Our Favourite Song

 This week's quote reads, "Life is not a wish concert, but sometimes it plays your favourite song."

Which I suppose means that sometimes, our heart's desire will happen... the part about playing your favourite song reminded me of being a teenager, when Radio 1 would be playing on the bus on the way to school and back again, and the joy of hearing my current favourite single - whether that was by T. Rex, David Bowie, Status Quo or Queen, to name but a few - during the short journey, rather than other tracks I disliked. Because of course in those days, before mobile phones and apps such as Spotify, we were very much at the mercy of what the radio DJs chose to play. (I'm so old that this was even before the invention of Sony Walkmans [Walkmen??] - it was the radio or nothing).The worst case scenario was a journey filled with music I disliked, the best case scenario was the opposite. But it was out of my control. 

Taken less literally, I guess it is talking about moments of grace, when something marvellous happens when we are least expecting it. Perhaps we are walking under a cloud-covered sky, and the sun comes out, and the world is transformed. Or we open our e-mails, and there is good news about the health of a loved one. Or our book is accepted for publication... there are so many small joys to be savoured and appreciated, so many "favourite songs" which are waiting for us to wake up and listen to them.

Sometimes, it is more about finding the silver lining (to coin a cliché) in an unpleasant situation... which happened to me as recently as yesterday. I was on my way back home from the Nightingale Centre in the Peak District, after a rich and nourishing Ministerial Fellowship Conference, when the front right tyre on my car blew out at speed on the M1. Luckily I managed to get to the hard shoulder safely and, double-luckily, we are members of a breakdown service, so all I needed to do was ring them up and wait to be recovered. The downside was, it took two solid hours from the moment I rang them to the moment the breakdown truck arrived. I moved to the passenger side of the car, because passing lorries were coming alarmingly close to my car and making it rock and sway. I was not a happy bunny!

Silver linings: while I was waiting, the call-centre guy from Autohome rang me twice to check I was still okay and safe, and an officer of the Highways Agency also stopped to check the same. I really appreciated their kindness and care. And (crucially) I had my Kindle with me, and an interesting book to read.... But I was very glad to get home (especially as I had decided to skip lunch to get home an hour earlier!).

No Matter How Hard We Work...

 The Austrian philanthropist, Hermann Gmeiner, once wrote, "Everything great in the world only comes about because someone does more than they have to do."

And back in the day, I would have agreed with that wholeheartedly. But not any more... I believe that *many* great things do come about because someone walks the extra mile, puts in the work and makes them happen, but not all.

There are great things that happen which come about through grace, rather than by our own hard work. No matter how hard we try, we cannot make someone fall in love with us, for example. We can be as persuasive as we like, but we cannot change someone's mind, if they have decided to close it against us. However well we plan, something random may happen, which causes our lives to go in a different direction.

I think there is another element at work here, which some of us may call luck or serendipity, but which Christians call grace. I have blogged about my beliefs about the workings of grace in the world here. And whether you call it 'fate', 'karma', 'destiny' 'luck' or 'grace', I believe there is a random force at work in the world, which means that we cannot plan for greatness. 

Which is not to say that we shouldn't do our best to make great things happen, but that there has to be that extra element present to make it so.

The Nature of Chance

 The French poet and novelist, Anatole France, once wrote, "Chance is God's alias when He doesn't want to reveal Himself."

Hmm. I'm not so sure about that. By which I mean, I'm not convinced that God directly intervenes in the affairs of our world. I know that many Christians believe this, but I wouldn't put it quite so precisely, quite so unequivocally. I would rather say, there are moments of grace in our lives, when God gives us a nudge. I have blogged about what I mean by grace here. 

I believe that God does occasionally give us nudges, by heightening our awareness of a situation, of a particular moment in time, so that we can decide what to do, in which direction to head, how to respond. But it is our choice, our God-given free will, that makes the decision. I don't believe that God would ever take that away from us, by direct intervention.

I also believe that it is up to us to be sufficiently awake to be aware of these moments of grace in our lives, so that we seize the chance that is in front of us and make the best of it, for ourselves and others. This we can do through what I call sacred living, weaving moments of attention into our lives, and noticing the miracles, wonders, and moments of serendipitous grace that surround us.

Salvation in This Life

 This week's quotation is from Psalm 27 of the Hebrew Bible: "The LORD is my light and my salvation: whom shall I fear?"

I have come to interpret the words of Jesus, when he spoke of the Kingdom of God being now, here, literally. In other words, heaven is not something we go to when we die. It is something we do our best to live up to during our lives.

In his reflection Salvation, from Carnival of Lamps, Unitarian minister Cliff Reed reminds us that "to be saved is to live abundantly, following as best we can in the footsteps of the great souls, blessed with courage to take hard roads." I wonder whether salvation is, as he writes, living "free from hatred, vengefulness, and resentment, free from hypocrisy and self-righteousness, free from selfishness, jealousy and greed: To 'take no thought for the morrow', because God's Kingdom is here, now, and we are called to enter it today, as living souls in living bodies - not free from mortality, but free from its dread."

I believe that if we live the best lives we can, striving to do the best that we can, for ourselves and others, using the gifts we have been given, we are already on the road to salvation. This is not to say we can pull ourselves up by our own boot straps, as the saying goes, but that through the grace of the Divine, here, now, we can make a positive difference in the world. 

Unitarian Universalist, Jay Abernathy, wrote, "We are all blessings to this world. Our work of building bridges of connection by finding and naming and affirming those blessings we are is the work of nurturing our spirits and healing our world."

May it be so.

 

Self-help or Grace?

 This week's quotation is by that inimitable apologist for atheism, Richard Dawkins. He writes, "Our life is as meaningful, as full and as great as we make it ourselves."

And I do agree with him, up to a point. Our attitude to life, to the events, people, places and things we encounter is very much up to us. Some of us are glass half-full people, who look on the bright side, others are glass half-empty people, who see the problems and pain in everything they encounter. Then there are the realists, who insist that they see life exactly as it is. 

BUT, for those of us who are religious and/or spiritual, there is another dimension to life, which for simplicity's sake, I will call grace. Christians have many ideas as to what "grace" means, but for me, it is a free gift from God, which has the power to transform us, on the soul level. 

I love liberal Catholic theologian Richard Rohr's take on the meaning of grace. He believes (and I do too) that God's love is limitless and unconditional - we don't have to earn it; we just have to accept it. Grace is how God works in the world to wake us up and enable us to accept His/Her love. I believe that it is through God's freely-given grace that we are able to live full and great and meaningful lives.

In her wonderful book, My Grandfather's Blessings, Rachel Naomi Remen shares a beautiful prayer, which for me, epitomises the difference between relying on ourselves, as Richard Dawkins advises and accepting the gift of God's love: 

"Days pass, and the years vanish and we walk sightless among miracles.

Lord, fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing.

Let there be moments when your Presence, like lightning, illumines the darkness in which we walk.

Help us to see, wherever we gaze, that the bush burns, unconsumed.

And we, clay touched by God, will reach out for holiness and exclaim in wonder:

'How filled with awe is this place, and we did not know it.'"

Amen.

 

The Doors of Perception

Such a poetic quotation this week, from William Blake, "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite."

When I googled it to get the exact quote, I found that The Doors of Perception is also a book by Aldous Huxley, published in 1954, which explains his psychedelic experiences under the influence of mescaline in May 1953. According to Wikipedia, "Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, ranging from the 'purely aesthetic' to 'sacramental vision'."

But I do not believe that you need to be under the influence of dangerous drugs to experience the possibility of infinity in the everyday world. The "doors of perception" - our senses - may be cleansed through spiritual awareness and through moments of grace.  At such times, you may experience the ordinary world, everyday events, with a heightened awareness and infinite gratitude.

Such an experience might occur when you are out in that natural world, and are brought up standing by the singular beauty of a sunrise, or a waterfall, or a single flower in all its wondrous complexity, or a mountain. Or the sight of a star bearing bright witness in the darkening sky.

Or the sound of a beautiful song or piece of music. Pilgrim by Enya has been doing this to me, the past few days.

Or bending over your sleeping child and being filled with so much love, that you feel your heart might burst.

Gratitude and an awareness of grace can transform our world, if we let it. We just have to be awake to the possibilities and aware when the moments come. Because come they will. And they are a blessing. Sacramental vision is available to all of us.

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.

The Right Words at the Right Time

For a while, I have been struggling with some guilt, over some behaviour in my past, which has made me feel unworthy of love.

But sometimes, by purest grace, you are given the words you need to hear. Today, on Facebook, these words by John O'Donohue turned up in my feed:

"When personal guilt in relation to a past event becomes a continuous cloud over your life, then you are locked in a mental prison. You have become your own jailer. While you should not erase your responsibility for the past, when you make the past your jailer, you destroy your future. It is such a great moment of liberation when you learn to forgive yourself, let the burden go, and walk out into a new path of promise and possibility. Self-compassion is a wonderful gift to give yourself. You should never reduce the mystery and expanse of your presence to a haunted fixation with something you did or did not do. To learn the art of integrating your faults is to begin a journey of healing on which you will regain your poise and find new creativity. Your soul is more immense than any one moment or event in your past. When you allow guilt to fetter and reduce you like this, it has little to do with guilt. The guilt is only an uncomfortable but convenient excuse for your fear of growth." (emboldening mine)

This has hit me like a train. It has taken this to finally help me to recognise that I am *more* than my past behaviour, and that to carry on letting the guilt over that past behaviour define me, I have indeed put my soul into prison. And so I am worthy of forgiveness, worthy of love.

Now I can finally believe that I am worthy of love, that my past behaviour doesn't define my whole self. I can't believe it has taken so long for the penny to drop. But drop it has. Thank you God! And thank you, John O'Donohue.

Still Beautiful

The glowing orange roses I was given on Mothering Sunday have aged in an extraordinary way. They have dried up and withered, but have neither dropped any petals, nor lost their shape. Their colour has darkened from that bright silky orange to a rich old red with hints of dark yellow. They are old, yet still beautiful.

They were bought to celebrate my 25th year as a mother. Like the roses, I am older, a little more dry and withered on the outside. But they have taught me that I am still beautiful, and can still give pleasure. And that it is what is on the inside that matters.

An Early Christmas Present

I know how very lucky I am, in that my other half is responsible for the main Christmas meal. And, taking after my side of the family, we have the turkey cold, and it is cooked on Christmas Eve. This for two reasons a) it makes life so much easier on the day and, more importantly, b) it tastes so much nicer. Or that's what I think.

But the early Christmas present I'm talking about isn't that. He was listening to a new three-CD collection of Christmas carols as he started to prepare the turkey for the oven, and I was sitting in the kitchen eating my lunch. To be suddenly stopped in my tracks by CD2, track 12, Star in the South. 

Not one of the regular carols or Christmas songs, which get played endlessly every Christmas. This one is so special to me, as I had learned it in Junior Choir in my secondary school, over forty years ago, and hadn't heard it since. I could remember the words to the first two verses, but had forgotten the title, so was unable to find it. And there it was! And now I can listen to it whenever I please!

This has given me a ridiculous amount of pleasure, out of all proportion to the event. And I feel so blessed that I *can* be made so happy, by something so immaterial and incidental. As the last-minute shoppers desperately try to find the final Christmas presents, or strip the supermarket shelves of sprouts and parsnips, cranberry sauce and Christmas puddings, I am sitting here contentedly, listening to "my" carol.

Life is good! I wish all readers of my blog (for whom I am truly grateful), a very Merry Christmas or Yule or Happy Holidays, and a very Peaceful and Blessed New Year.

Crafted with Love

For the last couple of months, I have been stitching away at a beautiful cross-stitch project. It's called Indian Summer Reflection; it was designed by Martina Weber of Chatelaine Design, and it is exquisite. It's in the form of a mandala, and I'm working from the centre outwards. Last night, I got to a certain point, and decided to take a photo of it and post it in a stitching group I'm a member of on Facebook. But because I'm not particularly au fait with posting photos and such, I posted it to my own timeline first, then shared it with the group.

And received a beautiful benediction from a Facebook friend: "patiently creating such a lovely mandala is a great way to honour your life, your achievements and who you are."

Which made me think about the power of creative art of all kinds to transform lives, not only those of people who see the finished work, but also those of the crafters and artists. I certainly feel at peace when I am stitching and try to stitch mindfully.

And then, by that marvellous serendipity that I am learning to recognise as grace, another friend posted these words by Kent Nerburn, from his Letters to my Son:

"I can measure my life by the moments when art transformed me—standing in front of Michelangelo’s Duomo pieta, listening to Dylan Thomas read his poetry, hearing Bach’s cello suites for the first time.

 

But not only there.

Sitting at a table in a smoky club listening to Muddy Waters and Little Walter talk back and forth to each other through their instruments…standing n a clapboard gift shop on the edge of Hudson Bay staring at a crudely carved Inuit image of a bear turning into a man.
... It can happen anywhere, anytime. You do not have to be in some setting hallowed by greatness, or in the presence of an artist honored around the world. Art can work its magic any time you are in the presence of a work created by someone who has gone inside the act of creation to become what they are creating. When this takes place time stands still and if our hearts are open to the experience, our spirits soar and then our imaginations fly unfettered.

You need these moments if you are ever to have a life that is more than the sum of the daily moments of humdrum affairs. 

 

If you can create these moments—if you are a painter or a poet or a musician or an actor [or a dancer]—you carry within you a prize of great worth. If you cannot create them, you must learn to love one of the arts in a way that allows the power of another’s creation to come alive within you."
 And I felt as though God himself had reached down and pasted a star on my forehead.