Give Yourself Away

...This little "blogspot" begins with this beautiful piece of wisdom...

Parker J Palmer Reflecting of “Sabbath’s” by Wendell Berry taken from “On Being”

One of my favourite poets is Wendell Berry the following is often seen as a poem about death and dying but really it is about generosity the most living giving of all virtues. “Sabbaths” by Wendell Berry

Sabbaths – 1993, I

No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And you have become a sort of tree
standing over a grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.

Generosity does not require material abundance. When I think back on the many people who have been so generous toward me, I never think of money or “things.” Instead, I think of the way they gave me their presence, their confidence, their affirmation, support, and blessing — all gifts of “self” that any of us can give.

And where does generosity come from? Perhaps from another life-giving virtue, the one called gratitude. When I take the time to breathe in my life and breathe out my gratitude for the gifts I’ve been given, only one question arises: “How can I keep these gifts alive?”

I know only one answer: “Become a giver yourself, pass your gifts along, and do it extravagantly!” As Wendell Berry “Every day you have less reason/not to give yourself away.”

...I do love Parker J Palmer, he speaks to the soul of me. I love the way he brings Wendell Berry's words to life...

When I awoke on Monday morning, the start of not only a new week, but also a new year, I should have been tired. By rights I should have been utterly exhausted, I certainly expected be so.

Now don’t get me wrong I didn’t leap out of bed, I simply rose into the day. That said I felt so alive. Why was this? By rights I should have been exhausted. I had certainly felt that way for a few days leading up to the New Year. I don’t think I’ve been busier than I have been this last month, so many demands, that I have mainly fulfilled and cheerfully. I’ve got a busy few weeks ahead, this week has been very full too.

Last Sunday began early at about 6.30am and it didn’t end until gone 2am, early New Year’s morning. I had led worship at both of the congregations I serve in the morning as well as other pastoral duties and then hosted a New Years Social and Watch Night service. It’s been full on for weeks, I’ve been giving myself away and its felt like I’ve been running on empty. So by rights, by all reason I ought to have awoken on Monday morning, have begun the New Year, exhausted and utterly empty. 

Several people had said to me these last few weeks, “Don’t give too much of yourself away.” I was thinking about this last Saturday evening as I felt utterly exhausted and knew that the next day was going to be a challenge. I would be spending the best part of 24 hours holding the space for others. I wondered, would I be up to it. I spent time in prayer and meditation, preparing myself, emptying my mind and filling my heart.

I’ve heard this phrase a lot over the years “Don’t give yourself away.” I question it, I'm not convinced it is helpful, if anything all it does is restrict life, reduce experience and keeps one lonely and isolated. I think the reason I felt so alive on News Years morning is that I had indeed been giving myself away and I’d been sharing in the company of so many other people who had also been giving themselves away. People simply coming together in love, with hearts burst open. On Monday morning my head felt completely clear and at peace, my heart was burst to overflowing and the soul of me had never felt more alive. I had spent so much time in intimate, spiritual community. I was experiencing, what I call true, free and loving religion. Religion as it is meant to be.

I’ve been thinking of Wendell Berry’s poem “Sabbath’s and Parker J Palmer's reflection on it, these last few days. I had shared it during the “Watch Night” service I had led. Like Palmer highlights it is the poem's ending that really gets into the heart of me and I know it got to others too, during the service. “Every day you have less reason not to give yourself away.”

I have learnt that if you truly want to know yourself, this is how you do it. This is how you will find yourself, how to know love, how your very being gets transformed and you become who you truly are, by giving yourself away. By pouring your heart out, you fill it with love and your mind and spirit know peace. This is the purpose of the religious life of living in true intimate spiritual community. You cannot experience this if you practise your spirituality in isolation. This is what I have experienced even more deeply this last month.

Religion gets a very bad name these days and rightly so, as for too long it has been about control and dogma, but that is not really its purpose, not in it truest sense. I think the core of religion is self transcendence, t is about giving yourself away and in so doing you actually not only find yourself, but become who you truly are.

This brings to mind a favourite quotation on the purpose of true religion, by Karen Armstrong:

“Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed.” When we dare to move beyond the known patterns and perceptions of our lives, letting the alchemy of love, listening and justice do its work, then we will be more than changed. The base metals of our lives will be transformed into something precious and flourishing. This is the purpose of religion, and the meaning of a religious life: to be transformed."

These thoughts about the true nature of religious living were passing through my being as I reflected on the recent weeks of my life and the people I have shared this time with. I see so many gorgeous examples of this transformation in them. Just beautiful!

Again as Wendell Berry wrote “Every day you have less reason not to give yourself away.”

This is about living generously. My word I have witnessed this a lot this in the ordinary people I share my life with. I’m not talking about on the big global scale, I’m talking about the communities that intersect my life. When I look at the big picture, on the news screens, what I see is selfishness and greed and yet when I look at the people around me, what I witness is people being generous, people giving themselves away. It fills my heart. By the way I'm not saying that this is all that is there, no just what is reported. They only tell us about the bad news, so rarely do we hear good news. Look around you, it is there.

As Parker J Palmer has pointed out generosity does not require material abundance. When I look at the people I have been around in recent weeks, what I have witnessed is generosity of spirit, generosity of time and generosity of heart. I’ve witnessed it every time I’ve been visiting in hospital as I have looked at the people all around me. I have witnessed people giving their time, their support, their open hearted presence, their hope even in the suffering of their loved ones. These are our gifts of the self. This is how we bring that divine love alive. This is the alchemy that transforms life. This is the heart of true religion. This is gratitude in action, this is living with gratitude, this is abundance, extravagance, this is God incarnating in out ordinary human lives.

Sadly too often we are afraid to do this. In fact we are told over and over again “Don’t give yourself away.”

Why?

What are we so afraid?

No! Times is passing by, it is short “Everyday day you have less reason not to give yourself away.”

It’s that simply really and yet at times it seems so complicated. This is the transformative nature of the religious life. It comes alive, as we come alive when we give ourselves away.

Another poem I’ve been thinking of a lot these last few days is “Accepting this “ by Mark Nepo

Yes, it is true. I confess,
I have thought great thoughts,
and sung great songs—all of it
rehearsal for the majesty
of being held.

The dream is awakened
when thinking I love you
and life begins
when saying I love you
and joy moves like blood
when embracing others with love.

My efforts now turn
from trying to outrun suffering
to accepting love wherever
I can find it.

Stripped of causes and plans
and things to strive for,
I have discovered everything
I could need or ask for
is right here—
in flawed abundance.

We cannot eliminate hunger,
but we can feed each other.

We cannot eliminate loneliness,
but we can hold each other.

We cannot eliminate pain,
but we can live a life
of compassion.

Ultimately,
we are small living things

awakened in the stream,
not gods who carve out rivers.

Like human fish,
we’re asked to experience
meaning in the life that moves
through the gill of our heart.

There is nothing to do
and nowhere to go.
Accepting this,
we can do everything
and go anywhere.

So many beautiful paradoxes in this poem that speak to me of what it means to live spiritually alive and in the company of others. I have witnessed and experienced so much of what it speaks of these last few weeks and it has filled my heart and humbled me. I have bared witness to how the spirit only comes alive in relation. That’s what the spiritual life is actually about you know, relationships. You cannot be a spiritual being, a living one at least in isolation. It only occurs truly in community, as messy as that can be. In so doing we may not transform the world, but we certainly transform ourselves, in that very relationship and this may just one day transform our shared world. I live in and through hope.

I’m going to end this little chip pof a "blogspot" with a confession. I hope you can forgive me. Life is an utter mystery to me. It just doesn’t make sense. I know my own life doesn’t. I don’t understand any of it, I just can’t make sense of it. Last Monday morning this didn't seem to bother me. My head was completely empty and my heart was full and I felt this incredible sense of belonging and well-being and pure love. I felt powerfully the presence of God and every person I looked at that day seemed to me to be made in that image. I felt this new sense of wanting to be a aprt of the love of this world, to be in relationship with it all.

If I know nothing else I know that every day I have less reason not to give myself away.

Maybe that is all I really need to know, maybe all I have to do is keep on remembering this and keep on giving myself away. The next time I forget, please remind me.

New Years Day: Holding on to what is Good

Look to this day!

For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of existence:
The bliss of growth, the glory of action, the splendour of beauty;
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision
But today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.

words attributed to Kalidasa, a 3rd century Indian author.

New Years Day is a time for new beginnings, a time for hope of what might be and a time to reflect on what has been before us. And yet it is just a day, much like any other day really. The sun has risen, as it has always risen and in a few hours time it will set, as it has always set.

As we look out into the unknown future, it has become our custom, on this day, to resolve to do things differently than we have in the past. We make New Year’s resolutions and begin to practise them, on this day. The problem is of course that we rarely keep them up; we quickly slip back into those old habits.

I wonder if this will ever work. I suspect the reason it doesn’t is that we focus too much of our attention on the negative, on what is wrong. Perhaps what we ought to be doing is focusing on what is healthy and good and actually work and practise these habits. Maybe by focusing on what is wrong all that we end up doing is actually strengthening these weaknesses and give them more power.  Perhaps the problem is that we spend too much time living in our problems, as opposed to living in the solutions to our problems. By doing so are we actually strengthening the destructive aspects of ourselves as opposed to our compassionate sides? As I keep reminding myself - the wolf that wins is the one that we feed.

Life is constantly changing, nothing ever stays exactly the same, and no moment is like any other. Each of us experience these moments differently too; we each bring our pasts with us to each moment and this always impacts on the present. We cannot completely let go, nor should we. Yes we need to let go of what stops us living as best we can, but we also need to hold on to what is healthy, that which feeds and nurtures us. We need these lifelines to live happily and healthily.

But what is it that we need to develop? What should we hold on to? What do we need to nurture in order to live healthy and happy lives? And what are the lifelines that sustain us, when life seems really tough?

Paul of Tarsus, in the 13^th Chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians names three truths that can hold us through any of the storms of life. These truths are secured, they are rock solid, they are eternal and they are of course universal. We can hold on and depend on these three, but only if we nurture and strengthen them. Something we will find difficult if we focus all are energy on what is wrong with us on what we must let go of. Actually we may well find that our troubles begin to disappear as we develop these three.

And what are these three? 

They are faith, hope and love.

And what do these three mean?

Faith is about trusting in life itself; it is about living as openly and honestly as possible; it is about accepting that there is pain in life, but that there is also so much joy; it is realising that the mere fact that we exist at all is life’s greatest gift. This allows us to sing the joy of living, in all its mystery. It is also about seeing that we are all in this together and that we need to connect as much as possible to the life in which we share. We need to ensure that this lifeline is secure and not worn or frayed at the edges. This is something we need to hold onto and not let go of. Why, you may well ask? Well because it sustains us through the vicissitudes of life. Life does not offer much certainty, but we need not despair at this. Again you may ask why? Well because from despair grows hope.

Hope is the second of those eternal, universal truths. Hope is rooted in despair; it grows from the same place. To live in hope is to believe that if we live with conviction and compassion that we can effect positive change in our world, even if we ourselves do not get to see its full fruition. Hope is about planting those seeds when and where ever we can. This is why I committed to leading the 12 Steps to a Compassionate Life Reading groups in the congregations I serve. It was an attempt to develop the connection to our compassionate natures and therefore improve our own lives and those around us.  I have faith in the hope that Confucius’s concentric circles of compassion can bear fruit in our age and that by developing our compassionate natures we can go out into our communities, our regions, our countries and even our world and be the change we want to see.

To live with hope is to live with the attitude that the future is genuinely open. The God of my understanding works with us and guides us but leaves life open, it is not pre-ordained. “The Lure of Divine Love” draws us out of ourselves, but it also allows life to develop freely. I accept that the past does have power, I have a strong sense of history, this is very important. That said I do not believe that the past defines the future, not everything is inevitable. The future is unwritten.

Life is definitely a journey worth taking, even during its toughest moments. Yes we all despair at times and we all live with uncertainty, but the beacon of hope is always there. This brings to mind a line in from "Proverbs" “Where there is no vision (no hope) the people perish.” Hope is a vital lifeline it both holds and sustains us. It is an eternal and universal principle and one that requires nurture. It is all about love.

But what is love? How can it sustain us? By the way I am not talking of romance here; I am talking of spiritual love, self giving love. Spiritual love is that power that connects us to our true selves, one another, the life we share and whatever it is that connects all life. What I myself call God; that power that is greater than all and yet present in each. Love is about caring deeply and passionately about life itself. This of course requires attention; it is a life line that requires nurture. Love reminds me that we do not live for ourselves alone or by ourselves alone. “no man is an island” or as Kurt Vonnegut once put it “one human being is no human being”. The universal and eternal truth is that we need the love, the care, the companionship of others in order to fully experience what it is to be alive. By ourselves we are never fully alive.

So my New Year’s message this year is not really about letting go, it’s actually about holding and developing those lifelines that sustain and nurture us. Instead of focusing on the problem, let’s focus on the solution. Remember the wolf that wins is the one that we feed. Therefore if we spend our time focusing on the problem we may well end up making it bigger than it actually is; where as if we simply feed and develop our compassionate sides, thereby feeding the solution, the problem will simply wither away and die.

Whatever this year brings us, let us resolve to develop lives of faith, hope and love and be the change that we want to see. The future truly is unwritten, no one knows what tomorrow will bring.

Lao Tzu once said:

If there is to be peace in the world,

There must be peace in the nations.

If there is to be peace in the nations,

There must be peace in the cities.

If there is to be peace in the cities,

There must be peace between neighbours.

If there is to be peace between neighbours,

There must be peace in the home.

If there is to be peace in the home,

There must be peace in the heart.