My Grandmother’s Wisdom

My grandmother died twenty years ago last week. As a small boy, it always seemed to me that my grandmother was wiser than my parents.  I had no objective facts to prove that, but intuitively I believed it.  I knew that my grandmother wasn’t as educated as my parents.  She had finished her formal schooling at grade four.  But that didn’t matter there was something in the way she treated me that seemed to communicate that she was a very wise woman.

My sister and I spent school holidays with my grandmother, while my mother cared for my three younger brothers at home.  I never realized at the time what a privilege it was to have the undivided attention of my grandmother for six weeks each year.  She would do the usual things one does with school aged children - trips to the pictures, visits to the Myer toy department and my favourite, dinner in the Myer cafeteria.  As a child I couldn’t imagine a more mouth watering meal than a meat pie with sauce, mashed potatoes and peas served on a plate with the Myer emblem at the top and accompanied by a strawberry milkshake with double ice cream.

My grandmother would walk everywhere.  She never owned a car and buses were only for long distances.  When my parents insisted that I walk to the local shops rather than being driven, I would complain.  But strangely, walking with my grandmother was not an imposition, but rather an adventure.  Her wisdom was what I would call “kitchen table wisdom.”  She had little time for the sophisticated discussions that happened between my mother and her children.  For my grandmother, the centre of life was care for and service to those she loved. And she was a woman of routine.  The washing was done on Monday, Thursday and Saturday; the carpets vacuumed no more than once a week for fear of wearing them out; Breakfast at seven, lunch at twelve and dinner on the table at five-thirty. 

Meals were times for conversation and stories.  Her stories, as she emptied her second pot of tea, told us who we were and where we had come from.  They were liberally spiced with family faults and failures, but equally they recounted the triumphs and small victories of our forebears and relatives.  Through my grandmother’s stories I heard the deeper voice of identity and integrity.  She never preached, moralized or criticized and yet I knew what she regarded as important in life and what she valued for her grandchildren. I am sure that it was from her that I gained my appreciation of stories, not primarily as entertainment, but as access into the real world - the world of hope and despair and the world of courage and failure.

My grandmother probably wasn’t that much wiser than my parents.  It just seemed to me as a small boy that her simple love for me and her uncomplicated view or the world was a goal that I wanted for my life.  From my innocent perspective she never seemed to be unhappy, angry or sad.  But the truth is she probably was, but she never showed it to me.  Perhaps all of us can seem wise to other people when we only have a little knowledge them.

The wonderful thing about my grandmother was that even in her last years she never tired of telling family stories.  And remarkably she could tell the same story over and over again and never change a word.  We sat, listened and treasured those moments with her - waiting with glee for the often heard punch line and the glorious laughter that followed.

Christopher

The Inarticulate Speech of the Heart

I had very sad news this week.  A good friend told me that her daughter had delivered a still-born baby boy at 26 weeks.  The tears welled up in my eyes as she told me. The words to say at such times never come easily to me and any words that do come seem so ineffectual and inadequate and seem that only the inner and outward sigh is in anyway authentic.  After a time I finished the conversation saying to my friend that in my morning prayer and meditation I would draw her daughter and husband and all the family into my prayer where my longing for them would be comfort and support and that I might be present and aware of their great suffering of which I can be only a friend or perhaps a companion.

For some time now I have found morning meditation an important part of my day.  For years I struggled with forms of personal prayer that I found unhelpful and dare I say, inadequate and inane.  The notion that prayer is about me talking to God was formative in my Christian development, but over the years the words increasingly got in the way of my deepest longings.  Then a couple of years ago I discovered meditation.  Through the careful instruction of a meditation teacher and a monthly gathering with a rather secular Buddhist meditation group, I found a deep stillness and openness with in me.  The simple practice of lighting a candle, breathing slowly and attentively, being aware of my body and the life within, has become a liberating experience.  Nowhere to go, nothing to do and most importantly, nothing to say has become for me the door way to true prayer.

Meditation has brought me back to prayer, but a prayer of the heart, prayer that listens, and practices stillness and wonder, much more the prayer the Apostle Paul speaks of in his letter to the Church at Rome, “we do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.” It’s strange that groans and sighs can be more articulate in prayer than a litany of words; words and words and more words.

I think we’ve got prayer wrong in the Christian church today and it is imperative that we start to get to right. This may not be the view of many Christians, but I’d suggest that the deepest longings of the human soul are not expressed in theology, philosophy or doctrines and beliefs; they are expressed in the inarticulate speech of the heart, in sighs and groans too deep for words and in awe-filled silence.

Perhaps the first posture of prayer must always be humility.  Again from the letter to the Roman’s Chapter 8, “those who search their hearts know the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for others in accordance with God’s will.”  When I am confronted with someone’s pain and suffering it is not for me to assume I know what is best for them.  It is presence, my presence and attentiveness that is most needed.  Yes some simple words can be helpful.  But being truly present and opening my soul to the other is the essence of true prayer.  And I believe it’s in this place that we encounter the real presence of the living God.

The next morning after the conversation with my friend, I light a candle, slowly breathed in and out, became aware of my body and my place in this world and I imagine a circle, at its centre was the loving presence God and there in God’s presence I named my friends daughter and her husband and the little one they had lost.

Christopher

Still Thinking – Soulfulness

This week the Age Newspaper had an article on Docklands, one of the newest of our planned precincts in Melbourne. The article suggested that in eight years the population has grown from almost nothing to over 50,000 people who, “walk, exercise, eat and socialize – or try to” but in an environment with, “no trees, no birds, no grass, a lack of community but a plethora of structures.”  The view of some is that this suburb only 2km from the central business district lacks soul.  I suppose it is the difference between a house and a home, a house provides physical shelter, whereas, “home is where the heart is.”

In the last few years the word soul has popped up in unexpected places.  It is common to talk of the soul of an organization and it doesn’t mean the part of the corporation that lives on after death.  Soul and soulfulness is a way of describing the innate force or energy of life that is a part of every human being and even corporations. So, being soulful means living one's life according to a deeper meaning that brings a commitment to self-reflection and exploration.

The Bengali poet Sri Chinmoy, suggests that the stance you should adopt toward the Holy is one of soulfulness.  He writes, “Do not try to approach God with your thinking mind. It may only stimulate your intellectual ideas, activities, and beliefs. Try to approach God with your crying heart. It will awaken your soulful, spiritual consciousness.” Of course our minds are always involved in our approach to God, nevertheless to draw deeply for the well of the sacred means our emotions and feelings must be engaged and that is the work of the soul.

In contemporary thought the soul is not a part of us that is primarily associated with religion or the spirit.  The Jungian psychologist, James Hillman suggests that “by soul I mean, first of all, a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint toward things rather than a thing itself. . . .Between us and events, between the doer and the deed, there is a reflective moment - and soul-making means differentiating this middle ground.” Perhaps it is better to speak of soulfulness rather than “the soul.”

Allison Moir-Smith a Canadian psychotherapist says that to live with soul is:

•   to live reflectively, deeply, and imaginatively,
•   to come into relationship with your deepest self and to live in connection with it,  
• to live courageously in the present moment, with respect for the past and with your eyes firmly focused on who you are becoming.

Perhaps that’s what is missing from Docklands.  The buildings are all there (well no quite, the article also notes that there were at least 8 cranes working on various structures in Docklands) but something is still missing. A town, a suburb needs a history, a community, and a degree of messiness and that’s were soulfulness comes in.  Like creativity the work of the soul does not happen in straight lines. Too much tidiness gets in the way of a soulful life and a soulful suburb.  The soul needs to wander, dream and to engage the imagination and the emotions.  Soul always wants to feel and that can be feelings of sorrow, sadness, joy, melancholy or exuberance.  And the soulful life honours all this emotions as pathways to the full and rich life – and suburb.

Christopher

Still Thinking – Brokenness

About three years ago Anne, my wife and I went to a concert in the Yarra Valley to hear the musician/poet /songwriter Leonard Cohen.  Cohen’s music is difficult to define.  He could be called an existential poet or perhaps a soulful folk singer.  The concert was fantastic. Cohen is over seventy years old and yet on that night he sang with the energy of a young man.  Among the many songs he performed was one titled The Anthem.  I have heard it many times before but the chorus never fails to move me.  The words go like this:

Ring the bells that still can ring forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything that's how the light gets in. 

The two images in the song are deeply spiritual.  First, the need to let go of religious perfectionism and the notion that God is waiting for the perfect offering.  And secondly, the recognition that it is when we are broken; when our lives are cracked open, that that is when the light and truth gets in.

It is an uncomfortable truth that most often the Spirit of God finds its way into our lives through our weakness, vulnerability, sadness and brokenness.  The ego in all of us is as Carl Jung suggested, “a little god that resists the life changing presence of God’s spirit.”  So the light of God’s truth finds the cracks in our lives and in our weakness begins to show us a new vision of wholeness.

Jacob Needleman, professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University draws this story of the power of brokenness from the Jewish Hasidic tradition.  He writes:

A disciple asks his Rabbi, “Rebbe, why does the Torah tell us to place these words upon our hearts?  Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?  The Rabbi answers, “it is because as we are, we are closed and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts.  So we place them on top of our hearts.  And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks open and the words fall in.”

Our life journey will pass through experiences of “heartbreak”.  The Christian story is clear that Jesus embraced the suffering visited upon him, so that the cross becomes a symbol of God’s love poured out for all humanity.  It is a sign to the followers of Jesus that the heart/the centre of our lives, must be large enough to hold both joy and suffering; despair and ecstasy, but only when it is open to the presence of God’s light and love.  And that is the difficult part for us.  This is not just a doctrine that must be believed, it is instead a painful experience that must be lived.

The Quaker scholar, Parker Palmer in a recent article draws us to this uncomfortable conclusion that we must allow ourselves to feel the pain of life fully lived.  Rather than numbing it with anaesthetics, fleeing from it with distractions, or fighting it off with blame and attack, we open our lives to the experience, allowing the turmoil to settle and an inner quietude to emerge so that the God within us can help us find our way through.[i]

Many know that a “heartbreak” can be a “breakthrough.”  Without the heart, the core of ourselves, being broken open, we will never know the largeness of life and the wonderful capacity within us to hold both joy and sorrow together in our lives.

Christopher

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[i] Palmer, Parker. “The Broken-Open Heart: Living with Faith and Hope in the Tragic Gap.” Weavings, March/April 2009 http://www.upperroom.org/weavings/pdf/PalmerReprint.Weavings.pdf

Still Thinking – Garden of the Soul

In spring I get excited about the garden. I would love to be a better gardener that I am.  Of course that is easily solved by just doing it with more commitment and enthusiasm.  Nevertheless, I do enjoy the digging, clearing, planting, watering and watching the garden grow.  Even though digging is the most demanding and physical part of the process, it is for me the most rewarding.  Perhaps it’s because the nature of my work from week to week involves sitting in front of a computer screen, or having conversations with people or delivering a sermon, and that means I long for a simple physical experience of “groundedness.” And that comes when digging in the garden.  

I am sure that it is not lost on most gardeners that the word “humus” means of the earth and that the compost we spread when garden is “humus” which brings us close to the earth, in fact you could say, makes “humble.”  To be humble is to stay close to the earth or to be grounded. And of course “humus” is also found in the word humiliation which means to be pushed down to the ground.

There is such a vital connection between gardening and the spiritual life that many say that they are closer to God in nature – in the garden, then in a church building.  Perhaps it’s because they are a part of the rhythm of the seasons, or the process of composting and planting and then the act of contemplation as one watches the garden grow.  But also, while gardening brings us closer to new growth there is always the wonderful experience of pulling out the weeds.  It doesn’t take must imagination to see the parallels between gardening and the spiritual life.

The greatest of modern day Pontiffs, Pope John XXIII, once said, “We are not on earth to guard a museum, but to cultivate a flowering garden of life.” We all know that if we think of our lives as say, a building with walls and windows, doors and roofs, then we construct an edifice that may be strong, but does it grow?  It’s the garden in which the house is set that often gives the home both its fragrance and its garland of beauty.

Paul Coelho is the author the famous book The Alchemist, published in 1988 and soon to be made into a film. But a more recent book of Coelho’s titled Brida draws an imaginative parallel between buildings and gardens as metaphors of life.  He writes:

In his or her life, each person can take one of two attitudes: to build or to plant.  Builders may take years over their tasks, but one day they will finish what they are doing.  Then they will stop, hemmed in by their own walls.  Life becomes meaningless once the building is finished.  Those who plant suffer the storms and the seasons and rarely rest.  Unlike a building, a garden never stops growing.  And by its constant demands on the gardener’s attention, it makes the gardener’s life a great adventure.

I love that quote not because it diminishes the houses in which we live, homes are fundamental to human life, but because it pictures the spiritual life as an organic process in which growth and sustainability is its goal.  Our inner lives crave to be nurtured and nourished. We are healthy in our faith and our spiritual journey when we are adventurous – dig in the hard soil and add a good load of compost, pull out a few weeds and plant an exotic scrub that has never been planted there before.  Sometimes that takes a bit of effort both spiritually and physically, but the reward of gardening is well worth it.

Christopher

Still Thinking – Forgiveness

Several years ago the celebrated atheist Richard Dawkins wrote an important book titled The Selfish Gene. In fact, Dawkins coined the term, “the selfish gene” no such idea existed before the book was published in 1976.  The book made a significant impact in the fields of both evolutionary biology and cultural development.  Naming a particular gene selfish was problematic because as Dawkins and others explained, genes have no will or moral motivation, rather they are “selfish” in the sense that the genes that replicate and are passed on are those that serve the best interest of the organism to which they belong – hence selfish.

Self-interest or selfishness has not had a good press in the Christian tradition.  Most of us were taught that to put one’s self before others was wrong, even sinful.  From a young age children are taught to share and to put others first and that selfishness should be punished or at least corrected.  And yet there is also the opposite view that the child must learn to be assertive and stand up to bullies and those who would exploit them.  And we know that our society relishes competition and glorifies winners and barely tolerates a looser.

There is no denying that Dawkins’ “selfish gene” is essential to the survival of the human species and active in the healthy human being and that even acts of bravery and altruism can be in fact, self-serving, perhaps not observable in the immediate context but later in a larger vision of life.  A healthy Christian view of life finds nothing wrong with that.  The central tenant of the Christian faith is to, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind and your neighbour as yourself.”  I think it is fair to say that loving my neighbour is often in my and the neighbours, best interest.

An example of this reciprocity comes from the considerable research done in recent years on the therapeutic value of forgiveness.   If one was to choose the opposite emotions to forgiveness they would be anger, hate, revenge or resentment.  It doesn’t take much imagination to recognize the damage these emotions do to ourselves and to those around us. It could be suggested that to forgive is an act of selfishness because I may get more benefit from it than the person I am forgiving.  Letting go of grudges and bitterness can open the way for experiences of compassion, kindness and peacefulness and it takes me out of the role of victim and empowers me to act with courage and assertiveness.

Katherine Piderman, Ph.D., staff chaplain at Mayo Clinic in the USA recognizes that forgiveness can lead to:

• Healthier relationships
• Greater spiritual and psychological well-being
• Less stress and hostility
• Lower blood pressure
• Fewer symptoms of depression, anxiety and chronic pain
• Lower risk of alcohol and substance abuse

But it is important to note that forgiveness is a process rather than merely an event.  We have all heard someone say, “just forgive and forget!” We also know that that is not so simple.  Cheap or easy forgiveness neither helps the victim nor the villain.  It may be just a way of avoiding conflict or burying a deep hurt.  True forgiveness takes time.  When we have been wounded or we have wounded another, it is legitimate to wait until that wound has begun to heal and we are less vulnerable.  Nevertheless, there is a time to forgive.  The Catholic priest Henri Nouwen said it this way:

Finally, it demands of me that I step over that wounded part of my heart that feels hurt and wronged and that wants to stay in control and put a few conditions between me and the one whom I am asked to forgive and forgive them.

Christopher

Still Thinking –Whole-Hearted Living

Each week in the TUC Update I will write a reflection on some issue relating our Christian faith to the experience of contemporary living.  The topics will be wide ranging.  It could be a current film or book; some new insights or information from the sciences; issues of wellbeing and daily living, or just a stream of consciousness that interests me and I think has relevance for our community at Toorak Uniting Church.  I have called this reflection Still Thinking because I want to emphasise that thinking about life and the Christian faith should be both a lifelong experience and done in what I would call a contemplative mode.  While our faith is always informed by our thoughts and our thinking, for me it always remains an activity of the heart.

It has been said that the greatest distance to travel is the thirty centimetres from the head to the heart.  Of course the word heart is used as a metaphor that describes the place of conviction and faith in our lives.  We know what it means to say a person is “whole-hearted,” or that an experience is “heart-felt.”  Both are ways of saying that something is not just important, but that it is central, vital and perhaps of eternal value in a person’s life. 

Central to our Christian faith are the words found in Deuteronomy 6:5. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” In the New Testament these words are found on the lips of Jesus where he states that there is nothing more important in life than to, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and your neighbour as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37) 

I interpret this passage to mean that essential to a fulfilling life is a relationship of love with the source of life, what the theologian Paul Tillich called the “ground of all being.” And we come to that relationship with God through our whole being – heart, soul, mind and although not explicitly mentioned in this passage, our bodies.  That doesn’t mean that we have to be very very religious to connect with God.  In fact religion often gets in the way of the relationship with the sacred and divine.  Religion can easily degenerate into simply rules and regulations, behaviours and beliefs and can limit the possibility of a transforming relationship with God.

No. What is called for in our lives is a life-long commitment to a journey of openness to and awareness of, all of life.  Or as Paula D’Arcy puts it, “God comes to us disguised as our life.” The best kind of learning we can cultivate in our Christian lives will engage our intellect, our emotions, our actions and behaviours and even the movements of our bodies.  All of life from the church sanctuary at TUC to the Yarra River at Warrandyte is the theatre of God’s activity.

Christopher