Choose Life: Learning to Live from Regret

This last Thursday 8th May marked “VE Day”, “Victory in Europe Day”; a day that must have been of the most incredible celebration 80 years ago, as the war in Europe ended, as the liberal democracy overcame Nazism. The Second World War had not yet fully ended, that was not until August 15 when Japan surrendered, with the formal ceremony taking place on 2nd September. It is important to remember such times as these, I have come to believe. That said it is not just that we need to acknowledge, to remember them, but to live lives of remembrance, in the hope that we do not repeat the horror that led to the Second World War again. It is vital to learn the lessons from the mistakes of those who came before us. I am not sure we have. I think we human beings have a long way to go before we can make the claim that we have learnt how to live in peace. I don’t just mean on global scale, but also much closer to home, including our own lives.

I have been thinking about memory quite a lot of late. Much has happened in my own life and the life around me, that has caused me to pause, to reflect. It has brought memory to the surface. At the same time, I have felt some of my own memory getting a little fuzzier. I have struggled to remember exact details of events. Whilst at the same time I have experienced real clarity in some deep old memories, and yet other more recent ones seem less clear. I know what this is, what is causing this, it is grief. I have experienced a lot of losses these last few months, tragic ones to be clear. I travelled home to Yorkshire on Friday for the funeral of a dear old friend.

I have found myself reflecting on so much, recently. Yes, good times, but I’ve also been visited by a few ghosts of the mistakes I have made and the regrets I live with. These are very common feelings when grieving, for myself and many others. I am not someone who claims that they have no regrets. I am not sure that is either helpful or honest. Regret is ok, so long as you do something with it, turn it into something beneficial for yourself and others, learn from the mistakes, live with regret, rather die or stagnate in it. This counts for individuals, communities, nations and the whole of humanity for that matter. The key to everything is to learn to live with regret.

You may recall a couple of weeks ago that I spoke of spending a bit of time talking with the new and upcoming ministers at the recent General Assembly Annual meetings. What I didn’t say is that I also spent time with some colleagues, who are precious to me, who are now retired. I spent some time in the company of Rev Dr Ann Peart, the one who loves Hope’s ankle in the stain glass window at Dunham Road. Ann and myself have a deep care and affection for one another and it was lovely to see her. We are both very different people, have our faults and our qualities. Talking with her brought back memories of my time at college, the challenge, the characters and the lessons learnt. One thing I remember was a little sign of Ann’s door that read “I have learnt so much from my mistakes that I think I am going to make a few more.” I was smiling as I remembered this, as I know that the only way to do so, is to keep on journeying, “Choosing Life” to paraphrase good old Moses and Wham of course. Yes, making some mistakes at times, but doing mainly good, certainly doing whatever I can for the creation of life and not it’s destruction.May we all choose life every day.

Some say that they have no regrets about anything. It is interesting that perhaps the most heard song at funerals is “My Way” by Frank Sinatra and that famous line “Regrets I’ve had a few, but then again too few to mention” or perhaps the famous Edith Piath “je ne regrette rien” no regret. A more modern version would be Robbie Williams’ “No Regrets”

Is this really true though? Can any of us truly say that we have no regrets? I’m not sure I can. I cannot make the claim that I have no regrets at all. There have been many failures and mistakes along the way. Most folk live with regret and struggle with parts of their past. Like King David I am sure we could all write our Psalms of Lament.

Regret is an interesting word, originally it was a kind of lament, from the Old French word ‘regreter”, meaning “one who bewails the dead,” which comes from a Germanic root meaning “to greet.” As Mark Nepo has said of regret “We always face these two phases of regret: to bewail what is dead and gone, and, if we can move through that grief, to greet the chance to do things differently as we move on.”

Nepo notes something of real value here, it is a lesson from grief. Yes, regret is a lament for what has gone, what has died, but if we greet it fully with love we can learn from the past and do things differently in the future. The response to regret is both of life and death. The choice is ours. By the way this is the one choice we have in life. We do not choose what happens to us but we can choose how we respond to what happens to us. This is the one ultimate freedom, that is open to all of us.

To quote Viktor Frankl:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”

So, the response to regret is ours. We can either choose life or death. We can close in and shut down or we can create with love.

There are two powerful examples of responses to regret in the New Testament. They are found in the Easter narrative, following Jesus’s betrayal. Luke’s Gospel (Ch22 vv 60-62) depicts Peter regretting his betrayal of Jesus. He wept bitterly for his fear based denial and yet how did he respond. Well, it was on Peter that the earlier Christian Church was built. For Peter Hope was once again born. Matthew (Ch 27 vv 3-5) depicts a very different response to regret that of Judas Iscariot. This is much closer to the original meaning of regret, which meant to bewail the dead. His response was to take his life. Both Peter and Judas can be seen as examples of how we can act with guilt or from shame over the things we regret in life. One chose life and the other turned away from life. One chose to create and the other to destroy. One turned further inward in shame and other turned out to do something creative with their guilt and regret. Peter lived with his regret, where as Judas died with his.

Regret has its place; we need to feel it and to respond in life giving and affirming ways. It matters how we live with regret, is it in life affirming ways, or shame based life denying ones. We can learn from our mistakes if we choose life.

As Joan Chittister wrote in “The Gift of Years”

“The burden of regret is that, unless we come to understand the value of the choices we made in the past, we may fail to see the gifts they have brought us.

The blessing of regret is clear — it brings us, if we are willing to face it head on, to the point of being present to this new time of life in an entirely new way. It urges us on to continue becoming.”

We all have regrets. It is delusional to say that we should never have them, in fact a person who never feels regret or guilt has something missing in their humanity. Yes, regrets, fuelled by shame, can gnaw away at our souls, but it we are wise, regrets can be powerful teachers. We need a lot of humility and curiosity to learn from our regrets rather than simply allowing them to whittle away at the spirit. Above all we need hope: if we regret something but are willing to learn from it, we must dare to hope that we can learn from it. All humility is, in some sense, a thing of hope: when we humble ourselves, we are living in the hope that we can do better.

Of course, before we move on we need to put right what we have done wrong. This may just take an acknowledgement, or it may take more, an action. Once we put right what is needed and wanted though we can begin again in love, in so doing we are choosing life once more. Not only for ourselves, but for all humanity. This is the key to everything, I have come to believe, to “Choose Life” once again.

So, I say let’s face and truly know those things we regret, no matter how many times we have failed to live up to our ideals. Let’s be powered by appropriate guilt and not fetted by inappropriate shame. We need not be paralysed lamenting the past, nor do we need to close the door on it. Let us instead move through the grief of regret and greet the future with its possibility of what might yet be.

Let’s choose life and infinite possibility. Let’s make lives of remembrance from the ashes of what went wrong before. Let’s do so as individuals, communities, nations and humanity.

I’m going to end this "Blogspot" with a meditation, with something to reflect on. It is adapted from “The Land of Regret” a spiritual practice created by Steven Charleston from the book “Spirit Wheel”

Steve invites us to enter into the mystery of the following words asking us to hear “What Native America has to say, to teach, to share…. When you enter into the mystery of these words for yourself, do so without preconception or judgment. With honesty and humility. Enter the deep earth of our ancient longing and reach for the highest branches of our collective hope…. Take each message as you find it. Let it speak to you directly. Ponder its meaning.”

So I invite us to still our thoughts, quieten our minds, connect to our bodies, to our breathing…Let us be still and silent together…

I have visited the land of regret more than once
But have never lived there, for the land is barren
And no person would make their home there

Unless, as the elders say, they have been so focused
On their sorrow and shame
That they have lost their way to forgiveness
The sacred well in any desert

Lost their way to repentance and reconciliation
So they haunt the wild lands of their own memory
Seeking responsibility like a mirage.

Better, the elders say, to let regret do its job:
Be a teacher with a lesson that must be learned.

Then make your cairn to mark your passing
To express your regret, to accept the teaching
And walk on, keeping to the straight path before you

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

Empathy, guilt, shame, they are not exactly the same

You may recall that last week I discussed a conversation I had with colleagues at “Ministry in the Making”. I’m not going to repeat it now. I just want to talk about one aspect of the conversation, something that has been a primary motivation of my ministry. I talk with lots of people, well actually I listen in conversation with lots of people. It is my life. One thing I notice often, is that so many people struggle or have struggled in their lives with feelings of guilt or shame. The feelings of shame are often without cause. It seems to come from some place deep within them. I know that these feelings are often preyed upon with so many places offering easy alternatives. That whatever people feel is wrong with them could be easily cured. There is lots of money to be made. The truth is we are not in need of fixing. Yes there is healing for just about all of us. Most of us wander around with some wounds that need healing, but I do not believe that we are fundamentally flawed. Yes, we do wrong, but we are not wrong at the core of our being. We should feel appropriate guilt for the things we do wrong, but never feel shame, because we feel that we are wrong.

I would like to make a space where people can come without shame and explore these feelings in an open and safe environment and perhaps find a way to heal these feelings. A space where we can come to terms with themselves and put right whatever it is they need to put right in themselves and this world. To come to right relationship if you like. “To forgive ourselves, to forgive one another, to begin again in love.”

I am sure all of us have done things we wish we hadn’t or said things we wish we hadn’t or not acted when perhaps we should have acted. I was talking with a friend this week, out walking our dogs. We both shared about times when we have remained silent when we should have spoken up. We discussed how this made us feel. There was a sense of appropriate guilt, a vital feeling. It comes from this sense of conscience. That seed of the Divine, that believe is there in all of us. A healthy feeling, something we should try to develop, to live from. I feel that empathy grows from this, another vital aspect of our humanity. Empathy and guilt are vital emotions, when they are alive within us. We have them for important and vital reasons. We have them for good reason and they need to be developed if we are to live the good life. They are a response to life. Shame though is something very different. It a purely negative feeling and instead of being a response to life, seems to come from a rejection of life itself. Where it comes from, I am not wholly sure. What I am sure if is how destructive it is.

Guilt is a common feeling for most ministers. We rarely feel that we are doing a good enough job, we wish we could do more. I feel guilt around the suffering of others. Now in its healthy form this manifests as empathy, in its unhealthy form it can manifest as shame. I do wish I could do more when around those suffering, I feel guilt for those suffering and their loved ones. I feel it around family and friends too, particularly old friends. I wish I had more time for them. I feel it too sometimes when in a joyful state, when I feel so much joy at simply being alive. When I see others suffering and struggling, there is a part of me that feels bad. I also experience some survivor’s guilt too, with my fellows in recovery and when I think of friends and loved ones that have died far too soon. I then feel a little bad for feeling guilty about feeling joyful.

It is crazy isn’t it, but oh so very human. I don’t think I’m alone in these feelings. It does suggest I’m not some kind of psychopath, which I am pleased about. No, I’m a human being who experiences the same emotions and feelings as everyone else. Thank God. The feelings come from empathy, which is vital aspect of healthy humanity. The problems can come when such feelings can overwhelm folk. Or they tap into feelings of shame. Shame will lead a person to shrink away from pain, empathy and healthy guilt will often allow a person to be with others in their suffering.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The feelings of guilt coms from a place within us. When it is in appropriate proportion it is a good thing. It connects us to one another and to life, it keeps us humble and therefore human and saves us from the dangers of destructive hubris. Such guilt is a function of conscience. This is key to my understanding of my faith as a Unitarian, this concept of living revelation that is an aspect of my humanity, if I can tap into it and allow it to lead me. When I do I see this same spark in others too. You see in opening myself to the divine spark within I open myself to that same spark in everyone and everything. This is key to my understanding of religion, my attempts to live my life in the company of others and through which I attempt to shape an ideal that I strive for, but suspect I will never attain. I always fall short of this ideal, in this sense I sin (from sinare which meant to fall short of the mark). This though is not original sin, it is actually more original blessing. I feel guilt, appropriate guilt, because I fall short of the mark, although I do at times feel shame too, in doing so I deny my true nature. I also occasionally fall short in shaming others too, something I strive not to do. I sometimes fail to recognise the divinity in my brothers and sisters, but hey these short comings save me from becoming too pious and separating myself from brothers and sisters.

What is key is to develop this feeling so it can used in good purpose in this world. The key is empathy and bring empathy to life, to act upon this empathy. Active empathy is about opening our whole being to others. We do this not by forcing ourselves upon them, but by allow them to be themselves around us. This is true openness. This is invitation. When I say come as you are m exactly as you are, this is what I mean. When I also say, “but do not expect to leave in exactly the same condition.” This is the purpose of religious experience, that of transformation. This is not to suggest that we are fundamentally wrong, no it is more that we can become who we are wholly and at the same time invite others to do the same. Empathy and particularly active empathy is the key.

Now Shame is something else. Shame is destructive and it keeps us separate from ourselves and one another. Shame is not formed from our actions or inactions, but from some other place in our being. It’s that place that people have tapped into throughout human history. Yes religion has used this, the classic example being the concept of Original Sin, but then so has the secular world. Advertising is the classic example it’s how they sell lifestyles to us and it’s how they get so many of us to feel we have to change who we just to be acceptable. How many people suffer from a sense that there is something fundamentally wrong with them? I know it’s crippled me over the years. Thankfully it does so less and less as I grow faithfully.

When I look at myself in the eye these days what I see is a man who gets things wrong from time to time and I feel appropriate guilt for this. This enables me to act in the world positively. Yes I wish I could do more, but hey I am only human. I feel less shame about my being, but I must confess that I am not completely free of this. There is a part of me that is ok with this. Why? Well because it keeps me grounded, for I know that every single one of us is still living with these feelings. Maybe this too helps with the empathy too.

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

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

Let us recognise these feelings within ourselves and begin to understand them in others. Let’s develop active empathy and invite others to do the same. In so doing we will live lives of love and purpose and encourage others to do the same.

I’m going to end this morning with a bit of Mary Oliver, her classic poem “Wild Geese”

“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Below is a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"

Regret: To Greet the Future or Lament the Past

During the Christmas season I found myself in a few conversations about guilt and shame. While they may appear similar, and they can be equally as powerful in affecting our lives, they are not, they come from a different aspect of our humanity. Guilt can spur is into action, to make positive change in our lives, or that of others and the world in which we live. Guilt is a product of a healthy conscience, a person who claims never to feel any sense of guilt is either deluding themselves or potentially sociopathic. Shame is not the same as guilt at all. As the wonderful Brene Brown has said “ Guilt is just as powerful, but its influence is positive, while shame is destructive. Shame erodes our courage and fuels disengagement."

Guilt and shame are equally powerful emotions, they can have an intense power over our lives and can push and pull a person in one direction or the other, they are opposites.The feeling of guilt can often compel a person to put right what was wrong, to heal a past hurt, or broken relationship. Whereas the desire to avoid the perceived humiliation of shame, by making the first move, may prevent a person from doing so. Yes, guilt and shame are both powerful emotions, one can be harnessed positively, whilst the other is only ever negative and destructive.

During one conversation a friend began telling me of some regrets they had about their life. We discussed what could be done and I shared some recent experiences in my own life. I have myself finally come to peace with some guilt and regret in recent months, it has lifted a great weight from my psyche, something family members commented on over Christmas. It seems I have once again been liberated from some shame, thank God.

Now all this brings me to a conversation after the last “Singing Meditation” when a congregational member was talking about shame and mentioned a book I read many years “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying” by Bronnie Ware.

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent many years working in palliative care. She worked with patients who were close to death, during the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded the patients dying epiphanies in a blog called “Inspiration and Chai”, this led to a book that she published a few years ago called “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying”. In the book she describes the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives and what this can teach we who live on. She highlighted that there were five particular themes that emerged from her conversations.

The five regrets were:

Number 1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me: "This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it."

Number 2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard: "This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret, but as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence."

Number 3: I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings: "Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result."

Number 4: I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends: "Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying."

Number 5: I wish that I had let myself be happier: "This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again."

I found these top five regrets very interesting, I wonder what we who live, what ours might be. There is time to do something about it and live with a sense of freedom and enjoy what time we have left, for while we are certainly living, we are also dying. I have, in recent weeks, sensed a deepening peace in my being as I have addressed certainly three of the five regrets. This is good, this is progress. It is good to know I am not a total slave to perfectionism. That said there is still some regret, there is guilt for mistakes I have made, but there is a decreasing sense of shame, thank God.

I know that most of the guilt and regret, the source of shame in my life, stems from a lack of courage at times, to not do what was mine to do and to live the life as authentically as I could. I feel less shame about this though as it just proves to me how fully human I am, there is no shame in that.

That said I still live with regrets though and I carry no shame about this.

Some say that they have no regrets about anything. It is interesting that perhaps the most heard song at funerals is “My Way” by Frank Sinatra and that famous line “Regrets I’ve had a few, but then again too few to mention” or perhaps the famous Edith Piath “je ne regrette rien” no regret. A more modern version would be Robbie Williams’ “No Regrets”

Is this really true though? Can any of us truly say that as our lives end that we have no regrets? I’m not sure I can. I cannot make the claim that I have no regrets at all. There have been many failures and mistakes along the way. Most folk live with regret and struggle with parts of their past. Like King David I am sure we could all write our Psalms of Lament.

Regret is an interesting word, originally it was a kind of lament, from the Old French word ‘regreter”, meaning “one who bewails the dead,” which comes from a Germanic root meaning “to greet.” So, it makes sense that it is the dying that perhaps feel regret the most intensely. As Mark Nepo has said of regret “We always face these two phases of regret: to bewail what is dead and gone, and, if we can move through that grief, to greet the chance to do things differently as we move on.” Regret can inspire us to change, so long as it is not fuelled by shame.

Nepo notes something of real value here, it is a lesson from grief. Yes, regret is a lament for what has gone, what has died, but if we greet it fully with love we can learn from the past and do things differently in the future. The response to regret is both of life and death. The choice is ours. By the way this is the one choice we have in life. We do not choose what happens to us but we can choose how we respond to what happens to us. This is the one ultimate freedom, that is open to all of us.

To quote Viktor Frankl:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”

So, the response to regret is ours. We can either choose life or death. We can close in and shut down or we can create with love.

There are two wonderful examples of responses to regret in the New Testament. They are found in the Easter narrative, following Jesus’s betrayal. Luke’s Gospel (Ch22 vv 60-62) depicts Peter regretting his betrayal of Jesus. He wept bitterly for his fear based denial and yet how did he respond. Well, it was on Peter that the earlier Christian Church was built. For Peter Hope was once again born. Matthew (Ch 27 vv 3-5) depicts a very different response to regret that of Judas Iscariot. This is much closer to the original meaning of regret, which meant to bewail the dead. His response was to take his life. Both Peter and Judas can be seen as examples of how we can act with guilt or from shame over the things we regret in life, we are all much the same.

Regret has its place; we need to feel it and to respond in life giving and affirming ways. It matters how we live with regret, is it in life affirming ways or shame based life denying ones.

As Joan Chittister wrote in “The Gift of Years”

“The burden of regret is that, unless we come to understand the value of the choices we made in the past, we may fail to see the gifts they have brought us.

The blessing of regret is clear — it brings us, if we are willing to face it head on, to the point of being present to this new time of life in an entirely new way. It urges us on to continue becoming.”

We all have regrets. It is delusional to say that we should never have them, in fact a person who never feels regret or guilt has something missing in their humanity. Yes, regrets, fuelled by shame, can gnaw away at our souls, but it we are wise, regrets can be powerful teachers. We need a lot of humility and curiosity to learn from our regrets rather than simply allowing them to whittle away at the spirit. Above all we need hope: if we regret something but are willing to learn from it, we must dare to hope that we can learn from it. All humility is, in some sense, a thing of hope: when we humble ourselves, we are living in the hope that we can do better.

So I say let’s face and truly know those things we regret, no matter how many times we have failed to live up to our ideals. Let’s be powered by appropriate guilt and not fetted by inappropriate shame. We need not be paralysed lamenting the past, nore do we need to close the door on it. Let us instead move through the grief of regret and greet the future with its possibility of what might yet be.

Below is a video devotion based 

on the material in this "blogspot"

Guilt and Shame are not the same

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

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

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

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

“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver

 You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

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

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

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

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

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

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

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

 “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry

 When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

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

I go and lie down where the wood drake

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

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

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

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Poet with His Face in His Hands

Mary Oliver

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guilt and shame are not the same

I recently came accross the following by Richard Gilbert...It oh so got to the heart of me...

“To Savor the World or Save It” By Richard S. Gilbert

“It’s hard to know when to respond to the seductiveness of the world and when to respond to its challenge. If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between the desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
—E.B. White

I rise in the morning torn between the desire
To save the world or to savor it—to serve life or to enjoy it;
To savor the sweet taste of my own joy
Or to share the bitter cup of my neighbor;
To celebrate life with exuberant step
Or to struggle for the life of the heavy laden.
What am I to do when the guilt at my bounty
Clouds the sky of my vision;
When the glow which lights my every day
Illumines the hurting world around me?
To savor the world or save it?
God of justice, if such there be,
Take from me the burden of my question.
Let me praise my plenitude without limit;
Let me cast from my eyes all troubled folk!
No, you will not let me be. You will not stop my ears
To the cries of the hurt and the hungry;
You will not close my eyes to the sight of the afflicted.
What is that you say?
To save, one must serve?
To savor, one must save?

The one will not stand without the other?
Forgive me—in my preoccupation with myself,
In my concern for my own life
I had forgotten.
Forgive me, God of justice,
Forgive me, and make me whole.

,,,Beautiful and powerful don't you think...

I have often said how much I dislike the phrase “there are two types of people in the world.” and usually respond that there is only one type of person. Now I’ve recently been questioning my conclusion. I have noticed that in one area of life there may well be two types of people… Those who arrive early for things and those who are always late.

Which one are you?

...I am of course not being serious here, there is ony one type of person in this world, we are one human family...

I hate being late. Now some might say that this is a good quality, that I am being considerate. To some degree this is true, but not entirely. The truth is I don’t like creating unnecessary anxiety, also I want to avoid criticism at all costs.

I live an extremely busy life, so I do my utmost to always give myself time to get to things and not to have to rush around at the last minute. I admit that to some degree this is fear based. I just don’t like that look from others when I am late and I will do many things to ensure I am not so.

Now there was a lovely little example of this on Monday afternoon at the gym. I had arrived in plenty of time for my session with Chris my personal trainer. I’d done my half an hour of cardiovascular and then had a few minutes to relax and stretch before my session began. I was about to begin stretching when I saw a friend and went over to say hello and got into a conversation. The conversation went on and Chris skipped along. I saw him and thought it is two o’clock, I’ve got to end this conversation, I don’t want to be late. I managed to bring the conversation to an end, which I felt some guilt in doing and went over to Chris to begin my session. I apologised for being a couple of minutes late. He smiled and said “oh don’t worry I’m always rushing not to be late. I always feel a little guilt when I see you waiting here for me every time, I’m always on the last minute and you are always early.” I smiled and said “Oh I hate being late”. I then said “I often make that impression on people, they feel guilty around me, it’s one of the perils of the job.” I smiled about it for most of the day.

That said anyone who really knows me should never feel guilty around me, I am as human as the next person. I’m as perfectly imperfect as everyone else.

Guilt in an interesting feeling. It can be positive, as a barometer to keep one aiming for our highest ideals, which everyone falls short of. That said there are other forms of guilt that are very negative and unhelpful. Such feelings come from a sense that there is something fundamentally wrong with our human being, it comes from a sense of shame. This is unhealthy and unhelpful, for no matter how well you do or what you do you will always feel bad about your very human being, if you live with a sense of shame.

As I look at my own guilt I can see that I have suffered from both types. For most of my life it was shame based and I know that it led me to doing more harm than I ever intended to as it stopped me doing the things I needed to do. These days most of my guilt is a guiding barometer, but not all of it, I do acknowledge that some of that fear of being late is based on a need of others to see mr as being good enough.

This is not necessarily a bad thing by the way. It keeps me grounded. For it reminds me I am no better than anyone else. It has certainly saved me from becoming sanctimonious. Not a good quality, especially in a minister.

Guilt is a common feeling for most ministers. We rarely feel that we are doing a good enough job, we wish we could do more. I have never been busier than I have been these last few weeks and yet I’ve felt I’ve not done enough. Crazy I know, but true. Now is that coming from healthy and unhealthy guilt? Probably a mixture of the two.

I have felt these feelings often when being around those suffering and their loved ones. I feel it around family and friends too, particularly old friends. I wish I had more time for them. I feel it too sometimes when in a joyful state, when I feel so much joy at simply being alive. When I see others suffering and struggling, there is a part of me that feels bad. I also experience some survivor’s guilt too, with my fellows in recovery and when I think of friends and loved ones that have died far too soon. I then feel a little bad for feeling guilty about feeling joyful.

It is crazy isn’t it, but oh so very human. I don’t think I’m alone in these feelings. It does suggest I’m not some kind of psychopath, which I am pleased about. No I’m a human being who experiences the same emotions and feelings as everyone else. Thank God.

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

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

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

Now in our culture some put it down to our Judea Christian heritage, the core of our culture, even in these secular times. Often folks who grew up in deeply religious homes will argue about who feels the most guilt. Now although the Judeo-Christian tradition seems to be seeped in guilt, I understand that the guilt that the Bible speaks of is guilt as it is commonly understood, this sense of guilt. As Mark Belletini points out in “Nothing Gold Can Stay: The Colours of Grief”

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

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

The feelings of guilt coms from a place within us. When it is in appropriate proportion it is a good thing. It connects us to one another and to life, it keeps us humble and therefore human and saves us from the dangers of destructive hubris. Such guilt is a function of conscience. This is key to my understanding of my faith as a Unitarian, this concept of living revelation that is an aspect of my humanity, if I can tap into it and allow it to lead me. When I do I see this same spark in others too. You see in opening myself to the divine spark within me I open myself to that same spark in everyone and everything. This is key to my understanding of religion, my attempts to live my life in the company of others and through which I attempt to shape an ideal that I strive for, but suspect I will never attain. I always fall short of this ideal, in this sense I sin (from sinare which meant to fall short of the mark). This though is not original sin, it is actually more original blessing. I feel guilt, appropriate guilt, because I fall short of the mark, although I do at times feel shame too, in doing so I deny my true nature. I also occasionally fall short in shaming others too, something I strive not to do. I sometimes fail to recognise the divinity in my brothers and sisters, but hey these short comings save me from becoming too pious and separating myself from these very same brothers and sisters.

Now Shame is something else. Shame is destructive and it keeps us separate from ourselves and one another. Shame is not formed from our actions or inactions, but from some other place in our being. It’s that place that people have tapped into throughout human history. Yes religion has used this, the classic example being the concept of Original Sin, but then so has the secular world. Advertising is the classic example it’s how they sell lifestyles to us and it’s how they get so many of us to feel we have to change who we just to be acceptable. How many people suffer from a sense that there is something fundamentally wrong with them? I know it’s crippled me over the years. Thankfully it does so less and less as I grow faithfully.

When I look myself in the eye these days what I see is a man who gets things wrong from time to time and I feel appropriate guilt for this. This enables me to act in the world positively. Yes I wish I could do more, but hey I am only human. I feel less shame about my being, but I must confess that I am not completely free of this. There is a part of me that is ok with this. Why? Well because it keeps me grounded, for I know that every single one of us is still living with these feelings.

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

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

I’m going to end this "chip" of a "blogspot" with a bit of Mary Oliver, her classic poem “Wild Geese”

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

You might also find this lovely bit iof wisdom from Brene Brown helpful