Lunch with a dear old friend: theatre chaplain, Shakespeare lover, retired Anglican priest. We share stories of the consummate skill of good actors reading a Bible passage aloud: their economy of expression producing the maximum expressiveness and meaning, shedding light on familiar words. We bemoan the scant attention paid in most local churches to the task of reading the text appointed for the Sunday service or, indeed, the training of lesson readers. Musicians practice, actors rehearse, only lesson readers step up to the lectern in church with the minimum of voice preparation or any rehearsal of the passage to be read. My friend reveals that he spends about 90 minutes preparing a reading, including writing the passage out by hand, however familiar it may be. Sometimes, he tells me, a choice of words leaps up and really hits you, as for instance, the line from A Misdummer Night’s Dream when Titania says, “These are the forgeries of jealousy”.
It so happens that I have been returning this week to one of the most familiar passages of the Bible in the English language: chapter 13 of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. For once the incomparable English of the King James Version obscures the impact for me of verses 5 and 6. “[Love] is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;” becomes in a modern translation: “Love keeps no score of wrongs, takes no pleasure in the sins of others, but delights in the truth.”
Hmmm: what is this truth to be rejoiced in rather than keeping censorious scores to give myself some so-called satisfaction? I am reminded of the simple statement in Eckhart Tolle’s ‘The Power of Now’: “Create no more pain in the present.” What can feel like the pleasure of score keeping is in fact a dysfunctional reaction which simply prolongs the pain of the encounter I am recalling. Worse, I may be saving up the unpleasant memory in the hope of getting my own back sometime; cradling present pain to create more pain in the future. How balmy can I get?!
But still I hadn’t got at the truth I can rejoice in: until now, that is. Suddenly this familiar passage reads, not like a series of impossible standards to be aimed at, but as a fundamental truth about myself and therefore about every human being on the planet. It is our nature to love. Whatever the appearances to the contrary, (and yes, I know there are plenty) our brains are wired for love (love, that is, in the sense of the rest of this famous chapter). That’s the easy bit. The hard bit is remembering the easy bit when it really matters.
Monday, 23 May 2011
Saturday, 14 May 2011
Sheer plod
Next month I will be 80. The last five years have been a wondrous time of discovery and growth; a miracle of rebirth for which I am profoundly thankful. George Herbert, towards the end of his life, wrote:
There is a sense, now, in which ‘I know it all’. Yes I realise that sounds – well – ‘know-it-all’, but more facts, more knowledge won’t help me practice what I call the Now Show, that ‘recover’d greenness’ Herbert speaks of. I know how to do it, how to react to circumstances. Reading more books or going to more lectures won’t add anything to my understanding. They might help to confirm the direction I am taking in these last years of living; they might remind me of insights I lose sight of from time to time. Essentially, however, my task, the meaning and purpose of my life is to live what I know. Accepting the isness of each present moment, including feelings of boredom, or thoughts of meaninglessness, is as always the way forward.
It takes about twenty five trips from the kitchen sink through the living room on to our little patio here in central London to water the forty six flower pots there. We’ve had at least six weeks drought now so I have to do it more often. Today I begin the task in one of those moods of, ‘what’s the point of it all’. Then the line from Gerard Manley Hopkins poem, The Windhover, springs up:
“Sheer plod makes plough down sillion shine.”
Life goes on being green even when the exultant soaring flight of inspiration departs.
“Who would have thought my shrivel’d heart
Could have recover’d greenness? ....
And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain, ....”
There is a sense, now, in which ‘I know it all’. Yes I realise that sounds – well – ‘know-it-all’, but more facts, more knowledge won’t help me practice what I call the Now Show, that ‘recover’d greenness’ Herbert speaks of. I know how to do it, how to react to circumstances. Reading more books or going to more lectures won’t add anything to my understanding. They might help to confirm the direction I am taking in these last years of living; they might remind me of insights I lose sight of from time to time. Essentially, however, my task, the meaning and purpose of my life is to live what I know. Accepting the isness of each present moment, including feelings of boredom, or thoughts of meaninglessness, is as always the way forward.
It takes about twenty five trips from the kitchen sink through the living room on to our little patio here in central London to water the forty six flower pots there. We’ve had at least six weeks drought now so I have to do it more often. Today I begin the task in one of those moods of, ‘what’s the point of it all’. Then the line from Gerard Manley Hopkins poem, The Windhover, springs up:
“Sheer plod makes plough down sillion shine.”
Life goes on being green even when the exultant soaring flight of inspiration departs.
“No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.”
Thursday, 28 April 2011
Right royal weddings
We have entered one of those interludes of national....what shall we call it? – frenzy? No, that’s too animated; euphoria? Still not quite right! I don’t know but it does feel as if a lot of people are caught up in some shared mood. I recall similar occasions: Princess Diana’s death for example, when a mood sweeps through and carries us off. It’s not the same when there’s a fierce political debate going on, as in the preparations for the invasion of Iraq: dossiers on weapons of mass destruction and all that. Then there are sides to be taken. Now, yes, a few folk are vehemently opposed to what they see as an upsurge of nationalistic monarchism but otherwise there’s not a really tangible position to oppose. There’s just this .... this mood: a kind of deep yearning which perhaps is always there in a majority of people and now finds a focus, a symbol, which animates it. Is it a yearning for some better way of living and being? A yearning for what the writer Simon Parke calls ‘the beautiful life’ in his book of the same title. (Now re-issued as ‘The Journey Home’.)
So this time it’s a wedding which is the catalyst: the spectacle of two lovely young people starting out, full of hope and promise, on a journey of commitment. It’s a vision of the beautiful life. I’m glad that Simon has called the new edition of his book ‘The Journey Home’. Home, the place where it feels utterly natural to be. If we are not there we feel exiled, strangers in a strange land. It starts, on this royal occasion, with a wedding but of course weddings are not the norm for many of us.
Or (hang on!) perhaps they are! Perhaps we are all wedded to something – an ideal (person or cause), a forlorn hope, a frenzied search for the truth, an insatiable desire for wealth or power, or health or sex or food. We can be wedded to almost anything if we imagine it will satisfy our yearning for home, for the beautiful life. But such weddings have happened without our realising it. There was no ceremony, no formal commitment, just a gradual orientation of our life to a goal which appears to promise something better than the state we want to escape from.
Ah! the crucial point! We want to escape from where we are, or what we are, now. We want to be somewhere, or someone, else. Tomorrow’s royal wedding reminds us: there’s something missing, something we're looking for. The truth however, is counter-intuitive. There’s no escape – or rather the only escape is to stay where we are because that’s the only place where ‘home’ is found. We are already there. We just didn’t recognise it. Nothing in the future, no new commitment, no royal spectacle, no ideal will satisfy the yearning which can almost be felt today as the royal wedding approaches. The chapter headings of Simon Parke’s book give us the clues for the treasure hunt: Be present; Observe Yourself; Be Nothing; Flee Attachment (yes, even when celebrating a wedding!); Transcend Suffering; Drop Your Illusions; Prepare For Truth; Cease Separation; Know Your Soul; Fear Nothing.
Welcome home.
So this time it’s a wedding which is the catalyst: the spectacle of two lovely young people starting out, full of hope and promise, on a journey of commitment. It’s a vision of the beautiful life. I’m glad that Simon has called the new edition of his book ‘The Journey Home’. Home, the place where it feels utterly natural to be. If we are not there we feel exiled, strangers in a strange land. It starts, on this royal occasion, with a wedding but of course weddings are not the norm for many of us.
Or (hang on!) perhaps they are! Perhaps we are all wedded to something – an ideal (person or cause), a forlorn hope, a frenzied search for the truth, an insatiable desire for wealth or power, or health or sex or food. We can be wedded to almost anything if we imagine it will satisfy our yearning for home, for the beautiful life. But such weddings have happened without our realising it. There was no ceremony, no formal commitment, just a gradual orientation of our life to a goal which appears to promise something better than the state we want to escape from.
Ah! the crucial point! We want to escape from where we are, or what we are, now. We want to be somewhere, or someone, else. Tomorrow’s royal wedding reminds us: there’s something missing, something we're looking for. The truth however, is counter-intuitive. There’s no escape – or rather the only escape is to stay where we are because that’s the only place where ‘home’ is found. We are already there. We just didn’t recognise it. Nothing in the future, no new commitment, no royal spectacle, no ideal will satisfy the yearning which can almost be felt today as the royal wedding approaches. The chapter headings of Simon Parke’s book give us the clues for the treasure hunt: Be present; Observe Yourself; Be Nothing; Flee Attachment (yes, even when celebrating a wedding!); Transcend Suffering; Drop Your Illusions; Prepare For Truth; Cease Separation; Know Your Soul; Fear Nothing.
Welcome home.
Friday, 22 April 2011
Book retrieval
Dear Simon,
About the time I attended the retreat you ran at Wyredale Hall several years ago now, I bought a copy of The Beautiful Life. A couple of days ago I decided I had too many books about the beautiful life and it was time I got rid of some because I didn't need the props any more. The Beautiful Life went on the discard pile.
Then, as one does - you know - I idly picked it up again, opened it at random and was struck by several arresting statements. Browsing further I came across the following on page 11,
ALL RIGHT THEN!! I surrender. I've only retrieved it once.
Incidentally I've noted in my diary that you will be speaking at St. James Piccadilly on July 4th. I look forward to it.
That first Easter (whenever/whatever it was) the garden was empty when Mary got there. She didn't get it at first and when she did, the men got a grip on things and relegated her to a bit part.
May you (continue to) know that utterly still emptiness.
Love
Richard.
About the time I attended the retreat you ran at Wyredale Hall several years ago now, I bought a copy of The Beautiful Life. A couple of days ago I decided I had too many books about the beautiful life and it was time I got rid of some because I didn't need the props any more. The Beautiful Life went on the discard pile.
Then, as one does - you know - I idly picked it up again, opened it at random and was struck by several arresting statements. Browsing further I came across the following on page 11,
"During your relationship with such a book it should probably be ..... retrieved from the bin at least twice."
ALL RIGHT THEN!! I surrender. I've only retrieved it once.
Incidentally I've noted in my diary that you will be speaking at St. James Piccadilly on July 4th. I look forward to it.
That first Easter (whenever/whatever it was) the garden was empty when Mary got there. She didn't get it at first and when she did, the men got a grip on things and relegated her to a bit part.
May you (continue to) know that utterly still emptiness.
Love
Richard.
Wednesday, 20 April 2011
Endings and beginnings
Somewhere on the far side of the planet (Taupo, New Zealand to be precise) a friend is dying.
Nearly 60 years ago we were part of one of those vibrant, life-changing groups of young adults: in our case Main Street Methodist Church Young Peoples Club. Where? Bulawayo, in what was then Southern Rhodesia: while apartheid still reigned; before Harold Macmillan’s ‘winds of change speech’; even before Dr. Hastings Banda had begun the transition from Nyasaland to Malawi. Those were the dying days of the British Empire, just after the end of World War 2. Endings.
But for me a beginning: an ecstatic experience of conversion which transformed my life. I still have the Bible concordance the club members gave me when I returned to the UK to train for the Anglican ministry. Later those young people were scattered by the winds of change and I lost touch with them. Campbell, who had been instrumental in my conversion, turned up in Canada and we are now back in touch. Dorille, who is dying, looked me up here in London a couple of years ago on a visit from NZ. Another ending. Together, via e-mail, we return to those formative days in Bulawayo: those beginnings.
For Dorille it is a final ending. For us all it is, as always, also a beginning.
(All the quotations are from T S Eliot's The Four Quartets)
Nearly 60 years ago we were part of one of those vibrant, life-changing groups of young adults: in our case Main Street Methodist Church Young Peoples Club. Where? Bulawayo, in what was then Southern Rhodesia: while apartheid still reigned; before Harold Macmillan’s ‘winds of change speech’; even before Dr. Hastings Banda had begun the transition from Nyasaland to Malawi. Those were the dying days of the British Empire, just after the end of World War 2. Endings.
But for me a beginning: an ecstatic experience of conversion which transformed my life. I still have the Bible concordance the club members gave me when I returned to the UK to train for the Anglican ministry. Later those young people were scattered by the winds of change and I lost touch with them. Campbell, who had been instrumental in my conversion, turned up in Canada and we are now back in touch. Dorille, who is dying, looked me up here in London a couple of years ago on a visit from NZ. Another ending. Together, via e-mail, we return to those formative days in Bulawayo: those beginnings.
“We shall not cease from explorationThe essence of that Bulawayo experience remains valid even though the words I now use to describe it (in this blog for example) could not possibly have been guessed at then.
And the end of all our exploration
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
“Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion.
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.”
For Dorille it is a final ending. For us all it is, as always, also a beginning.
“Quick now, here, now, always –
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.”
(All the quotations are from T S Eliot's The Four Quartets)
Thursday, 31 March 2011
HELP!! ?
I live near Lambeth North tube station in central London. Visitors often emerge on to the complicated road junction here, on their way to a local hotel or the Imperial War Museum. They stand, bemused, unsure which way to go. Sometimes I smile and ask, ‘Can I help?’ I get a mixed response: the name of a hotel, spoken in broken English, or ‘no, thanks, I’m fine’. It occurs to me that, as a visitor in a strange city, it can be an enjoyable challenge to do your own route finding, and anyway a smiling stranger might be seen as a possible threat. Whose needs am I satisfying? - my own to be a helpful person, or theirs to be given useful guidance? Suspecting my own motives, I’ve more or less given up trying to be ‘helpful’ in this way.
There are plenty of ‘beggars’ on the streets in this part of London. Last night I gave £1 to a young woman carrying a copy of The Big Issue who obviously wasn’t a registered vendor. Later another young woman accosted me. It’s always obvious if they are going to ask for money. Thinking that she might be the same young woman I walked on. “Won’t you be a gentleman and help me?” she called after me. Should I have helped? I know all the arguments for and against ‘helping’ those who call for it on the streets. Somehow they don’t add up to a hard and fast rule that I can apply in every situation. Of course there isn’t one. What matters is that I ‘see’ this person here in front of me, without pre-judgement, and respond accordingly.
Then there’s a neighbour of ours who lives in appalling conditions in a rent protected house. This winter she has been getting more and more ill. She refuses all offers of help, official and unofficial, to be re-housed. We do what we can, dropping by most days to make sure she’s ‘all right’ (whatever that might mean in such dreadful housing conditions). I am reminded of an amusing postcard from the 1970s which said, “If things don’t improve soon I shall have to ask you to stop helping me.” There's often an element of control in the desire to help ("Better to do it my way rather than yours.") Thank God for the old adage, ‘an Englishman’s home is his castle’ which means that officialdom is very reluctant to step in and force people to do things they don’t want to. But, as with those on the streets around here who ask me for money, what really is the best way to help? Leaving people alone can induce guilt but it does leave open the possibility that they will find a way out of their problematic situation; provided always that my leaving them alone is not simply avoidance but emerges out of 'seeing' them; out of some real human encounter no matter how fleeting.
Hmmm! Come to think about it – isn’t that not just an issue between one human being and another but also between nations? Libya?!!
There are plenty of ‘beggars’ on the streets in this part of London. Last night I gave £1 to a young woman carrying a copy of The Big Issue who obviously wasn’t a registered vendor. Later another young woman accosted me. It’s always obvious if they are going to ask for money. Thinking that she might be the same young woman I walked on. “Won’t you be a gentleman and help me?” she called after me. Should I have helped? I know all the arguments for and against ‘helping’ those who call for it on the streets. Somehow they don’t add up to a hard and fast rule that I can apply in every situation. Of course there isn’t one. What matters is that I ‘see’ this person here in front of me, without pre-judgement, and respond accordingly.
Then there’s a neighbour of ours who lives in appalling conditions in a rent protected house. This winter she has been getting more and more ill. She refuses all offers of help, official and unofficial, to be re-housed. We do what we can, dropping by most days to make sure she’s ‘all right’ (whatever that might mean in such dreadful housing conditions). I am reminded of an amusing postcard from the 1970s which said, “If things don’t improve soon I shall have to ask you to stop helping me.” There's often an element of control in the desire to help ("Better to do it my way rather than yours.") Thank God for the old adage, ‘an Englishman’s home is his castle’ which means that officialdom is very reluctant to step in and force people to do things they don’t want to. But, as with those on the streets around here who ask me for money, what really is the best way to help? Leaving people alone can induce guilt but it does leave open the possibility that they will find a way out of their problematic situation; provided always that my leaving them alone is not simply avoidance but emerges out of 'seeing' them; out of some real human encounter no matter how fleeting.
Hmmm! Come to think about it – isn’t that not just an issue between one human being and another but also between nations? Libya?!!
Thursday, 10 March 2011
Eastering
The season Christians call Lent has begun. I have a problem with it (What? Only one?) I can’t fit my personal, human experience into the church’s calendar. Lent is supposed to be a preparation for Easter. So it tends to encourage a looking forward to Easter forgetting that everything we do happens after that mysterious event which Christians have labelled the Resurrection. Easter didn’t happen two thousand years ago (a mere historical event): it is happening, now, timelessly in us. The final stanza of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem The Wreck of the Deutschland, contains the following line:
“Let him Easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us,”
I like that: Easter as a verb, an activity happening now.
What comes next in this blog is going to sound like a massive digression but – patience, dear reader – the connection with Easter will emerge.
The brain is an astonishing storage system. It’s all up here in my head: that row I had with my mother/father 20, 30, 50 years ago; the way I snubbed that poor woman last week. And it’s not just a bare record of the facts: it’s the accompanying feelings. Post traumatic stress syndrome is not something which happens only to soldiers home from Afghanistan. There are a fortunate few human beings who have never had any really unpleasant experiences but most of us have not been so lucky. Most of us have stored away in our brains some unpleasant experience which can wake up and trip us up at any unexpected time. It’s no wonder the ancient Christian prayer speaks of ‘your adversary the devil,’ who goes about ‘like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.’ Lions sometimes come roaring out of our sub-conscious and swallow us up. Some people have to spend a lot of their time and most of their energy dealing with wild beasts of one sort or another.
Lent is supposed to be a time for dealing with lions but, like I said, mine don’t wait meekly until the appropriate slot on the Christian calendar. Now, here’s the good news: Easter doesn’t wait either (this year for example, until April 24th). Easter isn’t an historical event, it’s a process, going on now. Just as coping with lions can become so much a part of someone’s ‘normal’ living, so can Eastering. We’re talking about states of being – processes. The brain is not only a brilliant storage system, it is also infinitely plastic, adaptable. The neural pathways leading to lions dens can be by-passed (slowly, slowly, with persistence and patience) so that Eastering becomes more and more the dominant mode of our being. The lions are still there but even they can become part of the Eastering process: one roar and we are reminded (yes! Re-minded!) to find the vast, vibrant, expectant stillness of the Easter garden within us: both an absence and a presence. The practice of meditation is part of that process. In the stillness of our centred prayer, even when nothing seems to be happening and it all feels pointless, new pathways are being gently trodden out: new ways to the depths of who we truly are. We are Eastering people. That truth about us trumps all the lion aces our brains hold. Happy Easter – Now! Today!
“Let him Easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us,”
I like that: Easter as a verb, an activity happening now.
What comes next in this blog is going to sound like a massive digression but – patience, dear reader – the connection with Easter will emerge.
The brain is an astonishing storage system. It’s all up here in my head: that row I had with my mother/father 20, 30, 50 years ago; the way I snubbed that poor woman last week. And it’s not just a bare record of the facts: it’s the accompanying feelings. Post traumatic stress syndrome is not something which happens only to soldiers home from Afghanistan. There are a fortunate few human beings who have never had any really unpleasant experiences but most of us have not been so lucky. Most of us have stored away in our brains some unpleasant experience which can wake up and trip us up at any unexpected time. It’s no wonder the ancient Christian prayer speaks of ‘your adversary the devil,’ who goes about ‘like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.’ Lions sometimes come roaring out of our sub-conscious and swallow us up. Some people have to spend a lot of their time and most of their energy dealing with wild beasts of one sort or another.
Lent is supposed to be a time for dealing with lions but, like I said, mine don’t wait meekly until the appropriate slot on the Christian calendar. Now, here’s the good news: Easter doesn’t wait either (this year for example, until April 24th). Easter isn’t an historical event, it’s a process, going on now. Just as coping with lions can become so much a part of someone’s ‘normal’ living, so can Eastering. We’re talking about states of being – processes. The brain is not only a brilliant storage system, it is also infinitely plastic, adaptable. The neural pathways leading to lions dens can be by-passed (slowly, slowly, with persistence and patience) so that Eastering becomes more and more the dominant mode of our being. The lions are still there but even they can become part of the Eastering process: one roar and we are reminded (yes! Re-minded!) to find the vast, vibrant, expectant stillness of the Easter garden within us: both an absence and a presence. The practice of meditation is part of that process. In the stillness of our centred prayer, even when nothing seems to be happening and it all feels pointless, new pathways are being gently trodden out: new ways to the depths of who we truly are. We are Eastering people. That truth about us trumps all the lion aces our brains hold. Happy Easter – Now! Today!
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