Brian’s Reflection: Thursday, April 14, 2011

Before you can do something
you must first be something.

Sir John Gielgud, actor; he was
born on this date, 1904, in London


I think that this statement by Gielgud is profoundly true. He was a Gay man; he was arrested early on for soliciting. He struggled mightily about what to do with his future. And with the help of true friends, he forged ahead. With trepidation, he went onstage at Stratford-on-Avon in Hunter’s play “A Day at the Sea” – and was greeted by a standing ovation by the audience, despite the efforts by the press to shame him. He was opposed in this by Sir Laurence Oliver – who, as is often the case, was a “closet” homosexual, once married to Vivien Leigh, and later to the brilliant Joan Plowright …. who simply ordered him to behave! (He didn’t.) Why am I telling you all this? Let’s be REAL!

As to “being something first”, I will invoke the mythical person of Jesus. Jesus would never have been able to become the Path to full humanity for all human beings as “children of God” if He had not come to the realization that he was incarnate as the Love and Justice of His God. In the Garden of Gethsemane, He knew that He would betray his very Being if He did not make His witness before the powers of the state and of organized religion. On He went, to Pilate, Calvary, and the Garden of Resurrection.

At their best, authentic religions show us how to “Be Something”. I’m not saying that, left on their own, human beings can’t “do something” that makes the World a better place. Many do. But what a difference it makes when someone who has become a living Flame of Love sets out to do something! Such people capture a power to transcend all fear and to live lives that free others to follow them on the path of Radical Compassion. They change the World.

Who are you? Have you Become? This is the Journey on which our ”hearts are to be fixed”. We are meant to burn like a “consuming fire”, cleansing each other of Falseness and forging Beings that radiate Compassion.

We each can “do something”. First, let’s Be Something.

Brian+