{"id":760,"date":"2025-04-01T21:21:43","date_gmt":"2025-04-01T20:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/?p=760"},"modified":"2025-04-01T21:22:06","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T20:22:06","slug":"universal-themes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/?p=760","title":{"rendered":"Universal Themes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Reflection #97 (14th January 2025 for OneLight Gathering at Essex Church)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks for inviting me to join you tonight \u2013 from the moment when Alison invited me to share on Universal Themes there was one thought that I couldn\u2019t get out of my mind \u2013 and I\u2019m ever-so-slightly hesitant to share it as it perhaps seems a bit heavy but the fact that it\u2019s been such an insistent thought feels like a sign that it\u2019s what I\u2019m meant to speak about tonight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

For me the most significant universal themes are suffering and struggle. I\u2019m guessing you are familiar with Buddha\u2019s parable of the mustard seed? A woman comes to the Buddha, desperate, as her son has died, and she begs him to bring the boy back to life. The Buddha says that he can help her if she can bring him some mustard seeds from a household where no one has died. She searches high and low, but eventually realises that every house has been touched by loss, and she is not alone in her suffering. She understands that death and suffering are unavoidable; while she is still in great pain, she is no longer in denial, and comes to accept reality as it is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whenever I lead a service or a small group one of the things I\u2019m most conscious of is that on any given day at least one of us (sometimes it\u2019s me) has turned up in distress, in pain, carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders, somehow burdened by the trials of life. They might have had a recent bereavement or a breakup. They might have got a scary diagnosis, or perhaps they\u2019re caring for someone who\u2019s sick and they\u2019re not coping, maybe they\u2019re struggling to make ends meet to feed their family. Perhaps they\u2019re dealing with addiction and on the verge of relapse. Maybe they\u2019re autistic and on the brink of a meltdown from sensory overload. And we may not always be able to tell that by looking at them. We humans can be surprisingly skilled at pretending to be OK even when we\u2019re really not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each week in our Sunday service here we have time for lighting candles and sharing our joys and concerns \u2013 and sometimes that gives us a little window into each other\u2019s lives \u2013 the sort of things that each of us carry. Even more so in our Heart and Soul contemplative gatherings where people are a bit braver about sharing how things really are for them. Each time we open up like this and share authentically, although the particulars of our situations differ, there are always deep resonances. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This sharing of how things really are for us \u2013 even when it\u2019s messy \u2013 even if we think we\u2019re failing at being a competent grown-up (and imagining that everyone else is managing better than we are) \u2013 this honest sharing reveals how universal this experience of suffering and struggle is \u2013 and that can be a source of comfort, insight, importantly, deeper connection with others who have been there too. I came across these wise words by Bryan Stevenson, a human rights and justice activist, which spoke to me \u2013 he said: \u2018We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. The ways in which I have been hurt\u2014and have hurt others\u2014are different from the ways others have suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connects us.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I would add that there\u2019s often something we can learn from hearing others\u2019 stories \u2013 especially in ongoing communities like this where we come back and reconnect again and again and we get to hear how the story unfolds \u2013 how others overcome their own difficulties, how the wheel turns, how the tough times often do eventually pass. It gives us hope. As the UU minister David Rankin says: \u2018I have learned to trust those who are witnesses rather than gurus, those who express their confusion as well as their knowledge, and those who share their suffering along with their joy.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll close with words of blessing from Tim Haley: We walk this earth but a brief moment in time. Amid our suffering and struggles, great or small, let us continue to learn how to celebrate this life, together. Let us continue to grow in our capacity to love ourselves and each other. And let us continue to move toward renewal: building a world of love, justice and peace. Amen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mini-Reflection by Jane Blackall<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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Reflection #97 (14th January 2025 for OneLight Gathering at Essex Church) Thanks for inviting me to join you tonight \u2013 from the moment when Alison invited me to share on Universal Themes there was one thought that I couldn\u2019t get<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=760"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":762,"href":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760\/revisions\/762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}