Easter Morning: Respair Awakening to a Fresh New Hope

We have passed through more than a year since the beginning of this pandemic. A year in which so many lives have been lost; we have lost people close to us, family and friends and folk from both communities. We have also lost much in the way of our experiences of life. A year staying in and staying home, of not mixing, of not celebrating, of not being together. It has felt like a long year and more now actually. It is not over just yet, but there is a little more light. There is a little more life, coming to birth once again.

Today is Easter, but it is not a time of absolute halleluiah, not just yet. There is much to do, to rebuild, to heal, to mend. There is much to give birth to within our hearts and lives and those of whom we share this spinning planet with.

That said just because we cannot live as we would like it does not mean that we cannot enjoy the Love that is to born again in the emptiness of tomb. Winter is over, Spring is here, life is returning and there is love in our hearts. From the dark caves of despair, hope is being born again. Let us give birth to this hope, but let it be a new hope, a fresh hope, may the despair become respair. May a new Hope be born this day in the dark caves of our lives. Today is Easter, let us give birth to the love born in the caves of our own hearts. A day of fresh hope, a day of respair.

I saw a wonderful example of “respair” while I was working on this sermon in the chapel the other day. I had just been out for a walk, it was beautiful to feel the sun on my back, to experience to appreciate, that beautiful feeling of the warmth of the sun on my back, it has been too long since I felt this. By the way did you know that there is a word for this feeling, or there use to be in the 17^th century. The word is ‘apricate’: to revel in the warmth of the sun on your back. “Apricate”, like “Respair” has gone out of usage, we should give birth to them once more.  Sorry I digress. Back to that example of respair. It came as I crossed the threshold of the chapel, there at my feet was an enormous bee. It was struggling along the ground, didn’t look in the best of shape, but wanted life so much. I knelt down beside it, it brought Galilee to my mind and those words “Interpreted as Love, interpreted as love.” It was the first bee I had seen this year. It seemed to me to be another sign of “Respair” of a new fresh hope. I left the door open for it and filmed it as it crawled toward the door. As it moved back towards light and life and into the unknown of who knows what. It didn’t fly off immediately, it seemed to crawl up the door frame and I watched for a little while longer. Then the phone rang and I was distracted for a while and by the time I looked again, it was gone.

I then returned to my desk and wrote this sermon with these wonderful feelings of “Respair” and “Apricate”, singing in my soul. With this sense of new life and new beginnings, singing in my soul. Isn’t that what Easter is about “Respair”, a new Hope, a Fresh Hope, sunshine returning once again, the Sun rising once again. It certainly felt like that in that moment. It inspired me to write these thoughts. It brought Easter alive in my heart, it opened the cave of my soul. It brought my understanding of Easter to life.

I wonder what Easter means to you.

There are many layers to the “Easter Mythos”, that if we allow it to can touch all of us, that can bring respair, a fresh, a new hope. In order to be touched by the magic of Easter you do not have to believe in the actual bodily resurrection of Jesus, you can believe in Easter without having to accept that this actually happened. Perhaps if all we focus on is this, then we will miss some of Easter’s power. What is clear to me is that Easter is about the Power of Love that grew from that empty tomb. It brought a new fresh hope, it brought respair, two thousand years ago in a time of utter despair, that those who followed him must have felt. Whatever we may think about bodily resurrection, something definitely lived on beyond the physical death of Jesus. While his body may no longer have remained in the empty tomb, some beautiful aspect of his life certainly remained. Love was born again, even after the body was killed.

I believe it is the same with every life and the love that life leave behinds, something beautiful always remain.

This brings to mind those beautiful words often shared at funerals by that famous author “Unknown”

“Something Beautiful Remains” – Unknown

The tide recedes but leaves behind
bright seashells on the sand.
The sun goes down, but gentle
warmth still lingers on the land.
The music stops, and yet it echoes
on in sweet refrains.....
For every joy that passes,
something beautiful remains.

Every life leaves its mark. Every life impacts in some way. We should never think that we are insignificant, that we do not matter. We impact on everyone and everything around us. Everything that we do and everything that do not do matters. There are those who I have known and who have loved me, who have been gone many years, who are still impacting on my life. Of their lives, something beautiful remains.

Easter is a reminder to me that even after death something beautiful remains. It is an acknowledgement of life’s sacredness. It is a reaffirmation of life that not even death can end.

All around us life is being reborn. I see this clearly each morning as I take my daily exercise. The spring flowers are everywhere, the birds are singing more sweetly. As I pass people, I offer a smile of love and nod of connection. It fills my heart to overflowing with a love for life itself and helps me connect to my true inner being, to all life and to that Greater reality that gives birth to and connects all life, whether I can feel the warmth of the sun on my back or not, you do need to “apricate” in order to appreciate. It is amazing how love and light finds a way through, even in these dark difficult times.

You can find the essence and spirit of Easter in your own heart, we can incarnate that love through our lives. This love can seemingly die in the winters of our lives and come to life once again in our spring times, regardless of the time of year. It is we who can bring this love alive once again. In so doing we will ensure that something beautiful will remain from our simple, humble lives.

Easter begins with the death and loss of the life of Jesus, with the seeming end of his life’s promise. As every single death means just the same. It begins with the despair of the empty tomb. This though is not where it ends, something else happened, something grew from this emptiness, this hopelessness, this despair. Something beautiful remained. Something new was born again. This despair was transformed into a new Hope.

This very same possibility of transformation and renewal exists for all of us. New hope can be born even in despair. Hope is born from despair. They share the same root. In French Desepair and J’espair share the same linguisitic root, it is the same with life. Yes we can know utter despair, but this despair can be transformed into a new Hope, “Respair”, a new hope, a fresh hope.

Even after death, something beautiful remains. If we live lives of love and beauty. If we become all that we were born to be if we bring to life from the empty tombs of our own lives the love that is at the heart of the Easter Mythos. A love that is eternal, a love that never dies, a love that I believe is our task to bring alive.

This is the Love that is born again on Easter morning. This is what grows from the emptiness of the tomb when the stone is rolled away…From nothing to everything…From Despair, Hope is born again…Respair a new hope, a fresh hope is born again in our own hearts.

 

Now I would like to end with these words of blessing by David Whyte.

 

“Easter Blessing”

The blessing of the morning light to you,
may it find you even in your invisible
appearances, may you be seen to have risen 
from some other place you know and have known 
in the darkness and that that carries all you need.
May you see what is hidden in you 
as a place of hospitality and shadowed shelter,
may that hidden darkness be your gift to give, 
may you hold that shadow to the light
and the silence of that shelter to the word of the light, 
may you join all of your previous disappearances 
with this new appearance, this new morning, 
this being seen again, new now, and newly alive.

David Whyte: Easter Morning 2015
In Memoriam John O’Donohue

Here's a video recording based on the material in this "blogspot"

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.

Questions about life, before, during and after: An Easter reflection

I had a rare opportunity a couple of Sunday’s back of being present at Dunham Road as people began to arrive. This was because we could not conduct worship at Urmston as the town was cut off due to the Manchester Marathon. As I stood at the entrance of the chapel I found myself chatting with Martin and Carolyn. Carolyn was sharing her thoughts on an interesting talk she had heard that week given by a Hindu woman discussing her traditions perspective and understanding of reincarnation. Martin and myself listened with interest and I remember saying something like "I’m not sure what I believe about such things." We made the usual, probably inappropriate, jokes of hoping we don’t come back as a slug or something similar. I then went and led worship, interestingly we were exploring the subject of “What you give your heart to.” A little later I was thinking about the conversation and remembered a similar one I had only a few weeks earlier with a woman called Elaine. Elaine is very important in Sue’s life. She is someone who guides her spiritually and has led a women’s circle that Sue has participated in these last 12 months. Sue had asked me if I minded having my astrological chart "done" by Elaine. I agreed to, although part of me felt a little unsure about it. I gave my birth details, the time, date and place and then went to meet Elaine for the results. I enjoyed both a wonderful and fascinating conversation with Elaine, during which she asked me if I believed in past lives. I said “I just don’t know. I am truly agnostic about past lives and even what happens to us after we die. I said I suspect that some aspect of us lives on but in what form I have no clue, I have to declare myself as truly agnostic about these things, as I have no knowledge. That said I am open minded, open hearted and my spirit is certainly open to the possibility, but that I prefer to think about one life at a time. That’s more than enough for me. Whatever happens to us when we die it cannot be any stranger than this life, which day by day seems to be way beyond my imaginings. It’s funny I do not feel agnostic about a relationship with a Power Greater than myself in this life, I call myself a “Universal Theist”, but what happened before and after this life I can offer very little I am afraid. Although day by day, as I live more spiritually alive I find myself believing ever more in the possibility.

We humans often ask the question, what happens to us when we die, but how many of us ask what happens before we are even born? That may well be a far more interesting question.

Having professed my agnosticism about the afterlife I am now going to contradict myself as I believe strongly that loves lives on in the lives of those we have touched, even after our physical lives end. I know this from personal experience. So perhaps there is some formed idea here. They are part of us in spirit in some way, sometimes I can feel that powerfully. As the song goes, “The ghosts are part of us.” Forrest Church put it so beautifully when he said: “The greatest of all truths is that love never dies, that every act of love that we perform in this life is carried on into another life and passed on into another life, so that centuries from now the love carries, and that is the work of religion. The opposite of love is not death. It is fear. Fear is what armors our hearts. If our hearts are armored, they’ll never be broken, and I have seen so many people get hurt in love and then try to protect themselves against it, and when they protect themselves against love, they protect themselves against the only thing that is worth living for.”

I would add to that that the purpose of religion is to bring that love to life and to share it with our world. This is the work of transformation. This to me is the true message of Easter.

There are many layers to the “Easter Mythos”, that if we allow it to can touch all of us. In order to be touched by the magic of Easter you do not have to believe in the actual bodily resurrection of Jesus, you can believe in Easter without having to accept that this actually happened. In fact perhaps it loses some of its power if we focus purely on this. What is clear to me is that Easter is about the Power of Love that grew from that empty tomb. Whatever we may think about bodily resurrection, something definitely lived on beyond the physical death of Jesus. While his body may no longer have remained in the empty tomb, some beautiful aspect of his life certainly remained. Love was born again, even after the body was killed.

I believe it is the same with every life and the love that life leave behinds, something beautiful always remain.

This brings to mind those beautiful words often shared at funerals by that famous author “Unknown”

“Something Beautiful Remains” – Unknown

The tide recedes but leaves behind
bright seashells on the sand.
The sun goes down, but gentle
warmth still lingers on the land.
The music stops, and yet it echoes
on in sweet refrains.....
For every joy that passes,
something beautiful remains.

Every life leaves its mark. Every life impacts in some way. We should never think that we are insignificant, that we do not matter. We impact on everyone and everything around us. Everything that we do and everything that do not do matters. There are those who I have known and who have loved me, who have been gone many years, who are still impacting on my life. Of their lives, something beautiful remains.

Easter is a reminder to me that even after death something beautiful remains. It is an acknowledgement of life’s sacredness. It is a reaffirmation of life that not even death can end. Easter for me is about birth and re-birth, again and again and again…

But what about “Resurrection”? What can that mean? Well “Resurrection” for me is about bringing to life the love that was born again on Easter morning. I have come to believe that this is truly our religious task. I believe that this is what it means to bring to life the “Kingdom of Heaven” that is constantly spoken of in the Biblical accounts. What I have come to call the “Kin-dom” of Love”, for all are equal in such a Commonwealth. To live in such a way of being is to recognise the oneness of all life.

This actually brings me back to astrological thinking and Elaine’s charts. She suggested to me that I had lived many lives. and that that I was at a stage of real potential right now, if I was willing to take it. This got me thinking of Joseph Campbell and his views of mythos. He wrote of Easter: “It is very much the longing to be born anew the way nature is. All these elements fit together. Easter is calculated as the Sunday that follows the first full moon after the vernal equinox. It is evidence of a concern centuries before Christ to coordinate the lunar and solar calendars. What we have to recognize is that these celestial bodies represented to the ancients two different modes of eternal life, one engaged in the field of time, like throwing off death, as the moon it’s shadow, to be born again; the other, disengaged and eternal. The dating of Easter according to both lunar and solar calendars suggests that life, like the life that is reborn in the moon and eternal in the sun, finally is one.”

This got me thinking of Easter as a metaphor for bringing about this oneness of all life. That what Jesus was trying to teach humanity about  was oneness, about harmony. Isn’t this what the “Kin-dom of Love” is?

This brings to mind the following passage from the Gospel of Thomas, one of the many that was not included in the Bible:

Jesus said to them:

When you make the two one,
and when you make the inner as the outer
and the outer as the inner
and the above as the below,
and when you make the male and the female
into a single one
. . . then shall you enter [the Kingdom]

Now of course many believe that the Kingdom is the place that we go to when we die, if chosen. I do not believe that this is what Jesus was speaking of in the Gospels. Remember he said (in the Canonical Gospels) that the “kingdom is within you” or that it is “at hand” (here now). I believe that he was teaching that the key is to bring “The King-dom” alive within ourselves and to share that with our world, therefore building the beloved community of love. I have come to believe that this is the love that is born again as the stone was rolled away and seemingly found to be empty, because from that emptiness love was once again, born again.

From nothing comes everything; from Despair is born Hope.

We all have this day, we all have this time, what shall we do with it? The key I believe is to fully live it. To bring forth what is within us. To incarnate love in our lives is to become fully alive. The second century philosopher Irenaeus said “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” This to me is the word becoming flesh and dwelling amongst us, this is the divine love fully alive. This is truly bringing forth the kingdom that is within us. If you want to know the divine presence in life, then all you have to do is to find the courage to live fully alive and then to bless the world with your very presence and thus inspire others to do the same. And thus enjoy the kingdom of God, the kin-dom of love right now.

It’s time to bring the kin-dom of love to life. It is time to begin living this one wonderful life we have been given…

This is the Love that is born again on Easter morning. This is what grows from the emptiness of the tomb when the stone is rolled away…From nothing to everything…From Despair, Hope is born again…

Now I would like to end with these words of blessing by David Whyte.

“Easter Blessing”

The blessing of the morning light to you,
may it find you even in your invisible
appearances, may you be seen to have risen
from some other place you know and have known
in the darkness and that that carries all you need.
May you see what is hidden in you
as a place of hospitality and shadowed shelter,
may that hidden darkness be your gift to give,
may you hold that shadow to the light
and the silence of that shelter to the word of the light,
may you join all of your previous disappearances
with this new appearance, this new morning,
this being seen again, new now, and newly alive.

David Whyte: Easter Morning 2015
In Memoriam John O’Donohue

Something Beautiful Remains: An Easter Reflection

“Rebirth” by Elizabeth Tarbox

"When the day is too bright or the night too dark, and your feelings are like an avalanche barrelling down the mountain of events outside your control, when you look down and you are falling and you cannot see the bottom, or when your pain has eaten you and you are nothing but an empty hungry hole, then there is an opportunity for giving.

Don't stay home and cover your head with a pillow. Go outside and plant a tulip bulb in the ground; that is an act of rebirth. Sprinkle breadcrumbs for the squirrels or sunflower seeds for the birds; that is a claiming of life. And when you have done that, or if you cannot do that, go stare at a tree whose leaves are letting go for its very survival. Pick up a leaf, stare at it; it is life; it has something to teach you.

You are as precious as the birds or the tulips or the tree whose crenellated bark protects the insects who seek its shelter. You are an amazing, complex being with poetry in your arteries and charity layered beneath your skin. You have before you a day full of opportunities for living and giving. Do not think you know all there is to know about yourself, for you have not given enough away yet to be able to claim self knowledge. Do you have work to do today? Then do it as if your life were hanging in the balance, do it as fiercely as if it mattered, for it does. Do you think the world doesn't need you? Think again! You cleanse the world with your breathing, you beautify the world with your thinking and acting and caring.

Don't stay home and suffocate on your sorrow; go outside and give yourself to the world's asking."

Elizabeth Tarbox

We all know suffering...We all know moments when all hope has seemingly gone...And yet from this place of emptiness, nothingness, knew hope can rise again...There need not be despair if we turn again in faith and return to love and life...This is the meaning of Easter for me...

Easter begins with the empty tomb; Easter begins with despair and fear; Easter begins with a sense of emptiness of nothingness. In the account in Mark’s Gospel when the women go to the tomb and find it empty they flee in terror and say nothing. The real miracle is in what follows, the power of love that comes to life from nothingness, from the emptiness.

This is something we can all surely relate to at one time or another this sense of losing everything, of everything being lost. This to me is the essence of the whole Easter Mythos that love can once again grow from the nothingness, from the emptiness. That abundant love can once again grow in our own hearts and our own spirits and that we can incarnate this in our own lives. That this love can be poured out onto our world that so desperately needs it, as much today as when they found the tomb empty some two thousand years ago.

This is our task I believe, our religious task, to once again bring the love that was so evidently present in the life of Jesus alive once again in our oh so human flesh. We can do it, we do not have to be afraid, we do not need to flee in fear, we just need courage gentle courage and this will sustain us. We just need to fill the empty tomb with that abundant love that is present in all life, fill it to overflowing and then let it pour out in all of life…

In all that we feel, all that we think, all that we say and all that we do...

“Easter Day” by George Landor Perin

"There is perhaps no day in all the year so full of meaning to the sensitive soul as the Easter Day. To say nothing of the beautiful music and flowers with which it is honoured, it is to multitudes the anniversary of new life by which they were borne to higher and nobler hopes. The peal of Easter bells and the melody of the Easter songs are the signals for a throng of memories and a host of suggestions to every heart. The origin of the day is simple enough. It is the anniversary of the Master’s resurrection. But what are its deeper meanings, its profound suggestions? I know not how it may be with you, but for myself they are embodied in such phrases as theses: “Victory from the ashes of defeat;” “Hope born from the soil of despair;” “Immortality crowning the grave.” The resurrection of Jesus means all this and more."

by George Landor Perin

Easter is seen through many lenses, some are very clear and precise, they are certain as to what Easter is about. Others amongst us though seem to see Easter through a kaleidoscope of ever changing colours and shapes. What comes to your heart and mind when you think of Easter?

Easter is a deeply universal festival in my eyes, I think there are so many layers to this mythos, that if we allow it to can touch all of us. In order to be touched by the magic of Easter you do not have to believe in the actual bodily resurrection of Jesus, you can believe in Easter without having to accept that this actually happened. In fact perhaps it loses some of its power if we focus purely on this. Maybe actually if we view Easter through this very clear lense we will miss much of what it can teach us. Maybe it is better to view Easter through a kaleidoscope or at least partially clouded glass, maybe we see more through the mystery than the seeming clarity.

What is clear to me is that Easter is about the Power of Love that grew from that empty tomb. Whatever we may think about bodily resurrection, something definitely lived on beyond the physical death of Jesus. While his body may no longer have remained in the empty tomb, some beautiful aspect of his life certainly remained.

I believe it is the same with every life and the love that life leaves behind, something beautiful always remains.

This brings to mind those beautiful words often shared at funerals by that famous author “Unknown”

“Something Beautiful Remains” – Unknown

The tide recedes but leaves behind
bright seashells on the sand.
The sun goes down, but gentle
warmth still lingers on the land.
The music stops, and yet it echoes
on in sweet refrains.....
For every joy that passes,
something beautiful remains.

Every life leaves its mark. Every life impacts in some way. We should never think that we are insignificant, that we do not matter. We impact on everyone and everything around us. Everything that we do and everything that do not do matters. There are those who I have known and who have loved me, who have been gone many years, who are still impacting on my life. Of their lives, something beautiful remains.

Easter is a reminder to me that even after death something beautiful remains. It is an acknowledgement of life’s sacredness. It is a reaffirmation of life that not even death cannot end. Easter for me is about birth and re-birth, again and again and again…

All around us life is being reborn. I see this clearly as I walk down and around Dunham Massey each morning. The spring flowers are everywhere, the birds are singing more sweetly and the deer, the beautiful deer, are increasingly going about their deer like business. I have noticed the young bucks squaring up to one and trying out their growing antlers either against tree branches or fencing with one another. It is a beautiful sight of life coming alive and it fills my heart to overflowing with a love for life itself and helps me connect to my true inner being, to all life and to that Greater reality that gives birth to and connects all life. There is something about the essence of Easter in all of this.

In each of us is written the essence and the spirit of Easter. In each of us is written to capacity to resurrect the Love that was at the core of the life of Jesus. We can bring that love alive once again. We can incarnate that love again. That love can seemingly die in the winters of our lives and come to life once again in our spring times, regardless of the time of year. It is we who can bring this love alive once again. We can become at one with that ancient tale. We can become the resurrection and the life. In so doing we will ensure that something beautiful will remain from our simple, humble, oh so human lives.

Easter begins with the death and loss of the life of Jesus, with the seeming end of his life’s promise. Every single death seemingly means just the same. It begins with the despair of the empty tomb and the despair and terror of this very emptiness. This though is not where it ends, something else happened, something grew from this emptiness, this hopelessness, this despair. Something beautiful remained. Something new was born again. This despair was transformed into a new Hope. The death of Jesus, for those who followed him, was not the end it was actually the beginning, a new beginning.

This very same possibility of transformation and renewal exists for all of us. We see examples of this all around us. Not just in nature and the earth’s renewal but in the lives of ordinary folk too. People who have experienced utter despair, have lost everything precious to them and yet have transformed this into a loving new Hope. Yes they have known utter despair, but this despair has been born again in a new Hope. Resurrection is not some mysterious event from 2,000 years ago, but a promise to each and every one of us; Resurrection is a promise and a challenge for us all that represents the possibility of transformation for everyone and a real sense of a new Hope.

Even after death, something beautiful remains. If we live lives of love and beauty. If we become all that we were born to be if we bring to life from the empty tombs of our own lives the love that is at the heart of the Easter Mythos. A love that is eternal, a love that never dies, a love that I believe is our task to bring alive.

...May we become the blessings our world needs...Not just this morning, but in every morning to come...

These are thoughts of mine about Easter, a universal festival for all people at all times. This is what it means to me, but what does it mean to you. I ask you once again what comes to your heart and mind when you think of Easter?

"Something Beautiful Remains" 

Do not fear the future: It is unwritten

We all stand at the beginning of a new year, none of us knowing what the future will hold, it truly is unwritten. The book of life is open waiting for us to mark it with our stories and when it is written to look back on it and give it whatever meaning we find. Yes the pages truly are blank and for some this can appear a scary proposition, but should we fear the unknown? Surely the excitement and the energy of life is in the unknown and the unknowing?

I have had time to take stock on the year now gone these last few days. On a purely material scale it has been a bad year, one filled with loss. There are several people I have loved deeply and who have loved me who are no longer in my life and I have felt and noticed this gap in recent weeks, especially around Christmas. Right from the beginning of the year up until Christmas I received sad news at the loss of people who have touched my life and I theirs. I have stood and wept at too many bedsides this last twelve months and attended and dare I say conducted more funerals than I would have wanted. I have probably shed more tears these last 12 months than during any other year of my life.

I attended the funeral of a dear sweet old friend only two days before Christmas. A young woman who died of an illness I thank God I found merciful release from, she was only 41. After the funeral myself and three old mates spent some time together and talked of old days, happier days and as we remembered laughter came forth. It was lovely to spend time with old friends. I only wish it could have been in happier circumstances. I drove back that afternoon, in the pouring rain with tears rolling down my cheeks as I thought of other friends, sadly no longer with us. About half way across the Pennines at that wonderful spot, Stott Hall Farm, my thoughts turned to friends I have got to know in more recent times, especially these last 12 emotional months. Thoughts of a young woman I have got to know in recent months came into my mind. It has been a real joy watching her grow spiritually and really come alive, following a difficult time in her life. What came to my mind was how much she reminded me of my friend Cath, whose funeral I had just attended. It was not so much that they looked alike, more how much they were alike in spirit, almost the very same personality. As I continued to drive in the pouring rain and the howling wind I found I just couldn’t get the image of her out of my mind.

Eventually I arrived back in Altrincham. Now for some reason before going home I decided to go to Tesco’s as I needed one or two things for a party I was attending that evening. A party I wasn’t sure I really had the stomach for at that precise moment in time. I drove around the car park trying desperately to find a space, feeling increasingly frustrated. Finally I did and then I headed into the store, tears still forming in my eyes. As I got to the top of the escalator I looked up and almost walked straight into a friend (a man who too had found merciful release from the same illness) who I had last seen at dear old Geoffrey Head’s funeral only a couple of weeks before. I had only discovered at the funeral that this man had lived next door to Geoffrey for many years. We spoke for a few minutes and as I walked away my friend said "the last thing you need on a day like this is the mayhem of a packed supermarket, why don’t you just go home." I thought for a moment that maybe I should, but said to myself. "no I need to get this shopping done." I wandered about in a bit of daze and picked up a few items and then headed for the check out. I stood there for a few moments and then something in me stirred me to go get something from another aisle and so I turned around and carried on shopping. And then I saw a sight that turned my face upside down…

There she was the very same young woman who had come into my mind, who so much had the same spirit as my dearly departed friend Cath. I approached her, said hi and we talked for quite some time. As we did I could feel myself once again coming back to life. I’m sure I was a bit odd, I’m sure she thought so as I recounted what had happened that day. By the way she too was buying supplies for the same party we were both going to that evening.

As I walked away I just smiled and laughed to myself and offered thanks and praise for this beautiful moment of synchronicity. As I walked away that beautiful poem by Wordsworth came to mind, words I always think of as I pass Stott Hall Farm, the very same place where images of that young woman had wandered into my mind.

“There are in our existence spots of time,
That with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating virtue, whence–depressed
By false opinion and contentious thought,
Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,
In trivial occupations, and the round
Of ordinary intercourse–our minds
Are nourished and invisibly repaired;
A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,
That penetrates, enables us to mount,
When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.”

“Spots of time” are moments in our lives that have the potential to change us forever. Moments when life not only feeds but truly nourishes us on a deep, deep level, deeper than the marrow of our bones; moments when the common becomes uncommon; moments when the veils we create ourselves seem to slip away; moments when we seemingly see beyond the ordinary; moments when we experience reality on a deeper level.

These “spots of time” are sacred moments that are made holy by their mysterious ability to nourish us and perhaps even repair us in body, mind, heart and soul. These moments are so special because they seem so rare. I suspect that they are a kind of grace; they seemingly come to us, from a place somewhere beyond ourselves.

As I reflect back on the last twelve months of my life such moments have become less rare. Now is this because they have happened more frequently or is it because I am just far more aware of them than I ever was before? All I know is that people, places and things that have lifted me up when I have seemingly fallen. All I can say is thank you for the blessings, despite the sadness.

So as I stand here at the beginning of a new year it would be easy to do so with a sense of fear, but I do not. Instead I stand here with a sense of anticipation of what might be if I continue to “Choose Life”, with all its blessings and curses and stay open and awake, with an undefended heart, as to what might just be.

It is so easy to take the opposite view, to look at the year just gone, to see all that has gone wrong and to therefore face the future in fear and or dread of how things might turn out. We really do not know, the future truly is unwritten.

Fear comes in many forms, but we need not live in fear of fear itself. Fear is a vital part of our makeup, of our animal heart. It sets the pulses racing and heightens our awareness. Fright is a vital instinct. It points to danger, it’s a warning signal. That said there are other forms of fear which are not so useful. Perhaps the most debilitating of all is dread.

Dread and other forms of debilitating fear can overwhelm us and lead to crippling forms of anxiety which can inhibit us from simply living and being. When we are overcome by such emotions everything can appear bleak; our senses become dulled; it drains all the colour and taste from life. This leads to us projecting our anxiety and worry onto everything that we do in life; it takes the very life out of living and leads to abject misery. It drags us into pits of depression and traps us in the very things that we believe protect us from present dangers. As a result we go deeper into ourselves and get lost and trapped in our black holes of doom and gloom. It can be very difficult to find our way out of these black holes. It sucks the life out of us and stops us being who we really are, all that we can be.

So how do we overcome the power of this debilitating fear? How do we find the courage to continue to “choose life”?

Well it takes just a little faith and a little love to create the courage to "choose life", to accept what is in front of us. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Which of course it is, but it is far from easy. I believe in love and I believe in life and through living in love and remaining open to life, despite its difficulties I find the courage to “choose life”, to overcome the power of unnatural fear. Love will always overcome fear; love will always enable us to find the courage to truly be all that we can be.

We will always know the emotion of fear, we will always feel it. We need it, it is a natural instinct. That said we need not be enslaved by it. We need not live in fear of fear itself. To be free all we need do is live with integrity, live in love and to continue to “choose life”. In doing so not only do we liberate ourselves, we will be a light to others who in turn may be inspired to liberate themselves and others too.

We cannot escape the pain and suffering that accompanies the joy of living. If we want to know the love present in life we also have to accept the pain and suffering we all experience in life too, no one is exempt from this. As we all know only too well.

As we all look back at the last 12 months of our lives I’m certain we have all experienced success and failure this year; that we have all known the joy of new life and experiences, I know that I have. I am certain too that we have all known the pain and suffering of illness and death, if not in our lives, then in the lives of those we hold most dear. Life truly is awry. It humbles me every day.

When the difficulties come we all cry out in pain and ask why is this happening to me? We ask for our own cup of suffering to be removed, but eventually most of us accept reality, we surrender to it and in our own ways cry out “Thy will, not mine, be done”. We get what we get in life, whether we deserve it or not, we certainly can’t avoid some things and if we try to all we really avoid is life’s beauty. No one can escape the suffering that is present in life. If we attempt to all that we succeed in doing is blocking ourselves off from life’s beauty and then we experience the worst kind of suffering; the suffering within the suffering, the ache of loneliness.

So my message to you as we step out into this New Year, this blank page, full of new possibilities is to continue to “choose life”, it is to live with your senses wide open to the love present in those many unexpected moments. If we do life will touch us and bless us even when it really hurts. If we keep our senses open we will be blessed by “spots of time”, that will truly lift us up when fallen.

I'm going to end this little chip of a blogspot with these beautiful thoughts...

“Beginning again on the continuous Journey” by Marta I Valentin

By the grace of the Divine Power,
which is larger hearted than we can ever imagine
we are constantly given the opportunity
to begin again
as the signposts along the continuous journey
suggest twists and turns we had not brought into view,
for the focus was on the mountain just up ahead
beyond the ridge….

By the faith of the Divine Power
that lives through the trust of our human ability
we are constantly offered the challenge to test the waters,
not just smooth the inevitable ripples
to a satiny gloss finish as if
that were the goal in life,
losing all character by not realizing:
the swells are what make life
interesting, intriguing, and indescribable.

By the law of the Divine Power,
whose very core is compassion
for our earthly missteps on this journey,
we are constantly given an opening
to remember that we each have a place
in the kin-dom* of humanity,
and the knowledge”
and courage to begin again toward a faith-filled,
loving grace that is our birthright.

*from Ana Maria Isasi-Diaz

An Easter reflection: Let Love continue long

I remember as a young boy being terrified by the death of my sister’s rabbit. I was in the house on my own, one Saturday afternoon, probably watching Grandstand. The rabbit was left in the living room with me and I was told to keep an eye on it. Suddenly I heard this violent scream, which made me jump out of my skin. I hardly dare look, but look I did. The rabbit had died and I was terrified. For one thing I’d never heard a rabbit make a sound before, let alone such a terrifying one  and for another I didn’t know what to do. So what did I do? I went into denial and left the house. I fled in terror and guilt no doubt, as well as a whole bucket load of shame.

I have only ever seen and touched two dead bodies in my life, both of whom were people I loved beyond words. The first was my father who I helped nurse through the last months of his life. He had died just moments before I awoke to see him that morning. I touched him and kissed him and told him that I loved him. I will never forget the look on his face, just moments after his death. My father had been in great pain, probably all his life, but the stress and strain was all gone as his life had gone. I have the very same frown lines on my forehead that he had. Those lines and all the other lines had disappeared as I looked down at him and touched his face.

The other person was Ethan, Claire’s son, who in his short life taught me everything. I saw him that day shortly after he had been killed and again a month later when they released his body for burial. Again these images and the way that his body felt will always stay with me.

A few months after Ethan died I remember Claire having a conversation with a nurse we know who works in casualty and her asking why after he had died the nurses kept talking to him as if he were alive. From what I can remember she said that they did this because it is understood that the spirit of the person is still there immediately after death and therefore this is how they act with someone who has just died. At least this is what I thought she said. I may well have misheard or misunderstood.

Although I have a powerful experience of God in my life now, I cannot say with any certainty, what happens after we die. I suppose I have to remain fairly agnostic with regards to what happens when life ends. This does not diminish my faith in God it just means I have to be honest and I say I do not have knowledge of the afterlife. So no I do not know where those we love reside after they leave us. Having said that I do know where we can experience them. They can be felt and known every time we talk or remember them, at every family gathering or when old friends come together for whatever reason. On such occasions their spirit does indeed reveal itself. The more sensitive amongst us often talk of feeling their presence. I think my sister Mandy is one of those people and I know of others too.

Those we have loved and lost often live on in our dreams and memories; they are imprinted on our conscious and sub-conscious. Their impact can be felt in our daily actions and our waking thoughts and feelings. I am sure that I am not the only one who imagines them being with us from to time. I remember my father fondly and un-fondly at times and Ethan impacts on just about everything I do and say. If I had not met that remarkable little boy I am not sure I would even be here today. His life certainly revealed God to me.

Those we have loved and are no longer with us have clearly had a profound impact upon us and as such are always with us. The love that we shared never dies. Yes their death changes our relationship with them, but the love that we have known will always live on, will always be with us, it is an eternal force. The love has created a bond that can never be severed. No one can take that love from us. Its influence on us is still there and impacting upon the people that we meet in our lives today, people our loved ones may never have met.

In Luke’s Gospel (Ch 24 vv 1-5) Jesus’ disciples return to the tomb to prepare his body for its final burial, but when they get there the tomb is empty.  Then two men in dazzling clothes arrive. We are told that the women are frightened and bow their heads, they do not know what to do. They are then asked the question “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

What a question. I suspect that it reflects powerfully the experiences of the early followers of Jesus “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” It reflects their struggles to come to terms with and understand an unmistakable presence that was still there amongst them after he died and that was still impacting upon them and holding them together long after he died. It is still echoing and impacting on humanity today.  Whatever we may or may not think of the idea of a bodily resurrection I do not think that anyone can deny that the love that Jesus embodied in his life lived beyond Good Friday.

Some call it resurrection and others call it beloved or blessed memory but something ties us to those we have loved and have loved us, those that have impacted and shaped who we are. As Forrest Church said:

“The greatest of all truths is that love never dies, that every act of love that we perform in this life is carried on into another life and passed on into another life, so that centuries from now the love carries, and that is the work of religion. The opposite of love is not death. It is fear. Fear is what armours our hearts. If our hearts are armoured, they’ll never be broken, and I have seen so many people get hurt in love and then try to protect themselves against it, and when they protect themselves against love, they protect themselves against the only thing that is worth living for.”

This is the hope in Easter that has birthed from the despair of Good Friday; hope and despair are formed from the same root and yet grow in opposite directions.

For love to live on and continue to show us the way we have to let it embody itself within and through us each and every day. For love to incarnate all that we have to do is to be open to it and that begins by first of all opening our hearts to one another and to God.

“Let love continue long and show to us the way and if that be strong no hurt can have a say.”