Death? No Thanks

Death and Taxes, the only two things in life that are certain.
One you can avoid, the other you can’t.
We are all getting older every minute.
And nowadays we are being asked to think more about our pensions, the care that we will have in our old age, and even where we would prefer to die.
But we still do not think too much about our own deaths.
Most of us prefer not to dwell too deeply on the subject.
Apart from not wanting a horrible death, we tend to shove it to the back of the mind.
To begin with we think we will live forever. We have our parents and grandparents to go before us.
Then it is just our parents.
And when they go, we really begin to feel that we are next.
Our mortality becomes very apparent.
We realise that more people are dying around us. We become sensitive to that ache or pain, that mole which seems to be itching – could it be C….?
And so the reality of death begins to dawn. It is no longer ‘way over yonder’, but merely ‘a way off’.
But, however old we get, we rarely make our peace with it.
We still do not want to talk about it, think of our funeral, or plan the details. And if we ever do mention it to others, they quickly move us on – “don’t be morbid… you’ve got years yet”.
Yet, like birth, death is an integral part of life.
You cannot live without dying. It is one of the two bookends of life. And to fully live you have to be prepared to die.
To be prepared for death. When we say that, we generally think of “getting our affairs in order “– wills, funeral, and the mental attitude to actually dying.
But I think there is a more vital stage than that.
During our lives we should carry our deaths around with us.
To be perfectly alive and in the moment, we have to live with the fact that we are going to die.
It is a cliché that we should live every moment as if it were our last, but I am suggesting that we should live every moment in the knowledge that we are going to die.
Not to do so is like playing a football match and thinking that there is no end to the game, whereas in actuality you’ve only got 90 minutes.
That time constraint creates a focus for action.
In life we think we’ve got ‘forever’ (when we are young), or ‘quite a time’ (when we are middle aged), or ‘not quite yet’ (when we are old).
But death is a ‘now’ thing. We are to embrace the possibility of death. To know what it feels like, to reach for it.
We should get to know our death; know how we feel about it; consider its possibility daily; so that when it comes we can say “Welcome friend, you are a part of my life and I have prepared myself for your coming”.
For to welcome death daily is to live in a right relationship with life.
It enables us to treasure what we have, and not to take it for granted. To make correct decisions based upon the idea that what we are deciding is within a finite structure, not an infinity of possibilities.
It also makes us consider the darkness in death, which makes the darkness in life less dark.
To live with death is not to forsake life; it is to embrace life fully.
We cannot fully live unless we are prepared to fully die.
As Shakespeare put it:
“Be absolute for death; either death or life shall thereby be the sweeter.”

I do not 'Enjoy!'

Why is it that I want to scream every time a waiter puts down my food and says ‘Enjoy!’.
There is nothing outwardly wrong with it, but I find my insides curdle whenever someone says it to me. I think it is the assumption that they are claiming authorship of the experience I am about to have. No! It’s my experience, nothing to do with you!
There are certain words and phrases that we seem to instinctively hate, for one reason or another.
I also hate the word ‘devastated’.
“My hamster died and I was completely devastated.”
“I found out that he was going out with someone else – I was devastated”.
It is such an over-used word that seems to be used out of proportion to the actual meaning. Hiroshima was devastated. The origin is de-vestare to lay waste.
Another one is ‘Hello!’ (pronounce: hell-oh-oh with the intonation going up on the first oh) in the sense of ‘You think I like you? Well ‘hell-oh-oh! Wake up and smell the coffee. You are completely deluded'.
Again it is the assumption that I hate, that I am in some way insane, and not getting the point that I find so insulting.
Hey Ho – getting older makes you crankier!
Any words or phrases that you hate?

What in heaven's name is The Trinity?

Last Sunday was Trinity Sunday. Herewith a go as to what it all means.

(Remember, The willingness to be wrong is all!)

Thomas Aquinas put forward the idea that God is one substance that has three relationships, but that the relationships constitute the very nature of the substance.
This view of the Trinity suggests that essence of Salvation (or becoming ultimately safe and fulfilled) is not based on belief, but on relationship.
Salvation comes from our relationship with God.
Our task is not to literally ‘make disciples of all people’, but really to be in relationship with all people.
The power (God) is in the relationship.
In quantum physics, more and more it is the relationship between particles that is interesting.
God is therefore not something that we can understand with our minds, but know by being a part of a relationship.
Salvation is that readiness, that capacity that willingness to stay in that relationship with God.

Well that's what I thought on Sunday anyway!

Going no-where, and liking it.

Just back from a few days at a monastery near Birmingham (Glasshampton).
How amazing it is to be somewhere with no agendas.
Nothing to get done, no-one chasing you for anything (no kids - I hope they are not reading this!) no phones ringing, no-one knocking at the door.
It really shows what a different experience it is just to 'be' for the sake of it.
So much of our lives are spent chasing our tails; and when we look back - for what?
We always seem to be pretty much at the same place as when we started:
Born naked, die naked - but how do you spend the time in between, that's the question!
Ended up at 'The best tea rooms in the UK' (see www.witleytearooms.co.uk) after a 3 hour walk - bliss.
Except that there was also a three hour walk back.
Still, I got no-where and really enjoyed doing it

The Sound of Silence

I surround myself with noise:
Music, the radio, television, children, chatter, and appliances.
And when there is no noise, I create my own; in my head or out loud.
I feel comfortable with noise.
It reassures me that all is OK in the world. That normal service has been resumed.
That things are going on as they should.
That I am alright with the world, and the world is alright with me.
Noise is the modern comfort blanket: Muzak, iPods, phones – reassurance that we are still living and that the world wants our attention.
But it’s all on the surface and, as with the proverb about the swimming pool, all the noise comes from the shallow end.
When we hear silence it is deep, profound, and life changing.
When we are open to silence we are open to that depth, to the possibility of our lives being changed.
But we do this so rarely.
We get up to the noise of the alarm, we turn the radio on, we clatter about, we exchange inanities with friends and family, we go to work with noise, we work with noise around us, and we go home to sit in front of noise, until we go to bed, where the noise in our heads keeps us awake.
And I am not much better with people.
The worst thing that can happen is for the conversation to dry up and leave us with an awkward silence – meaning a silence that causes us to feel awkward things. So we say something to cover up the awkwardness, to make it go away.
In fact we often shape the way we converse to avoid those silences. I find that my whole relationship with some people is built around keeping the conversation going. Filling the gaps, entertaining the person I am with, rather than letting us both be.
And, of course, there is a complementary position with the other person who tacitly allows you to ‘make the running’, while they just concentrate on getting the ball back over the net – for you to hit it again.
The sound of silence is the sound of the universe speaking to us.
It is more profound, more meaningful, more nourishing than anything that anyone could say, and yet we often do all we can to avoid it.
It brings peace, it brings harmony, and it brings understanding.
The problem is that it also makes us feel.
We are forced to feel what’s going on in our bodies, and what’s going on around us. And because that feeling involves an element of pain, we try to push it away.
However, that feeling, that pain, is what ultimately heals us.
It tends our wounds, and it brings us to wholeness.
Silence between people brings understanding, it allows love to grow, and it fosters intimacy.
Yet we avoid it.
We avoid silence at the cost of our health, of our joy, and of our ultimate happiness.
For it is the silence of the Eternal Nature that brings into contact with who we really are.
In it, we can hear that ‘still small voice’ which speaks to us in our hearts and which leads us home.
And we continue to wonder why we feel lost.
Silence is the most under-rated and under-used free resource that is available to all.
Each of us could seek to experience it more, could seek to practice it more.
To do so would make us all richer.
What is the sound of silence? It is like the sound of one hand clapping.
To listen for it is to hear it.

I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours

Our own inner world is a very secret place.
It contains all the things we would rather no-one else knew. It is also a treasury of all the wisdom we have ever gathered. And we keep it to ourselves. It is precious. It is who we are, and is it provides us with the information we use to navigate our way around our lives.
And yet it is limited to what we have been told, known or experienced.
We cannot know what we do not know. And because we do not know it we do not consider the possibility that it might exist – whatever it is.
We learn from each other. We learn how to love from our parents, from our friends, from those we come into contact with.
Before I began to learn how to love, I did not think there was any other way, than the way I was doing it. And yet I wondered why I wasn’t able to form any lasting relationships. I thought that there was something wrong with me. But there wasn’t, I just hadn’t been shown how.
We cannot know what we are unconscious of.
Consciousness is such a difficult thing to get a hold of. The International dictionary of Psychology describes consciousness as “ impossible to define except in terms that are unintelligible without a grasp of what consciousness means” and goes on to say “it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written about it”.
Which is very liberating for us ‘non-experts’. Normally science tells us what to think about everything, and here is a scientific tome admitting that it doesn’t know – pretty amazing. Science giving us permission to work it out for ourselves.
And that is what the meaning of the word consciousness implies – ‘con- scious’ , from ‘scius’ – to know, and ‘con’ – together, ‘to know together’.
By sharing the truth together about what we experience we can form a library of knowledge, beyond our own experience.
A range of perspectives, rather than our just our own.
We are very attached to our own perspectives. We will often be prepared to die for them. And yet they are only the sum of all the good ideas we have ever had.
To live our lives to the full we have to be prepared to broaden our outlook. To really hear from others as to how they experience life; what other dimensions of experience might exist; what other ways of being.
Being open minded is more about hearing than it is about considering. Because when you hear something that you have not heard before it broadens your mind and gives you a different perspective.
The considering of the implications of that perspective comes later.
Love is just one of the areas we can develop a perspective on.
We can open ourselves to different ways of thinking, of experiencing and of being. And this can take us into new dimensions of existence - in spirituality, in healing, in self-acceptance, and in the very nature of reality.
Because consciousness, like opinion, is not fixed. There is more to life than any of us ever know, and there is always more to experience.
So be prepared to explore, open yourself to what others have to say, and don’t think that all life is as you experience it.
There just might be a whole new world out there.

Guess what makes the world go round?

It was Eric Fromm who said that “The deepest need of man is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness”. Failure to do so, he goes on to say, leads to insanity, because the only way of escaping the isolation from the world is to pretend that the world does not exist.
We try many ways of dealing with our aloneness before we resort to insanity. We take drugs, we drink, we sleep with anything that moves, we throw ourselves into careers, we undertake creative endeavours, we busy ourselves, quite literally, to distraction.
Ultimately, however, there is only one holistic way of overcoming our separateness, and that is to love.
In his masterpiece “The Art of Loving” Fromm describes loving as not ‘falling for’ but ‘giving’.
Love is what makes the world go round. Not money.
Love is the most basic of all currencies.
We are given life out of an act of love. None of us asked to be born, we are freely given life. And from that moment on, all our relationships are built around the principles of love, even the bad ones.
The best definition of wealth I have come across is ‘the ability to give’. By that definition, even the financially richest of us can be actually seen as being poor.
The more we are able to give, the richer we become. We become more alive.
The secret of love is in giving.
When we moan that we are not loved enough, or we cannot find love, the answer invariably lies in what we are prepared to give, rather than what we are wanting to receive.
The laws of nature even comply. Every schoolgirl knows that ‘for every action, there is an equal and opposite re-action’. Now why should that not be true in personal relationships.
And yet the perceived wisdom is about ‘getting a partner’, ‘getting love’, of lack, of missing something, of not being given to.
Love has been ‘comsumerized’. We try to consume love, like everything else – as proved by the mushrooming trade in pornography.
We try to buy love wherever we can, to trade for it, to scheme for it, but it will not be ‘had’.
Love is the natural flow of energy from one part of our universe to another – it is the very building block of life.
As humans we have to learn to manage it as we have learnt to manage electricity or nuclear power. Until we do that we remain in our own shells, isolated, resentful, and in danger of going insane.
It is amazing that we do not teach ‘how to love’ in school. It is assumed that parents will know – but they often do not.
How can you teach your children to love, when you have never been loved yourself?
Whether we know it or not, the chief lesson we have to learn in life is ‘How to love’.
It is the ultimate lesson that lies at the root of most of the problems that we face today: war, poverty and man’s inhumanity to man.
Surely it is something we should all be working at.