It Depends on Your Point of View

 This week's quote reads, "Some people feel the rain, others just get wet."

Feeling the rain... when the recent heatwave finally broke and some very welcome rain fell last Monday, I dashed outside to feel it on my face. So I guess I come into the first category.

How we respond to external stimuli depends on our state of mind, our state of heart. There is always more than one way of looking at anything: positively, negatively, or (as my DH would say) realistically. I'm a glass half-full person myself, so I tend to look on the bright side of life. Yet I recognise that this is a very privileged viewpoint: I am able to do this because I have a foundation of good things in my life to hold me up, to support me.

Each person's life is a rich tapestry of joys interwoven with sorrows. I do believe that they are inseparable, and that to feel on, you have to be open to feeling the other. And having the capacity to feel great joy and great sorrow also means that we have the capacity to love greatly. Which is surely a gift? We are living in difficult times, with terrible news breaking daily, whether it is Donald Trump bombing Iran, people starving in Gaza (and in so many other places) or the myriad species of plants and animals dying out because of our lack of care for our beleaguered planet.

Yet I also believe that there is a deep joy which comes from within us, which is not dependent on circumstances and outside events for its existence - it is a divine gift. If I may give you a personal example: the other day, I went for a walk around the fields which surround our village. The weather was beautiful. Summer was showing herself everywhere, in the ditches and the hedgerows and the fields themselves. I saw a red kite wheeling overhead, riding the thermals with such grace and majesty, and heard the pure song of a skylark. It was just gorgeous, and my heart was full of joy.

Then I came home and checked my e-mails, to find that a dear friend had died in their care home. My bubble of joy burst, and I was filled with sorrow by the news of their passing.

And yet, the fact that I had been open to the joy of the surrounding natural world helped me to be able to cope with the sorrow I felt. Without the one, the other would have hit me a lot harder. I do believe that if we live our lives vulnerably, at a deep spiritual level, feeling the rain rather than simply getting wet, we become more resilient to sorrow, as we are more open to joy.

The Experience of Joy

 Mark Twain, the American author of The Adventure of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, once wrote, "Joy can only be fully enjoyed when someone else is happy too."

And yes, I agree up to a point. This Christmas, for example, was made very special by spending time with my extended family and being joyful together, finding joy in each other's company. Being joyful because everyone else was too. Yet it was overlaid by the sorrow of knowing that my mother is getting very frail and that this might be her last Christmas with us.

And when we read or see another in sorrow, it can urge us to do something to lighten that sorrow, to make the other person happy again, joyful again.

Unitarian minister, Lindy Latham, goes to the heart of the matter.. In the anthology With Heart and Mind, she wrote, "Perhaps one of the most difficult things that we have to do during our everyday lives in this troubled and demanding world is to discover how to embrace and experience moments of joy as they ae offered to us. Is it possible for them not to be dimmed through our awareness of the pain and demands of others, which can also include a feeling of guilt at our good fortune in the face of our difficulties?

    I believe that we can do this without denying the suffering of others, or turning our backs on their needs, or indeed by just leaving them temporarily on the back burner whilst we delight in our own joy.

    For me it is about learning to hold them together, so that by being alive to our own wonders and delights, this feeling can flow out to individuals and the world in a way that is both healing and enriching."

I totally agree with Kahlil Gibran's Prophet, when he says, "the self-same well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears... The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain." Because joy and sorrow are the deepest feelings that human beings can have, and I truly believe that it is not possible to experience either deeply, unless we allow ourselves to be open and vulnerable to whatever life throws our way - all  its joys, all its sorrows. If we choose to numb our responses to life, because we are scared of being too sorrowful, that we won't cope with the despair, the disappointment, the loss, the grief, we are also numbing ourselves to the possibility of feeling deep joy. And that is truly sad.

It is entirely possible to be full of joy at one point in the day, then full of sorrow later on. I remember one particular day, early on in the pandemic, when my husband and I went out for a walk around the fields which surround our village. The weather was beautiful, Spring was showing herself everywhere, in the ditches and the hedgerows and the fields themselves. We saw a red kite wheeling overhead, riding the thermals with such grace and majesty, and heard the pure song of a skylark. It was just gorgeous and my heart was full of joy. And it was wonderful to share that with my husband.

Then I came home and logged on to Facebook, to find that a dear friend had died in hospital of complications from the coronavirus. My bubble of joy burst, and I was filled with sorrow by the news of his passing.

And yet, the fact that I had been open to the joy of the surrounding Spring helped me to be able to cope with the sorrow I felt. Without the one,the other would have hit me a lot worse. I do believe that if we live our lives vulnerably, at a deep level, we become more resilient to sorrow.

Such Sweet Sorrow

It is never easy to say goodbye, and to move on, even when it is necessary, and when what you're moving on to is going to be really good. But such is life.

For a reason which I don't need to go into here, I'm stepping down from my role as Secretary of the Unitarian Association for Lay Ministry, which I've held for the past six years. That November evening in 2008, a few members of the nearly defunct Unitarian Association of Lay Leaders met at Great Hucklow, determined to keep the association going. Because we knew how important it was for lay worship leaders to have someone they could turn to, for advice and support.

At that AGM in 2008, it was decided that a name change was required, to reflect the Association's broadening remit. Our new name, Unitarian Association for Lay Ministry, was chosen to indicate that we see our principal role as that of supporting lay ministry in all its forms, not just those with pastoral oversight for a congregation.

The six years since then have been an exciting and enriching experience for all concerned.  Membership has nearly trebled to over 60, and as David Monk wrote on the History page of our website "We communicate with each other, support each other, learn from each other, and continually pull together in seeking to achieve our objectives." We have also been consulted about changes affecting lay worship leaders and congregational leaders, and have made the views of our members known. We have a good website and a twice-yearly newsletter. Our annual conference usually attracts about 25 folk, and our close links with the Worship Studies Course ensure that we remain fresh and up-to-date.

So it's going to be hard to walk away, and let other folk step in. I am so very proud of what the Association has accomplished in the last six years, and confident that it will go on from strength to strength, as more and more trained worship leaders from the Worship Studies Course Foundation Step join us.

As Tim Radford wrote in The Guardian in 2005, "In a here-today, gone-tomorrow world, there is a certain satisfaction in having existed at all. The exuberant joy of being is tempered by the wistful knowledge that nothing is forever. The Romans had a phrase for it: ave atque vale, hail and farewell. ... Parting, neuropsychologists say, is a stretching of emotional bonds: the sorrow is tinged with the sweetness of the memories."

And so I have found. And so I feel now. Ave atque vale indeed.