Brian’s Reflection: Thursday, Nov 5, 2009

We human beings are tuned such that we crave
great melody and great lyrics. And if somebody
writes a great song, it's timeless that we as humans
are going to feel something for that and there's
going to be a real appreciation.

-Art Garfunkel, musician, born on thus date, 1941


There is the theological problem! We human beings need/crave a “great melody and great lyrics” “God”. And we don’t have it. We rather have a “God” that is a puny, diminished, manipulated, co-opted version of “God”. A tyrannical God. A venial God. A God made in the image of basically grasping, selfish, loathsome levels of the human species. It really is appalling that such a version of “God” has been allowed to dominate Christianity and other faiths in the USA and other cultures. I ask myself every day: why are people who have such a tribal, limited view of “God” given the power to represent the Gospel in America?

Where are the people who sing “the great melodies and great lyrics” about “Divinity”??? Or do we just think that if we ignore the singers of a despotic, vindictive, exclusive, nasty God, they will just fade away?

I wonder every day, as I awake, “Why does America foster a “God” that creates such hate, such division, such social ugliness, such bitterness?” Why do the Majority – and I think there IS a majority who do not think this way – not rise up and counter this View of God?”

I know why. Persons of Compassion and Love have an intrinsic disposition not to believe that other human beings can possibly be so unloving. I only have to watch the TV to see every day the image of this selfish unlovingness: every Republican I see speaks against caring for people, against compassion, against justice, against generosity, against the kind of government which supports the basic needs of Americans as against the appalling graspingness of those who desire only to gather as much loot as possible, everyone else be damned.

Jesus wrote a “great song”. I call upon the Christian Church, the Islamic Ulema, the Jewish Covenant People, and all other people of Compassion, to confront the Perverted with Firm Love. Say NO. I call upon Americans to keep a “long distance” view. Do not vote by what you selfishly feel is promising a “quick fix” today, because you feel threatened at the moment. Keep your eye on the Image of the God of Love, on a community which reflects that Truth.

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, Nov 4, 2009

American politician Nellie Tayloe Ross (1876-1977) gained fame in the 1920s
when she was elected governor of Wyoming, becoming the first woman in the
country to hold such a post. After leaving that office, she had an active career in
national Democratic politics and was named director of the U.S. Mint by Presi-
dent Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, a position she held for nearly 20 years.


A good moment in USA history, as far as I am concerned! I raise a cheer at one of those moments that break down the male domination of culture.

But. I shall use this opportunity to segue to an important “spiritual” issue. Which is: I reject those religions which have excluded the Feminine from the so-called “godhead”. Including Judaism, Islam, and Christianity – which, since I have retired and begin to think about things – I reject completely! (Not that I didn’t preach this stuff when I was a parish priest.) I simply can’t and won’t live with that nonsense anymore. What male tyranny! And what a diminution of the glory of the Divine.

Let’s get a grip here people. We simply can’t go on allowing male power to reduce the nature of our conception of “God”. For Heaven’s sake, even the first of the Anglican Articles squashes that Lie! “God is a Spirit, without body, parts, or passions”. It is ridiculous to go on thinking of God as a “man” – and then blasphemously using God to justify all sorts of violence, hate, oppression, dominance, and exclusion of the Feminine from the full understanding of the nature of Life!

Unless we want to use “God” as a justification for denying the Gospel call to Love, respect for all human persons and for the Universe, compassion for all living things.

I don’t. Do you?

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Monday, Nov 2, 2009

“The fact is I am guilty of sexual immorality. And I take
responsibility for the entire problem,” Haggard wrote.
“I am a deceiver and a liar. There’s a part of my life
that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring
against it for all of my adult life.”

- Former evangelical pastor Ted Haggart; on this day, 2006,
he resigned as the president of the National Association of
Evangelicals, after he was revealed as a man who had sex
with men.


It isn’t “dark and repulsive”. Except to him – at least in public statement. He was only a “deceiver and liar” essentially and most fundamentally to himself. And he was the “victim” of our culture and of American twisted evangelical and other manifestations of Christianity - so homophobic. But you know, “What goes around comes around”. It’s called karma. Or, the consequences of the Golden Rule. For me, like so many others, Haggart becomes a symbol of the balefulness of Lying about “God’s truth”. One’s sexuality is “God-given”, part of the mystery of being created in “God’s Image”. We could reject this in the past; not now.

Lying about the truth about oneself only inhibits the coming of the “Kingdom of God”, of the inner reality of human diversity. Think of how many mens’ and womens’ lives have been destroyed because we have allowed religious bigots to define the Gospel! Including their “own”. Ted Haggart. I can only suppose that he had some charism, to lead a congregation of 14,000 people, and the so-called “Evangelical” community.

But let’s be clear: Truth sets us free, Jesus says. Lying enslaves us and all society. Which only creates Hate and Sin and and Fear – all of which Jesus, according to “traditional” Christian theology, died to “save us from”.

Haggart says that the responsibility is his. But. He continues to lie. He continues to believe that with God’s help he can be heterosexual. That being Gay is a perversion. Well folks, if he persists in this denial of reality, he will arrive at the Pearly Gates only to find a saddened St. Peter (or whomever, depending on the religion) saddened by Haggart’s self-delusion and offering him the chance to embrace the Truth.

My advice Ted – and all you represent, on all so-called “moral” and “ethical” issues? Embrace the Truth. Only that will set you free. Meanwhile, you and your ilk continue to deny American culture its greatness, religiously, politically, morally, ethically, and socially.

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Friday, Oct 31, 2009

[ La Dia de los Muertos ]

Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave.

- Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India.
She was assassinated on this date, 1984,
by trusted Sikh bodyguards.


You never know, do you. The World is full of Politics, Disgruntled People, Fanaticism, Tribalism, Grudges, Religion, etc. One chooses one’s friends, one’s allies, etc - but you never know what hides in their hearts, what motivates their later actions. Can you imagine being a “suicide bomber”? I can’t.

I think Mrs. Gandhi is insightful. As I look back over my own Life, I have “known” by what I was taught as a Christian and as a monk and as a priest that Forgiveness is critical first in order to free oneself from the power of anger or hate, to have the gate opened to Love and to “redemption”. But it IS hard! Christianity tries to provide a path to that freedom, through “confession and absolution” – but most of us are not “brave”. We draw back from confronting our own willingness to harbour hateful or angry thoughts/behaviour. We reject the insight of dear friends or spiritual advisors. We continue to think that, if we are “revealed” as people subject to “the doers of sin and death”, we are somehow diminished.

Crap.

We all must learn to look at ourselves with unflinching honesty. It is the only path to Freedom; the only path to growth and peace and the deepening of our Humanity.

Time to be Brave.

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Thursday, Oct 29, 2009

"There may be a recession in stock prices, but not
anything in the nature of a crash."
- Irving Fisher,
leading U.S. economist , New York Times, Sept. 5, 1929

- The stock market crash happened on Oct 29, 1929

Right.

But it happens, despite the confidence, the bravado, the “hope” of people. Crash.

To survive crashes of whatever sort, we have to have a strong inner Life. Resilience. Adaptability. St. Paul famously said that he had lived in every sort of situation, and was able to manage it. I don’t think I could manage Darfur, or double leg-amputation, or blindness. (I told my colorectal surgeon that I could NOT manage with a colostomy bag over festering fissures that never healed; he said the only thing I would accept. “I can fix it.”) We need to know our limits to the quality of Life, or anyway ….. I do!

Life throws a lot of things at us. Most religion is not helpful to a lot of people because most religions lie to us. They will tell us anything to get us to support them ….. but they often then will not tell us the truth. And when the rubber hits the road, we are without resources.

I think about my “inner path” a lot. I’ve been revising it quite a bit lately. Fine-tuning it. I smile when someone tells me that the World is going to be OK, or that I will survive to 80. I now have a path and a “God” that brings me serenity and peace and courage to face Reality.

What more does one need?

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, Oct 28, 2009

Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our
lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life
to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say.
Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only
so many tomorrows.

- Paul VI, bishop of Rome, who, on this date, 1965,
issued a decree absolving Jews of collective guilt for
the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.


What strange, amazing creatures we human beings are, regardless of the “status” we have achieved in Life! Paul VI is reported to have once said: “Failing to be there when a man wants her is a woman's greatest sin, except to be there when he doesn't want her.” Even giving him the benefit of the doubt, this is in my opinion a pretty stupid thing to say theologically if one is supposed to be centered in Gospel and not in one’s limited social culture. This is a huge problem with Religion: so often religious rules do not reflect their core principles or “founders”, but the manipulation of human beings with power in that Religion. The Hadith in Islam is a good example – a collection of sayings not in the Qur’an which various people “remember” the Prophet saying, and then used to control people.

Paul VI is also reported as saying: “No more war! Never again war! If you wish to be brothers, drop your weapons.” And yet, what has the papacy really done to live that truth over the millennia? Very little.

And as to issuing a decree “absolving Jews of collective guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ” – if he was attempting to eradicate the hate that his Church had shown and engendered falsely against the Jews, he might have just said plainly they were wrong. But if he was saying that the Jews were indeed collectively to blame for the death of Jesus Christ and were now being magnanimously “forgiven”, he deserves to be shamed for his ignorance and arrogance.

However, we humans are a mystery. We have so many contradictory facets! I agree wholeheartedly with Paul’s words about being told we are dying right at the beginning of our lives. So much about Life and society and religion tends not to support Life and the living of it. But certainly the Gospel is all about Life and not “death”. Paul is right: anything that reminds us that Life is fleeting, that there are only so many tomorrows, that we should do what we want to do now, is on the proverbial money.

“There are only so many tomorrows.” Love extravagantly, now.

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Monday, October 26, 2009

My advisers built a wall between myself
and my people. I didn't realize what was
happening. When I woke up, I had lost
my people.

- Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, tyrant (and
unfortunately not the last), of Iran, born on
this day, 1919


The Gospel of Jesus is about Reality. An example? Jesus confronting the apostle Peter with those chilling words, “Get behind me Satan!”. IMHO, the present and all popes of the Latin church, which claims to be founded by Peter, would do well to meditate on this moment. They should awake every morning hearing those words of the Christ in their ears. As should ALL faiths and religions as they reflect on their “founders” teaching. Jesus was constantly confronting His followers with their misguided understanding of His Message. It hasn’t changed. If Jesus were here today, He would be having the same problems with us.

My assessment of Shah Pahlavi as a tyrant may sound harsh – but I think it is accurate. It is, IMHO, true of all the subsequent “rulers” of Iran, and of many present World “rulers”, including our own in the USA.

I do not accept the Shah’s words as accurate. They are delusional. He chose to live in a fantasy World. He was ignorant and deliberately in denial, as many World “leaders” are, of his inner self and motives and reality. Somewhere deep inside, he knew that he was a tyrant, torturing his people, rejecting of their humanity, living in indecent luxury while most of his people suffered horribly. George Bush did the same thing as he deprived us of our constitutional rights. All World “leaders” run the risk of being so subverted. Power corrupts. I was not moved by the interview with the Shah’s wife, living in luxury in New York. She too was delusional and self-justifying.

Shah Pahlavi and so many others like him in power delude themselves. They put the blame – seen in these words of the Shah – on others for their cruelty, their inhumanity, their lust for power and riches, their renunciation of their humanity, their total lack of empathy for the suffering of others. Personally I don’t believe in Hell – but I do often hope that Justice will ultimately be done.

Somewhere, I hope that the Shah “woke up” and was forced to confront the consequences of his own choices, his own responsibility for suffering and deprivation. The same with George Bush and Robert Mugabe and Bill Clinton and various popes and other religious leaders and Benjamin Netanyahu and Abbas and right-wing American “Christians” and Islamic and all religious militants and all others who should be in a position of concern for the well-being of others.

Such people lie to themselves. It’s the only way they can live with themselves. Jesus, and Christianity at its best, boldly confronts such lying and self-deception: “Get behind me Satan!”

None of us should be complicit in such self-delusion. In such callous cruelty. In such disregard for our brothers and sisters. It’s time to examine our lives. To look at the sometimes subtle ways in which we participate in the self-delusion and the karmic infliction of suffering of others.

I believe that such self-truth will amaze us (and I include myself in this) with the ecstasy of the discovery of our unity with the God of Love.

Brian+