A group of people in traditional Scottish dress, including kilts and sashes, doing country dancing in the street.

Comfort and Cheer

We have my mum to thank for the title of this address – comfort and cheer. Her memory has almost gone – she doesn’t really know now who I am or who she is – and yet like so many people with memory loss, music brings her to life. Whenever I go to visit her we sing together and she will often remember more of the words than I do. And so it was this last Christmas as we worked our way through our repertoire of carols, ending with God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. Its last line is, “O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy, o tidings of comfort and joy”, which we sang with gusto. It was time to go and my mum, who can so often look completely blank, this once strong and intelligent woman who worked as a college lecturer and brought up five children, she turned to me and said quite clearly, in a voice that sounded like my mum of old, “Comfort and cheer Sarah, that’s what we need more of, comfort and cheer”.

 

So comfort and cheer it is that I’m exploring today. And it’s a good day to be exploring such a theme because if you believe some newspapers then tomorrow is Blue Monday, so called because it’s supposed to be the most depressing day of the year.

 

Here’s an amusing description of this – written in a Guardian article by psychologist Dr Dean Burnett:

 

“January is a depressing time for many. The weather’s awful, you get less daylight than a stunted dandelion and your body is struggling to cope with the withdrawal of the depression-alleviating calorific foods, such as chocolate, of the hedonistic festive period. January is one long post-Christmas hangover.

 

So there are many reasons why someone may feel particularly “down” during January. But every year, much of the media become fixated on a specific day – the third Monday in January – as the most depressing of the year. It has become known as Blue Monday.

 

This silly claim comes from a ludicrous equation that calculates “debt”, “motivation”, “weather”, “need to take action” and other arbitrary variables that are impossible to quantify and largely incompatible.

 

True clinical depression (as opposed to a post-Christmas slump) is a far more complex condition that is affected by many factors, chronic and temporary, internal and external. What is extremely unlikely (i.e. impossible) is that there is a reliable set of external factors that cause depression in an entire population at the same time every year.

 

But that doesn’t stop the equation from popping up every year. Its creator, Dr Cliff Arnall, devised it for a travel firm. He has since admitted that it is meaningless ….”

 

You can read more of this entertaining piece by Dean Burnett at http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2012/jan/16/blue-monday-depressing-day-pseudoscience

OK, so there is no Blue Monday but I think we can justifiably complain about the weather this winter – no crisp cold spells, little sun, and far too much rain. No wonder we might feel a bit gloomy and not just on the 19th January. A look at the mind body and spirit shelves in our local book shop reveals that what is sometimes called the ‘science of happiness’ is clearly a growth area amongst psychologists. Many studies have been completed in the last few years into what makes people happy.

One of my favourite studies was reported on TV a few years ago. The researchers worked with a group of people who described themselves as ‘unhappy’. For six months the group was taken through an endless array of tests and experiences. They were taken to see doctors who gave them assorted drugs and then scanned their brains. These scans showed that happiness can be seen in the brain. When we have a pleasurable experience our brain releases chemicals called endorphins, a sort of natural morphine, that helps us relax and feel good and which enhances the workings of our immune system. Putting it simply, when we feel happy it is because our bodies are producing endorphins and when we produce endorphins, we feel happy – a delight filled cycle of feeling good occurs.

But experiments show that you don’t even have to have an experience in order for endorphin production to start – you simply have to imagine it. You could experiment now if you wish, close your eyes and think about something or someone that you really like, something that delights you and gives you pleasure. Spend a moment now thinking about these pleasurable thoughts, breathing deeply, imagine yourself perhaps enjoying what it is you are imagining. Be aware of your bodily sensations as you think of something that makes you happy.

If we had some medical equipment here now it’s likely that we would be able to show how in just a short space of time we will have increased the blood flow in our brain and body and will have released endorphins that will have a variety of positive physical effects. If you’re interested in finding out more about endorphins and how to encourage their production, William Bloom has written a very helpful book called The Endorphin Effect which I can recommend.

Going back to the scientists who worked with the group of unhappy people for six months, at the end of the experiment they revealed the activity that was most likely to make people happy. I wonder what you might guess that to be? What might be the one activity most guaranteed to make most people happy? (In the service people shouted out guesses such as gardening, singing, having a cuddle).

According to these researchers it turned out to be Scottish country dancing! Apparently Scottish country dancing has all the right ingredients for happiness – it makes you laugh, it involves vigorous exercise, you dance to music and music is renowned for its ability to lift the spirits, it involves contact with other people – both physical touch and the delight of other people’s company – and it doesn’t have negative after effects – so long as you don’t trip over someone in the midst of dancing the Gay Gordons that is.

So if you want to feel happier try dancing – but for comfort – well comfort is not necessarily about happiness is it. Sometimes being comforted can be about accepting how we are, just as we are, accepting our situation as it is right now, sinking into it and into the present moment, even if the present moment is not an easy one.

Playwright Dennis Potter gave several interviews shortly before he died and his words were then gathered together in a collection called Seeing The Blossom: Two Interviews And A Lecture. What he’s describing here is the intensity of his experience of being alive, knowing that life is finite:

“. . . at this season, the blossom is out in full now, there in the west early. It’s a plum tree, it looks like apple blossom but it’s white, and looking at it, instead of saying “Oh that’s nice blossom” … last week looking at it through the window when I’m writing, I see it is the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be, and I can see it. Things are both more trivial than they ever were, and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn’t seem to matter. But the nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous, and if people could see that, you know. There’s no way of telling you; you have to experience it, but the glory of it, if you like, the comfort of it, the reassurance … not that I’m interested in reassuring people – bugger that. The fact is, if you see the present tense, boy do you see it! And boy can you celebrate it.”

So seeking comfort at this level allows us to be real. It’s not about escaping from reality, or avoidance of reality, but more about embracing it, in the present moment. Most of us are only too aware of the negative, addictive ways we sometimes comfort and soothe ourselves – with food or alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs, too long spent in front of a TV perhaps or even with tough exercise regimes. Only we can sense when a chosen activity is a positive act of comforting ourselves and when it is an addictive hole we are trapped in. Perhaps the most useful test is if we are mindful of what we are doing, if we are consciously enjoying the drink, the food, the cigarette, the run. This is Dennis Potter’s ‘seeing the present tense’ and when we are conscious in the moment then life is real, whatever we are choosing to do at that moment.

A few quick conversations over the last week created this list of things that comfort people – I wonder if any of these help to comfort you. You might want to jot down some of your own sources of comfort and cheer:

• Listening to music or singing
• Appreciating the natural world, getting outside and breathing fresh air
• Holding someone’s hand for a while or asking for a hug
• Stroking the cat
• Cooking something really tasty
• Talking to a dear friend
• Watching a favourite film again
• Curling up with a good book to read by the fire

Let’s tell each other over a cup of tea after the service what else comforts us and brings us cheer in life. Colette Lafia writes that the “The more we cultivate comfort in our own lives, the more readily and freely we can bring these gifts to others.” And I would add to that – that the more we accept our need for comfort in life the more we can reach out to seek it in healthy ways, knowing that we are all in this mysterious thing called life together. May that be a source of comfort and cheer to us all, however bad the weather.

Rev. Sarah Tinker

Sermon – 19th January 2014