Brian’s Reflection: Thursday, February 4, 2009

Drinking bear is easy. Trashing your hotel room is easy.
But being a Christian, that's a tough call. That's rebellion.

Alice Cooper, rocker, born on this date, 1948


Hard to think of Alice Cooper being 62 years old! Oh well.

Annie Dillard warned us about this. I can’t remember now where the passage is, but she talked about how nonchalantly Christians sit in the pews, when they should be battening down the hatches and prepared for a rough ride when we dare to invoke God! The same really could be said about anyone who sets out to plumb the depths of the Great Mystery of being Human.

Compassion. Love. Empathy. Joy. Wonder. Self-giving. But a few of the things to claim for one’s humanity and one’s fellow travelers. It is so easy to be distracted. Seeking control and misusing power and self-doubt being the chief among the distractions. But when we meet the Powers of Life, we’re in for a wild ride! One that will both sculpt us into a magnificent creature and “use us up” in a few decades. If we can abandon ourselves to it, the “end” will find us at peace and ready for the transfiguring Mystery of Death.

There are countless forces that want to enslave us, that seek to hold us back from claiming our full humanity.

Rebel.

Brian+