I don’t always start my Sunday’s as well as I would like. Last week was a classic example. I found myself rushing back from Sue’s. very early, to Altrincham to get ready for leading worship beginning in Urmston at 10am. I like to get to there early, certainly before 9am, to prepare myself in silence and solitude. As I left Sue’s I turned on the radio and listened to Radio 4’s excellent Sunday morning program “Something Understood”. The first word I heard was “Patience”. It was an episode on “Slowing Down”. I only heard about half of it and thought to myself “That sounded interesting”, I’ll listen to it later, it had awakened my homiletic consciousness. (I was in far too much of hurry to listen there and then, so funny!)
I found myself rushing around a bit that morning, getting frustrated as everything just seemed to take too long. I got particularly frustrated with my computer as I attempted to catch up with world affairs and friends on social networks, as well as answer emails. I remember that old familiar cry coming out of my mouth “I haven’t got time for this”, as I lost my wi-fi connection for the third time. I have noticed on cold dark, wet and windy days it seems to go down more often.
On the way to Urmston I called into the local garage and bought a coffee and petrol. I remember getting frustrated at the card machine as I attempted to pay, complaining (under my breath) it always takes so long. At which the man behind the counter responded, “people are so impatient these days, you have to wait for me to authorise the payment.” It caused me to pause and as I left I smiled and laughed at myself and once again noticed my homiletic consciousness come to life. I was noticing I was rushing and certainly lacking patience that morning.
As I drove to Urmston I found myself slowing down and truly connecting to what I was doing. I spent the day noticing so many things and truly engaged with all I was doing. I remembered the lovely two days I had just spent, slowing down and connecting. I remembered all the times I enjoyed simply walking in nature. The day before I had enjoyed a lovely walk around Sale Water Park with Sue and Poppy the dog. I thought about my times of connection walking around Dunham Massey and those beautiful deer in recent years, I also remember how connected I had felt walking round Platt Fields Park, particularly with the geese in the lake, as a student minister. It was lovely connecting all those moments that had brought me to this moment and how those moments had helped to make the moment I was living right now, they brought the moment alive. I saw the connection of my life and that moment with all life and those moments of connection that I will know and all those folk that will enjoy them when I am long gone. As I did I felt this strange sensation of time being stretched. We do not merely live in this Golden moment, but in a timeless never ending, long and deep moment, for time and space is eternal it is without limit.
The next morning I listened to the full episode of “Something Understood”, it has inspired this "blogspot". During the episode reference was made to what is called the “Long Now Moment.” And the “Long Now Foundation” I have to say it spoke to me powerfully as it shared some of my long held frustrations with some understandings of contemporary spirituality. Particularly how people talk about “The Now” or the “The Present” and how I find that it often feeds into our self-centredness. For me it’s not just about living in the moments, but how we live in the time and space we find ourselves and to truly see that this time and space is connected to all that has ever been and will ever be. That we and they way we inhabit time and space really does matter, for it effects everything. It’s not that we live passively in the moment, but bring it to life, and thus create a legacy for all that follows. The “Long Now Moment” speaks powerfully to my heart, my mind and certainly my soul.
The “Long Now Moment” is inspired by a story, which may well be mythos, but hey stories are all about mythos; a story of rotting Oak Beams in New College Oxford. The college was founded in the 14th century. At its heart lies a dining hall that features expensive oak beams across its ceiling. Now these great beams had lasted about 500 years, but during the late nineteenth century an entomologist discovered that the beams were infested with beetles and needed replacing. This was a big problem for the college for such beams, of sufficient size and quality, would be hard to find and expensive.
One of the college’s junior fellows suggested that there might be some worthy oaks within the college lands. The college had, when it was formed, been endowned with land scattered around England and run by the college forester. So he was called in and asked if there were any such oaks on the lands. He paused for a moment and then a reassuring expression appeared on his face and he said “Well sirs, we was wonderin’ when you’d be askin’.” It seems that when the College had been founded a grove of oaks had been planted to replace the beams in the dining hall when they became beetly, because oak beams always become beetly in the end. It seems that this plan had been passed down from one Forester to the next for over five hundred years. Each forester was told that “You don’t cut them oaks. Them’s for the College Hall.” It would appear that the founders of New College were not just obsessed with themselves and their time and place. They thought of their legacy, of the generations that followed.
This story, whether true or apocryphal, has become a foundational tale of the “Long Now Moment” movement that has developed in recent times. “The Long Now Moment” movement has developed in response to the fast paced instant society that we live in today, one that does not really think of the future and has a kind of disrespect of the past, a generation that has kind of hijacked the spirituality of Now.
The innovative musician, producer and composer Brian Eno is one of the key proponents of the “Long Now Moment”, he became interested in long now living after moving to new York and being shocked how instant and insular the people living there were. It was almost as if nothing existed outside of the moment folk were living in or outside of the widow of the buildings they were enclosed within. He has said that:
“"Now" is never just a moment. The Long Now is the recognition that the precise moment you're in grows out of the past and is a seed for the future. The longer your sense of Now, the more past and future it includes. It's ironic that, at a time when humankind is at a peak of its technical powers, able to create huge global changes that will echo down the centuries, most of our social systems seem geared to increasingly short nows. Huge industries feel pressure to plan for the bottom line and the next shareholders meeting. Politicians feel forced to perform for the next election or opinion poll. The media attract bigger audiences by spurring instant and heated reactions to human interest stories while overlooking longer-term issues - the real human interest…”
He continues…
“…We don't yet, however, live in The Long Now. Our empathy doesn't extend far forward in time. We need now to start thinking of our great-grandchildren, and their great-grandchildren, as other fellow-humans who are going to live in a real world which we are incessantly, though only semi-consciously, building. But can we accept that our actions and decisions have distant consequences, and yet still dare do anything?”
Danny Hills of the “Long Now Foundation” has been working on creating a long time clock as a kind of practical symbol of the of “Long Now” living. The idea is to create a clock that will last 10,000 years. Human society has existed for 10.000 years and the idea is to put our current place at the half way point of this. On the face of it this seems like a crazy idea, how can a machine last this long? The point is though to get us think of the future. As Stuart Brand has said:
“Such a clock, if sufficiently impressive and well engineered, would embody deep time for people. It should be charismatic to visit, interesting to think about, and famous enough to become iconic in the public discourse. Ideally, it would do for thinking about time what the photographs of Earth from space have done for thinking about the environment. Such icons reframe the way people think.”
Such a clock may just help us transcend the selfish thinking that keeps us enslaved in our time and space. Such short term thinking can be so destructive. “Long Now Moment” living can slow us down and help us to connect and be still enough to begin to live reverentially again. To begin to understand that how we live and act really matters, it affects our lives and it impacts on the lives of others. The trouble is that we want things now and we want them instantly. There’s nothing new here by the way, we humans have always had a tendency towards this. Perhaps this is why the religious traditions have always suggested that we need to slow down and connect and thus begin to revere once again.
This brings to mind the story of Elijah, from the Book of Kings. He wanted to know God and wanted this instantly. He goes to a cave on mount Horeb where he is told that God will pass by and speak directly to him. A great wind comes, followed by an earthquake and then a fire, but we are told that God is in none of them. Following the fire comes the still small voice – a voice, a sound like silence – this voice that is less than a whisper and yet not quite silence signals the presence of the divine.
He had to be still and he to be silent in order the know the Divine. He couldn’t rush it nor could he force it. It took patience and it took faith.
Now of course this is mythos. The one thing that has survived the 10,000 years that human society has been around are the stories the tales, the mythos, that we have shared, they are timeless. They move through time and can speak to we who live today, even though many were first told thousands of years ago. In many ways it is the stories and not the machines that connect the generations to one another. To me these are the perfect example of what it means to believe in the “Long Now Moment”. The stories connect us to the past, they connect us to the present and they connect us to the future and help us see how important it is that we leave a legacy for all who follow. The stories help us to create empathy for the other, the other not yet born that will live when we are dead and gone.
Everything matters, how we live now matters, just as how those who lived before us mattered. All life is connected and interconnected, past present and future. So how we live today will affect what is yet to come.
Let’s not just passively live in the short now, thinking only of ourselves and how we feel this moment. Let us extend our compassion beyond the confines of our little ego-centric worlds. Let’s think beyond the skin and walls we live in and develop compassion not only for those who live today but for the generations that are yet to come. Let us instead begin to live in the “Long Now” and expand our empathy and bring the moment that we live in fully alive, remembering all that came before and to build a legacy for those who follow, so that our lives will prove worth dying for by the legacies of love that we leave behind.
"They say that whenever the great Protestant theologian Paul Tillich went to the beach, he would pile up a mound of sand and sit on it gazing out at the ocean with tears running down his cheeks. One wonders what there was about it that moved him so.
The beauty and the power of it? The inexpressible mystery of it? The futility of all those waves endlessly flowing in and ebbing out again? The sense that it was out of the ocean that life originally came and that when life finally ends, it is the ocean that will still remain? Who knows? . . .
Maybe it was when he looked at the ocean that he caught a glimpse of the One he was praying to. Maybe what made him weep was how vast and overwhelming it was and yet at the same time as near as the breath of it in his nostrils, as salty as his own tears."
The old saying goes “Early to bed, early to rise, makes all men healthy, wealthy and wise.” Well over the last few months I have become an early riser. I certainly feel healthier for this. I’m not sure I am any wealthier, well certainly not in the material sense, although my life does indeed feel much richer. Am I any wiser? Well I think that others will have to be the judge of that.
I do though rise very early in the morning these days, usually between 5 and 6am. I have to do so in order to exercise before beginning my usual day. Now each day I go through a simple exercise routine before going out for my daily walk. Except on Tuesday’s, Thursday’s and Sunday’s. On Tuesday’s and Thursday’s I attend an early morning meditation after exercising and will go for my walk later in the day and on Sunday’s I get ready for leading worship and will again usually go walking later in the day.
While I am exercising I usually listen to the radio. The stations I listen to are often varied, from Talk Sport to Radio 4. It’s strange but I do not seem to want to listen to music while going through my exercise regime. These days I to listen to music while driving and not really while doing anything else.
…I digress…
Well one Sunday, a little while ago, I turned on the Radio at about 6am and began to exercise. The program I listened to was titled “Something Understood”, it was mesmerising and caught me right in the heart of me and I have listened to this program about every other week since. Each week they explore a subject through poetry, prose, music and personal anecdotal reflection. A few weeks ago I listened to a beautifully moving piece titled “I sat down and wept” by Samira Ahmed. It was a reflection on the ambiguous power of tears and it awakened by homiletic consciousness on that cold late winter morning. The program looked specifically at our attitudes to people who weep and weeping in general. It was fascinating.
While listening there was one poem, by the contemporary British poet Andrew McMillan, that caught me deep in the heart of me. It was titled “The Men are Weeping in the Gym”
It struck me powerfully as I considered myself exercising at this ungodly hour.
Below is a recording of Andrew sharing the poem and a written version...
“The men are weeping in the gym” by Andrew McMillan
The men are weeping in the gym
Using the hand dryer to cover their sobs
Their hearts have grown too big for their chests
Their chests have grown too big for their shirts
They are dressed like kids who have forgotten their games kits
They are crying in the toilets
And because they have built themselves as statues
This must mean that God has entered them
They are ringing their faces like sweat towels in the sink
Their veins are about to burst their banks
They are flooding out of themselves onto the tiles
They have turned water into protein shakes
They have got too close to the mirrors
They have got too close to the glass
And now they are laying in the broken pools of own their faces
The lines of them at the decline press
The bicep curl
Waiting, staring straight ahead
Swearing that the wetness on their cheeks is perspiration
That the words they mutter as they lift are meaningless
That they feel nothing when the muscle tears itself from itself
That they don’t hear the thousands of tiny fracturing’s needed to build something stronger.
Andrew McMillan is a gay man from the north of England and the poem is partly inspired by his fascination with heterosexual masculinity and the way that men attempt to impress other men. I get the impression that he sees a sadness in it all.
As I listened it made me pause and think as I exercised before getting ready to lead worship. He captured one of the reasons why I have had a phobia about gyms, something I am beginning to overcome. I exercise to be as healthy as I can be. I am certainly not attempting to impress anyone. Thankfully I rarely look to others for approval.
McMillan suggests that many modern young men feel they no longer have a real emotional outlet. That actually the concept of the modern man is not as real as some suggest and that young men are struggling for identity and going more deeply into themselves and into what he calls masculine activity, that they feel fragile, scared and weak. He suggests that many young men have reacted against the idea of the modern man and that they feel under a new pressure to be something that they cannot be, to behave in a way they should behave, to look a way they should look. Modern man can cry, but do they really know who they are? Are they really free?
Yes modern men can cry publicly, can show tears. Think of Obama who cried following another tragic school shooting, British politicians too as well as many celebrities can express tears publicly. Something that perhaps they couldn’t have done in the past and yet there is a deeper sense of repression in there. It is suggested that when men cry it is actually controlled, where as in women that this is viewed as losing control and a sign of weakness. So there is still a sense of needing to be strong and in control involved when showing emotion publicly.
There is something deeply sad in all of this…I suspect that we men are missing out of something deeply sacred…There is something deeply sacred in tears…
This got me thinking about how and where we cry. In recent times I have heard several people say that they cannot cry alone; that they need other people to be there so that they can feel safe enough to cry. I suspect that this has something to do with the fear of being out of control and being unable to get back to what they perceive as normality. I may well be wrong, but I don’t think so. If you cry in public you will of course be heard and there will usually be someone or even several people who will respond and help you to put things back together again. Sometimes though I think it best just to let someone fall apart and cry. To not put them back together again, just to be with them and to let them let it go.
One thing I have noticed about myself is that I rarely cry in public, not in an utterly out of control way. I think the last time I did so in an utterly uncontrolled way was when I carried Ethan’s coffin out of the church as his funeral. I broke completely in that moment. Nothing could have held that flood back. That said even then I had to maintain some control, even if it was just of my arms and legs.
I do shed tears often, sometimes while leading worship. I don’t fear it. I know these tears are sacred and it is my soul responding to something greater than myself…
...But do I ever lose complete control?
Well I do at times fight back my tears. Not as much as I used to, but I do. I remember going to see my granddad just days before he died at Kirkwood Hospice. As I saw him there asleep I had to fight back the tears as I began to speak to him and he awoke. I somehow managed to get myself back together and spend a little time with him in those last days. I kind of knew somewhere deep within me that if my granddad saw me crying it would hurt him and that was the last thing I wanted to do in that moment. As I drove home all I could do was weep, but there was no one else there while I did so. It was similar with “our Allen” and other friends and loved ones. It has been the same with loving members of the congregation and friends too. I shed tears, but I don’t seem to lose control utterly. I allow the tears to sooth both myself and others but I rarely lose complete control.
…Yes I am open to shedding tears, but I do not weep uncontrollably, well at least not publicly…
And yet I know that there is a strength in tears. We weep with gratitude over all the amazing gifts that life offers to us. We weep communally when we share moments of great joy with others. These tears enable us to connect to our deepest feelings. They help us express our grief at endings and the loss of those who are precious to us.
As Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat remind us
“Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus. He also wept over the city of Jerusalem and in our time, we weep over Jerusalem and Baghdad and Kabul and the refugee cities in Palestine and the Sudan and elsewhere. A Yiddish proverb says, "What soap is for the baby, tears are for the soul."
The early Christian desert fathers and mothers had the highest regard for what they called "the gift of tears." According to Alan Jones, Dean Emeritus of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, these drops "are like the breaking of the waters of the womb before the birth of a child." That's a wonderful way to describe the connection between pain and joy!”
Ancient Greek, Roman and Hebrew cultures recognised the sacredness of tears. During their funeral rites they would cry into lacrimatories or tear cups. These small veils, filled with tears and sealed would often be buried with the deceased. In one sense these buried the griever’s feelings but they were also a way of offering a tribute to the lost loved one. In this sense the tears were the final gift to the life that had been lost.
So even though I know that weeping, that crying is a deep sacrament of love, I still do not want to let go absolutely and I know I am not alone. I feel that many of us still find this difficult. I suspect in so doing we are missing out on really hitting the depths of our human experience and transcending absolutely our human created limits. You see when we weep tears our experiences stretch beyond what the mind can comprehend, for tears truly tear open our hearts. Something so many of us, myself included, are afraid of, or so it would seem.
Tears are sacraments of love. Crying is a true spiritual experience that connects us to our deeper selves, one another, all life and that power that both creates and connects all life.
May we fear no more to shed our tears.
...I will end this little "spot" with the following reflection by David O. Rankin
“A Time to Cry” by David O. Rankin
The mother waited for her child at the bus stop. The bus arrived on time, depositing the passengers on the other side of the highway.
The eight-year-old boy broke from the group and began running across the four lanes of concrete.
The blue Cadillac crushed him like a plastic doll.
In the living-room that day:
You tell her to speak to God.
You tell her to eat and sleep.
You tell her to look to the future.
You tell her to walk in cool air.
You tell her to bear the pain and sorrow.
You tell her to think of the other children.
But your face is wet with tears; and your heart is gripped with fear; and your mind is lost in darkness; and your soul plunges wildly into the desolation of the valley – where all words are symbols of absurdity.
Yes there will be another day. But today-there is nothing to do but share the tragedy. There is nothing to do but cry!
