Do not follow blindly, 'cos you'll soon find yourself lost

I was sat with friends enjoying coffee, outside Café Nero, in the early morning sun the other day. I was facing away from the street, a position I don’t usually enjoy; I much prefer to face out, watching the world go by. We were in a positive mood, the beautiful hot weather no doubt playing a major part in this. This was suddenly brought to an abrupt halt. There was some kind of distressed sound from right behind me. We all stood up and turned round. Right there in front of us was the street cleaner with his cart, he had halted and looked shocked. There was also a woman with a baby in a papoose in front of her, she had a black Labrador. The dog was a guide dog as the woman was blind. We were all in shock, not knowing what had happened or what to do. There was the fear the baby was hurt, thankfully the child was not. The woman broke down in tears and was led to sit down. The street cleaner was ok too. Things settled down and all was ok. Folk continued about their business. I returned home a little later. The woman, her baby and guide dog were just behind me and two friends as we walked towards the chapel. I was stood talking with two friends having crossed the road. Molly has learnt not to cross until the green man appears and it begins to beep. I stood talking with the friends on the chapel side of the road. As we were talking we saw the woman, her baby and guide dog safely cross the road. We spoke with her, all was well, and interestingly she was coming to the large schoolroom at the chapel to go to her regular mother and child exercise class. The guide dog knew the way very well.

The whole incident has been on my mind ever since. It certainly awakened my “homiletic consciousness”, which I once heard described as “going through life thinking, “Can I use this in a sermon?” . Any person who uses their own experiences of life to create something for others does the same, such as an artist or poet, a writer, teacher, song writer or storyteller. As you can see this is happening now. It got me thinking about how much the woman has to trust in her guide dog to live freely in the world. How much that incident must have shaken her up. How frightening it must have been not only for her own safety, but also her baby. How whilst we were all shocked, everyone responded in loving and caring ways and just wanted to make sure everyone was ok. How after breaking down the woman picked herself up, dusted herself down and started all over again. She got on with her day, she trusted her dog absolutely and all was well. She knew the path that she must follow, as did the dog and she continued on it.

I was talking about the incident with the friends who were present a few mornings later, trying to make sense of what happened. We hadn’t seen it as it happened. It was the noise and change in atmosphere that caught our attention. We surmised that both parties must have been moving slowly. How did the dog not see what was in front of him? How did the street cleaner not see them? They just slowly walked into each other, like two ships in a fog. We surmised the road cleaner was probably daydreaming and the guide dog got distracted. One friend suggested that perhaps the dog had been distracted by the scent of Molly who is in season. This seems possible, but who knows. It got me thinking and as you can see it awakened my homiletic consciousness.

I’ve never had a great sense of direction and or spatial awareness. My mind does not operate in images. Maybe this is why I rarely if ever remember my dreams or even recall having them. I’m more of a communicator really and mainly through sound and conversation. I can describe to you exactly how things felt that morning, the emotions of the individuals, but the imagery is all a bit vague. I have other friends who will be able to describe who was say where, what people were wearing and what the individuals looked like. We are all different, it is very important to understand this. We truly do not all think alike, although I do like to believe that we can all love alike.

Now while my way of operating has its advantages, there are some disadvantages too. I get lost very easily. This is why since I learnt to drive I have relied on Sat Nav. Moving onto the Waze system in more recent years. It has usually proved reliable. The great thing about it is if you take a wrong turn, it will quickly adjust and direct you back on track. Generally, this has worked out well, but once or twice it has not. Sat Nav is very good but it cannot be relied upon 100%, sometimes it can send you down the wrong path, especially if you follow unquestioningly. Sat nav is a good guide, but you must never stop trusting your eyes, and or common sense. No guide is 100% reliable all the time, even the best trained of guide dogs it seems. We will take knocks, we will get lost on our journeys through life.

Life itself and the spiritual life in particular are often described as a journey. That said it’s not a journey in which we really travel a great distance. As Wendell Berry so beautifully wrote, echoing that great mystic Meister Eckhart, “And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home.”

On this journey we often come to forks in the road when we must take decisions on which way we ought to turn. Many times we make wrong decisions, I think we have to get it wrong many times, before we get it right. Many times we get lost too. Many times we take advice from others and follow it blindly. Many times this is helpful but other times it really is not. It can lead us down the wrong path, but that’s ok because we can always get back on track again.

Often this journey is described as a path, I have just done so, and I have heard many say that it gets narrower. I am not convinced of this. If I have learnt anything I have learnt that the spiritual journey is not like a path at all and certainly not a narrow one. In my experience it is broad and rooming all inclusive and welcoming, never exclusive or forbidding and open to all. What in 12 step culture they call “The Broad Highway” and one that allows a great deal of room for error.

I think one of the biggest mistakes we make when we speak of spiritual matters is when we describe them in narrow language. It puts people off, because it sounds too much and beyond us. It should not be like that, there is room for us all and it isn’t so hard to get started, it just requires a slight change in direction.

Let us also remember that the spiritual journey is one of depth and not really distance. Sometimes the biggest mistake we make is that we continue journeying on, head down, not looking all around us, too focused on a perceived goal. This is due, I am sure, to the fear that if we don’t keep on moving we might get lost or that our troubles might catch up with us. I do not believe that this is healthy. In many ways by just marching on ever forward we can become completely lost, in the sense that we lose who we are at the core of ourselves, that sense of belonging here in life, as we are, wanted, needed and loved. Or we walk into something without knowing it is front of us. Anyone can live their life as if they were blind.

These thoughts bring to mind the beautiful poem “Lost” by David Wagoner,

“Lost”

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

by David Wagoner

Sometimes when you feel lost you aren’t as lost as you think. What you are is actually in a place you would rather not be. This is beautifully illustrated in the following bit of wisdom form my old favourite Mulla Nasruddin

Nasruddin was sat on a river bank when someone shouted to him from the opposite side:

“Hey! how do I get to the other side?”
To which Nasruddin replied “You are on the other side!”

We are always on the other side of the river.

Throughout our journeys’ we pass through many stages of our lives and looking back no doubt we can see these staging posts, moments in our lives that have made us who we are, that have deepened our experiences of life and given us wisdom to pass on to others, if they would care to have it.

On our journeys there are not only staging posts, but guide posts and actual guides too, that have helped we pilgrims along the way. Some we have paid heed of, others we have not. Some ancient, some contemporary. Hopefully we have not followed them blindly, but sometimes no doubt we have as we have trusted too implicitly perhaps, a bit like those Sat Nav horror stories we sometime here about of people driving almost blindly into a lake or river. We have to learn to trust our senses as well as the sixth sense too, the inner voice, the inner light that speaks to us when we have ears that can hear.

The ancient stories give many great examples of the different types of journeys, pilgrimages and Odyssey’s that we may undertake. In his meditation “The Spiritual Journey” David O Rankin names a few who have walked courageously through theirs. Stating:

“It is Moses leading the Jews through the desert of Sinai, and Jesus enduring the temptation in the wilderness of Israel, and Buddha seeking enlightenment along the dusty roads of India.

It is the glorious voyage of Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey, the narrow paths through the circles of hell in Dante’s Inferno, and the confessions of the travellers in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

It is the pilgrims sailing on the Mayflower, the settlers moving westward, being On the Road with Jack Kerouac, and spinning through a black hole in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey”

We are all of us pilgrims on the sacred journey that is life and like so many of the more famous ones we think we have to go someplace else to discover our own Nirvana or to build the New Jerusalem. Just as the pilgrims on the Mayflower did in the seventeenth century, with those words from Hebrews we heard earlier singing in their hearts. They believed that they had to travel a great distance to a new land to create their heaven on earth. Well, I have discovered that this is not necessary. You do not have to travel great distances to experience the beautiful journey and you do not need to travel great distances to build the New Jerusalem, it must be here, in our own hearts or nowhere. The “Kin-dom” of Love has to be built here or nowhere.

I suspect it’s the same about finding ourselves once again when we feel lost. Who or what do we listen to? Well I am learning to listen to that inner voice, that light that shines bright within all of us. That spark of the Divine that is within everything. That which awakens the sense of my senses, that which guides me home no matter how lost I am and that which allows me to be at home wherever my feet are planted. That Kin-dom of Love, within me, within each of you and within everything.

Let love be our navigator it will always lead us home, to the place where we belong.

The problem isn’t getting lost, we all get lost at times. The problem is in losing faith that you cannot find your way again. The key is how we live when we find ourselves lost. Do we close down and get lost deeper in our fear, or do we pause and reach out and ask for help from those loving forces that are all around whether visible or invisible.

I saw a beautiful example of faith and trust the other day sat outside Café Nero. A woman who had experienced a terrifying knock, it must have been an awful shock to her confidence in herself and her guide. She took stock, she accepted help and comfort and then she got up once again, with her baby safe and secure in her papoose, hanging infront of her heart. She trusted her guide dog and she continued on her way with her daily activities. I saw she had absolute trust and no fear as she waited to be guided across the road. What a beautiful example of faith and trust and most of all love.

Thank you

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

Which Way to Turn

"Map of the Journey in Progress" by Victoria Safford

Here is where I found my voice and chose to be brave.
Here’s a place where I forgave someone, against my better judgement, and I survived that, and
unexpectedly, amazingly, I became wiser.
Here’s where I was once forgiven, was ready for once in life to receive forgiveness and to be
transformed. And I survived that also. I lived to tell the tale.

This is the place where I said no, more loudly than I’d thought I ever could, and everybody stared, but I said no loudly anyway, because I knew it must be said, and those staring settled
down into harmless, ineffective grumbling, and over me they had no power anymore.
Here’s a time, and here’s another, when I laid down my fear and walked right on into it, right up to my neck in that roiling water.

Here’s where cruelty taught me something. And here’s where I was first astonished by gratuitous compassion and knew it for the miracle it was, the requirement it is. It was a trembling time.

And here, much later, is where I returned the blessing, clumsily. It wasn’t hard, but I was
unaccustomed. It cycled round, and as best I could I sent it back on out, passed the gift along.
This circular motion, around and around, has no apparent end.
Here’s a place, a murky puddle, where I have stumbled more than once and fallen. I don’t know yet what to learn there.

On this site I was outraged and the rage sustains me still; it clarifies my seeing.
And here’s where something caught me a warm breeze in late winter, birdsong in late summer.
Here’s where I was told that something was wrong with my eyes, that I see the world strangely, and here’s what I said, “Yes, I know, I walk in beauty.”
Here is where I began to look with my own eyes and listen with my ears and sing my own song, shaky as it is.

Here is where, if by surgeon’s knife, my heart was opened up and here, and here, and here, and here. These are the landmarks of conversion.

“From Walking Toward Morning, Meditations”

...There are many landmarks in our lives and many times when turn this way or that...

I’ve never had a great sense of direction and or spatial awareness. My mind does not operate in images. Maybe this is why I rarely, if ever, remember my dreams or even recall having them. I’m more of a communicator really and mainly through sound and conversation. We are all different, it is very important to understand this. We truly do not all think alike, although I do like to believe that we can all love alike.

Now while my way of operating has its advantages, there are some disadvantages too. I get lost very easily. Even in the town I live, a place I’ve driven round for five years, I can still quite easily find myself heading almost in the opposite direction to where I’m going. My mind does not seem able to picture exactly where I ought to be going. That said where ever I am and no matter how lost I get I can always find my way back home. 

I have also noticed that I don’t seem to ever get lost when driving round back home, in West Yorkshire. The lay of the land seems much more familiar to me. I think that this is because it is stored in my heart, it is heart memory, while Greater Manchester is still very much brain memory and therefore for some reason I find it less intuitive, hence I get lost and yet my heart still manages to always take me safely back home. This may seem strange to some as I have spent 18 of my 43 years here in Greater Manchester, but it is not truly home. It is not where my heart is.

Since I passed my driving test a little over five years ago I have relied heavily on Sat Nav. Mostly this has proved reliable. The great thing about is if you take a wrong turn, it will quickly adjust and direct you back on track. It’s kind of nice to have the soothing Radio Four type female voice pointing me in the right direction when I veer off course or take a wrong turn. Generally this has worked out well, but I can think of three occasions when it has not. The first was on the way to Great Hucklow when I missed my turning and the voice directed me to take the next right. This was a terrible mistake and I soon realised I was driving up a road fit only for tractors. I got through the ordeal, as did my car and for a couple of years I learnt my lesson. The next occasion was on a journey to Crosby beach to stand with the Gormley statues. Again I missed my turn and was directed through what appeared initially to be a country lane. I passed a farmer in a tractor who looked at me bemused and a little later I realised I’d made another error and found myself virtually in a field. I managed to turn the car around and not get stuck, so it did not turn into a John Cleese moment from Clockwise, thank God. The third time was a few weeks ago when I got stuck in Devon after my nephews wedding, which I wrote about in the last blogspot. So yes while Sat Nav is very good it cannot be relied upon 100%, sometimes the softly yet authoritatively spoken voice can send you down the wrong path, especially if you follow her lead unquestioningly.

Life itself and the spiritual life in particular are often described as a journey. That said it’s not a journey in which we really travel a great distance. As Wendell Berry so beautifully wrote, echoing that great mystic Meister Eckhart, “And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,and learn to be at home.”

On this journey we often come to forks in the road when we must take decisions on which way we ought to turn. Many times we make wrong decisions, I think we have to get it wrong many times, before we get it right. Many times we get lost too. Many times we take advice from others and follow it blindly. Many times this is helpful but other times it really is not. It can lead us down the wrong path, but that’s ok because we can always find our way back home.

Often this journey is described as a path, I have just done so, and I have heard many say that it gets narrower. I am not convinced of this. If I have learnt anything I have learnt that the spiritual journey is not like a path at all and certainly not a narrow one. In my experience it is broad and roomy all inclusive and welcoming, never exclusive or forbidding and open to all. What in 12 Step culture they call “The Broad Highway” and one that allows a great deal of room for error.

I think one of the biggest mistakes we make when we speak of spiritual matters is when we describe them in narrow language. It puts people off, because it sounds too much and beyond them. It should not be like that, there is room for us all and it isn’t so hard to get started, it just requires a slight change in direction.

Let us also remember that the spiritual journey is one of depth and not really distance. Sometimes the biggest mistake we make is that we continue journeying on, head down, not looking all around us, too focused on a perceived goal. This is due I am sure to the fear that if we don’t keep on moving we might get lost or that our troubles might catch up with us. I do not believe that this is healthy. In many ways by just marching on ever forward we can become completely lost, in the sense that we lose who we are at the core of ourselves, that sense of belonging here in life, as we are, wanted, needed and loved.

These thoughts bring to mind the beautiful poem “Lost” by David Wagoner.

“Lost”

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

by David Wagoner

...No one is ever truly lost, we can always find our way back home...

Throughout our journeys’ we pass through many stages of our lives and looking back no doubt we can see these staging posts. This is illustrated in those beautiful words of Victoria Safford's at the beginning of this "blogspot". Here she describes all those moments in our lives that have made us who we are, that have deepened our experiences of life and given us wisdom to pass on to others, if they would care to have it.

Now on our journeys there are not only staging posts, but guide posts and actual guides too, that have helped we pilgrims along the way. Some we have paid heed of, others we have not. Some ancient, some contemporary. Hopefully we have not followed them blindly, but sometimes no doubt we have as we have trusted too implicitly perhaps, like I did with my Sat Nav. We have to learn to trust our senses as well as the sixth sense too, the inner voice, the inner light that speaks to us when we have ears that can hear.

Now of course the ancient stories give many great examples of the different types of journeys, pilgrimages and Odyssey’s that we may undertake. In his meditation “The Spiritual Journey” David O Rankin names several who have walked courageously through theirs. Stating:

“It is Moses leading the Jews through the desert of Sinai, and Jesus enduring the temptation in the wilderness of Israel, and Buddha seeking enlightenment along the dusty roads of India.

It is the glorious voyage of Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey, the narrow paths through the circles of hell in Dante’s Inferno, and the confessions of the travellers in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

It is the pilgrims sailing on the Mayflower, the settlers moving westward, being On the Road with Jack Kerouac, and spinning through a black hole in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey”

We are all of us pilgrims on the sacred journey that is life and like so many of the more famous travellers we often believe that we have to go some place else to discover our own Nirvana or to build the New Jerusalem. Just as the pilgrims on the Mayflower did in the seventeenth century. They believed that they had travel a great distance to a new land to create their heaven on earth. Well I have discovered that this is not necessary. You do not have to travel great distances to experience the beautiful journey and you do not need to travel great distances to build the New Jerusalem, it must be here, in our own hearts or nowhere. The “Kin-dom” of Love has to be built here or nowhere.

I suspect it’s the same with finding ourselves once again, when we feel lost. Who or what do we listen to, when this happens? Well I am learning to listen to that inner voice, that light that shines bright within all of us. That spark of the Divine that is within everything. That which awakens the sense of my senses, that which guides me home no matter how lost I am and that which allows me to be at home wherever my feet are planted. That Kin-dom of Love, within me, within each of us and within everything.

Let Love be our navigator it will always lead us home, to the place where we belong.

I'm going to end with this prayer "Prayer for Travellers" by Angela Herrera

“Prayer for Travellers”

This is a prayer for all the travellers. For the ones who start out in beauty, who fall from grace, who step gingerly, looking for the way back. And for those who are born into the margins, who travel from one liminal space to another, crossing boundaries in search of centre.

This is a prayer for the ones whose births are a passing from darkness to darkness, who all their lives are drawn toward the light, and keep moving, and for those whose journeys are a winding road that begins and ends in the same place, though only when the journey is completed do they finally know where they are.

For all the travellers, young and old, aching and joyful, weary and full of life; the ones who are here, and the ones who are not here; the ones like you (and they’re all like you) and the ones who are different (for in some ways, we each travel alone).

This is a prayer for traveling memories, and surefootedness, for clear vision, and bread for your body and spirit, and water, for your safe arrival and for everyone you see along the way.

Radical OK-Ness & the Kindness of Strangers

A couple of weeks ago I attended the wedding of our Joe down in Devon. It really was a beautiful occasion as so many of his loved ones and friends came together. It’s been a difficult time for all of us in so many ways. Joe is the eldest son of our Allen, my brother, who died last year.

Now the journey to and from the wedding was quite epic. I was responsible for taking our youngest brother and sister to and from it. We got a little lost just finding the hotel we were staying at the night before and ended up down some country lanes which in my “townie” view were not fit for cars. They were grassed over paths really and I became very concerned about driving along them. At one point we met a horse and rider moving toward us. Thankfully the rider decided to turn round, walk down the hill and let us past. I suspect that she could tell I wasn’t a local. I really should have paid more attention to this, it was a sign of things to come.

The wedding the next day was incredible. The feeling of love had my heart full to overflowing and I know I wasn’t alone in this. We then headed off to the hotel for the reception. Now the hotel was at the top of a great hill and the roads leading to it were once again little more than grassed over paths. In fact many of them were unnamed on the Sat Nav. That part of the journey was not pleasant.

Finally we arrived and drew breath and then got on with the celebrations. I have to say that the speeches were incredible. All moving and highly amusing. I will not recount those given by the two best men as they were without doubt 18 rating and not PG. There was a great deal of laughter and tears, so many tears. Tears of joy and tears sorrow and grief too.

There was one phrase in the speech given by the father of the bride, Ian Adams, that caught that place deep in the soul of me. He talked somewhat about the joys and sorrows of life and the pains and struggles we all go through and then he described an abiding love that is present in life that can hold us and sustain us in all of this. He named it “Radical OK-ness”. This phrase really caught the heart of me and awakened the soul of me. I thought yes that’s it and in my mind I began to sing song I once heard based on words by Julian of Norwich, the words were “All will be well, all will be well, all manner of things, they will be well.” At this point I drifted away from what he was saying and sank into that place of deep prayer within myself. I let out a deep, deep breath and offered thanks and praise. And then we partied the night away.

As I left I noticed that most folk had arrived and were leaving by taxi, although I also heard that taxi drivers did not like coming to this spot at night, due to the drive back down. I swallowed hard at this point got in my car and began the journey back to the hotel we were staying at. I have to say it was not a pleasant journey. Things seemed to be going well and then I made a slight error and missed a turning. Sat-Nav directed me to take the next left, which I duly did. This was a big mistake. I later learned that you do not turn left at this point. Let’s just say that my car got stuck, right across the road and in my attempts to get free I burnt out my clutch and could not move. This was not a great place to break down, in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night with my youngest brother and sister with me.

We got out of the car my sister called International Rescue and the AA, she has gold membership. Before you ask, yes International Rescue is a real thing, although we were not expecting “Thunderbird 3” to arrive. The road I was stuck across was actually a real road, pure tarmac and vehicles began to appear. Mainly taxis going to the wedding venue. Most looked and just passed by up the hill, a few turned round but one or two stopped. One kindly taxi cab driver even got out to help saying “I’m a really good driver, I will get you out”. Then he realised he couldn’t as there was no clutch. Eventually a policeman arrived, what a Godsend he was. Finally the rescue truck arrived and we were taken back to the hotel.

The next day I sorted things out with my own recovery people and I and my car were brought to Altrincham, while arrangements were made to get my brother and sister home too. As I was driven back home chatting away with the man in the recovery vehicle about life and everything I began to reflect on the encounters I had experienced over the last 24 hours. I also reflected on the phrase “Radical Ok-ness” and the concept that “all will be well”. Another phrase also came into my mind too, the “kindness of strangers”. My word I had met some lovely people, who were so helpful and understanding in Devon. It lifted my heart as I sat there trying not to feel sorry for myself as I listened to the driver tell me all about his life. It’s funny I did very little talking, but lots of listening as I feasted my eyes on the beautiful countryside that we passed through, heading north and heading home. All the way home the "ears of my ears were awake" and "the eyes of my eyes were open." What a beautiful journey home.

It is easy to look at the world through eyes of despair and say that it is not OK, there is something rotten in life. There is of course much that is not OK. I remember just as I journeyed down to Devon hearing of the awful incident of a man being stabbed by a stranger on the motorway. Almost every day as I listen to the news I hear of troubles in the middle-east, mass shootings in America, crises in Europe, politicians caught up in scandals and celebrities and athletes bringing themselves into bad repute. I also see other troubles much closer to home. Our Joe’s grandmother Val, the mother of two of my sister’s and of course our Allen’s mother suffered a severe stroke last week and was unable to attend her daughter our Karen’s wedding the weekend after Joe’s. This has weighed heavily on my nearest and dearest. A young woman, that I had come to know, was killed last week by a driver who I understand was on drugs. I also share in the troubles of other friends and family and of course the hardships that people in congregations I serve are experiencing, emotional, mental and physical. So yes it is easy to say that nothing is OK; it is easy to fall into the Hobbesian nightmare and believe has he said “And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short” or in the words of the confession in the Book of Common Prayer that “there is no health in us”. It is easy to see the suffering in life and the wrong we do to one another. Yes we human beings do some terrible things to one another and yet on the whole what I see is goodness and in the end goodness seems to prevail. I do see an OK-Ness in life, when we choose it. When we bring it to life. This begins I believe by first of all seeing it, by baring witness to this OK-Ness, but it is more than that. I suspect that radical OK-Ness is about bringing this goodness to life, in our very lives. When we do we begin to bring that “Kin-dom of Love” to life. When we respond with kind-ness to what we see and do not pass by on the other side of the road.

The last week or so has brought that famous old parable in to my mind “The Good Samaritan” found in 10th chapter of Luke’s Gospel vv 25-37. Interestingly the two verses that proceed the parable also seems relevant too vv 23-24 . Verses that begin with the words ‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see!” I think that this parable is all about seeing and acting upon what we see. In the story both a priest and Levite go by and they both see him but they walk on by, they pass on the other side of the road. Then a Samaritan (who would be the enemy of the traveller from Jerusalem to Jericho) also see's him and when he see's him he is moved to action and not only helps but also brings him to a place of safety and pays for his boarding’s and lodging etc. He wants no recognition or thanks for his actions, he is motivated purely by compassion, this is pure altruism.

Now I think this story is teaching something very simple and vital, each of us is capable of all the actions that take place here. We are all capable of walking on by and we are all capable of being Good Samaritans. We can all be good neighbours. I believe that to see the world through the hopefulness of our potential goodness is what “Radical OK-Ness” is all about. It’s about seeing the good and becoming the good, so that others can see it too. It’s also about not beating ourselves up too much when we fall short of what we can be.

As I have written many times before I truly believe that everything matters; every feeling, every thought, every word, every action and every look. I truly believe that how we look at the world really matters. And how do we look at the world? Well through our eyes.

They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul; they say that our eyes reveal who we are. That said I do not think it is our eyes alone that reveal the truth, but how we see through these very same eyes. It is how we look at one another and life itself that reveal who we are.

How we look at one another really matters. We can look at one another with compassion, or we can give one another a hard look. Think about it when someone gives us a hard look, what do we do? Well usually we either turn away in fear or we respond with hardness too. What about compassion? What happens when someone looks at us through loving eyes? Well usually we respond with compassion and our lips and eyes may even stretch to a smile. Or at least we do unless we have fallen so far into the pit of nihilistic despair that we respond to love with fear and hatred.

How we act towards others really matters. But it is not just about doing what is right, it’s also about the spirit in which each task is conducted. We can appear to be encouraging and loving and doing the right thing, but our eyes will say otherwise. Our eyes say it all. Think about a smile. We think we smile with our mouths, but we do not, we smile with our eyes. When I smile my eyes almost slant shut. What we do and however we do something our eyes will reveal the truth of our hearts and people will intuitively pick up on this. They will see it in our eyes.

The eyes say it all. If you see the world through loving eyes you will see love. The next time you look at someone, let your eyes stretch to a smile. If you do the eyes of life will stretch back at you with a loving smile too.

This is where it begins. “Radical Ok-ness” begins with our eyes, with how we see the world. Yes we need to acknowledge what is wrong, but also what is right and good and we need to act appropriately. We need to do what we can, even if that is just one small thing, because that one small thing may well lead to a tidal wave of compassion that covers our whole world. We need to recognise the love present in life, the OK-Ness, despite the presence of suffering and we need to also bring that love alive, right here, right now and then we might just begin to build that “Kin-dom of Love” right here, right now.

May we look at the world through loving eyes.


...If you really want to understand what I mean, just simply listen to this clip "All will be well" by Rev Meg Barnhouse...She say's it far better than I...