1 July 2024 A Candle in the Window Peter Millar
Words to encourage us in these times.
Our shared human family in a world of change:
Our father, help us to know the light-year distance between one planet and another. Yet help us to know that the distance between one race and another can be even wider. Finally, lead us to know the ancient wisdom that love is the only bridge – between peoples, nations, and universes.
Prayer from Hawaii
In the immense cathedral which is the sacred universe of God each of us is called to live with an open heart – to take all that is human in one another and to turn it into an offering and a hymn of glory. Orthodox aspiration
We pray, Lord, for the humble beasts who with us bear the burden and heat of the day, giving their lives for the well-being of others: and for the wild creatures whom you have made wise, strong and beautiful; we ask for them your great tenderness of heart for you have promised to save both us and all living creatures. Russian prayer
Every one of us is part of the continent, not one of us, an island. We are a one world household sharing together in the life of the mainland – in our family, our neighbourhood, our community, our nation, our community of nations.
M.A. Thomas – India
Will thou come to strike down in vengeance or to lift us up with a kiss.
Fridoline Ukur, Indonesia
Help each one of us to live in such magnanimity and restraint that the Lord of life may never have cause to say to anyone of us – “this is my body, broken by you”. Prayer from China
Oh Lord, our father’s put spears into our hands and taught us to use them. But you have put the Book of Life into our hands; teach us to use it.
Prayer from Zaïre
In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer. Thomas Carlyle
The greatest show on earth:
Taylor Swift recently held three concerts in Edinburgh and each performance was enjoyed by 77,000 people. Commentators said it was the largest outdoor concert ever to be held in Scotland. There are three Taylor Swifts: the musician, the celebrity and the performer. All three have made her one of the most famous people in the world but it is perhaps the third, the relentless energy, the wit, the ways she cackles and shimmies with joy that make her shows among the greatest on earth. Several people who go to her shows say that they have been part of a spiritual experience. Her present show called Eras deals with many of the themes about our human journey. The journalist Sarah Carson expressed that in these words: “Seeing Taylor Swift live feels like we are singing along to the soundtrack to our lives, not hers. But you don’t have to be a ‘Swiftie’ (as her devotees are known) to be stunned by Eras. This 46–six song, three-hour, 20 minute odyssey through 11 albums of girlhood to womanhood is a remarkable feat – of imagination, range, fashion, athleticism, high production and collective catharsis – that demonstrates, for anyone who questions it, exactly how she became the biggest pop star on the planet”.
Over many years I have often written about how we understand spirituality in what I believe we too easily call a ‘secular society’. In her own inimitable way, Taylor Swift sings of some of the themes which have been core to philosophical and theological thinking for centuries. The journey within our human hearts will go on till the end of time in its trillions of manifestations, and that is why I believe that performers like Taylor are so significant in our times. I think it may be true to say that thousands of the young people who follow her and are moved by her songs would know very little about traditional faith whether Christian or other. In Edinburgh, over three days, her singing touched the lives of 165,000 people from diverse backgrounds. That figure is important for a recent study indicated that the total membership of the National Church of Scotland was 66,000 -- many of whom do not attend any church regularly. These numbers indicate not that God is absent from our world but that there are many different ways of understanding transcendence. There are many authentic mentors in our world and young people like Taylor are among them. We may not be into pop music in any way but what is necessary for us all in our times is to have an exploratory heart and mind when it comes to matters of faith and institutional religion. Vilayat Inayat Khan (1916-2004), a teacher of meditation and of the traditions of Sufism wrote some words which are so relevant for any discussions about spirituality and how it is expressed – “the human spirit lives on creativity and dies in conformity and routine”. Or in the words of Nicolas Berdyaev: “God demands newness from humanity: God awaits the works of human freedom”. Peter
