Salvation here and now: It’s not about being saved from life, but to be saved by life, in life, for life

I have a friend named Neil. We have known each other for twenty years now. I think it is fair to say when we first met we didn’t see eye to eye, we had lived very different lives. We got to know one another though because we suffered from a common problem. This though is not what led to us becoming friends. That just happened over time. We have been on a spiritual journey along side one another, some of that time we have been very close and others not so much, there have been many parallels and crossings over. We were members at Cross Street chapel together. These days Neil has returned to his Catholic faith; yes he is Catholic, but he is certainly one with an open mind, heart, spirit and soul.

I conducted Neil’s wedding to Rosemary at Dunham Road, I think it was the second wedding I ever conducted. I did not introduce them to each other, although I did meet her before he did. When I was a student minister at King Edward Street Chapel, the home of Macclesfield Unitarians, Rosemary was attending. They met not long after I left there and realised that they had a common acquaintance in me, it is a small world. Rosemary has her health troubles and Neil has been a loving and devoted husband throughout this time, she has even survived his terrible jokes and puns. Neil retired many years and since then returned to education, a few years ago he completed his History PHD on the Irish in Manchester.

Like I said earlier at different times Neil and I have drifted apart and then reconnected. We have reconnected in the last couple of years and he has been a good supportive friend to me, during a few personally difficult times. We see each other, along with other friends most Fridays. We met last Friday and he told me that he was meeting his brother a little later. This was wonderful to hear as I know that they had fallen out a few years ago, they had had their differences about life and the world, the kind of things that seem to cause so much division in society these days. Neil though wanted to make things right, his brother had been his best man at his wedding. So, Neil plucked up the courage to contact his brother’s son and offered the hand of friendship, between two brothers. That afternoon his brother Ged, had agreed to meet him.

A little later I saw them having coffee together. I cannot begin to tell you how much seeing the beaming smile of Ged’s face meant to me. It was so wonderful seeing two brothers reconciled with each other. Neil told me later “When I met him I hugged him and said ‘I love you Ged’. After that it was as it should be with brothers.” It touched my heart. I had already seen two men levelling their pride earlier that day and reconciling with one another and then there was Neil and Ged. If only the rest of the world could behave that way. One thing I am grateful for in life is that I have never fallen out with any of my siblings, nore they me, despite the many troubles and fallings out there have been and still are in our large and complicated family. This includes all the half siblings and step siblings and ex step siblings too. There have been tough times, but we have all vowed never to let these things destroy our relationships with each other. I hope we keep it that way.

Neil and Ged reminded of a verse from chapter 5 in Matthews Gospel, from the “Sermon on the Mount”, which for me is the essence of the teachings of Jesus, something regardless of whether you are a Christian or not seem as good a code as any to live by. I know that Gandhi, a Hindu, believed so. The verse is as follows:

23 So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. 25

It is no use proclaiming faith etc, showing your piety, if your human relationships are a mess. Unhealthy pride can be destructive in human relationships. So often it is the levelling of pride that leads to reconciliation. It takes faith and love and courage to build the bridges of reconciliation, it takes someone to make the first move to bring healing for their relationship but also the wider relationship. You see if two people are in conflict, it is not only those two individuals who are damaged by it, all who are connected to them are damaged too. Reconciliation can bring healing to so many. I see this every day, just as I see the damage done by disputes and resentment.

In life there are many things that separate we human beings, often our beliefs and disbeliefs. Whether these be religious or anti-religious, political, social, cultural, we separate ourselves through them and yet we are all human. We all love and we all grieve when we lose those we love. To quote Eugene Ionesco “Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.” We are united by a common humanity, united by our shared hopes and despairs. We are each of us unique and complete as ourselves and yet we only truly know ourselves through our relationships with one another and with life. To quote Mark Nepo “It is a great paradox of being that each of us is born complete and yet we need contact with life in order to be whole. Somehow we need each other to know that completeness, though we are never finished in that journey.” I know how precious my relationship with others is to my well-being.

We are living in ever more dividing and divisive times. We do not see ourselves as one people. This is dangerous. Not only to ourselves but to our shared humanity. By separating ourselves we will never know wholeness, we will never truly be all that we can be. No one is an island. We need to be at one not only with ourselves, but with all of life and whatever it is we believe is at the core of all life, to truly become completely ourselves, to touch perfection. Perfection means completeness. This is what salvation means by the way. To quote Forrest Church. “What I'm talking about…is salvation. The Latin root, salve, means health. The Teutonic cognates, health, hale, whole, and holy, all share the same root. Being an agnostic about the afterlife, I look for salvation here—not to be saved from life, but to be saved by life, in life, for life.

Such salvation has three dimensions: Integrity, or individual wholeness, comes when we make peace with ourselves; reconciliation, or shared wholeness, comes when we make peace with our neighbors, especially with our loved ones; redemption, in the largest sense, comes when we make peace with life and death, with being itself, with God.”

When we experience this wholeness we are as close as we will ever be to perfection, to completeness, although only for a moment as our lives go on. We begin to truly live our lives. Life is the greatest gift of all, the ultimate Grace. So choose life.

This brings me back to “The Sermon on the Mount”, this time verse 48 of the 5th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, the final verse of that chapter. “Therefore be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.” This is heaven on earth, this is the Kingdom of Love right here right now. This is the purpose of the spiritual life, this is the religion of love, of true communal spirituality. This is what it means to live in perfect love Perfection is not flawlessness as we often think it is. Quite the opposite perfect love is sincere, it’s about showing our cracks, our flaws, our scars, showing who we truly are. The Latin root of perfection is “perfectus” which meant “completeness”, or wholeness, health in mind body and spirit, wholeness with self, others, life and God.

This is the purpose of spiritual community; this is the purpose of our free religious faith.

But how do we become whole, complete, perfect? How do we become at one with ourselves, one another, life, with God? Well it begins by being truly present in what we are doing; it begins by not being caught up in worry and fear, our own and others. It’s about not going into things hard, but rather by softly melting into what we are doing, by being who we are in what we are doing, by almost not focusing too hard, by looking through soft eyes. By being natural, who we are, by becoming what we are doing.

We are never truly whole complete unless we are at one with ourselves, one another, life and whatever it is that we believe is the power that permeates all life. We can never truly become ourselves alone. This is why true community is so vital to the spiritual life. We need right relationship to become wholly who we are. To me this is the purpose of what we do as a community, what we are doing here today. Yes, it’s about becoming who we truly are, but this cannot be done in isolation. This is the purpose of free religion. It allows the birth of the true spirit in each of us, but no one can completely give birth to themself, by them self. To repeat those words of Mark Nepo: “It is a great paradox of being that each of us is born complete and yet we need contact with life in order to be whole. Somehow we need each other to know that completeness, though we are never finished in that journey.”

This begins with reconciliation. By putting things right with our relationships with ourselves, our God, those important people in our lives, in our families and our communities and of course putting things right in our relationships with life.

This is salvation here and now. It’s not about being saved from life, but to be saved by life, in life, for life.

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

The perfectly imperfect game of life

“Jigsaw” by Harold Kushner

There must have been a time when you entered a room and met someone and after a while you understood that unknown to either of you there was a reason you had met. You had changed the other and he had changed you. By some word or deed or just by your presence the errand had been completed. Then perhaps you were a little bewildered or humbled and grateful. And it was over.

Each lifetime is the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
For some there are more pieces.
For others the puzzle is more difficult to assemble.

Some seem to be born with a nearly completed puzzle.
And so it goes.
Souls going this way and that.
Trying to assemble the myriad parts.

But know this. No one has within themselves
All the pieces to their puzzle.
Like before the days when they used to seal
jigsaw puzzles in cellophane. Insuring that
All the pieces were there.

Everyone carries with them at least one and probably
Many pieces to someone else's puzzle.
Sometimes they know it.
Sometimes they don't.

And when you present your piece
Which is worthless to you,
To another, whether you know it or not,
Whether they know it or not,
You are a messenger from the Most High

There are many puzzles and crazes that seem to take over public consciousness from time to time. You may remember the Rubik’s Cube (pictured opposite) every kid had one in the early 1980’s. My family of course had a go. I was utterly useless. I seem to remember even the smarter ones couldn’t do it, even my brother. There were ways to cheat, the most popular was to remove the stickers and replace them. Did you ever give it a go.

Well it seems that “The Rubik’s Cube” is becoming popular again. I was talking with one my oldest friend’s Nick last Saturday night, at a mutual friends birthday celebration. It is always wonderful to spend time with old friends, those who have known you through thick and thin. He began by telling me how much his daughter is looking forward to seeing me again. I know it is not to see me, but to meet Molly. He then began telling me about his son. I think his son is a bit of a genius. I remember when he came over to Manchester last year he had a Rubik’s cube, which he could complete in a no time at all. Well he is utterly obsessed it seems. So much so that he is competing in the World Championship, which take place at the end of this month, in Spalding in Lincolnshire. Nick says he is incredibly confident, I understand why. He can even complete a cube blind. The technique being that the competitor gets to look at a muddled up cube, they are then blindfolded and they have to put it back in order while blindfolded. Well Nick’s son Alex can do so in no time at all. It blows my mind. I get the confidence.

People constantly amaze me. Yes, we are all made of the same stuff, but we can be so different in the ways we see and engage with life. I know I wouldn’t even know where to begin if given a Rubik’s cube. My mind just does not work in this way. I would imagine if my brother’s children got into such things, they would soon be geniuses at it. I am very different. My mind does not work through images, I am more intuitive and my memory is linked to language. I used to find this a bit of puzzle. I do less so these days. It is just part of the beautiful tapestry of life. It helps me to understand how differently people can experience life. Some folk love quizzes and games etc. Board games are very popular once again. I have never been that interested personally. I am much more interested in the puzzle of what makes each of us human and making sense of the mystery that is life and that which I find at the core of life. That spirit in life, that I call God.

It is hard at times to come to terms with life, particularly the horror and suffering. There is the natural horror, which we have no doubt witnessed this week in Turkey and Northern Syria, thousands of lives lost due to the earth quake. We also see corruption and all kinds of other human made horrors, war etc. At the same time we also see the incredible things we do for one another in times of strife. The human response to disaster can be incredible. When someone suffers, most people are only too willing to offer a helping hand. There are many other troubles too, that are so hard to make sense of. Life is not a game, a puzzle to be solved. Reality is not a mathematical equation, or a Rubiks cube that can be simply put back in order. It is not a jigsaw puzzle where all we have to do is put the pieces back together, to create the perfect picture. I supect even if we had all the pieces and the picture, it still would not fit together perfectly and neatly. Life is not some game of perfection and or perfectionism. Nothing in life is complete, there is no such thing as perfection.

Now this might shock some of you, but it seems I am not mad after all. Here’s the proof. I cannot draw a perfect circle.

Now I know that this test may not hold up in court, but I think it’s revealing. Now I don’t think it is one’s ability to draw perfect circle that is actually the true test of madness, the true test is to actually try. I think the true test of madness is to keep on trying to draw the perfect circle, or to even think that such a thing is possible.

The circle is never perfect, in fact I’m pretty sure that the circle will remain forever incomplete. I think it’s better that way.

One of the great plagues of humanity is perfection, is seeking perfection both within ourselves and others. How many times I wonder have I rejected either myself, others, or life itself because it did not offer perfection? How many times have I noticed others doing the same? It is a lot easier to see in others by the way than in myself.

Nothing in life is perfect, it is always imperfect. I am pretty much convinced that this is how it ought to be.

Now imperfection is one of those interesting words that doesn’t mean exactly what it always meant. When today we say that something is imperfect we are usually making a judgement about something suggesting that there is something wrong with it. In so doing we are making an error. Imperfection comes from the Latin “imperfectus” which actually meant incomplete.

So when we say that we are imperfect, that others are imperfect, that life itself is imperfect we are correct, in the sense that nothing is ever complete. Life is not a jigsaw or a Rubik’s Cube.

The mistake we have made is that in saying that someone or something is imperfect we have suggested that they or it is somehow wrong, when in fact we couldn’t be more wrong. Imperfection itself is what makes life what it is, it is the fuel and energy of life as it is through imperfection that the energy to create relationship is fuelled.

Imperfection, incompleteness is the energy of life.

This brings to mind that rather lovely poem by Harold Kushner “Jigsaw” that I shared earlier. I love the way Kushner explains why we are incomplete. That it is through our incompleteness that we draw closer together. This is so true, we are relational beings. We do not live in separation and we do not live separate lives. We are constantly seeking unity, to be yoked beyond ourselves. The word “Yoga” actually means to join, to unite. It seems to me that all the great spiritual traditions, eastern and western, are in their own way pointing to this. That the spiritual life cannot exist in isolation. That in actual fact to live spiritually is to live in relation. That there is a yearning within us all to find that missing piece. In so attempting to do so, by the way, we enable others to do the same.

When we come together in love, we create the love we have all been searching for.

I played a little game this week with friends. I shared the following “The imperfectionist” by Forrest Church with a whole load of friends. It had come up as a “Facebook” memory that morning. As I was about to start sending it round I noticed I had made a typing error in the title, it read “Imperfectionsit. I had made the error several years ago, but no one noticed it at the time. For some reason I noticed it as I read it through. So I added, at the end, that there was a prize for anyone who can spot the imperfection. The responses were wonderful and fascinating. Many replied that they loved the piece, but couldn’t find the imperfection. They told me how the piece spoke to them. Three found it immediately. Several suggested other mistakes, there weren’t any others, but could not see the typo in the title. One cheated after several attempts. They told me that they are a problem solver in work. She didn’t give up, but eventually found it after cheating by copying the text into “Word”, which highlighted the typo. One or two are still looking for it. I loved the whole game and responses that people gave. It showed to me the wonderful and fascinating diversity of the people I have in my life. Beautifully perfectly imperfect folk. It was also an interesting experiment in what different people look at and how many people see what they believe is there, rather than what is actually there.

Here is the piece “The imperfectionsit” by Forrest Church (It is really “The Imperfectionist”)

"The reason I’ve been able to produce so much is that I’m not a perfectionist – I’m an imperfectionist. I’m confident that everything I say can be improved upon by others, and that’s my great strength, because I know that it won’t be improved upon by others unless I take the first step. When we only do things which please us, or don’t frighten us, after a while fewer and fewer things please us. Over time, our circle of options diminishes until we are prisoners in gardens of our own making. The more decisions you make in your life, the more times you act, the more certain it is that you will be wrong. To be fulfilled we need to recognize, all of us, that the world doesn’t owe us a living – rather we owe the world a living. And in the brief time that is given us, we must somehow learn to give ourselves away."

It is a wonderful bit of wisdom don’t you think. Not perfect of course, but very interesting.

Life is a mysterious thing. Nothing fits perfectly together. It is not a perfect circle or a cube that can be put back in perfect order. It is messy and sometimes confusing. It is made up of many pieces, some broken and damaged. It is difficult to make sense and to work out where everything fits, including ourselves. This need not cause us fear. This is the nature of reality. Our task is to make the most of what is ours to draw our imperfect circles and do our little bit with the pieces we have, to place them together, to encourage one another and to bring to life that little mystery that I have come to believe is at the heart of each and everyone of us. In so doing we make this puzzle that is life a little more loving and meaningful for each and everyone of us.

So come play with me at this beautiful game that is life. This perfectly imperfect game of life.

Below is a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"

 

The Virtues of Crookedness: The Meaning of Life Just Doesn't Add Up

There was a crooked man, who walked a crooked mile, who found crooked six pence, upon a crooked stile.

I don’t like Monday’s. Thankfully not in the same way as the character from the Boom Town Rats song. Still, it is not my favourite day, or doesn’t feel like it. I find Monday’s a bit of a chore, a challenge. I’m usually tired and find myself slogging through the day. Usually, after forcing my way through my gym routine, I am beginning to form ideas about what I will be exploring that week, I did this last Monday. Actually, the seed had been planted quite early the day before, although it had by Monday taken on a whole new life. I began my research, but was distracted by having to put together my latest contribution for “The Inquirer” and for the congregational calendars. I made a good start though and went to bed early that evening and slept.
Tuesday’s, I love. I wake early, alive and refreshed. Tuesday’s, tend to be inspirational days, ones when I am enlivened by everything. That said I am certain that none of Tuesday’s inspiration would be possible without Monday’s slog, so maybe the truly magic day is Monday. All day this last Tuesday my attention was focused on folks responses to crookedness and perceived imperfections. I arrived at my 7am meditation early, as folk were setting up. My friend Adrian told me one of the heaters had blown a fuse and wasn’t working. I knew it hadn’t, he just hadn’t tuned it on properly. My friend is an intelligent man and an engineer, but he couldn’t work out that the heater had two switches, to turn on. He is the second engineer I know who has been baffled by this in the last week. He then started talking about the need for laminated instructions and things needing to be really simple. I thought to myself, well it couldn’t be simpler. He then spent time trying to make everything about the get together perfect. Another friend arrived and felt the need to move the candles, so that they were perfectly in the centre of the room. I myself often feel the need to ensure there are more chairs than required, to widen the circle, my attempt to make things perfect, as well as ensuring the room is at the right temperature. We all have our little obsessions. Our hour together couldn’t have been better, but it was far from perfect. It was profoundly beautiful though.

Conversations about maths, or “math” have been floating around the ether of late. It is almost a God to be worshipped in the lives of some folk. Not for me. If life has shown me anything it is that it is not about simple equations, that will somehow resolve the chaotic nature of existence. Chaos rules it all. I had recently got involved online in a group called “The Unitarian Universalist Hysterical Society”, it is generally a light hearted group, although a majority of posts seem to be about three subjects, maths, cats and coffee. The post I responded to was suggesting that “math” was the meaning of life. It read as follows: “A couple of days ago when my math teacher asked “any questions”. I asked “What is the meaning of life”. She simply replied “The meaning of life is math.” Today we realised that in the alphabet “M” is the 13th letter, “A” is the 1st letter, “T” is the 20th letter and “H” is the 8th letter. 13+1+20+8 =42.

According to Douglas Adams in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, the meaning of life is 42. Now this is obviously him having satirical fun. It was funny seeing folk getting all excited by the letter making up “Math” 42. Well until myself and several others pointed out that Doulas Adams was British and thus would never have referred to mathematics as “math”, for him and anyone educated in Britain it is “Maths” and thus by this logic the meaning of life must be 61, which of course it is not. Life is not a mathematical equation and its meaning cannot be discerned this way, at least I find it hard to believe that it can be.

Now Tuesday, which was of course was the 22nd February 2022 was an exciting day for both mathematicians and numerologists, in fact throughout the world it was being labelled “Two’s Day”. According to many people It was the last day when we will witness the following sequence of numbers in a day 22/2/2022 or in America 2/22/2022 or as folk were posting 2/22/22. Now some were getting excited by the palindrome, whilst others by the idea that “the sequence had mystical powers believed to elevate energies in individuals lives, propelling them towards their dreams, desires and unfulfilled wishes.” The number 222 is an angel number and according to astrologers pivotal in shifting powers. I kept on hearing that 2.22 was the perfect time for doing this, but which one? 2am or 2pm or perhaps 10pm or 22.22 in the 24 hour clock. By the way you may find this shocking but many younger people today cannot read an analogue clock, only the 24hour one. It shocked me, I recall that learning to tell the time, by a clock, was one of the frsit things I learnt at school.

Now whatever the merits of all this. What was lovely was to see how energised many folk were by this sequence of numbers. Hopefully it will help them live more connected lives, whatever the merits of this time and day. I certainly felt some really special energy myself. All of life was speaking to me, but then it often does on Tuesdays. I certainly didn’t see anything perfect this last “Two’s Day”, nor do I think that maths or perfect number sequences can provide me with any answers to the meaning of life. I find my meaning by engaging fully in life, but doing so imperfectly. Last Tuesday was one of those days. Thank you.

I am imperfect in everything I do. No doubt anyone listening to will hear all kinds of errors. Several congregants have told me, that I am well known for some whopping typos. I know that Colleen, the Inquirer editor, has to do some editorial work on everything I write, and my social media posts can be hilariously full of typing errors. I am somewhat raggle taggle generally in life. I, could never paint inside the lines. My handwriting is dreadful. I am a nightmare to accompany when singing, sorry musicians, but I often like to go my own way. My ear will sometimes try to improve a hymn.

Here is a song of praise for everyone who can’t paint within the lines, for those who move a little awkwardly, out of perfect step, unable to keep a straight line. I love the blessed crookedness of life, not the attempt to make everything perfect. I adore the holy imperfections in everything, this is the real beauty and perhaps meaning in life. There are no perfect moments or days, only this moment and this day, let’s make the best of it. I want to encourage myself and others to keep stumbling along, no matter how falteringly, carrying our wounds and unashamed by our scars, to keep on making the beautiful mistakes. To limp on as wounded healers. You see there is a danger in purity in holding up the ideal, ideas of perfection. Things don’t need to always add up, there is no perfect sequences or systems. Chaos rules OK. So, let’s not be afraid to be our perfectly imperfect selves. Let’s keep on making the beautiful mistakes. Some of life’s biggest mistakes have led to something wonderful, if unexpectedly so.

I was recently chatting with Jeanette Podestta, from Queens Road, about her dad John’s ashes. They will be scattered in the Garden of Remembrance at Dunham Road. John Reece’s wife Phyl and both his parents Horace and Elsie are at Dunham Road, named on the nearly full wall there. I remembered that her mum Phyl and begun at Monton Unitarians and asked if that was where they were. Jeanette then said something that was both stunning and amusing. It seems that her mum’s family had become Unitarians “by mistake”. It was during the second world war and there were no signs up at the church signifying its denomination. Well, Monton Unitarian Church is a grand old building, more impressive than the local parish church and it appears that the family had mistaken it for this. That said it must have become a happy mistake as they found a home amongst the Unitarians.

It got me thinking about the mistakes me make, how they can actually lead to blessings, as we learn from them, and or they might lead us to new and wonderful experiences. I also smiled as I thought of Jeanette’s grandparents and a line from the film “Withnail and I” that came into my mind, “We’ve come on holiday by mistake”. It reminded of a sign on the door of the principal of the Unitarian College Rev Dr Anne Peat, that read “I have learnt so much from my mistakes, that I think I am going to make a few more.” It got me wondering about the dangers of seeking perfection, “straightness”, I much prefer the virtues of crookedness, after all as Leonard Cohen observed, it’s the cracks that let the light in. Beauty in life is found in the imperfections.

Sadly, though so many see something wrong in this crookedness, in our imperfection. "The philosopher Immanuel Kant once wrote, "Out of timber as crooked as that which man is made of, nothing perfectly straight can be carved." Now some take this to mean that there is something wrong with humanity, rather than that the beauty in life is created by the misshapen, the imperfect. Ok so we can’t create things that are perfectly straight, we can though create something less perfect, with curves and knotholes. I for one find this more beautiful than the apparent perfect. Even if we did create something perfect, it would not remain that way, one day it break or deteriorate. Surely this is where the beauty is in life’s finiteness, that nothing ever lasts forever.

Many cultures celebrate the beauty of imperfection. Such as carpets in the Islamic tradition, that deliberately have a fault woven into them. Japan, a culture that on its contemporary surface seems obsessed with detail and perfection, as the wonderful example of Wabi Sabi, which creates something beautiful out of the cracks in pottery. When I think of myself and the most beautiful people I know it is the cracks in the pot that make them so. I rejoice in my potty, crack pottedness, I trust you will rejoice with me.

Some Japanese robes, kimonos, have a design and purpose that is very different to clothing in other cultures, particularly in the west. They are plain and deliberately have imperfections sown into them, at least on the outside, and yet on the inside they are intricately beautiful and meticulously crafted. The purpose I suspect is to remind the wearer that the beauty lies within, too easily we are distracted by attempts to appear perfect, at least on the outside, whilst on the inside we feel that something is wrong. We are perfectly imperfect, cracked pots, both beautiful and somewhat worn and a little crooked by life. This though does not mean that there is something wrong with us at our core. Our task, I suspect, is to bring this to life. The cracks not only let the light in, thy let it out too. We have a purpose here. Let’s crack on.

Life is not a competition where we have to be number one. Life is about falling down many times, making numerous mistakes and helping one another become the best we can be, not for ourselves alone, but for all to share. I reckon if we were perfect, or appeared that way, we would be of little use to others, we would be completely and utterly unrelatable.

Perhaps this is something to think about, consider the mistakes you have made, how they have led to wonderful things. Perhaps the gifts that have grown from your woundedness, even brokenness at times. Where have you been led by these beautiful mistakes? What blessings have been unearthed later in life. Maybe places you have been or things you have done by mistake that have led to some kind of blessing. Perhaps what brought you here, both today and in the past. I bet it wasn’t the search for some perfect equation, although it may well have been a search to find meaning in life. The answer is not maths, or math and it certainly isn’t 42. The answer to meaning is in asking the question, it’s in seeking and it is in living with one another. All of the beautifully strange, the perfectly imperfect, people just like you and me.

So lets keep on walking the crooked mile. You never know we might just find a crooked six pence, upon the crooked stile

Below is a video devotion based

on the material in this "blogspot"

Wholeness and completeness

In life there are many things that separate we human beings, often our beliefs and disbeliefs. Whether these be religious or anti-religious, political, social, cultural we separate ourselves through them and yet we are all human. We all love, we all long and we all grieve when we lose those we love. To quote Eugene Ionesco “Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.” We are united by a common humanity; we are united by our shared hopes and despairs. We are each of us unique and complete as ourselves and yet we only truly know ourselves through our relationships with one another and with life. To quote Mark Nepo “It is a great paradox of being that each of us is born complete and yet we need contact with life in order to be whole. Somehow we need each other to know that completeness, though we are never finished in that journey.”

We are living in ever more dividing and divisive times. We do not see ourselves as one people. This is dangerous. Not only to ourselves but to our shared humanity. By separating ourselves we will never know wholeness, we will never truly be all that we can be. No one is an island. We need to be at one not only with ourselves, but with all of life and whatever it is we believe is at the core of all life to truly become completely ourselves, to touch perfection. Remember perfection originally meant completeness, I suspect perfect love is in a sense wholeness. This is one way to salvation by the way. To quote Forrest Church. “What I'm talking about…is salvation. The Latin root, salve, means health. The Teutonic cognates, health, hale, whole, and holy, all share the same root. Being an agnostic about the afterlife, I look for salvation here—not to be saved from life, but to be saved by life, in life, for life.

Such salvation has three dimensions: Integrity, or individual wholeness, comes when we make peace with ourselves; reconciliation, or shared wholeness, comes when we make peace with our neighbors, especially with our loved ones; redemption, in the largest sense, comes when we make peace with life and death, with being itself, with God.”

When we experience this wholeness we are as close as we will ever be to perfection, to completeness, although only for a moment as our lives go on. By becoming whole we begin to truly live our lives. Life is the greatest gift of all, the ultimate Grace. So choose life.

This brings to mind those words I so love from the Sermon on the Mount “Therefore be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.” This is heaven on earth, this is the Kingdom of Love right here right now. This is the purpose of the spiritual life, this is the religion of love, of true communal spirituality. This is what it means to live in perfect love. Perfection is not flawlessness as we often think it is. Quite the opposite perfect love is sincere, it’s about showing our cracks, our flaws, our scars, showing who we truly are. The Latin root of perfection is “perfectus” which meant “completeness”, or wholeness, health in mind body and spirit, wholeness with self, others, life and God.

This is the purpose of spiritual community; this is the purpose of the free religious faith I am honoured to serve. This is what it means to me to be a minister of religion in the Unitarian tradition, in my view at least.

But how do we become whole, complete, perfect? How do we become at one with ourselves, one another, life, with God? Well it begins by being truly present in what we are doing; it begins by not being caught up in worry and fear, our own and others. It’s about not going into things hard, but rather by softly melting into what we are doing, by being who we are in what we are doing, by almost not focusing too hard, by looking through soft eyes. By being natural, who we are, by becoming what we are doing.

I remember when I was learning to drive. I did so late in life, when I was training for the ministry. I was never going to drive. I used to proudly proclaim it. The real reason was fear, fear of ridicule. When I was eleven years old I once had a go on a quad bike and I couldn’t handle it. I kept crashing and the man had to sit on the back of the bike and steer it for me. Everyone seemed to be laughing and I was so ashamed I vowed to myself that I would never allow that to happen again. I also remember another time when I worked in a warehouse and we were given forklift truck training. I was utterly hopeless, I just couldn’t do it. So I was never going to drive. Then when I began training for the ministry it became apparent that I had to learn in order to minister, to become who I am supposed to be. So I did.

Driving did not come naturally to me. I remember the instructor telling me that it would take time with me. I remember him saying “you are a thinker. I get some young men who just do it naturally, but you are a thinker, you analyse everything.” I did, every time I made a mistake I would spend time working out why and then I would make many more.

It took me a long time to learn and each time I had a lesson I would dread it. I got a sickly feeling in my stomach. Prayer alone did not take this away. Instead what took it away was walking and connecting and become one with life around me. Something that would come as I walked and connected to the people and geese in Platt Fields Park. It took my mind off my mind and helped me become more at one with what I was doing.

That said it didn’t help on the day I took my second test. I had failed the first time and the second time I was more nervous. I had to pass, my ministry was starting in two weeks time. I was putting intense pressure on myself. My left knee was shaking and it affected me. I made a minor error immediately. The examiner must have been in a good mood as he asked me to stop. He then said when ready I was to pull off. I checked properly and saw a car pulling out behind me, so I stopped and prepared. The car though pulled up next to me. I looked across and saw a car full of pensioners. One was waving at me to wind my window down. I looked at the instructor and he said to me “Tell them you are on your driving test and that you can’t talk”. I wound down my window, but before I could speak the woman said “Can you tell me the way to Manchester Royal Infirmary please?” I looked at the examiner and he repeated Tell them you are on your driving test and that you can’t talk.” I did to which the woman repeated “Can you tell me the way to Manchester Royal Infirmary please.” I again looked at the examiner, who repeated. It went on and the next time he remained silent, they weren’t going. So I paused, worked out where I was and gave them directions. They then drove off and when it was safe I drove off and completed my test and passed. My mind was no longer on my mind I was at one with the clutch and the wheel, the car and the task at hand. I was not at war with anything, I was at one, I was complete. By getting out of my mind I was better able to become what I was doing and to do so successfully.

Learning how to drive was the hardest part of my ministry training and yet it taught me more about how to live, serve and be. How to be whole and complete more than anything else I did in my time at college.

This brings to mind the following beautiful poem by Hafiz

“Each Soul Completes Me”

My
Beloved said,

"My name is not complete without
yours."

I thought:
How could a human's worth ever be such?

And God knowing all our thoughts — and all our
thoughts are innocent steps on the path —
then addressed my
heart,

God revealed
a sublime truth to the world,
when He
sang,

"I am made whole by your life. Each soul,
each soul completes
me."

We are never truly whole, complete, unless we are at one with ourselves, one another, life and whatever it is that we believe is the power that permeates all life. We can never truly become ourselves alone. This is why true community is so vital to the spiritual life. We need right relationship to become wholly who we are. To me this is the purpose of the free spiritual communities I serve. Yes it’s about becoming who we truly are, but this cannot be done in isolation. This is the purpose of free religion. It allows the birth of the true spirit in each of us, but no one can completely give birth to themself, by them self. To repeat those words of Mark Nepo: “It is a great paradox of being that each of us is born complete and yet we need contact with life in order to be whole. Somehow we need each other to know that completeness, though we are never finished in that journey.”

There is no end to any of this...We live in the thresholds of life...Becoming whole is just the beginning of the true journey...To where? Well God only knows...I certainly don't...

Right enough to be wrong

"You should never be ashamed to own that you have been in the wrong, which is but saying that you are wiser today than yesterday."

A quote attribute to Alexander Pope and also Jonathon Swift, Satirist better known as the author of Gulliver’s Travels

I wonder how many times I have been wrong in my life, how many times I have made mistakes, misjudgement, errors. I wonder how many times in my life I have changed my mind about something, come to a different conclusions. I wonder how many times in my life I will do so in the future. I wonder how many times I made the same mistake. I wonder how many times I will repeat those very same errors in new and subtle ways. I haven’t a clue how many. One thing I do know is that I will continue to do so.

This no longer troubles me. I am happy not always getting things right. These days I accept I will fall short of the mark, over and over again. This does not mean I no longer aim high, I do. In fact if truth be told I attempt to aim higher all the time, it’s just I accept that these days I will fall short. I do my best, but accept I cannot do anything perfectly. I am ok with being imperfect, being incomplete these days. Why is this? Some may ask. Well because these days I do not feel wrong inside. These days I feel right enough deep down in the core of me, to be wrong sometimes.

The beauty of being wrong about things, admitting you are wrong and doing what is required to put right what was once wrong is that as soon as you do you are no longer wrong, you are right once again.

I will repeat that… The beauty of being wrong about things, admitting you are wrong and doing what is required to put right what was once wrong is that as soon as you do you are no longer wrong, you are right once again.

I have not always been this way. There have been periods of my life when deep down in the core of me I felt wrong. I cannot give you adequate explanations as to why I have felt this way, I just did. I do know that as a younger person I found reasons, but the truth is it is just how I felt deep down in the core of me. Sadly so many folk do. Not that they would easily admit to it, but still they do. I offer thanks every day that deep down in the core of my being I know that these days I am a child of love, formed from love who is here to pour out that love on this our world. I still make mistakes, all too human mistakes, but these days I no longer crucify myself for them. These days I just laugh and smile and turn again in love to life, ever aiming higher.

I have had evidence in recent weeks that this change has occurred. I have seen it as I have begun to work with the personal trainer at the gym and begun to try and resolve my life long problems with flexibility and my back. Problems that they tried to address during my childhood, problems that filled me with deep shame and which I silently believed was further evidence that there was something fundamentally wrong with me, deep in the core of my being. The problems are still there, in fact they are possibly worse. The only real difference today is that the shame is no longer there, it has long gone. Today I have found the loving courage, the heart, to face what I need to face. Not perfectly, imperfectly and even faltering actually. These days I am able to correct an aspect of myself, as best I can, with the appropriate help, because deep down inside I no longer feel wrong. These days I feel right enough to be wrong.

Whatever we do in life, whatever we achieve there will always be failure involved. This thought brings to mind a story I once heard about a young man, let’s say of thirty years who had been appointed to be the president of a great bank. Now the young man had never dreamed he would be president, never mind at such a young age. So as you can imagine he was a little unsure of this new venture. So he approached the chairman of the board, a much older and wiser man and asked “Can you, please, give me some advice?”

To which the chairman uttered just two words: “Right decisions!”
The young man was a little aghast at this as he wanted something more specific. So he asked: “How do I make right decisions?”
To which the chairman answered: “Expereince!”
To which the novice bank president responded: “But I don’t have any experience. How do I get it?”
To which the chairman answered: “Wrong decisions!”

You make the right decisions by gaining the experience of making many wrong ones.

You really do have to be right enough to give things an honest go and get things wrong, over and over again before you truly make the right decisions. You’ve got to have enough faith in life itself to live successfully in this world. The only way to gain experience is to give it ago, to fall a thousand times and to keep on giving it a go. You will only do this, I have discovered, if deep down inside you can be right enough to be wrong.

This brings to mind those beautiful words of Rumi’s that are so key to my concept of ministry and what a truly free religious community ought to be about.

"Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again , come , come."

Mawlan Jalal-al-Din Rumi

Come again, come again come…even if you have broken your vows a thousand times, you can come, you are welcome as you are exactly as you are in this very moment. The key is to aim higher together, never expecting to reach the summit, but always living with hope in our hearts.

You see everyone fails, everyone falls short. You see the truth is that if at first you don’t succeed, then you are about average, you are human. You are just like the rest of us. Perfectly imperfect human beings.

These thoughts bring to mind one of the better known accounts of Jesus from John’s Gospel ( John Ch8 vv 1-11) of the “woman caught in adultery” The woman is about to be stoned to death, in accordance with the law. The Pharasee’s test Jesus and ask him what should be done. He does not answer immediately and simply sits down and begins to write in the sand. They continue to press him and after a short while he stands up and utters the immortal words “Let those amongst you who is without sin, cast the first stone” and then bends down and continues to write in the sand. One by one the crowd disperses, beginning with the elders and after they have all gone, Jesus rises and asks the woman where they are? And if anyone has condemned her? She tells him that no one has. To which he replies “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

I have often wondered what Jesus wrote in the sand. Maybe he wrote the misdeed, maybe he wrote his own misdeeds, things he got wrong. Who knows?

“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Can any of us truly say that at some point in our lives we have not caused harm to another? I think it is safe to say that to this extent we are all sinners, I am. Now do not get me wrong I do not believe, to quote ‘The Book of Common Prayer’ “there is no health in us”. I am not talking of original sin. I do not believe that anyone is born into this world tainted in any sense. I believe that we are all born with a clean slate and with the potential for so many things.

This brings to mind a beautiful meditation by Robert Walsh, simply titled "A Baptism"

She called to ask if I would baptize her infant son.

I said, "What we do is like a baptism, but not exactly. And we normally do it only for people who are part of the church family. The next one we have scheduled is in May."

She said, "Could we come to talk with you about it anyway?"

They came to see me, the very young woman and her child and the child's very young father. She explained that the child had been born with a heart defect. He had to have a risky heart operation soon. She had asked the clergyman of her own church if he would baptize her son, and he had refused because she was not married to the baby’s father.

I told them that their not being married would not be an impediment to anything we might do, but that our child dedication ceremony still might not be what they were looking for.

I explained that our ceremony does not wash away any sin, it does not guarantee the child a place in heaven, it doesn't even make the child a member of the church.

In fact, I said, it doesn't change the child at all. What we expect is that it will change the rest of us in our relationship with the child, and with all children.

She listened patiently. When I was through she said, "All I want is to know that God blesses my baby."

In my mind I gasped at the sudden clarity in the room. I said, with a catch in my throat, "I think I can do that." And I did.

Here Robert Walsh describes the general Unitarian approach to Baptism, which while often involving water in the ceremony is not doing so to cleanse the child or adult of sin. No instead the use of water, the most basic element of life, is to bless the child. When I conduct such a ceremony I touch their brow, their lips and their hands, to bless their thoughts, words and deeds. I carry this very same concept into the worship I create and lead. Each week, at the end of worship, I ask that we receive the blessings of God, the blessings of love in all that we feel, all that we think, all that we say and all that we do; that we carry this vision into all of our lives. The hope is that we go out into the world and live the best life that we can. I believe that we can change the world, just one smile at a time. I believe it is our task to bring the blessings of love alive in this world, for so many believe that there is no love. All they see is the very real suffering present and often miss the love.

Now Unitarians are sometimes criticised for not really doing sin. This is not exactly true. I certainly do sin. I fall short every day. That said I do reject the concept of “Original Sin”, I do not believe that we are fundamentally flawed at the core of our being. I am quite happy talking about sin, because I know that I sin. I sin in the sense that I fall short of the mark. Who doesn’t?

Now you may well ask what I mean when I talk of sin. First of all it is important to understand that in the original Hebrew and Greek sin meant falling short of the mark.

The Unitarian Universalist minister Frank Muir, in an attempt to explain the words etymology says that:

“The Garden story was all about cheyt, the Hebrew word meaning “to miss the mark,” which was their definition of sin-like shooting an arrow at the target and missing. After you miss, of course it’s a disappointment, but you try again, you try to hit the mark. So you see sinning is a part of life, no different than breathing, eating, or sleeping.

So you see we all sin, we all fall short, we all get things wrong from time to time. That though does not mean that we are wrong, that we are wrong at the core of our very being. Since I understood and accepted this I have found enough faith to become right enough to be wrong and to put right what needs to be put right and therefore no longer be wrong.

The key I believe is our starting point. If we believe that we are fundamentally flawed, that there is something wrong with us, deep down in the core of our being, then we will be afraid to do anything. Even if we do something every time it goes wrong, which it will from time to time, that’s one of life’s guarantees, we will see it as evidence that there is something deeply fundamentally wrong with us.

If we believe that we are wrong at the core of our being we will also be afraid to admit our mistakes. We will all make mistakes, we will all break our vows, maybe even a thousand times, that too is one of life’s guarantees.

If we believe we are wrong, at the core of our being, we will believe that everyone else is wrong and we will find ourselves throwing stones and fearing life and everyone else around us. We will point the finger, we will blame we, we will scapegoat, we will fail to take personal responsibility.

I once did. I believed I was wrong at the core of my being and as I result I feared myself and all life. Thank God I was able to see the truth about this and changed my mind. I hope that if you ever have these feeling about yourself that can see the same truth too.

I wish for you who read this "blogspot", what I wish for everyone, that they will too find the peace and freedom to become right enough to be wrong.

Imperfecting Perfection

A friend recently messaged with something that he thought I would like. It was the advertising tag line for the on-line dating website “Match.com”. It read “If you don’t like your imperfections, someone else will”. He was right I did like it and had noticed it popping up on adverts everywhere, a very clever bit of advertising I thought. It also tapped into that sadness that I see in us at times, our worries and concerns over our seeming imperfections.

On-line dating does not have a very good reputation. I have lost count of the number of tales of woe I have heard from friends who have tried to meet someone through such avenues. That said I know of some really lovely success stories too. My sister “Our Mand” met her husband through this avenue, he is a great guy. Last Saturday I conducted the wedding a dear friend who met the woman he was marrying through the same avenue. They met through one of the less reputable sites too. It worked for them though, after many previous seeming disasters.

Looking for love or the person that fits you and you fit them is no easy thing in the modern age, maybe the problem is that so many of us are looking for the seemingly perfect person, who fits the right profile, who ticks all the boxes. Maybe such a person doesn’t exist, I am fairly certain that they don’t. Even if they did exist, maybe they are looking for mister or miss perfect too.

Brings to mind one of my favourite stories from the vault of Mulla Nasruddin

One afternoon, Nasruddin and his friend were sitting in a cafe, drinking tea, and talking about life and love. “How come you never got married, Nasruddin?” asked his friend at one point. “Well,” said Nasruddin, “to tell you the truth, I spent my youth looking for the perfect woman. In Cairo, I met a beautiful and intelligent woman, with eyes like dark olives, but she was unkind. Then in Baghdad, I met a woman who was a wonderful and generous soul, but we had no interests in common. One woman after another would seem just right, but there would always be something missing. Then one day, I met her. She was beautiful, intelligent, generous and kind. We had everything in common. In fact she was perfect.” “Well,” said Nasruddin’s friend, “what happened? Why didn’t you marry her?” Nasruddin sipped his tea reflectively. “Well,” he replied, “it’s a sad thing. Seems she was looking for the perfect man.”

I am more like Nasruddin than I would like to be at times.

Perfectionism increasingly plagues our age. This need to get everything right. This need to escape criticism. We put too much pressure on ourselves and on one another. We see it in schools, in the work place, in public services. We have this growing expectation that celebrities and sport stars have to be whiter than white and not fallible humans like the rest of us. People also seem increasingly obsessed with body image and the like, this cannot be good for us. Increasingly we live in an age where all we do is pick at the seeming imperfections in our human make up. I wouldn’t mind but who exactly are we trying to live up to and whose approval are we seeking?

I fall for it myself from time to time and I know it doesn’t do me any good. I am a perfectionist in some areas of my life, but not in others. In the areas where I am I can put far too much pressure on myself and it is not healthy. It is not just about doing a good job either, which is a positive thing, it is about appearing perfect, doing things perfectly and therefore seemingly transcending criticism.

I know this is crazy and un-achievable, but I still put myself through it when locked away researching or writing. Thankfully when I’m out amongst the beautiful people I serve the clown in me takes over somewhat and I am set free from the chains of perfectionism.

"Perfection" is a subject I explored when I candidated for the two congregations I serve, although it was done in a very different way back then. I lead the same service at both congregations. Now things went fairly well at Altrincham,the first service, except when it came to the collection and I froze as I did not know what to do. Thankfully the lovely couple who had received it gently pointed me in the right direction.

Things though went a little bit wrong a couple of weeks later as I lead the service at Urmston. I got a little too engrossed in what I was doing and carried away with it and completely forgot one of the hymns. I only realised what I had done when we got to the third hymn. So I gave them an option, made a joke about it and we sang them together. I was then able to keep on referencing this throughout the sermon which was on "perfection" and that I was far from it myself. Strangely enough we’ve had problems with hymns from time to time their ever since. although thankfully they have accepted me as their Holy Fool.

I was taught many lessons that day…One of them being that people aren’t looking for a perfect worship leader, well they certainly haven’t got one in me…A real one yes, and one who isn’t afraid to appear as a Holy Fool.

I have been reflecting a lot on the "Sermon on the Mount", found in the fifth chapter of Matthew's Gospel in recent weeks. I have made several references to aspects of it in recent "blogspots". These last few days I've been reflecting, once again on verses 43-48 often referred to as "Love for Enemies". Here are the verses below:

43 "‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” 44But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? 47And if you greet only your brothers and sisters,* what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

These words come at the end of "The Sermon on the Mount". Verse 48 reads “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” As I understand it Jesus is speaking of perfect love specifically here, love without prejudice love for all, whoever they are and wherever they have been. I believe that this is the love that the communities I serve are built upon. It is certainly the foundation upon which my ministerial mantra is built “Come as you are, exactly as you are…but do not expect to leave in exactly the same condition.” I believe this is echoing Jesus’s belief in humanity that we are the "light of the world", that I explored in a previous blog You are the light of the world He is highlighting what we are capable of being when we remember who we are and the perfect love from which we are formed. What really gets me here though is the realisation that we don’t need to be perfect in all areas of our lives in order to offer perfect love. In fact if perhaps we thought we were we would not be able to offer perfect love to those who need it the most, for we would perhaps possess a false sense of superiority.

Now for a long time I wrongly believed that there was something fundamentally wrong with me and all humanity for that matter. I believed we were broken or “fallen” people who occasionally do something decent. I believed this when I had no religious belief by the way. Actually when I lost faith in the humanism I once had and descended into total nihilism this became even more deeply ingrained. I no longer see things this way I do believe in “Original Goodness”, or “Original Blessing”. I believe that our problem is that we forget we fall short of what we can be at our best. Sadly some people seem cut off almost completely from this, but I always live with hope. We are not perfect it would seem.

Now perfect, perfection and imperfection are very interesting words to me. I do believe our desire to transcend these states has a lot to do with this fundamental belief that at the core of us there is something wrong. This seems to have intensified in our increasingly secular time as we increasingly worship the God of self or even worse the God of public opinion, perhaps the most jealous of any man made God and certainly one that is impossible to please. That critical voice never stops, whether it is imagined or real.

The problem is that we equate imperfection with there being something wrong with us at our core, when actually what it really means is that we are incomplete. That we are looking for wholeness, with ourselves, our world and God.

The thing about life is that nothing is ever wholly complete, but that does not mean it isn’t any good. Life is constantly, changing, moving and bending into new shapes, it wouldn’t be life if it wasn’t.

When we hear the word perfect today we tend to think of something without blemish, being absolutely 100% pure. Yet the word for perfect in those verses above from Matthew was originally “teleo” which really meant fulfilment, or wholeness or completion. It does not mean what we understand as moral perfection today. Some version of the passage have translated it as goodness.

Now of course none of us are wholly complete. Well this is where love comes in, where God comes in. By returning to God I have learnt that I can better offer perfect love to those who need it. I believe that we can all be like the father in the Prodigal Son parable and offer perfect love. This is an example of perfect love, open to everyone.

I believe, stronger than ever that it is our imperfection, our incompleteness that makes us better able to both give and receive love as it opens us up to the love present in life itself. So maybe those folk at “Match.com” have it right when they say “If you don’t like your imperfections, someone else will”.

The truth is of course we don’t need something or someone to complete us; the truth is that there is nothing really wrong with us at all. We are human beings we all have our gifts and talents and things we don’t do so well and that’s beautiful. We are after all the the light of the world, we just need to remember this. We have to let all that love light shine for our world needs it.

I realised a while back that in order to imperfect our perfection all that is required of us is that we learn to just be at ease with who we who are, just to delight in our very being and to allow others to do the same. I learnt this from observing two very important people in my life. One was from my nephew Johnny who just happily and confidently delighted in who he was. No fear, no self-consciousness he has not yet learn about all that, sadly no doubt he will soon. The other was my granddad who over the years just accepted me as I was, without ever once criticising that I can recall. My sister has said something similar, he loved us without condition. I think that is perfect love. I see it also in people who are just at ease with themselves. The kind who don’t need to prove anything to anyone else, who just get on with the work and life they are given. These are the people who teach me how to imperfect my own perfection.

Who are the teaches in your lives? Maybe that’s something you could think about. Who shows or has shown you that it is ok to be you and have helped you show that perfect love to others.

Remember perfect love is about accepting those we meet exactly as they are and perhaps that begins by first of all accepting ourselves as we are, exactly as we are, warts and all and beauty spots too.

I'm going to end this little chip of a blogspot with the following "Passing Through" by Robert Walsh. I suggest that they are read in a prayerful state...You may notice something familiar in the pattern of these worlds…

“Passing Through” by Robert Walsh

O Spirit that creates us, sustains us, transforms us, and judges us, may your many names be hallowed.
May there come a world that sings with your justice and mercy, your beauty and truth, and may we be your faithful partners in creation to bring that world about.
Accept us in our brokenness, even as we would accept our mortal sisters and brothers, parents and children, spouses and partners, neighbours, and enemies.
Tempt us with life. Try us with growth and change and loss. But help us at last to find the path, through temptations and trials, to wholeness.
For we are but passing through this world. Yours is the creation, and the power, and the glory.

Amen

The Missing Piece: Practising Imperfection

Please watch this clip before reading the rest of the blog...

Ring the bells that still can ring,

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack, a crack in everything,

That's how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen

I love this story by Shel Silverstone. I really relate to it as I’m sure many others can too. It can be understood in many ways and I’m sure people take something different from it. What fascinates me about is this search, this struggle for completeness, this drive for wholeness and yet when it happens, when the piece is found that creates the perfect circle it does not bring happiness at all. In fact the circle rolls on at an ever increasing pace. So much so that it can no longer sing; it can no longer sing its little song nor can it appreciate all that surrounds it; it could no longer talk to the worm, or smell a flower, the butterflies could no longer land on it. Eventually it saw that it was no longer happy in its completeness, because it could no longer appreciate and or relate to life. So it rejects the missing piece and continues on imperfectly and once again begins singing its song.

"Oh I'm looking for my missin' piece
I'm looking for my missin' piece.
Hi-dee-ho, here I go,
Lookin' for my missin' piece."

Like everyone it didn’t really learn his lesson, it’s still looking for whatever will complete it.

There is a fear that haunts so many of us; it’s certainly taken its toll on me over the years. This is the fear of criticism. It can squeeze the life out of us and stop us doing whatever it may be that we want and need to do in life. I have often been held back myself, less so today, but it still lingers. It’s part of being human I suppose.

I was talking with a friend on the other day who had got herself in a bit of a "tizzy". She was starting a new job the next day and had basically driven herself mad in her attempts to prepare for it. She bought a new computer program to practise because she wasn’t sure she’d be up to the job and all kinds of other things. She wanted to be perfectly prepared for her first day and was terrified she would not make the perfect first impression. She had sought advice from all kinds of people and had desperately tried to download the program but it had gone horribly wrong. To calm herself she had practised what seemed like hours of meditation, but to no avail. In the end she stopped and realised that what she needed to do was to be with people, to sit with people and to simply say I can’t do this on my own. Within ten minutes of her simply sharing her troubles, it didn’t seem so bad at all. She had calmed down and realised that all would be well, she just needed to get a good night sleep and step into the new place of work the very next day.

The conversation brought to mind similar experiences in my life. A friend recently reminded me that I vowed I would never drive. Truth be told I only actually learnt because I had to. Now I can come up with a thousand and one reasons why I never learned, but the truth is I was terrified. I never thought I would have the right kind of co-ordination. Not true, it turned out; I got there in the end. It was a hard slog, a painful slog, but I got there in the end. I remember when I was learning I drove myself almost mad with anxiety as I got ready to begin my lesson. Each week I tried a different pair of shoes or trainers, the ones that would give the best feel on the clutch. After about 10 weeks I reckon I stumbled on the perfect ones. Truth be told, on reflection, I had probably just about learned about clutch control by this time. Each week I would spend an hour in prayer and meditation trying to get over the anxiety, which never really subsided. The only real cure was walking in the park and connecting to life. After about twenty weeks, the fear seemed to subside, as I found I could actually handle the car.

I did eventually pass my test and have been driving for over three years now. I’m never going to be Nigel Mansell, but I can drive. I stuck at what I needed to do; I found the courage to keep on going, despite my fear and error strewn early days

The biggest difference about my life today, compared to the first thirty some years is that I have faith and courage. I have found that something that sustains and holds me and guides me despite my doubt and fear. I can practise imperfection, incompleteness these days. There is far less fear of the criticism of others.

I love the following meditation by Forrest Church, it really chimes with me. It is titled “The Imperfectionsist”:

"The reason I’ve been able to produce so much is that I’m not a perfectionist – I’m an imperfectionist. I’m confident that everything I say can be improved upon by others, and that’s my great strength, because I know that it won’t be improved upon by others unless I take the first step. When we only do things which please us, or don’t frighten us, after a while fewer and fewer things please us. Over time, our circle of options diminishes until we are prisoners in gardens of our own making. The more decisions you make in your life, the more times you act, the more certain it is that you will be wrong. To be fulfilled we need to recognize, all of us, that the world doesn’t owe us a living – rather we owe the world a living. And in the brief time that is given us, we must somehow learn to give ourselves away."

I really believe that what we need is more imperfection, more incompletion. More people who are unafraid to do what they can, however falteringly so that others can improve on their beginning. Think about it if we all held back until that perfect moment, nothing would ever get done; nothing would ever happen; nothing would ever change. We would just sit around complaining about our lives and the state of the world where in, I have wasted a lot of my life doing precisely this. These days, thank God, I have enough faith to practise imperfection.

It is ok to be imperfect; in fact I would suggest that it is rather lovely. It makes us fully human. No aspect of life is perfect. I do wonder where this drive, this need to be perfect comes from, to escape our humanity. Maybe that is exactly where it does in fact come from? It is an aspect of that drive to somehow transcend our humanity. I am reminded here of the text from Genesis I. When God looks at his creation he does not suggest that is perfect, he sees that it is good. Some translations suggest that it means “fit for purpose”. This fascinates me. Perfection is not part of natural life and yet we so often cripple ourselves in our attempts to strive for it, to prove ourselves worthy of life. We forget that to be imperfect is to be incomplete and that there is nothing wrong in this, it is to be fully human. To be incomplete simply means we have not yet created the perfect circle and thus we can roll through life singing and enjoying all that is life, with all that is life. We can journey together in love. In our perfect imperfection.

I believe that by practising imperfection we can bring ourselves closer to one another and encourage one another to be all that we can be; imperfectionism gives us the courage to be all that we can be. If we can learn to celebrate imperfection within ourselves, then we can learn to celebrate it in one another. It will bring us closer to one another and we can begin to encourage one another to be all that we can be. We can then work together to build a better life for us all. Perfectionism is a manifestation of selfishness, it’s all about the individual. Where as imperfectionism draws us out of ourselves and encourages us to encourage one another to what ever we can. You never know we may end up doing more than we ever dreamed was possible, for the good of ourselves and the good of all.

I say lets practise being perfectly imperfect children of life, children of love, children of God. Let’s continue singing our song.

"Oh I'm looking for my missin' piece
I'm looking for my missin' piece.
Hi-dee-ho, here I go,
Lookin' for my missin' piece."


Amen

So what is it that you do?

“What does a minister do?” By Bruce T Marshall

Last Sunday the kindergarten class stopped by my office for conversation. The question came up, “What does a minister do?”

That’s a tough one. I have a hard time explaining to my wife what I do. What do I say to five year olds?

“Makes speeches,” one child volunteered helpfully. We all quickly agreed on that. Yes I make speeches.

“Talks to people.” That’s true, all the talking I do is not in the form of speeches. I expect many of these five year olds have witnessed the scene in which somebody wants to go home but the minister is still “talking to people.”

“Solves problems.” This also was suggested by a participant. I was about to equivocate and say, “Well, lots of times I may try to solve problems, but the problems are difficult, and one person can’t do it all, and I can’t think of many problems that I actually have solved alone, but I try to do my part.” I thought about saying that but decided it would just confuse things. I swallowed hard and said, “Yes, I solve problems.”

“The minister talks to people when there are problems because it’s better to talk about problems than to hit each other.” What an elegant statement to come from a five year old, to come from anybody.

I’ll let that statement stand. Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

Some questions are just impossible to answer...

I was out with a friend recently. He was getting money from the hole in the wall and I was just kind of lingering on the street. Suddenly a friendly, attractive, young woman approached me saying “I bet I can guess your name”. Now please don't get too excited she wasn’t chatting me up, she was actually working for “Friends of the Earth” and was attempting to get me to give money to the organisation. 

She persisted and kept on saying “I bet I can guess your name, in a friendly slightly flirtatious way.” I just smiled and answered “Go on then” and she said “Dave, Steve, Andy, Mike” I shook my head and said “My middle name is David”. She carried on, but didn’t manage to guess. She then asked if I could guess her name, which I failed to do. My friend then arrived and she asked if he was my brother? To which I replied, “don’t insult him, he’s far too good looking to be related to me.” 

Frustrated she changed her tack and the next thing she asked was "so what do you do?" Now if I'd been really sharp, no doubt I would have responded "Well I mind my own business," but I'm not that sharp and besides she never gave me the time. Instead she quickly said, “are you unemployed.” To which I replied, “Of course not, why would you think that?” She said, "well most people walking round here at this time of day are”. I suspect that this is the answer that most folk give in order to stop her pestering them and interestingly I had just been to the job centre with my friend, who is on the job hunt. 

She continued attempting to guess what I do. She looked me up and down and said “I bet you work in construction” I just shook my head, she continued “are you a chef?” “Do you work in sales?” I bet you’re a civil servant?” This went on for quite some time and I just kept on shaking my head and saying, "you will never guess."

She didn’t.

In the end in order to put her out of her misery I told her what I do (Well really what I am). I said “I am a minister” at which point she stopped and her jaw dropped, again she looked me up and down and then looked at my friend who said, "yes he is" as he began to snigger. The young woman looked like she had fallen into a state somewhere between shock and terror. She stared for a few moments, which seemed like an eternity and then began to mumble “Well then you know what Friends of the Earth are all about then”, to which I replied “Yes I know all about Friends of the Earth”, she then said a few barely coherent things back at me, as all her confidence and brashness had now left her, I just smiled and chuckled. There then followed a short silence, that seemed to last for an eternity and then she turned and kind of lept in the air and pounced on an unsuspecting young man passing in the street and began her patter again “I bet I can guess your name” I turned to my friend and we burst out laughing and off we went for a coffee and a chat.

Now I don’t generally get a kick out of sucking the wind out of the sails of young women, but this encounter did amuse me.

I know I’m not your typical minister; I’m not sure I’m your typical anything; I’m not sure I’d want to be in any case. People who don’t know me are often surprised when they discover what I do. I was asked by someone recently and a few weeks later they confessed to being shocked at first. That said they had thought that at first I meant that I was a minister in the government and not a minister of religion. Now I wonder if that’s what the young woman thought...maybe, maybe not.

This of course brings to mind another question that I’m often asked... “So as a minister what do you?” Or sometimes, “what do you the rest of the week?” I’m also asked how is it going, the job I mean? Again this is hard to answer. My usual response is “Well they haven’t chased me out of town yet.” Which is quickly followed by, “I am loved, they love me”, "the work's a real blessing"

Oh if only people would ask me simple question like "What is the Meaning of Life?", or "If there is a God why is there so much suffering?", or "What happens when we die?" These seem far easier to answer than "So what exactly is a minister and what does a minister do?"

I love the responses that the children given in words by Bruce T Marshall above. I also love his final concluding words

“The minister talks to people when there are problems because it’s better to talk about problems than to hit each other.” What an elegant statement to come from a five year old, to come from anybody.

I’ll let that statement stand. Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

I do believe that it points to what the role of a minister is or what it means to minister. Now of course etymologically speaking to minister is to serve; and I believe that to serve is to love in the truest meaning of the word. Now the love I am talking of here is agape love, self giving love, love without prejudice. Which I believe is perfectly exemplified in this verse from Matthew’s Gospel chapter ch 5 vv 48 “Therefore be the perfect, like your father in heaven is perfect”. This is the love that is the root from which ministry must grow. Perfect love is love without prejudice, love for all regardless of where a person has been, who they are, where they are from, what they may or may not have done in the past. This is the love that is expressed in the prodigal son parable. To me this is the essence of love and service; this is the essence of ministry. It is the purpose of my role and it is the primary purpose of a truly religious community. This I believe is the spirit that must run through all that I do and the communities I serve do. Now of course I fall short of this as does the community of people I serve, but we do aspire, we aim at this and accept that it is ok to fall short.

No one can get everything right. I need to remember that. I believe that every human needs to remember that.

I recently came across a wonderful meditation “The Church Where Everything Goes Wrong." by Elea Kemler. She is writing about her experiences of being a minister in a new congregation and all the problems and difficulties that she has to endure in attempting to keep her fellowship of love afloat. At the end of a piece filled with frustration at everything that goes wrong she writes:

“But I also imagine a God who is touched and a little honored by our efforts, however halting, to worship and give praise. I imagine a God who is moved by our attempts to care for one another and to name the things we know as holy. There is a warmth in this congregation that is new to me, a simple friendliness that shines through the fumblings and failures, a love that makes the ragged edges smooth. I have always wanted to believe that our mistakes aren't the most important parts of us. I have always wanted to believe that kindness and compassion matter more than anything. I sense that I can learn this here.”

I too want to believe that kindness and compassion are what matter the most; I do believe that they are the essence of love and service; I do believe that they are the root of true religion.

The Unitarian tradition that I belong to has emphasised not only the priesthood, but also the prophet hood of all believers. I am not the only one who ministers in the congregations I serve. I believe that everyone in the communities ministers to one another in one degree or another; the diverse communities of individuals minister not only to one another, but also to the wider community. We offer love and service to all. We welcome all, to come as they are, exactly as they are, but not to expect to leave in exactly the same condition; to be transformed in a loving and accepting way when they leave and to carry that out into their world.

I keep on wondering about that conversation with the young woman. It matters to me what people think. I care what people think, not only of me, but of what I do. It bothers me that a person can look with fear at me, because of what I do. Do not get me wrong, I do not take it personally. Nor am I ruled by what people think of me, but I do care. To no longer care about things sounds hellish to me.

The fear I would guess stems from the way that religion is viewed in this country. This is of course the fault, to some degree, of religion itself which at times does not come across as loving and accepting of all, quite the opposite, it can be divisive and against some people. That said I do not believe that this is the essence, the true essence, of religion.

Religion for me, or at least the free religion that I aspire to is about love and service. It’s about walking with people in their despair and their hope, in their suffering and their bliss and all that lies in between. It’s about accepting them as they are in all that they are. This is love in its truest sense. It’s about offering perfect love and making that love manifest in the world in which we live and have our being.