Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, April 21, 2010

The power of imagination
makes us infinite.

John Muir, Scottish-born naturalist;
he was born on this day, 1838


And to think that it all originates in the human brain!! What an amazing thing is the Brain! Is it not absolutely stunning that the chemical interactions (and I guess other; I’m woefully ignorant on this score!) produce Wisdom, and Insight, and Imagination, and “God”, and Meaning, and a myriad of other things that we associate with Being Human, and without which we would be dead in the water, so to speak?!! Little better than slugs – with apologies to the slug devotees!

“Imagination” means “to picture to oneself”, from Middle English via Old French, from the Latin. And what Muir could imagine!! Not only vast regions of preserved land, but the deep psychological and emotional health that Nature could provide to human beings. What a blessing he was to American Life and the Life of the World.

What we can imagine is a function of our brain, as well as of other faculties. If anything can teach me of the grandeur of being Human, the brain is that thing. And we use so little of it! Ye gods, the possibilities! We could be ….. gods and goddesses! And many would say that that is our destiny. Early Christian “fathers” said so , plainly, before they were suppressed by the Institutionalists.

“Infinite” means “eternal”. And I think that this is what Jesus intimates. Once we connect with the Mystery we call God, and once we understand that “God” is at the very core of who we are, and that we are One, we have entered Eternal Life. We pass from Time and Space to “infinite”, as Muir says.

It may take an Earthly Lifetime (the Buddhists and Hindus would say more!) to mature to this understanding. It will take some longer, some shorter time. But when we reach it!

Free at last! Free at Last! O Lord, free at last! And what we can do then!

Brian+