Living Spiritually Alive: Wholeness, Health & Well-Being

Last Sunday was a long day, a full day, a busy day. I don’t just mean my usual duties, but all sorts of other things going on, folk contacting me, having to carry many different things in my heart, mind and soul. My phone didn’t stop pinging, nor did my interactions and conversations abate. Late in the day I found myself “ligging” out on my settee, eating and half watching a drama on tv. I felt satisfied, if exhausted. I found myself making all kinds of noises in my mouth and throat, beautiful soothing sounds. I like to do this when I am relaxing. I thought to myself I really do need to learn “Overtone” singing. I was creating some wonderful bottom end notes, just smiling at myself in a state of bliss. As I went to bed, I decided I would not set my alarm, I would wake “naturally”. Can anyone really awaken unnaturally?

Well, I was obviously exhausted as I slept through until almost 9am, this is unheard of for me. I began my day in the usual manner, this included sharing my “It comes in the little things” reflection on Facebook, a spiritual discipline I have kept up since early December. How I have delighted in so many other people joining in. I had much to do that day, including dealing with many of the pressing issues left over from the day before. That said despite these many challenges I felt in good spirits.

As I ventured into the day the following poem “Any Morning” by William Stafford” was singing in my heart and soul.

Here it is:

“Any Morning” by William Stafford

Just lying on the couch and being happy.
Only humming a little, the quiet sound in the head.
Trouble is busy elsewhere at the moment, it has
so much to do in the world.

People who might judge are mostly asleep; they can't
monitor you all the time, and sometimes they forget.
When dawn flows over the hedge you can
get up and act busy.

Little corners like this, pieces of Heaven
left lying around, can be picked up and saved.
People won't even see that you have them,
they are so light and easy to hide.

Later in the day you can act like the others.
You can shake your head. You can frown.

Any Morning Can Be a Little Corner of Heaven

I could feel that little corner of heaven that morning, as I had the night before, despite the very real concerns and worries close at hand and in the wider world. Worries and trouble that have been very much with me this week. Not that I have been downbeat at all this week. I have felt connected, in good shape actually, with a real sense of well-being. I’ve found myself humming and singing to myself a lot this week, particularly the line “Groovy times are here again” by The Clash

Later that day I found myself watching the BBC news. Now amongst the more troubling news stories this last Monday there was one that was heartening. I found a little piece of heaven if you like. It was a story about the life of the wonderfully named Mercedes Gleitze, who was the first British woman to swim the English Channel in 1927, she was also the first person to swim the Straits of Gibraltar, later that year. Two achievements that although they were celebrated at the time, were unknown to her own children and grandchildren. A film has just been completed celebrating her life and a “Blue Plaque” has been unveiled at her former Brighton seas-side home.

The news item was shot on Brighton beach, on a freezing cold January morning. On the beach were scores of people going for their daily dip in the freezing sea. They are not alone. It seems the be the “in thing” this winter. I know people that go “wild swimming” in Pickmere out in Cheshire, every week; I know a whole load of folk who went there on New Year’s Day. I am told it is incredibly invigorating and those who do it say it makes you feel “so alive”. I understand that there are many health benefits to cold water swimming such as, boosting the immune system, creating endorphins that lift the mood, improving circulation and libido, the burning of calories, reduction of stress as well helping create a sense of community in the sense it increases socialisation.

I have not been tempted to take a dip myself, at least not yet. I am probably too scarred by holidays in Scarborough as a child and the cold North sea; freezing cold even in the middle of summer. That said I know I have said I would never do things in the past and then got into them. So I ought to learn that you should never say never. So, we shall see. That said I do know that I am more one for a long hot bath, after exercising. I love to loll and listen to music very loudly post workout, before eating. It all contributes to a deep sense of connection and well-being and enables me to fully engage with a very busy life. The messages, the phone calls, the encounters and conversations haven’t stopped all week, there is so much going on. I need this time.

At the beginning of the year so many of us resolve to live healthier lives, gym membership sores, as does attendance at slimming groups and their like. General physical well-being is often on our minds during the winter months, especially early January.

Now while there is a great deal of talk of improving our physical well-being, which is of course vital, there seems to be less talk of taking care of our spiritual well-being, which actually may well be more important. If I have learnt anything in life I know that my emotional, mental and physical well-being rests on my spiritual health. I discovered that if I take care of my spiritual well-being, as a result, the rest just seems to take care of itself. I never forget the importance of first things first.

The purpose of developing our spiritual well-being, is to improve our capacity to live in this life. I agree with my esteemed colleague Rev Bill Darlison who claims that the purpose of spirituality is to increase our sensitivity to life. Not so much transcend this life but to enable us to engage more fully in it. This is something that no one else can do for us, it is our task, our responsibility. Spiritual practice helps us to do so. As the Zen proverb says “no one else can eat your food for you, no one else can go to the toilet for you, and no one else can live your life for you. And, of course, no one else can do your practice for you.

Maybe this is something we could think about as we move into the year. To find ways to improve our spiritual well-being, to find a practice and stick with it, so as to increase our sensitivity to life and thus to live more spiritually alive. It doesn’t need to be anything drastic like cold water swimming, it could be something much simpler. I am continuing my daily practice of paying attention to and sharing the “little things”. It has made a huge difference. For every single day I am noticing more and more of these “little things” and I am finding so many other folk doing the same and sharing them with me and one another. It is a wonderful delight.

To live spiritually alive requires that we increase our sensitivity to life. In so doing it enables us to live more actively in the world and thus our lives will feel more meaningful, meaning filled. It is this that will give us a sense of well-being, of health. Health a word that has its root in the Old English word “haelp” meaning “wholeness, a being whole, sound or well” from the Proto-Germanic “halitho” meaning “whole, uninjured, of good omen”, from older words meaning holy, sacred or healed. In Latin it shared its root with salvation.

Healing, wholeness, health are about being in relationship with ourselves, one another and life. It is about increasing our sensitivity to all of this, this is true well-being. When we live this way we feel spiritually alive, as opposed to being estranged from life.

Spiritual well-being occurs in such relationships, relationships with ourselves, each other, life and whatever we believe is at the core of life, this is where true healing occurs. This does not mean that life does not affect us, there is no cure to life so to speak. If anything it will affect us increasingly. It does not mean the real troubles of life are taken away. What happens is that by being in relationship with all life, our sensitivity to life increases and we experience wholeness, well-being, health, and are thus touched by healing. We are filled with love, in life’s real challenges, and in so doing we know spiritual comfort and thus know what it means to be whole. We will feel wholly alive, we will live holy lives.

Health, well-being is not an absence of trouble of illness, instead it is a sense of being fully alive, like the feeling that those wild swimmers describe.

So, think about it. Can you think of one thing that can help improve your spiritual well-being and thus increase your sensitivity to life and to share it with those in your life. Can you attempt to stick at it day by day. Go on give it a go. I would love to hear about it, as I am certain others will too.

We each find our own bliss, our own groovy times, we rejoice in our own way…

So let’s go seek and discover, live wholly alive, live holy lives.

Below is a video devotion based 

on the material in this "blogspot"

Exquisite Risk

I was recently sent a picture of myself with my two closest, in age at least, siblings. It was taken in 1977 at a fancy dress street party during the Silver Jubilee celebrations. I was five years old at the time. In the picture I am dressed as Tarzan. The strange thing is though that I am standing bolt upright, like a soldier on duty. There is good reason for this. I was originally planning to go as “Action Man” (What American’s call GI Joe). I had spent the weeks before attempting to stand upright, as even at that age I was deeply self-conscious about physical problems I had and was constantly told to stand straught. As I looked at the picture I reflected on the pain and the shame I had at the time and the decades that followed. I also remembered how even at that young age I was already living a bubble of self-protection that would lead to so many problems later in life. It has taken me forty years to shed that skin, but as I write this little "blogspot" I believe I have done so. Many old ideas have drifted away over the years. I have lost so much skin that have been imprisoned in.

As a kid I was always considered overly sensitive, that I needed toughening up, to develop another layer of skin. For a long time I attempted to do so and of course it only made things worse as I attempted to be something I am not, to harden my heart. The truth is that all I needed to do was to learn not take things so personally and to allow my sensitivity to become perhaps my greatest asset. I no longer attempt to defend my heart, instead I just allow my heart to lighten my life and pour my love out. Today my sensitivity may well be my greatest asset, my treasure, it is certainly where my heart is

I regularly meet with several colleagues. We talk about ministry; we talk about where our own lives are at; we talk about our own spiritual development. One colleague often repeats the following words when we come together.

“I honour your gods
I drink at your well
I bring an undefended heart to our meeting place
I have no cherished outcome
I will not negotiate by withholding
I am not subject to disappointment”

Oddly these words come from traditional Celtic wedding vows. Hardly romantic, but perhaps they symbolise something deeper.

It is the line “I bring an undefended heart to our meeting place” that resonates with me the most. It is the key I believe to living the spiritual life, to live with an undefended an open heart. This can be extremely painful and difficult at times, but I have learnt how vital it is for me. When I close down or put on my suit of armour life soon loses its flavour. I suppose that this is why I’ve always struggled with the sentiment of Ephesians Ch6 vv 10-18, the passage commonly known as “God’s Armour”. I was recently at an Anglo Catholic church where I saw an image based around this passage. I remember thinking to myself “gosh that’s the last thing I would want.”

For me religion and spirituality are not about being at war or in conflict and the God of my limited understanding does not want me armour plaited. I know these kinds of images appeal to many and certainly to some of my own traditional Christians friends. Not to me though and it does seem in conflict with the message I find in the Gospels.

Increasingly for me the spiritual life is about “Living with an unarmoured heart”, easier said than done I know. It is the treasure though and wherever my treasure is I have come to believe that this is also where my heart is.

Just imagine what it might be like to live with an unarmoured or an undefended heart. We all have defence mechanism, things we do to protect ourselves from being hurt. I am sure we are all familiar with the fright and flight mechanism. There is another reaction that perhaps we are less familiar with, it is certainly one that is less talked about. I have come to call this the freeze mechanism. It is something I am very familiar with, for I have utilised it throughout my life. Basically when trouble strikes a frozen person appears to continue to function normally on the outside, but inside, emotionally at least, they shut down, they internally hibernate. It is something I have come to learn about myself in recent years and I see it others quite clearly at times, perhaps too clearly. When it happens to me my neck and shoulders become stiff, my throat dries up, the base of my skull seems to warm up, my skin tightens around my face, I tend to blow out a lot and it feels like someone has just dropped a great rock into the pit of my stomach. These are the moments when I build up my walls and try to keep life out. I was doing this at five years old, no child should be like that.

How many of us spend lifetime’s building these walls that we think protect us? When in fact all we succeed in doing is block ourselves off from the love present in life, a treasure of infinite value, a pearl of great price.

To live with an open heart is to live intimately with all that is life. It is to experience life through our felt experience to not be ruled by what our minds project from our past, those disappointments and fears that have been built over a life time. To live with an unarmoured heart is about connecting with all that is there. Zen Buddhism talks about intimacy with 10,000 things, meaning intimacy with all things, all phenomena, that nothing is left out.

I have discovered that I am living openheartedly when I am not at war with life, when I am not arguing with reality and not avoiding intimacy, especially with my own thoughts and feelings. I can find myself arguing with reality at times, I suppose some would call this living in denial, but thankfully by living faithfully I once again see the truth and let loose the prison of my own skin and move onto a newer and fresher reality, my heart opens up and I experience a new reality. I do not remain armoured or frozen for very long. Faith sets me free once again. I shed another layer of skin.

In “The Exquisite Risk: Daring To Live An Authentic Life” Mark Nepo talks about daring to live your whole unique self, to sing your authentic true song, and to be you unforgivingly. The key is to dare to slow down and to really feel life rather than merely manage it. Nepo encourages us to become quiet enough and open enough to listen to what truly matters; he encourages us to listen intimately to our own hearts, our loved ones, the wonders of nature; he encourages us to live with nothing held back. He shares his own journey including a battle with cancer which he overcame and which helped him understand how only by daring to embrace all that life has to offer can we come to a deeper appreciation of its meaning and beauty. The beauty of Nepo’s work is that he makes the personal universal. He speaks in a way that anyone can relate to, if they would only find the courage to open their own hearts.

A beautiful example of this is when he tells of a dear old friend who slowly loses her hearing. I can relate to this, mine is not what it once was. Due to this she moved beyond merely surface listening and instead listens below, she goes on a journey under the skin. He tells how one day as she grew “tired of straining so hard for all the words, (she) began to listen to eyes, bodies, to gestures, to the face behind the face.” She discovered the warmth, the deep love coming from within the other. Circumstances had forced her to change how she related to people and in so doing she discovered new and beautiful ways to relate and connect to others. Her disability had not decreased the experience of her life, instead through listening with the ear of her heart she had discovered new and beautiful things. She had shed off the skin she had been imprisoned it.

Nepo does not suggest that we have to suffer in order to draw out these beautiful gifts of the heart that are within all of us, although it seems that for most of us this is the case. It is often suffering that finally humbles us enough to open up and transcend the limits of what we think we know. The key he suggests is in self-education. Since the word “educate” means to draw out to call forth what is already present within us (if only schools and places of education would learn this). In so doing we will discover the world within us and ourselves within the world. This requires us to listen to all that the world has to say and not just the thoughts going round and round in our own little worlds. It requires us to shed the skin that we are imprisoned in, to let down the armour plating to learn to live with an un-defended heart.

The key is to become intimately aware that all of us have a unique purpose for being here, this is the “exquisite risk” that Nepo is describing. It is to become willing to be fully alive, open, available to live authentically alive with an undefended heart.

Nepo speaks powerfully to me, to my condition. The spiritual life is indeed a journey under the skin, beneath the surface. This takes courage to go beyond the limits of material life. It takes courage to truly engage in the exquisite risk, to live the authentic life, to join in the courageous conversation. I invite you to come and join with me on this journey under the skin, to lose the skin that you’re imprisoned in. Let us take together the exquisite risk.

A Journey of One Inch: Living in the Layers

"A Spiritual Journey"

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,

no matter how long,

but only by a spiritual journey,

a journey of one inch,

very arduous and humbling and joyful,

by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,

and learn to be at home.

by Wendell Berry

I went to bed last Saturday night not sure how I was going to spend my Sunday off. I’d had a lovely few days away with friends and family and was now happily back at home. I awoke on Sunday morning and instinctively knew what I needed to do. It was “Mothering Sunday” and I thought to myself, today I will keep “Mothering Sunday” and return to the Mother Church and so I set off into Manchester to Cross Street Chapel. Cross Street Chapel is the place that I had discovered the Unitarian tradition, almost by accident, one cold January in 2005.

If it was an accident it was a beautiful one by the way as a whole series of seeming coincidences conspired to bring me to that place at that time in my life. some would call it synchronicity, well maybe, maybe not...I give thanks and praise everyday that it happened...despite the suffering that has accompanied the joy...

As I drove into town, tears began to form and fall from my eyes as memories of times past grew from my soul. Times connected with Cross Street and the people I had known there and of course memories of my own family and friends. I remembered those I have loved and lost in recent times and over the last few years. I remembered the “Mothering Sunday” service in 2006, which Ethan had participated in, just a few months before he was killed. I remembered how much his short life had given to me, both on a human and spiritual level. I thought of his mother, my dear friend Claire and her own journey since his death. I remembered my former ministers both John and all he had given to me and of course dear Jane whose funeral I had attended only a couple of weeks previously. I also had memories of the “Old Lad” (my grandad) as well as “Our Allen” and other people who had touched my life and who are no longer physically a part of it. As I wept and drove I felt a real sense of release coming through my body and the spirit move within as another layer of skin around my soul began to loosen. I thought of The Clash song “Gootta lose this skin, that I’m imprisoned in, gotta lose this skin.” Sung by Tymon Dogg.

It was a moving, thought provoking, service led by the student minister Ralph Catt’s; it was lovely to worship with some faces old and new. As I drove home that afternoon those words of Wendell Berry's poem "A Spiritual Journey" came up from my heart and into my mind. I felt that I understood, maybe for the first time, that the spiritual journey is not really one of length, but one of depth. It’s not really about physically going anywhere and yet the landscape or at least ones perception of it seems to constantly change. We do not need to blast into space to enter a new world. We do not need to enter outer space; what we need to do is learn to truly inhabit the inner space; we need to learn to be at home, to belong here; we need to learn to live in the layers of our own lives. That’s the real journey.

Now no doubt the Wendell Berry poem is inspired by the Christian mystic Meister Ekhart.It was he who claimed that the spiritual journey is not one of distance, that we do not so much travel on a physical pilgrimage from A to B to C to D etc, that the spiritual journey is some kind of linear progression in which we reach some goal, some new state of being way over there in some distant realm. No instead we discover new truths, understandings and experiences as we journey through life in a cyclical sense and that as we do so we move deeper into the layers of our own being and find ourselves at home in the layers of our own lives.

John O’Donohue claimed that

“Meister Eckhart radically revises the whole notion of spiritual programs. He says that there is no such thing as a spiritual journey. If a little shocking, this is refreshing. If there were a spiritual journey, it would be only a quarter inch long, though many miles deep. It would be a swerve into rhythm with your deeper nature and presence. The wisdom here is so consoling. You do not have to go away outside yourself to come into real conversation with your soul and with the mysteries of the spiritual world. The eternal is at home — within you.” (John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: a Book of Celtic Wisdom)

O’Donohue further claims that sometimes we don’t see what is already here, what is within us. This is because we have become too familiar with our own surroundings and that this has lead to us losing our sense of belonging. This is why we search out there beyond, because we fail to recognise this sense of belonging within ourselves and our own surroundings and experiences. It is the very familiarity that is the problem. Therefore we need to dig deeper within the layers of our own being in order to see through the façade.

He states that:

“One of the difficulties for people, in awakening to their inner world is the familiarity of their lives. They find it hard to find something that is really new and interesting and adventurous in themselves and yet everything that we really need for our journey here has already been given to us. So there's a great strangeness in the shadows of our soul world, that we should become more conversant with and closer to.”

Last week on returning home I became aware that something had changed both within myself and in my relationships with my nearest and dearest. The familiar seemed less recognizable and as a result I was able to bear witness to everything with new vision; as a result I was able to hear everyone and everything with a deeper clarity; as a result I seemed to understand all that is in a new light; as a result I experienced a deeper intimacy with everything and everyone.

It seems that I have gone down deeper into the layers of my own soul and the soul of life and more has been revealed. What once seemed familiar seemed oh so different. This did not frighten me, far from it. Instead I felt excited by this and felt more at home both in my own skin and the world that I live within. It feels like the beginning of a new adventure and yet one that does not require me to walk down a different road.

And yet while everything felt so new there was still an abiding sense of the familiar too. I noticed a deepening sense of connection to my own past and a deeper understanding of who I am, who I have always been. This is something I’ve been thinking a lot of in recent weeks, as a deeper intimacy with who I am, past, present and even future has developed. I wonder sometimes, when speaking of spiritual matters, if we focus too much on the moment and in doing so if we lose this sense of the richness of our whole lives. It brought to mind a quote I recently came across by Stanley Kunitz

“I think it's important for one's survival to keep the richness of the life always there to be tapped. One doesn't live in the moment, one lives in the whole history of your being, from the moment you became conscious.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about Rev Jane Barraclough, these last few weeks, as I have grieved her death. Obviously she came into my consciousness while I worshipped at Cross Street Chapel last Sunday. One thing that Jane’s ministry awakened within me was a love for poetry, especially in worship. This is something I will always treasure. When I qualified as a minister she gave me a book as a gift. The book is “Soul Food: Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds” Edited by Neil Astley & Pamela Robertson-Pearce. I have used many poems from it these last three and a half years. She wrote a dedication in the book “For dearest Danny. All blessings on your many ministries. Love Jane.” She knew me well and understood my many ministries.

In the book is the poem “The Layers” by Stanley Kunitz.

“The Layers” by Stanley Kunitz

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

The poem was written at a pivotal moment in Kunitz’s long career. He believed that it spoke of something that was central to his whole experience of being a poet and a person. He wrote it in response to a personal crisis. He had suffered several grief’s, including his mother and two older sisters as well as several dear friends. It was a written at a time of change in his life, both personally and as a writer. He stated that

“. . . I wrote 'The layers' in my late seventies to conclude a collection of sixty years of my poetry. . . Through the years I had endured the loss of several of my dearest friends, including Theodore Roethke, Mark Rothko, and - most recently - Robert Lowell. I felt I was near the end of a phase in my life and in my work. The poem began with two lines that came to me in a dream, spoken out of a dark cloud: 'Live in the layers, not on the litter.”

“Live in the layers, not on the litter.” There is some beautiful wisdom here...I wonder from where it came...

In many ways this simple line may well be the key to everything, to live in the layers of our lives, the whole of our lives. So often we want to move on and leave behind the litter, the mess, the pain and the suffering, but to do so is to fail to bear witness to our whole lives. I believe that we have to live in our whole lives, we can’t just pick and choose and no matter how hard we try we can’t really leave our lives behind.

Kunitz was an avid gardener and maybe it is from this love that the idea of the layers grew. In horticulture “layering” is a method of propagation that brings forth new life from the dying or broken stem. This allows new roots to form and therefore life goes, or do I mean grows, on.

We cannot live on the brokenness of our lives, but we can grow anew from the litter if we live within the layers. We cannot completely begin anew, nor should we want too; we cannot leave behind was has gone before, nor should we want too; we cannot escape who we are, nor should we want too. The spiritual journey is not one of distance it is one of depth, it’s about finding ourselves at home in the ground at our feet. It’s about living in the layers.

The spiritual journey is not one of distance, but one of depth. It will at times appear arduous and painful and it will certainly be humbling as we are brought to our knees by the suffering that is a part of life. And yet from this very suffering we will re-awaken once again, like the new spring. It is this that opens us and it is this that brings the joy of living once again. It is this that will bring us home, to greater sense of belonging to all that has been, all that is now and will ever be. It is this that breeds deeper intimacy with ourselves, with those who we share life with and with the eternal spirit, that I name God.

So I say let us continue “in” our journey, let us “live in the layers”

Let’s sing the joy of living in all its mystery and invite others to come and join us in song, for they too can begin again to belong.

Let’s “Live in the layers, not on the litter.”

Amen