Brian’s Reflection: The Weekend, Saturday, September 10, 2010

"Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing
one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilder-
ness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?
When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices.”

The Gospel called Luke, chap 15 [Gospel reading for Prop XIX_C_RCL]

I look at this parable metaphorically, as I do all the parables. Remember: there is a “cryptic” saying attributed to Jesus saying “they may hear and hear but not understand”. This reflects the early church’s view that people needed to be challenged by “strange” things, and be encouraged to look deeper within to see the truth. Jesus did this challenging constantly. Though, charmingly, His tender compassion for his disciples and their human dull-wittednesses is highlighted in that He chooses to “explain” some of the “strange sayings” to them!

I do not think that Jesus intended this parable to be understood literally. It is not about sheep and coins.

The parable (along with the one about the “Lost Coin”) is essentially about the Journey each of us must undertake towards becoming One with the Christ Within. The "sheep" or the "coins" are those dimensions of ourselves which need to be brought into the Healing Light. The Shepherd is - as would be consonant both with the Ancient Mysteries and with the Pauline and early understanding of the Gospel - the "Christ in Us", in other words, our Self, which is One with the Deity Within. It does point to the courage needed by each of us, and the trust and perseverance, to set aside those “spiritual”, psychological, emotional aspects of ourselves which don't need "tending to" but which we are comfortable with and which are of course easier for us to dwell with, and permit those aspects which need transfiguring to be touched. This is the work of the Holy Spirit Who, when presented with our honesty and humility, can and will polish them with Her holy fire.

Given that this is (for Americans) 9/11 – nine years ago today was the apocalyptic day of the airplane crashes into the Twin Towers, the Pentegon, and a PA field, accompanied by the stunning assault to the collective American self-concept, to which I hope we will never become complacent – this Gospel passage should remind us that, if we are called to make the “Kingdom of God” visible on Earth, we have a lot of inner and communal work to do. Hate, Fear, zenophobia, prejudice, the illusion of separateness, arrogance: all must be refined in the fuller's fire.

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Friday, September 10, 2010

Eating is not merely a material pleasure.
Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life
and contributes immensely to goodwill and
happy companionship. It is of great impor-
tance to the morale.

Elsa Schiaparelli, Italian designer,
born on this date, 1890, in Roma


Eating. It is critical to being Human, both physically and “spiritually”. Have you read any of M.F.K. Fisher’s books? My favourite is “The Art of Eating”. I have found it available for my Kindle/iPad – and now it is with me as one of those things that sustains my Life and Spirit!!

Do you know how many stories/myths/legends there are of “eating with the gods/godesses?” Thousands! From every tradition and religion. Christians gather around a meal in which the “body and blodd” of The Christ are shared. Muslims celebrate the great season of Ramadan – a central aspect of which is breaking the daily fast to share a meal with family and friends. Eating together sustains Life.

Half to two thirds of the World is starving – including tens of millions of children in America. Can you believe it??!! What does this say about the morality of the politics (and religion!) in America these days??

We can’t change the whole World. But we can help another hungry person, either physically or spiritually, to a meal.

Simple enough, yes?

Let’s get on with it. We can each do something.

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Thursday, September 9, 2010

Eureka!

Motto of the State of California.


Archimedes is famously said to have shouted this when he discovered a method of purifying gold. The word has appeared on the California State Seal since 1849. It is thought to refer to the discovery of gold in CA, Jan 24, 1848. An attempt was made to change the motto in 1957; Californians rejected this. Today the motto of the State of California remains, “I Have Found It!

On this date, 1850, California became the 31st state of the Union. Happy 160th Birthday California; I am happy to be living here, despite the idiocy of the budget, the religious nuts, and governance by proposition.

I began a search at about age 6 for Holiness. It has been an interesting and amazing Journey! I started boxed in. Fifty-eight years later, I have become unboxed. I see the Wonder and the Unity of all things. I understand what “God” is. I experience the Peace that “passes all understanding”. And I shall try more diligently to manifest these realities in my Life. Many chains have fallen away from my body, mind and spirit, for which I am grateful to the Gospel and to many enlightened friends and companions on the Way.

Today, for me, Being blazes like the Light of Transfiguration.

Eureka!

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about his religion. Respect others in their views
and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your
life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and
of service to your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day
when you go over the great divide.

Tecumseh (1768-1813) Shawnee Chief


I can respect other peoples’ religions. No problem. I can respect “others in their views”. No problem.

Except I do have a problem. I can’t do those things when others determine to impose their “religious” views on me. I do indeed “demand that they respect mine”. When the Romans and the Mormons spent millions to promote Prop 8 in California (which denied civil marriage to same-sex couples), it was clear to me that they were determined to deny me my civil rights under the Constitution of the United States. It was not enough for them to live their religious lives as they wished. They sought to make me a slave to their religious beliefs. This is not, in my book, Respect; nor is it what America is supposed to be about as I understand it. I am with Tecumseh: I cannot respect other peoples’ views unless they respect mine. I demand it.

But I have adopted, long ago, Tecumseh’s further advice, which I learned on my spiritual Journey, centered in the Gospel of The Christ, but also informed by many other faiths and traditions.

I can’t say that the “fear of death” on some level never enters my heart. But I am 90% free of it. It is a blessing.

I love my Life. I know it to be equally important with all others’ lives. I know that unless I love my Life I will not be able to honour the lives of others. I expect others to honour mine equally with theirs.

I have spent 40 years of my Life in service to others. It has been – in most of it! – a Joy, and I regret none of it.

I’ve written my sermon for my funeral. It is my “noble death song for the day that I go over the great divide” – though actually I do not believe there is such a thing as a “divide”; I believe that all existence is a seamless reality.

I ask all others to respect my “religion”, and to live out in theirs the universal principles of Peace, Compassion, and Justice, rejecting all of the human selfishness we have projected on “God”.

The World can be a place of Peace and Respect – as long as each of us is willing to relinquish the sin of two things: Being the only Right, and deifying Control.

Brian+

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+

Brian’s Reflection: The Weekend, Sat, September 4, 2010

"Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife
and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot
be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me
cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower,
does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has
enough to complete it?

Luke 14: from the Gospel reading for this Sunday,
September 5 [Proper 18, C, RCL]


Do you seriously wish to believe in a Deity who asks you to hate your family and those you love?? If you do, I suggest that you are spiritually and psychologically ill.

The issue for us in this Sunday’s Gospel is this: Nothing must stand in the way of becoming the person, the human being, that each of us can be. (The description of what that IS is a Life-long work of discovery.) Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Jesus’ language is strong and powerful, so we don’t miss the point. If we put anything before this primary inner work, we will fail.

To “carry the cross” means to be willing to Love. To be a disciple of Jesus means to learn His path of Love. We must love our Self equally with “God” and our “neighbour”. Unless we radically commit ourselves to becoming our most authentic Self, the rest will fail. Every day of our Life, we must ask ourselves, “Am I walking the right Path?”

Others are precious: family, friends, lovers, and yes, ultimately, every human being. But it will be impossible to value that preciousness unless we ourselves are precious and valued. As Jesus said, “A bad tree cannot bring forth good fruit.”

Grow well!

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Friday, September 3, 2010

Courage is as often the outcome of despair as of hope; in the
one case we have nothing to lose, in the other everything to gain.

Diane de Poitiers, born on this date, 1499; she was the French
mistress of the English King Henry II


Always the way in human Life , isn’t it? Thinkers of every stripe have written about this since the ability to write and express the core of our brains and hearts came about. Why not? We are Human. To be Human, to be a Person ….. this is the greatest Mystery of all. Equal with the Mystery of that which we call “God”. Because they are One.

Despair and Hope are what that lovely “saint” Francis of Assisi would have called Sisters. From either of them we can learn the great virtue of Courage. When we are in the depths of despair or in the ecstasy of Hope, with either nothing to lose or everything to gain, we explode in a possibility of new Life. New understanding. New wisdom to lead us on.

The key is seeing how Life is. Every moment of Life offers opportunity to enter more deeply into who we Are. Not only Jesus but every other great spiritual Master I have read invites us to the same Path. Whether it exalts us or humbles us, we can learn and grow.

“Religion” is meant to be the agent of this Growth. Alas, so very often it is the opposite. Many decades ago, at the age of 18, I discovered the Anglican/Episcopal Church, at a Eucharist. I encountered the “Sacraments”, in particular the Sacred Eucharist ….. the mystical path of absorbing “God”. My Life has never been the same, for which I am deeply Thankful. I have lived nearly 65 years, and should I die tomorrow, I would be content. I understand both Being and Myself, and the Being of each of those I have met along the way and continue to meet.

Diane of Poitiers understood this over 500 years ago. It is in our blood.

Despair or Hope. They will both lead us to Life. In other words, everything offers Life. What we must learn is to discount nothing as “God’s” Handmaiden.

Brian+