We have spoken previously of story, both in terms of our own story and the stories to which we are exposed from childhood on, whether from family, school, culture, nation, or wider forms of literature. We also added that our own lives follow initially a script and self-image we have inherited. Only gradually do we become aware of that image and script, and are able either to re-affirm it as truly our own or to change it if it is untrue to our deepest self.

What is really crucial is to have an understanding of ourselves and a script that does help us to see ourselves and life truthfully and in depth, and to live out our personal, relational, and societal life accordingly. We need images and stories that are not superficial, naive, warped or destructive, but that take into account all our spiritual richness and complexity and depth, as well as our inner wounds and failures.

We need a vision of life (a script, story) that enables and challenges us to celebrate our joys, to survive our sorrows, to share our lives, and to build our world. And while taking into account all this complexity, that vision needs to affirm, as the basis of all else, our own sacred worth and the sacredness of all else (even when conflict and opposition are involved).

A point to add here is that the deepest truths about life are best, and even only, expressed in images, symbols, and stories. The truth of a story concerns not so much the facts of the story–whether or not it actually happened. It concerns more deeply the vision of life the story contains: the picture of what a human being is and what life really means; the picture of self and nature and history and the transcendent that comes through the story. Scholar, John Dominc Crossan expresses the thought bluntly. “My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.”

A good example is the verse by Rumi, the 13th century Persian poet. “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” He is apparently not talking about a specific physical place, but more of a way in which we can be present to one another. Instead of asking where is that place “out there,” we might inquire where is that place “in there.” What place within us goes beyond judging one another to trying to encounter someone in their home place, in their true self, behind and deeper than their or our thoughts, feelings, wounds, prejudices, and all else. Occasionally, if we are open, we may sense that inner place in another by a word or a glance or a simple gesture.

A good understanding of our inner world emerged once in a conversation with my son at the age of seven. He spoke of the world inside us in terms of different towns. He spoke of happy town and excitement town and the like, with examples for each. I asked him if there was anything further, and he said that way, way at the back was love town. I suggested to him that as long as we know that there is a love town we will be alright even if we cannot always be there, but are for a time in lonely town or angry town.

In this light, when we wish to embody in words the deepest things in our life, we tend to use images rather than plain matter-of-fact statements, because images say more and they say it better. When the poet, Robert Frost, exclaims, “I took the road less travelled by and that has made all the difference,” he is contrasting approaches to life rather than comparing highways. In the Shakespearean play, King Lear struggles to express the immense pain that his own folly and the treachery of his two oldest daughters have brought him, before spending his last days peacefully with his beloved youngest daughter. He does not simply say that he is hurting, that he has undergone a traumatic experience, or that he needs to seek psychological counselling. He proclaims: “I am bound upon a wheel of fire that mine own tears do scald like molten lead.” Once again, this is a vivid expression of the suffering that can afflict a human life and can expand our own understanding.

The story of Echo in Greek mythology tells of a young woman whose punishment is that she can only repeat what she hears. On one level it is an imaginative reflection on the experience of an echo in which a sound comes back to us until it gradually fades away. At a deeper level, the story suggests that we must find our own voice from within, beyond merely echoing what we hear from without. To do so is to make our own contribution to life. Not to do so is to fade away and to die within. In the words of Thomas Merton, contemplative writer, if we do not speak from our true self discovered in solitude, our speech will merely secrete clichés.

The story, familiar to many, of the Prodigal Son is not merely factual information about a lost young man. It suggests rather that even if we sever basic bonds, throw away our gifts, lose our way, and destroy much of the life that is within us, it is still not too late. We may begin at least to glimpse something deeper within us. And another caring person may recall us to our deepest self, beneath all wounds. In the face of the sometimes daunting experience of mistakes in life, the story calls us to remember that our sacred worth is deeper than and not destroyed by any brokenness and wrongness.

In effect, to understand ourselves, one another, and life’s meaning, we need the help of images and stories that affirm a deeper underlying worth which includes an awareness of our shadow self. I recall after reading a number of novels of Margaret Laurence that all her character are flawed, but that she likes them.

May you all find an image of yourself, your core self and your whole self, and a script to live by, one that allows for the shadows that fall across your life, yet affirms your underlying sacredness.

Norman King, April 5, 2021

Perhaps we might add a few more words on the experience of beauty. I looked up an interview with the late John O’Donohue, an Irish poet and philosopher, on the On Being program.

He recalls the words of Blaise Pascal, a 17th century French thinker, that we should always keep something beautiful in our mind. Beauty can help us endure great bleakness because it is resilient and life-affirming, it helps create more life that is worthwhile. He also cites Meister Eckhardt, a medieval German mystic, who held that “there is a place in the soul that neither time nor space nor any created thing can touch.” O’Donohue comments that our identity is not equivalent to our biography and that there is a place in us where we have never been wounded, where there is still a sureness, a seamlessness, a confidence, and a tranquility. And beauty, as well as spirituality and love allow us now and again to visit that inner kind of sanctuary.

Beauty in words, music and the other arts, as well as the world of nature, can remind us of this immense interiority within us and awaken us to that inner sanctuary and the vast resources there. This is not a luxury but a necessity. He adds that we can know about another person but not know what it’s like inside that person. Yet we also have an immense capacity to reawaken in each other the profound ability to be with and to be close to each other.

When he thinks of the word “beauty,” what comes to mind as well are some of the faces of those he loves, beautiful landscapes he knows, or acts of kindness by caring people. He thinks too of music and poetry and comments that music is what language would love to be if it could.

Finally, he refers to the etymology of the word, “threshold,” which comes from “threshing, ”the separation of the grain from the husk. When we cross a new threshold worthily, we heal the patterns of repetition in which we had been stuck, and we cross into a new and fuller ground, a kind of homecoming to who we truly are and can be. And beauty has an essential role in our unfolding life.

The theme of the essential need for beauty is illustrated in many of the familiar folk tales. In Hansel and Gretel, for example, while wandering through the forest, lost and hungry and afraid, the children come upon a snow white bird, and stop to listen to its beautiful singing. Birds stand for the higher aspirations of a human being. Iin the story, by gathering up the bread crumbs that Hansel has left as a trail, the birds prevent the retreat to previous securities, and lead to the witch’s house where they overcome their fears and discover hidden jewels. In effect, I think that the story is saying that beyond our need for survival and security, beyond our fears, lies our longing and need for beauty, both in the world of nature and the arts (singing bird) and in our own inner self (hidden treasures).

In te story of Jack and the Beanstalk, the young man’s maturing process involves a journey of climbing to a new land where he gathers gold coins, a hen that lays golden eggs, and a singing harp. Once again, besides money and an ongoing source of income, there is the need for beauty, symbolized in the singing harp. All of these challenges involve some form of struggle.

Finally, the story of Sleeping Beauty reminds us that our own inner beauty may lie beyond a hedge of thorns, all the prickly parts of ourselves, so to speak. And that beauty needs to be awakened in us, perhaps initially by the caring of others.

On a more personal note, I recall a conversation a long time ago in which someone told me of certain events in their life that were truly horrific. At the same time, in the midst of hearing about these terrible experiences. I had an overwhelming sense of the inner beauty of this person. It calls to mind the conviction of John O’Donohue that there is an inner sanctuary within us that no wound can ever reach.

On another occasion, after attending a conference in a distant city, I met with a relative, and for whatever reason, there was a sense of incredible closeness that included a tangible experience of the inner beauty of this person. Though many years have passed since that time, the felt memory of that experience and a sense of connection still remains.

As we said last week, in the experience of beauty, whether in a piece of music, a story, a work of art, or a person, it seems that we sense that it is good that this beauty exists. It is like a gift that enriches our spirit if we are open to it. We are also drawn us out of ourselves towards that beauty without grasping, it allows us to glimpse another way of seeing all of life, and challenges us to expand our heart and become like what we see or hear.

The experience of beauty can reach behind our defenses and into and through our wounds and hurts, and have a healing effect upon us. Perhaps the experience of beauty can put us in touch with what is at the heart of life, a presence and power of beauty that enriches our soul and calls to our spirit, a power of the healing that reaches deeper than and unveils our wounds, in the very process of healing them.

Norman King, March 29, 2021

On my walk this past week, I listened to a podcast from the CBC Tapestry program, which stressed the importance of words, both in terms of the healing or and wounding effect that they can have, our responsibility for our own words and something of their impact. The interview was with Malcolm Guite, a poet, Anglican priest, former fellow of Girton College, Cambridge. He stressed that the way a person speaks shapes who they are at a very elemental level, At the same time, the way we speak is itself born out of the way we hear and the way we read. As a result, he adds: “We really need to soak ourselves in rich language.”

He refers to the words of Irish poet and Nobel laureate, Seamus Heaney, who holds that the only way to respond to grief is through beauty : “The greater the weight of grief a line [of poetry] is asked to bear, the more beautifully and musically sprung the line must be.” His words reflect those of an article on beauty that appeared many years ago in Homemakers magazine. “The beauty of music seems to come to us from a vast spiritual reservoir and to reach behind all our defences and touches the core of the condensed self.”

One example is found in Shakespeare’s play, Romeo & Juliet. It would be absolutely horrifying if it were encountered as a newspaper report of a tragic mistake that resulted in two teenage suicides. But in the language of Shakespeare, while it certainly does convey a sense of sadness, loss, and tragedy, it also has a great warmth and beauty as well. Tragic events are put into a beautiful container which gives them a meaning or discerns a meaning in them that would otherwise be absent. As writer on story, John Shea puts it, “Any sorrow can be borne if a story can be told about it.”

Such words of Guite and others call to mind an expression I heard as a child, which I have since realized is utterly false. “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me.” Words can in fact undermine and wound a person even more than a physical assault. They can also heal immensely. Jane and I have often raised the question of whether our words come from our surface noise or from our deepest silence. It is these latter words that can have the most profound effect.

What the above observations indicate our profound need to experience what is truly beautiful. Whether our experience of beauty is in a piece of music, a work of art, a sculpture, a story, a poem, or a building, “we touch the deepest meaning of being human” (in the words of author, Frederick Streng). We may sense that it is good that such beauty exists. It is like a gift enriching our spirit, and drawing us out of ourselves towards it, allowing us to glimpse another way of seeing life, and challenging us to expand our mind and heart. As the above reference to grief expresses, the experience of beauty, can have a power of healing that reaches deeper than any of our wounds and sorrows. It may indeed make us aware of these in the very process of healing them.

I may mention here two favourite examples. Yousuf Karsh, the photographer, for example, tells a marvelous story in connection with his portrait of the exiled Spanish cellist, Pablo Casals. In an ancient French Abbey where the photograph was taken, session took place. Casals sat in a chair in the grotto and played the music of Bach. Karsh was so moved by the beauty of the music that he could not for a time attend to photography. Then, he took a picture of Casals from behind. “I have never photographed anyone, before or since, with his back to the camera–but it seemed to me just right. For me, the bare room conveys the loneliness of the artist, at the pinnacle of his art, and also the loneliness of the exile.” Years later when this portrait was on exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, an elderly gentleman would come each day and stand before it for a period of time. The curator finally approached and asked why he did so. To which the man replied, “Hush–can’t you see, I am listening to the music!”

A second example comes from the story of Beauty and the Beast. In the story, a young woman is initially held captive by a seeming monster, yet one who radiates kindness. After a time, she realizes that she loves him deeply, and once declared, her love transforms him back into a handsome prince. One element of the4 story is the transforming power of love. Yet the underlying truth of the story is that the deepest beauty is at first found in the “Beast,.” and that the beauty of his soul which flows into his love creates the deeper transformation. Writer G. K. Chesterton, has a striking comment on this story. Its lesson, he says, is that something must be loved before it is loveable.

Finally, Group of Seven artist, Lawren Harris, writes: “In the inner place where true artists create there exists a pure child. To recognize this is to recognize beauty as a living, abiding, presence completely untouchable by all the devices of human beings, such as moral codes, creeds, intellectual analysis, games and clichés, the acquisitive instinct, or lust for anything whatsoever.”

The experience of beauty may be contrasted with the experience of something or even someone as property. What is regarded as property is something to be acquired, owned, and used and disposed of at will. It is taken into ourselves and possessed. The experience of beauty in music, art, or nature speaks to a deeper, quieter, more centred place within ourselves. Beauty can reach into our inmost heart, yet at the same time draw us to reach out from that centre, not to possess, but to admire and appreciate, and even to be transformed by it.

Perhaps one of the most transforming experiences is to glimpse something of the inner beauty of another human being. It is perhaps most often felt in a situation of mutual vulnerability and openness. Yousef Karsh once remarked that everyone has a public face, which is like a mask that conceals their true self. He adds that if you engage the subject of a portrait in meaningful conversation, at some point their soul shines through. It is then that you must take the picture.

May each of you come in touch with your own inner beauty. And may you also have the occasion to reveal that beauty in situations of mutual trustworthiness. And may you more and more come to experience the beauty in the world of nature and the arts and in one another.

Norman King, March 21, 2021

This past week, I listened to a series of podcasts from the CBC ideas program, which were a re-broadcast of the British Reith lectures, given this year by Mark Carney, former governor both of the Bank of Canada and of the United Kingdom. He spoke of the need to allow the awareness of climate change to affect both our values and our economic policies.

His comments called to mind the work of writers such as Thomas Berry and Elizabeth Johnson, as well as Richard Rohr. They call for a transformation of our consciousness or awareness, so that we see and feel ourselves as part of the earth and of the universe, not as separate from, unrelated to, and dominant over all else. In a re-phrasing of a statement of Thomas Berry that I have often mentioned, we need to see the universe as a community of beings to reverence, not as a collection of objects to dominate. Another way of expressing the same awareness is to say that our unique personal story is part of a wider story of culture, nation, planet, solar system, and universe.

This transformed awareness of being part of something more vast is also tied up with our sense of sacred worth. The most obvious way in which this truth emerges is that our sense of our own worth first comes through the experience of being valued, through being cared for and cared about by another person, if not in childhood then at least later in our life. One colleague, years ago, said that if we were ever to think of ourselves as self-made persons, we just need the reality check of looking at our navel Another indication comes from the simple experiences of breathing, eating, and drinking. These are not private exercises but relationships with the world around us.

Wayne Muller, in his book, Legacy of the Heart, stresses that nothing can negate our sacred worth and that even our sorrows, grieved over, assimilated, and let go of, can contribute to our sense of worth. He also makes the point that we sometimes mistakenly strive to feel we belong, whereas the very fact that we are breathing makes clear that we are already part of a vast ecosystem. Breathing is belonging. To breathe is already to belong, whether we actually realized or feel that essential belonging. David Suzuki has also written that we are breathing the same air as generations have done for centuries, and so our breathing also connects us with our human past and its other than human environment. Brian Swimme, in a striking film, Journey of the Universe, brings out that the physical components in our bodies are the same as those that make up the stars. In his words: “The stars are our ancestors.” In a similar way, Jane has said that when we sing a particular song, we are already joined not simply with its composer, but with all who have shaped and been affected by his or her life, and even moreso with all those who have heard and sung and played this song over the years and even centuries that it has existed

It is fascinating that a fundamental form of mediation in both eastern and western traditions is simple attention to one’s breath. This exercise not only promotes an inner peacefulness but highlights a sense of belonging to and even responsibility towards the world of which we are a part. In a series of meditations, Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart, begins with a breathing meditation followed by one of attention to physical sensations, then to feelings, and finally to what has been called a lovingkindness meditation. Ths is one in which we express our compassion, our wish for safety, wellness, and fulfillment, for ourselves, then those close to us, then extending further and further to envelop all beings. It is a recognition of the natural expansion of recognizing, affirming and living according to a sense of our own worth, and extending it outwardly in wider and wider circles. Like ripples of a stone dropped in a pond. The very title of a book by Richard Rohr expresses this conviction: Everything Belongs.

Very simply put, our sacred worth belongs to each of us in our very uniqueness. But our uniqueness is not an isolating but a relational reality. Put a little differently, those who love us and whom we love find a home in our very core. They are a part of who we are. When that element is not concretely present, we can experience and isolating loneliness that can foster self-doubt. At the same time, the closeness to another can be tempered by the realization that our inmost longing reaches further than any other’s response or our own response to another. Once again, our sacred worth embraces and is not negated by both our shadow side of limitation, weakness, and even hurtfulness, and the incompleteness or imperfection of any relationship. It has a gift character that can be recognized, accepted, and shared. Yet it but can also be unseen and unheard and unfelt, and the accompanying painfulness can then be inflicted on others.

May you all find a sense of belonging within yourself, so that you feel at home and feel your sacred worth with a caring that envelops and moves beyond all sorrow and flows into compassion for yourselves and one another.

Norman King, March 15, 2021

Last week, we used the image of the eyes through which we look at life and suggested that we see most clearly when we look through the eyes, not of fear or hostility, but of compassion. This compassion begins with our own selves and extends outwardly in wider and wider circles.

We have also spoken about being in touch with our own feelings, or we might speak of our deeply felt experiences. Almost as important is the naming of these experiences, as truthfully as possible.

One personal experience I have often mentioned humorously, with which most of you are familiar, is the experience at the age of six of being hit by a truck, from which, I often added, I never recovered. In point of fact, however, that experience has had a profound impact.

I had no recollection of the actual incident, after awakening in the Sick Children’s Hospital, where I remained for about two weeks. A few days after returning home, I was allowed to get up. I was delighted, but took two steps and fell. I could not walk. I still recall the vivid impression of utter surprise, total disbelief, and sheer terror. Very soon, I was walking again as usual, but I have never forgotten how fragile and vulnerable life can be, and how utterly precious. The birth of my younger brother three years later with a chronic heart defect, and the subsequent heart surgery at the age of 4½ that allowed him to live for 26 years, only reinforced that impression.

In those early years were planted and took root the seeds of awareness that life cannot be taken for granted, that it is a precious and fragile gift to be cherished, appreciated and shared, and that we need always to have a concern for the most vulnerable in our midst. This perspective certainly has elements of both strength and weakness, both of which are probably always active in our lives, whatever script we are following.

I think that each of our lives does follow a certain script, a story in the background of our minds that influences how we experience and interpret ourselves, others, the world around us, and the events of our lives. In that script we see ourselves as having a certain role, so to speak. We follow a certain image of ourselves, perhaps as a hero or heroine, perhaps as a bystander or even a victim in our own lives.

A key question concerns where we get the image of ourselves and the stories we live by. Initially, I believe, it comes from how we are treated as a child and beyond and from the stories we are exposed to from family, culture, nation, and the like. One author, John Navone, puts it this way: “Who I am in large part depends upon who I am told I am. The creative freedom to shape my own self-identity … to take responsibility for the story my life is telling … comes only with increasing maturity.”

For example, our image of land is we are influenced profoundly by being exposed to the Canadian story as opposed to the USA story: an overarching horizon or an ever-receding frontier, encompassing plain. The land becomes, respectively, an infinite background in whose shadow we stand, but which we never conquer; or a a boundary to push against and expand beyond and overcome. One personal result was that the title of a new course proposal was changed from “new frontiers” to “new horizons” to reflect this difference.

While we inherit a certain image and script, we are increasingly challenged to become aware of these and perhaps to modify them. What is really crucial is to have an understanding of ourselves and script that does enable us and help us to see ourselves and life truthfully and in depth, and to live out our personal relational, and societal life accordingly.

We need images and stories that are not superficial, naive, warped or destructive, but that take into account all our spiritual richness and complexity and depth, as well as our inner wounds and failures. We need a vision of life (a script, story) that enables and challenges us to celebrate our joys, to survive our sorrows, to share our lives, and to build our world. And while taking into account all this complexity, it needs to affirm as the basis of all else our own sacred worth and the sacredness of all else (even when conflict ands opposition are involved).

How do we arrive at a creative and complex image and story? There seem to be many mutually inclusive avenues. One is the process of self-reflection, usually in solitude. The poet Rilke says: “Go within yourself and probe the depth from which your life springs.” Another is the experience of friendship, the kind that allows and fosters the trust that permits vulnerability. Here too Rilke says that authentic love consists of two solitudes that border, protect, and greet each other.”

Both of these pathways would require a great deal of further elaboration. A third way is through the great literature of humankind, as well as the other arts, such as music, sculpture, painting, architecture, photography, and the like.

One example is the story of Hansel and Gretel. The story reflects a historical background in which poverty, blended families, and child abuse have been present. It begins with children cast out with only a crust of bread. They are deprived of both food and belonging, the physical resources that allow us to survive, to stay alive; and the caring that allow us to be alive, to live meaningfully. After many trials, they discover jewels hidden in the house of the witch. Without venturing into a more detailed exploration, the underlying theme is that it is possible to grow out of and beyond negative situations, and to discover deeper than all else within us, a beauty and worth (imaged by the jewels) that is a source of survival and meaning, not only for ourselves, but also those whose lives intersect in some way with our own.

An article in Homemakers magazine many years ago, spoke of beauty as seeming to flow from a vast reservoir of spiritual beauty, to reach past all our defences, and to touch the core of the condensed self. Once a young woman, who was to sing at a wedding for which Lorraine was playing, came to our home to rehearse. She sang Going Home, the spiritual. My son, then three, was deeply moved. He asked if it was a sad song. Lorraine explained that it was sad in that the person was away from home, but is was joyful with the expectation of going home. In essence she was saying that home is not an external place, but a place within that is deeper than and encompasses both the joys and sorrows of live. I would add that home is that place within where our sense of sacred worth is deeper than and able to encompass all the light and shadow of our selves and our lives. Music that is beautiful is able to reach that core that carries the tears of both joy and sorrow, and is the place beyond tears.

May you all come more and more peacefully to your own home, and be more fully at home to yourselves, and become a place of home to others as well.

Norman King, March 08, 2021.

Many years ago, in reflecting upon the educational process, it struck me that the emphasis should not be merely on the acquisition of information but more importantly on the angle of vision, the eyes through which we view any information. More recently, the proliferation on the internet of so many materials of varying quality, truthfulness, and attitude,, it reinforced the conviction that there is a profound difference in the accumulation of information and the lens through which we see that alleged information.

To cite a favourite example, a tree is seen through very different eyes by a logger who wishes to cut it down, a photographer who tries to help us see it as if for the first time, and a child who loves to climb. We can also look at the events of our own life through the eyes of judgment or acceptance, anxiety or compassion, fear or hope.

Real growth and change, it seems to me, comes not so much through the acquisition of new information, but learning to see with new eyes. Many authors speak of a transformation of consciousness, or an awakening. In responding to a small child who is angry, for example, we may see beneath the anger to the hurt and the feeling of being overwhelmed or unloved that may be at the root of what comes out in behaviour. If we see pain rather than hostility as the real issue, our response may change accordingly. I have often said that in speaking to ourselves, in the continuing internal dialogue we carry on with ourselves, we should not speak to ourselves other than we would speak to a hurt or angry child on our best day.

The question that arises is how do we see most clearly. What are the best set of eyes, the best lens, the best angle of vision through which to look at ourselves, others, life itself. There is a fairly consistent pattern in the spirituality and literature throughout history, even if it is only gradually discerned. Certainly, we may sometimes seemed trapped in our own hurt or fear or hostility, yet these distort our vision. We see most truthfully if we see through the eyes of compassion, first for ourselves and then radiating outwards in wider and wider circles.. Sometimes, it seems that to see through the eyes of compassion emerges from our experience of suffering. As we quoted last time, Gordon Cosby observes: “Most of us have an incredible amount of unfaced suffering in our histories that has to be looked at and worked through.” This need not be great events, but can be small or persistent difficulties

The central issue seems to be that that compassion for ourselves, whether learned in childhood or later through the course of our life experiences, is essential, it then is able to radiate outwards in ever widening circles. Here are three examples

In Greek tragedy, Oedipus is transformed from arrogance to cleverness to compassionate wisdom by the discovery of his own history. The play, Oedipus at Colonus, written by Sophocles at age 90, tells of the final words of Oedipus to his daughters. “One little word can change all pain: that word is love, and love you’ve had from me, more than any man can give.”

In the story of the Prodigal Son, it is the father’s love for the son that reaches beneath all else, and conveys the conviction that no matter how far we stray, nor how lost we become, nor how dead we seem within, we remain a beloved son or daughter. We are a person of intrinsic value, a sacred worth that can never be lost.

John Holt, an educator, writes: “I think that the social virtues are an overflowing, they are a surplus; people have enough kindness for others when they have enough kindness for themselves–otherwise not. … My very strong sense is that if children are allowed to grow up in a way which enables them to become adults with a sense of their own dignity and competence and worth, they will extend these feelings to include other people.”

Many years ago as well, after a workshop on spontaneous writing, I wrote a poem on the death of my younger brother. Shortly afterwards, I did some further writing in which emerged an image for the many different and often conflicting feelings we have within us. It was the image of many children within, each having their own voice, whether excitement, anger, loneliness, or caring, or much else. The thought was that each child should be allowed their voice, but that none should predominate. Rather that they should form a harmonious chorus, with the vocie of love or compassion as director. It dawned on me that this was the beginning of a new psychological arrangement within, though never complete. The image was no longer that of domination but integration. It was no longer the domination of feelings, or the relationship to self as one of master-servant. Instead it was a more collaborative arrangement in which all the feelings are given voice and named, but none predominates, and that the voice of compassion was the integrating factor.

It amounts to what we have said earlier, that it is important to be in touch with and name accurately the whole range of feelings within us, but not to unleash the negative one, though perhaps entrust them to a caring other.

One final thought here, to be explored later is that in naming our experiences, we tend to interpret them through a certain script or story that is at the back of our awareness. The challenge is to become explicitly aware of that script and possibly modify it. In the words of Sam Keen: “The task of a life is to exchange the unconscious myth with a conscious autobiography.”

May you ever increase in compassion for yourself, let it gradually become the eyes through which you look at life, and extend that compassion in ever widening circles.

Norman King, February 28, 2021

I recently listened to an On Being podcast on depression and found that the author, Anita Burrows, had published translations from the German poet, Rilke, one of my favourites. One book was a collection of daily reflections from Rilke’s writings, called A Year with Rilke. A particular passage seems to relate well to our own recent reflections.
Just keep on, quietly and earnestly, growing through all that happens to you. You cannot disrupt this                      process more violently than by looking outside yourself for answers that may only be found by attending                to your innermost feeling. (15)

We recently mentioned that all of us have the whole array of human feelings, from profound joy to immense sorrow to unruly anger. It seems essential at once to recognize this puzzling variety of deep feelings, while at the same time holding on to a conviction of our sacred worth.

We have often spoken as well of allowing ourselves, in a safe place, whether quietly by ourselves, or in the presence of a trustworthy caring friend, to feel our deepest feelings. As we feel them, without either repressing them or unleashing them, the next task is to name them.

Gordon Cosby, in an article entitled “Journey to the Place of Central Silence,” speaks in a fascinating way about this process. He writes that naming our experience from within enables us to reach an inward place of silence.
When we withdraw from our usual occupations and try to settle down, we find it hard to sit still, we are                restless and ill at ease. Our task is to acknowledge these feelings, to meditate on them, and try to discover               what they have to tell us. With time to listen and to reflect, we will awake to what is in our hearts–all those           feelings that in the rush of our days we keep hidden from ourselves and from others. Silence will put us in             touch with yearnings, anxieties, pain, despair, envy, competition, and a host of other feelings that need to be         put into words if we are to move toward a place of centeredness and come into possession of our lives. The          fact is that most of us have an incredible amount of unfaced suffering in our histories that has to be looked at      and worked through.

In naming our inner feelings, we can also look to discover what lies beneath some of them, For example, we find ourselves annoyed and even expressing unfriendly words with those close to us, perhaps even moreso in pandemic circumstances. It may be because we feel safe to do so because of an underlying awareness that our irritation will not put an end to their caring for us nor erase the wider caring context of our connection with them. We may then realize that our deeper feelings are gratitude and trust and caring.

In a similar way we and those closest to us may want the best for each other, may want each other to become the best persons we can be. Yet this may be experienced on the surface as an expression of judgment and control rather than caring. Here the words of Richard Rohr may be helpful. “Sincerely caring for another person before trying to change him or her is the only way a person will change anyway.” (Immortal Diamond, 182)

Homelessness, as an inner experience, is precisely the attempt to run from ourselves into outer busyness and distraction. To the extent that we are moving, however tentatively, towards a recognition of our sacred worth, we are able to return home to our inmost, core self. We can then realize that it is possible gradually to live from that inner sacredness and that we need not abandon it out of fear. As many writers have said, we are all flawed human beings, but these limitations do not negate our sacred worth. They do negate our finding total fulfillment in any other human being or reality, or being a source of such fulfillment for one another. But we can share, with vulnerability, our common longing. Nor can we save the world, but we can take the next step, according to our gifts, in bringing a little more light to places of darkness.

Along the same lines, we have referred to a favourite quotation from Richard Rohr, who says that suffering that is not transformed is transmitted. This thought is expressed as well in the words of Gordon Cosby quoted above. Rohr goes on to explain that “ we shouldn’t try to get rid of our own pain until we’ve learned what it has to teach. When we can hold our pain consciously and trustfully (and not project it elsewhere), we find ourselves in a very special liminal space. Here we are open to learning and breaking through to a much deeper level of faith and consciousness.” Then we can become “the wounded healers of the world, and healers who have fully faced their wounds are the only ones who heal anyone else.”

The key realization here is that not only do our own wounds or other limitations and mistakes not negate our sacred worth, but they may make us more compassionate and forgiving for ourselves and others, and be a healing presence for one another.

May your own pain, however great or small, become a source of healing for your own spirit and for those who share in some way your life journey.

Norman King. February 22, 2021

I’ve been listening recently to podcasts by Laurie Santos, a psychology professor at Yale who teaches courses on well-being. Some of the things she says are in harmony with what we have been reflecting on in recent weeks. Two essential ingredient in physical, mental, and spiritual health are sufficient sleep and exercise. In addition, mindfulness or soulfulness, gratitude, and compassion are necessary qualities. These go against some of the cultural presuppositions which stress self-preoccupation, busyness, and distraction.

In a somewhat similar vein, Richard Rohr stresses contemplative time and space as crucial to enter liminal or transitional space where transformation can occur. We must step back from the culture that envelopes us so that we can see clearly and differently. There is, as Buddha recognized, an inevitable degree of suffering in every human life. Wayne Muller uses the analogy of suffering as a wind that blows through every life, in some case gently and in others fiercely. One of Rohr’s key insights is that suffering that is not transformed is transmitted.. In other words, we must tune in to our own sorrows, without either drowning in them of inflicting them on others. Part of this process is allowing ourselves to recognize and even feel them, and then to name them. It can also be valuable to entrust these feelings to an intelligently caring other, as a gift rather than an attack. That person may also help us to name and understand them. So too can stories and other art forms.

Jane and I have used the language that differentiates response from reaction. Reaction is the immediate unconsidered action provoked from without. This reaction can be to run from a difficult experience into the distraction of busyness, entertainment, overwork, or addiction. Or it can be a dumping of that feeling on others who become the targets of our hurt turned to fear turned to anger. This attack involves the inflicting of pain on others rather than recognizing it in ourselves. The alternative, that of response, is to allow ourselves to experience the distressing feeling consciously, to name it, as we said, to listen to what it may teach us, and then to decide whether and how to express it.

The above is in fact a form of practice of mindfulness as it is often called. I prefer the term soufulness. This term occurred to me after a week at Plum Village in France, a Vietnamese Buddhist monastery. While I recognize that it could be in part a misinterpretation, it did strike me that the term mindfulness might convey something that can seem overly intellectual and abstract. I use the term soulfulness to indicate an experience of the whole person that involves, beyond more surface emotions, the deepest feelings that are rooted profoundly within us.

The simplest and perhaps most common practice is to sit quietly and attend to one’s breathing: the inhale, the point of pause or turnaround point, and the exhale. As I have often said, it is really instructive that in Hebrew (ruah) , Greek (pneuma), and Latin (spiritus) , and probably a large number of languages, the words, breath, wind, and spirit, are the same. This association of breath, wind, and spirit, comes most obviously from the observation that if we are alive, we are breathing, we have the breath of life in us; and if we cease breathing, we die. In this sense, breath is what makes us alive. Breathing also involves breathing in, a pause or turnaround point, and breathing out. Breathing out is like blowing, like a breeze or wind. But we may also live and breathe by fear or hope, blow winds of greed or compassion. Any such qualities, singly or in combination, can be the spirit that shapes our lives.

A next essential component is gratitude, which is the opposite of resentment. One recommended practice is every day, preferably early on, to jot down one or two things that we are grateful for. It might be useful to even to do so, whether we can presently feel them or not. It can certainly include the people in our life who care about us and about whom we care, or our present level of health, if it is reasonably good. It can also be very simple things. Many, many years ago, in what turned out to be the final year of his life, my younger brother would remark that he felt grateful if he got through a day without too much discomfort. I also remember seeing a television interview in which the interview asked the person to whom he was speaking if she minded growing older. Her reply, with a sparkle of humour, was that she preferred it to the alternative.

Her response indicates that the underlying gratitude, that informs all other forms, is a gratefulness for the gift of life. In a similar way, the experience of joy is at root the experience that it is good to be alive. In more detail, it is a recognition that the life we have received is a gift, a living gift, to accept gratefully, to cultivate and make to grow, to share both intimately and in wider circles, and to immerse itself in a life-giving direction for one another and our world. Implicit in this thought is the recognition that the undercurrent of gratitude that informs our life, and to the extend that it does so, flows into compassion, certainly for ourselves, but also into compassion for others and into striving, according to our gifts, for a more just society.

May all of your experience your lives in a way that instils in you a joyful gratitude that flows into compassion towards yourself and radiating outwards to others.

Norman King, February 14, 2021