The uncomfortable gap.

Back in the 1960s someone published a series of amusing sayings on postcards called ‘Potshots’. One read, ‘If things don’t improve soon I shall have to ask you to stop helping me.’ It occurs to me that the media are trying to help by giving us an unrelenting diet of bad news. They are saying, “This is not how things should be and if we keep on reminding you how bad they are someone, somewhere will do something to make them better.”
The fact is that lots of people, including politicians, are doing things to try and make life better but generally speaking they don’t get reported by news media. Or if they are reported it’s usually because someone thinks that it’s not enough or that the wrong tactics are being used. In some respects, of course, for many millions of people, life does get better. Even in my lifetime it has got infinitely better for me and for many people like me. But there’s always a gap between the way things are and the way we would like them to be.

We are dominated by the ‘doing mind’, left hemispherical thinking. Therefore we rarely begin by accepting what is the case about our present situation (either internal or external). We perpetually begin with the famous response, ‘If I were you I wouldn’t start from here.’ The gap between here where we are and there where we want to be is intolerable. We assume that rational thought will get us there and fast. But sometimes it’s a question of ‘don’t just do something, stand there!’ In fact it’s nearly always the right way to start tackling a problem. And it’s certainly the right way to start if the problem cannot be solved immediately or by me personally. The rush to judgement, condemnation, recrimination has become a pandemic more serious than swine flu. A little more stillness, being instead of doing, acceptance of what is now the case, of where we are, of where I am in this present moment would produce dramatic results for all the suffering about which we are constantly reminded.

Mindfulness

I'm re-reading “The Mindful Way Through Depression” by Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal and Jon Kabat-Zinn. I come across the following succinct and exact definition of ‘mindfulness’, “Mindfulness is the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgementally to things as they are.” Every element of that definition is essential. As the authors point out, mindfulness involves, necessarily, intention (I am reminded of Martin Buber’s dictum, “Will and grace are two sides of the same coin.”); it focuses on the present moment; and it, again necessarily, requires a non-judgemental attitude. It's a pity about the book's title because it is a wonderful resource for anyone, depressed or not, who wants to know how to live 'wisely, agreeably and well'. (I can't remember the origin of that quote)

In a nice piece of synchronicity, Yvonne tells me later of a quote from Saul Bellows’s The Rain King: “The forgiveness of sins is perpetual and righteousness is not required.” One might begin such a wonderful sentence with, “Confession is essential ....” One would then have a more ‘spiritual’ approach to mindfulness in which becoming aware of ‘things-as-they-are’ is ‘confession’; and ‘righteousness is not required’ is the non-judgemental bit.

Simple but not easy

An e-mail exchange with Oliver Burkeman of the Guardian newspaper:
Your column this week this week is a remarkably succinct account of a truth known
for centuries in Christian, Buddhist, Islamic and ancient Greek
cultures. However the reason many Buddhists (Christians etc. etc) seem
so "tightly wound", and why Seneca (and lots of monks) spent so much
time in seclusion is that the truth is simple but not easy. That's why
Jesus talked about the narrow gate which few find and why he told the
parable of the sower. How different the world would be if there was a
short cut!!
Regards
Richard Craig.
Dear Richard Craig,
Thank you very much for this email, and for your kind words, and my apologies for the delay in replying. Simple vs. easy: yes, this sounds like a very profound point. Maybe even one I'll try to explore in a future column head-on, since I suspect a case could be made that much of self-help culture catastrophically confuses the two.
All best wishes and thanks again
Oliver

Intercession

In those last few minutes before bed time, when I feel too tired to do much, I try ‘intercession’. A contributor to Bishop Spong’s newsletter (qna@newsletters.johnshelbyspong.com) had written:
“When I pray any kind of prayer, there is an energy created within me that I believe in some way adds to a sacred energy in the world. I'm not sure how far it gets, or whether it does any good other than add to the positive energy in the universe. If I'm made of "stardust" then maybe there is an energy connection with others, perhaps through our "ground of being." I know that praying, saying formal prayers, taking the various liturgical prayers, prayerful reading of scripture, meditation and the like, are energizing for me and I hope the energy goes somewhere. I'm happy with the energy.”

I know what he’s talking about, I think. There’s a hint of Brian Swimme in the reference to ‘stardust’ and also the process looks something like Jon Kabat-Zinn’s ‘lovingkindness meditation’.
So I centre down and begin to call to mind people I wish to ‘pray for’. I find I can visualise them quite easily and in doing so I see them just as they are, without judgement and without wishing anything for them except the love and acceptance in which we are all one. Does it make any difference? I don’t know about the people I have in mind but it makes a difference to me.

Letter to an old friend

Thank you for giving us a celebratory meal last night. One of the (many) things I like about you is – no nostalgia! (and not much medical talk either) which is refreshing and necessary at my age as we approach our 50th wedding anniversary.

It occurred to me this morning that next year will also be the 50th anniversary of my ordination as a Church of England priest but I have no inclination to mark that. One of the reasons why is contained in the book I am sending you. I first came across this French philosopher [Andre Comte-Sponville] when I was doing an OU course on virtue ethics about four years ago and read his ‘A Short Treatise on the Great Virtues’. This latest book [A Little Book of Atheist Spirituality] is a compassionate contribution to the somewhat sterile debate sparked off by Dawkins et al about the existence or otherwise of God.

For me the core of the book is on page 192: “Whether they are believers or not, mystics are those who no longer lack God. But is a God who is no longer lacking still God?” To discover in my mid 70’s that I no longer lack God (or as Martin Laird puts it in ‘Into the Silent Land’: “God does not know how to be absent.”) has been one of the most profound gifts of my life; my only regret being that I did not get it when I read Honest To God in 1963. But then I suspect even John Robinson himself didn’t fully realise the implications of what he was saying. Bishops, as well as us priests, had too much invested in keeping the institution going to see the implications of a ground of Being approach. Plus, nobody taught us the simple ‘how to’ of contemplative prayer. It was considered too otherworldly, too monkish, and what we wanted above all was to be relevant, God help us. (See, there I go again, expecting help from outside when it’s already here inside.)

Looking back I can see that, like a goldfish nosing against the side of the bowl, I was looking blindly for this insight. It caused grief to [my fiance] during our engagement because I felt torn between marriage and ordination. I hadn’t understood Bonhoeffer’s definition of chastity: ‘the total orientation of life towards a goal’. Nor had I understood (along with almost everyone else in Christian churches) what Jesus may have meant by ‘deny yourself....’. Just think how much unnecessary grief and suffering that verse has caused sincere Christian people! It has taken two non-Christian writers to help me over this threshold into the promised land – Eckhart Tolle and Andre Comte-Sponville. Of course since then, armed with their insight I have rediscovered that ancient Christian tradition of contemplative prayer. The irony is that those who are now teaching it in ways which ‘ordinary’ lay people can understand and practice are mostly Roman Catholic monks. Does the Vatican know what they are saying? I hope not because their most holy and reverend father Ben would probably silence them.

Perhaps with your combination of psychotherapy and Shakespearean insight you have avoided the worst excesses of our spiritual inheritance. Perhaps you have known much longer than me how to “take upon’s the mystery of things”. I hope so dear friend.
My love to you

Haiku

My daughter gives me a book of haiku for my birthday (The Everyman's Library of Pocket Poets. Edited by Peter Washington with translations from the Japanese by R. H. Blyth). Suddenly I realise that haiku are of the essence of the Now. Here are two by Basho:

Summer in the world -
floating on the waves
of the lake

I sit here
making the coolness
my dwelling-place.

Here's a modern one by Kerouac:

Missing a kick
at the icebox door
it closes anyway.

Then there's a section of haiku-like passages from what you might call 'traditional' western poets,like this one by Adlington:

A young beech tree
on the edge of the forest
stands still in the evening.

Or this from Walt Whitman

Far in the stillness
a cat
languishes loudly.

Birthday

So, on my 78th birthday I make two resolutions. One, to stop telling people how old I am. It’s either a boast or it’s manipulative. Two, to be wary about reminiscing. The past is dead and gone. My experience may or may not be relevant to a younger person. The skill is to discern the relevance of what I have to offer, with a presumption that silent attentiveness is better.

I notice worries about not being able to remember details of some recently past events. Worries are like greenfly. You see one or two and if you don’t do something immediately, before you realise it, they have multiplied into thousands.