May Our Lives Be Inspired By Beautiful Encounters

Life is full of encounters, opportunities and interactions; there are many opportunities that could lead us in all kinds of directions; we never know when we set out each day what the opportunities we face may just lead too.

A week last Wednesday I heard and witnessed a rather beautiful encounter. Whenever I lead worship, or one of the several groups I host, I always promote them on social media, it is an attempt to open our free religious tradition to others. I promoted the service I was doing at Cross Street Chapel and David a friend told me that he had a day off work and was interested in the title of the service. I was pleased to hear this. He has in the past responded to some of my blog posts but never attended an event or service.

I got to the chapel early and he arrived as others did about 15 minutes before the service began. We said hello and he sat quietly in the chapel. A few minutes before he had a woman who is a member of the chapel had also arrived, she did not take her seat immediately. A few minutes later she did and appeared to sit near my friend. I noticed that they began to talk and thought well that’s a good sign someone is making him feel welcome. I had no idea what was going on. I walked into the chapel and soon discovered what was happening, they were both beaming at each other. No it wasn’t the beginning of a new romance, although it seems that they had both experienced a brief encounter.

They had never met before that day but had actually, without realising it, on their way to the chapel. They had both come by tram. David lived further out and told me he had missed the tram he had intended and was worried he might be late. A few stops later this smiling lady got and sat next to him. They did not speak to each other but felt comfortable in each others silent company. The woman got off a stop before David in Manchester and he told me later that just before she did that he had this feeling that they were both going to the same place. He had no idea where it came from and wished he had said something then.

David got off the tram the stop after the woman and then followed directions on google maps to the chapel, he walked in , sat down and waited and then the woman entered the chapel sat down near him. He said hello. Low and behold it was that very same lovely smiling woman who had sat next to him on the tram. It blew his mind and it made his day as it did mind. Afterwards we talked and he told me that he had connected with the service and the whole day, one of a great many surprises and seeming coincidences. Sometimes life is like that, don’t you find, especially when you are tuned into the right frequency and not lost in your own little ego-centric world.

I wonder how often in life such seeming coincidences occur, how many opportunities or chance encounters come our way, how many doors open that could lead to something incredible and new. I wonder if these opportunities come just once or do that keep on coming again and again in one form or another. I’m not sure if I am honest, although I do know that when I’m truly tuned in they do seem to occur far more often than when I m not. I wonder how many times we have that feeling that David had on the tram and ignore it, rationalise it out and turn away from it, only to find the universe present it to me once again. Or perhaps it’s all just random chance, just chaos bumping into each other. Who knows for certain? Certainly not I.

We all wander through life, primarily living by the same daily, perhaps weekly patterns. The seasons change but we live by a similar pattern and rhythm and yet as we do so life changes, we change, others change and we have these interesting interactions from time to time. I wonder sometimes if such encounters, however brief, are constantly available to us. How many people do we pass in life and never speak or truly interact with and yet we never know what the interaction might lead to.

This brings to mind the the rather wonderful poem below by Wislawa Szyborska

"Love at First Sight" by Wislawa Szymborska's

They're both convinced
that a sudden passion joined them.
Such certainty is beautiful,
but uncertainty is more beautiful still.

Since they'd never met before, they're sure
that there'd been nothing between them.
But what's the word from the streets,
staircases, hallways —
perhaps they've passed by each other a
million times?

I want to ask them
if they don't remember —
a moment face to face
in some revolving door?
perhaps a "sorry" muttered in a crowd?
a curt "wrong number" caught in the receiver? —
but I know the answer.
No, they don't remember.
They'd be amazed to hear
that Chance has been toying with them
now for years.

Not quite ready yet
to become their Destiny,
it pushed them close, drove them apart,
it barred their path,
stifling a laugh,
and then leaped aside.

There were signs and signals,
even if they couldn't read them yet.
Perhaps, three years ago
or just last Tuesday
a certain leaf fluttered
from one shoulder to another?
Something was dropped and then picked up.
Who knows, maybe the ball that vanished
into childhood's thicket?

There were doorknobs and doorbells
where one touch had covered another
beforehand.
Suitcases, checked and standing side by side.
One night, perhaps, the same dream,
grown hazy by morning.

Every beginning
is only a sequel, after all,
and the book of events
is always open halfway through.

This beautiful poem “Love at first sight”, by Wislawa Szymborska, describes two lovers engaged in a display of public affection. I get the impression that the author is convinced that some guiding force is at work in their interaction. What begins as “Chance”, then becomes “Destiny” which “pushed them close, drove them apart”. The poems suggests that these lives were scripted long ago in a “book of events”, which cannot be altered, try as we might. The poem suggests that the lovers have passed by one another many times before, but were never aware or ready to make that first point of contact. That there were signs along the way and that one day this encounter would happen, but it was more than mere chance, something else was at work offering itself to both of them. It just took this moment for it to happen.

In many ways this is how I see life these days. So many possibilities are going on all around us. Some good, others not so good. So many joys, tragedies, triumphs, failures, frustrations, crises, endless possibilities good and bad. Life offers itself to us, but so often we close ourselves off from it. One thing I have noticed is that as I have allowed life itself to guide me I have become more open I am to life itself and the more connected I felt, the more aware I have become of experiencing meaning and making meaning filled decisions. As I have done so I experienced a greater sense of belonging to myself, those people I share my life with and this world in which we all live and breathe and share our being.

The more I have lived this way the more I have noticed the meaningful coincidences in life. Some say this is how it is meant to be, I am not wholly convinced of this, I prefer to see it as this how it could be if I allow myself to follow the rhythm of life. If I do I notice the so called coincidences, the synchronicities of life.

I accepted one of those opportunities two years almost to the day when after a “Singing Meditation” Sue asked me if I would like to go for food after something we were both attending, I said yes and look what followed. I wonder what would have happened if I had not. One of the “Sliding Doors” moments. In our two years together one thing that we have said we will do is say yes to life when it offers itself to us. We have mostly stuck to this and when we have done so it has always turned out right. The classic example being the trip magical trip to Israel that I was invited on.

I do believe that life speaks to us, if we are in tune enough to hear it, it speaks in so many ways too. I believe it spoke to David quite a lot that day. Some say it is the hand of God directing everything, others say it is just pure chance and others call it synchronicity. I am one of those who call it synchronicity. I also refer to it as the “Lure of Divine Love”.

Personally I do not hold with the view of a God who controls all our interaction,that life is preordained if you like. Neither do I hold a deistic understanding that a Creator started the processes of life but then left life to get on with it. Nor am I an atheist or even agnostic, I sense that there is a Divine presence in life. I have come to believe in the Divine Lure of Love. That the Divine lures life on, that we are co-creators, with all of life in a universal process. I sense this divine presence within me and I experience it in life itself, particularly in creativity or in deeply felt interactions. I have discovered that when I am awake to such things in life I experience synchronicity constantly. Life seems to direct me, when I am awake to it

That said intuition alone is not enough, discernment is vital in order to make wise decisions about life.

The word discernment is formed from the Latin word “discernere”, which means to separate, to distinguish, to sort out. Just think of prospectors panning for gold or sifting through the rocks and dirt in search of gem stones. They are separating, they are sorting through the muck for the jewels, they are distinguishing, they are discerning.

Discernment is the key to making wise decisions about our lives, about what our senses are saying to us. We need to discover what is of value and what needs to be discarded as our minds interpret our senses. We need to discard the dirt and muck to uncover the gold, the gems, to have clarity of thought, so that we can truly follow that Divine spark within each of us. This is not easy, especially when we think of all that information that swims around in our lives and are consciousness; information like an enormous shoal of fish swimming round and round aimlessly in a small tank and not really going anywhere. Our lives, our heads are just so full of stuff, our senses are constantly overloaded. How do we discern what is the right response? Well we need silence; we need time away from all this information and all these things that pull us in so many directions. We need to still our senses from time to time and thus tune into the source of all life. We need time to be still, time to be silent, time to connect to our bodies and our breathing; time to hear that still small voice of calm. A voice less than a whisper, but somehow more than silence.

We need to awaken to our true consciousness in order to make those sane and sensible decisions about life. We need to learn to separate those things that are of value and those that are not. We need to do this in order to hear that voice, that is less than whisper but that is somehow more than silence; that voice that has spoken down the centuries, to those who had ears that could hear it.

That voice that spoke to David on the tram and then again a little later as he sat down in Cross street chapel and share worship with a room full of strangers or if you prefer friends he had not yes met.

The choices we make matter. It matters what we are and what we do. I do not think that God chooses this for us. Yes God offers guidance, “The Lure of Divine Love” but it is up to us to choose the path that we follow.

So pay attention my friends. Take time to tune into your deeper selves and the deeper pulse of life, pay attention, trust your own heart but please discern, make wise choices about what life offers to do, for what you do and do not do really matters…

May you have interesting and beautiful encounters and may you trust them enough that you allow them to lead you to ever more beautiful lives.

The Five Gifts & The Sixth Sense

From “The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship” by David Whyte pp 42-43

“This falling in love can occur in a multiplicity of ways. We have the remarkable ability as human beings to fall in love with a person, a work, or even an idea of ourselves. That is, we create a relationship that has a perfected image of what we first encounter, a sense of longing for the perfect person, the ideal work, the full potential of our own character. We fall in love through seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, intuiting and longing. These senses are constantly mediating the frontier between what we think is a self and what we think is other than our selves.

First we have eyes, taken mostly for granted, with which we see a new moon or a tiny memo. We have ears, not fully appreciated, with which to entertain a grand opera or a humble opinion, and we have these tireless hands used every day to pull others towards us or push them away; most especially we have a tongue with which to taste, to give voice to desires or to lash others with our pent-up disapproval. We also have the intellect to contrast and compare, to measure carefully and weigh things in the balance. Then beneath them all, untiring but seldom listened to, we have the sixth sense acknowledge in almost all traditions a swirling internal formation called the intuition, the imagination, the heart, the almost prophetic part of a person that at its best somehow seems to know what is good and what is bad for us, but also what pattern is just about to precipitate, what out of a hundred possibilities is just about to happen, in a sense, an unspoken faculty for knowing what season we are in. What is about to die and what is about to come into being.”

...The writing of David Whyte is one of those something news that I have fallen in love with these last few months...

I have recently embarked on a new healthy living regime. As well as altering my diet, quite dramatically actually, I am also going on walks in and around the area I live. Each morning after my time in prayer and silent meditation I set of out into the day. Each day the walks are getting a little bit longer and I’m up to about two hours, before coming home showering and then reading for about half an hour. This is followed by a healthy breakfast and then I get on with my busy working day. I have to say I’m feeling fantastic for it.

As well as the obvious physical benefits my senses are feeling enriched too as I soak in the beauty of nature all around and all the other people I see up an about at that hour, whether going to work or out and about walking, jogging, cycling and of course all the lovely dog walkers. People seem even more friendly at this hour of the day. I sometimes go for another early evening walk too and it’s great to see all the life in the local parks on these lovely summer evenings. My senses feel as though they have been reawakened once again.

One thing I am loving about this time alone in virtual silence, except for the noise of all that is around me, is that as I walk and my senses connect to the life around me I feel that deeper self, the soul as some have called it, also awakening too. It seems that by moving silently through the life all around me my senses are being awakened and that at some deep level there is another awakening going on right down in the marrow of the soul of me. This is how beauty works of course, it creates this sense of aliveness within us and it is this energy, I have come to believe, that enables us to act in a more loving and compassionate way. I am experiencing a deeper sense of connection to the soul of me, whist also feeling more of a part of the world around and to that something more, that is at the core of everything.

I feel like I’ve fallen in love with life once again and as that song I so love to sing goes “There’s always something new to fall in love with.”

I offer thanks and praise.

Now I’ve also been enjoying a book these last few days, which has really tied in with my current experiences. Each morning after my walk and shower and before I eat I read a little from it. The book is “The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship”, by David Whyte. It is catching that place deep in the heart of me. At the beginning of the "blogspot" is an extract from the book. Here David talks about falling in love either with someone or something, an idea, an opportunity a calling or some new aspect of oneself. He says “We fall in love through seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, intuiting and longing. These senses are constantly mediating the frontier between what we think is a self and what we think is other than our selves.”

He is suggesting that we take our sensory agents for granted. Like our eyes with which we experiences the most vast and amazing things as well as tiny minutiae of detail and or a written messages that we need to make sense of. Oh if only we could always have eyes that could see. He moves on to our ears in which we can appreciate the most complex and moving musical number as well as the thoughts and feelings of another person. Oh if only we could learn to “listen with the ears of our hearts” He then talks of our hands that can be used in such creative and destructive ways and with which we can draw another person close to our heart or push them away in rejection. How often do we use our hands carelessly? He lays the greatest emphasis on our tongues with which I am currently delighting in as I get used to a new diet and also talks of how through our tongues we “give voice to desires or…lash others with our pent up disapproval.” Finally he describes the intellect, our rational reasoning mind with which we discern all that our senses take in and can thus respond, hopefully appropriately. Sadly so often we do not, reason does not always prevail.

Whyte then describes that which is beneath it all, that which sadly we do not listen to enough, probably because of all the noise going on all around us, but also more especially the noise going on within us. He calls this the sixth sense. That voice that is less than silence and yet somehow more than a whisper, that intuitive part of humanity that if we listen to it tells us what is right and good and what is not. What he himself describes as “a swirling internal formation called the intuition, the imagination, the heart, the almost prophetic part of a person that at its best somehow seems to know what is good and what is bad for us, but also what pattern is just about to precipitate, what out of a hundred possibilities is just about to happen, in a sense, an unspoken faculty for knowing what season we are in. What is about to die and what is about to come into being.”

As I have been walking around these last couple of weeks I have felt this intuitive part of me awakening further. I feel more connected, more open, more a part of everything and through this experience life does seem to be calling to me. I have noticed I need less distraction. As I walk I am not listening to music, just to the life around me, I am letting my senses soak this up without any distractions. It’s the same at home I am less inclined to put the radio and or television on, unless it’s to listen to the cricket, either the Ashes or my beloved Yorkshire. I have noticed that as a result I am hearing more clearly that voice that is less than a whisper and yet somehow more than silence. That voice that animates all life, that breathes out everything.

Now this brings me to the following passage from the book of Kings (1 Kings ch 19 vv 11-13).

"He said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. 13When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’"

Earlier in this chapter, from the book of Kings, Elijah is threatened by Queen Jezebel and flees 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 God. The text then tells us that Elijah covers his head and goes out to talk with God.

Elijah had been commissioned that day to set right the problems of Israel and to call a new King for Syria and a new King for Israel and a new prophet who would lead the next generation.

Now no doubt this all sounds a little strange and fanciful and beyond all reason but I hear a deep universal truth in the story. This is "Mythos". Throughout the ages we hear accounts of people being called out by this still small voice; the voice of comfort, of hope, of challenge, of support and also at times the voice of rebuke...This same voice spoke to Jesus, Muhammed, The Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mary Wolstencroft, Nelson Mandella, but perhaps it is not a voice as we understand it....less than a whisper and yet more than silence...

The still small voice of calm…The intuition that speaks to us when our own minds are silent enough…

What is this still small voice of calm?

What is this something, this almost nothing that is more than silence and yet less than a whisper? What is this emptiness that can fill us with awe? It is so gently powerful and seems to emerge, nay burst, from nothingness into life. It is a nagging thought or presence that is their floating around in our consciousness or perhaps unconsciousness. It never seems to easily be revealed it requires us to go into our own depths and at the same time to truly open ourselves up to connect to the life all around us and then somehow in the stillness and silence meaning is revealed. Maybe it is something more than a mere thought or feeling, that appears from nowhere or perhaps beyond nowhere. This feeling that comforts, that accepts, that connects, even pardons just when we need it the most. Perhaps it’s the voice of conscience that lives in that space between what we say and what we do, between the talk and the walk.

We can never be truly certain what this is. Some, myself included, call it God, others prefer a myriad of names. But what does it matter what we call it, this is just belief or unbelief. It is truly beyond us to know what is behind this voice, this thought, this feeling, this experience but I feel sure that we have all known it from time to time. We have all known this indescribable presence at some point in our lives. This sense of being addressed by something, this powerful irresistible urge, is the source of art and poetry and not just religion and theology.

Experience has taught me that there is something in the corner of all our lives that gently, quietly, nudges us and desires our attention. I do not believe that I or any of us will ever fully understand or even comprehend what this still small voice is, but we ought not to ignore it.

To truly connect to it requires a stillness and a silence, a bit like those deer I see when I wander around Dunham Park. I also feel that it also requires a deeper sense of connection and awakening through all our senses, filtered through our reasoning mind. For if we do we will awaken to the beauty that is life, to the joy of living in all its mystery and we will be inspired to do the good that we can do.

I'm going to this little chip of a blog with some beautiful words on silence by Mark Belletini

“Ode To Silence” by Mark Belletini

You, silence, are the ground
On which we build the fragile sandcastles of our every spoken word.
You, silence,
Are quicksand where curses and cockiness and
And arrogance find their end.
You, silence, are the strand of beach we stroll where loneliness
Turns into solitude,
And our small heartbeats join the much vaster
Heartbeat of tide and wave.
You, silence,
Are the hand in which the pearl of the universe,
Grown around the painful grain of human suffering,
Rests in heartbreaking beauty.
You, silence,
Are the wide, bright delta into which
The river of this prayer fans out,
Before it flows into the indigo Deep,
Quiet, dark and lovely.
Come, Silence, fill this moment.

“The Sounds of Silence”: “Still Small Voice of Calm”

"whispered in the sounds of silence"

 “The Sound of Silence” is perhaps one of the most beautiful songs of all time. It is deeply poetic and meaningful. It describes our struggle to truly communicate with one another; that we only really communicate on a superficial level and therefore do not understand one another; “people talking without listening, people listening without hearing”. It is suggesting that we dare not really reach out and truly communicate – “take my arms that I might reach you” – to disturb the sounds of silence. The poet (the songs character) makes a futile attempt to reach beyond the silence; “but my words like silent raindrops fell within the wells of silence”. The enigmatic ending tells us that when meaningful communication fails all that is left is...the only sound is...silence.

“whispered in the sounds of silence”

  

Last Thursday, 6^th October, was national poetry day. This is why I decided to pick these words by Paul Simon...whatever we think of the music, we cannot deny the beauty of the words.

One of my favourite hymns is entitled "Others Call it God. This my favourite verse:

“A picket frozen on duty,

A mother starved for her brood,

And Socrates drinking hemlock,

And Jesus on the rood;

And millions, who though nameless,

The straight, hard pathway trod –

Some call it consecration,

And others call it God”

While I do indeed find God in beauty and laughter and song I also find God in consecration, in mercy and love towards those who suffer and the suffering in nature too...that said maybe I find God in silence more than in the din and illumination of life.

“whispered in the sounds of silence”

Maybe we need to listen to “The Sound of Silence.”

This is not always easy, just to find silence, just to make room for silence. I know that I must and in fact I do. I do make some time in the morning to connect and to listen. I no longer turn the radio on when I first get up. I spend a short period in prayerful reflection and then shower and shave etc. I pay attention to what I am doing in silence. I’m not just being functional here, as I once was.

I no longer need the distraction.

In the Book of Kings (1 Kings ch 19) the prophet Elijah is threatened by Queen Jezebel and flees 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 God is in none of them. After the fire comes the still small voice – a voice, a sound like silence – it is this voice that is less than a whisper and yet not quite silence that signals the presence of the divine. Elijah then covers his head and goes out to talk with God.

Elijah had been commissioned that day to set right the problems of Israel and to call a new King for Syria and a new King for Israel and a new prophet who would lead the next generation.

Now many folk will no doubt dismiss this as a fanciful tale, like many of the tales told about Elijah it does sound beyond belief when read literally. Should we dismiss it though? Is this the wise thing to do? Perhaps there is a deeper metaphorical meaning here? I believe that there is a deep truth being described here. I do not believe that it should be dismissed as merely a fanciful tale.You may well ask why? Well because it seems that down through the ages this voice keeps on speaking; the voice of comfort, of hope, of challenge, of support and also at times the voice of rebuke...This same voice spoke to Jesus, Muhammed, The Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandella, but perhaps it is not a voice as we understand it....less than a whisper and yet more than silence...

Maybe the voice is felt, rather than heard.

...the still small voice of calm, the sound of silence...

What is this still small voice of calm? What are the Sounds of Silence?

What is this something, this next to nothing, that is more than silence and yet less than a whisper? What is this emptiness that can fill us with awe?

It is so gentle and yet powerful and seems to emerge, nay burst, from nothingness into life; it is a nagging thought or presence that is their floating around in our consciousness or perhaps unconsciousness; it never seems to easily be revealed; it requires us to go into our own depths and wrestle and struggle with it to find its true meaning. Maybe it is something more than a mere thought or feeling, that appears from nowhere or perhaps even beyond nowhere; this feeling that comforts, that accepts, even pardons just when we need it the most. Perhaps it’s the voice of conscience that lives in that space between what we say and what we do, between the talk and the walk.

We can never be truly certain what this is. Some, myself included, call it God, others prefer a myriad of names. But what does it matter what we call it, this is just belief or unbelief. It is truly beyond us to know what is behind this voice, this thought, this feeling, this experience but I feel sure that we have all known it from time to time. We have all known this indescribable presence at some point in our lives; we have all experienced this sense of being addressed by something; we have all felt this powerful irresistible urge that is the source of art and poetry of religion, of love.

“Some people call it longing, And others call it God”

The passage from Kings portrays powerfully Elijah's experience with the Divine, in the stillness, in the quietness; it portrays it as powerfully as anything in our human canon, before or since. It is not unique though and is an experience we can all have if we take time to truly listen “to the sound of silence.” I have known it myself; I try not to ignore it these days. I need to hear it as it gives me the courage to trust, to have faith in life, to have faith in the promptings of my conscience, to have faith in myself and to have faith in God.

It is said that one night after receiving a threatening phone call, during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, that Martin Luther King Jr went into his kitchen and sat quietly, desperate, alone and ready to give up. At this point of brokenness and hopelessness he prayed out loud the words “I’ve come to a point where I can’t face it alone”.  At this very moment, bursting from deep within him came these words, “Stand up for justice; do what you believe is right.”

The author Taylor Branch said this about the incident:

“The moment lacked the splendour of a vision or of a voice speaking out loud. But the moment awakened and confirmed his belief that the essence of faith is not some grand metaphysical idea but something personal, grounded in experience – something that opens up mysteriously beyond the predicament of human beings in frailest and noblest moments.”

In his darkest hour in his moment of doubt and despair Dr King found that silence and entered a greater depth, a void and in that place hope and deeper faith was unearthed and tapped into.

He heard and responded to that still small voice of calm in the sounds of silence.

I am learning more and more that so much of ministry is about listening: "Listening with the ears of your heart". Not merely listening to the words that are said, but to what is beneath the words, to what is really going on. By the way I am not only speaking about people here. I, I think we all, need to listen to not only what is being said on the surface of life or in the centre of our vision, but beneath the surface too and in the corners of our vision too..."There is something in the corner of our lives that we cannot quite see"...I do believe that the conscience, life, the universe, God does indeed speak, but not loudly or aggressively, gently and quietly.

It seems to be less than a whisper and yet something more than silence.

It is that still, small voice of calm almost hidden in the sounds of silence

You see the real trouble is that everyone is talking, but are any of us really listening.