Brian’s Reflection: Monday, Aug 24, 2009

Reality is not always probable, or likely.

To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.

- Jorge Luis Borges, Argentine author, born on this date,
1899 (died June 14, 1986)


I couldn’t choose. Both quotes intrigued me. However, both quotes encouraged me - they both rang in my mind with the resonance of “true”, despite the fact that “true” is an extremely dicey concept ….. at least to me.

I find the quote about Reality is encouraging because it warns us away from the arrogance of thinking that we can actually know Reality; from thinking that something we call “Reality” factually exists; from boxing ourselves into a limited understanding of Life. Oh, yes, when we think that people have lost a grip, we say “Get real!” Like the pin I was given that says, “Get real, like, Jesus would own a gun and vote Republican!” Confession: I am prone to think that I have a good grip on Reality, on what is “true”. So, while I don’t actually like it, I am willing to admit that it is probably a good thing for me to be reminded that Life may be more than the boxes I inhabit.

I also find it encouraging to be reminded that we do not have to be perfect to be loved or to love. It reminds me that each of us is a “god” or “goddess”, that is, a sacred being whose intrinsic worth is to be acknowledged (i.e., to be worshipped) for who we are. No human being is infallible. We are all faulty and fragile and easily misled and confused. To be bound in true love to each other (which is what “religion” means – from the Latin religare, “to be bound to”) is to know our fallibility and to honour it. One of the great affirmations of this is the unconditional love of the Judeo-Christian God for a constantly unfaithful people.

“Reality” is indeed often improbable and unlikely. And “true love” very often transcends and ennobles fallibility. If it weren’t so, we’d have long gone the way of the dinosaurs.

Brian+