Happiness IS An address given in the chapel of Harris Manchester College on 3 September 2017 by Judith Fantozzi

Transcription

1 Happiness IS An address given in the chapel of Harris Manchester College on 3 September 2017 by Judith Fantozzi What is happiness? The dictionary definition is: contented with one s lot; taking things cheerfully as they happen; something that achieves satisfactory avoidance of extremes; slightly drunk! Liverpool comedian, Ken Dodd, who has brought us so much fun and laughter over many years, is not just a comedian, he also has a very pleasant singing voice. Here s a recording he made early in his career which became his signature tune Happiness. (Play CD) We say we re happy because of. whatever. We got the job we wanted; just what we wanted for Christmas or birthday; a great holiday; the perfect partner; the perfect place to live. Sunny days, starry nights and moonbeams, children s laughter, flowers, music, literature, tennis, football, cricket. these are all great pleasures, depending on what takes your fancy; but they easily fade with the occasion, and we are left wanting more. On the other hand, we re miserable because we haven t received or achieved what we wanted. Our happiness appears to be dependent upon what we appear to want seeking to extract lasting happiness from that which is transitory. We are led to believe that good marriages, success in the field of work, a secure pension and so on, are the stuff of happiness. But is this so? What when we haven t got any of these? When our sight or hearing is impaired and we can t enjoy the sights and sounds around us? When we live in such poverty that feeding our family is a real and distressing problem. When we lose our job and are forced to spend ages on benefits, applying for job after job without success. When we can t pay the rent and get evicted,or can t keep up the mortgage payments and the house is repossessed. When we or someone we love falls ill or dies or leaves us for someone else. What do we base our happiness on? We are taught that we must strive to achieve happiness that it will come with success in our field of work. But does it? How many truly happy and contented successful people do we know? Often, they are so stressed and overworked that they can t maintain their family relationships, and the whole thing creates more unhappiness than anything else. The projected expectation of happiness wasn t real and only brought disappointment. As we go through life, we acquire all sorts of attitudes that will never lead to happiness. GRUDGES, for instance. While we re bearing grudges we ll never be happy. From unhealed childhood hurts to adult injustices, real or imagined: while we re still harbouring these old angers, we will always be fouled up by them. They will always be a barrier to true, unrestricted 1

2 happiness. It s bad energy from the past. It isn t happening now, and we end up fighting shadows that have no substance in the present. FORGIVENESS is a very big part of happiness. But what is happiness? Ken Dodd, sings of the simple pleasures of life. The ocean, sunset on the mountains, fields of grain, and being with someone you love. These, he sings, are the stuff of happiness. If only it were always that simple. A lot of the time we would like someone to wave a wand over all our difficulties and make everything the way we would like it to be: all sweetness and light and no problems. Then we d be happy. For five minutes and then it would all be back again. Because nothing would have changed internally. We would manifest the same mess all over again, because the causes and attitudes had never been examined and truly cleared. It s wonderful to experience feelings of contentment and happiness. I think the trouble comes when we become dependent on events and the delights of the senses to give us those feelings. We can easily become happiness junkies, looking for the next fix. So what happens when life goes pear-shaped and everything goes what we would call wrong? To begin to answer this question when we come into this world we are not promised a bed of roses. Or, if we are, we need to remember that roses have thorns. Sharp ones. The thorns are as much a part of the deal of becoming human as are the flowers. Life seems to be a system of opposites and, as I understand it, this is designed, in order to give us opportunity to experience the wonder of who we really are, if we are prepared to receive it. For example, if we are always in a state of heavenly bliss, we never know what bliss is we are unconscious of it, because we have never known anything else. So we come into a human time-frame, which can bring us anything but bliss, in order to experience ourselves via a different state of being. The poet William Wordsworth in his Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood writes: Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life s Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy. 2

3 New babies and small children have a kind of transcendental quality about them. Pure glee and wonder at every new experience. But we need the prison-house, as Wordsworth describes it, of experiences other than blissful oblivion to bring us to a conscious knowledge of who we are in infinite and happy spiritual terms, by seeing the opposite. We need to experience loss and grief, pain, poverty, loneliness, hatred, anger and so on, in order to know the positive opposites that are the reality of our being. We don t like these negative opposites of themselves they don t bring happiness; but, if we approach them in the right way, when they are past we have a much greater consciousness of what the positives really are. We come into a greater consciousness of what we are HAPPY BEINGS. So while we re in this process, what is this state called Happiness? It can t be circumstantial, or we d be miserable much of the time. Relying on circumstances to give us happiness is going to be disappointing. It s putting into circumstances or someone else s hands the power to make us happy. Go down this road and you are on a hiding to nothing. If I can refer to the theme of this Service, which is not just Happiness but Happiness IS it just IS. Happiness is a fact, not a hoped-for fantasy. And the only one who can give you that happiness is YOURSELF. Happiness is a decision. Depending on where your concentration is. I saw this quotation somewhere, I can t remember where, but I scribbled it down. It says: Being able to let go of any negative state takes place naturally, as you see that the only thing binding you to it is your own attention. If we concentrate on the nasty situations with a view to resolving them, they just get worse. Look what s going on across the world now. What a mess! Have our leaders and politicians managed to resolve anything? No! Why not? because they are concentrating on the PROBLEMS. By doing that they just re-energise and re-energise what they see as problems. So it all continues and multiplies. Concentrating on the problem IS the problem. Which is why we have what we call problems. From Day One, whenever that was, humans have been trying to solve problems by regarding them as problems and therefore perpetuating them. If we say we have a problem, then we have a problem! When we stop thinking of situations as problems and begin merely to OBSERVE them and then see them as gifts and opportunities, the whole energy changes. Their power over us diminishes and they begin to transform into blessings. The circumstances we don t want can teach us a great deal if we view them in this way. We ve all been through stuff in life. Somehow, we all struggled through and survived. We may not have dealt with it as wisely as we would if it were happening now. We didn t know then what we know now, but we re still here! And now, we do know much more about ourselves than we did back then. Isn t that a cause for rejoicing? I wouldn t want to go through my sticky times again, but I wouldn t trade them for anything, because in those years I learned lessons that I would never have learned in any cushy 3

4 number. If we take these times not as problems to be solved but as opportunities to be embraced, they can prove to be life-transforming. It s hard, I know; I m not pretending otherwise but, if there s no opposition, where s the growth and development? Where s the victory? The darkest times can bring us the greatest happiness because of the treasures we find in the darkness. Two men looked through prison bars; one saw mud, the other saw stars. Where are we looking? What are we concentrating on? Happiness is always there for us - if we allow it. We have choices. Choices that enhance and enlarge us, or that shrink and enslave us. Only we can decide. When we re up against a brick wall with the enemy all around us and there is no way of escape, backwards, forwards, or sideways, where can we go? In those situations there is only one way to go and that is UP. How? How do we rise? The best way I have ever found is to GIVE THANKS for what is going on. Thanksgiving for puts us in a different relationship to it. It disempowers the situation because we have stopped putting power over us into its hands. Now, why am I behind the Lectern this morning, instead of in the Pulpit? In this place, we make a great deal of our wonderful stained glass windows. And they are wonderful. But while we re all goggling at the windows, does anybody notice this chap? (Point to the carved wooden lectern eagle) Our lovely eagle! We all walk past him as though he never existed. And he never complains or makes a fuss or seeks to attract attention to himself. He just gets on with the job he was created to do to bear the weight of our heavy books and sheaves of paper, so that we readers and preachers can do our job of holding forth about this and that. While I love nature in all its multitudinous forms, the eagle is my birdie. (Point to stained glass side window) This window at the side of the Chapel, which has been preached about and talked about..with its inscription, Elargissez Dieu, meaning Enlarge God or Set God free I believe it is the motto of this Chapel Society. The eagle can teach us a thing or three about that. When there s a storm coming and all the other birds are scuttling for cover, the eagle just stands on the edge of a high cliff, exposed to the winds. It stands there, being ruffled and buffeted. And it waits. Because it knows that in the worst of that storm there will be a current of wind that will carry it to heights that it could never reach by any other means. And it arrives. That alien wind that wallops it in the middle with its strength. And the eagle launches itself on to it and SOARS. It doesn t flap and struggle, it doesn t reason or argue with the wind; it just rests on that current and rises upwards and upwards, triumphant and unafraid. And the view! What a perspective! From up there, it sees everything down on the ground, oh, so clearly. And for miles into the distance. What a vantage point. What an advantage. 4

5 The eagle has a bone structure that is different from other birds, which gives it a buoyancy that is necessary for this kind of adventure. We, like the eagle, have a spiritual structure that enables us not only to ride the storms of life but to glory in them, knowing that they will take us to spiritual understandings that can only ever be reached by woundings. Not just triumphing over adversity but triumphing in it. Do you remember the poem that was read earlier in the Service, about Miss Pike and Miss Minnow? Poor Miss Pike, thin, pinched, doing everything properly, in a sanitised, clinical, and disciplined way everything according to the cold, joyless letter of the law? So concerned about what people think, so concerned about being seen to be correct. And plump, comfortable Miss Minnow, whose place is always in a pickle because she never has time to tidy up. She doesn t care about the dust on the sideboard or what anybody thinks. She s off, enjoying herself, making other people happy, and meeting Christ in the wounds of life. Finding that happiness that just IS, in the middle of it all. It is down to each individual to be happy or not! Happiness is a fact, a state of mind, a state of being, independent of circumstances. The choice and the decision to be happy or unhappy is OURS. So, from Ken Dodd and simple pleasures to transcendent victory, I leave you with this thought: Remember the steam kettle although up to its neck in hot water, it still continues to sing ooooo