Healing Rain

I wrote this poem exactly a year ago so I think it deserves an airing.  I still like it as much now as I did then - which one can't always say for one's creations.  I was thinking a lot about grief at that time - I believe Helen Steiner Rice called it, mourning for the future that will not be.

When you're in mourning, for whatever loss you may be suffering - you may not be aware of your friends and loved ones pouring out their love, but it is falling on your soul nevertheless.  All we can do for others at a time like that is, just pour out love in whatever form we can, whether it's help, prayer or just cake.  We have to do it without any expectation or reaction or even visible success.  But we have to go on doing it, because that is what love does.

I have just read about the woman who started The World Needs More Love Letters in New York.  She was lonely and isolated, and felt others must be the same.  So she took to leaving simple 'love letters' on park benches and on buses hoping that someone in need might spot them.  They were brief, such as 'Don't give up on your dreams'.  Now it has turned into a huge project and the idea is spreading throughout the world.  See more at www.moreloveletters.com.   (With acknowledgement to Positivenews.org.uk)

 

Healing  Rain

I am the rain falling soft on your soul,

falling on your parched lands,
filling up the rivers of your tears.

I am the rain falling in the darkness of your night,
filling your sleep with dreams of hope.
When daylight comes, there will be green shoots.
Through your tears you will see rainbows of glory
for I make all things new.

I will melt your bones

that dried to stone under the torturing sun
and you will be renewed.
I pour out my healing and your soul draws it in.
I am refreshment and re-creation and
my touch is soft on your open palms.

I will wash away all the dust of dispiritment,
baptise your feet and hands, bless your clouded face.
There will be rejoicing and you will learn to smile again.

 

The Legacy of the Socks

It’s strange how the smallest action, even one that seems quite personal to ourselves, can have such an unexpected impact.

An elderly neighbour of mine had a thing about his feet.  It was of no interest or concern to anyone else, but  he was almost obsessive about keeping his feet clean.  Perhaps it was a side effect of having worn army boots for many years.  Apart from washing his feet every day – I’ve never seen such pink plump feet on anyone other than a baby – he was paranoiac about fresh socks, to the extent that he wouldn’t wash his socks alongside anything else: they had to go in the washing machine by themselves. 

So it came as no surprise  really, to find when he died, that he had 25 pairs of brand new socks that were still in their packets, plus another 18 pairs that were as good as new.

It seemed such a waste to throw them away.  Luckily the Salvation Army soup kitchen in Bournemouth was only too grateful to have them, as every night they would have homeless and poor people turn up without socks or other basic clothing.   On occasion, the organisers had removed their own socks and given them out.  Now  43 of the local homeless benefitted unexpectedly from the passion of one stranger.

If something as trivial and personal as a hygiene obsession can have such unexpected effects, what about our everyday words and actions?  Our thoughts and intentions?  Often we don’t see the impact that these create, whether it’s holding a door open for a young woman struggling with a pushchair; or being rude to a traffic warden.  Our smallest action sends ripples out into the world, for better or worse.  No wonder it is said that God sees even a sparrow fall.  To me, that means no action goes unnoticed, each carries its own energy out into the world at large.  Love, like God, is not blind but all-seeing.  We may be blind to what we do but love is not: Love sees the ripples before the stone is cast.

Does goodwill make a difference?

May 24^th this year is World Goodwill Day. Goodwill – we are told – is Love in Action.  I love those near-palindromic  sayings that hold true when reversed: Love is Goodwill in Action.
What is goodwill, aside from the bland phrase that we use at Christmas? Interesting, isn’t it, that we use it at Christmas and almost never again during the rest of the year.  Surely the word is more about ‘will’ than we normally allow?  Surely ‘will’ and ‘good’ bear equal importance in that word?  Yet normally, like ‘peace’, it has a fairly insipid connotation.

When you re-structure the word as the will-to-good, how much more powerful it becomes in an instant.  The will-to-good – now there’s an ideal to make you think.  If there were more  will-to-good throughout the world today, ‘peace’ would follow automatically.  So now we have:

                 the will-to-good; and

                Goodwill is love-in-action; and

                Love is goodwill-in-action

Is your individual goodwill worth anything on World Goodwill Day, or any other day of the year?  Only this week I saw a snippet from the Dalai Lama on a friend’s Facebook page.  It said “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”

In a world where everything is measured in huge numbers – global population, the bail-out for Cyprus;  numbers so vast that we imagine winning a mere £1 million as a pittance – it is easy to convince ourselves that our widow’s mite, the two penn’orth we can contribute to well-being in this planet, is negligible.

But my view on this is that we are like the  hairs on a gecko’s feet.  It can climb walls, not because its feet are sticky, but because each is covered with thousands of microscopic hairs.  Each hair only makes an infinitesimally insignificant amount of contact with the wall, but combined with all the other hairs, the total makes for powerful adhesion.

That’s how an idea or an ideal grows and becomes a way of life.  Each of us contributes our miniscule amount of goodwill to society; but that, when added to that which already exists, enables the  human family to climb towards a fairer, more tolerant and compassionate future for the whole of the planet.

--==+==--

 World Goodwill is a principal activity of the Lucis Trust - see

http://www.lucistrust.org/en/service_activities/world_goodwill/purposes_objectives

 

Are we the books we read?

They say we are the food we eat.  Are we also the books we read?  I don't mean that lovers of murder mysteries are murderers.  More that we are attracted to the books that chime with some of our dearest wishes, our fantasies, lifestyle or how we feel about life in general.

Myself, I don't want to read books - fact or fiction - about child molesters, serial rapists or violent and murder.  I know these things exist, I can read about them any day in the newspapers (every day probably in some papers or on the Internet!) but for my leisure reading I want something more wholesome. Am I alone in this?  I can enjoy the occasional whodunit, but I prefer the sanitised variety of writers like Agatha Christie, where there is very little violence. 

I can understand the demand for romance and adventure stories, as it is a form of escapism.  The same applies to most chick lit, which I admit is my guilty pleasure.  I can understand anyone reading for a form of escapism - fantasy sci-fi for instance; but does escapism really include the full gamut of horror, death and destruction?

Do the people who read really violent novels (or violent biographies, or watch violently terrifying films) feel they are mere voyeurs?  Is that the thrill?  A guilty pleasure, like fantasy sex?  More importantly, should we indulge our fantasies, our baser nature, to this extent?  Is that what gives rise to pornography, sex-based killings, violent sadism in military contexts and marriages etc?

We worry about the influence on our children from watching violent computer games or films.  Do we adults think we are exempt from being influenced by such things? The more we indulge in these off-limits pleasures, the more they seem acceptable.  I have a particular fear and conviction that the more we hear about underage sex and child porn, the more acceptable it becomes, because our shock- reaction gets dulled.

Richard Bach, of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull  fame, says in The Bridge Across  Forever, “Touch all the books of Nevil Shute, they’re encoded holograms of a decent man… The writer printed the person he is on every page of his books, and we can read him into our own lives …”  Probably my two favourite writers currently are the Dalai Lama and Alexander McCall Smith.  I love their gentle and gentlemanly approach to life.  It reminds me, that amongst the rest of life's mayhem, there is another way to live - and one that we would all be the better for attempting to emulate.

 

Buddha and the power of thought

With the Wesak festival of the Buddha coming up, it's a good time to remember one of the Buddha's sayings as recorded in the Dhammapada:

We are what we think.

All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with an impure mind
And trouble will follow you
As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.

We are what we think.

All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with a pure mind
And happiness will follow you
As your shadow, unshakeable.

It is always interesting when you hear someone complain about how rude everyone is, how unhelpful, or how surly.  It is hard to resist the thought that that must be an unhappy person, who either attracts ill-will or who only sees ill-will in those around them.  It is not a fact that 'everyone' is obnoxious; it is merely one observer's opinion: one observer's thought which is of such an energy it becomes - to him or her at least - fact.

How many of us have started the day in a neutral mood, only to come across one person who is less than polite or helpful.  Before we know it, the day turns into one of those days where everybody we come into contact with is irritating or abrasive.  How much of this have we brought on ourselves by absorbing the energy of the first encounter and 'passing it on', often by dwelling on it and endlessly repeating the story?

When we see a scintillation of starlings circulating in the sky, we wonder how it is that they don't collide.  Humans do tend to collide, not so much physically as emotionally.  We are always bumping into other people's emotional space and we can cause great damage.

When someone does us a kindness early in the day, we feel better able to cope with any irritations that arise; and quite often we can pass on our good vibrations to the next person we meet.   For instance, if someone lets me out at a busy junction and then the opportunity arises for me to let someone else out into the traffic, I am always pleased to return the favour.  It makes me feel better, and the energy goes on repeating itself even though none of us will ever see the end result.

When someone makes us feel better, regardless of our irritation or bad temper, how often do we stop and wonder how much it has cost that person?  Nearly all of us are adversely affected by someone else's irritation, or low vibrations, so when someone is understanding, warm or caring regardless of our ill temper, we would do well to remember how difficult that may have been for them.  They have given us something invaluable which we have probably taken completely for granted.

Our thoughts and actions affect those around us whether we are conscious of it or not.  Do you ever think about the film, 'It’s a Wonderful Life' in the context of your own life?  How different would be the lives of our friends, families, workmates and others if we had never existed?  Would it be worse – or would it be better?  It always makes me realise what an impact I have on others and the responsibility I have towards them.

Beauty and Perfection

More from Alexander McCall Smith:

“Beauty … gave us completeness, peace, a glimpse of the divine.  We wanted beauty; we wanted to take it into ourselves, to possess it, to absorb it, so that it became part of us.”

What is it about beauty that makes us want to become one with it, soaking it up through a form of osmosis?  And why does exceptional beauty almost make us cry? Can make us cry, on occasion.  Leaving aside the tug on the emotional heart-strings of a piece of music or poetry, what is there about beauty that calls to us so?

Is it, as McCall says, because it’s a glimpse of the divine?  I think he’s nearer the truth when he talks about completeness.  If we recognise that we are incomplete, that our persona, outlook, attitudes etc, are less than perfect, then it is logical that we are drawn to something that completes us, supplies the missing bits of our jigsaw puzzle.  That may be why we all aim for the highest in whatever attracts our interest – the top job, the biggest prize, the toughest challenge.  Ambition aside, the lure of perfection draws us on.

Would a theosopher then argue that this desire for perfection, this need to fulfil the highest in ourselves, is in a fact the Godhead calling us home? In which case, maybe the purpose of evolution  is to draw us ineluctably nearer perfection, the divine, call it what you will.

We know that those who have had ‘a glimpse of the divine’ have been irrevocably changed.  If we have a glimpse of perfection or perfect beauty, does it change us?  Possibly, but in a much more transient way.  There may be a connection between divineness and beauty, but they are not the same.  In the world of manifestation, perfection and beauty are an ultimate form of the human experience; unlike divinity which is something completely outside of it.

Yet beauty still calls to us at a deep level.  My feeling is that it is the soul within us, the divine spark, recognising its own kind, that prompts such a strong reaction.  But because we don’t allow our souls to control our daily lives – would that we did! – we undergo no fundamental change.  Or do we?  Now that is even more thought provoking …

From John Masefield:

Beauty, have pity! for the strong have power,
The rich their wealth, the beautiful their grace,
Summer of man its sunlight and its flower.
Spring-time of man, all April in a face.
Only, as in the jostling in the Strand,
Where the mob thrusts, or loiters, or is loud,
The beggar with the saucer in his hand
Asks only a penny from the passing crowd,
So, from this glittering world with all its fashion,
Its fire, and play of men, its stir, its march,
Let me have wisdom, Beauty, wisdom and passion,
Bread to the soul, rain when the summers parch.
Give me but these, and though the darkness close
Even the night will blossom as the rose.

Rugby and Philosophy

Just started reading one of Alexander McCall Smith's latest books, 'The Forgotten Affairs of Youth'.  I find his books quite magical in the way they can weave  esoteric thoughts about life and philosophy into apparently ordinary tales of the everyday. Isabel Dalhousie is my favourite series of his.

I started this book on the day of the Wales v England game and smiled at what he says:
"...rugby, a game that struck her as being one of the few remaining tribal rituals on offer to males in modern societies."

It bemuses me that every aspect of a man's life needs to be invaded by women - women's cricket, women's boxing etc - so that men can't even have Men Only clubs any more.  Yet the female sex expects to keep some preserves to itself, and would be loud in its condemnation of men wanting to join some of the female preserves.  I imagine there would be an outcry if a male nurse or medic wanted to join the team of radiographers who carry out breast screening!