Sakura - Cherry Blossom

MP3 (Click Here)

Our Service today was Intergenerational, celebrating together our diversity as a congregation.  As with our previous 'Fifth Sunday' Service, we considered the role of the changing seasons in helping us to move along our spiritual journeys, and our day-to-day activities.  

The focus of the Service was Cherry Blossom, Sakura in Japanese.  We had songs, guided meditation, and a story.  The Sermon pulled these different aspects together. The words are below, or an MP3 is available to download by clicking the link at the top of this post.  The beautiful picture above is available on a number of websites, and I am therefore unable to credit the original artist. 

 

The beauty of the cherry blossom.

In Japan, as evidenced in part by the song we have just sung, the cherry blossom holds a special place in national culture.  The Cherry Blossom Festivals, starting in April, are a time when families, couples, and individuals will make a deliberate effort to go out and see the cherry blossom on the trees.

In Japan, as elsewhere, cherry blossom is a true mark of Spring.  It is a beautiful reminder of the glory of this Earth.  A return of light, natural beauty after a period of darkness and rebirth.  The clouds of blossom that a cherry tree will produce are the clouds of dreams of a new year. 

An important part of the appreciation of the cherry blossom for Japanese people is to take time to stop and simply look at the flowers of the cherry tree.

Not a casual glance and comment on the beauty.  But to really stop and look hard at the flowers.

To concentrate.  To focus.  To marvel at this glorious feat of nature. 

When you start to look closely at flowers you begin to notice the intricacy and complexity of each one.  How no two flowers are identical.  How even no two petals are quite the same. 

And yet, in the blizzard of white and pink, it is only by concentrating on the individual parts that you become truly aware of how so many similar but different parts are able to make one amazing whole.  The single, enormous cloud of blossom that surrounds the tree is in fact not a cloud, but rather a crowd thousands upon thousands of tiny parcels of beauty.  Each wonderful in its own way, each amazing and beautiful when studied close up. 

And yet together, these thousands upon thousands of petals make individual flowers, amassed on a single branch.  Alongside hundreds of other branches.  To a single explosion of colour and dreams.

Japanese society is, like most societies, influenced by the religions that have been strongest in the country for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.  And in Japan there are two core religious traditions, Shinto and Buddhism.

In different ways, both Buddhism and Shinto have a reverence for nature at the heart.  Buddhism is not so straightforward – there is a complex notion, depending on the tradition you follow, that can suggest that neither humans nor nature are of greater value than each other – but that both are of little value, since all is transient.

That is, perhaps, a route we might consider another time.

I would like instead to consider the great truths that exist and are manifest in Shinto.

At the heart of Shinto lies the idea that wa (or ‘benign harmony’) is inherent in all human relationships and in nature itself.  In Shinto, the idea that things must be kept to order and in agreed places is essential.

To break that balance, to undertake an individual action that disrupts our relationship with each other or with nature is simply unacceptable.  Should it happen, we must be prepared to apologise – to take responsibility for our actions and recognise when we have upset the natural order of things.  But it goes wider than simply understanding our individual responsibility.

Shinto instead reminds all that we are part of a greater single thing.  That imbalances in society or the natural world, or both, are as much our own responsibility as it is someone else’s.  We are part of the collective.  Despite our individuality and personal thought, we are a part of a much larger community.

The beauty of the individual cherry blossom, as wonderful as it is, will never compete with the collected ordered flowering glory of the cherry tree.

This idea can of course feel quite alien to us in our Western world.  We see everyday the encouragement to be different. We are told it is good to be different.  And this takes many forms.

To be different might mean to self-promote, to try and be different to everyone else at school, at home, at work.  We are all X-Factor contestants.  Well, I suspect we are not.  And we know, don’t we, that if everyone was like an X-Factor contestant in real life, every day, it would all get a little boring.

But before we get too smug about our wholesomeness, we might want to keep in the back of our minds that we, as Unitarians, have proudly waved our Non-Conformity as a battle flag.  We are different.  We will not do something just because we are told to.  We need to be persuaded there is good reason behind it.

And yet we are all human.  We are all people.  Some of us are men or boys, some are women or girls.  But we are all human.

And we are all part of this planet.  And we are all responsible for this planet.  And we are all responsible for the actions of humans on this planet.  And maybe that hope for a benign harmony.  A time and a place where we are in complete harmony with nature.

Our poems today, those by Karla Kuskin and Langston Hughes remind us of the importance of being at one with nature.  And the story of Rengetsu, the Buddhist nun who was able to witness the glory of a golden moon through the beautiful cherry blooms is surely an image we can all aspire to see.

The excitement we feel deep inside when we are facing the emerging flowers and growth of Spring.  Or the pleasure we sometimes feel when we allow the rain to drop softly onto us.  We are happy under a shower.  Perhaps we could be happy under the rain sometimes!

These are the reminders perhaps of the sacred web of existence if which we are each an equal and important part.  Our relationships with our families, with our friends, here in the congregation and elsewhere.

Our part in society, the difference we are able to make to people’s lives through kindness and generosity of spirit.

Our impact on the world around us.  This world of wonder and amazement, which we can so easily take for granted.

We are part of this world. Each and every one of us.

‘Let us give thanks and praise’, are the words of a great hymn (that we are not going to sing today!).  Let us give thanks and praise.

How can we not give thanks and praise for the wonderful opportunities that life can present to us. 

Spring is a time of rebirth, renewal, revitalised interest in life and love and the future.

And like the plants emerging from the winter, it is only ourselves that can fully complete this rebirth.  We can use the warmth of the sun, the freshness of the rain.  But the growth and rebirth comes from within us.  It cannot be put there by anyone or anything else.  It is a part of us and, as such, part of everything else.

And like the blossoms on the trees, it is beautiful.

We have thought today about the beauty of the Earth.

We have used the image of a cherry blossom wood to open our minds to rebirth and renewal

We have made promises to ourselves on steps we will take to change our lives for the better.  We have made written reminders to help us follow those through.

We are one, we are many.  We are beautiful.

From Tragedy Comes Hope - Easter 2012

MP3 (Click Here)

Easter can mean a number of things to different people, Christian and non-Christian alike.  In 2012, Easter falls close to the anniversaries of both the sinking of the RMS Titanic, and the execution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (right) at the hands of the Nazis.  In our Service today, we reflected on the everlasting possibility of hope, that can come from tragedy.  The words are below, or an MP3 download is available by clicking the link at the top of this post.

 

It is Easter.  An important time in the Christian calendar.  The day Trinitarian Christians believe, according to their spoken creed, that Jesus of Nazareth came alive again, after his crucifixion by the Romans three days earlier.

This is a fantastic claim, in all senses of that word, and one that Unitarians have, traditionally, not believed to have been a literal event.  And it is confusing.  And very hard to understand.

One of the key elements of Unitarian theology has been that Jesus was a man.  A human.  Like you and I.  His capacity for love, kindness and generosity is something we can hope to emulate.  We can see Jesus as an example to which we would want to aspire.  We are all children of God, whatever that might mean, and we are all therefore capable of living a life of love to ourselves and others.

Cliff Reed, the Minister of our Ipswich congregation put it well in his book 'Unitarian. What's That?':

While Jesus was, like all people, a unique individual, he was not other than human.  He was our brother in every sense, sharing the same human lineage as us.  And thus when we speak of him as child of God, as incarnate divinity, as vessel of God’s promise to humankind, we speak of him as embodiment, as symbol of what is true of every human baby.

The ministry of Jesus, and of those who have walked the    same path, was indeed an enfleshment of creative power, supremely that of love, which can re-make human beings by revealing to them their roots in a divine creation, their reclaimable goodness and wholeness, their oneness with this glorious universe.

This works fine for me.

But can it be true?  After all, we are saying, in large part, that the supposed claims of the Early Church – as recorded in the gospels, in the letters of Paul and other early Biblical writers – the claim that Jesus was resurrected is not true.  So, the key claim of a Church that would probably not have been founded without such claims is, perhaps we are saying, wrong.  The early Christians were wrong, founded their church and entire belief system on a fib – but luckily we, from about 1600, have been right.

This doesn't sound right.  Perhaps it’s not that simple.

So what might this all be about?

I wonder whether we need to move away from the literal, and focus instead on the meaning and purpose of the claims.  There is little to hear now.  The more we contemplate the possibility of the claims for Easter, the more silent our comprehension becomes.  As Robert Walsh suggested in our first reading, it is the voices under the silence that we must listen for.

It is the voice under the silence that might help us to recognise how we can use new understandings of these messages to better understand and serve the 21^st Century in which we live.

Perhaps it’s a question, in part, of certainties and endings.

This week is the 100^th Anniversary of the fateful maiden voyage of RMS Titanic.  Over 1500 people died on the evening of 15 April 1912 after the ship hit an iceberg – one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters in history.

 1500 people lost their lives.  Of which, I recently discovered, over 500 of these were from Southampton – the town that provided the crew and so many other workers on the ship.

A devastating loss, and something that is truly unimaginable. 

There is no question of the devastating loss for all those involved with, or friends or relatives of, the deaths on board the Titanic.  Twice as many people died, as survived.

And yet, Titanic touched so many peoples lives.  I imagine that every single survivor, the lucky 700 or so, lived with the loss of the Titanic every day for the rest of their lives.  They had lost family, they had lost friends, parents.  They also lost a part of their privacy and uniqueness.  They would always be known as a Titanic Survivor.  If such a thing truly existed.

And now, although the very last survivor, Millvina Dean, has died, in May 2009, the Titanic continues to fascinate and play a part in people’s lives.  There are films, exhibitions, plays, books.  Most admittedly cashing in on the tragedy, but I have been fascinated to watch people’s reactions.

Last year our eldest daughter was involved in a school project on the subject of the Titanic.  So last summer I took her to an exhibition of Titanic artefacts at the O2 in London. 

I was both surprised and genuinely touched by the sensitive way in which the story was presented, and the nature of the ship and its passengers was so carefully portrayed.

And the fascination of the crowds was not on the night itself, it was instead a fascination with the snap-shot in time that the doomed ship provided.  Pre-First World War, Britains and Americans, mostly, in a post-Edwardian world.  But still a world of class, of service.  A world of its time.

How many other cruise ships do you know about.  How many other photos are you aware of showing how people lived in 1912?

And the people.  People of all ages and all social classes were aboard the ship. 

One of the clever ideas of the exhibition was that your ticket contained the name of a passenger.  At the end of the exhibition you looked at a list of all the passengers and found out whether your name was travelling in first, second or third class, or was a member of the crew, and whether they died or survived. 

To see the wall of names was sobering in itself.  A cross-section of society.  A group of people brought together for that one crossing.  Normally their grouping would never have been known.  But for the tragic events in the Atlantic that night, they are forever linked.

Despite the best efforts of James Cameron, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslett in the 1997 film, we do not need to romanticise of fictionalise the story for it to be a lesson on so many subjects for so many people.

From tragedy comes learning.  From tragedy comes reflection.

And from tragedy came the hope of a better future.

From the Board of Inquiry set up after the event, came new rules on lifeboat provision, new safety design requirements, and the establishment of the International Ice Patrol ships.  Never again would a ship be designed with too few life-boats.  Never again would a Captain be so unaware of the risk of ice to his ship.  Perhaps thousands of lives have been saved as a result of the loss of the Titanic.

The people have gone in tragic circumstance.  Yet the story brings interest and hope to people.  And has led to a better sea-faring world.

And this idea of greater understanding through tragedy.  This sense of greater visibility and determination to promote hope through terrible things is not uncommon.

Tomorrow, 9^th April, is the 57^th anniversary of the death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  A German Lutheran pastor and theologian. 

Bonhoeffer was ordained in 1931 and spoke out against Hitler just two weeks after his arrival as German Chancellor in 1933.  Bonhoeffer could see the dangers of totalitarianism that Hitler and his party appeared to be moving towards, and fought against Hitler’s interference in the ecclesiastical structures of the church.  In April 1933, six years before the Second World War, Bonhoeffer made a very public call for church resistance to the Nazi persecution of the Jews.  Sadly, his calls were not heeded.  With Martin Niemoller he founded the Confessing Church, in opposition to the German Christians, who had aligned themselves the Nazi Party.

He established a seminary for pastors to the Confessing Church, and effectively lived on the run in the late 1930s, passing from village to village with his, officially illegal, ministers.

In the war, Bonhoeffer joined the German military intelligence organisation, the Abwehr.  This may sound a strange thing to have done.  However, some leading members of the Abwehr were, secretly, under command of a man named Canaris, using its contacts and resources to help smuggle Jews out of Germany, and also was the prime internal organisation opposed to Hitler and his regime.  It was the Abwehr that was responsible for many of the various, all unsuccessful, assassination attempts on Hitler.  Bonhoeffer was a leading member of the organisation.

The Abwehr’s involvement in all this was discovered by accident when their intelligence rivals, the SS, were looking for something else.

All the Abwehr leaders were rounded up and sent first to Buchenwald Camp, and then to Flossenburg, and, following a military trial on 8^th April 1945, were hanged on 9^th April.  Just two weeks before the Camp was liberated by the Americans.

Throughout his time in the Camp Bonhoeffer had acted as chaplain, and tended to the pastoral needs of all who sought them.

The legend of Bonhoeffer grew as a result of the tragedy of his death.  And the peaceful and loving way in which he lived his life has become better known and, one hopes, more influential.

It was Bonhoeffer who said:

“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children”

And for Bonhoeffer, that was the driving force behind his religious life.  The short time we have on this earth must be spent, always, in making this world a better place. 

As a theologian and pastor, Bonhoeffer was very focused on the life and teachings of Jesus, and putting the acts of discipleship into practice everyday, and wherever possible.  Reliance on a grace of God that would come to a creedal Christian was not enough for Bonhoeffer – he called it a cheap grace.  Instead, it was actions that mattered.  He was certainly a committed Trinitarian – and firmly believed that Jesus was God Incarnate.  But for Bonhoeffer, this was the foundation on which he built his belief that action in this world was a deliberate requirement of God – that cloistered existence was insufficient.  Putting this world right was the ultimate recognition of the God’s connection to the world.

Bonhoeffer lives on.  His works continue to be read and studied by theology students, and many others.  Through the heroic actions of his life, through his commitment to a better world for our children, through his ultimate sacrifice at the hands of an oppressive regime, Bonhoeffer has brought triumph through tragedy.

I do not intend, for one minute, to suggest that the Titanic, Bonhoeffer and the reported Resurrection of Christ are of equal importance or worth.  However, the common revelation from each of these events is the nature of human hope from tragedy.

For the early church, they could not accept that the teachings and examples of Jesus would die with his death on the Cross.  So, they agreed to continue his teachings and life.  They recruited another disciple, Matthias, to continue to live and spread the teachings of Jesus.

In this way, for many Christians and non-Christians alike, Jesus remains alive today.  Those who believe Jesus was human, and there was no physical resurrection, can be equally amazed and transformed by the example of Jesus.

The continuing message of love.  A message that, without his tragic death by Crucifixion, might never have survived Roman Jerusalem, and which has in so many ways brought, and continues to bring, love and hope to the world.

There can be no just reason for tragedy.  Be it human cruelty, as in the deaths of Jesus and Bonhoeffer, or simple accident or error, as in the Titanic.  There can be no just reason.

But such events are never a reason to give up hope.  To remember the need to draw new life and new approaches.  These are the marks of resurrection in life. 

Our first reading, by Stephen Shick, talked of the Triops and its amazing ability to remain dead, or effectively dead, until prompted to resurrection.  The Triops waits in silence for the moment to return.

Perhaps this is the silence in which we must all listen for the voices under all silences to which Robert Walsh referred in our second reading.  In silent contemplation of the possibility of hope from tragedy, in the silence that will always follow bad news, let us listen for the voice of hope.  The voice that will guide us to a better world.

Death is a certainty in life.  It is our reaction to it, and our actions before our own, that count. 

To remember the sacred and the holy of the lives that have gone before, we must carve our own memorial, building on the stories of those that have gone before.  As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said – and as his words continue to say to us:

“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children”

Let us celebrate the resurrection of hope and truth this Easter.

Helping Hands

MP3 (Click Here) 
 

For most of us reading is a skill we take for granted.  For thousands of people in prison, however, reading a letter from home, a job application or a newspaper is simply beyond them.  More that 40 percent of prisoners have literacy skills so low that on release they are ineligible for more than 90 percent of jobs, and are thus frustrated in their hopes for a new a different life.  

In our Service today, we raised awareness and funds for the Shannon Trust.  The Trust provides learning resources, staff training and individual support to the Toe-to-Toe Reading Plan, a peer-mentored reading scheme that gives prisoners a vital skill, and a fresh start in life.

Our Service today was dedicated to the way in which we must align our deeds with our faith - on the spiritual necessity of helping others, including those on the margins of society.

The words of the Sermon are set below - or a free MP3 download of it can be accessed through the link at the top of this post.

 

At the end of January we were accompanied through the entire Service by the members of our Children’s Chapel.

And we made a point of using some of their words in our worship.

Not only did we hear their poems about winter, but we also heard the words they use to both start and end their time together on a Sunday morning.

The words they use for the lighting of their chalice are very simple:

         We light this Chalice to celebrate being Unitarians.

         This is the home of the open mind.

         This is the home of the helping hands.

         And this is the home of the loving heart        

It is the second of these I would like us to focus on this morning.  This is the home of the helping hands.

An open mind, and a loving heart are very personal things.  These are approaches and attitudes that can make a profound impact on your life, your loving response to others, and through that open loving approach, it can bring hope and joy to others.

But they remain very personal.  There is no way I can look at someone and judge whether they have an open mind or a loving heart.  Hearts and minds are hidden inside us.  Deep inside.

And of course, open hearts, loving minds and helping hands are, I believe, strongly linked.  You are more likely to have helping hands if you have a loving heart.  You are more likely to have a loving heart if you have an open mind.

But, as I said before, hearts and minds are personal and unseen.  Helping hands, on the other……hand?.....are something that will make a tangible difference to something in a physical and visible way.

And, I hope, we are speaking in truth, when we say, we are the

         Home of the Helping Hands.

Unitarians are proud of their commitment to rational thought.  Proud of their willingness to read and engage with different ideas and approaches to religion and spirituality. 

However, I think this is only part of the story.  Our calling, as human beings in this great, interconnected world of ours, is surely not simply to think.  To ponder.  To assess in an intellectual way.

We are called also ‘to do’.  We are called to make a positive contribution to this wonderful world we live in.

This world is wonderful because of its potential.  It is not, I suggest, a wonderful place to live for the entire global population. 

Perhaps it could be.  I hope and pray it could be.  But it is not, at the moment.  On this day, and sadly on every day, people will die from hunger.  People will die from preventable disease.  People will die from violent conflict.  In many places.

Today, there are people living in fear.  There are people who have been cast out of their society.  There are people who see the future with little hope of the fortune and good luck in which we have mostly found ourselves.

And when we are thinking, with our open minds and loving hearts, how we might bring some love to the world – is it not to those who live in fear, those who are viewed as outcasts, those who have had the misfortune to be born into the wrong place at the wrong time?

Of course it is.

Now, helping hands can, of course, work in so many different ways.  We’ve all known the ‘helping hands’ of those that believe they know better than us.  We all have stories of those who have helped us into a worse position from where we started.  Not necessarily deliberately, but certainly without due and considerate thought.

But sometimes it is the less obvious, less showy and grandious things, that will really matter.

We heard earlier a passage from the gospel written by Matthew.  It is a recollection of story told by Jesus about the effect of good deeds and good intentions on humankind more widely.

A good deed, an action of love to one in need, is something that we are, I believe, called to by God, or by whatever name you might give that intangible something in which we are all bound.

The story Matthew recounts was one where, at the time of judgement, it is made clear that when an individual gives food to the hungry, gives water to the thirsty, visits the sick, or those in prison, then that action is being done to God.

For me, with a view that God is an indescribable ‘something’, a formless form that provides the source and inspiration of love and life, and is present within each and every one of us, then the notion that an act of kindness towards an individual becomes, for me, an action of kindness towards all humanity.  By simply living a life of love towards others, we are benefiting humankind in so many different ways.  Ourselves, the community in which we live, the congregation with whom we worship.  With those we are helping, with those who see hope in the help we are providing to others. 

We are benefiting the community of humankind immediately, and this leads to, I believe, the salvation of today.  This is not a storing up of good ticks for a later day, but a real and definite change to the society in which we are all a part.  And once you scrub away any need for a heavenly reward for good things, you are freed to recognise that a good act is something that must be committed for its own sake.  There are no ‘brownie points’, no special ‘gold stars’.  

There is instead a salving of our souls, a sense of love and commitment deep inside, a connectedness to those things in the world that are wrong – but to which we can help make a difference.

Albert Einstein once said:

‘If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.’

And I can recognise that instantly.  I can also recognise the thin line I might be on sometimes in that ‘hope for reward’.  But there is a thin line through many such things.

I suspect Einstein is talking of personal reward – tangible reward through recognition, or money, or status.  I think, and hope, that the reward we might take from knowing we are helping to build the loving community of tomorrow – a world in which future generations might live in greater equality and harmony than we do today.  That should perhaps be reward enough.

‘Doing good’ is something that can sometimes be quite hard.  It’s easy to do good for, or with, someone you know and, perhaps, feel empathy with. 

But sometimes, we need to cross the barriers of ‘nice’ and ‘easy’ to ensure we are reaching out to all.  To ensure we are not creating an exclusive group, but are making a statement about the value and worth of all.

For Unitarians, with strong beliefs in the interconnectedness of life, in the equality of sacredness found within each and every person, we must surely recognise that it is not just the supposed ‘good guys’ that need our help – it is also those whom society has put to oneside.  It is our calling perhaps to remember those not so welcome in society. 

Last month, we dedicated a Service to Fairtrade.  And who could find an argument against being nice to hard-pressed farmers in difficult times. 

But sometimes we need to reach out to those who would otherwise be ignored. 

Hard-pressed farmer are heroes.  But I believe we also need to look elsewhere, for those that are not such obvious candidates for society’s help.

And prisoners in jails in this country are one such category of society that rarely receive the ‘fashionable’ charity support they might need.

Our lunch here today is in aid of a charity, the Shannon Trust, supporting a particular type of prisoner rehabilitation.

Now, prisoner rehabilitation has always been a tricky subject.  The notion of ‘prison’ is, by definition, an idea of taking somebody out of society for a crime committed against that society.  Depending on your viewpoint, prison is for protection of society at large, it is a ‘punishment’ for doing something wrong, it is a ‘deterrent’ for those who might otherwise do wrong.  It will be for one, or two or all of those reasons.

There is a stigma attached to prisons and prisoners that can often make us feel uneasy.  We can be all too ready to assume that those in prison are ‘a bad lot’, and ‘not like us’.  Well, it’s not true.

We are all human.  And on that basic level, we are all the same.  Flesh and blood.  Alive.

We all start the same way.  Crying and screaming our way out from our mother’s tender care into this sometimes cold and difficult world.  And then, and only then really, do the differences begin.

We have different backgrounds.  We live in different contexts.  Our journeys in life are all different.  We have been brought up in different ways.  We have been influenced by different people.  We have very different strengths and weaknesses.

Yet we all started the same.  And, biologically, we all work (near enough) in the same way.  Blood, flesh, breath, sense.

One of the wonders of creation is the way in which we can be so varied, so different, yet so similar underneath.

And prisoners are the same too.  When you stand in the maternity ward of a hospital, seeing all the little plastic cots and tiny, stretching babies – you have no idea how their lives will work out.  The first baby you see may become a Prime Minister.  She may become a prisoner.  She may become both.

And still is like us.  She is just one person in this enormous population.  Just like us.

And just like everyone else finding themselves in an unfortunate position – prisoners are worthy of our love and compassion.

Some of those in prison find themselves there after a life of deprivation  - physical or emotional.  Many of these are there as a result of being unable to take advantage of many of life’s opportunities.  Often through something as simple as being able to read and write.

In 2008, the Prison Reform Trust reported that ‘48% of the prison population has a reading ability below that expected of an 11 year-old’.  It has also been shown that an exceptionally high proportion of the 64% of prisoners that re-offend within two years of release have very poor reading skills.  This is in large part a result of the fact that ex-offenders are three times more likely to re-offend if they are unemployed – and those who cannot read are generally unable to find a job.

We will be hosting a lunch here after the Service to raise funds for the Shannon Trust.  This Trust runs the Toe-by-Toe Reading Plan, an award-winning peer mentoring programme which encourages and supports prisoners who can read to give one-to-one tuition to prisoners who struggle to read.  It has been described by Stephen Shaw, the former Prisons and Probation Ombudsman as ‘the single best thing introduced into prisons in the last 10 years’.  Enabling prisoners to read will reduce the risk of re-offending, benefiting both prisoner and society at large.

But of course, the proof of this is not from the ‘officials’.  It is form those prisoners who participate.  And who are being helped so much by it.

First, by Eddie, a learner at HMP Wandsworth:

“All I wanted to do at school was mess about. When I came here, I could read a bit and write a bit, but not much. I started Toe by Toe in June last year; it took me about nine months. But now I can read my own letters – and write letters too”

and also, Jimmy, at a Young Offender’s Institute:

“This is my second time in prison. Last time I didn’t learn anything at all. I couldn’t read or write. This time my teacher has given me Toe by Toe. Everyone thinks I’m a star because I am doing so well. I was 16 two weeks ago and I have been told I am the youngest person in prison to be doing Toe by Toe.”

But, it’s more than this alone. As a programme of mentor teaching – prisoner to prisoner – it can benefit those teaching as well:

The words of Stuart, currently in HMP Swaleside:

“As a peer mentor I hold an important position of trust. I have surprised myself with what I have learnt here”

And I could go on.  The reports are wonderful.

 

Such programmes are a demonstration of loving commitment to others.  These are programmes that can make society a better place.  A place where people, all people, can fell held in love by others.

And the great thing is that by teaching to read, this programme is providing a lasting skill.  A long-term capability.  This isn’t just visiting prison in order to help someone fill in a form.  To write down the answers on behalf of someone.  No, this is providing the means for an individual to do this on their own.  A sustainable gift of love, that keeps on giving.

Of course, in this instance, I am not asking you to contribute your own reading and teaching skills.  You will need to get your self arrested and incarcerated to do that.  And that is not the route I would advise.

But what we are all doing today, by supporting this cause, is touching the lives of our fellow human beings.  We are facilitating the bringing of love and kindness to others.  We are helping to make this broken world whole. 

And in doing this, we are answering that inner call to the Divine, that still, small voice that tells us, no matter how hard we often try to ignore it, that still, small voice that appeals to our innate call to serve our fellow travellers in this world.

Last month, I quoted from the Book Of James – a reminder of our need to add deeds to our faith.  And I’m going to quote it again, because it’s a fantastic statement.  Interestingly, it’s also rock-star Alice Cooper’s favourite piece of prose.  And in my book, that makes it worth reading:

In the letter of James, in the New Testament, James asks,

‘what good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you have faith but you do not have works.  If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them ‘ go in peace, keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet does nothing to supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?  Faith, by itself, if it has no works, is dead’

I firmly believe that, from whichever religious path you come, or from no religious path at all, the sentiment in James’ letter must be a guide for us all.

Our faith in life, our faith in humanity, our faith in the possibility of a better world can only be realised through work and deeds.  We are part of this broken society, and we are part of the solution.

We are Unitarians.  This Meeting House is the:

Home of the open mind,         

The home of the loving heart,

And the home of the helping hands.