Brian’s Reflection: Tuesday, April 7, 2009

As long as you keep a person down, some part 

of you has to be down there to hold him down, 

so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might.

- Marian Anderson, great human being, 

who died on this date, 1993, age 96

[ some say it was Aug 8; I’m going with today]

And there, in the proverbial nutshell, is one of the great problems of human society. It might be that there was a time in the past when human beings didn’t spend a great deal of time “keeping a person down”. A time in the past when human societies and cultures “soared”. And one would think that this might have at least been true in times when religions like Christianity and Judaism (I don’t enough about Islam to comment) were influential and talking about Love and Justice and human Dignity.

Alas, I can’t think of such a time. Can you?

“Keeping people down” is essentially a product of Greed, Power, or Fear. And here we are, seven or eight thousand years into “recorded history” (written, remember, by the “winners”), and we aren’t “soaring”. Not that I can see. Though I do hope that the election of Barack Obama is a little hopeful flag. Oh, many good people do kind and helpful and brave things. But organized Greed, Power, and Fear, along with the tendency of human beings to become a Mob, tends to dominate on the Big Scale. Often, the problem is a few twisted leaders, and too many indifferent of the rest of us.

Though the various denominations will have different versions of how it happened and what it means, Christianity will, this coming Sunday, proclaim the triumph of Love and Life over Fear and Death.

Love and Life being, I think, beneficial to all, I invite us all to “Pray” for the end of “keeping people down” and of “being down to hold people down”, and to soar.

Remembering that prayer does not change “God”. Prayer only changes the pray-er.

Watch your local channel or your street for some good signs!

Brian+