Monday 31 August 2009

One to one (3)

There is one feeling in particular that holds us back; taking many forms and being at the root of other apparently un-associated feelings, attitudes, actions and inactivity. More than anything else, it is fear that makes us withhold the truth and shy away from others who may dare to reveal it for us; it is fear that leads us away to hide from aspects of reality, and once hidden, it is fear that keeps us from altering our way of seeing those things from which we hide.

I am brought back, once again, to the truth expressed in that same passage from John Henry Newman’s sermon, ‘Christian Sympathy’. ‘...we dare not trust each other with the secret of our hearts. We have each the same secret, and we keep it to ourselves, and we fear that, as a cause of estrangement, which really would be a bond of union.’
In the same text, we are reminded that ‘... the one has within him in tendency, what the other has brought out into actual existence ... They understand each other far more than might at first have been supposed. ...They have common ground; ...they have one and the same circle of temptations, and one and the same confession. ... we fear that others should know what we are really ...’

I am unable to read through those words without being taken back to the situation recorded in chapter eight of John’s gospel: the woman about to be stoned for committing adultery. (verses 3-11)
“Let the one among you who is guiltless be the first to throw a stone at her.” says Jesus to the men gathered round her. ‘They went away one by one, beginning with the eldest, until the last one had gone and Jesus was left alone with the woman.’
Here was a time when, in spite of the Old Testament Law which told them to stone a woman in such circumstances, the men present – Sadducees and Pharisees – appeared to act according to the teachings of Jesus. In response to His words, they found themselves unable to avoid weighing their own inclinations and weaknesses, and perhaps their own transgressions, against the discovered act of the woman before them. (But where was the man?). They appeared to acknowledge that ‘the one has within him in tendency, what the other has brought out into actual existence’, and walked away rather than pass final judgement. The eldest leaving first, points to both time’s persistence in its attempts to make us succumb to our weaknesses, and to its granting of wisdom through the experience of constant or repeated temptation, and through the making of our mistakes.
Temptation and transgression both contribute to an awareness that, deep down, each of us differs little from another.

This interpretation may be inaccurate of course. The men may have drifted away due to the failure of their attempt to trap Jesus into saying something usable as evidence against Him; but here was a demonstration of the New Covenant in contrast with the rigid interpretation of comparatively black and white laws of the Old: Jesus telling those present, and us, in a way that clearly brought the message home in the individual consciences of His hearers: -

“You have heard how it was said, You shall not commit adultery. But I say this to you,
if a man looks at a woman lustfully, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
(Matthew 5:27-28)
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This new way of approaching and understanding mankind – understanding ourselves, and of understanding God’s commandments and His requirement of us, coupled with our Lord’s instruction to forgive and thus to heal, opened up a whole new world: a potential for both unity and ‘sympathy’ within Christ’s Church. It is within this world that our facing each other has the power to heal. It is not possible to face each other for the first time without altering our relationship; without moving the relationship on in some way.
The Law, as laid out in the Old Testament, was not designed to hurt, but the interpretation of it, and the following of it, frequently left little room for understanding, mercy and forgiveness. In contrast with this, the whole ministry of Jesus was a coming face to face with mankind as a healing force. Our following of Him is expressed in our will to meet, to listen, to console, to forgive, to provide and to heal: in short, to love one another.
Those who have heard and understood Christ’s message, and have begun to act upon it, may find this comparatively easy with people from whom they are distant, but remarkably difficult with those they know well: their friends and family members. How is it that we can have a close and long-running friendship with someone and still find it so hard to ‘trust each other with the secret of our hearts’ ?
Everything points to the likelihood that daring to fully open our hearts and our consciences to each other would allow our long-maintained protective layers, and our pretence, to fall away. Beneath, would we not find that we are indispensable companions for each other’s journey, and, one by one, and two by two, that we are all made in such a way that we should all be sharing our journey together?


Could it be that this mutual honesty and openness is an essential without which we are unlikely ever to be empowered?
Are we unable to progress to the next stage with our imagined group of fellow travellers because our fear keeps us out of sight? – Because we do not allow our light to shine?
Love casts out all fear. Let us take the risk.
On the other side of our decision to face someone and to speak our truths to them, is a further awakening, and an enabling that will lead us closer to the certainties for which we long. Acting upon such a decision may be the key to our empowerment: the missing part of our surrender of self to our Lord’s will. I certainly sense this to be at least a part of the key to my own.
Without being empowered by the Spirit of God we shall remain unable to fulfil our potential; we shall remain less than the persons God has made us to be.

Let us crave a new dawn in our lives: an awakening from our sleep; an enabling that will empower us for all that God may ask of us. It begins and ends with us. The whole of creation has to do with us. And ‘us’ begins with you and me, our neighbours and our friends, each of us making that vital decision to meet face to face, heart to heart, and one to one.
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Friday 28 August 2009

One to one (2)


‘Do not desert an old friend;
the new one will not be his match.’
(Ecclesiasticus 9:10)

Even when well away from the seemingly unstoppable surge of life in the modern world, not just out of the city centre, not just beyond suburbia, not even when we are tucked cosily into the countryside: on holiday, travelling through, on a day trip, or strolling briefly away from the roads, we can be held in the grasp of much that we thought had been left behind. The television, the internet, DVDs, computer games, mobile phones: the many trappings of today’s world that no longer simply follow us wherever we go but are found to have preceded us into almost every corner of the world. If these products of man’s ingenuity were unavailable it would still take us a considerable amount of time to slow down, to shed our supposed reliance on them, and to begin benefiting from the reduced intensity of constant mental activity associated with them, much of which is subliminal. But when they remain as an active and constantly influential presence in our lives, our slowing down takes far longer, and we are unlikely ever to truly switch off from the activity they perpetuate and which drains us of the ability to actually stop, to truly listen and to really see.

It is not only the world around us that we continue to miss: the sights and sounds, the reality, the experience; it is the people in our lives. We may relax more into the presence of family or friends, but the opportunity for finding out more about who we are – who our companions are and who we ourselves are – is missed, because we fail to recognize that such a chance exists. How can we see opportunity where we fail to identify the underlying need? How shall we look each other in the eye and dare to discover who we are if we are afraid to come face to face with each other and with ourselves.
Access to the internet and the habitual presence of mobile phones – even in their simplest forms –allows us and encourages us to believe that we are more in touch with other people, especially friends, than ever before.

Texting took the ‘mobile’ beyond being a telephone, and the same small piece of hardware is now apparently capable of being most things, not only to most modern men and women, but to children down to (and beyond) whatever age their parents now regard as being appropriate for their possession. Involvement in social networks on the internet, especially by the young, has spread so rapidly that it is as though a dam has burst, releasing some previously unimagined need that has ever been locked into the makeup of mankind. To many people, the entire field of instant communication is a wonderful answer to their unspoken, and previously unimagined prayers. It has gone from non-existence to indispensable without any real journey between the two, and the ‘need’, once created and fed, has become an addiction wrapped in an irresistible and illogical desire. The must get, must have, must do, must see, must hear, must show, must tell mentality has been vastly expanded by such groups as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Last.fm which focuses on the perpetual hunger for the mutual enjoyment of music.
That was about the limit of my knowledge of such sites until I looked on Wikipedia! It names more than 150 sites in its list of major active social networking websites (It has another list for defunct sites), and states that ‘the list is not exhaustive, and is limited to some notable, well-known sites.’

With 250 million registered users, one of the ways in which Facebook describes its function is, “Giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” I have no quarrel with that as an aim, an objective, or as a description of Facebook. If everybody became and remained connected they would become more open with each other, and it works the other way round too; these two aspects of relationship rely equally on each other for their continuation. If living in this world was that simple, and if the power ‘given’ to people by these websites was fully utilized, we could all begin looking for real signs of world peace, of justice, tolerance and understanding, and of a global redistribution of resources and commitment. But as soon as either the connectedness or the openness begins to fade – and it will – the other will start to crumble; a degenerative spiral will be set in motion that will be very difficult to stop.
My seemingly pessimistic outlook on the fruit of so much involvement in these networks is based on the superficial nature of the openness. The connections, however meaningful and however strong they may appear, can only remain if there are other forms of real contact between the parties: some form of human relationship away from the internet with its inherent distancing and distraction. Without it the thin skin drawn over the lives of participants in these networks – the only layer in which they and others may share any level of connectedness – will not take the strain.
The connections have no genuine face-to-face quality; there is no meeting eye to eye; and there is no sharing of what is really going on inside hearts and minds. The busyness of the activity involved in taking part in such networking creates the feeling that we are in touch, informed, being honest, and in relationships. It covers over the simple knowledge that everything shared here is of a superficial nature. And it is our feelings that will always ensure this will be the case; the feeling that we are already truly sharing (and therefore need do nothing more), and an underlying reluctance to listen to any whispers within ourselves that suggest otherwise. We dare not attempt to make it real, as reality demands that we become fully present to others: that we meet them face to face. Technology and modern communications will not do that for us; we must do it for ourselves.

A bringing together of Anglicans and Catholics in the 1920s (the Malines Conversations) was the subject of the Archbishop’s ‘Testament’, from which the following often quoted words are taken; but their truth goes far beyond that particular context. They speak well of the requirements for every form of real togetherness, right down to the central and vital heart-to-heart meeting of two separate, but truly open, individual human beings.

“In order to unite with one another, we must love one another;
in order to love one another, we must know one another;
in order to know one another, we must go and meet one another.”
(Cardinal Mercier)
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Sunday 23 August 2009

One to one (1)

‘Iron is sharpened by iron, one person is sharpened by contact with another.’
(Proverbs 27:17)
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Ronald Knox quoted the above verse in a sermon entitled 'Jesus my Friend', and went on to say, 'your friendship with so-and-so inevitably knocks you into a particular shape, just as one piece of iron knocks another into a particular shape if you hit them against one another. Inevitably, not as the result of any deliberate attempt on the part of either to influence the other, but simply as the result of daily contact. And of course, speaking of human friendships ... either affects the other equally; it's not like sharpening a pencil, which leaves the knife just as it was.’ (The Pastoral Sermons.)
Referring to that same two-sided effect, Carl Jung said: - ‘The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed.’ (Modern Man in Search of a Soul)

Such words from people with well known names and acknowledged reputations can so easily be taken as facts applicable to every person and every situation. We make no conscious decision to regard them in this way, but we are easily led by the words of others, and when the words come from a highly thought of name like Carl Jung, who are we to doubt? If something is well put, and sounds reasonable, we skip beyond the careful consideration that it may deserve to an unconscious acceptance of what we have heard or read as fact. We absorb the ideas of others without any real analysis of what we are accepting and believing. Nothing we hear or read should be thought of as being beyond dispute, and this is no less applicable when what we absorb is apparently supported by words from scripture. The above quotes from Ronald Knox and Carl Jung are examples of this, being supported, as it seems, by the verse taken from the Bible. We take such things ‘as gospel’: we regard them as ‘the gospel truth’; and we allow the scriptural connection to blur our understanding of what scripture is, what the Bible is, and what the gospel is. We may still understand what truth is, but we relinquish our ability to comprehend what is, and what is not, the truth.

Many of us are susceptible to this weakness; I always have been, and often wondered whether I really did have any firm views of my own – on anything. In recent years (thank God) I have found that I do, and my slow realization of the fact has brought a welcome belief that these are well considered views based on my own assessment of what is real and what is true. It takes an appreciable increase in confidence to entertain even the idea of questioning the statements of others, regardless of the sometimes loudly proclaimed declarations of their views.
The ability of people to influence others by the powerful, well chosen, eloquent or persuasive use of words must never be forgotten. We must always be aware of the ease with which we can be swayed by those who speak out or write, clearly, confidently and apparently with knowledge and experience of their subject. We cannot be reminded too frequently of this.

How are we affected by our contact with each other? Are we affected equally? If so, is that always the case?

Ronald Knox said it clearly enough: ‘speaking of human friendships ... either affects the other equally’; and the implication is that this is the norm. I am able to read, consider and doubt his words as superficial and misleading through my own accumulated awareness of the reality of life as a human being. My doubt then leads me to compare directly with my own experience and thus to reject his words completely. In fairness, he was contrasting our human friendships with our relationship with Jesus; Jesus is not altered at all by His friendship with us, but we are changed by our relationship with him.
I believe there are no grounds whatever for saying of our human friendships, that ‘either affects the other equally’. For both parties to be affected in any way, and to any extent, however divergent or otherwise the degrees of change, there needs to be – as Carl Jung said – a reaction: some form of chemistry between them. The context of his words is the relationship between the psychologist and patient, where, to quote again from the same passage, ‘the personalities of the doctor and patient have often more to do with the outcome of the treatment than what the doctor says or thinks’.

Our friendships can take a wide variety of forms. They can be similar to Jung’s doctor/patient relationship in that one person can be a supportive guide for the other, occasionally, frequently or permanently. The support may always be going in the same direction, or may alternate between the two: sometimes we are supportive, at other times we need the support. A friendship can be based on two people both being ‘doctors’ at the same time, just as they can both be ‘patients’; and the whole area of confiding in another and giving and receiving support is only one facet of the broad canvas that is friendship. But friendship is not the only contact we have with others; all contact has the potential to change us in some way.

Iron can be sharpened, dulled, or simply battered, bent and dented by iron. In like manner, one person can be sharpened, refined, inspired, dulled, battered or otherwise abused by contact with another. The possibilities are endless, but we can neither receive nor give anything of value without turning to each other and daring to look each other in the eye. We are sharpened by contact with each other only when our honed edges point towards each other: when we meet face to face, whether as doctor and patient, as master and servant, as equals, as enemies, or as friends.
It is in our first meeting that we take the risks. It is in facing each other that we either hurt or heal.

Monday 17 August 2009

A perfect touch

One of the wonderful things about being human is our capacity for being drawn to a person – even someone we do not know – through an undeniable awareness of powerful emotion: the strength of feeling generated within them.
Such feelings encompass the whole range of our life experience from the blissful and joyous to the most debilitating sense of utter desolation. It is a capacity that both derives from our being human, and contributes to the advancement of humanity towards God’s intended fulfilment. It is also a manifestation of the many-sided giftedness with which we are all blessed; a necessary aspect of the binding together of individuals into a real community. And it goes beyond our usual and habitual understanding of community to where we hear the echoes of Jesus’ prayer that all of us “may be so perfected in unity that the world will recognize” that it was the Father who sent Him. (John 17:23)
Jesus prayed, “May they all be one ...” (17:21) Such simple words: such a powerful message; and prayed, not only for those who lived and breathed with Him two thousand years ago, but for all Christians who have followed after, including ourselves: we who, in the present day, can so easily show ourselves to have not been “so perfected in unity”.

One of the natural traits we all share as human beings is the ease with which we place reliance on our feelings. In much that life brings us, we instinctively base decisions and judgments on our reactions, our bias, our preference and our prejudice. Every day, clear evidence that this is not the best way presents itself in friction and disagreement between individuals, and in news of conflict, injustice and abuse that speaks loud of the scale of wrongdoing across the world. In one way or another, all such wrongs are the fruit of wrong thinking: wrong thoughts and consequently wrong action based on the feelings – or lack of feelings – of people with the power to influence the lives of those around them. Those people may be numbered in millions, and their extreme distress apparently goes unnoticed by those who are its root cause. They do not feel anything about it, and therefore pay no heed to what is so obvious. Of course there are other factors involved, such as pride and greed, but these generate their own sets of feelings and are therefore anchored in the same root cause. All these conflicts, from the smallest argument, show how far we can stray from an awareness of our capacity for being drawn together, for empathy, for reaching out to others in response to feelings within ourselves: feelings brought about by the emotions and strength of feeling in others.
Here we have two completely opposite ways, not only of thinking and feeling, but of being. The one resulting from an ability to sense the feelings of others, the other from an inability to do so. The former is truly human; the latter is inhuman.

Our sense of inadequacy in the face of another person’s desperate need is a natural consequence of the truth contained in Proverbs 14:10: ‘the heart knows its own grief best, nor can a stranger share its joy.’ But for each of us, it is awareness of God’s presence that can and does still make a difference. Even as a stranger, if we can begin to raise that awareness within someone whose plight is blinding them to all forms of consolation, we shall have helped to show them the way. We shall have brought them closer to being able to reach out to Him with the words, “Out of the depths I cry to you O Lord.” (Psalms 130:1).
For me, those depths are not only the place where we feel crushed, deserted and helpless; they are the inner heart of our desolation: the hard to find, and sometimes even harder to believe in place where peace builds its home; the cracked vessel which God repairs through our dejection, our emptiness, and through our regained trust in His presence, leaving the vessel stronger, wider and deeper than before.

Our faith invites us to walk alongside each other, carrying the message that strives for recognition within us into the everyday routine of our days, as well as into the perceived burdens and turmoil of the people around us. It is through this quiet but constant inclination that we are set upon the path towards ‘perfection in unity’. It is faith which tells us to act, not like a stranger, but as a friend: to match our steps with those of others for just a few paces along the way. Our paths have crossed, but God so often causes such meetings to occur at a staggered crossroads: one at which we briefly share the same path before separately journeying on. For us to regard this merely as coincidence would be to deny the power for good that would direct us in all things. Wherever that power leads, we must hope to always have the strength to follow.


Learning to respond to such situations without allowing doubts to steer me away has been a slow process, but the more frequently I do it, the more clear it becomes that this is what is asked of each of us; the touch, the word, the attentive ear, the supportive hand held out- whether accepted or rejected; making it known to those in need that we have noticed, that we are aware and are feeling some of their pain, and quite simply that we are there.
The act of truly being with someone, even for only a few moments, is a hint of ‘perfection in unity’ and a blessing to both parties.
It is a touch of the perfection for which Jesus prayed for us. It is a perfect touch.
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Wednesday 5 August 2009

Great and small


“All the points in which men differ, health and strength, high or low estate, happiness or misery, vanish before this common lot, mortality.” (John Henry Newman. Parochial and Plain Sermons,)

Why do we think of ourselves and others as being equally, more, or less able, intelligent, gifted, significant or worthy than anyone else? Other than within an academic or sporting context or when ensuring that a person is sufficiently and relevantly qualified for a specific form of employment, we have little or no reason to think about such things and no cause to consider anything in that way. Newman’s quoted words are from a sermon entitled ‘The Greatness and littleness of Human Life’. Our lives are both great and little, but not in the ways we habitually think, and not in the sense that one person is great while another is not. Thinking in those terms will have faded to nothing for some of us within a few years of leaving school or university, leaving us with the knowledge that nearly all such comparisons, while not being meaningless, are devoid of significant meaning for us in our daily lives. For many, however, such means of dividing individuals are perceived as essential to the advancement of themselves and thus to an imagined improvement of mankind.
All that really does matter is knowing that we have the intelligence and other attributes needed to be the persons we are supposed to be: the mental capacity and the ability to appreciate and think about who we are, where we are going, and our place within our local community and as part of the global family that is mankind.

Using the words, ‘mental capacity’, immediately takes my mind into my world of work, where the Mental Capacity Act 2005 Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards came into force on 1st April 2009. These safeguards are to protect the rights of people who are not able to make their own decisions, particularly where, in their own best interests, there is a perceived need to restrict the extent of their liberty. That liberty, which can include but does not necessarily mean the freedom to come and go whenever they choose, is something we all take for granted. For some, however, that freedom does not exist, and the deprivation may encompass anything that is not in the best interests of the individual, or that may be the cause of unacceptable outcomes or risks for others.

Over the years I have come to know many people with ‘learning disabilities’, some of them very well, and it is only through knowing them that I have become fully aware that this coverall expression refers to something which only has meaning when considered in relation to something else: something with which it can logically be compared. It is purely relative, and in that way is much the same as our usual understanding of ‘intelligence’ or ‘cleverness’. Compared with some people, I could be assessed as having learning disabilities and, in the right context, you or anyone else could describe me in that way without giving any offence – occasionally I have done so myself as a way of highlighting points relating to aspects of my work – but, in general we do not differentiate between ourselves in that way.
For those, however, who are, for mental capacity reasons, unable to live independent lives and who always need some degree of support, the world has been, and to a lesser extent still is, a very different place. The medical profession, and in particular the field of psychiatric assessment, based the classification of such people on a system which gave us words we still hear being used both lightly and offensively in everyday conversation: words which once described particular individuals and groups of people – those assessed and then forever regarded as being within the range of that classification, as follows:

MORON. An adult whose mental development corresponds to that of a normal average child between the ages of 8 and 12.
IMBECILE. An adult person whose intelligence is equal to that of the average normal child between the ages of 3 and 7 years, or between 25 and 50 per cent of that of the average normal adult; person of weak intellect.
IDIOT. A person so deficient in mind as to be permanently incapable of rational conduct and having a mental development not exceeding that of an average normal child of two years old; utter fool.
These definitions are taken from a 1963 edition of the Oxford Dictionary, and recognition of changes that began taking place in the following years can be found in the fact that they are not to be found in my 1979 OED.
This terminology was part of a fixed system that left little room for anything other than a basic categorization based on comparisons and preset criteria. The recognition and valuing of each life as being that of an individual and unique human being was not part of the system.

It is only through getting to know someone that we are able to find, recognize and appreciate the person before us.
We cannot get to know others without communicating with them, and we cannot do that without spending time with them.
Among those with whom I have spent a great deal of time have been people who were both mentally and physically incapable, not just of living independently or of living a meaningful life with input from others, but, without continual care and support, of living at all. Such people are usually classified today as having ‘profound and multiple learning disabilities’, which condition is not infrequently accompanied by severely disabling physical problems. Becoming aware of the person hidden within even the most incapable and apparently unresponsive mind and body has been a real blessing for me. It has been a privilege to be given the opportunity to spend time with them, a pleasure to get to know them, and an honour to have gained their trust and their friendship.
The lifelong vulnerability of such people is emphasised in the minds of those who get to know them by an awareness that they are, in effect, acting as life support machines. But for anyone prepared to search for ways to make a real connection with a person with these extreme needs, the relationship can bear fruit that is as meaningful and life-changing as any experienced in friendships with the most able-bodied and ‘intelligent’ persons.
Two observations from Paula D’Arcy in her book, ‘Where The Wind Begins’, are relevant to this:
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‘... who we are changes the life around us. If we choose to be loving, involved, withdrawn, cold, critical, judgmental – we shape the world in some way.’ ..- ..‘... we were all changed by the shared moments, and carried away a bit of the other. That’s how love is.’
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About Me

Who I am should be, and should remain, of little consequence to you. Who you are is what matters; who you are meant to be is what should matter most to you. In coming closer to my own true self, I have gradually been filled with the near inexpressible: I have simply become "brim full", and my words to you are drawn from those uttered within myself, as part of an undeniable overflowing that brings a smile to my every dusk, and to my every new dawn.
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