Mini-Reflection #83 (25th February 2024 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)
The theme of morning’s service was chosen in connection with this being the last Sunday in LGBTQ+ history month – this is a time for all of us to remember and celebrate the lives and achievements of our spiritual ancestors in the LGBTQ+ community – trailblazers and pioneers (or, to borrow a word that I first picked up from my friend and church member Gaynor – ‘qheroes’ – short for ‘queer heroes’). So, in that spirit, today’s service is titled ‘Learning from Lionel’ – we’re going to spend the next hour reflecting on what we might learn from the wit, the wisdom, and the marvellously messy life of one of my all-time spiritual qheroes, the Rabbi Lionel Blue.
I love Lionel Blue – I think that much is probably clear by this point – and he’s been a hugely influential figure in my own spiritual journey. It’s not so much his teachings, as such, though I enjoyed his Thoughts for the Day well enough. What really fascinates and inspires me is the story of his life and the way he lived it.
That’s why I wanted to share that long excerpt from the interview – to give you a sketch of who he was – though I’d really recommend reading his autobiography, ‘Hitchhiking to Heaven’, if you can get hold of a copy. It’s out of print now but you can still find second-hand copies online and I think we do have at least one copy of it in the church library. I was lucky enough to download the audiobook years ago (it is inexplicably and sadly unavailable now) and it’s wonderful to hear him telling his own rich, varied, and messy life story in his own voice.
So I just wanted to take a few minutes now – this is just a mini-reflection – to highlight a little of the wisdom I reckon I have learned from Lionel down the years. Here are my top three take-aways:
First off: I’ve learned that it is important to be real, to be authentically yourself, even if the reality of your life is messy. And by all accounts (including his own) Lionel Blue was a bit of a mess – physically scruffy, often personally chaotic, and he had to do a lot of work on his own psychological troubles – he endured a lot of turmoil and suffering, including a major breakdown, in his youth. But my hunch is that this life experience – and his willingness to be so very open about it – was perhaps what made him such a relatable and compassionate voice for so many people. He ultimately embraced life’s contradictions, and crossed boundaries all over the place, though always for the greater good, I reckon, and as he broke free of various constraints he invited others to join him on the journey of liberation. Most obviously, he came out as gay, in the sixties, when it was a very risky thing to do.
The second thing I want to highlight is Lionel’s relationship with God. It seems to me that this was absolutely his compass, his reference point, and whenever life was tough and he didn’t know what to do, he would instinctively call out for help. And I think it’s what enabled him to go against the grain, and do things that were a bit counter-cultural, against the rules or the norms of the time. Lionel spoke of his first major religious experience as ‘falling in love with love’, that was his primary understanding of the nature of God, and I think it led him to ask in every situation ‘what would love do?’ And he would do his best to follow God, or love’s direction, even when it was hard to do so. In the opening pages of his autobiography he acknowledges the many names he uses for the divine: ‘heaven, my soul, Inner Voice, Whomsoever Whatsoever, JC, Fred, God, another dimension, Old Smokey, Holy Spirit, He, She, It and possibly more. I have used so many because my beliefs have not stood still in the last half century, nor have my needs. They are all pointers in the same direction.’
The third and final thing I learned from Lionel is a certain sort of religious pragmatism. On the front of today’s order of service I put a quote taken from an interview in the Independent back in 2004. I want to share just a slightly longer quote from that article (written by Paul Vallely) now. He writes:
‘To judge from his massive Thought for the Day postbag, he says, most people come to religion out of need. “There’s some problem in their life. They’re no fools. They know that a little prayer is not going wash the problem away. But they want to know if religion can help them to understand it, to cope with it, live with it, be creative about it. By and large, they don’t care about the provenance of the solution so long as it works.” The same could be said of Lionel Blue himself. As you enter his home in Finchley, by the front door there is a mezuzot, a Jewish scroll symbolising that God is in the house. Inside there is an Orthodox Christian icon from Bulgaria. A Hindu saint presides over the breakfast room. Elsewhere, the whole of the Koran is framed. But there are no “might have beens” among the items: “I have found at various times that these have all been helpful.”’
Lionel took religious wisdom and comfort from wherever it could be found – he once wrote a book titled ‘My Affair with Christianity’ – even when he was at seminary, studying to become a rabbi, he went on holiday to a monastery and was worried about his teachers finding out. But when he owned up his teachers told him ‘Lionel, Judaism is your religious home, not your religious prison’ – I feel that he really took that message to heart (and it’s a phrase that made a big impression on me too). It’s worth noting that he founded the Standing Conference of Jews, Christians and Muslims in Europe and indeed he has some real tales to tell in his autobiography about the slow work of creating the conditions for dialogue and building the relationships which might one day bring about peace. While I was researching this service I came across one of his ‘Thought for the Day’ slots from over 30 years ago in which he speaks movingly (and bluntly) on the long road to peace and justice in Palestine.
I could go on and on about Lionel Blue but that’s all we’ve got time for today. After the service I’d be interested to hear about your spiritual heroes (and qheroes) too – the ones that came to mind during the meditation earlier – maybe we could have another congregational service before long where you tell us about some of those great souls who have meant a lot to you.
Reflection by Jane Blackall
An audio recording of this sermon is available: