A prayer by George MacLeod

Christ, you are within each one of us.

Nearer are you than breathing,

closer than hands and feet.

Ours are the eyes with which you, in the mystery, 

look out with compassion on the world.

Take us outside, O Christ, outside holiness,

out to where soldiers curse and nations clash

at the crossroads of the world.

We ask it for your name's sake.

Amen.

George MacLeod was the founder of the Iona Community. 

This prayer can be seen as a word to all the pilgrims who come to the ancient abbey on Iona. In this thin place many experience holiness. This prayer reminds us that God gives us holy experiences in special places to go with us back to the world charging and changing us as a result.

Compassion

"The principal of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions and it calls us always to treat all others as we would wish to be treated ourselves."

With these words, Karen Armstrong unveiled the Charter for Compassionon November 9th 2009.  This charter is for people of every faith and those with no faith from around the world. The charter contains the public confession that “we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion."

The Charter for Compassion was devised by Karen Armstrong who has written several books on religion and faith in the contemporary world. She was at one time a Roman Catholic nun before studying at Oxford University and ending up as a teacher. In recent years she has become widely known as a writer and speaker. Her study of the world’s religions revealed very clearly their differences but she identified a common thread that ran through them all. The common thread is compassion.

This dream is not simple or naieve but sums up the aspirations of all thinking and caring people irrespective of their faith. The Charter “impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures and to honor the inviolable sanctity of every single human being treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.”

By early 2012 more than 85,000 people had affirmed the charter online. It has been implemented in various settings. One of the most notable is in a jail in Washington State (USA) where the goal was to decrease violence by 2.5 percent. The project was much more successful than hoped and violence decreased by 100 percent. The creators are evaluating the advantages for the federal government of implementing this program across the country.

A motivational poem

Last week in a group of friends discussing the world and its problems over dinner someone referred to Rudyard Kipling's poem "If". I had not read the poem for several years but found that I still know large stanzas of it by heart. 


I was put off this poem over twenty years ago when some commentator on a radio discussion programme dismissed it as a relic of the British Empire. He was no doubt one of those Marxist intellectuals who reinterpret history to fit in with their narrow view of what constitutes human life. (Fortunately most of these people have now retired!)


Looking at the poem afresh I can honestly say I am truly moved by the sentiments expressed here. Kipling captures something about what it means to be a good human being and a valuable and contributing member of society. It is about being positive. It is about perseverance against the odds. It is about big society - in the proper sense of the word - not the political spin often associated with the word. It is a truly motivational poem.

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Easter Resource

A short book with a bible reading and meditation for each day from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday

Available for kindle download on Amazon in the UK click here and in the USA click here.