Brian’s Reflection: Thursday, November 14, 2008


Fog makes the world a painting obscure.
Even close trees are half unseen.
But a lonesome crow won't stop calling:
He objects to being in this dream.

- Deng Ming-Dao (Taoist)


I have thought about this business of Life as “dream” or “reality” for many decades. I was raised in the Christian culture, centered in the theology of Incarnation, so my mind wasn’t shaped to think of “this World” as delusion, as unreal. I was trained to see this World as not just a reality, but a holy reality, inhabited by the Divine, including “in me”. Important, critical stuff went on here! This World wasn’t just a thing to be endured, to be “gotten through”, either in one try or several. What one did/does here determined what happened to you after you died. So you had better get it right!

If I had been “raised” a Buddhist, or a Hindu, or a Platonist, I would have a completely different understanding. I would think that indeed this World is just a delusion/illusion, a “painting obscure” of the real Reality, “out there”, or “in Heaven”.

But I have always heard that “lonesome crow” calling. I’ve been in many a foggy place, literally, in this World. Paris on a Fall evening; Vermont valleys on damp early summer nights; San Francisco, with just the red tops of the arches of the Golden Gate Bridge and the top of Mt. Tam shining in the moonlight; the Arizona desert where you can’t see car lights ten feet in front of you; charming, seductive Portofino on a winter dawn. They have all been a metaphor of how Life on this planet, in this body, can be confusing, mysterious, tempting one away from taking it seriously.

But the “crow” is always there ….. and it is I. I object, strenuously, to those who pretend that this World is a dream. It isn’t. Essentially, this is the only Reality. The Past, Present, and Future are Here. Heaven and Hell are Here. Love and Hate are Here. The Immortal and the Mortal are Here.

For Christians, the Cross is planted firmly Here, where matter and spirit meet. We either live Here with all the passion we can muster, or we misunderstand it all.

If we can’t live Here, there is (if I may quote Gertrude Stein) no There There.

Brian+