Facing the Sun

 This week's quotation comes from Chinese wisdom sources, "Always turn towards the sun, then the shadows will fall behind you."

And there is a certain amount of wisdom in that. Reading it reminded me of Plato's famous allegory about the prisoners in the cave, which he used to think about the nature of belief versus knowledge. You may be familiar with it: There were some prisoners chained together in a cave, facing the cave wall. Behind them is a fire, and between them and the fire are people carrying puppets and other objects, which cast their shadows on the wall of the cave. The prisoners, who can only see these shadows, believe they are real.

Plato goes on to wonder what would happen if one prisoner finally managed to free himself, see the fire and realise that the shadows are not real. He escapes from the cave and discovers there is a whole world outside, which he was previously unaware of. He believes that the outside world is more real than that of the cave. So he decides to go back to the cave to try to free the other prisoners. 

In a weird twist, he is blinded on his return, because his eyes aren't used to real sunlight. The other prisoners see his blindness and believe they will be similarly blinded if they try to leave the cave.

Most of us believe that what we see is true.  So most of the time, it makes sense to face the sunlight, to see what is real, rather than relying on the words of others to tell us what is true.

On the other hand, when we ignore the shadows in our lives, we are not living authentically. Because all of us have shadows - the things in our lives we do not want to face up to, the parts of our personality we are in denial about. Dealing with these aspects of our lives is called shadow work, and I have blogged about it here. I do believe that it is only when we go deep that we can understand ourselves fully. Doing this necessary shadow work can be very painful, but it is necessary, if we are to be whole. Life isn't all sunshine and rainbows and it is by learning from the shadows, from the sad or painful things that happen to us, that we grow.

The Time to Learn Wisdom

 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the 18th century Swiss philosopher, wrote, "Youth is the time to learn wisdom. Age is the time to practice it."

If this was an ideal world, I would agree with his sentiment. But it's not... in my experience, it is a rare "youth" who learns wisdom. I certainly didn't. Many mystics, including Richard Rohr, suggests that our lives are divided into two parts. The first, which probably lasts into our forties, unless we are lucky, is the First Half, during which we grow up, establish our place in society and take on the values and norms of that society.

The Second Half, when we are in our forties and onwards, is when we come to wisdom and realise that there is more to life than security and survival, getting on and getting ahead. For me, it started in my early forties, when I first read the slim Quaker booklet, Advices and Queries, which is full of challenges and questions as to how to live a good and wise life. It has inspired me ever since.

But it was doing the Worship Studies Course and then ministry training, when I was in mid forties and very early fifties which really broke me wide open and helped me to understand that I was still very much in the First Half of life and needed to unlearn so much in order to make space for true wisdom.

Since then, I have striven to become whole, to integrate all the parts of my life into one and to recognise the truth in the words of American writer, James Truslow Adams, "There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it ill behooves any of us to find fault with the rest of us."

Be Gentle

 I have written about being kind and gentle often in this blog, but I feel the need to revisit this topic, after the defeat of the England football team in the UEFA Cup on Sunday evening. Even the least football-conscious among us must have caught a sense of the high hopes riding on that game. A lot of people will be feeling bitterly disappointed, because the team didn't win.

(Max Pixel)

Two of the fruits of the Spirit mentioned in Paul's Letter to the Galatians are kindness and gentleness. But when people are bitterly disappointed, it is often the automatic reaction to lash out at anyone they may feel is to blame. Sadly, as I expected, our social media feeds and newspapers the last couple of days have been filled with quick and judgemental (not to mention downright racist) reactions. The England team, who have been the media's darlings over the last few weeks, are now their scapegoats.

So fickle. So very, very unfair. 

But there have been messages of support and kindness too, which is good.

I love the reminder given by the anonymous poet, "Be gentle with one another... /  Who of us can look inside another and know / What there is of hope and hurt, or promise and pain? / Who can know from what far places each has come / Or to what far places each may hope to go."

We can't... but it is so very easy to judge others by what we see and hear and read on the surface. The poet further tells us to "Handle with exceeding, tender care, for there are / Human beings, there within / Human beings, vulnerable as we are vulnerable / Who feel as we feel, / Who hurt as we hurt."

Earlier on Sunday, I watched the Wimbledon Men's Singles Final, between previous winner, the Serbian player, Novak Djokovic, and the young Italian player, Matteo Berrettini. And it became very clear, early on in the match, that the Centre Court crowd were rooting for Berrettini. There was chanting, "Matt-e-o, Matt-e-o" and each time the young Italian won a point, the applause was rapturous.

Which was okay. But it was not okay that they applauded when Djokovic made an error. I wasn't surprise to notice that it began to get to Djokovic. It must be so hard to play your best, knowing that the audience is rooting for the other guy. Even though off court, the two men are friends and often play together. 

The Wimbledon crowd had evidently not heard the words I just quoted, about the vulnerability of each human being. They were partisan and didn't care who knew it. And it did feel unkind, not gentle or considerate at all.

Why do we do this to each other? What can't we all just get along? Each of us is a sentient human being, with the power of choice. And our choices have the power to dictate how we react to other human beings, to incidents in our lives and in the lives of others.

So let us be gentle with one another in the coming days and weeks. May we remember that each person we meet is a vulnerable human being, each with their own preoccupations, hopes, dreams and fears, and try to respond with kindness and gentleness in every encounter that we have with others.

Finding Peace

I have just returned home from spending a couple of days on retreat with my covenant group. We are all Unitarian ministers, who meet together a couple of times a year (and inbetween via Zoom) for mutual support and spiritual sustenance.

It's the first time we have been able to meet in person for nearly two years and it was wonderful to spend some time together at Holland House (pictured above).  There was a lot to catch up on. 

Holland House is a Christian retreat centre in Worcestershire and has its own very peaceful atmosphere. When I arrive there, I can feel a sense of peace stealing into my soul, like it does every time I turn left into the entrance to the Nightingale Centre at Great Hucklow. And each time I walk up into Salcey Forest.

I think that everyone needs to have some place where they can let their hair down, be themselves, not have to put on any 'front', or pretend to be who they're not.  And some people who see us as we are. 

It is wonderful to be with people who know you 'warts and all' and like you in spite of, or even because of them. With people who will listen deeply and with compassion. Without judgement. Such friendship is a great blessing.

At their best, our Unitarian congregations are such places, such gatherings. 

Where do you find your place of rest? People who see and hear you deeply? Treasure them, for they feed our souls.

Faith and Doubt

 This week's quote, by Austrian writer, Karl Heinrich Waggerl, is a very Unitarian one: "Faith moves mountains, doubt climbs them." 

Because Unitarians take very little on trust, or at least, on blind faith. We ask questions, apply our reason to our beliefs. I have blogged about this before, here.

We live in a very strange world. Bertrand Russell once wrote:  "In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted." Which I wholeheartedly agree with. But in our world today, in both politics and mainstream religion, it seems to be certainty that is prized. To doubt or question is seen as somehow bad, or incorrect. I find this quite ironic, particularly in the religious sphere. Many mainstream religions, in both Christianity and (for example) Islam, insist that their followers believe X, Y and Z, otherwise they are not deemd to be "proper" Christians / Muslims / fill in the blank yourself. 

The reason why I find it odd is that the definition of faith always used to be "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen", to quote the Epistle to the Hebrews. Frederick Buechner writes, "Faith is not being sure where you're going, but going anyway. A journey without maps. [And Paul] Tillich said that doubt isn't the opposit of faith, it is an element of faith."

We can never prove that God exists (or doesn't exist), but we can have faith that He (or She or They) does. And live our lives as though we believed it. Which includes a healthy dollop of doubt - not taking anything for granted, not accepting anything without questioning it first. I believe we should cherish our doubts, keep asking questions, for this is how we grow and mature in faith.

Forrest Church, late minister of All Souls Unitarian Church in New York City, summarises it very neatly in his book Born Again Unitarian Universalism: “We value one another’s thinking. We respect one another’s search. We honour it even when it differs from our own. We resist imposing our perception of truth upon one another. Embracing a kind of theological pluralism, we affirm the human importance of our joint quest for meaning in life without insisting upon the ultimacy of any single set of theological criteria … At our best, we move … to a fundamental trust in our own and one another’s  inherent ability to make life meaningful.” 

We share a devotion to spiritual freedom, and find that the insights of others can enrich our own beliefs. What could be better?