View from the Hill

For the last two days, I have been on an individual guided retreat at Holland House. The poem below was written while I was there ...

“You yourself are what you are seeking”.

A living manifestation of God – She is in all things.

God is in me – I am made in His image –

perfect and complete.

The whole universe is sacred.

Outside my window, a butterfly

browses among the sun-warmed flowers.

She too is a manifestation

of the Divine in creation.

But she regrets not the past,

nor has any care for the future,

She just does her thing,

flitting from flower to flower,

gaining sustenance for her present need.

Because of her, they will germinate

and seed – giving life to a new generation.

All of creation is interdependent.

It is only we, in our human arrogance,

who try to live outside this flow of life,

between God and the rest of creation.

The wise among us will “go with the flow”,

living in present awareness

of our part in the Circle of Life.

We could learn from the animals.

A dog, out for a walk with his master,

is only aware of present pleasures:

the feel of the earth under his paws;

the sights and smells and sounds

around him, and his perfect contentment

in spending time with the one he loves.

If the man is wise, his sensations

will be the same. But probably,

he will be “walking sightless among miracles”,

his mind on other matters.

God is manifest in the world

and in ourselves. If we pay attention,

How could we not love Him

“with all our hearts, souls, mind and strength”?

Wake up and smell the roses!

Over-Reliance on Technology

Yesterday afternoon, I had a funeral to do, in a part of Birmingham I’m not familiar with. So I set my sat-nav, planning to arrive half-an-hour early, as is my custom. But the sat-nav went loopy on the way there and I got well and truly lost. It was a good job I had planned to get there with half-an-hour to spare, as it was more like ten minutes to spare by the time I finally found the place. I had to sit and breathe for a few moments, to calm myself, before I got out of the car. At one point I was seriously worrying that I wouldn’t find the place at all, and that I’d be late for, or miss, the funeral. Which would have been dreadful.

It made me think about how reliant on technology we (I) are these days. I had set the sat-nav with the post code for the Crematorium, and set off with blithe confidence that it would get me there in good time. But for some reason, it malfunctioned, and I was up the creek without a paddle. I stopped and asked for directions in a newsagent, and the directions he gave me were so confusing that I got lost again.  

I tried to use Google Maps on my phone, but couldn't remember the password for the App Store, so that was no good. And I didn't have a road atlas in the car ... a mistake I plan to rectify! In the end, I stopped re-set it with the post-code, and still drove past and had to turn round. But I had found it - more by luck than technological wizardry.

After the service, which I am thankful to say went really well, I set the sat-nav again for home. And it took me a completely different (and much more direct) route back to the M6. 

Before the days of sat-navs, I used to use the AA Route Finder to get directions. I think that in future I will look up unfamiliar destinations on this again, so that at least I know the correct junction of the motorway to get off on.

Restoring Former Glory

Last November, I started playing the piano again, after a gap of several years. Not surprisingly, my poor piano had fallen out of tune in the interim, and so I asked my piano teacher whether the piano tuner I used to use was still in business. He was, but could only make an appointment at the end of January - yesterday.

It was nice to see him again, but when he walked in to the lounge, I made some throwaway comment about it having been "a while" since the piano was tuned, and to my slight embarrassment, he whipped a record card out of his pocket, looked at it, then grinned across at me and said: "Yes, May 2007." 

Oops.

For the next two hours I sat and stitched, while he did whatever it is piano tuners do, and restored it to its former in-tune glory. I love to watch skilled people at work - whether they are knitters, crocheters, artists, or in this case, piano tuners. It reminds me that we all need each other - I couldn't tune a piano if I lived to be a hundred. Nor cut hair, nor a million other tasks which others do so skilfully for me.

We are all inter-connected in a very fundamental way, by the services we render to one another. And I am most grateful, for my privileged life - a life in which such services are available, and easily accessible.

The Commonwealth of God

Like many people, I have been horrified by the bomb attack at the Boston Marathon earlier this week, and feel so sad about this renewed evidence of violence and hatred in the world.

I have been reading Forrest Church's The Cathedral of the World: A Universalist Theology this week. One passage in it really hit home. He writes:

"Members in the Commonwealth of God are not bound together by the specifics of their religion, for the nature of our interdependence does not require this. Rather we are bound by the shared recognition that when one person suffers, all suffer; when we violate one life, all lives are violated; when we pollute the earth, all living things are stained; when one nation threatens the security of another, it, too, becomes less secure; when we place the planet in mortal danger, we hazard the future of our own children as well as the children of our enemies.

Competitive virtues elevate winners by diminishing losers. This is especially hazardous in competition between countries. In the age of the global village and the global economy, while the balance may be tipped temporarily in one side's favor, if sustained such imbalances set up the possibility of a tidal wave of terrifying proportion, which may start all the way on the other side of the world, and end up crashing down on our own shores.

Given human nature and history, to propose a relational, cooperative, and fraternal, or kinship-based, ethic fashioned to strengthen the interdependent web of being may seem idealistic and naïve. In fact, it is desperately realistic. Interrelatedness is not simply a theological concept; it is a new truth."

Amen, amen.

The Interdependent Web of Life

These are the words of Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman philosopher:

"All things are interwoven with one another; a sacred bond unites them; there is scarcely one thing that is isolated from another. Everything is coordinated, everything works together in giving form to the one universe. The world-order is a unity made up of multiplicity: God is one, pervading all things; all being is one, all law is one (namely, the common reason which all thinking creatures possess) and all truth is one - if, as we believe, there can be but one path to perfection for beings that are alike in kind and reason."

If we believe that this is so (and I do) then everything we do has a knock-on effect on everything and everyone around us. I read these words as a reminder and a warning - that all of life is sacred, and it is our duty to treat others (and the earth) "with absolute justice, equity and respect". (Charter for Compassion).

Forrest Church quotes Unitarian Universalist minister David Bumbaugh: "We are called to define the religious and spiritual dimensions of the ecological crisis confronting the world, and to preach the gospel of a world where each is part of all, where every one is sacred, and every place is holy ground, where all are children of the same great love, all embarked on the same journey, all destined for the same end." Church continues: "Unlike those religions that view the world as a charnel house from which we must escape, Unitarian Universalism reveres the creation and challenges us to nurture it, even to defend it against ourselves when we lose our sense of intimacy with the earth as the ground of our being, the living web that connects us."

May it be so.