Sacred the Body: Embracing Embodied Spirituality

“The Way In” by Linda Hogan

Sometimes the way to milk and honey is through the body.
Sometimes the way in is a song.
But there are three ways in the world: dangerous, wounding, and beauty.
To enter stone, be water.
To rise through hard earth, be plant desiring sunlight, believing in water.
To enter fire, be dry.
To enter life, be food.

The twentieth century French Jesuit Priest and Philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin claimed that “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” It is a phrase I have heard many times over the years, in a variety of "spiritual" circles. Now while I think I know what people mean by it, it bothers me greatly. The reason is that in my view it appears to diminish the physical life. It seems to suggests that the physical life is of little importance, merely a home for the spirit. That what comes before and perhaps follows our physical life is somehow more important than this life. I am not convinced, dualism has always troubled me. I personally don’t see a separation between body and spirit. This disembodied spirituality troubles me. The reason is that if we see the body as somehow less than spirit, or on the other hand see nothing sacred at all in our humanity this can lead to all kinds of troubles. I personally see the body as deeply sacred indeed. For me the body is a beautiful expression of the spirit come to life.

This view about body and spirit has been described by Jorge N. Ferrer, professor of religious psychology as “embodied spirituality.” He wrote that:

“Embodied spirituality regards the body as subject, as the home of the complete human being, as a source of spiritual insight, as a microcosm of the universe and the Mystery, and as pivotal for enduring spiritual transformation.

The body is not an “It” to be objectified and used for the goals or even spiritual ecstasies of the conscious mind, but a “Thou,” an intimate partner with whom the other human dimensions can collaborate in the pursuit of ever-increasing forms of liberating wisdom.”

For Ferrer the body is the home of the complete human being. It is the physical reality in which we live. It is through the body that we both literally and metaphorically walk our own unique path. The mistake that so many religious understandings have made is that they have seen the body as the prison of the soul. Something that the spirit or soul needs to be liberated from. He claims that the mystery of incarnation never suggested that spirit entered into the body but that the spirit became flesh. To quote John’s Gospel “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God…And the Word became flesh.” Through our bodies, our lives, the way we live our lives the spirit comes to life. We are here for a reason, life truly means something and it is our task to bring that something to life, through our lives, through our bodily existence.

Embodied spirituality is about fully inhabiting our lives, our thoughts, our feelings our relationships with ourselves, our lives, each other and the mystery that connects all life. It’s about being fully present in our bodies and lives and therefore fully experiencing our potential, being fully alive. The body is not just a suit that clothes our being. It is through the body that we experience what it is to be fully alive. They say “listen to your body”, sage wisdom indeed. For me the body is not a separate entity to spirit, I cannot agree with this dualistic view, it seems to me that it is through the body that spirit comes alive and further through the body that the spirit is fed.

Embodied spirituality views every aspect of our humanity, whether that be body, spirit, heart, mind and consciousness as equal partners in bringing the self, community and world into a fuller alignment with the mystery that brings into being all life, while at the same time connects all life. I suspect it’s a kind of panentheism, that sees all life as being in God and that God is in all life and that little or perhaps infinite more. It sees the full engagement of the body as being vital to spiritual growth and transformation.

Sadly the spiritual and religious traditions have not always recognised the sacredness of the body; they have not always recognised that it is through the body that that the spirit comes to life. In fact they have seen it as quite the opposite. Plato and Aristotle taught that the physical can never be the ideal. That the spirit or soul was better than the real, fleshly body that contains it. The physical, Plato argued, was only an imperfect shadow of the realm of the spirit. Other traditions placed the cultivation of the spirit as something to be nurtured separate from the body. What Ferrer has named as “disembodied spirituality”. Traditions of both the east and the west have seen the denial of the body as a path way to spiritual enlightenment. In Hinduism Brahmanism calls for the denial of bodily comfort in order to transcend Samsara, the continual dying and rebirth of reincarnation. The ultimate aim being to transcend the body entirely. You can see similar traditions in Christianity, Taoism and Sufism. Buddhist writings have described the body as a source of suffering and that Nirvana could only be reached through the cessation of bodily desires. Many traditions have emphasised the life beyond this physical realm as being more important than this life, thus denigrating our physical being. The flesh has also been seen as the root of human sin. That the body is the source of humanity’s spiritual fall. The classic example is Adam and Eve being banished from the Garden of Eden to suffer from bodily pain.

Sadly the body, has not been seen as sacred at all, quite the opposite actually. Instead it has been seen as something of shame, something to escape and transcend. For me though the spiritual experience is about transformation and not transcendence. To be truly spiritually alive is to be engaged in change.

That said it is not only the religious and spiritual traditions that have failed to recognise the sacredness of the body. We live in a secular materialistic age and yet we still struggle with our bodies. How many people have become obsessed with the way they look? How many of us hate our physical being? How many people prey on this too? The body has become big business. In many ways we have swapped the worship for the Divine, and for life itself, for the worship of the approval of others especially with regard to our bodies, the way that we look. This does not see the body as sacred, more as a commodity that can be traded on and with. It does not recognise the sacredness of life, both our own and each other’s.

Science also, or should I say bad science, merely sees the body as a machine and not an expression of the Divine manifested in life. Richard Dawkins has described human beings as “lumbering robots”. Is that all we are? Is there really nothing sacred in life? When you look into the eyes of your neighbour do you see no spirit, no soul? Do you really see nothing? I know I don’t.

Life is a sacred thing.

Next year at Summer School we are going to be exploring “Theology in the Flesh: How Might our Embodied Experience Shape our Answers to Life’s Ultimate Questions?” I have been asked to co-facilitate a group there and I am excited by the prospect. We will be exploring how our personal and communal bodily experiences interact with spiritual understandings and how we interact with the world.

The following quotation from Carol P. Christ came in an email outlining the subject that I received recently.

‘Embodied theology is rooted in personal experiences in our individual
bodies. At the same time, we all live in a relational world, shaped by
social and historical events and forces that are shared.’ – Carol P. Christ

I remember hearing an excellent theme talk given by Rev Bill Darlison at Summer School several years ago. In it he made the claim that if we wished to live life more spiritually alive then we need to increase our sensitivity to life. To me this reveals just how vital our bodily experiences are and how it is through them that our spirit comes truly to life. By increasing our sensitivity to life we will know experiences beyond our imaginings and life will become our constant teacher. We will grow in deeper understanding and most importantly we will become more effective in our daily living and truly become of service to life and those we meet in life. Surely this is the Divine Love incarnating in life.

It seems to me that to live a full life is to truly inhabit our whole being, body, mind, heart, soul and spirit. To do so requires us to truly inhabit our bodies and to fully express our whole being through our bodies. This means we need to learn to be at home in our bodies, to bring our bodies home if you like. You see it is through our bodies that we both give and receive love. It is through our bodies that the word truly becomes flesh and comes alive in our very being. We are so much more than merely chemical processes and our bodies are not some lesser experience than spirit itself. We need to love life and our very being. Our bodies need not be despised, denied or repressed. Our bodies need to know love and for them to know love we need to allow that love to be expressed by our very being. For surely this is the Divine Spirit truly coming alive. This is the Kin-dom of Love right here, right now.

For the word to once again become flesh and dwell amongst us, we need to express that love through our very being. "Sacred the Body"!

May we bless life by our very being in all that we feel, all that we think, all that we say and all that we do.

I’m going to end this little "blogspot" with a little bit of Mark Nepo

I keep looking for one more teacher, only to find that fish learn from water and birds learn from sky.
If you want to learn about the sea, it helps to be at sea.
If you want to learn about compassion, it helps to be in love.
If you want to learn about healing, it helps to know of suffering.
The strong live in the storm without worshipping the storm.

Mark Nepo

Won't Get Fooled Again: Oh Really?

Last Monday was April Fool’s Day, I think it may be my favourite day of the year. Why you may well ask? Well because we all fall for them, no matter how clever we may think we are; we all get suckered into believing the nonsense from time to time, no matter how clever or rational we may think we are. I love April Fools Day because it brings us down to right size, to our fully human level, it reminds us that we are not as clever as we may think we are, it keeps us humble, it reminds us that we are fully human.

My favourite one this year was not actually an April Fool by design and actually occurred before the official date, in fact it was launched just a few days before Easter (I'm sure that someone will argue that it wasn't one as it did not occur on the official date, well who cares? It certainly worked like one). It was a meme about Ishtar, a Babylonian fertility God who the poster claimed Easter was named after. Now this went viral within a few days and was all over the internet. I received several postings myself and those of an anti-religious bent really went to town on it. Stephen Fry and his followers spread it all over twitter. Some 70,000 facebook followers of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science shared it with anyone in their circles. People just went crazy over it and seemed to use it as a launching pad to attack Christianity, during its most important week of the year. The meme itself read:

“This is Ishtar”, pronounced “Easter”: Easter was originally the celebration of Ishtar, the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility and sex. Her symbols (like the egg and the bunny) were and still are fertility and sex symbols (or did you actually think eggs and bunnies had anything to do with the resurrection?). After Constantine decided to Christianize the Empire, Easter was changed to represent Jesus. But at its roots, Easter (which is how you pronounce Ishtar) is all about celebrating fertility and sex.”

(I wonder if anyone reading this blog fell for this one) 

The fact is that very little of this is true. While very few people doubt that Easter is a blend of both pagan and Christian traditions it has absolutely nothing to do with this Assyrian and Babylonian goddess. There have been several rebuttles of this over the last few days, showing that just a little bit of research into the subject would have revealed the utter nonsense that was being claimed. It was eventually removed from The Dawkins Foundation site and others too. I do hope that in the future Stephen Fry brings this up on his excellent quiz show OI, it would be a wonderful act of humilty on his part if he did.

This is a link to my favourite critique. I take issue with a couple of points, but it is more or less accurate, the writer certainly did not disable her rational faculties while writing it.

http://bellejarblog.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/easter-is-not-named-after-ishtar-and-other-truths-i-have-to-tell-you/

Now what really made me think about all this was the frenzy of excitement that it brought about in so many people who seemingly cast aside all reason and sense just to attack a religion and those who follow it in its many guises. Some of the comments I read were so hate filled it was disturbing, especially from people who claim reason and understanding, there was no sign of any of it. As a couple of friends of mine who are themselves atheists have said they were appalled by it, adding further that they really dislike the kind of anti-religious zealotry espoused by Professor Dawkins and his brand of atheism.

Now while all this was going on Lord Carey, the former Arch Bishop of Canterbury was also all over the news claiming that Christians were being marginalised in this country. He has been roundly criticised for this in many quarters. Certainly it seems difficult for a man who has a seat in the House of Lord, just because of his former position, to claim that he is a marginalised member of society. That said there does appear to be an increase in anti-religious feeling both in this country and around the world. It has impacted my own Unitarian tradition too, we who claim to be a free religion. Only a few weeks ago the Wayside pulpit at Altrincham was defaced. It had originally read “You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist”, nothing offensive in that you would think. This had been covered up another poster that read instead “Religion Is A Lie: Now Stop Worrying And Go Enjoy Your Life”. No doubt this was inspired by the British Humanist Association Campaign, fronted by professor Dawkins, of a couple of years ago. If you remember the campaign placed posters on buses up and down the country reading “There’s Probably No God: Now Stop Worrying And Go Enjoy Your Life”. Now I’m all for people stopping worrying and enjoying their lives and people are entitled to put whatever posters they like on buses. That said I’m not sure it’s ok to deface others open and loving messages or to maliciously and aggressively attack them in other ways. This is especially so when you haven’t even got your facts straight and your unreasoning prejudice just leads to hatred. How can anyone justify that?

Anyway back to the original subject...

What I really love about April Fools Day is that it saves us from our greatest danger “Hubris”

Hubris is the Ancient Greek word for over stretching ourselves; it translates as arrogance or overwhelming pride. The ancient Greeks saw Hubris as the very root of tragedy. Their tragic dramas, played out at their religious festivals centred on human beings, often rulers who forgot their human limitations. In these tragedies the audiences were reminded of the dangers of acting like immortals or Gods. They taught the value of knowing themselves, who they really are and to know what it is to be truly human.

Hubris of course manifests itself in many forms. The one place it appears where you’d think it ought not to is in religion. Yet it’s probably more obvious there than in any other area of life. Those who believe they have a direct link to God and know not only what God’s will for themselves is, but what it is for everyone else do appear to be suffering from the worst form of hubris. My response to such thinking is usually “Come off it who do you think you are?” By trying to convert a person to your way of believing seems like the worst kind of Hubris to me. Although of course if I’m honest I’ve suffered from it myself from time to time. I could be accused of it now, while writing this blog. I do hope that when I am critical of other people's beliefs I do so in a loving way and I do not lose my rational faculties. I'm sure I fail from time to time, but then I am far from perfect. What do I know?

Sceptics also fall into the trap of hubris too. To belittle someone’s genuine faith by calling it a superstition or merely a crutch is deeply disrespectful. It certainly does not honour or respect their humanity. No one can ever truly know what is to have walked in another’s shoes and to have lived their lives. To be smug about one’s personal so called rationalism seems like the worst kind of arrogance to me. The question I’d like to ask is why we need to spend our time proving what someone else genuinely believes as wrong or false or immature, wherever we find ourselves on the faith spectrum? That said, once again, I have to hold up my hand and admit that it’s not something I’m immune from. As I heard someone say many years ago “To be right you don’t have to make anybody else wrong” 

I need to remember that one more often. “To be right you don’t have to make anybody else wrong.”

Sadly so many of us spend our time attempting to do so...We do not "have" to, but so often we do.

Hubris is an insidious beast. We often fail to see it in ourselves. Because Hubris is so well hidden in ourselves it can have a nasty habit of sneaking up on us. Why you may well ask? Well because it is neatly packaged as the virtue of truthfulness and righteousness.

Fortunately there exists a healthy antidote to hubris, humility!

Humility may well be humanities greatest virtue. It is essentially about accepting our human limitations. By doing so we become teachable, we learn from others, which leads not only to us improving our own lives but the world that we inhabit but do not own;  which in turn leads us to nurture and develop healthy relationships with other people. By recognising that we are not, nor do we speak for God we will open ourselves up to voice of transcendence as it speaks to us in life. In doing so we will be honouring life itself as sacred, which will hopefully lead to us taking care of what is our responsibility; our own lives mind, body and soul, our families, our homes, our friendships, our communities, our planet.

Hubris for me can be the most inhibiting and potentially dangerous delusion a human being can suffer from. In the end it actually stops us living the best life we can. Humility on the other hand helps us to see the truth about ourselves “Warts and all and beauty spots too”. From here we can honestly improve our own lives and those who we share this spinning planet with. It achieves more than that though. It draws us closer together not only to one another but to this amazing universe that we play a small but vital role in. The dangers stem from losing sight of this and believing that this universe and rest of humanity revolves around us and is there to do our bidding.

We all know so little and we can all easily be hoodwinked into believing almost anything, no matter how clever and rational we think we are. As the Ishtar meme seemed to prove as it went viral last week. So many people who claimed to live by reason and science loved it as it allowed them to pour scorn on those folk they believed were irrational and stupid, well in the end it is they who ended up with egg on their faces and looked both irrational and hate filled.

Oh well it can happen to us all. I think that’s why I love April Fool’s Day so much, because it reminds me we aren’t as clever as we think we are, we are still fully human and truth be told we know so very little about most things. By the way that’s a good thing, because it leaves us open to experiences way beyond our imaginations.

I’m going to end this little chip of a blog with some words from my old favourite. Good old Forrest Church, words on humility and openness...oh and then a fantastic clip of a fabulous song...

“In every field of human inquiry, ignorance increases as knowledge grows. The Greek philosopher Socrates once said, “I am the most ignorant man in Athens.” He wasn’t indulging in false modesty. He was pointing out that others, knowing far less, had no idea how ignorant they were. Socrate’s ignorance, the knowledge of how much remained for him to learn, expanded in direct proportion to his learning. Of both belief and knowledge, the same is true for us. When reflecting on several years of contemplation on the origins of the cosmos, one cosmologist sighed, “It’s not only queerer than we imagined; it’s queerer than can be imagined.”

“Whether informed by religion or by science, our minds cannot unwrap life’s mystery. This is why, in offering evidence to corroborate religious truth, true believers may more honestly be accused of being too rational than too irrational. They are not alone. We all use our minds to figure out things that can’t be deciphered by anything as small as our minds. On the one hand, the attempt is a noble one. Trying to decode life’s mystery is what makes us human.”

“Balancing these two apparent contradictions. I base my own theology on contrasting principles: openness and humility. No ceiling limits the expansion of the human heart. Yet, humility teaches that when death visits, we will have attained only a flickering notion of what life and death are all about. The light we discover will be framed by darkness. But, when we ponder the nature of our shared mortality, meaning may begin to emerge. Not unlike when we leave a warm, brightly lit room, go outdoors, and contemplate a dark winter sky: one by one the stars come out.”

Let beauty awake for beauty's sake

I love this song it is just so beautiful. I intend to learn it and perform it. I have fallen deeply in love with singing again. There are so many things that I want to learn and share with the world. The ability to express the beauty of life through song is a gift I have been given and it is one I need to share more.

I have learnt and performed a couple of pieces from “Songs of Travel” in the past, but have shied away from "Let Beauty Awake". I believe that I was probably intimidated by its beauty. That a man such as I cannot sing something so beautiful. Yes I can sing out the “Vagabond” and even the sad lonely journey of “Whither must I wander”, but not this piece of elegant beauty. “Let beauty awake for beauty’s sake...awake from dreams."

I have recently discovered that I am struggling with the word beautiful. It keeps striking me, pulling me, calling out to me and I keep on turning from it. It seems I cannot quite bare its light. Maybe I’m scared of beauty?

Actually I’m not sure that is true. I adore beauty and beautiful things. What I’m actually struggling with is equating the word beauty and beautiful with me. I have felt very uncomfortable in recent weeks when people have described either myself or even something I have done as beautiful. I have shivered at the description. I have felt stripped, I have felt naked, I have felt vulnerable and I have felt emasculated. It is funny in some ways; I do have to laugh at the ludicrousness of it all.

Last week it really hit home. It happened at the barbers shop. The young woman cutting my hair began to describe me as beautiful. “You are a beautiful man” she kept saying “You have beautiful hair”. I just laughed nervously to myself and nodded and grinned and jokingly said “I cannot argue with you” I felt so very uncomfortable though and couldn’t wait to pay and get out of there. I did not like how vulnerable I felt. There have been other recent occasions too when people have described my voice as beautiful and my writing as beautiful and that I am beautiful and every time I felt deeply uncomfortable.

I went away on retreat to St Deniol’s library (Also known as Gladstone’s Library) last week. I go twice a year with the same beautiful people. It’s a time of deep intimate sharing with a group of very different individuals. Each time I have gone I have enjoyed it more and more. This time it was a truly beautiful time. I was able to explore and express this seemingly new revelation; this trouble I am having with being described as beautiful. I admitted that last time we had met that one of the members had described my hands as beautiful and how at the time this made me feel hideously uncomfortable; I also spoke of other more recent experiences too. As I spoke it began to become clear to me what the problem was. It brought me back to experiences I had several years earlier; experiences I have been reminded of in the last few days as I have heard people, in a variety of situations, describe life changing spiritual experiences that had and were transforming their lives. They have reminded me of my own experiences.

As I have said many times before I was pretty much an atheist for most of my life. I would have probably scored about 6.5 out of 7 on the “Spectrum of Theistic Probability” popularised by Richard Dawkins. Circumstances forced me to re-assess what I thought I believed. During this process it came to me that my problem was not in fact that I did not believe in God, it was that I did not believe that God believed in me. I believed I was not worthy of divine love. When I saw and accepted that this had been a barrier for so long things began to change within me and my experience of life external to me. I saw love and beauty everywhere and felt a sense of connection, like I have never known before. I now believe that at that moment, eight years ago, I began to experience what I can only describe as God’s love. I’ve never been quite the same man since.

I suspect that part of my recent problem with beauty is a remnant of that old way of living. I think it’s a kind of defence mechanism a way of controlling life to some extent and a way of keeping this divine love from me. When I look back at those spiritual experiences I had I do remember that even then I still held a tiny morsal back, did I truly let go absolutely? I suspect that part of me does not want to let go to give myself completely. The problem is of course that by rejecting love and beauty within myself I am actually rejecting that in others and it is stopping me enjoying intimacy with the people I share this beautiful world with. It is also stopping me truly expressing the love and beauty within me.

It has dawned on me once again that I do and have always lived by “The Golden Rule of Compassion” I have always treated others and loved others as I have wished to be loved and treated myself. By not acknowledging my beauty I am also denying the beauty present in all life. It would seem that I have work to do, if I want to experience the beauty present in this life; I need to acknowledge the beauty that is me in order to truly know the beauty that is in everything.

Once again I am reminded of the opening paragraph of “The Third Step: Compassion For Yourself”  From “12 Steps to a Compassionate Life” by Karen Armstrong.

She said:

“The late Rabbi Albert Friedlander impressed upon me the importance of the biblical commandment “Love your neighbour as yourself.” I had always concentrated on the first part of that injunction, but Albert taught me that if you cannot love yourself, you cannot love other people either. He had grown up in Nazi Germany and as a child was bewildered and distressed by the vicious anti-Semitic propaganda that assailed him on all sides. One night, when he was almost eight years old, he deliberately lay awake and made a list of all his good qualities. He told himself firmly that he was not what the Nazi’s said; that he had talents and special gifts of heart and mind, which he enumerated to himself one by one. Finally he vowed that if he survived, he would use those qualities to build a better world. This was an extraordinary insight for a child in such circumstances. Albert was one of the kindest people I have ever met; he was almost pathologically gentle, and must have brought help and counsel to thousands. But he always said that he could have done no good at all unless he had learned, at that terrible moment of history to love himself.”

Let beauty awake, for beauty’s sake...awake from dreams.

Are you a Christian? Gandhi, Jesus and Professor Dawkins

My sister contacted me the other day to tell me that she and my mum had been arguing over whether or not I was a Christian. She wanted me to settle the argument, to answer whether or not I was. By the way she contacted me by text, so my answer had to be brief. I said “well it depends what you mean”. She replied a little later to say “well we’ve stopped arguing now and have both agreed, that you are an awkward bugger”...well at least they’d stopped arguing about me, I thought.

No doubt the conversation had been kick started by the findings of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. During last year's census it conducted a survey on religious attitudes in Britain. It found that only 54% identified themselves as Christian, compared 72% in 2001. Almost three quarters who described themselves as Christian said they did so because they were born into the faith rather than it being their current belief. Only a third believed that Jesus was physically resurrected and that one in five did not believe in the resurrection, even in a spiritual sense. Almost half did not believe that Jesus was the son of God, while one in twenty five of those who declared themselves as Christian did not believe he existed at all.

The findings have concluded that most people who identify themselves as Christian turn out, when questioned on what they actually think, to be overwhelmingly secular in their attitudes on issues ranging from gay rights to religion in public life. It concludes that these people who identify as Christian are not actually Christian at all. The report triumphantly heralds the end of faith in this country and the victory of secularism.

During a a recent conversation on Radio 4’s “Today Programme”, between Professor Dawkins and Rev Giles Fraser, the former Canon of St Paul’s, Professor Dawkins announced triumphantly that an “astonishing number (of Christians) couldn’t identify the first book in the New Testament. In Professor Dawkins view people who identified as Christians and yet were not fully conversant with the bible and did not follow and subscribe to the teachings and or doctrines of the church were wrong to do so. Rev Fraser questioned these conclusions claiming that people had the right to identify as they saw fit. There then followed a brief interchange...

Rev Fraser: Richard, If I said to you what is the full title of “The Origin of Species”, I’m sure you could tell me that.

Prof Dawkins: Yes I could.

Rev Fraser: Go on then.

Prof Dawkins: On the Origin of Species...uh...with, oh God, On the Origin of Species. There is a sub-title with respect to the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.

Rev Fraser: You’re the high pope of Darwinism...if you ask people who believed in evolution that question and you came back and said two percent got it right, it would be terribly easy for me to go “they don’t believe it after all.” It’s just not fair to ask people these questions. They self identify as Christians and I think you should respect that.

I heard an awful lot of hysteria from all sides during the debate over the findings of Professor Dawkins foundation. I occasionally heard a little sense. My favourite quote came from Linda Woodhead, a professor of Philosophy and religion at Lancaster University. She said:

"There's nothing new in Richard Dawkins's findings about the British way of being religious. But it's always good to be reminded of the findings of a poll commissioned by his Foundation for Reason and Science: that most of us are not "true believers" in either religion or in secularism and that Britain is neither a religious country nor a secular one, but an interesting mix of both. That doesn't make us muddled, or woolly, or confused – it just makes us British."

 “It just makes us British” I love that.

What has always troubled me about the fundamentalists either of religion or secularism is that they believe that they have the right to define what makes a person a believer or not. I find such positions arrogant. Who decides whether a person’s is a believer or not? Who has the right to set the boundaries? Of course no one is immune from this; I know I’ve done it myself. I could be accused of it in a previous blog (naughty me).

Anyhow I'd just about given up on them all when something remarkable happened, during a debate between Professor Dawkins and the Arch Bishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams at Oxford University. The two men politely discussed “the nature of human beings and the question of their ultimate origin”. They also touched upon the meaning of consciousness, the evolution of human language and the Arch Bishop’s beard.


For most of the discussion the Arch Bishop quieltly listened to Professor Dawkins explanations of human evolution and said that he was inspired by the elegance of explanation for the origins of life and agreed with much of it. Professor Dawkins told the Arch Bishop "What I can't understand is why you can't see the extraordinary idea that life started from nothing - that is such a staggering, elegant, beautiful thing, why would you want to clutter it up with something as messy as a God?" Dr Williams replied that he "entirely agreed" with the "beauty" of Professor Dawkins argument but added. "I'm not talking about God as an extra who you shoehorn on to that."


And the something staggering happened, Professor Dawkins acknowledged that he was less than 100% certain of his conviction that there is no creator. At this Sir Anthony Kenny, who chaired the discussion, interjected: "Why don't you call yourself an agnostic?" to which Professor Dawkins answered that he did. To which the flabbergasted Sir Anthony replied: You are described as the worlds most famous atheist." Professor Dawkins went on to say that he was "6.9 out of seven" sure of his beliefs that the probability of a supernatural creator is very low.

Later the Arch Bishop said that he believed that human beings had evolved from non-human ancestors but were nevertheless “in the image of God” and added that the explanation for the creation of the world in the Book of Genesis could not be taken literally. Stating that “The writers of the Bible, inspired as I believe they were, they were nonetheless not inspired to do 21st Century physics,” he said.

Sanity at last after a week of madness. The God of surprises does indeed appear to be alive and well and at work in the most remarkable of places. I do wonder though if some people will now accuse Professor Dawkins of not being a proper Atheist and if others will claim that Dr Williams is not a proper Christian...I wonder what my sister and mum think...

We have now entered into the season of Lent, perhaps the most important period of the Christian calendar. For many Lent is about giving things up, it is about self sacrifice. It is about that central religious message of self giving love.

According to the Biblical accounts at the beginning of his ministry Jesus is “led by the spirit” into the wilderness, a place of transformation and temptation. He is taken to the pinnacle of the temple and to the top of a high mountain. Here he is offered the world, but rejects the allure of an easier showier more obvious path. Instead he chooses the road less travelled, the heroes path.

This is a universal tale; many of the great sages went on similar journeys, before embarking on their missions to heal their people. The Buddha had to leave the comforts of home, abandon his weeping family, shave his head and don the robes of a world renouncing ascetic when he began his journey to discover a cure for the pain of the world. Long before his revelations Muhammad use to retreat to Mount Hira, outside of Mecca, where he fasted, performed spiritual exercises and gave alms to the poor. He did this in an attempt to discover a remedy for the troubles of his time. When Ghandi began his mission he left the comforts of the elite in which he had lived his whole life and travelled India carefully observing the plight of the ordinary people.

During their own times in the wilderness the great sages found their answers. Through taking the road less travelled, the hard road, the difficult road, the answers came to them. They discovered the knowledge they needed to impact positively on their people in their time and place.

This is the spiritual life in its essence. It is often the hardest most difficult path and it can certainly appear to be the loneliest. That said it is the one where the answers are usually found.

Now none of these meanderings answers my sisters initial question I know. I promise I am not being evasive. I’d like to explore one of the more recent great sages Gandhi and his relationship with Christianity and specifically Jesus in an attempt to answer her question.

Gandhi saw Jesus as an ideal Satyagrahi, which is resistance to evil through soul force . Gandhi studied the Bible everyday for years and was greatly impressed with the New Testament particularly “The sermon on the Mount”. Like many Hindu’s it was the gentle figure of Jesus that he admired, who taught his followers not to retaliate and to resist violence. For him it was not the historical event of Jesus that mattered, but what the example of the message of his life had to offer humanity.  For Gandhi Jesus exemplified what it meant to serve your fellow humans and saw this as the guiding principle of his life. He saw the cross as being the perfect example of this sacrifice. 


He said:

 “Of all the things that I have read what remained with me forever was that Jesus came almost to give a new law – not an eye for an eye but to receive two blows when only one was given, and to go two miles when they were asked to go one...The message of Jesus as I understand it is contained in the Sermon on the Mount unadulterated and taken as a whole...If then I had to face only the sermon on the Mount and my own interpretation of it, I would not hesitate to say, “oh, yes, I am a Christian.” But negatively I can tell you that in my humble opinion, what passes as Christianity is a negation of the Sermon on the Mount...I am speaking of the Christian belief, of Christianity as it is understood in the west.”


Gandhi saw Jesus as the example to humanity, for Gandhi he pointed the way to liberation through self giving love. He believed that within all of us is this impulse for compassion and that this spark of divinity will one day burst into full flower and that Jesus was the personified example of this to every person. As he said “I believe that he belongs not solely to Christianity, but to the entire world; to all races and people, it matters little under what flag, name or doctrine they may work, profess a faith or worship a God inherited from their ancestors.”

So to answer my sisters question as to whether or not I am a Christian my answer is still the same, “it depends how you define Christianity.” For me, like Gandhi, Jesus is the example of self giving love that I aspire to. If being a Christian means following Jesus as the example to humanity then I am a Christian; if it means that I have to believe in the teachings of the established church then I am not. I am sure that by the definition of the fundamentalists of Christianity or Secularism then I am not. That said I do believe in the Jesus that Gandhi held up as the perfect Satyagraha. I see him as the embodiment of self giving love, as the example to us all. That said I do not see him as the only one, many of the great sages have also shown the way too and I also see those same heroic figures in my world today. We are all capable of being them.

Lent for me is about attempting to practise this in my life day by day. It’s not about giving up sweets or chocolate etc, it’s about giving of myself to life each and every day in whatever small ways that I can. It’s about practising non-violence not only with myself but others too, it’s about facing up to my own demons, those within and those without and about attempting to build the commonwealth of love here on earth. It’s about self transcendence; it’s about the full realisation of the truth that it is giving that we truly receive and that it is in these moments that we can know God.

Myth & Mystery: Glad Tidings of Reason and Fact

From “Lifecraft” by Forrest Church from the chapter “A Mystery Story”

"Reckon the odds. That we should even exist staggers the imagination. Then take it back further, back to the ur-paramecium. All of us are connected genetically to the beginning of life and kinetically to the beginning of time. The universe was pregnant with us when it was born. I find this far more amazing and inspiring than most theological reflections. Simply being here - my having written, your reading - is a miracle. Consider my awe at the underwater world on the Great Barrier Reef, how impossible is was to be blasé in the presence of a giant clam. We should never be blasé when reflecting on the creation or our place in it. As it is written in thirtieth chapter of the book of proverbs,

Three things are too wonderful for me;

four I do not understand:

the way of an eagle in the sky,

the way of a snake on a rock,

the way of a ship on the high seas,

and the way of a man with a woman.

Physics, anatomy, biology, and psychology can begin to decode such mysteries. Yet knowledge has its limits. Quoting an academic study, novelist Saul Bellow observed “that an average weekday New York Times contains more information than any contemporary of Shakespeare would have acquired in a lifetime.” That includes Shakespeare himself. The Times is a fine paper. I read it every day. But for all its information, it only hints, and then only occasionally, at what Shakespeare knew so very well: that the beauty of the bird, the symbol of the snake, the courage of the pilot, and the wonder of human love will always be touched by mystery."

Oh I do love Forrest Church...he speaks to my condition...

I was round at a friend’s house the other night, we were just chatting away about a few things that we as adults see as being so important. My friend has a six year old son and during our rather serious conversation his son burst in with incredible excitement. A tooth had fallen out and obviously he wanted to show it to his dad. I am told that the going rate for a tooth these days is £5 and a set of football cards. It seems that the global recession has not yet impacted on the tooth fairies. A little later he burst in again this time desperate to show something he’d received on his laptop. It was a personalised video message from Santa Claus. Santa addressed him by name and was in possession of a great many details about his life, He had pictures too. Santa discussed how my friend’s son had been behaving for the last few months. At the end of the message Santa told him to be nicer to his brother.

It was an absolute delight to hear this little boy asking when his brother would be home, as he wanted to give him a hug. It was beautifully magical just getting lost in this family's little world, if only for a short time. I had gone to the house to help someone, spiritually I suppose, I had gone to teach. That said I left feeling I was the one who had learnt a lesson and I was one who had received the greatest gift; the gift of joy and wonder; the gift of seeing life through the eyes of a child. A priceless gift if ever I have received one. We can learn so much from children.

They do indeed bring “Glad tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy”

Sophia Lyon Fah’s is so right when she says that every night a child is born is a holy night. For in every child is that wonderful gift of potential. It is important to always remember that we did absolutely nothing to deserve the gift and privilege of being born; we truly had no say in it, it is a gift freely given. What we do with the Grace that is life itself though is another matter all together. This we do have some say in, but we did absolutely nothing to deserve it.

We are now well and truly into the Christmas season. The music is being played in the coffee shops and the other shops too no doubt. I am yet to venture into the other shops and can only vouch for what is being played in Cafe Nero in Altrincham. The adverts are everywhere. The season of Christmas re-runs has already begun. As has the bah humbugging. I heard a bit of it the other morning from a friend. A friend who always makes me chuckle when I sit with him. He makes me chuckle because he reminds me of the cynical guy that I was a few years ago, I was the emperor of scepticism. This was back in the day when my brother would call me Alan Rickman. This was because I reminded him of the character he played in Galaxy Quest, I used to be a real ranter back in the day. And yes Christmas really was a humbug. The awe and wonder at the mystery of life that I had once possessed had become covered by a cloak of cynicism and bah humbug.

Advent is about preparation. Now I used to be someone who was well prepared for misery, I sought it out in actual fact. You may well say I was utterly addicted to it. I certainly worshipped it. What I am becoming increasingly aware of is that I now have to make myself equally prepared for joy. This is my focus at the moment to open myself up as much as possible to the joy that is there in life. This will not take away the pain and disappointment that is there in all our lives. That will hit me just has hard as it always has. That said it will not have the same impact as it once did, because I am also working on preparing within myself a nest, a home, for the joy that is present in life, in love, in mystery. I am learning not to dwell on my troubles, because I keep remembering the lessons that the children I have known in my life have taught me. This advent for me is about preparing for joy and magic and mystery.

A friend recently sent me this play on the Christmas carol “God rest thee merry gentlemen”, it was written by the Unitarian Universalist minister Rev Chris Raible. He is playfully mocking himself and our tradition for its idolatry of reason. Reason and fact aren’t everything. There is more to humanity, and to life itself than we are ever capable of seeing and knowing. True humility always leads to a greater openness to new and wonder filled experience.

"Glad Tidings of Reason and Fact" by Rev Chris Raible

  God rest ye, Unitarians,            
  Let nothing you dismay!             
  Remember that there is no proof     
  There was a Christmas Day            
  For Christmas really started as     
  A pagan holiday.                    

  Oh, glad tidings of reason and fact, 
  Reason and fact. 
  Glad tidings of reason and fact. 

  No wise men travelled from the East, 
  The journey's far too long. 
  There were no shepherds in the fields, 
  The time of year's all wrong; 
  We don't believe in angels; 
  That rules out the angels' song!    

  (Chorus) 

  We're too sophisticated to 
  Believe in tales so old. 
  We know that human avarice means 
  Too much bought and sold; 
  We only celebrate because 
  This season is so cold. 
   
  (Chorus)

            

Now I will not argue with the factual accuracy of the words, but is this really what the Christmas story is about?  Is it really about what actually happened or didn’t happen all those years ago? Does this really bring glad tidings of anything? Does it help us to live better lives, to offer love and compassion to one another?

Advent is about preparing us for the coming of hope that can be found in a humble birth of a lowly child in a lowly stable. A child with incredible potential and yet who is rejected. Isn’t this a universal tale? Doesn’t it speak of all of us at times? There is more to the Christmas myth than the historical accuracy or inaccuracy of the Biblical accounts. In fact to get lost in detail of what did or didn’t actually happen is to miss the whole point of the story. It sounds as ludicrous as those medieval theologians who argued over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Is that what really matters? Surely there is more to the story than reason and fact. Gosh I’m starting to sound a bit like Alan Rickman again.

Joseph Campbell taught that myths such as the nativity story are actually metaphors for human life. That they are eternal and universal tales that can teach us about our lives right here right now. He believed that by understanding these mysteries we can begin to understand who we truly are and what life is all about.

Carl Jung taught that these myths originate within our “collective unconscious”. He said that we each have a conscious level that we are aware of in our waking moments (this is what is operating now as you read this blog, or at least I hope it is, are you still awake?). Beneath this is our personal unconscious level, our closet. This is where we store memories, experiences, desires, fears, urges, compulsions etc. It is here that our personal “stuff” is stored, which from time to time we dip into. Some of this stuff is beautiful and some of it is terrifying. This is the domain of our devils and demons.

Jung described our “collective unconscious” as our “collective closet”. He uncovered common themes, symbols and motifs while working with his patients and he noticed that these same themes, symbols and motifs were also to be found in the religious stories and myths. From this he concluded that these common myths and stories are part of humanity's “common closet”. These myths are drawn from a common human well of memory and thought and that they teach us about ourselves and the mysteries of existence. The problem today is that when we hear the word myth we equate it with an untruth, a lie, instead of seeing them as revealers of deeper universal truths. As Campbell observed, to view them as lies is to actually get “stuck in the metaphor” and to fail to see the deeper universal truth that is being revealed.

Why these are imprinted into our human consciousness I cannot answer. Richard Dawkins talks of the evolution of the meme (pronounced like cream) that these ideas, tunes, catchphrases and stories are just past on down the line to help us cope with life. He sees the myths as untruths as lies, as I once did and my friend in the coffee shop still does. Today though I see more; there is something in the corner of my life that I cannot quite see and yet I can experience, so long as I don't get stuck in the metaphor.

Yes the reductionist can dissect life and understand the minutiae but by doing so they can still miss out on its beauty and true meaning. You see the truth is the more we know, the more we realise how little we can ever know and so the mystery grows. I suppose it is here where the magic is and where the God of my misunderstanding is discovered, in the unknown and unknowing. This power is both redemptive and it is divine. It brings out our heart and it brings out our soul. By opening myself up to the unknown I have discovered the hope and joy that I had once lost and I have found the peace that passeth all understanding.

So yes this advent I am preparing myself for the coming of hope, love, peace and joy. I invite you to come and join in too.

Come Christmas come...most needed of seasons.