I listened this week to an interview with the late John O’Donohue, who was a poet, philosopher, and theologian, who spoke, among other things, of the importance and necessity of beauty, and of tuning in to the inner landscape of our being. He referred to the phrase of Blaise Pascal, a 17th century French writer, who said: “In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart.” This expression calls to mind what we have often said: that the experience of beauty can be a healing force in our lives. It can at once heal us while at the same time unveil our need for healing.

It is fascinating that our experience of beauty, perhaps in music more than anything else, blends joy and sorrow together inseparably. What is truly beautiful can bring tears to our eyes, and it is striking that tears well up within us in times both of great joy and of great sorrow. Perhaps both tears and beauty reveal that there is a place of unity in us prior to and beyond the separation of joy and sorrow.
It is a place within us that is deeper than the surface realities that weigh upon us every day. It is an intimation of an inner depth and beauty, a sacred worth, that, because of the endless demands of every day life, we so easily fail to recognize or be in touch with.

Meister Eckhart, the German mystic, whom O’Donohue refers to often, has written: “There’s a place in the soul where you’ve never been wounded.” He also writes: “There is a place in the soul that neither time nor space nor any created thing can touch.” G. K. Chesterton, essayist and story-teller, has commented on how we suffer from amnesia, we have forgotten who we really are, and even “ at certain dead levels of our life, we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awe-filled instant we remember that we forget.”

These writers all call us to remember who we really are, a sacred being of immense worth, with a vast and rich inner world to which we have become unfortunately become a stranger. It is our real home, and often, in this sense, we have become homeless. The experience of beauty is a call to return home, whether that beauty takes the form of music or story or film or painting, or a human face that is loving.

O’Donohue comments along these lines that our biography is not our identity, that the outer trajectory of our life does not fully express our inner reality. “It often seems to me,” he says “that a person believes that if they tell you their story, that that’s who they are. … And you look at a beautiful, interesting face telling a story that you know doesn’t hold a candle to the life that’s secretly in there.”

He recalls as well that the Greek word for beauty is related to the word for call or calling. In a similar way, we have written before that beauty is the opposite of possessiveness. In possessiveness we take something into ourselves, we try to own something, even a person. But what is beautiful at once speaks to what is deepest within us, and at the same time call us out of ourselves in a blend of respect, admiration, wonder, and appreciation. If we experience another person as beautiful, we can never treat them as a possession that we can grasp from outside.

O’Donohue writes that in the presence of beauty, you are being called. “And I feel that one could write a wonderful psychology just based on the notion of being called — being called to be yourself and called to transfigure what has hardened or got wounded within you. And it’s also the heart of creativity” In a similar vein, I think that the word vocation, literally a calling, need not be regarded as a demand to fulfil something merely external. It can rather be seen as what we are called from within to live out from our deepest and truest self. It is not a command barked from outside, but a pressing invitation from within. It is not a telling us what to do, but an unveiling of who we are, which can flow into our life.

It is not at all egocentric, but rather a call to how we are to be present to one another, to discover, develop, and share our particular gifts with one another and our world.

A related point O’Donohue makes is on the necessity and value of friendship. He describes it as a bond in which we feel safe, and able to be who we truly are with another. I recall a young student once describing in class the experience of loneliness as the experience of having no one with whom you can be yourself with defence or pretence. A gratitude-evoking experience I once had was someone telling me that I was a safe place for them.

We all need a safe place, whether it is in the solitude of our own sanctuary or the caring heart of another, where who we are, our whole interior world, can be discovered and can unfold, not only for ourselves, but for others, and for the world in which we live. This is the world of nature on earth which is our home. It is also the world of wounds to be healed, where so many have yet to realize that they are more than their wounds, and where their suffering is transformed rather than transmitted.

May you more and more discover and live from the inner world of your sacred self and its beauty, and become a healing presence for yourself and for all who come within the circle of your light.

Norman King

February 13, 2022

This past week I heard an interesting interview, made some years back, with Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, who died on January 22, 2022. The On Being program included comments from two other persons who were greatly influenced by his practice. One was a police officer, Cheri Maples. She recalls that, after some experience of his teaching and practice, she was called to respond to a domestic situation. After she was able to have the mother and young daughter leave safely, she spoke with the father. He broke down and sobbed, and a week later she met him again and he told her that she had saved his live. She commented that she then started to realize that what she was dealing with in this and so many other situations was misplaced anger, because people were in incredible pain.

Her words recall those of spiritual writer, Richard Rohr, who says that pain that is not transformed is transmitted. In his words: “If we cannot find a way to make our wounds into sacred wounds, we invariably become cynical, negative, or bitter. This is the storyline of many of the greatest novels, myths, and stories of every culture. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it—usually to those closest to us: our family, our neighbours, our co-workers, and, invariably, the most vulnerable, our children. Scapegoating, exporting our unresolved hurt, is the most common storyline of human history.”

I once read an interview with a man in his nineties who was asked the secret of his long life. When he realized that the person was not just looking for a cliché reply, he answered thoughtfully: “I have lived with my pain.” In other words, it seems that he recognized and faced the amount of suffering in his life without the need to inflict it, however unconsciously on others. Our pain can be perhaps visualized as something that blows through our life, whether as a gentle breeze or as a roaring gale, depending upon its kind and intensity.

Being in touch with any sorrow in our lives can be a source of openness and understanding of the sorrow of another. A person can them become, in the expression of Henri Nouwen, a “wounded healer.” Conversely, a medieval mystic, Mechtilde of Magdeburg has written: “When my loneliness becomes too great, I take it to my friends.” One response to suffering can be, not to inflict it on another who becomes a scapegoat, but to entrust it to another as a kind of gift. Instead of a story of scapegoating, it becomes a story of trust. John Shea, who writes on the meaning of story, has said; “Any sorrow can be borne provided a story can be told about it.”

Part of the process of growth lies in caring rather than hostility, in awareness rather than ideology, in a deep-seated hope rather than a naive optimism or a cynical despair, in a sense of humour rather than an angry bitterness. It involves being in touch with and naming our experience as authentically and accurately as possible. This may often take the form of a story entrusted to another. A key element here is learning to listen to one another, with the “ears of the heart,” as the Rule of St. Benedict expresses it. This is a process of learning to tune in to our own real feelings and to tune in to those of another. It is learning to respond from who we are rather than react from the surface.

In various ways and degrees, we can all say, “I hurt.” It lies deeper than but may be disguised or vented outwardly by anger, bitterness, cynicism, or destructive action. If we are in touch with our own pain, we may be far less likely to inflict it on others. One essential level of awareness is to recognize, even when we cannot feel it, that our worth does not depend upon the absence of pain or even the absence of mistakes.

Thich Nhat Hanh uses the term “mindfulness” to express this level of awareness in the face of sorrow. “When you are mindful, you are fully alive; you are fully present. You can get in touch with the wonders of life that can nourish you and heal you. And you are stronger, you are more solid in order to handle the suffering inside of you and around you. When you are mindful, you can recognize, embrace, and handle the pain, the sorrow in you and around you, to bring you relief. And if you continue with concentration and insight, you’ll be able to transform the suffering inside and help transform the suffering around you.”

He stresses the importance of living fully in the present and that attention to breathing is a means to this awareness. As we have said, attention to one’s breath is a basic form of meditation in Eastern and Western traditions. We have also mentioned that breathing is not just a private activity but is a relation with the earth, a participation in the whole ecosystem, and a sharing of all who have breathed the same air in ages past and present. It is also the basic experience that we are alive and that it is good to be alive, that life is a precious gift, that our life and we ourselves are a precious gift, even though it sometimes hurts. If we are able to arrive at a sense of gratitude for our life and all life as a gift, we are moved towards gratitude which flows naturally into compassion. In this regard, the Dalai Lama has said: “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

Spiritual author Wayne Muller has written: “Your challenge is not to keep trying to repair what was damaged; your practice instead is to reawaken what is already wise, strong, and whole within you.” He tells the story of Maria, abused by her father as a child, who continued to ask, “Why me?” He invited her to drop the “why” and simply repeat, “I hurt.” Then she began to feel and to weep the pain in her heart. This, he says, was the path to healing. She was able “to feel the deep healing that came from gently surrendering to her deepest feelings—not listening for the explanation or the blame or the injustice.” He adds that “both joy and suffering are threads that run through the entire fabric of our lives. To acknowledge this reality can free us from the need to find targets to blame.”

May the pain in your life never become too severe and may it find always a path to healing and compassion for yourself and others.

Norman King, February 6, 2022

I heard an interesting broadcast from the BBC World Service this week. It featured the response of a Buddhist nun, Dang Nghiem, to a man who felt he had been used by those he was in contact with and felt drained and lacking in love as a result. She spoke to him about the importance of caring for self. This gives us enough energy as well as the desire to reach out as a kind of overflow rather than a deprivation. As an image, she says that to be able to give a cup of water generously to another, we need a pitcher of water within ourselves.

Another CBC program that same afternoon spoke of the importance of having some meaningful purpose in our life, something that reaches beyond ourselves, beyond the level of mere fun. He spoke in terms of thinking of what is the legacy we leave for others from our lives.

Both remind me of a CBC program I heard years ago, The World of the Child. One speaker from the field of education, John Holt, observed:  “I think the social virtues are overflowing, they are surplus. People have enough kindness for others when they have enough kindness for themselves–otherwise not. … My very strong feeling is that if children are allowed a growing up which enables them to become adults with a strong sense of their own dignity and competence and worth, they will extend these feelings to include other people.”

In an article on folk tales, called The Logic of Elfland, Writer G. K. Chesterton observes that the core of Beauty and the Beast is that something must be loved before it is loveable. At the end of the article he comments: “The test of all happiness is gratitude; and I felt grateful, though I hardly knew to whom. Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful when in my stockings were the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?”

Many times, I have come across the emphasis on gratitude as absolutely fundamental. It certainly ties in with a sense of self-worth. So too does resentment tie in with a sense of hostility to others rooted in hostility to self, however unrecognized. As Chesterton suggests, the basic gratitude is a gratefulness for birth, that is, for being alive, for the gift of life. The experience of joy is essentially the experience that life is good, that it is the basic gift from which all else flows.

One friend, living in a dangerous situation once told me how when he went to bed at night he was grateful that he had survived the day, and when he awoke in the morning he was grateful that was still alive. Another friend, who was very difficult as a child, used to say jokingly that he was grateful his parents let him live.

In different ways, there is an underlying recognition that life itself is a wondrous gift. To have emerged from a universe, to be on this blue planet, and to have years to unfold from within, are quite remarkable, and are essentially gifts. They come to us without our forethought or decision. Yet for too many, life may be chiefly experienced as a burden or injured or snuffed out all too soon. At the same time, those who appear to have little are sometimes most filled with gratitude and the joy of living.

I remember once going up Mt. Edith Cavell in the Rocky Mountains. Because of the altitude, the air was thinner and breathing become a little more laboured and therefore noticeable. With that experience came a profound sense that it was good to breathe, that it was good to be alive, and that we are part of a vast world. The very fact of breathing means that we are part of a whole ecosystem, that we do belong to the earth and to the universe. It is fascinating that in both Eastern and Western traditions, the basic form of meditation is attention to one’s breath.

Spiritual author, Wayne Muller, recalls moments that evoked gratitude: “I experience a starry night, a forest after a rain, a loving embrace, a strain of sweet and perfect melody–and that is all it takes to remind me who I am: a spirit, alive, and whole. It helps me remember my nature, hear my name.”

In this light, the question that arises is how do we take care of ourselves? How do we feel enough at home with ourselves that we feel the freedom to reach out, to be caring to another or others, without feeling drained or deprived. It is not easy to approach a balance here. It is usually difficult and a slow process to feel at home with ourselves and have a deep sense of our own sacred worth, which is a precondition for being able to care for others as an kind of overflow.

One approach is simply to take time for ourselves, even if doing nothing but sitting quietly, and coming to recognize that much of our busyness may be less a matter of productivity than of flight or fear. Just simply noticing, appreciating, being present to ourselves can be ways of nourishing our soul.

Generosity perhaps only flows from and presupposes gratitude. It can be helpful to take time to think of what we are grateful for, beyond and deeper than any bitterness or resentment. There is a marvellous Peanuts cartoon in which Lucy is complaining about her life to her brother, Linus. He suggests that when she feels this way, she should count her blessings. That sets off a negative reaction in Lucy until she finally asks him to name one blessing. He answers: “Well, for one thing, you have a younger brother who loves you.” As she goes weeping into his arms, he makes the aside comment” “Every now and then I say the right thing.”

Other approaches might be things we have mentioned before. These include trying to get sufficient rest and some form of mild exercise. Other possibilities are a walk in a natural setting, a time for meditation or reflective reading, conversation with a friend.

May your more and more come to appreciate with gratitude the gift that you are to yourself and to others, and the particular gifts that you have and can share. May you more and more learn to live in the present moment, and experience that moment with a gratefulness that overflows naturally into generosity.

Norman King, January 30, 2022

The last time we mentioned how the beauty of a work of any art, from story to sculpture, or the transparent goodness of another person, can be like a mirror that reflects us to ourselves. The story of Snow White notes that the mirror always told the truth. It has often struck me that we cannot see ourselves with our own eyes but only by looking in a mirror. I would add that the true mirror of any of us is found in the eyes of someone who loves us. As also noted before, the story of Narcissus suggests that essential to our personal growth and authentic relationships is an image of ourselves as loveable, as capable of being loved and of loving.

We also wrote that, unless blocked by fear and its attendant hostility, the experience of beauty and goodness speaks to what is deepest within us. It reveals our deepest longing for lasting meaning and calls us to become the person we can be. It invites and challenges us to fashion ourselves according to our own and others’ sacred worth, to make of our lives as lasting work of art.

We might recall that the word voice comes from the Latin vox and vocare, voice and to call. The challenge of creating of our lives as a lasting work of art is to tune in to the call we hear from our own deepest centre. It is to discover, not just our job or our profession, but our vocation. It is what we are called from within to make of our lives, in light of our own deepest inner voice.

Theologian Theodore Steeman writes: “Human life is really an open-ended question, a question which does not contain its own answer. But it is a question to which the answer must be given by every person. …. Our hopes are always more than can come true, our demands on life are always larger than life is willing to give. Nevertheless, life is a task, an invitation, a challenge. It requires the courage to be, the courage to live. … I think that the best moments of our lives are when we do not feel closed upon ourselves or concerned about ourselves and we see life as a task before us, when we are aware that self-concern hinders honesty. These are the moments when we know that life is good, embedded in a mystery of goodness and love and that we have to make our own lives such messages of goodness and love.”

Another way of putting this thought is that we go through life with a question and a quest that reaches further than any answer that we receive. There remains within us an unstilled longing. It could perhaps be described as a longing for meaning, for a sense that who we are is of value, that we belong in this life, and that there is some purpose, something to live for in our life.

Sone years ago, Jane Ripley and myself published a book of reflective verse, called Touching the Spirit, Reflections from the Heart. It included a number of introductory sections including one on longing, which I’ll repeat here;
Longing is the voice of love in its aching for completeness and wholeness.
Longing is the voice of our heart in its recognition that we are ever on a journey, ever pilgrims,  whose words, actions, and lives, never fully embody who we long to be.
Longing is the voice of our heart in its recognition that, not without a tinge of anxiety, we wish to,yet     never quite share who we are with another.

Yet, longing is not a restless dissatisfaction nor a negative judgment passed on self or others.
Rather, longing is a gentle openness to embrace and share our lives, as they have been and are.
Longing is a gentle openness to grow beyond where we are now, to move with another on our journey, as we trust the unfolding process of life, within us, between us, and beyond us.

I may trust this endless, fathomless longing. I may feel its pain and beauty in silence. I may share its vulnerability and hope in friendship. I may give it voice in music and art. I may embody it in social struggle. I will let it become a caring space around what is precious here and now, yet let it ever remain a space that is never filled, that allows and draws me to reach further, with and for others, in a hope that strives both to realize its hopes, and to grow beyond them.

May the longing that you feel in your deepest heart not lead into sadness and sorrow, but move rather to a sense of hope that embraces but moves beyond your vulnerability to grow in understanding, and in caring for yourselves and for one another.

Norman King, January 24, 2022

The poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, wrote a poem about contemplating a statue of Apollo, the ancient Greek god and symbol of the sun, healing. and fine arts. Apollo was also, so to speak, for the Greeks, the mirror of an ideal human being. Rilke concluded his poem by saying that it was as if the statue saw him and spoke to him, with the final words of the poem. “You must change your life.”

Certainly it is not a literal voice that can be heard, but rather the call that the experience of beauty evokes on us. It is the call that summons us to become the person we can be, to become the best we can be. Shakespeare has written that the purpose of art is to hold the mirror up to nature. That would seen to mean that a good play or novel or painting or sculpture reflects us back to ourselves. It allows us to see into ourselves and challenges us to grow into the person we can be. I would add that a truly good person does the same. Who they are is an invitation and challenge to us to become all that we can be.

There is a striking Peanuts cartoon. Lucy is chasing Charlie Brown and threatening to “pound” him. He responds by saying that if we small children cannot solve our problems without resorting to violence, how do we expect the larger world issues to be solved. She then punches him and comments as she walks off with a companion: “I had to hit him, he was beginning to make sense.”

It reminds me of the Quaker expression of speaking truth to power. A prophetic voice expressing a compassionate truth, however peacefully invitational, can evoke a hostile and even violent response. In a similar vein, it seems that those who wish to inflict abuse on others label their victims as inferior, as in racism, or as evil, as in political propaganda. What is remarkable here is that this perspective also contains an implicit recognition that what is human is to be acknowledged, honoured, and respected. Otherwise there would be no need to devalue other individuals or groups

The challenge to realize our own true potential is, I believe, the heart of the story of Rumpelstiltskin. The young woman’s challenge is to spin straw into gold. This I understand to mean that we are challenged to take the raw material of our lives, which might seem brief and passing, like straw, and fashion it into gold, into a lasting work of art. We do so by the way we spin or weave our life story. The dwarf stands for the inner resources upon which we must draw. The possible gifts to the dwarf stand for what is involved in the process. The pearl necklace stands for the different qualities that need to be developed; the ring stands for the unifying or integrating of these qualities, and the possible loss of the child stands for the those elements that can take away our future, or even destroy us.

It is a process of developing all of our gifts, integrating them, and struggling with what may be destructive forces within us. We do so by naming those forces, by “coming to terms” with them; that is, by understanding the whole complex of our interior life, both light and darkness (as we have previously discussed). We need to discover words, images and ideas, stories and paintings, and even cartoons, that help us to name the totality of our experience. We return again to the thought that the different arts, especially if they are beautiful, do reflect to us who we are, including our sacred worth. They also challenge us to become who we can be, which is to realize and live according to to our sacred worth.

I once heard an Inuit artist comment that he sat meditatively before the soap stone that he was going to carve. After a period of time an image would emerge, whether of a walrus, seal, hunter or the like. He then removed the excess, so to speak, and freed the figure within. I also saw partially carved statues of Michelangelo which were human figures from the waist up with the rest being an uncarved block of marble. There was an uncanny sense that the figures were trying to escape from the marble. It seems that our own growth involves discerning our own unique, but inseparably communally situated self, and freeing it from all its clutter so that the work of art that each of us is can emerge more fully.

At the same time, how we look at ideals seems very important. If we are beginning piano lessons, for example, we can listen to recordings of Canadian artist, Glenn Gould. We can then move in two directions. One is to notice how good he is compared to our present level, and simply give up. The other is to see him as an example of what a pianist can be and, starting where we are, try to move, however slowly and incompletely, in that direction. In other words, we need not see ideals as a club to beat ourselves with, or as a criticism of where we are now. Rather, starting where we are now as already something sacred, we can look to an ideal as a good direction to move towards.

Once again, in this perspective, it is always a matter of beginning from a conviction of our own sacred worth, even though it can be hard to feel that worth at certain times. Then, like gold in a crucible, we can gradually unveil the work of art that is each of us.

May you come more and more to realize the precious work of art that you are and gradually uncover that masterpiece in every area of your life–and not be discouraged at the slowness and incompleteness of the process.

Norman King, January 16, 2022
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As we mentioned previously, the story of Snow White raises the question of how we respond to the red emotions, specifically our tendencies to love and to hate. Like the story of The Two Wolves, this story suggests that a fundamental life choice is between love and hate. Yet because both tendencies are powerfully present within us, the choice and the life-orientation will involve a struggle between the two.

Writer Richard Rohr has a very strong statement in this regard. “If we need to hate,” he says, “we will destroy anyone who tells us our hatred is the problem.” We have said before that hatred of others is usually a projection on to another individual or group of unfaced hatred of self. Rohr also adds that the challenge is to oppose hatred without succumbing to hatred within ourselves, without becoming a mirror image of what we oppose. Martin Luther King writes similarly: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do so. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do so.”

The major religions and worldviews have stressed that love or compassion is the root value that should ground and find expression in all else. This approach seems to imply to crucial things. One is that it is essential to arrive at an understanding of love that is wider than a one-to-one relationship, especially a narrow romantic view. The second is that if love is the core value then its opposite, hatred, must be the fundamental disvalue.

We have perhaps often been given the impression that a basic challenge is to determine whom to love and whom to hate. Yet at the heart of many traditions and worldviews is the understanding that hatred itself is the problem. There is also the saying that the first victim of hatred is the one who hates, in other words, that hatred is soul-destroying.

Richard Rohr speaks of shame, the sense that not just what we do or fail to do, but who we are is inadequate, unworthy, wrong. And he contends that this is the experience of most people, and that it is overcome not so much by changing our behaviour, as by changing our self-image. In this regard, a more fulfilling and also challenging image is the one we have consistently stressed, that of our sacred worth.

It is fascinating that spiritual writer, Henri Nouwen, who also struggled with anxiety and depression, has the notion that each of us is “beloved” as the basic truth of our lives. Thomas Merton, another spiritual writer, also emphasizes that the root commandment is not to love others but to believe that we are loved. Political scientist, Michael Ignatieff, in writing about human rights says that their foundation is the recognition that we all share a common humanity which is to be respected.

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights also grounds human rights in the dignity of the person, and of every human person. Philosopher, Robert Johann adds that we do not have rights before impersonal forces of nature, such as a tornado or hurricane, but only before another person who has the capacity and responsibility to recognize and treat me as a person, and not as an object.

Karen Armstrong, begins her Charter for Compassion with these words.  ” The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures,… and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.”

We have referred to these authors in previous reflections. From their writings we distill the same  underlying conviction of the sacred worth of the person. As the story of Narcissus implies, the starting point or foundation of that recognition begins with the image of ourselves as someone who is lovable and capable of loving and being loved.

Yet we may develop here a more expansive understanding of love in its basic form as a recognition of the sacred worth of self and all others. We may experience that worth more directly in the experience of friendship. But friendship itself can be foundational for seeing personhood not just as an “I” but as a “we.” We can then gradually extend our experience of personhood to every other human being, both near and far. Michael Ignatieff observes that it is an intense love of those closest to us enables us to extend that recognition to those farther away, to acknowledge the needs of strangers.

Erich Fromm further emphasizes that it is in a response to the most marginalized and vulnerable in our society that we learn to love. “Only in the love of those who do not serve a purpose,” he writes, “does love begin to unfold.” Theologian Albert Nolan, speaks in a like manner of responding to those who do not have wealth, power, privilege or the like. But have only their humanity to commend themselves

We return to the basic conviction of a sacred worth to each and every human being and, in effect, to everything that is. Our worth goes with who we are and is not something earned or added on. In this light, the notion of hatred is the denial or rejection of that worth or the limiting of that to one’s own “tribe” or group. In contrast, love springs from an acknowledgment and honouring of that worth in self and others. In those closest to us, there are additional qualities, a greater sharing of ourselves. These build upon the recognition of the worth of ourselves and those with whom we are more immediately connected. This recognition can then be extended in wider and wider circles. At its greatest extension, it includes an awareness that the universe it not a collection of objects to dominate but a community of beings to reverence

May you come more and more to experience in a deeply felt way your own sacred worth; may you experience as well the response of another or others to that worth; and may you learn to extend that recognition of worth in wider and wider circles. Put a little differently, may you become more and more at home, really a home, to yourself. And may you become increasingly a home for others as well.

Norman King, January 09, 2022

The last time, at the winter solstice, we spoke of light and darkness. While light usually is treated as more positive than darkness, the two are in fact inseparable and one emerges from the other. It is the dark night that allows us to see the light of the stars. The song, Anthem, by Leonard Cohen and the story, The Friendly Giant, by Oscar Wilde, speak of the cracks in the walls around us and, in fact, in everything, as places where the light of new life gets in.

These thoughts call to mind the issues of openness to grow and develop, the willingness to move beyond our present levels and ways of seeing, feeling, and caring. It is like noticing these are like an old coat that no longer fits and needs to be let go of. It is like leaving the home of familiar ways and venturing into the realm of new thoughts, feelings, and attitudes.

I once heard someone describe how a particular kind of crab periodically grew too large for its shell, and returned to the ocean where it shed that shell and took 24 hours to grow a new one. During that it remained quite vulnerable. The speaker then commented that life was a process of shedding shells, in which there are times of transition during which we may be quite vulnerable.

This can be a process of coming to see life in a new light. It may be a change in the angle of vision or horizon through which we see things. A problem that bothers us, for example, may look different in the middle of a sleepless night and in a conversation over lunch with a trusted friend. At the same time, we may be reluctant to let go of a way of looking at life that seemed to give a certain security in order to become open to new possibilities that may move us in an uncertain direction.

A good illustration is the story, All the Years of Her Life by the late Canadian writer, Morley Callaghan, In this story, a young man has been irresponsibly relying upon in his mother to rescue him from any difficult situation. As she helps him be extricated from another incident, he begins to see her in the new light, which includes a vulnerability he had not noticed before. He recognizes his own failures, and finally approaches a level of maturity. The story concludes: “He watched his mother, and he never spoke, but at that moment his youth seemed to be over. … It seemed to him that this was the first he had ever looked upon his mother.”

Sometimes we may glimpse someone in their vulnerability or someone may catch a dim glance of our vulnerability. It is then perhaps that we experience a call to acknowledge each other in our uniqueness and respect our sacred worth. I recall an experience many years ago when I caught sight of someone’s fragility when, as it seemed it was not intended. It was as if catching sight of something through the back door, and left a sense of uneasiness blended with a need to respect that person. The whole issue of trust arises here, which may be the topic for another reflection

A similar theme of openness to new light out of darkness can be found in the story of Snow White, as it appears in the Grimm Brothers version. It begins with a queen who longs for a child that is as white as snow, as black as the ebony window frame and as red as the blood that fell on the snow from a pricking her finger. In this instance, the colours black and white express the totality of light and darkness, the totality of feelings that are found in a person. The red stands for the powerful feelings, specifically the self-giving love of the one queen and the destructive hatred of the other queen. As she matures, the child is faced with a choice between the two reds, the choice between a life grounded in love and a life rooted in hatred. In tasting the red part of the apple offered to her, Snow White experiences all of the red feelings of life. This is a death and rebirth experience, and the awakening occurs through the receiving and giving of love.

A similar choice is echoed in the story of The Two Wolves, in which the child tells the grandfather of the struggle within himself between the wolf of love and the wolf of haste, and asks which one will win. The grandfather replies simply: “the one you feed.” In other words, we do experience contradictory feelings and tendencies within ourselves. Yet we can move in the direction of choosing to nourish our capacity to love, to bring to life and foster growth. Or we can feed our tendency to hatred which pushes us in the direction of domination and destruction.

What emerges from the above materials is that all of us experience the whole range of feelings and possibilities, and that we are drawn or pushed in different directions. To move in one direction or another will inevitably involve a struggle and be a gradual process. To move in a direction of love is to move towards an acknowledgment of the sacred worth of self and others and to try, however haltingly, to follow that direction. At the same time it will involve a struggle with our fears and hostilities in which we acknowledge their reality, but attempt not to unleash them on self or others. It will likewise involve a struggle with our own and others, sense of worth.

May your experience of shedding the shells of feelings, thoughts, and attitudes that no longer fit, give rise, despite our felt vulnerability, to a new and fuller life within us and around us.

Norman King, January 02, 2021

“There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” This is one of my favourite lines from the poetic songs of Leonard Cohen. To me, it suggests that in the midst of the experience of our limitations, our vulnerability, our mortality, there emerges the light of meaning and of hope. As I have often expressed it, our sacred worth is not taken away by our wounds, but even revealed and shines through these wounds. For example, we come closer to people, not when they brag about themselves but when they are open about their struggles.

A striking sight for me is when, driving before a cloudy sky, rays of light shine through the openings, the cracks, in the clouds, and stream down to earth. Another obvious occasion is when we see a rainbow flowing from light shining on rain clouds. The dancing movement of the Northern Lights is still another example. We likewise need to drive well outside areas of dense population to find sufficient darkness to be able to see the light of millions of stars or the milky way.

If you drive before sunrise early in morning, everything is very still and silent. Then, as the light begins to appear, there is often the movement of a light breeze, the birds begin their daily song, and animals begin to stir. It is like an awakening, an opening up.

We are now around the time of the winter solstice, when the night is longest and the days being slowly to lengthen. Darkness slowly recedes and light starts to expand. The cold of winter gradually gives way to the warmth of spring.

There is a beautiful folk-like story by Oscar Wilde, called The Selfish Giant . The giant discovers a crack in the walls he has built around himself and his garden. Children come in through that opening and, with them, the new life of spring. This experience leads the giant to break down all the walls and give free access to the children. The episode suggests that unless we have cracks in the walls of defensiveness, cracks of vulnerability, so that children can come through–that is, new life, new thoughts, new images–then we shall remain bleak and cold and dark and desolate inside. We tear down rather than build our walls through creative, life-giving, generous, even sacrificial compassion, caring, and love. At a point in the story, the giant does comment of the seasons of our life. “He did not hate the Winier now, for he knew that it was merely the Spring asleep, and that the flowers were resting.”

While we tend to see light and darkness as opposites and to see light as positive and darkness as negative, there is perhaps more a sense of complementarity. As we have just said, it is the darkness that allows us to see the light of the stars. Astronauts have commented on the sheer darkness of space, which nonetheless highlights the beauty of our blue planet. It is also from the rich dark soil that the new life of plants and flowers emerge.

Benedictine monk and Zen master, David Steindl Rast observes: “The universe is an immense house, as it were, with transparent walls. But outside, it is night. Beyond the transparent walls lies the darkness of mystery … And as human try to understand the mystery in which the world is embedded, they begin to project images onto the walls of glass behind which lies the night of the Great Question.” Our human loneliness, he adds, leads us to become focused only on these images so that we no longer look through at the night. He concludes. “There can be no vision without acceptance of mystery.” In a similar vein, theologian Karl Rahner says that if we enter into the silence of solitude, we may notice that everything is surrounded by a kind of “nameless remoteness,. .. like a silence whose stillness cries out.” He then invites us to trust this silent darkness: “it is not emptiness.”

Loreena McKennitt sings of what has been called the dark night of the soul, a term that has referred to an experience when all the ideas and images upon which we have relied fall away and the mystery of ourselves and of life and of the universe penetrates and envelopes our soul. Yet she sings: “ Oh night thou was my guide, of night more loving than the rising sun.”
We have previously noted how Einstein speaks of the invisible energy of love as the dominant force in the universe. I recall as well the experience of a friend who was groping his way to his car on a cloudy winter night, when the moon emerged from behind a cloud and shed a pale light over everything. He said that his overwhelming experience at that time was that he was loved.

It seems that the core of all this imagery of light and darkness is that they have many layers of meaning. Whatever is of light is surrounded by and emerges from darkness, just as words emerge from silence. Our best words seems as well to come from our deepest silence. The famous conductor, Leoplold Stokowski puts it in these words: “A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.”

Rumi says “What is the light in the centre of darkness inside your soul.” “Your defects are the ways that glory gets manifested… That’s where the Light enters you.” Rilke also speaks of the “deep innerness of all things.” which is with great difficulty and never successfully put into words.

May any darkness you experience be the rich soil of new life; and may any “cracks” you experience be places where the light gets in and also shines forth from within you.

Norman King
December 26, 2021