Do not follow blindly, 'cos you'll soon find yourself lost

I was sat with friends enjoying coffee, outside Café Nero, in the early morning sun the other day. I was facing away from the street, a position I don’t usually enjoy; I much prefer to face out, watching the world go by. We were in a positive mood, the beautiful hot weather no doubt playing a major part in this. This was suddenly brought to an abrupt halt. There was some kind of distressed sound from right behind me. We all stood up and turned round. Right there in front of us was the street cleaner with his cart, he had halted and looked shocked. There was also a woman with a baby in a papoose in front of her, she had a black Labrador. The dog was a guide dog as the woman was blind. We were all in shock, not knowing what had happened or what to do. There was the fear the baby was hurt, thankfully the child was not. The woman broke down in tears and was led to sit down. The street cleaner was ok too. Things settled down and all was ok. Folk continued about their business. I returned home a little later. The woman, her baby and guide dog were just behind me and two friends as we walked towards the chapel. I was stood talking with two friends having crossed the road. Molly has learnt not to cross until the green man appears and it begins to beep. I stood talking with the friends on the chapel side of the road. As we were talking we saw the woman, her baby and guide dog safely cross the road. We spoke with her, all was well, and interestingly she was coming to the large schoolroom at the chapel to go to her regular mother and child exercise class. The guide dog knew the way very well.

The whole incident has been on my mind ever since. It certainly awakened my “homiletic consciousness”, which I once heard described as “going through life thinking, “Can I use this in a sermon?” . Any person who uses their own experiences of life to create something for others does the same, such as an artist or poet, a writer, teacher, song writer or storyteller. As you can see this is happening now. It got me thinking about how much the woman has to trust in her guide dog to live freely in the world. How much that incident must have shaken her up. How frightening it must have been not only for her own safety, but also her baby. How whilst we were all shocked, everyone responded in loving and caring ways and just wanted to make sure everyone was ok. How after breaking down the woman picked herself up, dusted herself down and started all over again. She got on with her day, she trusted her dog absolutely and all was well. She knew the path that she must follow, as did the dog and she continued on it.

I was talking about the incident with the friends who were present a few mornings later, trying to make sense of what happened. We hadn’t seen it as it happened. It was the noise and change in atmosphere that caught our attention. We surmised that both parties must have been moving slowly. How did the dog not see what was in front of him? How did the street cleaner not see them? They just slowly walked into each other, like two ships in a fog. We surmised the road cleaner was probably daydreaming and the guide dog got distracted. One friend suggested that perhaps the dog had been distracted by the scent of Molly who is in season. This seems possible, but who knows. It got me thinking and as you can see it awakened my homiletic consciousness.

I’ve never had a great sense of direction and or spatial awareness. My mind does not operate in images. Maybe this is why I rarely if ever remember my dreams or even recall having them. I’m more of a communicator really and mainly through sound and conversation. I can describe to you exactly how things felt that morning, the emotions of the individuals, but the imagery is all a bit vague. I have other friends who will be able to describe who was say where, what people were wearing and what the individuals looked like. We are all different, it is very important to understand this. We truly do not all think alike, although I do like to believe that we can all love alike.

Now while my way of operating has its advantages, there are some disadvantages too. I get lost very easily. This is why since I learnt to drive I have relied on Sat Nav. Moving onto the Waze system in more recent years. It has usually proved reliable. The great thing about it is if you take a wrong turn, it will quickly adjust and direct you back on track. Generally, this has worked out well, but once or twice it has not. Sat Nav is very good but it cannot be relied upon 100%, sometimes it can send you down the wrong path, especially if you follow unquestioningly. Sat nav is a good guide, but you must never stop trusting your eyes, and or common sense. No guide is 100% reliable all the time, even the best trained of guide dogs it seems. We will take knocks, we will get lost on our journeys through life.

Life itself and the spiritual life in particular are often described as a journey. That said it’s not a journey in which we really travel a great distance. As Wendell Berry so beautifully wrote, echoing that great mystic Meister Eckhart, “And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home.”

On this journey we often come to forks in the road when we must take decisions on which way we ought to turn. Many times we make wrong decisions, I think we have to get it wrong many times, before we get it right. Many times we get lost too. Many times we take advice from others and follow it blindly. Many times this is helpful but other times it really is not. It can lead us down the wrong path, but that’s ok because we can always get back on track again.

Often this journey is described as a path, I have just done so, and I have heard many say that it gets narrower. I am not convinced of this. If I have learnt anything I have learnt that the spiritual journey is not like a path at all and certainly not a narrow one. In my experience it is broad and rooming all inclusive and welcoming, never exclusive or forbidding and open to all. What in 12 step culture they call “The Broad Highway” and one that allows a great deal of room for error.

I think one of the biggest mistakes we make when we speak of spiritual matters is when we describe them in narrow language. It puts people off, because it sounds too much and beyond us. It should not be like that, there is room for us all and it isn’t so hard to get started, it just requires a slight change in direction.

Let us also remember that the spiritual journey is one of depth and not really distance. Sometimes the biggest mistake we make is that we continue journeying on, head down, not looking all around us, too focused on a perceived goal. This is due, I am sure, to the fear that if we don’t keep on moving we might get lost or that our troubles might catch up with us. I do not believe that this is healthy. In many ways by just marching on ever forward we can become completely lost, in the sense that we lose who we are at the core of ourselves, that sense of belonging here in life, as we are, wanted, needed and loved. Or we walk into something without knowing it is front of us. Anyone can live their life as if they were blind.

These thoughts bring to mind the beautiful poem “Lost” by David Wagoner,

“Lost”

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

by David Wagoner

Sometimes when you feel lost you aren’t as lost as you think. What you are is actually in a place you would rather not be. This is beautifully illustrated in the following bit of wisdom form my old favourite Mulla Nasruddin

Nasruddin was sat on a river bank when someone shouted to him from the opposite side:

“Hey! how do I get to the other side?”
To which Nasruddin replied “You are on the other side!”

We are always on the other side of the river.

Throughout our journeys’ we pass through many stages of our lives and looking back no doubt we can see these staging posts, moments in our lives that have made us who we are, that have deepened our experiences of life and given us wisdom to pass on to others, if they would care to have it.

On our journeys there are not only staging posts, but guide posts and actual guides too, that have helped we pilgrims along the way. Some we have paid heed of, others we have not. Some ancient, some contemporary. Hopefully we have not followed them blindly, but sometimes no doubt we have as we have trusted too implicitly perhaps, a bit like those Sat Nav horror stories we sometime here about of people driving almost blindly into a lake or river. We have to learn to trust our senses as well as the sixth sense too, the inner voice, the inner light that speaks to us when we have ears that can hear.

The ancient stories give many great examples of the different types of journeys, pilgrimages and Odyssey’s that we may undertake. In his meditation “The Spiritual Journey” David O Rankin names a few who have walked courageously through theirs. Stating:

“It is Moses leading the Jews through the desert of Sinai, and Jesus enduring the temptation in the wilderness of Israel, and Buddha seeking enlightenment along the dusty roads of India.

It is the glorious voyage of Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey, the narrow paths through the circles of hell in Dante’s Inferno, and the confessions of the travellers in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

It is the pilgrims sailing on the Mayflower, the settlers moving westward, being On the Road with Jack Kerouac, and spinning through a black hole in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey”

We are all of us pilgrims on the sacred journey that is life and like so many of the more famous ones we think we have to go someplace else to discover our own Nirvana or to build the New Jerusalem. Just as the pilgrims on the Mayflower did in the seventeenth century, with those words from Hebrews we heard earlier singing in their hearts. They believed that they had to travel a great distance to a new land to create their heaven on earth. Well, I have discovered that this is not necessary. You do not have to travel great distances to experience the beautiful journey and you do not need to travel great distances to build the New Jerusalem, it must be here, in our own hearts or nowhere. The “Kin-dom” of Love has to be built here or nowhere.

I suspect it’s the same about finding ourselves once again when we feel lost. Who or what do we listen to? Well I am learning to listen to that inner voice, that light that shines bright within all of us. That spark of the Divine that is within everything. That which awakens the sense of my senses, that which guides me home no matter how lost I am and that which allows me to be at home wherever my feet are planted. That Kin-dom of Love, within me, within each of you and within everything.

Let love be our navigator it will always lead us home, to the place where we belong.

The problem isn’t getting lost, we all get lost at times. The problem is in losing faith that you cannot find your way again. The key is how we live when we find ourselves lost. Do we close down and get lost deeper in our fear, or do we pause and reach out and ask for help from those loving forces that are all around whether visible or invisible.

I saw a beautiful example of faith and trust the other day sat outside Café Nero. A woman who had experienced a terrifying knock, it must have been an awful shock to her confidence in herself and her guide. She took stock, she accepted help and comfort and then she got up once again, with her baby safe and secure in her papoose, hanging infront of her heart. She trusted her guide dog and she continued on her way with her daily activities. I saw she had absolute trust and no fear as she waited to be guided across the road. What a beautiful example of faith and trust and most of all love.

Thank you

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

The “Long Now Moment”: “Is Patience Still a Virtue?”

I don’t always start my Sunday’s as well as I would like. Last week was a classic example. I found myself rushing back from Sue’s. very early, to Altrincham to get ready for leading worship beginning in Urmston at 10am. I like to get to there early, certainly before 9am, to prepare myself in silence and solitude. As I left Sue’s I turned on the radio and listened to Radio 4’s excellent Sunday morning program “Something Understood”. The first word I heard was “Patience”. It was an episode on “Slowing Down”. I only heard about half of it and thought to myself “That sounded interesting”, I’ll listen to it later, it had awakened my homiletic consciousness. (I was in far too much of hurry to listen there and then, so funny!)

I found myself rushing around a bit that morning, getting frustrated as everything just seemed to take too long. I got particularly frustrated with my computer as I attempted to catch up with world affairs and friends on social networks, as well as answer emails. I remember that old familiar cry coming out of my mouth “I haven’t got time for this”, as I lost my wi-fi connection for the third time. I have noticed on cold dark, wet and windy days it seems to go down more often.

On the way to Urmston I called into the local garage and bought a coffee and petrol. I remember getting frustrated at the card machine as I attempted to pay, complaining (under my breath) it always takes so long. At which the man behind the counter responded, “people are so impatient these days, you have to wait for me to authorise the payment.” It caused me to pause and as I left I smiled and laughed at myself and once again noticed my homiletic consciousness come to life. I was noticing I was rushing and certainly lacking patience that morning.

As I drove to Urmston I found myself slowing down and truly connecting to what I was doing. I spent the day noticing so many things and truly engaged with all I was doing. I remembered the lovely two days I had just spent, slowing down and connecting. I remembered all the times I enjoyed simply walking in nature. The day before I had enjoyed a lovely walk around Sale Water Park with Sue and Poppy the dog. I thought about my times of connection walking around Dunham Massey and those beautiful deer in recent years, I also remember how connected I had felt walking round Platt Fields Park, particularly with the geese in the lake, as a student minister. It was lovely connecting all those moments that had brought me to this moment and how those moments had helped to make the moment I was living right now, they brought the moment alive. I saw the connection of my life and that moment with all life and those moments of connection that I will know and all those folk that will enjoy them when I am long gone. As I did I felt this strange sensation of time being stretched. We do not merely live in this Golden moment, but in a timeless never ending, long and deep moment, for time and space is eternal it is without limit.

Something Understood

The next morning I listened to the full episode of “Something Understood”, it has inspired this "blogspot". During the episode reference was made to what is called the “Long Now Moment.” And the “Long Now Foundation” I have to say it spoke to me powerfully as it shared some of my long held frustrations with some understandings of contemporary spirituality. Particularly how people talk about “The Now” or the “The Present” and how I find that it often feeds into our self-centredness. For me it’s not just about living in the moments, but how we live in the time and space we find ourselves and to truly see that this time and space is connected to all that has ever been and will ever be. That we and they way we inhabit time and space really does matter, for it effects everything. It’s not that we live passively in the moment, but bring it to life, and thus create a legacy for all that follows. The “Long Now Moment” speaks powerfully to my heart, my mind and certainly my soul.

The “Long Now Moment” is inspired by a story, which may well be mythos, but hey stories are all about mythos; a story of rotting Oak Beams in New College Oxford. The college was founded in the 14th century. At its heart lies a dining hall that features expensive oak beams across its ceiling. Now these great beams had lasted about 500 years, but during the late nineteenth century an entomologist discovered that the beams were infested with beetles and needed replacing. This was a big problem for the college for such beams, of sufficient size and quality, would be hard to find and expensive.

One of the college’s junior fellows suggested that there might be some worthy oaks within the college lands. The college had, when it was formed, been endowned with land scattered around England and run by the college forester. So he was called in and asked if there were any such oaks on the lands. He paused for a moment and then a reassuring expression appeared on his face and he said “Well sirs, we was wonderin’ when you’d be askin’.” It seems that when the College had been founded a grove of oaks had been planted to replace the beams in the dining hall when they became beetly, because oak beams always become beetly in the end. It seems that this plan had been passed down from one Forester to the next for over five hundred years. Each forester was told that “You don’t cut them oaks. Them’s for the College Hall.” It would appear that the founders of New College were not just obsessed with themselves and their time and place. They thought of their legacy, of the generations that followed.

This story, whether true or apocryphal, has become a foundational tale of the “Long Now Moment” movement that has developed in recent times. “The Long Now Moment” movement has developed in response to the fast paced instant society that we live in today, one that does not really think of the future and has a kind of disrespect of the past, a generation that has kind of hijacked the spirituality of Now.

The innovative musician, producer and composer Brian Eno is one of the key proponents of the “Long Now Moment”, he became interested in long now living after moving to new York and being shocked how instant and insular the people living there were. It was almost as if nothing existed outside of the moment folk were living in or outside of the widow of the buildings they were enclosed within. He has said that:

“"Now" is never just a moment. The Long Now is the recognition that the precise moment you're in grows out of the past and is a seed for the future. The longer your sense of Now, the more past and future it includes. It's ironic that, at a time when humankind is at a peak of its technical powers, able to create huge global changes that will echo down the centuries, most of our social systems seem geared to increasingly short nows. Huge industries feel pressure to plan for the bottom line and the next shareholders meeting. Politicians feel forced to perform for the next election or opinion poll. The media attract bigger audiences by spurring instant and heated reactions to human interest stories while overlooking longer-term issues - the real human interest…”

He continues…

“…We don't yet, however, live in The Long Now. Our empathy doesn't extend far forward in time. We need now to start thinking of our great-grandchildren, and their great-grandchildren, as other fellow-humans who are going to live in a real world which we are incessantly, though only semi-consciously, building. But can we accept that our actions and decisions have distant consequences, and yet still dare do anything?”

Danny Hills of the “Long Now Foundation” has been working on creating a long time clock as a kind of practical symbol of the of “Long Now” living. The idea is to create a clock that will last 10,000 years. Human society has existed for 10.000 years and the idea is to put our current place at the half way point of this. On the face of it this seems like a crazy idea, how can a machine last this long? The point is though to get us think of the future. As Stuart Brand has said:

“Such a clock, if sufficiently impressive and well engineered, would embody deep time for people. It should be charismatic to visit, interesting to think about, and famous enough to become iconic in the public discourse. Ideally, it would do for thinking about time what the photographs of Earth from space have done for thinking about the environment. Such icons reframe the way people think.”

Such a clock may just help us transcend the selfish thinking that keeps us enslaved in our time and space. Such short term thinking can be so destructive. “Long Now Moment” living can slow us down and help us to connect and be still enough to begin to live reverentially again. To begin to understand that how we live and act really matters, it affects our lives and it impacts on the lives of others. The trouble is that we want things now and we want them instantly. There’s nothing new here by the way, we humans have always had a tendency towards this. Perhaps this is why the religious traditions have always suggested that we need to slow down and connect and thus begin to revere once again.

This brings to mind the story of Elijah, from the Book of Kings. He wanted to know God and wanted this instantly. He goes to a cave on mount Horeb where he is told that God will pass by and speak directly to him. A great wind comes, followed by an earthquake and then a fire, but we are told that God is in none of them. Following the fire comes the still small voice – a voice, a sound like silence – this voice that is less than a whisper and yet not quite silence signals the presence of the divine.

He had to be still and he to be silent in order the know the Divine. He couldn’t rush it nor could he force it. It took patience and it took faith.

Now of course this is mythos. The one thing that has survived the 10,000 years that human society has been around are the stories the tales, the mythos, that we have shared, they are timeless. They move through time and can speak to we who live today, even though many were first told thousands of years ago. In many ways it is the stories and not the machines that connect the generations to one another. To me these are the perfect example of what it means to believe in the “Long Now Moment”. The stories connect us to the past, they connect us to the present and they connect us to the future and help us see how important it is that we leave a legacy for all who follow. The stories help us to create empathy for the other, the other not yet born that will live when we are dead and gone.

Everything matters, how we live now matters, just as how those who lived before us mattered. All life is connected and interconnected, past present and future. So how we live today will affect what is yet to come.

Let’s not just passively live in the short now, thinking only of ourselves and how we feel this moment. Let us extend our compassion beyond the confines of our little ego-centric worlds. Let’s think beyond the skin and walls we live in and develop compassion not only for those who live today but for the generations that are yet to come. Let us instead begin to live in the “Long Now” and expand our empathy and bring the moment that we live in fully alive, remembering all that came before and to build a legacy for those who follow, so that our lives will prove worth dying for by the legacies of love that we leave behind.