Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, September 2, 2008


Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
and To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!

- Kalidasa, classical Sanskrit poet c 4-6th C



Christians live in the context of a Mythology. (I’m laughing here! When I left a parish, after trying diligently in sermons to get people to understand “mythology”, and while they were interviewing for my “successor”, one was asked pointedly by a “matriarch” - I hope you don’t believe that Christianity is a MYTH!! The woman fled the yawning gates of that Hell!) Well, the “Christian Myth” says that, since the Death and Resurrection of the Christ, we all live in "The Eighth Day”. And what is “The Eighth Day”?

It is, mythologically, the assertion that Christians no longer live in strictly linear Time. Linear time has collapsed. Christians since the Resurrection of the Christ do not live in Chronos – linear time. Christians live in Chairos – God’s Time. So. There is no Past, Present, Future. There is only NOW. And this is “Eternal Life”.

And what does wise Kalidasa say, from long before the Christian Mythical Christ? For Yesterday is but a Dream, And Tomorrow is only a Vision; But Today well lived makes Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness, And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.

If you abandon living this NOW Life in favour of achieving a future Life, you will never know it. It is all ONE. Failure here is failure “there”.

The “secret” of Life here is Change. Change is the only Eternal Constant. We must grow. We must abandon the false security of “settledness”. Or we will rot. God begins as “Out There”. We must come to understand that “God is I”. Then, and only then, can the human community live in Peace.

Brian+