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+