Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Why cling to one life

till it is soiled and ragged?

The sun dies and dies

squandering a hundred lived

every instant.

God has decreed life for you

and He will give 

another and another and another.

- Rumi, Sufi poet


Ah Rumi! Rumi always calms me down. Such elegance! Such calm! Such sense!

I am going to use this poem in my sermon on the first Sunday of Lent. It’s perfect for looking at what Lent is all about.

The Sun. What a great image, symbol, metaphor! For what? For “God”. “God” is always giving of Life, “squandering” Life, pouring it out, so that the “rest of us” can have Life. That’s the kind of “God” that Human Beings have conceived of, written out, artistically represented. Human Beings have always wondered where the energy of Life comes from; how many “lives” we have; what the nature and character of Life is.

There is the Sun, consuming energy like crazy, yet continuing to generate energy, light, heat. And best of all, making Life possible in all varieties and shapes and sizes. Giving off energy, “dying”, so that the Earth and all its inhabitants can have Life. And we understand: this is a description of “God”, flowing out of our brains.

Worry not friends! I have no idea if there are “another and another and another” of Lives, as in “reincarnation” (and frankly, I don’t care). But I do know that every single day, “God” gives a Life “another after another after another”. Every time we let go of all the things that drag us back from the sheer exilharation of Living, of all the negativity and venality and self-destructiveness, one Life dies and another Life is given.

We need to learn not to cling to “one life until it is soiled and ragged”. “God” does not want us to have “soiled and ragged” lives. We need to learn to let go, minute by minute, of all the things (sin included!) that hold us back from Life.

Get it!? It’s certainly what “God” is all about.

Brian+