Brian’s Reflection: Tuesday, February 19, 2008




It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life.

- Amy Tan, author, born on this day, 1952


Well, I have two basic reactions to this. One: I wish I could have been a writer of the Great Myths of Life. OK, ok, so it sounds pretentious, but I would like to have had my chance at shaping the human community. I have thought about what Life is for decades. I’ve chosen a faith path ….. well, only in part, since I was born into a Christian ethos, I was somewhat indoctrinated, but I did make a choice along the way for a style of Christianity I hoped would pattern my hopes. That has only been so only in very disappointing part.

Two: I am willing to accept that the “people” who ended up writing, or shaping as editors, the great myths of humanity, were originally thinking about Life. I have come to see that even such minds are, like everyone’s, easily seduced by self-interest. “Death”, in all of its symbolic power, intervenes.

When I “retire”, and before I die, I am going to write my own Myth. I should be kept busy, but I think it will be exciting!

I have preached for 40 years as a Christian priest. I have been a “writer” in a sense. I’m not at all sure that I’ve been faithful to Life. I have always thought the Gospel, as I understand it, was about Life. It has been deeply deeply depressing to me that the Gospel has been used as an instrument of death and of demeaning and of debasement and of discrimination and of oppression and of violence and of lies and of cruelty. Particularly in the American ethos as I have experienced it.

I recently, when I decided to “retire in protest”, made a decision to be a “writer” who thinks of Life. I intend to make my life a witness to Life as I have come to understand it in the God I came to know in Jesus, and in the superb charity of Jesus that I have experienced in many many fine people and faiths. These are the paths and people I intend to spend my life with and in support of.

“All you ever think about is Life.” Would that were so in the World today. What a sad dark place we are in. I take hope in John’s vision that the Dark cannot overcome.

Brian+