Brian’s Reflection: Saturday, December 1, 2007



Understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what
part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake
and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must
be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

- From the version of the Good News called “Matthew”


The “Unexpected hour” is not in the time-space continuum - if I may sound a little star-trekkie. Matthew’s Jesus does not say these words so that we spend our lives furtively looking around in anxiety and fear for what might spring unexpectedly upon us. Matthew’s Jesus says these words for one reason only: so that we actively live every moment understanding that we are in the presence of the Source of Life we call “God”.

The “coming of the Son of Man” is not a straight line. It is a continuous loop. This is what we are proclaiming in the Eucharistic Liturgy when we say, “Christ has died, Christ is risen; Christ will come again”. We are saying, God, keep pouring out your life for us; God, keep lifting us out of death into life; God, keep us living in the eternal present of your Presence. Past, present, future collapse into One Reality. Now. The Moment.

For Christians, Advent is the Season of moment by moment expectation that Life has captured us. That we are in the swirl of Compassion, Justice, Joy, Peace, Generosity of Self, Graciousness of being blessed.

“Do not be anxious”. The “hour” is now - calling us to be our true, our divine, Selves.

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Friday, November 30, 2007

[ Sorry; pictures not available ]


St. Andrew the Apostle, by El Greco (left); traditional icon, right


“ O good cross, made beautiful by the body of my Lord! so long desired,
so anxiously loved, so unceasingly sought after, and now at last ready
for my soul to enjoy! take me from amidst men, and restore me to my
Master; that by thee He may receive me, Who by thee redeemed me.”

Well, I can’t resist. Being a Scot - at least on my father’s side. (My mother’s “side” is English, alas hated by the autonomous Scots!). But, you know what? Though the McHugh’s were “vera Scots” (one of my great uncles, Edward the Gospel Singer, changed his name to MacHugh, lest anyone think he was ….. Irish, horrors!), my paternal great-grandparents were ….. Irish!

Legend says that, in the middle of the 10th century, Andrew (brother of Peter, and called in the Greek Protocletos, “first called”) became the patron Saint of Scotland. And so it is that many years on St. Andrew’s Day, I have donned my kilt (the Orrock tartan, for my paternal grandmother Elspeth Orrock) and celebrated!!

I’m a Scot. I’m a Canadian. I’m also an “American”. All this is inconsequential to me. I don’t live on this lovely Earth to take ethnic or cultural sides! I live here as a free citizen of the World. Oh, if only I could have a United Nations passport! I think of myself as everything! I I am neither “Jew nor Greek”; neither “male nor female”. I am essentially - I choose to be - a citizen of God’s Kingdom - where there are no distinctions. I consider myself to be in the same family as all people.

Friends, give up tribalism. Give up zenophobia. Be a brother or a sister of every other human being. You will be giddy with the sense of relationship. This is what it means to be “one with Christ”. This does not mean “Christian”. It means “A lover of All People”.

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Thursday, November 29, 2007


He whose only concern had been to announce the unconditional love of God
had only one question to ask, "Do you love me?"......."Do you know the incarnate
God?" In our world of loneliness and despair, there is an enormous need for men
and women who know the heart of God, a heart that forgives, that cares, that
reaches out and wants to heal. In that heart there is no suspicion, no vindictiveness,
no resentment, and not a tinge of hatred. It is a heart that only wants to give love
and receive love in response. It is a heart that suffers immensely because it sees the
magnitude of human pain and the great resistance to trusting the heart of God who
wants to offer consolation and hope.

- Henri Nouwen,


Well, I have work to do. I want to be the kind of person that Henri Nouwen describes. An “announcer of the unconditional Love of God” ….. who “forgives, cares, reaches out, wants to heal”. But ….. I have to confess that there is much suspicion, vindictiveness, resentment, hatred in my heart at times. And I am further concerned that those things are shading my life and my living while I am unaware.

Perhaps I am too fortunate, that I don’t see ….. no, I see it, but rather don’t feel ….. the magnitude of human pain, especially of those I see as “enemies”.

Here is the role of “true religion”. To help me see the vision, to feel the suffering, to understand the resistance to trusting ….. to be free to offer hope and consolation to all. When I can feel this way about George Bush, I will be home free - and believe me, only Grace will get me there!

Pray for me.

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, November 28, 2007



That the Jews assumed a right exclusively
to the benefits of God will be a lasting
witness against them and the same will
it be against Christians.

- William Blake, poet, born on this
day, 1757


I am certain that I would have liked William Blake and his wife. (Which I can say, not knowing much about them intimately.) They were once discovered naked in their garden, playing the parts of Adam and Eve as they read Milton’s “Paradise Lost”. As the young would say, “Cool!”

When I was a callow youth, and a young man “into” being an avid Anglo-Catholic, I thought that surely Christianity was the top of the heap of religions. Judaism? Certainly superseded by “the New Israel”.

It did not take me long to realize how pompous and arrogant my thinking was. And it didn’t take me long because I was lucky enough to meet people who had come to know God. And these people, mostly Christians, taught me how my God was too small. And besides, who was I to think that I knew the mind of God - when Jesus Himself said, “No one knows the Father but the Son”. Why would I be one to whom God revealed Her reality???

But She did! And I learned not to think that I controlled God. I learned that God “works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform”. That God was not above using every possible path to make the wonder of divine Love known.

Jews and Christians are just two of God’s “children”.

We claim “the true God” as “ours”. But God lavishes Love and the knowledge of God on all. Without exception.

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Tuesday, November 27, 2007



Kiss the Earth

Walk and touch peace every moment.
Walk and touch happiness every moment.
Each step brings a fresh breeze.
Each step makes a flower bloom.
Kiss the Earth with your feet.
Bring the Earth your love and happiness.
The Earth will be safewhen we feel safe in ourselves.

- Thich Nhat Hanh, poet, Buddhist


A lovely human being he is. At least I think so ….. at least in his public persona. He exhibits character that I find winning and true. I have heard Thich Nhat Hanh speak in the vast space of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, and I have heard him in a garden in California. He has that so attractive quality of ….. serenity. He sees Life as the Big Picture. Where everything is part of everything else. I admire that kind of vision. And I admire and respect his understanding that, while we may be on different paths, all paths call us to find what it is to be authentically human.

I have always felt a part of the Earth. I was lucky enough to spend my childhood summers in the lakes and mountains of the Laurentians. Lying on sun-warmed rocks, or on the still warm grass at night, or floating in the warm-cool waters of our lake, I had then and still have the sense of being one with It.

The Earth, our Mother, is in danger. It is sick and dying in many places. Is it because we do not feel safe in ourselves? I hadn’t thought of that until I read Thich Nhat Hanh’s poem.

It is hard to feel safe in ourselves when so many human beings are threatening others, over religion, or power, or greed, or fear.

Unless we learn to make Life safe for all, Mother Earth will die, and we with Her.

Kiss the Earth with your feet.

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Monday, November 26, 2007


I'm not wise, but the beginning of wisdom is there;
it's like relaxing into - and an acceptance of - things.

You take your problems to a god, but what you really
need is for the god to take you to the inside of you.

- Tina Turner, singer, born on this day, 1939


What energy! Have you seen Tina Turner on stage? Incredible! Well I remember the first time I ever saw her. I was awed!

And oh, I would say that Tina is indeed wise! It’s a cliché now, to say “Go with the flow”. But the “flow” is the Journey of Life, and going with it is understanding who we human beings are. It’s knowing that we are an integral part of The Flow, not “above” or “outside” or “in control” of It. It is the Tao. It is our milieu, our natural context. It is to be connected with the god/goddess. We need to be in that river, accepting our part and participation in the Mystery. In the Flow, we begin to understand.

And Tina is right on the money about taking your problems “to a god”. Most of us who are so inclined do this - and drop it. We think that God is “out there” and that the God Out There will solve our problems. But the God is not Out There. God is always “inside of you”. And if we have problems to solve, we must let the God take us inside. The answer is always there, inside ourself. Once we learn this, we have at least begun to be wise.

Good old Tina! Wise indeed.

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Sunday, November 25, 2007


Love must Act, as Light must Shine, and Fire must Burn.

- James O. S. Huntington, OHC, founder,
The Order of the Holy Cross, who died on
this day, 1935


Well, I got “lazy” over Thanksgiving ………. So here’s the "guilty" Sunday Reflection.

Fr. Huntington is acknowledged as the Founder of the Order that I was a member of for 15 years. The Religious Life established itself in the Episcopal Church in the mid-19th century, an outgrowth of the re-flourishing of the Catholic tradition in the United States and other Anglican churches. Still many Episcopalians don’t know that there are monks and nuns in the Episcopal Church. It’s s fascinating part of the story.

Fr. Huntington wrote these words in the Rule of the Order. And I have remembered them all these 40 years. To me, they are a perfect, simple, and poetic stating of a profound human truth. Jesus emphasized it in a powerful way when He said, “There is no greater love than this, that a man should lay down his life for a friend”.

Talk is cheap. And God knows there is a lot of cheap talk in American (and other) life about Love. Especially in nauseous music - though I have to admit in my old age that Bing Crosby or Cole Porter being nauseous about it sounds a whole lot better to me than rappers.

Love must act ………. or it isn’t. Like dark light or dead flame.

What Life requires is us to be Act-ors in the great game of Love. Let’s be creative!

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, November 21, 2007


The great secret of a successful marriage
is to treat all disasters as incidents and none
of the incidents as disasters.

- Sir Harold Nicholson, English author
and diplomat, married to Vita Sackville-West,
born on this day, 1886


It was quite a marriage to be married to Vita! Believe me - read the historical documents! (Or, don’t read them if you are prone to judgmentalism; it will be perhaps too challenging to your inner life.)

And I might have mentioned before the gardens of Sissinghurst, the Sackville-West’s ancestral home. Stunning! Go there, if you like gardens.

I have gotten to the age to realize that Harold is right. We can spend a lot of sleepless nights worrying about what we think are - and might be in some sense - disasters. But you know, before long, they aren’t. Just think of all the “disasters” that occurred between God and the Israelites, and yet, the relationship continued. God choose to consider all the disasters as incidents, which then became non-disasters.

This is because Love allows you/God/us to see what’s important. When you truly love someone, “disasters” don’t destroy anything. One just deals with them, because the gift of the relationship goes on.

So, take Sir Harold to heart. Keep things in perspective and balanced.

Balance and perspective are always characteristics of a wise person.

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Tuesday, November 20, 2007


Mr. Foster, when you beat our teams, it gives us a black eye.

- Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Federal judge (!) and
Baseball Commissioner, born on this day, 1866


I would hope that no one would condemn me as “conventional”! I would hate to think that I was predictable. The worst of judgments, to my way of thinking. Yes, yes, I have spent my Life exulting in the fact that I surprise people, in everything from what I wear to what I think. Does that indicate a jolly wickedness, or a deep seated insecurity? You know, I care not!

Now who who knows me would think that I would ever quote a sports person?! I loathe sports and everything that has to do with competition. Just proves that I can be open and flexible and ….. surprising!

Mr. Landis said these words to Rube Foster, founder of the Negro National League, in 1923. 1923! What I don’t know is, did they know each other or have a relationship? Because it is delightful in its wit! Did Mr. Justice Landis know that when Mr. Foster got this message, he would chuckle???? Did they both know what the joke was?

A “black” eye. Rapier-like, yes. But more ….. human and humane. I like to think that Mr. Landis and Mr. Foster sat and laughed with a beer on a porch somewhere, away from the prying eyes of the Fascist so-called Christian storm troopers.

When people become Buddhists, does that give Christians a “black” eye? When they become Muslims, does that give Christians a “black” eye? Or Jains? Or Pagans? Or Wiccan? Or Atheists?

No, friends. It simply means that people are looking for an inner discipline that makes sense of their Lives. If Christianity abuses them, demeans them, doesn’t answer their questions with respect, they will look elsewhere. It is “our” job to show them, by loving them with the intensity of The Christ, that we, as does God, honour their humanity, their uniqueness, their Mystery. And more ….. Love them.

As we approach Thanksgiving, give thanks for all human beings, in their incredible Diversity.

Better: honour them by saluting their Beauty.

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Monday, November 19, 2007


Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent,
a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all
men are created equal ….. It is for us the living ….. to be dedicated here to
the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced
….. that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish
from the earth.

- President Abraham Lincoln, at Gettysburg, on this day, 1863

God knows that I do not trust any politician - unless I have had very ample reason. And God knows that I would be loath to connect any political statement to a theological virtue.

But.

The Kingdom of God is a community in which all human beings are members. In It, all who govern do so solely for the purpose of building the community of Love. In It, the common, equal, and non-discriminatory welfare of the People is the grounding principle. In It, the benefit of the people according to God’s Compassion and Justice rules.

Lincoln was right in his vision of the American purpose. Lincoln, and present politicians, may have their own view of what this means. But God’s purpose is, I believe, clear.

Do not vote for anything less.

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Thursday, November 15, 2007


So as this only point among the rest remaineth sure and certain,
namely, that nothing is certain. . .”

- William Pitt the Elder, British statesman, born on
this day, 1708


Very freeing! Well I remember my time in Nicaragua. There were six different points to cover. One day each week, the catechist and I would get in a dugout canoe, dressed only in shorts and a T-shirt. The communion vessels, a stole, bread and wine, and books were stashed in a heavy plastic bag which was tied to the gunwales. We would head up the shore of the sea towards a village (Rio Grande, I think) near the mouth of the river entering the sea. I got used to the sharks circling, looking for fish. But I would often say, “Will we make it?” The catechist, an experienced canoeist, would answer, “Father, nothing is for certain.”

It isn’t. So it’s better just to live with that reality. Make plans, sure. Dream, sure. Definitely strive for good health on all levels. If you wake up to another day, live it fully, loving and laughing and enjoying and singing and weeping with and maybe mourning with. The only near certain thing is the Present Moment.

I have a wonderful calligraphy from the Evening Gatha on my wall that Roy Parker, OHC, did. It says:

Let me respectfully
remind you:
Life & Death
are of supreme importance.
Time swiftly passes by
&
Opportunity is lost.
Each of us should strive
to awaken,
Awaken
Awaken.
Take heed.
Do not squander your Life.


Indeed. Jesus said, “Stay Awake! For you do not know the hour when the Master will come.” If we can live with shifting “certainty”, we will be less likely to be lulled into squandering, and opportunity not be missed.

Brian+




Brian McHugh, priest & vicar
St. Peter's, Casa Grande
St. Michael's, Coolidge
http://www.blogger.com/orrock1946@msn.com
520.705.2689 (telephonitto)
blog: http://brianstakeontheworldfaithandreligion.blogspot.com/

Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, November 14, 2007


People discuss my art and pretend to
understand as if it were necessary to
understand, when it's simply necessary
to love.

- Claude Monet, artist, born on
this day, 1840

Well, here I am again, “borrowing” paintings from the Internet. Claude Monet’s “Row of Poplars” and “A Meadow at Giverny”. Beautiful, yes??

I’ve been a “preacher” for 40 years. I’ve never “used” a sermon twice. Life changes, the World changes, ideas change - so no matter the Scripture, Life makes its demands, and no sermon written years ago can be in any way adequate to this new day. But that has made it easy! New wineskins, new wine! You just need to be alive, with some imagination.

If I had to say what the biggest preacher-ly mistake I’ve made, it’s that I’ve spent too much time trying to get people (including myself) to “understand”. As if understanding would really come from wrestling with the words. Oh, certainly we get somewhere. But, as Monet points out, “understanding” is not critical for any art, including the art of Life.

It is “simply necessary to love”. That’s where the understanding of Life is found. Monet also said, “No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.” The “picture in the head” is Faith informed by heart, mind, spirit. And the surety of method and composition is what Religion is at its best - that which shows us how to structure and nurture Faith.

“Understand”? This is an unexpected gift of Love. Be it Monet’s paintings, the World, Self, Another, all Mystery. Jesus said, in the end, “Love”. It is the only Path to comprehension.

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Tuesday, November 13, 2007


If you would only recognize that life is hard,
things would be so much easier for you.

- Justice Louis Brandeis, Associate
Justice of the Supreme Court for 23 years,
born on this day, 1856


Most of us live in a fantasy. We think that Life is going to be perpetually lovely. Without pain, physical or emotional or whatever. We think that every child will be born perfect. We think that doctors will fix everything to our own fantasy….. or God will ….. or prayer will. The highest form of repression and delusion is that, when experience proves all this wrong, we continue to live in a state of childish unreality. The God who has promised to “walk with us through the valley of the shadow of death” becomes the Good Fairy God whose failure to make everything right will be rationalized away with the most appalling stupidity ……. but secretly we harbor deep resentment, and how this makes a mockery of the God who above all things wishes to help us to live Life in its reality.

Life is hard, in a sense. But Life, lived in the context of Its Reality, is also stunningly amazing and fun and hilarious. Making a fantasy of Life only makes Life more difficult! And a fake.

Reality is always easier. Always.

Brian+

p.s. The Justice also said:

To declare that the end justifies the means, to declare that the government may commit crimes, would bring terrible retribution.

And:

We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.

You think this is politics and not about the inner life of the spirit and of America?

Think again.

Brian’s Reflection: Friday, November 9, 2007


By the time we hit fifty, we have learned our hardest lessons.
We have found out that only a few things are really important.
We have learned to take life seriously, but never ourselves.

- Marie Dressler (Leila Marie Koerber), actress, born on
this day in Canada, 1869

Oh Lordy! Who could forget Marie Dressler as “Min”, alongside Wallace Beery as “Bill” in that great film! She won the Academy Award that year (1930) for her performance. She was great as the owner of a tough dockside hotel, struggling to know what to do for the young girl she took in and raised. I’ve seen the movie three times - I just love Marie’s strong character and her gutsy acting.

Marie might better have said, “By fifty, we ought to have learned our hardest lessons ….”. I don’t think I can say that I have. O, I know what’s important, I think, at least for me. But I continue to allow all sorts of other things to take up my time and energies. I’ll have to take some quiet time and really think about why that is. Why is it that I still find myself in a rush all day long, doing several things at the same time, not leaving enough time, dashing to appointments having left just seconds to get there – and being in a fury when someone or something (perfectly predictable, of course!) gets in my way. Sigh.

Could it be that ….. oh, surely not! ….. that I take myself too seriously?? That I really think that I need to be doing all these things at breakneck speed because I think this means I’m taking Life seriously?? Yikes!

I think I do know, in the center, what’s really important. By 50, most of us probably do. We have learned what is genuinely serious in Life.

If we can just learn not to take ourselves too seriously, we can see all the distractions for what they are. We can let them go. I think this is what Jesus meant in saying, “Take up your cross” - He meant, Live and Die for what’s really important.

After 50, that’s the goal!

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Thursday, November 8, 2007


We have all known the long loneliness
and we have learned that the only solution
is love and that love comes with community.

- Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic
Worker movement, born on this day,
1897


Dorothy Day was born in Brooklyn. She survived the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Her family moved into a tenement on Chicago’s South side, where, with her father out of work, Dorothy came to understand the shame of failure, and poverty, and the beauty even of slums and their fullness of life and people.

Her experiences led her to Roman Catholicism, and to working for the equality of women and for social services to the poor. She was drawn to the Franciscan way of life. Eventually, to further outreach to the poor, she started a newspaper called The Catholic Worker - it sold 100,000 a month. And then Catholic Worker houses, for the homeless; they grew to 33 by 1936. And, in my mind, being the best of Christian love and charity, people were never proselytized - they were just loved and cared for in Christ’s name. To me, this is the very best of Christian witness. Charity for conversion is only unholy manipulation.

In the Christian myth, Jesus did not die for love of any one person. He died for the whole community of God’s human family. Of course love can begin between two. But any loving relationship draws others to it. Community forms - where people come “com muneris”, with gifts to share, so that all may grow together in mutual affection.

Anyone can pray alone – and this is good. And God can be found alone, or often finds us when alone. The church is only useful if it is a community of Love patterned after God’s unconditional Love. If it is not, it is a millstone around God’s neck.

If you are a church-goer, work to make your community a solution to the long loneliness that so many of us know.

Brian+




Brian McHugh, priest & vicar
St. Peter's, Casa Grande
St. Michael's, Coolidge
orrock1946@msn.com
520.705.2689 (telephonitto)
blog: http://brianstakeontheworldfaithandreligion.blogspot.com/

Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, November 7, 2007



http://www.maniacworld.com/Phone-Salesman-Amazes-Crowd.html


You may have seen this; if not, here it is.
It made me cry.
What a joy to see someone with a gift move the whole crowd.

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Tuesday, November 6, 2007


Evolution seems to close the heart to some
of the plainest spiritual truths while it opens
the mind to the wildest guesses advanced
in the name of science.

- William Jennings Bryan, who lost
the Presidential election to McKinley
on this day, 1900


Well, I don’t know who Mr. Bryan talked to ….. but he didn’t talk to me!! Why, I even projected myself back in time and stood outside the polling booth to give him the opportunity on this night in 1900 - but he must have been preoccupied.

For me, nothing could be more glorious than the elegance of evolution. And if “God” is anything, God is elegant! God is not some crude hucksterish magician - whose cache is illusion and delusion and trickery. “God” is about Reality.

And, since Science is Reality, they are Twins. Born of the same Beauty and Elegance and marriage of Imagination and Intellect.

There is no separation or contradiction between Science and Faith. Science is the biology and the geology and the genetics and the chemistry. Faith (or Religion) is the glorious Art of elegant explanation which honours the science and exalts the Mind - the Mind being the fountain of God’s language.

Bryan, alas, allowed himself to be misled by small-minded people.

Don’t make the same mistake. Your sanity depends on it.

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Monday, November 5, 2007


Life is too short to work so hard.

- Vivian Leigh, English actress,
born on this day, 1913.


Miss Scarlet! I’ll bet most people think that Vivien Leigh was American. She was born in Darjeeling, India - as was her Irish mother. Her father was British, her mother Irish and part Armenian, contributing to her daughter’s dark features. She had a fine career, but Vivien Leigh will always be Miss Scarlet to Americans.

You know, Life IS too short to work so hard!

Balance, balance is the goal. It’s hard in America. Puritan blood still courses through our bodies. Thinking we can “earn” Heaven and God’s Love. And, Life as we want it - all the trimmings, all the MRI’s, all the techie toys, $30,000 per year colleges, Starbuck’s coffee at $3.95 a frappacino.

Relax guys! Take a deep breath. Think about what expensive stuff you don’t need! Buy a grill and have good salmon and veggies on it! Play Scrabble. Reduce cable TV to 5 good channels.

Take the extra moolah every year and go to the Greek isles and eat moussaka from a cheap stall.

Feel better??

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Saturday, November 3, 2007


Mutation

They talk of short-lived pleasure--be it so--
Pain dies as quickly; stern, hard-featured pain
Expires, and lets her weary prisoner go.
The fiercest agonies have shortest reign;
And after dreams of horror, comes again
The welcome morning with its rays of peace.
Oblivion, softly wiping out the stain,
Makes the strong secret pangs of pain to cease:
Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase
Are fruits of innocence and blessedness;
Thus joy, o'erborne and bound, doth still release
His young limbs from the chains that round him press.
Weep not that the world changes--did it keep
A stable, changeless state, 'twere cause indeed to weep.

- William Cullen Bryant, American poet, born on
this day, 1794



Born in Cummington MA, Bryant was a sickly child - but he prospered, went to Williams College, later became a lawyer, practiced successfully, but leaned more to literature than the law. Whether or not this had anything to do with the fact that his doctor father tried to reduce the size of his enormous head by having him plunged as a baby into a cold stream daily, we cannot know. As I often say - Ain’t People Amazing!

I guess we can give thanks for the short reign of fierce agonies. For Oblivion, wiping out the strong pangs of pain. For remorse, welling up and flooding our lives and causing innocence and blessedness to flower, and Joy given strength to break chains and take over from mistakes and meanness and cowardice.

Lord, how many people I know who resist Change! We are using some new formats for the Liturgy, encouraging new insights into the nature of God, Self, Repentance, Salvation, Love. Oh the behind the scenes bitching! One person swept by me the other day and spit out, “Don’t tell me what page we need, just tell me whether we are using the Liturgy “we” (who’s “we”???) hate or the one we like!”

“Weep not that the World changes …. Did it keep / A stable, changeless state, ‘twere cause to weep.”

Weep. Yes, weep. Resist change, especially in ourselves, and we wither and die.

But The Christ calls us to change and Live.

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Friday, November 2, 2007


The world is too much with us;
late and soon, getting and spending,
we lay waste our powers;Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
the winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.

William Wordsworth "The World Is Too Much With Us"

“We lay waste our powers.” I think so, oh, I think so. Is my perception just clouded by cynicism? I wonder sometimes. I am always grateful for National Public Radio. It helps me not to wallow in discouragement about “the World” that “is too much with us”. Especially on the weekends, the news programs are filled with fascinating people who are doing wonderful, interesting, creative, thoughtful, fresh, kind, artistic, or funny things. I can’t watch TV News - too negative. And even NPR is getting way too filled with news of violent, saddening stuff, so I limit myself to an hour a day.

“We have given our hearts away”. Indeed I think we have. And here is where some words of Jesus come to mind. “Where your treasure is, there your heart will also be.”

Ponder Wordsworth with me today. Are we “out of tune”? Especially if we have given our hearts and minds and all we are to the God of Love and to the building of the Kingdom of Peace? The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon and the howling winds are but symbols of the wonder of Creation. Are we moved?

Treasure whatsoever is lovely, gentle, kind, generous.

Sleeping flowers of divine humanity will unfold.

Brian+