Tie Up Your Camel… and other Good Advice
Reading / Reflection: In Charles Dickens’ famous novel David Copperfield we meet Mr Micawber, a kindly, larger than life man who befriends the young Copperfield. Mr Micawber is thought to be based on Dickens’ own father who had great trouble managing his family’s money and spent time in a debtor’s prison when Dickens was a child. Here is some sound financial advice from Mr Micawber, which might be of economic relevance to some within the banking profession in our society today.
“My other piece of advice, Copperfield, said Mr. Micawber, you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six pence, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six pence, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and, and, in short, you are for ever floored. As I am!”
Mr Micawber’s annual income and expenditure’ was one of my mum’s favourite sayings when we were growing up, along with assorted other bits of advice – financial and otherwise. ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender’ be was one that has stayed with me all these years – and when I challenged that as a teenager, wanting to lend my friends everything I possessed, she countered that by introducing a new maxim – ‘only lend something if you are prepared not to get it back’. In last week’s service I asked people to write down good advice that has stayed with them over the years and when I looked through the twenty or so pieces of advice that some of you kindly wrote down for me, it was perhaps not surprising that family members were the most frequently quoted source of good advice. Gina’s son wisely reminds us all ‘not to give advice unless we’re asked for it’ and Liz’s dad told her that ‘no experience is ever wasted if you learn something from it’, which has helped her to think more positively over the years about life’s more difficult experiences. Carolyn’s father says ‘always think before you act’ and the classic encouragement of ‘just do your best’ echoed from various families. Thank you to everyone who contributed their pieces of good advice; we’ll hear a few more later and some are written on the cards you were given today as you came in (available by email – just ask for your own complete set).
Address: OK, let’s be honest. Do we really like receiving good advice? Well it depends a great deal, doesn’t it, on the circumstances and who it is giving the advice. I don’t know about you but there are people in my life, some dear friends, who I rarely tell my problems to because they have such an urge to put me right and give me their pearls of wisdom, when what I really want is just to air the problem and be heard. There are other people who I would always choose to share problems with, because they listen so well and seem to guide me towards my own solution rather than shoving their own views in my direction. I think when it comes to advice, timing is crucial – when someone gives us the right advice at the right time it can make such a difference; at other times that advice might just as well never have been uttered. Little wonder then that I’m amused by Oscar Wilde’s delightful wisdom on the front of today’s order of service, when he tells us “I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.”
Some good advice has been around for thousands of years. I’ve been reading sayings and proverbs from around the world this week – some of which, as you can imagine, are culturally specific, some now very outdated. There are a number of old English proverbs, full of advice about how women, children and dogs should be treated – with methods that we’d find abhorrent in this day and age. But some sayings are timeless and universal in their message to us. Last week several people mentioned traditional proverbs as being helpful to them – a stitch in time saves nine, don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, for example. You’ll no doubt have your own favourite sayings, passed down through the generations in your family. Sayings such as these are a way of encapsulating and passing on cultural, societal wisdom. You perhaps know the saying that was the inspiration for today’s service – from the deserts of Arabia, with its wry take on both faith and the nature of camels – ‘Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel’. It’s a perfect way to remind us that though religious faith may be valuable, it needs to be tempered with some basic common sense. This modern story from the Christian tradition gives a similar message:
A religious man escapes to the top of a roof during a great flood. A rescue team comes by in a boat and they shout “get in, get in!” The religious man replies, “No I have faith in God, he will grant me a miracle.”
Later the water is up to his waist and another boat comes by and the rescuer tells him to get in again. He responds that he has faith in God’s saving grace. With the water at about chest high, another boat comes to rescue him, but he turns down the offer again because “God will grant him a miracle.”
With the water at chin high, a helicopter throws down a ladder and they tell him to get in. Mumbling with the water now in his mouth, the man of faith again turns down the request for he has absolute certainty that God will save him. And so it is that he arrives minutes later at the gates of heaven having drowned in the flood. With broken faith he says to Saint Peter, “I thought God would grant me a miracle and I have been let down I want to complain to the management.” St. Peter smiles and responds, “I don’t know what you’re complaining about, we sent you three boats and a helicopter.”
The message of stories and sayings such as these finds echoes in many of the self-help books that abound these days in book shops and perhaps on a number of our bookshelves. In days gone by, when changes in society and family structures came at a more gentle pace, much of our good advice would have come from our families, the elders of our communities and our religions. They would have helped people to establish their own moral compass. Nowadays we seek guidance from many varied sources, including books.
When we look at the growth of self-help publishing two names stand out from its early days – Samuel Smiles, a Scottish reformer, who published his first book called Self Help in the 1850s and did so much work with workers’ education and mutual improvement societies to improve the lot of working people crammed into unhealthy Victorian cities. It’s not an easy read now but it contains such a passion for making this world a better place. It reminded me of Gandhi’s famous words – ‘be the change you want to see in the world’. Another well- known name in the realm of self-improvement is Dale Carnegie, whose most famous book How to Win Friends and Influence People, has never been out of print since first being published in the 1930s. Another of his works How to Stop Worrying and Start Living is also hugely popular to this day. The title How to Win Friends and Influence People has been joked about over the years or dismissed as a guide for smarmy salespeople. Yet at its core is a simple and profound message – be interested in other people and be as kind to them as you can possibly be. Not a bad piece of advice.
Self-help books such as these often guide us to take responsibility in life – responsibility for external matters but responsibility for our internal world too. We can change our thoughts, they tell us. Neuro linguistic programming – a bit of a mouthful, NLP for short, uses the term re-framing – to encourage us to look at our thoughts and indeed our lives in a more helpful way. Glenn our new children’s leader gives us a perfect example of this when he writes: “One of the most helpful things anyone’s ever said to me was when I was an angst ridden teenager, full of woe for humanity and for our planet, whilst also feeling unhappy about being ‘negative’. It was my oldest friend who said to me that my pain showed him I had a deep, deep love for life. Hey! What a change in perspective”. Thank you for that Glenn. Our human ability to reflect on and, if needs be, change our thoughts is a remarkably useful skill to develop in life. We don’t have to think in the same old ways; we are responsible for our thoughts as well as our actions and we can change both.
And as is sometimes the way with good advice, contradictory messages can be equally valuable. Yes it’s important that we take responsibility in life, but there will also be times to let go, to step back. Someone wrote last week:
‘A Buddhist meditation teacher said that detachment was very important in their religion. This surprised me but I do find it useful to a degree – not getting overly involved in other people’s problems or taking on responsibility for their lives is very important’.
And so I wonder what your good advice to yourself and indeed to others might be? It’s something to talk about over a cup of tea or coffee after today’s service. As is probably right and proper for a Unitarian minister, after a whole week of study all I can come up with is a list of contradictions: do any of these three strike a chord with you?
My first would be – to be yourself – yet never forget your ability to make changes, to grow and develop through the course of your life.
My second would be – to be kind to others – yet always remember that there are times to be tough in speaking the truth in relationship with others.
My third would be – to be grateful for the gift of life itself – yet never forget just how very tough other people’s lives can be – life is a gift that has been most unfairly distributed.
I look forward to hearing your good advice.
Rev. Sarah Tinker
Sermon – 21st April 2013