Monday, June 18, 2007
Well, Iran has "condemned" the granting of a knighthood to Salman Rushdie by the Queen of England. The British government says it is to honour his contribution to literature. The Iranis say that it is a deliberate slap in the face to vast numbers of Muslims who allegedly despise Rushdie as a "blasphemer" of Islam. That lovely caring and compassionate man Ayatollah Khomenie (sp?) issued a fatwa against Rushdie calling for his death and encouraging faithful Muslims to murder him. That fatwa has never officially been withdrawn.
The Rev. Tom Harpur writes, "There is one gift that we all must get from our reading of the Gospels or any other scriptures, and from any religion worthy of the name, and that is compassion. Philosophers and theologians, and indeed all ordinary people of good sense, know in their hearts that the core of any true religion is to be found in compassion".
I heard an Iraqui woman member of Parliament on NPR this morning. She converted from Sunni Islam to Shiite Islam (and married a Shiite man, for which her family threatened to kill her) because she could not accept the Sunni injunction that all who were not Sunni were infidels, nor support their alleged inclination to kill those who were not "real" Muslims.
Could Allah be such a God who would approve of such things? My own feeling is that, if any Muslim believes this, that their Islam cannot possibly be an authentic religion to the mind of any ordinary person of good sense. And I dearly choose to believe that most Muslims do not believe in such an Allah, despite the prevalence of such portrayal in the media these days.
Brian+
Monday, June 18, 2007
Brian’s Reflection: Monday, June 18, 2007
The only thing that is real is the being in you that is going to die.
- Carlos Castaneda, author
Wrong ….. and Right. (Carlos Castaneda didn’t “do” anything on this day; I just like the quote.)
The “Being in You” is the fire of God, Divine Life. If we “do” this living thing rightly, the “being ….. that is going to “die” ‘, metaphorically speaking, is the “you” that is defined by our material bodies. This is not the “real”, though our material bodies are the gracious vessel of the Spirit, and to be honoured and treasured.
Symbolically speaking, we must die in order to become more alive, more vibrant, more true to our essential Being which shares in God’s life, flows from God’s life. “Though we die, yet shall we live”, says the burial service of the Book of Common Prayer. We are buried with Christ in His death in order that we may rise with Him, says St. Paul about baptism.
So, I “discover” that I am a Gnostic Christian. You just never know, do you?
Brian+
The only thing that is real is the being in you that is going to die.
- Carlos Castaneda, author
Wrong ….. and Right. (Carlos Castaneda didn’t “do” anything on this day; I just like the quote.)
The “Being in You” is the fire of God, Divine Life. If we “do” this living thing rightly, the “being ….. that is going to “die” ‘, metaphorically speaking, is the “you” that is defined by our material bodies. This is not the “real”, though our material bodies are the gracious vessel of the Spirit, and to be honoured and treasured.
Symbolically speaking, we must die in order to become more alive, more vibrant, more true to our essential Being which shares in God’s life, flows from God’s life. “Though we die, yet shall we live”, says the burial service of the Book of Common Prayer. We are buried with Christ in His death in order that we may rise with Him, says St. Paul about baptism.
So, I “discover” that I am a Gnostic Christian. You just never know, do you?
Brian+
Brian’s Reflection: Saturday, June 16, 2007
A Better Resurrection
I have no wit, I have no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stoneI
s numbed too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is like the falling leaf;
O Jesus, quicken me.
- Sylvia Plath, poet. She and poet Ted Hughes
were married on this day, 1956
Sylvia Plath was born in Jamaica Plain MA. By the time she had graduated from Smith she had written over 400 poems there. She nearly killed herself after graduation. Had electroshock and psychotherapy. Married Ted Hughes. Had two babies. The marriage broke up. She killed herself with cooking gas at age 30.
No wonder she (not a "religious" person, I think) wrote this poem. Desperation.
More, alienation from herself, and from what made her (and each of) herself. The God Within. You find this God Within, or you remain “dead”, wandering, bewildered. In the extreme (“I look right, I look left, I dwell alone”), you court death in this world – a literal “answer” to a failure of the soul’s search for Life.
“Jesus” means “Saviour”. Countless Hebrew babies were named it (Yeshua, Joshua); every mother hoped she would bear him. Hispanics still express their longing for salvation by naming their sons after the Christian Saviour.
Salvation is as close our breath. And Peace. Look within.
Brian+
A Better Resurrection
I have no wit, I have no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stoneI
s numbed too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is like the falling leaf;
O Jesus, quicken me.
- Sylvia Plath, poet. She and poet Ted Hughes
were married on this day, 1956
Sylvia Plath was born in Jamaica Plain MA. By the time she had graduated from Smith she had written over 400 poems there. She nearly killed herself after graduation. Had electroshock and psychotherapy. Married Ted Hughes. Had two babies. The marriage broke up. She killed herself with cooking gas at age 30.
No wonder she (not a "religious" person, I think) wrote this poem. Desperation.
More, alienation from herself, and from what made her (and each of) herself. The God Within. You find this God Within, or you remain “dead”, wandering, bewildered. In the extreme (“I look right, I look left, I dwell alone”), you court death in this world – a literal “answer” to a failure of the soul’s search for Life.
“Jesus” means “Saviour”. Countless Hebrew babies were named it (Yeshua, Joshua); every mother hoped she would bear him. Hispanics still express their longing for salvation by naming their sons after the Christian Saviour.
Salvation is as close our breath. And Peace. Look within.
Brian+
Brian’s Reflection: June 15, 2007
Healthy children will not fear life if their elders
have integrity enough not to fear death.
- Dr. Erik Erikson, psychoanalyst, born
on this day, 1902, in Frankfurt
For us there is no death.Rest here merely bones.Around you love's in flower,Zero though our breath,Etched into these stones.Read and feel its power.
This is why God in Her kindness keeps arranging risings and resurrections. Just keeping the fact before us. Life requires risks. And the biggest killer of risk-taking is the fear of death.
Several things have conspired to reduce my fear of death. The longing for Life being one. I approached my heart surgery with some trepidation. It took me awhile to be calm about it - and I was surprised when I awoke, and pleased. When it came to having the bowel resectioned and reversing the colostomy, I lept for it! So, there are risks of dying. But the prospects of Living trump that in spades.
God is clever to think of empty tombs, heavenly courts, farther shores. They help us have “integrity enough not to fear death”. And those who come after us learn from us to Live.
Which is what it is all about.
Brian+
Healthy children will not fear life if their elders
have integrity enough not to fear death.
- Dr. Erik Erikson, psychoanalyst, born
on this day, 1902, in Frankfurt
For us there is no death.Rest here merely bones.Around you love's in flower,Zero though our breath,Etched into these stones.Read and feel its power.
This is why God in Her kindness keeps arranging risings and resurrections. Just keeping the fact before us. Life requires risks. And the biggest killer of risk-taking is the fear of death.
Several things have conspired to reduce my fear of death. The longing for Life being one. I approached my heart surgery with some trepidation. It took me awhile to be calm about it - and I was surprised when I awoke, and pleased. When it came to having the bowel resectioned and reversing the colostomy, I lept for it! So, there are risks of dying. But the prospects of Living trump that in spades.
God is clever to think of empty tombs, heavenly courts, farther shores. They help us have “integrity enough not to fear death”. And those who come after us learn from us to Live.
Which is what it is all about.
Brian+
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Brian’s Reflection: Thursday, June 14, 2007
Before he died, Rabbi Zusya said:
"In the world to come they will not ask me,
'Why were you not Moses?'
"They will ask me, 'Why were you not Zusya?'"
- Legend about Hasidic rabbi, Zusya of Hanipoli
Who of us knows who we really are?? Or how we got to be who we “are” at this stage of things? Personally, I don’t think we will know fully who we are in this Life. Something tells me that this earthly Life is an ongoing process. Constant change, adaptation, rethinking, shifting, learning, making decisions, changing our mind. At least, that’s what my life has been for 60 years. Is this a typical INFP thing - that “type” or personality who is constantly expecting new revelations, and so puts off making any “definite” decisions about the nature of being lest there be further input? Or do the other 15 types do the same thing??
Me - I know it’s “I”, but anyway - I’ve trained myself to change my mind about things. Not little things – those are hard! (I always put the towels on the towel rack with the seam inside and the two ends aligned - always. It’s not sick; just a simple illusion of order – how can that hurt???) But BIG things! Why, just this year, I have completely changed what I believe about Christianity. Didn’t hurt a bit. In fact, it was very liberating. I feel as if I discovered something that has been living inside me unarticulated for a long time which suddenly found Voice. And I felt I became more “I”. To say nothing of God.
God may greet me at the Pearly Gates with a laugh, and perhaps with a wish that I had been someone other than Brian! God will just be kidding of course. But I will have to bite back the temptation to ask Her, “So, couldn’t I have had a few more years “down there” with a little more certainty?
And ….. “So, how so You hang Your towels????”
Brian+
Before he died, Rabbi Zusya said:
"In the world to come they will not ask me,
'Why were you not Moses?'
"They will ask me, 'Why were you not Zusya?'"
- Legend about Hasidic rabbi, Zusya of Hanipoli
Who of us knows who we really are?? Or how we got to be who we “are” at this stage of things? Personally, I don’t think we will know fully who we are in this Life. Something tells me that this earthly Life is an ongoing process. Constant change, adaptation, rethinking, shifting, learning, making decisions, changing our mind. At least, that’s what my life has been for 60 years. Is this a typical INFP thing - that “type” or personality who is constantly expecting new revelations, and so puts off making any “definite” decisions about the nature of being lest there be further input? Or do the other 15 types do the same thing??
Me - I know it’s “I”, but anyway - I’ve trained myself to change my mind about things. Not little things – those are hard! (I always put the towels on the towel rack with the seam inside and the two ends aligned - always. It’s not sick; just a simple illusion of order – how can that hurt???) But BIG things! Why, just this year, I have completely changed what I believe about Christianity. Didn’t hurt a bit. In fact, it was very liberating. I feel as if I discovered something that has been living inside me unarticulated for a long time which suddenly found Voice. And I felt I became more “I”. To say nothing of God.
God may greet me at the Pearly Gates with a laugh, and perhaps with a wish that I had been someone other than Brian! God will just be kidding of course. But I will have to bite back the temptation to ask Her, “So, couldn’t I have had a few more years “down there” with a little more certainty?
And ….. “So, how so You hang Your towels????”
Brian+
Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, June 13, 2007
A Faery Song
[ sung by the people of Faery over Diarmuid and Grania,in their bridal sleep under a Cromlech.]
We who are old, old and gay,
O so old!Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told:
Give to these children, new from the world,
Silence and love;
And the long dew-dropping hours of the night,
And the stars above:
Give to these children, new from the world,
Rest far from men.
Is anything better, anything better?
Tell us it then:
Us who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told.
- William Butler Yeats, poet, Nobel in Literature 1923,
born on this day, 1865, in Dublin
I’m getting older. I’m reading exciting things about who we are, who I am, what we are meant to become.
I think about what I can give to those I love, know, will come to know, “miss”, as I become even older, “old, old and gay” in the thousands of years ahead.
Silence and love;And the long dew-dropping hours of the night,And the stars above:Rest far from men.
“Is anything better, anything better?”
Brian+
A Faery Song
[ sung by the people of Faery over Diarmuid and Grania,in their bridal sleep under a Cromlech.]
We who are old, old and gay,
O so old!Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told:
Give to these children, new from the world,
Silence and love;
And the long dew-dropping hours of the night,
And the stars above:
Give to these children, new from the world,
Rest far from men.
Is anything better, anything better?
Tell us it then:
Us who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told.
- William Butler Yeats, poet, Nobel in Literature 1923,
born on this day, 1865, in Dublin
I’m getting older. I’m reading exciting things about who we are, who I am, what we are meant to become.
I think about what I can give to those I love, know, will come to know, “miss”, as I become even older, “old, old and gay” in the thousands of years ahead.
Silence and love;And the long dew-dropping hours of the night,And the stars above:Rest far from men.
“Is anything better, anything better?”
Brian+
Brian’s Reflection: Tuesday, June 12, 2007
It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals,
because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out.
Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe
that people are really good at heart.
- Annalise (Anne) Frank, born on this day, in Frankfurt, 1929,
exterminated by the Nazis
We all know the sad story of Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl who died in the Holocaust. She is famous for her Diary.
Would most teenagers who went through the horrors that she went through still think that “people are really good at heart”? I don’t know ….. but I doubt it. Let alone an adult. At sixty, I have to confess that I have become somewhat cynical ….. and I’m inching further along that road!
So, just with reference to myself, I can’t say that I’m convinced that “people are really good at heart” by the vicious way so many are behaving these days. But. “Evidence” notwithstanding, I continue to believe that that people are created in the image of God who is Good and who is Love. And that these two things lie at the often deeply hidden heart of humanity.
I guess Anne has caught me. And I guess I had really work hard to live my ideals.
Brian+
It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals,
because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out.
Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe
that people are really good at heart.
- Annalise (Anne) Frank, born on this day, in Frankfurt, 1929,
exterminated by the Nazis
We all know the sad story of Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl who died in the Holocaust. She is famous for her Diary.
Would most teenagers who went through the horrors that she went through still think that “people are really good at heart”? I don’t know ….. but I doubt it. Let alone an adult. At sixty, I have to confess that I have become somewhat cynical ….. and I’m inching further along that road!
So, just with reference to myself, I can’t say that I’m convinced that “people are really good at heart” by the vicious way so many are behaving these days. But. “Evidence” notwithstanding, I continue to believe that that people are created in the image of God who is Good and who is Love. And that these two things lie at the often deeply hidden heart of humanity.
I guess Anne has caught me. And I guess I had really work hard to live my ideals.
Brian+
Brian’s Reflection: Monday, June 11, 2007
December 25
Christmas defeated Chanukah
once again last night
by a margin of three billion dollars
or so, but every time I heara Yiddish word like bupkes
in a movie (L.A. Confidential)
or when Oleg Cassini in that new play Jackie
calls a garment a shmatta, it's "good
for the Jews," as our parents used to say.
Meanwhile some things have
stayed the same; the drunken lout
in the street is still somebody's father.
Hey, kid, how does it feel to have a pop
that's a flop? And we had such good ideas
for changing the mental universe, if only
as a project in philosophy class, the one
I still dream about failing when I have
that dream everybody has, of being back
in college and needing this one course
to graduate, which I forgot to attend
- David Lehman, poet, born in NYC on this day, 1948
The cross is an ancient symbol of Life. It is a symbol of “Who We Are” as a human being - the “horizontal plane” (matter) intersected by the “vertical plane” *The Divine Spirit).
We are, each of us, indeed “A child of God”, “created in God’s image”, “a spark of God”.
Do we know that? Then:
Is it not time for each of us who does know this to “change the mental Universe”? If every encounter is the Divine in me meeting the Divine in you, can/ought we to behave badly, unkindly, unlovingly to one another??
Brian+
December 25
Christmas defeated Chanukah
once again last night
by a margin of three billion dollars
or so, but every time I heara Yiddish word like bupkes
in a movie (L.A. Confidential)
or when Oleg Cassini in that new play Jackie
calls a garment a shmatta, it's "good
for the Jews," as our parents used to say.
Meanwhile some things have
stayed the same; the drunken lout
in the street is still somebody's father.
Hey, kid, how does it feel to have a pop
that's a flop? And we had such good ideas
for changing the mental universe, if only
as a project in philosophy class, the one
I still dream about failing when I have
that dream everybody has, of being back
in college and needing this one course
to graduate, which I forgot to attend
- David Lehman, poet, born in NYC on this day, 1948
The cross is an ancient symbol of Life. It is a symbol of “Who We Are” as a human being - the “horizontal plane” (matter) intersected by the “vertical plane” *The Divine Spirit).
We are, each of us, indeed “A child of God”, “created in God’s image”, “a spark of God”.
Do we know that? Then:
Is it not time for each of us who does know this to “change the mental Universe”? If every encounter is the Divine in me meeting the Divine in you, can/ought we to behave badly, unkindly, unlovingly to one another??
Brian+
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Brian’s Reflection: Saturday, June 2, 2007
A flowerless room is a soulless room, to my way of thinking;
but even one solitary little vase of a living flower may redeem it.
- Vita Sackville-West, (the Honourable Lady Nicholson)
English author, poet, gardener, who died on this day, 1962
I love flowers. When I go to Trader Joe’s, 1/3 of my bill is for the lovely and reasonably-priced cut flowers they have! And I love gardens. I have no desire - and apparently no talent - to make a garden myself! But I love to see them and be in them.
One day while in England, I collected a friend and drove in my little rented Escort down to Kent to Sissinghurst Castle. I had heard they were the “most beautiful gardens in England”. (They are the most visited.) We spent several hours there, sitting in the gardens at various places, chatting. There weren’t too many people, being a Tuesday. Big puffy clouds sailed by, and there was sun. The day was topped off by a wonderful “high tea” at a tea shop in a local village - I remember the homemade raspberry jam for the fabulous heavy cream scones!
A Life can be like a soulless room. I don’t believe God wants it to be that way for anyone. In the Gospel called John, chapter 14, in answer to Judas’ question, Jesus says, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him”. And then He promises to send the Spirit who will dwell in us.
Metaphorically speaking, “one solitary little vase of a living flower” - the presence of the Holy - can redeem any soulless room. And perhaps lead to a spectacular garden - with a Tea House!
Brian+
A flowerless room is a soulless room, to my way of thinking;
but even one solitary little vase of a living flower may redeem it.
- Vita Sackville-West, (the Honourable Lady Nicholson)
English author, poet, gardener, who died on this day, 1962
I love flowers. When I go to Trader Joe’s, 1/3 of my bill is for the lovely and reasonably-priced cut flowers they have! And I love gardens. I have no desire - and apparently no talent - to make a garden myself! But I love to see them and be in them.
One day while in England, I collected a friend and drove in my little rented Escort down to Kent to Sissinghurst Castle. I had heard they were the “most beautiful gardens in England”. (They are the most visited.) We spent several hours there, sitting in the gardens at various places, chatting. There weren’t too many people, being a Tuesday. Big puffy clouds sailed by, and there was sun. The day was topped off by a wonderful “high tea” at a tea shop in a local village - I remember the homemade raspberry jam for the fabulous heavy cream scones!
A Life can be like a soulless room. I don’t believe God wants it to be that way for anyone. In the Gospel called John, chapter 14, in answer to Judas’ question, Jesus says, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him”. And then He promises to send the Spirit who will dwell in us.
Metaphorically speaking, “one solitary little vase of a living flower” - the presence of the Holy - can redeem any soulless room. And perhaps lead to a spectacular garden - with a Tea House!
Brian+
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