Input for the April 2024 gathering of the Lantern Group

At our Lantern Group meeting this time, we thought about spiritual cleaning — cleansing and purifying, not housework!

We were looking at three areas:

• Cursing and blessing.
• Severance
• The Ho-oponopono prayer.

Now, this is about the removal from society, or one’s personal life, of toxic input — that might be abuse or bullying, whether directed at you or at someone else; or other toxic behaviours that are spoiling your life or the common life; perhaps people who are greedy or selfish or violent or sexually predatory; that sort of thing. Or it can be about removing any kind of block to progress and development.

Starting, then, with cursing and blessing. There are two key passages about this in the New Testament. Here’s what Jesus had to say about it in the beatitudes (Matthew 5)

⁴³ “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

And here’s what St Paul had to say, in Romans 12:

v. 14: Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.

¹⁷ Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. ¹⁸ If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. ¹⁹ Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. ²⁰ On the contrary:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

²¹ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

These passages make it clear that in our spiritual practice as Christians, we are not in the business of cursing. The key is that last phrase from the Romans 12 passage: “overcome evil with good.” That’s what we have to do.

This doesn’t set us at a disadvantage, because there is no power but God, creation proceeds from God, and God is love, God is good, God “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous”. 

We can infer from this, that goodness will always triumph in the end, because it is inherently more powerful than evil. In the rock-paper-scissors of the spirit realm, goodness will always trump evil, blessing will avert a curse. Love wins.

It’s important to grasp the power of what we say, when it comes to blessing.

You may have heard of Masaru Emoto — his experiments on water in Japan — and Veda Austin doing the same thing in Australia. They photographed the crystalline structure of water molecules captured at the point of freezing. If you look this up online you can find lots of information and photos about their work. 

Masaru Emoto would take words and tape them to the side of a bottle of water, with the word facing inward so the water could read it. He demonstrated that the words made a difference to the water’s molecular structure: so something like “peace” or “grace” or “I love you” or “thank you” would bring about beautiful, snowflake-shaped structures captured by freezing. By contrast, such words as “I hate you” or “you make me sick” would result in chaotic and disordered structure.

Our bodies are 60-75% water. What is spoken into us makes a material difference to our wellbeing on a molecular level. Words of blessing make us well.

We are made in the image of God who is I Am that I Am, so our words have power. In order to transform the world and establish the reach of Christ, the kingdom of heaven, it is important that we use words with care and respect, because we are speaking life conditions into being. We are to bless, not curse — we want to create Heaven, not Hell.

It’s also important to understand that we have power, authority and responsibility, through the Name of Jesus, to do this. So when we pray to transform a situation by blessing, we command or announce, rather than petitioning or requesting. Thus we would say “I bless you with the love of the Lord” rather than “Lord, please will you bless this person?” 

There are two particular ways of praying into a toxic situation that needs changing — for instance a cruel and oppressive political régime. The first way of praying is to not curse it, but to announce in the power of the Name of Jesus, and with his authority, that it will be transformed or removed, making way for leadership committed to social justice, international peace, the wellbeing of creation and the common good. This is a form of mountain-moving intercession, of clearing the way for the King of Glory to come in and the kingdom of peace to establish.

The second prayer, that I learned from Eileen Wheeler of The Servants With Jesus, is short and simple: “I bless you with the love of the Lord.”

She would use this prayer as a kind of spiritual solvent to dissolve and remove any blockages. For instance, at one time the Servants had a sitting tenant who would not vacate a house that they needed to sell. They didn’t argue or threaten, they just prayed repeatedly and daily, holding that tenant in mind, “I bless you with the love of the Lord.” The tenant left of their own accord.

Something else to bear in mind is that authenticity, honesty and truth are essential to effective prayer. Miracles can occur only in an atmosphere of authenticity and integrity. Because we are made in the image of I Am that I Am, the created order will organise according to our authority — it will believe us and respect what we say. But if there is a dissonance, it won’t know what to follow — we’ll be sending out mixed messages. So if we are tangled in hypocrisy or trying to maintain an image or approval-seeking, we block our own power to bring transformation. How will the universe know what to do if we say one thing but do another, or say what we don’t mean, or profess one thing and secretly think something quite different.

Jesus lived in complete alignment with God, and there is no power but God, so power came thundering through Jesus and made people well, and calmed storms, and raised the dead. He thought and spoke and lived in accordance with the flow of grace.

To re-cap so far — two prayers that are announcing not requesting:

• For a toxic situation or regime to be transformed or removed in the Name of Jesus
• The short blessing to remove blockages, “I bless you with the love of the Lord.”

Moving on now to severance as a method of spiritual cleaning.

To practice compassion with a pure heart, it is necessary to establish and maintain firm boundaries. 

If you don’t set and keep clear and firm boundaries, it is overwhelmingly likely you will become some combination of stressed, resentful, depressed, manipulative and ill.

If, in your life, there are individuals who routinely abuse you and treat you without respect, or who are enmeshed in narcissistic behavioural patterns, you would do well to sever yourself from them. Some people are habitually destructive and dangerous, and it is not practical to maintain companionship with them. They will ruin your life. Severance is advisable.

But in order to sever yourself from somebody, to separate yourself from them completely, to release them and let them go so that you are no longer entangled at a spiritual level, it is necessary to both love and forgive them. There is no other way to get rid of them. If you are angry or resentful towards them, if you bear them a grudge, that will bind them closer to you.

Forgiveness and love are not feelings. In this instance, forgiveness and love are the way you let them go. You disconnect by cancelling all the spiritual debt they owe you, leaving that in the hands of Jesus, and then blessing them on their way. You don’t have to say it to them, you don’t have to have anything to do with them at all — this is about the attitude you must bear toward them. Love in this instance is not an embrace but a refraining from blame or retaliation. They are God’s problem now. Live long and prosper. Off you go.

This, too, is a form of spiritual cleaning; removing toxic influence from your life.

Our last area of consideration is the traditional Hawaiian Ho’oponopono Prayer, popularised by Dr Hew Len (you can find him on YouTube if you do a search there). It is simple:

I love you

I’m sorry

Please forgive me

Thank you

Dr Hew Len offers the evaluation that we are responsible for whatever shows up in our lives. By that, he doesn’t mean that whatever happens to us is our fault or we caused it. He means that what comes to meet us gives us the authority to respond. It should keep off our path and out of our way if it doesn’t want what we are.

So whatever shows up in our life — perhaps a harassed parent with a child having a meltdown in the supermarket, or a couple having a row on on the bus — even if we don’t know those people or their situation, we have authority now to the extent that they have appeared in our life. This allows us to pray with power.

Dr Hew Len had a medical colleague vexed by a difficult problem in his psychiatric hospital. Patients were getting worse not better, and staff were leaving. The situation was getting unmanageable. He asked Dr Hew Len if he could help. So that made Dr Hew Len responsible — as in, entitled to respond, even though it was not his problem.

He asked for a room in the hospital and a list of the patients’ names. He didn’t need to meet with them, he just sat down in that room, in their hospital, and prayed the Ho’oponopono prayer into their names “I love you: I’m sorry: Please forgive me: Thank you”— a bit like Masaru Emoto speaking words of power and meaning into the bottles of water. Over and over, Hew Len spoke the Ho’oponopono prayer into the list of names given him. And the patients began to get better and were able to be discharged. The situation eased and resolved.

Wherever you are that a turbulent situation shows up and thereby entitles you to respond, you can, in the quietness of your mind, repeatedly speak the Ho’oponopono prayer into the situation, and you will see the situation be defused, calm down, start to settle. You will alter its molecular structure.

So, to recap:

• We are to bless not curse, and blessing will overcome curse; light is stronger than darkness. Into a toxic or oppressive regime we can command or announce with power that it be transformed or removed.
• We can apply blessing as a solvent to release stuck situations: “I bless you with the love of the Lord”, repeated several times when the situation comes to mind.
• In order to be effective in our spiritual path it is necessary to live with authenticity, integrity and honesty; if we practice with divided intention, with a public self and a different secret self, we muddy the waters and the universe won’t know which set of instructions to follow — what we pretend or what we are.
• In order to sever completely from destructive fellow-travellers, which is advisable, it is essential to love and forgive them.
• We can use the Ho’oponopono prayer to take spiritual responsibility and bring calm into a turbulent and unstable situation.

Our mantra for this time:

Thinkabout for St Johns Pevensey Road, the 1st Sunday in Lent, February 18th 2024

The Lantern Group meeting on February 5th 2024

The Lantern Group met for the first time on Monday February 5th.

We have laid down a pattern for our meetings, not to follow slavishly but to create a familiar rhythm.

We began with a hot drink and welcome.

Then we went round the group asking each one the simple question, "How are you?" This isn't a vague or general enquiry, but part of our reflection on holding our light steady in turbulent times. How is that going for us?

After that we sang together — singing both draws a group of people together and builds up the spiritual core of each individual. 

So you could feel part of our meeting here online, our family recorded last weekend some of the songs we sang at this first meeting of The Lantern Group. We sang Here is Love; Living Under the Shadow of His Wing; Jesus, Be the Centre; and When Peace Like a River. I've given you links for the ones that are in the public domain. I do have recordings for the others, but I'm not sure the copyright regulations allow me to share them here. If you want to enjoy listening to other people singing them, they are easy to find on YouTube.

Next came our input, which went something along these lines:

After that, we discussed these thoughts and shared how they resonated in our own lives.

Here's a memory-jogger summary sheet to help focus on the main ideas.

When it was time to finish, we paused for a prayer, and then sang a vesper together. At the end we each had a mantra to take away, to use as a bookmark or keep by our bedside, to help focus our thoughts.

The mantras were printed off as small cards, but here's a bigger version. 

The words of our mantra are from the astrologer Pam Gregory.

I hope that even without having the chance to be physically present at our group meeting, this will have given you the assurance of being part of our Lantern Group.

Blessed be.

Introducing The Lantern Group

We're living in turbulent times — you'll have noticed!

For encouragement in holding our light steady day by day, I've put in place a new group meeting at our home.

It's called The Lantern Group, and I introduced it at our church on the last day of 2023. I had a sign-up sheet at the back of church, and afterwards someone who'd signed up asked if I could share what I'd said for people who weren't in church that day — our Mass is always uploaded to YouTube, but something broke on that particular day, so it couldn't be posted in the usual way.

So I made a video of what I'd said, and uploaded it to my own channel, and emailed it to those who were interested but needed to info.

A couple of people who don't live near me at all, but who follow my YouTube channel, spotted the video, and got in touch to say they wanted to be part of The Lantern Group too! 

This led me to conclude it would be helpful to make an electronic component of our meetings. Nothing kills a discussion like recording it (!) so we won't do that, but every time we meet — on the first Monday of each month — if I am leading, there will be a discussion topic with some input to centre our conversation, and a memory-jogger summary sheet. I will be leading every other month, alternating with my daughter Grace (whom you may know as Buzzfloyd from her comments on this blog). 

We (Grace and I) firmly believe that group singing is one of the most soul-strengthening things you can do, so each time we meet we will also include a back of songs.

So, for those of you who would like to be part of the group but live far away, when it's my turn to lead I will post (here on Kindred of the Quiet Way) a video of a Thinkabout from me of whatever was our discussion focus that evening, a memory-jogger summary sheet for you to print off, and one of the songs we had (a link to a YouTube video of that song, but probably not us singing it unless we happen to have one recorded).

Our first meeting is on this coming Monday (it seemed appropriate to begin around Candlemas), so I'll post accordingly on Tuesday. But for now, here's the introductory video explaining all about The Lantern Group and what it's intending to achieve.

Blessed be.

Headcoverings 2 of 2

I wear headcoverings mostly just because I like them. One of the things I enjoy is that there is a sort of spiritual resonance/connotation, and I feel the energy/vibration of it when I wear a head covering. 

In my case, it isn't a statement — it's not an ideological declaration — but it exerts an undeniable influence on how I feel. It emanates peace for me, and is a reminder to live quietly and intentionally. It speaks to me of the slowness and simplicity I would like to characterise the path I choose to walk.

But it's not a partisan affiliation of any kind, religious or cultural. It's just me.

Here is how to make the kind I wear.

I make them from vintage kantha scarves sourced on eBay from India.

Here's one I made a hat from today. 

They are made from two sheets of Indian cotton stitched together, so this is the reverse side.

The hat is made to fit my own head, so the sizing for one you make will depend on your head size and how loose/tight you like it to be. You might need to experiment a bit. 

There's only two measurements you need — the first is from behind the lower part of your right ear up over your head to behind the lower part of your left ear. For me that's a little less than 20 inches. I have a M/L size head.

You'll also be sewing a channel for elastic, so you need to add on an inch or so to accommodate that.

The second measurement is the front to back (brow to back of head). For me that's about 15/16 inches plus an allowance for the channel I'll be sewing for the gathering elastic. So I cut at maybe 16.5 inches.

Here's the piece I cut from the kantha scarf to make my hat.

Next, you cut it into a sort of flattened D shape, like this.  

Then you use a steam iron to press the raw edge in. You can stitch that down if you're feeling industrious, or just leave it pressed like this.

Then fold and press again to make a channel for the elastic to thread through.

Stitch it down all the way round. 

The stitches will show through on the other side of course, but it won't matter, as you'll soon see.

Now you are ready to put in the elastic. This is how much I use.

Yes. I can never get over how short a piece it is! about 5 inches, just over.

You use a safety pin to thread elastic through the channel. 

The tail needs to be pinned in place so it doesn't just get pulled through.

The elastic gathering is what determines how loose/tight the hat will be, so you'd be wise in the first instance to pin before you sew. The elastic has to be sewed in place very firmly, because it's under such tension. You won't want to be unpicking that again. Pin first, then sew.

Then, when you are happy with the result, stitch the elastic in place really well at the 2 ends of the channel, both the protruding ends and where you can feel it inside the channel.

That's all. You're done.

You can see that though one side makes a contrast edging, it doesn't matter, that looks fine as a decorative detail. The hat is still reversible.

Here it is on.

Front.

Side.

Reversed.

Done. Hand-sewn, one and a half hours max. 

Headcoverings 1 of 2

 Headcoverings have been happy travelling companions for me over about 25 years.

At the point we came into the 21st century, I liked wearing a tied scarf. Here's a photo of what I wore back then.  

Here's a demonstration (outdoors on a breezy day!) by my daughter Hebe, who first showed me how to tie a scarf like this. You take a square headscarf, fold it in half into a triangle, position it as you wish on your head, tie the long ends at the nape of your neck, roll the long ends lengthwise, bring them up to cross over the top of your head like a crown, tuck each end round and round into the opposite one to secure them, then tuck in the loose bit left at the nape of your neck.

Though this wasn't hard, I wanted something easier.

Around 2008 or so, I got interested in the kapps the Amish wear. I had some, but they looked a bit like a costume in our neighbourhoods, so about 2010 I went on to making my own hats — quick and easy to slip on, and (slightly) less culturally weird for where I live.

I wore these for a while, sometimes with my hair longer sometimes shorter like this photo below which must have been around 2012. I adapted the hats to be larger and looser, moving away from the style that perches on the back of the head in favour of one that sits on the head like a normal hat.

The ones I made at that time were from old dishtowels that I over-dyed.

As time went on, I preferred to stay with the same simple style (if you ever watch my Campfire Church thinkabouts on my Youtube channel, you can see the evolution of hair and hats).

This summer just gone, I wanted to make some new ones, but I didn't have the right kind of fabric. I wanted something soft and vintagey — old dishtowels are just right, but we had a new washing machine and my housemates felt no enthusiasm for ruining it with clothes dye.

So then I decided to cut up a kantha shawl I'd had for some years. It's been used as a curtain and a table cloth and an altar cloth, but mostly it just sat around unused.

The great thing about kantha stoles/shawls/scarves is that they are double-sided, so you get two hats in one. Also they are made from vintage saris, so they are soft Indian cotton in the first place, made sublimely soft by much use and wear. You can get two or three hats out of one scarf, and as they are reversible that's in effect 6 hats. You don't have to be a mathematician to figure out that's a whole lot cheap than buying a head covering on Etsy.

Here's one I made this summer.

This is what it looks like from the side. 

In the next post I'm going to show you how to make them, because recently a lady approached me in the grocery store wanting to know where I got my hat from. So in case you like them too, I'm going to show you how. 

Spiritual Care of Dying and Bereaved people — re-issued

 Back in 1996 I wrote a book called Spiritual Care of Dying and Bereaved People, published by SPCK. It came out of the years I spent working on a volunteer basis at a hospice, where I was the Free-Church Chaplain.

At that time, there was great consternation about caring for AIDS patients in the terminal phase of illness, and LBTQ+ people had far less in the way of rights and recognition and social inclusion than they do today — all of which was reflected in some parts of that book.

By 2008, much had changed. I revised the book to leave out the sections I felt now had less relevance, but I also added in some other chapters. In the years that had passed since the first edition, I'd done some thinking about experiences of bereavement arising from other situations than a physical death, and thought that worth including. I had worked with hundreds of bereaved people crafting funeral ceremonies specifically for their needs and outlook on life (rather than expecting them to adapt to the ideology of their celebrant), and wanted to give some guidance outlines to encourage and assist people in crafting their own ceremonies. And I felt I'd acquired some insights worth sharing from accompanying my husband Bernard on his own Great Journey out of this world.

This new, expanded edition was published by BRF, and stayed in print for another ten years, until 2019.

Since then, second-hand copies have become scarce but the book is still very useful for people training for pastoral ministry, for those on death doula courses, for people wanting help with creating a funeral, and for those living through experiences of bereavement of one kind or another, or accompanying someone through the last phase of life.

So we decided to re-issue Spiritual Care of Dying and Bereaved People under our own imprint Humilis Hastings. This time it has not been revised or expanded. The content is the same as the BRF edition was. All we changed was the cover design. Our new edition features a picture I very much treasure — the pencil sketch my daughter Hebe drew of my husband Bernard on the morning he died.

If you have been finding it hard to source a copy of this book, you can get it here on UK Amazon, and here on Amazon dot com. We took the decision to go with paperback only, so there will be no e-book version.

The Wilderness Within You — Day 47 — Easter Day

He is risen.

The Wilderness Within You — Day 46 of Lent; Holy Saturday

The Wilderness Within You — the 45th day of Lent; Good Friday