St Michael's Uniting Church on Collins St, Melbourne - Thoughts for the Week

Dr Macnab
Thoughts for the Week

Sunday 19th May 2013 - Dr Francis Macnab & Rev Dr Malcolm Sinclair

The time-zones all will flail ya when you’re flying to Australia,
For it’s more than twenty hours in the air.
But it’s more than merely worth it
When you finally get to “earth “it
And hibernate a while just like a bear.
The city is a beauty, and I’m here to do my duty
To share with them the meaning in my life.
(As I wake at various hours and concentrate my powers
I still can’t help remembering my wife.)
The roots of home reflect me, as the leaders here direct me
And I deeply love this union of our lands.
We are one in heart and spirit, with intelligence and merit,
And fit so nicely into soft and sacred plans.
The first Sunday is over. Now I get to be a rover
And travel to the forest up the way.
The snakes will all be sleeping and the spiders cease their creeping
When the temperatures dip down at end of day.
So far the crocs are missing, and jellyfish, addressing
Their own oceanic issues in the sea.
That’s just the way I like it, (but instead of walk, I’ll bike it
And come home with all my parts below the knee).
So, soon, with home-fires burning, I’ll set upon returning
To my brighter and, now, warmer hemisphere.
I leave behind a gemstone of the blend of “us” and “them’
Sown as future dreaming for some other year.
- Dr Rev Malcolm Sinclair, May 2013

We hold onto our belief that this is a Golden Age. There are many indicators that support the belief.
“And yet… the very things we’re so desperate to acquire as symbols of this imagined good life may be insulating us from deeper and more enduring satisfactions...”
“There’s nothing new in preoccupation with self, or the wish to lead a life based on economic security and material comfort. As a species, we’ve been focused on these ever since our forebears started     storing food for winter…”
- Hugh Mackay

“There are three particular disciplines that bring out the best in us and around us. Think of these as the three great therapies of everyday life -
- to listen attentively
- to apologise sincerely
- to forgive generously.
None of them requires exceptional skill, though each calls for some courage.”
- Hugh Mackay

We live in a world that continually challenges our strengths.
Strengths to cope with the daily hassles.
Strengths to meet adversity.
Strengths that realize there is a different way to be.
Strengths that come out of crises.
Strengths to be engaged with others.
Strengths to rediscover the 3 G’s - generosity, growth and grace.

The important question facing us today -
Are the churches willing and able to support the kind of moves that will enable Christian rituals and symbols to continue their life-giving functions? This is a life-and-death matter for the churches… can they reconstruct and reconceive the symbols they cherish.
- Roy W Hoover: The Jesus Seminar 

Sunday 12th May 2013 - Dr Francis Macnab

MOTHERS’ DAY

“It is not that real kindness requires people to be selfless, it is rather that real kindness changes people in the doing of it… Real kindness is an exchange with essentially unpredictable consequences.”
- Adam Phillips

What is the life we have lost in the living?
- T.S. Eliot

“What can be done to prevent kindness becoming the first casualty of family life. Parenting is seen by most people as an island of kindness in the sea of cruelty.”
- Adam Phillips

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
- T.S. Eliot

A simple comfort in a very isolated place -
Said the woman: “Be you the new lights ‘crost the valley yonder? You don't know what a comfort they’ve been to me this winter. Ye aren’t ever goin’ to shroud ‘em up - or be ye?’
- Rudyard Kipling

For the human being - surely - “The vast marvel is to be alive… The magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time.”
- D.H. Lawrence

From earliest days, a child is meant to discover the basic center of their life. The center holds them together. All too easily we lose the sense of a centered self, and we begin to fall apart. Every living being has the open experience of bringing the scattered parts of the self together.
- Theologian Paul Tillich

Sunday 5th May 2013 - Dr Francis Macnab

WE COME HERE TO MEET EIGHT POWERFUL REALITIES

1.   The place: This place - unique in Australia.
2.   The people: Different, Searching, Affirming.
3.   The pulpit: Words to encourage, inform, inspire, enrich and expand.
4.   The pastoral outreach: We attempt to care and show we care.
5.   The programs - For all.
6.   The projection of St Michael’s to the city, to country places,  to the world.
7.   The participations - Here we encourage more people to help build better people, better relationships, a better world.
8.   The positive religion: Positive, Personal, Passionate.

Legends say that hummingbirds float free of time, carrying our hopes for love, joy and celebration. The hummingbird’s delicate grace reminds us that life is rich, beauty is everywhere, every personal connection has meaning and that laughter is life’s sweetest creation.

Whatever man makes and makes it live,
Lives because of the life put into it.
- D.H. Lawrence

May the light of your soul bless the work
you do with the secret love and warmth of your heart.
May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul.
May your work never weary you.
May it release within you wellsprings of refreshment, inspiration and excitement.
May you be present in what you do.
- John O’Donohoue

We search for a relationship with others; and we need to develop a capacity to be alone.
- Anthony Storr

 

Sunday 28th April 2013 - Dr Francis Macnab

“My life now, my whole life, independently of anything that could happen to me, every minute of it is no longer meaningless as it was before, but has a positive meaning of goodness with which I have power to invest it.”
- Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina

“How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in it.”
- Shakespeare: The Tempest

“Laughter… the most civilized music in the world.”
- Peter Ustinov

“Father, hear the prayer we offer:
Not for ease that prayer may be,
But for strength that we may ever
Live our lives courageously.”
L Maria Willis

The New Faith
Stands for
1. Enhancement of the human spirit
2. Evolution of a better humanity
3. Ethical consciousness in love, work and play
4. Expulsion of negative and constrictive mentalisation
5. Energies of healing for mind, mood and emotions
6. Empowering therapeutic communities
7. Enjoyment and exuberance across the life-span

Sunday 21st April 2013 - Dr Francis Macnab

The Sunday before ANZAC day.

After morning service today:
A silent pilgrimage through Mingary, to remember so many lives lost in war time, so many families    bereaved, a whole nation carrying the sorrow and gratitude for all who have experienced the anxiety and pain of wartime and its aftermath. And to honour the doctors and nurses and all support personnel and those who remained ’at home’ constantly involved in community service of many kinds.

“The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on…”
- Omar Khayyan

And so we hope -
“Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high,
There’s a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby.”
- from the 'Wizard of Oz'

Sunday 14th April 2013 - Dr Francis Macnab

“The hour between dog and wolf, that is - dusk, when the two can’t be distinguished from each other, suggests other things besides the time of day…the hour in which…every being becomes his own shadow, and thus something other than himself… when the people half hope, half fear that a dog will become a wolf.” 
- Jean Genet

How is it that a courteous fine human being can act as if we have only seen the tip of the iceberg. Underneath there is a very difficult person altogether.

“Like the fire brigade, the response may save our house from an emergency, only to destroy it with water damage. Chronic stress may be responsible for many of the most deadly problems faced by modern medicine - hypertension, heart disease, type II diabetes,  immune disorders and depression".
- John Coates

“I dreamed of a world without the sick and the fat,
I dreamed of a world where everything is freshly created
as a wild cherry tree stippled with dew,
full of nightingales and thrushes,
where all the nations are related in brotherhood,
where no one slanders or abuses anyone
where air is clean, like morning on the river,
where we live, forever immortal
dreaming the dream - cheek to cheek.”
- Yevtushenko

God, I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a
king of infinite space—were it not that I have bad dreams.
- Shakespeare: Hamlet

So often human drama does not show itself on the surface of life. It is not played out in the visible world, but in the hearts of each one of us. 
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Sunday 7th April 2013 - Dr Francis Macnab

Many people report having some very difficult life experiences.
They realise they had the strength to cope.
They realised life can open a new awareness of self-understanding.
They realised the valued suppport of people who cared for them.

"I can tell hundreds of real-life stories of individuals who have overcome traumas.
Some are household names, some are unsung heroes yet there is so much to learn from them."
- Dr Paul Wong

For some, pain, suffering, and trauma can have positive long-term outcomes.
People through the ages have known this. But not since 1995 have psychologists spoken of 'post-traumatic growth'.

Resilience displays a remarkable strength of adapting well in the face of adversity.

"Sweet are the uses of adversity,
which like the toad, ugly and venemous,
wears yet a precious jewel in his head."
- Shakespeare: 'As You Like It'

"Post-Traumatic Growth is not something that happens to a lucky few. It is something we can actively achieve. There are several ways to do this."
- Rabbi Michael Knopf

"Post-Traumatic Growth and trauma resolution require that one should dig deeply to find one's inner strength."
- David Hartman

Religion has often been evoked in times of trauma.
Is religion a helpful resource?
What kind of religion?
To speak of an intelligent religion implies that there is an unintelligent religion.
In times of trauma, what will be the criteria of an intelligent religion?

Some have proposed that "trauma can be transformative, leading to the reconstruction of meaning, renewal of faith, trust, hope, and the redefinition of oneself and a sense of community".
- Afflect et al

Sunday 31st March 2013 - Easter Sunday - Dr Francis Macnab

Easter is a time of awakening to new possibilities.
Easter is a celebration of life, the Gift of life, the wonder of life;
this unrepeatable life;
this life to be lived once;
this life to be lived fully and well.

We have the major tasks ahead of us -
To stop the violence and the killing and the globalisation of destruction -
and place our feet firmly on the ladder of a different expression of evolution -
to claim the higher ground of humanity
of friendship, kindness, compassion
and the pathways towards harmony,
collaboration and human enhancement.

The ladder of words of evolution or the ladder downwards to extinction.

We are participants in four forms of evolution
1. Biological evolution.
2. Cultural Evolution.
3. Our psycho-social Evolution.
4. A revitalised evolution of meaning and human worth.

Sitting half way on the evolution ladder, we ignore all four forms. So we live and we die, and we only half live before we finally die.

Sunday 24th March 2013 - Dr Francis Macnab

“Let the wind blow.”
“May the stars light your way.”
“Wash the earth of its slag, earths oceans of bilge and oil.”
“Be alive to the gift of life.” “See the world through the eyes of a child.”

It is Palm Sunday. It throws up an image of God riding into our life, then riding out into the world. It may be that here we see “the loss of God”, and here is a New Way waiting to be born.

There is something in all of us that encourages us to join together to celebrate new possibilities, new strengths and new healing for old wounds.

It is Palm Sunday: pointing us to the possibilities of a way of non-violence, to individuals ready for new personal strengths, and of a necessary wisdom of working our way to find healing for our wounds and a life where high priority is given to personal and social enhancement.

Sunday 17th March 2013 - Dr Francis Macnab

"Let the wind blow."
"May the stars light your way."
"Wash the earth of its slag, earth's oceans of bilge and oil."
"Be alive to the gift of life." "See the world though the eyes of a child."

It is Palm Sunday. It throws up an image of God riding into our life, then riding out into the world. It may be that here we see "the loss of God", and here is the New Way waiting to be born.

There is something in all of us that encourages us to join together to celebrate new possibilities, new strengths and new healing for old wounds.

It is Palm Sunday: pointing us to the new possibilities of a way of non-violence, to individuals ready for new personal strengths, and of a necessary wisdom of working our way to find healing for our wounds and a life where high priority is given to personal and social enhancement.

"We underscore the ironies of well-being - the paradox that human strengths are grequently born in encounters with life's difficulties."
- Carol Ryff

Human strengths;
May be about ways people overcome daunting obstacles.
May be reflected in ways we turn possibilities into realities.
May be expressed in our resilience.
May be seen in flexibility and adaptability, in attitudes and ideas,

Human strengths are about our inner self, our mind, our spirit, our sense of purpose.

Sunday 17th March 2013 - Dr Francis Macnab

Silence is a language on its own.

Silence is often difficult to interpret -
Does it mean quiet thoughtfulness, composed control, strength and serenity of mind?
or
Does it mean anger, hostility, punishment, self disquiet, self distrust?

A quiet mind, free of the ravings of crass advertising, free of the rowdy noise of politics, free of the boring utterances of people, is a mind free to think, reflect and grow.

Quiet people tend to be less impulsive, less aggressive and easier to be with. When they speak we are more likely to listen.

Sometimes silence is the best philosophy… silence is the door key of the interior life.

“Speak when you are angry - and you will make the best speech you'll ever regret”
- Ambrose Bierce

Silence is frightening to people who feel they have to talk.

“Blessed is the one who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.”
- George Elliot

“Be silent about great things. Let them grow within you.”
- Fredrich von Hugel

“Everyone has experienced how, when punctuated by long silences, words weigh more... how when one talks less, one begins feeling more fully one’s physical presence.”
- Susan Sontag

Sunday 10th March 2013 - Dr Francis Macnab

"I learned that just beneath the surface there's another world, and still different worlds as you dig deeper. I knew it as a kid, but I couldn't find the proof. It was just a kind of feeling. There is goodness in blue skies and flowers but another force - a wild pain and decay - also accompanies everything."
-David Lynch

We probe beneath the surface of the human mind in an effort to uncover the hidden sources of behaviour. Many give the impression of being confident, knowledgeable, well-in-front; but just beneath the surface there is uncertainty and fear, concealed anxiety and tightly controlled anger. There is a widespread unawareness of what sits just beneath the surface.

You have some really good things - just beneath the surface. But you have to discover them, dig for them, develop them.

"It is a joy to be hidden and a disaster not to be found."
- D W Winnicott

"I carry a replica of an 18th century pirate coin in my pocket...I tell my children it's a physcial reminder that with each person we meet there is some kind of treasure about them. But like the gold and silver coins discovered on the ocean floor, we must be willing to look beneath the surface."
- Richard Haddad

"Instead of dirt and poison we have chosen to fill our lives with honey and wax; thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light."
- Jonathan Swift

Sunday 3rd March 2013 - Dr Francis Macnab

“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.”
- R.B. Fuller

“A minute speck of life is set upon a leaf. Out crawls a miracle. A butterfly to be.”
- K.D Angelo

“Everyone is like a butterfly. They start out ugly and awkward, and then morph into graceful butterflies…”
- Drew Barrymore

‘Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.”
- from The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“The caterpillar does all the work, but the butterfly gets all the publicity.”
- George Carlin

“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always beyond your grasp, but which, if you sit down quietly, will alight upon you.”
- Nathaniel Hawthorne

“Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting, small but approachable, butterflies lead you to the sunny side of life. Everyone deserves a little sunshine.”
- Jeffery Glassberg

“Just living is not enough,” said the butterfly. “One must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower.”
- Hans Christian Anderson

So what is our true identity? Do we automatically grow, evolve, are transformed by an inbuilt energy, or do we need some external energies? And when we arrive at what ‘we were meant to be’, what sustains us? Or do we just as automatically decline as we grew?

Sunday 24th February 2013 - Dr Francis Macnab

Care can be bought, but good care flows from compassion. But does compassion 'just appear', or is it an outcome of a planned and purposeful development?
- Jan Baars

"Today, we are called upon by ours times and our world to change ourselves from within us."
- Keiko Takahashi

How surprised we should be that we know so little baout adult human development? "Our libraries are full of studies of human development - up to the age of 21. What happens AFTER that remains in many ways a mystery".
- George Vaillant

The kind of a person you become may have similarities with this man; At age 75, "I've slowly become comfortable, joyful, connected and effective." He viewed these last five years as "the happiest in his life". Do we all have to wait so long? What happens to another man who died at 60? He did not have the extra 15 years!

Often we see that people are unaware of the spiritual dimension, because "It is interior and concealed, and because they are busily engaged with more obvious and external everyday matters".
- Larry Culliford

There are millions of spiritually mature people in the world, doing good in general society. What is this spiritual maturity and how do we get there?

After many individuals have confronted a hard inner problem, and in coming to a profounder understanding of its nature have discovered, standing behind it, something even more difficult to face.
- David Whyte

There is this opening to life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
- David Whyte

Sunday 17th February 2013 - Dr Francis Macnab

What did you do - afterwards?
Where did you go - afterwards?
After the war - after the weekend - after the children left home -
after we had that accident -  after we made a lot of money?

The world breaks everyone, and AFTERWARDS, many are strong at the broken places.
- Ernest Hemingway

I can’t remember what happened - afterwards. Could it be true, that not much is written about ‘afterwards’. Yet we all live in that zone - of afterwards: after the storm, after your illness, after the clock struck. So much of our living is done in our times ‘afterwards’.

Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labour, to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chore done by the gods themselves.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Man first of all exists,
encounters himself,
surges up in the world -
and defines himself
afterwards.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre

Everyone knows on any given day there are energies slumbering in them which the incitement of that day do not call forth. There are times when we only see afterwards what we could have become.
- William James

Sunday 10th February 2013 - Dr Francis Macnab

If we keep looking only at where our feet are going, we may walk off the cliff. We may miss a great opportunity. But if we can look up and look ahead, look forward, there’s a greater chance that we will live more productive lives.
- Buzz Aldrin, astronaut (Stepped onto the moon, 1969)

They came to feel they could do anything they set their minds to. Indeed, they believed not only that they were part of the larger world, but also they could contribute to it.
- Surgeon Atul Gawande

When you make an effort, you find sometimes you are not the only one willing to do so.
- Surgeon Atul Gawande

It’s very important that now we start to think about our soul, our spirit… Love yourself and give that love to the world.
- Yoko Ono

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
- Albert Einstein

To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends.
To appreciate beauty;
to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;
to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
- Anne Frank

Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all.
- Helen Keller

Sunday 3rd February 2013 - Dr Francis Macnab

The question that comes to all -
Does your religion enhance your life, affirm you as a person of worth, and help you to live?

Does your:

• Religion help you cope better with life’s stresses?
• Religion have a quietening, strengthening, healing effect on your mind?
• Religion provide you with a stronger sense of belonging to a tradition, a ritual, and a group of people?
• Religion open up avenues for you to support good causes and so give expression to your personality?
• Religion lead you to a fuller sense of the meaning of life, and your life in particular?
• Religion give you energy and passion for life?
• Religion lead you to a broader or deeper spirituality?
• Religion lift you to the awareness of a higher spiritual place that calls you to be in harmony with it?
• Religion encourage you to develop a greater maturity and a higher   spiritual intelligence?
• Religion affirm you as a person, strengthen your belief in yourself, and enhance your self-worth and self esteem?

Our highest spiritual intelligence might be described in six ways:

1   There is an inborn spiritual quest in each person to explore their best and deepest ways to be a good human being.
2   There is a readiness to listen to the ways the sages and searchers of previous eras have tried to understand life and make the most of it.
3 It is the capacity to bring meaning and wisdom to life’s pain and life’s possibilities.
4 It dares to deinstitutionalise Jesus of Nazareth from the churches and follow his finger, which pointed to the many pathways to a better humanity.
5 It encourages a constant readiness to counter the recurring encroachments of psychic deadness or to what I have called soul deadness.
6 Spiritual intelligence courageously confronts the human and individual past, and practises a revitalising engagement with a new faith for the self, the other, the future.

12 Steps to a Higher Spirituality:

1. Faced with the transitions and tragedy of existence, we set out to recover and sustain a new sense of balance in our inner life.
2. We set out to rediscover what I have called a listening wisdom.
3. We set out to stem the drainage of human care, of human decency and dignity, of human courtesy and commonality.
4. We set out to discover those factors that enhance happiness, wellbeing and a flourishing existence.
5. We set out to acknowledge the allies of the human spirit and a higher spirituality.
6. We set out to create networks of people pledged to create and sustain a world of open-heartedness, genuine dialogue and the affirmations that foster a better humanity.
7. We set out to sustain a sense of planetary survival and the protection of the vital ecology of life.
8. We set out to strengthen the understanding and commonality of all religions devoted to spiritual awareness and growth.
9. We set out to recover a sense of awe and wisdom in more than one zone of human existence.
10. We set out to study the meaning of spiritual growth and liberation.
11. We set out to find meaningful ways to affirm and celebrate others’ spiritual growth and liberation.
12. We set out to translate that spiritual growth into a flourishing existence: a taste of a different way of being.
- Francis Macnab: Discover a New Faith.

“I love this idea because it has always been important to me to wonder why I do what I do and believe what I believe … why we take up one issue but not another … Wondering about this is what life is all about.”
- Rhonda Galbally

“Imagine how lovely it would be if you could be yourself at work and express your true nature, giftedness, and imagination ... One of the encouraging aspects of modern work … Is the increasing recognition of the imagination as a vital and essential force … The imagination is the creative force in the individual.”
- John O’Donohue

“To come to ‘a new place’, to create ‘a new reality’, it was necessary to uproot the old way of life. But still we search for the way of love and compassion.”
- Michael Lerner

Sunday 27th January, 2013 - Dr Francis Macnab

You need live no longer with fear and anger in you hearts, but you can be people of a New Faith, accepted by God, and fully part of the one family of God.

Creating societies that are more just and affirming, more inclusive and proactively tolerant, and are thus more in keeping with the “reign of God proclaimed by Jesus”, in word and deed, is the most important goal of all the Christian Theologies.
- Anne Clifford, adapted

“The details of any illness are tedious and repetitive. What I want to say is ‘I’ve been on this incredible journey...’”

What a difference! “As a kid, I used to wish that the Sacrament of  Confession was matched by one in which you got to boast with equal fervour about how great you were…” Instead of being critical of the human being, we would become congratulatory. Congratulations on being a positive good human being.
- Wilfred Sheed

No matter what your high business in the world, or your very ordinary tasks, remember your small gestures of beauty and tenderness.

“Through the years, organized religion has, by and large, not been a friend or advocate of gay and lesbian involvement in church and society.”

“We were put here on earth to love and take care of one another”- could anyone say it better?

“The notion that human caring, the effort to do better for people, might make a difference can seem hopelessly naïve. But it isn’t.”
- Atul Gawande, surgeon.

Sunday 20th January, 2013 - Dr Francis Macnab

We have our memories. Good memories. Distressing memories. How accurate are our memories? Do we control our memories, or do our memories control us?

Millions of people claim to have vivid remembrances of events that occurred decades ago.

Our memories call to mind events that occurred, but these memories are invariably loaded with emotions, some positive emotions, some deeply negative.

Many past experiences keep returning to awareness and greatly trouble the mind. The person has to learn and practise the art of mind-focus: to move the focus off images of memory that are troublesome, and focus on good memories and actions and images that produce such memories.
- Francis Macnab: Bliss, 1993

The  book of Ecclesiastes in The Old Testament, gave us a wisdom that has been repeated throughout the centuries. Chapter three said. “There is a time”

There is a time to pause and a time to listen.
There is a time to heal and a time to change.
There is a time to talk and a time to reason.
There is a time to be inspired and a time to inspire.
There is a time to be in touch with our inner world and a time to be enriched by the outer world.
There is a time to value the direction of our life and a time to decide what is really important in all of life.
There is a time to ponder the meaning of out bliss, and there is a time to follow our bliss.
- Francis Macnab: Bliss, 1993

“I told you the truth, memory’s truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimises, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else’s version more than his own.”
- Salaman Rushdie

Sunday 13th January, 2013 - Dr Francis Macnab

“We are all blessed with this remarkable experience that is known as ‘Life’ - and that also is something to celebrate.”
- Matt Weinstein

“I was waiting for my future, my next life to begin.”
- Doris Lessing

“‘And where will we go, Master Kavanagh?’ I asked him, ‘when we reach the northern edge of the forest’. And he turned in the saddle and smiled at me...and replied, ‘the future, my lady, we shall ride into the future’”.
- Kate Atkinson

“And so it is with our past. It is a labour to recapture it… the past is hidden somewhere...beyond the reach of the intellect…”
- Marcel Proust

“...Last year’s words belong to last year’s language,
and next year’s words await another voice”.
- T.S. Eliot

“I keep thinking that there are discrete stages of life, each with its own qualities, and that fudging these stages is to fudge the inherent value of each of them. It feels more authentic to me to recognize that human desires and capabilities change from one period of life to the next and that to deny that they do is to miss out on what is most fulfilling about each stage.”
- Daniel Klein, Harvard Philosopher

We are continually facing the possibilities of losing our spontaneity (a deadening inner experience) and the search for life’s unfulfilled promise - what seems to elude us when we thought it should have been our true possession.
- Sheldon Bach, NY, psychoanalyst

“Above all, avoid cynicism.”
- Garret Fitzgerald. Twice Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland.

Things here are not as I once expected
Or hoped or dreamed.
But amongst the fading glories, the losses,
The things that now can never be
I find the moments that have been treasured
And will be treasured
Till I can no longer anything treasure
Nothing will be treasured any more
Till I lose that power and place
Where things were treasured.

Sunday 6th January, 2013 - Dr Francis Macnab

Whatever has occurred in 2012, suppose now we set the goal for 2013 - a clear persisting goal:

• To discover pathways to a life worth living

• To discover pathways that give meaning and comfort to the life already lived.

They kept faith in a future, in the possible, in the ultimategoodness of life. More than that; they had a faith in that recurring   vitality that kept alive their desire to be part of the future healing of life.
- Francis Macnab: Discover a New Faith, p.141

As soon as you rise above mere survival, the question of meaning and purpose become of paramount importance in your life. So what then is the meaning of your life? And its purpose?
- Eckhart Tolle

so much depends    
upon

a red wheel     
barrow

glazed with rain        
water

beside the white      
chickens.
- William Carlos Williams

I have come to realize that nothing is better for people then to be happy and do good while they live.
- Ecclesiastes

We are born to live, not to prepare to live.
- Boris  Pasternak

Sunday 30th December, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

“In a great religious tradition, the house of God is a special place...Over the years, the interior becomes threaded with the desires, intimacies and longing of a community…This interior is richly textured with the aura of those who have worshiped them. There is a gathered memory. This is a living archive of transcendence.
- John O’Donohue

As the year ends, and we turn to the unmarked pages of the New Year, we will pause to recognize the remarkable resilience of the human personality.
- Kennor Sheldon

“We know too much, and feel to little. At least, we feel too little of those emotions from which a good life springs.”
- Bertrand Russell

Tuesday 25th December, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

For three things - maybe four - we could - each of us - make this day more important than all the rest -

• Life is God’s gift to you. The way you live your life is God’s gift to you (Buscaglia).
• We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive (Lawrence).
• In my father’s house are many memories (St John’s Gospel).
• Put off the old nature…put on the new…(St Paul to Ephesians).

Recognizing Life’s Great Moments

And surely...it will happen, and tell me,

That now I must rise and with firm footsteps tread
Across the enormous flagstones, reach, find and know
My own and veritable door;
I shall open it, enter, and learn
That in all this hungry time I have never wanted,
But have, elsewhere, on honey and milk been fed,
Have in green pastures somewhere lain, and in the mornings,
Somewhere beside still waters have
Mysteriously, ecstatically, been led.
- Henry Reed

“How glad I am,” I said... “I believe I have been on my way my whole life – and now I have come home.”
She smiled like a mother.
“One never reaches home,” she said. “But where paths that have affinity for each other intersect, the whole world looks like home, for a time.”
- Hermann Hesse

Sunday 23rd December, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

May I find here a place where I am strengthened and inspired.
May I come here carrying grace, goodwill and a good spirit.
May I here be encouraged to think again of the best meaning of Christmas.
May I become part of the harmony and joy of Christmas.

“We shall have to try our utmost to get used to each other,
To live together with dignity and respect.
Love means just that! Dignity and respect.”
- Henry Reed

Human beings may be powerless.
But, what if
The prayers rising up from this darkness
And people’s actions that turn into prayers
Become a string of lights?
…I would call this the ultimate miracle.
- Keiko Takahashi (after the great earthquake in East Japan)

“It is not that real kindness requires people to be selfless; it is rather that real kindness changes people in the doing of it, often in unpredictable ways”.
- Adam Phillips

“Kindness comes naturally to us.
But so too do cruelty and aggression”
Kindness offers us all the better way.
Lets us be part of that conversation.
- Adam Phillips

Sunday 16th December, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

The name of Caravaggio has always been associated with bold and challenging painting. He had a rare magical power. Again and again his art provoked wonder and enchantment. He was born in 1571 and died in 1610. His art often reflected the turbulent events of his time, yet it conveyed a new self   consciousness of the 17th century.

The Christmas story is one of identification and empathy - human beings at their worst, human beings at their best. We see something of the other person and their predicament, and, if we are ready, we will see ourselves.

Empathy is to see and feel into the life and feelings of another. For that to happen, a person needs to be able to identify their own feelings, and sensitively control them. It is part of the process of understanding oneself, and understanding the other person.

We relive stories and see ourselves as the watcher or listener, the drummer in the background keeping cadence.
- Michael Ondaatje

Healing light flows into the unknown region of the heart...It is as though twilight were awakening in the inner night. Where there was fear, courage begins to dawn. In old walls, unexpected doors open and the heart awakens with the desire “to live everything”.
- John O’Donohue

Suffering brings you to a land where no one can find you. Yet when the human voice focuses with skilful empathy, it can find its way across any distance to the heart of another’s pain.
- John O’Donohue

Sunday 9th December, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

Among the cannier initiatives of religion, has been the provision of regular souvenirs of the transcendent, at morning prayer and the weekly service, at the harvest festival and the baptism, on Yom Kippur and on Palm Sunday. The secular world is lacking an equivalent cycle of moments during which we, too, might be prodded to imaginatively step out of the earthly city and recalibrate our lives according to larger and more cosmic set of measurements
- Alain de Botton

The effort of religions to inspire a sense of community does not stop us introducing us to one another.
- Alain de Botton

Some of our social alienation comes down to the many facets of our nature that have no interest whatsoever in communal values, sides that are bored or revolted by fidelity, self-sacrifice and empathy and which instead incline with abandon towards narcissism, jealousy, spite, promiscuity and wanton aggression.

Religions know full well about these tendencies and recognize that if communities are to function, they must be dealt  with, but by being artfully purged and exorcized rather than simply repressed.     Religions therefore present us with an array of rituals, many of them oddly elaborate at first glance, whose function is to safely discharge what is vicious, destructive or nihilistic in our nature.
- Alain de Botton

In essence, religions understand that to belong to a community is both very desirable and not very easy. In this respect, they are greatly more sophisticated than those secular political theorists who write lyrically about the loss of a sense of community, while refusing to acknowledge the inherently dark aspects of social life.
- Alain de Botton

“In a team, each individual becomes stronger”
- Helmut John

“Every now and again, life sends us little messages. The messages are meant for us alone. They may seem perfectly  banal to the world, but to you, for whom they were intended, they have the force of revelation. Much of the failure and success of life, much of the  joy or suffering in life, depends on being able to see these secret messages. And much of the magic, or tragedy of life depends on being able to decipher or interpret these messages.
- Ben Okri

Sunday 2nd December, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

“Learning to be still opens the door to many other possibilities;
- developing compassion
- remaining focused.
My personal attitude to religion can be summarized simply;
“God is love, and those who abide in love, abide in God,
and God abides in them.

But does the broader community  accept the link between love and God?  Can love be a genuine part of human exchange without any reference to God?
- Larry Culliford

“To speak of a Personal God, does not mean that God is A person.  It means that God is the ground of everything personal.
- Paul Tillich, Volume I

“God’s life is life as spirit”
- Paul Tillich, Volume 2

But can we identify a “good spirit” in human exchange without any reference to God?

“The major and almost the only theme of all work is the struggle of man with God.”

“Everything inside my dark head was transformed into light and sun and love.”
- Nikos Kazantzakis

“Day in and day out, look for your small gestures of beauty and tenderness.”
- Stanley Hauerwas

Sunday 25th November, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

JOY the flourishing life.

Perhaps the opposite of FLOURISHING is flatness or cynicism. Who wants to exist on the level of ‘flatness’?
We are all re-energised by the spirit of flourishing.
That is where we all (most of us) want to be.

Fewer than one quarter of adults 25-74 are enjoying a flourishing life. Of America’s 155 million people, the flourishing population would be approximately 27 million (ie 17%).

“To live is the rarest thing in the world.
Most people exist.
That’s all”.
- Oscar Wilde

"Flourishing individuals", said Keyes and Haidt - "are filled with emotional vitality".

Flourishing means finding meaning and enjoyment in one’s relationship with the world. It is to be vitally engaged.
Anything less than that may mean we function, but flourishing is absent.

We look to our own INNER EXPERIENCE.
We look to our interpersonal RELATIONSHIP ENJOYMENT.
We look to the institutions of our belonging and participation.

Are these three areas contributing to our flourishing life?

“H+ is a way of life”
“Most religions emphasise the negative. H+ is entirely positive”.
- Edward deBono

“Yes. This is the place where colours are made. 
This is the place of joy”.
- Stephen Beal

Sunday 18th November, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

Give new meaning to your life.

Is there anything wrong with the monotonous life?
With the ‘low-key’ life?
With the purpose-less life?
With the insouciant life?
With the unengaged life?

Our religion aims to re-invoke a new energy, a new curiosity, a new awareness, a new way of being.

Our church searches for people who want to re-examine the monotonous life, who want to engage in something of special significance, who want to contribute to a new sense of identity for this place and people.

In the first part of the 20th century (OTIUM CUM DIGNITATE)
“Doing nothing with dignity” was widely accepted. We need to be more vocal of the ‘tradition’ of disengaging as we get past retirement age. There is a slow movement of awakening of older people to different forms of engagement.
- Jan Baars

For surely beyond that great façade my life is being lived?
Lived, loved and filled with gaiety and ardour,
As though my life were endowed with a perpetual splendour
And radiance fell on it. It is surely only that I
Am not now with it, not with my life, but here,
Restlessly rigid, counting the flagstones while there within, 
it dances

Nightly the length of the lighted hall to the starry feast,
Stoops in the dawn to the kindly fountain, rests and, rested,
Breathes on a single breath its anthem of love and praise.
- The Chateau, Henry Reed

So here I am, in the middle way, 
having wasted twenty years.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation
- T.S Eliot - East Coker

Sunday 11th November, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

Great Thanksgiving Day

Sometimes the theological strengths of faith, hope and love do more than comfort us: they heal us.
And for that, we are surely grateful!

In yourself lies your whole experience of the world, and if you know how to look and learn, then the door to that world is there, and the key is in your hand.
- Jiddu Krishnamurti

“Can you CURE bad memories?”
No - But I can prevent them doing any more harm.
I can give them a different position and thereby reduce their power.
I can supersede them by giving good memories primary place.
I can refocus my life so that bad memories are no longer  the focus of my life.
I can create inner states that change the meaning of my  life.

Scars should be esteemed as proof of natures healing. And not mere mementos of unhappy wounds.
- Leonardo Da Vinci

A person pondering their adverse experiences can discover to their amazement, that there is a flow of good energy, a deep river of awareness that he/she can tap into and use.
- Psychoanalyst Edgar Levenson

Sometimes we forget the past. And other times we distort it; some disturbing memories haunt us for years. Memory plays such a persuasive role in our everyday lives that we take it for granted.
- Daniel Schacter

We are a collection of memories. They dictate how we think, act and make decisions, and often define our identity.
- Memory (New Scientist, October 2012)

Sunday 4th November, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

Strengths

Human strengths represent a relatively new area of scientific research. There has been a long period where the focus has been on negative aspects of development; now it is time to investigate the positive aspects.

On the one hand, it is possible to learn how to mobilize our strengths. On the other hand, we know that strength is often fired in the crucible of adversity.

Every step we take on earth

Brings us to a new world.
Every foot supported
On a floating bridge
- Frederico Garcia Lorca

Of course, there are miserable times that can be pervasive. But -

If you can make some joy appear in your life -
there is strength in that!

“I believe in joy as the sovereign remedy for sickness, and the sole
preservative of youth”.
- Alma Mahler

“Love your enemies is probably the most radical thing Jesus ever said. Unless, one considers the parable of the Samaritan. There the admission is to let your enemies love you”
- Robert Funk, founder of the Jesus Seminar

Sunday 28th October, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

The science of emotions and the role of Faith.

Wherever one is, one must be on a good path, a spiritually beautiful path, if one is to avoid being an exploiter or a beneficiary of aggression. This is not, however, a matter of dogma or adherence to a restrictive philosophy, but is simply a recipe for a good life where mistakes can and will be made, but can also be overcome by the discovery of a better path.
- Jack D Forbes

Religion is, in reality, living. Our religion is not what we profess, or what we say, or what we proclaim; our religion is what we do, what we desire, what we seek, what we dream about, what we fantasize, what we think - all these things - twenty-four hours a day. One’s religion, then, is ones life, not merely the ideal life but the life as it is actually lived.

Religion is not prayer, it is not a church, it is not theistic, it is not atheistic, it has little to do with what white people call ‘religion’. It is our every act. If we tromp on a bug, that is our religion; if we experiment on living animals, that is our religion; if we cheat at cards, that is our religion; if we dream of being famous, that is our religion; if we gossip maliciously, that is our religion; if we are rude and aggressive, that is our religion. All that we do, and are, is our religion.
- Jack D Forbes

The last three decades have witnessed a dramatic increase in the scientific interest in emotions. We now have multiple models of emotion.
- Christopher Heavey

Wanting to feel bad (angry) does not sound smart.
One would expect that those who elect to feel bad (angry) would be lower in emotional intelligence.
But is that always the case.
- B Ford and M Tarrie

Keep me away from the wisdom that does not cry, 
the philosophy that does not laugh, and the greatness 
that does not bow before children.
- Kahlil Gibran

All of us need resilience to steer through the everyday adversities that by all us… Depending on our supplies of resilience, we will either become helpless and resigned, or we will bounce back and find a way to move forward.
- K Reivich and A Shatter

Sunday 21st September, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

Everything is tried and nothing satisfied”.
- Paul Tillich

“And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
...would it have been worth it, after all”.
- T.S Eliot

“Where is the life we have lost in the living? 
...You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again, 
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there”.
- T.S Eliot

“As we comfort our existential fears, we grow spiritually”.
- J.D Bartz

“Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans 
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, 
The emptiness of ages in his face, 
And on his back, the burdens of the world”.
- Edwin Markham

“Just as we are, the immortal spirit grows
Like harmony in music, there is a dark
Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles
Discarded elements, makes them cling together
In one society”.
- William Wordsworth

“You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself 
floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with 
the heavens and crowned with the stars; and perceive
yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world”.
- Thomas Traherne

“Sic itur ad astra”
(That’s the way to the stars)
- Virgil

“Too late came I to love thee, O thou Beauty so 
ancient and so fresh, yea too late came I to love thee. 
And behold, thou wert within me, and I out of myself, 
where I made search for thee”.
- St Augustine of Hippo

Sunday 14th October, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

“Man lives by habit indeed, but what he lives for is thrills and excitement”.
- William James

“There are times in a ‘man’s’ existence when ‘he’ must make something happen, must fling a splash of colour into life, or some part of ‘him’, perhaps the ‘boy’ in ‘him’, will perish, flying broken before the grey armies of age, timidity, or boredom”.
- J.B Priestley

“You know, I’m fascinated with everything. Life is fascinating.
I’m fascinated by trees and dogs, but no one wants to hear me talk about it”

“Youth, large, lusty, loving - Youth, full of grace, force, fascination. Do you know that old age may come after you with equal force, grace, fascination?”
- Walt Whitman

“All of my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them. If like me, you have looked at the stars, and tried to make sense of what you see, you too have started to wonder what makes the universe exist”.
- Stephen Hawking

“I am not a believer… but I have great respect for religion. The subject has always fascinated me”.
- Stephen Jay Gould

Who would you name as your eight most fascinating people? If you can’t name eight, four or five will do!

I am fascinated by a ‘girl reading a letter at an open window’. Vermeer. What is written? What are her thoughts? Why does it affect us? Are we seeing something more than the girl, the window, and the piece of paper?

Sunday 7th October, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

A time of support and encouragement for all cancer survivors, family, friends and helpers.

There are times when we find strength for our sorrows,
and then we know we can get beyond our grief.
There are many griefs.
- Dr Francis Macnab: ‘Life after loss’

Sarah Watt, dying of cancer said -
“The best I can do is balance the good luck with the bad and go with good grace…”
“In our home, while despair and disappointment may sit quietly in a corner of the house, hope and grace take up more room”.

Her husband after her death and in his time of bereavement wrote -
“It’s a different life, a new way of being”.
- From 'the Sunday Life' 30 September 2012

We need to take careful notice of the fact that many people cling to their pain because they do not know how to let it go, and they have never learned.

'Despite a large body of knowledge gathered from the last fifty years of psychological research and clinical practice, we do little organised thinking and preparation for these known and necessary losses and even less for the unexpected and imposed losses.'
- Dr Francis Macnab: 'Life after Loss'

We look for a new way of being in face of anxiety,ambiguity and tragedy.
- Dr Francis Macnab: 'Life after Loss'

Sunday 30th September, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

St Michael’s is a unique place in all of Melbourne.

St Michael’s is one of Melbourne’s distinctive architectural  treasures. Its exterior is a landmark in the City of Melbourne. Its interior affects everyone. Its windows, its tapestry, its various  appointments attract people from around the world as well as from places across Australia.

St Michael’s reflects its biblical legend - an advocate of the prevention of violence, destruction and waste - and the promotion of growth, wellbeing and wholeness.

St Michael’s encourages all who come within its walls, to explore the possibilities of a relevant, meaningful Faith for this

21st Century; for people searching for a purpose and passion in their lives; for the consolations and courage they need to meet the conflicts and stresses that are so prevalent in society.

St Michael’s points to the growth and development of children; the needs of children in countries around the world; and the prevention of the many ways children are deprived of love, care, and encouragement. St Michael’s calls all people to unite in the causes of healing, health and wellbeing, and the building of a better world.

These causes are vital, necessary and urgent. They are basic to humanity, to human compassion, and to the transformation of human communities everywhere.

If you want others to be happy: practise compassion.
If you want to be happy: practise compassion.
- Dalai Lama

People  may feel compassion, think compassion, talk compassion, but DOING compassion is the practice of kindness. It is a different way of being in the world. It is a process of doing something for another and changing something in ourselves.

Compassion, a local virtue with global implications.
- R.A Lewin

Every child is born under that invisible energized canopy of hope and potential. Every child carries the mark of momentous significance: “Suffer the little children”.

Sunday 23rd September, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

We all have the desire for happiness and joy and we all wish to overcome human suffering. And we can all develop gentleness, compassion ands a sense of universal spirituality”.
- The Dalai Lama

“I share with most of my scientific colleagues a feeling that there is a something going on in nature… It’s so beautiful, it’s put together with much delicacy and there are many felicitous qualities about it.  I think the universe has something like a purpose or a meaning and we human beings have a part to play in that”.
- Professor  Paul Davies

“Instead of asking the wrong question - ‘why did it happen?’ - ask the question - ‘what do I do now? - when do I find the strength and grace to go on, to change, to be different?’”.

“There are people who believe human nature is essentially violent, oppressive and combative. In every faith, there is the desire to keep negative emotions in check, and are under the influence of compassion and love”.
The Dalai Lama

“Remember anger closes our hearts;
Compassion is a doorway to an open heart”.
- Dean Ornish

“It is possible to live a very good life, even though it isn't an easy life”.
- Dean Ornish

“When you take things just a little less seriously, you enormously empower yourself”
- Mira Kirshenbaum

Sunday 16th September, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

As we move from youth to age, several key tasks are waiting for us-
(a) taming the upsurge of strong negative emotions
(b) reconciling our strong preoccupations and our social attachments
(c) Sustaining and solidifying our stable love relationships
- Miller, 2011

In this month of St Michael:

Give a thought to families where there is one child or more with a severe emotional disorder. Studies reveal what we might expect - high levels of stress, and some family members overloaded, unable to cope, often angry, and without a steady recognised support. What happens to their children as they grow older? - some needing trust and affirmation, others troubled in their relationships, often very destructive to their community?

Imagine -
The decision to leave their home country and venture, sometimes dangerously, into another country, with different culture, religion, and values, is not one that is taken lightly by any immigrant. The children of immigrants are very vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and appalling discrimination.

Imagine the stresses they experience on arrival!

Multiple moves, searching for job opportunities, legal proceedings, often with long term separation from their families.

There is much controversy over these families and how they arrive here.
Note that in America, over 1 million undocumented migrants arrive annually. Many at high risk!

“Emotion is important because it is the one thing everybody has in abundance. Our triumph is to use it, temper it, transmute it.”
- June Wayne

Sunday 9th September, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

“They want to know themselves better and feel happier about who they are. It is an opportunity to decide what kind of life they want to live and who they want to be. In most cases, it has been a long journey. It is time to find the true self.” (p3)
- Amanda Stuart The Longest Journey - Finding the True Self.

“For me, the process of counseling was life changing. I actually believe the term life saving to be no exaggeration. What more could anyone want from life than to discover the answer to the question: ‘Who am I?’ I know the full answer will always be a mystery…” (p195)
- Amanda Stuart The Longest Journey - Finding the True Self.

People often discuss their dreams; “they reveal the inner landscape of their being…opening up a dialogue with the unconscious.” (p212)
- Amanda Stuart The Longest Journey - Finding the True Self.

“For those who commit to the process of exploring their inner world, I believe it is a life-long journey…” (p344)
- Amanda Stuart The Longest Journey - Finding the True Self.

Here is where one starts from. As we grow older the world becomes sharper, the pattern more complicated, … a life time burning in every moment...old stones that cannot be deciphered.
...the waves cry, the wind cry, the vast waters,
...In the end is my beginning.
- T S Eliot

Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks.
- T S Eliot

Unless the god’s own power were  in our hearts
How could what is divine delight us?
- Wolfgang von Goethe

Sunday 2nd September, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

What a life some people have!
Living or trying to live in squalor.
Displaying an expansive life-style in vast wealth.
Struggling to survive the recurring bouts of cancer (at age 16).
Being the life of every party with plenty of buzz and booze.
The hardworking nurse, teacher, doctor, business person.
The anxiety of children in the boats looking to a new country.
People retired, not knowing what worthwhile thing to do each day.
People retired, devoting their years to some good cause.
What a life some people have!

Refugee camps housing thousands of people in Romania,
Turkey and several countries in Africa.
Living in fear and danger in Afghanistan and the Middle East, every day.
Being the parents of the thousands of children who die every day
What a life some people have!

Two eighteen year olds, one training to be an infant teacher - the other working in a camp for disabled children.

“Their kind may have a chance of helping Australia slough off its
cancerous growth of fear and greed”
- Leanne Rowe, Medical practitioner

“The people I admire are those who give their full attention; the ones with

an appetite for life who look and listen and wonder”
- Rosalind Price (Author born in England, grew up in Kenya, made her home in Australia)

“Hear the bird’s song without attempting to render it into nouns and verbs.”
- R.W Emerson

“Nature is full of freaks – now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then a young heart beating under fourscore winters.”
- R.W Emerson

We expect and aim for a successful life.
We want a meaningful life.
We would like something  to enrich our life, keep us in good mental health, and free of physical disease, injury and suffering.

Some people say:
I don’t look forward to the future anymore.
My life has no meaning anymore.
I feel that something bad is just waiting around the corner.

Other people say:
I value the life I have.
I focus on the faith I have in human nature.
I want to live a life that has some meaning.
I want to be true to myself.

One individual, under serious stress, and with a demanding job -

“My cup runneth over”
“Life gives us another chance – will I take it?”

Sunday 26th August, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

Preparing for St Michael’s week:

“There is a drug we can all get for free. It has wide ranging health benefits, with no side effects. It’s called the MIND”
- (New Scientist 20.08.11)

“Religion and spirituality provide people with an acceptance of what is, and hope of a better future.”
- Larry Culliford“

The visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance.”
- William James

“What mattered to Confucius , Socrates, Christ and Isaiah was not what you believed but how you behaved. Show me, don’t tell me. ‘God’ was the experience of loving compassion, not an all-powerful, judgmental and often angry patriarch.”
- George Vaillant

“The process of spiritual development begins in childhood.”
(Unfortunately it often stops there)
Is there an adult spirituality? If so, what is its marks, and why are we so often in flight from it?

“Jewish spirituality, like many forms of spirituality, can be seen as an expression of individual and communal yearnings toward a different life.”
- Ellen Vmansky

“Let us teach ourselves and each other to love the best there is.”
- Julia Richman

“Spirituality is universal. Available to every human being. Not limited to one religion, or one group of people”
- David Elkins

“Spirituality presupposes certain qualities of the mind”
- David Lukoff

Sunday 19th August, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

Preparing for St Michael’s week:

Did you know, that 14 million of the world’s children will die before the age of 5.

While millions of little children suffer and die,
Other millions of little children suffer and live

Can we help them live with greater
confidence? Greater enjoyment?

In the past the world presented a set of conditions whereby adulthood was akin to maturity, and becoming an adult was a relatively fixed goal. In the modern world, adulthood is not the final stage of life. Adulthood is a series of transitions from one stage to another, continuously.

How do we develop the strengths needed? How do we sustain them, and how do we re-grow them after they have been exhausted or undermined?

“People are often too critical of themselves - agonising over what they should have done, and done better. Many often find it easier to imagine being compassionate towards others than towards themselves.”
- Stephen Joseph

“We have great technology, we have great ability to handle things on the outside - build cars, roads and stuff, but we don’t have any approach to what’s on the inside of a human being.”
- Nick Nolte

“We live at the mercy of a single word.”
- Joseph Conrad

It takes a special strength to transform a world into something that does not frighten us.

“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”
- William James

Sunday 12th August, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

Each individual is in a process of evolution over the human life-span.
“Evolution towards spirituality takes place not only in the genetic and cultural arenas, but in the lives of each one of us as we mature our focus from caterpillar ‘me’, to community butterfly.”
- George Vaillant, MD

We are all on a journey: hope calls us forward, healing comes along behind. We need to recognize them both, and give them the ‘space’ to do their work for us. We need them both.

“Transform in the broadest way possible, greed into generosity, hatred into loving-kindness, and delusion into realistic thinking.”
- Emmanuel Levines

Sometimes I go about pitying myself, and all along my soul is being blown by great winds across the sky.
- Ojibway saying

“I was looking forward, with never a glance behind me. I was waiting for my future, my real life, to begin. Behind me a door had slammed shut. Doors had been shutting behind me all my life.”
- Dorris Lessing

“Everybody is vulnerable at every stage of their lives. This does not mean that people aren't also resilient and resourceful”
- Adam Phillips

Sunday 5th August, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

“Even when
We have been hurt
Or feel disheartened
The world
Starts a new day as it always has.

Even when
Our dreams have been shattered
Or we have lost loved ones
The world

Continues on a new cycle as it always has.
No matter what happens
The world welcomes us
As if nothing had occurred.
The world endures
Doing all it can
In silence

Therefore
In time
In such a world
We will stand up again
We will begin to walk again.”
- Keiko Takahashi

Even after circumstances of great trauma—
war, earthquake, tsunamis, and disasters of various kinds—
"I believe we can live with ‘Hope’… deep within us reside strong spirits"…"Each of us is being called on to face our undiscovered true nature and profound wisdom that can respond to all sorts of realities."
- Keiko Takahashi

So we search for joy.
“The state of joy, contentment, delight—
Is a desired state.”

“Men without joy seem like corpses”
- Käthe Kollwitz

“One joy scatters a hundred sorrows”
- Chinese Proverb

“He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise.”
- William Blake

Sunday 29th July, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

Afterwards—
Do you look backwards  -  or forwards?
Do you succumb  -  or find new strength?
Do you grow smaller  -  or larger?

“At any given moment there must be hundreds of millions of acts of kindness taking place around the world”
- The Dalai Lama

“Real kindness changes people”
- Adam  Phillips

Will I remain broken?  How will I mend?  If all the King’s horses fail, why not find other horses to help?

“The world breaks everyone
and afterward
many are strong at the broken places”
- Ernest Hemingway

“Scars should be esteemed as proof of nature’s healing, and not mere mementos of unhappy wounds"
- Leonardo da Vinci

“What does not kills me - makes me stronger.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Sunday 22nd July, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

“My aim is to bring about a psychic state in which my patient begins to experiment with his own nature - a state of fluidity, change and growth, in which there is no longer anything eternally fixed and hopelessly petrified.”
- Carl Jung

“There is not a single person anywhere who has not had great moments, has not risen to rare occasions.”
- Ernest Dimnet

Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone,
Kindness in another’s trouble,
Courage in your own.
- Adam Lindsay Gordon

“If, we as a people cannot always make history have a meaning, we can always act as if our own lives have one.”
- Albert Camus

“Try to keep your soul young and quivering right up to old age…”
- George Sand

Sunday 15th July, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

We look for ways to preserve who and what we are - or would like to be. Some events and experiences arouse our anxiety and we fear the loss of our image, our self, our identity and our dignity.

The photographs showed vast displays of deprivation and degradation, but dignity was nowhere to be found.

We fear the loss of our dignity. Sometimes it is a loss imposed upon us by others. Sometimes we lose our dignity by our own actions - our loss of emotional control in the presence of others; our own internal critic tells us we have fallen below our standards and beliefs.

In the deserts of the heart
Let healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
- W.H. Auden

Everyone wishes to be Cary Grant,
Even I wish to be Cary Grant.
- Cary Grant

The individual searches to find -
one’s true self in terms of core values and beliefs;
meaning and purpose in life;
truth about the world;
relationships that bring fulfilment;
autonomy to pursue realisation of one’s full potential;
one’s highest sense of dignity.
- Don Snider and Lloyd Matthews

Last Sunday’s address concluded with five suggested factors for the Australian personality.
(T) 1. Thoughtfulness
(I) 2. Intelligence (in different situations)
(G) 3. Generosity
(E) 4. Expansiveness, excitement
(R) 5. Resilience
T.I.G.E.R

Sunday 8th July, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

“Matters of dignity are at the heart of every interaction…”
- Dr Diana Hicks

Walk tall as the trees, live strong as the mountains, be gentle as the spring winds, keep the warmth of summer in your heart, and the Great Spirit will always be with you.
- American Indian Lullaby

Where’s the sense of being proud when you consider that Man, as a species, is not very well constructed physiologically, and in the vast majority of cases, is coarse, stupid, and profoundly unhappy too?
- Anton Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard

The Lord God has given us vast forests, immense fields, wide horizons, surely we ought to be giants, living in such a country as this.
- Anton Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard

In the large empty spaces of our life 
we yearn for a connection
with something that will give us
A sense of meaning and purpose.

“...Les Kossatz’ sheep can be seen as a metaphor for the human condition… the perpetual struggle against all that debases, depends and denies individual autonomy and hinders significant progress towards societal improvement.”
- Jenny Zimmer

Remember this - there is a proper dignity and proportion to be observed in the performance of every act of life.
- Marcus Aurelius

Sunday 1st July, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

In the middle of winter, I learned at last that there was in me an invincible summer."
- Albert Camus

Unhappiness and suffering come from three directions: our own body, doomed to decay; from the external world that refuses to grant our wishes; and from our relations with other individuals.
- Martin Bergmann

We are never so helplessly unhappy as when we have lost our loved object or its love.
- Sigmund Freud

In the world when I choose to love, even the coldest winter must yield to agents of spring and the darkest view of human violence must eventually find room for shafts of light.
- Madeline Allbright, one-time US Secretary of State.

I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time, I am right.
- Albert Einstein

Sunday 24th June, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

The Good Spirit floods into everyone’s very soul,
searching out their inner most being.
- Proverbs 20.27

“I must make clear the distinction between creative living and being artistically creative. In creative living, you or I find that everything we do strengthens the feeling that we are alive, that we are ourselves.”
- Donald Winnicott, psychoanalyst.

“In each baby, there is a vital spark, and this urge towards life and growth is a part of the baby, something the child is born with…”
- Donald Winnicott.

A profound reason why people don't collaborate well in groups is because they don't know how to. (Some act as if they do know how, but they are imitating already worn-out ideas.) If they changed their style, they would not only come up with more creative, inspired solutions, they would have more fun, and be energised by meetings.
- Andrew Gaines

“A creative life…brings forth unknown issues, impossible to preconceive.”
- DH Lawrence

“All joyous or creative life is a rebirth of something not oneself…”
- WB Yeats

“I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the birth of imagination - what the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth - whether it existed before or not.”
- John Keats

Always we search for who we are - who we really are - in the context of other people. Even when we are alone, our inner world is subtly, if not explicitly influenced by a sense of self in relationship to others. Our mind, our mood, our emotions, our behaviour are shaped within our relational context.
- Joyce Slochower, psychoanalyst.

Sunday 17th June, 2012 - Dr Paul Tonson

Whenever I’d heard someone say ‘Relationships are work’, I’d always scoffed, because I’d thought relationships should grow wild like untended gardens, but now I knew they were work, and unpaid work too, volunteer work.
- Steve Toltz 'A fraction of the whole' (p.422)

Have you noticed in books and movies the Devil is always depicted with a sense of humour while God is deadly serious? I think in reality it would be the other way around, don’t you?
- Steve Toltz 'A fraction of the whole' (p.609)

The soul has no culture. The soul has no nation. The soul has no colour or accent or way of life. The soul is forever. The soul is one. And when the heart has its moment of truth and sorrow, the soul cannot be stilled.
- G D Roberts, 'Shantaram' (p.124)

Said Joan of Arc when friends abandoned her:
“It is better to be alone with God. His friendship will not fail me, nor his counsel nor his love. In his strength I will dare and dare and dare until I die.”

'True religion is about adding value to the world we live in’.
- Don Cupitt

You don’t have to be listed in ‘Who’s Who’ to know what’s what.

Sunday 10th June, 2012 - Rev Dr Lorraine Parkinson

‘The act of communion with God is one which engages the whole person and calls upon all the interior energies. It can occur only when these energies are working together, when inner disharmony has been overcome and unity reigns within.’
- Michael Casey: "The Undivided Heart". The Western Approach to Contemplation, 1994.

Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart to revere your name.
- Psalm 86: 11

‘Of the divided heart, let me say that it is a disease in the heart.  Now a very small wound in the heart will kill. A great gash in the head may be healed, but a slight wound in the heart is deadly. A division of understanding or judgment may be remedied, but a division of heart is a very terrible and often a very fatal disease.’
- C. H. Spurgeon, ‘A divided Heart’, April 14, 1872, C. H. Spurgeon Collection, Version 1.0, Ages Software.

And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.
- Mark 3: 25

The concluding lines of Harry Dansey’s poem ‘The Divided Heart’ sum up his ideal for racial harmony:
We would not choose to tell apart
the things we love by race or clime
for they are one within the heart;
and equal joy in them we take
that in this place by chance are set
tall kauris of Waitakere
or oak and elm of Somerset.
- H. R. Dansey, Dansey, Harry Delamere Barter – Biography’  from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, September, 2010.

Sunday 3rd June, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

"We listen to every voice and to everybody but not ourselves. We are constantly exposed to the noise of opinions and ideas hammering at us from everywhere, but we stop listening to ourselves."
- Erich Fromm

"Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed."
- UNESCO Constitution

Give us release form our pains of the past -
"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased;
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;
Raise out the written troubles of the brain;
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?"
- Shakespeare: 'Macbeth' V. iv

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day."
- Shakespeare: 'Macbeth' V. v

Inner uncertainty -
"Stars, hide your fires,
Let not light see my black and deep desires,
The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see."
- Shakespeare: 'Macbeth' I. iv 50f

Knowing that you can do good things,
And feel good about what they are doing,
Helped you to tolerate some of the destructiveness
That we have experienced and participated in.
- Martha Bragin

Can you say what will happen?
"If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow, and which will not,
Speak then to me..."
- Shakespeare: 'Macbeth' I. iii

Is life so meaningless - ?
"Life is but a walking shadow -
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more."
- Shakespeare: 'Macbeth' V. v

The Talking Cure - what to do with your grief -
"Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak
Whispers the o'erwrought heart,
And bids it break."
- Shakespeare: 'Macbeth' IV. iii

"Even in our darkest moments, it is possible to find hope."
- Stephen Joseph

Sunday 27th May, 2012 - Dr Debra Campbell

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
- Oscar Wilde

Forgiveness is learning to live with the past, rather than in the past.

Forgiveness isn’t something we do for others. We do it so we can get well and move on.

“I’ve just realised how important forgiving yourself is for our young people, because only then can they change their lives.”
- Member of the Bristol Youth Offending Training Team

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong.
- Gandhi

Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn others, or it will all come back against you. Forgive others, and you will be forgiven.
- St Luke 11:4

We achieve inner health only through forgiveness - the forgiveness not only of others but of ourselves.
- Joshua Liebman

“When true forgiveness happens it is one of the most astonishing and liberating of the human experiences.”
- Richard Holloway

I don’t forgive because I’m weak. I forgive because I’m strong enough to acknowledge that we all make mistakes.

Sunday 19th May, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

We have taken a long time to realise that religion is not a social disease or a failed confrontation with science. Religion is a psycho-social theology - it does depend on what kind of religion.
- I.D. Suttie

“Everything I do depends on other members of our species and the shoulders that we stand on. And a lot of us want to contribute something back to our species and to add something to the flow...we try to use the talents we have to express our deep feelings, to show our appreciation of all the contributions that came before us, and to add something to that flow.”
- Steve Jobs

Religion can affect happiness through good health.
- Michael Argyle

“If you’re looking to preserve your health, happiness and longevity, what’s the single most important thing you can do today that costs absolutely nothing?”
- David Agus

Be a listener -
“And a whisper will be heard in the place
Where the ruined
House once stood.”
- Yehuda Amichai

May religion not “strike with a fist in the face,” but “tug gently with the fingers on the sleeve.”
- Richard Holloway

“It’s here in all the pieces of my life
That now I find myself again.
I yearn to belong to something, to be contained
In an all-embracing mind that sees me
As a single thing.
I yearn to be held
In the great hands of your heart…
Into them I place those fragments, my life,
And you, God - spend them however you want.”
- Rilke

Sunday 12th May, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

Everybody knows that a good mother gives her children a feeling of trust and stability.
- Katherine Hathaway

For the child, mother is good; she is love; she is warmth; she is earth. To be loved by her is to be alive, to be at home.
- Erich Fromm

The successful mother sets her children free and becomes more free in the process.
- R.J. Harighurst

In my generation, many of us knew that we did not want to be like our mothers. Strangely, many mothers who loved their daughters, did not want their daughters to grow up to be like them either.
- Betty Frieden

We are all ‘works in progress’ - walking the path of never-ending spiritual growth, incomplete and needing to mature.
- Keiko Takahashi

Children from a deprived ghetto area demonstrate remarkable resilience and creativity when given the sufficient conditions of a dedicated and creative teacher. This creativity has to be continually valued and affirmed by significant persons and the culture in order that it continue to flourish throughout the rest of the life cycle.
- David Schecter

Sunday 6th May, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

All we need is the morning. As long as there is a sunrise, then there is the possibility that we can face all our misfortunes, celebrate all our blessings, and live all our endeavors as human beings.
- 365 Tao

The good in you is like water in a well. The more you draw from it, the more freshwater will seep in. If you do not draw from it, the water will become stagnant.
- 365 Tao

“I marvel at the human soul; no power in heaven and earth is so great. Without being aware of it, we carry omnipotence within us. The words we speak tell how much we are in touch with it.
- Nikos Kazantzakis

For one word, a person is often deemed to be wise; and for one word they are often deemed to be foolish. We should be careful indeed what we say.
- Confucius 500BC

People say they “find” love, as if it were an object hidden by a rock. But love takes many forms, and it is never the same for any man or women. What people find then is a CERTAIN love. And Ed found a certain love with Marguerite, a grateful love, a deep love, a quiet love, one that he knew, above all else, was irreplaceable. Once she’d gone, he’d let the days go stale. He put his heart to sleep.
- Mitch Albom

I am worn out
with the effort of trying to love people
and not succeeding.
- D.H. Lawrence

People always make war when they say they love peace.
- D.H. Lawrence

Sunday 29th April, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

“Faith is an act of the total personality.”
“It is the most centred act of the human mind.”
“The psychology of personality requires a dynamic theory of faith.”
“Faith cannot be imagined without an awareness of the unconscious elements in the personality…”
- Theologian, Paul Tillich, 1957

Looking up…
You see the afternoon sun catch
a row of jars on a shelf.
Thankful, for this moment.
- Lee Harwood

Let winds blow wild around us,
But let hearts be glad and minds be calm -
And let God’s people say Amen.
- Iona Community

“One cannot replace faith by courage, but neither can we describe faith without courage … Faith gives depth, direction and unity to all other concerns and, with them, to the whole personality.”
- Paul Tillich

Beauty is so central to our life - but we evade it.
“You cannot make beauty, you can only allow yourself to experience and accept it, and let it grow.”
“We are all on a journey to experience beauty in our life. Do not wait until the end of the journey to discover it.”
- Gregory Landsman

“The only angels we need to invoke are those of our better nature … the only demons we must fear are those that lurk inside every human mind...”
- Sam Harris

Sunday 22nd April, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

Bear with me, O mystery of being, for pulling threads from your veil.
“I am my own obstacle.
Do not hold it against me.”
- Wislawa Szymborska

“And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them. And with a great voice he said: When love beckons you, follow him.
...When he speaks to you, believe in him.
Love possesses not, nor would it be possessed.
Think not you can direct the course
of love, for love, if it finds you worthy,
directs your course.”
- Gibran: The Prophet

We all have to try to build
After the war is over, whether we win or lose,
We shall have to try to live together with dignity and respect.
- Henry Reed

Restore in us
A peaceful mind
A strengthened spirit

Restore to us
A new pathway
A new hope, and a new purpose

Restore for us
The courage to let go what is past
The readiness and strength to walk
towards the future

Restore in us
A union with the energy
Of this sacred place
And a union with the
soul of the universe

As we touch the rock
Help us draw strength from the stone

- The Mingary Prayer

“If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you to go on in spite of all.”
- Martin Luther King

Sunday 15th April, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

“It has been my privilege to see many of my monastic brethren die well. After a full life they have accepted death serenely; sometimes pain and discomfort made this very difficult, but that could not detract from their readiness to accept death when it came. The ability to die well is a seriously underrated skill in western society; having watched it close up, I believe that it is one of the most encouraging things you can ever witness. Yes it is sad to lose a brother and we rightly mourn their loss, but in their dying well they leave us a great parting gift.”
- Abbot Christopher Jamison. “Finding Sanctuary”

“Our dying gives our experience an intensity, an immediacy, a seriousness and an innocence that we have never known, or have forgotten.”
- Dr Stanley Keleman “Living Your Dying.”

“Many people when I asked them about their dying, answered with outbursts of relief. ‘Thank goodness you asked me,’ was the general response. Then they implored me that they be allowed to die in peace.”
- Dr Lawrence Schneiderman “Embracing our Mortality.”

“Each of us needs to escape the incessant noise that surrounds us...to create the opening to connect with our inner wisdom.”
- Dr William B Stewart “Deep Medicine.”

“…Even the Son of God sought relief from his intolerable suffering.”

“...I assisted Jim to end his life.”

“Through being a doctor who is prepared to talk about dying...I (have) helped (people) to live.”
- Dr Rodney Syme “A Good Death.”

It is always a surprise - life, I mean. Never what I anticipate and seldom what I ask.
- James Kavanaugh

“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
- Bronnie Ware “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.”

“Because I could not stop for Death - he kindly stopped for me.”
- Emily Dickinson, poet.

“We are songs
You should have sung us

A thousand times
You have curbed and suppressed us

In the depths of your heart
We have lain and waited

We were never called forth...”
- Henrik Ibsen “Peer Gynt”

"What about our own inevitable ending?...We ignore the subject until it is too late.”
- Susan Shore “Death our Last Illusion.”

Easter Sunday 8th April, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

"We are not long on earth, we do many evil deeds and say many evil words. Let us, therefore, take advantage of the favorable moment of our being together here to say a good word to each other. That is what I am doing as I stand here; I take advantage of my moment."
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Sunday 1st April, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

“And let your best be for your friend” (Kibran)
— But who is your friend?

“Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.”
- Socrates

“Think where man’s glory most begins and ends,
and say my glory was I had such friends.”
- William Yeates

“The best I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.”
- Henry David Thoreau

“In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
- Martin Luther King

“Friendship is a magic world inhabited by chosen people. Each friendship is unique. To have a friend is to have a particular self that somebody else recognises. It means having someone know you as something other than somebody’s child.”

“The heart of friendship is not companionship or sympathy...but mutual self-awareness.”

“Friendship that’s lost its chemistry simply ceases to exist…         
Because friendship’s morality is the morality of authenticity—the friend exists as an ultimate good in the mind of the individual.”
- Graham Little

Friend wrote to his friend:
“People like you should not die out my friend; we others need the likes of you too much.”

“The best in friendship is that it brings out the best in friends.” But friends can so quickly become “un-friends”, even enemies. What happens to us when we realise we have lost a friend?

We all turn around when we hear some of the friendship songs—
“I Will Be Your Friend” (Amy Grant)
“That’s What Friends Are For” (Dionne Warwick)
“Whenever I Call You Friend” (Kenny Loggins)
“Wind Beneath My Wings” (Bette Midler)
“Lean on Me” (Franklin and Nation)
“You’ve Got a Friend” (John Taylor)
“Friends” (Elton John)
“Count on Me” (Bruno Mars)

“We were once good friends. But I don’t see much of him these days.”

Sunday 25th March, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

“Hope is a most fundamental part of life.”
- David Clarke, MD

“Never take away a person’s hope.”

“Hope has been called a person’s most powerful internal resource.”
- Lawrence Schneiderman M.D

We all know how hope deserted us. What then? Will we hope again?

“Something was dead in us
And what was dead was hope.”
- Oscar Wilde

“The miserable have no other medicine
But only hope:
I have hope to life.”
- Shakespeare "Measure for Measure"

When all known hopes are gone, what will we hope for?

“I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope.
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing.”

“You do not know what it is to have hope taken from you.”
- T.S. Eliot

“Hope and faith are very simple words, but they encompass an essential facet of resilience.”
- George Vaillant M.D

“There is no need to be afraid.
The One we serve will clear a path for us.
Wait here for me, and let your spirit rest,
And feed it with the comfort of good hope,
For I shall not abandon you...”
- Dante’s Inferno, "Canto VIII"

“Faith and hope are both beyond the realm of proven fact,
And yet we function every day on the basis of these two things.”
- David Clarke M.D

Sunday 18th March, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

Everyone’s prayer: “deliver us from evil.”
A large part of the stories of Jesus are healing stories. There are three types: those in which people sick of body are directly healed; those in which people sick of body are forgiven and healed; and those in which people sick of mind are delivered from what was called ‘possession.’
There is a healing power in mankind, but there is also the hidden power of self destruction. It depends on every one of us which side will prevail.
- Paul Tillich

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start.
- W.H.Arden

The rhythm of soul is the surprise of endless enrichment.
- John O’Donohue

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Here the appalling and unexpected
Disaster is expected...
But
Laugh behind blinds and believe in tomorrow.
- U.A. Fanthorpe

If we could avoid cancer and coronary heart disease by suitable psychological treatment, or at least postpone their onset by 15 years or more, then we would add immeasurably to the sum of human happiness and save huge amounts of anxiety - and money.
- Hans and Michael Eysenck

Pour the unhappiness out
From your too bitter heart.

Fill your black hull
With white moonlight.
- Wallace Stevens

Sunday 11th March, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

At different stages and ages of life, our identity changes. Of course we retain our name and our belongings, the way we walk and the job we have. But the ‘who we are’ changes. Some people remain as they always were; but others change dramatically.

After a time of deep depression and anxiety, “I came alive again. My depression lifted."
“I reshaped my external world to reflect the internal changes that had occurred."
- Jean Wixom

“A basic need of all human beings is to make a positive contribution to the world and to our fellow beings, as well as improve and enjoy our personal lives."
- Shakti Gawain

What am I?
I am a lake, my poem is an empty boat
and my life is the breeze that blows
through the whole scene
stirring everything it touches -
the surface of the water, the limp sail,
even the heavy leafy trees along the shore.
- Billy Collins

“Sometimes the theological virtues of faith,
hope and love do more than just
comfort. They heal.
And their lives changed."
- George Vaillant

Sunday 4th March, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

“Humans are not born with the complete set of emotions. Later emotions include self-conscious emotions - shame, pride, guilt, embarrassment.”
- Robert Levenson

An area where we all can gain greater competence is in identifying the effective resources to cope with life stresses.

"Recovery from stress can be necessary for wellbeing and health. We need recovery activities and recovery experiences."
- Jennifer Ragsdale

Carers and rescue workers frequently experience similar ‘negative’ emotions associated with compassion, fatigue and burnout and ‘positive’ emotions associated with compassion, satisfaction. We are able to find better descriptors.

Sunday 26th February, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

In the universe, there is a flower that only you can make blossom.
- Keiko Takahashi

"Psychologists have identified up to nine basic emotions among peopleliving in different cultures." Some of these emotions are shown and felt clearly. Others are more subtle, concealed, and even confused or coalesced with other emotions.
- M Csikszentmihalyi

By broadening people's mindsets and building their psychological resources, over time, positive emotions should also enhance emotional and physical wellbeing.
- Barbara Fredrikson

However intently you have lived, there remain regrets. Regrets can become the energy to transform the next phase of your life.
- Keiko Takahashi

"Understanding people requires taking their spiritual lives seriously."
- Robert Emmons

Sunday 19th February, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

Is there anything to live for? Is anything worth pursuing apart from money, love, and caring for one’s own family? If so, what could it be? Talk of “something to live for” has a faintly religious flavor, but many people who are not at all religious have an uneasy feeling that they may be missing out on something basic that would give their lives a significance it now lacks.
What can we live for?
We can live an ethical life.
Most people have only the vaguest idea of what it might be to lead an ethical life.
- Peter Singer

The commitment to a more ethical way of living will be the first step of a gradual but far-reaching evolution in your lifestyle and in your thinking about your place in the world.
- Peter Singer

Pause a moment: consider what you have in material wealth.
What you do in your activities
and what you are, in your spirit.
All these are important, although many people devote themselves only to the first two categories.
- Mardi Horowitz

We are just a great machine for looking backwards and we  foster the delusion that this will make us ready for the future. But what if the future is totally different from all of the past?
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here,
Believe in miracles and cures and healing wells.
- Seamus Heaney

Sunday 12th February, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

For many people, ‘faith’ and ‘belief’ are just two words for the same thing. But they are not the same... We can BELIEVE something to be true without it making much difference to us, but we place our FAITH in something that is vital for the way we live.
- H Cox "the Future of Faith"

In the centre of a square in Lisboa there is a cypress tree. Its branches, instead of pointing up to the sky, have been trained to grow outwards, horizontally, so that they form a gigantic, impenetrable, very low umbrella with a diameter of twenty metres...the branches are supported by metal props, arranged in circles around the massive trunk; the tree is at least two hundred years old.
- John Berger “Here is Where We Meet”:

A parable. We can be like that tree. We can also be one who encourages others to come under the tree, to be one of the branches reaching out, to be one of the props, supporting the tree in different places. All of us remembering the tree which over a very long life, has been an inspiration for many.

“Not only is there in everybody a divine particle, but there is in every body a particle peculiar to them to be found nowhere else. Everyone has in the eyes of God, a specific importance in the fulfilment of which none can compete with them.”
- an encouragement, Martin Buber.

“He was indeed, something of a saint: a man who seemed to others to possess simple goodness, and what some called spiritual grandeur. Everyone who met him was impressed by his greatness and wisdom.”
- Anthony Storr

Our quest today: We search for a high sense of wellbeing: A sustained sense of wellbeing. As more people experience their strong sense of wellbeing, they carry a healing and transforming influence into the world where they live.

We are aware of a Presence within and around us.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope.
- Charles Dickens. Born 200 years ago, 7 February 1812

Sunday 5th February, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

May we be reminded here of our highest aspirations,
And be inspired to offer our gifts of care and service for the good of our humanity.
May we know we are not isolated beings,
But connected in mystery and miracle
To the universe
To this community
And to each other
May these connections enlarge and enrich our lives
And the lives of others.

We here seek the ways of harmony with each other,
Strength and courage in ourselves,
An enhanced quality of life
And wellbeing -
For all.

At the end of 2011, we noted the remarkable events of the last 40 years. So many comings and goings over those years. Did we make a difference to those who came? Did we enhance the goings of those who left us?

Now is the time to look forward. Time to welcome more people in their coming. Time to ensure St Michael's will be a best experience while they are here. Let this be a place where each one will find themselves saying -
“here is where we meet.”

Sunday 29th January, 2012 - Rev Peter Burnham

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality.
- G.K Chesterton - Orthodyxy

The man who tells you truth does not exist; he is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
- Roger Scruton "Modern Philosophy".

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
- Shakespeare "Hamlet".

Reason is our soul’s left hand, faith her right. By these we reach divinity.
- John Donne

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind.
- The Dhammapada 3rd Century BCE

The desire to know is natural to good men.
- Leonardo Da Vinci

Sunday 22nd January, 2012 - Rev Dr Antony Floyd

“Superficiality is what seems to characterise our politics, media coverage and expressed cultural values best. We are in the shallows: and not just politically.     
Now is the time to go deeper, much deeper. It’s time to delve into the places that supply our better values and instincts, to the practices that renew our faith traditions and ethical priorities.”
- Jim Wallis "Sojourners" December 2011

“There is no well marked road which our history will take
It turns writhes and darts with surprise unforseen
Our life is like mountains with valleys between
And spiralling paths through the mixed up ravines.”
- Professor Ross Snyder, 1974

Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come near …”
- Mark 1.15

“Let me create within myself a carefree tranquillity, a place for every encounter, unreserved receptivity, and unhurried disposition ... Let me answer thoughts and situations rather than words!”
- Hassan Dehqani-Tafti – one-time Bishop in Iran, in exile.
Quoted in "Living Water Thirsty Land", UCA Assembly 2008

Sunday 15th January, 2012 - Dr Debra Campbell

I can’t help thinking that if we had taken all the money we have spent on exploring outer space and used it for inner-space exploration, on knowing ourselves better, the world would be a better place.
-Bernie Siegal MD

When patients are in despair the analyst’s task can be to help them wait. This can only be done when he or she is willing to wait along with them - without hope, desire, or understanding; with nothing but faith. It is faith that makes it possible for the analyst and patient to tolerate the painful emotional experiences that are inevitably part of the analytic process, and of life.
- Contemporary psychoanalysis, in "Discover A New Faith"

Sunday 8th January, 2012 - Rev Ron Rosinsky

“One hundred years from now
It will not matter
What kind of car I drove
What kind of house I lived in,
How much I had in the bank
Nor what my clothes looked like.

One hundred years from now
It will not matter
What kind of school I attended
What kind of computer I used
How large or small my church.

But the world may be
... A little better because...
I was important in the life of a child."
- Anonymous

“Dark and cold it might be
But winter-time is not.
Now is the time
Where wrong comes up to meet us

Everywhere—
Until we take the longest stride,
That soul folk have ever taken."
- Christopher Fry

Sunday 1st January, 2012 - Dr Francis Macnab

Welcome to St Michaels -
A place of renewal and
inspiration
A place for making contact with a New Faith
for a New Year.
A place for finding a different level of
enjoyment and enrichment.

Over 3,000 people have a meaningful contact with St Michael’s. 4,000 people visit St Michael’s every year. What we do and say in St Michael's each Sunday goes out to people in 65 countries. These figures are astonishing. What really matters is how St Michael’s can enrich and enhance the life of one person.

Sunday 25th December, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

The New Faith at Christmas revisits old stories and celebrates new beginnings. It is a time for all human hearts and spirits
To open - to be comforted and healed;
To be alive with energy and hope,
It is a time to gather together in a spirit of greetings and genuine expansiveness and exuberance.

The New Faith points to a new human being, a new humanity, a new way to be the people of God.

Gather then, and sing, the welcoming hymn is in celebration we open “the gates” to let the Good Spirit (the King of Glory) flow into our lives.

Let this day be a memorable Christmas Day in the best possible way.

Sunday 18th December, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

Sometimes, the little things make all the difference.

And man spoke of his friend - “Each time I remember him, our last day together, the twinkle in his eye, I awaken again to how fragile life is, and how precious.”
- Forrest Church

Easy at first, the language of friendship,
Is, as we soon discover,
Very difficult to speak well, a tongue
With no cognates, no resemblance
To the galimatias of nursery and bedroom,
Court rhyme or shepherd’s prose,
And, unless often spoken, soon goes rusty.
- W.H. Auden

Some notes demand to be sustained
Others like tiny sparrows fly and flutter
And are gone
Yet their music lingers.
- Francis Macnab

The door to the season stands ajar.
Through it, crickets sing.
Grass ripens in the flat stones of the walk.
- Jan Zwicky

He does not see his characters talk. He sees
Them mottled, in the moodiest costumes,
Of blue and yellow, sky and sun, belted
And knotted, sashed and seamed, half pales of red
Half pales of green, appropriate habit for
The huge decorum, the manner of the time,
Part of the mottled mood of summers whole,
In which the characters speak because they want
To speak.
- Wallace Stevens

Sunday 11th December, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

Christmas comes again to remind us of the powerful energies of renewal and restoration in all of life.

“The church after the death of Jesus believed and expected the coming of the kingdom. We believe that in his ethical religious personality, the Messiah and the kingdom are come.”

“The situation may be likened to the course of the sun. Its brightness breaks forth which is still behind the mountains. The dark cloud takes colour from its rays and the conflict of light and darkness produces a play of the fantastic imagery. The sun itself is not yet visible: it is there only in the sense that the lights issues from it. As the sun behind the morning glow, so appeared the personality of Jesus of Nazareth.”
- Albert Schweitzer

The bark beetle ‘is no bigger than a grain of rice.” “This tiny insect.”
Is one of those things “that require us to revise our sense of ourselves in this world and understand our place on this earth.”
- David Mattsu

Help us to believe in ourselves -
In the very best in the human spirit.
Knowing its goodnes, its energy, its strength, its resilience.
- Francis Macnab "This Hungry Time"

Sunday 4th December, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

The New Faith is the dynamic engine that brings together the personality and its surrounding culture. It is about who we are as human beings and it encourages our deep desire to be better human beings and to explore new directions, celebrate our self-worth, and enjoy the fullness of our potential and the very best that life opens to us as its gifts.
(p. 232: Discover a New Faith)

Love is an active power which breaks through the walls which separate one from the other, which makes a person overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet permits them to be themselves, retaining their individuality and integrity.
- Erich Fromm

How happy is he born or taught
That serveth not another's will…
... Who passions not his masters are…
… who hath his life from rumors freed…
...who entertains the harmless day
with a well-chosen book or friend
...This man is free…
Lord of himself though not of lands;
And having nothing he hath all.
- Sir Henry Wooton

“The lovers all die of betrayal and a broken heart. The non-lovers live longer. And hate everyone. Is that how it is?”
- Jeanette Winterson

“Somehow let us not waste love.”
- Iris Murdoch

“Love can enlarge both personalities and bring new life to a whole family or group - but it rarely happens without conditions.”
- Richard Chessick

“Love has always mystified us. Why is it good to some, and so frugal in its gifts to others?”
- Francis Macnab "Hungry for Love"

Sunday 20th November, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

Strong personalities know life comes with many positive and numerous negative experiences. There’s a vast difference between people who have grown in self confidence and benefitted psychologically from their experiences AND those who become increasingly defensive and destructive in their responsiveness to life. Different people will show different trajectories of growth and these may change over time.
- Richard Tedeschi

Character strengths and positive adjustment often go hand in hand. Both of these require continual refurbishment, as they can quickly deteriorate. The character strengths of courage, optimism, persistence and self-regulation are coherent factors in the overall picture of health and adaptation.
- Rhonda Cornum

“No person exists apart from their living body...”
“If you are your body and your body is you, then it expresses who you are. The more alive your body is, the more you are in the world.”
“We would all like to be and feel more alive.”
- Alexander Lowen

Some people clearly have an energised expansive spirit.
“Spirit is the animating principle of human life. It comes from the word SPIRARE which means ‘breath’, and it is the root of aspire, aspiration, inspire and inspiration, Thus, spirit is the breath of life... Spirit is that which gives vivacity, energy, liveliness, courage and ardour to life.”

When one is ‘high-spirited’, one is lively, active and showing the joy of being alive and being part of something bigger than self.
- Rollo May

“One of my classmates had cerebral palsy... The only way he could write was by gripping a pencil between his toes and arching his leg over the desk. For all that, he was a funny and entertaining guy once you got used to his strained efforts at speaking...”
- Ken Robinson

“Altruism born of suffering has people more from being a survivor to being an activist to help others.”
- Pilar Hernandez-Wolfe.

Sunday 13th November, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

What can you do to make your mind more beautiful? You are born with a certain shape of mind and body. There is only a certain amount you can do to make them more beautiful. But there is very much more that you can do to make your mind more beautiful.
- Edward de Bono

The beauty of your mind should show in your conversation.

A beautiful body and a beautiful face age and grow old. A beautiful mind can become ever more beautiful - with age.
- Edward de Bono

TODAY we remember what we have been given, what we have been able to develop and achieve; and we are grateful for the actions of so many who have made it possible for us to have a beautiful mind, and to be a beautiful human being.

TODAY, we remember the people lost in our wars; people damaged in destructive homes and relationships; and the people who have spoken the soft and soothing words, the people who have helped rebuild, restore, and renew.
TODAY is a day of Remembering and Thanksgiving.

TODAY, at the end of Morning Service, you are invited and encouraged to make your quiet pilgrimage through MINGARY -

There to remember;
There, to be grateful;
There to feel the healing strengthening symbols;
There to gather new strength for life.

TODAY, we come to this sacred place - hoping.
We leave this place, knowing a pathway of healing.
And we are grateful.

TODAY
The flags of six countries of the Greater Horn of Africa are displayed, along with the Australian flag.
On this Remembrance Sunday, we remember the thousands of Africans who die every day.
We remember too, the resilience of the African people, and their deep sense of caring for each other.

Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan and Djibouti face the worst drought in 60 years. Eleven million people are at risk. Among them, there are 2.3 million children “severely malnourished.”

We remember - we have our origins in Africa. Today it has one billion people, 54 countries and over 2,000 languages.

Today we celebrate our common human bonds with the people all over Africa. Our compassion is a further bond with these nations of diversity.

Sunday 6th November, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

Everyone knows the experience - ‘What will I do? Now that this has happened, what is the best thing to do: what is the most appropriate action to take?’ When a distressing life event occurs, the primary task is to draw on our inner resources and our outer supports, to help us adapt and make some sense of it all.

“A moment of joy can offset years of suffering or emptiness.”
- Michael Eigen

“We have to discard the past
and, as one builds
floor by floor, window by window,
and the building rises,
so do we keep shedding…”
- Pablo Neruda

“Don’t think I’m going to die.
The opposite is true;
It happens I’m going to live.
To be, and to go on being.”
- Pablo Neruda

“The day comes without schedules or warning
to tell of life again and morning unexpected.
It is always a surprise, life I mean,
never what I anticipate, and seldom what I ask.”
- James Kavanaugh

“We all stand on the edge of life, each moment
comprising that edge, before us is only possibility,
this means the future is open.”
- Rollo May

Sunday 30th October, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

The first movement of the symphony is only one part of the whole. If you miss the finale, you miss the full impact of the music. If you read a chapter of a book, or a few chapters, you may miss the golden thread that runs through the story giving it its coherence and its meaning.

"Recognise and rejoice in the Unity of all Being, stand in awe and wonder at the glory of all that is, bring about as much consciousness, love, solidarity, creativity, sensitivity and goodness as we possibly can."
- Michael Lerner

We are likely to become tangled in the fragments of daily life. If we stay with the parts we may miss the view of the whole.

"The more we succeed in quieting the mind, the more receptive it becomes to the unity of all being."
- Michael Lerner

"You need to understand that human beings are fully integrated into mind /body/psychological/spiritual/communal totality. If each of us is all these interacting dimensions, ...then when we get sick, every aspect of us needs healing."
- Michael Learner

Sunday 23rd October, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

Some words from “THE BOOK OF RACHEL” - Leslie Cannold

“As I moved towards the window, Judah called my name again; more insistent this time, ‘Rachel!’
I looked out, then down, and into my beloved’s upturned face, its features lost to darkness, but for the crescent of his smile.’
(p. 117)

Love:
Rachel to her father: Why, Papa? What led you to change your mind?
My father ... Taking his time to formulate his answer, ‘Because everyone wishes to try their hand at love, Rachel ... Why should you be any different.’

Anticipation:
‘I was awake before first light the next day. I sat on my mat and waited for the first streaks of light, intimations really to colour the sky. Lips moving soundlessly, I spoke to my lost sister about my excitement, my hopes for the coming adventure. I described the lightening that seemed to crackle and race beneath my skin...”
(p. 142)

Golgotha:
‘Golgotha was the place where, on a crossbar nailed to the beheaded stump on an olive tree, the Romans hung my brother naked and left him to writhe in the sun. Above his head a crude sign declared his crime in Hebrew, Greek and Latin.’
(p. 287)

Afterwards:
‘I saw him! Maryann announced to the circle of hostile faces...I saw my beloved in a dream.’ ‘...God rolled the stone away...he healed my beloved...’
(p. 307)

‘The journey was at an end. Although for me, of course, it was just the start.’
(p. 310)

And afterwards:
“I understand you now, mama, just as you said I would...”
(p. 322)

Sunday 16th October, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

“Remember then: there is only one time that is important - Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.”
- Leo Tolstroy

Old time’s
Gone time;
New time’s come.
Old fears still lurk behind the tombstones,
Of this new season.
- John Barrie Morley

Might we choose to make
This time a waking-up event
A moment of world empowerment?
To pledge, in private, to be more aware
More playful, more tolerant, more loving
Awake to our unsuspected powers, more amazing.
- Ben Okri

We have the capacity to “look forward” to a time yet to come; and we can “look back” to a time which once was. We can imagine and invent, and we can forget and deny. Such is our life in the passing of time.

“We go towards something that is not yet, and we come from something that is no more. We are what we are by what we came from.”
- Paul Tillich

Anxiety and depression, fear and hope, “once upon a time,” and the celebration of a particular time - are all part of our experience of time.

Sunday 9th October, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

“No matter where we are in our life span, or where we sit on the various ladders of life, we are all part of a great ongoing pathway of discovery. The New Faith is a conversation about what is of ultimate importance in this whole process.”
- "Discover a New Faith"

“We all need stories to break open our hearts and reconnect with the mystery of life.”
- Laura Sirrim

“I bring a message from life.”
- The Cat in a Therapy Group

“The New Faith is about being liberated from hate and hostility...from our entangled neuroses. The New Faith points in several directions to set us free to be better human beings.”
- "Discover a New Faith"

“At various points theology and therapy join to reflect on the “givens” of life; what is of immediate concern, and what is of ultimate importance; an appreciation of the astonishing experiences of life; and the expansive pathways of our growth and transformation.”
-Dacher Keltner

We see many examples of religion and theological beliefs becoming major ingredients in mental disturbances and personality disorders. We will search for new ways whereby theology and therapy will become partners in redefining mental health, and how they will contribute to an enhanced mental health.

“Religion brings a new zest, which adds itself like a gift.”
- William James

“Beneath the surface of life...there are unsuspected deep and great spiritual forces that condition and control our lives.”
- Evelyn Underhill

“Spiritual growth involves finding a community of support with others who share similar values and perspectives.”
- T.G. Planter

Sunday 2nd October, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

Large sections of the population don’t want to hear about theology, because they have never heard about it. Or the glimpse they get of theology at weddings and funerals confirms that belief that it has nothing to say to them, so they do not  listen.

We have theology in one “box”; and our “situation” spread out in front of us (not in a box), the question is - does theology have anything to say to our “situation”? Often we hold onto some remnants of a “theology” we once assumed to be the only theology, and we try to impose it on our new and different situations.

Theology is about what concerns us deeply, expansively,  ultimately. If you are ill or “out of sorts”, or exploding emotionally, you must be deeply concerned about something. What happens if we discover a kind of theology that speaks therapeutically (ie, restoratively) to that deep concern of ours? What form will that theology take?

“Faith in the New Testament is the state of being grasped by something of deep significance - a restorative power in the mind.”
- Paul Tillich

Virgil spoke to Dante;
And now what ails you? Why do you lag?
Dante replied;
As flowers droop and pucker in the night
Turn up to the returning sun and spread
Their petals wide on his new warmth and light -
Just so, my wilted spirits rose again
And such a heart surged through my veins
That I was born anew...

St Michael's Day: Sunday 25th September, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

St Michael’s is a unique place in all of Melbourne.

St Michael’s is one of Melbourne’s distinctive architectural  treasures. Its exterior is a landmark in the City of Melbourne. Its interior affects everyone. Its windows, its tapestry, its various  appointments attract people from around the world as well as from places across Australia.

St Michael’s reflects its biblical legend - an advocate of the prevention of violence, destruction and waste - and the promotion of growth, wellbeing and wholeness.

St Michael’s encourages all who come within its walls, to explore the possibilities of a relevant, meaningful Faith for this 21st Century; for people searching for a purpose and passion in their lives; for the consolations and courage they need to meet the conflicts and stresses that are so prevalent in modern society.

St Michael’s points to the possibilities of a new sense of wellbeing, and how each person can have a part in building a better world.

Today, St Michael’s shows its concern for Planet Earth, for people and their communities, for the animals - “all creatures great and small.” Here the prevention of violence, destruction and waste is a significant concerns for our everyday.

“Animals become our friends, we become their friends, when they look back at us and we are confronted by the mystery of the Other which is at the root also of our own being. Non-humans are not as clever as we are in human terms, but neither are we as clever as they are in their terms.”
- Stephen Clark, Professor of Philosophy, Liverpool

Sunday 18th September, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

The New Faith fully reflects the most necessary direction our humanity needs to take to ensure the survival of the planet and its people. The pointing finger in the New Faith points beyond us to the best and the beautiful, to what is positive and possible.

We need to say our ‘goodbye’ to the negatives of an Old Faith, and be fully open to greet the positives of a New Faith for today.

We are born with the intelligence to grasp and shape the pathways of our growth.

We look for goodness to be stronger than our readiness to succumb to a lesser humanity.

If we accept that we are “made in the image of God”, we had better check on what part of God and what is the image.”

(All the above: Themes for “Discover a New Faith.”)

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime.
Therefore we must be saved by hope.
Nothing true of beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate sense of history.
Therefore we must be saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however victorious, can be accomplished alone.
Therefore we must be saved by love.
- Reinhold Niebuhr

God changed his appearance every second.
Blessed is the ‘man’ who can recognise him
In all his disguises.
- Nikos Kazantazakis

And God said: "I shall be there whom I there shall be."
- Exodus 3.14

Sunday 11th September, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

I sing the eternal song of the universe -
my solo ballad in a cosmic symphony
in which we are each required voices.
Its rhythm thrums within my heart,
it echoes in the pulsing of my blood;
the electric hum of its vibration,
its timbre, tone and harmony
is the musical movement of my soul.
- L.L. Schneider

Mandala, Holy circle,
let your pattern hold me still
in total emptiness of self
drawn into the sacred centre
to seek the power there of love,
of justice, forgiveness, truth.
Help me bring myself in silence
to the blessed fire at the centre
to listen to the hissing fire-wind-
the Great Spirit whispering truth.
- L.L. Schneider

“They are strong who conquer others, they are mighty who conquer themselves.”
- A C Grayling "The Good Book"

“To do better, you have to want to do better.”
- Edward deBono

“If you do not know how to disagree you will never have a beautiful mind. This is the critical operation. If you get this wrong then your mind will be ugly even if it is effective.”

Remember - there are those who disagree because they do not know any other way of exploring a subject.
- Edward deBono

“She decided I needed laughter, every day
was waiting in my office with a joke,
selected specially, just right for me -
not rude, or stale, or obvious. Not easy either.
- U.A. Fanthorpe

Sunday 4th September, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

Earthbound, I watch the darting swallows,
In shivering reeds the wind is caught.
Bright water bears way the mind’s
Unraveling of restless thought.
- Gwen Harwood

“We drag
Expensive ghosts through
Memory’s unmade bed.”
- Paul Hoover

“We can so easily slip back from what we have struggled to attain, abruptly, into a life we never wanted."
- R.M. Rilke

“Even against the greatest of odds, there is something in the human spirit - a magic blend of skill, faith and valor - that can lift men from certain defeat to incredible victory.:
- Walter Lord. World War II memorial in Washington, D.C.

“None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done before we realize it. And once they’re done, they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you’d like to be…”
- Mary in O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

Often as we are involved in healing and a new era in life, we are involved in a spiritual struggle about matters of deepest significance for oneself and for others. These struggles have sometimes been associated with profound growth.
- Psychologist, Kenneth Pargament

Sunday 28st August, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

“Fear stops me from being the person I could be.”

“Some people seem to have no fear. They are full-on living life full-on. I would give a lot to be like that.”

“Why can’t I be like my cat?”

Often fear is a stop sign that warns ‘danger ahead.’ But maybe the sign needs to be decoded.

“I fear rejection.”

“I fear what other people will say.”

“I fear I won’t be able to cope.”

“Fear can be a positive experience if it occurs at the right times in the correct dose.”
- Harriet Lerner

“All my life I have been trying to test my real potential. But that has meant knowing how to handle my ‘underground anxieties,’ and how to regather my strengths.”

“We need not let anxiety silence our authentic voices, or stop us from acting with compassion or courage. In today’s world, no challenge is more important than that.”
- Harriet Learner

Sunday 21st August, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

“What must I do to tame you? Asked the little prince. ‘You must be very patient,’ replied the fox.”
- Antoine de Saint Exupery

“And out of so many seeds, (innumerable deeds,) will come a new humanity.”
- Ben Okri

“I believe that the One World which is emerging can come into existence only only if a NEW ‘MAN’ comes into being.”
- Erich Fromm

“Uncover what you long for, and you will discover who you are.”
- Phil Cousineau

Love creates new blood vessels. Anger and anxiety constrict the ones we already have.

"Kindness, or the lack of it, has been getting a lot of press lately.”
- Adam Phillips

“This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart, is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.:
- Dalai Lama

“Over a dinner one night, my friend said, ‘Isn’t it amazing that when we do things from our hearts, we actually produce a chemical thats good for the heart?’”
- David Hamilton

“Some of us are profoundly ambivalent about kindness. We love it, and we fear it.”
- Adam Phillips

Sunday 14th August, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

The right word restores faith in “everything.”

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science.  He to whom this emotion is a strange, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is a as good as dead a snuffed our  candle.
- Albert Einstein

“Faith starts with awe.”
- Harvey Cox

“When Christianity became swollen with an elaborate code of prescribed beliefs...policed by a hierarchy, the meaning of “faith” was warped beyond all recognition.”
- Harvey Cox

What then is the real energy of faith?

Faith is a healing word. Unfortunately we are often driven into more words, and not one is a healing word.

“I ask only kind words from you.”
- Tagore

Sunday 7th August, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

We need a New Faith -

Faith in ourselves

Faith in some designated people

Faith in the future

Faith in the goodness of humanity

Faith in the process of healing and hope.

I want to take the beliefs and themes of faith and translate into a practical realistic faith that will affect the way we live in the world.

“Many (people) are creating new ways of understanding, and  relating to, “God” in an attempt to make sense of their lives, the world, and the nagging notion of something that has created and sustained it all.”
- Nigel Leaves

“We see ourselves as being on an open-ended journey...a journey in faith and hope, in which there is always something new to learn, a mind-set to be expanded, a perception of things to be stretched, a deeper wisdom to be discerned.”
- Archbishop Peter Carnley

“There is a major difference between FAITH and BELIEF. “we can BELIEVE something to be true without making much difference to us, but we place our FAITH only in something that is vital to the way we live.”

“Creeds are chisters of beliefs. But the history of Christianity is not a history of creeds. It is the story of people of faith.”
- Harvey Cox, professor of divinity (retired),Harvard University.

“We have entered a new age, we have crossed the threshold of a new era. This has brought with it the chance to start over.”
- Robert Funk, founder of the International Scholars of the Jesus Seminar.

Sunday 31st July, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

“Human strengths are frequently born in encounters with life difficulties. Strength is often fired in the crucible of adversity.”
- Carol Ryff

Look at us, the men of the world -
What psychology will be important for us, lest we settle for the well-sworn clichés of previous generations even though they no longer fit this exciting age that continues to stretch the boundaries of thought.

And look at the woman of the world -
Often full of zest in their younger years, but older years take their double toll.
There is a psychology for our older years. Perhaps we need a theology of ageing - a theology that gives life a new meaning, an overhaul of thought, mood and behaviour.

“The river of time carries us all away. All we have is the moment.”
- Bill Clinton

So much depends
Upon
A red wheel
Barrow
Glazed with rain
Water
Beside the white
Chickens.
- William Caros Williams

“We do not have to accept the world as it is; we continually create it.”
- Martin Buber

“You’ve got to find your own song to sing.”
- Irvin Yalom

“Presume not that I am the thing I was.”
- Shakespeare "Henry IV"

Sunday 24th July, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

World Refugee Day is an important opportunity to remind us about the obgoing plight of millions of refugees around the world.
- Robert Alan, American Writer, artist, Social Activist

I speak for those children who cannot speak for themselves, children who have absolutely nothing but their courage and their smiles, their wits and their dreams.
- Audrey Hepburn

Though much is taken, much chides; and much though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved heaven and earth: that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will -
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
- Tennyson

To all survivors out there, I want them to know that we are stronger and more resilient than we ever knew. We survived, that should be enough but it isn't. We must work hard to become whole again, to fillour soul with love and inspiration, to live the life that was intended for us before it was disrupted by war and horrors, and help rebuild a world that is better than the one we had just left.
- Loung Ung, Cambodian-American Human Rights Activist

We are all part of a human family and we should be about doing what all good families do - caring for our less fortunate brothers and sisters.
- Dan O'Neill, Founder, Mercy Corps

While eery refugee's stroy is different and their anguish personal, they all share a common thread of uncommon courage - the courage not only to survive, but to persevere and rebuild their shattered lives.
- Antonia Guterre, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 1978-1985

"I dream of a cursed day
And I am afraid
...I dream of a burnt out sun
And I am aching
I dream the dream of the poor
And I am hungary,
And cold,
And then I bless the day,
And turn down
Into an offering.
For I shall light the sun's fire again
With the spark
Of my soul."
- Elie Wiesel

"The more I am spent, ill, broken pitcher, by so much more am I an artist. This green shoot opening up from the roots of the old felled trunk."
- Adele Tucker

Sunday 17th July, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

“How to promote human strengths - emotional strengths - is the challenge of everyone from infancy to old age. We are constantly challenged. How will we respond will reflect our emotional maturity and vitality.”

“It doesn't matter much why people help each other, as long as they do. Does it matter that they do with an eye to self-gain, or they didn't ever stop to think why they do it."

Perhaps genuine altruism shows greater emotional growth and balance, so why not teach more people the ways of altruism? It could be as important as our pursuit of personal happiness. But - then - one might enhance the other.”
- Nancy Eisenberg

“Search for wisdom. You shall drink from an inexhaustible well for the health of your soul.
- Epicurus, 341-270 BC

“The ability to withstand the tension of feeling both positive and negative emotions may be an important human strength.”
- J. T. Larsen

“To live everyday as if it has been stolen from death, that is how I would like to live...to feel the joy of life...to say I am alive. I am wonderful, I am. I am. That is what I aspire to.:
- Garth Stein "The Dog Speaks His Wisdom"

Sunday 10th July, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

“To understand people, we must understand their unique ways of construing their worlds. People’s behavior, their problem, and attempted solutions are understandable when their global and situational meanings and their contexts are understood.”
- Crystal Park

“If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.”
- James Michener

“For many, a concern with the sacred or transcendent goes to the heart of what it means to be human.”
- Thomas Plante

“The conscious mind gives us one way of making sense of our environment. But the unconscious mind gives us, more supple ways.”
- David Brooks

Sunday 3rd July, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

After all, these are serious things we have to talk about. We can’t settle them in a minute.
- From Dr Zhivago

“Religion goes from one spiritual function to the other to find a home, and is either rejected or swallowed by them.:
- Paul Tillich

“Embedded in the most dry and technical concerns, we sometimes uncover an eruption of light that can break through the smothering darkness. In our lives, in our sacred writings, and in the inner most chambers of our souls we can uncover the sparks of light, warmth and hope.”
- Bradley Artson

“Deprive me of bread, if you want,
deprive me of air, but
Don’t deprive me of your laughter.”
- Pablo Neruda

“Religion opens up the depth of our spiritual life which is usually covered by the dust of our daily life and the noise of our secular world."
- Paul Tillich

“And a man doesn’t have time
To have time for everything
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
A season for everything.”
- Mehuda Amichai

And so he sits back and waits -
For it all to happen!
- U.A. Fanthorpe

Sunday 26th June, 2011 - Rev Peter Burnham

Wisdom comes from the experience of living. To travel the road of wisdom requires knowledge of ourselves and others - in love and hatred, in joy and sorrow, in victory and defeat. To experience life, and to learn its truth - this is wisdom.

“What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is brought with the price of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children.”
- William Blake

“The era that heeds wholesome admonition will lodge among the wise.”
- Proverbs 15.31

“Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers.”
- Alfred Lord Tennyson

“Knowledge can be communicated, but wisdom cannot. A man can find it, he can live it, he can be filled and sustained by it, but he cannot utter or teach it.”
- Hermann Hesse

“Who is a wise man? He who learns of all men.”
- The Talmud

“Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you can desire can compare with her.”
- Proverbs 3:13-15

Sunday 19th June, 2011 - Dr Eileen Ray

We give thanks for the blessing of winter:
Season to cherish the heart
To make warmth and quiet for the heart
To make soups and broths for the heart
To cook for the heart and read for the heart
To curl up softly and nestle with the heart
To sleep deeply and gently at one with the heart
To dream with the heart
To spend time with the heart
A long, long time of peace with the heart
We give thanks for the blessing of winter
Season to cherish the heart.

- Winter Blessing Leunig, M  The Prayer Tree 1991 North Blackburn, Vic., Collins Dove

Greening
One tree is not a forest
but one tree can make a forest
therefore take time
give yourself space
that your spirit
may green
and flourish.

Winter -
Nature's alpha and omega -
the womb of all our Springs
the goal of all our Autumns:
in you life ends
in you life begins.

Winter -
Season of hidden mystery -
of death that leads to life
sleep that leads to reawakening
reflection that leads to action.

Winter -
Season of paradox -
of warming cold
singing slilence
enlightening darkness
fulfilling emptiness
of joy hidden in pain
of hope in despair
of buried identity
and enlightening mystery.

Winter -
Sign of soul's dark night -
yet your
buried aloneness
but preludes
God's dawning,
the ever-vibrant
ever-greening
Spring
of the
Spirit.

- Winter Wallace, W Singing the Circle Book 3 Broken Bread, Broken Chains? 1990 Methodist Church of NZ,  Christchurch.

Sunday 12th June, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

“Nearly everyone has wronged another. Who amongst us has not longed for forgiveness/ Nearly everyone has suffered the bitter injustice of wrong doing. Who has not struggled to forgive…Personal and national credos anchor themselves in tales of unfairness and the glories of retaliation. Oceans of blood and mountains of bones are their testament”
-C. L. Griswold

“Three thousand years after the oracle of Delphi proclaimed, ‘know thy self,’ we are still trying to discover ourselves.”
-Paul Valent

“All of us need resilience to steer through the everyday adversities that befall us. Life is rich in stress and hassles, but if you’re resilient - you will not let the daily tribulations of life interfere with your           productivity and well-being.”
-Karen Reivich

Many people get stuck in their development. Have they stopped growing? Some find “environmental conditions constrain them from realising their full potential.”

“The physical and social aspects of environments are often closely intertwined and can jointly affect individuals well-being.”
-Daniel Stokols

Exposed to different environments, a person can become satisfied about life, or they can become part of new growth - the evaluation of their mind and personality can become their most important reality.

Sunday 5th June, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

“I have the sense of a presence, strong, and at the same time soothing, which hovers over me. Sometimes it seems to enwrap me with sustaining arms.”
-(from William James)

“The master said, ‘To do one’s best with humility and sincerity: that is what it is to be a superior man. The superior man is distressed by his want of abiity. He is not distressed by being unknown. What the superior man seeks is in himself. What the inferior man seeks is in others.”
-A.C. Grayling

Do you believe those words - faith, hope and love? Can you  embrace them in your life? Sometimes those words - faith, hope and love - do more than comfort; they heal. Sometimes those words - faith, hope and love - do more than ‘sound good’; they change us.

“If we ask the question… ‘what is human life’s chief concern?’ One of the answers we should receive would be: ‘It is happiness.’ How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness, is in fact for most ‘men’ at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.”
-William James

Time and time and time without end life bends us, twists us, knots us, stretches us … but out of our pains, our agonies, our heartaches, we smap back and go on.
-Tommy, The Puppet Man.

Sunday 29th May, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

Gustav Mahler - from his childhood was apparently tied to an astonishing destiny.

He died on the 18th of May 1911 - 100 years ago and his music still captivates millions around the world.

Mikkail Gorbacher in his memoirs, wrote -
“In like there is always conflict and contradiction, but without these- there is no life. Mahler was able to capture that aspect of the human situation.”

One morning in Octber 2007, commuters in Toronto were astonished to see “Gustav Mahler” graffiti on the sideway walls. One web-reporter demanded “Who is the mystery Mahler among us?”

So over 35 years of Mahler study, “what have I learned? … that dignity survives defeat”… that “striving in all”… “the impossible takes just a little bit longer…”that every child stands a chance.” (Norman Lebrecht)

“To be truely with him one felt fully alive and awake”   
- David Schecter.

“What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree.”         
- Logan Pearsall Smith

“And again he thought the thought we already know: Human life occurs only once...” 
-Milan Kundera

“The Moving Finger writes, and having writ, Moves on.”
-In Oman Khayyam

Sunday 22nd May, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

This year marks 100 years since Gustav Mahler's death. He was the most controversial composer. Some as they leave his symphonies throw their hands up saying, "Is that music!". Others like a New York teacher who spoke after the catastrophe of the Twin Towers said, "Mahler's music particularly, can bring me such a deep sense of the human connection that makes it possible to bear the unbearable."

"If one's spiritual life is clear and sound, then every other level-mental, emotional, physical-falls into place." -Kylie Kwong

"Every time we choose life over non-life and move deeper into the ongoing discovery of who we are, we bring new life to ourselves and our culture."

"Heroes are not only people who grow and change and take their journey, they are also agents of change." - Carol Pearson

May we all become carriers of goodness
When we feel hate, may we rediscover tolerance
When we see distress , may we re-find the spirit of compassion When we hear of sadness, may we speak words of comfort
When our lives are empty, may we re-find the energy of faith.

A Palestinian doctor lost his three young daughters in an Israeli tank attack. But this doctor refuses to let hate fill his soul "I think the world is drowning in hate, and hate is a toxin that affects all aspects of life", he said. (The Age Good Weekend, May 14, 2011.)

"A new heaven" is the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness, and a ‘new earth' is its reflection in the physical realm".

"If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating fundamentally the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction".
- Eckhart Tolle.

Some people do not REALIZE who they are. "Without that realization, who you are does not shine forth into the world... you are like an apparently poor person who does not know he has a bank account with $100 million in it, and so his wealth remains an unexpressed potential."
- Eckhart Tolle

Sunday May 15th, 2011-Dr Francis Macnab

Gustav Mahler - What a gift he gave to the world...It was the gift of music.

A week after President Kennedy was assassinated, Mahler's Second Symphony was played. At the funeral of Robert Kennedy the Adagietto from the Fifth Symphony was played. It was also the soundtrack for the film "Death in Venice." Mahler saw that his music had the potential for a "world-shaking effect."

Mahler: "Hoping to find a precious word early tomorrow."
- Quote from S. Feder

"I am thirstier for life than ever."

"Man's task in life is to give birth to himself."
- Erich Fromm

"Epiphanies of life are transformational experiences for the one experiencing them; after these...turning points, a person will never be quite the same again."
- Norman Denzin

"Sometimes I would almost rather have people take away years of my life then take away a moment."
- Pearl Buck

"The great virtue in life is real courage, that knows how to face facts, and live beyond them."
- D.H Lawrence

"The more a person is able to direct their life consciously, the more they can use time for constructive benefits." 
- Rollo May

Sunday May 8th, 2011-Dr Francis Macnab

Mahler. Composer of some of the greatest classical music. He experienced many life traumas. Walked on high mountains, knew the depths of despair. Died 100 years ago - May 18, 1911, at the age of 51.

He was born on 7th July 1860.

The events of his early life could have easily have led to a sad, enclosed life. Instead, he found a way to live an expansive life.

He was second in a family of 14 children. Ten members of his family would die before he was 30 years of age. Six had died before he was 15.

His parents were far from happy. His own marriage to Almo was loaded with anxiety. And his treasured older daughter died at the age of five.

One loss. Followed by many losses.

It is notable that Mahler also mourned the death of the very core of humanity. "An old era was giving way to a new one." Mahler found a way to control his sadness and to contain the anxiety of death and the fear of his own mortality. (See "Footprints": F. Macnab)

How will we live - after our loss, after our many losses? How will we be "cheerful" again? How will we feel at peace with ourselves.

"If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life."
- Kahlil Gibram

"We cannon put off living until we are ready."
- Jose' Ortegay Gasset

"When the darkness comes, I know that it will pass."
- James Kavanaugh

"Life is this moment."

Sunday May 1st, 2011-Dr Francis Macnab

"I am thirstier than ever for life."

"All his life he was a God-seeker - a wrestler after truth."

"He wanted to grasp life in all its heights and depths."

"Every time Mahler conducted, it was a invocation to the God of creation."

"He was one of the world's greatest existential composers."

"God is dead."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

"The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious... he to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed out candle."
- Albert Einstein

"Humanity is being given an invitation to explore the wondrous possibilities of tomorrow's God and the world that this new God can create."
- Neale Donald Walsch

Easter Sunday April 24th, 2011-Dr Francis Macnab

Today we celebrate Easter Day
We also commemorate ANZAC Day

Easter day. In the face of widespread pain and suffering in the world, and the huge numbers who had died in wars and earthquakes and tsunamis -

TODAY
We celebrate the possibilities and the realities of new beginnings. A resurrection of the human spirit.

After a death, a trauma, a war, a catastrophe, all eyes will turn to the time of healing and consolation, and then to the forward roads that lead to coping, a new beginning, the discovery of resources, and the reality of life's best priorities and best values.

In the smaller segments of human existence, we repeat destructive behaviors, regress to killing and maiming. But in the larger long term scheme of things we affirm human evolution towards the preservation of life, the affirmations of life and the collaborations of life.

Reflections and Comments

Easter is a time of celebration.
It is a time of awakening to new possibilities.
It is a celebration of life, the Gift of life, the wonder of life
this unrepeatable life
this life to be lived once
this life to be lived fully and well.

Easter is a time of laughter
as our kids search for Easter Eggs
as they talk of the Easter "Bunny"
as they see how life can be a life of growth and good fun.

Easter is a time of leaving past traumas and grief
and walking into a new future
finding new meaning
being part of new relationships
creating new stories.

Palm Sunday April 17th, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

Many emotions flood around us, and in and our of us, everyday. The vital task is to focus on those emotions that confirm our turning into a satisfying pathway, or that key drawing us towards a good - even better - future pathway.

"Emotions shape our thoughts, motivations, and behaviors from morning till night, everyday of our lives."
-Sara Algoe

Many people are "masterfully adaptive creatures who are able to transform adverse circumstances into opportunities for personal growth, lasting happiness and quality of life even in the face of pain and suffering. For some, life is often elevated to the sublime precisely under these conditions that might be expected to produce the most pain and misery."
-R.A. Emmons

People who become participants in positive emotions begin to see life differently, and are more likely to be resilient. Being parcipants in just THREE emotions could give us all a new lease on life.

Palm Sunday is how to remind us of those three emotions.

Emotions are very important to us and our own objective experience. Emotions also have an impact on others. And any one person can become part of the group emotion and can help to generate such emotion.

Sunday April 10th, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

One thing is certain: we all run into adversities of one size or
another. We all need to be resilient. That means we need the
capacity to endure the adversity, cope with it, and get on with
living the best life we can - aiming to "bounce back" and thrive
wherever we can.

Resilience is not something only for our body. It is just as essentially something in the human spirit.
Most of us have never learned, in any
Specific way, how to be resilient.
And most of us are unclear about what
Is meant by the human spirit - and
How to activate it.

Sunday April 3rd, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

Resilience and the Human Spirit

How resilient are you? Most people consider themselves to be fairly resilient. But the reality is that most of us aren't emotionally or psychologically prepared to handle the specific difficulty or distress that comes our way.

Some will say, the human spirit is at the centre of a person's resilience. Are we born with it? Do we come how discover it?

We know resilient people. They bounce back after a crisis or a stress. Others are drained out one day, and are back and ready the next. How do they do it? What happened if they DON'T do it?

Many keep referring to the huge catastrophe of September 11. How do people get over an event like that? Now we might hear some refer to March 11 (2011): an earthquake, a tsunami, a nuclear crisis. What is it in the human spirit that gives some people the "strength" to start anew - having lost everything.

"It is by mutual support of one another that we can best deal with the pain of the many burdensome aspects of human existence..."
-Lloyd Geering

"Flesh must face through fated time
from birth to death, both unwilled,
but spirit may climb counter wise
from a death, in faith freely chosen,
to resurrection, re-beginning.'
-W.H Audur

Sunday March 27th, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

In the Minefield of our emotions, there is an important question:
Faced with the same event, why do some people thrive, and others are indifferent, impaired,
or confused?
And the second question is:
Given most people enjoy the experience of thriving, how can we increase the possibilities of
people - thriving?
A third question is:
Do we know WHEN we are thriving?
What are the indicators?

Studies show that people who are high on optimism and hope, are more likely to find they experience positive growth in response to stress. No one will underestimate the distress some people go through. But as they cope, they see that there is hope that some transformation is possible in the most difficult and horrifying situations.

Research shows that people with strong social responses and a hopeful optimistic perspective are likely to grow and thrive following highly stressful events.

"Stress can be a catalyst for physical change, advancing one's physical state towards disease."
- Elissa Epel et. al, Yale

"Stress arousal can lead to advanced health by toughening up the stress response systems and thus conditioning the body to be resistant to future stressors."
- Elissa Epel

Thriving might mean many things -
The capacity to feel good in coping with stress,
The focus on one's own needs for the fruit the
active involvement in educating others.

At Easter, the churches give considerable emphasis to suffering. But Faith is about the energy of coping. It is about the goal of ‘triumph' emerging from the experience we call "THRIVING."

Sunday March 20th, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

The content of a person's emotional life strongly influences their judgments of the quality of that life.
Uncontrollable stress foreshadows poor health.
Some people adapt well and quickly to stressful situations. Others have prolonged difficulty.

"It isn't WHAT we worry about that makes us ill;
But the WAYS in which we worry."
Study after study tells us how we articulate our anger, distress or sadness will predict which illness we are most likely to get."
-Darian Leader

Hearts that have lost their freshness, yearn
In secret for these days gone by
When all the ill was yet to learn, -
I was so young when thou went by.
Fallen, - ah me!
-James Michael

"Half-heartedness doesn't reach
Into majesty. You set out
To find God, but then you keep
Stopping for long periods
At mean-spirited roadhouses."
-Rumi (6, 1207)

We might wonder why religion tends to fall silent when it comes to coping with stress. Could it be a more active, more intelligent influence?

Sunday March 13th, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

"Teach me the gladness
That my brain must know,
Such harmonies madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then - as I am listening now."
-P.B. Shelly

I can't forgive myself.
I will never forgive them for what they did.

"To suffer woes which hope things infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night..."
-P.B. Shelly

- Is it possible?

"The world's great age begins anew,
The golden years return,...
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream."
-P.B. Shelly

"Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished health
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!"
-P.B. Shelly

Swift as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory and of good, the sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendor.
-P.B. Shelly

Does life provide us with all that is necessary, or do we need to look underneath the experiences and gifts of life - to a sense of God, to a belief in God or to a concept of God?

"Is the concept of God dead or is the experience to which the concept points, and the supreme VALUE it expresses, dead?"
-Evich Fromm

To forgive you have to master two most recently evolved skills of homo sapiens.

Sunday March 6th, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

There is a Chinese proverb -
If you are patient in one moment or anger - you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.

"Emotion is important because everybody has an abundance of it. The triumph is to use it, temper it, transmute it."
-John Wayne

"We complain and complain, but we have lived and seen the blossom - apple, pear, cherry, plum, almond blossom - in the sun, and the best among us cannot pretend they deserve or could contrive - anything better."
-J.B. Priestley

"We direct to your minds that peace is not merely the absence of war, but the constant effort to maintain harmonious existence between all peoples, from individual to individual, and between humans and other beings of the planet."
-Sioux Elder

Remember: One word can poison the soul. One word can be a gateway to hope. One word can provide rage. But one word can soften the hardest heart.
-Michael Eigen

"Happiness is vital to our mental health and physical well-being. Happiness affects the way we see and respond to the world."
-From Paul Bailey

Sunday February 27th, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

Do you feel the invisible wave of impulses forming a new era as it rises from silence?
Do you hear the call of a new tomorrow as it echoes in twilight?
Even if you do not notice it, nor are conscious of it - the core of who you are, grasps these signs and does not let them go.
-Keiko Takahashi

I wanted to infuse the Bark with a sense of passion...I wanted more humanity in what we were doing...

"My objective is to get a sense for myself of what we're doing well, what we can improve, where we should put our resources, (and when I know that) there will be people who care and there will be people who can be proud to be here."
-James Wolfensohn

Sooner or later, the discerning person realises they must deal with their mistakes, and move on. Some fell intensely guilty having made a mistake, and some feel guilty about how they dealt with their mistakes. But when it comes to moving on - that requires a decision and more than a decision. And there is the persisting question - will we move on, stay put, or keep moving back? There are more than 50 ways to move on. But me effective way is enough!

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that we must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.
-Norman Mailer

The profoundly significant thing is this - as a person grown, they make no noise as they grow.
-A German Proverb

Sunday February 20th, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

One of the recurring challenges that sits in front of everyone is to grasp the essential reality, and make ‘something' of it, to adapt, change even a little, and grow in our personality and in our approach to life.

The outer world requires that we make some necessary adaptations in our inner world.
-Carl Jung

Somehow I cannot resist engaging in an ongoing series of challenges ... at my age, I should take it easier and spend more time...playing the cello...but it is difficult to change the habits of a lifetime.
-James D Wolfensohn

Time has too much credit...It is not a great healer. Sometimes it does not heal at all. And sometimes when it seems to, no healing has been necessary.
-Dianne Ivy Compton-Burnett

Since changes are going on anyway, the great thing is to learn enough about them so that we will be able to lay hold of them and turn them in the direction of our desires.
-John Dewey

Mozart's music, like the teeming drama of the Bible and like good crisis theology, gives us permission to live. With an ear open...one can be young and become old, one can work and rest, be content and sad: in short, one can live.
-Karl Barth, quoted by John Updike

Mozart - what he translated into music was real life in all its discord.
-Karl Barth

Sunday February 13th, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

Each year at this time, we hold up our hopes and aspirations for another year. Here are the programs we intend to provide. Here are the plans and the possibilities. And we celebrate that we are here. And that we can have some part in the programs and be pleased that we can be enhanced by the possibilities.

The New era is already here:
Here the new times begins anew.
The new era happens every day,
Every day is a new world.
-Ben Okri

"This earth is our brief home. Let's put the human house in order. Let's tend the wold garden of humanity. It's time we turned our formidable powers of heart and mind to humanity's solvable problems."
-Ben Okri

May the Great Mystery that we call God keep alive in each one of us the search for a Faith that is real
a Faith that helps us to live happier lives
a faith that gives us a fuller meaning to life and the events of life;
Bring us to know the goodness that flows from the heart of the universe, and may we be expanded in heart and soul by that goodness. This is our prayer.
-Francis Macnab

Sunday February 6th, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

"We are quite confident that a person Jesus of Nazareth once existed."

"There is little doubt that he used pithy sayings to speak about God's domain."

"That he was a charismatic healer;

"That he was executed by the Romans around 30 C.E"

"We are not certain that Jesus deliberately formed a group of disciples, but it is clear that followers - including women - gathered around him."

We live by our stories...that help us make sense out of a complex universe of meaning mixed with nonsense.

(All of the above - Dr Robert Funk, Founder of the Jesus Seminar)

Sunday January 30, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

"If we were to ask the question: ‘What is human life's chief concern?' One of the answers we should receive would be : ‘It is happiness.' How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness, is in fact for the most people at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure."
-William James: The Varieties of Religious Experience

"Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into over darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: ‘You are accepted...accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know."
In that moment, "everything is transformed."
-Paul Tillich: The Shaking of the Foundations

May you be blessed with good friends.
May you learn to be a good friend to yourself.
May you be able to journey to that place in your
Soul where there is great love, warmth,
Feeling and forgiveness.
May this change you."
-John O'Donohue

"When people feel threatened and anxious they become more rigid, and when in doubt they tend to become dogmatic; and then they lose their own vitality."
-Rollo May, psychologist

"Fear is never a good counselor, and victory over fear is the first spiritual duty of man."
-Nicholas Berdyaer, Russian existentialist writer

Sunday January 23, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

Though there are times when we prefer to stay put in our own corner, we know how our lives are enlarged when we see - and become part of - the bigger picture.

Everything in the world was really beautiful, everything but our own thoughts and actions when we lose sight of the higher aims of existence and our dignity as human beings."
-Anton Chekhov. C 1900

A larger mood? Try some joy!

"What is the single, best word to describe the pleasure of a great Bolognese sauce? Rich. That richness. It's an easy, irresistible, almost childish pleasure: the ground meat dissolved into a dark blood-red sauce until they are one and the same; ... a slurpy goodness; the oily Bolognese hanging onto the slippery pasta; a guaranteed joy - in a world that's just ruled it out."
-(Guardian 26 November, 2008)

Ill fares the land, to hast'ning ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay;
Princes and Lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
but a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.
-Oliver Goldsmith, 1770

My life, my whole life...every minute of it is no longer meaningless as it was before, but has a positive meaning of goodness with which I have the power to invest it.
-Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy, 1875

Sunday January 16, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

"Beautiful triumphs."
-Shostakovich used these words to sum up the triumphant theme of his Eighth Symphony.

"This is the music, propped open before me:
Immense Unfinished Symphony of life,
Its intervals, blunt naturals and fugues,
Its resolutions, syncopations, shakes,
Scored for players."
-U.A. Fanthorpe

"We are the players.
Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is."
-Erich Fromm

"Yet I will fear no evil: not even here. Nor even now.
For surely beyond the great facade my life is being lived?
Lived, loved and filled with gaiety and ardour...
And surely (and almost now) it will happen, and tell me
That now I must write...
reach, find and know...
That in all this hungry time...have
Mysteriously, esctatically , been led."
-Henry Reed

Sunday January 9, 2011 - Dr Francis Macnab

Anyway
People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered.
Love them anyway..
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable
|Be honest and frank anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for some underdogs anyway.
What you spent years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you've got.
ANYWAY.
-Karl Menninger

"Life is good."
-Michael J Fox. (The Michael K. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research is dedicated to the development of better treatments, and ultimately a cure for Parkinson's disease.)

"‘You're not a failure,' she told him one day. ‘You're like an un-detonated shell with its devastating power intact. You're an explosion still waiting to be heard.' In all his life no one had spoken to him like that."
-Andreï Makine

 

To see "Thoughts for the Week" from 2010 please click here.