Happy Valentine’s Day.

The message from my eldest son to our family today.

The original Valentine was arrested in a time of imperial persecution for marrying Christian soldiers – soldiers weren’t allowed to marry – and helping others to escape persecution.  He was later executed when he tried to bring Claudius II around to the faith the emperor was persecuting.

I guess love holds out hope for everyone.

We all need the love and strength others provide so that our best and most creative self might emerge, helping us to overcome the inner obstacles and struggles, making it possible for us to do what we must do.

We know we are walking paradoxes, not just this or just that, but this and that: good and bad, light and dark, beauty and ugliness – sinners and mystics trying to hold together the opposites of life.

Love makes it possible.  Here’s to celebrating you and all you bring.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

(*From “The Teacher,” thought to be King Solomon.)

I’ve tried to hold these elemental truths close since I first coming across them:

Life is hard
You are not as special as you think
Your life is not about you
You are not in control
You are going to die.*

You may wonder, what’s left if we submit to or embrace these ways of thinking?

Paradoxically, they help us find ourselves, the True Self or identity which comes from deep within – more than what others think of us, more than what we have, more than what we are able to influence this way or that.

Life is an great experiment towards fullheartedness, the ability to increasingly appreciate our life within this universe – an idea, an inquiry, an attempt, a failure, a reflecting, an unlearning, a relearning, an idea, an inquiry, an attempt, a failure, a reflecting, an unlearning, a relearning, an idea … .

Life is hard
You are not as special as you think
Your life is not about you
You are not in control
You are going to die.*

Funny how these result in more, not less.

‘I believe this deeper self is what most traditions were referring to as “the soul” or True Self, and what some might call “the collective unconscious,” because when you live there you are somehow sharing and living in Something Larger.’**

(*From Richard Rohr’s Adam’s Return.)
(**From Richard Rohr’s The Naked Now.)

‘A new “Law” puts all other laws and criteria into an utterly new perspective.’*

“When the universe is full of wonder, all is as it should be.”**

Yesterday was an exciting one for Planet Earth.

The discovery of gravitational waves, confirming Albert Einstein’s one hundred year old theory, provides us with a new way of seeing our universe – the thing that most caught my attention from the news coming out of the LIGO Collaboration.

This morning, on a live radio phone-in, I listened to some of the questions being posed to scientists about the implications of this discovery.  One caller,  describing himself as being from the wilds of Cheshire, asked what has any of to do with the average man.

Everything, nothing, and everything in between depending on how close we get.

‘It takes a different mind to live in such a different time and space.’*

Nothing changes us unless we want it to, whether the new ways of seeing come from from science or personal development or the story of someone’s life.

Yesterday’s discovery won’t automatically make the world and everyone in it better.  If it could, it would have already done so.  The things which mark our movement through history and time are still argued and fought over, stolen and used to hurt one another and our planet.

‘I had come to understand one critical fact about my happiness project: I couldn’t change anyone else.’**

But if we are prepared to open our eyes and see more, we can change ourselves,  and we can send out our own gravitational waves to others.   They then can decide what they want to do with these:

‘The intrinsic self is not a genetically programmed entity that simply unfolds with time … . It is instead a set of potentials, interests, and capabilities that interact with the world, each affecting the other.’^

No matter what we see and know, our greatest task is to live in an expanding world and universe with imaginative and innovative expressions of love and joy and peace and kindness and goodness and gentleness.

‘Each day your soul weaves the opaque and ancient depth of you with the actual freshness of your present experience.’*^

(*From Richard Rohr’s The Naked Now.)
(**From the Cirque de Soleil’s Varekai.)
(^From Gretchen Ruben’s The Happiness Project.)
(^^From Edward Deci’s Why We Do What We Do.)
(*^From John O’Donohue’s Eternal Echoes.)

We bring ourselves heart, soul, mind, and strength to life.

Problem.

To love is to make ourselves vulnerable to the thoughts and words and actions of another.  We cannot control the response of another.

We hold our “art” out in front of me, offering it.  Pause.  There’s a hiatus moment when the gift is surrendered, out my of control and not yet received.

This happens thousands of time every day.  We smile at someone – pause – will they smile back?  I hold the door open for someone – pause – will they even make eye contact and acknowledge my presence?  I share something in a team which is important to me – pause – will it be received by a motion or a word, or will it fall into silence.  Every day for you too.

‘Musashi understood the observing eye sees simply what is there.  The perceiving eye sees more than what is there.’*

What happens if the gift is not received?  There’s a small twang of pain.  Maybe we think, “That’s the last time, I’ll open the door, smile at a stranger, share something in a public setting.”

Now that I notice the pain, what will I do with it?

‘Struggling with one’s own shadow self, facing interior conflicts and moral failures, undergoing rejection and abandonment, daily humiliations, experiencing any kind of abuse, or any form of limitation: all are gateways into deeper consciousness and the flowering of the soul.’**

(*An insight from the 16th Century Sumarai Musashi, from Ryan Holliday’s The Obstacle is the Way.)
(**From Richard Rohr’s The Naked Now.)

While we draw breath, we want to make the most of life.  Yes?

If only we could wish it and it would happen, but life isn’t like that.

What begins in curiosity, continues in inquiry, grows into fascination, sweats hard graft through trying and failing and learning, until the magic happens, and what was imagined becomes real and beautiful and helpful.

This isn’t a blueprint with “do this, then this, then this” instructions.  There’re as many ways to walk this way as there are people.  The weird thing is how we often we closely copy others, or fall into living a cliché, or put off what we really want to do until tomorrow.

We can struggle the tendency of life to take us into the unknown and unfamiliar, even though we’re fully capable of negotiating the liminal.

For a start, we’re all equipped with faith, a future-sensing ability which isn’t only the requisite of the religious.  A closer look at faith shows it’s exactly what we express when we open our minds and hearts and wills, each requires we open ourselves to what we don’t know, haven’t felt, or have not done before.

The Human story is replete with tales of how people have done just this, this journey being told again and again in the legends and myths personifying the human spirit, including contemporary film narratives and tales of superheroes – often tales of becoming.

I’ve enjoyed sharing snippets from the stories about time told by Alan Lightman.  The latest story I’ve read reflects on the texture of time – smooth, rough, prickly, silky, hard, soft – and then tells a story about a world in which the texture of time is sticky:

‘Portions of towns become stuck in some moment in history and do not get out.  So, too, individual people become stuck is some point of their lives and do not get free.’*

Sticky time is disconnecting, holding us in the past, disconnecting us from our future self, from one another, from the world in which we live:

‘For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present.  Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.’*

Even to notice what we notice is a beginning to getting unstuck, prising open my knowing to see and understand more:

‘Such an opening or reopening is entirely necessary to help you make fresh starts to break through to new levels.  You normally have to let go of the old and go through a stage of unknowing and confusion, before you can move to another level of awareness or new capacity.’**

There’s something more coming to us in the unknown – wonder.  The unknown in this way is our friend:

‘The unknown evokes wonder.  If you lose your sense of wonder, you lose the sacramental majesty of the world.  Nature is no longer a presence, it is a thing,  Your life becomes a dead cage of facts.’^

We each have the possibility of reopening present and future time, something which isn’t singular, our of scarcity – but a plethora possibilities, out of abundance

(*From Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams.)
(**From Richard Rohr’s The Naked Now.)
(^From John O’Donohue’s Eternal Echoes.)

Alan Lightman tells a beautiful little story about how people might live if they knew the world would come to an end in a month:

‘They do not seem to mind that the world will soon end, because everyone shares the same fate. A world with one month is a world of equality.’*

In this world, people drop their pretence, their seriousness, begin to notice the beauty all around them, forgiving each other, reconciling, living larger in a short time than they ever did in a large time.  With one minute to go, everyone holds hands in such silence they can hear the beating of their neighbour’s hearts.

If we found ourselves living in such a world but it didn’t come to an end, when realised this, would we go back to ways we used to live?  We know this new world is within our reach now, today.

‘Advice from every quarter, ancient and contemporary, backs up the observation that to change our feelings, we should change our actions.’**

No matter what I’m reflecting on in life, sooner or later I find myself pondering humility.  Previously, I’ve mentioned how humility is about not having too high or too low an opinion of ourselves.  Rather, it’s about having a true understanding of self – which means knowledge is involved.

There are negative uses to knowledge:

I’m not going to tell you so I’ll keep my job.
You know I know something about you; how does that make you feel?
You know I know something about you that you don’t want others to know, do you?

The Johari window offers four views of personal knowing: things we know about ourselves and hide from others, things we know about ourselves and share with others, things which others know about us which are hidden to us, and, things which neither we nor others know about us.

Perhaps, most hopefully, our journey is with one another towards what we do not know about each other, moving towards new knowledge we’ll share together, and holding more gracefully what we already know because it’s not the whole or finished picture.

The following words shared by Vincent Donovan from one of his students fits well here; they speak of a journey that understands there’s something more beautiful than we know now, a place discovered by both or all on a journey, not just one:

“In working with young people in America, do not try to call them back to where they were, and do not try to call them to where you are, as beautiful as that place may seem to you.  You must have the courage to go with them to a place that neither you nor they have ever been before.”^

This requires an open mind and heart, not working for this in order to get that:

‘Non-Dual people use knowledge for the transformation of persons and structures, but most especially to change themselves and to see reality with a new eye and heart.’**

What if those humbly imperfect and incomplete are discovering how to enter this new world, in acting and becoming, identifying their energy, being quietly persistent, iterating, with an eye for an opportunity?

(*From Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams.)
(**From Gretchen Ruben’s The Happiness Project.)
(^From Vincent Donovan’s Christianity Rediscovered.)
(^^From Richard Rohr’s The Naked Now.)

“When a great moment knocks on the door of your life,
it is often no louder than the beating of your heart,
and it is very easy to miss it.”*

I wonder if you, like so many hearing the “great moment,” have the first thought: “This is for someone else, not me.”

There’s a reason why this moment has come to you.  It’s not coming out of the blue; it comes because of your values, your talents, the experiences which fill your life and make you, you – including the good and bad, together with  the things you notice which no one else does.

To hear and respond, then, opens the possibility of something which will need to be described in new words and phrases – so different and new is it.

There’s even a game with minutes you can play.  The kind of ordinary minutes which each days brings, in which you can look for the opportunities of playing out what your life is asking of you, this into each moment: a note to self, or to someone else, an idea to jot down, someone to help, an innovation to bring, a plan to make, a journey to begin, a new word or phrase to devise, moment of reflection, a walk of noticing … .

All of this helping you to develop: to become more adaptable, learn faster, move quicker, home in on new ideas and absorb them rapidly, produce new possibilities faster.

None of this is requires you be complete or perfect but simply willing to respond when the knock comes.

(*Boris Pasternak, quoted in the Northumbria Community‘s Morning Prayer for the 8th February 2016.)

As I watched the dawn this morning, the darkness didn’t just disappear, it disappeared before beauty: scarlet, salmon, light orange.

I had found myself reading the words of a prophet about doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly.  To the original hearers, these words will have meant small everyday actions in the market place, in their work, and in their families and friendships.

I found myself needing to explore meekness again.

Meek people see a world beyond boundaries and ethnicities, marked by kindom and commonwealth, a movement from polarities to resonance:

‘You start knowing through, with, and in somebody else. … Your little I Am becomes We Are.’*

We each bring something different.  Each having our particular curiosities and needs, finding we’re drawn to this and not to that, and, digging deep enough, we’ll find this leads to someone or something we can make some difference for.

When forged in a place of stricture and confinement – in which we hone our skills, identify with our values, and iterate possibilities – meekness creatively brings simple beauty into the world.

(*From Richard Rohr’s The Naked Now.)

meek

Check out the word meek and you come up with something akin to this from The Free Dictionary, with a heavy lean towards the weak; here’s another attempt:

Maybe we need to redeem the word in this way.  Meekness is about knowing we must change.  Meekness doubts in a world that seeks and demands certainty.  Meek people question themselves, how they see things and what kind of difference they can make.  When this is directed towards openness, then, from this perspective, they make the very hopeful material.

‘The ego self is by definition  the unobserved self, because once you see it, the game is over.’*

Why bring ego into this?  As the undeveloped self, the ego doesn’t want to change; it’s most happy wanting others to change.  As long as the ego avoids change it remains hidden, and as long as it remains hidden nothing changes.

Perfect.

Ego doesn’t want to questions it’s beliefs, its relationships, or its actions.  One of its strongest tactics is to suggest there’s plenty of time to change, playing into our apprehension of time passes slowly when nothing much is happening.  Ego maintains inertia.

Obversely, we change by doing, by acting, by moving.  Meekness is not afraid to look on the present self and to advocate change, change allowing for growth, and growth enabling doing what each must do, which is about sacrifice and courage.

Meekness certainly does bring some surprises with it.

‘There is in the universe a higher kind of beauty.  It is the beauty of sacrifice, or giving up for others, or suffering for others.’**

(*From Richard Rohr’s The Naked Now.)
(**From Frank Laubach’s Letters By a Modern Mystic.)

One of the stories about time told by Alan Lightman in his excellent little novel Einstein’s Dreams is of a world in which effect precedes cause.

In such a world, people don’t act in order to make something else happen, but as a result of something we’ll hope for or decide upon in the future.*

Forty years ago today, I began a spiritual journey, and, turning Lightman’s story into a question, “Was the decision to begin the journey back in 1976 really  the effect of where I have now arrived?”

Or, “Is the place I have come to (I can’t say I’ve not arrived) more or greater than the reason I began?”

My answer has to be “yes,” and, it’s why I began.  Now I press on, and the question comes again, “Is this the effect from a choice I’ll make in the future because of the new, larger, more colourful place I find myself?

Only time will tell, this strange time.

I see how, looking back, I thought I’d begun this journey with a fully formed way of seeing, feeling, and behaving, and I see, as I’ve continued the journey, how so much of this was burned up along the way – a letting go in order to let come.

‘[E]very mass-produced product comprises a bundle of “take-it-or-leave-it” features or dimensions offered to all customers.”**  

Now I see this journey could only be understood as one of becoming, and as I continue to open my thinking, my feeling, and my behaving, this path of fire continues to burn up what is unnecessary to my becoming an authentic human being.

And it is the same for all of us.

“The new foundation consists not in objective statements but in subjective reality.”^

‘The sense of wonder can also help to recognise and appreciate the mystery of your own life.’^^

(*Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams.)
(**From Joseph Pyne and James Gilmore’s The Experience Economy.)
(^Jesuit Bernard Lonergan, quoted in Richard Rohr’s The Naked Now.)
(^^From John O’Donohue’s Eternal Echoes.)