Reasons for Living

Music: O nata lux - Morton Lauridsen
Voces8
CD: Lux - Voces8 (Decca)

Good morning, I'm Richard Carter.
I wonder if you have books that you always take with you. One of my favourite books that I have kept close to me for more than 35 years is by Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camera called A Thousand Reasons for Living first published in translation in 1981. Helder Camara once nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize believed that the poorest of our world should not have to wait until the afterlife to free themselves from oppression.
Every morning it was Dom Helder's custom to rise at 2 a.m. in the darkness to listen to the voices so frequently drowned out by the daytime noise. Then it was that he felt he could listen to God, nature too and the human heart. During these nights Dom Helder Camara wrote innumerable meditations. Each mediation is an encounter, an insight, a moment of revelation, like a wild flower that speak to the human soul and the senses. The quality of these insights is that of one who is open and available to others and the world, who listens and sees, who is present, humble, attentive and notices what so often goes unnoticed. And what these meditations so often see is beauty and hope, even amidst the struggle. Here are some of his words:

"If you have a thousand reasons for living, if everything speaks to you from the stone in the road to the star in the sky, if you understand the wind and listen to the silence, Rejoice.Because love walks with you. He is your brother, she is your sister."
I have lived on the edge of Trafalgar Square for twenty years, working at St Martin-in-the-Fields and leading the Nazareth Community, discovering each day, in the people I have met, and in the wonder of the world around me, reasons for living. Each of these reasons for living is like a door or a window that lets light in and seeks the miracle or wonder present in life, that can so easily go unrecognised or squeezed out. I too have the practice of waking early to spend time in silence, prayer and contemplation and writing down my own diary of gratitude. In today's service I would like to share some of things that have opened my eyes to God's blessing. These reasons for living can be as simple as a smile, an encounter, an act of kindness Things you take for granted. My hope is that you will add your own reasons for living too

Music: Lord of all hopefulness - Nils Greenhow
St Martin's Voices
BBC recording

Reasons for Living One: Listening the Voice of Others
A group of people who are at present homeless gather in an upper room, a room of creativity, art and light. This is our 'Spiritual Space' where we meet each week. We welcome everyone coming through the door, the last as much as the first. We sit in a circle chatting, waiting for the latecomers to arrive and I go in search of them. I know that each person in this room carries with them their own story and many of these stories are heavy and painful; in fact, not peaceful at all.
And then we begin. Today I talk about peace and the burdens we carry. Its hard living on the streets, its tensions, changing weather, lack of facilities, loss of dignity, an unknown future, mental health issues, fears, compulsions and stresses - This is the place, I tell them, where we can put our burdens down. It is a space where we can untangle the anxieties of our lives and untie the knots within. The light is flooding through the window and I gently lead them in a meditation. I talk about breathing. The breath that fills and expands. The breath that gives life. Breathing in peace, holding that peace within us, breathing out and sharing that peace with the world. Breathing in, holding, and breathing out.
Music: Da pacem domine - Arvo Part
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
CD: Arvo Part - Da Pacem (Harmonia Mundi)

Then we keep a long silence. A silence that stills us and centres us. Then I ask, 'I wonder what brings you peace?' and each person in the circle has space to answer:
"The park. The park? I find a bench in the sunshine. A free bench on which no one else is sitting. A bench just for me. A bench that someone else put there for me just to sit in the sun. And I sit there watching the day. And no one tells me to move. That's peace for me."
"Walking, just walking, getting away from the noise and the crowdedness and walking so that all the thoughts move out of my head and stop bothering me."
"I find peace reading books. When you're reading books, you can't think of anything else. You just kind of enter into the story. Sometimes the story is so good it's like I am in the story and I don't want it to end. And when I do finish the book it's like that story has become part of me and if the story is happy then I can share that happiness and if it ends in sadness I understand."
"I find peace through singing."
She picks up a guitar

Music: I listen to the wind (Cat Stevens)
Sung by Maddie Naisbitt
BBC recording
And me? I find peace being in the presence of this group, with their hopes and their fears and their ability, despite all that faces them, to find peace. A find listening to them, really listening to the voice and experiences of others a reason for living. They are my teacher. And at the end of the group there is such warmth and peace within and it is because we have heard each other. Really heard. What greater gift to gift to give each other than our attention and our listening.
Music: My peace, I give you - Taize
Reading Phoenix Choir
CD: Domine Deus (Pilgrim Tapes)

Reasons for Living Two: A Walk in the Park

Living in the centre of a city it sometimes that the noise, the traffic, the sirens, the buskers, the shouts are 24 hours. I don't have a garden but I have a garden that belongs to everyone. I have St James's Park and the London parks to walk-they are a sanctuary for me and many others - and who could want a better garden. St James's Park with its lake, fountain, trees and birds. It's bird song. Listen! This is the park where I come to pray each week in the early morning. Come what may, in wind, rain, cloud and sunshine. There is a place here among the London plane trees and copper beeches, where I watch the seasons change and feel the rhythm of the natural world. Each season is beautiful to me. Winter trees in the winter light with their silhouettes and latticework of branches against an icy sky. Now when spring comes, the squirrels are trapezing through the branches looking for food and the daffodils have been out in force with hundreds of yellow trumpets of hope and the knots of the trees - new leaves have now begun to unclench and open their newborn greens. And of course the blossom - blackthorn first, then the Japanese cherry, the sweet cherry, the pink crab apple, and later the whitebeam and hawthorn will froth with flowers and celebrate the sun. Soon it will be summer, with its deckchairs and bandstand. After a long day I will come over to sit in the evening light and read and the leaves will be so thick you will almost not be able make out the lake and the park will be filled with picnics and people pulling off shirts to feel the warmth of the sun. Couples will be lying in knots kissing, and toddlers will be tottering down the path with proud parents waiting to gather them and swing them in the air to the sounds of giggles or cries. And I will ride up the Mall on the way to the Proms with the dust from the pollen and plane trees making my eyes itch and stream. Then autumn will come, as the summer always seems to part too quickly. This is the time of such wonderful colour: reds and gold, umbers, oranges, yellows and browns. This is the time to notice the shape of leaves. The park- a reason for living
Music: All things bright and beautiful - John Rutter
Cambridge Singers
CD: John Rutter - The Ultimate Collection (Universal)

Reasons for Living Three: The example of trees

The trees themselves - a reason for living
You ancient trees that look down on the madness of our world
You that were here long before I was born
And you that will be here long after I am gone I hope!
Teach me your secret
Open to the rhythms of God
The roots of the tree intertwining, the strength of these limbs, the thinner roots, like fingers rising from the earth to hold and nourish. Beneath the earth thousands of roots reach down and out,In conversation with the other trees and with the soil to anchor and to whisper to one another their message of life. I love the trunk of a tree growing upwards; its powerful stability, its bark, its colour, its knots and scars, its strength, and yet its movement.Then the limbs and branches, bending and forking and dividing; each branch tapering, thinning, twisting, turning and shooting into an intricate latticework of smaller branches, curves and crooks, elbows, arches and tangles. I love looking up and seeing the light through the branches of the tree framing the sky in thousands of shapes, bends twists and openings. The shards of light like the stained glass fragments of a cathedral window, a kaleidoscope of pattern, light and colour.Glory be to God for dappled things.
Music: Jesus Christ the apple tree - Elizabeth Poston
The Sixteen
CD: A Traditional Christmas Carol Collection Vol. II (Coro)

Reasons for Living Four: Walking

We don't just make relationships with other people, we also make relationships through the paths we take, the trees we meet, the water, the earth, the squirrels, the birds, the hills and valleys we walk through, the styles we climb over, the fields we cross- the stories we encounter. Each encounter on the journey can be an epiphany. By walking, we walk with and alongside the natural world, and we begin to realize that nature is not something out there and alien, but a relationship, a connection on which all our life and future depends. By walking, we begin to see that the places we walk have souls too. And in order to discover that soul we must come alongside, and walk with, through and in. The church itself begins to exist when we leave our territories behind and enter into shared spaces, spaces of learning and listening ? sacred spaces. As I walk with nature I learn to name, honour, see, sense and relate to the world in which we live, not because I want to master or control it, but because I am discovering its living soul ? its wonder. And the more we walk the more we are filled with awe and love for the world as well as pain for all that is hurting in creation. As Gerard Hughes always used to say, 'Solvitur Ambulando' - the solution lies in the walking. I'm aware of how the word walking is a metaphor for all movement - the movement of one's imagination and soul through a landscape. So I hope and pray that if you are listening to this and have mobility difficulties you can replace this verb walking and celebrate the journey of your own spirit through God?s creation.

Music: We shall walk through the valley in peace - arr. Undine Smith Moore
VocalEssence Ensemble Singers
CD: Dance like the Wind (Clarion)

Reasons for Living Five: Wounds that become signs of Resurrection

Reading: John 20: 24-31

Music: Passacaglia (Handel/Halvorsen)
Louise Lipatti
CD: Records DK

Christ's wounds are the signs of the pain and violence that is still being inflicted on our world. For we are still crucifying one another with bombs, bullets, drones, and the misuse of wealth and power. The more attentive we grow to the world the more attentive we become to the suffering of our neighbour. But in our Gospel wounds can also become signs of resurrection. This is our resurrection hope. Love feels the pain of the world. And it is often in the pain of abandonment and doubt that we long most for the one who can redeem our world and set us free. Sometimes it would be easy to despair, to be so overwhelmed by the cruelty of the world, to see only the fear, the fault, the failure, the cross so that we fail to see the resurrection. The risen Christ reveals to us a different truth. He wanted to show us that he is risen. He saw the seed which fell upon the ground and died as the beginning of new life. He saw the good in us, our potential to become. He saw creation and it was good. He saw people not defined by sin, but set free by forgiveness and grace. See his heart for Peter, for the tax collectors, the leper, for the woman taken in adultery, for the paralysed man lowered through the roof, for Zacchaeus the tax collector in the tree, for the man blind since birth, for the thief on the cross, for Mary in the garden. He saw humanity released by God?s love from the burden of fault or sin they carried. He saw their potential to put their burden down and walk in His light. He calls us out of the tomb. He unbinds us and lets us go free. He sends us out as the bearers of his risen life. He sows his seed of new life in us. He called us to be the springtime to bare fruit that will last.Charles de Foucauld used to say that on meeting a follower of Jesus Christ you should say, 'If that is what the servants are like, how I long to meet his or her master.'

Reasons for Living Six: Being Set Free

Jesus says at the grave of Lazarus 'Unbind him and let him go free.' To help others unbind we need to unbind ourselves.

True Freedom a Reason for Living

Free like the blackbird who will not stop singing in spring.Free as a river is free that cannot stop flowing. And free as the wind is Free as it gusts and blows where it wills.Free as the clouds are free for they have the whole of the sky on which to sail so that even the darkest rain clouds never stay forever.Free as the sunlight is free as it pierces the canopy of leaves and fills this garden with dappled light

Free as the breath within me is free as I breathe in and then out into the world my own breath of life.Free as my heart is free which cannot be imprisoned whatever the agendas, violence or coercion we see oppressing the world.Free as real love is free which cannot be overcome by loss, or guilt or even death.Free as Jesus is free as he opens the tomb of human cruelty and walks out into the morning - going before us and meeting us by the sea for breakfast.Free as human beings are free when we recognize our fear and stop Seizing, attacking, blaming, grasping, manipulating, invading, killing and learn the wonder of loving as Jesus has loved us.

In the words of Desmond Tutu

Goodness is stronger than evil
Love is stronger than hate
Light is stronger than darkness
Victory is ours through him who loves us.

Music: Ubi caritas - Taize
Taize Community
CD: Taize Instrumental (Taize)

Reasons for Living Seven: Praying

Let us pray

Teach me, my God and King,~
In all things Thee to see,
And what I do in anything
To do it as for Thee.

Thanks be to thee, my Lord Jesus Christ,
For all the benefits thou hast won for me,
For all the pains and insults thou hast borne for me.
O most merciful Redeemer, Friend, and Brother,
May I know thee more clearly,
Love thee more dearly,
And follow thee more nearly:
For ever and ever.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is despair in life hope
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

The Lord's Prayer
The Blessing

Music: Go forth into the world in peace - John Rutter
Cambridge Singers
John Rutter - The Ultimate Collection (Universal)