Sunday, October 26, 2008

Brian’s Reflection: Monday, October 27, 2008


You don't have to be the Dalai Lama to
tell people that life's about change.


- John Cleese, actor, born on this day, 1939


Have I said before that I change a lot??? I do. And I have, all my life. I tend to have – if you are talking to me – rather definite opinions about things and am willing to state them ….. but I also change my mind fairly easily if I hear or read something that tells me I need to change.

These days, I am changing my ideas quite a bit about church, about God, about ritual. (Politics I will leave out of this. Whew, you say!) And I have to say that I am finding it very stimulating, this rethinking things. This is “driven”, of course, by the fact that I have “retired” and have a fair amount of time to read a lot of things.

Either change or die. It’s about as stark as that. Jesus was a big instigator of change. As was the Buddha, and most other religious figures. The absolute key to transformation in the Christian path is change, otherwise known as Repentance. The word actually means “to turn around”. Divine Forgiveness and Liberation are automatic in the face of genuine Repentance. We “see” a wrong road, we change direction, we are ourselves changed, drawn deeper into the heart of Love.

Change will happen whether we cooperate or not. It will be change either for the “good” or not. One of the things that distinguishes us humans from other creatures is our consciousness. We can examine and we can make decisions about our direction. The bottom line is, we can change and live or we can reject change and die on every critical level of Life.

One of the reasons I am an Episcopalian, by choice, is because our approach is to honour and value the teachings of Jesus, and to take seriously that He will “be with us always”, and that the Holy Spirit will “guide us into all truth” as new situations and questions arise, for as long as Time exists. The Living Word is always among us. Life will change. We will be grounded in Compassion. No new reality will confuse us, for we will know what is just and loving and redemptive.

I love change. It is the only path to an authentic Life in one’s own time.

Brian+

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