“Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.” Etty Hillesum, Letters from Westerbork

“I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.” Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

 

The other day I was watching an old Frost television interview with Desmond Tutu. He said that after Nelson Mandela had been released from prison and before the first general election in South Africa, was a very dangerous time for the country. Nelson Mandela, who was held in very high esteem by many people but was looked upon with suspicion by others, was preaching reconciliation, but there seemed to be, as Tutu described it, “a third force”: a potential power of violence and destruction that threatened to undermine and overwhelm the whole country. In the end, Mandela’s stature: his determination, courage and personal actions of reconciliation seemed to win the day. Without him no one knows what might have happened.

I was interested in the Archbishop’s description of “a third force.” I have heard it used before, although not in those words, by others – people like the pacifist writer, Walter Wink, who describes how a new personality can seem to take over a crowd, so that individuals who would never dream that they were capable of violence, can perform the most atrocious acts together. Wink points out that we have seen this happen throughout history, again and again.

As we look at the news at the moment many of us feel bewildered at the upturn in violence and the extent of it, appalled at the stories of suffering, and helpless in the face of it. It is as if an evil third force has taken over in some places and its darkness overshadows and undermines all of us. How can we fight the darkness outside so that it does not take over our spirit and overwhelm us, too?

It may seem a selfish and even superficial response in the light of all that we hear and see in the news of other peoples’ suffering, but one way to fight is to encourage a sense of gratitude in our hearts, which in turn leads to praise, thanksgiving and joy. Today is the first day of the rest of your life and this day is the gift God gives you – not yesterday, that is finished, not tomorrow for we do not yet know what it will bring, but today, this day is the gift of God. Can we see it? Can we receive even a little of what God wants to give us? Even on the days when we feel really grey we can thank God for food in our stomachs, a roof over our heads and safety – things that many people do not have.

You have to work at gratitude. We are not, for the most part naturally grateful or thankful. We are much better at moaning and complaining. “Count your blessings,” is an old saying, and a wise one, for as we count them our hearts are warmed and we are blessed. A genuine love grows in us for the people and things of the world, God’s world, and also a strength and faith. People who have been terribly cruelly treated have much to teach us about gratitude, praise and joy even in the midst of extreme suffering. Etty Hillesum, quoted at the top of this blog, wrote from the Westerbork Transit camp in Holland before being transported to Auschwich. Anne Frank was also to pass through. Both these young women determinedly fought fear and darkness by turning to the light and giving thanks. St Paul, quoted below, did the same when he wrote from prison his marvellous epistle full of joy and thanksgiving to the church at Ephesus. This is the way to fight back against the darkness – with the light and life of gratitude, praise and thanksgiving.

I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.     Ephesians 3: 18, 19

I apologise for being late in delivering my blog this week. I have had a rather disjointed but lovely past few days because my brother came home from Australia with his wife to celebrate his 65^th birthday.

My brother went to Australia when he was only 17. We then didn’t see him for thirty years as he established his life out there and brought up his family. When he came back for the first time it was very odd. The whole family turned out to meet him at London Airport and although we recognised him when he came through the barrier, we also didn’t recognise him. Who was this leathery-skinned man with grey hair and an accent you could cut with a knife? What was wrong with his eyebrow – oh, yes, that was where he had had an accident? The mask this man wore seemed to cut me off from the brother I remembered. And then there was a moment when his eyes twinkled and suddenly I saw him. His eyes were the same, strikingly blue, full of laughter. There was my brother and the years rolled away.

Since his first journey home he has come back several times but only about once every five years and due to his work as a farmer, only for very short breaks each time. These intermittent visit have made me aware of how, if you leave home at an early age, certain family myths and stories get fixed in a way they don’t if you remain at home. I do not know if my family is like others but there were certain ancestors and living people too, who were cast in the role of saint or sinner as were growing up. I remember realising in my twenties that in my heart I was condemning people I had never known, without understanding their side of the story. Because family members who can get together, share these family stories as they mature, and if things are healthy, the edges of negative criticism become softer. We realise as we share that other may see things differently and that their view point is just as valid as our own. We take into consideration that times change and that what was, for example, perfectly acceptable behaviour in the first half of the 20^th Century is not in the 21^st.

More than anything, if you are a Christian, hopefully you begin to see that whatever the ills of the past, and what so and so is said to have done to so and so, we are all both saint and sinner. Each one of us has done something that another family member might point out as being, unjust, unkind, negligent or even just thoughtless. All of us need forgiveness.

And that is one of the reasons why it is important that families continue to share the stories and do not let them become stuck in aspic. Even though my brother has had infinitely less opportunity to do this – and it shows – in the few visits home he has made, we have shared and he has softened towards one or two people. All families need healing and sharing family stories with that sense that, “I, too, have failed others,” is a good way of opening up our hearts and minds to all these people in the past, who probably, for the most part, did their best.

Words! Words! Words! I’m so sick of words!

 I get words all day through; First from him, now from you!

Is that all you blighters can do? (My Fair Lady)

Silence; we started the day today at Launde Abbey with shared communal silence, and it was bliss!  Today was the first day of our new prayer and services schedule all created with the aim of bringing more silence and stillness to the heart of Launde Abbey and to those who come to rest awhile in this place.  Instead of the old regime of morning prayer followed by the Eucharist, which was a demanding hour’s worth of liturgy first thing in the morning for our guests, many of whom need to rest, we now offer half an hour of silent contemplative prayer followed by morning prayer.  Midday prayer remains the same and then in the late afternoon we have another half hour of quietness preceding the Eucharist at 5.30pm.  Fewer words and more space to be still and to listen to God.

Like Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, I am sick of words.  I think many in our culture are sick of words, too.  We are clamoured at from morning until night and if it is not coming from the outside it is the incessant conversations inside our heads that are so demanding and exhausting.  Words, of course, need not be just the spoken variety.  We are shouted at by billboards and advertising, emails and over-busy schedules; so to stop and be still becomes not just a luxury but a necessity.

God speaks, we read, and the world is created.  But God does not just speak in words and when he does use words they are not simply the giving of information: narrow and arid, but rather, salve for the soul.  The Word of God is Jesus in all he is.  The way Jesus chooses to speak is invariably in story and metaphor.  God speaks in Creation, in music, in poetry, in dance and in art, but we have to be silent to hear it and to see it.  We have to be quiet inside to be present to it.  God speaks in and through other people, but we have to be quiet inside to be present to them.  This quietness does not just happen.  It comes from a bank or a larder of silence that grows in us as we spend time in silence.

Launde Abbey is a busy place with so many people coming and going.  It is also a place that has to balance the need of some for quiet and others for conversation.  But I hope as we practice our new routine of shared silence morning and evening, that a deeper and more profound quietness will grow in the heart of the Abbey.  It will not be of our making.  It will not belong to us.  It will be God’s silence, God’s words speaking deep with us and creating calm and space at the centre of our lives.

“Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.” Iris Murdock

 

When we wake up to it we all know that we live at the centre of our own worlds; that we do not find in others the same reality we find in ourselves, even those closest to us.  In this lack of awareness of the reality of the other lies some of our deepest pain.  When someone says to me that I have offended or hurt them my first instinct is to withdraw more deeply into myself and to become aware of my own pain: in self-protection I build the wall higher between them and me and in so doing become less conscious of their reality.  Actually, what I should aim to do when I am challenged is to go outwards to the person.  At the moment of exposure to their pain to move consciously towards them, saying to myself, “This person is real, is feeling these emotions now; has a life out there completely separate to mine with a family to go home to, washing and cooking to do, bills to pay, holidays to plan.”  You notice the reaction is not one of who is in the right and who is in the wrong?  That is the reaction of the one who is living with the unreality of the other, who withdraws to a place of self-defence.  When we expose ourselves to the other, right and wrong cease to matter, or not to matter as much.  Something else comes into being.  The world becomes a larger, more real place, full of more fully defined human beings with whom, we realise, we share this space for a little time.

Iris Murdock knew what she was saying when she wrote, “Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.”  It is extremely difficult to realise that someone or something, like a tree or animal, has its own reality which has nothing to do with you.  We have to ‘realise’ it, which means we have to make it real for ourselves.  It is love because it is about standing in the other person’s shoes, looking at the world from their point of view: being merciful and compassionate.  It is love because it is giving yourself away, not self-seeking.  It is love because it is service and a willingness to become smaller so that the other may become bigger.  It is love because it is the discipline of trying to wake up every day to the reality of the present moment rather than indulge in the fantasy that is often so much easier to live in and with.  Finally, it is love because it is the determination day in and day out to go on trying to wake up to the realization that someone other than oneself is real, however costly it may be.

Looking at Jesus in his meetings with people, I am quite sure he saw the reality of each and every person with whom he came into contact, and they felt more real, more cared for, more present because of his utter and grounded authenticity.  If you have ever had anyone give you their full attention, have met them mutually, in deep and attentive sharing, then you will have tasted what it is to be real for someone else and to know what a gift it is to both of you.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Jesus Christ, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself….

Philippians 2: 5-7a

This week someone showed me a beautiful wooden bowl that they had been given.  It was one of those bowls that purposefully is not completely finished.  You could still trace the slender trunk of the tree out of which it had been carved so that holding it you felt close to its source.  It was completely smooth on the outside and very deep and rounded within.  As I took it into my hands I felt a little jerk of response within myself.  It was a joy to hold, my own hands cupped the empty cup and as I held it and looked at it I thought, here is something on which one could meditate for hours.

Three things struck me immediately: the sheer pleasure of the wood, honed and smooth but also the way it made me open my hands to receive; the relatively speaking great space within the bowl, empty, waiting to be filled; and my reaction, that somehow this physical presence in my hands had awoken a spiritual response in me, somehow opening me up, creating in me a parallel, waiting space.

Many years ago I read a Zen Buddhist saying about the space inside a vase being more important than the vase.  If the purpose of a vase is to hold flowers, it would be pretty useless without the space.  One could argue (rightly) that the shape of a vase makes a difference to the way the flowers look within it, but actually anything can be made to hold flowers and as long as the flowers are pretty and arranged well, we respond with delight.  (We have at Launde some old tins, painted white, which hold flowers and look quite delightful on our tables in the courtyard.)

But of course interior space is what we all need to achieve if we are to hear the voice of God.  If we want to hear God speak, rather than all the other voices in our heads we have to find a way of hushing them.  Jesus himself and the great saints from John the Baptist onwards (“I must grow less so that he may grow more”) knew that we are invited to empty ourselves so that God may fill us and Jesus modelled this for us with his whole life.  Over and over again he said it was not him but God in him that he was expressing in thought word and deed.  We need to empty ourselves of the delusion of an identity separate from God, of the illusion that we make ourselves, and instead seek daily to be created and recreated by our Maker.

The spiritual writer, Joyce Rupp, wrote a whole book on spiritual growth, “The Cup of Life” using an ordinary teacup or mug as her starting point for meditation.  She wrote,

“Hold the empty cup in your hands. Look at all the room the cup has for filling. Picture the inner part of yourself. Notice how much room there is for filling. Hold the cup out before you in the gesture of a beggar. Ask God to fill you.”

How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world

(William Shakespeare)

The chapel at Launde is a very special place early in the morning, especially on Sunday.  In some ways it is even more special in the winter as all is dark.

When I come in I light the Pascal candle and renew the water in the font in preparation for our very first service of the new week, The Blessing of the Water and Renewal of Baptismal Vows.  Then I wait in the darkness for any who might come.  That is a precious time of quietness, wrapped in soft, hazy darkness, listening only to the early morning call of the wood pigeons and the occasional gentle rap of a branch on the windows.

Once this short service is over, we take a light from the Pascal candle and light all the other candles in the chapel, the two on the altar and those beneath the beautiful Coptic style icons behind the altar.  Now the atmosphere changes.  There are pools of light but not enough to flood the place.  The chapel is full of warmth.  People sit quietly in the shadows and all look towards the candles, look towards the altar.  We wait in this almost breathless, time out of time space; we wait for the first Holy Communion of the new week to begin.

I try not to be sentimental about religious practice but I don’t think I am being when I express my huge thankfulness for this Sunday morning ritual.  It always calms me, always steadies me.  Today, for instance, I was feeling very ‘growly’, very fed up as I began my day.  My private time of prayer didn’t seem to shift my mood or to help much.  But as I lit the candles from the Pascal candle and as I sat at the back, robed, ready to begin when the time came, I gazed as I always do at the altar and at the icons.  The icons seemed to grow with the candles beneath them.  Each ancient and venerated saint seemed taller, his feet in light and his head in the shadows.  The quiet, the silence seeped into me and I was at peace.

Our chapel is actually never without candlelight.  We have them constantly lit in various places.  One burns before the reserved sacrament, reminding us of Christ’s constant presence.  One blue one is placed before the icon of the Virgin, reminding us of the incarnation and Mary’s “Yes” to God’s invitation.  There are two on the windowsills, one, surrounded by barbed wire, reminds us of the many prisoners of conscience there are around the world.  Another has been there for the last eighteen months as a prayer of solidarity for the people of Syria.  At times we will also introduce another candle for a while, when there is a disaster in the world or a particular individual we want to pray for.  There is one there now.

And of course, others come in all the time and light a candle for people they know who need prayer.  These burn on long after the people who lit them have left.

Sometimes the world seems so dark and all our prayers seem so pointless.  The candle reminds us of the light of Christ, the little beam that shines like a good deed in a naughty world.  It is the sign that we are not alone, that there is hope at the end of the tunnel.  It reminds us of good and brave deeds being done all the time which we do not hear about.  It calls us to stop being so self-centred and remember others.

Candlelight and quiet also have their own very particular gift.  They soften sharp edges, chase away shadows and bring peace.  They enable us to let go and enter another space, to be less ‘growly.’

If someone were to ask me what I did not on my holidays this year, I would say, I learnt a little bit more of what Sabbath actually means.

I have always been a bit snooty when it comes to what could be described as lounging by the swimming pool holidays.  I expect culture, history and authentic local colour from my holidays!

This year, however, though not initially planned that way, we spent a lot more time doing very little other than reading, swimming, walking, talking and simply being.  It gave me a lot to think about.  It was interesting, for example, to watch my emotional rhythm.  As usual there was the initial euphoria of the first couple of days of being on holiday.  Then, also as usual, about day three there was a sense of let-down, slight irritation and restlessness.  I have learnt over the years that day three is the one on which I am mostly likely to have a row.

But this year the holiday didn’t go in the usual way.  We did not go out and about that much.  We did not replace the usual diversions of work and home, with many holiday diversions.  For the most part we rested in the way I described above and did quite a lot of staring at the natural world around us and pondering.  And, surprisingly, at the end of the first week of our two week break I felt again the day three emotions – restlessness, anxiety, slight irritation and frustration.  I was uncomfortable in my own skin.  What was going on?

When we read the story of creation in Genesis, we hear that on the seventh day God rested and unlike all the other days, which he said were good, the Sabbath he made “holy”.  What does that mean?  Later in the bible we learn that human beings are commanded to rest one in seven days, too.  But the truth is that nowadays we don’t ever really rest.  We simply keep ourselves distracted by doing things which are more congenial during our times of leisure.  We keep ourselves busy so that we will not have to be alone with ourselves, because, to quote T S Eliot, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”

I can remember Tony Hancock’s character in “Hancock’s Half Hour,” having to get through a Sunday afternoon once and going up the wall with boredom.  This was in the days when pretty well everything closed on a Sunday.  In those days many people considered Sundays the most boring day of the week.  For “holy” read “boring.”  Was that what God intended?  All this has changed, of course: there is plenty to entertain us nowadays on a Sunday, but if anything we are more bored as a society.  When I was a child and complained I was bored, my mother would say, “Only boring people are bored.”  Not perhaps a very provable statement but one that batted the ball back into my court.  Within half an hour I would be busily involved in some sort of play, all trace of boredom forgotten.

At the end of week one, I think I hit the boredom moment and realised what was going on.  We do not appreciate what a drug being distracted has become in our society and how most of us are distraction junkies.  But whilst we are being distracted we are not fully alive to what is in front of us.  The sense of discomfort in my own skin was caused by not being present to what was around me, by not living within the time and rhythm that was real and actual, but rather being pulled by something non-existent and illusory that promised to be better but never is.  St Irenaeus said that “the glory of God is a human being fully alive.”  The boredom moment is the equivalent of cold turkey but if you stay with it you go through it – and on the other side is a place that is not boring at all, but is,as God said, holy.

Lately, I have rediscovered my nose and realised again the delight of walking as the fragrances waft by me.  Simply coming from my house to the Abbey this morning (of course, nature’s scents are always stronger in the morning or evening) I smelt first mown grass, then a fir tree / evergreen dark smell; then something cool and minty and then the wonderful warm sweet smell of Honeysuckle flowing abundantly by the pond.  Going on, I am now entranced, lifting my nose in much the same way as my dog does, to see what is in the wind.

I say I have “rediscovered” my nose because I cannot remember being so aware of smell in London.  I did not find the smells there unpleasant. Odd as it may seem, I like the scent of a dusty street on a hot day in London and I don’t mind, if it is not overwhelming, the smell of traffic.  Even in London I would have been stopped for Honeysuckle.  But just as one reason for the sparrows deserting London is because their mating call cannot be heard above the noise of the traffic, it is now so loud, so one reason I could not enjoy the scents that blossomed in the gardens there so much was because other smells were over-powering.

The human mind, body and emotions are a sensitive instrument; the senses, a most wonderful gift from God given for our joy and our pleasure.  But too often we are overwhelmed by one or two things which are so demanding of our attention in one way that we are ‘blinded’, ‘deafened’ or ‘numbed’ in ourselves as to the riches on offer.  This is true in all areas of our lives.  We get into habits of thinking and behaviour that demand so much of us that we begin not to see anymore what is important.  Worse still, we cease to feel what is important.  We cease to care.  To find ourselves again we have to stop and smell the flowers, as the saying goes.

This is the importance of the idea of Sabbath.  “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,” said Jesus.  Stopping, getting in touch with ourselves; our minds, bodies, spirits, hearts – this wonderful experience of being human, is what Sabbath is all about.  The interesting thing about the “Sabbath” is that it is a commandment of God that we should all have a day off, a real day off, and yet it is the one thing that most of us feel we don’t need and those who make law certainly don’t think we need.  I have to tell clergy sometimes (and myself, for that matter) that keeping a Sabbath is one of God’s commandments.

Of course, human beings with their oft repeated ability to take a gift of God and make it into a burden for people, have in the past made the idea of the Sabbath rather unattractive and many people today will say that they do not like Sunday because “there is nothing to do,” meaning nothing to entertain themselves with.  There is everything; go, smell the flowers.  Rediscover the lost sight, the acute hearing, the sense of emotion.  Rediscover the sensitive instrument you are and enjoy it.  God gives this wonderful world for us to enjoy.  It is the inheritance of Everyman (and woman.)

The news is not good.  A week ago we were hearing the latest twist in the “Trojan Horse” saga, the ‘plot’ to infiltrate extreme Islamist views into Birmingham schools.  On the radio this morning the Middle East was described as imploding, with stories of Isis, a Jihadist group sweeping across Iraq from one direction while Kurdish separatists took another part.  There is the ongoing terrible situation in Syria.  Alongside this the Ukranian government accused Russia of sending tanks over Ukraine’s Eastern border;, South Sudanese people continue to starve as the civil war storms on, and another terrorist group, Boko Harem seem to have made certain parts of Nigeria into no-go areas.  No wonder we feel anxious and helpless, particularly when we hear of young men brought up in Britain going to join these extreme organisations which we tend to blanket describe as ‘terrorist.’

The response to the Trojan Horse situation from the government was that we must teach British values in our schools.  But hold on; what values are we talking about here?  What are the underlying messages of our society?  What do we applaud in our culture?  What are we inviting young people to reach for?  What sense of meaning or purpose do we give them for their lives?

Young people are hungry for meaning and purpose.  That is why the big political movements of the past were so often made up largely of the young.  Think of the Ban the Bomb marches, the anti-Vietnam War protests.  Jesus chose young men as his followers.  Perhaps one reason that so many Muslim men from this country are leaving to fight against Assad (and then finding themselves fighting other rebels instead) is because they have a desire to live for something bigger than themselves.  Because they are young and hungry for meaning they are vulnerable to manipulation but that doesn’t mean that the original longing in them was not for something good.

Britain does have strong values but they are largely hidden under the more obvious traits exposed in the media of greed and selfishness.  One of our values is unity.

Unity…is more than solidarity and more than uniformity.  Unity, ironically, is a commitment to becoming one people who speak in a thousand voices.  Rather than one message repeated by a thousand voices, unity is one message shaped by a thousand minds…The kind of unity that is born out of difference and becomes the glue of a group has four characteristics: it frees, it enables, it supports, and it listens.

(Joan Chissiter, “For all that has been, thanks.”)

We recognise that whatever we might once have been we are now a diverse nation, made up of many peoples with their cultures, religions and histories.  All our justice is undergirded by law based on the Christian faith.  Jesus by engaging with all sorts of people in his ministry paved the way for the early Church to include slaves, women, foreigners and the poorest of the poor.  He taught that everyone is valued and loved by God, so let us go on seeking unity in diversity.

We do not have to force people to become Christian in this country.  Let the faith speak for itself and let us honour other peoples’ religions and listen to them.  But it is about time we honoured our inheritance and stopped shrugging it off as being of no consequence.  Let us celebrate and teach what is good for all people.

I have a vivid memory of my mother grabbing my brother by his collar at a Billy Graham rally in the early 1960s to ‘save’ him from being ‘saved’ again.  It wasn’t that my mother was in anyway against any of her children finding faith.  It was she, after all, who instigated the visits to various cathedrals, chapels and Salvation Army halls and this rally.  It was that my brother, in his early teens, a warm and emotional person, always responded to the call to ‘come forward.’  He had been saved so many times that it was becoming farcical and the saving didn’t really appear to stick.   On top of that, I think my mother was afraid she would never find him again in the crowds of Wembley Stadium.

In the season of Pentecost we start to look at the saving mission of the Church.  On the Day of Pentecost we are always instructed that we must read Acts 2: 1 – 21.  It is a story we all know well if we are long term Christians: that of the Holy Spirit coming in power on the disciples; an experience so powerful that they were thrust out into the streets of Jerusalem where every passer by heard them speaking in their own language.  It is easy to hear the story and miss it because we think we know it so well.  But this year I was brought up short by verses 12 and 13, which describe the reactions of the onlookers.

All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

I thought, a few years ago I would have been in the latter group, the ones who sneered.  My reaction to the revivalist meetings my mother took us to as children was always that of feeling like an outsider, like an observer looking on at something I didn’t feel part of and didn’t really understand.  As an adult I felt uncomfortable with ‘born again’ language even after I became a Christian.  I felt hostile because I didn’t understand.

Very often many of us in western Christianity have talked of the Holy Spirit either as a distant maiden aunt whom we don’t really know but who sends us a cheque each Christmas (and we respond with a formal thank you.)  Or we have thought that receiving the Holy Spirit had to be an experience almost as dramatic as  that of the first Pentecost.  This has meant that many British people have held the Holy Spirit at a safe arm’s length.

That is not the way I feel now.  I have never had flames on my head or been ‘slain in the Spirit’, but slowly, slowly I have become aware of the Holy Spirit working deeply and persistently in my life and, as I have observed it, in the lives of many other quite ordinary people.  The Acts reading goes on to say that many different nationalities, all in Jerusalem for the Jewish Festival of Booths (the original Pentecost), heard the disciples proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ in their own language.  If we look around the world today and see the many languages in which the same good news is being spoken we can see Pentecost as a prophetic moment, pointing forward to what the Spirit would do and the power with which he would do it.

But for me more poignant is the fact that the message of Jesus Christ is discovered by every human being who turns to him, spoken to them in their own unique language.  We all have an exclusive language which comes from our own unique histories, burdens, joys, longings and desires.  And Jesus Christ speaks uniquely to each of us as we need to hear.  Jesus gives us the freedom to be ourselves – this is the sign of genuine saving – and to know ourselves, with all our weaknesses to be very precious to the God who created us, irreplaceable in his sight.