Dolly and Wendell Berry: Lives that Inspire Us

I’m going to begin with one of my favourite poems by Wendell Berry. I think that this more than any other poem has brought me solace in times of struggle, in pain and in suffering. I not only read the poem, but follow the instruction. I come into the peace of wild things; I rest in the grace of the world and I am free. I remember I re-feel that I am a part of everything, a creature like everything else and I belong once more.

"The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry

""When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."

"The Peace of Wild Things"

I enjoyed “Summer School” immensely this year. The theme was ‘Doing Our Best’, inspired by a quote from Maya Angelou: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” I co-led an engagement group with the wonderful Rev. Tina Gandhi based on the following lines from Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese: “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.” It was a deeply moving week and we explored with depth, creativity, music, and humour.

Something I wanted to explore was the fact that an awful lot of people think there is something fundamentally wrong with them. I certainly experienced this from an early age. Why so many feel this way isn’t always easy to explain, but it is a common one, and it has certainly been exploited by unhealthy religion and the secular world too. The advertising industry exploits the idea that you can purchase the perfect life.

There were many inspirational theme talks throughout Summer School. The talk by Raj and Emma from Leeds truly got to the heart of the whole week for me. They spoke about how Maya Angelou never actually uttered the words I quoted above to Oprah Winfrey. Instead in private, after Oprah shared something she was deeply ashamed of, Maya said, “You did then what you knew how to do, and when you knew better, you did better.” Maya wasn’t instructing Oprah to do better, but recognising Oprah’s humanity, her capacity to change, and the goodness at the heart of her.

‘Doing better’ is about experiencing what we are capable of becoming, and we need to go deeper to do so. It’s not just about knowing more, but bringing more of our shared humanity to life. It takes trusted community and friends to do this. It is not enough to simply learn about it - we need to experience it.

I believe there is a goodness at the heart of everything, including you and me. It doesn’t mean that we do no wrong, and never cause harm. Rather that this goodness can be brought alive through our humble, human being. I experienced this once again recently during a week in the hills of Derbyshire, with 60 or more folk sharing together and simply doing their best, to become what they were always born to be.

Sometimes it can be hard to see our capacity to be our best; sometimes it takes another to inspire us to do so, to become the best we can be, to do better. Sometimes it takes inspiration. We can all be inspirations, as I believe we all have that spirit within us.

But what does it mean to be an inspiration? You may well ask. Well the word inspiration is an interesting one, as so many are. We have, as is our way, reduced its meaning in power. It’s another one of those words that we have attempted to tame. Today it means someone or something that gives you an idea for doing something, but originally it meant “immediate influence of God or a god”. It comes from the old French word “inspiriacion” meaning “inhaling in or breathing in from the Latin “inspirare” meaning to blow into or breath upon so as to excite or inflame. This is the meaning in the following verse from Genesis Chapter 2 “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” It really meant to infuse or animate to affect to rouse to guide to put life into the human soul. As you can see it meant something much more profoundly powerful in the past that it does today.

That said I believe that we can and do inspire in this way and in so doing we can bring the kingdom to life in our own hearts and lives. We can ignite that divine spark.

I believe that this is what Albert Schweitzer meant when he said:

“Sometimes our light goes out but is blown again into flame by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light.”

Those who rekindle the light are the inspirers amongst us.

Social media algorithms are mysterious things. My YouTube suggestions are a deeply eclectic mix. It recently popped up a short film exploring the origins of my favourite cartoon character “Foghorn Leghorn”. I suspect that this is because I had watched some of his cartoons recently and I also have an interest in the origins of things. Who knows what inspires such things.

I learnt that Foghorn Leghorn was inspired by the character Senator Claghorn who was a fiction southern politician on a popular American radio show. Foghorn adopted many of Claghorn's catchphrases, such as "I say..." and "That's a joke, son!"

"Foghorn Leghorn"

 
He was a large and larger than life character, far too confident in his own abilities. He would wander around singing “Campdown Races” etc and generally stepping over everything and making a mess. I am certain Foghorn leghorn was in turn the inspiration of the Coronation Street character Fred Elliott and his catchphrase “O say, I say, our Ashley”

Foghorn Leghorn is a caricature of a loud and brash southern American gentleman. Someone no doubt who is mocked and held up to ridicule. A Caricature is a caricature it is nothing more than that. Prejudice and stereotyping is never a good thing. Sometimes folks from that part of the USA are considered to be a certain way and displaying certain characteristics. Now while this maybe true of some people it is not true of all.

Two truly inspirational people born of the south of the USA have died in recent weeks. They were well loved and lived out their personal spiritually in their unique and individual styles. They embodied beautifully what it means to live by the spirit of love and deep empathy, an attribute that has become under some attack in recent years, something I find astonishing. In my view if we lose empathy we are done for.

One was a daughter of Tennessee Dolly Parton and the other a son of Kentucky Wendell Berry. They couldn’t have been more different in personality and the way they lived their lives. That said at the heart of them was that same spirit, it inspired their lives and their love and care. As Dolly said “I always just thought if you see somebody without a smile, give ’em yours!” and as Wendelly Berry said “Love is never abstract. It does not adhere to the universe or the planet or the nation or the institution or the profession, but to the singular sparrows of the street, the lilies of the field, ‘the least of these my brethren.’ Love is not, by its own desire, heroic. It is heroic only when compelled to be. It exists by its willingness to be anonymous, humble, and unrewarded.”

Dolly and Wendell Berry shone like two bright stars from opposite ends of universe, the spectrum of love in its many manifestations. They followed very different paths, but they followed their own stars, they were uniquely and authentically themselves. The Gospel according to Dolly was that the work of life is to “find out who you are, and then do it on purpose.” Dolly on the surface was rhinestone and hairspray whilst Wendell Berry was all about the earth and the plough and yet there was a soulfulness in their melodic language, they embodied love through their human being. They were both holy in their own unique ways.

Dolly was a prolific singer/songwriter and entrepreneur who lived her life her own way. She dedicated herself to causes that were close to her heart, particularly childhood education and literacy. This began in her home Sevier County in Tennessee, spread throughout America and all over the world. I saw a clip of her speaking and reading with children in Rotherham south Yorkshire while I was researching for this service. She has gifted something like 330 million books to under 5’s. This was inspired wholly by empathy and the pain of her own father’s illiteracy. Dolly’s world was a big welcoming tent, she accepted people as they were. In a 1997 Out Magazine interview, she was asked about embracing LGBTQ fans while maintaining a country audience that included the religious right. “It’s two different worlds, and I live in both and I love them both, and I understand and accept both.” Dolly Parton was deeply rooted in her own identity, but open and embracing of others. As she said to her God daughter Miley Cyrus whenever they got into discussion “You be you and I’ll be me.”

 Dolly described "Coat of Many Colours as her favourite song

A story she wrote about her own childhood

Wendell Berry’s vision was that of local community, neighborliness, and belonging, including our interdependence with nature and our responsibility to one another. To Berry, the health of the soil, the health of the human body, and the health of a local community are a single, indivisible thread. In his “Think Little” essay, written in 1970, he wrote: "A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world... We become aware—perhaps for the very first time—of the enormous complexity of our world, and the realization of the folly of simplistic, reductionist, single-solution thinking." For Wendell Berry it was about the simple humble ordinary habits and how they bind us to nature and each other, and that the choices we make each and every day contribute to improving the world around us.

In a world where anxiety, pessimism and loneliness appear to be on the increase Wedell Berry and Dolly Parton always lived by faith, hope and love. They always looked and saw the best in others, in ordinary people. Neither lived easy lives, without pain and struggle. Their hope grew from struggle and helped create a vision of love of how we could yet be. They both in their own way visioned that kin-dom of love right here and now.

"I will always love you"

They were both people of faith, rooted in the Christianity of the southern states of America, that said they were not conventional and were true universalists in every sense of the word. Dolly grew up with a Pentecostal preacher grandfather, of the fire and brimstone type but said she found God personally as a girl in an abandoned church building near her family’s home. “I felt the presence there,” she said, remembering the moment she prayed for God to show, help and save her. “I just felt like that I had, for the first time in my life, had truly found God.” She lived her faith both in her philanthropy and in her love and acceptance of all people. She encouraged others to seek their own path, not to follow hers. As she said: I know who I am and I don't try to be nobody else... I can walk in any room knowing I'm going in as myself." And also on the dangers of conformity.

"If you try and follow everyone else and be like everyone else, before you know it you're gone. You're not going to find yourself again; you'll be a version of what you might of hoped to be."

"Jolene"

Wendell Berry’s Christianity was certainly non-conformist, he strongly criticised institutional religion and dogma of many kinds, his faith was shaped by a love for the world we live in now. He recognised and celebrated our creatureliness, that humans are a part of this creation and that it is our task to take care of this world as we take care of one another; we are a part of the whole, of the beautiful creation.

Regardless of what they did and how they lived Dolly Parton and Wendell Berry will be remembered mostly for their creativity their ultimate gifts to life. Dolly for her songs that she both wrote and performed, as did many others, as well as her whole persona. Wendell Berry for his writing, his novels his essays and of course his poetry. It was through his poetry that he reached and inspired me. I am going to end with a piece of his prose, which I think speaks of both his love and his spirituality and then a favourite poem

This is taken from “What Are People For? Essays”

"For many years, my walks have taken me down an old fencerow in a wooded hollow on what was once my grandfather's farm. A battered galvanized bucket is hanging on a fence post near the head of the hollow, and I never go by it without stopping to look inside. For what is going on in that bucket is the most momentous thing I know, the greatest miracle that I have ever heard of: it is making earth. The old bucket has hung there through many autumns, and the leaves have fallen around it and some have fallen into it. Rain and snow have fallen into it, and the fallen leaves have held the moisture and so have rotted. Nuts have fallen into it, or been carried into it by squirrels; mice and squirrels have eaten the meat of the nuts and left the shells; they and other animals have left their droppings; insects have flown into the bucket and died and decayed; bird have scratched in it and left their droppings or perhaps a feather or two. This slow work of growth and death, gravity and decay, which is the chief work of the world, has by now produced in the bottom of the bucket several inches of black humus. I look into that bucket with fascination because I am a farmer of sorts and an artist of sorts, and I recognize there an artistry and a farming far superior to mine, or to that of any human. I have seen the same process at work on the tops of boulders in a forest, and it has been at work immemorially over most of the land surface of the world. All creatures die into it, and they live by it."

There is Wendell Berry’s faith, his theology in that bucket.

Here is a final poem. A simple instruction on how to be a poet. It contains my favourite line ever “There are no unsacred places, there are only sacred and desecrated places. Again I believe that this speaks of Wendell Berry’s theology. That everything is sacred, everything matters and all is born from this sacred beginning. That the only thing that has been desecrated are those parts of the world that have been done so by the denial of this eternal sacredness of everything. That they have been damaged by we human beings have failed to recognise this very sacredness and desecrated this sacredness, whether that be nature or one another. It also recognises his rejection of modern technology and his embracement of simplicity, of feeling the earth at our feet, of being grounded in time and place, of humility, of the humus.

“How to Be a Poet” by Wendell Berry

(To remind myself)

i
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill -- more of each
than you have -- inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

ii
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

iii
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

Dolly Parton and Wendell Berry were two inspirations who were rooted in their place. That lived their own unique lives authentically. They were inspired by the same love and the same a spirit. A love and spirit that lives on beyond their lives. A love and a spirit that I believe is at the heart of each of us and everything.

Thank you.

"9 to 5"

 

I am going to end with some words of Dolly the first on leadership, the second on finding the inspiration you needed was always in you.

“If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then, you are an excellent leader.”

“the magic is inside you. there ain't no crystal ball”

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

Let it Be a Dance: The Movement of Faith

September is here, we have moved through the summer and are heading towards the autumn of the year. We have moved through quite a summer, like no other. I wonder how it has been for you. When harvest comes what fruits will you have to share. The tradition in many American Unitarian Universalist congregations is that during the first service after their summer recess they would bring water and share their water in a communal container. The water symbolises where they have been and what they have done during the summer.The summer has reminded me how precious water is, how precious everything is. We all move through life in so many ways, each bearing its fruits and own consequences. Water of course moves through everything and moving water always has its way, it always finds a way. I wonder what things we have moved through this summer and what we will move through during the days ahead.

For many of us music is about movement. A piece of music is often called a movement. To create music air moves and vibrates. Music is never still, as creativity is never still. Nothing is ever truly still. Even when we sit still, we are a part of life that is all about movement. Just because our sense cannot pick up the movement, it does not mean it is not happening. Like a fish swims in water that is constantly moving, thus we move through life that is never quite the same. Life is flux. To slightly misquote Heraclitus, no one steps in the same river twice, because the river is not the same and neither is the person who steps into it.

I was thinking of music the other day. There are basically two forms of popular music, obviously there are variations on themes, but throughout human history there has always been two types of music. There is song, which is essentially story telling music and then there is music that is created to enable people to dance, dance music. Yes of course some music is for both, a right song and dance. I have always preferred song. This is no doubt obvious, as I am singer, I am not much of dancer.

Dance and movement in general is not my forte. I am a singer, not a dancer.

Having said that I do love to a go a wandering, singing along at the same time. I also, just for a bit of fun, enjoy gambolling from time to time. A friend sent me something about gambolling, not to be confused with gambling the other day and I gave it a go. For those that don’t know gambolling is a form of movement where you can run, jump or skip around in a playful kind of way, think of a lamb or goat perhaps. Maybe this is where acting the goat comes from. I did not gambol gracefully, but I did have a lot of fun. It was suggested to me as I was dealing with some pretty stressful stuff at the time. It had such an effect that I sat down in the park with Molly and wrote a song, recorded and shared it with friends, as a way of spreading a little joy. It is a play on the old classic song “The Happy Wanderer”, it is called “The Happy Gamboler”. Would you like to hear it? (You can hear it in the video devotion at the bottom of this post)

"The Happy Gamboller"

Chorus:
Gambolli, Gambolla,
Gambolli,
Gambolla-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Gombolli, Gambolla.
A Dude must always abide.

I love to go gambolling,
With Molly by my side,
We skip and dance and sing our songs,
A Dude must always Abide.

Chorus:
Gambolli, Gambolla,
Gambolli,
Gambolla--ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Gomolli, Gambolla.
A Dude must always abide.

I love to gambolling
And dance under the sun.
So joyously folk call to me,
"Come! Join my happy song!"

Chorus:
Gambolli, Gambolla,
Gambolli,
Gambolla--ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Gomolli, Gambolla.
A Dude must always abide.

I wave and smile at all I meet,
And they smile and wave back to me,
And blackbirds call so loud and sweet
From ev'ry green wood tree.

Chorus:
Gambolli, Gambolla,
Gambolli,
Gambolla--ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Gomolli, Gambolla.
A Dude must always abide.


High overhead, the skylarks wing,
They never rest at home
But just like me, they love to sing,
Until all this world shall gambole.

Chorus:
Gambolli, Gambolla,
Gambolli,
Gambolla--ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Gomolli, Gambolla.
A Dude must always abide.

Oh, may I go a gamboling
Until the day I die!
Oh, may I always laugh and sing,
Beneath God's clear blue sky!

Chorus:
Gambolli, Gambolla,
Gambolli,
Gambolla--ha-ha-ha-ha-ha
Gomolli, Gambolla.
A Dude must always abide.

(Additional note the line "A Dude must always abide, is a homage to a favourite film "The Big Lebowski)  

It cheered a lot of folk up, it concerned a few others. It got the funny bones moving though. The next morning Keiron in café nero was feeling a bit blue, so I sang it to him and it cheered him up too. Later that day Natasha from the MDA sent we a video of some hilarious movement that folk were trying, which I gave a go at too. It got so much laughter and joy moving through folk who were struggling along with one or two things, although it was in itself a bit of a struggle in the intense heat.

We are moving creatures. We move in so many interesting ways, we are moving, even when we are stood still. I have spent the summer observing all kinds of movement. There were many types of movement based sessions at this years summer school. All kinds of flow and sacred dance and so much laughter. I had a go at some line dancing, which was slightly chaotic, but fun. I also had a go at ecstatic dance, which was pretty out there as well. In fact at one moment Molly and myself were dancing together, she on her hind legs while we danced away. Now while dancing doesn’t come naturally to me it is fun to join in, in my own way. Makes you grateful for this grace, even if I don’t myself move so gracefully. Like water though we human beings are made for movement, we are not meant to be still. Movement has a way to bring stillness to the mind and soul.

Dance and movement has always been a sacred thing.

Let it be a dance with do, may I have this dance with you, through the good times and the bad times too, let it be a dance.

Dancing and movement are sacred things, part of the sacredness of being alive. The God of my limited understanding is alive in this life or not at all. I need to know God through my bodily being, or not at all. Sacred the body, God has created, temple of spirit that grows deep inside.

Friedrich Nietzche said “I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance”

Is there anything more divine that being fully alive and yet too often in sacred circles the body is decried. If there are such things as angels I am sure that they sing and dance at being alive, in their angelic way and not just on the head of a pin. This brings to mind the wonder poem “Questions about angels” by Billy Collins

“Questions about 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 spirit lives to set us free, it is ever moving, as is all life, as are we.

In “Dance – The Sacred Art: The Joy of Movement as a Spiritual Practice” Cynthia Winton Henry wrote:

"At the beginning of nearly every culture, dance arose at the foundation of collective spiritual life. Just as inconceivable as separating out deities and goddesses from everyday activities, dancing was intrinsic to the religiosity of indigenous groups. It could not be extricated. It was manna, daily bread. More than mere expression, dancing served as the primary means of knowing and creating the world. It carried technologies of healing, entertainment, and most definitely of praying.”

You see movement and dance right there at the heart of the Hebrew Scriptures. In the beginning God did not merely breathe life into being but moved through it too. The Psalms were sung with movement and dance. Isaiah declared, 'You shall go out with joy and be led forth in peace: The mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field clap their hands' (Isaiah 55:12). The Divine danced in and through us bringing the people out beyond themselves.

Think of circle dancing, the Hebrew word for festival being “Haga” meaning to move in a circle, it is there at the heart of festival and ceremonies. Just because dance isn’t written down in holy scripture it does not mean that the religious life was some solitary solemn thing, rejoice, rejoice, rejoice is there at the heart. In “The Sermon on the Plain” in Lukes Gospel Ch 6 v 23 Jesus instructs those who listen “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets"

Dance is at the heart of Taoism, the origins of the Tao. When the ancients attempted to understand the flow of the Tao, they danced; when they tried to put it into practice, they danced.

Dance and movement is at the heart of the ancient traditions, they danced to bring about rain. High priests danced in the patterns of the stars constellations, to commune with the Gods. Yoga is in flow. Dance and movement is in everything. When we think of spiritual practice we think it is about being still and silent, but it really isn’t. it is about movement and life, dance and song, as life was moved and not just breathed into being. We come to life, stillness and silence is the end of life, but the spirit, well I reckon that moves on.

To dance it to be like water as Bruce Lee said. Water moves its way into life, it always finds away and it is never quite the same. The river is not the same and neither are we as we move into and through it.

Life is movement, it is forever changing, nothing stays the same. So, we may as well dance with it. Why should we resist, we ought to go with the flow and dance in the dance of life. Why not join together as part of the dance of life. Dance together.

In joining in the dance we are being faithful to life, to the spirit in it all. In so doing we play our part in creating the universal web of life, we play our part fully in the universal process and in so doing encourage others to come and join in the dance too.

So will you come and dance with me…Let it be a dance we do, may I have this dance with you, through the good times and the bad times too, let it be a dance…

I’m going to end with a bit of Mary Oliver. A poem titled Prayer”

“Prayer” by Mary Oliver

May I never not be frisky,
May I never not be risque.

May my ashes, when you have them, friend,
and give them to the ocean,

leap in the froth of the waves,
still loving movement,

still ready, beyond all else,
to dance for the world.

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

The Odyssey: A Journey of Nostalgia

Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey”, is this summer’s blockbuster movie. Have you seen it. It is an ancient tale that has been told many times. It is a story told in poetic form and certainly not easy to recreate in any media, least of all the cinema. Even the written form we have translated today is probably not as it was originally told, as it was not written down in the time. Much like so much of these ancient tales, including the books of the Bible.


Nolan’s film has received rave reviews, but also criticism. Some have said that it is not historically accurate, although it is closer to the text than other adaptations and certainly some other so called historical tales. I will explore some of the themes here and will continue to explore what might be the central theme in the next video devotion, what is sometimes called “Zeus’ Law” or the concept of “Xenia” or “Philoxenia”. This is translated as “guest friendship” or “love of a stranger” and perhaps other spiritual themes.

“The Odyssey” is not history, it is mythology. It is taking us on a journey to reveal universal truth. A long and arduous journey, that for Odysseus took 10 years to finally get home. The journey from Troy, that is now in what is Northern Turkey, to the Island of Ithaka west of Northern Greece, should have taken only a few weeks. This journey like all journey’s was not a straight line and it is littered with mistakes and hopefully lessons. It was Odysseus pride in defeating the cyclops, that led to him being cursed by Poseidon, which caused many of his troubles. He had left Troy high on victory, returning a hero, full of Pride and Hubris. The clever hero. This was not the man who finally reached Ithaka 10 years later having lost all his men and lost everything, well except for this vision of home.

“The Odyssey” reminds me somewhat of Moses and the Israelites journeying towards the Promised Land, a journey that took 40 years (Meaning a lifetime), should have taken a matter of months. Now this was not a journey home, but for a new home. Odysseus just wanted to get home, much like the character played by Michael Douglas in “Falling Down”, or Steve Martin in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”. Like so many other tales, ancient and modern. The Odyssey is the archetype for most of the stories told. It might be the original “Heroes Journey” depicted by Joseph Campbell.

“The Odyssey” is a tale told in poetic form. Here is a wonderful poem inspired by it, depicting the journey home. It offers a meaning at the heart of the ancient journey. One that may not be about the final goal, the ends that draw us out. Instead it is about the means by which we journey. It is an allegory of the beautiful journey.

“Ithaka”, by C. P. Cafavy

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

“The Odyssey” is an archetype for the human journey, the call to adventure. Other examples might be Pilgrims Progress, Gulliver’s Travels, The Wizard of Oz, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Lord of the Rings the list goes on and on. Humanity’s canon is littered with folk tales and myths which teach us about this call to adventure, about the potential for both beauty and horror that is life.

Joseph Campbell spent years exploring these myths and stories believing that they possessed universal qualities that could help us understand how so often life calls us out to adventure, often at the least expected of moments.

Campbell identified four distinct stages of the journey. The first stage he named as “The Call to Adventure”. This he claimed is caused by discontent, which draws us out of the comfort of our lives to risk something new. For Odysseus it was the call for home after 10 years at war with Troy. The second he described as an initiation, where ordeals are faced that test someone’s mental and physical skills, you see Odysseus’ great skill and wit overcoming troubles and then his arrogance and hubris creating his troubles. The third stage is the time of revelation the discovery of truth and treasure. The truth for Odysseus is that he is humbled by his return home, he is stripped of his vainglory and has to rely on hospitality, he returns an old beggar man. The final stage is the return to one’s community, with wisdom gained and with treasure to share. This is Odysseus return home, back with family a different man, with stories to share. Here he fulfils his Nostos.

On our journeys through life there will be many obstacles that we meet along the way. No one’s life is a perfect smooth ride and I do not for one minute believe that it is meant to be this way. Life throws many obstacles at us that can blow us of course. The key is not to allow these troubles to rule or lives and to maintain the faith in life itself, that we will be able find the courage to come through the storms. There is also another key too, don’t carry your own monsters with you, just deal with what is there in front of you. I think one of lessons of “The Odyssey” is that most of the troubles were self created. Yes some were created by the God’s, but not all and even those were in response to Odysseus mistakes. In fact Odysseus was general favoured by the God’s, it is only Poseidon who turned against him, in his rage for blinding his son, the Cyclops Polyphemus. That said despite these very troubles what we have is the beautiful journey of life. As the end of the poem Ithaca reminds us...

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithaca means.

No one knows what the future holds it truly is unwritten, but we need not fear it. We do not have seers like Odysseus met on his journey. Such as the blind prophet of Thebes who Odysseus meets in Hades (The Underworld). Tiresias tells Odysseus how to return home, warns about dangers and predicts his peaceful death in old age. We don’t get that. If I had known what was coming in the last couple of weeks I may well have buried my head, but I have not. I have journeyed on with the help of beautiful friends.

Here’s another poem based on the hero of “The Odyssey”, by Tom Leonard, titled “Odysseus”

“Odysseus” by Tom Leonard

it took me so long to get back to who I am
why was I away so long why was the journey so tortuous
all those false masks against a backdrop narrative to do with authenticity

but now arriving back there is still much debris to clear
the clearer to see the point from which I started

that from which I set out confused in sundry identities at war with themselves
now to find calm on that setting-out point as the final destination

The call to return, especially to return home is a powerful one. This call though is not just about returning to a place, it is also about time; about returning to a time in life when everything was simpler and safer. I’m sure that this was Dorothy’s call in “The Wizard of Oz”.

This is the call of nostalgia. To return to the place of safety the place of paradise, where we are cared for and looked after. Nostalgia though is often blind and perhaps senseless. It can also be painful. Things are never quite as we remember them. Nostalgia is rooted in the Greek word “Nostos”, which is the central call of “The Odyssey”, this arduous journey by sea, full of adventure and trials and tribulations. “Nostos” is also Penelope’s yearning too, despite her never leaving the island.

Nostalgia is one of the central themes of “The Odyssey”. The problem is that things are never quite what we thought they were. Nostalgia in its original understanding meant “severe homesickness considered as a disease” from the German heimweh (home+woe) homesickness. It is rooted in the ancient Greek words “algos” meaning pain, Grief, distress and “nostos” meaning homecoming. Nostalgia is a painful homecoming. The call to return home is powerful and, at times, painful. It can cause a deep yearning ache in our hearts and souls. Isn’t this the call of Odysseus, through all his trials and tribulations.

The return home is not without pain. Sometimes you might be rejected on the first return. Think of Jack and his beans in the story “Jack and the Beanstalk.” Think of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel returning home and being rejected and almost mocked. As he said to his disciples ‘Prophets are not without honour, except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house.’

Sometimes we might not be recognised when we return home, how painful can that be. We can feel like a stranger in our own land. Odysseus is not recognised on his return. He looks like a beggar stripped of all his vainglory. Only his old dying dog Argos recognises him, dropping his ears and wagging his tail. Odysseus weeps, but cannot go to his dog or his identity will be revealed. Argos has been neglected and left on a dirt heap. This powerfully symbolises the pain and neglect of Ithaka since Odysseus left. It is a heartbreaking moment. Argos his old loyal dog dies as Odysseus arrives home, safe in the knowledge of his return. This might be the most beautifully pure moment in the whole mythos. Maybe Argos is the real hero of the Odyssey.

Here is another poem inspired by “The Odyssey” Note that Ulysees mentioned in tin it is the Roman name for Odysseus.

"The Art of Poetry" By Jorge Luís Borges

To look at the river made of time and water
and remember that time is another river,
to know that we lose ourselves like the river
and that faces go by like the water.

To feel that wakefulness is another sleep
that dreams it is not dreaming and that the death
that our flesh fears is that death
every night that is called sleep.

To see in the day or in the year a symbol
of the days of mankind and of his years,
to change the outrage of the years
into a music, a rumor, and a symbol,

to see in death sleep, in sunset
a sad gold, such is the poetry
that is immortal and poor. Poetry
returns like dawn and sunset.

Sometimes in the evening a face
looks at us from the bottom of a mirror;
art should be like that mirror
that reveals our own face to us.

They tell that Ulysses, tired of wonders,
wept with love at the sight of his Ithaca,
green and humble. Art is that Ithaca
of green eternity, not of wonders.

It is also like the endless river
that passes and remains and is the mirror of one same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and is another, like the endless river.

In the “Art of poetry” Jorge Borges, like Joseph Campbell, recognised a common theme in all the great stories. In this poem he explores some of the great ancient Greek stories. One being Ulysses (which is the Latin translation of Odysseus) and his painful return to Ithaca. He also talks of the philosopher Heraclitus who suggested that we can never return to the same river. This is because water continual flows on and on and the water we step into is never quite the same, but also because we who stand in the river are not the same person either, life will have changed us too. Like the river our lives, go on and on, ever changing. The lesson is that it is not about yearning to return to some mythical ideal, but to fully experience the adventure, the beautiful journey as the poem by Constantine Cavafy, “Ithaca” suggests. This is the lesson of Homer’s Odyssey and perhaps all the great stories. The treasure is the journey itself.

Life is a journey and a beautiful one at that. One in which we are constantly turning and returning again and again and again. It is not always an easy one and one where there will be troubles and difficulties. There will be times when we will not be recognised and may not even recognise ourselves; there will be times when we will feel completely lost and won’t know where to turn for sanctuary. The key is to journey on and in the end we return from where we came. We though are not the same and neither is the place or anyone else.

Odysseus returned home a changed man. Humbled by the journey. Stripped down and older. He and Penelope were eventually reunited, along with his now adult son Telemachus. Odysseus this fulfilled his Nostos. The story, well that goes on, as our lives go on, for the journey is never ending.

I’m going to end this devotion, although there will be more on the Odyssey next time, with one final poem by the wonderful Mary Oliver. A poem titled “The Journey”

“The Journey”, by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Happiness is a spirit that visits us, but how do we speak of it

"So Much Happiness" by Naomi Shihab Nye

"It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

"But happiness floats.
It doesn't need you to hold it down.
It doesn't need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records. . . .

"Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.

I was recently asked by a member of the Urmston congregation I serve Mary to explore happiness during our recent “Common Search for Meaning” group. I will be honest with you, I wasn’t quite sure where to begin. How do you talk about happiness? What on earth is this thing we called happiness?

As Naomi Shihab Nye writes 'With sadness there is something to rub against,' It is easy to speak of sadness, it feels embodied, there is a deep weight a heaviness to it. It has a power that feel like it is pushing you down. Sometimes just raising your head can feel impossible when weighed down by sadness. The sadness can feel so locked in that that no happiness can break through.

Happiness is more of a “willow the whisp”, like a little sprite. It seems to come and go almost unbidden, out of your control. All you can do with it, according the Nye at least, is to simply “shrug, . . . raise your hands . . . take no credit. . . .”

Happiness seems to lack a body, a weight, it is hard to put your finger on, it is not a static state of being. It seems impossible to name and or even talk about. It seems to go against the very grain of our modern materialistic age. How do we talk about happiness?

I am reminded here of something I once read by Henri Nouwen on why it so much easier to speak of our troubles than of joy and happiness. It seems it is not only a British thing. He wrote of his university days:

"I vividly remember how one of my university teachers spoke for a whole year about anxiety in human life. He discussed in great detail the thoughts of Kierkegaard, Sartre, Heidegger, and Camus and gave an impressive exposé of the anatomy of fear. One day, during the last month of the course, a few students found the courage to interrupt him and ask him to speak a little about joy before the course was over. At first he was taken aback. But then he promised to give it a try. The next class he started hesitantly to speak about joy. His words sounded less convincing and penetrating than when he spoke about anxiety and fear. Finally, after two more meetings, he told us that he had run out of ideas about joy and would continue his interrupted train of thought. This event made a deep impression on me, especially since I had such great admiration for my teacher. I kept asking myself why he was unable to teach about joy as eloquently as he had taught about anxiety.

It is the same with happiness. We have no trouble describing our sadness, what is wrong, what sickens us as individuals and as a society. Nouwen observed there are far “more words for sickness than for health, more for abnormal conditions than for normal conditions. When my leg hurts, my head aches, my eyes burn, or my heart stings, I talk about it, often in elaborate ways, but when I am perfectly healthy I have little, if anything, to say about those parts of my body.”

Think about the word resentment. It comes from resentere which literally means to re-feel something. Now when we re-feel something a memory from our past life it doesn’t have to be a painful memory, something that makes us angry and yet the word resentment only has negative connotation. We do not have a word that means to re-feel something that made us happy. There is no specific word for this in the English language.

Now please do not get me wrong. I am not for one moment suggesting that we ought not to talk about our troubles. My word we all have them. Whether that is our personal ones, our health, physical, emotional, mental and or spiritual. Our families, our communities, our wider world. We all live with fears and anxieties and pain brought to our being due to these sufferings. I have plenty myself. In fact sharing our troubles often helps and connects us with one another and through this we may find a freedom that allows happiness to visit once may. We do need to be careful not to become weighed down and enslaved by our struggles though, to the point that this is all that we are.

I was out an about on Monday morning, walking through Altrincham with Molly towards Stamford park. This is how I begin my week probably 9 times out of 10. I left the house with a variety of troubles on my mind. Concerns about the communities I serve. Family issues, folk close to me. Worries about the wider world, both within this country and conflicts in other places. I watched folk as I passed through town and connected. I was also thinking about this subject, how to talk about happiness. I said hello to a few folk and we exchange pleasantries. As I was walking Angela Fowler came into my mind. What a wonderful person she was an example of someone who lived with many struggles in life and yet lived with a sense of joy and happiness in life too. How she was one of those people who was genuinely pleased for others. She had such a wonderful quality about her.

I enjoyed the park, as did Molly. I enjoyed watching those exercising and young parents with babies and pre-school children. I spoke with a few folk and enjoyed the dogs playing together in their delightful way, they were naturally happy. There is something about watching labradors and spaniel’s in particular frolicking in the park. As I got lost in the moment of their play I was visited by that spirit I call happiness.

I walked home smiling with one or two ideas forming. I passed a woman I talk to from time to time. She has a tiny Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. It has had health troubles. It is doing well she tells me and it was a delight to see the happiness on her face as she spoke of her dear sweet dog. As I walked away, I felt that spirit of happiness taking over me. As I reached the crossing, a little later, I heard my name called out. Rosemary Donaldson approached me. She began telling me about what she was doing and then began to speak to me about Angela Fowler, how much she missed her how she had been such an inspiration to her. I told her I had been thinking of her too and we stopped and spoke of Angela for quite some time. As we did, I could feel that spirit of happiness working through us. I walked home with the biggest beaming smile and then got down to some work.

As I did, I thought of seeing and witnessing happiness in folk over the last few days. Observing people lost and absorbed in what they were doing. How in so doing it seems that this spirit of happiness had taken them over. I thought of the Mayor’s Civic Reception I had been invited to last Friday. It was a moving evening, especially listening to people share their stories of struggles and living with M.E. At the same time, I enjoyed experiencing a variety of talented people sharing their artistic gifts. I observed them lost in their work, being visited by that spirit of happiness and sharing it with others. It was strange evening in someways. There were tables full of people in their finery and others sharing gifts and sharing stories. I was happy to be a part of it, although I did experience a little bit of imposter syndrome. I thought to myself, how did I end up here. It made me smile. I felt a sense of happiness.

Here’s another wonderful poem

“HAPPINESS” by Jane Kenyon

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

I am not sure that happiness is something that we can pursue and catch. The foundation of the American Republic is “Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. I am not sure that this is the right objective in life. It seems very self-centred and if not achieved fully sets folk up for dissatisfaction and envy. I suspect that if what your aim in life is to feel happy you will rarely achieve it; if one day you do, then your focus will be on holding onto it. I am not convinced that this is possible. Yes, live the good life, the worthy and meaningful life as they great philosophies teach, but happiness ought not to be the aim in itself, only the product of living this way. When I think of Angela, she seems to be an example of this. Yes she had her struggles, but she knew happiness.

I suspect that the key maybe to find ways to savour the experiences of being alive and to share these moments with others. This is certainly when I experience being visited by the spirit of happiness. It is when I feel free and most alive. It certainly has been the last week or so, despite my real worries and concerns.

I live in the real world and the real world concerns me greatly I carry the same worries we all do. I awake each day with same dilemma that E.B. White wrote of “It’s hard to know when to respond to the seductiveness of the world and when to respond to its challenge. If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between the desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

Now I cannot save the world. That does not mean I avoid it. No instead I do what I can, put my whole self into it and in so doing I am visited. by the spirit of happiness. Not constantly, but when I let myself go and give myself fully to it. The spirit visits me and this spirit sets me free.

This makes me happy and this is my best way I know how to speak of it.

I am going to end with a bit of wisdom from Mary Oliver. A moment of happiness that changed her life. Here she describes being visited by that “sprite” of happiness. She puts the experience in such a beautiful way. She savoured this life, despite the very real struggles she faced and she found a way to share what she experienced. As a result, she knew happiness and others experienced it too.

"Once, years ago, I emerged from the woods in the early morning at the end of a walk and — it was the most casual of moments — as I stepped from under the trees into the mild, pouring-down sunlight I experienced a sudden impact, a seizure of happiness. It was not the drowning sort of happiness, rather the floating sort. I made no struggle toward it; it was given. Time seemed to vanish. Urgency vanished. Any important difference between myself and all other things vanished. I knew that I belonged to the world, and felt comfortably my own containment in the totality. I did not feel that I understood any mystery, not at all; rather that I could be happy and feel blessed within the perplexity — the summer morning, its gentleness, the sense of the great work being done though the grass where I stood scarcely trembled. As I say, it was the most casual of moments, not mystical as the word is usually meant, for there was no vision, or anything extraordinary at all, but only a sudden awareness of the citizenry of all things within one world: leaves, dust, thrushes and finches, men and women. And yet it was a moment I have never forgotten, and upon which I have based many decisions in the years since."

From "Long Life: Essays and Other Writings" by Mary Oliver

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

Original Blessing: A Return to Love

“Blessing” by Barbara Pescan from “Morning Watch”

We spend so much time running from ourselves
Fleeing from what we know
about the goodness in our hearts
we think we can escape
the intelligence of our loving.

Imagine you are standing before a bodhisattva—
Jesus, Buddha, the first mother
it does not matter what you call the holy one—
he has dust on his shoes
chaff clings to her
the smells of being alive—
Shining from their faces is the beam of
all their questions
the compassion of their living

Can you see yourself through those eyes?
Can we know each other like this?
(We, who no longer believe in messiahs
can hardly believe in each other.)

Can we
know ourselves seen
and know each other this same way
until our restless hearts
learn to abide
in this knowing and this love?
Can we live in this gaze of blessing?

During the recent “Ministry in the Making” Rev Ant Howe, the principal tutor of Unitarian College, led an excellent workshop. His opening remarks chimed with concerns I often feel not just about colleagues, but an awful lot of people I meet and have met along the way of life. He observed how if he could have one super power it would be to help folk to see themselves as they truly are, the potential they have, what they are capable of being and becoming. I know myself how much it matters how we see ourselves, for how we see ourselves is how we will see all life. I am not merely talking about our physically being here, but in our hearts and souls.

What do you see when you look into the mirror, when you look into your own eyes? It matters you know, it really does.

It is said that if we could only live by The “Golden Rule of Compassion”, found at the heart and soul of all the great spiritual traditions states, in various forms, “do into others as you would have them do unto yourself”, then we might learn to live in love and peace with each other. It is certainly vital that when we look at each other we see a fellow human being and that we act with compassion towards one another. This would certainly be a good start, but there are some problems that stem from even the Golden Rule. I wonder sometimes if this is actually part of the problem; that we do live this way and for many of us this is where the trouble begins. I suspect that many folk see the world as they see themselves. The problem is how they see themselves and they see the world. That they see at the heart of themselves something or someone that is wrong at the core of their being. Therefore, they see this in the world around them.

The problem is that we see something wrong at the core of human nature.

During the introduction to his workshop Ant made reference to two pieces of Old Testament literature. The first from the first book of the Bible Genesis I v 27

27 So God created humans[e] in his image,
in the image of God he created them;[f]
male and female he created them.

He complimented this with the 8th Psalm V5

5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God[b]
and crowned them with glory and honor.

So not God’s, but formed in the image, a reflection, of the Divine. Born from love and with responsibility for the world and the people they share with the world, folk born from the same flesh and with the same spirit.

These verses suggest to me an “Original Blessing”, that humanity is formed in this, at least according to these foundational verses of scripture. If we saw this as foundational and then applied the Golden Rule, then certainly life would improve for all. The problem is that too often we do not. For too long the emphasis has been on what is seen as humanity’s fallen nature. This of course comes from the traditional understanding of second book of Genesis and the fall of humanity in the story of “Adam and Eve”. Of them eating from the forbidden tree of knowledge of Good and Evil and thus being cast out of paradise. From Augustine it has been understood, at least in orthodox Trinitarian Christinaity, that humanity is permanently stained and corrupted and can only be saved by the blood of the sacrifice of Jesus, through substitutional atonement. That the troubles of humanity and the troubles of life are due to our “Original Sin”.

Now of course this is an explanation for our troubles, but not one I share. We have the capacity for good, just as we have the capacity to cause great suffering. Depending on the eyes I look at life with, determines which one I believe.

I have felt sadness this week. I was shocked on Tuesday morning when I received a phone call from Liz Parkinson’s husband Neil to tell me that Liz had died suddenly on Monday. Now I know that Liz had lived with a variety of complex health issues for many years, but the news was still shocking. I have known Liz for over a dozen years and it has been wonderful having her become a member of the Altrincham congregation. She has given so much, especially keeping other physically isolated people connected from the Covid days until the last few days of her life. Liz found a home amongst our free religious tradition. She was always quite surprised by the freedom she was afforded, to explore her own faith, to find what she believed and didn’t believe. I remember a conversation I had with her a little while ago about suffering and faith and the rejection of the concept that anyone is born with the taint of sin and or wrongness. Something I know that she struggled with from an early age. Her daughter Lynne told that she found great healing and acceptance in our community and I know how much that meant to her and her family.

As I was thinking of Liz and her journey I was reminded of a conversation I had with another friend, who is herself on her own spiritual journey. It took place out walking and talking with Molly. We found ourselves walking in circles, side by side and sharing about our own journeys through life and our own understandings of faith and doubt.

We were talking about where this sense of wrongness we humans can feel at times comes from. Something we have both shared, something sadly so many do. Where does this rejection of life come from? We talked about the foundational stories in Genesis. Of course it is Mythos. It is not history to be argued over factual accuracy. Mythos is Universal Truth, the question to ask is does this speak to a deeper truth that we can find in ourselves, does it speak throughout time?

Now of course some reject the Bible as outdated and not only inaccurate but downright destructive. I do not, I think there is so much to engage with still. That said only in a symbolic sense. I explained to my friend how it actually begins with “Original Blessing”, in Genesis chapter one. This was the point that Ant was trying to make too. That God looked at his creation and saw that it was good. That life is a good thing, that we are formed from good, not wrong. There is no original sin, only original blessing, that blessing is formational, that life is formed from goodness. The concept of “Original Sin” was actually a creation of the later church, mainly Augustine and his self-loathing, Which I believe is a rejection of his own original blessing, something I can personally relate to at times, as sadly so many folk do. That the fall came after the blessing and that the spiritual journey is about returning to the blessing.

So it isn’t that there isn’t wrong, or suffering, sin in the world, it’s just that this is not the foundation, that we are born in and through “Original Sin”

The trouble begins in the understand of second creation story, in the Garden of Eden. That said if we look at this symbolically rather than literally there is so much beautiful mythos to be unearthed in this story too. The original human Adam meant born from the earth. Human, humus, humility all share same linguistic root, born from the earth, not God, but finite, limited, but beautiful. Yes we are born, but we also die. This is life.

Originally, we enjoy paradise, the fruits of life. There is no shame, no sense of wrongness no rejection of our lives, no destruction of ourselves and or others. We simply enjoy paradise. We have something else though. We want more, we seek more. This is where all creativity is born, but can also causes trouble. We are the only aspect of created life that experiences dissatisfaction. We want more.

So, we eat the forbidden fruit, we want the knowledge, we suffer Hubris. We lose that beautiful gift of innocence, we are cast out by a sense of shame, especially with our humanity. We leave paradise. We separate ourselves.

We can though return to love, to blessing, but the journey is long and arduous, not that we go anywhere. To quote Meister Eckhart, it could be of one inch, but a depth beyond any depth, layer upon layer. We return home, we go full circle, we don't go back on ourselves. We come home with treasure to share. This is the classic heroic journey. The truth of every great story, the Universal Mythos. The key is to return home to love. That though comes in later stories. I often think of the prodigal son here. With the boy returning home to the open arms of his father who greets him halfway, celebrates his return and embraces his son, with a kiss. An act of pure love. Can there be anything more intimate. It seems to me there is nothing considered wrong in this child born of love. Yet so often we do not feel we are formed from this, it is just so sad.

Now of course this is only my view of the mythos and it is certainly not orthodox in any way shape or form. My interpretation is life affirming, it celebrates life, the traditional view does not. As Joseph Campbell, that great mythologist, has said the orthodox interpretation is “a refusal to affirm life.” Life is seen as corrupt. It sees the serpent as the symbol that brought sin into the world and woman as the figure who handed the apple to man. As Campbell says “This identification of the woman with sin, of the serpent with sin, and thus of life with sin, is the twist the has been given to the whole story in the biblical myth and doctrine of the Fall.... I don't know of it [the idea of woman as sinner...in other mythologies] elsewhere.”

The traditional understanding sees life as the problem, especially human life and sees the female, the bringer of life, as the root of the trouble. How long have we all suffered as a result of this rejection of life and woman as central to it. We see it clearly today, it has not gone away, in fact if anything the trouble seems to be intensifying. For me the problem stems from this fear of life itself. Surely though life is good.

Sadly, it seems that so many folk are as afraid of life as we are of death. It seems to me that these ancient stories, in their essence at least, are trying to teach that death is in life as life is in death. This is the story of existence of which we are all a part of. Yet for me some reason we reject life in so many ways, we are frightened of being cast out of it, we crucify it, we torture it we persecute and distrust. We fear our own humanity, our mortality. We say there is no good in us and no good in the other. In so doing we do in fact treat others as we would wish to be treated. This is of course is not what the Golden Rule of Compassion was meant to be like. It was meant to help us see ourselves in the other, and other in ourselves and to act with love and compassion to all.

Ant made a vitally important point, one I agree with. It matters how we see ourselves and I firmly believe how we see ourselves will reflect on how we see others and the world. It certainly has in my life. I have at times in my life lived with feelings of self loathing, that there was something wrong with me. This a conversation I shared with my friend in Accrington recently as we shared childhood memories. I know I was told many times that people like me would not last long in this world. That I needed to be different kind of person a tougher one than I was. On dark days, when my mood is low I can feel like that again. I can believe that there is something wrong with me, at the core of me. I know I am not alone. Maybe this is not such a terrible thing as it does breed empathy in the heart of me, as I know many others can feel this way too.

I am not alone in these feelings. So many folk feel this way. Not everyone though. It can be hard for folk who have never felt this way to relate to those amongst us who have. It can make it difficult to understand if you have never felt this way.

It is only humanity that seems to be cursed with a sense of shame, maybe this is where the mythos of eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge is about. I certainly don’t see it in animals. As I watch Molly playing and loving and enjoying her existence, it’s the same with the other dogs too. They enjoy the fact that they live at all, it is a pure blessing.

I was chatting with someone the other day who was singing the joy the of living. They were telling me how they were going to the gym after work, enjoying the privilege of being alive. This is a person who has never suffered this sense of being wrong, at least this is what they tell me. They are a delight to be around, although they do tell me that they struggle to empathise with others and that it can make them both impatient and intolerant. This brings its own troubles. I know a sense of joy in my being mostly these days. I love to sing the joy of living in all its mystery. I also know the other feelings too and I do not forget, for it helps to breed empathy. If I never felt them I wonder if I would truly be able to do this work. It allows me serve and has enabled me to find my place in this world.

As I journey on, as I have done this week, despite sad feelings of grief and concern for others, I have remembered to keep on singing that joy of living. I have noticed that despite the very real suffering that is part of existence, both natural and that caused by our inhumanity, that there is music too. I have been thinking of Ant’s words to the new ministers. I have been remembering that life itself is a blessing, it is a privilege to be alive. Grief has remined me just how precious life is and how I get to share my life with some remarkable people. That we are born from “Original Blessing”. That this is our natural state, that too often we lose sight of this. We are all formed from the tree of life, the tree of renewal, the tree of re-birth. We need to recognise this. Sometimes this comes when we lose something or someone precious to us, somehow in this suffering we turn back home again, we return to paradise. We find wholeness once again, we recognise our own sacredness and that of others. We return to love and care compassion. We care for one another and we let others care for us too.

This I believe is how we are meant to live. It is certainly how I am meant to live. It is the only way that someone like me can live in this world.

I’m going to end with a bit of Mary Oliver, perhaps her best known poem “Wild Geese”

“Wild Geese” Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

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

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"