“Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.” Iris Murdock

 

When we wake up to it we all know that we live at the centre of our own worlds; that we do not find in others the same reality we find in ourselves, even those closest to us.  In this lack of awareness of the reality of the other lies some of our deepest pain.  When someone says to me that I have offended or hurt them my first instinct is to withdraw more deeply into myself and to become aware of my own pain: in self-protection I build the wall higher between them and me and in so doing become less conscious of their reality.  Actually, what I should aim to do when I am challenged is to go outwards to the person.  At the moment of exposure to their pain to move consciously towards them, saying to myself, “This person is real, is feeling these emotions now; has a life out there completely separate to mine with a family to go home to, washing and cooking to do, bills to pay, holidays to plan.”  You notice the reaction is not one of who is in the right and who is in the wrong?  That is the reaction of the one who is living with the unreality of the other, who withdraws to a place of self-defence.  When we expose ourselves to the other, right and wrong cease to matter, or not to matter as much.  Something else comes into being.  The world becomes a larger, more real place, full of more fully defined human beings with whom, we realise, we share this space for a little time.

Iris Murdock knew what she was saying when she wrote, “Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.”  It is extremely difficult to realise that someone or something, like a tree or animal, has its own reality which has nothing to do with you.  We have to ‘realise’ it, which means we have to make it real for ourselves.  It is love because it is about standing in the other person’s shoes, looking at the world from their point of view: being merciful and compassionate.  It is love because it is giving yourself away, not self-seeking.  It is love because it is service and a willingness to become smaller so that the other may become bigger.  It is love because it is the discipline of trying to wake up every day to the reality of the present moment rather than indulge in the fantasy that is often so much easier to live in and with.  Finally, it is love because it is the determination day in and day out to go on trying to wake up to the realization that someone other than oneself is real, however costly it may be.

Looking at Jesus in his meetings with people, I am quite sure he saw the reality of each and every person with whom he came into contact, and they felt more real, more cared for, more present because of his utter and grounded authenticity.  If you have ever had anyone give you their full attention, have met them mutually, in deep and attentive sharing, then you will have tasted what it is to be real for someone else and to know what a gift it is to both of you.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Jesus Christ, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself….

Philippians 2: 5-7a

This week someone showed me a beautiful wooden bowl that they had been given.  It was one of those bowls that purposefully is not completely finished.  You could still trace the slender trunk of the tree out of which it had been carved so that holding it you felt close to its source.  It was completely smooth on the outside and very deep and rounded within.  As I took it into my hands I felt a little jerk of response within myself.  It was a joy to hold, my own hands cupped the empty cup and as I held it and looked at it I thought, here is something on which one could meditate for hours.

Three things struck me immediately: the sheer pleasure of the wood, honed and smooth but also the way it made me open my hands to receive; the relatively speaking great space within the bowl, empty, waiting to be filled; and my reaction, that somehow this physical presence in my hands had awoken a spiritual response in me, somehow opening me up, creating in me a parallel, waiting space.

Many years ago I read a Zen Buddhist saying about the space inside a vase being more important than the vase.  If the purpose of a vase is to hold flowers, it would be pretty useless without the space.  One could argue (rightly) that the shape of a vase makes a difference to the way the flowers look within it, but actually anything can be made to hold flowers and as long as the flowers are pretty and arranged well, we respond with delight.  (We have at Launde some old tins, painted white, which hold flowers and look quite delightful on our tables in the courtyard.)

But of course interior space is what we all need to achieve if we are to hear the voice of God.  If we want to hear God speak, rather than all the other voices in our heads we have to find a way of hushing them.  Jesus himself and the great saints from John the Baptist onwards (“I must grow less so that he may grow more”) knew that we are invited to empty ourselves so that God may fill us and Jesus modelled this for us with his whole life.  Over and over again he said it was not him but God in him that he was expressing in thought word and deed.  We need to empty ourselves of the delusion of an identity separate from God, of the illusion that we make ourselves, and instead seek daily to be created and recreated by our Maker.

The spiritual writer, Joyce Rupp, wrote a whole book on spiritual growth, “The Cup of Life” using an ordinary teacup or mug as her starting point for meditation.  She wrote,

“Hold the empty cup in your hands. Look at all the room the cup has for filling. Picture the inner part of yourself. Notice how much room there is for filling. Hold the cup out before you in the gesture of a beggar. Ask God to fill you.”

How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world

(William Shakespeare)

The chapel at Launde is a very special place early in the morning, especially on Sunday.  In some ways it is even more special in the winter as all is dark.

When I come in I light the Pascal candle and renew the water in the font in preparation for our very first service of the new week, The Blessing of the Water and Renewal of Baptismal Vows.  Then I wait in the darkness for any who might come.  That is a precious time of quietness, wrapped in soft, hazy darkness, listening only to the early morning call of the wood pigeons and the occasional gentle rap of a branch on the windows.

Once this short service is over, we take a light from the Pascal candle and light all the other candles in the chapel, the two on the altar and those beneath the beautiful Coptic style icons behind the altar.  Now the atmosphere changes.  There are pools of light but not enough to flood the place.  The chapel is full of warmth.  People sit quietly in the shadows and all look towards the candles, look towards the altar.  We wait in this almost breathless, time out of time space; we wait for the first Holy Communion of the new week to begin.

I try not to be sentimental about religious practice but I don’t think I am being when I express my huge thankfulness for this Sunday morning ritual.  It always calms me, always steadies me.  Today, for instance, I was feeling very ‘growly’, very fed up as I began my day.  My private time of prayer didn’t seem to shift my mood or to help much.  But as I lit the candles from the Pascal candle and as I sat at the back, robed, ready to begin when the time came, I gazed as I always do at the altar and at the icons.  The icons seemed to grow with the candles beneath them.  Each ancient and venerated saint seemed taller, his feet in light and his head in the shadows.  The quiet, the silence seeped into me and I was at peace.

Our chapel is actually never without candlelight.  We have them constantly lit in various places.  One burns before the reserved sacrament, reminding us of Christ’s constant presence.  One blue one is placed before the icon of the Virgin, reminding us of the incarnation and Mary’s “Yes” to God’s invitation.  There are two on the windowsills, one, surrounded by barbed wire, reminds us of the many prisoners of conscience there are around the world.  Another has been there for the last eighteen months as a prayer of solidarity for the people of Syria.  At times we will also introduce another candle for a while, when there is a disaster in the world or a particular individual we want to pray for.  There is one there now.

And of course, others come in all the time and light a candle for people they know who need prayer.  These burn on long after the people who lit them have left.

Sometimes the world seems so dark and all our prayers seem so pointless.  The candle reminds us of the light of Christ, the little beam that shines like a good deed in a naughty world.  It is the sign that we are not alone, that there is hope at the end of the tunnel.  It reminds us of good and brave deeds being done all the time which we do not hear about.  It calls us to stop being so self-centred and remember others.

Candlelight and quiet also have their own very particular gift.  They soften sharp edges, chase away shadows and bring peace.  They enable us to let go and enter another space, to be less ‘growly.’

If someone were to ask me what I did not on my holidays this year, I would say, I learnt a little bit more of what Sabbath actually means.

I have always been a bit snooty when it comes to what could be described as lounging by the swimming pool holidays.  I expect culture, history and authentic local colour from my holidays!

This year, however, though not initially planned that way, we spent a lot more time doing very little other than reading, swimming, walking, talking and simply being.  It gave me a lot to think about.  It was interesting, for example, to watch my emotional rhythm.  As usual there was the initial euphoria of the first couple of days of being on holiday.  Then, also as usual, about day three there was a sense of let-down, slight irritation and restlessness.  I have learnt over the years that day three is the one on which I am mostly likely to have a row.

But this year the holiday didn’t go in the usual way.  We did not go out and about that much.  We did not replace the usual diversions of work and home, with many holiday diversions.  For the most part we rested in the way I described above and did quite a lot of staring at the natural world around us and pondering.  And, surprisingly, at the end of the first week of our two week break I felt again the day three emotions – restlessness, anxiety, slight irritation and frustration.  I was uncomfortable in my own skin.  What was going on?

When we read the story of creation in Genesis, we hear that on the seventh day God rested and unlike all the other days, which he said were good, the Sabbath he made “holy”.  What does that mean?  Later in the bible we learn that human beings are commanded to rest one in seven days, too.  But the truth is that nowadays we don’t ever really rest.  We simply keep ourselves distracted by doing things which are more congenial during our times of leisure.  We keep ourselves busy so that we will not have to be alone with ourselves, because, to quote T S Eliot, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”

I can remember Tony Hancock’s character in “Hancock’s Half Hour,” having to get through a Sunday afternoon once and going up the wall with boredom.  This was in the days when pretty well everything closed on a Sunday.  In those days many people considered Sundays the most boring day of the week.  For “holy” read “boring.”  Was that what God intended?  All this has changed, of course: there is plenty to entertain us nowadays on a Sunday, but if anything we are more bored as a society.  When I was a child and complained I was bored, my mother would say, “Only boring people are bored.”  Not perhaps a very provable statement but one that batted the ball back into my court.  Within half an hour I would be busily involved in some sort of play, all trace of boredom forgotten.

At the end of week one, I think I hit the boredom moment and realised what was going on.  We do not appreciate what a drug being distracted has become in our society and how most of us are distraction junkies.  But whilst we are being distracted we are not fully alive to what is in front of us.  The sense of discomfort in my own skin was caused by not being present to what was around me, by not living within the time and rhythm that was real and actual, but rather being pulled by something non-existent and illusory that promised to be better but never is.  St Irenaeus said that “the glory of God is a human being fully alive.”  The boredom moment is the equivalent of cold turkey but if you stay with it you go through it – and on the other side is a place that is not boring at all, but is,as God said, holy.