Brian’s Reflection: Monday, March 5, 2012

I will love the light
for it shows me the way,
yet I will endure the darkness
for it shows me the stars.

Og Mandino


“Light”. I was thinking about it today, as Dennis and I walked the Dragonfly Trail in the Gila National Forest. It was a magical New Mexico day at 6300 feet in early March. Warm … even the wind; we were in polo shirts. and sandals. The sky an endless blue from horizon to horizon. Western bluebirds getting bluer as Spring approaches; Western Scrub-jays more vibrant; Dark-eyed Juncos their tails flitting white. I was so glad that I could see clearly and sharply … I had been taking Vesicare which did indeed help my problematic issues after radiation and seed implants for prostate cancer, but it blurred my vision! Not acceptable … to me. But, Life hands us these things to deal with … and I will always choose quality of Life!

Anyway: the New Mexico light was enchanting this morning. It shouted of the joy of this Earth, of the wonder of being Human, in a simple, clear way. I was indeed enchanted! How I do enjoy being able to tell people that Dennis and I live on the Trail of the Mountain Spirits in the Land of Enchantment!

Have you ever tried to make your way in the pitch dark with a bright light in your hand? I have. You’re blinded. You have to put the light aside in order not to stumble. It’s because you’re looking too limitedly. I’ve found that in order to navigate Life successfully, you have to take the long view. In Christian mythology, it’s the message of the Transfiguration.

“Light” shows the Way. And I thank God that we have many Lights! There is such Wisdom available about this Path we are born to walk! Glorious minds and hearts from human beings who are epiphanies of “God” … the name we give to the Wonder that gives Life to Life. In my culture, I was led to Jesus Christ and the Gospel … and over the years I have jettisoned all the baggage that has been loaded on Him and seen His simple Message: Love One Another”. If those who followed Him loved and loved His Message, the World would be so very different.

We tend to negativize “darkness”. But essentially, “Faith” is embracing the Darkness. I see Darkness as the great Mystery that Life is. We try so hard to comprehend it all … but Life can’t be “comprehended”. It wasn’t meant to be comprehended. It was meant to be wondered at and danced with and gone on adventures with. When we can do that, we are free. We have discovered what it means to Live.

“Endure”? I think it only has to be “endured” if we do not know we are God’s Child. When we know we are Of God, the Dark leads us down the road to the “stars” … to the unfettered Kingdom of Love.

I am beyond “endurance”. I have been gifted with Abandonment.

It’s the only Way.

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Thursday, March 1, 2012

Death is not extinguishing the light;
it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

Rabindranath Tagore


Superb! Poetic. Insightful. But … it makes me uneasy. It seems to belittle the value of our earthly Life.

However, I think about it. And then I see the mythic import of it.

I could almost make this my “mantra” as I close my eyes each night and fall into that mystery we call sleep, of which we have no lasting memory except the shocking flashes we call “dreaming”.

To die is to let go of what is Past. “Tomorrow” we awake to a new Life. It is resurrection. Death and Resurrection is the Reality. Or, perhaps, as Strauss expressed it in his wonderful tone poem, “Death and Transfiguration”.

Every morning that we awake to Consciousness, it is “the dawn”.

And it is radically “New”.

The lamp goes out as we close our eyes. We “die”.

We open our eyes; a Dawn beckons us to Life.

One day, it will be different.

It will be a dawn we have never seen before.

But we will not be afraid. We’ve been prepared for it.


Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, February 29, 2012

But I remember the moment when my father died.
I wasn't a very committed Catholic beforehand, but
when that happened it suddenly all felt so obvious:
I now believe religion is our attempt to find an
explanation, for us to feel more protected.

Javier Bardem, Spanish actor; he was born on this
date, 1969, at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria,
Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain


Wow! Having put up the birdfeeder, today several birds “found” it. Two Vespers Sparrow came by (they are here in the winter); and the ubiquitous House Finches appeared. Plus a Sparrow I haven’t identified yet. I was thrilled. (Sparrows are hard for me.) I even saw a California Towhee trying to manoeuver the feeder, and a pack of Dark-eyed Juncos eating what the other birds cast on the ground. And did I mention the Juniper Tit??

The cardiologist I went to see was a charmer! He and his wife came to Silver City 5 years ago on a kind of medical Peace Core; they came from Colorado to provide service to an “underserved” community. He’s the only cardiologist serving 75,000 people! The wind finally died down, and I did my 1.5 mile walk with a pile of Silver High School students doing everything from hurdles to long jumps. I was in my Pendleton wool jacket and gloves; they were in tank tops! Ah youth!

Javier: thank you for portraying Tom Hanks’ wonderful lover in “Philadelphia”.

I may have mentioned that over the years my view of God and Religion has been in a state of flux. Actually it has become more real! Makes more sense. I’ve been thinking about the concept of “faith”. And how people say that “Faith” is something one does not have to “prove” … or justify. I think that that demeans the whole concept of Faith and Religion. Why? Because I have come to believe that there is – can’t honestly be – a separation between God and Us. My sense is that “God” can only “appear” in our consciousness through us … through out hearts, minds, brains, hormones, even psychoses. Or, as Javier says, through “our attempt to find an explanation, for us to feel more protected”. That, I am convinced, is how “God” is “revealed”.

I’ll get politically personal. Republican presidential candidates project a “God” who does not in any way provide an “explanation” for a Life that is worthwhile. I don’t know about you, but they certainly don’t make me feel “more protected” – in fact, I feel abandoned and threatened and alienated.

I think it’s about time that we human beings accepted our essential role in this business of “God”. God and we are mirror images. “God” is manifested through us, and we are defined by our concept of “God”.

The God that Romney and Santorum and the rest of the Republicans project? No resemblance to Jesus at all! And no resemblance to the finest of human beings I honour and respect. No resemblance to what I think of as the best of “American”.

Javier is on the money: “God” manifests through us. How others understand “God” will be shaped by their experience of you and Me.

What God do you or I proclaim by our Life?

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Tuesday, February 28, ‘12

I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself.

+

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

Michel de Montaigne, author, philosopher; he was born

on this date, 1533, near Bordeaux, France

Silver City NM. The Weather Channel app on my iPad (it has an opening picture of a wonderful sunny meadow, which always cheers me) said “Sunny”. However, the sky is full of dark gray clouds. C’est la vie. I might have known; my sinuses started draining … a sure sign of changing weather. For a couple of days, a bag of birdseed has been sitting outside. This morning, when I went to put the garbage bin out by the road, the bag was empty and the chair on which it had been sitting was five feet away and upside down ….. hmmm: wonder what animal that was! And, finally, the birds have found the feeder I hung in a bush outside our bedroom window. The Chipping Sparrow has trouble – the perches are too small; but the Juniper Tit did just fine (first one I’ve seen in NM). The tea is still hot under the cozy, and the toast from the bread I made yesterday is unexpectedly delicious (with good old Earth Balance spread from good old Trader Joe’s) … so on the scale of things, Life is Good.

Thinking honestly about it, I have to admit that I have cared too much in my Life what others thought of me. I cared that I was called a sissy in school. I cared about not wearing stripes when I was at college, because I was fat and thought stripes made me look worse. I cared how my habit looked when I was a monk, because I wanted people to note how svelt I was having gotten to 145 pounds. I wore black shirts all the time to disguise (I thought) the huge bulge of two abdominal hernias until they got repaired – and that was only a few months ago. I dyed my beard until recently, hoping that people would think I didn’t look my age.

All the while, I thought that I was following the wise advice of Montaigne and caring more about what I am to myself … and of course in some instances, I have done that. But the balance has not been “right”, I see now.

But! I have learned something along the way. I have learned that there is no point in giving the Past too much power … learned to just acknowledge and move on. And I have learned that 90% of events are not governable … which has taught me what it means to find one’s place in the web of Being. I’m still working on the “govern myself” part - a lifetime work for all of us, I think … but I do know that the more I am authentically myself, the easier it is. What is false always evades governing. Surprise!

Well: off to shave and shower, do my daily 1.5 mile walk, and keep my appointment with my new cardiologist.

I really hope you have a day where you feel "at ease" with the World.

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Monday, February 27, 2012

In character, in manner, in style, in all things,
the supreme excellence is simplicity.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet; he was
born on this date, 1807.


God bless the Benedictines. A “simple” understanding of the Gospel. A ”simple” understanding of Christian/Human community. A “simple” and clear understanding of Simplicity. I can’t tell you how ….. though I have usually not succeeded … my life has been empowered by trying to emulate Simplicity. Oh, I’ve had far too much stuff … I’m always delighted by the creativity and imagination of human beings!

But there is another aspect of Simplicity. I call it simply “Live Free”. Things come; Let them go … when that is appropriate or called for. I’ve surrounded myself all my Life with lovely, beautiful things … lovely and beautiful to me. But I learned not to depend on them, or to idolize them. None of those things was a foundation for Happiness or Joy or Contentment. Things of this World are always transitory … that is the nature of this dubious gift of Mortality. But the transitory realities of being Human always have their exhilarating blessings if we can but “see” them. I have learned that Life is enormously enhanced by “sitting loosely” with Earthly Things.

I remember the first time I went to Gethsemane Abbey, where Thomas Merton lived. I sat in the balcony for Compline, in a darkened chapel. But I could see the Simplicity … little “decoration”. It it’s own way, such it is with St. Augustine’s Chapel at Holy Cross Monastery (where I was ordained both Deacon and Priest). And the chapel at Vail’s Gate of the Sisters of St. Helena.

Every chapel or place of worship is a metaphor for the human soul. If it so designed that the eyes and heart and mind don’t fly directly to the core … to that which sucks us into the Love of God … then it fails.

Longfellow points us to the path of Ecstasy … a simple Life. Which is to day: Never become encumbered. As Jesus did, always be ready to let go of Life … there is always a rising to a rich new one. That is the message of Death and Resurrection.

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Friday, February 24, 12

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror
every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the
last day of my life, would I want to do what I am
about to do today?' And whenever the answer has
been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know
I need to change something.

Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple; he was
born on this date, 12955, in San Francisco


Twice in my Life, I knew I was in the wrong place, a place where nothing contributed to the quality of my own Life or of others (though one never knows how one has affected people!). I quit and moved on … and yes it was hard because I had to grapple with all the issues of “failure”, etc.

I would say that “quitting” ought never to be the default position when confronted with challenge or difficulty or unhappiness. My experience has been that in most cases, whatever the issue is that’s causing the discontent, it’s a personal interior issue and it can only be “fixed” by changing oneself. Quitting is the last resort … but I think it’s an option that should be on the table.

The most helpful point that I think Steve’s comment makes is the reminder about Change. As someone once said, Change is the only constant. I would say that there is no growth without Change. The status quo is very often stagnation.

If Life is a misery, change yourself. Trying to change others is usually misery-making and a dead-end!

If it’s any consolation, I’ve done it several times, and while a challenge, it was always a relief and Life-giving!

Brian+

Brian’s Reflection: Thursday, February 23, 2012

Finish each day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities have crept in;
forget them as soon as you can.
Tomorrow is a new day.
You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit
to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Ralph Waldo Emerson


The problem, of course, is the second line: “You have done what you could.” Most of the time I think I haven’t really done what I could – that I surely could have done more. But, when we think this way, maybe we are being too hard on ourselves? Maybe.

Whatever else we may be being or doing, what we are certainly doing by holding on to the past is limiting our possibilities for today, as Emerson points out.

We need the freedom to accept the blunders and the absurdities, or our laziness, or cowardliness, or whatever has gotten in the way of being true to our heart and spirit and love. If we don’t forgive ourselves and “forget them as soon as we can”, we just spiral further down.

Don Miguel Ruiz, in his “Four Agreements”, says (I think it’s number 4) “Always do your best”. He knows that even if we try, we will not always succeed, and will have to forgive ourselves. But his point is the same as Emerson’s: if we try to do our best, and accept our failures, we can start each day unencumbered with our old nonsense. On the Christian path, this is the core pattern of Death and Resurrection.

When I was a monk, we ended the day with Compline. It contained Silence to ponder what our day had been like, a “confession of sin”, and an absolution. We “forgot”, and prepared for the new day with serenity and a “high spirit”.

Good advice. Do your best. Forgive the failures. Embrace the New Day afresh.

Brian+