Dolly and Wendell Berry: Lives that Inspire Us

I’m going to begin with one of my favourite poems by Wendell Berry. I think that this more than any other poem has brought me solace in times of struggle, in pain and in suffering. I not only read the poem, but follow the instruction. I come into the peace of wild things; I rest in the grace of the world and I am free. I remember I re-feel that I am a part of everything, a creature like everything else and I belong once more.

"The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry

""When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."

"The Peace of Wild Things"

I enjoyed “Summer School” immensely this year. The theme was ‘Doing Our Best’, inspired by a quote from Maya Angelou: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” I co-led an engagement group with the wonderful Rev. Tina Gandhi based on the following lines from Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese: “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.” It was a deeply moving week and we explored with depth, creativity, music, and humour.

Something I wanted to explore was the fact that an awful lot of people think there is something fundamentally wrong with them. I certainly experienced this from an early age. Why so many feel this way isn’t always easy to explain, but it is a common one, and it has certainly been exploited by unhealthy religion and the secular world too. The advertising industry exploits the idea that you can purchase the perfect life.

There were many inspirational theme talks throughout Summer School. The talk by Raj and Emma from Leeds truly got to the heart of the whole week for me. They spoke about how Maya Angelou never actually uttered the words I quoted above to Oprah Winfrey. Instead in private, after Oprah shared something she was deeply ashamed of, Maya said, “You did then what you knew how to do, and when you knew better, you did better.” Maya wasn’t instructing Oprah to do better, but recognising Oprah’s humanity, her capacity to change, and the goodness at the heart of her.

‘Doing better’ is about experiencing what we are capable of becoming, and we need to go deeper to do so. It’s not just about knowing more, but bringing more of our shared humanity to life. It takes trusted community and friends to do this. It is not enough to simply learn about it - we need to experience it.

I believe there is a goodness at the heart of everything, including you and me. It doesn’t mean that we do no wrong, and never cause harm. Rather that this goodness can be brought alive through our humble, human being. I experienced this once again recently during a week in the hills of Derbyshire, with 60 or more folk sharing together and simply doing their best, to become what they were always born to be.

Sometimes it can be hard to see our capacity to be our best; sometimes it takes another to inspire us to do so, to become the best we can be, to do better. Sometimes it takes inspiration. We can all be inspirations, as I believe we all have that spirit within us.

But what does it mean to be an inspiration? You may well ask. Well the word inspiration is an interesting one, as so many are. We have, as is our way, reduced its meaning in power. It’s another one of those words that we have attempted to tame. Today it means someone or something that gives you an idea for doing something, but originally it meant “immediate influence of God or a god”. It comes from the old French word “inspiriacion” meaning “inhaling in or breathing in from the Latin “inspirare” meaning to blow into or breath upon so as to excite or inflame. This is the meaning in the following verse from Genesis Chapter 2 “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” It really meant to infuse or animate to affect to rouse to guide to put life into the human soul. As you can see it meant something much more profoundly powerful in the past that it does today.

That said I believe that we can and do inspire in this way and in so doing we can bring the kingdom to life in our own hearts and lives. We can ignite that divine spark.

I believe that this is what Albert Schweitzer meant when he said:

“Sometimes our light goes out but is blown again into flame by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light.”

Those who rekindle the light are the inspirers amongst us.

Social media algorithms are mysterious things. My YouTube suggestions are a deeply eclectic mix. It recently popped up a short film exploring the origins of my favourite cartoon character “Foghorn Leghorn”. I suspect that this is because I had watched some of his cartoons recently and I also have an interest in the origins of things. Who knows what inspires such things.

I learnt that Foghorn Leghorn was inspired by the character Senator Claghorn who was a fiction southern politician on a popular American radio show. Foghorn adopted many of Claghorn's catchphrases, such as "I say..." and "That's a joke, son!"

"Foghorn Leghorn"

 
He was a large and larger than life character, far too confident in his own abilities. He would wander around singing “Campdown Races” etc and generally stepping over everything and making a mess. I am certain Foghorn leghorn was in turn the inspiration of the Coronation Street character Fred Elliott and his catchphrase “O say, I say, our Ashley”

Foghorn Leghorn is a caricature of a loud and brash southern American gentleman. Someone no doubt who is mocked and held up to ridicule. A Caricature is a caricature it is nothing more than that. Prejudice and stereotyping is never a good thing. Sometimes folks from that part of the USA are considered to be a certain way and displaying certain characteristics. Now while this maybe true of some people it is not true of all.

Two truly inspirational people born of the south of the USA have died in recent weeks. They were well loved and lived out their personal spiritually in their unique and individual styles. They embodied beautifully what it means to live by the spirit of love and deep empathy, an attribute that has become under some attack in recent years, something I find astonishing. In my view if we lose empathy we are done for.

One was a daughter of Tennessee Dolly Parton and the other a son of Kentucky Wendell Berry. They couldn’t have been more different in personality and the way they lived their lives. That said at the heart of them was that same spirit, it inspired their lives and their love and care. As Dolly said “I always just thought if you see somebody without a smile, give ’em yours!” and as Wendelly Berry said “Love is never abstract. It does not adhere to the universe or the planet or the nation or the institution or the profession, but to the singular sparrows of the street, the lilies of the field, ‘the least of these my brethren.’ Love is not, by its own desire, heroic. It is heroic only when compelled to be. It exists by its willingness to be anonymous, humble, and unrewarded.”

Dolly and Wendell Berry shone like two bright stars from opposite ends of universe, the spectrum of love in its many manifestations. They followed very different paths, but they followed their own stars, they were uniquely and authentically themselves. The Gospel according to Dolly was that the work of life is to “find out who you are, and then do it on purpose.” Dolly on the surface was rhinestone and hairspray whilst Wendell Berry was all about the earth and the plough and yet there was a soulfulness in their melodic language, they embodied love through their human being. They were both holy in their own unique ways.

Dolly was a prolific singer/songwriter and entrepreneur who lived her life her own way. She dedicated herself to causes that were close to her heart, particularly childhood education and literacy. This began in her home Sevier County in Tennessee, spread throughout America and all over the world. I saw a clip of her speaking and reading with children in Rotherham south Yorkshire while I was researching for this service. She has gifted something like 330 million books to under 5’s. This was inspired wholly by empathy and the pain of her own father’s illiteracy. Dolly’s world was a big welcoming tent, she accepted people as they were. In a 1997 Out Magazine interview, she was asked about embracing LGBTQ fans while maintaining a country audience that included the religious right. “It’s two different worlds, and I live in both and I love them both, and I understand and accept both.” Dolly Parton was deeply rooted in her own identity, but open and embracing of others. As she said to her God daughter Miley Cyrus whenever they got into discussion “You be you and I’ll be me.”

 Dolly described "Coat of Many Colours as her favourite song

A story she wrote about her own childhood

Wendell Berry’s vision was that of local community, neighborliness, and belonging, including our interdependence with nature and our responsibility to one another. To Berry, the health of the soil, the health of the human body, and the health of a local community are a single, indivisible thread. In his “Think Little” essay, written in 1970, he wrote: "A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world... We become aware—perhaps for the very first time—of the enormous complexity of our world, and the realization of the folly of simplistic, reductionist, single-solution thinking." For Wendell Berry it was about the simple humble ordinary habits and how they bind us to nature and each other, and that the choices we make each and every day contribute to improving the world around us.

In a world where anxiety, pessimism and loneliness appear to be on the increase Wedell Berry and Dolly Parton always lived by faith, hope and love. They always looked and saw the best in others, in ordinary people. Neither lived easy lives, without pain and struggle. Their hope grew from struggle and helped create a vision of love of how we could yet be. They both in their own way visioned that kin-dom of love right here and now.

"I will always love you"

They were both people of faith, rooted in the Christianity of the southern states of America, that said they were not conventional and were true universalists in every sense of the word. Dolly grew up with a Pentecostal preacher grandfather, of the fire and brimstone type but said she found God personally as a girl in an abandoned church building near her family’s home. “I felt the presence there,” she said, remembering the moment she prayed for God to show, help and save her. “I just felt like that I had, for the first time in my life, had truly found God.” She lived her faith both in her philanthropy and in her love and acceptance of all people. She encouraged others to seek their own path, not to follow hers. As she said: I know who I am and I don't try to be nobody else... I can walk in any room knowing I'm going in as myself." And also on the dangers of conformity.

"If you try and follow everyone else and be like everyone else, before you know it you're gone. You're not going to find yourself again; you'll be a version of what you might of hoped to be."

"Jolene"

Wendell Berry’s Christianity was certainly non-conformist, he strongly criticised institutional religion and dogma of many kinds, his faith was shaped by a love for the world we live in now. He recognised and celebrated our creatureliness, that humans are a part of this creation and that it is our task to take care of this world as we take care of one another; we are a part of the whole, of the beautiful creation.

Regardless of what they did and how they lived Dolly Parton and Wendell Berry will be remembered mostly for their creativity their ultimate gifts to life. Dolly for her songs that she both wrote and performed, as did many others, as well as her whole persona. Wendell Berry for his writing, his novels his essays and of course his poetry. It was through his poetry that he reached and inspired me. I am going to end with a piece of his prose, which I think speaks of both his love and his spirituality and then a favourite poem

This is taken from “What Are People For? Essays”

"For many years, my walks have taken me down an old fencerow in a wooded hollow on what was once my grandfather's farm. A battered galvanized bucket is hanging on a fence post near the head of the hollow, and I never go by it without stopping to look inside. For what is going on in that bucket is the most momentous thing I know, the greatest miracle that I have ever heard of: it is making earth. The old bucket has hung there through many autumns, and the leaves have fallen around it and some have fallen into it. Rain and snow have fallen into it, and the fallen leaves have held the moisture and so have rotted. Nuts have fallen into it, or been carried into it by squirrels; mice and squirrels have eaten the meat of the nuts and left the shells; they and other animals have left their droppings; insects have flown into the bucket and died and decayed; bird have scratched in it and left their droppings or perhaps a feather or two. This slow work of growth and death, gravity and decay, which is the chief work of the world, has by now produced in the bottom of the bucket several inches of black humus. I look into that bucket with fascination because I am a farmer of sorts and an artist of sorts, and I recognize there an artistry and a farming far superior to mine, or to that of any human. I have seen the same process at work on the tops of boulders in a forest, and it has been at work immemorially over most of the land surface of the world. All creatures die into it, and they live by it."

There is Wendell Berry’s faith, his theology in that bucket.

Here is a final poem. A simple instruction on how to be a poet. It contains my favourite line ever “There are no unsacred places, there are only sacred and desecrated places. Again I believe that this speaks of Wendell Berry’s theology. That everything is sacred, everything matters and all is born from this sacred beginning. That the only thing that has been desecrated are those parts of the world that have been done so by the denial of this eternal sacredness of everything. That they have been damaged by we human beings have failed to recognise this very sacredness and desecrated this sacredness, whether that be nature or one another. It also recognises his rejection of modern technology and his embracement of simplicity, of feeling the earth at our feet, of being grounded in time and place, of humility, of the humus.

“How to Be a Poet” by Wendell Berry

(To remind myself)

i
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill -- more of each
than you have -- inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

ii
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

iii
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

Dolly Parton and Wendell Berry were two inspirations who were rooted in their place. That lived their own unique lives authentically. They were inspired by the same love and the same a spirit. A love and spirit that lives on beyond their lives. A love and a spirit that I believe is at the heart of each of us and everything.

Thank you.

"9 to 5"

 

I am going to end with some words of Dolly the first on leadership, the second on finding the inspiration you needed was always in you.

“If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then, you are an excellent leader.”

“the magic is inside you. there ain't no crystal ball”

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

From Paralysing Worry to Creative Concern

I have a new joy in my life, Molly the beautiful Havanese puppy. She is a wonderful blessing and a great responsibility. She is also, I have noticed, something else to worry about. Like I don’t have enough. I found myself the other day very worried as she had eaten something, probably from the garden, that had made her sick. She then went very quiet for an hour or so and I got increasingly worried that there was something seriously wrong with her. I was so worried I couldn’t focus on anything else. I made the fatal error of googling. This is never a good idea as you can go down all sorts of avenues and end up convincing yourself of all kinds of trouble. I need not have worried as an hour later she was her usual self. No doubt it will happen again as this happens a lot with dogs, big and small.

I have experienced a few other worries over the last few weeks, around Molly, family and friends, all those who I love and care about. This week I have had much to hold in my heart and many people to be concerned about, it is my job afterall. It has also been the funeral of my cousin Cheryl and I have been back and forth to Yorkshire on a couple of occasions. There are other family troubles too. It has been a week of carrying so much, a heavy week and a deeply emotional one, hearbreaking at times. Cheryl’s funeral went as well as such things can, but word it was painful.

Now please do not get me wrong none of this worry had paralysed me. I have been very productive, despite what I have been carrying in my heart. I have also had the joy of Molly and one or two pleasures in my life. I have often stepped out into the world and sung. Unlike Mary Oliver singing is not something I worry about. Here is a bit of Mary on worry.

“I Worried” by Mary Oliver

I worried a lot.
Will the garden grow,
will the rivers flow in the right direction,
will the earth turn as it was taught,
and if not how shall I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing,
even the sparrows can do it and I am,well, hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism, lockjaw, dementia?
Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up.
And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.

Mary Oliver. Swan – Poems and Prose, 2010 Beacon Press

We all have our worries in life. I am sure that some of you share Mary Oliver’s or perhaps some of your own. Many are deeply concerned about how they might cope through this winter. I know a lot of people are deeply worried, that financially, they will be unable to get by. Many have health worries whether physical, emotional, mental and or spiritual. Many worry that if they become ill, that they will be unable to get the help they need. Such worry can only impact negatively on people’s well-being.

There is no doubt to me that anxiety and depression is on the increase. Things have not returned to “normal” since Covid, if anything people seem to be struggling more now. It is also worth noting that we had these very same problems long before the Pandemic.

Worrying and getting caught up anxiety will not solve any of these problems, in fact it can only make them worse. That said just telling folk not to worry doesn’t help either. All it does is eat away at their well-being further. If we could just stop worrying, I am sure that we all would. Besides it is not feeling worried that is the real problem, it is becoming paralysed by it.

Being paralysed by worry does none of us any good, it can be deeply crippling and life reducing. Now of course we should not dismiss the challenge of life and live like some kind of delusional Pollyanna, but to live in and through worry destroys any joy in life. I remember a few years ago speaking with Rev Jill McCallister who was visiting from the US. She told me how she worried about her congregants; she worried how she could help them with their crippling anxiety about life. She described them as people of privilege and yet they were still ruled by worry. I have the same concerns about you folk as well as friends and family. I wonder how much of our energy is spent worrying about the people in our lives? Is this the best use of our limited resources? Surely it would better to put our energy into something more constructive.

I spend a lot of my time listening to people. They tell me of their worries and often end their time sharing with the classic line “Oh not to worry”, which of course is precisely what they are doing. That said I know that by sharing our worries they do somehow occupy less of our head space. I had a long conversation with my brother the other morning, as I was working on Cheryl’s eulogy, he was seeking help with his deep worries. They are not trivial. In sharing with me he gained some strength to continue doing what he can and not become paralysed by fear. While we were speaking Molly was sat on my lap, almost sensing I needed support. She stayed there all the time I wrote Cheryl’s eulogy. It was a bit of a challenge as for most of it her head was resting on one of my hands and thus I had to type one handed. She kept me going though.

Sometimes the most crippling aspect of worry is worrying about what might be, the worst possible scenario, as I did when exploring Google after Molly was sick.

The thing about worry is that, as Mark Twain observed, is that most of the things that we worry about never happen, Molly was fine afterall. And yet as we go through our day the worry machine is there chugging away in our minds stopping us experiencing this life we have been given. How many of us worry so much about being on time that we ruin every journey we take. This is one of mine by the way, especially on the Washway Road. How many of us worry about the weather when going on holiday. How many of us spend our days worrying about how we look, what people think of us, will the world come to an end, the political situation of the day. Our children and what their lives will be like and a myriad of other possible troubles. We are no different to Mary Oliver in our worries. The problem is not worry of course, it is what we do with our worries.

Now please don’t get me wrong I’m not suggesting any of these worries are real, of course they are. Surely though wouldn’t it be better dealing with the things that trouble us as best we can rather than wasting our days worrying about every little thing.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we waste so much energy on worry? Why are we so afraid of things going wrong? Why do we believe that we can stop such things happening, that we can somehow control life? Well we can’t. Things will go wrong. And do you know what that aint always a bad thing.

Not that worry is wholly bad either, it has its place. We have the capacity to worry for good reason. As we anticipate that something bad could happen, the discomfort of worry spurs us to avoid that unfortunate something or at least mitigate against it. No doubt it is something that has evolved in humanity to guard against danger and to prepare for troubles ahead etc. Such as storing food for winter. The problem is though that we go too far with this and become paralysed by worry.

It would seem that the key is where we focus our attention. Worry and concern can help us to do so in positive ways. Likewise, it can paralyse us too, as our attention becomes purely focused on the worry and not what we can do about it. The problem is not so much the worry and concern, but what we focus our attention on and how it leads us to act. For what we focus our attention on really matters.

Throughout the Gospel accounts Jesus is often portrayed as being concerned with what the people he is with focus their attention on. When he said “consider the lilies” he was turning their attention on the lilies, to experience them. Likewise when he said “the kingdom on heaven is at hand,” he was pinpointing the exact location of where attention ought to be in order to enter the kingdom. And when he said “fear not, judge not, love one another.” He was suggesting that the focus ought to move away from images that generate fear and judgement towards ones centered on love. This it would appear is a solution to being dominated by worry. Worry was as troubling 2,000 years ago, just as much as it is today.

The key it would seem is to focus our attention in loving ways in the moment that we find ourselves rather than being paralysed by worries of what might be.

We cannot escape the trouble of life. Life is by its nature a risking business. It does us no good to waste our days worrying about what might go wrong. Instead what we need to do is embrace the risk of life. I’m not saying to go involve ourselves in foolish risk taking, no what I mean is that we need to give ourselves away to something useful, something beautiful, something life enhancing. The key is to “risk ourselves for the world…to hazard ourselves for the right thing.” As David Whyte wrote in his essay on “Longing” from his wonderful book “CONSOLATIONS:The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.”

To quote David:

"We are here essentially to risk ourselves in the world. We are a form of invitation to others and to otherness, we are meant to hazard ourselves for the right thing, for the right woman or the right man, for a son or a daughter, for the right work or for a gift given against all the odds. And in all this continual risking the most profound courage may be found in the simple willingness to allow ourselves to be happy along the way….”

I just want to repeat the last sentence ‘in all this continual risking the most profound courage may be found in the simple willingness to allow ourselves to be happy along the way….’

Worry can eat away at any chance to be happy in daily living.

None of us knows what the future holds. There will be joy and there will be troubles ahead for all of us. That said we cannot waste this life worrying about what might be before it ever happens. Surely it is better to risk our lives to some greater love, whatever that love might be. It’s love of course that leads us to a sense of wholeness and connection with all of life.

So, I am not saying to you this morning, don’t worry. What would be the point of that? Instead what I am saying is turn your worry into concern, be inspired by it and act in this world in loving and more beautiful ways. You never know but by doing so you might just allow yourself to be happy along the way.

I will end today with a favourite poem by favourite farmer poet Wendell |Berry “The Peace of Wild Things” which offers a solution to being consumed and paralysed by fear. It came to me as I walked around King George V pond the other morning after I had finished writing our Cheryl’s eulogy and before I returned to write this sermon. As I wandered around the pond with Molly safely in her papoose, and as I observed the ducks, the geese and swans,I took in the peace of wild things having turned my worry into useful concern. Yes I shed tears, but I also connected to the life all around and as I rested in the grace of the world and I felt free.

“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Below is a video devotion based 

on the material in this "blogspot2

“Resting in the Grace of the world: Bearing witness to the horror and finding the courage to do what you can”

“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

This short piece constantly sings in my heart. It nudges me, it comes often when despair begins to grow in me again. Such feelings grow inside every single one of us at times, there is nothing more human, well unless you have become utterly detached from your heart. This poem is often shared back to me by others and whenever it does how it lifts my heart. Sue recently contacted me to tell me that a family had asked for it to be shared at a funeral service she was creating and leading. How it lifted my heart, just as I was feeling the pain of the loss of someone.

I have recently found my own place, where I find a similar peace to Wendell Berry. I often wander down to Stamford Park in Altrincham. I like to walk around but really I like to go and see my favourite duck. The mystery has been solved as to what type it is. It is a Rouen Duck. The only one of its kind in the pond. It is a lonely displaced one, perhaps a refugee. Now while I don’t lie down where he lies down, I do rest in the grace of the world whenever I go there and I feel free.

There is so much grief, suffering and anxiety around at this time. I was talking with a friend the other day who had spent hours staring at the news, at the horror in Ukraine, fixated on the suffering, feeling utterly powerless. I had awoken slowly myself last Sunday, caught up the suffering, both close at hand and in the wider world, despairing at inhumanity. I worked myself into the day slowly and did my job, I always do, trying to carry three groups of people through worship, whilst constantly being contacted about the suffering of many folk, particularly two dear friends. Two more souls died last week.

In the midst of the suffering, I found myself surrounded by so many folk, doing all they can, coming together in love, living by that spirit and resting in the grace of this world whilst finding freedom too. Not turning from life. They were bearing witness to the horror and fear and then finding the courage to do what they could. No, we cannot change the world, but we can do something, we do not have to sink into the utter despair and suffering. The key is the find what that something is; our duty is to find out what that is and to do it.

Last Sunday several folk seemed to go out of their way to tell me how much they appreciated the worship I had created and shared with them. They too had awoken with a sense of despair, they felt lost and confused and were suffering deeply despairing at the world, concerned for their loved ones and due to the horrors they had seen on their tv screens, a horror that has continued. I thanked them and I thanked God for this work. It certainly lifted me out of myself, gave me meaning in the very real suffering, there was no despair. I had an extra service on Sunday, in Dukinfield, I go there several times a year, I have been doing so for years and I love the folk. The last time I was there I had heard of a lovely woman who had given up on life, she had stopped eating. Well this time I learnt that she had died, as a member said, a victim of Covid, but who had not died from the virus. There have been many more and there will continue to be many more. I was talking to her lovely partner, they had both been widowed and had been together these last 15 years. It was beautiful to listen to him, although distressing, I felt deeply his pain and I understood it. I have felt this pain so many times, this deep grief, the loss of love, the sense of being unable to do something for someone you love so deeply, except bare witness as their life slipped away.

Monday, I felt even more tired than I normally do. I awoke and slowly moved into the day, I had begun it in my usual manner. On returning from the gym I noticed a couple of missed calls and a message on my phone. The number read private, and the message was from an obviously distressed woman, who I do not know, asking me to call her back. Sadly, I was unable to do so as her number was withheld. I wonder who this poor lost soul is. It was one of those days when I felt somewhat hopeless against the suffering in this world, both close at hand and in other lands too. There is so much suffering in this our shared world. The horrors in the Ukraine being just one terrible example.

I know that the answer is not to stare at the rolling news all day long, that will help no one. The answer is in find a way to rest in whatever grace we can find in the world, where we can find our solace and then to turn back to life and do what we can. I have been doing that all week; I have been doing that for many years. I have turned and I have kept on turning toward the world again and again. As I find that peace, that love, that strength to do what I can, with what I have.

No one can take away the suffering that is a part of life, but we do not have to fall into utter despair. We cannot do everything, but we can do something, it is our task, our duty, our purpose, our meaning, to do so.

I hope you can find yours and I hope that you can share it with others. I hope you can offer them some of the grace of this world, something that that they too can rest in and share it with the world.

We have entered the season of Lent. I hope you all enjoyed your pancakes on Tuesday. On what some still call Shrove Tuesday, or as many prefer to call it “Pancake Day”, or as I prefer to call it “Flat Yorkshire Pudding Day. How do you eat yours?

The following day “Ash Wednesday”, for Christians, marks the beginning of 40 days of fasting, reflection, penitence and self-sacrifice that lead up to Easter, the day of re-birth re-newal and new beginnings.

Lent is a time of reflection, a time of temptation, a time to observe and find answers. It’s a time of preparation. These forty days or so are meant to be a barren time, where we strip ourselves down of luxuries and distractions to give birth to new treasures that can be symbolically born again at Easter time. Not an easy time and a time to experience a sense of loneliness as we enter our inner wilderness time.

Lent is not just about giving up luxuries. It is also a time of reflection a time to go inward and search out answers to the troubles we face as individuals, but also as families, communities, nations and the world. It is a time for repentance and for re-building relationships with those we share this world with.

Lent shares this focus on repentance with many other religions. Such as Yom Kippur, the Jewish New Year. where prayer and fasting accompany acts of atonement. There are parallels with Ramadan in the Islamic tradition, a time for fasting and spiritual engagement as well as charitable works and act acts of atonement. Both have a key focus on putting right relationships with God and the people around us. You see similar rituals in both Hinduism and Buddhism too, where fasting atonement, forgiveness and reconciliation are key components.

You can see clearly two key components in all these traditions that is at the core of Lent. These being fasting, denying oneself of life’s luxuries and therefore connecting with those less fortunate and the other healing relationships with one another and with whatever we believe is at the core of all life. It is a time to go in, but with the intention of going out and bringing healing to our shared world.

Our world is suffering, both close at home and in other lands too. We have all continued to witness the horrors in the Ukraine. It is easy to just despair and to give up, or to become utterly fixated by the suffering that all we can do is stare at our screens, paralysed by the horror. This is of no use. We need to find our way to seek solace in this world, to go and find our own “peace of wild things” and then turn back to the world and do whatever it is that we can. We do not need to wait for Easter, or some hope to be born in the future to do this. We can begin now, we can find our meaning here and now, we can give birth to that love right here and now, no special date in the calendar is needed. We are responsible for our lives and our world. It is up to us. The time is now.

Lent is about attempting to practise love in life. It’s not about giving up luxuries, not really, it’s about giving of ourselves to life each and every day in whatever way we can. It’s about preparing for the new love that can be born again in our hearts and lives and for this we are all responsible. The time is now. And because I cannot do everything

Like Wendell Berry we all feel despair at the world at times. We all fear for our own lives, our loved ones and the lives of others. We all seek to come into the peace of something. We can find that peace. I know this to be true and when the peace comes, provided we do not close down or close in, hope can once again come to life and we can begin to bring healing not only in our lives, but in the lives of those around us stretching out to the wider reaches of this our shared world. We cannot avoid suffering, but we can give birth to meaning in that suffering in the way that we live our lives. We need not despair, we can live in hope, we can live in love.

We can live in love. We can do so in all that we feel, all that we think, all that we say and all that we do.

I’m going to end with following I saw posted on facebook the other day. It is by John Roedel

I can’t make the
world be peaceful
I can’t stall tanks
from roaring down roads
I can’t prevent children
from having to hide in bunkers
I can’t convince the news to
stop turning war into a video game
I can’t silence the sound of bombs
tearing neighborhoods apart
I can’t turn a guided missile
into a bouquet of flowers
I can’t make a warmonger
have an ounce of empathy
I can’t convince ambassadors
to quit playing truth or dare
I can’t deflect a sniper’s bullet
from turning a wife into a widow
I can’t stave off a country being
reduced to ash and rubble
I can’t do any of that
the only thing I can do
is love the next person I encounter
without any conditions or strings
to love my neighbor
so fearlessly that
it starts a ripple
that stretches from
one horizon to the next
I can’t force peace
on the world
but I can become a force
of peace in the world
because
sometimes all it takes
is a single lit candle
in the darkness
to start a movement
“Lord, make me a candle
of comfort in this world
let me burn with peace”

Below is a devotion based on

the material in this "blogspot"

 

Guilt and Shame are not the same

I was out walking with Charlie the other day. Not feeling my best, struggling with a few things, not least of which was guilt, for pain I had caused. An appropriate feeling at the time as I was coming to terms with my own all too human failings. Being out with the little dog on the canal bank at Sale helped, as I watched nature and the people pass by. I felt connected, I belonged.  I felt angry for a moment at some carless rowers and their coach as he shouted at them. They had careered into a line of ducks and their young, who near maturity to be fare. They were ok. I saw a guilty look on the coaches face and on one of the young women in the team. It was a face I recognise and the human connection took away my anger.

A little later I saw a sight that put me in a completely different mood. It was a long line of Canada geese. I reckon that there were about four adults at the front and back and eight or more goslings in between. They lifted my spirits as they always do. It was something about the care and protection of seeing them swimming along in their line. There were no rowers about here either. I took a picture of this delightful scene and posted it on facebook. It got some lovely responses, including a couple of others who also posted pictures of identical scenes.

As anyone who knows me will testify I have a deep love of Canada Geese. I first fell in love with them when I was a student minister and observed them over a two year cycle as I walked around the lake at Platt Fields Park, in Fallowfield Manchester. They helped at times as I struggled with myself and the training. Particularly the long walk I would take before my weekly driving lesson. They seemed to ease my anxiety and self doubt. These beautiful birds took me out of myself, they lifted my spirits, enabled me to connect to my animal heart and to to a reality far greater than my solitary self.

They brought to mind that great poem by the wonderful Mary Oliver “Wild Geese”

“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver

 You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

This poem and perhaps “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry are to be the words that sing in my heart whenever I find myself despairing at the world or despairing at myself, which I do from time to time. Don’t we all.

 “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry

 When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

As I was thinking about my time as a student minister, the lessons I had learnt and forgotten - I am not talking about theology here, more about life.  Some of those lessons I had failed to heed or sadly forgotten, how many mistakes do I keep on repeating in my life? God only knows. I digress - As I was thinking another memory came to haunt me. It was a postcard on the principal Anne Peart’s door that read “I have learnt so much from my mistakes, that I think I am going to make a few more.” I remember at the time how much I liked it. It helped me overcome the fear of imperfection. It encouraged me to give things a go and not to worry if I made mistakes as I would learn from the lessons. Over the years I have learnt many lessons, but not always. Some lessons keep on repeating themselves. I keep on forgetting the lessons. I keep on making the same or similar mistakes. This is all well and good if the cost for these errors is a price I pay alone, but alas it is not. Others get hurt too and is their suffering worth the lesson? I do not think so. To believe that would make me sound like Donald Rumsfeld and his notion of “collateral damage”, which is newspeak for the destruction of innocents in order to achieve a perceived goal. A different take on dangerous and often destructive philosophy of the “Ends Justifying the Means”.

These days I take a wider view of the lessons learnt from mistakes; I understand and accept the guilt caused by the damage done by those oh so very human mistakes; mistakes we all make. That said I no longer set out to make more, Instead I pledge to try and learn the lessons once and for all and not repeat it again. Or at least I aspire to do so, we shall see hey.

There is nothing in and of itself wrong with feeling guilt for our shortcomings in life. It an error to beat ourselves up for these human frailities, but we ought never wish away a sense of guilt, well not entirely. Like all other feelings it is there for a good reason, it’s a gauge as to whatever we are doing, whether we should or not. It also connects us with our fellow creatures. In many ways that voice of conscience, deep in the core of our being may well be that which is of God within us all. It would serve us well to pay attention to it.

Guilt has its positive aspects, it can be a kind of barometer to keep us aiming for our highest ideals, something we always fall short of. That said there are other seemingly similar feelings to guilt that are very negative and unhelpful. Such feelings come from a sense that there is something fundamentally wrong with our human being, it comes from a sense of shame. This is unhealthy and unhelpful, for no matter how well you do or what you do you will always feel bad about your very human being, if you carry with you a sense of shame.

Guilty feelings come in many forms, helpful and unhelpful. To feel remorseful after saying or doing the wrong thing, is healthy. It compels us to do what we can to put things right. That said if this feeling lingers even after putting right what was wrong, if we dwell and beat ourselves up for unskilful action or word then this form of guilt is coming from another place, from this sense that fundamentally there is something wrong with us. This is shame which dresses up like guilt, but is very different indeed.

I suspect that the key is where the guilt comes from. Does it come as a result of our actions, thoughts and or words or is it a feeling that comes from some other place and almost dictates our thoughts, feelings, words and actions and regardless of these things we just feel bad.

Where does this feeling of being wrong come from? Why does it control so many of our lives?

Now in our culture some put it down to our Judea Christian heritage, the core of our culture, even in these secular times. Often folks who grew up in deeply religious homes will argue about who feels the most guilt. Now although the Judeo-Christian tradition seems to be seeped in guilt, the bible both the Hebrew scriptures and the Gospels make no reference to guilt as it is commonly understood. As Mark Belletini points out in “Nothing Gold Can Stay: The Colours of Grief”

“…I confess to being surprised that the word guilt itself, as in the feeling of guilt, is not found any place in either the Jewish or the Christian testaments. Not once. The few times the English word can be found in more antique translations, it refers only to the kind of “guilty” that courts speak about, which is not a feeling so much as a legal category.

I am convinced that families of origin, cultural and ethnic patterns, and categorical realities play a far greater role in how much guilt we feel than does religion.  I certainly have known folks raised without religion of any kind – including the “shopping mall spirituality” created by cultus consumerism – who have struggled with guilt as much as anyone raised in a particular denomination of religion, Western or Eastern.”

Guilt when it is appropriate is a good thing. It connects us to one another and to life, it keeps us humble and therefore human and saves us from the dangers of destructive hubris. Guilt caused form our shortcomings is a function of conscience. This feeling at the core our humanity that needs developing not suppressing. This is key to my understanding of my faith as a Unitarian, this concept of living revelation that is an aspect of my humanity, if I can tap into it and allow it to lead me. In so doing my senses open and I begin to see this same spark in others too. You see in opening myself to the divine spark within me I open myself to that same spark in everyone and everything. This is key to my understanding of religion, my attempts to live my life in the company of others and through which I attempt to shape an ideal that I strive for, but suspect I will never attain. I always fall short of this ideal, in this sense I sin (from sinare which meant to fall short of the mark). This though is not original sin, it is actually more original blessing. I feel guilt, appropriate guilt, because I fall short of the mark. Something I’ve been feeling this week. This sense of guilt is a healthy human quality and it helps to strive to do better.

Shame is something else. Shame is destructive and it keeps us separate from ourselves and one another. Shame is not formed from our actions or inactions, but from some other place in our being. It’s that place that people have tapped into throughout human history. Yes religion has used this, the classic example being the concept of Original Sin, but then so has the secular world. Advertising is the classic example, by tapping into this sense that there is something wrong with us we buy a thing or lifestyle that we believe will make us acceptable and or whole. How many people suffer from a sense that there is something fundamentally wrong with them?

When I look at myself in the eye these days what I see is a man who gets things wrong from time to time and I feel appropriate guilt for this. By the way I get it terribly wrong at times. I wish I didn’t as I know it causes harm. This sense of guilt is healthy and good. The danger is if it becomes crippling shame.

When you look at yourself in the eye, what do you see? Do you a decent person who makes mistakes? Or do you see someone who is fundamentally wrong to the core.

It matters you know, it really does. For it will affect how you interact with the world and how the world interacts with you and that really matters.  It really does.

I’m going to end with a little more Mary Oliver. These words that came up as a facebook memory last Sunday, the day I saw the line of Canada Geese have been saving me all week:

The Poet with His Face in His Hands

Mary Oliver

You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn’t need anymore of that sound.

So if you’re going to do it and can’t
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can’t
hold it in, at least go by yourself across

the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets

like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you

want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched

by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.

Hope not Despair: Coming into the peace of things

This piece was originally day after Jo Cox's murder as I visited home, in shock, to bare witness to the scene...

"The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Like Wendell Berry we all feel despair at the world at times. We all fear for our own lives, our loved ones and the lives of others. This is something common to the whole of humanity, something that unites us all. No life is immune from suffering. I have experienced such moments these last couple of weeks, as I have been recovering from surgery. I have had to spend much time alone as company has been too exhausting. This has not been easy for an active man such as I. It has been deeply uncomfortable at times, but I know in so doing my soul has opened up and I have grown. In the pain and suffering I have found the peace that passeth all understanding and if truth be told the suffering has not turned to despair.

One of the darkest moments was a week last Sunday as I stood in silent suffering in the market square of the village where I had grown up. I stood there in Priestley’s shadow weeping with many others. I grew up in the village of Birstall, in West Yorkshire. Birstall was not known to most of the world until a couple of weeks ago, but sadly now the world does know its name. Birstall of course was the scene of the brutal murder of the M.P. Jo Cox. Murdered because she served and loved all of her people, which in the eyes of some is somehow treachery.

The tributes in the market place were beautiful, all gathered around the statue of Joseph Priestley. The Unitarian minister and scientist who himself was chased out of England for his beliefs. His home and laboratory were destroyed by a baying mob.

I walked away from Birstall market place heart broken. They say home is where the heart is. Well this is home and it feels broken, my heart is broken. I walked away and wanted and needed to be alone. I thought of Wendell Berry’s poem I too wanted to come into the peace of wild things. I didn’t have the energy to be with people, even loved ones. I needed to be alone. I need to feel this horror and suffering and to come to terms with this awful destruction of love. So I went off alone, low on energy, in physical discomfort and pain, and I just wept.

Now what has followed since and caused me to weep more and more. I have found much that I have witnessed and heard since hard to take as people have torn one another apart. As division has risen and as hate has grown. Some of the things I have seen on the news and some of the things I have heard from people I know personally has broken my heart again and again and again and all I could do was sit silently and try and take it in, struggling to come into the peace of anything. There does seem to be so much turmoil and division about everywhere.

Now of course this is nothing new, it’s been going on for a long, long, time. The human capacity to Love and to create knows no bounds. That said the human capacity to Hate and destroy knows no bounds similarly.

As the days have passed I have continued to sit in the silence, alone, hoping against hope to come into to the peace of something. As I did other words came into my heart. I thought of Viktor Frankl and “Man’s Search for Meaning” and his equation that D=S-M that despair is suffering without meaning. I thought of Jo Cox herself and her legacy. I thought of her words during her maiden speech in the House of Commons, her belief that there is more that unites us than divides us. I thought of what I have learnt during my life, that hope is born from despair. That in these ashes of all our hearts that love and hope can rise again, but it is up to us. I thought of the beautiful words of Margaret Kirk’s Meditation "Something there is that doesn't love a wall". That bridges between difference can be made. That we are all the same people, all of the same earth, born under the same sun. That we can live together as one. It is up to us though. We are responsible. It is up to us to create meaning from the ashes of suffering. It is up to us to bring healing in our lives, in the lives of those around and to the wider human community. We are responsible, every single one of us. For everything matters. Every feeling, every thought, every word and every deed.

Below is Margaret Kirk's Meditation mentioned above...

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” by Rev Margaret Kirk

We see barriers erected between people of different lands,
We see sheets of steel and towers of concrete called Protection.
We see boundaries policed,
watch men, women and children running from hunger and persecution,
looking for a gap in the wall………

Something there is that doesn't love a wall…………

We see walls of fear –
Fear of the young, fear of the stranger,
Fear of sexuality that is different, fear of the educated, fear of the poor,
Fear of the Muslim, fear of the Jew –
Fear upon fear, endless and perpetuating,
And we offer our silent prayer that solid walls of fear will crumble to dust.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall…………

We hear the language of separation,
The jingoistic chant, the racial slur,
words of indifference and dismissal,
words arranged for the purpose of exclusion,
words that sting and taunt,
words that lie.
Let us find words that ring with love and truthfulness,
that reach out through the emptiness of separation.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall…………

We see the deluded barriers of the mind protecting self,
We see relationships stripped of affection
as one person becomes closed to another.
We see people trapped in misunderstanding,
old hurts re-ignited,
bricks placed higher on the wall,
goodwill and trust suspended.
and we ask for boundaries that are not impenetrable,
through which light can shine and distance be dissolved.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall………….

And when we need these boundaries for our own well being,
Let us know them for what they are,
Use them wisely and kindly,
Recognising our own vulnerability and that of others –
So each of us can find the space for retreat and succour,
find that peace that passes all understanding
and be renewed with strength and love
for the task of living life joyfully in communion with all others.

...A beautiful poem...A heartbreaking poem...

There are moments in every single one of our lives, when darkness seemingly over comes us. We all experience tragedy, loss, bereavement, rejection and failure. No one can avoid this. There is no wall we can build around ourselves that will protect us from this. In fact if we do build up such walls all that we will achieve is to cut ourselves off from the love and the joy present in life. This leads to the worst kind of suffering, the suffering within the suffering, hopeless despair. It leads to nothingness.

This despair, this nothingness often turns to blame, to pointing the finger, to scapegoating to hatred of the other who we see as being somehow different to us. There seems to be a growing tide of this at the moment. Whether that be against people from other parts of the country, other sections of society, other genders, religions, sexualities, nationalities, colour of skin, even other age groups. The young not trusting and blaming the elderly and the elderly not trusting and blaming the young. This helps no one and it just makes things worse.

So what can we do? How do we build bridges of love between those divisions in our lives and our own communities? How do we bring light into the darkening aspects of life? How do we bring the light of Hope into the darkening shadows of despair? How do we ensure that the light shines in the darkness and that the darkness does not overcome it? Well by becoming the light of the world and letting that light shine from our being. This is how we bring Hope to life and light. This is where meaning will grow from the ashes of despair. This is what I remembered as I came to the peace of everything, alone and in the silence. In this silence that still small voice of calm seemed to speak to me in a voice that was somehow more than silence and yet less than a whisper. I remembered also why I had become a minister of religion in the first place, that too had been born from personal loss and suffering. I remembered how my heart had been broken many times before and I remembered all the many broken hearted and broken people I have known in my time ministering to the communities I serve and how they too had come to life once again in their grief and suffering. My heart was filled once again and courage began to rise within me.

Hope had risen from the ashes of suffering...There was no despair...

Like Wendell Berry we all feel despair at the world at times. We all fear for our own lives, our loved ones and the lives of others. We all seek to come into the peace of something. We can find that peace. I know this to be true and when the peace comes, provided we do not close down or close in, hope can once again come to life and we can begin to bring healing not only in our lives, but in the lives of those around us stretching out to the wider reaches of this our shared world. We cannot avoid suffering, but we can give birth to meaning in that suffering in the way that we live our lives. We need not despair, we can live in hope, we can live in love. We can heal what separates us from one another. 

We can live in love. In all that we feel, all that we think, all that we say and all that we do.

I’m going to end this "Blogspot" with these adapted words by Sidney L. Freeman, which my friend Jane Blackall recently shared...

'Only a few things wear the mark of the eternal:
the giving we have invested in others,
the love we have expressed in deeds,
the kindness we have shown, the work
we have done because we loved it,
the light we have shown that others may not stumble,
the evil we turned into good because we saw
that none of us lives apart,
but all are members one of another.'