We are all connected

Imagine, if you can, that you have been blind since birth. All your other senses work well, you can smell if the bacon is burning, you can recognise people by their voices, you can reach out and touch things, people – you can know a person by feeling their face. You map out the interior of your home by sound, by temperature, by knowing the surfaces. You navigate outside in the same way, knowing familiar places by their sound or smell. All your senses combine to give you a model in your brain of the world, and using this model you live a complete, non-visual life.

But how will you know if your son is waving to you from a window? How will you know the look of love in your lover's eyes? How will you understand the dazzling beauty of a glorious Summer day? We who have sight take these things for granted, but try to imagine how difficult it must be for a blind person to understand how we know that eight miles above us a plane is silently streaking across the blue sky. But the blind person is unaware of the limit of their perception because they have never known what it is like to not have that limit.

We are all like that blind man. We can look back in time but we can't look ahead. In order to communicate we have to frame our thoughts in words, so that the listener can reconstruct our thought from the spoken words. We can only be in one place, we can only look in one direction at a time. We don’t have a sense for our connectedness with each other and the universe. Our capacity for accepting and giving love is attenuated. But all this is normal to us; we are unaware of our limitations because that is all we have ever known.

Imagine, if you can, how it must be for someone who has known life beyond these boundaries. Well, some people have. It is estimated that about 15 million people in the USA alone have had an NDE, a Near-Death Experience. They tell of a sense of love a million times stronger than any love they have known, they can communicate without words, they have all-round vision, they can be in many places at the same time. But above all they know that they are not separate individuals, but are an integral part of the universe, connected and interconnected with every living being, with every star and every atom. For them it is as though they have lived all their lives in darkness and now someone has turned on the light. St Paul had a similar experience on the road to Damascus; he wrote from personal knowledge about how it will be for us at the end of this earthly life:

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

So this is the first lesson: “We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey”. (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin).

But it doesn't stop there.

Their brief taste of real love, as a tangible fabric of light that is the substance of all existence, changes their lives forever. They dedicate the rest of their lives to helping other people, in medical care, education, counselling, or any of the caring professions. They are more tolerant, less competitive, less interested in material possessions, more into friendships and Nature. They are full of enthusiasm for life, determined to make the most of each day. They all agree that love is the only thing that matters, the only thing you really can take with you when you go. This is the second lesson.

What sort of world would we have if we all had an NDE? Perhaps a world without violence and war, without addiction or homelessness, without racial conflict, without a compulsion to own more and more things while other people have less and less. It might be a place where everyone would feel valued and wanted. We could have a planet that we cherished and cared for.

NDEs will always be the exception not the rule. Only one in seven who come close to death have an NDE. But the rest of us can learn from them. As Albert Einstein said:

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” (Albert Einstein)

Love is a blog

Does Love exist? No-one is quite sure. Astronomers have now detected background radiation from the farthest edges of the universe and yet there is no sign so far of Planet Love. Venus was a big disappointment, just a lot of hot air, a celestial body maybe but not one to cuddle up to. “Love all” says the tennis umpire; all that means is nothing's happening.

“All you need is love” sang The Beatles, but try telling that to the rent man. It doesn't seem to make you happy when you have it – witness all those sad blues songs. Love is not dependable; it's always the ones you love who let you down. “Only love can break your heart” sang Neil Young. Love is illogical – you try all you can to keep it for yourself and it disappears, and yet when you give it away it comes straight back to you. Love is messy – just messy. Need I say more?

What does it mean anyway? For a cat it's a matter of stroking of fur; for a dog, throwing a ball. It can mean doing what your Dad tells you or remembering when it's your Mum's birthday. For those in their twenties it just means sex; for those in their thirties it's arguing; for those in their sixties it's company.
All in all it's simply too much effort. Wouldn't it be much better if we forgot all about it? We could have nice, predictable lives doing what we wanted for ourselves, without having to even think about anyone else.

Nice boring predictable pointless lives.

All right then I was only kidding. You can't throw love away, it makes the world go round, it makes you sing, it's “the little thickness of the coin” (E.E. Cummings), it's the fifth element, it's the seventh wave (Sting), it's all around (The Troggs), love is the answer, love is the flower you've got to let grow (John Lennon). Life without love is like a tree without fruit (Khalil Gibran), or like a song with no tune.

“Love is patient,love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking,it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” 1 Corinthians 13.

According to the ancients, it is love that holds the stars together.

February 14th is approaching. If you have found love, be thankful; and if you haven't, watch out! St Valentine is coming to get you!

Near Death

Is there life after death? It used to be said that no-one has ever returned to tell us, but now it is increasingly common for those pronounced clinically dead to be resuscitated, and in many cases to relate their experiences.

What is surprising is the striking similarity of the majority of these experiences. The one feature that comes up in almost all cases is seeing a very bright but not dazzling white light, which is associated with an overwhelming sense of unconditional love. Many people report beautiful scenery and music. Often they meet dead friends, pets and relatives. In some cases they don’t know who the person is until they search old photographs at a later date. The feeling of bliss is so intense that few people want to return, or if they do it is with a heavy heart.

My aim here is not to try to prove that we are immortal. What interests me is the wisdom that experiencers bring back from their encounter with death. Their new understanding radically alters their lives. They become less interested in material things, and more focused on being of service to the world. They are more patient, more caring, more aware of other people's feelings. They speak of love as the only thing that matters, and that we are all connected, not only to each other, but to the entire universe, to each star and each atom.

The radiant light experience has been known to living people too, not only by St Paul on his way to Damascus, but in more recent times by Dennis Shipman and others, always marked by intense love and understanding. And the wisdom is not new either. It is pretty much in line with the writings of a long line of mystics from pre-Christian times through Christians such as Julian of Norwich and through Sufis such as Rumi and Hafiz.

This message that we are all one could not have come at a better time. If anything can now save this fragile skin of life clinging to the surface of the globe, it will be the power to overcome our petty differences and work together for the good of all.

You are HERE...

This is a diagram showing where we are in relation to everything.

Our civilised daily lives are built on the foundation of our religions, laws and customs. These in turn are derived from our shared sense of values, which arise out of our still evolving mythology. And this was born out of our connectedness with Nature, the seasons, life and death.

If we start undermining our religions and laws, if we trash our values for quick profit, if we fail to understand or recognise our own mythology, if we lose our connection with the Earth, then the whole edifice will collapse.

This system is only held in place by a transcendent sense of the divine, the timeless, the ineffable, or as Wordsworth put it, the "sense of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns and the round ocean and the living air and in the mind of man."

No Fear

What a celebrant does

You are a child of the Universe,
No less than the trees and the stars,
You have a right to be here.
       (Desiderata, Max Ehrmann)

When the Ancients lay on the cool ground at night, looking up at the stars, which encrusted the heavens like an unfolding glittering white cloth, they liked to imagine patterns like the join-the-dots pictures you may have drawn when you were a child. Some of these they named after animals – the Great Bear, the Swan, the Scorpion; some were characters from story – Hercules, Cassiopeia, Cepheus.

In reality these are not groups of stars at all. They just look that way from Earth. But we could equally group them in different ways if we wanted. We could have the Fork-lift Truck, the Harley Davidson, Tower Bridge. Seeing patterns in things comes easily to us. This is how we make sense of the world, of history, of our own lives.

As with the stars, we don't have just one story to tell. When we write a job application we will include everything about our education, our relevant experience and our positions of responsibility. But we probably won't include the way we struggled with bullying at school, or the dedication and love of our parents. We won't include the one we love, and the day we first met. Yet these things also have their story, and they are more a part of us than our position at work.

While our mundane life plods on from education to qualification to position to promotion to retirement to death, inside we are super-heros on a great adventure. We face danger, injury and disease; we see friends and family through life and death; we witness the miracle of birth; we struggle with our weakness as much as with our greatness. Against all the odds we triumph.

This is our brilliant human existence. It is a story written in the stars, waiting to be told. Who will tell our story? Or will it be buried with our bones? The skill of a celebrant is to recognise you as a child of the Universe, no less than the trees and the stars, your life unfolding like a cloth of silver.

With each turn of life there is a death and a rebirth. When we are born, the waiting is over, the period of pregnancy ends. It is a joyful beginning, but there is also a sense of loss; ask any mother. We cross a threshold into the unknown. And so at each new stage of life: starting school, starting secondary school, leaving home, starting work, giving vows, - right through to retirement, each milestone a new beginning.

A celebration can be seen as a snapshot pasted up onto the storyboard of our life, recording each stage as we go through. But there is more to it than just this. Imagine for a moment that you finally worked out for yourself how space and time was really structured, an understanding that would end a hundred years of speculation. Naturally you would want to tell the world. Why? Because until you do, to all intents and purposes, it hasn't happened. Unless you share it, it is just something in your head. Likewise a ceremony actualises reality – it makes reality happen.

In the Jewish tradition, a statement can occur on three levels: the first is a thought – even a thought is an action; the next is the spoken word, which is more powerful than just a thought; the most potent of all is the deed. In business, a handshake, or in previous times a kiss, seals a deal. Wearing the ring seals the marriage. A ceremony binds an idea into fact.

A qualified celebrant can work with you to make a ceremony that is right for you where you are in your life, that says what you want to say, that has the right feel. It can combine words, music, light, colour, costume - plus doves, balloons, fireworks, anything! Or just a few well-chosen words in a solemn setting. It's your call. You matter.