I Am the Way the Truth and the Life

We often reflect on the need for purpose in life on how we may find joy and fulfilment in the service of others, indeed on how in reality it is this serving, serving God, serving the world and serving others is actually a prerequisite to the truly successful life. We look at nature the interconnection of life and our mutual dependence on the world and on each other. Even the trees, for example, serve the world and when they cease to do that they die. And of course the motor car at the end of its life is scrapped recycled and often eventually reappears as another product to serve humanity. So perhaps we are looking in the wrong place for clue to the meaning of it all through dismantling and reducing things to their component parts, we can no more understand the reason for the trees existence by sawing it in half than we can understand the meaning of life from the Hadron Collider. I am not however dismissing the significance of scientific investigation which is quite another thing.

Here we are really concerned with the things that matter to us, the religious, the metaphysical, the spiritual, not in reducing things down to nothing so that they can be explained away by intellectual arrogance but rather through an approach that can give us inspiration, spiritual solace and the courage and strength that brings us into harmony with God, with the creative spirit of the Universe.  A woman who once came to our chapel was disappointed to be told by a visiting minister that he did not believe in the after-life. We certainly have no proof that there is survival beyond the grave. When somebody dies, what are we left with? A few photographs, a few letters, some of their personal effects and the dust of their previous existence blowing through an empty room, I once heard a story, a true story I am led to believe, of a devout and holy man who in the closing years of his life lost all power of memory and had physically deteriorated to the point where he required full time nursing. Yet such was the power of his spirit that he gave inspiration and transformed the lives of others until his death.

The religious life demands a leap of faith; trust in the present moment that all will be well, 'blessed are those who believe and have not seen' says Jesus but scientific inquiry wants to put its fingers in the holes of the wound; or put another way, simply to peel back the existing layers and to discover what lies behind the previous layer but what do we ever find? More layers like a continuing game of pass the parcel. Sometimes this searching is presented in the publication of yet another historically researched book or a biography on the past life of a prominent or exceptional person but in the end it always comes down to the same thing; opinion.

We are left then, always to make up our own minds to even create our own reality because the truth is not always apparent, all our searching and looking, our weighing up of the evidence will always be inconclusive and unsatisfactory because there will always be new evidence or new doubts that come along, like new theories of who this Jesus was or wasn't what he looked like and what his exact age was when he died: whether indeed he existed at all. 

We are certain of his existence, in this sense, not because of any scientific truth but because the words attributed to Jesus find a resonance within the depths of our own being. The deep spiritual words found in the gospel of John are interpreted to speak to each of us, for there is a real power in these words, "I am the way the truth and the life" You cannot enter this life without following the example of Jesus, Jesus personifies that self-giving love, which is the love of God and we are promised that by taking this road we can achieve much as Jesus said, "I tell you the solemn truth, the person who believes in me will perform the miraculous deeds that I am doing, and will perform greater deeds than these, because I am going to the Father." If the language is difficult to grasp the meaning is clear, that the way, the truth and the life is a road open to anyone. The one great truth is the love that is the source of all things and to know that love and to live in that love is to live spiritually, and in this sense without doubt, to live faithfully and truly. "I am the way the truth and the life." 

"I and the Father are one."

At the heart of the cyclone tearing the sky
And flinging the clouds and the towers by
Is a place of central calm:
So here in the roar of mortal things,
I have a place where my spirit sings,
In the hollow of God’s Palm.
— Edwin Markham.

 Edwin Markham in this single stanza rephrases the words of Jesus of Nazareth who was asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God will arrive to which he replied, "Neither say lo here! Or lo there! for behold the Kingdom of God is within you! When we look at the life of Jesus through any of the four gospels the emphasis is always placed on the inner life on His connection with God, and prayer. In the gospel of Matthew we can read: "Immediately Jesus made His disciples get into the boat and go before Him to the other side, while He sent the multitudes away. And when He had sent the multitudes away, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray. Now when evening came, He was alone there." (Matthew 14:22-2) And in the gospel of Luke: "But the news about him spread even more, and large crowds were gathering together to hear him and to be healed of their illnesses. Yet Jesus himself frequently withdrew to the wilderness and prayed."

Real prayer is communion with God, contemplative prayer, non-discursive prayer, meditation - all genuine seeking leads to the one road and the one destination. Ralph Waldo Trine wrote: "This Spirit of Infinite Life and Power that is behind all is what I call God. I care not what term you may use, be it Kindly Light, Providence, or the Over Soul, Omnipotence, or whatever term may be more convenient. I care not what the term may be as long as agreed in regard to the great central fact itself." 

This one essential point, this central fact is the basis of all religion the etymology or the root meaning of the word 'religion' is to reconnect to God or to bind to God. The goal in life as the founder of Transcendental Meditation the  Maharishi Mahesh Yoga would have it is to attain enlightenment or to put it another way the object of the spiritual life is to achieve union with God. This is why Jesus who had achieved this exalted state could say, "I am not alone, because the Father is with me."(John 16:32) or "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30) we are all offered this great gift.

Homeward Bound

We are as the old hymn goes 'dwellers all in time and space' this time and space is our life, a world which is literally moving under our feet, so to speak and we are on a journey, a journey of life that has a beginning and an end. In the spring time there is this explosion of new life and we don't have to go far to see it the greening of the trees, spring flowers forcing their way through the dormant soil amidst the increasing warmth and light of the season. In new life there is a sense of innocence of confidence and purpose all of it at the brink of a new journey; outward bound. And yet there is this allure this gravitational pull almost; in the message of being homeward bound. 

I think the hymnodist, Isaac Watts give expression to this yearning when he writes: 'Time, like an ever rolling stream, bears all who breathe away; they fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come; be thou our guide while life shall last, and our eternal home." Psalm 23 begins with the words, "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want . . ." and it closes with, "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." I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. This dwelling in the house of the Lord is not a dwelling in a church or a temple it's not even a place. Rather it's an attitude and a relationship with God. It's part of the human condition to want and there are always things we think we need and want but not to be in want is contentment to live in acceptance and take if you like, a more philosophical view of life. Our dwelling in the house of the Lord is to enter into this contentment and into a filial relationship with that power that is infinitely greater than we are.

 A child lives in it its parent's house and has no worries because the child knows it is not in control and that the ways of adults are not particularly clear to them; to children. A child lives in acceptance more often than not and is not subject to the pressures and external stresses of providing and surviving and worrying about things as an adult is. I don't think that the practice of faith or religion is actually a 'cop out', an abrogation of our responsibility to face up to life but rather it is that faith can allows us to be honest and to recognise our frailty within the impermanent and uncertainties of life. 

In one mode of transport, flying, perhaps more than any other, we are brought face to face with our own vulnerability, we get on that aeroplane as passengers and we are like the child, totally dependent on the crew of the aircraft, the weather conditions and it air-worthiness. Sadly, tragically, as we know, this weekend as the Reuters news agency reported: "A Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew went missing off the Vietnamese coast on Saturday as it flew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and was presumed to have crashed. There were no reports of bad weather and no sign why the Boeing 777-200ER, powered by Rolls-Royce Trent engines, would have vanished from radar screens about an hour after take-off."

How can we deal with these awful realities except through acceptance? Our homecoming is to dwell in the house of the Lord, our homecoming is our acceptance of all those things we cannot change, our homecoming is the death of ego and the acquisition of that peace that passes all understanding, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff they comfort me." Our homecoming, when we have done all we can, is simply to let go and just be, to dwell in the house of the Lord.

Van Gogh: A Prophet of Light

Have a look at this picture, I'm sure you will recognise it, it's Vincent Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' painted in 1898. I've always loved this picture. The first time I ever remember seeing it, I must have been eight or nine years old. We were allowed to paint and draw at school on Tuesday afternoons, something I always looked forward to. We weren't jut allowed to draw and paint we were allowed also on occasion, to model with cardboard boxes and be creative. I don't think most parents see may see it in that light when their children arrive home with their creations of recycled junk. But no matter, art is about imagination and what cannot be denied is the power of imagination. I happen to think that imagination is one of our greatest faculties and in children it needs to be encouraged. In any case, where would humanity be without imagination to fire its inspiration and to lead us on to achievements that cynics had previously have either dismissed as pointless fantasy and time wasting? Where would we be without artists and dreamers?

As I was saying, our teacher had put a print of Van  Gogh's Starry Night on the wall and explained to us that those dramatic Catherine wheels in the night sky of  that  picture  were  really stars. She explained that this painting was an example of alternative way to see, to draw and paint and therefore depict meaning outside of the conventional ideas of what a picture should look like. Her words made a lasting impression on me, it was too me a small but significant moment in opening my mind to ideas in art that went beyond the merely conventional. Looking back, it was a revelation to me since there were no pictures on the walls inside the council house where I lived as child, let alone a Vincent Van Gogh print!

I have to say that in spite of this early teaching experience I have lived my life knowing little about art. It's true that I have made the occasional visit to local and national art galleries and seen the occasional art programme on television. But on the whole I remain largely ignorant about art and the work of the great artists, which I have to admit, is nothing to boast about at all. However, as a ministry student at Luther King House in Manchester, I was, as it were, called back into the classroom. And there I had to encounter what was termed 'Art in Theological Reflection', Art in 'Encountering and Responding to Christ', and there was even a module titled: 'When Artists, Scientists and Theologians Meet'. In theology it seems, I cannot escape the world of art and there amongst all the great artists I rediscovered albeit, much later in life, my old friend Vincent Van Gogh and his Starry Night - courtesy of a college power point projector.

The teacher on this occasion was a Baptist minister, the Reverend Dr Richard Kidd who is also the co-author of:  God and the Art of Seeing - Visual Resources for a Journey of Faith. Commenting on Vincent's Starry Night He wrote these words "Let us look at it closely, it is utterly 'Van Gogh'; all, that is but for one thing, the darkness; But he writes in the same paragraph, "Its claim to total 'Van Goghness' is fully justified however by the peculiar illumination of this night; even from the darkness an unparalleled radiance beams from this painting." I think, if you like this picture, this is indeed what draws us, the colour in the night sky, the dynamic swirling motion  of the paintwork,  and the sheer energy of light that explodes and is born out of the darkness

As a young man Van Gogh wanted to enter the church. He was initially encouraged in this ambition whilst working in England in 1876. At this time a Methodist minister, the Rev Slade Jones whom he was also lodging with, employed him and also gave him the opportunity to preach at his church. The theme for the sermon was taken from Psalm 119: 19 "I am a stranger on the earth, hide not thy commandments from me." The writer, Albert Lubin said "The sermon shows Vincent freely accepting the existence of grief, loneliness, and death, but through the vehicle of religious faith he is able to glorify them as a prerequisite for joy, acceptance and immortality."Catalysed by suffering, sorrow leads to joy, loneliness to togetherness, death to rebirth, darkness to light, and earth to heaven."

Vincent's sermon given at the Wesleyan Methodist Church Richmond on Sunday 29 October 1876 ended with a description of a painting: God Speed by George Henry Broughton (1870) Inspired by Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress, Vincent recalled the picture's distant mountains, and then spoke of the distant mountains that pilgrims must arduously travel in faith. In a letter to his brother he describes this first preaching experience in the pulpit as 'emerging from a dark cave underground'. He feels as though he is emerging into the 'friendly daylight' and so, describing his first experience as a preacher, it is images of light to which he intuitively turned." Enthused and inspired he wrote "It is a delightful thought that in the future wherever I go, I shall preach the Gospel."  As we know, Van Gogh became the extraordinary lightening conductor through which his own inner turmoil would lead to a metamorphosis in which his Christian faith, and later his paintings brilliantly dreamed out on canvas would bring fame and immortalise him in the world of art.

However, Van Gogh's attempts to enter the Church were ultimately unsuccessful. He failed to pass the entrance exams for the Faculty of Theology in Amsterdam.  He  then  entered  an evangelical  school in Brussels only to be rejected after working as  a lay  preacher  amongst  the  miners  in  Belgium.  In  August 1879, he was rejected by the church, which criticised him for his 'excessive  commitment'  Whatever  Van  Gogh's'  personal  short comings, his ascetic life style as a 'lay evangelist'  and dedication  to  his  ministry,  to  the  peasant  miners,  his  praying with them and dressing their wounds cannot be denied. This was Van Gogh's testament to following the life of Christ. But in the end without the support of the Church his self-appointed missionary life could not be sustained. Moreover his own health could not withstand his own obstinacy and his self-induced privations.

Vincent Van Gogh was twenty-seven years old when he finally abandoned his attempts to become a pastor and set his sights on becoming an artist instead. But I would argue that he would never give up on his faith. For example, in 1888 he described Christ, the life of Christ by writing, "He lived serenely, as an artist greater than all other artists, scorning marble and clay and paint, working in the living flesh. It has been said by many commentators, 'the majority even' have argued that the end of Vincent's evangelistic career was also the end of his Christianity and even the end of his belief in God. The reality is more that whilst Vincent like most people who  may have break with organised religion and its attendant hypocrisies still retain their faith and  there attachments to the Bible and hold on to that concept of the Christ figure. In a letter to his brother, Theo in 1884 he wrote, "Oh, I am no friend of present-day Christianity, though its Founder was sublime"

There are critics who have dismissed Vincent's religion and art as a coping mechanism for a troubled mind and we know that Vincent   was a troubled man; we know   about his personal circumstances his bouts of melancholy his depressions, his self­ admitted insanity, the story of his cutting off of a large part of his ear with   a razor.  All of  this  point  to  a  life  of  mental suffering,  deep  feelings of   rejection,   unrequited   love,   and loneliness would (again) lead to self mutilation and death by suicide in 1890. However, the specific details of Van Gogh's illnesses are complex. Could it not be suggested that in large part, albeit at an extreme, his sufferings are representative of the universal human condition? We are all familiar with existential angst. Perhaps we should learn to recognise our own shadow side as an integral universal component. And whilst we may long for, and worship the light, we may learn that we simply cannot consign the darkness to irrelevance. Van Gogh seemed to know that darkness and suffering is the soil, the potential, out of which may spring light, life and love. Light and darkness is not a duality but a symbiotic whole in a dialectical relationship. And I find it helpful to see the twin themes of religion and art as the medium through which Vincent's own God-realisation could be expressed, a working through of the Holy Spirit leading him to artistic completeness. A prophet of light who bequeathed paintings that will be gazed at forever in awe and wonder

A New Year Reflection 2014

When we see a newborn baby we see how fragile human life is. We see the infant and hear the infant breathing and we can hear her feeble cries. Although the child has been born and although she  is in our world it seems that in those early days there is that struggle for life as though the child has not yet fully crossed that bridge from eternity into existence. We see as the days of its life pass from weeks into months how that child takes on form, weight and flesh and how she grows. How in a relatively short time she sits up and begins to take notice and not only can she can make her presence known by demanding comfort and food but how too she smiles and brings pleasure to all those around her. Then there she is it seems in no time crawling and then beginning her first faltering steps falling and then rising again with the determination that is the essential human spirit, the determination to succeed, to live and to participate in this strange new world that is so full of wonder of surprise and curiosity. The child at this stage lives in the present moment; there are no doubts or fears to assail her for she lives in the now, driven on by the impetus of life to take her place in that

In this New Year we are given a gift, if we choose to see it like this, a New Year, a blank page to write and act upon, new days to savour and perhaps new ways of dealing with old problems. Surely there is potential enough in the coming unfolding days and changing seasons to make this coming year different in so many ways? One of the great themes of the religious life is to give thanks for the privilege of life but perhaps the greatest way to honour God, the greatest way to acknowledge the privilege of living, the days of our life is to live them more fully, to be awake to the presence of God in the world and to be awake to our obligations to each other.

And so we return once again to that subject, the birth of a child, the hopes for its future, its needs to be loved and protected and its eagerness to discover the world; to play and to learn and eventually in the passing of years to take its rightful place as an independent and fully functioning person to fit into society, into the local community and the wider family of humanity. At the beginning of life, there is no definite blueprint or a certain road map for any child, for the child will be he or she that it wants to be, there is no certainty, we might guess at the future but every child like every moment is unique; every child, every person.

We cannot know the future as we look at the prospect of a New Year as it stands before us. But we should accept it as a great blessing not with foreboding or a jaded sense of repetition because it is not that it, it is not the repetition of another year but the continuation of life in its unfolding drama on a cosmic scale, where all the men and women are actors playing different parts at different times, we are co-creators with God you could say in our brief lives. So let us live now with a sense of excitement of pleasure in the lengthening days and the joys that the remaining winter months will bring, and let us live in the anticipation of spring and all that will follow in its wake. And let us remember these words from the poem, The Gate of the Year by Minnie Louise Haskins:

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”

And he replied:

“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”

Get On Your Horse and Drink Your Milk

We might remember that 1972 film, The Cowboys, starring John Wayne in which there is supposed to be this famous line where he says or at least I was led to believe he said, "Get off your horse and drink your milk". Actually, I have checked and I'm not sure now that he ever said it. I once met some one who used to misquote the quote that probably never was by saying "Get back on you horse and drink your milk". The John Wayne film, The Cowboys features John Wayne as Wil Andersen, a cattleman who must get a herd of cattle to market in order to avoid financial disaster. Unable to find any men to help him he is forced to take on a group of schoolboys. Andersen becomes their teacher in the school of hard knocks but his methods work and the boys graduate and become real cowboys in the end. The story is enhanced by the eventual revelation that there is a gang of cattle thieves stalking them.

What I like about the film is that it's a film about growing up, growing up the hard way and facing the realities of life so I like the misquoted quote that never was, 'Get back on your horse and drink your milk.' When you get knocked down, get back up. Seeking strength through adversity can provide a way forward, and doing the things that are good for you, getting back in the saddle and drinking your milk, figuratively speaking is perhaps the best thing you can do after you've had a bit of a knock. As somebody once said, 'It's not how many times you've been knocked down that counts but how many times you get up.

I think that one of the two important skills most of us learn in life is how to swim and how to ride a bicycle. When we learn to do either of these things properly it becomes something that we never forget and when we have learned how to do it seems so natural after a while that it's hard to see why we couldn't do it in the first place. One of my most disastrous cycling adventures as a boy occurred when a friend of mine who thanks to a growth-spurt had grown much taller than me, let me try riding his adult sized bicycle. He had been given a big old post war bicycle, a big black heavy monster; it had three-speed Sturmey-Archer gears and a dynamo. Anyway, one Saturday afternoon he let me have a go on it. The received wisdom when learning to ride a bike is to keep your head up and look straight ahead. So off I went down a street which was in effect a gentle declining hill. At first everything was going well, but the bike was a too big for me it wasn't long before the descent degenerated into a wobble and then I ploughed into the back end of a parked car leaving a big dent on the boot. I picked up the bicycle and after handing it back to my friend ran away from the scene of the accident as fast as I could.

Later, I got my own bicycle and soon got the knack of cycling but like learning to swim it does require a bit of confidence. There's this silly joke about a man who goes to the naval recruiting office and as part of his interview is asked if he can swim. The man asks "Why, haven't you got any ships?" I too joined the navy and found learning to swim a lot harder than learning to ride a bike. I joined the navy and I couldn't swim. (Fortunately they had some ships at the time) They taught me sure enough. They had a course they called the 'backward swimmers' and I became a member of that elite club we had to turn up in the early evening and in the cold dark  mornings before breakfast and not only dressed in swimming trunks but in a boiler suit too, just to make it harder. You would be subject to having to jump in at the deep end, and having your hands hit with a pole if you tried to touch the side of the swimming pool. In the end of course, I came through it and passed what they called the naval swimming test. They taught only two things the breaststroke and how to tread water; the emphasis being on surviving and staying afloat rather than taking part in a swimming gala.

Once when I was at the backward swimmers class, we must have been going for a while then, because wearing our boiler suits we were taken up to the top diving board and told to jump in. Now there was one lad, a Scottish lad, he was a boxer and quite tough but he was frightened of jumping or diving into the water. I remember the PTI (Physical Training Instructor) encouraging him to jump but he wasn't having it. "But you're a boxer, said the PTI, you're not afraid to go into the ring and fight, what are you afraid of?" Shortly after that the boy was in the water he might have been pushed, I can't remember or he may have just jumped. I remember still being stood on the diving board looking down; he was in the water but neither at bottom of the pool or on the surface. Rather, he was suspended half way under the water rigid, not moving and obviously drowning. The PTI had to dive in to rescue him and to save his life. There is this saying that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Here was a dramatic illustration of this truth. The lad may have been drowning but it was really is own fear that was killing him.

In the gospel Matthew after the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand we are told that he then told his disciples to get into the boat and to go to the other side of the lake whilst he himself overlooked the dispersion of the crowds who had come hear him before he went up into the mountain to pray. The boat sailed on but the weather was against them and it was heavy going as we can read in Matthew: 'the boat was battered by waves' as it approached the other side in the early morning. At that point, the disciples were looking out of the boat and saw Jesus walking towards them on the lake. They as you can imagine, would be extremely frightened when they all saw this. This cannot be real, and Jesus is taken for a ghostly apparition until of he calls out to reassure them. "Take courage; don't be frightened it is I."  Then Peter calls out, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’ Jesus said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came towards Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’ When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshipped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’

There is this book that's titled, If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat. I must admit that I've not read this book, written by the Christian evangelist, John Ortberg but apparently it was the winner of the 2002 Christianity Today Book Award. The blurb tells us that, "You're one step away from the adventure of your deep life and that within us all lies the faith and longing that sent Peter walking across the wind swept-sea of Galilee towards Jesus." We are challenged to come out of our comfort zone onto the risky waters of faith and so it means that we must get out of the boat if we want to walk on those waters. I think the key to understanding this fantastic story is not about achieving the impossible feat of walking on water but rather it's a spiritual lesson, an illustration of the power of faith, and the dangers and consequences of allowing doubt and fear to dominate our lives. In modern parlance we often refer to someone of great talent or ability to be able to walk on water. We don't of course mean that that person can actually do it; we know that it's just a metaphor we might employ for emphasis. In the ancient world, as now the ability to walk on water would have been reserved for the pages of scriptural spiritual truth of myth rather than for the day to day world of reality. The world is truly a wonderful and miraculous place but we know that there are truly some things that just don't happen.

What happens in the walking on the water story is that when Peter notices the strong wind, the tempestuous conditions in which he is achieving this supernatural feat, he becomes frightened and sinks into the water and has to be rescued by Jesus. "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" says Jesus. Often we do have to doubt; doubt and faith we are told often go together. One way to understand this is to keep an open mind. For example if we consider the use of traffic lights we know that red means stop and green means go. But legally, red means stop, amber means stop, and green means go but only with the clause: if it's safe do so. Now to be able to drive safely each day we not only have to believe that the traffic lights are safe and reliable but we have to use our own observation and judgement. Although we might believe the traffic lights are working properly and even though the lights are green we have to have faith that it is safe to proceed.

Sometimes a nervous driver loses faith in both the lights and his or her judgement and does not proceed until forced to do so by other by now irate drivers who will be making their displeasure felt. Faith is not a dogmatic certainty, for there lies madness and disaster. No, faith guarantees nothing except the will and energy to overcome despondency and fear, to live our lives to the full, to get back on your horse and drink your milk to get up after being knocked down like those people in the words of Theodore Roosevelt 'who at the best know in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if they fail, at least fail while daring greatly.'

Not all of us are destined to achieve great things by the standards of the world, few of us are but perhaps the greatest goal is to try to follow the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth in faith hope and charity, to follow the teachings of a man who knew the importance of faith, a great teacher who talked of  'faith to move mountains' He said, "For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” 

May your life be a journey of faith.

Happiness

There is something about the early morning that is qualitatively different from the rest of the day and I think that it is in the silence and the freshness of the day that we are perhaps at our most reflective, another day with all the possibilities that this unknown quantity can bring and an opportunity to plan, to decide perhaps what our options may be. Of course those options may be circumscribed by the necessities of the working day but in a way we still have choices even if its only in the way might approach our work what our attitude might be are we going to be the same as we were yesterday or are we going to move on to find new areas of personal challenge and so on.

The start of a day is like a fresh page in a book. It's a fresh page in an exercise book, blank page for us to write on, to write our lives on, every word every full stop, if we think about it is important, we can't go back and edit it because it's written in indelible ink. Sometimes, I will be pulled up short and reminded what I did or said weeks, months, and decades ago. Did I? Did I do that, did I really say that? I ask. Regrettably probably, I did. The good news is that although we can't change the past we can live in the present and write a new story and hopefully we can do the same, God willing in the future.

The good news is that we have the capacity to realise happiness in this life much more than we probably know or allow ourselves to do. A recent study of what make people happy was recently undertaken from across the whole of the United Kingdom where 1001 people were asked what happiness meant for them. They weren't asked to select factors from a series of tick box questions but rather to put their own answers to this question in their own words. Unsurprisingly the respondents listed components of happiness as falling in to six areas: relationships, contentment, security and money, health, transcendence and fulfillment  The two major things that emerged in this study was firstly that people, actually 73% of the people that responded, mentioned relationships as the only or one of their definitions of happiness. This finding is consistent with research that shows that supportive social connections are fundamental to feeling good. I think this absolutely true, we all need friends, and we all need to give and receive love if we are to live a healthy balanced life. Certainly, this is what the ethos of any church community must be about if we are to live up to the standards we proclaim. Jesus said, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.'"

Secondly, and this was the component that seemed to have surprised much psychological opinion was that 56% of opinion emerging from this research was that contentment was put forward as a major factor. This was something that really upset the apple cart. Because apparently, positive psychologists have this thing they call a happiness formula or even a magic happiness formula that goes something like this pleasure plus engagement, plus meaning equals happiness. In other words if we engage in something pleasurable and find some meaning in it then we will achieve happiness. This kind of happiness to me seems like the kind of happiness that the advertising companies deal with, a sort of commodity happiness that can be bought and found in a product whether it's a new car or a foreign holiday. However, contentment is something really quite different and although we can equate happiness with contentment it can be useful to know the subtle differences.

Oscar Wild is once supposed to have said that the most insincere question is, "how are you?" and that it's the most crashing bore who proceeds to tell you. Not withstanding the wit of Oscar Wild, at the risk of being insincere; sometimes I ask people how they are; I will ask if they are happy. By that I don't mean are you happy because you have all the things that you want or you happy because you have just come into some money. Rather, I ask from a more general point of view, are you happy with your life? Are you contented in other words? Because I happen to think that contentment is the only really authentic happiness that there is and I think this contentment comes not from the world as we want it to be but from an acceptance of the world as it is. We are reminded of the words from Reinhold Niebuhr:

God, give me grace to accept with serenity

the things that cannot be changed,

Courage to change the things

which should be changed,

and the Wisdom to distinguish

the one from the other.

This contentment we are talking about is very clear it is about acceptance and courage, accepting the things that cannot be changed and having the courage to change the things that should be changed. Acceptance is about accepting ourselves and other people for who they are, acknowledging that there are things that simply won't be changed or can't be changed and having to live with it. Contentment can involve recognising the present moment and embracing it as the only reality. Perhaps you can call it The Power of Now where there are no 'what ifs' or 'if only' if only this had happened or if only that had happened or if and so on. In any given situation we are where we are and we must proceed from that. In the survey on happiness conducted by a national opinion poll they found that ordinary people were saying things like, "For me, happiness is about personal tranquility , "Happiness is going to sleep peaceful and waking up the next day," "Being at peace with the way things are going", "Happiness is when you are OK inside about where you are and who you are, "Happiness can be found in simply just taking the dog for a walk"

I suppose you could say that happiness or contentment is found in seeing things as they really are. Real happiness or contentment is not a soft option it's not about giving in or giving up, living a life of docile passivity or agreeing with what is fashionable to agree with or like some people who will agree with latest opinion until another one comes along. Real happiness is also about being true to yourself as Shakespeare would have it

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!