In these lifelines we’re often holding on to the wisdom of others: artists and activists, poets and songwriters, thinkers and dreamers. Some of them can reach out and touch faith, others feel like they never grasped it. This is less of a ‘how to’ book than a ‘try this’ book. It’s more about clues and pointers than terms and conditions. It’s about how we might try to live well in this beautiful but baffling world.
Please don’t feel you need to start at the beginning and plough through to the end. It’s more of a dip-in-and-out thing. But if each spread stands alone, we hope that it’s more than the sum of its parts. Less of an instruction manual, more of a sketch book. These are not the kind of lifelines that you might throw to someone who’s fallen overboard, they’re more lines about life that might help navigate the choppy seas.
In case you’re counting, we’ve come up with 99 lines. Maybe you’re thinking that’s because, in Islam, there’s a tradition that there are 99 names of Allah. Actually, it’s probably that 99 is a number that seems reassuringly incomplete. Unfinished. There’s always room for more.
There’s another tradition, that Persian rug-makers and Amish quilt-stitchers put a deliberate mistake into their creations out of humility, because only God is capable of perfection. We may have done this too, but most of our errors are less deliberate.
We’re following Leonard Cohen’s advice to give up on the ‘perfect offering’ because ‘there’s a crack in everything.’ Hopefully, as he added, ‘That’s how the light gets in.’2
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You Don’t Have To Choose Between Religion and Spirituality
Religion has an image problem. This might have something to do with its patriarchy. Or its homophobia. Or its elitism. It could be about being sectarian and exclusive – allied to an inability to update its theological software, which, on its worst days, leads to schism and violence. Religion has been responsible for most of the wars in history, claim its critics, but for all that, it’s pretty resilient. As the American TV presenter Jon Stewart says: ‘It’s given people hope in a world torn apart by religion.’1
Is it religion’s style that’s the problem? Or its content? Or that general enduring sense of impenetrability? Whatever it is, for many people religion no longer ticks their boxes.
Spirituality, on the other hand, does.
Spirituality does not have the same image problem. Unlike religion, spirituality is soft, not hard. Fluid not fixed. It’s about personal development and individual choice. If religion seems to be about guilt, duty and obligation, spirituality feels like its about growth and maturity. You have to fit into a religion but spirituality can be customised – it will fit in with you.
No wonder, as the comedian Lenny Bruce said, ‘Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.’2
But maybe religion doesn’t deserve such a bad rap. On its good days, religion stands up against power, and violence, and sides with the weak against the strong. It feeds the hungry, and teaches people to read and write. It inspires social movements that transform history for good. On its best days, religion produces the likes of Francis of Assisi, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King and Marilynne Robinson.
It inspires heartbreaking music, powerful images, extraordinary buildings and wonderful stories. Its rites and rituals remind us of who we are and where we’ve come from.
It provides a home and a community when we find life bleak and lonely.
And yet... the critics have a point.
The unpredictable flame of spirituality is often doused by the controlling hand of institutional religion.
And religion is only meaningful if it’s informed by genuine spirituality. If it provides a home for authentic experience. If it opens a window into ‘the other’.
True religion will always make room for a spirituality that will develop us, individually and collectively. A way to find ourselves. The American scholar Barbara Brown Taylor puts her finger on it: ‘Religion is the deep well that connects me to the wisdom of the ages. Spirituality is the daily experience of hauling up living water and carrying it into a dry world.’3
As someone once said: ‘Sitting in church on Sunday doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.’4
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Greet the day
Morning has broken Like the first morning, Blackbird has spoken Like the first bird. Praise for the singing, Praise for the morning, Praise for them springing fresh from the Word.
Sweet the rain’s new fall, Sunlit from heaven, Like the first dewfall on the first grass Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden Sprung in completeness where his feet pass
Mine is the sunlight, Mine is the morning, Born of the one light Eden saw play; Praise with elation, Praise every morning, God’s recreation Of the new day.12
How many mornings will we get?
No one can tell.
The accident of birthplace has a say on the number of our days. But, roughly speaking, we might find the sun rising and peaking through our curtains about 26,000 times. We might lay down to rest 26,000 more.
At the end of it all, most of those days we will never remember. And a few we will never forget.
Nearly a century ago, the poet and children’s author Eleanor Farjeon wrote the words to a hymn which beautifully captured a sense of gratitude for a new day. She imagined the first morning in Eden, with Adam and Eve taking in the birdsong, the dew on the grass, the breaking light. Much later the hymn became a hit for Cat Stevens, who continued to perform it under his new name, Yusuf Islam, after he converted to Islam.
Whether we give God a name or whether we don’t, giving thanks is a good way to start the day.
What might happen on any given day? No one can tell. Every day is something of a surprise. All we can know for sure, as each new morning breaks, is that she is here again. She is ours.
‘Give thanks for her,’ says the cartoonist Michael Leunig, ‘as you make your way.’3
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LIVE THE QUESTIONS
BE PATIENT TOWARD ALL THAT IS UNSOLVED IN YOUR HEART AND TRY TO LOVE THE QUESTIONS THEMSELVES, LIKE LOCKED ROOMS AND LIKE BOOKS THAT ARE NOW WRITTEN IN A VERY FOREIGN TONGUE. DO NOT NOW SEEK THE ANSWERS, WHICH CANNOT BE GIVEN YOU BECAUSE YOU WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO LIVE THEM. AND THE POINT IS, TO LIVE EVERYTHING. LIVE THE QUESTIONS NOW. PERHAPS YOU WILL THEN GRADUALLY, WITHOUT NOTICING IT, LIVE ALONG SOME DISTANT DAY INTO THE ANSWER.1
RAINER MARIA RILKE
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