel safe, protected and warm, not cold, exposed and vulnerable. It is a refuge that we all seek, often something that folk seek and believe they will find in religion and spirituality. This sense that we are protected and safe, but is it realistic? So often we seek protection from the troubles of life, from its winter. If life has taught me anything it has shown me that the insulation I often seek so easily becomes isolation. These attempts to protect myself from exposure only increase the suffering. If I have learnt anything in life it’s that self-protection just cuts you off and leaves you feeling all alone, once again.
One of the advantages of ministry is that it really forces you to pay attention to the passing seasons. By doing so you learn to appreciate what each has to offer. Winter has so much to offer if we would but let ourselves appreciate it I think the trees in winter have much to teach we who would prefer to hibernate. If I have learnt anything I have learnt that the spiritual life is about living openly and vulnerably, it’s about accepting the reality of life. It’s about standing their upright, arms outstretch in the cold vulnerability of life waiting for the time of re-birth and renewal in whatever form this takes, just like the trees in winter.
The spiritual life teaches me not to cling to things, but to let life flow freely through me. The power of our finite lives is in the impermanence. Thus giving us a time for everything under the sun, including death. The power and beauty of our lives comes in its finiteness. Nothing ever lasts forever. That said although our lives and the lives of our loved ones someday come to an end, life does go on and love does indeed remain. To quote Ecclesiastes 1 v 4 “Generations come and generations go, but the earth abides forever”
For everything there is a season. Winter is the most difficult in many ways. This winter has been a challenge for me as a minister, the demands are greater than ever and there is much heart ache within both congregations I serve, many are seriously ill. For some this will be the final year of life.
The wisdom contained within the book Ecclesiastes, particularly the well known verses from the third chapter, has stood the test of time. There is good reason for this; it speaks an eternal and universal truth that generation after generation have found that they can relate to. The power of this ancient source lays in its ability to link we who live today with the generations that have walked the earth before us. We all of us have travelled many and varied journeys and lived through all the seasons of life. Nothing is permanent and nothing lasts forever. No one will ever escape the pain of life, but that ought not bring despair because if we remain open we will also know life’s joy. Yes there is a time to mourn, but there is also a time to dance; there is a time to weep, but there is also a time to laugh.
“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”There are many seasons in our lives, just as there are many different emotions. Yes sometimes we can experience all those emotions in one single day, just as we can experience four seasons in one day. There is a time and perhaps a place for all them, for to diminish any of them is deny what it is to be fully human. Yes there is a time to weep, just as there is a time to laugh and there is a time to mourn, just as much as there is a time to dance.
I have wept several times this last week and have held others in their suffering too, that said I have also laughed many times, I have seen joy and I have seen how life continues on. Again to repeat Ecclesiastes 1 v 4 “Generations come and generations go, but the earth abides forever”
It is the realness of Ecclesiastes that really speaks to me, it reveals and authentic truth. I have a growing love for Ecclesiastes. I love it because it is real, it is authentic. Like the changing seasons life is forever changing, it is impermanent, nothing last forever. As Rami Shapiro writes of its wisdom:
"The world revealed in Ecclesiastes is an impermanent world of continual emptying. Ecclesiastes calls this hevel. Trying to grasp something in this world, trying to hold on to anything in this world, leaves you breathless, exhausted, and anxious. This impermanence is the nature of nature, and because this is so, the world lacks surety and certainty; change and the unknowing that change carries with it are the hallmarks of life. In Ecclesiastes you spend no time longing for escape from impermanence, but rather learn to live well in the midst of it. This is what the Book of Ecclesiastes wants to tell us. This is why it was written. This is why it is still read some twenty-five hundred years later."
Eccleciates teaches me what it means to live authentically and truly religiously. That said it is a religion that is not pointing to Salvation beyond this life, but in this life. This to me is the essence of my Unitarian faith. It is not pointing to something beyond this life, but within this life. Which you can only truly experience by letting go of control and allow life to have its way with you, every season of life and every feeling of life. In so doing you will live the life you have been given, the ultimate gift, the ultimate grace.
Last Monday was meant to be the most miserable day of the year, Blue Monday. I didn’t feel that myself. Yes there was pain and suffering present in my life and certainly in those around me. I have been with many people experiencing the most difficult kinds of suffering. There is much pain in those I hold dearly to my heart too. I also relive my own grief and suffering when I am with others going through the same pain. Whenever I walk into a hospital ward I do relive those times I have gone to be those I love the most those whose lives are coming to end or have already ended. That pain is the price I pay for daring to love, a pearl of the greatest price. It is the refusal to close myself to this pain that allows me to do the things I am here to do. It gives me meaning even in the most painful suffering.
“Generations come and generations go, but the earth abides forever” So does love. Something beautiful remains. I’ve been thinking all week about the legacy of Dr King and his view of religion of the creation of the beloved community. He knew intense suffering but never lost faith in the power of love to always overcome. He spoke about building the kingdom now. This is faith that I can believe in and it’s something I and all of us can be responsible for. We cannot escape the suffering in life. We cannot cling to anything even those things and those people we love the most. The generations come and the generations go, just as the seasons do also. That said we can plant seeds of love right here right now. We can walk side by side with one another, we can hold each other and bear witness to one another’s tears. We can also laugh and dance and make merry even in the midst of real suffering too. We can live our lives fully regardless of how many seasons we have left. And when the time comes we can let go of our lives with dignity and grace.
Remembering always that while our individual lives come and go, just like the seasons, both the earth and love abides forever.
I'm going to end this "blogspot" with the following inspired by a verse I have reapeted from Ecclesiastes 1 vv 4 “Generations come and generations go, but the earth abides forever”
“The Earth Abides Forever” by Richard S Gilbert
The seasons come and the seasons go,
But the earth abides forever.
The cold-whetted wind blew autumn from my mind,
The white snow whipped across my landscape
And reminded me of the changing seasons.
Another transition, paying no attention to the calendars,
Simply doing what it had to do to follow Nature’s law.
The seasons are capricious here;
They come and go without warning;
They flaunt our human artifacts and devices;
They remind us of our finitude
And call to mind our dependence.
There is a strange beauty in their passing,
Something mysterious in the subtle or not so subtle
Changing of the guard.
The seasons seem indifferent to us
Who, after all, are in charge here, aren’t we?
They act as if they do not need our permission to be or not to be.
It is a humbling reminder of irresistible forces
Meeting immovable objects
With inexorable persistence.
And we, with our little lives, tossed into his playground of Nature,
Strutting importantly about our business,
Try to learn to play our small part within the larger drama
In which we find ourselves.
The seasons come and the seasons go.
So do we
But the earth abides forever..
In “Love and Death: My Journey through the Valley of the Shadow”, a book written while he knew that he was dying, Forrest Church wrote,
“The only way to reconcile yourself, make peace with yourself, make peace with your neighbor, make peace with God, find salvation, is to break through and love — to forgive and to love. You don’t change the person you forgive. You change your own heart. So anything that you can do to reconcile also means that at the end of your life, when you’re given a few months to live, you can look back without regret.
The two saddest words in the English language are “if only,” and they ring with the most poignancy at a time that a person gets word that he or she has a terminal illness: “If only I had stopped drinking; if only I had dared to change careers when I could; if only I had reconciled with my father when I had a chance.”
I agree with Forrest. I believe that “If Only” are the saddest two words in the English language. I would add also that they are loneliest too. How many of us live with this sense of regret for the things we have done, or just as painfully failed to do? How many of us live in isolation from people we have known and loved in our lives because of our pride? How many of us have let past wrongs done, or perceived to have been done, stop us living the loving and connected lives we are capable of?
So why do we find it so hard to seek and give forgiveness? Why is reconciliation so challenging? Why does pride hold us in this sense of regret? Why are so many of us visited in the darkest night with the ghosts that whisper “If Only”
Well because it is not easy. It requires us to rise above and beyond our small selves to a larger way of being. As Sara Moores Campbell has claimed. “There is incredible power in forgiveness. But forgiveness is not rational. One can seldom find a reason to forgive or be forgiven. Forgiveness is often undeserved. It may require a dimension of justice (penance, in traditional terms), but not always, for what it holds sacred is not fairness, but self-respect and community. Forgiveness does not wipe away guilt, but invites reconciliation. And it is as important to be able to forgive as it is to be forgiven.”
No it is not easy, but it is vital. Not only for ourselves but for the greater good also. Forgiveness is about reconciliation it is about bringing wholeness and healing to all. This is why, in my experience, failing to offer forgiveness and failing to atone for our own wrongs and mistakes makes reconciliation impossible and I have come to believe that it is this that breeds a sense of isolation and loneliness, deep within us. It is not by chance that atonement can be broken down to at-one-ment. For it is such acts that bring about oneness in life.
I recently spent a few days away with a group of people exploring the subject of forgiveness. We were together in a beautiful and loving setting and it was an open environment in which we all talked about our struggles with forgiveness of others and of ourselves. I believe that we all gained a great deal from our time together and I hope it renewed us in our efforts to reconcile ourselves with our pasts and those we have shared our lives with, so as to live better lives in the future. One thing that came strongly out of the weekend was this sense that forgiveness is not about forgetting. Yes it is about healing and reconciliation, but not about simply abandoning the past and passively letting go. In fact if anything real forgiveness is a true act of remembrance. It is about growing from the past and becoming increasingly whole people.
Again as Sara Moores Campbell said, “No, we do not forgive and forget. But when we invite the power of forgiveness, we release ourselves from some of the destructive hold the past has on us. Our hatred, our anger, our need to feel wronged – those will destroy us, whether a relationship is reconciled or not.”
Our varied struggles with forgiveness showed how difficult it was to truly reconcile ourselves with our pasts, with ourselves and with those we have shared and share our lives with. Forgiveness is not easy. It is easy to say perhaps “I forgive you”, but those are just words, it is far from easy to truly mean them though. We cannot just simply will ourselves into it and it certainly isn’t an overnight matter. The key, as in all things, is to be open to it. Here lays its power and its love. Here lays the key to be freed from that aching loneliness of regret and the ghosts of “If Only”. Not only for ourselves but for the good of all. I have come to believe that all our lives depend upon it
Again to quote Sara Moores Campbell,
“…we cannot just will ourselves to enter into forgiveness, either as givers or receivers. We can know it is right and that we want to do it and still not be able to.
We can, however, be open and receptive to the power of forgiveness, which, like any gift of the spirit, isn’t of our own making. Its power is rooted in love. The Greek word for this kind of love is agape as “Love seeking to create community.” This kind of love is human, but is also the grace of transcendent power that lifts us out of ourselves. It transforms and heals; and even when we are separated by time or space or death, it reconciles us to ourselves and to Life. For its power abides not just between us but within us. If we invite the power of agape to heal our personal wounds and give us the gift of forgiveness, we would give our world a better chance of survival.”
At one point during the weekend we discussed the limits of forgiveness and whether there were any. A friend said that he didn’t know how he would react if someone did anything to his son and many people agreed with him and then I shared an example of this and the power forgiveness. I recounted my dear friend Claire’s reaction to witnessing her son being killed in front of her on a crossing. The driver did not stop at the crossing and took Ethan’s life. A power from within or beyond her compelled her to forgive him there and then. I know from watching her piece her life back together since that if she hadn’t have done so there and then she could not have survived herself or if she had she would have lived with an aching bitterness for the rest of her life. Not that the last nine years have been easy, she has been to hell and back many times, but that power, the power of love, has held her through it all and I believe that it was that same power that compelled her to forgive the driver of the car that day on the side of the road. A love that passeth all rational understanding, but one that can hold and sustain us through whatever happens in life, if we would let it have its way and bring it to life in our being.
Forgiveness is a true act of Love, in the purest Agapeic sense of the word. It is an act of the heart, it takes real courage, Remember that courage comes from the French word for heart “Coeur” In the Hindu sacred poem “The Bhagavad Gita” you hear this reflected “If you want to see the brave, look at those who can forgive, If you want to see the heroic, look at those who can love in return for hatred.” You see it reflected in the dying words of Jesus on the cross “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” This same loving courage was expressed in the way that both Martin Luther King and Gandhi led their movements of non-violent resistance. These were powerful loving soul forces that inspired healing and reconciliation taken up by the likes of Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa and “The Truth and Reconciliation Hearings” that took place there following the end of Apartheid. It can be the same with our individuals lives and our individual hearts. At some level I think we all need to reconcile ourselves with someone or something, even if it is just our own pasts.
This is why I have come to believe that forgiving is not about forgetting at all. In fact what it is really about is remembering. Actually it is more than that, forgiveness is an act of remembrance. It is about bringing the memory alive and creating something from the past. Reconciliation is not just something that occurs between us, but also within us. In each of our hearts and minds and souls. If we can make something from our past hurts we can create meaning from even the hardest moments of our lives and bring a new wholeness and openness to our lives. In so doing we won’t live out our lives with that aching lonely feeling of regret and be visited by the ghosts of “If Only”. In so doing we will leave something to pass on to those who follow and our lives will have truly proved worth dying for, by the love we have left behind.
Below is the full version of Sara Moores Campbell's reflection on "Forgiveness" quoted above
“Forgiveness” by Sara Moores Campbell, from “Into the Wilderness”
There is incredible power in forgiveness. But forgiveness is not rational. One can seldom find a reason to forgive or be forgiven. Forgiveness is often undeserved. It may require a dimension of justice (penance, in traditional terms), but not always, for what it holds sacred is not fairness, but self-respect and community. Forgiveness does not wipe away guilt, but invites reconciliation. And it is as important to be able to forgive as it is to be forgiven.
No, we do not forgive and forget. But when we invite the power of forgiveness, we release ourselves from some of the destructive hold the past has on us. Our hatred, our anger, our need to feel wronged – those will destroy us, whether a relationship is reconciled or not.
But we cannot just will ourselves to enter into forgiveness, either as givers or receivers. We can know it is right and that we want to do it and still not be able to.
We can, however, be open and receptive to the power of forgiveness, which, like any gift of the spirit, isn’t of our own making. Its power is rooted in love. The Greek word for this kind of love is agape as “Love seeking to create community.” This kind of love is human, but is also the grace of transcendent power that lifts us out of ourselves. It transforms and heals; and even when we are separated by time or space or death, it reconciles us to ourselves and to Life. For its power abides not just between us but within us. If we invite the power of agape to heal our personal wounds and give us the gift of forgiveness, we would give our world a better chance of survival.
I was recently chatting with some friends, when one of them asked the group of us about a reference in a book familiar to us all (The book was Alcoholics Anonymous). She asked what a “Lone Ranger” was ? (now as it turns out she had got the reference slightly confused, as the phrase she was referring to is actually “Lone Wolf”). Well there were several responses. Several of the men amongst us, who had obviously watched the televisions series as children, began to describe who “The Lone Ranger” was. It was interesting that many talked about why he was “The Lone Ranger”, citing the reason being that he worked alone. Now as someone pointed out this is not actually correct. This friend it seemed was quite an expert and explained that he was called “The Lone Ranger” not because he rode alone but because he was the only surviving member of a group of six Texas Rangers who had been ambushed in a canyon named Bryant’s Gap by a gang of outlaws led by Bartholomew “Butch” Cavendish. He explained that Tonto, a Native American, comes across the scene and rescues the surviving ranger and nurses him back to health. The story tells how the ranger real name Reid had saved his life when they were both boys and that they had formed an eternal bond back then. Tonto had given him the name "Kemo Sabe", meaning trusty scout. The Lone Ranger lived by a strict moral code and went about righting wrongs, but he did not do so alone. He did so alongside Tonto and on his trusty horse Silver “Hi Oh Silver, Away”. The three along with others helped each other. No one was completely self-reliant, although they were very much responsible. “The Lone Ranger” even had his own Creed, that he lived by. It read:
I believe…
That to have a friend, a man must be one.
That all men are created equal and that everyone has within himself the power to make this a better world.
That God put firewood there, but that every man must gather and light it himself.
In being prepared physically, mentally, and morally to fight when necessary for what is right.
That a man should make the most of what equipment he has.
That “this government of the people, by the people, and for the people” shall live always.
That men should live by the rule of what is best for the greatest number.
That sooner or later…somewhere…somehow…we must settle with the world and make payment for what we have taken.
That all things change but truth, and that truth alone, lives on forever.
In my Creator, my country, my fellow man.
An interesting creed…although definitely of its time, hence the lack of gender neutral language.
Now “The Lone Ranger”, operated very much within the spirit of Emersonian “Self-Reliance”, but he did not operate alone. He asked for help when he needed help and he got it. “Self Reliance” is one of those phrases that have been misunderstood and misinterpreted over the years, I know that I have done so. It’s not about not caring for the needy and telling them that they need to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. It’s also not about refusing to ask for help relying purely on your own resources. When Ralph Waldo Emerson was describing it in his famous essay “Self-Reliance”, as he left the Unitarian ministry and went off alone, he was not talking about the self-reliance that some economists talk of today. No what he was describing was more akin to cultural and spiritual autonomy and the need to know ourselves and listen to our hearts and our own intuitions and to use these gifts given to us by nature for the best purpose and not to use them lightly or selfishly. This is portrayed in his thoughts on prayer. Towards the end of his essay “Self-Reliance” he writes “Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul…But prayer as a means to effect a private end is a meanness and theft.”
Self-reliance ought never to be confused with selfishness, they are in no way similar, although they have been misinterpreted over the years and understood similarly.
No one pulls themselves up from their bootstraps completely alone, all by themselves. From the moment of our births others are involved in creating who we are and who we become. As the old saying goes “It takes a village to raise a child.” No one lives entirely from themselves we are all a part of an interdependent web of relationships that are made of both visible and invisible strings; strings that are physical and others metaphysical. Asking for help is actually a sign of both strength and wisdom, rather than weakness. It is a sign of good, mental, emotional and spiritual health.
Now asking for help is not something that comes easily to me. I am much more comfortable offering my hand than accepting that of another. That said the moments of the greatest personal spiritual growth for me have been those moments of humility, when I have felt powerless and completely lost and have had to surrender to this and held out my shaking hand in the hope that help would be available. It happened again recently as I surrendered to the need to lose weight. I hit a rock bottom about eight weeks ago and broke down. From there I was able to lift up my eyes to hills and to genuinely ask for help. Just asking the question, in prayerful brokenness was enough for things to begin to change. I found the appropriate help and they showed me what I had to do. Now of course it is my task and responsibility to put in the action, but I am not doing so alone. I am part of a Slimming World and am following their “Food Optimisation” plan as well as exercising daily. The results are astonishing, in under 8 weeks I have lost almost three stones, a total of 41 pounds and feel fantastic and am therefore better able to serve life and the people around me.
Now the asking for help began as a prayer but soon became an activity and it brought to my mind that questions that begins Psalm 121 “I lift up my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come?” Now in the Psalm the answer is that God will give the help. God who made the heaven and the earth as well as the hills that the Psalm is referring to.
Now while the hills themselves may not be the power there is something powerful about both looking up to them and being up there looking down on life from them. In many ways the thing I miss the most about Yorkshire are the hills, Cheshire is a very flat place.
Standing up on a hill top and looking down on the world in which we live and breath and have our being gives us space and perspective. It helps us rise above our worries and troubles and leads us to solutions that often cannot be found in the middle of the hustle and bustle of life. Somewhere in that space the answers as to what can be done, can be found.
A few months ago I went to see the documentary film “Between Dog and Wolf” it told the story of my musical heroes New Model Army and their long career on the fringes of the mainstream. Much of it moved me as it described their many ups and downs, many that they created for themselves. There was one moment that really took a hold of the soul of me. This was when Justin Sullivan, the creative force behind it all, talked about the few months he lived in London at the beginning of their odyssey and how he just couldn’t write there. He felt cramped up creatively and hemmed in. he needed to return to the hills of Bradford to write once again. He needed those hills to find space and perspective and to once again touch the spirit.
I understand this I need space and time alone to commune with the unseen thread so that I can connect with physical life in the right way; so I can help in appropriate ways and seek help when I need it, so as to be the best that I can be.
From the cradle to the grave we need to keep on asking for help and we need to make ourselves available to be of assistance to others in their time of need. This is not to say that we become unhealthily dependent on others and society as a whole, no not at all. We are though a part of a whole, a complex whole that makes life and community. As we grow and change and become the people that we are this changes shape and reforms constantly, it seems that we are being born again and again to new versions of ourselves. Of course we cannot do this alone. We cannot give birth to ourselves, no one can. We need help and sometimes we need to ask for help from others and in so doing we are of course doing not only a service for ourselves, but for them also.
No one is an island. We are communal beings entirely dependent on each other and life itself. In the words of Martin Luther King “We are interdependent…all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” This has never been more true than today. When someone reaches out in a time of need it is our God given duty to help and when we need help we need to be faithful enough to ask for help too. Interdependence is a physical fact, but it is also a spiritual reality.
This to me is the whole point of spiritual community, of religious living. To see, understand and experience this oneness, this Divine Unity. To see that we are all one. To be of help to one another and to seek the help when it is needed. In this way we all grow and become the best that we can be and serve life to the utmost of our ability.
So I say to you the reader, echoing the Creed of “The Lone Ranger’s” let’s recognise the power within ourselves to make this a better world; let’s gather the firewood that god has provided for us; let’s make the most of the equipment we have; let’s settle with the world and make payment for what we have taken. "Hi oh Silver, away"
I will end this this little chip of a blogspot with the following meditation “The Web of Life” by Robert T Weston…
"The Web of Life"
There is a living web that runs through us
To all the universe
Linking us each with each and through all life
On to the distant stars.
Each knows a little corner of the world, and lives
As if this were his all.
We no more see the farther reaches of the threads
Than we see of the future, yet they’re there.
Touch but one thread, no matter which;
The thoughtful eye may trace to distant lands
Its firm continuing strand, yet lose its filaments as they reach out,
But find at last it coming back to him from whom it led.
We move as in a fog, aware of self
But only dimly conscious of the rest
As they are close to us in sight or feeling.
New objects loom up for a time, fade in and out;
Then, sometimes, as we look on unawares, the fog lifts
And there’s the web in shimmering beauty,
Reaching past all horizons. We catch our breath;
Stretch out our eager hands, and then
In comes the fog again, and we go on,
Feeling a little foolish, doubting what we had seen.
The hands were right. The web is real.
Our folly is that we so soon forget.
Towards the end of “12 Steps to a Compassionate Life” Karen
Armstrong writes
"...the attempt to
become a compassionate human being is a lifelong project. It is not achieved in
an hour or a day - or even in 12 steps. It is a struggle that will last until
our dying hour. Nearly every day we will fail; but we cannot give up... We must pick ourselves up and start again. If you have followed the steps
carefully you have come a long way. But the process is not over. You will have to work at all twelve steps continuously for
the rest of your life: learning more about compassion, surveying your world
anew, and struggling with self-hatred and discouragement. Never mind loving
your enemies - sometimes loving your nearest and dearest selflessly and
patiently will be a struggle!" Been thinking about the following sentence for the last few weeks...
“Never mind loving your enemies – sometimes
loving your nearest and dearest selflessly and patiently will be a struggle”
Love is not as easy as those cards and
adverts make it out to be. This is because love is not some sentimental or
mushy feeling. Love is tough and love is disciplined and it can really hurt
sometimes, too much sometimes...
Love is one of those easy to say words, that
are so hard to truly live by. How often do we say each day I love this or I
love that? By the way how often do we say I hate this or I hate that? These are
very strong sentiments but do we really mean what we say when we say I “love”
or “hate” something? Think about it?
Last Thursday 14th February was
Valentines Day, the great love fest. Now this festival is about the celebration
of romantic love, but this is not the only form of love there is. When the
ancient Greeks spoke of love, they were not necessarily talking of romance. They
used four different words for love: eros, romantic love; philia, friendship love;
storge, a familial love; agape, spiritual love. This final type of love is the
form that the great religious traditions talk of. This is a different kind of
love as it is meant to be none exclusive, it is open to all, it is suppose to have no
boundaries. It is meant to build bridges between the walls we create around
ourselves. Whereas the other types of love suggest partiality in one sense or
another.
Agape is the love that Jesus spoke of in the
Gospels. He commanded his followers to “Love one another as I have loved you.” He is not talking about something soft and
mushy here though, please do not be fooled. When Jesus preaches that we should
love our enemies he is commenting on the commandment in Leviticus “You must
love your neighbour as yourself.” As Karen Armstrong has stated “Leviticus is a
legal text and any talk of emotion would be out of place as it would be in a
Supreme Court ruling. In the ancient Middle East, ‘love’ was a legal term used
in international treaties: when two kings promised to ‘love’ each other, they
pledged to be loyal and to give each other practical help and support – even if
this went against their short term interests”. When Jesus spoke of love he was
talking about an action that put someone or something else at the centre of
their life, rather than ourselves; he is talking about yielding for the good
of all, instead of self interest.
This message is of course not unique to the
Judeo-Christian tradition it is the essence of all the “Great Faiths”. It would
appear that selfishness and self-centredness has been the root of so many of
humanities troubles, throughout our history, therefore it is hardly surprising
that the idea of yielding for the good of all is at the core of the great
faiths; that putting something other than our selfish needs at the centre of what
we do is vital to human survival. The great Chinese guide to statecraft “The
Daodejing”, authored by Lao Tzu made similar claims. As Armstrong highlights, the Dao states
that “The only person who is fit to rule is the man who has overcome the habit
of selfishness.”
The Dao further states that...
“The reason there is great affliction is that
I have a self.
If I had no self, what affliction would I
have?
Therefore to one who honours the world as his
self
The world may be entrusted,
And to one who loves the world as one’s self
The world may be consigned.”
Ah The Golden Rule of Compassion...the rule of love...the essence of true religion...the essence of the spiritual life...
Agape requires love for all, without
conditions and without borders. This is the love expressed in 1 Corinthians 13
which perfectly describes the qualities of such love. It states “Agape is
patient. Agape is kind and is not jealous. Agape does not seek its own, is not
provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice with
unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth, bears all wrongs, believes all
things, hopes all things, endures all things, agape never fails.”
Agape was the foundation of Rev Dr Martin
Luther King’s ministry, the great champion of civil rights in 1950’s and 60’s
America. He saw it as an abundant overflowing love that seeks nothing in
return, that is open to all and rejects self interest. It is not sentimental
and has nothing to do with whether we like a person or not. It is the kind of
love that recognises our common humanity and reveres the other as our self; it
recognises the sacred mystery in everyone. It is this that forms the beloved
community that he spoke of. You may call it the Kingdom of God, or the Commonwealth of Love, or simply “Fellowship”.
Although Agape is not soft, mushy or
sentimental it is still a condition of the heart, it is a way of being that
encompasses all aspects of our humanity; head and heart as well as mind, body
and spirit. It is about how we are and how we act. In his sermon titled “Love
in action” Dr King preached that “one day we will learn that the heart can
never be totally right if the head is totally wrong...only through bringing
together head and heart, intelligence and goodness – shall man rise to a
fulfilment of his human nature.”
It is a mistake to believe that Dr King's ministry
focused purely on the injustices of society external to him. He also talked of
healing humanities inner violence. None violent action, motivated by love, that he
adapted from the teachings of Gandhi was about committing not only to
non-violent resistance externally but also internally. Both he and Gandhi knew
how vital it was that we transformed our inner lives first before we looked to
the world. Gandhi named this Satyagraha (soul-force). They both knew that in
order to transform society for the better, they first had to develop themselves
spiritually.
Why was this? Well they knew that if a person
did not heal the violence within themselves that when they did overcome the
injustice they were experiencing they may well end up replacing it with something
just as destructive. Just look at the revolutions of the past two hundred
years. They began as a protest against tyranny and yet in many cases they
replaced the former tyranny with something worse. We must all be wary of the “dark
side of the force”, of how corrupting power and self righteousness can be. The
last two hundred years are littered with examples of this.
Love is a way of being. It is not sentimental, it is not soft and mushy, it is tough and it requires effort and discipline. It is something that I will be attempting to focus on this Lenten season.
It always amazes me how something like Lent,
which in my view is about self sacrifice, about giving of self for others, has
somehow become so self centred. Today people give up things for Lent, but they seemingly primarily do so for their own good. People often given up certain food stuffs, for their
own vanity, they do it for themselves. Is this what Lent is about? Well it
doesn’t seem to be the right focus to me. Surely it’s actually about Agape,
about self giving love, about loving all without prejudice, about recognising
the “inherent worth and dignity of all” Isn’t this the example that Jesus gave
to humanity, in the same way that Gandhi and Dr King did, they gave themselves
wholeheartedly for others. Sadly they were murdered for it. That said their message did not die with their physical bodies; their message survived their physical deaths, it lives on today. This loving spirit
is timeless, it is immortal, but it needs a body, it needs to be embodied. So I’ve made a decision. This Lenten season I’m
going to attempt to let this spirit live through my body; this Lent I’m going
to focus on giving, instead of giving up. This Lenten season I’m going to see
what I can give to life instead of what I can give up; this Lenten season I’m
going to live in what I consider the solution is as opposed to what the problem is.
I am going to give love, even if it’s in small ways. I am going to do so while
recognising how difficult that is, even to my nearest and dearest. By doing so I know that my outer world is bound to improve and my inner world
will continue to heal.
My question to you, who read this blog, is what are you going to
give, instead of give up, this Lent?
“The Sound of Silence” is perhaps one of the most beautiful songs of all time. It is deeply poetic and meaningful. It describes our struggle to truly communicate with one another; that we only really communicate on a superficial level and therefore do not understand one another; “people talking without listening, people listening without hearing”. It is suggesting that we dare not really reach out and truly communicate – “take my arms that I might reach you” – to disturb the sounds of silence. The poet (the songs character) makes a futile attempt to reach beyond the silence; “but my words like silent raindrops fell within the wells of silence”. The enigmatic ending tells us that when meaningful communication fails all that is left is...the only sound is...silence.
“whispered in the sounds of silence”
Last Thursday, 6th October, was national poetry day. This is why I decided to pick these words by Paul Simon...whatever we think of the music, we cannot deny the beauty of the words.
One of my favourite hymns is entitled "Others Call it God. This my favourite verse:
“A picket frozen on duty,
A mother starved for her brood,
And Socrates drinking hemlock,
And Jesus on the rood;
And millions, who though nameless,
The straight, hard pathway trod –
Some call it consecration,
And others call it God”
While I do indeed find God in beauty and laughter and song I also find God in consecration, in mercy and love towards those who suffer and the suffering in nature too...that said maybe I find God in silence more than in the din and illumination of life.
“whispered in the sounds of silence”
Maybe we need to listen to “The Sound of Silence.”
This is not always easy, just to find silence, just to make room for silence. I know that I must and in fact I do. I do make some time in the morning to connect and to listen. I no longer turn the radio on when I first get up. I spend a short period in prayerful reflection and then shower and shave etc. I pay attention to what I am doing in silence. I’m not just being functional here, as I once was.
I no longer need the distraction.
In the Book of Kings (1 Kings ch 19) the prophet Elijah is threatened by Queen Jezebel and flees to a cave on mount Horeb where he is told that God will pass by and speak directly to him. A great wind comes, followed by an earthquake and then a fire, but God is in none of them. After the fire comes the still small voice – a voice, a sound like silence – it is this voice that is less than a whisper and yet not quite silence that signals the presence of the divine. Elijah then covers his head and goes out to talk with God.
Elijah had been commissioned that day to set right the problems of Israel and to call a new King for Syria and a new King for Israel and a new prophet who would lead the next generation.
Now many folk will no doubt dismiss this as a fanciful tale, like many of the tales told about Elijah it does sound beyond belief when read literally. Should we dismiss it though? Is this the wise thing to do? Perhaps there is a deeper metaphorical meaning here? I believe that there is a deep truth being described here. I do not believe that it should be dismissed as merely a fanciful tale.You may well ask why? Well because it seems that down through the ages this voice keeps on speaking; the voice of comfort, of hope, of challenge, of support and also at times the voice of rebuke...This same voice spoke to Jesus, Muhammed, The Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandella, but perhaps it is not a voice as we understand it....less than a whisper and yet more than silence...
Maybe the voice is felt, rather than heard.
...the still small voice of calm, the sound of silence...
What is this still small voice of calm? What are the Sounds of Silence?
What is this something, this next to nothing, that is more than silence and yet less than a whisper? What is this emptiness that can fill us with awe?
It is so gentle and yet powerful and seems to emerge, nay burst, from nothingness into life; it is a nagging thought or presence that is their floating around in our consciousness or perhaps unconsciousness; it never seems to easily be revealed; it requires us to go into our own depths and wrestle and struggle with it to find its true meaning. Maybe it is something more than a mere thought or feeling, that appears from nowhere or perhaps even beyond nowhere; this feeling that comforts, that accepts, even pardons just when we need it the most. Perhaps it’s the voice of conscience that lives in that space between what we say and what we do, between the talk and the walk.
We can never be truly certain what this is. Some, myself included, call it God, others prefer a myriad of names. But what does it matter what we call it, this is just belief or unbelief. It is truly beyond us to know what is behind this voice, this thought, this feeling, this experience but I feel sure that we have all known it from time to time. We have all known this indescribable presence at some point in our lives; we have all experienced this sense of being addressed by something; we have all felt this powerful irresistible urge that is the source of art and poetry of religion, of love.
“Some people call it longing, And others call it God”
The passage from Kings portrays powerfully Elijah's experience with the Divine, in the stillness, in the quietness; it portrays it as powerfully as anything in our human canon, before or since. It is not unique though and is an experience we can all have if we take time to truly listen “to the sound of silence.” I have known it myself; I try not to ignore it these days. I need to hear it as it gives me the courage to trust, to have faith in life, to have faith in the promptings of my conscience, to have faith in myself and to have faith in God.
It is said that one night after receiving a threatening phone call, during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, that Martin Luther King Jr went into his kitchen and sat quietly, desperate, alone and ready to give up. At this point of brokenness and hopelessness he prayed out loud the words “I’ve come to a point where I can’t face it alone”. At this very moment, bursting from deep within him came these words, “Stand up for justice; do what you believe is right.”
The author Taylor Branch said this about the incident:
“The moment lacked the splendour of a vision or of a voice speaking out loud. But the moment awakened and confirmed his belief that the essence of faith is not some grand metaphysical idea but something personal, grounded in experience – something that opens up mysteriously beyond the predicament of human beings in frailest and noblest moments.”
In his darkest hour in his moment of doubt and despair Dr King found that silence and entered a greater depth, a void and in that place hope and deeper faith was unearthed and tapped into.
He heard and responded to that still small voice of calm in the sounds of silence.
I am learning more and more that so much of ministry is about listening: "Listening with the ears of your heart". Not merely listening to the words that are said, but to what is beneath the words, to what is really going on. By the way I am not only speaking about people here. I, I think we all, need to listen to not only what is being said on the surface of life or in the centre of our vision, but beneath the surface too and in the corners of our vision too..."There is something in the corner of our lives that we cannot quite see"...I do believe that the conscience, life, the universe, God does indeed speak, but not loudly or aggressively, gently and quietly.
It seems to be less than a whisper and yet something more than silence.
It is that still, small voice of calm almost hidden in the sounds of silence
You see the real trouble is that everyone is talking, but are any of us really listening.
