The Living Spirit

A beautiful letter in this week's edition of The Friend, by Arthur Wright:

Jesus did not write anything down, nor did he ask his followers to record his teaching. He has never left us and his living voice guides and counsels us still. If we live in prayer we remain in safe communion with him. God is spirit and God’s ways are spiritual and cannot be grasped by human wisdom alone. They can only be discerned by spiritual eyes. The greatest miracle is to be born in the spirit and experience true peace.

We are moved quite naturally and joyfully to give our lives in loving service to a deeply wounded world. The fundamental law of our being is to attend inwardly to the living voice of our creator, to be taught by that voice and to obey it. The unique mission of Christians is to recognise the divine in everyone, friends and enemies, tyrants and saints, and to love them all into glorious life.

The whole human family is embraced by Christ, each one of us in our brokenness. There are no outsiders. Our message is justice and peace and the love that cannot enforce any claim. The way that Jesus shows us is one in which more love and peace, more goodness and mercy and more joy and happiness are possible. He teaches us to prefer the truth to self‑advantage, serving to ruling, reconciliation to victory.

Our hope is not a mocking dream. The truth of things is somehow finer, richer and more wonderful than anything we could imagine, a universal way of love that Jesus proclaims. He appears mysteriously to those who love him and fills our humdrum lives with all the light of morning. Such experiences banish doubt and demand no explanation.

Where is the Love

Saw this great short film at the QPSW conference at Swanwick this year. It's made by a group of school kids questioning the Arms Fair that took place close by their school.

'You must change your life'

Some sobering reflections on 'the twilightof the industrial age' from John Michael Greer's blog, The Archdruid Report (he really is an Archdruid too):

It’s one thing, after all, to treat the twilight of the industrial age as an abstract possibility, or a dumping ground for Utopian or apocalyptic fantasies, as so often happens these days. It’s quite another to grapple with it as a reality that can be expected to shape the rest of our lives. Those who make the subtle transition from one to the other tolerably often find themselves confronted with some form of the same message the German poet Rainier Maria Rilke received from the statue of Apollo: Du musst dein Leben aendern, “you must change your life.”

First, it’s crucial to remember that our predicament is anything but unique. The fantasy that today’s industrial societies are destiny’s darlings, and therefore exempt from the common fate of civilizations, needs to be set aside; so does the equally misleading fantasy that today’s industrial societies is the worst of all possible worlds and are getting the cataclysmic fate they deserve.

The societies of the industrial world are human cultures, no better or worse than most; for a variety of reasons, they happened to stumble onto the reserves of stored carbon hidden in the Earth, and used most of them in three centuries of reckless exploitation; now, having overshot their resource base like so many other societies, they're following the familiar trajectory of decline and fall. Letting go of the delusion of our own uniqueness enables us to learn from the past, and also makes it easier to set aside some of the unproductive cultural narratives that hamstring so many attempts to respond to our predicament.

Second, one of the lessons the past offers is that the fall of civilizations is a slow, uneven process. None of us are going to wake up one morning a few weeks, or months, or years from now and find ourselves living in the Dark Ages, much less the Stone Age. Thus trying to leap in a single bound to some imagined future is unlikely to work very well; rather, the most effective strategy will be a matter of muddling through, trying to deal with each stage of the descent as it comes into sight, and being prepared to make plenty of midcourse corrections. Flexibility will be more useful than ideology, and making do will be an essential survival skill.

Third, another of the lessons offered by the past is that the long road down is not going to be easy. Like every human society in every age, the future ahead of us will have opportunities for happiness and achievement, of course, and there will doubtless be significant gains to set in the balance against the inevitable losses, especially for those who long for simpler lives at a slower pace. Still, the losses will be terrible; it’s crucial not to sugar-coat them, despite the very real temptation to do so, or to ignore the immense human tragedy that is an inevitable part of the slow death of any civilization.

Fourth, the harsh dimensions of the future can be mitigated, and the positive aspects fostered, by preparations and actions that are well within the reach of individuals, families, and communities. Not all declines and falls are created equal; in many failed civilizations of the past, a relatively small number of people willing to commit themselves to constructive action have made a huge difference in the outcome, and not only in the short term. The same option is wide open today; the one question is whether there will be those willing to take up the challenge.

Fifth, we can only guess at many of the details of the future ahead of us. Drawing up detailed plans for the future may be a source of comfort in the face of a relentlessly unpredictable future, but that same unpredictability makes any plan, no matter how clever or popular, a dubious source of guidance at best. Nor is consensus a useful guide; one further lesson of history is that in every age, the consensus view of the future is consistently wrong. Instead, the deliberate cultivation of diverse and even conflicting approaches by groups and individuals maximizes the likelihood that the broadest possible toolkit will reach the waiting hands of the future.

Read the full article here.

Community Food Growing

Transition Heeley/Meersbrook is organising a free workshop on community food growing
on Thursday 23rd April, 7pm, at The Grapevine Centre, Northcote Rd, Heeley, with guest speaker Kirstin Glendinning from the Soil Association.

Find out how we could set up a local community supported agriculture scheme for:
- Cheap, fresh, healthy local food
- Hands-on practice in food growing
- Community-owned land for days out, camping and social events.

This is an opportunity for anyone who is interested in food growing to explore how communities can work together to build local food securityand resilience. Everyone is welcome (not just Heeley/Meersbrook residents).

For more information and resources on community supported agriculture see www.soilassociation.org/csa

A story

It was a time of great turmoil in the world. There was war and rumour of war, and famine, pestilence and catastrophe stalked many lands. Many people sought to escape hardship and persecution, and travel to lands where providence had been kinder. And so it was that three hundred people found themselves on the border of a country far from their abandoned homes; and they encamped there and waited to see what fate might befall them.
And one day two luxury coaches pulled up at the camp and stewards in smart uniforms came out and announced that there were places in the new country for one hundred people. So the first one hundred people were taken to a great country house, where they were greeted at the entrance by the owner of the house, with all his staff arranged on the steps below him: “Welcome to my home; as you can see, there is plenty of room for you all, and my staff here will see to your every need. All I ask of you is that you must obey the rules of the house.” And at this point the owner held aloft a small booklet. “I am sure you will be very happy here.” And so it was that the first hundred found themselves in their new land.
Then later, at the border camp, two government officials arrived, with clipboards and notes and announced that places had been found for one hundred people, so long as they could afford the train fare and accommodation. So the officials vetted and selected one hundred people and told them how to get train tickets and where their destination was. The one hundred people eventually found themselves at a large hotel, where they were invited to the main reception room and greeted by the hotel manager: “Welcome to our hotel; as you can see there are plenty of rooms for you all, and you can purchase all the goods and services you might need right here in the hotel. All we ask of you is that you pay for your room and services promptly.” And at this point the hotel manger held aloft a large card titled 'Current Tariff'. “But you must also make sure you do not disturb the other guests, or be a nuisance to them, and then I am sure you will be happy here.” And so it was that the second hundred found themselves in their new land.
Back at the border camp, there then arrived a number of people in a motley collection of cars and minibuses, and one of them announced that they would take all the rest to their new home. They arrived at the central square of a large town, where they were greeted by the town mayor, who was with a large number of the townspeople: “Welcome to our town. We have some land where we will help you build your own homes. In the meantime enough rooms shave been offered to keep you all comfortable. We look forward to learning about you, and to your contribution to our town.” And then a child from among the last hundred smiled and shouted: “Yes! lets build our new home together with you.” And so it was that the last hundred found themselves in their new land.
Elaborated from ideas of Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi, in his book “The Home We Build Together - Recreating Society”.

Matters of interest?

Friends may find the following site of interest
http://www.pendlehill.org/resources/free_downloads.php
I say this having recently discovered it and reading some of the material.
Peter

The Big Bangers

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) coined the term Big Bang as a descriptive tag for the theory of the origin of the universe first proposed by Georges Lemaître (1894–1966). Hoyle did not intend this term to be pejorative, merely as a means of outlining the difference between Lemaître’s theory and his own, the Steady State hypothesis, which held that even as distant galaxies were observed to be rushing away from each other, matter was being steadily created in the space between them.

It occurred to me that the same sort of difference exists between views, not necessarily of the end of the universe, but of how the Kingdom of Heaven may arrive. Some people believe that at a point in time (to be announced) Signs and Portents will start to happen (or have already started to happen) which presage the beginning of the end of the sinful, secular, Satan-led phase of humanity’s existence on Earth, as was foretold in the scriptures, especially in the Book of Revelations. Opinions vary at this point. According to some believers, God will raise the Faithful (‘Us’) up to Heaven – the ‘Rapture’ – while the Earth is purged of sin and sinners (‘Them’), making it fit for Him to establish His rule on Earth.

Personally, I think that the mistake here is to conflate the life of the spirit with some sort of cosmic political event. What worries me is that the End-of-the-Worlders seem to welcome the prospect of the end of all things, beginning with the Battle of Armageddon, and ending (they hope and believe) with the Truly Faithful receiving their just reward. They seem to be saying, “Bring it on.” For this reason, they may not be very concerned with the need to conserve the planet as a sustainable home for future generations, but may even be happy to let it all burn.

I have begun to believe that the second coming of Christ, or the arrival of the Kingdom of God, or however it is best to name it, may not be a simultaneous, world-wide event at all, but may happen here and now in one person, there and at a different time in another – a steady state, a gradual advance of the awareness of the spirit. I see myself as a Steady Stater, rather than a Big Banger.

I was delighted to find, in her introduction to ‘Islam – a short history,’ Karen Armstrong outlining this: “In the gospels, Jesus often went out of his way to explain to his followers that his Kingdom was not of this world, but could only be found within the believer. The Kingdom would not arrive with a great political fanfare, but would develop as quietly and imperceptibly as a germinating mustard-seed.”