Brian’s Reflection: Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Blessed are the hearts that can bend;
they shall never be broken.

Albert Camus, French philosopher; he
died on this date, 1960

I think that many hearts are “broken” because we are unable or unwilling to face Truth. There is a good reason for this: many if not most people are brought up with Lies. I guess that’s why the figure of “Satan” is called the Great Deceiver.

Today is also the birthdate of Sir Isaac Newton, in 1643. Look at all the trouble he had getting people, and in particular the Church, to accept his scientific truths. Is it not ever so, this avoidance of the truth?

Think about the idea of God. In all my nearly 45 years of monastic and ordained ministry, I would say that my primary work has been liberating both God and people from lies about God and people. From magic, and from fantasy ….. and from the heartbreak that such lies inevitably bring about.

Truth is always Life-giving, and Lies death-dealing.

I wish us “hearts that can bend” ….. including to both the great strength of our own being, and to Understanding and Forgiveness.

Brian+