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

Many authors have stressed that our sense of worth includes a recognition of our shadow side, the limitations, weaknesses, and even wrongs that we discover within us. It also involves going deeper than and beyond the cultural stereotype which stresses producing and consuming, winning and losing, and always being in control. This narrow approach essentially involves striving to prove a worth in which we do not really believe.

Along these lines, philosopher James Carse has said that the invention of the mirror had disastrous effects among many people. We were drawn then to look at our image, to look outside ourselves rather than becoming aware of what was within. We tended to exchange an image of ourselves for our real selves. We then compared our image with others and as a result developed a sense of never having enough er never being enough. The challenge is to let go of external comparisons and try to become attuned to who we truly are from within, and to let that self unfold into our awareness and flow into our activity

This process ties in with what we have said before that the challenge is to come to a realization of a sacred worth that is already there from the beginning, and that therefore has a gift quality that evokes a sense of gratitude and generosity.

Coming to an awareness of the sacredness of self, others, and of all reality is often described in many thoughtful worldviews as an awakening or an enlightenment. It is as if we are sleepwalking through life or groping in darkness, It is a question of waking to self and reality and emerging out of the shadows of life in order to see clearly.

There are two striking films which deal with the notion of awakening. One is called Awakenings and the other Alive Inside. The first stars Robin Williams as a physician working with catatonic patients who discovers a drug that is able to awaken his patients, however briefly, from their comas which may have lasted for decades. The second film explores how music from a previous time in their lives can awaken the minds of people suffering from some form of dementia. In one case, a person who has not moved for years gets up and dances.

Music, and really all of the arts, can evoke memories. Memory can be seen not just as a recalling of past events, but as coming alive to who we truly are. In writing about folk tales, G. K. Chesterton says: “We have all read … the story of the man who has forgotten his name. …Well, everyone is that person in the story. Everyone has forgotten who they are. … All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awe-filled instant we remember that we forget.”

To remember in this way is to come home to who we truly are. This theme is reflected in the song from Les Misérables, “Bring Him Home.” which expresses the longing for a young person to know the fulness of life. Perhaps even moreso, it is reflected in the spiritual, “Going Home,” which states of home that: “It’s not far, just close by, through an open door.” It is portrayed as a place beyond fear and pain, and accompanied by family and friends. This again can be seen as the inmost self, a place ultimately where only love can dwell, and so whose door is open to those closest to us. The challenge is for us to open that door to ourselves, rather than wander aimlessly outside our own home. To finally come home, and be at home with our sacred self is to touch at least for a moment the peace we long for. One writer, Gordon Cosby puts it this way. “The journey to your own quiet centre is long and arduous. You will be tempted a thousand times to forget the call to make this journey, this pilgrimage. But one day you will touch the Silence and understand … how little were my labours compared with the great peace I have found.”

I have found that this awakening and coming home involves responding from within to three main questions: What prevents me from seeing clearly, or in what ways am I blind? What keeps me from being free, or what imprisons me? And what keeps me from a sense of profound self-acceptance. In other words, in what ways am I deluded, bound, or self-rejecting.

To deal with these issues would take a lot of time and far more than words. Briefly, one approach is to allow some quiet time by ourselves, letting the myriad of our feelings arise, some frightening some heart-warming, without either judging them or unleashing them on others, Deeper than these feeling can surface an awareness of a core self more interior to but enveloping all these feelings, a self that is more than our hurts, fears, or hostilities. This is a self that looks at ourselves with eyes of compassion and has a sense of its worth. It is our true home, though it is always easy to wander far away into our hurts, fears, or hostilities, or even into a forgetful busyness. To think, feel, decide, and act from then inner place is to do so freely from within rather than compulsively from without. It is, so to speak, not to become an impersonator but to become and be the person that we truly are.

May all of you uncover, cultivate, and share in a safe place, the person you truly are and are becoming.

Norman King, February 7, 2021

We spoke last week of a few ways to sustain a sense of sacred self worth, while acknowledging our experiences of weakness, mistakes or failures, and recognizing that we cannot always have that sense of worth at a feeling level. We mentioned in summary that such ways may include attention to breathing, meditation in solitude, the world of nature, kindness to self and others, enduring friendships, and struggles for compassion and justice.

One aspect of this whole process can be expressed by saying that there are many seasons in each person life. In this time of pandemic, there is for many of us, an abiding feeling of weariness and uncertainty and doubt, as well as a sense of isolation and deprivation. This experience so common today can lead us to question our own sacred worth. Henri Nouwen has written that the greatest challenge everyone of us faces is the tendency to self-rejection, though it is often disguised from one another. It contradicts the inner voice that calls us sacred, which he sees as the core truth of our existence.

It may be helpful to think of such difficult times (whether occasioned by the pandemic or other stages or experiences of our life), as a season of our life which will eventually give way to another brighter season. I recently listened to an On Being interview with a Katherine May, who wrote a book called Wintering. She says that “wintering is a metaphor for those phases in our life when we feel frozen out or unable to make the next step, and that can come at any time, in any season, in any weather.”It brings up lots of emotions, such as sadness and failure.

She adds that “the hardest thing to believe when you’re in the midst of that dark place. Is that there is a summer on the other side.”Yet sadness is a part of life and sometimes we need to acknowledge our own sadness and have friends who allow us to be sad without always trying to cheer us up. Such times can be a crucible for transformation, for recuperation and renewal. Taking our cue from the animal world, we can see that there are times of rest that are needed. She mentions that in many children’s books, the winter snow is a time of transition, as for example when the children cross into Narnia.

Wayne Muller writes in a very striking way both about sadness and about the need for rest and renewal, which he calls Sabbath time. He tells of his experience of sadness on a week long silent retreat. He allowed himself to feel this sorrow in a silence that gradually deepened. “And I began to sense something beneath even the sorrow,” he writes. “I could feel a place inside, below all my names, my stories, my injuries, my sadness–a place that lived in my breath. I did not know what to call it but it had a voice, a way of speaking to me about what was true, what was right. And along with this voice came a presence, an indescribable sense of well-being that reminded me that whatever pain or sorrow I would be given, there was something inside strong enough to bear the weight of it. It would rise to meet whatever I was given. It would teach me what to do.”

He concludes: “All my life I have felt this presence, but at that moment I could feel its fundamental integrity. …Neither my pain nor my confusion can stop the relentless companionship of this true and faithful voice. Something more vital, strong and true lies embedded deep within me. Sometimes I barely see it, can’t quite touch it. Then 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 his book, Sabbath, he writes: “If busyness can become a kind of violence, we do not have to stretch our perception very far to see that Sabbath time – effortless, nourishing rest – can invite a healing of this violence. When we consecrate a time to listen to the still, small voices, we remember the root of inner wisdom that makes work fruitful. We remember from where we are most deeply nourished, and see more clearly the shape and texture of the people and things before us.”

“We, too, must have a period in which we lie fallow, and restore our souls. In Sabbath time we remember to celebrate what is beautiful and sacred; we light candles, sing songs, tell stories, eat, nap, and make love. It is a time to let our work, our lands, our animals lie fallow, to be nourished and refreshed. Within this sanctuary, we become available to the insights and blessings of deep mindfulness that arise only in stillness and time. When we act from a place of deep rest, we are more capable of cultivating what the Buddhists would call right understanding, right action, and right effort. In a complex and unstable world, if we do not rest, if we do not surrender into some kind of Sabbath, how can we find our way, how can we hear the voices that tell us the right thing to do?”

I would just add that our sacred worth does not depend upon our being better than we are at the present moment, or on being busier, or on anything external. It is always there as a gift to be accepted, cherished, and shared. Sometimes a quiet space in our heart or in the heart of another can help us recognize and accept this inner voice of our sacredness. Whatever season you are now in, may you be at home to your sacredness and to others who need your presence in whatever ways are now possible.

Norman King. January 30, 2021

I have written frequently that my fundamental conviction is that there is a gifted sacred worth to each and every human being, and even beyond that to all that dwells on this earth. This conviction is expressed religiously in the belief that human beings are fashioned in the image of God and in the golden rule that is found in all religions. In her Charter for Compassion, Karen Armstrong maintains that “the principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions,” and calls us “to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being.” In the preamble to its Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations grounds its assertion of human rights and corresponding responsibilities in the dignity of each and every human being.

The questions that arise include how this conviction is expressed in attitude and action in relation to oneself, to others, to communities, social organizations, and even to national and international relations. A core issue, however, is how does each of us recognize this conviction in ourselves. Many of us, myself included, struggle not to have a sense that we are not worth much, that we are of little significance. This sense can readily arise from our experience of limitations, weakness, failures, disappointments, and all the things that make us feel that our lives are not what they should be or could be or ought to be.

Henri Nouwen has an interesting approach to this matter. He says that we are all needy persons. We are affected by a neediness for affection, attention, affirmation, and praise, as well as influence, power, and success. He says that this neediness comes from an experience of woundedness that causes us to question our worth. He suggests that this sense comes from the feeling, often not conscious, that we are rejected, that we are not quite acceptable. Frequently, our neediness can lead us to wound others if we try to force them to give us what they cannot give. Our own woundedness may well come from others in the past who have hurt us because they were so needy. Nouwen says that this woundedness is essentially the experience of not being loved.

The underlying issue is that neither we nor anyone else can provide the unconditional, irrevocable love for which there is an insatiable thirst in the human heart and which could affirm unmistakably that we are of worth.

The result is that our sense of worth is always fragile. How can we achieve that conviction, if only partially? A first response is to let go of the expectation that another can provide this need for us. Rather than regard one another as possible answers, we can approach one another as fellow questioners, as fellow seekers.

Another approach is to cultivate a sense of gratitude for our life, and to help one another have experiences of gratitude, however small. Most mornings, for example, I go for a walk in early morning, while it is still a time of winter darkness. At this time, almost everyone who passes, usually on a similar walk, greet each other, with a wave of the hand or a good morning word. It is very simple but refreshing. Sometimes, I encounter a rabbit, or a deer, or even a skunk, all of which evoke a kind of inner smile.

On a grander scale, a friend once told me of his experience at his place in the Point Pelee region. It was mid-winter. and no one else was around. As he shut all lights off before leaving left his place to return to the city, he was immersed in total darkness. He was groping his way to his car, when the moon suddenly appeared from behind a cloud and shed a pale light on everything. He recalled how, at that moment, he had an overwhelming experience that he was loved.

Another friend once told me that she felt a lack of understanding from her parents, but when she was with animals around her rural surroundings, she had an uncanny sense of at-homeness.

One author, Wayne Muller, says that we are often afflicted at once by a more surface need to fit in and a deeper sense of not belonging. Yet, he recalls, by the very fact that we are breathing, we do belong, we are part of the whole ecosystem of the earth, not simply its present, but also its past. It is striking that quiet attention to our breathing is a fundamental form of meditation in both Eastern and Western traditions.

These kind of experiences, brought to our awareness, can evoke a tone of gratitude, a gratefulness that can almost imperceptibly wear away feelings of resentment and hostility. They can move us slowly to a sense that our life is a gift rather than a burden or a mere accident. From here there can unfold over time a recognition that our life is a precious gift to cultivate and share.

This realization, however elusive, and readily lost sight of, can nonetheless, help us develop an understanding that this valuable gift is there from the beginning, before any decision or action that we make and is not dependent on any decision or action. As a result, our sacred worth is not a benefit to acquire or prove, but a gift to accept. As something already there, we need not seek it from someone or something–who cannot confer it anyway. It is rather something to accept and to live by, even when we do not feel it. We may help or even hinder one another in recognizing this worth but cannot give it to or take it away from anyone else, including ourselves.

What all these thoughts come down to is that there are many avenues to develop and maintain a sense of our sacred worth, however elusive and even fragile it may seem. These include a simple attention to our breathing or other forms of meditation in solitude, the experience of the world of nature on this planet earth which is our basic home, simple acts of kindness to one another or more enduring friendships in which we do not expect everything but do share our life journey, and also a participation in struggles for compassion and justice in our wider communities, societies, and world.

May all of you more and more uncover your own gifted and sacred worth, despite–and possibly on occasion through–any of life’s sorrows, and may we always help one another to move more fully towards lives of gratitude and generosity.

Norman King, January 25, 2021