Reconnecting with the Quiet Centre

 I've been away from home quite a bit for the last couple of weeks - I went to stay with a dear friend for a few days, came back home for 48 hours, then drove up to the Nightingale Centre in Great Hucklow to attend the Ministerial Fellowship's Autumn Conference. Which was marvellous.

The Nightingale Centre 

Nevertheless, in spite of the joys I found in visiting my friend and attending the conference, it was good to reach home again yesterday afternoon and, after catching up with my e-mails and recording this week's worship service, to spend a quiet evening with my husband and the cat, before having a soaky bath and an early night.

This morning, I felt the need to reconnect with the quiet centre and was glad to be able to spend some time in front of my personal shrine and simply sit. I found a beautiful greetings card which reminded me of the importance of this while I was at Hucklow... by Gwyneth Roper of Altrincham. It is beautiful and I will be adding it to my shrine...

Because I find that when I have been away, or even too busy at home, I tend to forget how deeply I need to reconnect with that quiet place inside myself, with the Divine presence within. I love the words of hymn number 21 in our hymnbook Sing Your Faith, written by Shirley Erena Murray, which reminds us all of the need for cultivating some peace in our lives:

"Come and find the quiet centre

in the crowded life we lead,

find the room for hope to enter,

find the space where we are freed:

clear the chaos and the clutter,

clear our eyes, that we can see

all the things that really matter,

be at peace and simply be."

Where do you find peace?

 

Why Worrying Doesn't Help

I am not generally a worrier, having been blessed by having been born without the "worry gene", which I've blogged about before. Nevertheless, it does get to me sometimes... I am due to have an operation on my left foot in early December to correct some deformity in my toes, which has been caused by arthritis. And I catch myself worrying about it every day. What if it goes wrong? What if the anaesthetic wears off befoe they've finished (to my horror, it's being done under a local anaesthetic rather than a general one. And yes, I understand that it will be better for me not to be knocked out, but urgh...) What if it doesn't make a good difference? What if I'm left off worse than before? What if I can't do things I can do now - like hill climbing etc? In short, a whole platoon of "what ifs" is haunting my mind, making me fretful. And I don't like it, not one little bit.

So it was good to read the wise advice of the Greek Stoic philosopher, Epictetus: "There is only one way to happiness, and that is to stop worrying about things that are beyond our control." [And I've just had a small moment of joy when I looked him up on Wikipedia: he was born in Hierapolis, Phrygia, which is now known at Pamukkale in Western Turkey. There is a World Heritage site there, an area of glorious travertine terraces which also features hot springs) and my husband and I visited them in 2013. They were astonishingly beautiful see below].

(image: Wikimedia Commons)

So, thanks to the nudge from Epictetus, I am going to try to stop worrying. It is making me miserable and will make no difference whatsoever to the outcome of the operation. 

In fact, there are very few outside events that are within our control as human beings. I believe that the only thing we are able to control is our reaction to our worries... we can allow them to take us over, removing all the joy from our lives, or we can choose to tell ourselves, "Nope, can't do anything about that. But I can let it go. I can choose to not let it get to me. I can choose to bring myself back to the present moment, the present pain, the present pleasure, and not lose myself in dark imaginings."

I appreciate that this is difficult advice for us to take, and may well be impossible for those who suffer from real anxiety, who may find it both irritating and laughable. If this is you, my reader, I apologise.

But I don't. So I'm going to try...

The Benefits of Seeing Life As It Is

 Sir Adolphus William Ward, an eminent historian and man of letters, once wrote, "The pessimist complains about the wind, the optimist hopes that it will turn, the realist hoists the sails."

Which is a clever aphorism to illustrate the differences between pessimists, optimists and realists. As regular readers of this blog will know, I am a born optimist, and proud of it. Yet Ward's words have made me wonder whether I am sometimes ridiculously naive - whether all optimists are.

Because all the hope in the world will not help any particular situation. Change for the better will only happen when our hope is translated into a firm plan to do something about whatever is bothering us. So the fierce practicality of the realist is perhaps something I should cultivate more. I can see that there is little point in being optimistic about the future, unless we are prepared to buckle down and do our bit to make it so. All the optimism in the world won't change that world. Only concrete actions can do that.

Yet I also believe that realists (who can often be quite pessimistic in their outlook, because they see things as they are, and there is so much to grieve about in the world today) might also take a leaf out of the optimists' book. The leaf of hope, the belief that something can be done. The belief that the world can change if we work at it hard enough.

A combination of optimism (so that we believe in the possibility of a better future) and realism (so that we are prepared channel that hope into action) is perhaps the best course to adopt. 

Off the Beaten Track

The German novelist and poet, Theodor Fontane, advises us, "But all the best, as everywhere in life, lies beyond the main road."

There are several different ways of interpreting this... Perhaps he means that it's important to remain curious during our lives, so that we poke our heads down proverbial rabbit holes, simply to see what's there. Even if that means sometimes wasting time, as the road leads to nowhere in particular.

Yet, I do wonder whether it is even possible to "waste time" when we are following our curiosity. Over the years I have had huge amounts of fun doing just that. And sometimes, being curious has led me to marvellous new experiences I would not have had otherwise... One example was in September 2014, when I was sent an e-mail by the London Centre for Spiritual Direction, asking me for a reference for a new student, who was a fellow Unitarian. I was inquisitive enough to click on the link about the course, which led to a deep and wonderful three years training to become a spiritual director. 

Curiosity about new ideas, thoughts and experiences is a very Unitarian thing, or so I have found. Many of us came to Unitarianism because we heard or read something about it, and decided to find out more. And, once we are in, there are many opportunities for "going off-piste", so to speak, by following our curiosity wherever it leads on our spiritual journey. Which is not uniquely Unitarian, of course, but we see it as a virtue, rather than a hindrance. We tend to enjoy exploring little known byways.

In Matthew's Gospel, we read, "Enter through the narrow gate; for the road is wide and easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it." Which may, perhaps, have been interpreted to mean that the Christian has to follow the authorised path of faith laid down in the Bible, rather than being distracted by the world around them. The problem with that, for me, is that the Bible contains so much contradictory advice. I would rather use my own reason and conscience was my authority. They haven't led me "to destruction" so far, and I don't believe they ever will (or even could).

Or perhaps he is warning us not to become so fixated on our immediate goals that we are blind to all else that is moving in our lives. This is something I have had to learn the hard way. When I am focused on a task, my attention on it is laser-sharp. It often takes a nudge from a friend (or from my guardian angel) to lift my head up and look around me, to see what is going on "beyond the main road." Which may be just as important.

So yes, let us follow our noses and see where our curiosity may lead us...