In this, the final blog of this series I want to give thanks for the community that makes an experiment like this worth doing. We have had a good range of perspectives and tones as we have considered  the blessings of a wide range of things from indoor plumbing to the friendships that change us. So first of all thank you to everyone who has written pieces.

I also want to thank all the people who have read these posts each day and those who have been in touch to comment on it. My starting point for this final blog came from this comment by Isabel Pebody:

It struck me recently what a blessing it is to be able to enjoy someone else being happy, especially if I have contributed to that happiness. I think of watching children unwrap their Christmas stockings, or people taking part in games..

Isn’t Christmas a time of sharing happiness?

What I liked about that comment was the recognition that our happiness is wrapped up in the happiness of others. I am reminded of a conversation I had with a student this week originally from South Africa who was writing an assignment about leadership styles in which she drew on the wonderful philosophy of ubuntu, which Desmond Tutu used to summarise with the phrase,  ‘I am because we are.’  This student wrote about an inspirational leader she had known whose embodiment of that principle meant that the people in the organisation she led felt a real sense of ownership and enthusiasm for the work they were doing.

So today I am thinking of communities large and small. There is the community of our local congregation in Cheltenham, but the reach of this blog is rather broader. I wrote this on 20 December at which point we had had 1007 views in 36 countries in the course of December. Whilst the majority of readers were in the UK, we had 146 views in the United States, some of whom were old friends of mine who saw the blog and got in touch to say hello and it was great to hear from them. Some of those people in the US may well have been members of the Beacon UU Church in Troy, Michigan, who we connected with in the era of Covid. But many more just found this blog online and started reading. There were people in Sweden, China, Nigeria and many more besides and this got me thinking about how we are connected with people around the world and the importance of fostering those connections.

In the Unitarian Universalist movement they established 7 key principles, the seventh of which is ‘respect for the interdependent web of existence of which we are all a part.’ It is a really important idea that challenges us to look after each other and our planet and resist the selfishness that can happen when individualism is allowed to become too dominant. To a large extent then it is a very challenging thing.

But it is also a very beautiful thing and I see it in the technology that allows a sentence written in Cheltenham reach a person in Vietnam and hopefully make them smile. In a world where so many people are being othered for where they happen to have come from, we desperately need to rediscover our connections to people from different places and cultures and the shared humanity that connects us. And of course we also need to consider our connection to the ecological systems of which we are a part and look after this Spaceship Earth we call home. Robert Weston captures both the beauty and complexity of this idea in these words:

There is a living web that runs through us
To all the universe
Linking us each with each and through all life
On to the distant stars.
Each knows a ­little corner of the world, and lives
As if this were his all.

We no more see the farther reaches of the threads
Than we see of the future, yet they’re there.
Touch but one thread, no matter which;
The thoughtful eye may trace to distant lands
Its firm continuing strand, yet lose its filaments as they reach out,
But find at last it coming back to him from whom it led.

We move as in a fog, aware of self
But only dimly conscious of the rest
As they are close to us in sight or feeling.
New objects loom up for a time, fade in and out.

Then, sometimes, as we look on unawares, the fog lifts
And there’s the web in shimmering beauty,
Reaching past all horizons. We catch our breath;
Stretch out our eager hands, and then
In comes the fog again, and we go on,
Feeling a ­little foolish, doubting what we had seen.

The hands were right. The web is real.
Our folly is that we so soon forget.

As we enter the Christmas season may we not forget our connections to the interdependent web of existence.  Instead may we know we know the peace, happiness and blessing of the people with whom we share our lives, and a deeper sense of connection to the reality of which we are a part.

So now, light a candle and let your light shine for Christmas is almost here and I feel the need to end with a song: