Sacred Living

Christians have sacraments, which Augustine defined as "the visible form of an invisible grace." Protestants have two: baptism and the Lord's Supper or communion; Roman Catholics have an additional five: confirmation, confession (or penance), marriage, ordination and extreme unction or last rites (although I understand that this last can now be done if the person is ill rather than dying). My Baptist lecturer at Regent's Park College, Myra Blyth, stated that "they point to and reveal the creating, redeeming grace of God through their association with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus ... They are an extension of Christ's ministry in and to the world."

But as I have stated elsewhere on this blog, I would rather believe with the Christian writer John Macquarrie that we live in a sacramental universe. Rather than the Divine presence being limited to either two or seven sacraments, Macquarrie believes that God has so arranged things that the material world can “become a door or channel of communication through which he comes to us and we may go to him." For this reason, “man’s spiritual wellbeing demands that he should recognise and cherish the visible things of the world as things that are made by God and that provide access to God.” 

In other words, God / the Spirit / the Divine other is present everywhere, all the time. The trick of sacred living is recognising this.

Sacred living is about weaving moments of attention into your everyday life, and recognising the sacred there. It is about living with a new level of awareness. It is about going through our day paying attention to what is happening in each passing moment. It is about noticing the presence of the divine, the numinous, everywhere, in the natural world, in other people, in ourselves, and in things that happen to us. Sacred living is about rediscovering our sense of wonder, and living our lives in response to that.

A prayer quoted by Rachel Naomi Remen, in her wonderful book My Grandfather’s Blessings, reads:

“Days pass, and the years vanish and we walk sightless among miracles.

Lord, fill our eyes with seeing, and our minds with knowing.

Let there be moments when your Presence, like lightning, illumines the darkness in which we walk.

Help us to see, wherever we gaze, that the bush burns, unconsumed.

And we, clay touched by God, will reach out for holiness, and exclaim in wonder: ‘How filled with awe is this place, and we did not know it.’” 

The Spirit: "That Of God In Everyone"

I love Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's words: "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." With the Quakers, I believe that there is a part of each of us that is more than human, a divine spark reaching out to the rest of the universe and to God. Some Unitarians believe in the Holy Spirit as “the active divine presence in individuals and communities, as the divine breath that gives us life, as … the divine mystery moving among us and within us as we work and worship.” 

 The belief in God as the Spirit working through human beings is one which many Unitarians, including myself, are increasingly warming to. While we may have rejected the concept of an omnipotent, omniscient God, we still believe that God definitely exists, as that "active divine presence" that Cliff Reed refers to.

Many, of course, do not believe in any divine being at all, and so will not agree with my belief that the Spirit does dwell in each one of us, in our hearts, waiting to be listened to. I love Quaker Stephen Allott's description of the Spirit: "What manner of spirit are we of? have we any connection with the spirit which descended on the upper room, sounding like a 'mighty, rushing wind'? Do we look to be swept out of our comfortable existence by an invading power which comes, as Jesus said, no one knows whence? Or do we look rather for a gentler movement within? Do we say, it was this Spirit of God which breathed into our human clay to make us living souls? It is there, in our humanity, but mixed with passions which confuse its purpose, limited by the tunnel vision of the self. Occasionally a blinding flash may come from without and someone is jolted forwards; but the Spirit's normal method is a quiet insistence, a still small voice barely audible amid the turbulence of earthquake, wind and fire."

Two lines of this particularly speak to me: "it was this Spirit of God which breathed into our human clay to make us living souls" and "the Spirit's normal method is a quiet insistence, a still small voice barely audible amid the turbulence of earthquake, wind and fire."

"It was this Spirit of God which breathed into our human clay to make us living souls." This is something I have come to believe in the last eighteen months or so, through reading the works of the great Celtic poet and theologian, John O'Donohue. He wrote, and I have come to believe (because it makes sense to me) that our souls come from elsewhere, and inhabit our human bodies, and go elsewhere after death. Our souls are animated by the Spirit - it is the Spirit that enables us to respond to the divine in the world.

One of the most obvious ways in which the Spirit works within us is when we respond to something beautiful. I am sure that you have felt your heart lift and your levels of joy soar when contemplating a majestic mountain, or the endlessly changing sea, or the intricacies of a flower, or a man-made work of art, or the face of someone you love, or when you are listening to uplifting music or the songs of birds or to a beloved voice. I believe that this is the Spirit within us recognising and responding to the beauty of the world around us.

How can we learn to listen to the Spirit, and to recognise her at work in the world? I think that this may be attempted by what I would call 'sacred living'. The Christian author John Macquarrie believes that we live in a sacramental universe. Rather than the Divine presence being limited to either two or seven sacraments, Macquarrie believes that God has so arranged things that the material world can “become a door or channel of communication through which he comes to us and we may go to him." For this reason, “man’s spiritual wellbeing demands that he should recognise and cherish the visible things of the world as things that are made by God and that provide access to God.”

In other words, God / the Spirit / the Divine other is present everywhere, all the time. The trick of sacred living is recognising this.