Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

The German theologian, Martin Luther, who famously nailed his Ninety Five Theses to the doors of All Saints Church in Wittenberg in 1517, thereby starting the Protestant Reformation, has some good advice for us: "For we must ascend gradually, on a flight of stairs to other stages, no-one becomes the first in one fell swoop."

This is good advice not only for life in general, but also for the spiritual journey.  At least, for Unitarians. I understand that some Christians have a profound conversion experience and make the huge step from non-belief to accepting Jesus as their Lord and Saviour in "one fell swoop" as Luther said.

But we Unitarians tend to be more cautious. Our faith is based on what our reason and conscience tell us is right and true. And that may change over time. What I believe now, in my early sixties, is very different to what I believed in my twenties. As the 19th century Unitarian minister Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, " What we are is God's gift to us. What we become is our gift to God." And this becoming is often not a straight road, with no diversions, no backsliding. Which is why most of us only manage to move two steps forward, one step back at a time.

There are many lovely quotations about the spiritual journey in Stephen Lingwood's anthology, The Unitarian Life:  Voices from the Past and Present. Michaela von Britzke wrote, "A spiritually growing person - like a spiritually growing congegation - is developing awareness and a capacity to pay ttention to what is at hand in daily tasks and encounters, as a template for understanding and filling a place in the wider scheme of things." 

That is what why I agree with Martin Luther's quote about doing the journey step by step, stage by stage. 

And yet, as UU Sarah York wrote in Singing the Living Tradition, "We receive fragments of holiness, glimpses of eternity, brief moments of insight. Let us gather them up for the precious gifts that they are and, renewed by their grace, move boldly into the unknown."

These "fragments of holiness, glimpses of eternity" can help us on our journeys, enabling us to move onto the next step and "into the unknown." But we often need the help of others to be aware enough, attentive enough, to see them for what they are. And what these fragments and glimpses mean to one person may not speak to the condition of another (to use the Quaker phrase).

Which is what being part of a Unitarian religious and spiritual community means. Being able to talk to other people about our own spiritual journeys and to hear about theirs is so precious.

The Spirit of Place

 French philosopher Jean de la Bruyère wrote, "It seems to me that one depends on place and landscape in terms of mood, passion, taste, feeling and spirit."

I have found that to be true, up to a point. Being in certain places and landscapes brings me instant peace - for example, Salcey Forest. Which is why I go up there so much: if I am feeling agitated or fed up, I know that going for a walk in the forest will soothe me and bring my soul back into balance. I walk there in all seasons and it never fails to lift my spirits. Whether the trees are bare with the spare elegance of Winter, sharing their glorious Autumn foliage, or in their full green power (see below) being in among them brings me peace.

But our moods, passions, feelings and spirits are also affected by other things, mostly by other people. Because each person we meet bring with them their own moods, passions, feelings and spirits, which in turn can affect ours. So being with some people makes me feel happy and secure and uplifted, whereas the company of others brings me down. They seem to move through the world seeing the downside of everything, like Eeyore. I sometimes feel like that myself. Which is when I take myself off into the forest.

Which is why we all need friends like Pooh and Piglet and Tigger to comfort us and cheer us up. Good friends, who will sit alongside us, listen to us with empathy and compassion, never judging us. 

Where We Feel Whole

 This week's quotation, by Jean Paul, reads, "Only at home is one whole."

Which left me thinking, hmmm. I'm not at all sure it is true. At least not in that particular phrasing. Because "home" can be interpreted in so many ways. From the photo which came with the quotation, it seems to imply a physical building, of which you go through the front door and then you are home and whole.

Hmmm. I think it depends on what the author meant by "home". For me, "home" is more nearly the company of loved others, in front of whom and with whom I can be myself - nothing to do with bricks and mortar. It's more about feeling "at home", at peace, seen and heard for who we truly are. Which I guess is what the author meant.

Whereas "home" in the bricks-and-mortar sense of "the place where you live" can be very far from a real home. There are far too many dysfunctional families for that. And the scars of childhood (whether physical, mental or psychological) are far too frequently felt by far too many people for me to believe that "home" means "the environment in which you were brought up".

One of my favourite books by Celtic poet and theologian John O'Donohue is Eternal Echoes: Exploring our hunger to belong. In it, he writes about what I believe is the true sense of home - a place where we belong. He has much to say about longing and belonging and about "homne" as a place of sanctuary and belonging, where we feel safe and can grow. He writes, "The word home has a wonderful resonance. Home is where you belong. It is your shelter and place of rest, the place where you can be yourself." 

But sadly, it may not be the building in which we live...

Love of Words

Unitarians may not be People of the Book, like the Christians, Jews and Muslims, but we are surely the People of the Word.  Our worship services, our books, our magazines, our Wayside Pulpits, are all examples of how important we, as Unitarians, find words. Words that influence us, words that inspire us, words that make us think, words that challenge us, words which paint pictures of the wonder and beauty of the world. I would guess that the most well-read issues each year of our periodical, The Inquirer, are the two ‘Faith in Words’ issues, which are compilations of original words by Unitarians all over the country.

Unitarian minister Stephen Lingwood wrote, in his anthology, The Unitarian Life: Voices from the Past and Present, that, “We can pay attention to a cloud of witnesses from many different countries around the world and many different times in history. We can delve deep into the traditions of our spiritual ancestors and listen to their voices. In doing so, we can create a ‘living scripture’: a loose, dynamic collection of texts which brings together essential insights from the past and present of our movement.”

This lovely quotation shows that we are not limited to readings from a particular sacred text – we are free to create our own “living scripture” of readings that speak to our condition and that of our hearers. And so we do – many of the readings and prayers in our worship services have been written by Unitarians, past and present. Unitarian worship leaders are also free to choose any words they believe will have spiritual significance for us, which relate to the theme of the service.

And often, these words are poems. Someone once defined poetry as “the best words in the best order” and I have to agree. Poetry seems to be able to reach parts of people’s hearts and souls in a very special way, which prose does not generally share. The poems of John O’Donohue, William Stafford, Mary Oliver, Denise Levertov and others are frequently used in Unitarian worship services, as are the poems of more classical poets – Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Blake and so on. We are not limited to poems originally written in English either – thanks to the skills of contemporary translators. We find both wisdom and spiritual nourishment in the words of Kahlil Gibran, author of The Prophet, in those of the Sufi poets Hafiz and Rumi, in the poetry of the Bohemian-Austrian poet, Rainer Maria Rilke and in the words of Rabindranath Tagore, the "Bard of Bengal", who died 80 years ago this week.

Whichever flavour of spiritual poetry you enjoy, there is little doubt in my mind that reading these poets (and others) can nourish our souls. To quote Unitarian minister, Cliff Reed, let us "give thanks for all the honest, healing wordsmiths of the world."

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.