Two Souls in One Body

This week's quotation is by Aristotle: "Freundschaft ist eine Seele in zwei Körpern". Which being translated, means: "Friendship is two souls in one body." And I have been truly blessed in my friends.

What are the qualities of a good friend? I believe that they include compassion, love, kindness and loyalty.

So what might compassion look like in the context of friendship? It means trying to put yourself into your friend's shoes, to really understand how they are feeling, so that you can respond appropriately to their joys and concerns. It doesn't mean feeling sorry for them, or trying to "make it all better". It means truly being there for them when they need you, whether it is to celebrate or commiserate.

Love in friendship is the same as it is in any other relationship. Love is an amazing thing. I very much like science fiction author Raymond Feist’s definition: “Love is a recognition, an opportunity to say ‘There is something about you I cherish.’ It doesn’t entail marriage, or even physical love. There’s love of parents (to which I would add love of family), love of city or nation, love of life, and love of people. All different, all love.”

And love is fundamental to human well-being. I am sure we can all remember those sad, sad photos of those little children in Romanian orphanages, left in their cots 24/7, with no attention paid to them, who had withdrawn into themselves, totally unable to relate to anyone else, because they had been starved of love and attention. And it is well known that in bringing up children, even “bad attention” is better than being ignored.

I would go so far as to say that we can only become fully rounded people if we love and are loved in return. Jesus recognised this when he described “Love your neighbour as yourself” as one of the two greatest commandments.

Building loving relationships with all the people we come into contact with may sound an unrealistic proposition, but stick with it; the rewards are beyond compare. Starting from where you are is the important thing, and building up slowly. Resolving to live your life in a spirit of love means recognising that there is “that of God in everyone”, to use a Quakerly phrase. 

Kindness in friendships is closely related to compassion. It means responding to the best in another person, and forgiving the worst. It means making a positive difference to their lives, by small acts of kindness - remembering to send a birthday card, giving them a ring "just because", listening with the ear of your heart, and knowing them well enough to tiptoe round their tender spots and rejoice with them when they are happy.

And kindness need not be limited to friends. Let me tell you a true story, about the effect of a random act of kindness: It is amazing how little it takes to make a difference to the feel and shape of someone's day. A while ago I went to visit a friend in hospital, and, as is customary (or so I thought) I took her a bunch of flowers. Only to learn that flowers on wards are now strictly forbidden because of "water contamination". So I had to take them away again. But at least my friend realised that I had been thinking of her.

My original thought had been to stick them back on the back seat of my car, and take them back home with me. But then, at the main entrance to the hospital, I walked past two women (I guess mother and grown-up daughter) who were obviously waiting for a taxi or something. On impulse, I presented the older lady with the flowers. And her whole face lit up: "It's my birthday on Monday!" she said. So I wished her a happy birthday and went on my way.

I love the words of Frederick Buechner about how we act towards strangers can have a real knock-on effect. he writes: "As we move around this world and as we act with kindness, perhaps, or with indifference or with hostility towards the people we meet, we are setting the great spider web atremble. The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops, or in what far place my touch will be felt."

It is lovely to think that perhaps my gift of flowers to that woman might have that sort of impact on her day, and hence on those around her. It also made my day - her happiness made me feel good! It is amazing how little it takes to make a difference - to my life, and to that of others.

Loyalty in friendships is such an important thing. The sticking point of any friendship will come when your friend does or says something you cannot be happy about. If your friendship is true, you may be disappointed in them, but will still try to understand where they are coming from, and stand by them. A friend who deserts their friend at a time when things go wrong is a weak and feeble friend at best. The loyalty of one true friend can make an enormous difference to how one copes in a crisis. If just one person stands by you through thick and thin, it can make life bearable. To take an example from the Harry Potter books, Harry is gutted when his best friend Ron turns against him in The Goblet of Fire, because he (Ron) believes that Harry put his name into the goblet and didn't share how to do this. It is only because his other best friend, Hermione, stands by him, that he gets through the next difficult weeks.

Compassion, love, kindness and loyalty... that is what friendship means to me.

The Joys of Gathered Community

I have just returned from a wonderful, wonder-full week at the Nightingale Centre at Great Hucklow. Summer School 2019.

(I'm not sure who this photo is by, but whoever it was, thank you!)

Our theme this year was 'Theology in the Flesh: How might our embodied experience shape our answers to life's ultimate questions?' It was such a rich week... full of deep sharing, a wide range of optional activities and, above all, Summer School magic.

I have been attending Summer School each year from 2009, and every year it is the same... a bunch of disparate Unitarians from all over the UK and further afield come together in community and create something so very special. I come away at the end of the week feeling enriched and grounded and whole.

While I was there this year, I felt moved to write a prayer:

Spirit of Life and Love,
Thank you for the many blessings of Summer School;
For our sacred community, where it is okay to be authentic;
For the theme talk speakers, group leaders, worship leaders, optional session leaders and the Summer School panel, who make it all possible;
For each and every one of us, who choose to risk being vulnerable;
For the staff of the Nightingale Centre, whose quiet efficiency makes us feel so welcome;
For the joys of reunions with old friends, and for making new ones;
For the beauties of the Derbyshire countryside, which enfolds and surrounds us;
For sunlight on green grass and the sound of children's laughter;
For the chance to learn new ways of thinking and understanding, and kinder ways of being together;
For the stretching of bodies, minds and hearts, through our groups and activities and worship;
For giving and receiving,
For sharing and silence,
For food and faith and fellowship;
For all these contributions to the magic which is Summer School,
I am truly grateful.
Amen

The Power of Scent

The olfactory sense is the one that triggers memories most easily. Certain smells or scents can spin us back through years of memory, to a particular situation or person. So I agree with this week's quote from Christian Morgenstern: "Der Duft der Dinge ist die Sehnsucht, die sie in uns nach sich erwecken."

Which being translated, means: "The scent of things is the yearning they arouse in us." And the memories will be unique to each person.

For me, one of the most evocative scents is that of Gold Block pipe tobacco, which my father has smoked all my life. I only have to catch a whiff of it to think of him. And the scent of new hay takes me back to my countryside childhood, when I used to help bring the bails of hay back to the farm.

For many people, freshly-baked bread is a strong hunger trigger. Which is why many supermarkets which have bakeries pipe it round the store. And the aroma of real coffee is enticing too. Ironically, I adore the smell of real coffee brewing, but prefer the taste of my favourite Free Trade instant.

Scent can also be a negative trigger. When I quit drinking, nearly six years ago, the complicated scent of red wine would fill me with yearning, like Morgenstern says. Even now, I can smell it yards away. But today, I just sigh and move on. And when I was giving up smoking (on the numerous occasions I did so) the scent of someone else's cigarette was a powerful source of temptation.

Which scents fill you with yearning? With sadness? With joy?

Luck or planning?

This week's postcard shows a bottle on a sandy shore, with a message in it. The quotation is by Jonathan Swift: "Grosse Wendungen werden nicht immer durch starke Hände herbeigeführt, sondern durch ein glückliches Zugreifen im geeigneten Augenblick."

Google translate was a bit iffy about this, but I *think* it means: "Great changes are not always brought about by strong hands; but by/through a happy access at the appropriate moment."

In other words, no matter how carefully we plan something, there is still an element of luck or grace involved in bringing our project to fruition.

In the past few years, I have come to realise that God's grace is everywhere, if we had but eyes to see, and ears to hear. I believe that through sacred living - weaving moment of attention into our everyday lives and recognising the sacred there, we will find it. Sacred living is about living with a new level of awareness. It is about going through our days paying attention to what is happening at each passing moment. It is about noticing the presence of the divine, the numinous, everywhere: in the natural world, in other people, in ourselves, and in things that happen to us. Sacred living is about rediscovering our sense of wonder, and living our lives in response to that. Sacred living is about truly appreciating what we have. About being awake to God's grace at work in the world.

Next week, I will be co-facilitating an engagement group at Summer School. My co-facilitator and I have planned every session down to the last detail, but I am well aware that it will take luck and grace and the holding of sacred space for the usual Summer School magic to happen. I pray that it will do.

Love's Gift

This week's quotation, by Rabindranath Tagore, puzzled me somewhat. "Love's gift cannot be given. It waits to be accepted."

Unless we see 'Love' as God.... who cannot storm our hearts by force, but knocks politely, waiting patiently for us to let Him/Her in.

As Paul famously wrote in his first Letter to the Corinthians, "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way/ it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."

I believe that the best kind of human love shares these attributes. If we truly love someone, we accept them just the way they are. If the person we love behaves badly, we hold on to our love with everything we've got, and hope that our love will eventually be accepted.

And unless we can open our hearts to God, we will never truly experience His/Her Love.

I am not a mystic, but once, I had a vision of the truth, which I can only believe came from God. A few years ago, I bought myself a Celtic-style silver cross. For many years, I had repudiated the symbol of the Christian cross, associating it with death and failure. But my attendance on the Encounter course at the London Centre for Spiritual Direction was opening my heart in ways I had not foreseen.

And one morning, I was applying some moisturiser to my face, using a magnifying mirror for the purpose, when the mirror slipped, canting to a different angle. And I noticed the cross around my neck and realised that instead of a circle at the centre, it had a heart.

This hit me with the force of a revelation. I saw that God was Love at the centre of everything. A belief which has changed my life. For the first time, I was able to accept God's love for me, and to realise that my job in the world was to love others in that same wholehearted way.