Taking It As It Comes

Each day is a new day, an opportunity for growth. As it says in Rumi's wonderful poem, The Guesthouse,  "This being human is a guesthouse, Every morning a new arrival." And this is so true.

Yesterday was a good example. In the morning, I conducted a funeral - it went very well, and the family were happy with what I had done. One of the congregation made a complimentary remark about my voice, and I felt very happy.

Then I got home to find that a book I had been working on for the past eighteen months had been turned down by the publisher. The e-mail was kind and regretful, and contained some good advice, but the feelings of hurt and rejection were real.

So I have to find a balance. I have to learn to embrace each "new arrival" - to celebrate the good, and to learn from the bad, so that I can grow. I am truly grateful for all the good things in my life - family, friends, my work as a minister, the beauties of nature around me, and need to learn to be likewise grateful for any setbacks, so that I can learn from my mistakes, and maybe, one day, produce a piece of work that is worthy of publication.

May it be so.

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 Devotion of Friends

I have just been re-reading Vera Brittain's two volumes of autobiography - Testament of Youth and Testament of Experience. It has made me reflect on the nature of true friendship.

There is something very special about devoted friendship - the best marriages are based on it, for example. Such loyalty and devotion between two people is rare and precious, whether it occurs between a man and a woman, or between two people of the same sex. The relationship between Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby is a beautiful example of a very strong same-sex devoted friendship. They met at Oxford after the First World War, and after a rocky start, became the best of friends. In her wonderful tribute to Winifred, Testament of Friendship, Vera writes of her time with Winifred in London before her (Vera's) marriage:

"Those years with Winifred taught me that the type of friendship which reaches its apotheosis in the story of David and Jonathan is not a monopoly of the masculine sex ... After a year or two of constant companionship, our response to each other's needs and emotions had become so instinctive that in our correspondence one of us often replied to some statement or request made by the other before the letter which contained it had arrived."

Winifred's love and loyalty to Vera were complete and absolute. After Vera's marriage to George Catlin, the friendship between the two women is as strong as ever; indeed for some years, Winifred shared a house with the Brittain-Catlins. She wrote a typically rueful letter to Vera shortly after the latter's marriage and subsequent removal to America for a year: "I am happy. In a way I suppose I miss you, but that does not make me less happy ... When a person that one loves is in the world and alive and well, and pleased to be in the world, then to miss them is only a new flavour, a salt sharpness in experience." When she died at the tragically early age of 37, Vera was devastated.

Every human being needs at least one deep, true friend, who, in the words of the Arabian proverb "is one to whom one may pour out all the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away. This is the sort of friendship that can, with luck and care, grow between people of all kinds.

Today is Golden Rule Day, on which we are exhorted to do unto others as we would wish to have done to ourselves, and to refrain from doing to others that which would give us pain. Every time we obey this, we are putting out a small tendril of friendship towards another person - who knows where it might lead?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.