Feeling the Presence (or Presents) of Christmas

We are well and truly into the Advent season; we are making our way to that moment of magic that is Christmas day. It is so close and yet feels so far away. Our bodies, our minds, our hearts and our souls are making the journey, just as the holy family did in the Christmas mythos. These are the days of waiting of preparation. The music is playing, we can hear all the familiar songs in every shop as we no doubt begin the process of selecting presents for our loved ones.

This is the season for giving and forgetting, but not just one of wanton consumerism, is not just about giving and getting things. It is a time set aside to forgive and forget, to heal old wounds, surely this is the spirit of the season ahead. Sadly, though the spirit of the season is so often lost.

A classic example of missing out on the spirit and just getting lost in the pure materialism of the season is the “Black Friday” phenomenon that has come to our culture in recent years. It is another example of us partially importing and acquiring culture from our friends in America. Sadly though we have only taken on board the material aspects. Yes, we have “Black Friday” or more accurately “Black Fortnight” but without the spiritual element that accompanies it. “Thanksgiving”, a festival of coming together in love and an offering of thanks for the gifts that life has offered to us we have not acquired…Oh we do live in such a reductionist age, we have squeezed the spirit out of everything. In so doing we run the risk of reducing our lives to nothingness, to meaninglessness. This is a dangerous game. In reducing everything to a purely material level we reduce everything eventually to nothing, until life itself becomes nothing but a meaningless soulless activity.

We need to find the spirit and soul of everything, to sanctify life once again…We need to rediscover the spirit of the seasons, to once again find the religion in the ribbons and the wrapping paper. We need to be wrapped, to be enveloped in this spirit, in our bodies and souls. We need to feel the spirit of the season, we need to embody that love.

Strangely enough we can begin to discover the spirit of the season in those very gifts as we select them for our loved ones and wrap them up with our care and attention. These are acts of connection and thanks giving in and of themselves. This is the spirit coming alive, oh yes there is true religion in the ribbons and wrapping paper and the time we take to select and prepare the gifts. Through such simple acts we can begin once again to sanctify life. As we wrap those gifts we envelop them with love. The love is incarnated as we write and place those card in envelopes, as we do the love at the heart of the season envelopes us.

Perhaps the greatest gift we can give is simply our time and our love. We can sanctify this season by giving one another perhaps the greatest present of them all, our true presence. We just need to spend time listening and paying attention to one another. Our time is the most priceless commodity of them all. We embody this love by giving them the present of our loving presence.

Brings to mind an old joke I heard told one Christmas time by Rev Hammer

It’s a scene that was cut from “The Return of the Jedi” episode VI in the battle between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker when Darth Vader said Luke:

"Luke, I know what you're getting for Christmas."

To which Luke Skywalker replied: "How could you possibly know?"

To which Darth Vader answered: "I have felt your presents."

I will get my coat.

There are other ways that we can embody love, that we can share our gifts our presents. Modern social media does have its good points. A lovely friend of mine sent me the gift of a “meme”, that expresses the priceless commodity of time. It is by Thich Naht Hanh, who said:

“Every morning, when we wake up, we have twenty four brand new hours to live. What a precious gift! We have the capacity to live in a way that these twenty four hours will bring Peace, Joy and Happiness to ourselves and others.”

What a precious gift we have been given. The gift of life, the gift of our presence. Let’s not waste it. Let’s sanctify life with our presence with our life. Let’s become the gift we have all been waiting for.

May we feel one another’s loving presence and may that universal and eternal love come to life through human being and loving.

You may recall some of the words of the prayer shared from last week’s Advent service:

Now is the moment of magic,

and here's a blessing:
we already possess all the gifts we need;
we've already received our presents:
ears to hear music,
eyes to behold lights,
hands to build true peace on earth
and to hold each other tight in love.

You see we’ve already received the greatest gifts we could ever have been given, the gift of life itself. It is up to us what we do with this gift. Let’s not waste them; let’s make the most of them; let’s make the most of our lives. In so doing we will encourage others to do the same and we will sanctify life with our presence. What a present we then become to life itself. Remember that life is indeed the greatest gift of them all. Life is the ultimate Grace. We did absolutely nothing to deserve it. It was freely given to us without any effort on our part.

Mariah Carey sang “All I want for Christmas is You”. Let us wrap ourselves in love and give our loving presence.

Last week I shared the experience of the loving hug offered by Floella Benjamin. Something so deeply loving and beautiful, something I will never forget because of the purity of it. A love I believe we all possess.

It brings to my mind the following wonderful poem “The Hug” by Tess Gallagher

“THE HUG” by Tess Gallagher

A woman is reading a poem on the street and another woman stops to listen.
We stop too, with our arms around each other.
The poem is being read and listened to out here in the open.

Behind us no one is entering or leaving the houses.

Suddenly a hug comes over me and I am giving it to you,
like a variable star shooting light off to make itself comfortable, then subsiding.
I finish but keep on holding you.
A man walks up to us and we know he has not come out of nowhere, but if he could, he would have.

He looks homeless because of how he needs.
“Can I have one of those?’ he asks you, and I feel you nod.
I am surprised, surprised you don’t tell him how it is – that I am yours, only yours, etc., exclusive as a nose to its face.

Love - that’s what we’re talking about.
Love that nabs you with “for me only” and holds on.
So I walk over to him and put my arms around him and try to hug him like I mean it.
He’s got an overcoat on so thick I can’t feel him past it. I’m starting the hug and thinking.
“How big a hug is this supposed to be? How long shall I hold this hug?”
Already we could be eternal, His arms falling over my shoulders,
my hands not meeting behind his back, he is so big!

I put my head into his chest and snuggle in.
I lean into him. I lean my blood and my wishes into him.
He stands for it. This is his and he’s starting to give it back so well I know he’s getting it.
This Hug. So truly, so tenderly, we stop having arms and I don’t know if my lover has walked away
Or what, or if the woman is still reading the poem, or the houses - what about them? - the houses.

Clearly, a little permission is a dangerous thing.
But when you hug someone you want it to be a masterpiece of connection, the way the button on his coat will leave the imprint of a planet in my cheek when I walk away.
When I try to find some place to go back to.

This poem possesses such an enveloping love. It’s beauty lays in its universality. I’m sure that most of us can identify with both characters; I’m sure that most us have experienced that sense of emptiness and that feeling of being utterly devoid of love that the homeless man feels, so desperate that you would ask a stranger to hold you; I’m sure all of us have felt too afraid to give our love away, as it is only for your beloved. And comes that moment of magic as you give in and you become transformed by giving your love away.

This to me is the heart of the incarnation of love in the Christmas mythos. Maybe it’s all there in the hug. Oh hug, a simple but. How though do we describe a hug? Do we give a hug? Do we have a hug? Do we get a hug? Maybe all three. I think that the love at the heart of Christmas is found in a hug, it’s about being enveloped in love.

I recently discovered something about the Nativity found in Luke’s Gospel. It is found in a French translation of those old familiar words, that I heard on “On: Being”:

“The angel of the Lord came to them and the glory of the Lord shone all around them.” And “You will find a newborn wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger,”

Now what is fascinating about the French translation is that it describes the wrapping of love as being a kind of enveloping, in both phrases. The glory of the Lord “les enveloppa”, is wrapped around them. And the child was “envelope” — wrapped around — in clothes.

Could this be what is truly at the heart of the Christmas mythos. Maybe this love is an enveloping love, symbolised in the hug. In this ordinary birth of an extraordinary man, the love is incarnated that it envelopes us and that we bring this love to life when we love in the same way. Our presence can bring this love alive once again. Maybe we all can give such love and in so doing we receive too.

I will do my utmost to give this love away beginning this Advent and moving on into Christmas and beyond. This to me is Love coming alive, Love incarnating in human form. A love that comes alive by simply giving our presence. This is what we are here for. To use the gifts we have been given, not only for ourselves but for the good of all and to share with all, therefore encouraging others to do the same. It begins by simply sharing the most precious gift of all, my time, my presence, isn’t this the ultimate present. Oh how I wish I had more of this priceless commodity to give. Oh how I wish there was more of this precious commodity for giving and for getting.

This is what I’d like us all to focus on this Advent season, this giving of our true presence, the ultimate present. I’m not saying you need to go hug everyone, but you can incarnate love and envelop them with your loving presence. It begins right here right now in this season of selecting and wrapping presents. We can begin to bring the sacred alive in what appears to be wanton materialism. We can sanctify life with our presence in the selecting and wrapping of presents, we can begin to bring the spirit of the season alive in these most simple acts, we can unwrap the religion in the ribbons. We can also bless one another with our presence by simply spending time with one another mindfully and lovingly, simply sharing our time and listening to one another. In so doing we will both give and receive love.

It really is that simple. We can bring the spirit of the season alive once again. We can bring Christmas alive in the presence of each and every day. We can become the greatest gift that anyone could wish for.

We no longer have to wish it could be Christmas every day, we can make it Christmas every day. By simply blessing each day with our presence.

I know what you have got for Christmas, I’ve felt your presence.

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

The Thread Lives Through Us: Do We Become the Creators or the Destroyers of Life

There was a knock on my door on Monday afternoon. I was upstairs but Molly made sure I was fully alerted. I went downstairs, picked Molly up and opened the door. There was no one there. I looked down to see a bunch of sunflowers on my doorstep and a card. I was about to bend down, to pick them up, when I noticed a redheaded woman near the vestry of the chapel. She was looking towards me and I asked her “If she had left the flowers.” She clearly hadn’t. She was looking for the “Depression and Anxiety Group” that has begun meeting in the small schoolroom. She was lost and told me she had followed the person who left the flowers on my doorstep and who had left by the time I opened the door. I went out with Molly and showed her where the group meets. I then returned home and picked up the flowers and card.

The card was beautiful, self-made with a water colour painting of Molly on the front. They are clearly a gifted artist. The card was signed, but I will not name the person. The card explained that Hallmark don’t do cards like this, with a quote “sorry life is always moving and sometimes it moves too fast for us to keep up with it.”

There was a beautiful thoughtful message contained within it and a thank you for the work I do and for generally being ace, which I loved. The person was acknowledging a difficult time personally for me.

They were inspired by a sermon I had delivered in September 2022. They reminded that sunflowers had been left on my doorstep, and that brightened up my week. So much so that I delivered a sermon in which I suggested that we should turn to joy where we can, like the sunflower turns toward the sun.

I was so touched by this lovely thoughtful gift and personal card, they themselves have been through some recent deep loss. I had been touched at the time in 2022 by a similar gift, which led to the service, which obviously left an impression, upon which they acted. They took time and care to do so too. It proved once again that the things we do, both positive and negative can lead to positive and negative things in life for ourselves and others. The butterfly effect is very much alive. It can lead to wonderful deeds and it can lead to grotesque destruction. We have seen the destruction over the last couple weeks, as those who are intent to breed fear and cause destruction have spread hate filled and destructive lies. We have also seen another response too, communities coming together and standing against the divisive and destructive violence.

On Tuesday morning my friend Oliver James Lomax sent me a poem he had just written for his brother and family. It is titled ‘“Be” for Ben, Lauren and Genie’. The father, mother and sister of Be King one of the three girls murdered in Southport. “Be” is Oliver’s niece. The family have responded with dignity and love. It was supposed to be a time of celebration for them all as they were joining together for Oliver’s sister wedding, which was meant to be held the day after the murders. A day that was instead marred by those who exploited the grief to cause destruction and breed fear. Oliver’s dad posted a beautiful and loving tribute on Tuesday and I know most people in the town and area and responded with real love. As Oliver said to me on Tuesday “What survives us will be love”. He is correct, but it will only do so if we live by it and through it.

It matters how we respond to life, what we do and how we do it, what we say too and how we say it, and in what spirit. We weave webs of love throughout life, or we weave webs of destruction. We create by love or we destroy by hatred and fear. What are the threads that make up our lives, the threads that run through us. The threads that guide us in joy and in sorrow and how do we weave these threads into the other threads of life

There are many threads that make up my life and the web of creation, made of infinite threads that both holds and creates all life. We each of us have this very same thread in us, in fact maybe we as individuals are one thread on the universal web of all life, that without our thread and every other thread the web would not exist. The web is what creates, holds and sustains us, but at the same time we create the very same web of existence. Many of the great stories of the ancient traditions speak of this. In the Christian tradition I always think of the Kingdom of God, as being an example of this. You see the Kingdom is not some place we wish to arrive at some day, but something we build or maybe weave right here, right now. We are the builders, we are weavers or we are the destroyers of the web, the kingdom or as I prefer to call it these days, the “kin-dom”, for we are all kin afterall. Surely this is the central message that Jesus weaved through his ministry.

Now in many traditions there is the mythos of “The Spirit’s Thread” You will find it in the Navajo tradition, and in traditions found in Alaska and Japan. By the way there may be good reason for this, as studies of migrational history suggest that all three peoples’s originate from a tribe that dispersed from Siberia. Both Navajo and the Japanese traditions share a reverence for the larger interconnected net that holds all of life together, the web of life.

It is vital that we take care of this thread that is our life, body, mind, heart and soul and that we continue to weave into the web of all existence. That we fully play our part in creating and recreating the web. For if we do not we will not be playing our part in the whole and we will feel disconnected, no longer a part of the whole.

Now at times our thread may become a little threadbare, an aspect may become weakened. When this happens we need to take stock and perhaps do what is required to fix our thread or perhaps do more work to repair the damaged whole.

The web does not only exist only in the present moment. It began to be weaved at the beginning of time and will continue on into eternity, when we are all long gone. That said we have played our role in co-creating the whole. As our ancestors did, those who came before us. As I look back at my own life I can see a kind of personal tapestry being weaved and not by myself alone. I did not create this wholly alone, so many other lives have weaved their way into my life and helped create who I am, just as I have weaved my way into the lives of others. There is no neutrality in life, everything is connected. Everything that we do and do not do matters. Every thought, every word, every feeling. It matters for we are all part of the great interconnected whole.

We are the creators or destroyers of life. “What you do to the least of them, you to do me”. If we damage one aspect of life, we destroy every aspect, just as if we repair one aspect we repair the whole. Nothing is separate in life and yet the destroyers seem to want to do so.

Now for me the main purpose of spiritual community, of religion, is to aid and encourage both the repair and enhancing of our individual threads while also creating, repairing and beautifying the whole. This is what Rev Dr Martin Luther King called “Beloved Community”, the Kingdom of God right here right now. This is the kind of faith community that is based around responsibility in humility. Not one that expects God to do the weaving alone but for each individual to bring their uniquely beautiful thread and weave it into community, turning up, entering into relationship willingly, learning how to weave their individual gifts to make the most of the whole, which is greater than the sum of its parts. To me this is true religion. Religion comes from the word religiere which meant to bind together and create more than could be done alone with the individual parts. Our single threads, no matter how well developed, no matter how powerful and beautiful can achieve very little alone, in fact they are pretty useless and certainly lonely on their own. This is the greatest problem of spirituality without community, in truth it doesn’t really work. Yet each individual thread weaved into the whole, playing its part, can create something way more beautiful than any of us could ever have imagined.

All life is interconnected, what Thich Nhat Hahn named “interbeing”, this is at the heart of “Beloved Community”. Luther King’s concept, Nhat Hanh explained it like this all of us are connected, as if each of us has a cord around our waist and from that cord an innumerable set of other cords radiate outward, connecting to all other beings. He stated that:

“True compassion … is much more than just knowing that I’m connected to you. Self-interest alone can govern my behavior in a world that is interconnected but not perceived to be interpenetrating. Compassion literally means ‘feeling with,’ and my capacity to feel with you — or with a caribou, or with a dying star — stems from the reality that the caribou is calving in me, that the star is flinging its elements into the space around it in me.”

“What you do to the least of them you do to me.” If we harm one aspect of life, we destroy the whole. If we alienate one person, we alienate all. Do we weave love or do destroy with hatred and fear. It is up to each and every one of us.

We are here for a purpose, there is meaning to our lives. Our lives and the lives of all depend on each of us taking care of the threads that make up our individual lives and the weaving of our threads as deeply as we can into the web of all existence. As we look at ourselves, our families, our communities, our world, no doubt we can see may tears in the web of existence, tears that won’t heal themselves. It is our task to repair the damage by weaving our threads together. In so doing we not only repair the whole, but we also beautify and strengthen our own threads. In so doing we will begin to create the “Kin-dom of Love” right here right now, we become the “Beloved Community”, we become the ones we have all been waiting for.

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

They don’t publish the good news. The good news is published by us

Thich Nhat Hanh “The Good News”

They don't publish
the good news.
The good news is published
by us.
We have a special edition every moment,
and we need you to read it.
The good news is that you are alive,
and the linden tree is still there,
standing firm in the harsh Winter.
The good news is that you have wonderful eyes
to touch the blue sky.
The good news is that your child is there before you,
and your arms are available:
hugging is possible.
They only print what is wrong.
Look at each of our special editions.
We always offer the things that are not wrong.
We want you to benefit from them
and help protect them.
The dandelion is there by the sidewalk,
smiling its wondrous smile,
singing the song of eternity.
Listen! You have ears that can hear it.
Bow your head.
Listen to it.
Leave behind the world of sorrow
and preoccupation
and get free.
The latest good news
is that you can do it.

On the drive back from our Jack’s wedding a couple of weeks ago we stopped off at the village of Grassington. It was lovely to walk in the Yorkshire country side on such a beautiful day. We walked without thought of where we were going and eventually made our way back to the village. As we wandered around I noticed a sign on a tiny local jewelry shop that read “Home of the Notorious Tom Lee”. We called in and purchased something as we paid I asked about the sign outside. The owner was only two pleased to tell the story of “The Notorious Tom Lee”. He was the local blacksmith who lived and worked in the building and also the small inn next door. He had murdered the local doctor and terrorised the village and surrounding area. A thief, a highway and all round bad man. He had apparently been shot and injured during a highway robbery and the local doctor Richard Petty had tended to his wounds. Fearing the doctor would inform on him he took him on a drinking spree, following winning money on a cock fight, in nearby Kettlewell ( the place of our Jack’s wedding). The doctor was lured to the woods and murdered. Despite being the prime suspect there was not enough evidence to convict. Eventually Tom Lee was informed on and caught and found guilty at York Azzizes where he was hanged for his crimes. Later his body was left in a cage in Grassington to warn other would be criminals.

A gruesome and fascinating tale and one that the village is known for. There were no other plaques to local people. It all got me thinking about how we know places and people; it got me thinking about notoriety and our fascination with bad news and bad people. How we are fascinated by darkness and dark people. Whether they be notorious murders or world leaders. People love gangster stories and highway men etc. My childhood was filled with tales of characters such as Dick Turpin, Ned Kelly, Jesse James, Al Capone. Gangster films are ever more popular. People today are fascinated by true crime stories. Recent research has shown how this can be psychologically damaging. There is a fascination with notorious public figures, people love the likes of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, whilst decent honest politicians are seen as dull and uninspiring. There is a fascination with celebrity gossip and celebrity influences online. Meanwhile there is a distrust of those who do good, who give their life for others. They are often sadly seen through suspicious eyes or considered dull. People are even told to hide their light and not talk about the good that they do. To not share the good news. Therefore, sadly all we ever hear is the bad news, because the good news is not up in lights and yet generally speaking it is the good that occurs throughout most of our lives. The good news does not stand out and shine so bright. Well maybe it should maybe it is time to tell the good news, to evangelise if you like.

Last Tuesday evening Adie Tindall led a fascinating conversation during “Living the Questions” on this very subject, “What is the good news?” He introduced the conversation explaining where the word evangelise came from. He explained That “'The ancient Greek word 'Evangelion' meaning good news was made popular in the Greco-Roman world. Especially under the reigns of Augustus and Caesar. Where they proclaimed a military victory to the Masses of the Roman empire, declaring “Salvation for the Empire.” This was adapted by the early Christians declaring the good news of Jesus Christ and Salvation in a different sense. Adie then opened up the conversation and invited us to explore the spirit of Evangelion in our context and experience; asking if any of us had good news to share? How do we share the good news? What is the good news as opposed to only the terrible news, and what part hope has to play in this?

We also talked a lot about discomfort and distrust we evangelism. How we can feel uncomfortable when people want to tell you what they considered to be their good news to you. We often turn off if someone is evangelising about their chosen subject. I experienced it myself the other day as a friend was trying to tell me about the merits of a carnivore diet. After first being taken aback by their approach I did look into it. While interesting I will not be following it. By the way they haven’t stopped evangelising since.

Why do we only talk about what is wrong, why do we promote only the bad news. Why do we build statues to the notorious. Why is it that a brutal murderer is the biggest talking point of the beautiful village of Grassington? Hey I’m talking about it now. Actually there is some good news in this. We talk about it because it is rare and shocking. Most people live decent caring lives, will do what they can to help. Something I have witnessed wherever I have been in life, wherever I have gone. We do good because it is the instinctive thing to do, the problem is that we are told not to talk about it. Maybe we should as it will encourage others to do more and in so doing all gain. So long as we ourselves do not become the bad news by overwhelming others with what we consider to be “The Good News”. The good news should always be joyful.

The former chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said:

“Doing good is not painful, a matter of dour duty and a chastising conscience. There is a Hebrew word, a key term of the Bible, for which there is no precise English translation: simhah, usually translated as "joy". What it really means is the happiness we share, or better still, the happiness we make by sharing.”

There is a real joy in doing good, all gain and yet we are encouraged to hide or light. Such a shame as joy is one of those feelings that grow the more we share it. Like love joy increases with subtraction. It is good for our souls and for the souls of others. As Swami Vivekananda said:

“The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will be purified, and God will be in them.”

Thich Nhat Hahn said in his wonderful poem “The Good News”, that I shared earlier, that they don’t print the good news, that is our task. We have to make and publicise our own good news, to be aware of the good news that we are surrounded by. We need to be grateful that we experience life at all. He says: “Listen! You have ears that can hear it. Bow your head. Listen to it. Leave behind the world of sorrow and preoccupation and get free. The latest good news is that you can do it.”

Of course there are those who do try to spread the good news. I remember as a child that “The News at Ten” used to have an “And Finally” section at the end of its news bulletins. This would tell of a heart warming story. There is “The Good News Network” and similar publications that try to publicise good things in the world. So, there are pockets of folk trying to spread the good news, but they are rare.

There is sadness in this world, but there is also beauty, love, compassion, courage too. It’s just a shame that most of the modern media no longer believes that this sells.

The News of the World may well have gone the way of the Dodo and the dinosaur but what it traded on is still going strong, stronger than ever it would seem.

Perhaps the real problem is that we have come unreceptive to the good news. Maybe we no longer have ears that hear. Maybe we find it hard to take in the good news and just as importantly share it, become it, nurture it and let it flower and grow. We do this by not only our good deeds, but also let others see it.

As Hildegard of Bingen said:

“A person becomes a flowering orchard. The person that does good work is indeed this orchard bearing good fruit. . . . Whatever humanity does with its deeds in the right or left hand permeates the universe.”

Let us prepare the ground for the good news, let’s create the beautiful garden and let it bare fruit.

In “The Parable of the Sower” Luke 8: vv 4-8 Jesus tells the crowd that the sower threw seeds on the path that were trampled on and eaten by birds; while other seed fell on rocky ground where the roots were weak and therefore the plants withered and died; still others fell on thorn and the thorns grew up and choked the plants; finally some fell on good soil where they thrived and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing...a hundred fold.

Let us prepare the ground for the “Good News”, let it flower and grow. Maybe we need to find new ways of sharing the good news.

The great sages such as Jesus and Buddha spoke in parables in attempts to help people get to the deeper meaning of their message. They wanted the ears that heard to wrestle with what was being said and therefore come to a deeper understanding.

I believe that in this parable Jesus is telling his followers that in order to hear the good news you need to become receptive to it. As I have said many times before I believe that every one of us has the potential for deep compassion as well as the potential for hatred and extreme selfishness. The key is to feed and develop that compassionate aspect of ourselves and then we can indeed impact positively on the world in which we live. I do believe that the kingdom of heaven is within all of us, as is hell for that matter and that we can indeed build that kingdom here on earth; or we can build our own living hell here on earth. It really is down to how we all live our lives. “The Parable of the Sower”, “The Good News Network” the word’s of Thich Nhat Hahn, little conversations throughout our day, smiling at the person that you pass on the street, passing on a good turn given to you can indeed lead to some kind of chaos theory of love and compassion. It is time to start spreading the good news of the decent and ordinary and not just talk about the notorious.

Start spreading the “Good News”, we can change our world today.

I’m going to end with the poem “So” by Leonard Nathan

It’s a poem addressed to each and everyone one of us. We who live ordinary lives, not the famous or infamous, the notorious. We ordinary people who create the “Good News”. We are the most important people in the lives of others. We influence through our ordinary daily interactions. There is always something deeply meaningful and effective that we can all do in our ordinary lives and it can make all the difference. Let’s start spreading the “Good News”

“So?” by Leonard Nathan

So you aren’t Tolstoy or St. Francis
or even a well-known singer
of popular songs and will never read Greek
or speak French fluently,
will never see something no one else
has seen before through a lens
or with the naked eye.

You’ve been given just the one life
in this world that matters
and upon which every other life
somehow depends as long as you live,
and also given the costly gifts of hunger,
choice, and pain with which to raise
a modest shrine to meaning.

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

Anger is an energy: It can destroy or it can create

We live on an angry planet, or at least it certainly seems that way. Anger seems to be everywhere; people appear ever more angry.

A friend contacted me the other day troubled by the anger she had felt toward a friend who had been asking some rather personal, probing questions. She got very defensive. I don’t think her response was inappropriate, she dealt with things well, she certainly wasn’t rude or insulting. The trouble she had was dealing with how she felt afterwards, she was very angry. She asked me how I stayed so calm in such situations. I explained that I had learnt to be like this from a young age. It was my way of controlling the potential anger of others. What I also said was that I had not always dealt with my internal anger though over the years. The anger was still there, and the anger remained just as destructive. I have learnt over time that anger, like all other emotions has a place. It is not wrong to feel angry, there are times when it is entirely appropriate to feel angry, the key is what we do with these feelings, do they inspire us to creativity or do they become destructive.

There is a lot of anger about at the moment. I think the feelings have intensified over the last eighteen months as we have been hit by the Covid crisis. I have noticed that since lockdown ended folk have in strange ways struggled more. I wonder if this has been due in some ways to folk clinging on holding on through it all and now as some sense of normality has returned many of us have struggled more. There is anxiety and a sense of anger that so many of us are expressing.

Yes, folk are angry, but not necessarily at the same things. What I have noticed is that much of this anger seems to become obsessively focused on whatever the object the individual or group might be angry at. There is nothing new in this we humans have projected our obsessive anger on to people, places and things throughout our history. In time the anger becomes ever more deep seated and transforms into resentment, so deep it cannot be reasoned with.

Resentment is a waste of life, as it so quickly becomes all consuming. It can take over your whole life. You will find many examples of this in literature. A classic example would be Captain Ahab. My friend, who I mentioned earlier, produced a copy of “Moby Dick” from her hand bag while we were talking the other day. In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick Captain Ahab is consumed by his rage against the “white whale” “Moby Dick” who in a previous voyage had destroyed his ship and bitten off his leg. So Ahab, vowing revenge, sets out on a voyage to hunt down the “white whale”. He becomes so consumed by his rage and his desire for revenge that as time goes by he no longer sees “Moby Dick” merely as the perpetrator of an evil act but as the “devil incarnate”, as the sum and substance of all evil that occurs in our lives. Today there are many versions of the “White Whale”. Just spend a few hours on social media if you don’t believe me.

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

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

They say that anger is like fire. It can smolder for some time and then suddenly blaze or burn with fury. Anger, like fire, of course does serve a purpose, an essential one at times. It can bring warmth where cruel coldness once reigned. It can destroy what is harmful and oppressive, as it has throughout history. The problem of course is that sometimes the right healing does not follow, you have to build again after the destruction.

Anger itself is neither good or bad, it is what is done with this emotion that makes the difference. As Aristotle so wisely recognised when he asked not whether anger is “good” or “bad” but how it shall be used: directed at whom, manifested how, for how long and to what end.

Anger can be an example of care, deep care. I have noticed feelings of anger in myself this week. I have realised that in some situations I have remained too silent, afraid to speak out, when I should have. Some of the anger is frustration at myself. I am becoming aware that the feelings are also a nudge that I should act and speak out. The key is discovering the right and appropriate ways to achieve this and to do so in ways that add to life’s creation and not destruction.

In the Gospel accounts you will see examples of Jesus becoming angry at injustice. The gentle Jesus meek and mild image is not an accurate one. He raged against the religious leaders of his day who seemed to place observance of the law over caring for people. It seems that the heart of the law was missed in pursuit of following the rules. A classic example of this can be found in the Gospel of Luke chapter 13 of Jesus healing on the Sabbath. To Jesus what mattered were the people, that is what he cared for rather than these laws that had lost the spirit of the faith. So what did he do? He healed people on the Sabbath right in front of the Pharisees.

Jesus saw the law had lost sight of the people. He saw his purpose, as a good Jew, to return the law to the people.

I recently came across the following poem “Making a Fist,” by Naomi Shihab Nye

“Making a Fist,” by Naomi Shihab Nye

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
A drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
Watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past
the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.
“How do you know if you are going to die?”
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
“When you can no longer make a fist.”
Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the back seat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.

Anger can be creative, it is wrong to see the feeling as merely negative and destructive. Naomi Shihab Nye’s fist is a gesture of self determination, of the will to live, of a fury to stay alive. This power can become a seed that can compel us to act in ways to aid in the creation of life and not its destruction.

This is beautifully illustrated in the following verse from Thich Nhat Hahn

“For Warmth”  by Thich Nhat Hanh

I hold my face in my two hands.
No, I am not crying.
I hold my face in my two hands
to keep the loneliness warm—
two hands protecting,
two hands nourishing,
two hands preventing
my soul from leaving me
in anger.

He wrote it after the Vietnamese village Ben Tre, that he and his monks had helped to rebuild four times, had been destroyed once again by American bombers. Over time he tenderly cared for his anger, knowing that it could be turned into action needed for his country’s survival.

Anger is an important human emotion, we have it for good reason. You cannot live without it. The key is what we do with the energy. In “Women who run with wolves” Claressa Pincola wrote

“All emotion, even rage, carries knowledge, insight, what some call enlightenment. Our rage can, for a time, become teacher, a thing not to be rid of so fast, … The cycle of rage is like any other cycle; it rises, falls, dies, and is released as new energy.

… Allowing oneself to be taught by one’s rage, thereby transforming it, disperses it. So, rather than trying to behave and not feel our rage or rather than using it to burn down every living thing in a hundred mile radius, it is better to first ask rage to take seat with us. Have some tea, talk awhile so we can find out what summons this visitor.”

We can’t hide from our feelings of anger, nor should we destroy with them, but we do need to realise them and create something from this fire that burns inside our hearts. It is there for a reason and the reason needs to be found or it can actually destroy us. The key is to make good use of the anger. Now what that might be is for each of us to discover. You have those feelings, even if you don’t want to recognise them, the key is to understand them and see what they are compelling you to do in order to participate in the creation of life, for our world needs it. There is far too much destructive rage all around us. It is getting louder and more destructive as time goes by.

So know your anger, do not flee, understand it, make something useful from it, it become a part of the creation of life. Our world so desperately needs it.

I am going to end today with “Uselful Anger” by Stephen M Shick

“Useful Anger” by Stephen M Shick

A good anger swallowed
clots the blood
to slime
—Marge Piercy

But what is to be done with it,
this anger that dare not be swallowed?

Should it be diluted with denial, cooled with indifference?
Should it be sweetened with good intentions,
softened with lies?
Should it be spewed out red hot over searing tongues,
scorching the guilty and innocent alike?

What’s to be done with it,
this anger that dare not be swallowed?

Don’t dilute it, deny it, or cool it.
Don’t sweeten it or soften it.
But, pause for a moment.

Could you hold it before your eyes
examine it with your heart and mind?
Could you hold it
then touch it to your belly
that place where your soul rests?
Could you let it enter there knowing it is the part of you
that needs to be treated kindly
that needs to be listened to
that needs to be honored?

For it has the power to save you,
to save us all.

Below is a video devotion based on this "blogspot"

“How Do We Remember? To Re-Feel Our Lives Again”

The Olympics end today. I find that they always bring up memories of years gone by. They connect folk with the past and times in history, both personal and universal. The Olympics are always caught up in their time and space. In years to come no doubt these Olympics will be known as the “Covid Games”. They have already been postponed for one year. These are the 2020 Olympics, but are taking place in 2021. They have taken place without crowds of supporters cheering on the competitors. They have also been the games that have highlighted various mental health issues that top class athletes, as well as ordinary folk, suffer from. Society has changed and is changing and this is reflected in all aspects of life.

I have been watching the Olympics, but not with the same interest and attention that I have in the past. I am not sure why. Someone suggested to me the other day that is probably because of the time difference. I am not convinced of this. As a child I loved the Olympics. My first sporting hero was Brendon Foster and this dates back to the 1976 Olympics at Montreal. I was only four years old at the time. Now when I say he was my sporting hero, I suspect he was more my mum’s. She loves the Olympics and I suspect I enjoyed watching with her all those years ago. The images I remember from 1976 are not of the actual events but images repeated over the years. My mum likes to tell the story of waking me late in the night so I could watch Brendan Foster’s race, he came third and won bronze in the end. What is strange is that I do have this felt memory of being woken. It is not so much a visual memory though, more an emotional one. This though does not surprise me as memory for me is much more a felt, an emotional experience, rather than a visual one. In many ways it’s the responses of competitors after the events that stay with me, not just the competition, I am touched by the joy and the emotion.  I am touched by the years of dedication that these people and those who have supported them have put into their lives. Not just the winners and medallists, but also those competing. It is inspiring and these feelings stay with me, stored in my heart and soul. No doubt others remember differently.

If I have learnt anything in life it is that people can experience events, remember events, that they were both present at very differently. There are many reasons for this, but one may well be how their senses take in the experience, another how they actually remember. Some people are much more visually minded than others, more spacially aware. I have noticed over the years how different my brother and myself are. We recall things very differently and I suspect that this is because we process and thus remember very differently. We human beings are very diverse creatures indeed. While my brother and me look alike, we are not very alike.

A Lot of my memories were lost for many years, but have over time been re-felt and re-experienced. This is never an easy experience, but it is a rich one in the end. When I say it isn’t always easy, I am understating things, in truth it can be excruciatingly painful. I have recently re-experienced some memories while visiting an old friend who was staying in hospital in the North West. Thankfully he has been able to return home and I hope that his mental condition will continue to heal. During our conversations he talked an awful lot of our days, when we were students. Events and people and experiences that just weren’t there for me, they were gone, seemingly lost, from my mind. Some amusing and wonderful and others less so. There was an awful lot camaraderie, friendships and the odd romance, that never ended well. The memories though were not particularly visual though, they were felt, they were emotional. I re-felt these memories, I re-sensed them, they were resentments. They keep on coming as the days pass.

As I have said, many times before, I wish we had a word for re-sensing things that didn’t only have negative connotations. Resentment means to re-feel, to re-sense something, sadly we do not have a word for doing so in a positive or even neutral sense. My memories are mixed experience, aren’t all of memories a mixture of blessings and curses, just as life is. To quote good old Moses, “I lay before you life, blessings and curses, therefore choose life”

I wonder how your memories manifest in your life. Maybe you could reflect on past Olympics and where you were in your life and the folk you shared those memories with. How do you remember? What senses come alive? Perhaps talk with those who shared those memories with you, how do they remember? I Bet that they don’t in exactly the same way.

Memory is a mysterious thing. The way I remember my own life and people I share my life with has changed many times. The changes seem to coincide with the way I have experienced and understood my own humanity. The truth is that my life is made up of those lives that went before me, my life is built on their lives and those that follow me, their life will be built on mine and my contemporaries. The ancestors who walked before me and those that follow me are actually a part of me. I find that incredibly humbling.

It 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 the days pass. In many ways it is memory that brings the moments I am experiencing to life, how these ghosts of the past in habit our lives. They follow us like headlights on our tales.

One thing I have never had a great memory for is names. I was talking with someone the other day who told me how much he hates it that some people forget the names of others, he said he thought it was disrespectful. I told him that am one of those people. I can remember details of a person’s life, if they have told me it, faces stay with me, even though I claim I don’t have a visual memory, but I suspect that is more spacial than facial the deficit I mean. That said for some reason names can easily get lost somewhere. By the way it is not only the names of people, but places and things too. The details are there, but not the name. I am told that this is only going to get worse, I have already seen the signs of what is yet to come. Billy Collins captured this perfectly in his poem “Forgetfulness” Angela Fowler recently shared this poem at our poetry night. She loves Billy Collins, as do many of us. He has the capacity to touch places deep within but in a simple easily relatable way. Interestingly when I remined of this on Thursday she had forgotten about it, which we all laughed about together, a beautiful moment of human connection.

Here is the poem

The name of the author is the first to go
Followed obediently by the title, the plot,
The heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
Which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
Never even heard of,
As if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
Decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
To a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
And watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
And even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
Something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
The address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
It is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
Not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
Whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
Well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
Who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
To look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
Out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

…Billy Collins captures something beautiful, if a little painful here, as he usually does.

Memory is a mystery, we all forget things. I keep on forgetting things at the moment, but I know that this grief and how it manifests in my life, how love and loss plays out. Thankfully I am keeping a sense of humour about all this. We have to maintain our sense of humour about such things. That said there are types of memory loss that less funny, tragic really. There is of course Dementia, in its many forms, the cruellest being Alzheimer’s. A disease which attacks the cortex of the brain forming bundles of tangled plaque that inhibit conversation between the neurons; as it takes away a persons identity and history as aspects of their humanity drift away. The longer we live the more likely we are to become one of its victims.

While the Alzheimer’s sufferer forgets, those who loved them never let them go. Those who shared memories with them hold their love, those feelings are felt in that deeper place that cannot be destroyed by time. Love is eternal, it is immortal. Perhaps some of us feel these experiences more deeply, depending on how we experience life. Sometimes they are so intense that we lock these memories away. Ghosts though have a habit of haunting you again when you least expect them to.

This brings to my mind the following verses from Isaiah (49 vv 15-16):

15 Can a woman forget her nursing child,
or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.
16 See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are continually before me.

These words came to me the other day as I was looking at the callouses on my hands caused by training at the gym. I then spent a little time looking at the palms of my hand. I looked at what are called the heart and lifelines and remembered the love I have known and the love I have shared, with those people who have made up my life. Such feelings are surely Divine. There are times when these feelings are too much.

This is beautifully illustrated by Thich Nhat Hahn, who wrote in “Present moment, wonderful moment”

“If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.”

Isn’t he right. All that has been before is a part of who we are.

Life awes me every single day, it humbles me also. The more I learn the less things make sense. Every day I have a growing sense of how truly ignorant I am. Nothing makes absolute sense to me. I have no idea why I feel what I feel or why my mind remembers and forgets things and then suddenly the memory is more alive than it has ever been. Clever people try to explain these things to me, but they seem to get it even less I. The sum of the parts they describe do not even begin to scratch the surface of the whole.

I am grateful to be a part of this incredible mystery that is life itself; that I get to share with the people I do; that I get to experience the sensations of these memories coming to life in my body and spirit, enhancing my experience of life today.

I am grateful to have experienced this the most amazing trip that anyone could wish to be on. Thank you for being a part of it. What a ride, what a ride…

Please click below to watch a video devotion

based on the material in this "blogspot"

 

Family: It takes just three cups of tea

Last weekend Sue and myself made a trip over to Yorkshire to catch up with some of my nearest and dearest. We have spent quite a bit of time, in recent months getting to know one another’s family and letting them get to know us. It is lovely but it is also challenging. Both families have their history and their stories. Mine is of course much more complicated. It is certainly bigger. Our wedding guest lists are not balanced at all.

When you enter into any family you have to take it completely in all its joy and suffering, we have both experienced much of this already. Last weekend was another experience of sharing in joy and suffering also.

Most of us started out in a family of some kind. Now whether we remember our childhoods fondly or with dread, I bet we all have some complicated feelings about our families of birth and upbringing.

Families are complicated things, they always have been by the way. My mum is a family history expert, purely self taught . Over the years she has spent a great deal of her spare time exploring people’s family histories. One thing that she has noticed is that they have always been complicated, full of mystery and secrets. People are the same as they have always been. Families are complicated things, therefore it should come as no surprise that so many of us have complicated feelings about them.

Most of us are born into a family of some sort, within these families we learn the basics of living and at some point we break away and establish our own emerging adult personalities. For of all of us the day eventually comes when we leave the nest, yes some are pushed, but leave we do. In the end we begin to make our own complicated families, merging with others and blending in all kinds of fascinating ways.

Families are fascinating and complicated things. The place of some of our greatest joys and desperate sufferings, no matter how they are made up. There are many ways to make and create family by the way. Once again this has always been so. Family is not just some idealized image of a 1980s sit com, thank God. If you take a proper look at your family history you will see so.

More than anything a family is made up of stories. Families tell stories, just as cultures and religions do, they are held together by the telling of these stories. Some of the stories are ones of deep suffering and others of incredible joy, so many funny stories too. Mine certainly are. I am told that my brother is currently collecting many stories for his best mans speech at my wedding next year.

These family stories are not static things, they are constantly being rewritten and re-told. Last weekend we recounted an amusing story from last Christmas, of playing “Family Fortunes” with a happy and mixed blend of my ever forming and reforming family. Please don’t ask me to explain exactly who belongs to who of those that were gathered together that day.

A family is a place of stories. Another word for this is “gossip”. We connect by telling our stories of each other, keeping up to date with varied members. The stories are not just of the past, but also of the present. Family members gossip about each other. Now such “gossiping” can be hurtful and diminishing, I am sure all have bad experiences of this from our lives. That said healthy gossip is shared too. Now this is closer to “gossip” in its original meaning. The word “gossip” is derived from words for God and sibling. It originally meant “akin to God”. The word originally described a person you were connected to in spiritual kinship, either a sponsor or God parent. So when we share such stories we are connecting people together in shared concern. Sadly, gossip these days almost means the exact opposite to its original meaning. It seems more to be akin to separation than connection.

Now this might not surprise you to hear, but the word family had changed in its meaning over time too. Family never meant the classic image of mother, father and 2.4 children. The word itself originally meant all members of a household, property or estate, this would include servants as well as relatives. The Latin word familia did not refer to parents and children exclusively, the word “domus”, from which domestic was thus derived. actually meant this.

Rather like the word itself, family has changed over time. What we consider as our family may well be different for all of us. I think that a healthy family is something that is constantly opening and changing shape. It ought to be a place of welcome and not one of exclusion. To live healthily by family is to not make the other the un-familiar. it is to instead invite them to become familiar. It takes time to get to know the un-familiar. Not too long though. Actually all we have to do is begin to relate, to “gossip”, in the old fashioned way, to tell our stories.

How do we do this, well simply by sharing time, usually over a meal or simply a cup of tea or coffee. In so doing we begin to relate to one another, in real ways. It doesn’t take long you know. As Thich Nhat Hanh has said 'We are most real when we are drinking tea.' In fact some suggests that all it takes is three cups of tea. This is beautifully illustrated by the following passage from “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson. The following passage describes the author being taught its meaning by a Balti tribesman in Pakistan, that  he was working with.

" 'The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die. Doctor Greg, you must take time to share three cups of tea. We may be uneducated. But we are not stupid. We have lived and survived here for a long time.' "

Perhaps all it takes is three cups of tea for the un-familiar to become familiar. For once we have shared our stories, once we’ve gossiped for a short while we will already have made deep connections, we see ourselves in the other, and the other in ourselves. We see that we are kin. Kindred spirits bound together by a simple ritual.

This I believe is the case for all of humanity. All it takes is the time to share our stories for all of us to truly see that we are related, kin, kindred spirits, part of the one human family.

Sadly, so often in life we do not see one another as kin, we see the other as different and not part of the one human family. The religious traditions at their worst have often perpetuated this and yet I’m not convinced that this is the essence of their teachings, just the way that some have taught and been practiced. The first book of the Bible Genesis, in chapter 1, depicts humanity being created in God’s image. So if one is to be a follower of the book then surely every act done by one person to another is done by and to a person made in that image, that all are part of the one human family. There is a similar suggestion in the Qur’an which in the fourth chapter declares 'Oh people, be conscious of your Lord who created you from a single soul and created from her, her mate; and from them, many men and women scattered far and wide.' Thus suggesting a deep unity within the one human family and that all people are not only created by God but are descended from a single soul.

Buddhism extends this familiarity beyond merely humanity but to all sentient beings. Seeing all individual beings as being like waves on the ocean. Although each wave has a sense of its own separateness (its 'lesser self'), it is better understood as part of the ocean (its 'greater self'). Suggesting that the key is to awaken to the larger truth that not only are we a part of the ocean but that we are in fact in essence the ocean. Or to paraphrase Jesus “What you do to the least of them you do to me. This is more than interconnection it is deep kin-ship, it is the family of life itself.

We are all part of the one family of life. We share a common heritage, but not only that, we share a common destiny too. We are deeply interconnected, in deep kin-ship. Thus no one is really un-familiar, we just haven’t shared three cups of tea yet.

There are two things in particular that all of us share, joy and grief. We all know joy and we all know grief. When one of those we call family have a success in life, we all celebrate, we all share in this joy. I witnessed this recently at my sisters wedding when all of hers and Howard's loved ones came together to share in this joy. It is the same with grief , when we gather as we lose someone we love. These are feelings that the whole human family share in. We are united in joy and grief. Feelings that are familiar to everyone. So often these are the very stories we share as we drink those three cups of tea.

I'm going to end this little piece with a story from the Zen Buddhist tradition. It illustrates ways in which we can connect and bear witness to our common kinship and familiarity to one another.

"Soyen Shaku, the abbot, each morning took a walk accompanied by his companion from the monastery to the nearby town. One day, as he passed a house, he heard a great cry from within it. Stopping to inquire, he asked the inhabitants, 'Why are you all wailing so?' They said: 'Our child has died and we are grieving.'

"The abbot without hesitation sat down with the family and started crying and wailing himself. As they were returning to the monastery, the abbot's companion asked, 'Master, is this family known to you?' 'No,' the abbot answered. 'Why then, Master, did you also cry?' The abbot said simply, 'So that I may share their sorrow.' "

Isn’t this our common humanity to share our sorrow and of course to share our joy. To become family to make the un-familiar familiar…Apparently it only takes three cups of tea…

Memory is a Mystery to Me

As the silence came to an end during the meditation, I was sharing with my Tuesday morning friends, I felt overcome by a beautiful sense of peace within myself and for all of life. I felt awake to the moment I was in and connected to all of eternity. As the feeling flowed over me a memory awakened within my being. I was taken back to a childhood time. What today would be called year four, but in my day was the first year of junior school. I re-felt, I re-sensed a memory of being sat on the floor with my class mates listening to the teacher reading the end of day story. It was a lovely feeling as I re-felt the experience. There was not really a picture in my mind, other than a very vague one of the room, which even now I cannot see in my minds eye. I can’t even picture the teacher or even my class mates. What I remember is that lovely sense of well being. As I sat there, awakening from the silence, that Tuesday morning, I re-awakened that feeling, the experience re-incarnated in me.

The fact I can’t really picture the memory is not very surprising to me as I am not a visually minded person. I have friends who can visualize all kinds of memory, but I am not one of them. My memories tend to be more sensed than seen. Memory and memories are an utter mystery to me. Why it came when it did and in the form that it did, I have no clue of. I immediately shared the experience with the friends I was with and on Facebook as soon as I could. I felt the need to share it widely and thus make it more real.

Social media, particularly Facebook gets a bad press. It has been rightly criticised in some quarters. Young people consider it passé. The fact I favour it as my preferred social media option ages me somewhat. One of my favourite things about Facebook is that each day it reminds you of previous posts on that day over the years.

The other day I came across the following quotation, I had originally posted two years ago:

“A spontaneous flash of understanding came to me an hour or two after the birth of our first child: "He will never remember today. His birth is chiefly experienced by me, his other relatives, the nurses, and the young mother in the next bed in this war-time hospital. So it may be in death? Only others aware of our passing?”

Hilda Martin Hall

Sadly, I have no memory of where this came from. I find it beautiful. It got me thinking and re-feeling. Two of the most important moments of our lives, our birth and our death, perhaps the most memorable to our nearest and dearest, we have no memory and no real awareness of. If we do have awareness we have no way of communicating the experience through our physical senses. These moments though, as they are experienced by our nearest and dearest, can be some of the most memorable of their lives. They are a part of the natural experience of living and dying and yet the they are the most awe filled, they are awful in the old meaning of the word.

I have never witnessed the birth of a child, I am not a parent. That said I can still re-feel the incredible experience of first seeing my youngest sister Natalie as well as nieces and nephews, truly awe filled moments. I remember powerfully how it felt visiting my grandad those last few times before he died. As well as seeing the lifeless bodies of my father and little Ethan, that incredible outpouring and heartbreaking love as it felt like the whole of my inner being was being torn to shreds . I have also been at the bedside of several congregants as they have come to the end of their lives and witnessed the incredible power of shared love as I have been in the presence of their loved ones. The love experienced in such moments is overwhelmingly powerful.

These memories are etched in my soul. I cannot truly visualise them, they are blurred a bit like looking through frosted over glass. They are like the spiritual experiences I have had, when everything that surrounds the object of my focus appears frosted over.and what is at the centre becomes illuminated. That said while I cannot visualise the memory it feels so alive in my inner being, I can embody the memory. It is somehow more real than reality itself. It is a deeper and thicker kind of real.

The other day another memory appeared on my screen. It was of my grandad’s 90th birthday party, just over a year before he died. As I looked at the picture posted by “Our Troy” I remembered well the conversation we had that day. How he told me how grateful he was to have lived the life he had. I re-felt the feeling of awe as he recounted a tale from the war. He was in the Royal Navy and the ship on which he served was under bombardment. The ship was hit by a shell that went right through to engineering. Somehow it never went off and as a result he and his crew mates were spared. His friend Percy, who went to sea with him, was not so fortunate he never came back. He later said that he has been a very fortunate man throughout his life. Like everyone he has known his share of suffering, but he knows how fortunate he has been to have had the chance to live the life he has had.

I have shed many private tears as I have re-felt that conversation. I shed several more as I wrote these words.

A few weeks ago I attended the funeral of my grandad’s long time partner, “Auntie Hilda”. They were together from 1973 until my grandad’s death. She is our Troy and Samantha’s mum. They are both heartbroken since she died.

After the funeral I was sat talking with my auntie Lynne and cousins and she was recounting tales of my birth and early childhood to my fiance Sue, I could sense powerfully her deep love for me, as I always do around family, particularly those who have known me for longer than I have known myself. She is one of those people that witnessed my earliest moments that I have no memory of. As my grandad had of her and as we and so many others shared over those last years of his life. These are deep connections.

Memory is a mystery to me. The way I remember my own life and people I share my life with has changed many times. The changes seem to coincide with the way I have experienced and understood my own humanity, another mystery. The truth is that my life is made up of those lives that went before me, my life is built on their lives and those that follow me, their life will be built on mine and my contemporaries. The ancestors who walked before me and those that follow me are actually a part of me. I find that incredibly humbling.

It 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 the days pass. In many ways it is memory that brings the moments I am experiencing to life, as it did during meditation on Tuesday morning.

Sadly we cannot store the experience of memories. Memories fade as our minds lose their power. I noticed this the other day as I realised I had left the chapel lights on overnight. Something that Thelma pointed out to me as I returned from the gym and chatted with her as she was hoeing in the garden.

I have always been terrible with names, faces I remember, as I do details of peoples lives, but names they seem to fall through the sieve that is that aspect of my memory.

I am told that this is only going to get worse, I have already seen the signs of what is yet to come. Billy Collins captured this perfectly in this extract from his poem “Forgetfulness”



The name of the author is the first to go
Followed obediently by the title, the plot,
The heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
Which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
Never even heard of,
As if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
Decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
To a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
And watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
And even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
Something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
The address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
It is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
Not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
Whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
Well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
Who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
To look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
Out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

I cannot remember how many things I have forgotten this week. We all forget things and even more as we get older. And then there is Dementia and its cruellest form Alzheimer’s A disease which attacks the cortex of the brain forming bundles of tangled plaque that inhibit conversation between the neurons; as it takes away a persons identity and history as aspects of their humanity drift away. The longer we live the more likely we are to become one of its victims.

Now while the Alzheimer’s sufferer forgets, those who loved them never let them go. Those who shared memories with them hold their love, those feelings are felt in that deeper place that cannot be destroyed by time. Love is eternal, it is immortal.

For as Isaiah (49 vv 15-16) said:

15 Can a woman forget her nursing child,
or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.
16 See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are continually before me.

These words awoke somewhere in me the other day as I was looking at the palm of my hand; as I looked at my life line and my heart line and remembered the love I have known and the love I have shared, with those people who have made up my life. Such feelings are surely Divine.

This is beautifully illustrated by Thich Nhat Hahn, who wrote in “Present moment, wonderful moment”

“If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.”

All that has been before is a part of who we are.

Life awes me every single day, it humbles me also. The more I learn the less things make any sense. Every day I have a growing sense of how truly ignorant I am. Nothing makes sense to me. I have no idea why I feel what I feel or why my mind remembers and forgets things. Clever people try to explain these things to me, but they seem to get it even less I. The sum of the parts they describe do not even begin to scratch the surface of the whole.

That said I am so grateful to be a part of this incredible mystery that is life itself,; that I get to share it with the people I do; that I get to experience the sensations of these memories coming to life in my body and spirit, enhancing my experience of life today.

I am grateful to have experienced this the most amazing trip that anyone could wish to be on. Thank you for being a part of it.

Know yourself, know that you are mortal

Last year I was invited to Parliament to speak at a forum on obesity, specifically to talk about men’s health. It was an incredible honour. As you can imagine security was tight. It was actually the week before the horrific terror attack that took place there. I will neer forget the sickening scenes that took place just seven days later, the terrible loss of innocent lives.

As I entered parliament I had to pass through metal detectors and thus had to empty the coins in my pocket out onto a tray for unspection. One of those coins was a sobriety chip. The security officer seemed very interested in what it was and asked me about it. I explained what it was for a few moments and then turned the coin over. On the back it read “To Thine Own Self Be True”, which I read out to her. she looked at me rather oddly and then dismissed me. I moved on into the day, speaking from my heart of my own expereinces in the hope to help others. It was a good day.

Being true to yourself, living with honesty, authenticity and integrity is key to recovery and I would say it is the key to living with virtue in this world.

The ancient Greeks believed that the ultimate aim for a person of virtue was to know themselves. There were many aphorism on this theme such as “The unexamined life is not worth living.” The key for the ancient Greeks was to know yourself. Now “Know thyself” has been understood in many ways but ultimately to know oneself is to know that you are mortal and live in such a way, fully a part of mortal life. They constantly guarded against the dangers of hubris, the idea that human beings were God’s. Yes we are made in the image of the Divine but we are not God’s and it is vital that we recognise our finite mortality. In many ways this is the beauty and the energy of our lives, the fact that they do not last for ever.

Know yourself, know that you are mortal. That is what it means to be truly human. The word human is etymologically linked to humility. We are not god’s we are finite, we are mortal. We cannot live wholly from ourselves, no one is totally self-reliant, self sufficient and we do not live for ever. To truly know yourself is to accept the finite nature of your humanity. This is a stepping stone to discovering yourself and your unique place in the circle of life.

The fact that we are mortal is not to say that we do not matter, quite the opposite actually. Our lives matter, how we live matters. We impact on the whole of creation and we impact on the lives around us. Just as all that has existed before impacts on who we are today, including our ancestors. No one person lives a life separate from those around them and the history that they come from. Our lives are not singular cellular ones. The whole history of life has brought us to the point we are at today and who we are is made up of from that.

This is beautifully illustrated By Thich Nhat Hahn, who wrote in “Present moment, wonderful moment”

“If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.”

All that has been before is a part of who we are. We are not separate selves, to know ourselves is to know what made us who we are. To know who we are we need to know those who we are surrounded by, who help make us who we are and all those who existed before we did. How do we begin to know ourselves? By knowing the lives we are surrounded by. No one is an island. Then we begin to understand who we are and we can begin to know ourselves.

The book of Genesis describes humanity being made in God’s image, in God’s likeness. Now what on earth could this mean? Well image, from the Latin “imago” means reflection or portrait it does not mean exactly the same. I believe it is suggesting that each of us has something of Divine within us, that we are a reflection of the divine and that this brings a duty to humanity to reflect this image into the world in which we live. This is a real responsibility, to reflect the divine love into life, to incarnate it to bring it to life.

I believe that most of our human problems stem from our rejection of this, from our inability to see that we are children of love, formed from love. That this Divine spark is an aspect of our very human being. I know when I look back at my darkest days it is this that frightened me the most and so I rejected it. I know that I am not unique in this thinking about myself. Marianne Williamson beautifully illustrated this when she wrote:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually who are you not to be? You are a child of God?”

So who do you think you are? Oh and who do you think that everyone else is?

I believe that we are all formed from that same love, from that same image, every single one of us.

Now this puts a great responsibility on us as human beings, to make our lives matter in the short time that we have here on earth. What will our epitaphs read?

From time to time I am asked to conduct funerals for people who are not members of the congregations. Often they have had some connection in the past or are looking for something spiritual in nature but not too religious. Last year the family asked for the following poem to be included in the service.

The Dash – Linda Ellis

I read of a man who stood to speak
At the funeral of a friend.
He referred to the dates on her tombstone
From the beginning..to the end.
He noted that first came her date of birth
And spoke the following date with tears, 1964-1994
But he said what mattered most of all
Was the dash between those years.

For that dash represents all the time
That she spent alive on earth..
And now only those who loved her
Know what that little line is worth.
For it matters not, how much we own;
The cars..the house..the cash,
What matters is how we live and love
And how we spend our dash.

So think about this long and hard.
Are there things you”d like to change?
For you never know how much time is left,
That can still be rearranged.
If we could just slow down enough
To consider what”s true and real,
And always try to understand
The way other people feel.

And be less quick to anger,
And show appreciation more
And love the people in our lives
Like we”ve never loved before.
If we treat each other with respect,
And more often wear a smile..
Remembering that this special dash
Might only last a little while.

So, when your eulogy”s being read
With your life”s actions to rehash..
Would you be proud of the things they say
About how you spent your dash?

Know yourself, know that you are mortal, but also know that how you live your mortal life really matters. It impacts on all that you meet and come into contact with. Each and every life matters, each is unique and each is vital and each has something to offer to the world.

You see we are all a part of this body that is life. Everything that we say and everything that we do matters, just as everything we do not say and everything that we do not do matters. This is why it matters how we see ourselves and one another, who we think we are and who we think one another is, for this will impact on how we live in the world.

To know yourself is to know that you are mortal. I believe that because of this, not despite it, it really matters how we live our lives, how we spend our dash.

We need to pay attention to who we think we are and therefore who we think others are. For if we see that we are formed in the image of divine love we will see that we have responsibility to this life that we lead and the history that we are a part of. If we do we can become champions of this life, we can become co-creators of the Love that is Divine.

By the way it’s never too late. Actually I suspect that it’s probably only later in life that we finally get to know ourselves. I’d like to share with you the following poem by “Now I become myself” by May Sarton

“Now I Become Myself” by May Sarton

Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before—"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

To know thyself, to be who we truly are, who we were born to be, is no easy task. Sarton wrote this poem when she was 83 years old. It would seem that it took her a long time to truly know herself and become who she really was, something she wrote of in her memoirs and journals. I commend them to you, they are worthy of exploration.

It is no easy task to be who we truly are, to live openly, to live whole and holy lives. To “find our path of authentic service in the world.” You see we learn by following others from the day we are born. We learn to be like those others we are surrounded by, who made us who we are, rather than becoming who we truly are. It takes a long time to let go of the stabilisers of others and become wholly ourselves. For May Sarton it only really began after the death of her parents during middle age, actually about the age I am now.

Forrest Church had similar experiences it was only when he stopped living in his father’s shadow that he found the courage to truly become himself and give his true mortal gift to life. As he said:

"I found my calling. I answered a call that was mine, and not someone else’s." And went on to say "To envy another’s skills, looks, or gifts rather than embracing your own nature and call is to fail in two respects. In trying unsuccessfully to be who we aren’t, we fail to become who we are."

The key he said of course was to always “be who you are.”

This is the key of course. This is what it means to live holy lives. This is how we become a holy, an authentic presence in the world. This is how we serve the world by our presence and you know what it is never too later. This is how we fill in that dash and truly live our mortal lives. It can begin right here right now. May Sarton was 83 years old when she wrote “Now I become myself”. Maybe, we only truly become our true selves at the end of our physical being. That said we need to begin some where and the only place to begin is right here right now. Right here, right now is the only place we can not only know ourselves, but truly be ourselves, to not only know that we are mortal, but to truly live our mortal lives and give our unique gift to the life.

Let us make it so.