Brian’s Reflection: Monday, May 4, 2009

 I decline to discuss, under compulsion, where I have sung,
and who has sung my songs, and who else has sung with me,
and the people I have known.

- Pete Seeger, folksinger, born on May 3, 1919

Well, I am a day late. But who could ignore the 90th birthday of Pete Seeger!!!! I met Pete Seeger everywhere! The Hudson River. Berkeley CA. Prison in DC. I went sailing on the Clearwater, awed by his commitment to preserving the beauty of America. Let me tell you: it is a blessing and a joy to know of such a man and to have participated with him in bringing a spotlight of Truth and Justice and Compassion and Peace and non-racism to our land.

We Americans go through periods of Failure. Times when our Integrity collapses. The last 8 years have been torturous (in my view) under the Bush administration. And through it all, Pete Seeger has gone on being full of Integrity. He was not about to kowtow to the McCarthy gangsters! How is it that times come around in our land where we can be so alienated from the high principles which motivated the founders of our nation? I have to admit: as much as I am understanding of the vicissitudes of human nature, I often collapse in either fury or bewilderment at the way human beings (including myself at times) behave! But, the same is true about my feelings about American Christians: how can we stray so far from the essential clarity of the Gospel and of the Christ, when we have the witness of the Good Shepherd who was willing to Die for the Sheep?

My point?? Look at Jesus. He absolutely refused to compromise on many levels – because it would have implied that “God” was willing to compromise with Injustice, with Greed, with the Will to Power, with Evil. The amazing thing about the Christian Gospel is that it has survived for over 2000 years, transcending all of the Church’s lapses into Unlovingness. If anything indicates that the “God of Love” is somehow at work” in the Scriptures, this to me is it.

Christian friends, you KNOW what the Gospel requires! See and acknowledge the Divine Christ within you! Become truly one of His disciples. Open your hearts to be transformed. Begin to love with the radicality with which the Christ responded to the diminishment of Creation and Humanity. Understand what it means to “lay down ones Life for the sheep”. It has nothing to do with loosing your life; it has to do with gaining it.

The choice is ours. Like Pete Seeger, refuse to compromise with anything that diminishes the integrity and the value of every human being, and the Earth.

Brian+