Follow Your Bliss: Find Your meaning

I was chatting with a congregant Helen Redhead in the gym. As many of you know she has recently begun competing as a power lifter, she is making great progress. She was telling me some new training that she was involved in. it was something like “Stone lifting”, a bit like you would see in the Highland Games. She has since told me that they are called “Dinny Stones”. I think the idea of getting dressed up was as exciting as competing to Helen. It was great to see her so thrilled and excited, to see her “Following her Bliss.” She told me afterwards that she was going to meet a mutual friend for lunch. She was going to share about past struggles of her own that she had overcome, a wonderful example of her finding meaning from a place that was once suffering, by helping someone else who was experiencing a similar struggle and was looking for hope. Just as she was leaving I thanked Helen for writing this weeks sermon, which is on “Following your bliss: finding your meaning”

I will begin with “Follow Your Bliss”

What does it mean to “follow your bliss”? Well according to Joseph Campbell it is a sacred call to action. It is a call from your soul to light the fire within you to do what destiny asks of you, to bring yourself fully to life and therefore to become a light in the lives of others. Following your bliss is about doing the things that bring meaning and fulfilment despite the troubles that may accompany it. It is about meaningful living despite the very real suffering present in all life. As Campbell says by “following our bliss doors will open up for us where we could only see barriers before.”

Following our bliss is about saying yes to this call and beginning our own heroic journey. In doing so synchronicity will seemingly be abound and luck will follow. By following our bliss we seemingly become guided by something more than ourselves. This is what Campbell observed and it has certainly been my experience, since I began following mine, which is of course this ministry.

Following our bliss though is not an easy ride, quite the opposite actually. Yes, there maybe moments of triumph when all are for us and no one seems to be against us, but there will also be moments of suffering and betrayal when everyone and everything seems to be against us. As Campbell observed that like all heroic journeys there are tests and trials along the way. There are monsters and dragons to slay on the journey although most of these are the ones we carry with us. It is our fear of the adventure that is our greatest enemy. It is this that stops us taking the first vital step.

Human history is littered with figures who have been drawn out of themselves, have followed there bliss and begun their adventure thus inspiring others to do likewise. Some have done this on a mass scale, figures like Nelson Mandela, and many others have done so on a much smaller, but no less important scale. All have had to face their trials and tribulations and all brought so much light to our world. They were not special people though, they were ordinary people just like you and me; ordinary people who followed their bliss; ordinary people who found the courage to be all that they were born to be.

I wonder what it might mean for you to follow your bliss?

I am at my most blissful when singing, especially with folk my heart and my soul are in harmony with. I am singing more at more once again, my soul is calling out for this. I had the most incredible experience this week during “Singing Meditation” as my voice blended heart and soul with that of another, I feel it may lead to more singing and soul stretching. My heart felt so alive, so aroused. Before we began we were chatting and Martin, who was attending for the first time, shared that he had recently found his voice, after nearly fifty years, during a service at Cross Street Chapel in Manchester. It was beautiful how he described this. I shared I had had similar experiences myself at Cross Street all those years ago. I discovered later that another friend, Helen and mine’s mutual friend, had begun to find her voice during “Singing Meditation”. All this was bliss to me, to my heart and soul and was music to my ministry, my purpose, my meaning. I wonder where this may lead. I suspect it will be somewhere wonderful, as we follow our bliss.


“Singing Meditation” was last Tuesday, the 23rd August. It was 22 years ago on that Ethan was born, the little boy who lived six years, but who was the most significant person ever to enter my life. My ministry in many ways is a legacy to his love and life. Certainly my journey through this seemingly unbearable grief is what led me to this work. His mum shared some lovely messages with me last Tuesday, including one in which she told me “You were always good for Ethan, you taught him it was ok to be a sensitive soul.” It broke me that day. I never think about what I gave to him, only what he gave to me. Of course we all still live with the grief of this loss, I have been saved though from despair by the meaning that is my life’s work that has grown from this loss. It has saved me from despair. It has enabled me to help others in their own grief, I have not lost that sensitivity, if anything I feel more deeply as time goes by, as I am sure you have all observed these last few months. Sometimes this makes it difficult, but it is the only way. My life has proven to me that despair is suffering without meaning D=S-M. Despair equals suffering minus meaning.

This leads me to the other question

“How do we find our meaning?”

The equation D=S-M comes from Viktor Frankl. In “Man’s Search For Meaning” he wrote “Man is not destroyed by suffering; he is destroyed by suffering without meaning.” He discovered that if we have a “why” to live for we can endure anything. More than that actually it is this that allows us to thrive, to be all that we are born to be. To not only improve our lives, but to serve our world. This in my eyes has parallels with Campbell’s idea of finding your own bliss, only in less flowery language and imagery.

Like finding our bliss, uncovering meaning is no easy task, how do we do so? Where do we find meaning in our lives? What about those who tell us that life is essentially meaningless? Is there one meaning? Is there one truth?

Now Frankl would suggest that it is for each of us to discover our own meaning in any given situation. That this is our task; that this meaning may not be in the given moment but in some place in the future; that it is to be found in some purpose or meaning yet to come. Again, there are parallels with Campbell’s idea of finding your own bliss. Campbell saw no one meaning, that life itself was meaningless in one sense. Our task is to discover what our bliss is to inspire others to do the same, in so doing our lives become meaning filled. The meaning is not given to us, it is revealed through our lives.

Campbell made his discoveries through studying ancient texts and stories, Frankl developed his observing and experiencing the horrors of the Nazi death camps.

In “Man’s Search For Meaning” Frankl gives an account of his struggle to find meaning when held as a prisoner in the Nazi death camps of the Second World War. He lost most of his family and friends in the camps and yet he never lost hope in humanity.

Frankl was the founder of what has often been referred to as the “Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy” Freud founded the first which was based on the central role of the libido or pleasure principle in human psychology. Alfred Adler founded the second which emphasised the importance of the will to power and the significance of the superiority/inferiority complex in human behaviour. In contrast to these two schools Frankl’s psychology is based on the will to meaning which he saw as the primary motivating force in human life. He named it “Logotherapy” taken from the Greek term logos, which means “word”, “reason”, or “meaning”. Think of the opening words from John’s Gospel, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.” The word here of course is “Logos”. There is an implication here that meaning has a transcendent origin.

Frankl saw a spiritual dimension beyond the biological and psychological. He saw the suppression of this as the root cause of our human malady. Therefore, the task of “Logotherapy” was “to remind patients of their unconscious religiousness” and to uncover the spiritual dimensions of their lives and enable them to recover the capacity to choose those values which give our lives worth and meaning.

Now this meaning is of course different for everyone, again we see parallels with Campbell here. As Frankl said himself:

“For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.”

Frankl claimed that meaning is discovered through creative and worthwhile activities, by creating something beautiful or doing good – I believe that one of the greatest sadness’s of our age is the fact that the phrase “do-gooder” has become a term of mockery, that it is somehow seen as wrong and suspicious to do good - Meaning can be found through experiencing and sharing in the beauty of art or nature or through loving or ethical encounters with others.

Even in the most horrific and terrifyingly hopeless situations we still have the capacity to choose our attitude towards whatever circumstances we are faced with. It is our response to life’s events that shapes our souls. Remember Frankl developed his theory during the utter despair and horror of the Nazi death camps. As Frankl himself said “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

There are those that say that life has no meaning, that nothing matters in life. I was once one of these people. These days I see no truth in such statements. These days I see meaning in everything, even in the most painful moments in life. In fact it has usually been through coming through these most painful moments that the greatest meaning has emerged. Not immediately always but eventually as I have been able to give back to others from the experience of the suffering I have experienced and or witnessed. These last few months have proved this once again This in no way justifies the suffering please do not get me wrong, I am in no way suggesting any such thing. To quote Dorothee Soelle, “no heaven can rectify an Auswitz”. No what I am saying is that through living openly meaning can emerge. Meaning can merge from living by the way of the Lure of Divine Love. Such love draws us out of ourselves and meaning emerges as we live from love and our most painful experiences are transfigured into meaning and purpose. The suffering is still as real, but meaning begins to emerge as we are saved from the hell of despair.

We can also know bliss in our lives, by uncovering whatever it is that makes us feel alive. I have witnessed it again in the lives of ordinary people in this extraordinary week. I have experienced it too. Spiritually speaking it has been quite a week, my heart has felt close to bursting at times. That said this week has not been without pain, but even in that meaning has emerged and I have experienced utter bliss.

So follow your bliss, find your meaning. I am not here to tell you what the meaning of life is. I would be cautious of anyone who suggests that they have all the answers to such questions. What I can tell you though is that meaning can and will emerge from you, all you have to do is follow your bliss. In so doing not only will your life be meaning filled but you will inspire others to do the same.

Please find below a video devotion based

 on the material in this "blogspot"

Are we the religious animal? A Pentecost reflection

I was recently sent the following bit of wisdom by Robert Fulghum. It got me thinking about that often heard phrase about humanity "We are the religious animal"...anyhow here is the the little chip of wisdom...

Propositions:

To be human is to be religious.

To be religious is to be mindful.

To be mindful is to pay attention.

To pay attention is to sanctify existence.

Rituals are one way in which attention is paid.

Rituals arise from the stages and ages of life.

Rituals transform the ordinary into the holy.

Rituals may be public, private, or secret.

Rituals are in constant evolution and reformation.
…

Ritual refers to two kinds of acts: those things we do for the first time that, in fact, have been done by the human race again and again forever – and those patterns that we ourselves repeat again and again because they bring structure and meaning to our individual and collective lives. A consideration of human and personal history will remind us that rituals are not set in concrete – that public forms, private celebrations, and even secret acts get modified over time to more nearly satisfy changing needs.

Today is Pentecost one of the most important days in the Christian Calendar. Not that many will have noticed, it certainly does not come with the same fuss as Christmas and Easter and yet it is deeply significant.

The word Pentecost means the 50th day. Pentecost, within the Christian tradition, falls 50 days after Easter. The original Pentecost though was the Jewish holy day known as Shavuot, which comes 50 days after the Passover. Now Passover marked the Exodus from Pharoah’s enslavement. Remember the Last Supper was Jesus calling his disciples to commemorate this. So 50 days later those very same disciples and many other Jews gathered once again to mark the Jewish Pentecost, Shavuot.

Shavuot marks the giving of the Law by God to Moses on Mount Sinai and was observed for centuries before the account recorded in the book of Acts when the presence of the Spirit is understood to have descended. Both Pentecost’s marked the dawning of a new era. For the Hebrews it was the receiving of the “Law of God”, which an observant Jew has to follow; for Christians it was the receiving of the Holy Spirit. They both came at a time when the people were lost and frightened and squabbling amongst themselves; they both offered the people a sense of unity across their differences; they both offered the people a sense of identity and understanding, a narrative to follow; they both were about creating a new religious identity and purpose.

Pentecost commemorates the beginning of a new revelation, a new step forward in religious understanding and practise. This it would appear, continues on and on. Religion, as does all life, continues to evolve, it has to or it will whither away and die. I wonder if ours might be a time for a new Pentecost.

Now there are those who will say that is the last thing that we need; there are those who will say that what we really need is an end to religion all together. Many see religion as the cause of most of humanities troubles and that really it’s for the weak, the feeble and mindless. It has been seen as a pill or an opiate or a crutch to keep us upright and moving forward. It’s not just the "New Atheists" either that hold this view, such thoughts have been around for some time, for all time to be honest. Sigmund Freud didn’t think much of religion. In 1927 he authored a book titled “The Future of an Illusion”. In it he argued that the belief in an almighty personal God who set everything in motion and authored the rules and who human beings depended on was like an obsessional childlike neurosis that humanity would one day outgrow as we developed and matured through scientific understandings of ourselves and nature.

Now what Freud failed to recognise was the capacity for religious understanding to evolve. He had a model for religion and he stuck to it, a bit like many of the "New Atheists" do today. I suspect that in doing so they are committing a fundamental error; I believe that even if we did do away with all religion that currently exists in our world today that a new form would eventually emerge. Why you may well ask? Well because I believe that we human beings are by our very nature religious animals. There is something within us that needs to celebrate life itself in all its pain and all its glory; there is something within us that wants to dance and to sing and re-enact the drama of what it is be; there is something within us that wants to acknowledge the mystery within and way beyond scientific knowledge and insight; there is something within us that wants to offer gratitude for what inspires us to be all that we can be; there is something within us that wants to offer hope, consolation, courage and endurance in the face of the fear and the many disappointments of life; there is something within us that asks the question why, when we consider the mysteries of life and death? These I believe are religious and spiritual needs and they are ones that humanity will never outgrow, because they cannot be outgrown.

Do you have these needs? I do and I believe that I always will. The darkest emptiest days of my life were when I tried to suppress and deny them.

Forrest Church in an interview shortly before he died said

“I have long believed that religion itself is our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die. We are the religious animal. We asked, “Where did we come from? Who are we? Where are we going? What is life’s meaning? What is life’s purpose?” Now, we don’t always come out with religious answers. But these are religious questions we ask. We’re not the animal with advanced tools or advanced language. We’re the religious animal, and so at some point death requires our search for meaning. Without death, we would not have to search for meaning, and we would not have to search for purpose. My own sense of the purpose of life, it’s to live in such a way that your lives will prove to be worth dying for. And that puts an enormous moral, ethical impetus behind our work in this world. I take it one world at a time. I’m agnostic about the afterlife. I haven’t gone there. It could not be, though, any stranger than this. There’s no afterlife that could be stranger than life itself. And we need, first and foremost, even as we’re dying, to celebrate the miracle of this day.

I agree with Forrest in nearly every sentiment expressed here. Human beings will never stop asking these questions re the mystery of life and death, they are at their essence religious questions. This is why religion will always emerge and re-emerge even if it were completely done away with tomorrow.

We human beings are meaning makers and meaning seekers. We must not underestimate this innate desire within us. We have this need for connection to things both in and of this world; we have this need to feel loved and held too, by things that are beyond our understanding. We need a relationship to life. We need to love something. Most of us want to be part of something bigger than ourselves, to help create a world that is more filled with possibility and hope than when we arrived. So we pay attention to what is going on all around us. We acknowledge it. We make meaning out of it. As we do so we make rituals out of the meaning. We make rituals to mark the stages of life from birth to death and all the stages in between. These rituals come in many and varied styles and forms and come from many sources, but they are there in every human culture and society. These rituals help us connect to a greater reality from which we belong, that we finite creatures are dependent upon.

We human beings are the religious animal. Therefore we need religion in order to live fully human lives. This is why I believe that even if we were to do away with all forms of religion it would once again emerge, although perhaps in a different form or forms.

Now maybe that’s what we need. Not so much an end to religion, but a new kind of religion, one that incorporates the best of the past but is not a slave to it, one that is not shackled by what has been.

I think that now, perhaps more than at any other time in human history we need a new Pentecost; I think now more than at any other time in human history we need the dawning of a new religion, something that will perhaps unite the whole human family.

Now I know there are many who will say, oh you are just a dreamer. Well maybe I am, but I don’t think I’m the only one. I believe that the fire of unity and hope can be lit once again.

The symbol of Pentecost is the flame. Every Sunday at the commencement of worship I light a flame. When I do so I believe that I am lighting a symbol of new hope, of what might be of what humanity can become if we live in unity and love.

If we light the flame of unity and love within our own hearts and carry that out into our wounded world I believe that we can begin the dawning of a new Pentecost. Instead of despairing at this our age, let us instead bring forth new hope, let us become symbols of new hope.

Our world needs a new Pentecost that will unite it and bring humanity out of its wilderness into the Promised Land. This must grow from within our own hearts and souls. It is a fire that grows from humility and leads to connection and interconnection and inter-dependence. The first Pentecost brought the Law, the one language. The second Pentecost brought love which called humanity to understand diverse languages. This new Pentecost, I believe, is needed to bring us together through our shared humanity through a genuine sense of humility that will allow us to see our interdependence.

We need a new Pentecost, a new beginning that will enable us to fully acknowledge our interdependence on one another, all life and that spirit that runs through all of life. For it is this that can bind us together if we would but let it.

Now there are those who say that in order to achieve this that the first thing we must do is bring an end to religion, that this is the cause of all of humanities ills, but I am not one of them. I say what we need is a new religion or at least a new approach to religion that can set us free from the chains that bind us; what we need is a way to join us in a unity with all that is, all that has been and all that has ever been. It begins within each and everyone of our hearts.

We need a new Pentecost, a new beginning that will bind us together in unity. We need it and our world needs it. We need to recognise the oneness, the unity of everything. We are all part of a vast and yet mysterious living system. By recognising this we begin to participate consciously in this vast oneness. The mystics of every faith tradition have proclaimed this divine unity. It is known as Nirvana in Buddhism, or the Brahman-Atman synthesis in Hinduism, when Jesus declares “I and the father are one” he is talking of divine oneness. We are all part of the one undivided whole. We are bound together in the ship of life.

Howard Thurman described this near perfectly in “Creative Encounter”, when he said "It is my belief that in the Presence of God there is neither male nor female, white nor black, Gentile nor Jew, Protestant nor Catholic, Hindu, Buddhist, nor Muslim, but a human spirit stripped to the literal substance of itself before God."

How though do we bring about that “Creative Encounter”? Well I believe it has to begin in our own hearts and minds and souls. We need to open ourselves to it in our daily lives and to carry it out into our world that so desperately needs it.

We need to light the flame within us and we need to carry this spirit of a new Pentecost into our divided world and begin to bind up the broken.

Let us be lights in our world…let us be the new beginning…Let us bring a new Pentecost here in our time and place…our world needs it...We all need it...let us make it so...