It is important for awake people to be awake

I was away last weekend in the beautiful city of Edinburgh. Edinburgh is one of those places that is a delight to simply walk around in. I spent several hours on Saturday morning doing so. It was wonderful. I went to few places of importances and paid homage to the great and good of the city, marked by the statues and the monuments. To me they help to sanctify the city, give it a sense of the sacred. Edinburgh has a timeless quality to it, with a skyline dominated by the castle built on that ancient rock.

As I wandered round there was nowhere that you could not see the castle on the rock, for whatever reason it kept on bringing the first verse of Psalm 121 to my heart and mind “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help”. I felt a gentle strengthening as I walked around the city with one or two concerns on my mind.

As I said I love the monuments of the city. My favourites though are the more quirky ones. Some tell ordinary tales, of local inhabitants that graced the city and others told great tales. I of course went to find Greyfriars Bobby, to pay homage and of course to touch his nose. I received his blessing. As I am sure you know a dog blesses with their nose. I also discovered another statue of another dog, one that became the mascot of San Diego, This dog was named “Bum”, he arrived as a kind of refugee, a stow-away. The locals fell in love with him and they cared for him. The people of San Diego donated a statue of “Bum” to Edinburgh, thus creating a bond between the two very different cities and their beloved dogs. Both dogs’ noses are worn from all the blessing. I thought of Molly and how she blesses so many folk in the communities we live in. I wonder if they might build a monument to her one day.

There are many monuments to those lost in war and conflict, you see throughout Edinburgh, in particularly in Princess Street gardens. As I wandered through gardens I paused and reflected many times. I thought of many folk we have lost in our communities and folk I have lost personally. I thought of Derek and his family as his life is coming to an end. Sadly Derek died this week, surrounded by his loving family. He is a huge loss to the community and to me personally. He has been a good friend and rock actually.

I saw a statue I hadn’t seen before of a giant toy elephant. It is named “Never Forget”. It has been placed in the gardens in memory of the “Morton Hill Baby scandal”. It marks a something terrible, not only the loss of babies lives, but also that their ashes were never given to their parents. It si said that the elephant never forgets and this statue symbolises the fact that these parents will never forget the loss of their babies.

All these statues and many others, especially in Princess Street gardens, sanctify the city of Edinburgh and the people who both live and visit there. They speak of the city and those who inhabited it through the centuries, marking the past, touching the present and pointing towards the future. I felt blessed as I walked around the city that Saturday morning, connecting with its heart and soul. I then made my way towards St Mark’s Unitarian Church and Janine’s induction service.

It was a beautiful and moving service, as folk gathered together, to mark this important day in Janine’s life and the life Edinburgh Unitarians. So many people from Janine’s life were gathered and the story of her journey into ministry shared and all those that had been involved in her journey were present. It was a true blessing and a blessing to be a part of. It was all accompanied by the most beautiful music played by Ailsa Aitkenhead. There were several moving moments of ritual that we engaged in throughout the service or was it a ceremony. I felt deeply blessed by it all. I then enjoyed a wonderful evening of folk catching up with things. The next day I returned to St Mark’s to enjoy Sunday morning worship. It was wonderful to be led in worship by Kyle Mc Donald, inspired by the journey of Robert Falcon Scott and his party to the Antarctica, an ill fated journey, but one of honour, inspired by the same spirit I felt blessed by all through the weekend in Edinburgh. A spirt that can come alive in each of us and bless us all. We don’t need to touch one another’s noses to receive the blessing, but it is there all the same. By the way Kyle has just been accepted for ministry training. It felt like a blessing to see him lead worship having this just been announced.

My weekend in Edinburgh was one of blessing, worship and ritual of so many kinds. I felt the spirt alive and present throughout it all.

The previous Sunday I had been invited to attend a dear friends Baptism at “The Audacious” Church in central Manchester. This was a very different occasion to the one I had experienced in Edinburgh. I was deeply moved witnessing my friend pass through a threshhold of her own. She has been on quite a journey herself. A journey that had some of its beginnings during a Christmas Eve service at Dunham Road. Now while the worship in the service at the “Audacious Church” did not touch me so much, it did touch many of the hundreds present. What did touch me though was witnessing my friend pass through a threshold of her own and continue on her journey to who knows where. As I looked at her face during this ceremony I saw that same spirit I experienced at St Mark’s and as I wandered around Edinburgh, as I was blessed by the beautiful city. It was a blessing to gaze upon her face and to think of the journey she has been on.

We are always at the threshold of something, the end of one moment moving into another. People say live in the moment, well I have discovered that the moment is not some static thing that you can live within, the moment is liminal in nature, it is the space between the past and the future. You cannot really live in the moment. Maybe it is more accurate to say that the moment lives in and through you. Each moment can be a blessing in itself, can be deeply sacred in and of itself. The key is how we live within each and every one. You may be sanctified by it, if you live by and through blessing.

This bring to mind a rather wonderful poem, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other” by William Stafford. I will share it with you.

“A Ritual to Read to Each Other” by William Stafford

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

It is the line “For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep” that speaks powerfully and intensely to me. It is not merely that we need to keep ourselves awake, but that we need to remind one another who and what we truly are in order that we remain awake and do not go back to sleep. We have to bring to life what has awakened within each and everyone of us and share that with each other so as to remind one another of the importance of staying awake, or we will go back to sleep. Again something I experienced in Edinburgh last weekend. I felt once again awakened by the spirit and was reminded how vital it is that we remain awake.

The key is to remember and to bring the memory alive in this moment we find ourselves in right here and now. To communicate what we have learnt and to listen to what has awoken within each other. I felt this powerfully as I shared in Janine’s induction service and as I looked upon the face of my friend during her Baptism. I thought of all that had brought them to these moments of transition and wondered where they might lead. They may not build monuments to them, but they will touch many lives and bless folk with their presence, of this I am certain.

As I witnessed Janine’s induction, as I saw her step over the threshold into her life as a minister, I felt those words by William Stafford deep in my heart. As I did I felt a recommitment to ministry deep within me and thought to myself, I will attempt to live that ritual and keep on reading it to others and listen to it as they read the ritual to me. I will remember the line.

“For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep”

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking once again about worship. Its purpose and how to create sacred space. Of course, having Peter as a student has brought this to my consciousness. Also being part of the interview panel for ministry as well as “Ministry in the Making” has brought it to my head and heart too. I have also attended several different forms of worship, some has affected my soul, touched me deeply. Other has not in the least, although it did many others who were present. It has all got me thinking deeply about worship and its purpose. I have also been thinking about ritual, how it holds life together and sanctifies it, but also the dangers of becoming a slave to it. There is a place and need for structure as it allows the freedom to explore. There is also the need to cater for different types of people. There is a balance needed between structure and total lassez faire. I know myself I need a mixture of the two, although I know the balance will never be perfect. I also know that you cannot please all of the people all of the time.

This brings to mind a favourite story “The Guru’s Cat”

In India there was a great religious guru who was always surrounded in his Ashram by loyal devotees. For hours a day, the guru and his followers would meditate on God. The only problem was that the guru had a young cat, an annoying creature, who used to walk through the temple meowing and purring and bothering everyone during meditation. So the guru, in all his practical wisdom, commanded that the cat be tied to a pole outside for a few hours a day, only during meditation, so as to not disturb anyone. This became a habit – tying the cat to the pole and then meditating on God – but as years passed, the habit hardened into religious ritual. Nobody could meditate unless the cat was tied to the pole first. After the guru died, the cat continued to be tied during evening worship.

Then one day the cat died. The guru’s followers were panic-stricken. It was a major religious crisis – how could they meditate now, without a cat to tie to a pole? How would they reach God? In their minds, the cat had become the means.

Centuries later, learned treatises were written by the guru’s scholarly disciples on the liturgical significance of tying up a cat while worship is performed.

Ritual in worship helps to touch the spirit. That said there is a real danger in becoming too enslaved to ritual. Sometimes it becomes all about the ritual and the spirit dies. Surely the purpose of such activities is to feed the spirit and not just follow some pattern, just like the story of “Guru’s Cat”. We are here to touch and awaken the spirit, to keep feeding it and thus to keep the spirit awake.

Sometimes we become so tied to things that we forget the purpose of why we are doing what we are doing. So yes, I have been thinking once again about the purpose of worship, particularly in the context of a free religious tradition, one that should never be a slave to anything. I have also been thinking about the purpose of spirituality and the spiritual life. I have been thinking how we enliven and awaken the spirit in each of us, about balance, and how worship may feed the soul; thinking of ways to live the spiritual life, to live spiritually alive.

How do we define spirituality and the spiritual life? What is its purpose? I have heard many explanations over the years. The best one came from Rev Bill Darlison, he said “that the purpose of the spiritual life, is to increase our sensitivity to life.” I believe that the purpose of spirituality is to aid us to become more affected by life and thus become more effective in life. It is not to rise beyond life, to escape from life, but to enable us to engage fully with reality. I know that the more engaged I am in such practices the more engaged I am in life. That said I also need such practices to recharge my spiritual batteries and thus return back to life and increase the affect and become more effective. The spiritual life is not so much about transcendence but transformation. It is not about escaping life, but to be changed by it and thus be a force for good within it.

The realm of the spirit and the realm of the material are not separate, they both feed and are fed by each other.

There is something very powerful about coming together in love; there is something very powerful in opening ourselves up to one another and recognise what connects us what makes us wholly human. Worshipping together is one way to do so, but it can happen in all aspects of life. It can occur in deep encounters with others, when love and attention is paid. It can happen by simply walking around wherever you may find yourself if your spirit is open to it.

The communities I serve gather together seeking something, as we engage in the ritual of worship. We come for a reason, even if where not wholly sure what that reason is. In the worship we share I attempt to create through words, music, silence, imagery and more, a sacred time and space that will enable us to open our hearts and help us connect to the Greater mysteries of life, to the Web of being, to know the spirit of life and love, to experience God and for this to impact on how we live our day to day lives.

In this sacred space at the sacred time where generations have worshipped we open our hearts to the greater mysteries of life. In so doing we begin to connect to the greater realities and mysteries of existence. It is this time that can help us to open up the lives we find ourselves in and to pay attention to the life around us and to touch the people we meet in our daily living. In so doing we make all life sacred, by blessing it with our presence.

My hope is that when we leave the space that we are touched in those deeper aspects of our humanity and that when we leave the space that we begin to bless the world with our sacred humanity by recognising the sacredness of each person that we meet and that we bless life with our loving presence.

Or as William Stafford put it, “For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep”

May our souls, our spirits, our simple human being be awake.

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

To Ask Is To Give

Sue and myself took a trip out to Cheshire Oaks, the other day. The plan was to purchase my wedding outfit. It was a successful couple of hours. Now even though we looked in every single menswear shop the suit I chose was the very first one that took my eye. As soon as I saw it I thought I like the look of that one and nothing we looked at afterwards came close. Now while Sue came along she knew I wouldn’t be overly influenced by her thoughts on things. I can be quite single minded over such matters, some might say stubborn. The suit seemed the easiest part of the process and the assistant was really helpful, without being too pushy. I had a mixture of experiences in other shops as I looked for a shirt, tie and shoes to complete the outfit. Now some of the shopping assistants we encountered were both encouraging and genuinely helpful, others were not, some were even dismissive, one or two were mocking. I know which I responded to and which just made me want to flee.

It is vital how a person responds when asked for help. I had an experience of this on Tuesday morning as I left the gym. I realised I needed to buy a card for my mum’s birthday. As I passed WH Smith’s I noticed an electric wheelchair, I felt I recognised it and discovered later it was Edna’s, a member at Dunham Road. As I continued on I noticed a large elderly woman struggling with her wheelchair, people seemed to walk on by, I was tempted to do as I was in a rush, but stopped, it was pouring down with rain.  There was a problem with one of wheels and she couldn’t propel herself. So I found myself pushing her to a shop at the other end of the high street. As we got there I asked the shop assistants to come out to help. She was not the easiest of people but I left her in safe hands. The woman needed help, was asking for it and gratefully received it when it came.

The two experiences led me to reflect on my own attitude towards asking for help. I am not someone who finds it easy to ask for help, pride is definitely my kryptonite. I am much more comfortable offering my hand than accepting that of another. That said the moments of the greatest personal spiritual growth for me have been those moments of humility, when I have felt powerless and completely lost and have had to surrender to the need to ask others to help me. It has happened on several occasions these last few years. I have learnt that asking for the help is not an abdication of responsibility, quite the opposite actually. The power of asking and gratefully receiving help has often been enough to lead to me to taking the appropriate action, to be responsible and to walk alongside others in mutual aid and inspiration. Asking for help is not about becoming dependent on others, it is actually a genuine act that recognises our human inter-relatedness. There is a time in all our lives when we need help from others and others need help from us. There are no singular givers and receivers in life, we all give and we all receive at times. Paradoxically the one who gives often receive abundantly in so many ways.  

That said I still find it difficult to humbly ask and receive help, it is my weakness, my kryptonite. Asking for help without giving nothing back in return is a real challenge. Maybe that is why I suit ministry. It is the same for others involved in caring work too, I have noticed.

I remember chuckling to myself a few years ago when I discovered the meaning of the word “minister”. To minister literally means to serve. I have wondered over the years if governmental minister’s grasp this. It ought to humble all who minister. Our Prime Minister, if they truly understood their work, ought to recognise that they are the number one servant to we the people, I doubt if many have.

Now within a free religious tradition, like the Unitarians, it is not only the appointed minister who serves, all who congregate together do so to some degree or another. All give and receive in such communities. Everyone has different gifts and talents and by combining together a loving community is created. It is the sum of all its parts that makes a spiritual community what it is.

I believe that is the point that the Epistle Paul was making in his first letter to the congregation at Corinth some 2,000 years ago (1 Corithians ch 12). In his letter he is pointing out that each of members possesses special gifts and that no gift is superior to the other. These gifts are there for the good of the whole. The key it would appear was to combine their gifts and use them together so that they could then build the Beloved Community that they sought.

This does not mean that the individual is lost in the whole, quite the opposite, in such an environment the individual can thrive and become all that they would hope to be, so long as thy do not surrender who they are in order the fit into what they consider the whole would want them to be. Spiritual autonomy and responsibility for our own journey is vital to the ethos of a free religious community. While each may lean on one another and ask for assistance when needed, each remains responsible for their own spiritual journeys. The minister is not some special, set apart mediator.  Each comes together in love and inspires one another, but no one conforms to will of another. Emersonian "Self-Reliance, in spiritual matters, is vital for the individual to thrive within such communities.

“Self Reliance”, at least in the context of Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of those phrases that have been misunderstood and misinterpreted over the years, I know that I have done so. It’s not about not caring for the needy and telling them that they need to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. It’s also not about refusing to ask for help, relying purely on their own resources. What Emerson meant by “Self-Reliance” was not what some economist would recognise it to mean today. What he was describing was more akin to cultural and spiritual autonomy and the need to know ourselves, to listen to our hearts and intuitions, to use these gifts given to us by nature, for the best purpose and not to use them lightly or selfishly. Self-reliance ought never to be confused with selfishness, they are in no way similar, although they have been misinterpreted over the years and understood similarly.

 No one pulls themselves up from their bootstraps completely alone, all by themselves. From the moment of our births others are involved in creating who we are and who we become. As the old saying goes “It takes a village to raise a child.” No one lives entirely from themselves we are all a part of an interdependent web of relationships. Life has taught me that asking for help is actually a sign of both strength and wisdom, rather than weakness. It is a sign of good, mental, emotional and spiritual health. Of course it is not enough to merely ask for health, true healthy humility is about accepting the help offered.

Asking for help usually begins in an acknowledgement of the need for help[ it is an acknowledgment of the truth that we are not an island. It comes as we look above and beyond ourselves and widen our purview. It brings to my mind the question that begins Psalm 121 “I lift up my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come?” Now in the Psalm the answer is that God will give the help. God who made the heaven and the earth as well as the hills that the Psalm is referring to. It seems that by looking up to the hills we raise our vision.

Now while the hills themselves may not be the power there is something powerful about both looking up to them and being up there looking down on life from them, something that is difficult when you live in flatlands. In many ways the thing I miss the most about Yorkshire are the hills, Cheshire is a very flat place.

Standing up on a hill top and looking down on the world in which we live and breath and have our being gives us space and perspective. It helps us rise above our worries and troubles and leads us to solutions that often cannot be found in the middle of the hustle and bustle of life. Somewhere in that space the answers as to what can be done, can be found. The answer though will never come until we acknowledge that we do not know the answer.

To ask is to give. From the cradle to the grave we need to keep asking for help and we need to make ourselves available to be of assistance to others in their need. Isn’t this the essence of human relationships. This is not to say that we become unhealthily dependent on others and society as a whole, no not at all. We are though a part of a whole, a complex whole that makes life and community. As we grow and change and become the people that we are this changes shape and reforms constantly, it seems that we are being born again and again to new versions of ourselves. Of course we cannot do this alone. We cannot give birth to ourselves, no one can. We need help and sometimes we need to ask for help from others and in so doing we are of course doing not only a service for ourselves, but for them also.

No one is an island. We are communal beings entirely dependent on each other and life itself. As Martin Luther King said in his final Christmas sermon “We are interdependent…all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” This has never been more true than today. When someone reaches out in a time of need it is our God given duty to help and when we need help we need to be faithful enough to ask for help too. Interdependence is a physical fact, but it is also a spiritual reality.

This to me is the whole point of spiritual community, of religious living. To see, understand and experience this oneness, this Divine Unity. To see that we are all one. To be of help to one another and to seek the help when it is needed. In this way we all grow and become the best that we can be and serve life to the utmost of our ability.

It is the purpose  of the communities like the ones I serve to be places where people practise serving one another. If I have learnt anything about the spiritual life I have learnt that at its core are two basic principles, love and service. Surely the spiritual life is not just about serving ourselves, but one another. By doing so we feed one another's spirits. I have learnt that in that relationship, in that space, we can experience the Love that is Divine.

So let us keep on asking and answering, giving and receiving, weaving communities of mutual love and understanding. Let us remember that to ask is to give, it is to begin to create that “Kin-dom” of love right here, right now. You do not need to seek heaven, you just need to awaken to that bit of heaven within each of others and give birth to it right here in life.

Self Reliance and asking for Help

I was recently chatting with some friends, when one of them asked the group of us about a reference in a book familiar to us all (The book was Alcoholics Anonymous). She asked what a “Lone Ranger” was ? (now as it turns out she had got the reference slightly confused, as the phrase she was referring to is actually “Lone Wolf”). Well there were several responses. Several of the men amongst us, who had obviously watched the televisions series as children, began to describe who “The Lone Ranger” was. It was interesting that many talked about why he was “The Lone Ranger”, citing the reason being that he worked alone. Now as someone pointed out this is not actually correct. This friend it seemed was quite an expert and explained that he was called “The Lone Ranger” not because he rode alone but because he was the only surviving member of a group of six Texas Rangers who had been ambushed in a canyon named Bryant’s Gap by a gang of outlaws led by Bartholomew “Butch” Cavendish. He explained that Tonto, a Native American, comes across the scene and rescues the surviving ranger and nurses him back to health. The story tells how the ranger real name Reid had saved his life when they were both boys and that they had formed an eternal bond back then. Tonto had given him the name "Kemo Sabe", meaning trusty scout. The Lone Ranger lived by a strict moral code and went about righting wrongs, but he did not do so alone. He did so alongside Tonto and on his trusty horse Silver “Hi Oh Silver, Away”. The three along with others helped each other. No one was completely self-reliant, although they were very much responsible. “The Lone Ranger” even had his own Creed, that he lived by. It read:

I believe…

That to have a friend, a man must be one.
That all men are created equal and that everyone has within himself the power to make this a better world.
That God put firewood there, but that every man must gather and light it himself.
In being prepared physically, mentally, and morally to fight when necessary for what is right.
That a man should make the most of what equipment he has.
That “this government of the people, by the people, and for the people” shall live always.
That men should live by the rule of what is best for the greatest number.
That sooner or later…somewhere…somehow…we must settle with the world and make payment for what we have taken.
That all things change but truth, and that truth alone, lives on forever.
In my Creator, my country, my fellow man.

An interesting creed…although definitely of its time, hence the lack of gender neutral language.

Now “The Lone Ranger”, operated very much within the spirit of Emersonian “Self-Reliance”, but he did not operate alone. He asked for help when he needed help and he got it. “Self Reliance” is one of those phrases that have been misunderstood and misinterpreted over the years, I know that I have done so. It’s not about not caring for the needy and telling them that they need to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. It’s also not about refusing to ask for help relying purely on your own resources. When Ralph Waldo Emerson was describing it in his famous essay “Self-Reliance”, as he left the Unitarian ministry and went off alone, he was not talking about the self-reliance that some economists talk of today. No what he was describing was more akin to cultural and spiritual autonomy and the need to know ourselves and listen to our hearts and our own intuitions and to use these gifts given to us by nature for the best purpose and not to use them lightly or selfishly. This is portrayed in his thoughts on prayer. Towards the end of his essay “Self-Reliance” he writes “Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul…But prayer as a means to effect a private end is a meanness and theft.”

Self-reliance ought never to be confused with selfishness, they are in no way similar, although they have been misinterpreted over the years and understood similarly.

No one pulls themselves up from their bootstraps completely alone, all by themselves. From the moment of our births others are involved in creating who we are and who we become. As the old saying goes “It takes a village to raise a child.” No one lives entirely from themselves we are all a part of an interdependent web of relationships that are made of both visible and invisible strings; strings that are physical and others metaphysical. Asking for help is actually a sign of both strength and wisdom, rather than weakness. It is a sign of good, mental, emotional and spiritual health.

Now asking for help is not something that comes easily to me. I am much more comfortable offering my hand than accepting that of another. That said the moments of the greatest personal spiritual growth for me have been those moments of humility, when I have felt powerless and completely lost and have had to surrender to this and held out my shaking hand in the hope that help would be available. It happened again recently as I surrendered to the need to lose weight. I hit a rock bottom about eight weeks ago and broke down. From there I was able to lift up my eyes to hills and to genuinely ask for help. Just asking the question, in prayerful brokenness was enough for things to begin to change. I found the appropriate help and they showed me what I had to do. Now of course it is my task and responsibility to put in the action, but I am not doing so alone. I am part of a Slimming World and am following their “Food Optimisation” plan as well as exercising daily. The results are astonishing, in under 8 weeks I have lost almost three stones, a total of 41 pounds and feel fantastic and am therefore better able to serve life and the people around me.

Now the asking for help began as a prayer but soon became an activity and it brought to my mind that questions that begins Psalm 121 “I lift up my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come?” Now in the Psalm the answer is that God will give the help. God who made the heaven and the earth as well as the hills that the Psalm is referring to.

Now while the hills themselves may not be the power there is something powerful about both looking up to them and being up there looking down on life from them. In many ways the thing I miss the most about Yorkshire are the hills, Cheshire is a very flat place.

Standing up on a hill top and looking down on the world in which we live and breath and have our being gives us space and perspective. It helps us rise above our worries and troubles and leads us to solutions that often cannot be found in the middle of the hustle and bustle of life. Somewhere in that space the answers as to what can be done, can be found.

A few months ago I went to see the documentary film “Between Dog and Wolf” it told the story of my musical heroes New Model Army and their long career on the fringes of the mainstream. Much of it moved me as it described their many ups and downs, many that they created for themselves. There was one moment that really took a hold of the soul of me. This was when Justin Sullivan, the creative force behind it all, talked about the few months he lived in London at the beginning of their odyssey and how he just couldn’t write there. He felt cramped up creatively and hemmed in. he needed to return to the hills of Bradford to write once again. He needed those hills to find space and perspective and to once again touch the spirit.

 

I understand this I need space and time alone to commune with the unseen thread so that I can connect with physical life in the right way; so I can help in appropriate ways and seek help when I need it, so as to be the best that I can be.

From the cradle to the grave we need to keep on asking for help and we need to make ourselves available to be of assistance to others in their time of need. This is not to say that we become unhealthily dependent on others and society as a whole, no not at all. We are though a part of a whole, a complex whole that makes life and community. As we grow and change and become the people that we are this changes shape and reforms constantly, it seems that we are being born again and again to new versions of ourselves. Of course we cannot do this alone. We cannot give birth to ourselves, no one can. We need help and sometimes we need to ask for help from others and in so doing we are of course doing not only a service for ourselves, but for them also.

No one is an island. We are communal beings entirely dependent on each other and life itself. In the words of Martin Luther King “We are interdependent…all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” This has never been more true than today. When someone reaches out in a time of need it is our God given duty to help and when we need help we need to be faithful enough to ask for help too. Interdependence is a physical fact, but it is also a spiritual reality.

This to me is the whole point of spiritual community, of religious living. To see, understand and experience this oneness, this Divine Unity. To see that we are all one. To be of help to one another and to seek the help when it is needed. In this way we all grow and become the best that we can be and serve life to the utmost of our ability.

So I say to you the reader, echoing the Creed of “The Lone Ranger’s” let’s recognise the power within ourselves to make this a better world; let’s gather the firewood that god has provided for us; let’s make the most of the equipment we have; let’s settle with the world and make payment for what we have taken. "Hi oh Silver, away"

I will end this this little chip of a blogspot with the following meditation “The Web of Life” by Robert T Weston…

"The Web of Life"

There is a living web that runs through us
To all the universe
Linking us each with each and through all life
On to the distant stars.
Each knows a ­little corner of the world, and lives
As if this were his all.
We no more see the farther reaches of the threads
Than we see of the future, yet they’re there.
Touch but one thread, no matter which;
The thoughtful eye may trace to distant lands
Its firm continuing strand, yet lose its filaments as they reach out,
But find at last it coming back to him from whom it led.
We move as in a fog, aware of self
But only dimly conscious of the rest
As they are close to us in sight or feeling.
New objects loom up for a time, fade in and out;
Then, sometimes, as we look on unawares, the fog lifts
And there’s the web in shimmering beauty,
Reaching past all horizons. We catch our breath;
Stretch out our eager hands, and then
In comes the fog again, and we go on,
Feeling a ­little foolish, doubting what we had seen.
The hands were right. The web is real.
Our folly is that we so soon forget.

By Robert T Weston

How The Rainbow Works

This blogspot was originally published on 17th November 2013... 

Please watch the clip above before reading on...

Last Saturday I was driving down the road that links the two congregations I serve. I was in a hurry, I had an urgent appointment to make. Someone needed to speak to me over a very important matter, something was seriously troubling him. I remember I was growing increasingly frustrated at the slow moving traffic. I have lost count of number of times I’ve got stuck on that road. By now the weather was beginning to turn quite ugly. The song “Storm Clouds” by New Model Army was blaring out of my stereo, it is an aggressive and intense number. I could feel a bit of a storm brewing inside of me, so I began to connect to my breath and relaxed. As I did I began to look up above the line of traffic, probably in desperation, asking that ludicrous question, why does this always happen to me? As I did I was confronted by an incredible sight, the most intense skyline I have seen in some time. The blackest clouds I can ever recall and just in front of them was a beautiful vision, just the most luminous double rainbow.

I continued onward the traffic was clearing by now and then the heavens opened. Not just bouncing intense rain, but hailstones too. Weather of Biblical proportions I thought. I arrived at my destination and had the privilege of engaging in the most beautiful and open conversation I have had for some time.

I left a few hours later and by now all was once again calm outside. As I walked to my car I recalled the image I had seen in the middle of my frustrations. That double rainbow which shone ever more brightly against those dark thundering storm clouds. This got me thinking once again, more about that song that I had been listening to than the dramatic sky. I was particularly thinking of the chorus and the following lyrics.

“There's a line of shadows on the far horizon. It could be stormclouds and it could be mountains. All my life I've been gazing to the far horizon. It could be stormclouds and it could be mountains.”

It got me thinking about what I see when I look out onto the world. Do I see stormclouds and the terror they can bring or do I see mountains? What do any of us see see when you look out of our windows and gaze at the far horizon?

We are very fortunate in this country that we do not have face the extreme weather conditions that many other people in far off lands have to. We have witnessed once again the horrors that the people in the Philippines have had to face these last few days. Typhoon Hayian has reaped utter destruction and taken thousands of lives. It has caused damage that will take many years to recover from. We can do our bit to offer support, but really there is not much we can do for them. We do what we can; we pray and we send what aid we can, that said we cannot take away their suffering. If only we could! A grim reminder that we are all at the mercy of the elements.

Where do these souls turn in time of trouble? Where do any of us turn in times of trouble?

I was deeply moved by the following words by Crisante E Igama.

"The Typhoon"

In the darkness of the night,
roaring flow of waters,
not a single scream was heard,
outpouring rains and howling winds,
baldness of the mountains uncovered,
giant logs came rushing,
angry rivers eating away the lands,
floating haven,hogs and bodies,
wildly running with the debris,
not a single scream was heard,
only the mad voices of the angry waters,
pulling away the happy memories,
into the rivers, into the sea,
blinded by the thick mud and too much garbage,
in the middle of the night,
hope flickers with a single rope,
cling on, cling on, sing with the rivers,
even the roof detached the dream of yesterday,
sleep and gone with the rivers,
heard a simple and powerful prayer,
help us, help us, please…

"Help us please..." Three of the most humbling words we will ever hear...

Over the last few weeks Psalm 121 has been floating in and out of my consciousness. Several people have quoted the opening verse to me as they have struggled with grief and other distress too. A member of the Altrincham congregation Ann Molyneux who recently moved to the Lake District and whose husband Bill died within weeks of them moving there told me that every morning after Bill died she would look out of her window in Keswick, stare up at the hills that surrounded her and would ask this very question that the Psalm begins with “I lift up my eyes to the hills-from where will my help come?” It’s a good question. Now of course the Psalm answers it in the very next line by stating that God is the help on offer and not the hills themselves.

Now while the hills themselves cannot offer help directly I still suspect that they can point to it, they certainly do for Ann as they have for countless generations. They are symbolic of something larger, something greater something that can hold us in our times of need. The hills that Ann stares at each morning are the very same hills that Wordsworth described in his poetry. His memories of walking them created “spots of time” that held him through darker days later in his life. Hills that generation after generation have come to know through the beauty of his words. Now those hills are not the same hills as those referred to in Psalm, but perhaps they lead to the same summit.

Sometimes by just asking the question we make a beginning, we open a channel, maybe a bridge to something more than self...

The Psalms to me are prayers. They often begin with a question that is cried out and then followed by an answer. How often in life do we all do this? How often do we cry out a prayer? Are these ever answered? Some say no, of course not do not be so naive, but I’m not so sure. I suspect that they are always answered it’s just that we rarely hear the voice of transcendence. We need to learn to listen with the ears of hearts in order for the language of the heart to break through. To listen we need to make the time and space in our lives. This I believe is what those hills point to. They may not quiet the external storms of life but they will give us the courage to walk through them.

When we look out on the far horizon what do we see? Do we see storm clouds or do you see mountains?

And what of the rainbow? What does the rainbow point to? What does the rainbow mean? I don’t mean how is the optical effect created, which is of course fascinating in and of itself. Please do not get me wrong I am not being literal here. No what I mean is what can the rainbow teach us? What does the rainbow symbolise?

The rainbow is central to many of the great religious traditions. In Greek and Roman mythology they were considered a path between Heaven and Earth. There was a similar understanding in ancient Norse Mythology, where they were known as the Bifrost Bridge which connects the homes of the God’s and humans. In Hinduism and other ancient traditions they were considered the bow of various deities.

In the Epic of Gigamesh the rainbow symbolises the jewelled necklace of the Great Mother Ishtar that she lifts into the sky as a promise that she “will never forget these days of the great flood” that destroyed her beloved children. This myth is almost identical to story of Noah’s Ark found in Genesis (Ch 9 vv 13-17) and the great flood. Here the rainbow appeared as a resealing of God’s covenant with his people.

Many people see the rainbow as a symbol of hope for the future, but I think it is more than that. It is also one of connection and not just with the future but all time. This is message that is found in some of those ancient traditions. It seems to be a bridge to the eternal a link between past, present and future. When I look at a rainbow it reminds me of that connection and it is this that sustains me no matter what is going on around me. It’s carried me through many a storm.

At the beginning of this blogspot is a video clip reading of the poem “How the Rainbow Works” by Al Young (If you have not watched it please do so before continuing). He wrote it for Jean Cook a woman he worked alongside who was struggling with grief following the death of her mother; now her grief was not just about the physical loss but also about the fact that she and her mother had never really got on. He also explains that the poem is not only about our connection to those who have died but all that has existed and all that will exist past, present and future. It links every moment to eternity; the rainbow therefore is the bridge between now and eternity. It points to the eternity of all life what happens before we are born, what happens now and what happens beyond. The poem The rainbow therefore depicts the rainbow as a symbol of eternity.

Here is the poem in written form:

“How the Rainbow Works” by Al Young

(for Jean Cook, on learning
of her mother's death)

Mostly we occupy ocular zones, clinging
only to what we think we can see.
We can't see wind or waves of thought,
electrical fields or atoms dancing;
only what they do or make us believe.

Look on all of life as color -
vibratile movement, heart-centered,
from invisibility to the merely visible.
Never mind what happens when one of us dies.
Where were you before you even get born?
Where am I and all the unseeable souls
we love at this moment, or loathed
before birth? Where are we right now?

Everything that ever happened either
never did or always will with variations.
Let's put it another way: Nothing ever
happened that wasn't dreamed, that wasn't
sketched from the start with artful surprises.
Think of the dreamer as God, a painter,
a ham, to be sure, but a divine old master
whose medium is light and who sidesteps
tedium by leaving room both inside and outside
this picture for subjects and scenery to wing it.

Look on death as living color too: the dyeing
of fabric, submersion into a temporary sea,
a spectruming beyond the reach of sensual
range which, like time, is chained to change;
the strange notion that everything we've
ever done or been up until now is past
history, is gone away, is bleached, bereft,
perfect, leaving the scene clean to freshen
with pigment and space and leftover light.

"Where are we right now?" is a very good question indeed

The more I grow and understand the more I see that everything is connected in ways we will probably never fully know or understand. To me this understanding is so central to the religious life. Everything is connected to everything, there is no separation. I’m not just talking about the human family but all life and that that is beyond life. We are not even separated by death. I’ve been thinking of this over the weeks of November. Everything I’ve been experiencing has been connecting me with these thoughts and feelings as I moved through all that I have experienced and witnessed and heard said. Everything is a part of everything, it is not limited by time and space; life is not the beginning and neither is death the end. 

"Sometimes all we need to do is search for what is at the other side of the air." Anon

I have not always thought this way and I know many will think this nonsense, I have thought very differently myself in the past. I may change my mind in the future, but right now my whole senses seem filled with this truth.

When I look out of the windows of my soul through these eyes even when I see storm clouds I know at the other side I will also see those beautiful mountains and I know that I will soon once again glimpse the messenger of hope, the rainbow, and that this will link me to all that is and all that will ever be. By doing so I stop worrying and can once again focus on what I can do instead of what makes me afraid to live the life I have been given. I can offer whatever help I can to my suffering brothers and sisters.

I’d just like to end this little chip of a blogspot with something I recently heard from an anonymous friend.

"There is a rope that connects everyone to God. Sometimes these ropes break. When a broken rope gets retied, however, the distance between us and God becomes shorter."

"Storm Clouds" by New Model Army