Brian’s Reflection: Tuesday, September 7, 2010

If you want to build a ship,
don't herd people together to collect wood
and don't assign them tasks and work but rather,
teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry


A Life. A People. A World. A Faith. To build any of them successfully, one – someone! – has to have, acquire a Vision. One has to look up from, be taught to look up from, the clutter around one’s feet; to raise our eyes to the Horizon and sense the Wonder lying just beyond our comprehension.

Impossible possibilities.

For me, this is what “God” is: “the endless immensity of the sea” – while holding too the Mystery that the opposite is also true. Paradox is always the greater Reality. God is the vastness, and God is the particularities.

If we can see the immensity of Peace, we will create it.

If we can see the immensity of Love, we will pour it out.

If we can see the immensity of Justice, we will demand it.

If we can see the immensity of Hate, we will kill it.

I think the thing we need the most are Seers – those who imagine for us, those who teach us to see, the Immensities.

If we are just “collectors of wood”, if we are just treated as doers of “tasks and work”, we are but slaves.

People like The Christ lift us up. Reveal our own Immensity. Only then will the Ship be built.

Brian+