Brian’s Reflection: Thursday, August 21, 2008


There is only one heroism in the world:
to see the world as it is and to love it.

- Romain Roland, philosopher (1866-1944)


Well, I can be pretty critical of the World, and of everything else, including myself. Failure, failure, failure, failure. Countless number of people have produced countless visions of the glory of being human - people from every possible focus or perception. We human beings never live up to them. We are, from this point of view, pathetic. We tout our intelligence, our brain, our intuition, our resourcefulness, our wisdom. And we and the World are a mess.

But where is this going to get us? Not very far. There is very little point in loving the Vision if we are not able to love What Is. In the Gospel, this is what “God” does - Love Us As Is. Unconditional Love. Acceptance while “Imperfect” - though I do not personally believe in the concept of “Perfection”, just as I do not believe in the concept of “Innocence”. God does not wait to love us until some standards have been achieved. God loves us As Is. Why? Because of this truth: If we are loved As Is, we bond, we trust. Being who we are, this is the freeing catalyst for our flinging ourselves onto the path of maturization. We cannot be forced or manipulated to change and grow ….. or love. Change and Growth are the choice of ontologically free beings. We will not change or grow in any authentic or real way unless we are free. This is why the World community is in such collapse these days - violence and force and coercion breed only rebellion, hate, and resentment.

Contemplating Roland, I “see” that before any of us can move anywhere – especially towards respect and honouring and cooperation and justice and understanding and peace - we must become true heroes. We must espouse the “one heroism in the world”. To See the World as it is and to love it.

You might like to think today about what this means for your Life and how you live it. It only makes it infinitely worse, in terms of God’s hope as expressed in the Christian Scriptures for the emergence of the Kingdom of Love, that the Pope continues to insist that his brand of religion if the only “true” path. Or Islam, or whomever. The pain of the World’s people is crying out against such arrogance and presumption.

I think we are being called by the World’s suffering to die - as Christ did - to our sin of rejecting those fellow humans we either fear or demean, for whatever reason. It must be a phenomenon of all humanity, something we all see and embrace together, or it won’t work.

I’m going to pray for and encourage us all to see the World as it is. To see then, in love, it is unworthy and self-destructive. To become a Hero. To accept, then transform.

Brian+