Hallowed be all our names, the living and the dead

Today the 31st of October is All Hallows Eve or Hallo’ween, Halloween. Tomorrow is All Saints Day or All Hallows Day which is followed on the 2nd November by All Souls Day, a time in the Christian Calendar to remember all souls who have departed this life.

Like other Christian festivals, including Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide, these three autumn days are a fascinating mixture of pre-Christian, Christian and even post-Christian tradition and mythos. I am fairly certain that the children going door at Halloween are probably not aware that they have created a modern day variant on the pre-Christian festival of Samhain; a festival that not only celebrated harvest, but was also a time to commune with the spirits of ancestors. There are similar traditions throughout most culture's, autumnal and winter festivals. Autumn is a time of reflection, a time to take stock before the harsh realities of winter come.

Halloween in the north of England is something that is marked, at least in a secular way, far more these days than I remember in my earlier childhood. When I was a child it was Guy Fawkes or Bonfire Night that took on greater significance. I don’t really remember going “Trick or Treating”, until a significant film came out in 1982 and then everything seemed to change. The film was E.T. the Extra Terrestrial. One of the most commercially successful films of all time and one that changed something significantly, certainly in my life and perhaps the culture of the North of England. I recall, as many others did, that after this going door to door, trick or treating replaced the tradition of going “Door to Door” asking for “a penny for the guy” and of course “Mischievous Night”. It seems that these traditions all got swallowed up with “Trick or Treating”. “Mischievous Night”, at least in Yorkshire came on the 4th November and was linked to the “Gunpowder Plot” and “Fireworks Night” that is marked on the 5th of November. Things could get pretty wild on “Mischievous Night” and some, I’m sure, are glad to see that it has pretty much been lost to history. You do hear of little pockets of it in Liverpool and Leeds, but mainly it has gone the way of the Dodo and been replaced by “Trick or Treating”. There’s a part of me that wishes this wasn’t true. I remember the thrill of getting up to no good with friends and of hearing similar tales of other friends who were far more daring than I. I also remember my granddad telling me of things he and his mate Percy used to get up to. I remember the delight in this night of freedom that the children used to be granted. A freedom that I fear children of today do not enjoy.

November is Remembrance Season and really it begins today. Remember Samhain was about connecting with the ancestors, the lost souls. Our age and culture has in recent times become a little death defying and death denying, I feel. The last eighteen months or more have brought this more sharply into focus. We have had to face the fragility of life, our mortality and the realisation that everything that we seemingly depend on is finite, that it can be broken. That we are mortal and life is fragile, that impermanence truly is the nature of the game. Halloween, like the Mexican Day of the Dead is about fun and joy, but there is something serious beneath these ancient traditions that are played out in our modern sanitised culture.

By contrast as Mary Anne Brussat has highlighted “many of the great teachers from the religious traditions recommend that we face death and even befriend it. Saint Benedict tells us to keep death daily before our eyes. Medieval philosophers kept a skull on their desks to remind them of the impermanence of life. Rabbi Harold Kushner interprets poet Wallace Stevens' comment "Death is the mother of beauty" to mean that we cherish and find things beautiful precisely because we know they will not be around forever nor will we always be here to enjoy them. Death, in other words, brings meaning to life.”

We live in age where violence is often glorified in our culture, but in a way that makes it unreal. We see it on our screens, but we rarely experience it face to face. It is sanitised and we are detached from it. We glorify violence whilst at the same time deny the reality of death. In so doing we make life itself seem unreal. Not sacred or holy. We do not hallow one another, recognise the sacredness in life itself and thus existence becomes meaningless. Is it any wonder that a sense of despair is on the increase. If we take away the things which bring superficial meaning to our lives, what is left? Surely there is a better way?

Well I believe that the way is to sanctify life, to make everything holy, to hallow all our names. To recognise the sacredness of all souls, the living and the dead.

I like to get up very early on Sunday morning these days, ridiculously early actually. I am usually in Altrincham not long after 6am. I do a little exercise and then prepare myself for the day. I sanctify the day as I prepare to lead worship, two or three times. I like to arrive in Urmston no later than 8.30am even though the service doesn’t begin until 10am and no one else arrives before 9.30am. After opening and setting up I often take the short walk down Queens Road to the cemetery and walk round reading different headstones and contemplating the lives off those folk. People that touch so many other lives, people I never knew but who meant so much to others. I honour the dead which in some ways enables me to better serve the living. It helps me connect to the sacredness of life itself. There is nothing morbid in this activity. It enables me to connect the preciousness of the lives that have touched mine, but who are no longer with me. I say to myself hallowed be each of your names. It helps me recognise the sacredness of every soul. Not just on 2nd of November, but every day. For every day is a holy day, all ground is holy ground and each person is a holy one, from the core of their being. It helps me to recognise the sacredness of all life, for everything matters. Matter really matters you see. We are all holy and acceptable as we are, even the aspects of ourselves that we would prefer to hide, that we would prefer the world not to see, the things that bring us shame. They are all acceptable. If we hide them, or attempt to hide them, they will only appear in our shadow and cause damage. Mine do, I have seen evidence of this in the past year. Personal grief has brought aspects of myself to the surface once again, that I have not wanted to face, but in the end I have had to. We should never be ashamed of any aspect of ourselves, we are acceptable and loveable as we are exactly as we are in this moment.

I experienced a wonderful moment after last Sunday’s service in Altrincham. Two newer members asked me about sin, suggesting we are not all about it. That I don’t offer absolution for their short comings. I half jokingly said well how could I do such a thing. The truth is how could I. Who am I to think I can. Everyone falls short of their ideals, but no one, nothing is born wrong at their core, is rotten to core, or even selfish to the core. We are born whole and holy. That is why I say hallowed be all our names. That said we all fall short, we all get things wrong, all of us. The mistake is that we try to hide and en-shadowed these aspects of our humanity and this is where the problems come from, I have come to believe.

Perhaps the ancient tradition of Samhain will help us here, for I feel it is closest in connection to All Souls in its spirit. Perhaps here will find the true meaning of the next few days, perhaps the whole season of Remembrance. Here at this time we can truly remember the lost loved ones, at this time where the veil between the living and the dead is said to be most thin, we can re-feel these experiences as we touch and are touched by those who are no longer physically with us, but are still with us in our hearts, minds, spirits and souls. It might also be a time when we allow ourselves to be visited by the ghosts within ourselves, those aspects of our humanity that we try to keep hidden. The things that cause us pain and shame. We all have them, I do. They do not stay hidden for ever maybe we need to greet them like a long lost friend, maybe that is what Halloween and these other autumn festivals are actually about, they are there to allow us come to terms with our whole humanity and that of each other, maybe this is what the ancestors are trying to teach us after all.

I am going to end this devotion with a little bit of Wendell Berry “I go among trees”

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

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

How Can the Ends Ever Justify the Means if it Means Selling Your Soul?

A friend recently turned 50. He invited a whole host of folk to join with him to share a Sunday afternoon at a venue in Cheshire. He asked people not to bring gifts but to instead either buy or preferably bake one and bring it along. Sue and myself chatted about this and decided we would bake a cake. We spoke to a friend who had recently brought a “Lemon Drizzle Cake”, his mum had baked, to a social gather, for recipes and he gave us two of Mary Berry’s finest. Now this was a challenge for both of us. Sue said she was no baker and I’ve not baked a cake since I was child in my grandma’s kitchen. We chose the recipe and bought the ingredients and followed the instructions to the letter. There was some temptation to freelance, but I insisted that we follow directions. I reminded Sue of the time in Nazareth when we decided not to follow the Sat Nav and decided to freestyle on instinct. Things did not go well.

Anyhow the cake was a great success. It was consumed very quickly as were all the many cakes that came along with the wonderful barbecue food. In fact the day was such a lovely success that Sue and myself have decided that we will do something similar for our wedding next year. We are not going to ask for presents, instead we will invite guests to bring food along for themselves and others to share and have a kind of “bring and share” meal.

If only life was as simple as cake baking. It isn’t though and actually I am glad of that. Life does not follow a simple pattern and making decisions about what is right and wrong and which way to turn is not always obvious. We are not given a recipe or set of directions at the beginning or at any stage really. That said the journey of life is not about beginning in one place and trying to get to another. The journey of life is a road to nowhere. The destination is the journey itself. And a successful journey is shown in how we travel with ourselves and one another. It is about learning to truly inhabit our lives and the ground at our feet. Its about the experiencing the kin-dom of love in this time and space and giving birth to that kin-dom of love from deep within.

We live in a destination fixated culture. That life is all about getting to some kind of promised land. So much so that we forget that the key is not so much the destination but how we journey, how we live. We miss out on life because we fail to recognize the sacredness of each experience. There are other dangers too. We can be so fixated on the goal that we can lose our integrity and end up justifying all kinds of acts in order to reach our perceived goal. We say “Well the ends justify the means.” I am not sure that this is ever the case. Such thinking has led to all kinds of barbarity as people have been sacrificed to achieve a perceived goal. In modern times that has become known as “collateral damage.” Goal orientated philosophies lead to the failure to recognize the sacredness of all people, all souls and all life. All is sacred, every action and interaction.

“The ends justify the means” is Machiavellian to the core. In fact this ideal can be traced back to the following from Chapter XVIII from “The Prince” by Niccola Machiavelli:

“There is nothing more necessary to appear to have than this last quality (appearing to be religious), inasmuch as men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you.”

Here Machiavelli is instructing the Prince on how to appear to others for this is the key to achieve what he desires, his personal ends. He told the prince how important it was that he appeared merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious. The key was to keep up the appearance even if you are acting contrary to it. This was because, as Machiavelli saw it, most can see what you appear to be, and only a few will get close enough to intimately experience the real truth. The key was to appear as the Prince wished others to see them. It didn’t matter what the truth was only what it appeared to be. For Machiavelli to appear to be doing something is good enough even if “The Prince” has no intention of doing so. Or to put it another way the end result far outweighed how he got there; what road he took; who was sacrificed along the way; and whether our behavior was ethical or not.

If we look at world today and much of human history how often have people been sacrificed, manipulated and used for a perceived greater good? Because, apparently, the end justified the means.

I have found that rarely do the ends justify the means. This is because the means of doing anything are an end in themselves, for I believe that all life matters. Perhaps the means are actually more important than the ends for how we travel is a deeply sacred thing; for how we travel reveals who we are in the world and how we see life and the people we share this world with. How we travel the journey that is life reveals who and what we truly are. It reveals our soul and is an example to others. It matters how we travel because people are paying attention. Also in the end the truth is finally revealed. Rome always burns in the end. Finally, someone sees that the King is in in fact in the all together. That the emperor’s new clothes are not all that they seem to be.

So how should we travel? Well I believe that the key is integrity. To travel with integrity, in the beautiful way, it is the way of the soul, but is not easy. There are many crossroads that we will stumble upon as we walk round and round the circle of life. There will be many temptations to sell our souls so as to reach our perceived goals or to avoid the pain and suffering that accompany the joys of life. We are all tempted to make the “Faustian Bargain” and sell our sells. Faust made his bargain with the devil, promising him his soul in the after life just for the experience here on earth so fulfilling that he would be moved to say “Let this moment linger, it is so good.” This was Faust's Destiny, his fools gold, his emperors new clothes. None of which are real and all reject the true experience of life. The end justifying the means, or so it appeared. For if you lose your soul, you lose the one thing that really means something in life.

The problem with being focused on some outcome in life, in some end that would justify any means, even selling our human souls, our integrity or that of another, is that in so doing we miss the wonder of living fully alive. There is an aliveness in every step of the way, even the painful, if they are experienced with integrity.

You see to live from our unique souls, to live with integrity, is not a place that you can ever arrive at. Integrity is not a state of perfection, of completeness, that you stay in for the rest of your lives. Integrity is about bringing who we are into what we do, its about being who we truly are and sharing it with our world. Integrity is about integrating who we are with what we do. I’m not sure we ever fully achieve this, I certainly haven’t. The real journey of life is an attempt to bridge the gap between the two, between who we are and what we do. Absolute integrity is not a place we ever arrive at completely in life, rather it’s the attempt to live with integrity that brings one fully alive.

Life is a journey and a beautiful one at that. It’s a road to nowhere though. This is why the ends can never justify the means. Why? because the means, the way that we live, is the true end in and of itself. It’s about living with integrity, blessing one another with our presence and inspiring others to live the same way. Or at least to try to. It’s about raising one another up to be the best that we can. It’s about not being afraid to reveal who we are, thus encouraging others to do likewise.

The ends do not justify the means. The means (the way we live) is the real end in and of itself. The means are actually more important than the ends for how we travel is more important than where we are travelling too; for how we travel reveals who we are in the world and how we see life and the people we share this world with. How we travel the journey that is life reveals who and what we truly are. It reveals our soul and is an example to others.

Let people see who you truly are. Live with integrity with love. Integrate your soul and your body. Integrate who you really are, with what you do, how you live, or at least attempt and in so doing you will begin to bring that kin-dom of love alive right here right now.

Time to inhabit space

Last Saturday afternoon I was out with friends, it was my day off and we wandered together around Dunham Massey, a place I love. I wasn’t quite myself. I could feel it in the core of me. I was not enjoying this time with friends in such a beautiful space. Something just didn’t feel right, my heart wasn’t in it. Not that it showed in how I was with them, but in the core of me I wasn’t quite myself. I was not connecting with them or the nature in which we walked. In fact if truth be told I could feel myself getting increasingly irritated as time went on. So much so that I was half relieved to get home and be on my own. Things got worse there though and I had an awful night’s sleep. I discovered that night what the problem was. I had obviously picked up some kind of bug and spent the whole night up and down to toilet.

I was not happy when the alarm went off next morning as I had such a busy day ahead. It was not just caused by the lack of sleep, I felt lousy, I felt weak. On top the services I had to lead I had appointments all afternoon too. I could have cancelled, of course I could, but I felt duty bound to continue on. I got through the day and did a decent, job as tough as it was. So many people were kind and loving and something carried me through. Love is such a powerful and gentle force. Human love and kindness and the love of God is comforting and sustaining. It kept me going all day, although I can’t claim to have truly experienced the day. I was not fully present.

That evening I went for a short walk with a friend just around Altrincham. We walked through the deserted town which just a few hours earlier would have been buzzing with activity, just around the corner the bars and eateries were crowded and full of life as people enjoyed the beautiful evening. I was just grateful for loving company, the ground at my feet and air to breathe. I smiled to myself as I thought that peace is always available to us if we allow it to be, if we allow ourselves to occupy the space. It’s amazing what a little bit of quiet time in any space can do for the soul. There is even peace to be found in the centre of town, although only on a Sunday evening these days; we no longer observe Sabbath, Sunday rest, these days. I wonder how often in life we find the time to truly experience the space in which we inhabit.

I went to bed that night, exhausted, feeling delicate, but with a sense that I would feel better in the morning.

I was wrong, very wrong. If anything I felt worse. I ate a good breakfast and thought I just need to get going, I know I’ll go to the gym. That didn’t work. I lasted less than half an hour before I gave in. So I came home showered and ate and thought, I’ll do some work. I’ve got so much to do this week I’ve got to make a start. I’ve not got the time to be ill this week, but I couldn’t work either. I just felt exhausted, I felt utterly bankrupt, mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. So I went to sleep. All I could do was rest and sleep and find peace in the silence. I dreamed too which is something I rarely am aware of doing. Wow! They were some wild and wacky dreams.

I did nothing that day and nothing that evening. I spent the next few hours in dreamtime. It was a day and night of rest and eating. Did I feel better the next day? No not really. My stomach still felt very delicate, but again I made myself eat. I also went to my usual meditation and in the silence, shared with others, I began to finally revive and reconnect to life. In that time and space I felt held by that all sustaining love and it nourished me. All I had to do was surrender to it. I then returned home and these words just started flowing out of me. I felt alive once again. Not so much physically but most certainly spiritually, emotionally and mentally.

We all need a time for rest, it is vital to living an active life. We all need time to receive love too. I know I’ve been running near to empty recently. I’ve been told off several times for not taking my day off, let alone the two I’m meant to take. I seem to have an increasingly busy life, which I am grateful for, but I do need to find time to rest, in order to truly inhabit the space in which I live. My body told me that last the weekend, it refused to continue on. It was having none of it and I had to obey. It’s interesting that it was in my stomach, the physical home of both love and fear, that it manifested itself. It always seems to be so with me. I remembered the last time this happened a couple of years ago when I got gastric flu. I also remembered another time over ten years ago when I was coming to terms with an intense and heart-breaking grief, around the time of the first anniversary of Ethan’s death when my body just gave in in the middle of Albert Square in Manchester and I had to stop completely. I could not move. I sat down on a bench, for over an hour and wept. This was the last time I suffered a bout of depression in my life, thank God. I was utterly exhausted and my body just refused to move any more. My body forced me to fully experience the time I found myself in. It forced me to stop trying to run from the space of grief. Thank God I obeyed it, because it was in this time and space of surrender that my journey into ministry began.

Last weekend was a warning to me and one I need to take heed of. You cannot run from time. 

Everyone needs a time of rest, a time to fill themselves with love, a time to take in order to give back to life. This is no doubt why a time of rest is so enshrined within the great religious traditions. We cannot live without rest, for without rest we will not appreciate the lives we have, we will not feel the love present and we will be like zombies, live a slow meaningless living death. In Exodus 31 it is said that if a person works on the day of rest they should be put to death. Now this is a bit strong, extreme beyond reason I know, but if you think about, if you don’t read it literally and instead metaphorically, if we live without a time of rest are we not living as if we were dead? Life quickly becomes meaningless and we live like zombies. This seems like a living hell, a fate worse than death, to me.

According to Jewish teaching the seventh day is a time for rest and refreshment, for even God rested on the seventh day and was “refreshed”. The time of rest is needed in order to love whatever it is we create in our lives. For without a time of rest we will not see what we create as good, we will not love those we share our lives with and the world in which we live and breathe and share our being. Such time allows us to live in the space in which we inhabit.

Rabbi Abraham Heschel claimed that “The Sabbath as a day of rest is not for the purpose of recovering one’s strength and becoming fit for the forthcoming labour. The Sabbath is a day for the sake of life.”

We need to take time to rest, to connect to life. This doesn’t have to be a particular day though. I feel frustrated by having to have Friday’s as mine, which to be honest I rarely take these days. My work and life doesn’t allow for this kind of rigidity. In fact I find that such rigidity ends up destroying the spirit of time. It is so easy to find ourselves becoming slaves to such rigidity and resenting the time as a kind of function. This is the problem of prescribed religion in many ways, it kind of destroys the spirit at the soul of the teaching. What I feel Sabbath is really about is a time for sinking into the heart and soul, a time to let go absolutely of all rigidity. It is often called free time, I see good reason for this.

Why are we so afraid to let go of rigidity?  Why are we so afraid to be set free? So many of us are.

During the early years of the twentieth century Sandor Ferenczi, a disciple of Sigmund Freud, discovered a phenomenon that he described as “Sunday Neurosis”. He noticed that seemingly normal healthy successful people would experience extreme mental and physical distress on the Sabbath. Ferenczi believed that these people, having been deprived of their normal busy routine by Sunday began to panic, as they feared that they would lose their usual self-censoring mechanism and therefore their wild impulses would reign. They felt out of control and this terrified them. Therefore this extreme pain and or mental anguish developed as a way of staving off the anxiety.

I see real wisdom in Ferenczi’s discoveries. I suspect that the fear of stopping is somehow rooted in the fear of our humanity, the fear of our animal heart, the fear of the soul, the fear of the spirit and this is why so many of us live in our heads and become slaves to rules. I’m not just speaking of the religiously inclined here either, actually I suspect that this is more of a symptom of secularism and modernism and the worship of the mind. It is a symptom of functionality of not valuing time and space. Time is sacred I have discovered. Life is not just about what we do but the spirit in which we do it. While you may be able to purchase a lifestyle, you cannot buy a life.

Again in “Sabbath” Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote

“There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.”

Sabbath is a celebration of life, of love, of our part of the creation. It is a time of liberation and appreciation. Jesus recognised this in the Gospel accounts. He was critical of the way his own tradition was practiced and it’s slavishness to the rules, not because he was opposed to a time of rest of spiritual sustenance, far from it in fact. No he was critical because he witnessed that by slavishly following the rules the pious had lost the spirit and the love at the core of the tradition. Sabbath you see is about Love, the love of life, for it is Sabbath time that allows humanity to bring the spirit of love alive in life. Again as Heschell wrote in the 20th century “The Jewish contribution to the idea of love is the conception of love of the Sabbath, the love of a day, of spirit in the form of time.” In Mark's Gospel (Ch 2) Jesus remarks “‘The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath.” This is the Love that is at the core of Jesus’s teachings, the love of God, the love of life, the love of other and the love of self. I believe that this same spirit is at the core of all the great spiritual teachings, it’s just that at times it gets lost. The spiritual life is as much about the love of time as it is a love of space and place. It’s an appreciation of the sacredness of every moment of time; the love that allows the space in which we find ourselves come alive.

This to me is our religious task, to bring alive the space in which we find ourselves. This is the whole point of Sabbath time

We need Sabbath time. We need to learn to live in the space in which we find ourselves, this a lesson I’ve once again been taught this last week or so. We need to breath in the air all around us, we need to take in life. We need to feel our feet on the ground. We need to allow our senses to awaken to all that is, we need feel the love in our own bellies and those we share our lives with. We need to appreciate the preciousness of this moment and the sacredness of all life. We need to learn to be people of time and not only of place. We need Sabbath time.

Either everything matters or nothing matters

A little phrase has been on my mind for quite some time now “Either everything matters, or nothing matters.” I’ve been talking about it and writing about it for quite some time now. “Either everything is sacred, or nothing is sacred.” Or another variance “Either everything has meaning, or everything is meaningless.” I have lived on both sides of these divides during my 43 years of physical existence. These days I believe in everything and that little bit more than everything. I have noticed that since I turned this way that life has become sanctified and every single breath has become meaning filled.

Everything matters to me and yet the world outside of my window increasingly tells me that there is no meaning to anything and that religion and all forms of spirituality are merely delusions to give us consolation in an indifferent universe. They tell me that the rituals that we engage in are just futile attempts to give our lives meaning.

Is this so? What do you believe?

21st century Britain is on the surface a secular country and yet you see ritual and spiritual activity going on everywhere. A classic example has occurred on the other side of the road to Dunham Road Chapel where I live just a last few weeks ago. A young mother Natalie who worked in the dress shop just round the corner from the chapel was tragically killed on her way to pick up her child. The response to this tragedy has been incredible as all kinds of floral and other tributes have been left at the spot where it occurred. Many have come and marked this passing. This is a deeply meaningful activity where people are connecting beyond themselves and joining together to support one another. There is a real power at work, a power that is greater than all and yet present in each and every one of us. Some may call this Love and others call it God. It is far more than mere symbolism though and it is deep and rich in meaning.

You will see examples of this everywhere. In every town it would seem. Such road side activity is not just about death and tragedy either. Ever since I first saw the “Tree of Lost Sole’s” on the road to Warrington I have noticed other road side symbolism all over the place. It seems to me that they are no different to those Holy Shrines of ancient times, perhaps they too may one day become “Thin Places”, where the barriers between this world and the other world are narrowed. I have noticed that these things are deep and rich in meaning. They have certainly brought meaning and transformation to my life as they have brought me into closer contact with a reality greater than myself.

I believe in everything and that little bit more than everything, that all life is sacred and I also believe that it is our task to sanctify all life; I believe it is our task to realise the sacredness of everything. Everything matters. Every thought, every feeling, every breath and every action.

The Buddha reputedly said “ Whereever you live is your temple if you treat it like one.” All ground is holy ground if we sanctify it. As Wendell Barry so beautifully put it. “There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.” I believe it is our task to nurture the sacredness from which we are formed and to carry that out into our world, through our lives…Everything matters you know, every breath, every feeling, every thought, every deed impacts in some way on the chain of life…Everything matters.

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin claimed “This world this palpable world, which we are wont to treat with the boredom and disrespect with which we habitually regard places with no sacred association for us, is in truth a holy place and we did not know it. Venite adoremus."

All ground is holy ground. We all stand on holy ground. We can consecrate it with our presence or we can desecrate it with our presence in how we live on the ground on which we live and breath and have our being.

This is why ritual, worship and acts of remembrance are so important because they remind us of the sacredness of all life, including our own and those of our neighbours. If nothing matters, then nothing matters. If nothing is sacred then any act of barbarism can begin to be justified. When we begin to deny the sacredness of life, we fail to recognise the sacredness of one another and we can begin to deny that we are all part of one human family, we begin to separate ourselves from one another and from life itself.

John O'Donohue described this void beautifully in his book "Bendictus: A Book of Blessing" in piece titled "The Loss of Ritual Leaves us Naked in our Rites of Passage" he wrote:

“A threshold is a significant frontier where experience banks up; there is intense concrescence. It is a place of great transformation. Some of the most powerful thresholds divide worlds from each other: life in the womb from birth, childhood from adolescence, adulthood from middle age, old age from death. And on each side there is a different geography of feeling, thinking and being. The crossing of a threshold is in effect a rite of passage.

Our culture has little to offer us for our crossings. Never was there such talk of communication or such technology to facilitate it. Yet at the heart of our newfound wealth and progress there is a gaping emptiness, and we are haunted by loneliness. While we seem to have progressed to become experts in so many things – multiplying and acquiring stuff we neither need nor truly want – we have unlearned the grace of presence and belonging. With the demise of religion, many people are left stranded in a chasm of emptiness and doubt; without rituals to recognize, celebrate, or negotiate the vital thresholds of people’s lives, the key crossings pass by, undistinguished from the mundane, everyday rituals of life. This is where we need to retrieve and reawaken our capacity for blessing. If we approach our decisive thresholds with reverence and attention, the crossing will bring us more than we could ever have hoped for. This is where blessing invokes and awakens every gift the crossing has to offer. In our present ritual poverty, the Celtic tradition has much to offer us.”

...Ritual helps us to sanctify life and therefore recognise and experience the sacredness of existence...

Either everything matters, or nothing matters. Either everything is sacred, or nothing is sacred. Either everything has meaning, or everything is meaningless. We are all part of the one human family, the family of life. When we no longer recognise we begin to fail to acknowledge one another’s sacred mystery. We begin to separate one another, we begin to dehumanise. We are not all exactly the same we have different qualities, different characteristics, different gifts to offer as well as different needs. That said we are all made of the same substance, the very same substance that the whole universe is made of, or at least the matter we have knowledge of and I believe that the same spirit runs through all life. I do not personally believe it controls all of it, but it is certainly present, always there offering the lure of its love. It is our task to choose this love, because if we do not then we will begin to separate and alienate and I believe that it is this that causes the distrust and fear that leads to hatred and dehumanising violence.

The solution is simple, I believe, as solutions usually are. The solution is a reawakening to this sense of sacredness of all life, all existence.

You see either everything matters, or nothing matters; either everything is sacred, or nothing is sacred; either everything has meaning, or everything is meaningless.” What do you believe? Do you believe that everything ought to be sanctified or that life is devoid of any meaning at all? What is your choice to be?

Sacred Spaces & Sacred Places

A few months ago I was talking with a friend about "Thin Places". A little while later they sent me the following by John Crossley Morgan.

"I was taking a morning walk down a path outside the Tintern Abbey in Wales when I discovered a rather small but sprawling tree, its branches beckoning to travellers who might rest under its shelter. I crawled under the branches and sat quietly to watch the morning sun break across the ancient abbey sky. It felt safe and even sacred there, a place you might go to rest and reflect on the mystery of life. I sensed the presence of others who had sat in that spot before.

Later over lunch I spoke with a local resident and told him how I had felt sitting under that tree. He looked at me and said quietly, “it’s called a thin place.” I had never heard the name before, so he patiently explained that to the Welsh a thin place is a very special place, a sacred spot, where you feel a presence so deep and mysterious that you have to stretch language to describe it. “That sounds like what inspires poetry.” I laughed. “Maybe that’s why the Welsh are such poets,” he said.

In the months that followed, I became more aware of “thin places” in my life, whether in my backyard garden or by a river. I came to understand that once you feel the power of thin places you tend to experience them often, in places you might have missed before. More surprisingly, I learned that when you carry a thin place in your mind and heart, you can go there wherever you feel the need. I did so not long ago before I was wheeled into surgery - scenes of a Welsh countryside before me rather than the white gowns of nurses and doctors.

Now I carry with me the idea of a thin - place where the veil separating this reality from another is temporarily lifted, so faith and imagination can catch a fleeting glimpse."

I thought it was beautiful and it got me thinking and feeling many things, many things that keep on returning...

A few months later, this Monday to be precise, I woke up with the question “What is sacred?” I have no idea why it was there that morning all I know is that it was all over me as I stepped into the day and I began the process of preparing myself to prepare the worship for Sunday.

I did what I always do each week. I posted the idea on facebook and waited to see if anyone would respond with thoughts. I then began to look for appropriate material, for readings etc. As the day progressed ideas began to form and formulate within me. The thoughts took me on a journey more towards places and spaces than general ideas about sacredness...as always it was an interesting journey.

The next morning after enjoying coffee with my usual Tuesday morning friends I walked up towards Dunham Road Chapel where I live to continue my work. As I approached the chapel I smiled as I read the banner marking 200 years of Unitarians in Altrincham. Ok we’ve not always worshipped in this building for two hundred years, but the sacred space has existed that long. There has been a community dedicated to free religious expression in Altrincham for 200 hundred years. A place where people can congregate and worship together unconstrained by creed and dogma. It is indeed a special place, a sacred place, I am coming to truly understand and appreciate this.

I sometimes like to go into the chapel and sit in different parts of it; I sometimes like to walk around it too and look at the many and varied aspects of the inside. Dunham Road Chapel has a Tardis quality about. It doesn't look much from the outside and yet when you walk inside it seems to grow in both size and beauty, it is an awesome space and place. I know it will take many years to fully know the place. I love the gardens too and often just like to stand in various spots there. I have recently developed affection for the rose trees, especially those one or two yellow winter roses that I have seen these last few weeks; I’ve been carrying a vision of those around with me these last few weeks.

Now I know Dunham Road is not one of those Celtic “Thin places” that John Crossley Morgan described above, at least not in the traditional sense and yet somehow it is. I completely connect with him when he writes “I came to understand that once you feel the power of thin places you tend to experience them often, in places you might have missed before. More surprisingly, I learned that when you carry a thin place in your mind and heart, you can go there wherever you feel the need. I did so not long ago before I was wheeled into surgery - scenes of a Welsh countryside before me rather than the white gowns of nurses and doctors.”

I carried the image of those yellow roses with me as I carried my grand dad’s coffin and spoke about his life, at his funeral a week last Thursday. It was a "thick" and deeply felt time. In that time and space I felt held by a greater reality as I have at other moments in my life, especially when I have needed it the most. There was an absolute sense of being at one with all time and space as the sacredness of the space held me in my grief. I have also felt it as the week has unfolded and I have spent time with family as we have come to terms with the loss of my step brother, our Allen. I don’t always feel this held, this connected, but then thankfully I don’t always need to.

I was recently sent the following poem "How to be poet" by Wendell Berry

“How To Be a Poet” by Wendell Berry

(to remind myself)

i

Make a place to sit down.

Sit down. Be quiet.

You must depend upon

affection, reading, knowledge,

skill—more of each

than you have—inspiration,

work, growing older, patience,

for patience joins time

to eternity. Any readers

who like your poems,

doubt their judgment.

ii

Breathe with unconditional breath

the unconditioned air.

Shun electric wire.

Communicate slowly. Live

a three-dimensioned life;

stay away from screens.

Stay away from anything

that obscures the place it is in.

There are no unsacred places;

there are only sacred places

and desecrated places.

iii

Accept what comes from silence.

Make the best you can of it.

Of the little words that come

out of the silence, like prayers

prayed back to the one who prays,

make a poem that does not disturb

the silence from which it came.

The poem is a reminder to Wendell Berry himself on how to truly be a poet. There is much in it that speaks to me as a creator of material for worship and to some extent a writer. I could write so much about but this blog is already longer than perhaps it ought to be, so instead I will discuss just three lines at the end of the second verse. These read:

“There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.”

In the poem he is speaking specifically of the space where he writes and the need to keep it pure. He seems to especially have a distrust of technology. Now I’m sure Wendell Berry would disapprove of the space that I sit and write at. I have wires and books and all sorts of papers piled up. I communicate through modern media all the time I am working and yet whatever needs to come through makes its journey there. It is most definitely not a desecrated place.

I do agree with Wendell Berry in his view that there are no unsacred places, everywhere is sacred although there are places that have from time to time become desecrated, by humanities inhumanity to humanity. This was very much on my mind last Monday, as I pondered what is sacred and what is profane in our world, on what was “Holocaust Remembrance Day”. I paused long and hard as I considered the places where inhumanity reighns. I also looked into my own heart and thought of the times I have failed to love and been overcome with hate. How many of us can truly say they have always honoured the sacredness of life and never desecrated anything or anyone, including ourselves?

All life is sacred every single aspect, even the things we don’t want and like; all life is sacred I have no doubt about that. All spaces are sacred too. That said there are still places and moments that touch us in much deeper ways. The Celts called them “Thin Places” and it seems they can be found anywhere and everywhere. And as I learnt again last week we can carry them with us when life gets a little too difficult.

Now while I do believe that everywhere is sacred I still find something extra-specially sacred about Dunham Road Unitarian Chapel, Altrincham and Queens Road Unitarian Free Church, Urmston,  especially during times of worship. So much of what I am and do is focused on what occurs at those places during specific times in the week. This time I share with the people I serve have become what I like to call “Thick Time” in  “Thin Places”. They have become a sacred times in sacred places. I see a growing purpose in the worship I share with the people I serve. I take it very seriously, although with some humour. There is nothing more serious than humour. I’ve been thinking a lot these last few months about the worship I share and how it is created. I have written before about the process, but really it’s beyond words. You can only stretch words so far.

Last September I attended a workshop led by the inspirational Unitarian Universalist Minister Mark Belletini. It was advertised as a workshop on preaching, but that was only a small part of it. It was really about creating worship in a free religious tradition. Mark shared his own personal experiences, which are vast as well as discussing what he saw as the purpose of worship. It really got me thinking about what I create and share and its purpose. More and more I see it as a sacred time in a sacred space, I see it as “thick time” in “thin places”.

A few weeks after Mark’s workshop I was reading The Unitarian magazine, particularly the editorial by Yvonne Abburrow that talked about the moments before worship begins. She talked of the need to make this time a holy time and the need to invoke “The Divine” to be present with us before worship began, it chimed very much with what I had come back from the workshop thinking. I had only a couple of Sunday’s before began to ask those I lead in worship to still themselves in silence and to "invite a loving presence to be here amongst us and to awaken within us". This was before the lighting of the chalice. It seemed important to separate that time from the ordinary and everyday; it seemed important to create time and space for worship. My intention was to create “thick” moments in these sacred times and spaces; my intention was to create “thick time” in these “thin places”

Now of course it has not been my intention to totally separate this time from the rest of time. I always end worship with a variation on the same theme with the blessings asking the congregation to take with them what we have experienced in our time together “in all that we feel, all that we think, all that we say and all that we do.” The intention is to carry the spirit that touches us in this hour out into the world in which we live; the intention is to bless the places and hearts we touch, with the light of our time together.

The congregations gather together each Sunday seeking something. They come for a reason, even if are not wholly sure what that reason is. Each week in the worship we share together I attempt to create through words, music, silence, imagery and more a sacred time and space that will enable us to open our hearts and help us connect to the Greater Mysteries of Life, to the Web of Being to know the Spirit of Life and Love, to experience God and for this to impact on how we live our day to day lives.

In these sacred spaces at these sacred times where generations have worshipped I hope our hearts are opened and our souls are touched. That we connect to that Greater Reality and that we leave these sacred spaces carrying with us at least the hope that we can make our lives and the lives of those we touch a little more sacred.

Finally I'd like to end this little "blogspot with some words by Tom Barrett “What’s in the Temple?”

"What's In The Temple?"

In the quiet spaces of my mind a thought lies still, but ready to spring.
It begs me to open the door so it can walk about.
The poets speak in obscure terms pointing madly at the unsayable.
The sages say nothing, but walk ahead patting their thigh calling for us to follow.

The monk sits pen in hand poised to explain the cloud of unknowing.
The seeker seeks, just around the corner from the truth.
If she stands still it will catch up with her.
Pause with us here a while.
Put your ear to the wall of your heart.
Listen for the whisper of knowing there.
Love will touch you if you are very still.

If I say the word God, people run away.
They've been frightened--sat on 'till the spirit cried "uncle."
Now they play hide and seek with somebody they can't name.
They know he's out there looking for them, and they want to be found,
But there is all this stuff in the way.

I can't talk about God and make any sense,
And I can't not talk about God and make any sense.
So we talk about the weather, and we are talking about God.

I miss the old temples where you could hang out with God.
Still, we have pet pounds where you can feel love draped in warm fur,
and sense the whole tragedy of life and death.
You see there the consequences of carelessness,
And you feel there the yapping urgency of life that wants to be lived.
The only things lacking are the frankincense and myrrh.

We don't build many temples anymore.
Maybe we learned that the sacred can't be contained.
Or maybe it can't be sustained inside a building.
Buildings crumble.
It's the spirit that lives on.

If you had a temple in the secret spaces of your heart,
What would you worship there?
What would you bring to sacrifice?
What would be behind the curtain in the holy of holies?

Go there now.

by Tom Barrett