The Ingredients of Happiness

 According to the 19th century German Romantic writer, Clemens Brentano, "Happiness is a silent hour, a good book, fun in happy company, and a friendly visit." Google's translation loses the rhythm and rhyme of the original, but that it is the rough meaning....

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I am writing this in on holiday in Vienna, where the second, third and fourth ingredients are present in abundance... We have been blessed with gorgeous sunny weather so far, and have been sightseeing and visiting famous Viennese landmarks. 

Yesterday morning I fulfilled the ambition of a lifetime, when we spent an hour at the Spanish Riding School, watching the Lipizzaner stallions being taken through their paces - only a training session, because the cost of a performance is prohibitive - which I have longed to do ever since reading Mary Stewart's Airs Above the Ground as a teenager. Even the training was amazing to watch, because the riders scarcely move at all, yet the horses perform complicated movements, responding to invisible signals. We didn't see any "airs above the ground", but the training session did include the diagonal trot, pirouettes, and a fiery piaffe. Just gorgeous.

We have had coffee and cake in one of Vienna's most famous coffee houses, Demel's, and have found a nearby restaurant called the Esterhazy Keller, which also appears in the all the guidebooks. On the first evening, Maz ordered the Wienerschnitzel (made with pork, not veal) and was slightly disconcerted when *two* huge schnitzel appeared rather than one... 

It's a special holiday for us, as we will be celebrating our Ruby Wedding on Sunday... but in another way, it is like all the holidays we've ever taken - we wander around the city, taking in the sights, visitng what appeals to us, and generally appreciating the heck out of it. It's something we've done for the whole of our marriage, which has built up some very happy memories... 

I hope that wherever you are, you are able to enjoy a silent hour, a good book, have fun in good company and a friendly visit...

Moving Away from Home

 W. Somerset Maugham once wrote, "You should stay where you feel happy." Which is good advice as far as it goes, but not particularly susceptible to reality.

There are so many reasons why people cannot stay where they feel happy... they might be entering a new stage in their lives, which may be for a happy reason - for example, going up to university, moving to a new village or town or city (or even country). Or it may be for an unhappy reason... they might no longer be able to cope with living in their present home, or war may have passed over the place in which they live, or famine or a host of other disasters, both natural and manmade. Which are more difficult, more traumatic reasons to move.

And, because we are perhaps conservative by nature, it will take us a while to settle in to the new place, to make new friends, to come to feel that it is our home. Even if we have moved because we wanted to, the first few weeks or months may be very difficult and we will long to be back home among familiar places and faces. But eventually, if we persevere in "making the best of it", we will, more often than not, settle in to our new community and begin to feel at home there.

Of course, this will largely depend on the kind of welcome we get in the new place. Refugees are often not *allowed* to "make the best of it". Refugees in particular, often face downright hostility rather than any kind of welcome. I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to have to uproot yourself and your family because of necessity, rather than desire. The British-Somali poet, Warsan Shire, has written a beautiful, moving and poignant poem about this, called Home, which I urge you to read. The final lines read:

               " no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear

                saying - 

                leave,

                run away from me now

                i don't know what i've become

                but i know that anywhere

                is safer than here."

New Month New Year

 It's September and all over the country, children and young people will be going back to school and college, or starting a new stage in their education. The British (non-) Summer is over and it's time to put away our holiday gear and buckle down to something new.

Having worked in or around the education system (including the Unitarian education system with the Worship Studies Course) for donkey's years, I always get a new surge of energy at this time of year - it is so full of new possibilities.... Yesterday, I visited an exhibition about Lego models with my grandson and his mum, at Northampton Museum & Art Gallery, and he was full of excitement to be going up into Year 1.

I'm also excited on my own behalf - there are two new Worship Studies Course Foundation Step courses beginning this month - one for UK students, the other for students from Australia and New Zealand. And I've been asked to help facilitate the Australia / NZ one, which begins on Monday, at 8.00 am (which will be late evening for the students). It's a new venture for Unitarian College and I really hope it goes well. It fills me with hope for the future of our beloved "uncommon denomination", as more and more people are trained to fill lay leadership roles, either supporting our current ministers or on their own, in their home congregations. 

If you are one of the people beginning a new course (or just a new academic year) this month, I hope that it fulfils all your hopes and proves to be both interesting and worthwhile. Good Luck!

Following the Path

 This week's quotation, by French poet Anatole France, reads, "If the path is beautiful, let us not wonder where it leads."

Hmm. Not so sure about that... The first image that came to mind (having just written a service about John Bunyan's A Pilgrim's Progress, was of attractive paths which lead us into bad situations, whether physically, mentally or spiritually. I believe that it is only too easy to be seduced into taking a wrong direction, if the path towards it is (or seems to be) beautiful. If we are not wide awake, it can be very tempting to simply go with the flow, to continue in the direction we're going, to follow the lead of others, without asking any questions about the ultimate destination. Or, if the destination itself seems sufficiently attractive, so it awakens our desires.

Let me give you an example from my own childhood. I followed the path of teenage rebellion by beginning smoking at the age of 13, because I desperately wanted to be accepted as one of the in-crowd. I knew it was wrong, I knew it would do me no good, but it was "cool" to smoke, so to hell with the rest of it. 

Another example might be the seduction of any life-harming substance, such as alcohol or drugs. We can be tempted into trying them because of the promise of a more enjoyable life. "Everybody else is doing it, and look how happy they are, so why shouldn't I?" is the most seductive excuse in the world.

The many social media platforms around today provide a selection of "beautiful paths" - which have the implicit promise that if we follow the right people, post the right sentiments, it will make us more popular, more loved. Which are deep and fundamental human needs. Yet they have little to do with the real world, with out interactions with friends, neighbours and family. If our standard of what is good and bad is predicated on the number of likes we get on Facebook or Instagram, TikTok or Twitter (or its rivals) we are not standing in our own integrity, standing by our own deeply held values. And that cannot be good. I have blogged about the counter-cultural path of digital minimalism here.

It is my belief that we have a duty to ourselves, to other people, and to the planet, to question each lure to take a "beautiful path", rather than blindly following it, no questions asked. Because when we take the time and trouble to examine the path we are on, and the motives we have in following it, the ultimate outcome is more likely to be good, not only for us, but for other people and our world.

If we are lucky, we will have trusted others with whom we can discuss such things, whether they are family members, friends, members of a Unitarian or other religious / spiritual community, or therapists. All can help us to see straight, to avoid the allure of "beautiful paths" which promise much, yet deliver little.

New Every Morning

I loved this week's quotation, by German philosopher, Ernst R. Hauschka: "Every morning offers the chance of a whole day." Which was accompanied by a picture of a glorious sunrise...

And I have blogged before about the joy which can come from living in the present, here. So Hauschka's words really resonated with me. But I know that I am one of the lucky ones, having so much in my life to be joyful about.

Yet I do understand that sometimes, it can be difficult to appreciate that each and every morning offers the chance to start anew. We may not have slept well, we may be feeling ill or depressed or anxious or sad. Or simply under par. For whatever reason, when we feel like this, the promise of a whole day may not mean very much. Or may even be greeted with negative feelings, as strong as dread. It may be as much as we can do to haul ourselves out of bed in the first place. All we want to do is stay there and shut the world away, rather than having to face the challenges of a new day.

If you are feeling like this, and are perhaps reading this post on your phone while lying in bed trying to psych yourself up into facing the day, I send you a virtual hug. Self-care is incredibly important, so please, give yourself permission to only do what you can, where you are, and don't beat yourself up for not being able to do more.

 

What We Take For Granted

 I chuckled over a post by Library Matters on Facebook the other day, which showed a young woman searching through a drawer in a card catalogue with the caption, "Prehistoric Googling" and couldn't resist sharing it, saying, "Oh yes, I remember it well, and contributed to many card catalogues."

For people under a certain age, here is an image of a card catalogue, from Wikimedia Commons:

Depending on the purpose of the library, there would usually be at least two sequences of cards: one arranged in subject order (classified), the other alphabetical by author. During the late seventies and for most of the eighties, I spent many happy hours producing catalogue cards and then filing them, so that my library's users could find the information they needed. The one I remember best was the card catalogue I maintained at the Library of the Chartered Institute of Transport. Not only did it contain details about books, but also a detailed index of journal articles, for all the journals to which CIT subscribed. Most of the morning during each working day was spent indexing, because if the subject of the article was a complex one, which they often were, each article would require several catalogue cards to index it adequately.

Well over thirty years have passed since I last contributed to a card catalogue. Since then, the information revolution has happened and they are redundant. (And it was already taking place during the eighties, when I stubbornly stuck to manual input, because computers scared me so much). Looking back from the vantage point of today, when almost everything is available online, it's hard to believe I spent so much time on them. These days, only one entry is required and the cross-references (all the extra "catalogue cards") are generated automatically.  Far less time consuming.

Yet I do not begrudge the hours I spent writing catalogue cards. In their time, they were invaluable to the Library's users and were, in their way, an efficient information retrieval system. Of course, online searching is far easier and can be done remotely, given access to any online catalogue. Whereas, in the old days, you had to be physically present in the library to find the information. 

It is too easy for organisations (including branches of government) to take it for granted that *everyone* has a smartphone these days and can therefore interact with the online world. But it ain't necessarily so. This was brilliantly illustrated by the film, I, Daniel Blake, which I blogged about here. I do sometimes worry about the minority of people who are unable to access online resources. Those who do not have a computer, or are unable to get to grips with using one. This is a problem which will become more and more rare as time passes, but at present, there is still a substantial minority of folk who don't have the IT skills to embrace our Information Age. They are excluded from so much because of this. To give just one example, our local GP practice now requires patients to complete an online form before accessing their services. And I do wonder how intimidating that is for some...

So I think we need to remember that not everyone is au fait with the online world and take the trouble to provide non-computerised alternatives.

Slow Down and Appreciate the Now

The 20th century Geman novelist, Wilhelm Raabe, once wrote, "Slowly, step by step, further up the stairs! Truly, the world does not offer such an abundance of pleasures that you should fly over them in jumps." (or something like that - the German to English translator on Google was vague). 

And I guess the implication is, that we need to walk through our lives slowly, "step by step", so that we are able to appreciate each beautiful object or pleasurable experience as we experience it, rather than being so fixated on some mythical future goal that we leap over them in our hurry to get there. 

Which is counter-intuitive for many of us. It is so easy to rush through the to-do list for the day (or the week) frenetically ticking off items as we go, with the idea that then, yes, then, we will be able to slow down, to rest. Only to find that when we finally reach the evening or the weekend, we are too exhausted and wound up to enjoy it properly. 

In the picture above, each blue vase of plants is beautiful in its own right, and each can be appreciated as a singular whole. How much more would we receive from our lives, if we slowed down and truly lived in the present moment? A lot, I suspect.

Meditation practicses are an excellent way of grounding us in the present, particularly following the breath. Because we spend far too much of our lives being "walking, talking heads", unaware of our bodies, oblivious to how they are moving through our days. And so we miss all the lovely moments of now-ness which are in front of us.

There was a fascinating article in The Inquirer some years ago, by Peter Hawkins. He was talking about borders, which he referred to as , "the spaces between places, between roles and between times." His argument was that we all need a breathing space between activities so that we can finish the present task properly before we start on the next. 

He recommended instituting a brief spiritual practice, which he defined as "a ritual to fully finish one event and empty myself before I cross the boundary into the next event." This could be something as simple as taking a couple of deep breaths while focussing on your breathing. I thought this was a really interesting idea, and try to follow it, when I remember.