First Steps

Last week, I had a profound spiritual experience, which is too precious and private to share here.

In the week since then, I have come to realise that I am taking the first tentative steps on a journey, that will take the rest of my life. With this has come the slow recognition that although my knowing has changed, all the rest of my life still has to catch up. In habits, in attitudes, I am still the same person I have always been, and it will be the work of a lifetime, with God's help, to get myself into alignment, into wholeness, into belonging.

A prayer for the journey:

Spirit of Love, without and within,
May I be aware of you as I make this journey.
Guide my steps,
That I may grow into this new life,
Governed by compassion, integrity and simplicity.
Help me to recognise that this journey
Will take all of my life
And that my steps will falter,
Doubts will come,
But that anything is possible with You.

Amen

Nothing New Under the Sun

The Teacher in the Book of Ecclesiastes famously laments that "there is nothing new under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9). This was brought home to me this week, when I read the following words:

"Our movement has lost power and helpfulness through our recent disinclination to speak frankly with each other on the subject of religion. We hesitate to let our closest friends see the depth of our convictions, and we show great reserve in religious matters in our own households. This, no doubt, is due to our wholesome fear of cant and to our conviction that prayer at its highest is an inward movement of the soul to God. We rightly distrust those who can speak with ease on any occasion concerning the deepest experiences of the soul, and lay bare to the public gaze the secrets which the heart learns in private communion with God. We dread to be artificial and insincere, and we shrink from methods which appear to turn faith into an exciting and popular pastime. But surely we lose a vast part of the help religion can bring us, if we hide the best side of our nature from those we love.

... We have no common rites, ceremonies or dogmas, which seem to make a simple beginning in fellowship for earnest souls in other Churches. Yet we have a spiritual faith which has taken the form of definite convictions in our minds and which can furnish the necessary means of communication with others who belong to the same home and the same Church.

We must surrender our excessive individualism and make our faith a social force. We must abandon our reserve and speak with the frankness and openness to our friends and to each other concerning our message." (emphasis mine)

For me this is a fair summary of where Unitarianism is at the moment. And yet, it was written nearly 100 years ago, in 1922, by Alfred Hall, in the now little-known Aspects of Modern Unitarianism, which I discovered languishing in the Vestry cupboard in one of our Midlands churches.

As then, so now, our challenge is to make our faith a social force and to speak with frankness and openness concerning the wonderful message of Unitarianism.

Sharing the Risk

Yesterday I attended a workshop led by Rev. Andrew Hill, called 'Writing Worship Material'. Nine of us from the Midlands and beyond gathered at Unitarian New Meeting Church in Birmingham. I don't know about the others, but I was feeling a bit apprehensive about writing my own prayers, not having much experience of doing it. I've always felt that other people's words are so good, why write your own. But I've come to realise that there are times when your own words are best.

It was such a good experience. After some theory and hints and tips, Andrew encouraged us to get writing. During the day, each of us wrote five prayers: a 'Tweet' prayer (maximum 140 characters), some opening words, some closing words, a prayer on the theme of an address, and our own versions of the Lord's Prayer. I was blown away by the quality of other people's prayers - all different, but all heartfelt and real.

Here is my 'Tweet' prayer: Spirit of Life and Love, May we live our lives in a spirit of compassion, that we might leave the world a better place than we found it Amen


And it wasn't such a big deal after all. The lesson I've taken from yesterday is that sharing the risk of doing something with others makes it easier and safer to try something new, and the benefits can be huge.

The Valley of Humiliation

For the last few days, I have been reading, and re-reading, in the manner recommended by Francis Bacon ("some books are  to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested")  the wonderful and insightful book by Richard Rohr and Andreas Ebert Discovering the Enneagram.

I already knew that I was a Three, but this book has made me squirm, as the descriptions in it seemed to be reading my heart and mind. Phrases kept jumping out at me, saying "That's you - you know it is."

It's not been a comfortable experience - far from it. In fact, my face has been burning, and I have felt humiliated by what I've learned about myself. But the self-knowledge it has given me is priceless. At last I know (or know much more) what kind of person I am, and how I can learn to live with that person, so that I can "encounter self-critically their own dishonesty and the compulsion to succeed. Threes must above all chew and digest their shadow sides, their failure and their defeats, instead of running away from them" and "confront their own inner emptiness and longing for love."

I swithered about posting about this, but I truly believe that learning which Enneagram type you are, and learning to deal with your shadow side is essential for spiritual growth, so I wanted to share about the book, so that other people (if they wish) can do the same.

And may God have mercy on us all.

Consequently, I Rejoice

Five years ago today, I made a leap of faith. I gave up my (then) safe local government job as a professional librarian, and started working as District Facilitator for the Midland Unitarian Association. A few months later, I applied, and was accepted for, Unitarian ministry training, which started in October 2009. It was the beginning of a journey which has changed my life profoundly.

Consequently, I rejoice.

This phrase is taken from T.S. Eliot's beautiful poem Ash Wednesday, which Karen Armstrong uses as the leitmotif for her second volume of autobiography The Spiral Staircase, which is sub-titled My Climb Out of Darkness. Part way through the book, she writes a superb analysis of the poem, which is indeed peculiarly applicable to her life. As a result, this is one T.S. Eliot poem that I (at least partly) understand with my head, as well as feeling with my heart. (As compared with The Waste Land, which I adore, but do not understand at all).

Consequently, I rejoice.

While I do not share Armstrong's initial sense of loss at my change of direction (far from it), I do share her sense of assurance that I have done the right thing. Towards the end of the book, she writes: "In the words of the late Joseph Campbell, we have to 'follow our bliss', find something that wholly involves and enthralls us, ... and throw ourselves into it heart and soul." Yes.

Consequently, I rejoice.

At another point in the book, she writes: "It was not simply my personal circumstances that had changed, but my religious landscape was also being transformed." Oh yes, me too. The process of training for ministry and the privilege of spending the last five years serving the movement I love, has been a transformative experience. In 2008, although I had been a Unitarian for nearly 30 years, I had not really dug deep and explored why I believed what I believed. Attendance at Summer School, my two years at Harris Manchester College Oxford doing ministry training, and my concurrent two years at Regent's Park College Oxford doing the Diploma in Biblical & Theological Studies with Baptist ministry students - these three experiences have certainly "transformed my religious landscape."

Consequently, I rejoice.

One huge change has been the institution of regular spiritual practices in my life, including daily prayer bead practice and journalling, and, in the last 18 months / two years, a regular weekly half-day Sabbath, and a weekly entry in this blog. I have also been working with a wonderful spiritual director, who is showing me how to recognise the Spirit at work in my life, and how to work with it, to try to become the best Sue Woolley I can be.

Consequently, I rejoice.

Finally, Karen Armstrong's work around compassion has been an enormous influence on me, and has shaped the direction of my life and ministry. Reading her words firstly in The Spiral Staircase, and then in Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, has opened my eyes and ears and changed my focus in life. I realise that compassionate living is the journey of a lifetime, and that it will always be two steps forward, one step back, but at least I'm trying to move in the right direction. And I feel so very blessed.

Consequently, I rejoice.

The Power(lessness) of God

I was sitting in the silence of the Quaker meeting house this lunchtime, pondering the phrase "there is that of God in everyone."

I take this to mean that there is a divine spark - whether you call it "God", "the Spirit", "the Light within", "the still, small voice" or "conscience" - in each and every one of us. The Hindus have a word for it, which they use as a greeting: "Namaste" - "The divine in me recognises and honours the divine in you."

And it came to me that the only power that God has in our world is through us. I don't believe that He (or She or It) is omnipotent, otherwise how would bad things be allowed to happen? If God could truly do anything He wanted, surely He would simply "reach down from heaven" and stop evil-doing or natural disasters in their tracks? As this obviously doesn't happen, I am forced to the conclusion that He must have something different in mind.

I believe that God is all-loving, but powerless to intervene in the affairs of the world. He can influence what happens in only two ways:

1. by giving us the attributes - kindness, compassion, strength etc - to deal with whatever comes our way, and
2. by working through us as that of God within, to make the world a better place.

Rabbi Lionel Blue recalls a conversation with God "in a south German church by some railway lines leading to a former labour or concentration camp:

LB: 'Where were you during the prayers which were said in those cattle trucks of human misery?'

No answer.

LB: 'Were you drunk or dozing? Would it have hurt you so much to take a hand?'

No answer.

LB: 'But you've got no hands - so you're useless!'

As I go through the door, raging within me, my inner voice answers,

Him: 'You're the only hands I've got in the world - over to you!'
LB: 'I've no answer, but now I know the next step for me.'"

This means that each one of us is responsible for our own words and deeds - God can work through us, but the responsibility is ours. So we need to learn to become aware of that divine spark within us, and pay attention to what it is saying. So far from our fate resting in God's hands, the world's fate rests in our hands.

When will there be peace?

Ten years ago today, the largest ever anti-war rally in history took place, as millions of people in sixty countries expressed their opposition to the imminent war with Iraq. In spite of this, the war began on 20th March.

It is now well over fifty years since World War II, but since then, not a single day has passed in which there was not a war going on somewhere in the world - whether it was called a civil war or a "police action".

War is an expensive business, in every sense of the word. If all the money currently spent on defence were to be channelled into education, health and welfare; into feeding the hungry and housing the homeless, what a different world this would be.

If we reject the concept of war altogether, the alternative is pacifism. In the 1930s, an Anglican minister named Canon Dick Sheppard founded the Peace Pledge Union. Tens of thousands of people joined it, pledging never again to wage war. In her autobiography Testament of Experience,  Vera Brittain reports a discussion with her husband, George Catlin, on the issue of pacifism:

Vera Brittain

 Catlin wrote: "I will not stop to inquire whether pacifism as an absolute principle is sound. In measurable time you will not convert to it the majority of this great nation. and therefore (whatever one's private view) it will not, as a public fact, avert war."

Brittain argues that "the same argument applied to all forms of revolutionary teaching, costly and often dangerous to its interpreters, which visualised life in terms of a society still to come. The fallibe Apostles could never have hoped to convert the great Roman Empire to Christ's doctrines "in measurable time". But surely few would now say that the early Christian Church should have abandoned its task as too difficult, even though neither the lands once ruled by Rome nor the rest of humanity were converted even yet?"

She went on to join the Peace Pledge Union, and bore witness for peace for the rest of her life, often at considerable personal cost.

And yet, and yet. I have blogged before about my feelings about pacifism: "To fight or to take a pacifist line is one of the deepest and starkest choices of personal conscience. Is pacifism a cause worth fighting for? What a paradox. I speak as one who has a fairly volatile temperament at times, and one who is not a naturally pacific person. I admire Vera Brittain enormously, and the Quakers too. I am also deeply impressed by the realisation that we are all human beings, given life by God. What right have others to take that life away? What cause can possibly justify it? Not many, I think."

Maybe all that anyone can do is their best, where they are, to promote peace through following the Golden Rule in our lives, and trying to behave towards those we connect with, with loving-kindness, or compassion.