The Bubblegum Time Machine

Somebody once said that, “Time exists to stop everything happening at once”. Taken from this point of view, time appears not as a torrential downpour or an unbridled explosion of events and history but something else.  Rather, it seems to say that time is very much a control mechanism that allows events to occur sequentially, one bit at time, a bit like the mechanism of a bubblegum machine, those bubble gum machines which as every child knows appears as a kaleidoscope of colour bursting with the promise of a flavoured, chewy-sweet pleasure. 

The bubble gum machine seems designed to suggest (subliminally) a mega-hit of not one piece of bubble gum but a thousand! forget the psychedelia of the 1960’s! The ecstasy would be almost unbearable. Of course, the bubble gum machine is regulated to drop only one ball of gum at a time, a bubblegum time machine regulating the events of our lives. The penny drops, the machine clicks with a turn and out drops another day.  We live each day as it comes: a red day, a blue day, a yellow day or even a black day. We experience life like this: a series of random events like the selected lottery balls that can make you an instant millionaire - or not. Perhaps the patterns of our lives might appear more coherent when viewed from further back, using the wide-angle lens, in the wide sweep of history but we cannot predict the future with any certainty.

Nor can we be clinical analysts knowing and observing through a plate glass screen.  As St Paul puts it, “we see through the mirror darkly”.  This is because we are part of the process that is unfolding, life and death coming into and going out of existence.  In that beautiful letter to the Corinthians there is a warning against the conceit of knowledge and of intellectual prowess, “If I have the gift of prophesy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains but I do not have love I am nothing.”  This is Paul at his poetic best, freely handing out the profoundest truth, the essential truth that no scientific discovery will ever exceed.  For God’s love is the truth that permeates the universe, a love that is beyond time itself.  As St Paul says, “Now we see but a poor reflection, as in a mirror: then we shall see face to face.  Now I know in part: then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known”.

Bruce Almighty

The concept of God as somehow separate from creation and only standing outside as some kind of all powerful being either occasionally intervening in or on the other hand ignoring the passing events on earth does not accord with the words ascribed to St Paul. Quite the opposite, as Paul says, "For in him we live and move and have our being".  Here we are given a certain flavour of the proximity of God in our lives, a proximity so close we can scarcely imagine it.  It is reminiscent of the fish that wanted to see the ocean so badly but didn't know she was already in it.  We too are in that ocean; enveloped in that loving, pulsating consciousness where even the hairs on your head are numbered for in God, there is nothing that is not known. 

Jesus gave us a glimpse of our own potential to become truly the children of God and sometimes we may see in another, the flowering of that potential, a glimpse of that divine goodness that for a time may guide and inspire us. I recently enjoyed the comedy film, Bruce Almighty, featuring Jim Carey as Bruce Nolan, an egotistic and disaffected television reporter who temporarily becomes Bruce Almighty, while God has a holiday. In this production, God played by Morgan Freeman, is depicted as appearing as a wise, world weary God, a God who is very much the creator God, but a God also who knows only too well the weakness and failings of humanity.  He is a compassionate God with a sense of humour and he is a God with a filing cabinet who knows everything about Bruce Nolan. Importantly, Freeman helps us to glimpse that divine goodness that exists in others.   

Because Bruce had complained about being ignored by God, that God was not doing his job properly, God taking his holiday hands over his powers to Bruce for a while with the rule that Bruce must observe the right of all human beings to have "free will".  Bruce Nolan therefore becomes Bruce Almighty. Hilariously the whole episode ends in near disaster, with thousands of people, for example, all winning the same lottery draw and rioting, until God takes over again but in the process, Bruce learns some major life lessons.  Through his own suffering, Bruce realises that real success cannot be achieved through selfish egotism; you have to be there for other people if you want them to be there for you.  Secondly, that we do not inhabit a world that is indifferent to our existence but a world that needs us to become compassionately aware of our interdependency that we all have a role to play. 

This God of love calls us into the fullness of the one life and knows our weakness and our potentialities so God says to Bruce Nolan, "Bruce, you have the divine spark, you have the gift for bringing joy and laughter to the world - I know, I created you".  Jack Kornfield, teacher, psychologist and Buddhist tells a story of the Buddha who shortly after achieving enlightenment was approached by a man who had noticed that there was something special about him.  The Buddha seemed to exude a remarkable energy.  The man wondered if he was a god, a wizard or a magician.  The Buddha simply replied that he was 'awake'.  In the same way, Jesus exhorted the crowds to wake up, he said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God then all things will be added".  On our own journey, we may sometimes be given insight and moments of inspiration. Our spiritual path if we choose to take it is a journey not an end.  However, it is the only response to despair and cynicism as Bruce Nolan discovered. May you take your journey with courage and faith.

If We Can Understand Who We Really Are

The twentieth century comedy actor, Jimmy Edwards, once remarked, “If there was any good advice he could give it would be, “don’t take good advice!” There’s a message there somewhere.

A few weeks ago, The Guardian carried an interesting review by Susanna Rustin of a book entitled, “The Social Conquest of the Earth” by Edward Wilson. Since I have already touched on the subject of advice, I can tell you that the writer and atheist Richard Dawkins has advised that we shouldn’t read it, “Potential readers should throw the book aside with great force” he says.  Should we take such advice?  What is so objectionable about the book in the first place?  First, we should remember that back in 1976 Professor Richard Dawkins published a book on evolution entitled “The Selfish Gene”.  The premise of this book is that our genes drive evolution, and that our genes drive us to do the things that give us most chance of survival and of replicating those same genes.  Our actions may appear to be unselfish, but basically, the genes are driving us in one direction – the survival and replication of our genes.

However, the Harvard biologist and professor Edward Wilson has scientifically challenged this rather bleak view of humanity, much to the annoyance of Richard Dawkins. From his research, Wilson has proposed the alternative view; he said, "I think if we can understand who we really are then we could reach a much better world."  His work and research on social insects such as ants has led him to conclude that their high level of organisation through close co-operation has promoted the replication of their own genes. Through such co-operation, there has been altruistic evolution that has ensured group survival and so these insects have become one of the most successful species on earth.

For Wilson, the lives of the ants provide a lesson for humanity.  He sees our own selfish striving is continually at war with our more generous co-operative and compassionate instincts.  He says it is a conflict between the poorer and better angels of our own nature.  He warns us about the contradictions of human society, a society he says that is a "star wars civilization with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions and god-like technology.  We thrash about terribly confused by the mere fact of our own existence and the danger to ourselves and the rest of life".

But Wilson, through his own take on evolutionary theory offers us hope. He says, "I think we have the qualities to come through and staunch the haemorrhage of species extinction I just think people are capable of being better than they have been. Why would you risk your life to save the life of a stranger? Why would you give up one of your kidneys? We really are a wonderful species, and I think if we can understand who we really are, then we can reach a much better world, and a much better arrangement than we have now."

On the other hand, Professor Dawkins has said the threat of extinction was real and very disturbing he has stated, "Humans may be unique in having the consciousness and ability to look into the future. Ninety nine per cent of species have become extinct. I don't think there has been a mechanism by which a species took steps to halt a headlong rush to extinction."

Against the advice of professor Dawkins, to throw professor Wilson's book "aside with great force", perhaps we might consider that Wilson’s perspective holds out the hope for humanity that in the end our better angels can defeat our poorer angels and that ultimately we can create a better world.  These two opposing views may be dressed up in scientific verbiage but the decision to choose hope over despair lies within you alone, no one can think for you, you have to decide.

We struggle with the dark side our own human nature there is uncertainty and we have to live with that. However, Psalm 23 exhorts us to acknowledge God, to live with the faith, courage, and determination:

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
    for ever. Amen

Our beliefs and attitudes make us who we are and will ultimately create the world in which we live.

Madness

Last year, in Norway on July 22^nd 2011, Anders Breivik a declared ultra nationalist, launched a bomb attack on government buildings in Oslo where he killed eight people, and then travelled to a Labour party youth camp where he killed 69 young people, one of whom was only 14 years old.   He shot them using a handgun at close range, or if they were further away, he used a semi-automatic rifle.  Breivik justified his cold-blooded slaughter by saying “I see all multi-cultural political activists as monsters, as evil monsters who wish to eradicate our people, our ethnic group, our culture, and our country.”

It is natural to think that anyone who could carry out such atrocities is insane; certainly, they must be!  Anders Breivik is clearly a madman yet he too was ruled eligible to stand trial because psychiatrists had declared him sane.  Apparently this had overruled a previous psychiatric evaluation in which he had been described as “living in a delusional universe” - a paranoid schizophrenic who had lost touch with reality.  The state prosecutors lost their campaign to have Breivik declared insane while 72% of the Norwegian population wanted him declared sane so that he could stand trial.  Breivik wanted the same thing and he got it. The New Statesman magazine commented, “Breivik’s actions are not rooted in mental imbalance, but in political belief, and we must study and negate his beliefs – and those who adhere to them, to stop future slaughters.”  Actually, all we see here is the beginning of the operation of the law of unintended consequences.  In giving such evil the credibility and status of political belief, we end up allowing the power of darkness to dictate the terms of our existence. We unwittingly give it power.    For now we have unintended collaboration and the boundaries have become blurred.  One person said, “I believe he is mad, but it is political madness, not psychiatric madness”. The question is what is the difference? 

The Catholic priest, Thomas Merton said, “The generals and fighters on both sides in World War 2, the ones who carried out the destruction of entire cities, these were the same ones.  Those who have invented and developed atomic bombs, thermonuclear bombs, missiles – who have planned the strategy for the next war; who have evaluated the various possibilities of using viral and bacterial chemical agents – these are not crazy people, they are sane people.  The ones who coolly estimate how many millions can be considered expendable in a nuclear war, I presume they do all right with the Rorschach (ink blot) test.”

In Struggle We Can Find Truth

Years ago there was this famous TV advert for a brand of cigars, known as Hamlet.  There were many versions of these advertisements that would begin with various scenes involving an attempt of sorts that would go wrong.  Famously, there was one advert where a man in a photo booth is vainly attempting to hide his baldness with only a few strands of hair before the camera flashed to take his photograph, but the unpredictability of the camera turned his vain attempts into disaster.  Disappointing, is the word that comes to mind.  At the point of deepest despair, Bach's Air on a G String is played and our dismayed friend consoles himself by lighting up a Hamlet cigar.   Such was the popularity of this advertisement at the time that if you referred to any story of failure or disappointment as 'Hamlet time', it would be likely to receive a knowing smile from the hearer of the tale. I can't help feeling that the Hamlet advertisements inadvertently not only pointed to consolation but also to the potential for new understanding that can arise from disappointment. The Zen Buddhists call this form of personal insight Satori.   

Life as we know can be full of disappointments or to put it another way, 'Blessed are they that expect nothing for they shall not be disappointed' which in a way is again very Buddhist when we consider the four noble truths, of its teaching that tells us that life is suffering and that our suffering arises from desire or attachment or wanting; and no doubt, disappointment. If we look at the New Testament there is of course, the story of Jesus and an expectation that following his death and crucifixion that he will return within the lifetime of his followers and bring God's kingdom to earth:

And then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory: Mark 26: 13

Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass a way before all these things take place:Mark 26: 30

The literal message, the eschatology, was of course not realised and yet the faith of the Church, sustained by the spiritual truths of the teachings of Jesus, continued. 

It seems that there has to be new revelation when events, outcomes do not concur with our expectations.  There is more on the ground than there is on the map and we have to accept surprise and disappointment and move on in the light of new knowledge, in revelation, so that we can continue our journey. In an article published by the National Unitarian Fellowship 'Book Believers' by the Rev. Bill Darlison he tells us that, 'We must constantly bear in mind, that in the main the Bible is a book of poetry, and poetry depends for its power on ambiguity, on nuance, metaphor and similes. To translate poetry into history or into prosaic doctrinal formulations is to destroy it. There is no one way to interpret a poem.'

In the Bible, we are challenged and confronted by the contradictions and mixed messages, and even Jesus is not always presented as a serene mystic who can face his own death with equanimity but is actually presented as someone much more human who knows pain and fear and openly expresses anguish and his own anger as he argues and remonstrates with the teachers of the law.  The characters in the Bible, as well as Jesus, have faults and many commit all kinds of crimes and take issue with God.  Perhaps the Bible exists to say to us 'life isn't perfect and neither am I, look upon me as a person and then show me a person who never made a mistake.' Or we could remember the words of Theodore Roosevelt, who said, 'It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again . . .'  In struggle we can find truth.

Say it with Flowers

'Say it with flowers' - that's the advertising slogan of Interflora probably the oldest commercial flower delivery service in the world. 'Say it with flowers' - it's a very simple strap line but it's clever for it seems to say something that most of us instinctively understand at a deeper level. Whenever flowers are presented or given to someone, often to, but not always, to a woman, there is a message there, a message that cannot always be adequately expressed in words. Therefore we really do 'Say it with flowers'. Flowers are used to express love, affection, or are used for celebration, for congratulations, for bereavement, for sympathy, for welcome and so on. In short, flowers become a medium of communication.

The beauty of flowers is universally recognised, the beauty of flowers is a kind of beauty that can lift us from the apparent ordinariness or drudgery of day-to-day life onto another plane, onto a plane that can transcend our preoccupations allowing us to connect with a more profound reality.

We can experience this reality in a wide variety of ways for example, when we gaze into a clear dark evening sky and witness the diamond display of countless distant stars and then taking it all in, gaze across the horizon at the relative proximity of the moon, or when we observe abundant fields of poppies or buttercups or when we see the sun's rays breaking through misty skies bringing warmth to the cold earth. In fact everywhere we look when we care to do so, we can allow ourselves to see the wonder of life, whether it be a solitary bird winging through the sky or the teeming flocks creating dark shadows as they sweep and swerve in spontaneous formation. Here we are given a glimpse of the majesty of creation of a world of which we are very much a part. But as William Blake wrote in his 'Auguries of Innocence' it doesn't always have to be the wide panoramic vision:

To see the world in a grain of sand

And heaven in a wildflower

Hold infinity in the Palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour

Blake's words about seeing 'heaven in a wildflower' are an echo of Jesus' injunction to consider the lilies of the field:

'And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of those.

In this instance Jesus is speaking of the kingdom of heaven, he is advising us not to worry, not to sweat the small stuff, not to be concerned about 'storing up treasures', or what we might eat or wear.  For tomorrow will take care of itself if we seek the 'kingdom of God and his righteousness'.  If we pay attention to the spiritual life we will get our priorities right. Bogged down in worries and concerns and in our own personal dramas, we cannot live life to the full successfully and we cannot approach that peace of mind that can be our heaven in the here and now.

A boy, who had never seen his father, asked his mother what his father looked like. 'Look into the mirror and you will see,' she replied. And the God question is rather like that for us. If we want to see a reflection of God we have only to look within our own selves. The German philosopher, Hegel wrote:

'We are all from God and we carry in our minds and hearts the ripple of the divine mind.'

The meaning of life is the dynamic creative love that can be found in our own depths.

Towards the end of his life legend has it that the Buddha, standing near a pond, gave a sermon. This sermon was different from all his other sermons in one respect, it was conducted in silence. Instead of addressing his disciples, he reached into the pond and pulled out a lotus flower which he held out to his disciples, who stood close to the old man, looking at the lotus and wondering what the significance of this particular teaching was. Eventually one of his disciples Mahakashyapa began to laugh quietly. The Buddha then said. 'What can be said I have said to you, and what cannot be said, I have given to Mahakashyapa". From that day onwards Mahakashyapa became the Buddha's successor. Perhaps this Zen story illustrates the Buddhist belief that some things cannot always be said or written down, we have to discover truth in our own hearts. Perhaps it was the Buddha and not Interflora who first invented the slogan; 'Say it with flowers'.

Revolutionary Love

We went recently to the Corner House cinema in Manchester to see Marley, a film documentary on the life and times of Bob Marley. I thought that this was a fantastic film comprising archive film footage of his performances, interviews with people who knew him, and original film clips of some of the other great moments in his life. Without any hesitation I would recommend that you should go and see this film if you get the chance. If I was asked to sum up this film on the life of Bob Marley into a few short words I would say that it's about revolutionary love. It seemed to me as I watched the film unroll and illustrate the life of Bob Marley that we were being given an insight into the mind, thoughts and actions of a great man who had a message for the world.

Bob Marley wrote and sang fantastic songs about love, compassion and revolution, about a new world that is possible. He wrote the song, I Shot the Sheriff and Eric Clapton's version of this song helped catapult him to fame. Songs we will remember like Buffalo Soldier, One Love/People Get Ready, No Woman No Cry and Get Up Stand Up - are profound and inspiring songs. In Get Up Stand Up he tells us to get up and stand up for our rights not to give up the fight and that religion is not a private affair that has no relationship to what's happening in the world but something we should be involved with in the here and now in daily struggle:

Preacher man don't tell me

Heaven is under the Earth

I know you don't know

what life is really worth

it's not all that glitters is gold

half the story has never been told

so now you see the light

stand-up for your rights.

But Bob Marley's words were also translated into deeds. He eschewed personal wealth in favour of people, his generosity was legendary. He gave the songwriter credits to the song, No Woman No Cry to his friend, Vincent Ford who ran a soup kitchen in Trenchtown. The royalties ensured that the soup kitchen could remain open. In 1976 right wing gun men, loyal to the Jamaica Labour Party, attacked and injured Marley and his friends and they were forced to flee to Britain. But he returned in 1978 at the request of the government of Jamaica where he staged the One Love Peace Concert, at Kingston’s National Stadium, it was a symbolic moment of national reconciliation. And in 1980 he performed at the celebration event of Zimbabwe's national independence in Harare.

The film as I am sure you have no doubt gathered was a joy to watch. At 36 years of age Bob Marley had so much more to do and so much to look forward to. He was intent on further touring in America and performing to new audiences. Sadly, as we know this was not to be, by 1980 he was sick with cancer having contracted a malignant melanoma which in the end proved to be fatal. The film deals with these remaining days of his life in some detail. Bob Marley died in hospital in Miami in 1981. (The film) Marley has received very positive reviews because it has served to reveal a Bob Marley who spoke out for the poor and the oppressed; he was a man who worshipped God in his own way, and in a faith of his own choosing. He said, 'My life is only important if I can help plenty of people. 'In my life, there's just me and my own security. There'd be no wanting. My life is the people.' And when asked, 'Are you a rich man? You have a lot of possessions? He replied Possessions make you rich? I don't have those types of riches; my riches are life.

What a blessing the cinema is and what a privilege it is to see such great films.