Everything Works Together – interconnected golden threads

The first few pages of Jerome K Jerome’s story Three Men in a Boat, contain a very funny account by the narrator of how he read a medical text book and discovered to his horror that he had the symptoms of every illness and disease he looked at, apart from a mild form of cholera and housemaid’s knee! It’s amusing because most of us can identify with this sort of hypochondria, especially now that we have the internet, with countless medical sites containing descriptions of diseases and symptoms of illnesses, all of which seem to apply to us, when we read about them.

When we think about the themes of Grace, Guilt, Hope, Mercy, Gratitude, Forgiveness and Generosity covered in some of the blogs posted on this site over the last 18 months, there is probably a similar effect. We’ve got problems with every one of them. We feel as if we are constantly in deficit and are not good enough in any department. What became very clear to me early on, as I tried to write about these things on an individual basis, was that whilst they may appear to be separate, they are in fact part of a much bigger, interconnected whole. golden thread - electron microscope The Golden Thread of Jesus’ teaching is many separate strands woven together, each with its own shade and lustre which together make the thread as strong and as golden as it is. A photograph of a golden thread seen through an electron microscope as it is passed through the eye of a needle shows clearly that the thread we thought was a single strand is in fact made up of many finer strands. (no wonder it is difficult to thread a needle!)

In reality however, they are more than just interconnected – they are actually interdependent in the sense that there is a dependence between things. For example, if I provide my dog with food and walks and my dog provides me with devotion and happiness, then my relationship with the dog is one of interdependence. Likewise, the individual strands of the golden thread are interdependent, each strand depending on another, which in turn depends on yet another. Thus, there can be no resolution of guilt without forgiveness, and this in turn requires mercy and compassion. The result of forgiveness is often gratitude. And of course, everything, absolutely everything is connected to and held together by love. So, we don’t have to feel despair about how little we may have of these things or what we must “get better at”. Nor do we need to think that we need to work to develop all of these things or set out a regime to “improve ourselves”. They are not ingredients in a cake or bottles of medicine and lotion that need to be taken daily in precise amounts. If I do X and Y then Z will happen. Such a formula would be all about us being in control, a false pathway. Because whilst it may offer some growth, the reality is that the process is much more of a mystery. If we can try to get the conditions right, then growth will happen, and what is amazing is that they all grow, not just one or another. That’s because they’re interconnected and interdependent, both within ourselves and between each other. So, whilst we do have our part to play, maybe by practising gratitude for 30 days, dealing with our resentments and forgiving or perhaps actively seeking to be more loving, after that it’s not down to us at all. As we so often find in the teachings of Jesus, and central to 12 step recovery, it’s all about letting go and letting God. The important lesson here is that spirituality, and the growth of the individual golden threads in our lives is through relationship rather than knowledge or achievement. And the real wonder is that the process of inner growth happens as we seek to serve and bless those around us, because none of the strands of the golden thread are just about us. This is the mustard seed or the yeast in the bread which Jesus talks about. The things which grow silently and miraculously if we let them, in ourselves and the people and community around us. Which once again brings us back to the Kingdom of Heaven, where all things connect, and everything works together for good.

I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God’s help I shall succeed. Vincent Van Gogh

I think we’d like life to be like a train…..but it turns out to be a sailboat. Barbara Brown Taylor

Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone’s face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love? These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come. Henri Nouwen

Through my years of darkness, some spark of spirit remained in me, helped me survive until I found my way into A.A. Then, nurtured by the program, that inner spirit grew, deepened, until it filled the emptiness I had so long felt inside. Step by step I moved to a spiritual awaking. Step by step I cleared up the past and got on with the present. Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition

Grace – Amazingly Amazing

“I was sitting in the boughs of a large sycamore tree on a hot, dusty day. The sun shone brightly and there was a shimmer of heat rising from the ground as I looked along the road and into the distance. There were people everywhere. It was like market day and festival all rolled into one. It had been quite an effort to climb the tree in the first place, as I’m not very tall, but once up, it was a good place to be, because nobody knew I was there. The leaves offered some protection from the sun and up high there was a very slight but welcome breeze, but I wasn’t there for a place of rest or shelter. I needed a good vantage point, and a secret one at that. Nobody down there would want to rub shoulders with an outcast like me. For what it’s worth, the feeling was mutual.

I saw the entourage moving down the street in our direction a long time before the people on the ground below me could see. The crowds were especially dense at that point and their progress was slow. It was about 20 minutes or so before I could see the group really clearly because they kept stopping and getting side-tracked – a right royal walkabout. The Teacher was closely surrounded by his followers who seemed impatient to keep moving, overly protective and dismissive of those who wanted to see him, let alone speak. He didn’t seem to notice or care what these disciples thought. No matter, up in the tree I wouldn’t be getting in anyone’s way! There were quite a few of the religious leaders around him too, trying to engage him in conversation and generally lording it up as if the crowds had turned out to see them. No chance of that!

It was interesting watching everybody’s reaction to him, and the noise and clamour grew louder as the Teacher and his followers moved nearer. In the midst of the group I recognised a blind beggar who I passed in the street most days. He’d left his pitch and his bowl behind and was up on his feet, singing and dancing. No longer blind! Just as they were about to pass by, The Teacher stopped. He looked up into the tree, saw me in my hide-out, smiled, and spoke, calling me by my name and saying that he wanted to stay with me in my house. For some reason, I couldn’t get down the tree quickly enough and we talked as if we’d known each other for years. That meeting with the Teacher set my life off on a new path, one that I neither expected nor deserved but one for which I will always be grateful.”

This story of how the despised, cheating, collaborator and tax-collector Zacchaeus met Jesus and the changes that happened in his life as a result can be found in Mark 19 and are just one of the many examples of Jesus reaching out and blessing the least expected of people. Story after story about his life show acts of grace to so many people – thieves, poor, disabled, ostracised, foreigner, old, women and children, none of whom were deemed to be of much value by society at that time. And the parables or stories he told were ways of introducing and conveying the truth about God. A God in love with the world extending grace to all.

The blog in October 2019 looked at Mercy, which is closely related to Grace. But the distinction is important. Mercy is not getting something bad which we deserve, whereas grace is receiving something good that we don’t deserve. Grace is thus a much larger concept, and in turn is more amazing, more remarkable and more beautiful. We all need mercy in our lives and when we recognise this, we hope that people will show us mercy, but grace is like a great big bonus that we could never really ask for or expect. I see it a bit like this. If I am in a queue of traffic at a busy junction waiting to make a difficult turn, then the driver behind can show mercy by not getting impatient with me if I’m a bit slow and it takes me time to make the turn. But if a driver on the road I am trying to turn into stops to let me in, then he shows me grace. If we think about it, there is so much to be grateful for that is a result of grace. And if this is hard to do, then a good starting point is to realise there’s always someone worse off than us simply because of where and when they were born. What we have is a gift, like life itself.

Jesus was, as the start of John’s gospel says, full of grace and truth, and told us about a God who was forever wanting to bless us, to extend grace and favour to each of us in our lives. As a follower of Jesus, I see God as the source of all the acts of grace in my life. Recovery too is also a place of grace. Becoming clean and sober always begins with an act of grace when the individual receives something of tremendous value that they don’t deserve in the light of the choices they have made and all the hurt they have caused other people. And neither do those who receive it merit it any more than other struggling addicts or alcoholics. It isn’t earned, nevertheless it happens. It is an act of grace. Nadia Bolz Weber who straddles the 12-step recovery and Christian communities is her usual honest and incisive self in describing this Grace at work in her life. “Getting sober never felt like I had pulled myself up by my own spiritual bootstraps. It felt instead like I was on one path toward destruction and God pulled me off of it by the scruff of my collar, me hopelessly kicking and flailing and saying, ‘Screw you. I’ll take the destruction please.’ God looked at tiny, little red-faced me and said, ‘that’s adorable,’ and then plunked me down on an entirely different path.”

The very existence of the 12-step programme is a sign of grace – especially when you consider the flawed and broken people who helped AA to begin and to develop. Over the last 80+ years it has been a vehicle of grace to thousands and thousands of undeserving but beautiful people, who became transformed and carried the message, offering this grace filled programme to others, helping their souls to heal and placing faith in them until this belief became their own. Sobriety is obtained through “working the programme” but anybody who sees or experiences this transformation knows that something bigger and far more wonderful is at work here and that is Grace.

Fortunately, Grace does not come as a one-off thing – we need grace on a daily basis. Zacchaeus experienced grace when Jesus called him and ate with him and we see the transformed behaviour of the tax collector as he made amends, repaying money he had stolen or wrongly taken. But if his addiction and attachment was to money and making a fast buck, then he will have needed daily grace to continue to live that new life of honesty and integrity. Just like us.

Jesus talked about grace and longed for those he met and still meets, to experience it. In his stories and parables and in the way he lived his life, God is always shown to be the giver of gifts for the most undeserving of recipients, the thrower of parties for the least likely of guests, the welcoming host for those with a record of trashing the places where they stay. As beneficiaries of such grace (or whatever else we may choose to call this mystery), we experience feelings of deep humility and gratitude, hallmarks of both a good recovery and of a well-founded Christian faith. But as ever there is a challenge. We must go and do likewise offering acts of mercy and grace to those we meet, loving the unlovely, giving to the undeserving and forgiving those who have wronged us. As we stumble along this path, usually with the most limited of success or even if we find ourselves side-tracked and self-obsessed once again, grace continues to come knocking at our door. Why? Because, that’s just what God’s grace does. In the words of Zaphod Beeblebrox, it’s amazingly amazing!

Christianity is not primarily a moral code but a grace-laden mystery; it is not essentially a philosophy of love but a love affair; it is not keeping rules with clenched fists but receiving a gift with open hands. Brennan Manning

I do not understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. Anne Lamott

Grace isn’t about God creating humans as flawed beings and then acting all hurt when we inevitably fail and then stepping in like the hero to grant us grace—like saying “Oh, it’s OK, I’ll be a good guy and forgive you.” It’s God saying, “I love the world too much to let your sin define you and be the final word. I am a God who makes all things new.” Nadia Bolz Weber

We are captured by grace. Only after much mistrust and testing do we accept that we are accepted. Richard Rohr

2020 Vision – wise sayings about faith and recovery

A lot of the time I muddle through life, dragged along on the switchback of my emotions, often clearer about what I don’t believe in than what I do. But then there are moments of clarity. It might not be 2020 vision, but the mist does clear and for a short time I feel sure that I can see clearly. Nothing helps me to see more clearly and hope more completely than the wise words of others talking about their own life and the spiritual path they are treading. As we take our first faltering steps into a new decade, here for the twenty-twenties are 20 wise sayings to help us on our way.

Each day holds a surprise. But only if we expect it, can we see, hear, or feel it, when it comes to us. Let’s not be afraid to receive each day’s surprise, whether it comes to us as sorrow or as joy. It will open a new place in our hearts, a place where we can welcome new friends and celebrate more fully our shared humanity. Henri Nouwen
This is it. This is the life we get here on earth. We get to give away what we receive. We get to believe in each other. We get to forgive and be forgiven. We get to love imperfectly. And we never know what effect it will have for years to come. And all of it…all of it is completely worth it. Nadia Bolz-Weber
I asked a very young Sunday school girl today what she think God wants to change about her life this year. She said “That I be kinder to people and be nice to all little dogs.” I said, “that pretty much says it.” Anne Lamott.
The Christianity that called to me, through the stories I read in the Bible, scattered the proud and rebuked the powerful. It was a religion in which divinity was revealed by scars on flesh. It was an upside-down world in which treasure, as the prophet said, was found in darkness; in which the hungry were filled with good things, and the rich sent out empty; in which new life was manifested through a humiliated, hungry woman and an empty, tortured man. Sarah Miles
Given the scale of life in the cosmos, one human life is no more than a tiny blip. Each of us is a just visitor to this planet, a guest, who will only stay for a limited time. What greater folly could there be than to spend this short time alone, unhappy or in conflict with our companions? Far better, surely, to use our short time here in living a meaningful life, enriched by our sense of connection with others and being of service to them. Dalai Lama
All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle. Francis of Assisi
Everyone has a piece of good news inside them. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is! Anne Frank
Christianity isn’t meant to simply be believed; it’s meant to be lived, shared, eaten, spoken, and enacted in the presence of other people. Rachel Held Evans
If unconditional love, loyalty, and obedience are the tickets to an eternal life, then my black Labrador, Venus, will surely be there long before me, along with all the dear animals in nature who care for their young at great cost to themselves and have suffered so much at the hands of humans. Richard Rohr
You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching, Love like you’ll never be hurt,
Sing like there’s nobody listening, And live like it’s heaven on earth.” William W. Purkey
If you want something you never had, you have to do something you’ve never done. Anon
Every single person has a story that will break your heart. And if you’re paying attention, many people have a story that will bring you to your knees. Nobody rides for free. Brene Brown
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger — something better, pushing right back. Albert Camus
Our culture says that ruthless competition is the key to success. Jesus says that ruthless compassion is the purpose of our journey. Brennan Manning
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.The second commandment is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these. Jesus of Nazareth
The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbour as the self – to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enrol, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it. Barbara Brown Taylor
Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards. Soren Kierkegaard
Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you. St. Augustine
What if Jesus’ secret message reveals a secret plan?” What if he didn’t come to start a new religion – but rather came to start a political, social, religious, artistic, economic, intellectual, and spiritual revolution that would give birth to a new world? Brian D McLaren

Mercy, Mercy – radical kindness to all

I’ve recently completed an annual spiritual practice that I do at the same time every year. It’s a long way from a desert retreat or 30-day Ignatian spiritual exercises (and a lot cheaper too) but my day of learning never fails to teach and remind me about important things in life. About acceptance and compassion, but especially about mercy.

I live just a mile or so away from the route of the Great North Run, the biggest half marathon in the World, which began in 1981. I ran in the first three and in several others since, but I am no longer running. As a club runner I trained hard and prided myself on achieving the best times I could, always striving to do better. Whenever I wasn’t running, I’d go along to watch, seeing the elite athletes and supporting the club runners who I knew. I didn’t bother to stay and watch the fun runners who were running at a more sedate pace. After I stopped running, I no longer went to watch the race, but over the last few years I’ve started to go along again and now watch all of the runners go past. I tend to go to a point close to the Tyne Bridge where they’ve run about 2 miles. I started to cheer on runners I didn’t know, calling out their names or those of the charity for whom they were running to raise money and trying to encourage them. But I found myself introducing a very rigid (and unlovely) selection process as to who I’d cheer for. I would never cheer on anyone walking so early in the race. They didn’t deserve my encouragement nor did the ones who clearly hadn’t trained. Even those jogging ever so slowly got my cheers and words of support. And I’d pick my preferred charities – the bigger more organised ones seemed less deserving than the small ones.

When I discovered that I was doing this, I was quite shocked, even more so when I discovered it went very deep. I applied this mean-spirited, conditional and judgemental approach to a lot of other situations and people I came across, not just fun runners, but including of course, judgements about myself. It seems that I’m not alone in this sort of thinking. As Brennan Manning observed in his book The Wisdom of Tenderness, each of us lives in a world of our own, the world of our own mind. “How often we’re narrow, cold, haughty and unforgiving. Above all else we are judgmental, happy to believe appearances, impute motives and interpret behaviours with nothing but the slightest scraps of evidence to back it up.”

Jesus was very clear about the wrongness of this behaviour. In the story of the Good Samaritan, answering the question as to who our neighbour is, Jesus shows that the real neighbour is the one who cared for the beaten man and showed him mercy. The Samaritan may have had a host of reasons for not helping the victim or thinking he did not deserve help, as two previous religious figures had done, but he didn’t – he showed mercy and cared for the man without any conditions. Elsewhere Jesus is even more explicit when he says “Judge not, so that you yourselves are not judged”. Throughout his life he showed acceptance to the most judged and vilified people of his time – prostitutes, lepers, disabled, tax collectors, adulterers, beggars and so on. He himself experienced judgement and unkindness much of his life; as a young child he and his parents were refugees, as an adult he was consistently misunderstood, rejected and threatened by his own people. His trial and death were unfair and brutal.

The point of Jesus’s teaching is not just that we should seek to be merciful and non-judgmental, but that in doing this we reflect the character of God. “Be merciful, as your heavenly Father is merciful” he said. God is not the big, bad villain we think but our compassionate, loving, merciful ever hopeful creator who only ever wants to restore and embrace us, most especially those who feel far away. God is the Father in the story of the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan who binds our wounds, the employer who pays over the odds.

Learning to be accepting and non-judgemental seems to be intrinsic to the 12 Step programme too. Not only is there a recognition that we’re all in the same boat, all helpless addicts without a hope, but a deeply compassionate, merciful streak to all, even the difficult, awkward and contrary ones. The Big Book talks about having survived a common peril, regardless of who we are and having found a common solution. This is a solution where “there are no fees to pay, no axes to grind, no people to please, no lectures to be endured.” In the telling of stories and hearing different and common experiences there is a recognition that none of us is in a position to judge the other, because underneath it all we’re no different at all. We are all walking through this life with bandages and a limp.

Since in wider society we are conditioned to assess, categorise and judge almost all of the time (clothes, class, gender, age, job, weight, skin colour, income, ethnicity, religion, education level, etc) we have to work hard to overcome these prejudices. It seems to be like a little used muscle that only grows with practice, training and cultivation. As Anne Lamott says, “Mercy means that we no longer constantly judge everybody’s large and tiny failures, foolish hearts, dubious convictions, and inevitable bad behaviour. We will never do this perfectly, but how do we do it better?” The Just For Today Card is a useful way of improving our behaviour by practising kindness, compassion and above all showing mercy. This is the mercy that I know I need from my fellow beings and above all from God for all my slips, errant behaviour and sometimes downright nastiness. I don’t deserve it and maybe others I meet don’t either, but mercy is never about just deserts. Encouraging those runners (and walkers) in the Great North Run is not about what they do or don’t deserve. It’s a gift, and when I saw the increase in pace, smile or look of gratitude on the faces of those I encouraged this year who would not in the past have made the cut, I realised that they were bandaged and in need of my support. And in that brief moment there was connection and the Kingdom of God became real to us both.

Mercy, mercy, looking for mercy. Peter Gabriel

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Jesus of Nazareth

Mercy is the stuff you give to people that don’t deserve it. Joyce Meyer

Mercy is radical kindness. Mercy means offering or being offered aid in desperate straits. Mercy is not deserved………The good news is that God has such low standards, and reaches out to those of us who are often not lovable and offers us a chance to come back in from the storm of drama and toxic thoughts. Anne Lamott

Most of us were taught that God would love us, if and when we change. In fact, God loves you so that you can change. What empowers change, what makes you desirous of change is the experience of love. It is that inherent experience of love that becomes the engine of change. Richard Rohr

Compassion is not a virtue — it is a commitment. It’s not something we have or don’t have — it’s something we choose to practice. Brené Brown

The Constant Gardener – enabling spiritual growth

It’s a busy time of the year down at my allotment. I share the plot of rented land with a couple of friends and right now the fruit and vegetables are at their most productive. This year the combination of warm sun, heavy rains and damp, muggy air have not only benefitted the crops but also made it a paradise for numerous weeds and uninvited plants. For some unknown reason, the weeds grow more rapidly and far more profusely than the strawberries, chard, beans, beetroot and leeks that I am trying to grow. 20190731_122803 Regular work is required to keep the weeds under control. Since I don’t always do this weeding as frequently as I ought to, the plot as a whole quickly becomes a jungle of assorted greenery instead of neat rows of plants, growing in well defined beds and borders. It’s easy to despair and abandon the fight, letting everything grow together in the hope that it’ll sort itself out in the end. Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. Making the most of the well composted and fed soil that was meant for the crops, the weeds flower and spread their seeds around the plot long before my crops have matured, guaranteeing me the same problem for years to come, unless I do something about it.

The parallel for our own lives is not hard to see, partly because many of us are familiar with Jesus’s stories of crops and weeds along with good and bad soil. The parable of the sower which is recorded in three of the gospels, is particularly well known, with the seed failing to germinate, growing poorly or flourishing, depending on the soil conditions where it had been sown. This is exactly what does happen – plants sown on the edges or growing close by are smaller and much less productive than those in the central, more fertile areas; plants with weeds around them have to compete for light, water and nutrients and also grow far less well than those in cleared ground. Those in weed-free, well-watered and composted areas are by far the most productive. Likewise, in our own lives we need good fertile environments in which to thrive and an absence of things which choke or stifle our spiritual growth.

In twelve step programmes the need to deal with these impediments to growth is a vital part of recovery, dealt with most clearly in steps 5,6 and 7. Making a moral inventory is a revealing process, showing us just how widespread and deep our wrongs and failings are. It is not the more glaring shortcomings we have that shock but the small hidden things, including our negative responses to the events of our lives. I came to see how many and how deep my resentments were towards people and circumstances of life – recent and long past. Because we are powerless to move on from or eliminate these things ourselves, we have to ask God, our Higher Power to remove these character defects and shortcomings. We must not only remove the weeds and clear the ground, but as I know only too well from both my allotment and my own life, we need to continue to manage them, because weeds continue to grow. Sometimes too it takes time to completely get rid of the deep roots of established weeds in our lives which can grow back. We need to find some way to reflect on and keep on top of these things. So it is no wonder that step 10 helps us to do this by “continuing to take a personal inventory and when we are wrong promptly admitting it”. Handing things over to our Higher Power is always central, and a reminder that our lives remain unmanageable if we try to do it alone. But neither Recovery nor following Jesus are passive activities and we have to play our part not least in wanting things to change. As they say in the rooms, “we alone can do it, but we cannot do it alone”.

I am not sure that there is the same amount of work put into deep reflection, admission and clearing of ground by many of us Christians as there is by those in recovery. Admit your wrongs and move on via a quick general confession is often the process and too much time dwelling on your failings is seen as beating yourself up rather than basking in the grace of forgiveness and new life. Of course this can happen, with guilt trapping us in an unhealthy whirlpool of despair, far removed from the freedom which Jesus promised. But like weeding, the purpose is to clear the ground, not feel bad that weeds have grown and as a general rule some sort of moral inventory is a helpful and productive thing to do periodically, preferably with the support of a spiritual mentor or guide, who will help us to avoid unhealthy levels of guilt. As the Desert Fathers discovered, true spirituality begins with the acceptance of our own flaws and limitations and in the compassion that emerges from this self-knowledge – compassion towards ourselves, towards others and towards all of humanity. We are all beautiful but flawed and we are all in this together.

As well as slowly clearing the ground (and it really can be slow work), we also need to water and feed the ground of our lives to make them fertile. We must dig deep wells to find the things which feed and nurture us, like the living water which Jesus said flowed from him. Serving others and helping the stranger is a sure yet mysterious way to receive nourishment and spiritual blessing. Step 11 talks of prayer and meditation as being a means of helping us to improve our conscious contact with God, seeking guidance and help with our lives. Jesus’s life and ministry was totally reliant upon prayer and time spent alone with God, enabling him to be obedient to his calling, proclaiming the Kingdom of God here on earth.

A common prayer in 12 step circles is the Set Aside Prayer. I forget who it was I read who developed this into a fuller prayer which helped me so much (Heather King, I think), and which in turn I have amended to capture the things which my moral inventory revealed were the weeds of my life which will choke the growing seed if I do not seek to manage or remove them on a daily basis. So, with grateful thanks to whoever it was who wrote the first version, here is my take on the Set Aside Prayer.

“Loving God, please set aside everything I know or think I know about spirituality, religion and faith that has become formulaic or gets in the way of new understanding. Set aside every idea that has frightened, threatened or angered me. Set aside everything that’s been forced down my throat, that’s inconsistent, that manipulates me. Set aside all my resentments and the ease with which I find and harbour new ones. Set aside my desire to be in control and my discomfort when I’m not. Set aside my tendency to see things through the lens of my emotions of the moment. Set aside my constant judging and categorisation of other people. Set aside my worry and anxiety about almost everything. Set aside my plotting and planning about how I’d like things to be and my unconscious expectations that things should be perfect. Set aside my addictions, my doubts, my guilt, my shame, my jealousy, my rage, my intolerance. Set aside all these things and anything else which prevent me from having a loving heart, an open mind and a fresh experience of you today. Amen.”

Gardens are not made by singing ‘Oh, how beautiful,’ and sitting in the shade. – Rudyard Kipling

If your knees aren’t green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life. Bill Watterson

Most people don’t have the willingness to break bad habits. They have a lot of excuses and they talk like victims. Carlos Santana

Don’t let your sins turn into bad habits. Saint Teresa of Avila

When you find yourself in need of spiritual nourishment, it is in the opportunities to serve others that you will find the abundance you seek. Steve Maraboli

There are two types of seeds in the mind: those that create anger, fear, frustration, jealousy, hatred and those that create love, compassion, equanimity and joy. Spirituality is germination and sprouting of the second group and transforming the first group. Amit Ray

Becoming like Christ is a long, slow process of growth. Rick Warren

The Christian who has stopped repenting has stopped growing. A W Pink

G.O.D.

One of the few popular TV commercials in the UK at the moment, is a series of adverts for a large chain of opticians. People doing various jobs or activities get them woefully wrong without realising it, because they have poor, uncorrected vision. A shepherd shears his dog instead of the sheep, a vet checks the heart-beat of a fur hat instead of a cat, and so on. Specsavers cat If only they’d gone to the opticians! In a recent one, a joiner puts a back door on upside down, so that the cat-flap is at the top. The workman finishes the job and goes on his way, unaware of his mistake, whilst the mystified cat sits there gazing up at the unreachable cat-flap.

All too often in life we don’t see things very clearly and need a corrective. Jesus’s teaching and example was all about offering us this new focus and clarity. Consistently, he showed what a distorted picture we had, and still have about God. Whether it is the shepherd seeking the lost sheep, the farmer employing labourers, the hen protecting its chicks or the bridegroom and his guests, the stories Jesus told us about God are always correctives, giving us a picture of a God who offers acceptance, protection, care and inclusion. This is most perfectly captured in the story of the prodigal son, where the Father waits longingly for his lost son to return, rejoicing and celebrating when he does, offering forgiveness and reconciliation without a moment’s thought. The essence of that relationship – and all of the other parables Jesus told us about God, is one of unconditional love.

The corrective was needed – and continues to be required because we so often see God as very far from loving. We project onto God our own experiences of parents and those in authority, or our own attitudes and feelings towards ourselves. God becomes angry, punitive and vindictive, constantly disappointed in us, and we live our lives in fear, flight, anger and denial. In the Garden of Eden story in Genesis, the cunning serpent twisted Adam and Eve’s knowledge and understanding by depicting God as rule based, mean, controlling and prohibiting, a picture they completely buy into, abandoning in the process their real experience of God which was one of love and care. We do this today, and end up hiding or feeling angry, avoiding God in name, thought and conversation. A friend of mine who works in a twelve-step treatment centre once told me that he could say almost anything to the new people entering the programme or use any swear word and it wouldn’t get the response that he gets when mentioning the word God. “ I can guarantee that it will offend someone in the room.”

For all that, there seems to be something very interesting at work amongst those who, with gritted teeth, stick with the twelve-step programme and somehow manage to deal with the God bit. Since it’s prescriptive rather than descriptive, believing in “a Power greater than ourselves” whatever or whoever that might be and “turning our lives over to this God of our own understanding,” is all that is required. Nobody has written about this better than Glenn Chestnut. He talked to a lot of old timers in AA, NA and other 12 step groups, who discovered a higher power of their own understanding in spite of the fact that many were atheists or bitterly opposed to organised religion. They learned to pray, developed strong spiritual lives, and had sustained recovery as a result. More recently, Nadia Bolz-Weber says that she was helped in her early recovery by an elderly woman who told her that “this isn’t about religion, honey, you just have to find a higher power that you can do business with.” Having been brought up within a guilt-based church system, the real revelation to Nadia was that this woman’s relationship with God was functional, not doctrinal. The God she knew was the key to her staying sober.

Now it might be said that people are simply making God in their own image, but here’s the thing. What I find consistently true amongst all my friends and acquaintances in twelve-step recovery is that their higher power, the God of their understanding, is always kind, loving and accepting, though never in a cotton candy type of way. As one of them put it, “My higher power really likes me”. That is most definitely not the case for a good many mainstream Christians in churches today. God is the angry traffic cop just waiting to pull you over, the heartless judge, the disappointed probation officer, the vindictive jailer. The analogies with authority figures in our legal systems are no coincidence because so much of organised religion is about laws, rules, conformity and appeasing an angry God. I’ve seen it, heard it and if I’m honest, battled with these notions of God most of my life because that’s what I was brought up with. So if I’m given the choice between the higher power of the twelve-steppers which is benevolent and loving, wanting only the best for that person, or the harsh, angry God, constantly disappointed in me which lurks in mind – and I’m pretty sure a good many other people’s minds in churches or brought up in church, then I’ll take their God every time.

That’s why I cling on to the life and teachings of Jesus. Because in him everything comes together. He not only told us about the true nature of God, but in his life and death he showed it. And its really pretty simple. GOD IS LOVE. If that’s not always easy to hang on to or if it becomes tarnished by the love that we’ve received which is often very conditional indeed, then think on this. 1 Corinthians 13 is St Paul’s inspirational account of love. If we replace the word love with the word God, then our distorted picture is corrected, and finally we can begin to see more clearly, the true nature of God.

“God is patient, God is kind, God is not jealous, God is not boastful, God is not rude, God is not proud, God does not demand her own way, God keeps no record of being wronged, God does not rejoice at injustice, God rejoices when the truth wins out, God never gives up, God never loses faith, God is always hopeful, God endures through every circumstance.”

If we all have different finger-prints, it is not so surprising that we should also have our own way of knowing and understanding God. We are all making the same journey, but the route is different for each and we have to discover it in freedom. Gerard W Hughes

I didn’t need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity; I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees. Anne Lamott

Until you meet a benevolent God and a benevolent universe, until you realize that the foundation of all is love, you will not be at home in this world. Richard Rohr

God loves each of us as if there were only one of us. St Augustine

The great thing to remember is that though our feelings come and go, God’s love for us does not. C.S. Lewis

God is the father who watches and waits for his children, runs out to meet them, embraces them, pleads with them, begs and urges them to come home. Henri Nouwen

Forgiveness is The Fragrance of Violets

One of my all-time favourite films is Get Carter. It is a 1970’s cult movie, set within a few miles of where I live and full of memorable lines and great acting performances. getcarter poster 2 The story follows a London gangster, Jack Carter played by Michael Caine who travels back to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, his home town to investigate the events surrounding his brother Frank’s supposedly accidental death. He becomes increasingly convinced that his brother was murdered and ruthlessly interrogates those who may know something, with his mind set only on revenge. It ends violently with his own death, but not before he has dealt with those whom he holds responsible for his brother’s death.

The list of revenge movies is long and illustrious – Gladiator, Kill Bill, Cape Fear, Old Boy, Mad Max, to name but a few. Forgiveness on the other hand, is not a theme that sets the pulse racing nor does it offer easy promotional headlines or glamorous images. Interestingly, the stories about forgiveness that do exist are nearly always about real people who forgive – Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr or Nelson Mandela. It’s as if we can’t invent a story about someone who sees forgiveness as the way to live. It’s just too implausible. Across cultures and over time, revenge and retaliation are regarded as just and right – an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Its all about strength, dignity and pride to enforce justice by means of revenge.

The movies may glamorise the idea of revenge and build up the vengeful into heroic characters, but deep down we know that this is not true. Death in the pursuit of revenge is not a glorious end, but a sad defeat in the course of a fruitless quest. Through the lives of those who eschew vengeance and violence, we discover that forgiveness is not weak or character-less, nor are they door-mats for those who do wrong; in fact they appear to be strong and attractive people whose lives continue to inspire and influence us long after they have died. The greatest example of course is Jesus. He preached against our so-called justice and revenge – we are to love our enemies, return good for evil, offer blessing for curse and forgive those who wrong us without limit. Jesus did not just preach forgiveness and the way of peace but practiced it throughout his life – and even at his death, when he prayed to God for forgiveness of those who nailed him to the cross.

Jesus’s teaching about forgiveness is not simply about creating healthy and whole relationships with one another, but offers us a radical corrective to our distorted image of God and forgiveness. Instead of a vengeful, angry God, bent on hunting us down, he shows us a God who loves us passionately and looks for us along the highways and byways, to forgive us and restore our fractured, fear-based relationship to one of love and trust. He is the Father in the story of the Prodigal Son overwhelmed by love and longing for his son. To follow the way of Jesus is to love with all our hearts, forgive as God forgives and to trust that this is the pathway to wholeness and peace. Forgiveness should therefore be generously and constantly extended to all, with no strings attached. This is right at the heart of a Christian life. The Lord’s Prayer, the pattern of prayer Jesus taught us to use, asks God for forgiveness for what we have done wrong, as we forgive others who do wrong to us. Forgiveness and forgiving, both of which we need and must do, are inextricably intertwined.

Forgiveness is central to good recovery too. In the course of addiction, there is a lot of collateral damage and many people get hurt. As those who have done wrong to others and also people who have been hurt by others we are left to carry a lot of emotional baggage that hinders the process of recovery. (Which is true for everyone, both in and out of recovery.) Step 8 in the Twelve Step Programme says that “we made a list of all the persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them”. Step 9 makes amends to those we wronged and Step 10 helps us to continue to behave in a right way towards others. Much of this is about seeking forgiveness but we also need to grant forgiveness to those who have done us wrong, and this is generally a good deal harder than asking for forgiveness.

Over recent years we have learned a lot about forgiveness as we see the wrongs of national and civil wars, tribal and religious conflict and individual fanaticism lead to atrocities and extreme acts of harm done to others. Personal examples of forgiveness have always taught and inspired but formal procedures and processes are important too. Truth and Reconciliation Commissions are a form of restorative justice aimed at the healing of a whole community or nation, broken apart by violence and oppression. Restorative Justice seeks to bring together offender and victim to offer a place for repentance and forgiveness. This allows both parties to move forward more positively. Much has been learned from these Commissions about the process of forgiveness. Desmond Tutu, the former Archbishop of Cape Town, who chaired the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission has subsequently written about the four steps to forgiving and healing:

Telling the Story
Naming the Hurt
Granting Forgiveness
Renewing or Releasing the Relationship

Ideally, it is a two-way process but this is not always possible. Thankfully so too, because if forgiving depended upon the culprit owning up, then the victim would always be at their mercy and remain bound in the shackles of victimhood. Mandela prison release Archbishop Tutu says that “Forgiving is a gift to the forgiver as well as to the perpetrator. As the victim, you offer the gift of your forgiving to the perpetrator who may or may not appropriate the gift but it has been offered and thereby it liberates the victim. It would be grossly unfair to the victim to be dependent on the whim of the perpetrator. It would make him or her a victim twice over. The gift has been given. It is up to the intended recipient to appropriate it. The outside air is fresh and invigorating and it is always there. If you are in a dank and stuffy room you can enjoy that fresh air if you open the windows. It is up to you.” This, it seems to me is equally true for the wrong-doer when they ask for forgiveness and it is not given. They can do no more, but it in no way lessens the importance of what they have done in releasing them. Many people who have undertaken steps 8 and 9 can vouch for the truth of this when their attempts to make amends and admit their wrongs have not been accepted. It still allows them to move forward in the process. Meanwhile the one who was wronged is also on a pathway which may ultimately lead to them accepting the gift and breathing freely of the clean air of forgiveness. Not to do so will only hurt themselves. As is so often said in recovery about carrying wrongs and resentments, we are allowing the wrong-doer to live rent free in our heads. It can help to remember that everybody has experience as both a doer of wrongs and a recipient of wrongs. Dealing with our part in both of these helps us to remain emotionally and spiritually healthy.

All of this makes forgiving seem like a simple process but we all know from experience that it is far from easy. As C.S. Lewis says, ‘Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until they have something to forgive.’ Even if we grasp on an intellectual level that it is good for us and in our own interests, we do not have a switch to flick which makes us forgive. It is a process, a deep hurt that takes time to deal with. And this can be a hard road, which may take us some time to travel. But travel it we must if we are to become whole and free. And we can be inspired by the stories of those who have been able to forgive, especially those ordinary people who have suffered appalling wrongs and shown extraordinary forgiveness to those who have hurt them. In doing so they send ripples of hope across the world. Because in the end peace in our hearts and peace in the world will never be achieved by revenge and resentment. Forgiveness is the only way and love is always at its centre.

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it. Mark Twain

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. Mahatma Gandhi

Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.
Nelson Mandela

Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Forgiveness says you are given another chance to make a new beginning. Desmond Tutu

The dying can teach us much about genuine forgiveness. They do not think, “I have been so right, and in being so right, I can see how wrong you have been. In my bigness I will forgive you.” They think, “You’ve made mistakes and so have I. Who hasn’t? But I no longer want to define you by your mistakes or have myself be defined by mine.” Elizabeth Kubler Ross

Dark Hydraulic Forces – the power of addiction

When I was young, there was a widespread craze amongst children for keeping ginger beer plants. My memory of them is less about the ginger beer that they produced and more about their relentless growth and expansion. Truth be told they were not plants at all; essentially they were a combination of water, ginger, lemon, yeast and sugar. The “plant” or more accurately the yeast, required “feeding” every day with sugar to keep the growth and fermentation process going. Every week or so, the contents were added to a few litres of warm water and sugar, strained and bottled to provide enough ginger beer for several months. But the plant lived on in the strained residue which had now doubled in size, so it had to be split and half of it given away. In the early days most kids were delighted to accept the gift of a ginger beer plant, but with its exponential growth, it wasn’t long before everyone had one; tense, hyper-vigilant parents barred all offers of further plants. Eventually, like all crazes, it died out, and the manufacture of ginger beer is now mainly done by big manufacturers and artisanal brewers.

The relentless advance of the ginger beer plant is very reminiscent of addiction. It doesn’t stay sweet and manageable but gets bigger and bigger until it takes over. Addiction is not just a bad habit, it’s a progressive illness, that untreated can be fatal. What makes it even more insidious is that even if someone is no longer feeding the addiction, it retains its potential to wreak catastrophic damage if the person does try to use the substance again or re-continues the addictive behaviour. Anyone who has been around addicts has seen this happen. Last week I was talking to a man who had been sober for 11 months when that old voice in his head told him he was so well and so established in his recovery that he could safely start drinking again. He couldn’t. He now says that the addiction and the battle to stop is far worse than it was the last time. Another friend was sober for over 6 years when he took a drink to help him through a life crisis. The speed of his descent into a terrifying and utterly chaotic state was frightening. The lovely, gentle, warm man that I knew was replaced by a desperate, wild un-man, hell-bent on self-destruction. Dr Jeckyl was no longer at home and Mr Hyde was well and truly in control. Thankfully, he got to be clean and sober again, and incredibly has built on the experiences to create a stronger recovery than before, revealing a tender, wise and humble person. Even just a few minutes in his company makes me feel uplifted and blessed. Looking back, however, he is still horrified by the speed of his relapse and the nightmare of those months.

Jesus talks very interestingly and with great insight about things which are very akin to addiction and relapse, using the language of his time. “When an evil spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, I will return to the house I left. When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put into order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more evil than itself and they go and live there. And the final condition of the person is worse than it was before”. Jesus’s explanation, whether taken literally or as a metaphor conveys the power and force of darkness and evil. This is never truer than in addiction where achievements and assets from a period of abstinence and stability are washed away by the incoming torrent of a relapse.

So are we helpless in the face of this? Not at all, but we need to recognise that all addiction as a form of evil has immense power for harm and once we have been gripped by it, we cannot overestimate the risk it will always pose for us. As Jesus said on another occasion, we need to be ruthless with the things that can drag us down or make us vulnerable to going off-course. So it has to be “No!” to the addiction we used to have, and No to anything else with addictive potential that we might use as a substitute, which can become worse than the first experience. In addition to this vigilance, we need to hand things over to God, a power that is greater than ourselves, follow a programme for life which we work on a daily basis, look outward by helping others and cultivate friendships with people who may see more clearly than us the signs of dangerous thinking and behaviour.

What is true for addiction is true for life in general. Whilst these dark forces pose a threat, sources of light and power can help us to overcome the darkness and to live happy, grateful and hopeful lives each and every day. “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness can never extinguish it.” That is the good news which Jesus proclaimed. He had come to bring light; to set the prisoner free, to loose the captive’s chains and to announce that the Kingdom of heaven is here, within us.

You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town. Anne Lamott

It is 10 years since I used drugs or alcohol and my life has improved immeasurably. I have a job, a house, a cat, good friendships and, generally, a bright outlook… The price of this is constant vigilance because the disease of addiction is not rational. Russell Brand

Every worthy act is difficult. Ascent is always difficult. Descent is easy and often slippery. Mahatma Gandhi

Sometimes we motivate ourselves by thinking of what we want to become. Sometimes we motivate ourselves by thinking about who we don’t ever want to be again. Shane Niemeyer

Recovery didn’t open the gates of heaven and let me in. Recovery opened the gates of hell and let me out! Anonymous

Changes – actively choosing a different way of living

Of all the recorded sayings of Jesus, none seems to be more relevant to the problem of addiction than the question he asked of a paralyzed man. “Do you really want to get well?” At first reading, it seems a little crazy – I mean who doesn’t want to get well? But on reflection it makes a lot of sense, especially when the words were spoken to someone who had been ill for a long time and who had become so used to the life and ways that this had necessitated. The account by St John says that the man had been an invalid for 38 years; doubtless he still talked about getting well, but he probably no longer really expected it and was comfortably stuck in a mindset that fitted his circumstances. Jesus recognised that the man was going to have to let go of things he was used to and familiar with in order to embrace the new direction his life was going to take. Things were going to be turned upside down by getting well – did he really want that?

The man wasn’t unusual, nor are people with addictions, because we all have this tendency to prefer to stick with our unhealthy, unhelpful mindset and behaviours, even when we can see that they’re not good for us. The unknown is scary and we don’t want to let go of the securities, the comforts, the safety of our current situation and behaviours, even the destructive ones. These may be our addictions, resentments, selfish habits, blaming, self-pity and misery, entrenched behaviours and ways of being – things that appear to bring us some sort of comfort or pay-off, whereas changing or stopping them poses a threat. We may not even be aware that these things exist in our lives, or they may appear to be our best friends or just harmless security blankets. Do we really want to let go of them? Change doesn’t come easy and we have to be up for it. As the old joke goes, “How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?” “One, but the light bulb has to really want to change”.

Since it is all about our thinking and our behaviours which keep us trapped and because telling other people that they don’t want to change is so open to abuse, we are really best placed to regularly ask this question of ourselves, generally with the help of a trusted other who can sensitively pose the question. And the question Jesus seems to be asking the man, which we need to ask ourselves when we have a problem, is how desperate is he to embrace change and do things differently? Is he willing to give up everything he knows from his 38 years of living with his illness and learn everything anew? To lose what control he believes he has and opt instead for an unknown future? Will he take the leap of faith? Because like a parachute jump, once you’re out of the plane, there is no going back!

I know that there have been occasions and situations in my life when I haven’t wanted to change or move on. I have held onto activities, behaviours and resentments which prevent progress or healing. Like charms on a bracelet, these resentments and mind-sets seem friendly and alluring, but if we could see them for what they are, we’d see instead a set of handcuffs shackling us to a static, unsatisfying, possibly even self-destructive life. Instead of eating a beautiful crisp apple, we are swallowing a mouthful of ash, all the while trying to convince ourselves that it really does have a very strong apple flavour. But the process of change is hard; sometimes the best we can do is to say that we want to want to change.

For addicts in recovery, none of this is very earth shattering. They know it because they’ve been there. “Do you really want to recover?” Yes and no. And it’s true for us all. Fortunately, the hound of heaven doesn’t give up and the persistent footsteps are never far away. It may be desperation, a breaking point, rock bottom, reaching the end of our rope or it could just be a recognition that what we are doing isn’t really working anymore. Like walkers who’ve lost our way we may have to retrace our steps to find the old path, but more often than not we discover that we are embarking on a new pathway, where we take the next tentative steps on our pilgrim journey. In the parables of Jesus, the Kingdom of Heaven is often likened to a banquet, a wedding or a party. The choice is simple – are we going to stick to the ordinary, mundane ways in which we feel safely in control or do we choose instead to go to the celebration that we don’t yet fully understand.

On the precipice of any great change, we can see with terrifying clarity the familiar firm footing we stand to lose, but we fill the abyss of the unfamiliar before us with dread at the potential loss rather than jubilation over the potential gain of gladnesses and gratifications we fail to envision because we haven’t yet experienced them. Maria Popova

(Turn and face the strange) Ch-ch-Changes, Just gonna have to be a different man; Time may change me, But I can’t trace time. David Bowie

In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety. Abraham Maslow

I put a pound in a change machine. Nothing changed. Anonymous.

Spirit-led people never stop growing and changing and recognizing the new moment of opportunity. How strange to think that so much of religion became a worship of the status quo, until you remember that the one thing the ego hates and fears more than anything else is change. Richard Rohr

I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better. Georg C. Lichtenberg

On Gratitude Street – with grateful thanks

A couple of weeks ago I overheard a young woman I know talking to herself. She was saying how very fortunate she was to have friends who cared for her and expressing gratitude for the many good things in her life. Knowing a little about her situation I am aware that she has had a very troubled life. A professional woman, she fled her own country a few years ago, with her son and young daughter following persecution, violence and torture, arriving in the UK with nothing but the clothes they wore. Life here hasn’t been easy, and the road ahead is very uncertain, yet she was still able to reflect on her current situation with thankfulness and gratitude. I found it very humbling.

Gratitude is about an acceptance of things as they are and being thankful for what we have. It sees life and all we have as a gift. This is in stark contrast with a mindset that is not content and which always wants things in our life to change. This often includes those around us changing too. Living in a consumer society doesn’t help, since this cultivates discontentment; the idea that what we have now isn’t sufficient and that if we had a better, newer, smarter something or other, we would be happier and more fulfilled. And of course, we could then be grateful. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like this. Neither new stuff nor anything else we do such as drinking or drugging to make us feel better or happier can do so more than fleetingly, so we’re never really content, grateful and happy for what we’ve got. Resentments and self-pity can become even greater obstacles. It becomes all too easy to live our lives without ever really reaching a place of gratitude.

Of course, it can be hard to be grateful amidst the humdrum stuff of life, and even harder when difficult, painful things happen to us and to others. Sometimes, with the passage of time we may be able look back and see blessings that arose as a consequence of bad times and be grateful, because mostly we learn through our failure and suffering, not through success. Sometimes though, pain and struggle do not have an obvious purpose or meaning. Gratitude is not about living on a pink cloud or cultivating a false and dishonest positivity. Instead it means realising the power we have to reframe how we see a problem or difficulty and turning it into something more positive for which we can be grateful. Or we can look back or forward to some other things for which we can be grateful. In the midst of the bad stuff, our lives have still been blessed. It is hard for others to show us this or tell us – we have to be open to discovering it for ourselves. Like the young woman I overheard, we can actively decide to be grateful whenever we can; grateful for the glimmers of light, the small joys, blessings and fulfilments that we continue to experience along the way. God is at work around and through us to make something beautiful from the mundane and the messy bits of life – and just believing that, is something for which we can be grateful.

When Jesus healed a group of ten lepers only one of them returned to thank him – a reminder to us that if we seek the gratitude of others for things we do, we’d better get used to working with small percentages! Jesus talked a great deal about God’s loving care, knowing what we need and providing for us. About our relationship with him being as a father who only gives us good things. He sought to encourage a loving, trusting, grateful relationship with God. Giving thanks in all things. And this gratitude is not for the benefit of all those around us; it’s a quiet inner thanksgiving to God for what we receive. It’s a relational thing and a mind-set which always has us openly facing towards God, not turning away.

Gratitude is an important part of recovery too, replacing self-pity and blame which help to sustain addiction. There is gratitude for another chance of life, trusting that all will be well in the end. Seeing good in people and circumstances, concentrating on these rather than the negatives and accepting things as gifts. Gratitude is all about having the right mind-set which helps us to think less about ourselves, develops humility and gives us a much more positive perspective on life. Seeing our glass as half full not half empty. As a narrative on step ten says, “we seek to have an honest regret for harms we have done, a genuine gratitude for blessings we have received and a willingness to try for better things tomorrow.”

Today on the first day of a New Year, as I look out of the window from where I am sitting, sipping a mug of tea, I can see the sun shining brightly in a pale blue winter sky. From the warmth of my home, I watch Geoffrey, the neighbour’s cat walk briskly down the street with an unusual sense of purpose. A child is laughing and the occasional bird flies past the window heading for a roof or treetop perch. This very ordinary scene becomes truly extra-ordinary when I stop and think about what it entails and suddenly I am full of gratitude. I have sight, hearing, warmth and security, but would I have been thankful for these simple, taken-for-granted things if I weren’t writing this piece about gratitude? I doubt it.

It’s been said that gratitude is a decision of the will, and if it’s a decision of the will, the choice to be grateful or not rests firmly and squarely with each of us. So, although New Year’s resolutions are not really my thing, I’m going to break with this and pledge to practice gratitude every day in 2019. Gratitude for the small and simple things of life, gratitude for the many wonderful people I know, gratitude for the pleasures of living, gratitude about my circumstances – even when they’re not great and I can’t see how things are going to work out. And of course, gratitude for God’s love. If I stick to doing this, I hope that there will be more joy, beauty and happiness in my life and perhaps the world around me may be that little bit better too.

Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world. John Milton

I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness – it’s right in front of me if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude. Brene Brown

To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything He has given us – and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him. Thomas Merton

It is through gratitude for the present moment that the spiritual dimension of life opens up. Eckhart Toll

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. John F. Kennedy

Gratitude-Word-Cloud