Musing #9: Reality

“Our hardest and holiest work is to not look away”

Yesterday evening I went to the shops and when I got home my 15-year-old daughter was watching a Dispatches program on Channel 4 entitled, Kill Zone: Inside Gaza.  The graphic footage of what has happened and is happening to people in Gaza was harrowing.  There were no advert breaks during the program but, where the adverts would have been, a notice warning viewers that they may find some of the images distressing and that they included footage of injured children. I asked my daughter: Do you want to watch this? She nodded.  So, I sat with her, and we watched the horror that is reality for so many unfold before our eyes.  Knowing that this reality is only one of many around the world which seem impossibly inhumane and unliveable.

What should I do as a parent?  As a mother my primary concern was for my daughter: how would she respond to these images?  And yet I watched children with multiple injuries and listened to them talk of the multiple family members they had lost.  Their reality is so bleak.  As I went to bed I looked out my window and thought that in another part of the world, somewhere I can not see, that reality continues.

A couple of days ago I was listening to a radio discussion about a novel set in the near future, or may be the present, which deals with climate change.  In the novel one of the characters observes people laying out their towels on a British beach in the sunshine and says to another character: How can they do this?  How can they carry on as if nothing is happening? Don’t they realise that this is our planet falling apart? (or words to that effect).  In the discussion the author and the other participants talked of how we live in two different realities: most of us are fully aware of the effects of climate change and the suffering and radical changes they will bring, but at the same time we have to carry on with life, so we do. 

The realities of our own life in the here and now tend to supersede any other realities that we know of.  We tune out some of the news we hear: we numb ourselves to the pain that we know exists.  And, often, we have pain and anxiety in our own reality which can not be easily brushed aside: it is as real as the suffering on the other side of the planet and as real as the suffering that is coming.

The quote above is from Rabbi Sharon Brous.  These words - our hardest and holiest work is not to look away – struck me as true on so many levels.  It is easy to look away; to carry on as if nothing is happening; to let things happen to other people; to ignore the person I had an argument with.  But is it right? What is hard is also holy work: when we face the ugliness of humanity something shifts in us.  If we can stay with that pain we open up cracks that let Love in, even in the midst of the suffering.

We can not function and take on all the realities that exist on our planet at the same time: the pain would break us.  But neither do I want to ignore them.  I know that when I sat down to watch that program last night – doing so not because I wanted to but because I wanted to see what my daughter saw – I opened myself up to the suffering of other human beings.  I witnessed other lives and, in some intangible way, I let their souls speak to mine.  Did anything change?  In the horrendous situation I was watching, the news this morning would seem to say a resounding no.  But, did anything change?  Somewhere inside me I think something did, because I recognised and acknowledged another human being in pain.

At the beginning of Rabbi Sharon Brous’ reflection that I read this morning she says: A Rabbinic text from the ninth century declares that every person is accompanied, at all times, by a procession of angels crying out, “Make way, for an image of the Holy One is approaching.”

Every person… My prayer is that we will know that for ourselves, and that we will honour it in each person we meet and in those that we see in their suffering on our screens.  Let us not turn away from them but do the hard and holy work, reaching out – in what ever way we can – into the pain of our kin.

 

All is Well: A Journey in Contemplation

g Reality

It may seem like a strange question, but: what is reality?  It seems to me that in the clamour of modern life we have lost our hold on what reality is.  Many of us know this through our experiences of social media.  We scroll through posts and know that, whilst we can touch base with people, much of what we see is not ‘real’.  More than ever before, we have the opportunity to curate our own lives and to portray a life that is not real.  We can reach across the ether and ‘hold hands’ with a friend – give them a virtual hug – but this can come at the price of not living in the present: not interacting with the people on our doorstep and the environment in which we live.

Human beings are amazing creatures and the exponential rise of technology means that many of us – especially in developed nations – live lives that are insulated from what it means to be alive.  We don’t have direct contact with the source of the things that enable us to live: our water comes from taps; our food comes from shops; our heating comes through radiators.  We take for granted: shelter; full stomachs; clean water and warmth.  And in the same way that we have lost contact with the physical sources of life, so too have we lost touch with the spiritual source of life.  God/Love gets lost in all the superficial things we hold onto and we seek solace through various forms of addiction – to food, drugs, alcohol, pleasure.  Always seeking more, bigger, better.  Trying to hold on to youth and beauty instead of seeking the inner wisdom that comes from a life in touch with reality.

This is not to say that life is easy.  Life trips us up all the time.  It throws ‘curve balls’ at us that knock us off balance.  And sometimes that fall is exactly what we need.  Sometimes that fall takes us face-to-face with reality and we are able to let go of the things that have blinded us.

It is a hard message to hear, but a true one.  We need to spend some time in darkness, and we need to recognise our current trajectory given our lack of care for our planet.  Human beings are amazing creatures, and yet despite all our knowledge and scientific discoveries we too often run away from the truth.  When there is bad news there is only so much we can take and then we seek comfort – comfort that is often taken at the expense of others who are far away enough for us to ignore.

I struggle with this.  I struggle to live in a world where I know that other people suffer, where the planet is being exploited and destroyed, where it seems that too many of us – and in that I include myself – are too lethargic, or scared, or selfish to act in love for the whole of humanity and the planet.  It is all too much – the problems seem too big to even conceptualise, so I disappear back into my comfort zone.

I believe that God wants us to live in reality.  To face the darkness and, indeed, to dwell in it sometimes.  It is there that we can escape the clamour of the world: we can find God and God can find us.  It seems counterintuitive in many ways and yet it is the pattern of nature - life leads to death and death to life – the very pattern that Christ as a man lived out in his time on earth.  He did not turn his back on the realities of life – he reached out in love and when death sought him out he absorbed the hatred that put him there and accepted his path.  In accepting his path, he found life.

In many ways it seems crazy to be writing these thoughts and ideas under the title of ‘All is well’ when our world is such a mess.  But I honestly believe that when we face the reality and ugliness of our world and ourselves, it is then that God/Love enters us with the reassurance that ‘all is well’, and we become aware of a bigger reality.  A reality that is cosmic and beyond our understanding. We gain a peace that we don’t understand and yet is more real than any we have previously experienced.

Meditation has been described as ‘practising dying’.  In meditation I sit in silence and I let go of all that is inside me: I just sit.  The way of contemplation is a ‘letting go’ not just of the physical, but also of the ego – a letting go of myself.  Jesus taught us to give up our lives and take up our crosses.  Why such a tough request?  Because that is the way of life and peace.  God does not come to punish us in this, he comes to us in Love and wants us to find the Love that he planted in our souls at the very beginning; that he planted in the whole of his creation.

The darkness we experience is sometimes an unknowing.  Whilst I am energised to understand more about how our universe functions, I am conscious that there are always more questions.  Whilst I love to find out more about how people work and to find empathy, I am always faced with people and situations that surprise me and that I don’t understand.  Sometimes I need to let go of the desire to understand and sit in the mystery of it all.  God/Love is mystery and sometimes our journey is a road of un-knowing.  Sometimes we need to unpick what we thought we knew and trust the falling; trust the mystery; trust the darkness.  Let go of our need to be in control and trust that God/Love will always catch us.

Through darkness we find light.  Fighting for justice and peace, valuing our planet and every human life, is not something we can do without this inner journey.  We will burn out; we will lose hope.  We need to do the inner work that takes us to the real reality; that affirms that ‘all is well’.  Then we will live in hope and faith, and love will be our source and our guide.

 

Love says

Love says:

I am here

 

I am in the waiting.

Pregnant with the life

that will unfold.

 

I am in the

sound of the wind,

and in its silence

as it comes to rest.

 

I am in the pause,

in the full stop,

the comma.

 

I am in the snatch of time

between your busy thoughts.

 

I am in each Nano second,

which passes

without your noticing,

beyond your grasping.

 

I am within the sound waves.

Caught in the bird’s song

And the hum of traffic.

 

I am the infinite space

Between each molecule.

In the narrowest gap

which opens up into my expanse.

 

Love says:

I am here

I am not in the stillness.

I am the stillness

that seeps into you

as you sit in my loving gaze.

 

Sermon: Acts 17:22-31 and John 14:15-31

Theme: The Lord of the Dance

Yesterday at church those leading the service talked of how our faith is like a dance, in which we are learning to tune into the music of God’s love and move in response.  In looking for what to share on my blog I found something I wrote in May 2017 on these two passages which feels like it is exploring the same theme.  How do we understand God? How do we tune into the music of love and join in his dance?

In the verses in Acts Paul is talking to the people of Athens.  They ask him to explain ‘this new idea’.  They are thinking people but what Paul is saying is something different – I love that they want to understand.  I find myself standing with them saying, ‘Yes, Paul, please explain!’ 

Paul in his ‘tuned-in-ness to God’ understands their desire, and he speaks to them because he  wants the unknown to become known (v 23); he explains that God does not live in temples built by hands (v24): he describes how God wants humans to seek him out, reach out for him and find him, ‘though he is not far from any of us’ (v27).  In verse 28 he uses the Athenian’s own words to explain that God is with them: ‘For in him we live and move and have our being’ ‘We are his offspring’.

I sense that searching for God in my own soul.  I sense the presence of God when I slow down and pause.  I feel like my life’s journey is to return home to the place inside myself where God/Love dwells and this is a journey that we are all on however eloquently or uncomprehendingly we articulate and understand it.

Then we come to Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John. We see that Heaven’s strategy is relationship and starts with the relationship ‘within’ God – between the three parts of God.  Jesus says in verse 16: And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another counsellor to be with you for ever – the Spirit of truth.

God is ‘three in one’.  Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  The relationship between these three is at the heart of our faith.  The Holy Trinity is a difficult concept but as we struggle to understand we find the deeper truths and the mystery that is God.  We will never fully understand ‘him’ but that shouldn’t stop us trying and, in the process, beginning to unwrap that bit of God’s kingdom which lives within us.

The relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit is sometimes understood as the ’Divine Dance’.  There is movement and harmony and it is centred around Love. Jesus says in verse 20: ‘you are in me, and I am in you’.  Jesus is in the Father and we are in him, and he is in us, and the Holy Spirit ‘lives with us and will be in us’ (v17).

The intertwined nature of the relationship reminds me of a Celtic knot within which we find no ends.  The flow of the ‘three in one’ is beautifully illustrated in this ancient art.  And that image is deepened when we realise this is a static symbol of something that is moving and flowing.  It is a dance of love into which we are invited: we are invited into that Love energy.

Yesterday at church we sang ‘The Lord of the Dance’.  I tend to associate this song with my 70’s Primary education – a favourite in assemblies.  But yesterday I heard its truth.  Jesus is the Lord of the Dance and invites us to join in.

“I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me: I am the Lord of the Dance said he!”

I would encourage you to listen to ‘The Lord of the Dance’ and to consider Jesus’ words: You are in me and I am in you.  What does that mean to you?  How does that reality sit with you?  God lives in you…  Have you found ‘him’ in there yet?

Picture by Caleb Woods on Unsplash