Mana Retreat Centre, Easter  2013

Joo-Cheong

As a peacemaker, I will speak against injustice, remembering that peace is not just my birthright but of all humanity.
I will live with idealism, seeing the prospect of change even when change seems all but impossible, believing in hope especially when cynicism and despair seem more natural.
I will live for idealism, committing to the truth that the world can be a far better place.

Hilary

I am a peacemaker when I breathe and live from the place of peace within me;
when I see the Divine life in others when they cannot see it in themselves;
when I am open to receive nourishment, care, support and loving;
when I unconditionally accept myself.

Karen
Be loving and accepting of love
Be kind to myself and others
Be a good friend to myself and others
Make peace with myself and others
Live in the ‘now’ for today IS the day

Jane
As a peacemaker I will…

Live from a place of the heart, offering the best of who I am to others, and to myself. I will do this by asking, is this loving? Is this kind?
Acknowledge that although I have fear, I am not my fear. Courage is the antithesis of this fear. I can find courage by increasing thoughts and actions of joy and love; lessening thoughts and actions of anxiety and pain.

Judy
I will begin over and over, a daily practice of loving kindness
 I will remind myself, over and over, that this ground I stand on, wherever it is, is sacred and holy ground
 I will explore with curiosity and deepen my understanding of my values, my principles and my intentions
 I will endeavour to process and take responsibility for any upsets or disturbances I experience in my feeling life
 I promise to open myself to Divine Inspiration in all aspects of my life

Sara
I will choose my words carefully;
Kindness will be my motto;
I will teach and be taught;
I will speak and live my truth;
I will be my own fan club;
I will walk in others shoes;
I will listen with an open heart;
I will continue to discover the true meaning of love.

 Deborah
I will
explore with delight and curiosity
enquire and pay attention to what lies beneath
honour commitments to myself as I do commitments to others

Marianne

I will
make an effort to sort my own house before I give advice ( a spring clean works just as well in the autumn)
embrace and love that we are all different
use my ears more than my mouth
not be scared to speak up if I witness an injustice
not sweat the small stuff

Davinia
Stop struggling with yourself, with your opinions of others. They will go on with their lives, you will go on with yours. That is OK.
For some, being a friend means you will meet again, you will make time for them.
For others, being a friend (to yourself and to them) means you will not. That is as it should be.
Try to be less impatient with yourself. “Make a friend of the teaspoon!” [in the dishwasher ]. This will allow you to–hopefully–be less impatient with others (e.g. friends, students, a partner, colleagues). This could take a while. Be patient with that knowledge also.

Mark
Recognizing that non-violence starts at home, I will:
Treat myself with care.
Speak to myself as if I was my own parent.
Treat others as I deserve to be treated.
Listen deeply to understand and feel.
In recognition of non-violence, I summon my courage and integrity every day.
When solutions are called for, I will foster the emergence of creative options.

Linda
I will speak to myself as a true friend and nurture my spirit
Give others the benefit of the doubt
I will see love in actions from others
I will open space for joy in my life

Sue
I will
send good wishes liberally
do some things often that are useful, effective as well as kind and loving
work towards harmony
work towards embodying my highest values
remember that less is more
make tiny little efforts each day
use discernment often
be grateful for small things (since I have been to China, this includes toilet paper!!)
acknowledge the strengths of both myself and others

Perla
I will
Seek other peace makers
Ring the bell of peace….
Dance and sing with you on the curve of the circle of life. (this, most of all, brings peace, love and joy to my being)

Donna D
I will
Turn my re-actions into carefully considered pro-actions
Be mindful of my words so that I speak with messages of love
Offer my ears for those who need to be heard

Our next retreat at beautiful Mana will be 3-6,6-9 October 2013 (2nd part optional).

Bookings direct with Mana Retreat Centre. Ferry and shuttles available from Auckland.

In this talk, recorded at the Sydney Town Hall for the Happiness & Its Causes Conference, Sydney, 2012, Reverend Dr Stephanie Dowrick challenges – with considerable gentleness and strength – some of our familiar ideas about happiness, and invites us to a greater vision not of happiness only, but also of safety, justice and peace. “Are we spiritually ambitious enough?” she asks. And then she encourages us to care far, far more.  You can share your comments on this powerful talk on Stephanie Dowrick’s Facebook page. You can also share this link with your own networks to spread a message of happiness that can reduce suffering; we can be the cause of happiness – even sometimes in the face of grief and sorrow – because happiness is not just pleasure, joy and fun, it is also a state of aliveness, wholeness and even holiness that has abundant room for compassion, forgiveness and great tenderness.

“Interfaith” is a word increasingly used. It’s used as an adjective. It’s used as a noun. We can even do interfaith in the sense of engaging with a range of activities that might include the local rabbi, imam, Buddhist monk, Hindu priest and Catholic nun sharing insights around an urgent social need, as well as people getting together without their religious labels to share sacred silence, a day of prayer, peace-making, forgiveness or healing, an experience of art, poetry or music, or a service in a church, temple or under the trees that draws on humankind’s shared spiritual inheritance and is in every way inclusive. This last word matters most. From this perspective, no one is “lesser than”; no one is “left out”.

But that very range of experiences ought to give us pause: pause to celebrate that such events are increasingly commonplace; pause, too, to reflect that those vitally inclusive and welcoming experiences are unlikely to be enhanced when a definition of “interfaith” becomes rigid or constraining. Or when some experiences are regarded as more authentically “interfaith” than others.

Definitions matter. They can be thrilling and illuminating. They can also be used to create hierarchies and exert power. Or even to humiliate or batter those who see the world differently. It’s unhelpful to think about the definition of some words without taking into account who is doing the defining, and why. This is particularly true surely when it comes to those highly subjective, densely loaded words that attempt to describe, much less define “faith” or “belief”. In fact, as I write this images rush through my mind of countless individuals shunned, defiled, even murdered for religious claims or definitions that were regarded as so offensive they were called heretical. That has happened throughout human history. It still happens.

A great deal of religious and spiritual experience comes to be defined by what it is not. Growing up in the latter part of my childhood within the Roman Catholic tradition I learned very quickly to divide the world into Catholics and non-Catholics. (I’d come into the former world from the latter one: from Protestant Mars to Catholic Venus – or so it felt.)

That kind of sheep/goats talk is commonplace in other traditions too. The inference is clear: far better to be what “is”, than what is “not”. In those same childhood years I also heard people speak about a loss of faith in tones as hushed and concerned as might be used to speak about the death of a loved one. For many, it was equivalent. Yet when someone “loses” their faith this could mean a huge range of experiences within each individual from no longer believing in or accepting the God of their childhood to no longer believing that their faith is the “one, true” and only – or that it has any right to condemn “others”; to giving up on religion entirely – with all manner of shifts between.

The sacred is more likely to be found through experiences that engage the emotions than through dogma that rigidifies the mind. Self-righteousness, or insistence on “one way” trumping all others, is the enemy of the subtle, infinitely powerful, never-entirely-knowable sacred. Vulnerability, compassion, hope, tenderness, good humour, patience, forgiveness, love: these are sacred and sustaining qualities that belong to all of humanity and need not depend on religious belief. For some, they reflect the infinite and unconditional love that God has for our human family. But this is not always true. Nor is it true that people who are explicitly theist practise these qualities more obviously or profoundly than those who are neither theist nor atheist. “God” can be inspiration as well as source; but not for all and never within a context of fear.

The great twentieth-century visionary poet Rainer Maria Rilke was, like most poets, extremely wary of definitions and mistrustful of our anxious grasping after them. When it came to priests and their confident reading of the mind of God, he was particularly scornful. “Middlemen”, he called them. When it comes to questions of faith, religion and the awesome “sacred”, we must, Rilke believed and so do I, learn to trust an inner authority based on experiences, one that’s tempered by humility as well as wisdom as life continues to mellow us.

There is some argument as to whether Rilke did or did not call God “a direction of the heart”. (He called God many names and addressed God with sublime intimacy and often equally sublime lack of certainty: one of many reasons why he is a poet for our times.) But this gentle, questing notion of “direction of the heart” may be useful to some of us, too, as we think about faith, about our faith in thinking about faith…and about interfaith.

Modesty as well as humility is a great blessing here. I am thrilled when I hear people speak to one another about the interfaith services I lead in inner city Sydney with delightful familiarity as in, “Will I see you at interfaith next week…?”.  I love their confidence that “interfaith” experience is real for them and that they are eager to have those experiences together. But is interfaith also a “noun”?  I am not sure.

I have been teaching from a spiritually inclusive perspective for a quarter of a century. For at least an entire century our human family has been increasingly open to finding inspiration and ethical guidance from wherever it feels most inwardly refining and outwardly effective, in the sense of growing a love for our diverse human family, and service to it. As an ordained “interfaith minister” (and graduate of one of New York’s several interfaith seminaries), I have been leading those services to a large inner-city congregation for seven years, since 2006. During those years, and as a writer and public spokesperson for an interfaith practice and perspective, I have felt often that I am standing on the margins – where change in attitudes is most likely to happen – and quite simultaneously that I am right in the heart of where positive change is occurring. What I am sure of is that I am witnessing change as much as I am possibly contributing to it.

This intense familiarity with broadly interfaith questions and context does not, though, and should not mean that I want to offer a confident definition for interfaith beyond the key phrases of “spiritual inclusion” or “spiritually inclusive”.

My own inner calling to ministry was undoubtedly to spiritually support all who sought that, whatever their faith experiences, beliefs or questions. The teachings, prayers and practices that inspire and shape my work and life are those that could best be described as universal or mystical. They are challenging. They leave no one out. They do not assume that all religions are the same, or that all religious teachings should be valued equally. Universal teachings of the kind I cherish derive from love and urge us to live a life of love – without exceptions. There is nothing new in that. Universal Sufism and Vedanta are just two of many paths that have explicitly defied the idea that Truth revealed itself to a single privileged group.

Love, whether it is human or divine is considered to be sacred, in the view of the mystics, philosophers, and thinkers. That it is possible to regard it thus is shown by the fact that in its root it is beyond both the human and the divine. As it is written in the Bible, ‘God is Love’: three words which open up an unending realm for the thinker who desires to probe the depth of the secret of love. In ordinary life, we make this word mean affection for our surroundings, for our relatives or our beloved, but when we think deeply about it, we see that from start to finish it represents the power underlying the power of all activities and all intelligences.
 – Hazrat Inayat Khan, 20^th-century Sufi teacher

Following a spiritually inclusive way of life has been, for me, both liberating and demanding, as it should be. It’s been liberating in that it has opened me to the incredible treasure trove of spiritual resources that each faith has nurtured, despite everything. It is demanding too – and I welcome this – in that it calls and depends upon an ethic that is also at the heart of all faith and spiritually philosophical traditions: the ethic of the “Golden Rule”.

Interfaith practice unequivocally calls me to consider who and what I am, who and what my “neighbors” are, and particularly how I treat and regard them as well as myself. How I live matters. How each of us lives matters. It also matters whether our beliefs nourish our relationships with one another, or destroy them. Looking at faiths as well as faith close up it is easy to see the complex human dimension in them all: the weaknesses are painfully similar; the strengths are encouragingly similar.

A “spiritually inclusive” attitude and way of living is a choice that challenges prejudices and stereotypes. It also challenges the power imperatives that characterize some conventional religious thinking and practice. Given the shockingly irreligious, sexist, homophobic and violent nature of much “religious” behavior, and given the violence that continues to be waged in the name of religions and faiths, I believe that we can safely say that in any of its sincere forms, interfaith activity is a change for the better in human consciousness. It offers a vital shift not only in how we think about religion and religious adherence, but also – and more profoundly – in how we think about humanity and what we are capable of doing and being. The time for tribal thinking is over. It has become too dangerous. This is a time for thinking that is both global and intimate; bold and delicately receptive and nuanced. It is a time for thinking and behavior that is self-responsible, self-respecting, and simultaneously caring of the effect of our choices on the world around us.

In a recent Huffington Post article, Chicago-based activist Eboo Patel claims three reasons why “interfaith efforts matter more than ever”: These are: “1. Interfaith helps harmonize people’s various identities. 2. Interfaith efforts help us to separate the worst elements of communities from the rest. 3. Interfaith efforts remind us America [I would add, all multi-cultural nations] is about welcoming the contributions of all communities and nurturing cooperation between them. “

Like Patel, I am confident that interfaith experience is brilliantly suited to these times. It is unconditionally rooted in care for others and a willingness to look way beyond one’s own garden gate; it is overtly harmonizing and peace-making; it is open to change; it is self-evidently more interested in questions of “how should we live” than in staking an exclusive claim to “truth”. I would also add that it offers a vital chance to “grow up”: to claim one’s inner authority and conscience that returns us to the profound simplicity of the Golden Rule and all that implies.

None of us “owns” God. Nor can any of us rightly claim to speak for God – particularly when those claims are arrogant, violent or divisive.  What we can know is how urgently humanity needs a more peaceful, self-respectful and caring way of thinking about – and living out – religion, faith, religious identity and belief.

One of my own community members, herself long versed in Sufi universalism, wrote to me recently: “Interfaith in my experience does not water down one’s own particular religious tradition. It seeks to strengthen by its intrinsic and explicit acknowledgement of the value of all religious traditions. In this way, the interfaith movement seeks to unite in a universal service by drawing together people to celebrate the essential Divine humanity expressed through diversity. Some call this a uniting path of love.”

My sense perhaps my hope is strong that in all its diversity, “interfaith” experiences – including shared worship -  will be increasingly available and supported within our global world. They will, though, be diversely lived. For some, this will strengthen a “home faith”. For some, it will involve a softening of attitudes about faith as well as interfaith, with a greater understanding of those who live or worship differently. For some, “spiritual inclusivity” will itself be a chosen and cherished path.

Accepting that diversity of experience can be challenging. Yet “interfaith” can itself be our finest teacher about what we more profoundly share. Bowing our heads together in silence, allowing ourselves to be transported by poetry or music, listening deeply to one another’s stories, offering consolation in grief and celebration in joy: these are unifying moments and may even be transformative.

Seeking meaning in and through life (and in and through our reflections upon it) is among the most profound quests that our human family shares. An interfaith perspective is likely to acknowledge this as a human activity, expressed and inspired in many ways, but transcending through first-hand knowledge and respect all the familiar separations of religion, culture, race, class and gender. In short, it’s a way of bringing people together around what matters most. It’s a way of opening hearts as well as minds.

In 21^st-century life, interfaith activities, ideals and spiritually inclusive experiences can add substantially to our urgent needs for peace making, social and economic justice, care for the physical universe, and global as well as intimate, daily and personal understanding of one another. They also witness to what we share, rather than to what divides us. This is no small thing. In truth, I find it quietly hopeful.

*

Reverend Dr Stephanie Dowrick leads spiritually inclusive services each 3^rd Sunday of the month at Pitt Street Uniting Church, 264 Pitt Street, Sydney, 3pm. She also leads retreats and events in Australia, NZ, and Japan. For further depth on interfaith and spiritual seeking, please see her book, Seeking the Sacred. This article is copyright. If you wish to reproduce or share it, please write to uhn @  stephaniedowrick.com (close up spaces) and acknowledge this website as your source. You are invited also to follow her on Facebook for spiritually inclusive, socially conscious inspiration.

At the monthly interfaith, spiritually inclusive services she leads at Pitt Street Uniting Church, Sydney, Reverend Dr Stephanie Dowrick brings us ideas and inspirations that can sustain us spiritually and emotionally whatever our life circumstances. This month (April 2013), she speaks about gratitude – with some very fresh thoughts about gratitude as a way of life and being, and also about how essential it is to RECEIVE gratefully and appreciatively what others are giving us, and adding to our lives.  You are free to comment on Stephanie Dowrick’s Facebook page where she also offers daily inspirations.  Thanks to Brad Harris for videoing and posting this talk. You can find other talks also on interfaithinsydney’s YouTube link. Please share this resource generously.

Interfaith service, Sydney, THIS Sunday 21 April, 3pm  *Book Club news including Anne Deveson’s new book  * Retreat at Mana  * Links to supportive talks and articles  *  Bookstore support  * A beautiful prayer of appreciation for this day.

Welcome to this month’s Universal Heart Newsletter – and to Book Club news also. And if you are near or in Sydney this Sunday please also know how very welcome you would be at this month’s interfaith service. It’s special and rather sad because Ian Pearson, minister at Pitt Street, is leaving after 10 years, and after seven years committed involvement with our services there. We are celebrating those years with even more music than usual, and a hugely uplifting theme and readings. Everyone is welcome – and do take a minute to pass this invitation on to others.  (Details of the service at the end of this newsletter.) I notice people always leave feeling lighter and uplifted. And oh how badly we all need that.
It’s been my impression, from the news and from social media, that the painful, painful events at the Boston marathon have renewed for so many of us a determination to live appreciatively every day. That inspired my choice of prayer at the end of this newsletter. Just as crucially, it is a reminder how imperative it is to keep up our peace making efforts so that small as well as great acts of violence become a thing of the past. Is that a pipe-dream?  I don’t believe so. It does, though, take people committing individually as well as collectively to a life of peace, justice and care…the very values we promote, think about and share here at the Universal Heart Network. That confidence is also shared in Waging Peace, a new memoir from the wonderful Anne Deveson which is my choice for this month’s Universal Heart Book Club.
Anne covers some of the same themes that I wrote about in Seeking the Sacred, but of course her stories and many of her reference points are very different. She’s an absorbing story-teller and in a long life has much to reflect upon. She does it wonderfully well and I commend her book to you.  (My co-host Walter Mason has chosen such a different book: The Divinity of Dogs – which some of you will adore!)
I’d love you to visit the Book Club regularly. There are now many choices to guide you towards books worth reading – and for those of you keen to write there are articles that support that, including one this month from Sophie Masson on “Authors Unlimited” a new e-publishing initiative from the Australian Society of Authors. Through the Book Club or directly you can effectively support this Network by buying virtually any book through the “Stephanie Dowrick Bookstore” which is a far from glamorous website, but is well run by Collins/Seek. All books are discounted, and each book sold returns a small % which is our sole support for this Network. As always, I send heartfelt thanks to those of you who are choosing this way of buying your books – it really helps.
This year’s Easter Retreat which ended earlier this month was particularly lovely. If you had considered it but missed it know that I will be teaching again at the wonderful Mana Retreat Centre, Coromandel, New Zealand, from 3-6, 6-9 October. The three additional days are for those who want extra time, silence, rest and reflection. I cannot begin to describe to you how effectively a retreat helps our inner peace-making – where outer peace-making must always start.  It is also a profoundly refreshing way to spend time with other people – and yourself.  Please enquire now, even though it is some months away. The retreats fill and I always want there to be places for Universal Heart Networkers.  Shuttles or ferry available from Auckland. Mana can help organise that.  Retreat details and booking at their website:  web address is http://www.manaretreat.com  Telephone: (NZ) 07 866 8972.

       A reminder, too, that if you can’t get to Sydney for the services, then at least catch up with the talks that are on the interfaithinsydney YouTube channel. The most recent talk was on the theme of inner riches and spiritual abundance. For more frequent support you an of course also visit my website or Facebook.  And you don’t need to have a Facebook page to visit and enjoy! Your thoughtfulness in using and sharing these resources makes the time they absorb so worthwhile. Some of you may be particularly interested in an article I have posted, sharing Buddhist nun Robina Courtin’s provocative, very useful words about anger.  Anger drives and justifies so much violence. We have to challenge the countless excuses we make for it…and watch for it closely in our own minds and hearts. (Yes, a flash of anger sometimes creates a necessary boundary or full-stop…as a way of living it is never helpful.)
Details follow in full for this Sunday’s interfaith service. Plus a most beautiful verse from the yogic tradition. I’d love you also to take a quiet moment to think who might benefit from your sharing of any part of this email.
And, to close, a quiet moment to wish you peace of mind, love and laughter in the month ahead.

Stephanie Dowrick

 Interfaith Service, this Sunday 21 April  2013, 3pm
 These services are genuinely inclusive and may meet your needs for a time of peace and renewal. We offer readings and reflections from different traditions, shared prayers and brief meditations, a short inspirational talk and always beautiful music. This Sunday we farewell dear Rev Ian Pearson, and will also host Reverend Hilary Star from Auckland Interfaith community.  Details: Pitt Street Uniting Church, 264 Pitt Street, Sydney 2000. Nearest cross Street is Park. Some street parking available. Excellent public transport (nr Town Hall). We do ask you to arrive a little before 3pm as we must start promptly. The service is about 75 minutes with tea and coffee afterwards for those who can stay. You can also join the community singing with Sydney Sings director Liz Lecoanet at 1.15-2.15pm (before the service). A lovely treat.

In New Zealand?  Similar services are offered at the Subud Centre, 19 Formby Ave, Pt Chevalier, Auckland, NZ, each 2nd Sunday at 5pm (new time), led by my dear colleague and friend, Reverend Hilary Star. To join the mailing list contact Patsy Sim psim@orcon.net.nz

Look to this day. For it is life.
The very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the realities and truths of existence.
The bliss of growth.
The splendor of action.
The glory of power.
For yesterday is now a dream.
Tomorrow is just a vision.
But today, when lived well, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness.
And every tomorrow, a vision of hope.

I (Stephanie Dowrick) have written a great deal about the epidemic of anger in our society and its disastrous consequences, as well as what to do about it – particularly in Everyday Kindness, The Universal Heart and Choosing Happiness. Creating a life free from anger is an individual responsibility that has profound and immediate consequences on all our relationships – and on the communities we are collectively creating. So-called “passive aggression” – manipulating, trivializing, shunning, ignoring – is just as harmful and much easier to deny. The immensely valuable words below come from Buddhist nun and social activist, Robina Courtin, and they appear in a longer article (this is the LINK). I don’t agree with everything that Robina has to say – and especially not that calm self-examination can replace intelligent, compassionate, self-responsible psychotherapy. On the contrary: one can radically enhance the other! And exploring and changing an unhelpful vision of oneself within a dynamic relationship context (psychotherapy) can be absolutely essential for many of us. But I do commend Robina’s words on anger…and hope you, too, will give them time and thought. We can only create a calmer, safer world if we do this together. Your efforts matter.

FROM ROBINA COURTIN: What anger is, and what anger is not
The perfect answer to the question, “What is anger?” which I heard from a lama, is: “Anger is the response when attachment doesn’t get what it wants.” But if that is what anger is, then what is it not?
•    Anger is not physical. Anger is part of our mind, and our mind is not physical. It exists in dependence upon the brain, the genes, the chemical reactions, but is not these things. When anger is strong, it triggers huge physical symptoms: the blood boils, the heart beats fast, the spit comes out the mouth, the eyes open wide in panic, the voice shouts. Or if we experience aversion as depression, the body feels like a lead weight; there’s no energy, a terrible inertia. And then, when we boost our serotonin, the body feels good again. But these are just gross expressions of what, finally, is purely thought: a story made up by our conceptual mind that exaggerates the ugly aspects of the person or event or oneself. Recent findings prove what is explained in Tibetan Medicine: that what goes on in the mind affects the body.
•    Anger is not someone else’s fault. This doesn’t mean that the person didn’t punch me; sure they did. And it doesn’t mean that punching me is not bad; sure it is. But the person didn’t make me angry. The punch is merely the catalyst for my anger, a tendency in my mind. If there were no anger, all I’d get is a broken nose.
•    Anger does not come from our parents. We love to blame our parents. Actually, if Buddha is wrong in his assertion that our mind comes from previous lives and is propelled by the force of our own past actions into our mother’s womb, and if the materialists are right in asserting that our parents created us, then we should blame them. How dare they create me, like Frankenstein and his monster, giving me anger and jealousy and the rest. But they didn’t, Buddha says. (Nor did a superior being – but we dare not blame him!) They gave us a body; the rest is ours (including our good qualities).
•    Anger isn’t only the shouting. Just because a person doesn’t shout and yell doesn’t mean they’re not angry. When we understand that anger is based on the thought called aversion, then we can see we are all angry. Of course, if we never look inside, we won’t notice the aversion – that’s why people who don’t express anger experience it as depression or guilt.
•    Anger is not necessary for compassionate action. His Holiness the Dalai Lama responded to an interviewer who suggested that anger seems to act as a motivator for action: “I know what you mean. But with anger, your wish to help doesn’t last. With compassion, you never give up.” We need to discriminate between good and bad, but Buddha says that we should criticize the action, not the person. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, it’s okay to find fault – but then we should think, “What can I do about it?” It’s exactly the same with seeing our own faults, but instead of feeling guilty we should think, “What can I do about it?” Then we can change. Anger and guilt are paralysing, impotent, useless.
•    Anger is not natural. Often we think we need anger in order to be a reasonable human being; that it’s unnatural not to have it; that it gives perspective to life. It’s a bit like thinking that in order to appreciate pleasure we need to know pain. But that’s obviously ridiculous – for me to appreciate your kindness, do you first need to punch me in the nose?
•    Anger is not at the core of our being. Being a delusional state of mind, a lie, a misconception, it’s logical that anger can be eliminated. If I think there are two cups on my table, whereas there is only one, that’s a misconception. What to do with the thought “there are two cups on my table”? Remove it from my mind. Recognize that there is one cup and stop believing the lie. It’s simple. Of course, the lies that believe that I’m self-existent, that delicious objects make me happy, that ugly ones make me suffer, that my mind is my brain, that someone else created me – these lies have been in my mind since time immemorial. But the method for getting rid of them is the same. What’s left when we’ve removed the lies, the delusions, is the truth of our own innate goodness, fully perfected. That is what’s natural.

(These words from Robina Courtin are from an article posted on the web:for the complete article please click on this LINK.)  You are welcome to comment on any of Dr Stephanie Dowrick’s thoughts or articles on her Facebook page.

A ‘tour de force in matters of the heart’ Claire Scobie, Kindred Spirit      This powerful, beautiful, transformative book reminds us on every page that a life worth living is a life of love. Love is the currency that transcends all others. Love connects us most deeply to our best selves, as well as to other people. The presence or absence of love makes the greatest difference to our happiness, our health and wellbeing. Yet seeking love and sustaining it continues to disappoint many people.

In enriching and practical chapters, Dr Stephanie Dowrick affirms our highest ideals and intentions. Better still, she shows us how possible it is to live them out. With the compassion and psychological depth that is the hallmark of her writing, she also explores the common pitfalls to love. Then, with persuasive wisdom, she helps us to transform them.

Perhaps what also makes this book exceptional is that Stephanie Dowrick shows us how to live more appreciatively across all our relationships, including with our own selves. Through her powers of storytelling, she demonstrates that anything worth discovering about love improves not one but every one of our connections. In a world where fears of not being or having enough dominate, she proves that love is ours to discover, to give and to receive.

Reissued by Allen & Unwin, 2012   Available immediately via this BOOKSTORE link.

You can also buy this book from your favourite e-book retailers.

ISBN: 9781742378039
Format: Paperback Book
Number of pages: 456

Take one quarter of one hour to hear this remarkably uplifting talk from Rev Dr Stephanie Dowrick. With humour and compassion, she invites us to view our lives, even our struggles, from a place of hope and confidence. You are very welcome to share your thoughts on her Facebook page where she posts short daily inspirations. You are also deeply welcome to come to the Interfaith services led by Dr Dowrick at Pitt Street (264) Uniting Church, each 3rd Sunday at 3pm. ALL welcome.

Dear friends
Welcome back to the Universal Heart Newsletter. As I sat down to write this today I realized that I have been writing these newsletters for nearly 13 years! I wonder how many of you have been with me that long? These days I also write short inspirations on Facebook virtually every day, as well as articles for my website and for your very own Universal Heart Book Club.  That means that despite my delightful “grandmother” times, I am spending many hours at my computer…never mind writing my books! So please understand if this newsletter today offers links rather than lots of words, with – of course – a little additional inspiration at the end.

Are you within range of Bellingen in mid-North NSW?  If so, I will be talking about my writing at the Bellingen Readers Writers Festival in New South Wales NEXT weekend, 22-24 March, with lots of time to meet readers and sign books.  I’ve heard such good reports of this Festival so if it is accessible for you, please come on Saturday at the very least. And don’t hesitate to say hello! Bookings and information: http://bellingenwritersfestival.com.au. My special event is 11-12 on Saturday 23 March at Bellingen Youth Centre. (Very appropriate!) This is a Festival small enough to meet and hear writers at close quarters and the volunteer team who make it all happen are truly to be applauded.

With only days to go this is your last chance to check for a space at the Easter Retreat for 2013 at glorious Mana Retreat Centre, Coromandel, New Zealand (28 March – 1 April).  I will be teaching on the theme “Messages of love”, and how we can bring those timeless teachings on love into our minds, hearts and lives and allow them to heal and strengthen us. Body treatments are also available at Mana, and this is a fine retreat for those who haven’t been to a retreat before. It offers enduring peace of mind and inner refreshment in an environment of great beauty. Shuttles or ferry available from Auckland. Mana can help organise that.  Retreat details and booking at their website:  web address is http://www.manaretreat.com  Telephone: (NZ) 07 866 8972.

We have several wonderful books leading our reviews this month at the Universal Heart Book Club. Saved by a Poem, Writing Down Your Soul and Minding the Earth are all books from exceptional writers that invite deep reflection. I think they are real finds – and there are now more than 60 articles on the website, with so many choices to guide you towards books worth reading. You can comment on any of the choices at the Book Club site or, of course, on my Facebook page.  Jane Goodall has also launched a lovely new feature on the “Reading life” which is all about enhancing and sharing your reading experiences. Through the Book Club or directly you can also support this Network by buying virtually any book through the “Stephanie Dowrick Bookstore” which is efficiently run by Collins/Seek. All books are discounted, and each book sold returns a small % which is our sole support for this Network. Big, big thanks to those of you who are choosing this way of buying your books. I am so grateful.

A reminder, too, for those of you who can get to Sydney that our spiritually inclusive INTERFAITH service is this Sunday, 17 February, 2013, at 3pm. All details below. And if you cannot join us in Sydney then at least catch up with the talks that are on the interfaithinsydney YouTube channel. For more support please visit my website or Facebook. Your thoughtfulness in using and sharing these resources makes them worthwhile.

Details follow in full for Sunday’s interfaith service. And I want to add two extra links: one to a recent article I have written about moving through a crisis; the other an earlier article on 10 days to greater calm. You can let me know via Facebook if either of these has come at the right time for you.  I’d love you also to take a quiet moment to think who might benefit from your sharing of any part of this email.  Finally, some words below on “words” – and their power to heal.

I wish you peace of mind and courage in the month ahead,
Stephanie

 Interfaith Service, this Sunday 17 March 2013, 3pm
These services are genuinely inclusive and may meet your needs for a time of peace and renewal. We offer readings and reflections from different traditions, shared prayers and brief meditations, a short inspirational talk and always beautiful music. Please send this information to anyone who may benefit.
Interfaith services. 3rd Sundays, 3pm. Pitt Street Uniting Church, 264 Pitt Street, Sydney 2000. Nearest cross Street is Park. Some street parking available. (St Pat’s parade restrictions OVER by 2pm!!)  Excellent public transport (nr Town Hall). We do ask you to arrive a little before 3pm if possible as we must start promptly. The service is about 75 minutes with tea and coffee afterwards for those who can stay. You can also join the community singing with Sydney Sings director Liz Lecoanet at 1.15-2.15pm (before the service). A lovely treat.

In New Zealand?  Similar services are offered at the Subud Centre, 19 Formby Ave, Pt Chevalier, Auckland, NZ, each 2nd Sunday at 6pm, led by my dear colleague and friend, Rev Hilary Star. To join the mailing list contact Patsy Sim psim@orcon.net.nz
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On choosing words wisely: a simple invocation that may benefit you…and those around you.
May my words today heal myself and others.
May my words today calm myself and others.
May my words today create insight for myself and others.
May my words today express and affirm the very best of who I am.
May my words today affirm and respect the very best of who you are.
May our words today uplift our world and bring happiness to all who live in it.

Rev Dr Stephanie Dowrick

“It is not an easy thing to be a peacemaker, but it is an essential thing. Our world is at a turning point. We either speak up passionately and act for peace — or we are bystanders of and complicit with violence.”   Rev Dr Stephanie Dowrick

Read Stephanie Dowrick’s persuasive arguments for peace, and for the urgency of our peacemaking, in her recent book SEEKING THE SACRED.

You can find details here of the retreats and events which Stephanie Dowrick is leading, or where she is contributing, through 2013. The interfaith services in Sydney are each 3rd Sunday of the month, at 3pm: Pitt Street (264) Uniting Church, Sydney. The retreats at Mana Retreat Centre are twice-yearly: Easter and October. And yes, Stephanie is again leading a writing retreat in Kyoto in October 2013, with William Suganda! Booking enquiry details for these events are all listed. If you wish to enquire about Stephanie Dowrick’s availability to lead a retreat or speak at an event, please visit CONTACT on this website.

3-5 May 2013, “Inner Peace, Outer Strengths”, Interfaith in Sydney Retreat, Wilton, NSW

Easy access from Sydney and Canberra (and places between!), from Friday evening until Sunday lunchtime, we will gather to deepen our awareness of inner peace and outer engagement. The retreat will be offered at the beautiful, peace-filled Brahma Kumaris Centre for Spiritual Learning, 150 Macarthur Drive, Wilton NSW 2571.  The weekend will include time for teachings from Stephanie Dowrick, quiet periods including meditation (guided), personal rest and reflection, and guided time for discussion. The retreat is suitable for those on retreat for the first time, as well as those returning to the serenity of a retreat experience.  Ample, delicious vegetarian food. Fully inclusive cost: $350.  Small number of single rooms available at extra cost. Address your enquiries to Phillippa Andrew. Tel: 02 4630 8124. For payment: cheque or money order to: Brahma Kumaris Centre for Spiritual Learning. Please include your name, address plus email details for acknowledgement, and state that it’s for the May 2013 interfaith retreat. Use THIS LINK  for more information about the Retreat Centre. However, for this retreat you cannot book on-line – you can only book by phone or mail.

19 May 2013   Interfaith service Pitt Street (264) Uniting Church, Sydney

Reverend Dr Stephanie Dowrick has been leading spiritually inclusive services at the beautiful, centrally-situated Pitt Street Uniting Church since 2006. Each 3rd Sunday of the month at 3pm a diverse group of people gather to discover that everyone is welcome, with teachings and music that affirm our diversity and our unity.

16 June 2013   Interfaith service Pitt Street (264) Uniting Church, Sydney

Reverend Dr Stephanie Dowrick has been leading spiritually inclusive services at the beautiful, centrally-situated Pitt Street Uniting Church since 2006. Each 3rd Sunday of the month at 3pm a diverse group of people gather to discover that everyone is welcome, with teachings and glorious music that affirm our diversity and our unity. Community singing is also available with Elizabeth Lecoanet from 1.15-2.15pm.

21 July 2013   Interfaith service Pitt Street (264) Uniting Church, Sydney

Reverend Dr Stephanie Dowrick has been leading spiritually inclusive services at the beautiful, centrally-situated Pitt Street Uniting Church since 2006. Each 3rd Sunday of the month at 3pm a diverse group of people gather to discover that everyone is welcome, with teachings and glorious music that affirm our diversity and our unity. Community singing is also available with Elizabeth Lecoanet from 1.15-2.15pm.

18 August 2013   Interfaith service Pitt Street (264) Uniting Church, Sydney

Reverend Dr Stephanie Dowrick has been leading spiritually inclusive services at the beautiful, centrally-situated Pitt Street Uniting Church since 2006. Each 3rd Sunday of the month at 3pm a diverse group of people gather to discover that everyone is welcome, with teachings and glorious music that affirm our diversity and our unity. Community singing is also available with Elizabeth Lecoanet from 1.15-2.15pm.

24-25 August Annual Conference, Buddhism and Psychotherapy, Brisbane

Dr Stephanie Dowrick will offer both a keynote address and a workshop at this outstanding annual conference.  The theme for 2013 is “Inner Peace Outer Action”. For more details visit the conference website.

3-6, 6-9 October 2013 “Peaceful Mind” Spring Retreat, Mana Retreat Centre, NZ

Writing in Kyoto with Stephanie Dowrick  24 October – 2 November 2013

This highly successful writing/travel retreat in Kyoto will be repeated in 2013. It is for writers or would-be writers at all levels. And especially for anyone ready to live, see and think more deeply, appreciatively and creatively. Writing workshops in the mornings with Dr Stephanie Dowrick. Guided explorations of the enchanting ancient city of Kyoto in the afternoons and evenings with Japanese-speaking William Suganda.  Please email: William@inspiredtraveller.com.au to register your interest and receive the complete itinerary in its pdf form.  (An optional extension to Koya-San is also being planned.)

Did you miss?

17 March 2013  Interfaith service Pitt Street (264) Uniting Church, Sydney

Reverend Dr Stephanie Dowrick has been leading spiritually inclusive services at the beautiful, centrally-situated Pitt Street Uniting Church since 2006. Each 3rd Sunday of the month at 3pm a diverse group of people gather to discover that everyone is welcome, with teachings and glorious music that affirm our diversity and our unity. Community singing is also available with Elizabeth Lecoanet from 1.15-2.15pm.

22-24 March 2013, Bellingen Writers and Readers Festival, Bellingen, NSW

Stephanie Dowrick will be a participant at this delightful literary Festival.  For all details and to register please visit the Festival website.

28 March – 1 April 2013, Mana Retreat Centre, Coromandel, NZ

Early bookings highly recommended. The annual 4-nights Easter Retreat at Mana Retreat Centre, Coromandel, NZ is a highlight of Stephanie Dowrick’s teaching year and has been offered annually since 2001. The experience of being on retreat at Mana is truly restorative, way exceeding most people’s expectations, and the theme for Easter 2013 is “Messages of love.”’ Cost: A$675 (approx.)/ NZ$835. The retreat will include time for enriching teachings from Stephanie, quiet periods including meditation, personal rest and reflection, and shared, guided time for discussion. Vegetarian food; comfortable accommodation; exceptionally beautiful setting. Body treatments available during afternoon rest periods. You may extend your stay on either side of the retreat for a modest cost.  Mana Retreat Centre, RD 1, 608 Manaia Road, Coromandel 3581, New Zealand   (+ 64 7) 866 8972

14 April 2013, New South Wales Writers Centre, Sydney

“Free to Write: Writing with greater fluency and pleasure” A one-day course with Dr Stephanie Dowrick that will support your need to write and your ease in writing – whether you are a beginner or a professional. A highly interactive day that will allow you to sustain with new confidence your writing ideals. Numbers strictly limited (to 16) and early booking urged. Cost: $165 or $115 for members; conc: $100. Tel (02) 9555 9757  NSWWC for bookings and enquiries – or to join the WAITING LIST.

Unless you are an accomplished masochist (or have a fatal attraction to drama), you will want to avoid most situations dramatic and uncomfortable enough to qualify as a crisis. However, life is more often than not indifferent to our list of “wants”. And so it is that crises fall upon us and we fall upon them, like it or not.

I am personally turned off in a big way by people expounding a fairly popular view that the ghastly things that happened to them surely did so “for a reason”. I  feel, or maybe I just “sense” that life is, in many ways, chaotic as well as unfair.  It is also often unjust. But what is solid for me, what is truthful and reliable, is that every crisis offers a priceless opportunity to go deeper INTO life, rather than further away from it if we choose to. A crisis is an opportunity to become a bigger person than we were, or maybe the same person with a bigger, more truthful and more compassionate view.

Please: I am not suggesting we should put the welcome mat down for crises;on the contrary. We should do all that we can to minimize the suffering that crises bring, while at the same time letting ourselves discover that we can (and often must) become wiser and more discerning.  Indeed, as we look around us and see that troubles come to every door and not just our own, we can also become less self-centered, certainly less self-pitying, and increasingly resolute that we have the capacity to help others as well as ourselves.

The paradox is clear. The crises we most want to escape – what any sensible person would want to flee from – are also a chance to gain invaluable humility, to recognise that whatever we are suffering it is part of the human experience and condition, and  that we are not exempt. That is a blow to the ego and our sense of specialness but it also forces us, if we are lucky, to seek differently and deeper.

If we are shaken up enough by a crisis – a blow, a grief, an insult, an abandonment, a death, a significant disappointment, an illness – our usual strategies will not work. This means we are forced to find new strengths, greater resources, resources that arise from spirit and our first-hand knowledge of what life offers as well as takes away. I am thinking here of the big spiritual strengths like courage as well as tolerance, like forgiveness as well as generosity, like self-responsibility as well as compassion. And if we cannot? If we prefer to wail and moan and blame other people, or God or life?  Then, I would suggest, the crisis is truly wasted.

A crisis insults our innocence: that temporary delusion that frightful things won’t or should not happen to us. The loss of this innocence is essential to any claim to spiritual maturity. Because in truth not only will frightful things happen to us but we may also be the cause of frightful (and unnecessary) things.

And that is the most significant learning of all.  Not all suffering is inevitable. Much of the suffering we react and respond to is caused by us: by our ignorance of what makes us happy. Take violence, for example. Or “everyday” contempt, disrespect and aggression. It would be impossible to measure how much suffering this causes. It is impossible to describe the power that comes when we humbly resolve to ourselves and others that, “Harm will stop with me. I will and must keep others safe.”  This is the fundamental of peace-making – within, as well as without.

We can choose to understand, from our newly rattled perspective, that not every crisis is, in fact, a crisis. We can choose to make far less fuss about what is just a blow to our ego, or a disappointment. We can save ourselves and grow our resources for what really matters. We can shed the limiting skin of selfishness. We can take responsibility for our attitudes, our strategies as well as our actions. We can grow up. We can ask: “What would help most here.”  We can pray not only for ourselves but for all those similarly suffering. We can soften our demands on the world and other people. We can think – even in our fragile state – far more about what we are ready to give.

Does it seem counter-intuitive that I am suggesting “giving” when we might feel empty? Again, I am not suggesting this for the acute stages of grief…but surprisingly soon and often we begin to “fill” when we are including others in our vision, rather than thinking only of ourselves. The reality of our interbeing, our interdependence, means that we never endure a crisis alone. The effect it has on us will also affect others.

If today is, for any reason, a day of crisis or heartache, then take a few precious minutes to still your mind, go inward, and send love and light to all who need it. As you generate those thoughts, and as they flow through you, they will also be healing FOR you. “Love and light to all who need it.” Breathing in. Breathing out. Joining with others not through pain, but healing.

Those of you familiar with two of my books will be unsurprised by what I have written here. The two books that I believe are particularly strong and clear in a crisis (when clarity and strength are so needed) are Creative Journal Writing and Forgiveness and Other Acts of Love. In very different, complementary ways, those books invite you to a depth of knowing, insight and also courage that – without a crisis – you would never need to discover. How do I know this? Because I have lived them; not simply written them.

Holding onto the truth that you do continue to have choices, and continuing valuing and honouring life even it is temporarily unrecognisable, you grow inwardly: you become your whole, true, beautiful self. Yes, there is sometimes a massive price to pay. Don’t waste it.

 You are welcome to respond to Dr Dowrick’s article on her FACEBOOK page. If you wish to quote from or use any of her articles please write to uhn @ stephaniedowrick. com (close up spaces).

In the first of her “Interfaith in Sydney” talks for this year, Rev Dr Stephanie Dowrick shares some surprising thoughts about harmony, and especially the need to embrace and even rejoice in difference. Harmony – inner and outer – is essential for our safety and our wellbeing. We hope you enjoy this talk and share it freely.  Please direct any comments you may have to Stephanie Dowrick’s public Facebook page.

Dear friends

Welcome back to the Universal Heart Newsletter.  Some of you have been receiving these letters for many years now and I want to thank you so much for continuing with them…and caring for the values they affirm. At the end of this email are some lines that offer the most gentle reminder of powerful ways to be kinder to ourselves, an essential pre-requisite to playing our part in making this a kinder world.

Kindness, consideration, concern, respect: these are all familiar expressions of love. And if a deepened experience of these qualities  – as well as courage and appreciation – calls to you, then I’d love you to consider the Easter Retreat for 2013 at Mana Retreat Centre, Coromandel, New Zealand (28 March – 1 April). The Easter Retreat is a highlight of my year and Mana are taking bookings now. We do expect it to be particularly beautiful this year. Mana itself is such a tonic and I will be teaching on the theme “Messages of love”, and how we can effectively take the universal messages or timeless teachings on love into our minds, hearts and lives and allow them to heal and strengthen us. Body treatments are also available at Mana, and the physical setting and kindness shown there are exceptional. This is a fine, welcoming retreat for those who haven’t been to a retreat before, as well as for those who return most years. Shuttles or ferry available from Auckland. Mana can help organise that. You can also stay for days on either side of the retreat for a modest cost – and have treatments during that time.  Retreat details and booking at their website:  web address is http://www.manaretreat.com  Telephone: NZ 07 866 8972.  I would love to see Universal Heart Networkers there!

Kindness in everyday life is of course also one of the constant themes in my own writing – and life (Everyday Kindness, The Universal Heart). It’s also the theme of an exceptionally accessible book called Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin. Walter Mason reviews it this month for the Universal Heart Book Club. I think many of you will find lots of practical new ideas -and, again, it is a gentle book.  We all know that kindness and happiness grow back to back. And kindness must begin at home…though it cannot end there, either!

My own Book Club choice for the month is the intriguing, provocative Proof of Heaven. I’d love to hear your comments on this one – written by Dr Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon who survives a catastrophic infection to his brain and during his days in a coma experiences what he describes as eternal consciousness (or “heaven”!). Some of you will love it; some of you will argue with or about it. But do read it. You can comment at the Book Club site or, of course, on my Facebook page. There are more than 50 articles posted now at the Book Club, including monthly video discussions. Enjoy!

I hope this reaches you in time also to remind you that our spiritually inclusive INTERFAITH service is this Sunday, 17 February, 2013, at 3pm. All details below. And if you cannot join us in Sydney then at least catch up with the talks that are on interfaithinsydney YouTube channel. For more support please visit my website or Facebook. Your interest and thoughtfulness in using and sharing these resources makes them so worthwhile – and I truly value your visits to the dull-looking but very efficient “Stephanie Dowrick Bookstore” which is actually run by major booksellers Collins/Seek. Each book sold returns a small % which is the sole support for this Network. So MUCH much appreciated when you use it.

Details follow in full for the interfaith services in Sydney. If you can join us – and I hope you will – please let me know you are from this Network! And do always take a moment to think who might benefit from your sharing of any part of this email.  Finally, the promised lines from Loy Ching Yuen, plus a deceptively simple practice that has been part of my own life for many years. Is it meditation or a prayer? Who knows. What I do know, is that it restores a vital sense of peace.

I wish you joy and gentleness in the month ahead,

Stephanie

 Interfaith Service, this Sunday 17 February 2013, 3pm 

 These services are genuinely inclusive and may meet your needs for a time of peace and renewal. We offer readings and reflections from different traditions, shared prayers and brief meditations, a short inspirational talk and always beautiful music. Please send this information to anyone who may benefit.

Interfaith services. 3rd Sundays, 3pm. Pitt Street Uniting Church, 264 Pitt Street, Sydney 2000. Nearest cross Street is Park. Some street parking available.  Excellent public transport (nr Town Hall). Reduced Sunday prices in nearby parking buildings.  We do ask you to arrive a little before 3pm if possible as we must start promptly. The service is about 75 minutes. You can also join the community singing with Sydney Sings director Liz Lecoanet at 1-15-2.15pm (before the service). A lovely treat.

Similar services are offered at the Subud Centre, 19 Formby Ave, Pt Chevalier, Auckland, NZ, each 2nd Sunday at 6pm, with Rev Hilary Star. To join the mailing list contact Patsy Sim psim@orcon.net.nz

I leave you with lines from Taoist poet Loy Ching Yuen, plus a brief spiritual practice.  Blessings to all.

In difficult moments.

remember that everything passes.

Sit quietly inside your home.

Spring will come again.

 Loy Ching Yuen (1873-1960)

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If today is, for any reason, a day of heartache, 

then please take a few precious minutes to still your mind, 

go inward, 

and send love and light to all who need it. 

As you generate those thoughts, 

and as they flow through you, 

they will also be healing FOR you. 

“Love and light to all who need it.”

Stephanie Dowrick

I have a soft spot for religion. And even for religions. However, many so-called religious views and people fill me with despair (and sorely try my claims to compassion). So I was not entirely surprised some time ago to receive a short appreciative note about my writing from someone who has been significantly helped by my books but wishes that I could personally be “less religious”.

Frankly, although religious impulses drive my life, my work and my thinking, I don’t see myself as conventionally religious. (And as an interfaith, spiritually inclusive teacher and minister, the conventionally religious certainly don’t offer me an unconditional welcome.) Nonetheless, it’s clear that for many people – and many of my friends and acquaintances among them -  holding onto any remnants of connection to organized or institutionalized religion, as I do, is worse than misguided. For them, religion has come to be associated with divisiveness, self-righteousness, arrogance, sexism, homophobia and unrelenting global violence. Far worse than mere foolishness, religion has, from that perspective, little or nothing to recommend it to a contemporary world seeking greater peace and justice or simple kindness.

But the tragic part of that perspective is that it leaves out the essential spirituality that not only sustains any genuine religious impulses but effortlessly transcends them. This is the spirituality that heals and unifies; that “belongs” to everyone and to no one; that consoles and strengthens; that seeks to create “heaven” on this flawed, beloved earth; that uses us – all of us – as its instruments.  This is the spirituality that does, almost miraculously, survive within the religions as well as way beyond them. It survives the arrogance, the power seeking, the sexism, racism and homophobia, and the gross lack of love – although it certainly doesn’t do so uniformly.

When “religion” fails to heal and instead causes harm, when it shields or promotes bigotry or violence, when it brings a message of death and fear rather than life and love, it ceases to be religion. It is ideology, at its most debased.

At the heart of all faiths, in language that is plain and inescapable, is a call to care for and about other people, species and our physical environment – regardless of who they are. This call refuses to name some as fully human and others as less than human. This call also refuses to pretend that God plays or claims favourites. It is also a call that must be lived in the challenges of daily life, that must become the ethic that informs daily life indeed, if it is to be meaningful.

Forgiveness, tolerance, understanding and compassion: these are the essential constituents of what’s widely known as “the Golden Rule”: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” In other words, let your knowledge of what you most want (or dread) dictate and guide your conduct. Know that you are making choices and that your choices have consequences.

Each of us, individually and collectively, is making our world more violent – or kinder, more loving and safer. The Golden Rule acknowledges our power to choose.

Universally, this teaching takes precedence over dogma. Or it should. “Do everything in such a way that the Divine can be revealed through it,” said Paul to the people of Corinth. But human beings have a unique talent for hair splitting. What ought to be an unconditional call to appreciate, respect, LOVE long ago descended into wretched arguments about who, exactly, “my neighbour” is, particularly when that “neighbour” doesn’t look or believe just like I do. Conformity, fear and divisiveness have justified the arrogant assumption that there is only one way to believe…to discover life’s meaning…to know God and our own selves. And that all other ways are self-evidently wrong.

This is a problem explicitly addressed by Jesus, Jewish teacher, man of all people, inspirer of what eventually (after several hundred years) became the Christian faith. Far from privileging the “righteous”, or those most eager to conform to orthodoxy, he appears to have gone out of his way to include women and men who were dismissed and disparaged by the majority of his day. People on the margins listened to him. They had far less to lose when it came to embracing an inclusive view of humankind. Perhaps they still do.

 I’d go so far as to say that without an unconditional respect for human life and dignity, religions have little or no value beyond any other power-seeking institution.

There are countless religiously-minded people who do indeed care far more about peace and justice than about claiming an exclusive view into the mind of God. That alone is a quiet miracle. But it is also testament to the spiritual values that transcend any one faith or culture.

For many, religious or not, this is a post-religious age. But it is certainly not an age lacking a far-reaching spirituality, a sense of purpose and interconnectedness that is most urgently needed. A post-tribal, at least tentatively inclusive spirituality is significantly influencing how we view and respond to the most urgent but seemingly disparate issues of our time. In the late 1930s the pioneering psychologist Carl Jung wrote: “The modern world is desacralized, that is why it is in crisis. The modern person must rediscover a deeper source of his [or her] own spiritual life.”

That was the theme that inspired and drove my writing of Seeking the Sacred, a book that addresses directly the yearnings that most have to understand life in its depth and unity, and to find ways to live that in the small, modest gestures of life, as well as the most significant choices and decisions.

Whether the issue is religious or cultural wars, homelessness, addictions or climate change, we need to take seriously that our personal choices and values affect the world we are collectively creating. We are part of the problem and of the solution. This may mean we will finally hear what it is that the Golden Rule asks of us – and gives us. We may finally and significantly re-think who our neighbours are and what choices we have in how we will affect them.

Spirituality is the connective currency here. It’s a vision of life that emerges from valuing all of life – and our own gift of life. It is cultivated when we take seriously that through our attitudes and behaviour we are influencing “the world”, as well as being influenced by it. And that our choices matter. It is a vision of life that allows us to be love’s instrument, that calls us to maturity, self-responsibility and care for others. And to constantly renewing compassion, self-confidence, appreciation, gratitude and joy. Perhaps most significantly of all, this universal spirituality knows no boundaries, has no favourites, is infinite in its generosity. And arises wherever the human heart welcomes it.

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This article is copyright. Please write to uhn @ stephaniedowrick. com  (close up spaces) if you wish to reproduce it.  Stephanie Dowrick leads spiritually inclusive services at 3pm each 3rd Sunday of the month at Pitt Street Uniting Church, 264 Pitt Street, Sydney. Tel: 9267 3614. All welcome. You are welcome to comment on this article or any of Stephanie’s daily postings at www.facebook.com/StephanieDowrick.