Gandhi's Seven Social Sins

There are many things that trouble us, all of us, in different ways. If I was to sit and spend all my life focusing on what I see as unhelpful, as wrong in life, no doubt I would never leave the house and even there I wouldn’t feel safe. In so doing I would be committing what I have heard described as the greatest sin of all, to fail to exist, to live and unlived life. I have wasted enough years doing that and I refuse to do so ever again.

Despite its very real troubles I have faith in life, a love for life. I believe in life. To quote William James. 'These, then, are my last words to you: Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.' " I have found this to be 100% true.

I was recently chatting with someone I love dearly, it was not an easy conversation, but it was essential. I have had this conversation with them before. The first time I found it almost unbearable it was too painful to hear. Thankfully I love them enough to listen to their pain. What was clear was that they had been ruled by fear all their life; for all their life they had been dominated by fear. Gosh how I wish I could relieve them of it, but alas I cannot. No one can.

Fear is a deeply powerful emotion, it can be crippling in its power, which is why so many of the dark forces of life employ it to control and dominate. In many ways this is perhaps the root of human sin if you like, this use and or instilling of fear to dominate others, it seems to be the root of so many of our human troubles.

No area of life is exempt from using fear in their attempts to get what they believe is right. It has been one of the great evils of religion of course. How often have people been subjugated by fear in so many ways. Modern advertising does it too, in their attempts to sell us a lifestyle that will take all our troubles away and you see it very clearly in politics, particularly around election time. I never saw this more clearly than during last year’s EU referendum and we have seen it again in recent weeks as we have approached last Thursday’s General Election. As each one passes I see the seeds of division being sown and it troubles me deeply, we also see scapegoating too on the increase. This bothers me greatly too and I know I am not immune from this either. I have blamed others for my troubles.

Now of course the temptation is to withdraw, to crawl under some kind of fear based spiritual rock and refuse to engage. This is fear of the highest order, it is selfish and a rejection of life. The spiritual life can only be lived in reality. Its purpose is to bring healing and not to sow seeds of division. We are all in this together regardless of our views about how life ought to be. The spiritual life has to be an ethical life.

If the spiritual life has to be ethical, then how do we live such a life without causing harm and sowing those seeds of division. Well I believe it begins by first of all recognising our one shared humanity. Recognising that we are all formed by the same substance and have the same spirit flowing through us, that not one of us is perfect we all fall short of our attempted ideals, we are all sinners in that sense, we are all driven at times by fear and we are all open to the transformative power of love, no one is beyond redemption. We are all more human than otherwise.

Throughout human history many have attempted to show us ways to live a more ethical life. In recent years Karen Armstrong wrote her “12 steps to a Compassionate Life”, it inspired my early ministry. I spoke of it constantly and I led groups exploring her ideas. It was her attempt to return compassion back to the centre of the social, economic, political and spiritual life. There have been others who have spoken of what has blocked us from living the ethical life. Towards the end of the sixth century Pope Gregory came up with “The Seven Deadly Sins”, which were based on Greek philosophy. The seven were Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy and Pride. Unlike the “Ten Commandments” they contained no “Thou Shalt Not’s”, instead they were designed to aid the individual to examine the state of their being.

Now the main problem with the list is that they were still an examination of our inner life and not an examination of how we live our lives.

During the 20th century Mohatma Gandhi published another list. It was named “The Seven Social Sins” and was published in his newspaper “Young India” on October 22nd 1925. The list is as follows:

Wealth without Work.
Pleasure without Conscience.
Knowledge without Character.
Commerce without Morality.
Science without Humanity.
Worship without Sacrifice.
Politics without Principles.

The list had sprung from a correspondence that Gandhi had with someone who he only identified as a “fair friend.” It is understood that the list comes from sermon first delivered at West Minster Abbey. He published the list without commentary. All Gandhi said was : “Naturally, the friend does not want the readers to know these things merely through the intellect but to know them through the heart so as to avoid them.”

Is that possible? Can these seven been known by the heart, so that we can avoid them in our daily living. The focus of the list is on our conduct in society. It is salvation by not only faith but also works, how we live our lives in our daily interactions. They seem firmly in keeping with his own spiritual ethics of non-violence and interdependence and each one is an example of selfishness overcoming the common good. As he himself said "A person cannot do right in one department whilst attempting to do wrong in another department. Life is one indivisible whole. " It is said that Gandhi believed that these social sins were a greater threat to society than the personal sins listed by Pope Gregory.

Many years later in 1947 Gandhi gave the very same list, this time under title “the seven blunders that human society commits, and that cause all the violence”, to his fifth grandson Arun. Sadly within three months Gandhi had been murdered by a Hindu extremist who obviously had fallen into the trap, that so many do. and made Gandhi the scapegoat for so many of the countries troubles. So often the great and the good are destroyed by the violence that is given birth to by fear, by seeing others as something other than human. Sadly things have not changed in the last seventy years.

What do you think of Gandhi’s list? I like them. I think they are a great model for the spiritual life, for living a life of ethical principle and dignity, by attempting to overcome them. In so doing we can begin to bring to life the loving compassion that Karen Armstrong is promoting, a love that is the essence of all the great traditions. We see this love expressed in the teachings of Jesus, it is worth noting that Gandhi, although a Hindu, read the Gospels every day, believed that the Sermon on the Mount was the model of the good life and saw Jesus as the embodiment of Satyagraha. That his life was an example of how to live the spiritual and ethical life. If we were to adopt the principles that would ensure that we avoid living by these sins or blunders then we would begin to create the society that at its core would be justice, equity and compassion. 

Is this possible can we live the spiritual and ethical life can we live in such a way as to avoid these seven sins or blunders as Gandhi named them? I wonder what do these seven statements bring to your heart, mind and soul? I wonder if you can think of examples, in today’s world, of any or even each of them? What about your own life, where do you fall short? How could you begin to live a more connected life?

We all fall short of the mark, every single one of us. None of us is perfect, perhaps it is this as much as anything that makes us more human than otherwise. It is important to understand that to sin originally meant to fall short of the mark, the word "sinare" was an archery term that literally meant this. By the way when I write of sin here I am not writing of original sin, I do not believe that anyone is born this way, it's just that none of us hit the mark every time. In what ways can we aim higher and therefore raise the targets we reach when we all fall short? By the way it’s worth remembering this when we look at the specks in the eyes of others and fail to see the log in our own.

I firmly believe that to live the ethical life requires us to grow spiritually to take care of our inner life, certainly this was Gandhi’s view too. This leads me to ask you who read this "blogsot" to do me a favour. I'd like you to think of ways that this can be achieved, how can we improve our inner lives so that we can be more effective in our own homes and communities and therefore live more ethically. How do we improve our inner lives so as to see where we fall short and therefore live more ethically?

It is easy to look at others and point out where they fall short of the mark, to scapegoat, to blame; it is perhaps less easy to look at ourselves and to see how we fail to live up to the ideals of justice, equity and compassion. The truth is we all fall short of the mark, we are all far more human than otherwise and that perhaps when we criticise others for their very human shortcomings what we are really doing is deflecting from where we ourselves fall short. The truth is we can do something about ourselves, if we take care of our own spiritual needs, where as we can’t change others. We can inspire them by the way we live, but we cannot change them

We can aim way above these “Seven Social Sins”

Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Worship without sacrifice.
Politics without principles.

Right enough to be wrong

"You should never be ashamed to own that you have been in the wrong, which is but saying that you are wiser today than yesterday."

A quote attribute to Alexander Pope and also Jonathon Swift, Satirist better known as the author of Gulliver’s Travels

I wonder how many times I have been wrong in my life, how many times I have made mistakes, misjudgement, errors. I wonder how many times in my life I have changed my mind about something, come to a different conclusions. I wonder how many times in my life I will do so in the future. I wonder how many times I made the same mistake. I wonder how many times I will repeat those very same errors in new and subtle ways. I haven’t a clue how many. One thing I do know is that I will continue to do so.

This no longer troubles me. I am happy not always getting things right. These days I accept I will fall short of the mark, over and over again. This does not mean I no longer aim high, I do. In fact if truth be told I attempt to aim higher all the time, it’s just I accept that these days I will fall short. I do my best, but accept I cannot do anything perfectly. I am ok with being imperfect, being incomplete these days. Why is this? Some may ask. Well because these days I do not feel wrong inside. These days I feel right enough deep down in the core of me, to be wrong sometimes.

The beauty of being wrong about things, admitting you are wrong and doing what is required to put right what was once wrong is that as soon as you do you are no longer wrong, you are right once again.

I will repeat that… The beauty of being wrong about things, admitting you are wrong and doing what is required to put right what was once wrong is that as soon as you do you are no longer wrong, you are right once again.

I have not always been this way. There have been periods of my life when deep down in the core of me I felt wrong. I cannot give you adequate explanations as to why I have felt this way, I just did. I do know that as a younger person I found reasons, but the truth is it is just how I felt deep down in the core of me. Sadly so many folk do. Not that they would easily admit to it, but still they do. I offer thanks every day that deep down in the core of my being I know that these days I am a child of love, formed from love who is here to pour out that love on this our world. I still make mistakes, all too human mistakes, but these days I no longer crucify myself for them. These days I just laugh and smile and turn again in love to life, ever aiming higher.

I have had evidence in recent weeks that this change has occurred. I have seen it as I have begun to work with the personal trainer at the gym and begun to try and resolve my life long problems with flexibility and my back. Problems that they tried to address during my childhood, problems that filled me with deep shame and which I silently believed was further evidence that there was something fundamentally wrong with me, deep in the core of my being. The problems are still there, in fact they are possibly worse. The only real difference today is that the shame is no longer there, it has long gone. Today I have found the loving courage, the heart, to face what I need to face. Not perfectly, imperfectly and even faltering actually. These days I am able to correct an aspect of myself, as best I can, with the appropriate help, because deep down inside I no longer feel wrong. These days I feel right enough to be wrong.

Whatever we do in life, whatever we achieve there will always be failure involved. This thought brings to mind a story I once heard about a young man, let’s say of thirty years who had been appointed to be the president of a great bank. Now the young man had never dreamed he would be president, never mind at such a young age. So as you can imagine he was a little unsure of this new venture. So he approached the chairman of the board, a much older and wiser man and asked “Can you, please, give me some advice?”

To which the chairman uttered just two words: “Right decisions!”
The young man was a little aghast at this as he wanted something more specific. So he asked: “How do I make right decisions?”
To which the chairman answered: “Expereince!”
To which the novice bank president responded: “But I don’t have any experience. How do I get it?”
To which the chairman answered: “Wrong decisions!”

You make the right decisions by gaining the experience of making many wrong ones.

You really do have to be right enough to give things an honest go and get things wrong, over and over again before you truly make the right decisions. You’ve got to have enough faith in life itself to live successfully in this world. The only way to gain experience is to give it ago, to fall a thousand times and to keep on giving it a go. You will only do this, I have discovered, if deep down inside you can be right enough to be wrong.

This brings to mind those beautiful words of Rumi’s that are so key to my concept of ministry and what a truly free religious community ought to be about.

"Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again , come , come."

Mawlan Jalal-al-Din Rumi

Come again, come again come…even if you have broken your vows a thousand times, you can come, you are welcome as you are exactly as you are in this very moment. The key is to aim higher together, never expecting to reach the summit, but always living with hope in our hearts.

You see everyone fails, everyone falls short. You see the truth is that if at first you don’t succeed, then you are about average, you are human. You are just like the rest of us. Perfectly imperfect human beings.

These thoughts bring to mind one of the better known accounts of Jesus from John’s Gospel ( John Ch8 vv 1-11) of the “woman caught in adultery” The woman is about to be stoned to death, in accordance with the law. The Pharasee’s test Jesus and ask him what should be done. He does not answer immediately and simply sits down and begins to write in the sand. They continue to press him and after a short while he stands up and utters the immortal words “Let those amongst you who is without sin, cast the first stone” and then bends down and continues to write in the sand. One by one the crowd disperses, beginning with the elders and after they have all gone, Jesus rises and asks the woman where they are? And if anyone has condemned her? She tells him that no one has. To which he replies “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

I have often wondered what Jesus wrote in the sand. Maybe he wrote the misdeed, maybe he wrote his own misdeeds, things he got wrong. Who knows?

“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Can any of us truly say that at some point in our lives we have not caused harm to another? I think it is safe to say that to this extent we are all sinners, I am. Now do not get me wrong I do not believe, to quote ‘The Book of Common Prayer’ “there is no health in us”. I am not talking of original sin. I do not believe that anyone is born into this world tainted in any sense. I believe that we are all born with a clean slate and with the potential for so many things.

This brings to mind a beautiful meditation by Robert Walsh, simply titled "A Baptism"

She called to ask if I would baptize her infant son.

I said, "What we do is like a baptism, but not exactly. And we normally do it only for people who are part of the church family. The next one we have scheduled is in May."

She said, "Could we come to talk with you about it anyway?"

They came to see me, the very young woman and her child and the child's very young father. She explained that the child had been born with a heart defect. He had to have a risky heart operation soon. She had asked the clergyman of her own church if he would baptize her son, and he had refused because she was not married to the baby’s father.

I told them that their not being married would not be an impediment to anything we might do, but that our child dedication ceremony still might not be what they were looking for.

I explained that our ceremony does not wash away any sin, it does not guarantee the child a place in heaven, it doesn't even make the child a member of the church.

In fact, I said, it doesn't change the child at all. What we expect is that it will change the rest of us in our relationship with the child, and with all children.

She listened patiently. When I was through she said, "All I want is to know that God blesses my baby."

In my mind I gasped at the sudden clarity in the room. I said, with a catch in my throat, "I think I can do that." And I did.

Here Robert Walsh describes the general Unitarian approach to Baptism, which while often involving water in the ceremony is not doing so to cleanse the child or adult of sin. No instead the use of water, the most basic element of life, is to bless the child. When I conduct such a ceremony I touch their brow, their lips and their hands, to bless their thoughts, words and deeds. I carry this very same concept into the worship I create and lead. Each week, at the end of worship, I ask that we receive the blessings of God, the blessings of love in all that we feel, all that we think, all that we say and all that we do; that we carry this vision into all of our lives. The hope is that we go out into the world and live the best life that we can. I believe that we can change the world, just one smile at a time. I believe it is our task to bring the blessings of love alive in this world, for so many believe that there is no love. All they see is the very real suffering present and often miss the love.

Now Unitarians are sometimes criticised for not really doing sin. This is not exactly true. I certainly do sin. I fall short every day. That said I do reject the concept of “Original Sin”, I do not believe that we are fundamentally flawed at the core of our being. I am quite happy talking about sin, because I know that I sin. I sin in the sense that I fall short of the mark. Who doesn’t?

Now you may well ask what I mean when I talk of sin. First of all it is important to understand that in the original Hebrew and Greek sin meant falling short of the mark.

The Unitarian Universalist minister Frank Muir, in an attempt to explain the words etymology says that:

“The Garden story was all about cheyt, the Hebrew word meaning “to miss the mark,” which was their definition of sin-like shooting an arrow at the target and missing. After you miss, of course it’s a disappointment, but you try again, you try to hit the mark. So you see sinning is a part of life, no different than breathing, eating, or sleeping.

So you see we all sin, we all fall short, we all get things wrong from time to time. That though does not mean that we are wrong, that we are wrong at the core of our very being. Since I understood and accepted this I have found enough faith to become right enough to be wrong and to put right what needs to be put right and therefore no longer be wrong.

The key I believe is our starting point. If we believe that we are fundamentally flawed, that there is something wrong with us, deep down in the core of our being, then we will be afraid to do anything. Even if we do something every time it goes wrong, which it will from time to time, that’s one of life’s guarantees, we will see it as evidence that there is something deeply fundamentally wrong with us.

If we believe that we are wrong at the core of our being we will also be afraid to admit our mistakes. We will all make mistakes, we will all break our vows, maybe even a thousand times, that too is one of life’s guarantees.

If we believe we are wrong, at the core of our being, we will believe that everyone else is wrong and we will find ourselves throwing stones and fearing life and everyone else around us. We will point the finger, we will blame we, we will scapegoat, we will fail to take personal responsibility.

I once did. I believed I was wrong at the core of my being and as I result I feared myself and all life. Thank God I was able to see the truth about this and changed my mind. I hope that if you ever have these feeling about yourself that can see the same truth too.

I wish for you who read this "blogspot", what I wish for everyone, that they will too find the peace and freedom to become right enough to be wrong.

You are the light of the world

"...You are the light of the world..."

In a recent “Living the Questions” we explored “Sacred Places & Sacred Spaces”. Now during the evening the use of the word “sacred”, was questioned, by one of those present. It was suggested that while some places touched us deeply they were no more sacred than anywhere else. Special places yes, but not necessarily sacred. One or two others felt the same way too. As the evening went on a fascinating conversation developed, of which it was wonderful to be a part of.

To quote Wendell Berry "There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places." I believe that all life is sacred and yet, like Wendell Berry I do think that there have been times in human history when we have desecrated certain times and places. That said such places in time have once again become sacred. I do believe we can consecrate such places again. It got me thinking about ways in which this might be achieved. It also got me thinking about ways in which we can create sacred spaces in and around our being. How we can perhaps create sacredness in the way we interact with life and one another. How do we bless the world and the spaces in which we live, by the way that we live?

This got me thinking of blessing and ways in which we can bring blessings to life in our daily interactions. How we can bless one another and the world in which we live and breathe. How we can bring that eternal and loving spirit to life that I name God, in places where the light has seemingly gone out. We see so much of our inhumanity, of our darkness, in life. You can turn on the news any night of the week to see evidence of this.

How can we bring some of the light into our world? I do not believe that we are corrupt and wrong in our very nature. I do believe that if nurtured correctly a human can bring that divine aspect within us to life. We humans can become a blessing.

Now this got me thinking about “Blessings”. I wondered what a blessing is? Who or what can give a blessing? What form do blessings take? As I sat there thinking about blessings I received a wonderful message from Lizzie Roper. She sent a piece written on the role of humour in the Muslim tradition. It discussed Nasrudin the archetype of the Holy Fool that can be found in virtually every religious tradition. Through his foolishness Nasrudin helps us to see beyond the confines of our often small minds. His blessing is that he shakes those who engage with him out of their often rigid belief systems.

Now the piece ended with this wonderful line. “Blessed are the flexible for they will never be bent out of shape.” How true is this? And yet so often in life we can be so inflexible and therefore if something goes against our perceived understanding we can become so easily bent out of shape.

The line "Blessed are the flexible..." brought to mind those beautiful words from the “Sermon on Mount” in Matthews Gospel, often referred to as the Beatitudes. Here I believe we hear the central theme of Jesus' ministry, his core teachings. Here we hear the blessings, the Good News that he brings. Here we are being shown how we can ourselves become blessings to our world. Here we are being shown how we can create a sacred space in our way being and doing. Here we are being shown the way…

Matthew 5 vv 3-10

3 ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
5 ‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
6 ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
7 ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
8 ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9 ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
10 ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 ‘Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely* on my account. 12Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
13 ‘You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
14 ‘You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden.15No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

Last Sunday after leading worship I was asked by an occasional attender “what do Unitarians think about sin?” I paused for a moment and then began by explaining that this was an impossible question to answer as I do not speak for all Unitarians. I then went on to explain what I believe about sin. I believe in sin in the sense that no one is perfect and that we all fall short from time to time. As I learnt a while back in the original Hebrew the word for sin in scripture meant to miss the mark or really to forget. In this sense to forget who we truly are. To sin is to basically fail to live up to what you are capable of being. So in that sense I suspect that we are all sinners, I know I am, I have never managed to consistently live up to what I am capable of being. I truly am imperfect, in the sense that I am incomplete. Imperfect coming from imperfectus, meaning incomplete, not meaning that there is something wrong with me, at the core of me.

Having said this I do not believe in “Original Sin” I do not believe that we are fallen by our very nature, quite the opposite. I find that what we do is forget that we have the divine aspect within our earth bound bodies and thus fall short of what we are capable of being. We can all do better, I know I can.

So yes I do believe in sin, just not "Original Sin". Instead I believe in “Original Blessing”, so beautifully described in the writings of Matthew Fox. Fox highlights that before “The Fall” in the second chapter of Genesis there is originally goodness and blessing found in the metaphorical creation story of Genesis I. Remember! At the end of each day, God “Looked at what he had done, and it was good…all of it was very good!” I think if we move beyond a literal understanding of the creation mythos that something deeply important is being revealed here about the nature of life itself. That life is a blessing in and of itself, it truly is the greatest gift of all.

Fox claims that through this creating energy we are continually invited into a co-creating relationship and are called therefore to engage in the on going blessing that is life. He states, in ‘Original Blessing’ that “Blessing involves relationship: one does not bless without investing something of oneself into the receiver of one’s blessing. And one does not receive blessing oblivious of its gracious giver. A blessing spirituality is a relating spirituality. And if it is true that all creation flows from a single, loving source, then all creation is blessed and is a blessing…”

Original Blessing is saying that we all flow from what the 12th century mystic Hildegard of Bingen has described as “Original Wisdom” and that the trouble is that we have forgotten this. The sin if you like is really that we have forgotten what we are formed from, the one original source. Therefore when we remember this and become at one with it we become a blessing to our world and create an environment, a sacred space, in which we can create further blessings.

Matthew Fox's understanding of "Original Blessing" speaks to me, to the very core of my being. It shows me that the key to becoming a blessing is to remember from what we originally came, what we are formed from and what we are capable of being. We can all be blessings and give blessings to one another. It does not require special training or to be a special or Holy person. We are all Holy if we would but just let that aspect of ourselves come to light.

In the sermon on the mount Jesus says "You are the light of the world..." how many of us truly believe this? How many of us truly believe that we are formed from love and that this light is their within us. how many of us feel more comfortable seeing ourselves as somehow wrong deep down within  and therefore capable of not much. Rather than bearers of the light who have somehow forgotten that we have that divine aspect deep down within.

Now some of us seem so far from this state at times that this light has virtually gone out. It is those amongst us who perhaps need blessing more than anyone else and yet often they are the ones we fear to touch. Should we give up on them, cast them aside? I don’t think so, for as John O’Donhue has said no life is unreachable we can touch those deeper aspects of one another we can connect soul to soul. You see when we bless we are engaging in the original blessing that brought about life. We are becoming co-creators in this process. By blessing we are affecting what unfolds. All life matters, everything we do and do not do matters.

Below is the beautiful poem “If you knew” by Ellen Bass. Here she describes a way to live with blessing. How to bless every person in our daily interactions, ways in which we can recognise one another’s sacred uniqueness. So often in the busyness of life we fail to do this, we miss what is there.

"If You Knew" by Ellen Bass

What if you knew you'd be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line's crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn't signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won't say Thank you, I don't remember
they're going to die.

A friend told me she'd been with her aunt.
They'd just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt's powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked a half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon's spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

Now just imagine what life might be like if we lived as Ellen Bass describes in her poem. What if  we attempted to see the people we interact with day by day this way, as both fragile and mortal. Perhaps if we truly recognised one another as we truly are we might bless one another as the waiter did in the poem. Not by doing anything special or Holy, just by recognising one another’s sacred humanity. That I believe is to truly bless.

We can begin to bless one another. We can create a sacred space in and around our being. We can become co-creators in that original blessing that formed life. We just need to remember who we are; we just need to remember the original wisdom and our world can then perhaps once again become very good indeed.

I'm going to end this little chip of a blessing with with the following by Monica Cummings

“Bless a Stranger with a Smile” by Monica Cummings

Take time each day to remember you are a part of the interconnected web of life. Bless a stranger with a smile. Tell the people in your life how much they mean to you. And take a moment every day, beginning today, to give thanks for all that you have.

May you have the strength, courage, and commitment to begin or continue the rewarding journey of self-understanding. May you have the wisdom to forgive yourselves, the grace to ask for forgiveness, and the compassion to forgive others.

You are the co-creator of your life. It’s up to you. Forgive your trespasses as you forgive those who trespass against you. May you live your beliefs and feel at one with everyone and everything.

Blessing upon you,
Blessings upon me,
Blessings upon every living thing,
Blessed Be.

Amen

Building bridges not walls

Below is the most beautiful of meditations written by Rev Margaret Kirk, “something there is that doesn’t love a wall. (inspired by the poem of the same name by Robert Frost no doubt). It speaks powerfully to me. I first heard it during the anniversary service where Margaret preached the address at the British Unitarian General Assembly meetings a few years back. I seem to remember that David Dawson set some music to it. I’d love to get a hold of it and perhaps learn to sing it sometime. We shall see...

Here are those beautiful words...

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” by Rev Margaret Kirk

We see barriers erected between people of different lands,
We see sheets of steel and towers of concrete called Protection.
We see boundaries policed, 
watch men, women and children running from hunger and persecution,
looking for a gap in the wall………

Something there is that doesn't love a wall…………

We see walls of fear –
Fear of the young, fear of the stranger,
Fear of sexuality that is different, fear of the educated, fear of the poor,
Fear of the Muslim, fear of the Jew – 
Fear upon fear, endless and perpetuating,
And we offer our silent prayer that solid walls of fear will crumble to dust.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall…………

We hear the language of separation,
The jingoistic chant, the racial slur,
words of indifference and dismissal,
words arranged for the purpose of exclusion,
words that sting and taunt, 
words that lie.
Let us find words that ring with love and truthfulness,
that reach out through the emptiness of separation.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall…………

We see the deluded barriers of the mind protecting self,
We see relationships stripped of affection
as one person becomes closed to another.
We see people trapped in misunderstanding,
old hurts re-ignited,
bricks placed higher on the wall,
goodwill and trust suspended.
and we ask for boundaries that are not impenetrable, 
through which light can shine and distance be dissolved.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall………….

And when we need these boundaries for our own well being,
Let us know them for what they are,
Use them wisely and kindly,
Recognising our own vulnerability and that of others – 
So each of us can find the space for retreat and succour,
find that peace that passes all understanding
and be renewed with strength and love
for the task of living life joyfully in communion with all others.
Amen

Rev Margaret Kirk

So often in life we hear of the need for healthy boundaries in order to live happily and successfully. I do not disagree with this, boundaries are important. My only concern is that so often these boundaries quickly become barriers, nay walls; walls that can quickly separate us from one another. And as Margaret has so beautifully described these walls can be created in so many other ways too. There are many walls that separate one from another...

There is an ancient Persian tale known as,  “learning to write in the sand” The story depicts two men crossing a river. One gets into trouble and is saved by his friend. As a way of thanks the rescued man has the account carved in a nearby stone. Sometime later the two men again reach the same stretch of river only this time they get into a silly argument and one strikes the other. When the argument calms down the very same man who wrote in the stone gets up and once again writes about the incident, only this time he carves it in sand. He says "I hope to forget this argument before the wind and water erase my words from the sand."

It is important to know what should be written in stone and what should be written in stand.

It brings to mind an account from John’s Gospel ( John Ch8 vv 1-11) of the “woman caught in adultery” The woman is about to be stoned to death, in accordance with the law. The Pharasee’s test Jesus and ask him what should be done. He does not answer immediately and simply sits down and begins to write in the sand. They continue to press him and after a short while he stands up and utters the immortal words “Let those amongst you who is without sin, cast the first stone” and then bends down and continues to write in the sand. One by one the crowd disperses, beginning with the elders and after they have all gone, Jesus rises and asks the woman where they are? And if anyone has condemned her? She tells him that no one has. To which he replies “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

I have often wondered what Jesus wrote in the sand. Maybe he wrote the misdeed, maybe he wrote his own misdeeds. Who knows?

“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Can any one truly say that at some point in their life they have not caused harm to another? I think it is safe to say that to this extent we are all sinners, I am. Now do not get me wrong I do not believe, to quote ‘The Book of Common Prayer’ “there is no health in us”. I am not talking of original sin. I do not believe that anyone is born into this world tainted in any sense. I believe that we are all born with a clean slate and with the potential for so many things.

This afternoon I am conducting a blessing of a child. I will use water in the ceremony, but not to cleanse him of sin. No instead I will use water, the most basic element of life, to bless the child. I will touch his brow, his lips and hands, to bless his thoughts, words and deeds. 

Each week at the close of worship I offer similar words of Benediction. I ask that we receive the blessings of God, the blessings of love in all that we feel, all that we think, all that we say and all that we do; that we carry this vision into all of our lives. The hope is that we go out into the world and live the best life that we can. As I have said before I believe that we can change the world, just one smile at a time.

I was chatting with Carolyn Jones (a member of the Altrincham congregation) about sin the other day. Now Carolyn is a lover of the etymology of words. She said that Unitarians don’t do sin. “Don’t we”, I thought.  Now I believe that she was actually talking about “Original Sin”. I explained to her that I’m quite happy talking about sin, because I know that I sin. I sin in the sense that I fall short of the mark. Who doesn't?

Now what do I mean when I speak of sin? Well first of all it is important to understand that in the original Hebrew and Greek sin meant falling short of the mark.

The Unitarian Universalist minister Frank Muir, in an attempt to explain sin's etymology says that:

“The Garden story was all about cheyt, the Hebrew word meaning “to miss the mark,” which was their definition of sin-like shooting an arrow at the target and missing. After you miss, of course it’s a disappointment, but you try again, you try to hit the mark. In other words, sinning is a part of life, no different than breathing, eating, or sleeping. So we sin-what else is new!

Sin...is anything that I do that isolates, ostracizes, or separates me or others from the human community (and by extension, from the web of life) which results in robbing or denying human uniqueness and potential. Call it evil or flawed behaviour; call it missing the mark; call it brokenness; call it denial, repression, or reaction formation-it’s all sin if it separates, ostracizes, or isolates us from the ground of our being, from that which defines us as human beings. Sin is behaviour that prevents a person from living out their potential for human being-ness."

The great twentieth century liberal theologian Paul Tillich defined sin as anything than leads to estrangement from ourselves, from one another and from God. I see it as a state of brokenness, alienation and division. I am certain that we have all experienced this; we have all experienced division within ourselves, estrangement from our neighbours and those we love and from whatever we believe is at the core of all this.

Forrest Church says that “the opposite of sin is salvation, a word that means health or wholeness. Not only is this clear from the Latin root, but the parallel Teutonic etymology suggests the same meaning: hale, health, whole, and holy spring from the same root.”

This brings me back to those walls that Margaret talked of in her meditation. It also gets me thinking of a poster that is hanging in the school room at Dunham Road that reads “Unitarians building bridges not walls”.

This I believe is the key to living religiously. True religion is about building bridges between what separates us from one another, from ourselves and from God. It's all about wholeness.

When we build these bridges we are atoning, we are becoming whole again. Atonement literally means at-one-ment. It is about bringing back together that which was once separate. I believe that to atone is to begin to build those bridges between our true selves, between one another and between God. This is true religion, building bridges that can begin to heal the troubles within ourselves and within our world.

So let’s not build walls that separate us from one another, let’s instead build bridges of reconciliation between one another and all life. If we do we have already begun to build the Commonwealth of Love right here, right now.

We can make ourselves and all life whole again.