The Hill’s are Alive with the Sound of Music: Universalism Inspired Oscar Hammerstein

A friend of mine sent me a message the other day stating “I’ve never been called a nerd before, I quite like it”. She had been gently teased earlier in the day as she had been showing a group of us an app on her phone showing the number of inclines in the Peak District she had recently climbed and all the ones she has yet to climb. She seemed so thrilled with this. She has in recent times taken to going off on her own on long country walks, buying maps and all sorts of things. She is having a ball and it is wonderful to see such enthusiasm for life. I replied to her message “Climb every mountain”. I meant both metaphorically and literally. I am sure she will give it a go. Later in the week she told me “15 since mid February, so another 80 to go!!!! I’m so nerdy (nerdy these days instead of needy). She later informed me that these little hill's are named "Ethel's". Named after "Ethel Mary Bassett Haythornthwaite (née Ward) MBE (18 January 1894 – 11 April 1986), who was an English environmental campaigner, activist and poet.[1][2] She was a pioneer of countryside protection as well as town and country planning both locally and nationally."

“Climb every mountain” has been on my mind these last few days. I was smiling and singing it as I drove between Urmston and Altrincham last Sunday. The seed had been planted by John Poskitt and Graham Harrison who had heard reference to Oscar Hammerstein II’s childhood and upbringing at what was described as a Unitarian Sunday school in New York and how this was a great influence on his life and work. So, this week I’ve been climbing every mountain myself and explored Hammerstein and the influence of Universalism, a faith based on hope, exemplified in songs such as “Climb every mountain” “You’ll never walk alone”, “Cockeyed optimist”.

Here is an example of religious influences in the following quote by Hammerstein

“In art the goodness of the human spirit must be fighting for its life. People must leave the theatre the church, or the lecture hall, with a deeper faith and higher interest in human kind, than they brought in with them”.

His optimism grew from his sense in the joy of living. He engaged with what was beautiful in the world and encouraged those who engaged with him to see it too. He was not denying the troubles of life, just pointing to life’s beauty. He sang the joy of living in all its mystery. In so doing he was preaching the Gospel of Hope, the Universalism of his childhood.

Again as he wrote:

“I know the world is filled with troubles and many injustices. But reality is as beautiful as it is ugly. I think it is just as important to sing about beautiful mornings as it is to talk about slums. I just couldn't write anything without hope in it.”

Or in this song from “Oaklahoma

Oh, what a beautiful mornin',
Oh, what a beautiful day.
I got a beautiful feelin'
Ev'erything's goin' my way.

Hammerstein’s father was from a Jewish family and was prominent in New York theatre. His mother was from a British liberal protestant family, I suspect Unitarian. As a child he attended “The Church of the Divine Paternity” in New York. This is now the Fourth Universalist Society in the City of New York and part of the Unitarian Universalist denomination. The Unitarians and Universalist became one denomination in the 1960’s not long after Hammerstein’s death due to stomach cancer.

He carried his spirit of Universalism with him throughout his life and work. It was how he engaged with life. Foundational to him was the following “The Fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man and salvation by character”. Now of course this is old fashioned language today, man in those days meant every human being, not just males. The God of love that he believed in, loved all equally. You will find Universalist themes throughout Hammerstein’s lyrics; themes such as hope, compassion and the potential for human goodness, were threaded throughout the lyrics of Oklahoma, Carousel, South Pacific and the King and I. It is incredible to think that this joy filled musical theatre was some of the most powerful social commentary of its time.

Just think of the following from “South Pacific” reflecting on the internalised racism of Lt Cable and Nellie

You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught from year to year,
It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear—
You’ve got to be carefully taught!

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a different shade—
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

Hammerstein’s work revealed his Universalism so beautifully; these musicals are a wonderful exploration of his theological depth. In his work you see the Universalists belief in the possibility for change, for hope, for human progress. You see God at the heart of this, a loving God who accepts all, a Divine Unity; you see the possibility for redemption and the restoration of the soul, as well as his belief in the social Gospel and in the assertion of human unity. Perhaps we ought to re-examine some of these musicals in these divisive times. They are filled with joy too, something we all need.

Hammerstein was hope filled, he believed in the God of love and that this love is what ought to be at the heart of what we do. He wrote constantly about love, in its many and varied forms. He also sang about never losing sight of what is wholesome and beautiful in this world. Something I’ve focused on much in recent weeks. As my friend has as she’s been climbing every mountain. The hills are alive with the sound of music. May it fill all our hearts.

Hammerstein faith was about how we engage with this world. It was a conversation fuelled by hope and possibility and beauty, despite the very real troubles we all face. It is important how we face and greet life. The conversations we have with life and the conversations life has with us.

Another friend sent me a message this week. She had been reading a book I gave to her as a present several years ago. It was a funny exploration around the origins of words. The book is “The Etymologicon” by Mark Forsyth

The word was “Ciao”, a greeting that has become universal through the world over the last hundred years. It came from an old Venetia dialect word “S’Ciao” which was translated as “I am your slave”. Clearly it has rather unpleasant origins. That said in time this meaning evolved to mean “I’m at your service” or “I am here for you if you need me”. So, “Ciao” became a way to express deep respect, loyalty and trust. It became a universal phrase that encompassed everyone in spite of social standing. It was a greeting that expressed deep devotion and love. Maybe Oscar Hammerstein ought to have turned it into a song. I would love to sing it, “Ciao baby!”

I received another message from another friend this week. She is back home visiting family in Transylvania. It brought to my mind those beautiful and soulful people and their lovely phrase, which like “ciao” is both a greeting and a way of saying goodbye. The phrase being “Isten aldjon”, meaning “God bless”. I love that both “ciao” and “Isten aldjon” are ways of saying hello and waving goodbye. There is something loving, respectful and beautiful about them. They are lovely ways of beginning and ending a conversation. It matters how we greet the world and how the world greets us.

As I have lived through this week I have been noticing how I engage with people and life. What my conversation with everything is and its conversation with me. Like the spring weather it has been ever changing. Sometimes four seasons in one day.

The poet philosopher and former marine zoologist David Whyte sees our lives as focused on what he calls "the great conversation" we have with ourselves and the great mysteries of life which surround us. He calls this “the conversational nature of reality.” Like Whyte I have come to believe that the essence of any real conversation is attention. It is about paying attention to that space where we meet life and life meets us, I suspect that it is in this space that God truly comes to life, or at least this is what my experiences teach me. This is a song I love to sing, the joy of living in all its mystery.

I love the way that David describes the conversational nature of reality, that we are constantly in conversation, whether we are speaking or not, so long as we are alive, awake and fully engaged.

This is beautifully illustrated in his poem “Everything Is Waiting for You?”

After Derek Mahon

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the
conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

I love the way that Whyte, through is words, encourages us to “feel the grand array; the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding out your solo voice.” He insists that the frontier of this profound reality of the world can be and is found in “the intimacy of your surroundings,” in “the way the soap dish enables you, or the window latch grants you freedom.” The key is in this line. That, “Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.” That it is about being alive to everything and allowing everything to be alive to you. This is more than just being mindful, it is about being in conversation with everything and everything with you; with everything in you and you in everything.

Everything is waiting for you. Everything is waiting for all of us. The conversation is reality. The beauty and profound nature of reality is everywhere, in everything, even the kettle boiling as you make that cup of tea for a guest. All we have to do is bring our attentiveness to the frontier between self and the rest of creation, and then enter into conversation with it. We must come out of abstraction and back into the world.

The spiritual life is about living more spiritually alive, in this life. It is about increasing our sensitivity to life itself. It is about being increasingly affected and then becoming more effective in life.

I have come to understand that at its core the spiritual life is about relationships; relationships with life, with each other, with ourselves and with God, whatever we understand God to be. And how do relationships develop? Well through conversation, through sharing ourselves with each other, not by losing ourselves, but becoming ourselves through our conversations with the other, lower and upper case. We relate through conversation and thus we grow spiritually, through relationship.

We have to believe we belong here of course, that we do not reject our humanity. Everything is waiting for us. More than that everything needs us to engage in the conversation of life. Life needs all of us. Everything is waiting for us.

Everything is waiting for us.

So I invite you to join with me in the conversational nature of reality.

When you walk through a storm
Keep your chin up high
And don’t be afraid of the dark.

At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky
And the sweet, silver song of a lark.

Walk on through the wind,
Walk on through the rain,
Though your dreams be tossed and blown.

Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart,
And you’ll never walk alone!

You’ll never walk alone.

Life is alive all around us and within us. We are part of it, and we play a crucial role within it. May the love that is God come alive with in us. Let’s climb every mountain, who knows what we will find at the summit.

For the hill’s are alive with the sound of music.

My heart wants to beat
Like the wings of the birds that rise
From the lake to the trees.
My heart wants to sigh
Like a chime that flies
From a church on a breeze,

To laugh like a brook
When it trips and falls
Over stones in its way,
To sing through the night
Like a lark who is learning to pray!

I go to the hills
When my heart is lonely;
I know I will hear
What I’ve heard before—
My heart will be blessed
With the sound of music,
And I’ll sing once more.

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

To weave the web, to tear and repair

I will begin this "blogspot" with a refelction by Parker J Palmer...

Here’s a William Stafford poem about the “thread” that runs through our lives — a thread that can guide us if we hold onto it:

"The Way it is" by William Stafford

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

Holding on doesn’t make life any easier, but it can keep us from getting lost in the dark woods that swallow us up every now and then. Knowing we can find our way home with that thread in hand, we’re more likely to explore the darkness and learn what it has to teach us.

From time to time, I lose track of the thread of my life. I lose it when I succumb to my own fears, or to other people’s expectations, or to the non-stop circus of distractions we call the modern world. So I need to take time to ponder a few questions, which is what I’ve been doing this week:

As I look back on my life, what’s the thread that has given me a sense of meaning and purpose? How can I name or picture it in a way that will keep me more aware of it?

Once I’ve reclaimed my lost thread and have it firmly in hand, what darkness do I need to enter and explore? For example, what fears do I need to face into and walk through to keep them from shutting me down?

In what kinds of situations do I most often let go of the thread? How can I avoid those situations, or go into them better prepared to deal with their risks?

If you find these questions helpful, I’ll be glad. If you have thoughts or questions to share about holding onto the thread that guides your life, I’ll be glad for that, too.

…Thank you Parker…I do like Parker J Palmer

Today is 1st August. I began my ministry with the good folk of Altrincham and Urmston and many others , these beautiful people on 1st August 2010. 11 sweet years, we have been through so much together.

Now of course 1st August is a special day for many reason. It is of course “Yorkshire Day”, as I am sure you all know. You will be celebrating won’t you? I don’t remember it being marked when I was a child, I suspect like a lot of things it is something that has developed over the years. It began in 1975, a creation of the “Yorkshire Ridings Society” as a response to the local government reoganisation in 1974 when the three Ridings no longer existed. August 1st was picked as it marked the passing of Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, a campaign led by the Yorkshire M.P. William Wilberforce. The day was already marked as “Minden Day” commemorating “The Battle of Minden” , when a White Rose is permitted to be worn in the headdress. The white rose is of course the symbol of Yorkshire.

To be honest I suspect that “Yorkshire Day” is a bit of nonsense, although not as much as “Lancashire Day” which is marked on 27th November and began in 1996, no doubt in response to “Yorkshire Day”.

1st of August is also “Sister’s Day”, “Girl Friends day”, “Planner Day”, “Respect for Parents Day”, “Doll Day”, “World Lung Cancer Day”, “Psychic Day” (I’m sure they already knew that), “Rounds Resounding Day”, “International Child Free Day”, “Raspberry Creampie Day”, “World Scout Scarf Day”. I am sure there are other days marked on 1st August too.

1st August is also “World Wide Web Day”, a day of celebration dedicated to web browsing on the internet. Seems like an odd thing to celebrate I know, but if you think about it, the World Wide Web (www) is something that has helped keep so many of us going these last 18months. The World Wide Web has made it possible to do so, something that would not have achievable just a few years ago. It has helped us keep in contact with folk all over the world, as well as finding out information about virtually any topic! It really is quite remarkable to think about the power that the Internet has today, for good and for bad.

The first image to be posted on the World Wide Web, was uploaded in 1992 by Tim Berners-Lee. It was a photo of “Les Horribles Cernettes”, a parody pop band founded by employees at the CERN centre in Geneva. The term “surfing the net” was coined a librarian called Jean Armour Polly? It was first used in an article she published called “Surfing the Internet” in March of 1992. Since then the World Wide Web and grown beyond anyone’s imaginings.

Tim Berners-Lee created the www, you know he gave it away for nothing. If he had wanted to, I’m sure he could have been the richest man on earth, but money was not his motivation. Profit is not the only thing that stimulates creativity, although some would have us believe it is. Tim Berners- Lee is a Unitarian Universalist and it is suggested that the principles of the faith tradition influenced the creation of the World Wide Web. In 1999 he said:

“One of the things I like about Unitarianism is its lack of religious trappings, miracles, and pomp and circumstance. It is minimalist, in a way. Unitarians accepted the useful parts of philosophy from all religions, including Christianity and Judaism, but also Hinduism, Buddhism, and any good philosophies, and wrapped them not into one consistent religion, but into an environment in which people think and discuss, argue, and always try to be accepting of differences of opinion and ideas.”

This at least is the ideal. Nothing lives up to an ideal.

It was something about the decentralised power aspect, that spoke to Berners-Lee and his ideas as to what the www would become. Perhaps what influenced him was the idea that the Divine is a part of the interconnectedness of everything and that all feed into the creative process. This is how Berners-Lee conceived that the World Wide Web would operate.

When considering the future of the internet in 1999 he suggested that:

“We certainly need a structure that will avoid those two catastrophes: the global uniform McDonald’s monoculture, and the isolated Heaven’s Gate cults that understand only themselves. By each of us spreading our attention evenly between groups of different size, from personal to global, we help avoid these extremes. “

Sadly, and seemingly more clearly day by day, Berners-Lee’s dreams have not been realised. The darker forces that are at work in life do seem to have overwhelmed the internet with aggression and disinformation, while corporate power has taken control. A bit like so many of the great faith traditions the spirit at the heart of the World Wide Web and the internet have been overtaken.

That said the spirit and thread at the heart of is all is still there. There is still hope. Afterall it is we who feed the web, we are not only fed by it, we are a part of it too. It is the same with the nature of all life. We all live in a vast web of mutuality. We all feed this and we are fed by it too. There are many threads that are constantly weaved. Many of the great religious traditions speak of them. It seems to me that the www is a mirror of life.

I have come to believe that we have this thread running through all of us, this aspect of the Divine; I have come to believe that God is not separate from creation, but weaved and weaving through it. 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 it. 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” of love and life is its temple.

This is why 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.

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 in the present moment. It began to be weaved at the beginning of time and will continue on into eternity, when we all here are 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.

I have come to believe that the primary purpose of spiritual community is to aid and encourage both the repair and enhancing of our individual threads while also creating, repairing and beautifying the whole. This was Berners-Lee’s vision of the World Wide Web. I suspect it is akin to what Rev Dr Martin Luther King called “Beloved Community”, the Kingdom of God right here right now. A 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.

We are here for a purpose, there is a mighty meaning to our lives. Our lives and the lives of all depend on 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 communites, 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.

Something to think about this day, August 1st, “World Wide Web” day and in all the days to come.

Please find below a video devotion based

 on the material contained in ths "Blogspot"

The Golden Rule Plus 20%: Multiplying by subtraction

I was talking with a friend over the weekend. He is not a religious man although he told me he had given up certain food items for Lent. Now his primary motivation was to lose weight. Like most folk, including myself, he has gained quite a bit of weight this last year, this seems to be especially so during the second “lockdown”. It has been tough going staying physically healthy, food is often such a comfort. I have stepped back into good eating myself this last week. Not so much as a Lenten practice but for general well-being.

As I said at the beginning of Lent, I think we have probably given up enough this year and that perhaps instead of focusing on this at this time, that what we ought to be doing is focusing on what we can give instead.

Earlier that day I had come across a rather wonder “Meme” posted by Bill Darlison on Social media. It comes from the Marginal Mennonite group, a progressive religious organisation. The “Meme” read:

“I have something that I call my Golden Rule. It goes something like this. Do unto others 20% better than you would expect them to do unto you, to correct the subjective error”

I liked this quote by Linus Pauling, who twice won the Nobel prize for Chemistry, one of the greatest scientists of all time and who was a committed Unitarian Universalist. The quotation suggests that the golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do to you, no longer cuts the mustard, because subjective error is involved. And what is subjective error? Well, it is an error caused by bias or prejudice. No one can be truly objective and the problem with treating others as we would like to be treated is that it doesn’t fully take into account the perspective of the other. We do not put ourselves in their shoes, we cannot fully. So instead of treating them as well as we would like to be treated, what we ought to be doing instead is actually treating them better than we would want to be. By doing so we begin to raise one another up. Maybe by doing so we might all begin to treat one another better. And if we keep on adding to one another, we may just raise up our shared humanity and create a better more loving world. Yes, the golden rule is a great starting point and certainly an improvement on an eye for an eye, which itself was actually an improvement on unlimited revenge. All are steps in progression, but perhaps we could go further and I suspect that the twice Nobel prize winner for Chemistry Linus Pauley, may have the answer to raising up our shared humanity.

It is an idea that Viktor Frankl proposed in my favourite video clip which you can find on YouTube. In it he states “We have to be idealists, in a way, because then we wind up as the true, the real realists. And so you know who has said this? If we take man as he is, we make him worse, but if we take man as he should be, we make him capable of becoming what he can be. This was Goethe. He said this verbally. Now you will understand: this is the most apt maxim and motto for any psychotherapeutic activity. 

So if you don't recognize a young man's will to meaning, man's search for meaning, you make him worse: you make him dull, you make him frustrated. While if you presuppose in this man, there must a spark for meaning. Let's presuppose it and then you will elicit it from him, you will make him capable of becoming what he in principal is capable of becoming.” 

Here is the video clip

As many folk know Viktor Frankl is my favourite. I love the twinkle in his eye that is so evident in this clip, as well as his obvious humour. He takes what he does seriously without taking himself too seriously. In this wonderful little clip he makes an argument for the idealist in all of us, as he points to what we are all capable of being, if we could just tap into our God given human potential. 

As he says by definition the idealist always overestimates what is possible. Where as a realist will only estimate exactly what is possible and no more. In fact perhaps a realist will ever so slightly underestimate what is possible, just to be on the safe side. Just to ensure that they don’t over estimate things and aim too high. Just to avoid disappointment. 

Is this truly realistic though? 

Frankl suggests by aiming at a realistic level we always fall short of the mark. By taking a realistic view of people we are setting them up to fall way short of what they are capable of achieving. Where as if we aim high and become idealists about human nature we can lift people up to where they are capable of reaching and thus if they fall short of this mark, they fall to a "true" realistic level. For Frankl a true realist, must be an idealist. To achieve what we are capable of we must overestimate what is possible. To become our true selves we must be optimistic. To achieve what we are capable of achieving we must believe that we are capable of more than we actually think we are. And by giving out more than we think we are receiving we will receive back far more than we thought was possible. In so doing we will encourage others to do the same. 

I see clear parallels here with Linus Pauling’s Golden Rule plus. I will repeat his quotation:

“I have something that I call my Golden Rule. It goes something like this. Do unto others 20% better than you would expect them to do unto you, to correct the subjective error”

I love Linus Pauling’s uncommonsense, especially when I combine his wisdom with that of Frankl. In expecting more from people in giving more than we expect we take the risk of love, that is at the core of living faithfully and in so doing we pour out more love than we believe is available and thus love grows. This is the strange mathematics of giving, classic uncommon sense. By giving out more than we receive; by overestimating what is possible, we encourage others to do the same and thus they will give out more and thus we will receive even more that we give. Love will somehow become multiplied by subtraction. All we have to do is take the risk. 

If we want to know love, we need to give out love into this our world, we need to risk our hearts to that love. We need to be true realists by being idealists about ourselves and humanity and life itself. This is not to ignore the darker side of life, far from it. We need to acknowledge what is wrong with the world, without becoming weighed down by it. 

The Kin-dom of Love is truly within us and amongst us. It is our task to bring it alive through our lives. It is up to us to raise one another up, to aim as high as we can and become the people we never knew we were capable of becoming.

The great medieval heretical mystic Meister Eckhart said:

“God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction.”

Another example of this uncommonsense, that defies the perceived laws of nature as we understand it and yet it is true. How by giving away a particular commodity not only does the person receiving gain, but so does the giver and all who are caught up in this activity. You see if you give 20% more than you would like to be given to you, you will know more love than you ever thought was possible. In fact if you want to fill the cup of love, that you hold in your heart, the first thing you must do is empty it and pour it out all who you share this world with you. In so doing you will encourage others to give as much as their heart desires and 20% more and in so doing more is poured out for all to share and in so doing, we will begin to create that “kin-dom of Love” that we have all be seeking.

Over the next few months, we are going to be returning to some level of normality. I’m sure that we cannot wait to get to live the lives we used to, but is that enough? The world was not exactly perfect before. There was much wrong. Surely, we ought to be striving for more, for a better world. A world that begins to fulfill is potential.

Yes, the golden rule is a good starting point, but it is not enough, for as Frankl so wisely pointed out if we only aim at what we believe is possible we will fall short of this, whereas if we aim 20% higher, if we see one another as better than we actually think we are we might just reach what is possible, what is achievable. If we do, we will encourage one another to give more of ourselves and thus add more to the lives of everyone and everything. We will begin to multiply by subtraction. Maybe, just maybe this is what the “kin-dom of love” looks like.

So, let’s begin with the Golden Rule plus 20%; let’s begin to give more of our love and let us do so abundantly; let us take the risk of love; let us aim high and then it won’t matter if we fall short, because in so doing we will reach a realistic level. We will also encourage others to do the same and thus love will begin to grow. We will somehow multiply the love in the world by the miracle of subtraction. Now isn’t that amazing! In so doing we may just begin to create the “kin-dom of love” right here right now.

Let us begin to create what they tell us impossible. Let us build the land right here, right now.

Please find a recording based on this blog in the video below