UKSpirituality Blog http://www.ukspirituality.org/blog Articles and musings about spirituality, wellness and a holistic outlook on living in the United Kingdom in the 21st century. en apakula@gmail.com apakula@gmail.com Sat, 24 Apr 2010 06:15:39 +0000 Sat, 24 Apr 2010 06:15:39 +0000 15 AVBlog UKSpirituality Blog http://ukspirituality.org//blog/skins/uk_spirituality/images/logo.gif http://www.ukspirituality.org/blog Articles and musings about spirituality, wellness and a holistic outlook on living in the United Kingdom in the 21st century. <![CDATA[A surprising source of redemption in one of the year's most powerful films ]]> http://ukspirituality.org/blog/permalinks/2010/04/24/city-of-life-and-death I've recently been able to catch some movies and have been particularly lucky that it's been at a time when some of the finest films of the year are on release - Kick Ass, with it's explosive c-word scene an instant classic, I am Love, an art-house meditation on the brutal authenticity of love, and City of Life and Death, on the pitilessness of war and specifically the 1937 "Rape of Nanking".

With our own focus on the Holocaust, Chinese suffering in the 1930s and 40s tends to be overlooked, yet between 10-20 million lost their lives. Before the war in the West had even begun (and long before Pearl Harbor) the Japanese had invaded China and sacked the then-capital Nanking.

The atrocities committed presaged those to come, as graphically portrayed in the film, the most convincing depiction of World War Two war crime since the Russian Come and See and certainly superior to Schindler's List, not least because for most of the characters there is no happy ending. It is also a far more complex film, making an attempt to understand this dreadful "phenomenon" from both sides and even daring to empathise to a limited extent with the perpetrators. We criticse China's freedoms, but I cannot imagine a Western film as even-handed - Letters from Iwo Jima perhaps, but the context was very different.

A further example of how it challenges our preconceptions is the portrayal of the leading "hero", Nazi official, John Rabe, German consul in Nanking. Rabe represents the refugees in the so-called Zone of Safety and does all he can, alongside American missionary Minnie Vautrin, to protect the terrified civilians. Unlike Oscar Schindler, it appears Rabe was a convinced Nazi, although for his activities he ended up being questioned by the Gestapo on his return to Germany and lived in poverty after the war, supported by a grateful Chinese government. Traumatised by what she witnessed, Vautrin committed suicide at home in Illinois in 1940.

What comes out of the film quite strongly is how brutally in the wrong circumstances - inevitably unlimited power -  human beings can behave to each other. It is telling that Rabe, apparently at the time a true believer in the Nazi's twisted interpretation of Nietzsche's ideas about power should, when faced by its consequences, become the champion of the weak. It is perhaps one of the few sources of redemption in this outstanding, unflinching film.

I also saw Roman Polanski's highly-rated The Ghost but thought it was crap.]]> Sat, 24 Apr 2010 06:15:39 +0000 <![CDATA[THE MEANING AND UNMEANING OF AUGUST 1980]]> http://ukspirituality.org/blog/permalinks/2010/01/29/THE-MEANING-AND-UNMEANING- Bologna railway station bombing in 1980 and was struck by how very many people in their early twenties had died.

I imagined them crowding the waiting room, where the bomb was planted. There would have been backpacks, books. Boyfriends, girlfriends, friends all heading somewhere – the future still ill-defined but full of possibility…

I thought of all the love that had been poured into them by their parents. The quiet, unconditional love and hope and faith over 20, 21, 22, 23 years they would never begin to understand, or not until they too became parents…

All of that ended by their killers, youngsters themselves, decoupled from humanity by nothing more than an idea – in this case a fascist pipe dream – and controlled, it is said, by people who remain at large today, or at least were never apprehended.

A parents’ love, I thought, must be the apogee of humanity, indeed of all animal life (because animals can certainly love). Forget Romeo and Juliet – this must be closest to actual holiness, albeit largely unremarked upon because it is so damn commonplace, taken for granted. How many parents would sacrifice their lives for their children, as Jesus is said to for us?

The killers’ act of destruction was the opposite of love, the opposite of holy. And if love, even in its mildest form, empathy, is absent, then what’s left? Nothing. A void. But one should not flatter them with nihilism – they had their meaning right enough, even if they misunderstood it as they admired their vainglorious reflections in the looking glass.

They sold their souls for the sense that they were somehow superior to their victims – above the ordinary, humble holiness they embodied – when in fact their act made them infinitely, infinitely less so.

And that, I thought, turning away to see Lea coming toward me across Maggiore, was all you needed to know.]]> Fri, 29 Jan 2010 08:51:34 +0000 <![CDATA[Bravery]]> http://ukspirituality.org/blog/permalinks/2009/11/13/Bravery footage of the latest pro-democracy demonstrations in Iran, I meditated on the nature of bravery.

Despite the shootings, show trials, the two hundred who remain behind bars, the beatings, rapes, “ring leaders” sentenced to death, some brave souls continue to demonstrate.
The footage shown on the BBC was smuggled out – there’s a media blackout now – although in the butterfly-minded West, interest has largely waned.

Dictators learn the lessons of history too – time and greed forgive all post-Tiananmen – and curiously the very wealth of information today serves to drown out clarity and concern: there is always another cause, another point of view, it seems, to distract us.

And don’t forget evil too can be modern: Italian fascism gave birth to its own art form, futurism. Joseph Goebbels was the first proper spin doctor, combining the insights of Machiavelli with the dawn of the mass media:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
And it is precisely this principal Iran’s Islamist government practices today on the streets of Tehran. Truth must be suppressed, whatever the cost.

So evil can be, often is, cutting-edge. Yet modernity itself is something of an illusion.

As John Gray remarks: Human knowledge grows, but the human animal stays much the same.

This is the problem with Jacobinism, Fascism, Bolshevism, Maoism, Neo-Conservatism, Islamism – all Utopian creeds that seek to impose heaven here on earth.

When Man assumes the role of God, he builds little more than a pile of corpses to the sky.

Yet despite all the odds, the protestors in Iran persevere.

Now, as a former journalist and some-time spin doctor myself, I suppose you could say I’m a pretty cynical person, although I prefer to call it “realistic”. So realistic in fact I have got in to trouble at more than one dinner party for suggesting those pro-democracy protestors in Tiananmen were not only pro-democracy but as largely middle class students the very people who would benefit from an end to (the then) communist regime.

And self-interest I suppose could also be said to figure in the motivations of Iran’s Green Movement. But what struck me about the latest protests in Iran was that they now had next to no hope of success. The Tiananmen protestors believed they were riding a wave of reform and when the crack-down came it was unexpected. The one’s in Tehran can be under no such illusion – the regime is firmly in place.

All the protestors can hope for at present is that they are not injured, imprisoned, raped or murdered. The West will not come to their rescue.

So to still protest is true bravery in my book, a kind of compulsion to act in truth despite the likely consequences.

Truth – an eternal value that transcends human frailty. It is not negotiable, self-interested, a matter of opinion: argument avoids the firing squad.

To risk all for the truth is something like an act of faith.

Which is precisely what the men who claim to speak for God are so afraid of.]]> Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:20:19 +0000 <![CDATA[A Revenger's Tragedy]]> http://ukspirituality.org/blog/permalinks/2009/10/31/A-Revengers-Tragedy On my journey to work I read some Schopenhauer to assuage my feelings of revenge. Arthur, who himself was conned out of a considerable income, writes:

When he suffers an injustice the natural man burns with a thirst for revenge, and it has often been said that revenge is sweet.

Ah, yes, I can certainly relate to that, having been conned out of my pension pot by an unscrupulous property company.


No suffering laid upon us by chance or nature or fate is so painful as that inflicted by a will of another, Arthur continues. This is so because we recognize nature and chance as the natural primal masters of the world and we can see what nature and chance do to us they would have done to anyone else… Suffering caused by the will of another, on the other hand, includes a quite peculiar and bitter addition to the pain or injury itself, namely the consciousness of someone else’s superiority, whether in a point of strength or of cunning, together with that of one’s own impotence.

Spot on Arthur, and you can see where Nietzsche derived his ideas about power, along with much else for that matter.

Revenge boils in me, revenge broils in me. The human dimension that Arthur identifies is key – one cannot feel a burning sense of injustice from a lightening strike. Only Man can be unjust. This is why Islam’s emphasis on justice is so powerful.

Elsewhere in his Essays and Aphorisms, Arthur wryly observes that if you try to define justice, you won’t get very far:

For the concept of justice is, like that of freedom, a negative concept: its content is pure negation. The concept of injustice is the positive one… It follows that the necessity for the state ultimately depends on the acknowledged injustice of the human race…

Islam recognizes this through God’s law – Sharia – implicitly acknowledging that only God can truly arbitrate justice. This is presumably why Islam encompasses both the divine and the human realm, in contrast to Christianity, which has traditionally separated the two.

The main problem with the Islamic concept is of course God’s law is mediated through Man who, according to Arthur, is inherently unjust.

I can get where it is coming from, however. Love and forgiveness are difficult to swallow when your life savings – and your future security – have been cynically stolen.

I plot and plan. Mostly I just want to hurt the perpetrators as much as they have hurt me.

But then an image of a stage comes to mind. More than twenty years ago, bathed blood red. Its the Jacobean Revenger’s Tragedy in which almost the entire cast end up butchered, including that of the initial avenger.

An eye for an eye, Mahatma Ghandi famously remarked, leaves the whole world blind.

Arthur too saw this danger, remarking:

As every fulfilled desire reveals itself more or less as a delusion, so does that for revenge.

Arthur’s advice for life, broadly-speaking, was to adopt a kind of Buddhist detachment from the impulses that drive us and are, as he saw it, at the root of our unhappiness.

But that didn’t prevent him from being a largely successful litigant. So I will accept the inherent injustice of Man, I decide, and the ultimate emptiness of revenge, and sue.

]]> Sat, 31 Oct 2009 10:45:30 +0000 <![CDATA[Truths and Trials]]> http://ukspirituality.org/blog/permalinks/2009/10/06/Truths-and-Trials
Persecution can define religions – the Christian church was shaped on the anvil of martyrdom, Judaism and Islam developed their unique characteristics simply to survive. Unitarianism even embodies its spirit of dissent in its name – an original rejection of the Holy Trinity.


Persecution can define countries and causes – intrinsic to Britain’s understanding of itself is the Summer of 1940 when it beat back the Nazis. Socialists still speak of the Tolpuddle Marchers, Irish Republicans Bloody Sunday.

Even today, in England, some individuals almost consciously seem to seek out persecution – the registrars who refuse to marry Gays, the niqab-clad school teachers.

Persecution can put our faith to the test. It can even, dare I say it, make us feel special. I remember as an awkward, oddball teenager being told by a girlfriend: the reason they don’t like you is because you’re different, and different is good – it means you are better than them.

It certainly lifted my spirits.

So persecution can cut both ways. It can seek us out, or we can seek it out.

What spirituality means to me is truth and I don’t mean – this piece of dogma over that, or the “true” story of creation. What I mean is what speaks to my soul, be it a work of art, a beautiful (or bleak) day, a moment of intimacy, or an insight that strips away all pretence.

So I seek to live in truth as best I can. To me, truth is an expression of holiness, a holiness some might call God.

It is also a useful way of cutting through the crap. What is a true persecution? Are we being faithful to a greater cause, or just striking a pose?

Christians still face genuine persecution in countries like India and Pakistan. Attacks on British Jews are at an all-time high, while in the Middle East, Bahais, who in many ways resemble a kind of Islam-influenced Unitarians, are regularly victimised. I was actually inspired to post by news that a date has now been set for October 18 for the “trial” of seven Bahais in Iran for the capital offences of “corrupting the earth” and “espionage for Israel”.

What can we do? What can you do? Not a great deal, it is true – there sometimes seems to be so much suffering in the world.

But as small as each of us is, in smallness we can do what we can – as individuals remember, pray even for these seven on the 18th.

As communities – reach out to local Bahais and join our small voice to theirs.

In their uninvited persecution is our fellowship – in their truth is our truth.

And truth is holy.
]]> Tue, 06 Oct 2009 05:49:38 +0000 <![CDATA[Practice Being Human]]> http://ukspirituality.org/blog/permalinks/2009/08/31/Practice-Being-Human
Hafiz, the 14th century Persian sufi mystic and poet, defines more ‘human’, saying ‘More kind to every creature and plant that you know.’

Inhuman means cruel or unfeeling. Human is kindness and care. We could end all talk of religion right there and not miss too terrible much. Be human. Be kind. Love your neighbour.

But I would go a bit further.
It has been said that ‘Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.’ Although some may differ, I think we can assume this statement takes in modern woman too.

Hafiz, the 14th century Persian sufi mystic and poet, defines more ‘human’, saying ‘More kind to every creature and plant that you know.’

Inhuman means cruel or unfeeling. Human is kindness and care. We could end all talk of religion right there and not miss too terrible much. Be human. Be kind. Love your neighbour.

But I would go a bit further.

Being fully human, in the most positive sense, is about our relationships with other people and indeed, all other beings. It is also about our dreams and aspirations.

To be a living, breathing, fully human being is also about wanting something more for this world and for its other inhabitants. It goes beyond acting with kindness ourselves to the dream of a world where kindness is universal.

The fully human being is, in some ways, eternally unsatisfied. While she may become sufficiently enlightened and free of ego to be satisfied with her own life, she continues to strive in the interest of others.

Robert Zend was a Hungarian writer who moved to Canada after the Soviet Invasion in 1956. He was a wonderful phrase-maker and his writing perhaps reflects a pessimism born of repression. Zend asserts ‘There are too many people, and too few human beings.’
There are too many people who live without a sense of connection and a sense of care for others. There are too many people who live without a passion for this world to be a better place – more loving, more just, and more peaceful.

The great 20th century Unitarian Theologian James Luther Adams contributed to an understanding of the purpose and meaning of religious participation freed of dogmatic constraints. Adams put it simply: "Church is a place where you get to practice what it means to be human."

May we, together, create such places – where each of us may grow toward the fully human with the whole of the world the better for it.

May it be so]]> Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:54:21 +0000 <![CDATA[Practice Being Human]]> http://ukspirituality.org/blog/permalinks/2009/08/31/Practice-Being-Human
Hafiz, the 14th century Persian sufi mystic and poet, defines more ‘human’, saying ‘More kind to every creature and plant that you know.’

Inhuman means cruel or unfeeling. Human is kindness and care. We could end all talk of religion right there and not miss too terrible much. Be human. Be kind. Love your neighbour.

But I would go a bit further.
It has been said that ‘Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.’ Although some may differ, I think we can assume this statement takes in modern woman too.

Hafiz, the 14th century Persian sufi mystic and poet, defines more ‘human’, saying ‘More kind to every creature and plant that you know.’

Inhuman means cruel or unfeeling. Human is kindness and care. We could end all talk of religion right there and not miss too terrible much. Be human. Be kind. Love your neighbour.

But I would go a bit further.

Being fully human, in the most positive sense, is about our relationships with other people and indeed, all other beings. It is also about our dreams and aspirations.

To be a living, breathing, fully human being is also about wanting something more for this world and for its other inhabitants. It goes beyond acting with kindness ourselves to the dream of a world where kindness is universal.

The fully human being is, in some ways, eternally unsatisfied. While she may become sufficiently enlightened and free of ego to be satisfied with her own life, she continues to strive in the interest of others.

Robert Zend was a Hungarian writer who moved to Canada after the Soviet Invasion in 1956. He was a wonderful phrase-maker and his writing perhaps reflects a pessimism born of repression. Zend asserts ‘There are too many people, and too few human beings.’
There are too many people who live without a sense of connection and a sense of care for others. There are too many people who live without a passion for this world to be a better place – more loving, more just, and more peaceful.

The great 20th century Unitarian Theologian James Luther Adams contributed to an understanding of the purpose and meaning of religious participation freed of dogmatic constraints. Adams put it simply: "Church is a place where you get to practice what it means to be human."

May we, together, create such places – where each of us may grow toward the fully human with the whole of the world the better for it.

May it be so]]> Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:54:21 +0000 <![CDATA[Becoming Human]]> http://ukspirituality.org/blog/permalinks/2009/08/30/Becoming-Human
I thought, ‘Oh no, here we go again.’

The first time someone came to the door with a tragic story that ended with needing some money – that he would surely return – I was taken. I lost £35 of my own money on that one and I resolved never to fall for it again.
A few months ago, a man came to the front door of the church and rang the bell. He wanted to see the minister.

I thought, ‘Oh no, here we go again.’

The first time someone came to the door with a tragic story that ended with needing some money – that he would surely return – I was taken. I lost £35 of my own money on that one and I resolved never to fall for it again.

So, when I saw this fellow and heard that he wanted to talk to me, I knew just what to expect.

I sat down with him outside the door – knowing that it would be easier to get rid of him if I didn’t let him in the building. He began to tell me his tale of woe. He had had a job until something went wrong. He wanted to assure me that he wasn’t an alcoholic, although he had been drinking. He was down on his luck and needed help.

We talked for a while and he looked so sincere – but then, even the con man who took my 35 quid managed to squeeze out a real tear or two…

I was ready to be resolute about money with this man. I wouldn’t give him any. But he didn’t ask for any…

So, I told my visitor that I could do three things for him. First, I could listen to him as I had been doing. Second, I could get him a sandwich. And third, I could give him a bit of work to do and pay him for doing it.

A con man would have argued at this point – about how what he needed was just 20 quid to get his truck back so he could rescue his child, or 30 quid for a train trip to his mum’s funeral, or 25 for his wife’s emergency dental work… you get the idea.

But my visitor was delighted with the three options. I got him set up with my pressure washer and started him off cleaning the entry area to Unity and then went to make him a tuna mayo sandwich.

When I returned, he was hard at work. My expensive pressure washer was still there –he did not take off with it… I stopped him working for a bit and he gratefully took the food and ate quickly before getting back to work.

Hours passed. I checked on him occasionally, but not often. Whenever I checked, he was there – hard at work.

At last, he said he was done. I paid him for the job from my own money, not Unity’s.

I looked at his clothing. He was now pretty well soaked with water and covered with spattered dirt. And yet, he had a strange sort of happy look on his face.

Finally he spoke again.

He told me that while he was working, people who walked by thought he was a workman – not a homeless person. And they met his eye. They might have even smiled. He was overjoyed at this small thing – something that any of us would probably take for granted.

He said to me ‘Thank you. For a few hours, you’ve let me feel human again.’



It is no small thing – to be treated as human.

Our Unitarian faith tells that each human person is born with inherent dignity and worth.

Perhaps it’s our recognition of that fact that leads us to dehumanize people. We need to do it to justify our hatred of them.

In vilifying non-Muslim minorities in Iran, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of the Iranian Guardian Council, has said, “Humans who follow anything but Islam, are the same as those animals who wander about and commit corruption.”

In Rwanda, Tutsis were depicted as cockroaches and snakes to make way for the genocide there. To make the holocaust possible, Jews in Germany were called poisonous mushrooms, pigs and spiders.

Each of us who can hear and understand these words is human, with the dignity and worth and responsibility that this status confers.

We all dehumanize others. It’s a way of defining positions and of getting through the day.

Next time you’re in a crowded public place, try this. Look at the faces of the people around you. Most of them will be expressionless. Some will look sad or angry. A few will appear happy. Very rarely, you might even detect contentment.

As you look, remember that each of these people feels as you feel. As different and as ‘other’ as they may seem, each one has loved and lost and dreamed, just as you have. They had parents. They have hopes and fears just as you do.

Do this, and just for a barely tolerable and unsustainable moment, you may recognise life in its full overwhelming sweetness, misery and complexity. Keep that thought with you.

In a world of dehumanization, let us work toward rehumanizing all who are treated as less.]]> Sun, 30 Aug 2009 11:19:22 +0000 <![CDATA[I Saw You]]> http://ukspirituality.org/blog/permalinks/2009/08/16/I-Saw-You
In fact, you may not even have thought that what you did was worth any notice, and certainly not any comment, but what you did has stuck with me over the last few days and I just needed to tell you that it didn’t go unnoticed and certainly it was appreciated.
I saw you. You may think that no one noticed, but I saw you.

In fact, you may not even have thought that what you did was worth any notice, and certainly not any comment, but what you did has stuck with me over the last few days and I just needed to tell you that it didn’t go unnoticed and certainly it was appreciated.

My daughter and I got on the bus just ahead of two, shall we say, older women. Noticing them behind us, you moved from your comfortable seat and threaded your way to the back of the bus. I don’t know that the woman who took your seat even saw that you left it for her. The bus was filling up, but there were still seats in the back, and you found one and settled in. Claire and I sat behind you. I was mindful that you had just acted kindly, and no words of thanks were offered. You probably would have dismissed any thanks. Anyone would have done it, you would have said. But that’s not true. And even so, it was an act of kindness, and those shouldn’t go unappreciated.

Then a mum with two young boys moved toward the back of the now full bus. She directed her sons into the remaining seats in the back of the bus. Hesitating not a moment, you got up again, and she sat. Distracted by her energetic sons, I’m not sure she noticed that you had gone so that she could sit. She took the seat, I suspect, gratefully as any mother of two small sons would.

You didn’t ride for all that far, perhaps 4 or 5 stops further along. You strode off the bus, looking thoughtful and your attention on where you were going, no doubt you were already on to whatever was next on your schedule for the day. If today I saw you and said something, you likely wouldn’t even remember doing it.

But I saw it. And I gave thanks out into the universe for those two small acts of kindness. And, while I am fairly certain that you won’t see this – if you read the Unitarian, you would likely buy it from my church – still I wanted to let it be known that those small acts did not go unnoticed.

It is those little acts of kindness that weave the fabric of the world, I think. They are mostly unnoticed – a smile offered along the street, a hand held out for assistance whilst crossing a street, a word of care spoken in a difficult moment, making a seat for someone who might need it. Acts of kindness endure in ways that moments of meanness never can. Small act by small act, goodness is woven, and each of us is a thread in the weaving.

Today I say thank you to you:

You, the woman on the bus who gave up her seat twice;

You, who smiled at a baby;

You, who held the hand of a friend in pain;

You, who made a meal for someone you love;

You, who performed one of those innumerable and important acts of kindness.

I saw you. And I say thank you from the depth of my heart.]]> Sun, 16 Aug 2009 08:30:13 +0000