Plenary, 04 Jun 2008
Meeting date: Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Official Report
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Time for Reflection
Good afternoon. The first item of business is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is the Reverend Stephen Taylor of the Kirk of St Nicholas Uniting in Aberdeen.
The Rev Stephen Taylor (Kirk of St Nicholas Uniting, Aberdeen):
Around the age of 50, many people begin to relax from the cultural constraints that have been imposed on them and become their own persons in ways that they have conceivably not dared to before. They begin to be defined less by others and more by their own choices. As a result, mid-life is a time that is rich with potential and possibility for personal and spiritual growth.
When that milestone in life's journey approaches, they or—I should confess—we begin to count the years and reflect on what has gone before and what is yet to be. We begin to ask, "How much time is left?" Mid-life offers us the opportunity to position ourselves in deeper meaning. It awakens us to something that is inherent in human nature and to something that is fundamental to our enlightened sensibility that recognises certain distinctions of worth in reality. Society has, by tradition, called the highest of these realities "sacred" or "holy."
There is a part of human experience that evokes awe, reverence and ultimate respect for that which we can never grasp and yet ultimately defines us. As I rapidly approach mid-life, my perception of the sacred these days is concerned less with divine mysteries and theological definitions than with a simple recognition of the interconnectedness of all life and our place within existence. The holy and the sacred bind us to each other, to all other living things, to all of creation and to our home, the Earth. The connection of all living things to each other and to the world that sustains us is holy and sacred. Whatever nourishes that connection increases it, and whatever calls us to an appreciation of it calls us to holiness and invites us to the sacred.
The political realm and the politicians who inhabit it are part of that connection. Politics is about how power is exercised in human relationships; it is about who benefits from the exercise of power and who suffers because of it. This is where the source of life enters into human affairs.
This truth of the matter is possibly that the things that are sacred and holy in this life are neither locked away in the convoluted secrets of the saints nor stored away on mountain-tops. I also doubt that any church has complete control of the sacred or the holy. What holiness there is in this world exists in the ordinary connections between us and in whatever connections we manage to create between the divine and ourselves.
We are all co-creators and preservers of God's beauty in the world in our art, in our science, in our politics, in our communities, in our service to high ideals and, not least, in our devotion to the good and the just.
May God bless you as you do justice, love mercy, walk humbly and serve the people.
Amen.