The Yorkshire Coast: Connecting Past, Present & Future

Sue and myself had a wonderful week away on the Yorkshire coast. We needed time away together, It was oh so needed. A time to refresh and recuperate as well as enjoy the beautiful countryside history and heritage of the region. We have signed up to a years membership of English Heritage too, it will help us to get out and about more over the summer, when time allows. Our hearts, souls, minds and spirits will need it, our bodies too, we walked a lot last week. It was great to breath in that invigorating sea air. The weather could have been better, but we didn’t seem to mind too much.

It was a week away and yet I could not completely escape my present or my past. Thankfully, Sue has got used to the fact that I cannot go anywhere without bumping into someone I know. We often joke about who we are likely to bump into or meet up with wherever we go. Well, it seems that to some degree or other the whole of my life was tapping me on the shoulder last week. I had gone to soak up and experience the gift of the present moment, but the past was always with me, following like headlights on my tail. During the week I also relived many childhood memories, some of which were seemingly long lost and yet came to life during our time away. Many old ghosts seemingly came out to greet me, some unexpectedly. Some were beautiful, others painful, but all were meaningful.

"Headlights" by New Model Army (Live)

On the first day we wandered round Scarborough, witnessing everything beginning to open up again, as we retraced many of my childhood steps. I was somewhat surprised at how familiar it all was. The town is perhaps not as beautiful as it once was, but its spirit is still there and it did bring to life some powerful memories. While we were there I received a phone call from a fellowship friend who was going to be in Bridlington the next day with his mother. We decided to go there and meet up with them. We also visited Flamborough Head. The next day we met up with my auntie Catherine in Filey and talked and talked. She showed me some letters I had written to her many years ago, they were the first steps in healing family rifts, it was strangely beautiful reading them. We also talked of old family holidays as we walked around the town, including one in Filey. It was a beautiful but emotional day as so much of my past came alive in that moment. There was a deeper sense of healing going on, it felt like the whole of my life was alive in the moment, the past, the present and the future. The next day we took the steam train from Pickering to Whitby on the “North Yorkshire Moors Railway” as we were boarding I swore I saw a retired colleague Rev Dr Vernon Marshall walk down the platform. It was a beautiful journey through the countryside but the day in Whitby was spoilt by the weather. It was wild but we kept on we fulfilled several “Whitby Rites of Passage”. We walking on and out to the edge of the Jetty, as the rain came down and waves crashed over and we walked up to the Abbey and old church up the 199 steps. We couldn’t go to the Abby as it was closed due to filming. Now as we approached the 199 steps I saw the man again who had boarded the steam train we travelled on, it was indeed Vernon Marshall. I called out to him and we talked for a while, he was with his family on a break too. He didn’t recognize me at first, as it has been a few years since we last spoke. Over the next couple of days we took in many of the cultural sights of the area, just beautiful. We had joined English heritage for the year at Scarborough Castle, we reckon it will get us out and about this summer, when we have the time. On the final day we decided to drive up to Robin Hoods Bay and Staithes, we actually had time to go back to Whitby too and enjoy it in more pleasant weather. It was a beautiful day and one when I kept on meeting ghosts from my past. Whilst walking to the beach at Robin Hoods Bay I saw a face I recognised, they recognised me too and after taking a double perhaps triple take we approached each other and spoke. It was a guy called Andy Butterworth who I have not seen since 1988 and Batley Grammar school. His partner took a picture of us, I did not, but my mind and heart captured the memory. Later that day, in Whitby, we passed my nephew “Our Paul” who was out with his wife and friends on a drinking weekend. We talked for a while before moving on. It was quite a week, enjoying the present, while re-feeling the past and looking forward to an unknown future. So many snap shot moments, that have awakened so much deep in the soul of me.

Last week I experienced “Retrouvaille” (pronounced reh-troo-vahy-uh), which is the joy that comes from seeing someone again after a very long time. It was a kind of reunion and certainly a rediscovery and it reawakened so much deep in my soul.

One thing we noticed at the weekend was that there were many other people visiting these beautiful places for very different reasons to us. You could see all the characters from “Viz” descending on Whitby over the weekend and from what my friend Oliver has told me Scarborough was madness too. That said these places mean different things to each of us. For me is about my past, my present and future coming together, for others it was something completely different. I tried to take in as much of the experience as I possible could, to truly live in the present. I tried to keep my homiletic consciousness quiet too, to try not to think too much about what I was going to write afterwards. I allowed by senses to awaken, to drink it all up and enjoy our time together away from the stresses and strains of our lives, but you can never do so completely, and as you can see my past is always tapping me on the shoulder. As Sue says, “we cannot go anywhere”.

The week brought to my mind the following:

“In the Present” by Robert Walsh taken from “Stone Blessings”

"On a sunny day, I walked alone in a broad valley in Nepal, through an old forest with vines and flowering trees and intermittent vistas of the snow-covered Himalayas. I came upon a clearing in the woods, and saw there a holy man – a monk in an orange robe, head shaved, back bent with age – chopping wood.

I had conflicting impulses. I wanted to ask him questions. What was his name? Where did he live? What was his life like? I wanted his blessing, and I wanted to give mine. And I wanted to pass by invisibly, noiselessly, doing nothing that would disturb him.

Instead, I took out my camera and took a picture of him. I tried to be discreet as possible about it; I waited until he was not looking in my direction. I don’t know whether he heard the sound. Then I put the camera away and moved on down the trail.

I took the picture because I wanted to tell you the story. Now I have a small, still, two-dimensional memento of that moment. We can look at it. It will last for a while. The actual moment completely surrounded me. It had sounds and smells and movement, and it was only real for a moment. Now it’s gone, and it will never happen again.

I moved through the experience with my attention alternating between the present moment and a future time, when I would be back home, telling the story. It’s what preachers call homiletic consciousness, which means going through life thinking, Can I use this in a sermon? But it’s not just preachers who do it. I imagine a painter would do the same. Or a poet. Or a novelist, teacher, composer, or a storyteller – anyone who uses the experiences of life in order to give something to someone else.

But the more we stay in the future, thinking about telling the story, the less we are open to the power of the experience itself. The more we put a frame around the picture, the more it becomes only a picture and not a real event. Instead of living life each day, we are busy getting ready for life.

Yet if were not for story tellers and photographers, I would never have gone to Nepal.

So I will try to find a balance between being fully in the moment and being present to the whole of life – past, present, and future, here and there. That I may live this day today, and also tell the story tomorrow."

I love how Robert Walsh describes trying to balance the power of the moment he was experiencing, observing a holy man in Nepal, whilst also struggling with ideas of wanting to know him and also tell him all about himself, to almost justify his presence. Instead, he took a snapshot, hoping perhaps that by taking a picture you would capture the essence of an experience that would help him tell the tale later. Of course, taking a picture does not capture the power and beauty of any moment or experience, but it does perhaps help one to remember. I spent my week surrendering to the experience of the Yorkshire, with past flowing through, whilst trying to share this with Sue. Yes, I knew I would talk about them later, but I tried to suppress the rationalising in the moment, and just allow my senses to take it all in. That wasn’t the difficult challenge, this came from the past as it kept on constantly creeping up on me and tapping me on the shoulder.

During our week on the Yorkshire coast we shared many magic moments, beautiful moments, that will live in my heart. Those moments also brought to life that fed into the wonder of it all.

There was another interesting tie that helped to link together the past, present and future. Sue and I stayed at a place named “Gallows Hill” in Brompton by Sawdon, which is half way between Scarborough and Pickering. It is run by a lovely couple who are originally from Birmingham but have lived in North Yorkshire for forty years. I highly recommend it, just beautiful. “Gallows Hill” was the family home of William Wordsworth’s wife Mary Hutchinson. Wordsworth came into my mind on and off all week as I enjoyed the experiences we were sharing, in the moment, whilst also being transported to so many moments from past, some beautiful and others heartbreakingly painful. The beautiful moments whether in the present or past brought to my heart and mind “Spots of Time” from The Prelude (Book XI, ls 258-278) by Wordsworth

 “There are in our existence spots of time,

That with distinct pre-eminence retain

A renovating virtue, whence–depressed

By false opinion and contentious thought,

Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,

In trivial occupations, and the round

Of ordinary intercourse–our minds

Are nourished and invisibly repaired;

A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,

That penetrates, enables us to mount,

When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.”

 William Wordsworth, The Prelude (Book XI, ls 258-278)

Don’t we all experience such magic moments, these “spots of time” when life not only feeds but truly nourishes us on a deep, deep level, deeper than the marrow of our bones; moments when the common becomes uncommon,; moments when the veils we create ourselves seem to slip away; moments when we seemingly see beyond the ordinary, when we experience reality on a deeper level. Gosh there were so many last week.

These “spots of time” are sacred moments that are made holy by their mysterious ability to nourish us and perhaps even repair us in body, mind, heart and spirit. These moments are a kind of grace; they seemingly come to us, from a place somewhere beyond ourselves. They cannot be forced; I do not believe that we can just simply create them for ourselves, although we do of course play a vital role in their creation and in the way that they are experienced.

These moments can happen anywhere. For Wordsworth these “spots of time” occurred primarily in nature. We all experience them in different ways, in different states and in different settings. Those moments when time seemingly stands still; those moments that touch us at the core of our being; those moments that transform our lives; those magic moments. Time seemingly becomes compressed or concentrated in these moments when the senses become heightened, when life seemingly has a deeper meaning. These are not necessarily supernatural moments by the way; no, they are firmly grounded in reality.

In these moments time appears to be slowing down, although obviously it does not. Time does not so much stop as become compressed, the moment becomes concentrated. There just seems to be more of life in that moment, but it lasts just as long. Maybe the moment is deeper, not longer. Time is time after all. Some call this Kairos time, or God’s time.

I experienced some such moments last week and I was reminded of many others from my past too. I was reminded by the places we visited as well as the people I bumped into, that brought to mind so many other moments in my life. Wonder filled moments indeed, moments that have shaped me as a human being, but never painlessly, sometimes deeply painfully. Haven’t we all known such moments in our lives.

Last week was beautiful, it also taught me a valuable lesson about life. The lesson was about how important it is to balance time in our lives. It reminded me how vital it is that we practice not only living in the moment that we find ourselves, but to truly bring that moment to life. To allow your whole life to fully inhabit that space, to bring it with you into the moment, without allowing it to dominate, whilst at the same time allowing that moment to prepare you for an unknown future. A future that is truly unwritten. For none of us know what is coming.

May we all find the balance between being fully in the moment and being present to the whole of life, past, present, and future, here and there and everywhere, whereever we find ourselves. If you are anything like me you cannot get away from either your past or present, because it will just appear right there in front of you. That said do we ever need to? No, we just need to be awake, fully present and the moment will work its magic.

So let us all live this day, fully alive today and let us live well enough to tell the story tomorrow, because tomorrow always comes.

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

Memory: The Power of Not Only Now

The following appeared on my facebook feed last Sunday evening. It was one of those wow! moments! It seemed to encapsulate near perfectly some of the thoughts that have been forming in my soul of late.

“Memory” by David Whyte

"Memory is not just a then, recalled in a now, the past is never just the past, memory is a pulse passing through all created life, a wave form, a then continually becoming other thens, all the while creating a continual but almost untouchable now. But the guru’s urge to live only in the now misunderstands the multilayered inheritance of existence, where all epochs live and breathe in parallels. Whether it be the epochal moment initiated by the appearance of the first hydrogen atoms in the universe or a first glimpse of adulthood perceived in adolescence, memory passes through an individual human life like a building musical waveform, constantly maturing, increasingly virtuosic, often volatile, sometimes overpowering. Every human life holds the power of this immense inherited pulse, holds and then supercharges it, according to the way we inhabit our identities in the untouchable now. Memory is an invitation to the source of our life, to a fuller participation in the now, to a future about to happen, but ultimately to a frontier identity that holds them all at once. Memory makes the now fully inhabitable."

It's been singing in my soul all week...

A couple of weeks ago, actually it was Easter Saturday, I discovered I had a whole day off. My appointments were cancelled and I announced on “Facebook” that I had a fully open day and wondered if anyone had any suggestions about how I ought to spend it. Many suggestions came my way. One friend suggested I ought to get some sea air in my lungs and I thought to myself, what a grand idea. Anyhow I went to bed that night and thought to myself I will see what the morning brings.

I was awoken very early by a phone call from a dear old friend who said “Why don’t we go to the seaside”, to which I answered yes. How could I refuse? So off we went to Crosby, a favourite place and not just because of the name. I love it because I enjoy joining all those other Anthony Gormley figures staring out to sea. I love staring out into the ocean, opening myself fully to the experience and the great power and mystery of the sea. I stared and I took pictures as I waked along Crosby Beach. I had been instructed to take pictures of my day by another friend. I guess it’s the modern way, you have to take pictures of your day and post them on facebook for the world to see. No pictures, no experience it seems.

It was a day when I was totally in the moment and experienced all that was occurring I felt every drop of life. That said it was also a day filled with memories. I have experienced an awful lot of life with the friend I shared the day with, every emotion really. From the most gut wrenching despair to the most beautiful loved filled hope. I also felt and almost relived my whole life as I walked on that beach. Childhood memories came flooding back. I remembered family holidays, particularly in Scarborough. I remembered the unbridled joy and the sadness of those times.

As a child I would often go wandering off alone. Actually this continued into adulthood. Well one year I wandered off on Scarborough Beach and it seems I got completely lost, not that I realised it at the time, I had wandered off into another place in my mind. The family had to go of searching for me, eventually they found me. I was totally oblivious to being lost and to the fact that I had filled them all with worry and panic. The story of my life really, or at least it used to be. These days when I wander it is not by mistake and these days when I wander I don’t really get lost.

Memories are snapshots of life, whether we physically take pictures or not. It always fascinates me how these memories take shape and form and often reshape as time goes by; it amazes me how these memories seemingly re-incarnate as time goes by. We should not fear our memories, they are precious in so many ways, it is these very memories that make the present moment truly come alive. I have discovered that sometimes you can lose some of the true richness of the moment by becoming purely engrossed in it. That might sound like a counter intuitive thing, but I think not.

I remember in my early days of ministry exploring the “Power of Now” and the idea that life is to be found in the present moment and how the great traditions had taught this for millennia, that there was nothing new in the new age. I remember that after the service a member came to speak and they spoke passionately about the importance of memory and all those memories that she carried with her into her life and how they enrich her daily experience of life. I remember at the time feeling defensive about this, which I did not need to be. What she said has stayed with me and has been forming in my soul ever since. I now see that in many ways to truly experience the richness of the present you have allow the memory of all time to flood into it.

By the way please do not get me wrong, my current truth is no way a rejection of the power of the present moment, quite the opposite actually. What it is really about is bringing the present moment alive by enriching it with our whole selves. It’s a kind of active experience of the present moment. It’s about opening our whole selves up to the present moment and not just passively experiencing what is there. It’s about wholly living in the moment and then carrying that snapshot of the moment into the future. It’s about truly living on the threshold of life. The truth is of course that this is how we are always living, on the threshold of something, as one moment ends another begins.

I love the way that David Whyte almost perfectly encapsulates this in the reading on “Memory”, I shared earlier. The piece ends with the following “Memory is an invitation to the source of our life, to a fuller participation in the now, to a future about to happen, but ultimately to a frontier identity that holds them all at once. Memory makes the now fully inhabitable.” It’s not just about living in the moment, but about bringing the moment to life.

Now of course this is fine in theory but what if our lives are filled with painful memories. What if when we sit our minds are just filled with pain from our pasts? It is said that the very reason that people cannot inhabit the present is because it is polluted by painful thoughts and memories from the past and projected fears about the future and that the key to freedom from this is to let go of them and therefore live fully in the present.

Now I am not sure that the proponents of the power of the present moment are actually making such claims; I do not believe that they are claiming that we need to reject the past and future in order to live in the present moment. Instead what the likes of Ekhart Tolle are suggesting, correctly in my view, is that much of our suffering is created from wrong thinking and that the key to being relieved from this self-created suffering is to change our thinking. How is this achieved? Well I believe it begins by truly coming to terms with who we are and by fully engaging with our past present and future. It is not achieved by running from our past and becoming a false slave to the moment, for we all of us carry our pasts with us. By attempting to run from it we allow it to have a false power over us.

I learnt, purely from experience, that to be fully alive in the present I must first of all be alive in my past. I need to come to terms with all that I am and all that I have been as well as all that those I have shared my life with have been too, for none of us live singular isolated lives. This can be scary by the way. It is important to tread carefully when you do and it’s also important to not do so alone. A trusted friend and or guide can help here and spiritual practise is vital here too…prayer has held me through so many frightening encounters in the wilds of my memory. I never go there alone, God is ever present, always with me.

There are so many seams of richness waiting to be mined in our memories, that we can bring into our present moment and can come alive in our lives. Not just for our good either, but also for the good of all. We should not fear them. We should not feel shame about our scars either, we do not need to cover them up and hide them away; we should bring them into the open, into the present and proudly bare them as evidence of life lived well.

This brings to mind a story I once heard about the soldiers who survived the battle of Agincourt. How each year, on the anniversary of the battle would stand up on their tip toes and proudly bare their scars for all to see. Scars of battle, scars of a life fully lived that they brought into that moment and in so doing became fully alive in it; scars they were unafraid of, that they were not haunted by.

There are lessons in all of our lives; lessons waiting to come alive in the golden present; lessons that we can pass on to others too. I am great believer in living in the present, but by this I mean really living in the present. I have learnt, and I hope to God I never forget this, that to truly be alive in the present we have to open our whole selves to our past, our present and our future. We have to let the floodgates open and allow the tide both in and out.

This came to me as I stood and stared out to sea on Crosby Beach; this came to me as I stood as a living breathing example of one those Anthony Gormley statues. That said it came to me in an ever slightly different way. I do not want to adopt their stance. I want to stand and face the sea in another way. I want to stand with my arms out stretch to the world, like one of those Agincourt survivors, unafraid to show my scars and live fully present in this moment. To bring every memory to life. To be fully alive on threshold of everything.

So my message, in this “Golden Moment”, is to see our memories as an invitation to the source of our lives; to bring our memories fully alive, so that they enable us to fully participate in the now; to understand that it is memory that makes the now fully inhabitable. For it is not just about living in the moment, but about bringing the moment to life.

This is the power of memory; this is the power of not only now.

“Spiritual History” by Mark Belletini

Let my body remember.
Let my hands and feet remember.
Let my breath remember those who came before me, those who have come before us.
Didn’t Muhammad wait quietly in his cave?
And didn’t Jesus sigh silently by the blue lake?
And Guan Yin, didn’t she sit in silence thinking that what to do before doing it?
And what was Siddhartha the Buddha doing anyway under that tree if not sitting quietly?
And Susan B. Anthony, didn’t she push back from her desk, and take a breath now and then?
And Florence Nightingale, didn’t she put down her nurse’s hat and think silently about what to write in her essay on mysticism before she actually wrote it?
And Sophia Fahs, didn’t she stop telling stories sometimes and just sit there?
And didn’t Black Elk just notice the sunlight glancing on his chair sometimes?
And Starhawk, does she only talk and write, or does she too keep silence?
Let us remember them all with our bodies.
Let us remember them with the silence they too knew.

The Power of Now: There's Nothing New in the New Age

This a re-telling of an ancient Zen Buddhist tale

A man was walking across a field when he heard a rustling in the tall grass beside him, and turned to see the hungry eyes of a large tiger staring at him. The man began to run, fear giving him greater speed and stamina than he knew he possessed. But always, just behind him, he could hear the easy breathing of the hungry tiger. Finally, the man stopped, not because his strength had failed but because he had come to the edge of a high cliff and could go no further. "I can let the tiger eat me, or take my life in my own hands and jump." The man turned and saw the tiger slowly walking toward him, licking its mouth in anticipation.

Resolved to take his own life, the man stepped to the edge of the cliff and bent his legs to jump, when he suddenly noticed a thick vine growing out of the side of the cliff, several feet from the top. Carefully, he let himself drop down the cliff face, catching hold of the vine as he slid past, and thanked God when it was strong enough to support his weight. Hanging now, the man looked up and saw the tiger's eyes peering over the edge of the cliff. It roared down at him, then began to pace back and forth along the top of the cliff. For the first time, the man looked at the vine that had saved his life. It was thick enough for him to wrap his legs around, resting his arms, and long enough that he might be able to let himself far enough down to jump safely to the ground below. And the moment he had this thought was the same moment that he saw the second tiger, pacing back and forth at the foot of the cliff, licking its mouth, and looking hungrily up at him. Well, thought the man, if my strength and the strength of the vine are great enough, perhaps I can outwit the tigers. Surely, they'll go some place else to eat when they're hungry enough. And the man prepared to settle in for a long wait. His preparations halted quickly, however, when he heard a scurrying, scratching sound close to his own face. Glancing upwards, he saw two mice, one white and one black, emerge from a small hole in the cliff. They made their way swiftly to the base of the vine, and began to gnaw through it with their small sharp teeth. There was nothing else he could do, a tiger above, a tiger below, and the vine that kept him from their jaws about to break. The man was closing his eyes to begin his prayers, when he noticed, a little to his right, a tiny patch of red colour on the face of the cliff. He reached toward it precariously, pulled, and brought his hand back beneath his eyes. There, in his palm, was a luscious, red strawberry. The man swiftly pressed the strawberry between his lips, onto his tongue, and hanging between those still visible tigers, he enjoyed the finest , juiciest, sweetest meal of his life.

The idea that the gift of life is found through experiencing the joy of the present moment is not a new concept. The faith traditions have been teaching it since the early days of human history, it is one of the great universal principles. There really is nothing new in the “New Age”

While there is something rather beautiful about this ancient Buddhist tale of the man the tigers and the strawberry, there is also something sad. In many ways it is a powerful metaphor for life. How we often only really stop and appreciate the gifts that are there when there’s nothing else to do nowhere else to turn. The tiger chasing the man could be our past, which often we are on the run from; the tiger at the bottom of cliff could be our futures which we are in fear of, the unknown, the unpredictable. The vine could be our minds which we often believe can sustain us through all that life throws at us and the mice could be that corroding thread that eats away at our rationality, our fear and anxiety...seen this way the story does indeed seem a little scary.

And yet there is the strawberry, the beautiful juicy strawberry that can be enjoyed regardless of all that is going on all around us. The problem is of course that we don’t see the fruit until the point of death or at least this man didn’t. It wasn’t until he had surrendered to his fate that he could see the strawberry and then enjoy it.

Is this what happens in life? Do we fail to enjoy its fruit because we try to overcome fear by thinking we can either out run or outwit it? Should we instead simply surrender to the reality of the life we are currently experiencing so as to fully enjoy whatever fruits are available?

Jesus (Luke 12 vv 22-31) reminds us not to worry or be anxious about life, to be like the ravens or the lilies of the field. He suggests that what we need is to have faith and to concentrate on building the Kingdom of God. But what is the kingdom of God? Where can it be found? Well it seems that it can be found by surrendering to the present moment, to the reality of the life in which we find ourselves rather than fleeing it or trying to overcome our anxiety of it with our minds. Perhaps we simply need to accept nature, life, the kingdom of God as it truly is and to trust.

Ralph Waldo Emerson echoed this in the nineteenth century, he said.

“...man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.”

Eckhart Tolle, in “The Power of Now” describes an experience he had which led him to transcend his anxiety riddled life. For him the change happened one day while listening to himself think. He realized in that moment that there was more than a single unified and separate him. There is who we are in our daily actions and then there is the part of us that witnesses what we are doing, thinking and feeling. The part of us that watches is our true self. That bears witness to what we are doing without getting trapped in it. It is not wrapped up in the past and is connected to the greater whole. Or put more simply, we are not always what we think we are.

Descartes said, “I think therefore I am.” According to Tolle this is the most fundamental error of our time. It is what has set us apart from each other and the rest of creation. We “think” we are somehow separate and therefore unique; unique in our suffering, unique in our troubles, unique in our feelings, and thus utterly alone. The moment we start watching our thinking is the moment we realize there is more to existence than us and what we think. We are not all there is of beauty, love, grace, creativity, joy and peace. Well thank goodness, thank God for that.

How many of us can say that they truly give their full attention to what they are doing? Tolle claims that this is the key to happiness and peace, giving our full attention to what we are doing. When we are truly present in what we are doing we are totally at peace and we are happy, we are not in fear and we are not in anxiety. Being present is life’s gift. That’s why it is called the present. I occasionally get glimpses of this; I occasionally get a taste of this in my life. It happens when I am in the company of some people, in my personal life and also in ministry. One of the great joys of ministry are the conversations I have with people. I become totally absorbed in them at times, especially when people speak from the heart. I also experience it while singing, especially during singing meditation. Here I feel I am floating above time, here I feel I am transcending self. I can experience it in worship too. We all experience it in the activities we love, when we totally abandon ourselves to whatever it is we are doing. Tolle says we can experience it in all that we do. We can give ourselves wholeheartedly and be present in everything that we do; whether that is washing the pots or cutting the grass, or reading a book or watching children play or watching birds flying above our heads, or considering the lilies of the field.

These are the moments that we can truly experience the Divine, in the moment in the NOW. Not in the past which no longer exists; nor in the future, which is yet to come. Fear and anxiety only exist when our minds are not with our bodies in the gift of the eternal now. This is what Tolle is suggesting in our present age; this is what Jesus was teaching when he talked about building God’s Kingdom in our time and not just the time to come; this is what Emerson was teaching and this is what the Buddhist story is teaching too. There is nothing new in the “New Age”, it is an eternal truth.