Brian’s Reflection: Monday, September 29, 2008
[ A Noontime Offering, or later in the East!]


If you are irritated by every rub,
how will you be polished?

- Rumi, Sufi “saint”


It’s six days after my radioactive seed implants for prostate cancer. I hurt! But, I guess if you have something like a shotgun exploded in your rear end, one might hurt? I’m hoping it’s just that.

Attitude, attitude, attitude. I may have said, that I’ve been trying to “live by” Don Miguel’s Ruiz’s Four agreements, the second being Don’t take anything personally. I’m trying not to take prostate cancer and this annoyance of hurt personally! Getting older is, I guess, part of being polished. The Universe isn’t “against us”, though it’s easy to “take it personally” and think that the Universe or God or Whatever has it is for you! And feel sorry for yourself, etc.

No. There is distinctly the possibility that we are, I am, just being polished by this and other “rubs”. We all may have a chance if the whole economy collapses! (Read Andrew Bachevic’s The Limits of Power – we all bear responsibility, even if we have been vigourously mis-led by politicians and preachers alike!)

The Gospel speaks more than once about “pruning”. The implication being that we all grow more healthy. Of course, most of us don’t like either the process or what we have to learn constitutes a healthy humanity!

Oh well. Life. A laugh helps too. Doesn’t help to take it all too seriously. Keep balanced – the “continual state of war” approach which America has lived by for the last 60 years hasn’t substantially solved anything.

Brian+