Wanting What We Don't Have

I believe that this week's quote, by 17th century French writer and moralist, Francois de la Rochefoucauld, is advice which, if taken by the world's governments, by all of us, would transform the world for the better. It reads, "Before you ardently desire something, you should check the happiness of the one who already owns it."

We seem to be driven by a base desire for wanting more - more of everything. I have blogged before about the wonderful concept of Enoughness - of recognising that (at least in the West) we already have more than enough of everything. As John Naish wrote, "There is no 'more'. We have to learn to live 'post-more'."

So why this seemingly bottomless desire to have what the other person has? Perhaps if we learned to pause, and to check "the happiness of the one who already owns it", we might realise that actually, they are not that much better off than we are. And, perhaps more importantly, if we only paid attention to what we already have, we would be far more content, far less acquisitive.

It's hard - we live in a world in which the advertising and marketing industries batter our minds ceaselessly - "You need this", "Your life will be incomplete without that", and, worst of all, the more subliminal, nasty message, "Everyone else is having a better time than you are." I am already weary of the wall-to-wall Christmas adverts on Channel 4 - painting a picture of the "perfect Christmas", which is ours for the getting, so long as we lay out our hard-earned cash on X, Y, and Z. Top of my "non-essentials" list this year is a cocktail-making machine (£100 off!!) and the ubiquitous Quooker. 

This year, our immediate family (me, my husband, my son and his partner, and my daughter and her partner) have decided to do a Secret Santa between us, and only get presents for the children. Which we've done in the wider Ellis family for years, thanks to the wisdom of my sister. Because Christmas is (or should be) about giving pleasure, rather than driving ourselves into debt to buy presents they don't really want for people we only see a couple of times a year. We are opting out of the Christmas rat race and concentrating on spending quality time together instead. Which I believe is far more conducive to long-term happiness than that cocktail maker.

On a national level, the "ardent desire" for something is driven by lust for power and land, and fear of the other. But wouldn't it be wonderful if governments said to themselves, "Are we really going to be happier if we destroy the lives of the people of this other nation? Should we stand back a little before jumping into the familiar pattern of violence, and really think about other ways we could improve the qualities of our own lives, here in our country?" 

Which I'm sure are questions which are never, ever asked. Sadly...

Holding on to our Dreams

There's a wonderful post doing the rounds on Facebook at present, in the wake of the US election result, written by environmentalist, Chris Packham. It reads, "Things have just got a lot more difficult. Here's what I think. I had no control over what just happened. None. But I do have control over how I will react to it. And I am not going to give up on the beautiful and the good, the grip on my dreams just got tighter."

Thank you, Chris. This is such a timely reminder, when the world seems to have gone to hell in a hand basket (incidentally, *why* in a hand basket? - I've never understood that!). Yes, we will need time to grieve, to mourn what might have been. And no emotion is wrong - if we need to scream our woes to the skies, that is fine, or weep quietly in a corner.

But we must not allow this election result to destroy our dreams of a better, fairer, more peaceful and equitable world. A world based around the values of love and compassion, justice and peace. Working towards those dreams, witnessing for those values, is under our control, is in our gift. People like Tr*mp will ultimately only win if everyone else gives up fighting.

Another quote doing the rounds comes from JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: 

"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

"I am not going to give up on the beautiful and the good, the grip on my dreams just got tighter." "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." 

Different words, same message. In the hard, dark days ahead, may we all be given the strength, the passion, to hold onto our dreams.

The Importance of Self-Love

When I read this week's quotation, by the 13th / 14th century German theologian and mystic, Meister Eckhart, I had a strong reaction to it. It reads, "All the love in this world is built on self-love."

No, I thought, surely the point of love is that it is self-less, concentrated on the other. Then I remembered something Brene Brown once wrote, in The Gifts of Imperfection. Part of her definition of love, gleaned from her extensive qualitative research, reads, "Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow; a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them - we can only love others as much as we love ourselves." (emphasis mine)

She admits how hard this is to hear, let alone put into practice, because most of us tend to be harder on ourselves than we are on the people we love. She says, "I know I can talk to myself in ways that I would never consider talking to another person. How many of us are quick to think, God, I'm so stupid and Man, I'm such an idiot?"

She opened the question on her blog in 2009 which, perhaps not surprisingly, sparked quite a fierce debate. And in her book, she shares one wise comment by Renae Cobb: "Certainly, the people we love inspire us to heights of love and compassion that we might never have achieved otherwise, but to really scale those heights, we often have to go to the depths of who we are, light/shadow, good/evil, loving/destructive, and figure out our own stuff in order to love them better. So I'm not sure it's an either/or but a both/and. We love others fiercely, maybe more than we think we love ourselves, but that fierce love should drive us to the depths of our selves so that we can learn to be compassionate with ourselves."

So maybe Meister Eckhart and Brene Brown are both right: self-compassion is a vital component of being able to love others well. Because when we are continually down on ourselves, even if only inside our heads, it will inevitably affect how well we are able to respond to, love, others. 

The Benefits of Meditation

I'm away from home this week and had forgotten to bring this week's postcard with me. So I appealed to my friend, with whom I am staying, for a suitable quote, and she came up with this: "Buddha was asked, "What have you gained from meditation?" He replied, "Nothing. However," Buddha said, "let me tell you what I have lost: Anxiety, Anger, Depression, Insecurity, Fear of old age and death."

And its truth reverberated in my soul. I find that meditating regularly, whether I simply sit in silence, or walk in nature, or peacefully craft, is such a benefit. A time out of my daily life, a time away from the busy-work that makes up my days, is hugely beneficial. When I return to that daily life, it is with a new feeling of spaciousness, serenity. I am able to cope far better with the small vicissitudes of my normal existence, because I have allowed myself the time to simply Be. As someone once remarked, "We are human beings, not human doings."

I blogged some time ago about the benefits of simply breathing, here. And about the practice of taking a breathing space between activities. And I stand by what I wrote then: "Meditation practices are an excellent way of grounding us in the present, particularly following the breath. Because we spend far too much time 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."

For me, living in the moment by consciously breathing, by choosing to be aware of the present as it unfolds around me *does* make me less anxious, less prone to anger, more able to let go of the petty insecurities and irritations when they happen. Give it a go -  I hope you will discover that I am right.

Nothing is Certain

The early 20th century German author and painter, Ringelnatz, once wrote, "What is certain is that nothing is certain. Not even that."

And he is right. We humans like to pretend that some things in our lives are certain, because it is more comforting to believe so. But actually, the only true certainty in life is that each of us will die, some day. We cannot be absolutely, 100% sure of anything else - not of the existence of God (or whatever we call the Divine presence in our lives), not of the health of our bodies, not even that the person or people we love will still love us tomorrow. Nothing is certain.

Which is why we have faith. I would not trade certainty for questioning and doubt, and have blogged about this here. For me, the beauty of faith is that it is based on trust, rather than certainty. We can trust that God exists, and then act on that trust. We can do our best to increase the probabilities that our bodies will remain healthy (by eating healthy food and regular exercise and taking our medication). 

I believe that having faith is vitally important for human thriving - we have to act 'as if' the things we believe in are certain. In this way, through faithful work and trust, we can make it more likely that the things we have faith in will come to pass. But we can never, never be certain that they will. We can always and only have faith, trust. And that is fine.

A few years ago, I shared a beautiful poem about faith and trust, by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. I make no apology for sharing it again, as for me, it sums up beautifully why we don't need certainty.

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

We are quite naturally impatient in everything

to reach the end without delay.

We should like to skip the intermediate stages.

We are impatient of being on the way to something

unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress

that it is made by passing through

some stages of instability - 

and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;

your ideas mature gradually - let them grow,

let them shape themselves, without undue haste.

Don't try to force them on,

as though you could be today what time

(that is to say, grace and circumstances

acting on your own good will)

will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit

gradually forming within you will be.

Give Our Lord the benefit of believing

that his hand is leading you,

and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself

in suspense and incomplete.

I find this incredibly soothing...

Using Our Own Reason

The 18th century German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, once wrote, "Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is the inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another." And it continues, "Have courage to use your own reason - that is the motto of enlightenment."

Of course, we do need to have "direction from another" in the early stages of our quest for truth and meaning in life, but I completely agree that at a certain point along the way, it is up to each of us to examine and evaluate what we know or believe, and then choose our own path, in the light of our own reason, conscience, and lived experience. Rather than blindly accepting what someone else has told us is true.

Which is a great part of what I love about being a Unitarian. Of course, if your desire is for answers, set down in black and white without contradiction, Unitarianism is not the place for you. I know that some may find the lack of a creed, a denomination-wide accepted set of beliefs, daunting. Not me - I *love* the fact that Unitarians do not claim to have all the answers, and accept that there is room for questioning and doubt. We are all on the same journey, supporting each other along the way, and sharing our discoveries and spiritual breakthroughs, in our worship, and in our lives.

We are held together by a shared attitude to religion and spirituality. All of us believe profoundly in the necessity of person freedom of religious belief (with the proviso that those beliefs do not harm anyone else) - the freedom to grow, and to act in accordance with our beliefs, to work out our own answers, using our reason on the path to our own personal enlightenment. We share a devotion to spiritual freedom and find that the insights of others can enrich our own beliefs. 

At the same time, we appreciate that humankind must accept responsibility for their choices and their acts. Every time we encounter a new person or situation or way of thinking, we find that some are better and others worse, by trial and error, by measurements of happiness and welfare, by comparison and reflection. This is how we cultivate responsible behaviour - by using reason as our guide.

Yet of course, there are irrational elements in our experience of ourselves and our universe - mysteries that are beyond reason. But how else can we comprehend or respond to them, at least in part, unless by using our reason? The process works like this: find out what commends itself to your reason as truth and then accept that as your authority. If we work at it faithfully, our whole lives long, with help from fellow pilgrims along the way, we might become better, wiser, and more loving human beings. And if we then put our better, wiser, more loving beliefs into action, who knows? It might even lead to a better, wiser, more loving world.

 

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

 I came across a beautiful short poem by John Roedel in my Facebook feed this morning: 

"Between a rock

and a hard place,

let me be water,

let me be water,

let me be water."

And its truth convicted me. Sometimes in our lives, we feel as though we are completely stuck between a rock and a hard place, between two hard and unpleasant things, and that there is no way out. Roedel's words reminded me that water always finds its way through, somehow. That it has the power to seep through the smallest cracks in the reality of our lives, and flow on, undisturbed. And that in the end, it also has the power to wear down those rocks, soften the edges of those hard places, and bring us into a new equilibrium.

There are so many hard places in all our lives. The temptation can be to armour up against them, to protect our vulnerability by enclosing our souls in a carapace of "I'm fine", "I'm dealing with it", "I can cope". It can feel much harder to allow ourselves to feel the feelings, to be open and vulnerable, to trust that life is ultimately good, even if we are not in a particularly good place, right now.

I attended my regular yoga class yesterday evening, and the instructor always begins in the same way. She has us lying on our backs and talks us through a series of breathing and relaxation exercises to open up our bodies, enabling them to stretch and soften. I believe that being open and trusting and vulnerable has the same effect on our souls, enabling them to stretch and soften too. 

So John Roedel's words will be a mantra for me in the days and weeks to come: "Between a rock and a hard place, let me be water."