A Blizzard of Blossom: Beauty Awakens the Soul to Act

I was watching the cherry blossom falling the other day. It was blowing in the wind around the wind telephone, designed to connect the living with those at the other side of the breath of life. There is a message on the telephone quoting Bob Dylan, “the answer is blowing in the wind”. I saw pink snowing blowing so beautifully around the gardens, while Molly was zooming around, sniffing all the new life. It looked so beautiful, it awakened the heart of my mind and got me thinking about the things we see, in our ordinary lives, when we lift up our eyes, our vision, when we live in hope, not expectation or optimism. When we are inspired by beauty. When my eyes are open and my mind isn't trapped in some disappointment from the past, my own or that done by others, or when I am not blinded by some fear of what might or might not be. When the eyes of eyes are awake I feel so alive and I have vision. I see what is so easy to miss.

As I watched it all I was reminded of this lovely poem “Vision” by May Thielgaard Watts

"Vision" by May Thielgaard Watts

To-day there have been lovely things
I never saw before;
Sunlight through a jar of marmalade;
A blue gate;
A rainbow
In soapsuds on dishwater;
Candlelight on butter;
The crinkled smile of a little girl
Who had new shoes with tassels;
A chickadee on a thorn-apple;
Empurpled mud under a willow,
Where white geese slept;
White ruffled curtains sifting moonlight
On the scrubbed kitchen floor;
The under side of a white-oak leaf;
Ruts in the road at sunset;
An egg yolk in a blue bowl.
My love kissed my eyes last night.

What a beautiful poem, isn't it lovely. When we live in heart, in courage, in love, we can see these signs of hope everywhere. It comes in the little things, that I think of and share upon awakening each morning. Such beauty compels me to act. It is vital to keep our senses open, despite our fears and worries, despite what troubles us. We must keep our senses open, in order to see things. In order to blessed by beauty and to act from it.

“Beauty awakens the soul to act”, said Dante. Well this is exactly what happened to the local poet and friend of the congregations Oliver James Lomax the other day, as he sat in the chapel gardens and wrote the poem which follows. He said he was looking at one of the Cherry Blossom trees in the chapel garden, and noticed “a blizzard of blossom falling from it, dancing in the low wind, it looked like it was almost shedding its memory. It transported me back to the day my Nan passed away from vascular dementia, there was a blossom tree just like it outside the Palliative Care Ward, also rather joyously, there was also a small boy trying to catch Pokemon in the corridor as I left her for the last time. This poem sits between those two images, a moment that brought a little peace and hope to my grief.”

Here’s the poem. I am sorry you can’t hear it in Oliver’s voice:

“To The Boy Catching Pokémon On The Palliative Care Ward” by Oliver James Lomax

The day nan died
the blossom tree was a blizzard

of gentle data
a white drift of unkept names

shifting like a small god
in the hospital garden.

Mine is, a god of flux
today he is a boy

catching Pokémon in the corridor
his hand consecrates the air

drawing a circle in time
where nothing consents to remain.

I watch from the threshold
of what has already gone,

how often will I
cast into the invisible?

For that glamour and strength
for the colour of her being,

drag the unseen closer
as if it might answer.

The blossom keeps falling
into itself, onto itself

a paper rain blinding the page
where the light

I’m trying to capture and name
cannot remain.

Beauty awakened Oliver’s soul to act and he shared this poem as a result of the awakening.

I just love how the beauty of the falling blossom, blowing up in the wind like a pink blizzard, took Oliver back to a time in his life and awakened something in him, something that brought healing to his soul, but also inspired his soul to act and write there and then. By the end of the day he sent me his poem. His poem inspired the service this devotion is based on, as did so many other things and people. The beauty in many forms inspired our souls to act. The answer was most certainly blowing in the wind that day.

I was awakened by beauty that day. I found myself engaged in several rather beautiful conversations. One was with the beautifully pregnant Rose our choir leader. She told me that she and her husband often see me walking around with Molly. It is an image that makes them both smile. Sometimes stopping to talk, but often just passing by, as I spend my days “farting around” as Kurt Vonneghut described it. It was a beautiful evening singing that night, as we prepare for a concert. I had another beautiful conversation with Alex the Flower man who was concerned about a mutual friend. I passed on his concern and the friend was grateful for this. I had several delightful conversations with people going through their ordinary lives that day. It reminded me of the following beautiful words of Walt Whitman:

“I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,

To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing,
Laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm
Ever so lightly around his or her neck for a moment,
What is this
Then?
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.”

To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, Laughing flesh is certainly enough to awaken my soul. All this beauty whether natural or human has awakened my soul to act in more loving and open ways and thus pour out my own love on the world in which I live and breathe and move and have my being. It is a powerful antidote to the ugliness and violence that is going on in this our shared world too. Those forces that separate person from person and fails to recognise our shared humanity. It is easy to get caught up in the Hobbesian nightmare. The truth is that this world is both beautiful and ugly. The problem comes from when we fail to see and be moved by beauty and become overwhelmed by the ugly destructiveness that is part of life. Our souls will be inspired to act by something, better it be beauty.

On Tuesday morning Nick posted a video a blizzard of Cherry Blossom blowing up in the wind and it and all that I had experienced in the last couple of days inspired me to begin to write. I found myself caught up in the “Creative Interchange”. It reminded me of some wisdom from Matthew Fox:

“The universe is in the habit of making beauty. There are flowers and songs, snowflakes and smiles, acts of great courage, laughter between friends, a job well done, the smell of fresh baked bread. Beauty is everywhere”

I had enjoyed the smell of fresh baked goods that morning as I walked into Altrincham. It reminded me of Molly and her sniffing all the new life this spring. Her nose seems more alive as each day passes, it energises her. As J. Ruth Gendler claims “Beauty is an energy, not an image, and that energy can go anywhere; that energy takes on an image, a form, many images, many forms.” Beauty energises and awakens the soul to act; beauty awakens the soul of me in so many indescribable ways and it compels me to act in such a way as to pour out that beauty within on to all I engage with.



Beauty inspired Oliver to write the other day while sitting in the garden; it inspired him to give back to the world, despite experiencing current suffering and being taken back to a place of pain, grief and guilt. The beauty of the blossom blizzard inspired his soul to act.

Beauty manifests itself in so many ways in the world in which we live and breathe and move. It awakens all our senses and thus feeds and nourishes our souls; it awakens our souls and it fills our hearts to overflowing. We not only drink from the well of beauty, we also fill it too. Beauty truly is about the heart, about filling the heart to overflowing. In "Beauty: The Invisible Embrace" John O’Donohue wrote:

"The heart is the place where beauty arrives; here is where it can be felt, recognized and shared. If there was no heart, beauty could never reach us. Through the heart, beauty can pervade every cell of the body and fill us. To use a word that feels like it sounds: this is the thrill of beauty through us. Perhaps this is why we sometimes feel the absence of beauty in our lives; we have allowed the prism to become dull and darkened; though the light is near, it cannot enter to have its inlay of beauty diffused. Sometimes absence is merely arrested appearance. Compassion and attention keep the prism clear so that beauty may illuminate our life. Prayer of course is the supreme way we lift our limited selves towards the light, and ask it to shine into us. "

Beauty not only awakens the soul, but also fills the heart to overflowing, it certainly compels me to pour my heart out on the world in loving ways. In fact perhaps true beauty, certainly in a human sense, is to act morally. As John O’Donohue has pointed out Plato believed that Love was born of beauty and that it tapped into our basic human drive and desire for Good, that it was not a private or self-indulgent act of pleasure and that “the ability to love beauty has created all the good things that exist for gods and men’. He quotes Pseudo Dionysius the Aeropagite who said, "For beauty is the cause of harmony, of sympathy, of community. Beauty unites all things and is the source of all things. It is the great creating cause which bestirs the world and holds all things in existence by the longing inside them to have beauty. And there it is ahead of all as…the Beloved…toward which all things move, since it is the longing for beauty which actually brings them into being."

It is beauty that awakens our souls and inspires us to act lovingly in the world, to pour out our love on the world. How do we do this you may well ask? Well, I believe it begins with our neighbour the very people we interact with on a daily basis. As it has with me once again these last few days

It brings to my mind a passage from Matthew’s Gospel (Ch 26 vv 6-13). It is a much debated primarily because it has been used by some as a justification for tolerating poverty. I believe that to focus on this is to fail to recognise the central message of Matthews Gospel, the abundant blessing of love.

6 Now while Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper,* 7a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and she poured it on his head as he sat at the table. 8But when the disciples saw it, they were angry and said, ‘Why this waste? 9For this ointment could have been sold for a large sum, and the money given to the poor.’10But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, ‘Why do you trouble the woman? She has performed a good service for me. 11For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. 12By pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial. 13Truly I tell you, wherever this good news* is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.’

The power in this story is in its recognition of abundant love. The woman loves and cares for Jesus. She anoints him with oil because she loves him dearly. It truly is an act of loving, nay gracious abandonment. This is in complete contrast to the grumpy disciples who are definitely of the glass half empty brigade. At least they are consistent though as they appear this way throughout the Gospels. The woman though is overflowing with love and wants to anoint those she loves with this. This is beauty in action. This is a soul awakened by beauty and inspired to act lovingly. Her heart is over flowing with love and she wants to pour out this love onto Jesus who will soon no longer be with her or the disciples.

Just as Oliver’s poem did; just as Nick’s video did; just as Rose’s conversation did; just as Alex asking about a friend did; just as Molly sniffing around as the pink blossom blew did; just as we all can do. We can all pour out this attentive love on one another and all life. We can offer care and attention to each and everyone around us. In so doing we will help create beauty all around us. All we need to do is pay attention open our hearts to beauty and act from it.

This brings to mind the following little anecdote by William McNamara:

“I once lived near a mansion where only one of the many gardeners employed had succeeded with every one of the roses. I asked him the secret of his success. He told me that the other gardeners treated all the roses not unwisely, but too generally. They treated them all in precisely the same way; whereas he himself watched each rosebush separately, and followed out for each plant its special need for soil, manure, sun, air, water, support and shelter.”

Beauty is all around us. We are surrounded by it. If we open ourselves to it, it will fill our hearts, awaken our souls and lead us to act lovingly and morally. This is beauty in action. If we create beauty with our own hands we will touch each individual soul we meet and they will grow and flower to their own full potential. We are here to enjoy the beauty that we are surrounded by and to pour out the beauty that lays within us and thus bring it to fruition in the world around us.

As Desmond Tutu has said:

“We were made to enjoy music, to enjoy beautiful sunsets, to enjoy looking at the billows of a sea and to be thrilled with a rose that is bedecked with dew…Human beings are actually created for the transcendent, for the sublime, for the beautiful, for the truthful…and all of us are given the task of trying to make this world a little more hospitable to these beautiful things.”

Let beauty awake for beauty's sake. Awake from slumber and awake from dreams. Let beauty awake from deep within us, Let beauty pour from us and be lavished upon our world.

May we be caught up in the blizzard of beauty, may we be blown in such a wind.

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

We can inspire and we can dispirit; it matters how we be

Last Sunday Molly and myself will be travelled to Hucklow to spend a few days with new and upcoming ministers at “Ministry in the Making”. We have some great people coming through and it feels good to help them in their development, in the ways that I can. The theme this year is “The Ministry of all believers: How do we believe in our people”. I will be leading a workshop exploring how we have been inspired, who have been our inspirations, who believed in us, who didn’t, who dispirited us. It is an opportunity to look at ways in which we might inspire and help develop others as they step into their own ministry’s. It got me thinking about some of the inspirations in my life. There are many folk who inspired me throughout my life; sadly there has been who have dispirited me too. This is life of course. It is vital to discern who we listen too.

I recently shared the following story with friends: “Do you know who I am?”

Journeys today on public transport have a sort of regularity about them, but there’s always someone who thinks they can beat the system – especially when things are busy. Like on a Bank Holiday weekend.

Picture this scene at Manchester Airport – travellers, airport personnel, aircrew, people looking for the loo or a bar – thousands thronging the concourses.

At one of the check-in desks for a long-haul flight there was a snaking queue of people with lots of luggage. The attendant was doing her best to get people through the process as quickly as possible and most were good humoured about the wait. Except, apparently, for one man – towards the back of the queue.

He was getting more and more agitated and finally he barged through, headed straight for the desk and demanded to be served.

The attendant said patiently: “Sir, there are lots of people ahead of you and we’re doing our best to get everyone through – trying to jump the queue will only delay things even more for you and everyone else. Please go back to your place.”

The man went puce in the face, leaned over the counter and shouted so everyone could hear: “Do you know who I am?”

The attendant blinked, took a deep breath and picked up the public-address microphone.

“Ladies and gentlemen, there is a gentleman at check-in desk No 212 who does not know who he is. If anyone is able to identify him and assist him, please let us know.”

I got some interesting response from folk. Most were amused and several responded with a video of a character who came into public consciousness about 10 years ago. He gets into an awful dispute with someone on the road, he utters the immortal line “Do you know who I am, I’m Ronnie Pickering”. It brought back some awful childhood memories of growing up with a man like that. A totally dispiriting character. In the video there is a child sat in the car with him, looking terrified and trying to hide. A feeling I remember only too well.

The next day I met up with my writer friends. One’s husband was shown the video and he was appalled by it. We began to talk about characters and the folk that people look up to, the folk we remember. Those that lift us up with their example and more notorious characters. I talked of a friend who’s six year old son told him he wants to be a gangster when he grows up. My friend said he tried to explain to his son that this is worse thing he could aspire to. I talked about a notorious character when I was growing up who instilled fear in all he met This was Paul Sykes, the notorious hard man from Wakefield. The conversation then turned to other characters from our childhood that left us with a very different feelings.

I spoke of a character who would walk around the roads of West Yorkshire dressed as a monk just smiling and waving at people, spreading good cheer. I described the feeling he would instill in me whenever I saw him. How he filled me with a very different spirit. He was a mystery, but one that filled my good feelings, even though I never met him.

I thought I would look him up. I though there must be something on the internet about him. If he had that impact on me, he must have had it on others. Well there was all sorts of interesting stuff on line. It seems he was called Jeffrey Brindley, known as “The Jesus Man of Bradford”, or “Holy Joe”, “The Airedale Monk”. He died in 2015 having spent 50 years walking the roads around Bradford spreading love. He was a harmless eccentric and when he died money was raised to give him a funeral at Bradford Cathedral, following a huge parade through the city. There are plans to build a statue in his memory in Baildon where he lived. There were hundreds of messages from people speaking of him and memories of what he brought to ordinary folk dating back to the 1960’s. I shared on-line myself about this conversation and several of my friends shared memories of him and the cheer he brought to the people he met as he walked around sharing the good spirit with those he passed by. Yes, he was an eccentric, but harmless and one who people remember with fondness. Maybe the world needs more holy fools, certainly more than it needs characters like Paul Sykes and Ronnie Pickering. I’m glad I remember “the smiling, waving, monk” as I called him and the way I felt when I saw him passing by on the road. It filled my heart with love and joy, if inspired something good in me. Something I have been re-feeling and remembering all week.

I was talking about this on Tuesday evening at “Living the Questions”. Geoff who lived in Bradford for a time, talked of “Holy Joe” as he called him. There was also a few jokes and suggestions of what the folk of Altrincham might call me. I do spend a lot of my life walking around the town, meeting and greeting folk, although I suspect most of them remember Molly more than me. I hope I share joy, love and respect, I hope I lift folks spirits. There are many others in the town that offer similar feelings. I am sure there are many in every community. Unfortunately they do not get the attention they deserve, the notorious it seems have too string an appeal. Sadly those who do good are too often viewed with suspicions.

I have been thinking of late of the people who have inspired me, who lifted my spirit, there have been many. As there have been many who have diminished me, made me feel useless, discouraged me, told me I was no good at things, pretty useless. I am sure it is the same for every single one of us. We have know those who have inspired us and those who have dispirited too.

I wonder who and what has been significant in our lives? Who and what has touched and shaped our lives? Who are the significant people, what are the significant moments and events? We might not remember the events fully, but we do remember how they made us feel. Our lives are shaped by every moment and every person that we share our lives with.

I’ve been thinking of the people who have inspired me. Who filled my spirit and kept me going in my darkest days. I was sat with several of my early ministry inspirations after David Copley’s funeral the other week. Folk who lit the light in me. They and many others remind me of that famous quote by Albert Schweitzer:

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”

There are many people who have inspired me, who have lit the flame within me, who have inspired me to make the best use of what I have and to give back to others. To serve in little and sometimes bigger ways in this our shared world.

There is inspiration everywhere, there are many folk who have no doubt inspired us all. What though do we mean when we say “inspire”.

“Inspire” is an interesting word, it is one of those, like so many in common usage, that has been reduced in meaning as time has gone by. We have reduced its power as our lives have become secularised. It originally meant “immediate influence of God”, especially with reference to the writing of a Holy book. Coming from the French “inspiracion meaning “inhaling, breathing in inspiration”, coming from the Latin “inspirare” meaning to breath in, to inflame. To inspire means to breath upon, to blow into, to excite, to inflame, to affect, to arouse, but to do so through spirit or soul, it is a Divine activity. Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that when we inspire others we are engaging in Divine activity. To inspire others is to engage in one of the highest forms of love, as it is Divine love in human action.

So if you are walking round the place you live, sharing love, lifting spirits, you are in fact involved in Divine activity, well you are in my eyes. Likewise if you are going around dispiriting or instilling fear in others, you are engaged in the opposite. It seems to me that Divine activity takes place in the most ordinary, not the grand and loud and showy. It comes to life in the most humble of activity.

Now not everyone agrees with me, in fact throughout history it has always been the great figures that have been seen as the real inspirations. It is they that they usually build statues to. Thomas Carlyle saw the great figures of history as the ultimate inspirations, to him they were geniuses. Nowadays many people are labelled as geniuses, some say that is overused. I think that actually it is an under used word. I think that it ought to apply to anyone who inspires another to be all that they can be. For surely the real genius of anyone is to inspire another to truly come alive, for in so doing you are breathing new life into another. Maybe we ought to build monuments to each and every one of them, like the folk of Bradford would like to do for Jeffrey Brindley. Now wouldn’t our towns and cities look interesting if we did.

Everyone we meet, and everything that we absorb through our senses can be an inspiration. There are inspirational people all around us, as there has been throughout human history. Some have been the greats, those that have shaped history, they even had statues built in their memory, but most were probably never recognised., except in our own hearts and memories. Nevertheless they inspired us, they awakened something within us and helped to become the people that we are today.

We can all be inspirations. We all have the genius seed within us. We are all born, we are all graced, with certain gifts. The real genius of course is the one who can give birth to theirs and inspire others to do the same with theirs.

Now throughout human history this genius within us has been understood in different ways. Many, beginning with Plato, talked of each of us being born with a companion, what some might describe as a spirit that remembers our true nature and therefore "calling" and which can guide us back to our greatest animation. It is this that truly brings us alive, that animates our very being that enthuses us. This inner spirit animates our soul, this is the genius within each and every one of us. It has been called by many names such as muse, inner voice, still small voice, higher self, guardian angel or what the ancient Greeks referred to as Daemon. It breathes its life into us and inspires us and through acting from it we too inspire others.

The gifts life has bestowed upon us, our genii are not meant to be kept or selfishly horded. They are meant to be given away, they are meant to be shared with others. Our task is to make the most of these gifts, to enjoy them and to share them with others, thus inspiring them to make the most of what life has given them. This I believe is the point that the epistle Paul was making in is first letter to the Corinthians chapter twelve.

aul wrote the letter because each member of the congregation, in their struggle to be the perfect congregational leader, was getting in the way of the others. Each one of them wanted to possess all the good qualities that make up a good leader, to become the perfect leader and to leave the others in their shadow.

Paul taught that the spirit does not allow even the possibility that one person can possess all the talents. That said if people come together in love, live interdependently and inspire one another with their gifts they will create a community for the good of all.

We all have gifts, talents that have been bestowed upon us and I believe we have a responsibility to learn to use these gifts well and to recognise that the same spirit that gave us these gifts requires us to use them cooperatively with those who have different gifts to us. They are not to be used lightly and selfishly, neither are they to be despised. In so doing we will inspire others to do the same, to make the most of what they have been freely given.

Let us be grateful for the gifts that have been bestowed upon us. Let us make the most of these aspects of our humanity that have been given us. Let us learn to share them with one another. Let us be inspired by one another’s gifts and create a true kin-ship of love right here, right now.

Let’s breathe our inspiration into one another.

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

The Stray Dog Philosophers Dare to Enter the Arena

 

Everywhere I go I seem to be surrounded by dogs, they are everywhere. They come in so many shapes and sizes and are just adorable. There was a giant New Found Land outside Café Nero the other day. He got up as I went to greet him and almost knocked over the table, spilling coffee everywhere. He was a friendly fella and very big boy. Altrincham is full of puppies and all kinds of house dogs. They all bring a smile to my face as I walk around. Now I know a lot of folk got dog’s during lockdown. They have become an increasingly expensive commodity. There is concern that as we continue to return to some kind of normality that some will struggle to keep them. I do hope not.

Did you know that there is a school of ancient Greek philosophy named after dogs. Do you know which one? Well it was the cynics. How and why? You may well ask? Dogs do not appear to be cynical animals at all. Well the cynicism aint what is use to be.

The word “cynic” comes from the ancient Greek word “kynicos” meaning “dog-like”, churlish. Although some suggest that the word “kun” actually takes its origin from “Kunosarges” which was the gymnasium where the early cynics were taught by Antisthenes and those who followed him were considered his “faithful hounds” Whatever the true origins of the world the cynics became known as “The Stray Dog Philosophers”

The best known of cynics was Diogenes. Many of his habits certainly resembled an undomesticated dog. He loved basking naked on the lawn while his fellow philosophers talked on the porch. As they debated the mysteries of the cosmos, Diogenes preferred to soak up some rays. One morning, the great philosopher Plato had a stroke of insight. He caught everyone’s attention, gathered a crowd around him, and announced his deduction: “Man is defined as a hairless, featherless, two-legged animal!” Whereupon Diogenes abruptly leaped up from the lawn, dashed off to the marketplace, and burst back onto the porch carrying a plucked chicken - which he held aloft and shouted, “Behold: I give you... Man!” I am sure a real dog would have been more interested in scoffing the chicken.

Diogenes could be found wandering through the streets in the mid-day sun squinting and holding a lantern to find his way, claiming he was “looking for an honest man” He lived in a hollowed out half barrel which he wheeled through the streets. This was his only possession except for a wooden bowl which he destroyed in protest at the fakeness of society after seeing a boy slave drinking water with his cupped hands.

Those ancient cynics protested against society and attempted to mitigate the dangers of hubris. They believed “virtue” was the only good and that self-control was the only means of achieving it. They rejected what they saw as the falseness of the time. They were known as the “Stray dog philosophers”, so not the domesticated dogs we see on nice leads wandering around town. They rejected the luxury of home living and personal hygiene and they believed that the best way to get their message across to the general public was to verbally abuse them and expel bodily fluids on them as they went about their daily business. Is that dog like? I suspect that the phrase “mud slinging” may have its origins in the original cynics.

The “cynics” became celebrities of a sort in Ancient Greece, even Alexander the Great was fascinated by Diogenes. Several stories are told of their encounters. It is said that one day Diogenes was philosophising to great crowds and Alexander demanded a private audience with him. Diogenes was not very impressed and ignored his request. Eventually Alexander found him sunbathing. Alexander asked him what he could do for him and Diogenese simply asked him to move a little to right as he was blocking the sun. Another version of story claims that when Alexander found Diogenes he was sifting through bones in a graveyard. Alexander asked what he was doing to which Diogenes replied “I am looking for the bones of your father, but cannot differentiate them from the bones of slaves.

Alexander was greatly humbled by Diogenes and said “if he wasn’t Alexander, he’d want to be Diogenes.”

The ancient Greeks “cynics” were the critics of their time and place. They pointed out what was wrong. The original “cynics” had a way of bringing the greatest down to the truly humble level, they were an antidote to the hubris of the day. Yes they had their plus points but there were negatives too, it certainly was not a pathway to friendship and community building. It seemed to me to be the ultimate in isolation and individualism. Anyone can be critical of what others are doing, but what about doing something yourself? The cynics never entered the arena, know they slung mud and criticised those who did.

Diogenes and the other “cynics” remind me a little bit of “Statler and Waldorf” from Jim Henson’s “The Muppet Show”. They don’t step into the arena, they don’t participate in the show. They just sit on the balcony heckling the rest of the characters who are trying to create the show. They are archetypes of so many of us who sit back, pour scorn and criticise the efforts of others who are actually doing something. Those who have the courage to step into the arena and do what they can. Anyone can be a critic, it is so easy to just to sit back and criticise the best efforts of others while doing nothing yourself. I’m with Marge Piercy myself. The people I love the best jump into life headfirst. Instead of slinging mud, they do the work that is as common as mud. They participate rather than criticise the work of others.

Here is Piercy’s wonderful poem

“To be of use” by Marge Piercy
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

“Statler and Waldorf” are achetypes of the critic. They resemble the cynics of ancient Greeks. They sling the mud, they stand apart and just por scorn. Now while there is a role for being critical of those in power, it keeps them humble, grounded, level headed and saves us from the danger of hubris, it does not contribute. it does not encourage folk to truly play their part, to participate in the arena of life. It is easy to be a critic to cynically dissect and pull apart what others do. Social media is full of critics of all types. Critics who have opinions on anything and everything, but without the expertise. We are increasingly living in the age of the anti-expert too. It amazes me how folk can believe that reading a few things on the internet suddenly makes you an expert. Or am I being a bit cynical here myself?

Increasingly we seem intent on fault finding and discovering the imperfections in one another. Why do we do this? Do we believe it will help us feel better about ourselves if we pour scorn on the imperfections of others?

In “The Heart of the Enlightened” Anthony De Mello tells the following story.

“A woman complained to a visiting friend that her neighbour was a poor housekeeper. “You should see how dirty her children are – and her house. It is almost a disgrace to be living in the same neighbourhood as her. Take a look at those clothes she has hung out on the line. See the black streaks on the sheets and towels!”

The friend walked up to the window and said, “I think the clothes are quite clean, my dear. The streaks are on your window.”

This story brings to mind those words from Matthews Gospel (ch 7 vv 1- 12) we heard earlier “Why do you see the speck in your neighbours eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye.” It easy to pass judgement and to find fault in others but is that what our task is? To tear apart everyone else and to point out where they are going wrong? Or is it to make the most of who we are not only for ourselves but for the good of all. Is our task to be the critic who picks apart what others do or is it to contribute to life in whatever ways we can? I for one no longer wish to choose the path of lazy cynicism and criticism. I’d much rather do what I can and risk getting shot down.

I find the last line iin this passage from Matthew fascinating. Here Jesus states the Golden Rule of Compassion, the universal essence found in all the great religious traditions. In verse 12 you find those immortal words ‘In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.”

Here lays both the problem and the solution. In these words we find the reason why people are so harshly critical of others. I suspect that they find fault in others because deep down inside is that insidious voice, finding fault in everything they do. People often do love their neighbour as themselves. The problem being that deep down inside they feel no real love for themselves.

You see the greatest critic of them all, the one that seems to drive all other criticism, is that inner critic that quietly tears our own souls apart. I suspect that we find fault in others so as to deflect from that voice that eats away at everything loving and good within ourselves and our world for that matter.

Cynicism eats away at your soul, until you do nothing and believe in nothing. In such a nihilistic state anything goes, all morality is lost and barbarity rules. Cynicism soon becomes nihilism, the worse form emotional cowardice.

As Caitlin Moran wrote in the novel “How to Build a Girl”:

“Cynicism is, ultimately, fear. Cynicism makes contact with your skin, and a thick black carapace begins to grow — like insect armor. This armor will protect your heart, from disappointment — but it leaves you almost unable to walk. You cannot dance in this armor. Cynicism keeps you pinned to the spot, in the same posture, forever.”

Here she echoes wisdom from “Teddy” Roosevelt a hundred years earlier

On the 23rd April 1910 former US president Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt took to podium at the Sorbonne in Paris and delivered what has been considered one the great speeches. It was titled “Citizenship in a Republic”. Here are a couple extracts from it:

“The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twisted pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform…

… It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat…

The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder.”

Great language don’t you think.

It is easy to be the critic who sneers and throws mud at the person who gives life an honest go, who dares to step into the arena to do good, to do what they can. It says something of our age that one of the worst things a person can be today is a so called “Do-gooders”. Since when is doing good a negative thing? Well in this cynical age it seems.

Too often we mistaken critical thinking for sneering cynicism. Critical thinking is vital, but it also needs to be constructive. Today the cynic seems to have an ever more powerful voice than they did in the past. Today they don’t sling mud, instead they just join in forums of the internet and social media and tear apart those who dare put their head above the parapet and step into the arena and do good. Just a decade or so after Roosevelts speech Bertrand Russell asserted “construction and destruction alike satisfy the will to power, but construction as a rule gives more satisfaction to the person who can achieve it.” Those who enter the arena and give things ago, even if they fail will find satisfaction. Those who cynically sneer, sling mud and point out the imperfections will likely live lives where “They get no satisfaction”

There is no real satisfaction in sneering at life, just slinging dirt or pointing out the dirt on someone else’s washing or missing the plank in your own eye for the speck in your neighbours. It is easy to be a critic. It less easy to step into the arena and actually do something. What the world needs right now is less critics and more constructors as we attempt to build back society. That is not to say that we should not be critical. Any healthy society needs those who point ought what can be done better. The key is how we do this. We need to do so constructively. We need to learn from the original cynics and become folk who enter the arena with hope, ones who offer another way, a better way, rather ones who sit at home, pick up their keyboards and cynically dissect the work of those who dare to step into the arena of life.

So, I am going to leave you with a question. Are you going to be a mud slinger? Or are you going to be encourager or better still a constructor? The choice is yours. What is it going to be?

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

Conversation: The Nature of Reality

I recently had the experience of being cut off from folk, from being able to communicate, to converse. I have been having mobile phone trouble. I phoned my mobile phone company over a couple of days and discovered that my software had become “corrupted”. It is not easy to speak with your mobile provider when your phone isn’t working, but thankfully I was able to use my landline. I was told that I would have to remove everything from my phone, save it to my laptop, relaunch the phone and then add everything back to the phone. This was a task way beyond my ability and so I had to call the company who made the phone and I was put through to a man named Alban. Alban who is originally from Albania. What followed was a three hour telephone conversation as he carefully guided me through all the steps, including several twenty minute phases where we waited for things to upload and download and other various technical things. During these blocks we got to know each other. We talked about our lives the things we have done in the past. Views about life, philosophy, politics, religion, music, sport, family, entertainment, the current pandemic and a whole lot more. It was a wonderful conversation, with a complete stranger I will never meet, in fact I will never speak to him again. It was a wonderful encounter, a beautiful conversation, and my phone seems to be working now.

I have been thinking about conversations ever since. I am discovering that they are deeperning, they seem more precious at this time. Whether that be the conversations in the supermarket, taking place behind masks, or the brief ones in the gym or street as I pass folk, moments of connection that are so precious. As well as the various phone calls I receive and all those Zoom conversations and other video based ones I have all week long. Last Monday I hosted the grief group, it was a quiet one, with only a few in attendance and yet it was so deep and rich in meaning. I loved the conversations we share in the poetry group. I reckon we share less poems each week and spend more time talking about the many varied things that the poems bring up.

I find it amazing how even though we are spending far less time in the company of people I am experiencing increasingly deeper conversations in my life. Thank God for that and thank God for modern technology, even social media. Where would we be without it.

Life is about conversation, good conversation. We spend most our lives in conversations, on all kinds of levels. Conversations are not of course always spoken, we are constantly in conversation with all of life, constantly engaging, speaking and listening.

Krista Tippet from “On Being” who spends much of life interviewing and engaging with all kinds of folk claims that “Good conversation is an adventure”. She states:

“I think of a good conversation as an adventure. You create a generous and trustworthy space for it, and prepare hospitably for it, so the other person will feel so welcome and understood that they will put words around something they have never put words around quite that way before. They will give voice to something they didn’t know they knew — and you will be a witness to thinking, revelation, in real time. This is one reason radio/podcasting is such a magical medium: everyone who listens joins that room, becomes a witness, the moment they push “play.” They are also there for the revelation. It’s a form of time travel. And if the conversation is edifying (one of my favorite, underused words), we all sync up in some mysterious way across time and space and grow a little together.”

Life is made up of conversation. We as humans have conversed in all kinds of ways over the years. People communicate in different ways in different cultures and sub-cultures within cultures, there has always been an etiquette in conversation. Now while conversation style has morphed and the methods of communication grown and expanded I suspect that the measure of good and bad conversation has remained the same. To quote William Spielgelman in “Senior Moments: Looking Back, Looking Ahead”

“Here are some adjectives that do not apply to the best conversation: 'one-sided,' 'monopolizing,' 'condescending,' 'preachy,' 'abrasive,' 'hectoring,' 'loud,' and 'rude.' However many people it involves, conversation is, like chamber music, an exercise in intimacy, of give-and-take, of what Plato, who recorded the talk of one of history's first and finest talkers, called 'dialectic,' a word etymologically related to 'dialogue.' Conversation moves forward, or back and forth in starts and stops, like drama itself. That philosophy, democracy, and drama all began in fifth-century Athens says a great deal about the far from incidental relations among them.”

Conversation is not only about the ability to articulate oneself, it is about engaging in relationship with ourselves, with others, with life and with whatever we experience at the core of life. “The Creative Interchange” is a form of conversation. I am delivering this worship, this address but it is actually a part of wider conversation with life, with you who are listening and with all that came together to create it. You who are listeners will hopefully engage with the words shared and then engage and feed life in someway from it, leading to further conversation, engagement with life.

The goal of conversation is create understanding and connection between our thoughts and words. As Richard Saul Wurman has said “…conversations are an understanding machine, an imminently satisfying forum for the exchange of information.” I have noticed that tithey can be transformative too, they can change my whole psyche, my persona, they can bring to life my whole soul. So many times in the last few days I have felt transformed by a simple conversation.

Conversation though has been challenged for all of us these last six or months due to having to separate, to varying degrees, physically. We have had to adapt how we converse with one another. We are probably talking to one another less and perhaps this is why the conversation have deepened in meaning. I have also noticed a deeper conversation that can be had, that is often unspoken, a conversation with life itself and whatever we consider to be at the core of life, what some of us would call God and others give a different name. We are always in conversation; it is just that sometimes we speak and listen to words.

The philosopher poet David Whyte often speaks of “the conversational nature of reality.” He says that he became a poet, after a successful career as a marine biologist, because he felt a deeper need to communicate his experiences. As he states in a conversation he had with Krista Tippet:

“I went back into poetry because I felt like scientific language wasn’t precise enough to describe the experiences that I had in Galapagos. Science, rightly, is always trying to remove the “I.” But I was really interested in the way that the “I” deepened the more you paid attention. In Galapagos, I began to realize that because I was in deeply attentive states, hour after hour, watching animals and birds and landscapes — and that’s all I did for almost two years — I began to realize that my identity depended not upon any beliefs I had, inherited beliefs or manufactured beliefs, but my identity actually depended on how much attention I was paying to things that were other than myself — and that as you deepen this intentionality and this attention, you started to broaden and deepen your own sense of presence.

I began to realize that the only places where things were actually real was at this frontier between what you think is you and what you think is not you, that whatever you desire of the world will not come to pass exactly as you will like it. But the other mercy is that whatever the world desires of you will also not come to pass, and what actually occurs is this meeting, this frontier. But it’s astonishing how much time human beings spend away from that frontier, abstracting themselves out of their bodies, out of their direct experience, and out of a deeper, broader, and wider possible future that’s waiting for them if they hold the conversation at that frontier level. Half of what’s about to occur is unknown both inside you and outside you. John O’Donohue, a mutual friend of both of us, used to say that one of the necessary tasks is this radical letting alone of yourself in the world, letting the world speak in its own voice and letting this deeper sense of yourself speak out.”

I love the way that David describes the conversational nature of reality, that we are constantly in conversation, whether we are speaking or not, so long as we are alive, awake and fully engaged.

This is beautifully illustrated in his poem “Everything Is Waiting for You?”

After Derek Mahon

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the
conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

We are constantly in conversation, even if we haven’t spoken with someone for sometime. Life is about conversation, big and small. Conversation can happen anywhere and in any situation. Our tools for conversation are constantly changing and evolving. To enjoy a good conversation all that is required is for us to engage with life, to be alive and awake to the life around us, to take it in, to absorb it, to hear what it has to say and to respond in kind.

So let is join in the beautiful conversation, to engage in the conversational nature of reality.

Amen

Genius: Nurturing the Kin-dom of Love

“Each of Us Is An Artist” by Arthur Graham

"Each of us is an artist whose task it is to shape life into some semblance of the pattern we dream about. The molding is not of self alone, but of shared tomorrows and times we shall never see. So let us be about our task. The materials are very precious and perishable."

I’ve been reflecting on my experiences of this year’s Annual Meetings of The General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches in Great Britain and Ireland (a mouthful I know) and how much I enjoyed it. This surprised me to some extent, as over the last couple of years I have not. Now it maybe just a reflection on where I am at, both with regard to my own personal spirituality and that of the denomination in general or maybe a reflection on the few days I experienced in Birmingham, or perhaps a mixture of both. I suspect that there were many reasons for this and that I will never reach a clear and defined answer. Thank God.

There seemed to be a real sense of togetherness this year and new optimism too. There was also a seeming absence of ego, there was no one trying to run the whole show and orchestrate everything in their image. This was a real blessings. I felt this right from the start, at the minister’s conference. Where I enjoyed some wonderful conversations and was greatly impressed by the new ministers who are coming through. Amongst them is great evidence of spiritual and theological depth. Listening and engaging with them I was touched in those sometimes hard to reach places, right in the soul of me. During one of the evening services titled “Celebrating Our Vision” each of the newly qualified ministers spoke of their own theological and spiritual influences, again I was touched by what they all said, but there was one that stood out and has stayed with me ever since. Kate Whyman who has recently been appointed to serve the congregation at Plymouth quoted a plaque that she saw at the Divinity School at Harvard University where Ralph Waldo Emerson had delivered his now famous “Divinity School Address”. The plaque read “Acquaint Thyself at First Hand with Deity”…Those words have been singing in my soul ever since…

“Acquaint Thyself at First Hand with Deity”

There were many things that amused and touched me throughout the week. One of those was a moment when I was moving from one workshop to go to another. Rev Keith Hill saw me in the corridor and came rushing towards me and said you’ve got to come with me as Melda Grantham, the Secretary of the Welsh Department in a talk on communication, has just been singing your praises and described you as a genius. Well I almost died of shock on the spot, but I went with him. It seems that Melda is very impressed with the way I write and express through personal stories, theology and spirituality, and that I do so in a way that anyone can connect too. She said “That Danny Crosby is a genius”. Well as you can imagine I blushed somewhat at this. Like so many people I still, at times, feel uncomfortable when someone compliments me and shines the light on my better qualities.

That said I have been having a bit of fun with it ever since, especially with friends. I even posted an update on Facebook on Easter Sunday, as I was relaxing having spent some time enjoying the beautiful Easter/Passover moon. It read “It was said last week I am a genius…I didn’t know…What do you reckon?” Some rather interesting comments followed, some lovely and some hilarious and still others a real mixture of both. What was interesting was that a couple of my friends posted definitions of “genius”. The first read:

“ 'A genius is a person who displays exceptional superior intellectual ability, creativity, or originality', so yes.” and the second suggested “that this sounds like another etymological adventure was on the cards” and then quoted the following “In ancient Rome, the genius (plural in Latin genii) was the guiding spirit or tutelary deity of person. The noun is related to the Latin verb genui, genitus, "to bring into being, create, produce"”

To which I responded “I think you may have planted some seeds.” Now this immediately sent my thoughts back to “The Mustard Seed” readings that were shared during this year’s "Anniversary Service" at the "Annual Meetings" I had attended. By the way the service was phenomenal and again highlighted so much that is truly wonderful about our free religious faith.

So I had this seed of genius planted deeply into my soul and I began thinking and exploring this idea, especially bringing that which is within us into being; to bring that seed of Deity within us to bare fruit. Now this of course requires us to first of all become acquainted with it and to lovingly nurture it. Suddenly Kate’s quotation from Emerson began to take on new meaning.

“Acquaint Thyself at First Hand with Deity”

I do believe that there is that of the Divine within each and every one of us and that it is our task, our duty to bring that to life in our very being. It’s just that I had not previously thought of it the same way that my friends and acquaintances were now pointing towards, through the various aspects of the “Creative Interchange”, we and others were unknowingly engaging in.

So once again it would appear that everything that we need is already there deep within us. We do not need to seek the Kingdom of God, the Commonwealth of Love, because it is already here within us and amongst us. We are each and every one of us an aspect of what I heard someone describe recently as “The Kin-dom of Heaven”. Our task, I believe, is to bring it to fruit and bring it together.

You see the real truth is that we are all genius’s, yes I know that you probably feel uncomfortable hearing this, but none the less it is true. We are all born with this essence and we need to bring it to life in our very being, we need to reclaim our true nature and then share it with our world, because it doesn’t belong to us alone and doesn’t truly come alive unless we share it with others.

Now throughout human history this genius within us has been understood in different ways. Many, beginning with Plato, I understand, talked of each of us being born with a companion, what some might describe as a spirit that remembers our true nature and therefore "calling" and which can guide us back to our greatest animation. It is this that truly brings us alive, that animates our very being that enthuses us. This inner spirit animates our soul, this is the genius within each and every one of us. It has been called by many names such as muse, inner voice, still small voice, higher self, guardian angel or what the ancient Greeks referred to as Daemon.

Now the problem of course is that so many of us suppress our inner genius, we do not let it shine, we do not believe that we are “The Light of the World” or perhaps the opposite happens we keep it selfishly for ourselves alone.

Now I witnessed a wonderful example of this on Easter Sunday evening just before I noticed that beautiful Easter moon. It was during a conversation I and others were having while standing outside unknowingly experiencing the light of that said moon. A friend who is both a juggler and a magician began juggling some red balls, he was in total bliss enjoying his gift that he has nurtured over the years. As he was doing so he began to talk about how even in his darkest days he had always enjoyed the company of jugglers, how they were the most loving and accepting community of people he had ever known. How they were happy to share all that they had with anyone and that they were totally devoid of ego. He contrasted this with magicians who he said were the exact opposite, how they were secretive, closed and suspicious of anyone, that they were not welcoming and were full of ego. As he spoke I thought to myself, you are a genius, you have just taught a beautifully deep truth about the last few days of my life. It dawned on me that these are examples of religious communities and actually all human communities. They could well be metaphors for the “Kingdom of Mistrust” or the “Kin-dom of Love”, “the Commonwealth of Love”

I then went and caught my first glimpse of that Easter moon, I spent quite sometime alone gazing lovingly at it.

A couple of days later as I began to piece worship material together for the coming Sunday's service it became clearer to me what our task truly is. It is to bring our genius to life and share and allow it to spread so as to create the "Kin-dom of Heaven", the oneness of humanity, right here right now…it can be done…if we want it…

We each of us have the seed of genius within us. How it got there I am not sure; who or what planted it there, again, I cannot be certain. It is there though, of that I am certain. Our task is to first of all become acquainted with it, to nurture and to bring to life in all that we feel, all that we think, all that we say and all that we do; our task is to share our genius with one another and our world; our task is to become the light of the world.

Easter Sunday revealed to me that our real task is to become joyful and joy filled jugglers rather than those suspicious and miserable magicians. By doing so we will begin to create that “Kin-dom of love” within and amongst us.

A genius is someone who acquaints themselves, first hand, with the Divine seed that was planted within them before they were even born; a genius is someone who nurtures and brings to fruit, harvests and finally shares this generous love with all they meet; a genius is someone who gives birth to the kin-dom of love.

I am going to end this little chip of a blogspot with a prayer from Rev Cliff Reed, from his wonderful new book "Carnival of Lamps"...I trust it will sing in your heart and soul...


“By Many Different Paths”

O God,
the ultimate, the One.
we, who come here by many different paths,
greet you and bow before you.

We were not just placed here on this planet.
We grew with it, out of it,
yet always in its web of life.

We were many things before we were human.
We were many humans before we were
“thinking man”, as we like to call ourselves.

We are the children of more ancestors
than we can imagine, carry the genes
of many things we cannot name.

We are part of this earth, this cosmos,
and we pause in wonder at its majesty.

Somewhere, some time,
creatures came out of all this that could
love and be kind, and recognise in you
the source of love and kindness.

Who were the first we don’t know,
and never can, but we would be like them.

May it be so.

Listening: Making Space for the Other

A man approached Nasrudin and asked him, “how does one become wise?”. To which Nasrudin replied: “listen attentively to wise people when they speak. And when someone is listening to you, listening attentively to what you are saying!”

Ah Mulla Nasrudin, the wise fool. The “Holy Fool”. We can learn so much from listening; we can learn so much from really listening; we can learn so much from really listening not only to others, but to ourselves too.

Listening is about invitation. It is about inviting the other into our lives; it is about making space for the other. This is not always easy to do especially when engaging in conversation.

“Listen with the ear of your heart”, has become one of my mantras. It comes from “The Rule of Benedict” a set of ancient principles for monastic orders. The foundation of the rule is listening, deep attentive listening. It begins, “listen carefully, my child, to the instructions...and attend to them with the ear of your heart “.

This is no easy task. It is so easy to get wrapped up in so many other things. That said in order to make space for the other we do need to learn to listen; to listen “with the ear of our hearts”.

Ernest Hemingway once said "When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen."

How many of us can really say that we listen to one another? When we begin to converse do we take time to truly listen to what the other person is saying? Or are we merely waiting for our turn to make our point? When we engage with one another are we really attempting to make space for them or is it all about us? Is it about our need to be heard? Are we engaging with others in the hope that they will agree with us?

In “Forgotten Art of Deep Listening” Kay Lindahl asks us to:

“Think of the difference it would make if each of us felt really listened to when we spoke. Imagine the time it would save to be heard the first time around, instead of having to repeat ourselves over and over again. Envision a conversation in which each person is listened to with respect, even those whose views are different from ours. This is all possible in conversations of the heart, when we practice the sacred art of listening. It takes intention and commitment. We need to slow down to expand our awareness of the possibilities of deep listening. The simple act of listening to each other can transform all of our relationships. Indeed, it can transform the world, as we practice being the change we wish to see in the world.”

By listening we can begin to transform the world; by listening we begin to practise being the change we wish to see in the world.

 There is an old Buddhist proverb that roughly translates as “when the pupil is ready the teacher will appear”. I can vouch for the truth in this statement. That said I can’t always vouch for another well known cliché “first impressions count”. Looking back at my life there have been times when first impressions really got in the way. My first impressions have proved to be way wide of the mark at times.

I often talk of this wise man I met in Oldham eight or nine years ago. Now when I first met him I did not like him at all. I certainly didn’t want to listen to what he had to say. I quickly built some barriers between us, barriers based purely on unfounded fear. I’m extremely grateful that those barriers came a tumbling down because I am pretty sure that if I hadn’t learnt to listen to what he had to say, I might not be here today. I am not understating things when I say that he saved my life.

Of the many things that he taught me one of the greatest was how to listen. This all began by practising and noticing when I wasn’t listening, especially when others were talking. He taught me to observe when my mind wandered off or to notice when I was listening how much of my time was spent on working out what “brilliant” response I was going to make, in an attempt to refute what the other person was saying. He taught me that when we are listening to another we are extending ourselves to that person, we are giving them a gift; a gift that we can both share in. In making space for the other, we create a sacred space, we make space for God and we get a taste of heaven.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said “There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening, we shall hear the right word”

When we listen to others and when we truly listen to ourselves when others speak, as the “Holy Fool” Nasruddin suggests, we may just uncover what the root of the things that are troubling ourselves are and even better what the solution to these troubles might be. As that wise man in Oldham taught me we can uncover what the problem is, we can discover its root cause and we can cut it out and discard it and move on with our lives. We can remove the barriers that are blocking us from living the lives we would like to lead.

He taught me that when we listen to another we truly give of ourselves. Whereas when we only appear to be listening and are in fact judging or comparing ourselves to them we are in actual fact judging ourselves. He taught me that if we learn to listen to others, without judgement, we can begin to learn to accept them for who they truly are. By doing so we are learning to love them; by doing so we give them the dignity to be themselves; by doing so we dignify ourselves. We create a sacred space in that relationship between one another.

Now of course not all the great sages come from Oldham. Those of ancient times taught similar lessons to this ordinary man. That said I am not sure that I could have accessed what they taught eight or nine years ago. It required simple language from an   ordinary man. He spoke the language of the heart and I was prepared to listen. I learnt a valuable lesson that day; I learnt that the language of the heart is universal, it can break down any barrier.

Karen Armstrong has highlighted that human dialogue has tended “...to be aggressive, a tradition we inherited from the ancient Greeks.” If we look at our world today we tend to debate competitively whether we are public figures or just talking in the playground, the pub or through social media. Often when we are engaging in conversation we are trying to trip one another up, or prove one another wrong. How many of us can truly say that we are truly listening to one another?

Since ancient times the great sages have offered solutions to this competitive and aggressive way of communicating, but I’m not sure they have ever won out.

As Armstrong has highlighted:

“The Socratic dialogue was a spiritual exercise designed to produce a profound psychological change in the participants - and because its purpose was that everybody should understand the depth of his ignorance, there was no way that anybody could win.” The key as Plato highlighted “...is to ‘make place for the other’ in his mind and to listen intently and sympathetically to the ideas of his partners in dialogue...” Can you imagine this happening during Prime Minister’s Question Time?

Other great sages such as the Buddha and Confucius conducted discussions in a similar manner. Confucius always developed his ideas in conversation. He did this because he felt that in order for anyone to achieve ‘maturity’ required this kind of friendly interaction. The Buddha taught his monks to converse kindly and courteously with one another. His lay disciple King Pasenadi of Kosla observed the contrast between his Royal Courts and the Buddha’s communities. In the courts everybody seemed to be looking out for themselves and were always quarrelsome. Where as he observed the monks were “...living together as uncontentiously as milk with water and looking at one another with kind eyes...smiling, courteous, sincerely happy...their minds remaining as gentle as wild dear.” They were showing reverence to one another.

Listening is about making space for the other, it is an invitation; an invitation to create true spiritual intimacy. Listening is one way to release ourselves from the treadmill of own ego centric little worlds. It can release us from hell.

Listening is a loving practise and as such it requires discipline, it requires spirit and it requires devotion. It begins by being aware, mindful, of when we do not listen and re-committing to listening once again. It is one step towards living more empathically, more compassionately with one another. This is a lifetime’s project. As Karen Armstrong herself says “...the attempt to become a compassionate human being is a lifelong project. It is not achieved in an hour or a day - or even in twelve steps. It is a struggle that will last until our dying hour.”

It begins with us listening, by us attempting to be the change we want to see in the world. We can turn away from judgement toward empathy and understanding, we can truly invite the other into our lives.

Here is a link to a "Talking Head" reflection I recently recorded based on these ideas