Moby Dick: To Resent or Rejoice

I recently returned from Summer School, at Great Hucklow. This year marked its 30th anniversary. It went by the title of “Finding My Religion: Being Unitarian in the 21st Century”. Over 50 of us gathered in person for theme talks, engagement groups and variety of other activities. Many others joined on-line for some of these. It was wonderful to be a part of, as it has been since I first attended over 15 years ago.

I was very involved this year, as it seems I am in so many areas of my Unitarian life. I co-led an engagement group and “Theme Talk” with Arek Maleki a wonderfully gifted minister serving the Leicester Unitarians. Our “Engagement group was titled “The Words We Speak Become the House We Live In”, words attributed to the Sufi mystic Hafiz. We actually built a house. I will speak more about this in the coming weeks, exploring some of the themes. Our theme talk was well received as we explored our journeys in our own unique and yet complimentary styles. We gained a nickname “Tweedledum and Tweedledee” from one of our group, who told us that all that we lacked were the caps. This was a bit rude to Arek who is 20 years younger than me. Interestingly one of the tutors at Luther King House would often call Arek Danny when he studied there. The tutor had taught me when I trained for the ministry. I also had a ballad written in my honour by Nick Maurice who was the musician of the week and came up with the “Tweedledum and Tweedledee” comment. The ballad was beautiful if slightly embarrassing to hear. Oh, and returned with a wonderful gift. A giant knitted whale. This was created by our own Ruby. I was slightly obsessed in my hunt for the whale and paid more than I intended too.

Birthday’s and anniversaries have been on my mind. I recently attended the Golden Wedding Anniversary of Bill and Morag Darlison. Bill is one of my ministerial heroes, I have loved being in their company many times over the years. I was travelling with a sense of sadness as I had the feeling that this might be the last time I would see Bill. When I arrived he greeted me warmly and then told me he was pleased I had come as he had a request. He told me that when his time comes he would like me to conduct his funeral. He told me it as all arranged and that I would be given some space in its creation. I of course agreed and he told me he would email the details. I then shared in a wonderful lunch with a speech from Bill. It was both moving and hilarious. There was not a hint of self pity, just deep gratitude and love for his beautiful wife Morag. As he said she is still the most beautiful woman in Pontefract, before adding that his friend said, “no Bill the most beautiful in England”. Morag is a native of Scotland and moved to nurse in Pontefract over 50 years ago.

Bill had been given a terminal cancer diagnosis over 20 years ago and recovered and there is no cancer currently. Treatment ended a few weeks ago and he looks well. I will of course do as requested, but it may not be in the immediate future, God willing.

As I was driving to Bill’s I witnessed something both dangerous and disturbing on the motorway, it didn’t ruin the day, but it has stayed with me. A large four-by four entered the motorway in a rather erratic manner. It almost collided with a motorcyclist who had to take evasive action. The motorcyclist pulled up next to the 4 x 4 and began gesturing the driver and hurling abuse. This was returned by the driver. What followed was the two of them pulling up and driving past each other in a very dangerous way. It could have easily caused an accident and was deeply dangerous to them and all around. I pulled back and let them pull away I thought to myself what a dangerous pursuit. It brought images of Ahab and Moby Dick and power of anger and resentment to my homiletic consciousness.

Summer School was very special this year. I have shared in beautiful, if somewhat eccentric company and heard the most wonderful of words in the last couple of weeks. This is in complete and utter contrast to some of things I have witnessed and heard in the world around me. Things that break my heart and disturb me greatly. I am reminded of those words by Hafiz “The words we speak become the house we live in.” I wish to build a house of love and not one of resentment and hatred. Resentment is oh so destructive.

Resentment is a negative emotion that is re-felt and replayed, over and over again until at times it becomes all consuming. At its most destructive it becomes an all-consuming repetitive rage. Frederick Nietzsche said of it, “nothing on earth consumes a man more completely than the passion of resentment.”

When I look at my life there have been examples, some serious and others ridiculous, that have consumed me for long periods of time. I know I am not unique in this, it happens to us all, things from our past can so easily control and even poison the life we are attempting to live today.

I know from truly looking at my own life and honestly acknowledging all that has happened to me and all that I have caused to happen that many of these resentments I used to carry were really just justifications for the mess I was in at the time. By blaming others for my troubles, the things they had done, real or imagined, I could somehow raise myself above them and place myself on a pedestal. The problem of course was that I just remained lost in this sea of anger and my life went nowhere other than become increasingly lost. I was stuck on a ship, created from my own ill feeling, heading for trouble and unable to change direction. The bitter feelings were so all consuming that I could not hear the voices that were offering a different directions and my senses were closed to the joy present in the life all around me. What a waste!

Yes, resentment is such a waste of life, as it so quickly becomes consuming. It can take over your whole life. You will find many examples of this in literature. The classic perhaps being Captain Ahab. In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick Ahab is consumed by his rage against the “white whale” “Moby Dick” who in a previous voyage had destroyed his ship and bitten off his leg. So Ahab vowing revenge sets out on a voyage to hunt down the “white whale”. He becomes so consumed by his rage and need for revenge that as time goes by he no longer sees “Moby Dick” merely as the perpetrator of an evil act but as the “devil incarnate”, as the sum and substance of all evil that occurs in our lives.

This is near perfectly illustrated in the following passage from “Moby Dick”

“Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue devil;- Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.”

Ahab grapples with the “white whale” until the end. He hurls his final harpoon and cries out “to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”

Words that a hundred or so years later echoed through the galaxies as they were uttered by Khan in the Star Trek movie "The Wrath of Khan"  

Now I know this is only a work of fiction. A great work of fiction by the way and one written by a man who had Unitarian links. I understand that Herman Melville worshipped at the “All Souls” in New York. There is something in this work of fiction that speaks to me and I believe to all of us when we look at the power of rage and the destructive nature of deep rooted resentment. We only need to look at the world we live in today to see example of this all around us.

Have you ever been consumed by such a rage?

The problem of course is that once you become consumed by such intensely powerful emotions it is very difficult to change direction. This is especially true if you believe the resentment is justified. Now while the anger may well be justified I am certain that the destruction it carries with it is not. Like the motorcyclist reaction on the M62 and the four by four drivers response to that. It could have easily led to a serious accident and loss of life, all because of the rage of two men, who believed their response was justified.

Resentment can close down all our senses to such an extent that we fail to heed all the warning signs around us and end up crashed against the rocks all alone. We may not end up with Ahab’s fate but we can easily find ourselves shipwrecked or lost at sea.

This reminds me of story I was once told of an old ship captain, in the days before modern communication, who one night saw the beacon of another ship headed straight for him. He asked his signal man to warn them and so he blinked to the other ship “Change your course 10 degrees south.” Moments later the reply blinked back “change your course 10 degrees north” to which the captain ordered the signal man to answer “I am captain change your course south.” To which the reply came back "I am seaman first class. Change your course north." This infuriated the captain, so he ordered his signal man to reply "I am a battleship. Change course south." To which almost instantaneously came the response, "I am a lighthouse. Change course north.”

If only we could just listen and perhaps change course for the good of our own and the health of those who share our lives. It’s not so easy though is it, especially when we believe that we are right and get a sense of superiority by this feeling of being right. If only we could see the damage that this does to ourselves and those around us, but alas once a person is consumed by rage, this is hard to do. Even if you yourself are a battleship headed towards a lighthouse.

Resentment is a destructive force.

So what is the alternative? Well it begins with the words we speak, the way we act towards others and the way we see others. For this will create the house, the world we live in. It begins with seeing the good in others, to see ourselves in others and not see them as enemy as other. Maybe it begins with seeing what is beautiful and joy filled in our lives and that of others. It is so easy to get stuck in what is wrong and to therefore fail to see what is good and rejoice in it. This is such a terrible state for our minds to get in. As the poet Milton said “The mind is its own place and in itself can make a Hell of Heaven, a Heaven of Hell.”

Perhaps the key is to change course and not sail into the rocks or to be sunk to the depths by the white whale. The key I suspect is to change our minds. The key is to rejoice, rather than resent.

How does this begin you may well ask?

Well I believe that it begins by learning ways to celebrate our lives; it begins by learning to savour every breath no matter what is dealt to us. This begins by learning to offer that unceasing prayer “thank you”. Something I witnessed powerfully at Bill and Morag’s Golden Wedding anniversary. It begins by following the advice of the Hopi elders who suggested that you should “Gather yourselves…See who is in the water with you and celebrate. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.”

Maybe this is how we begin to rejoice, by looking at those in the water with us and learning to rejoice in who they are.

Pema Chodron claims that “Rejoicing in the good fortune of others is a practise that can help us when we feel emotionally shut down and unable to connect with others. Rejoicing generates good will. The next time you go out into the world, you might try this practice: directing your attention to people- in their cars, on the sidewalk, talking on their cell phones – just wish for them all to be happy and well.”

Maybe this is a way to set ourselves free from the anger and resentful feelings that leave us all lost in the sea of life. Maybe this is one way to help us change direction and not leave us shipwrecked against the rocks. Maybe this is one way to begin to rejoice in life. Maybe it can begin by not so much looking for the things to be grateful for in our lives, but instead to offer gratitude for the good fortune of others who we find ourselves in the water with. Maybe it begins by wishing good fortune for the people we meet.

I have found that this really works as it begins to fill us with joy because when our minds are thinking of others good fortune it is difficult for us to be thinking of anything else. Why not give it a go? You never know you might just find that if you do your minds might just become freed from the shackles of resentments, and then you might just be able to learn to live and rejoice in the beautiful gift that is this day.

“The words we speak become the house we live in.” I wish to build a house of love and not one of resentment and hatred. The choice is our ways, which way are we going to turn today?

Please find below a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"

Life is a Circle: Tradition is not the Worship of Ashes but the Preservation of Fire

Cynicism can be very seductive, to get caught up in all that is wrong with the world. To put down those who speak with a hopeful voice. To say we’ve tried this before, there really is no point to this. It is easy to get caught up in fear and negativity about the world, to say what’s the point; to think what’s the point in doing my little bit, it will make no difference. Well, I don’t believe that for one moment. I live in and by hope. There maybe no point to things, but then life doesn’t work like this. There is no end goal, life is a circle. We are not heading for some unknown place, we are moving in circles and the point is how we live. This is a great universal truth, a truth told by every great story ever told. There is no end to this.

As I mentioned last week I enjoyed much of Summer School. One of the many treasures are the daily “Theme Talks”. Michael Allured was minister of the week. He held the last talk, which began with a story that Michael is well known for telling. The story is the “The Starfish Story”. I have told it myself many times. Here is a version:

A young boy is walking along the beach when he sees hundreds of starfish washed up on the shore. In dismay, and realizing that many of them are still alive, he begins chucking them back out to sea so they won’t die on the beach. A man comes along and asks him, “Why are you throwing those starfish back out into the sea? You can’t possibly save all these starfish! What difference can you make when there are so many to be saved?” After thinking about it for a moment, and throwing one more starfish back out into the water, the boy replies, “I just made a difference for that one!”

As I spoke of last week you never known what one little action can begin to trigger. I know that hope is often born from despair, often a new hope is born. What I kearnt to call respair, a new hope a fresh hope, but it is up to us, inspired by the spirt. There is never an end to anything, the world keeps on spinning round. What the world is though depends on the way we live this day.

As I said I enjoyed the theme talks at Summer School. I can’t talk about them all. I will just talk of some of the aspects of one led by Lizzie Kingston Harrison, who is our Congregational Connections lead and Liz Slade who is our Chief Officer. Lizzie Kingston Harrison is also training for the ministry and is one of several talented people coming through. Whenever Lizzie speaks she impresses me. I had a wonderful conversation at “Ministry in the Making”, that inspired my thinking around some of my own foundational theology. She gave a fascinating talk on Joseph Priestley at the General Assembly. Her contribution to the theme talk was both moving and inspiring. She is rooted in classic Unitarian theology, but with her feet firmly grounded in the present and vision toward the future. She looks forward with real hope. She describes herself as natural optimist, nay radical optimist. She talked about the importance of not focusing on some perceived goal, but to understand that we are grounded in a great historical tradition, a part of history, but that this is not linear, heading toward some unknown promised land. She instead highlights that journey is circular. That all life is circular, that we are not looking for some promised land, some Nirvana, somewhere beyond the rainbow. Well, that is at least how I interpreted her talk. That the Unitarian approach to religion, is real, grounded in this life. That we sanctify in and through this life. That the likes of Priestley and our forebears, in rejecting “Original Sin”, and thus the need to be saved from ourselves, embraced the humanness of Jesus and this life, the sacredness of this life, and as I would see it, that we are here to sanctify in and through life. Throughout her talk she repeated a wonderful phrase. “Tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire.” That ours is a living tradition, that can inspire all who live today.

Behind her, as she spoke, was this wonderful image of Hildegard of Bingen’s Mandala, which was a beautiful circular pattern, inspired by one of her mystical visions. It shows the cosmic connection of all angels, all people, and all beings celebrating the creation that God has made for us. It is from the “Second Vision of the Second Part of De Operatione Dei.”

The emphasis of her talk was on the circular nature of life, claiming that this is the wisdom of Ecclesiastes and quoted the following verse from Ecclesiastes 3 vv 1-8

3 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
7 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

I love Ecclesiastes and the idea that life moves in seasons and that there is time for everything in life, it is every changing and impermanent. To quote the wisdom of Soloman, “This too shall pass.” Now one mistake that is often made with Ecclesiastes is to think that in suggesting there is a time for everything, it does not mean that we can do everything, or that we should even try to do everything. This can be a mistake we make in life and was a repeated theme during Summer School, that it is important to understand what you can do, but not try to do everything, joy and fun and pleasure are vital to the soul. Also, that you need to leave space for others to, live too.

This brings to mind a wonderful poem, a reaction to Ecclesiastes, “A Man in His Life” by Yehuda Amichai

A man in his life has no time to have
Time for everything.
He has no room to have room
For every desire. Ecclesiastes was wrong to claim that.

A man has to hate and love all at once,
With the same eyes to cry and to laugh
With the same hands to throw stones
And to gather them,
Make love in war and war in love.

And hate and forgive and remember and forget
And order and confuse and eat and digest
What long history does
In so many years.

A man in his life has no time.
When he loses he seeks
When he finds he forgets
When he forgets he loves
When he loves he begins forgetting.

And his soul is knowing
And very professional,
Only his body remains an amateur
Always. It tries and fumbles.
He doesn’t learn and gets confused,
Drunk and blind in his pleasures and pains.

In autumn, he will die like a fig,
Shriveled, sweet, full of himself.
The leaves dry out on the ground,
And the naked branches point
To the place where there is time for everything.

We cannot do everything, but we can do something. Also, we can fall and mess up a thousand times, but still begin again in love. I am reminded here of that great nineteenth Unitarian Edward Everett Hale and his famous quote:

“I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.”

Going back to Ecclesiastes and its wisdom, despite its limits. The main point of Ecclesiastes is that is there is no point. Now this is not negativity or pessimism. The point so to speak is that there is no end to this. There is no end point we are aiming for, no places where we come to rest. Not a promised Land, a Heaven, a Nirvana, an Oz, an Ithaka. Remember the point of Ithica is that it gave us the beautiful journey. This is the massage of Ecclesiastes, that there is no point to this, so enjoy the tasks we have before us, this is heaven to find our meaning as Frankl highlighted. That heaven is found in the living, not some places at the other side of the rainbow. Yes, seasons come and go, but the fire remains in all the changes, the spirit is alive in and through us and all life. This is the radiant core at the centre that we circle around. No one knows what the future looks like or will be, but that is not what fires and inspires us, what inspires us is the love of what and where we find ourselves, to love it, to follow the example of Jesus and his message of radical love and radical optimism. To bless and sanctify this life. Not perfectly, but with love, imperfectly. Even if we have fallen short a thousand times, to paraphrase Rumi.

What is important is to recognise that we are temporal beings, but that life itself is eternal and our task here is to enjoy this life as part of this life and to take care of what is ours to take of. To bless this life and fully part of it, is what will sustain us, this is where the spirit lives. The mistake is that we focus on some perceived goal, a destination that may not be reached. The key is to sanctify life, one another and in so doing we live sacred lives. To paraphrases good old Forrest Church, to live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for by the love we leave behind. The wheel continues to turn, and we get the beautiful journey.

Ecclesiastes, particularly those verses from the third chapter, speak an eternal and universal truth that generation after generation have found that they can relate to. The power of this ancient source lays in its ability to link we who live today with the generations that have walked the earth before us. We all of us have travelled many and varied journeys and lived through all the seasons of life. Nothing is permanent and nothing lasts forever. No one will ever escape the pain of life, but that ought not bring despair because if we remain open we will also know life’s joy. Yes, there is a time to mourn, but there is also a time to dance; there is a time to weep, but there is also a time to laugh.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. ”There are many seasons in our lives, just as there are many different emotions. Yes, sometimes we can experience all those emotions in one single day, just as we can experience four seasons in one day. There is a time and perhaps a place for all of them, for to diminish any of them is deny what it is to be fully human. Yes, there is a time to weep, just as there is a time to laugh and there is a time to mourn, just as much as there is a time to dance.

I have wept several times in recent weeks and have held others in their suffering too, that said I have also laughed many times too, I have seen joy and I have seen how life continues on. As Ecclesiastes says in Ch1 v 4 “Generations come and generations go, but the earth abides forever”.

Life is circular, everything changes, but life itself goes on. This is the ultimate teacher, my guru if you like. No person can be as nothing in life is perfect. Remember perfection original meant complete, well nothing is ever complete. Ecclesiastes teaches this so powerfully. There is no end point, the circle is never complete. We need to live with our senses fully awake and alive to everything around us, including our sixth sense with that spirit alive. Look and see for yourself; experience all life yourself; taste everything, bare witness to the impermanence and ever changing nature of life. Summer is ending, autumn is coming; experience everything that is under the sun and all beyond, but experience it yourself, know reality. Investigate life’s true nature, your true nature, experience it yourself. Take in every breath, for each is fleeting and yet so very precious. Love this life and let the spirit inspire your living.

We are a part of a living tradition. To quote Lizzie one final time “Tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire.”

Let us be lit up by that living flame.

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

The spiritual life: It’s an imperfect ‘I-Thou’ relationship

I recently spent a week at Great Hucklow, participating in ‘Summer School’. The title for this year was ‘Real Life: Telling the Truth of Our Lived Experience’. It is the first in person Summer School that has been held, since the pandemic. I along with Rev Laura Dobson led an engagement group titled “A Life Less Ordinary”. A group exploring our experiences both of the ordinary material life and that that could described as beyond that. It was a fascinating journey. Laura and myself are very different people, but I feel that we complimented one another. During the week Louise Baumberg led a series of talks, which touched on theme of listening to the stories of others, especially the more marginalised. How vital it is that we see one another as fellow humans, how all life and one another are sacred. Exploring ways to live on a relational level with one another and all life. Her talks were challenging and she was unafraid to explore difficult themes. It was a great week; a week of what I would describe as spiritual intimacy. I feel I engaged with many folk in a way that is rare in life. I hope I can better carry these experiences into my life and ministry.

It is no easy task to engage with other people in a truly relational way. We all have our own quirks and peculiarities. On a wider scale so many of our troubles have been caused by not seeing other people as our brothers and sisters, that we share a common humanity. I suspect that this is the root cause of human barbarity. It still goes on today sadly. There are people close to home and other lands that are somehow seen as other. No one is immune from this by the way, including myself. An incident in the park this week as highlighted that for me.

Now while we share a common humanity, we are also unique. No two people are exactly alike and it is important to honour and celebrate this human diversity. None of us can do this perfectly, but we can aspire to it. The key is good will and intent, but also to accept that no one in life is perfect. Nothing in life is perfect.

One of the great plagues of humanity is perfectionism, in seeking perfection both within ourselves and others. How many times I wonder have I rejected either myself, others, or life itself because it did not offer perfection? How many times have I noticed others doing the same? It is a lot easier to see in others by the way than in myself.

Nothing in life is perfect, it is always imperfect. I am pretty much convinced that this is how it ought to be. Yes it is important to strive for improvement, but perfectionism can be deeply destructive.

Now imperfection is one of those interesting words that doesn’t mean exactly what it always meant. When today we say that something is imperfect we are usually making a judgement about something suggesting that there is something wrong with it. In so doing we are making an error. Imperfection comes from the Latin “imperfectus” which actually meant incomplete.

So when we say that we are imperfect, that others are imperfect, that life itself is imperfect we are correct, in the sense that nothing is ever complete.

The mistake we have made is that in saying that someone or something is imperfect we have suggested that they or it is somehow wrong, when in fact we couldn’t be more wrong. Imperfection itself is what makes life what it is, it is the fuel and energy of life as it is through imperfection that the energy to create relationship is fuelled.

Imperfection, incompleteness is the energy of life.

This brings to mind that rather lovely poem by Harold Kushner “Jigsaw”

There must have been a time when you entered a room and met someone and after a while you understood that unknown to either of you there was a reason you had met. You had changed the other and he had changed you. By some word or deed or just by your presence the errand had been completed. Then perhaps you were a little bewildered or humbled and grateful. And it was over.

Each lifetime is the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
For some there are more pieces.
For others the puzzle is more difficult to assemble.
Some seem to be born with a nearly completed puzzle.
And so it goes.
Souls going this way and that.
Trying to assemble the myriad parts.

But know this. No one has within themselves
All the pieces to their puzzle.
Like before the days when they used to seal
jigsaw puzzles in cellophane. Insuring that
All the pieces were there.

Everyone carries with them at least one and probably
Many pieces to someone else's puzzle.
Sometimes they know it.
Sometimes they don't.

And when you present your piece
Which is worthless to you,
To another, whether you know it or not,
Whether they know it or not,
You are a messenger from the Most High

I love the way Kushner explains why we are incomplete. That it is through our incompleteness that we draw closer together. This is so true we are relational beings. We do not live in separation and we do not live separate lives. We are constantly seeking unity, to be yoked beyond ourselves. The word “Yoga” actually means to join, to unite. It seems to me that all the great spiritual traditions, eastern and western, are in their own way pointing to this. That the spiritual life cannot exist in isolation. That in actual fact to live spiritually is to live in relation. That there is a yearning within us all to find that missing piece. In so attempting to do so, by the way, we enable others to do the same.

When we come together in love, we create the love we have all be searching for.

This brings to mind an extract from "Radical Hospitality: Benedict's Way of Love": By Father Daniel Homan and Lonni Collins Pratt. It is from the Chapter "Hospitality begins inside." (pg 33-34)

They wrote:

" We are caught up in what is probably the most immature attempt at spirituality humanity has ever seen. It is tragically and poignantly adolescent, with the deep emotion and angst that goes with adolescence. It is a spirituality that seeks improvement for life - a better me, a better relationship - but it does not seek God and it does not move us towards others. It just keeps us running on the treadmill of our little egocentric worlds.

We are accustomed to easy answers. Hospitality is not an easy answer. It requires that we take a chance and we change. It requires us to grow. The moment we engage with another person everything gets messy. Our time becomes not quite our own; we can count on others interrupting us. We become subject to a whole hoard of emotional dangers.

Because hospitality always involves giving something of ourselves to others, it is a spiritual practice. Spirituality is about relationship. When you and I become confused about the meaning of spirituality, remembering that spirituality is about relationship will bring us back to the basics. Relationships."

One of my great frustrations with some aspects of contemporary spirituality is that it does not seem to be about relationships at all. It seems to be all about the self, almost about protecting the self, from the so called “messiness” of living. Maybe that’s why it can seem so appealing. The truth is of course that all we ever achieve in blocking ourselves off from the messiness, from circling our spiritual wagons, is increase the loneliness and the emptiness.

The spiritual life is about relationship. We need to be in what I have often heard called right relationship, with ourselves, with others and with whatever it is we believe connects all of life, what is often called the Divine, to live spiritually alive.

I can usually get a good measure as to where I am at spiritually by simply checking where I am at relationally with myself, with others and with God, they are all interconnected and inter related. Do I see myself in others and do I see others in myself. My week at Summer School brought these feelings to my heart and mind, as have my interactions this week.

During the week of theme talks Louise Baumberg made reference to Martin Buber and his book “I-Thou”, first published in 1923 and translated from German into English in 1937. Buber taught that the most important moments in all of life are the moments we meet and communicate deeply with one another. He called these I-Thou moments; he taught that everything really good in human life, such as love, learning, the feeling of being appreciated, knowing that someone really cares for us, comes from these moments of meeting. This to me is the essence of the spiritual life, of living spiritually alive. Buber suggested that we have two basic orientations toward the world. I-it and I-thou. I-it is the way we relate to an object or thing that we experience. Something that is separate from us, that we use or don’t use; something that we see from a distance. These are empty relationships that have no spiritual charge. Buber labelled I-Thou encounters as genuine engagements with others. In such encounters we drop our defenses and open our whole being to their whole being. In so doing we recognize their inherent worth and dignity. To Buber, this authentic relationship is where meaning is found. He wrote, “When I encounter a …being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighbourless and seamless, he is Thou and fills the firmament.”

When we see each other first and foremost as thou and do not objectify we bring that kin-dom of love alive, right here right now. In that space in that relationship is the love I call God alive. This is the spiritual life, it’s all about relationships.

There is one community that I have in the last 12 months become a member of that seems very much about I-thou, rather than how-it relationships. This is the community of dog owners and walkers. It is a community like no other except perhaps parent and infant communities. There is a special kind of intimacy that goes on between us. I collected Molly almost exactly a year ago. She has made an incredible difference to my life. Not only our relationship, but in those I have with folk in the wider community. She has enabled me to get closer to folk and folk get closer to me. I may not know details of people’s lives, but I do of their dogs and she has allowed people to approach and talk to me more frequently in the street. It is a lovely example of intimate relationships, rather than transactional ones. These are I-thou encounters, not I-it. They are not perfect though and mirror the difficulties and messiness of all other interactions.

Of course often in life we do not engage with others as we would always like. I know when I am tired or stressed or caught up in grief I do not interact with people as I would like. I am certainly not a perfect pastoral minister. Buber often spoke of a tragic incident that shaped his life. While still in his twenties, Buber was at home working on a scholarly manuscript when there was a knock on the door. The visitor seemed somewhat distraught, and Buber, sympathetic to the man but anxious to return to his work, answered the man's questions briefly, but, as Buber later expressed it, "I did not answer the questions that he did not ask." Buber subsequently learned that, just a few days after their brief encounter, the man died, an apparent suicide. From then on, Buber concluded, encounters with people must take precedence even over scholarship and mystical speculation.

I am sure we can all remember moments in our lives when we could have related to other people better, when we could have recognised their shared humanity better. I know I have. I have sadly attended the funeral of two friends this week, who died in tragic circumstances. They services were beautiful and so many friends and people who cared for them were present. That said I left both services with an overwhelming sense of sadness and some guilt. I wondered if I could have done more to help them. This is not the first time I have wondered this both with friends and family. Could I or others have made a difference, it is hard to know. It has certainly weighed heavy in my heart these last few days.

The week at summer school and recent events have certainly given me pause. Led me to consider how better I can relate to others and meet them where they are, recognising their sacred uniqueness. To build better relationships with others, myself, life and God, for this is the essence of the spiritual life. Whilst also remembering that I cannot do so perfectly, no one can. In many ways it is the imperfect aspects of ourselves that help us come closer together, to build relationships

It's all about relationships. This is the spiritual life in its entirety. To see the holy in each other, to bring about holy encounters. This is the kin-dom of love right here right now. It is about seeing ourselves in the other and the other in ourselves. This is not easy. None of us can achieve it perfectly. The key is to attempt, to make a beginning, to move toward a completeness, to love one another and to love life, to move toward the creation of the kin-dom of love. It has to begin somewhere, so let it begin here right here, right now.

So let’s bless one another with our beautiful and imperfect presence.

It begins with our next imperfect encounter with one another and with life. It begins when we see the I in thou, in me in you and you in me.

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

“Meeting Matter: It Matters How We Touch and are Touched By Life”

I recently returned from an intense week at Great Hucklow. I was a part of the Summer School team and together some 60 or more of us were exploring “Theology in the Flesh”: How Might Our Embodied Experiences Shape Our Answers To Life’s Ultimate Questions?”. As part of the week everyone attended or lead an engagement group. This year I was co-facilitating, with Rev Sarah Tinker, a group we had called “Sacred the Body”. We were exploring our bodily experiences and how we experience and live in the body of life, how this affects us and how we affect it. Looking at what life has done to us and what we have dine to life and to try and find better ways to recognise the sacredness of our lives and the whole of life.

I was grateful there was no major health problems this year. If you remember last year my co-facilitator was unable to attend and during the week about a third of the people at Hucklow were struck down by the Norovirus.

I was particularly grateful to work alongside Sarah. I feel we complimented one another. What we created together, along with the thirteen participants, was far more than the sum of the parts we brought to our time together. I know I have grown as a result of the experience and I believe that others did too

Each day we explored the theme “Sacred the Body” from a variety of perspectives. iI was fascinating to observe the ways that different people interacted with the subject, Sarah and myself and with each other. It was deep work, challenging at times, but I feel that we held them through the process. I am sure that many of us discovered new truth and understandings, I know that I did. The experience changed me, it opened me to new truths, but this was not pain free and my word it took a lot out of me. Summer School is like that.

Of all the themes that we explored I think the one that touched me the most was the one we titled “Aspects of the Body: Meeting with the World”. I noticed a shift within the group dynamic and people began to really get into the marrow of the subject this day. It was an attempt to explore what David Whyte has called the “conversational nature of life”, by reflecting on the two most visible aspects of our bodies, our hands and our faces. I introduced the subject by suggesting that our faces symbolise how life touches us and as a result how we face life in response to this “conversation”. While our hands express how we touch life. You see our hands are one of the tools, perhaps the most significant, with which we work with one another within this our material world.

Our hands and faces are the most exposed aspects of our humanity. If we look at them and at one another, they have many stories to tell. Our hands and our faces show our vulnerability, but also our power to both love, create and damage. Who we are is written on our faces and what we do is shown through our hands.

Abraham Joshua Heschel said of the human face.

“A human being has not only a body but also a face…A face is a message, a face speaks, often unbeknown to the person. Is not the human face a living mixture of mystery and meaning? We are all able to see it, and are all unable to describe it. Is it not a strange marvel that among so many hundreds of millions of faces, no two faces are alike? And that no face remains quite the same for more than one instant? The most exposed part of the body, it is the least describable, a synonym for an incarnation of uniqueness. Can we look at a face as if it were a commonplace?”

Among many things Heschel says that no two faces are alike. Now I’m sure some will object and say “what about identical twins?”

Now I recently had an experience with two seemingly identical faces. A few weeks ago I conducted a wedding for a couple. The groom is an identical twin and I was told that his brother would be flying in from Australia for the rehearsal. Now when I first met them I could not tell them apart, after all they were genetically identical. They were the same, but then again they were not. After a while I began to notice differences in them. They were not as identical as they first appeared. Life had shaped them in different ways and I could see this in their faces and their bodies. One of them even appeared a little taller than the other, although I suspect that this was more about how they carried themselves.

So here were two identical faces that had been somehow changed by how life had touched them. Our faces show who we are to one another. Mine certainly does. I do not have a poker face. How I am feeling is written all over my face. I am particularly sensitive to how other people are feeling, I am aware of this as I look into the faces of others. Summer school revealed my deep sensitivity to the emotions of others; I see it in their faces, hear it in their voices and notice it in their body language. I find this exhausting at times. From a child I have always had a heightened awareness of the feeling of others. I used to consider it a great handicap, I no longer do so. I have to be careful of it though. For there have been times when it has been too much and as a result I have found myself turning away from life.

Our faces reveal so much of who we are, it I written all over them. Think about when you meet up with and old friend or relative, one who you have not seen for many years. How often do they say or do we ourselves say “come on let’s have a good look at you” and how often do they or do we then look into one another’s faces to see how we are? And isn’t the response often fascinating for it either brings immense joy or gut wrenching sadness as we see our loved one as they are, for it is written all over our faces. I remember in my darkest days how I used to hate people doing this to me, for I was afraid that they would be able to see right into my soul and know that things were not ok. For how I am, I know, is written all over my face.

Our hands say much about who we are too. There are stories in those lines and scars on our hands. There are many memories in our hands as there is in all of our bodies. Our bodies carry so much of our lives within them; we can express who we are in the world through our bodies, particularly through our hands.It is through our hands that we interact with the world. They express so much of who we are and what we do to the body of life that we interact with life. We are not passive beings in this life. We touch life as much as life touches us.

It matters how we touch life, how we interact with each other. For how matter touches matter, really matters. We need to be careful and loving with our hands, the world needs us to touch one another and life gently for all that we do impacts, it really matters. We are all a part of the co-creation of life.

Just think about all the things that you have touched already today, in fact think about the last few days. How many people have you waved at or gestured towards, was there love in the interaction? How many people have you physically come into contact with? How many hands of you shook, people you have hugged or patted on the back? Perhaps those you have kissed? don't worry I won't go any further. What have you picked up or dropped, opened or closed, torn apart or repaired?

What have you touched in life, how have you touched life? Have you done so loving, gently, or have you done so aggressively? Have you brought violence to life?

It matters how we touch life for how we touch life plays a part in the healing or the destruction of this thing called matter that we are all a part of. Matter really matters you know.

Life is a conversation and it matters, it really matters how we engage with matter, with the skin where in and the skin we live in, with life. We have all been touched by life in so many ways and we all touch life in so many ways. It matters how we do so. We can not alter how we have been touched, we carry that with us in our being, in our bodies and sometimes this really shows. We cannot change this. That said we are not passively blown about in the winds of life. We can do something about how we ourselves touch life. It matters how we touch life, how we take care of the little bit of life we interact with. We can do this with love and care, or we can do it violence and lack of care.

It is in our hands. So what is your choice to be.

How will you face life today?

How will you touch life today?

It matters it really does

Matter really matters…

Sacred the Body: Embracing Embodied Spirituality

“The Way In” by Linda Hogan

Sometimes the way to milk and honey is through the body.
Sometimes the way in is a song.
But there are three ways in the world: dangerous, wounding, and beauty.
To enter stone, be water.
To rise through hard earth, be plant desiring sunlight, believing in water.
To enter fire, be dry.
To enter life, be food.

The twentieth century French Jesuit Priest and Philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin claimed that “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” It is a phrase I have heard many times over the years, in a variety of "spiritual" circles. Now while I think I know what people mean by it, it bothers me greatly. The reason is that in my view it appears to diminish the physical life. It seems to suggests that the physical life is of little importance, merely a home for the spirit. That what comes before and perhaps follows our physical life is somehow more important than this life. I am not convinced, dualism has always troubled me. I personally don’t see a separation between body and spirit. This disembodied spirituality troubles me. The reason is that if we see the body as somehow less than spirit, or on the other hand see nothing sacred at all in our humanity this can lead to all kinds of troubles. I personally see the body as deeply sacred indeed. For me the body is a beautiful expression of the spirit come to life.

This view about body and spirit has been described by Jorge N. Ferrer, professor of religious psychology as “embodied spirituality.” He wrote that:

“Embodied spirituality regards the body as subject, as the home of the complete human being, as a source of spiritual insight, as a microcosm of the universe and the Mystery, and as pivotal for enduring spiritual transformation.

The body is not an “It” to be objectified and used for the goals or even spiritual ecstasies of the conscious mind, but a “Thou,” an intimate partner with whom the other human dimensions can collaborate in the pursuit of ever-increasing forms of liberating wisdom.”

For Ferrer the body is the home of the complete human being. It is the physical reality in which we live. It is through the body that we both literally and metaphorically walk our own unique path. The mistake that so many religious understandings have made is that they have seen the body as the prison of the soul. Something that the spirit or soul needs to be liberated from. He claims that the mystery of incarnation never suggested that spirit entered into the body but that the spirit became flesh. To quote John’s Gospel “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God…And the Word became flesh.” Through our bodies, our lives, the way we live our lives the spirit comes to life. We are here for a reason, life truly means something and it is our task to bring that something to life, through our lives, through our bodily existence.

Embodied spirituality is about fully inhabiting our lives, our thoughts, our feelings our relationships with ourselves, our lives, each other and the mystery that connects all life. It’s about being fully present in our bodies and lives and therefore fully experiencing our potential, being fully alive. The body is not just a suit that clothes our being. It is through the body that we experience what it is to be fully alive. They say “listen to your body”, sage wisdom indeed. For me the body is not a separate entity to spirit, I cannot agree with this dualistic view, it seems to me that it is through the body that spirit comes alive and further through the body that the spirit is fed.

Embodied spirituality views every aspect of our humanity, whether that be body, spirit, heart, mind and consciousness as equal partners in bringing the self, community and world into a fuller alignment with the mystery that brings into being all life, while at the same time connects all life. I suspect it’s a kind of panentheism, that sees all life as being in God and that God is in all life and that little or perhaps infinite more. It sees the full engagement of the body as being vital to spiritual growth and transformation.

Sadly the spiritual and religious traditions have not always recognised the sacredness of the body; they have not always recognised that it is through the body that that the spirit comes to life. In fact they have seen it as quite the opposite. Plato and Aristotle taught that the physical can never be the ideal. That the spirit or soul was better than the real, fleshly body that contains it. The physical, Plato argued, was only an imperfect shadow of the realm of the spirit. Other traditions placed the cultivation of the spirit as something to be nurtured separate from the body. What Ferrer has named as “disembodied spirituality”. Traditions of both the east and the west have seen the denial of the body as a path way to spiritual enlightenment. In Hinduism Brahmanism calls for the denial of bodily comfort in order to transcend Samsara, the continual dying and rebirth of reincarnation. The ultimate aim being to transcend the body entirely. You can see similar traditions in Christianity, Taoism and Sufism. Buddhist writings have described the body as a source of suffering and that Nirvana could only be reached through the cessation of bodily desires. Many traditions have emphasised the life beyond this physical realm as being more important than this life, thus denigrating our physical being. The flesh has also been seen as the root of human sin. That the body is the source of humanity’s spiritual fall. The classic example is Adam and Eve being banished from the Garden of Eden to suffer from bodily pain.

Sadly the body, has not been seen as sacred at all, quite the opposite actually. Instead it has been seen as something of shame, something to escape and transcend. For me though the spiritual experience is about transformation and not transcendence. To be truly spiritually alive is to be engaged in change.

That said it is not only the religious and spiritual traditions that have failed to recognise the sacredness of the body. We live in a secular materialistic age and yet we still struggle with our bodies. How many people have become obsessed with the way they look? How many of us hate our physical being? How many people prey on this too? The body has become big business. In many ways we have swapped the worship for the Divine, and for life itself, for the worship of the approval of others especially with regard to our bodies, the way that we look. This does not see the body as sacred, more as a commodity that can be traded on and with. It does not recognise the sacredness of life, both our own and each other’s.

Science also, or should I say bad science, merely sees the body as a machine and not an expression of the Divine manifested in life. Richard Dawkins has described human beings as “lumbering robots”. Is that all we are? Is there really nothing sacred in life? When you look into the eyes of your neighbour do you see no spirit, no soul? Do you really see nothing? I know I don’t.

Life is a sacred thing.

Next year at Summer School we are going to be exploring “Theology in the Flesh: How Might our Embodied Experience Shape our Answers to Life’s Ultimate Questions?” I have been asked to co-facilitate a group there and I am excited by the prospect. We will be exploring how our personal and communal bodily experiences interact with spiritual understandings and how we interact with the world.

The following quotation from Carol P. Christ came in an email outlining the subject that I received recently.

‘Embodied theology is rooted in personal experiences in our individual
bodies. At the same time, we all live in a relational world, shaped by
social and historical events and forces that are shared.’ – Carol P. Christ

I remember hearing an excellent theme talk given by Rev Bill Darlison at Summer School several years ago. In it he made the claim that if we wished to live life more spiritually alive then we need to increase our sensitivity to life. To me this reveals just how vital our bodily experiences are and how it is through them that our spirit comes truly to life. By increasing our sensitivity to life we will know experiences beyond our imaginings and life will become our constant teacher. We will grow in deeper understanding and most importantly we will become more effective in our daily living and truly become of service to life and those we meet in life. Surely this is the Divine Love incarnating in life.

It seems to me that to live a full life is to truly inhabit our whole being, body, mind, heart, soul and spirit. To do so requires us to truly inhabit our bodies and to fully express our whole being through our bodies. This means we need to learn to be at home in our bodies, to bring our bodies home if you like. You see it is through our bodies that we both give and receive love. It is through our bodies that the word truly becomes flesh and comes alive in our very being. We are so much more than merely chemical processes and our bodies are not some lesser experience than spirit itself. We need to love life and our very being. Our bodies need not be despised, denied or repressed. Our bodies need to know love and for them to know love we need to allow that love to be expressed by our very being. For surely this is the Divine Spirit truly coming alive. This is the Kin-dom of Love right here, right now.

For the word to once again become flesh and dwell amongst us, we need to express that love through our very being. "Sacred the Body"!

May we bless life by our very being in all that we feel, all that we think, all that we say and all that we do.

I’m going to end this little "blogspot" with a little bit of Mark Nepo

I keep looking for one more teacher, only to find that fish learn from water and birds learn from sky.
If you want to learn about the sea, it helps to be at sea.
If you want to learn about compassion, it helps to be in love.
If you want to learn about healing, it helps to know of suffering.
The strong live in the storm without worshipping the storm.

Mark Nepo

Pass it on, pay it forward

I recently spent a beautiful week at Great Hucklow, attending and participating in the annual summer school. The subject this year was “How then shall we live?” We were exploring how we live with the fact that we will inevitably die; we were looking at grief, love, loss and legacy. The legacies of those who have touched our lives and are now gone as well as what might be our legacy when our time comes, perhaps the ultimate question. It was said that the panel had been brave in choosing the subject. I agree with this sentiment, it was very brave indeed.

Forrest Church said that “Religion is our human response to being alive and having to die.” Surely the ultimate question for all of us. That said I would add a little more, the theme of the week, knowing this…then how shall we live?

Now the week did not go exactly as planned. We were given a big dose of the ups and downs of life. The troubles started before I’d even set off. I was to be co-facilitating a group exploring grief and our legacies of love and loss. I had spent some time with the co-facilitator preparing the group we would lead throughout the week. On the morning I was setting off I received a message telling me he was unwell and would not be travelling that day. I received news the next day informing me he would not be coming at all. So I had to quickly make adjustments and do things alone. People were very supportive and the group was a truly moving experience. More beautiful than I could ever have dreamed possible; a beautifully deep and engaging experience that I was blessed with leading and experiencing. Thank you.

Now this was not the end of the challenging experiences. Early in the week trouble began to strike. First all the water went off in the whole village. As this occurred people began to be struck down with what we used to call sickness and diarrhoea but is now called the norovirus. Each day three or four would go down with it and would have to quarantined for 48 hours as all kinds of measures were put in place. The quarantine room became known as the leper colony as they were fed and socialised together until they were deemed fit enough to join the rest of us as they were no longer infectious.

Great Hucklow is only three miles from Eyam, something that was not lost on any of us. Now for those who don’t know Eyam is known as the “plague village”. It was the village that basically quarantined itself during the plague of the seventeenth century. It cut itself off from all the surrounding villages so as not the spread the plague that had arrived on cloth from London. Of the 350 village inhabitants only 83 survived. Incredibly one of the survivors was the grave digger.

Sue and I decided to pay Eyam a visit one afternoon. As we drove towards it there were signs saying the village was cut off, due to roadworks, it gave us a deeply earie feeling. A local told us to ignore the signs and to just drive through, which we did. We walked around for a couple of hours and took in the sights and sounds, visiting the church yard and reading the history of the place which was sign posted everywhere. I was particularly moved by the list of dead outside each little cottage, I felt the pain and grief that they must have experienced as one after one family members died. Whole families were wiped or just one or two survived. I also noticed that commemorative service which was to be held in open at near by at Cucklet Delph. The church services were held in the open air at the time of the plague to stop the spreading of infection.

As we left Eyam and returned to Hucklow I thought how incredibly faithful these people must have been and how willing they were to sacrifice for a greater good. A wonderful and beautiful example to us all as to how we might want to live. The village is a beautiful example to humanity of how we can be at our best. By isolating themselves they protected others, by not infecting others with the illness they had passed on something beautiful, a legacy of love and self-sacrifice, an example that still lives on today many centuries later. Just a beautiful counter to the selfish and self-centred ways in which so many of us live today.

Now this sounds like the kind of infectious disease that ought to be passed on; the kind I would love to see grow and pass on throughout the whole world. A kind of blessing to humanity that could spread through us all.

It brings to mind the old nursery rhyme “ring a ring o’ roses”

Ring-a-ring o' roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down.

Cows in the meadows
Eating buttercups
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all jump up.

It used to be thought that this is about the Great Plague, although folklore scholars do dispute this, some suggest that its origins maybe the spreading of disease amongst the early American settlers in New England. Who knows, certainly not I.

The reason it came to mind is the A-tishoo! As I’m one of life’s great sneezers. Oddly one of the things that Sue first noticed about me was my unapologetic sneeze. Now whenever anyone sneezes don’t we all say “bless you”, we wish one another well for the sneeze may be a sign of impending illness. We pass on a simple blessing, gosh don’t we all need more blessings.

As the week at Summer School went on and we explored “How then shall we live?” I thought a lot of all the wonderful people who have blessed me with their loving presence. I thought of how I could possible pay them back, to give back to them the blessings that they had so freely given me. And then it came to me. I don’t need to pay it back, in order to live out the legacy, what I need to do is “pay it forward”

Pay it forward is an interesting term. It is a phrase I have heard many times before. Now just like there are disputes as to the origin of ‘ring a ring o’roses’, there are also disputes about the origin of “pay it forward”

Some say it began with the ancient Greeks. Luminaries such as Benjamin Franklin and Ralph Waldo Emerson made reference to the principle. In a letter to Benjamin Webb in 1784 Franklin wrote “I do not pretend to give such a sum; I only lend it to you. When you...meet with another honest man in similar distress, you must pay me by lending this sum to him; enjoining him to discharge the debt by a like operation, when he shall be able, and shall meet with another opportunity. I hope it may thus go thro’ many hands, before it meets with a knave that will stop its progress. This is a trick of mine for doing a deal of good with a little money.”

In his essay “Compensation” Emerson wrote: “In the order of nature we cannot render benefits to those whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody.”

During the 1950’s the phrase “Pay it Forward” was popularised by Robert A Heinlein, initially by being referenced in his book “Between Planets.” Heinlein preached and practised this principle in his daily life and this led to the formation of the Heinlein society, a humanitarian organisation based on this principle.

In the year 2000 Catherine Ryan Hyde published the novel “Pay it Forward” which became a best seller and was soon made into a film by the same title. This led in time to the formation of the “Pay if Forward Foundation.” It even has its own day. Did you know that April 26th is “International Pay It Forward Day”. This is a day when millions of people intentionally commit to acts of kindness and caring.

Pay it forward is based on what is known today as the “ripple effect”, which is really based on Confucius concept of “Concentric Circles of Compassion”. Like a pebble dropped into a pond, our actions create ripples that go out and affect others beyond what we can imagine. It works on the premise that we can make our world a better place if we share, if we care as much for others as we do for ourselves. It is firmly grounded in the ethos of the “Golden Rule of Compassions” a concept found at the core of every single one of the world’s great religious traditions. It is an effort to change the world one small act at a time. Everything we do and everything we do not do really does matter. We affect our world, for good or for ill, with every feeling, every thought, word and or deed.

One of the great movements for social good of the twentieth century is enshrined in the concept of “paying it forward”. Alcoholics Anonymous and the near two hundred other fellowships that have sprung from its principles have brought about recovery for millions of people from all manners of addiction. When a person is released from their destructive addiction they are not asked to pay back what was freely given to them, instead they are asked to pass on what has been given to others in desperate need and when doing so to also pass on that they do not have to pay back what has been given to them, instead they too must pass it forward. This is the basis of the simple movement that has saved millions of lives.

When I look back at my life it blows my mind to think of all the good that people have done for me. During the group, I had the privilege of leading at Hucklow, we spent time remembering the gifts that had been given to us the blessings of the lives that had touched and inspired ours, that deep love that had turned to grief when those lives ended. As we considered how we should now live, the conclusion that we came too is that surely what we need to do is to make of these lives acts of remembrance by passing on these beautiful examples to others, in the hope that they would be caught up in the love and pass it on also. This is the kind of infection that does not want to be quarantined, this is the kind of blessing that the whole world needs and is a true antidote to the disease of selfishness and cynicism that seems to be taking hold in humanity these days.

To bless the world all we have to do is remember those wonderful examples that have touched our lives and blessed us with their loving example. No we cannot pay back to them what they so freely gave to us, but then we don’t have to, all we have to do is pay it forward and become the blessing that we have all been waiting for.

It is easy to look at our world and despair and give up and say “what’s the point? Everyone is out for themselves. If I go out of my way to help another, they’ll just keep on taking advantage and what will I ever get back in return?

There is though another way; this other way is the purpose of the “Pay it Forward” movement. We can change our world, one act at a time. This is religion in its deepest and simplest form, binding up the broken manifesting God’s love in life. At its core is this life affirming principle that in spite of a great deal of evidence to the contrary faith, hope and love do in fact still remain. You see these ripples touch everybody both the giver and receiver and all who are eventually touched by them; both the giver and receiver are transformed by the experience; both giver and receiver are blessed abundantly.

So let’s become the blessings we have all been searching for; let’s remember all those times in our lives when someone has gone out of their way to help us with no expectation of anything in return; whether they have helped us materially, intellectually, emotionally, or spirituality; let’s re-feel these occasions and to meditate on them and to come up with ways that we can pay these debts forward; let’s think of ways we can give back to our world; let’s create ripple effects that can impact in our shared world in ways we perhaps can’t even begin to dream of.

We can change our world today; we can become the blessing that we have all been waiting for… Atishoo…Bless you…