Showing posts with label Love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Love. Show all posts

Saturday, April 5, 2025

Fighting the Good Fight


 

I often find myself in a cycle when it comes to sharing political content online. Initially, I feel strongly compelled to post about issues I care deeply about and engage in the discussions. However, after a while, my own posts can become overwhelming and a source of anxiety due to the often divisive and upsetting nature of online political discourse. 


This leads me to eventually delete those very posts. It's crucial to understand that this isn't because my convictions have weakened or because I'm afraid to express my political views – quite the opposite. My desire to share comes from a genuine place of wanting to make my voice heard. However, I've also made a conscious decision to curate my social media into a space that offers a counter-narrative to the negativity and anger that can easily dominate online interactions. 


The world can feel saturated with hurtful news and conflict, and my hope is that my corner of the internet can be a place where light, hope, refreshment, and love can prevail. I firmly believe in 'fighting the good fight' and staying engaged with important issues, but for me, that fight looks less like constant public debate on my personal feed and more like actively nurturing a positive environment, both for my own well-being and for those who connect with me here. It's about contributing to the good in a different way, by offering a space for respite and encouragement amidst the often turbulent online landscape.


Crucially, I want to emphasize that I hold absolutely no judgment for those who choose to engage with political issues online in a more direct or consistent manner. I understand and respect that there are many valid and necessary ways to advocate for change and make one's voice heard. My approach is simply what feels most sustainable and beneficial for my own mental well-being and the kind of online space I personally wish to cultivate. We are all navigating this complex world and the digital landscape in our own ways, and I believe that diverse approaches to engagement are ultimately valuable.


Love,

+Brian

Friday, February 21, 2025

AnneLynn

Her self-described happiest moment. 


If you are triggered by sad stories or the topic of suicide, skip this  post.  This is just such a story about a friend, near and dear to my heart.

It was 36 years ago today on February 21, 1989 that my dearest friend in the whole wide world committed suicide.  Her name was AnneLynn. I remember her every year on this day and if truth be told sometimes every day. While I accept it, I have never gotten over her suicide.

The year was 1989.  I had last heard from her in a Christmas card where she said she needed some time and space away from people and cats. (She cared for three indoor Abyssinians and a whole tassel of outdoor strays.)  In her letter she quipped, "this season may kill me."  I took it as hyperbole but made a mental note to give her some space.  That was in December. She killed herself two months later.

I was so young, a sophomore in college and she was much older than I and yet my world revolved around our friendship.  She was the first person in my life who I felt saw me and with whom I connected on a deeply spiritual level.  I miss her every day but most of all, on this day. 

I watch a  popular movie staring Robin Williams every year on this day, "What Dreams May Come" and I think of her.

In the movie "What Dreams May Come," Chris Nielsen's wife, Annie, commits suicide after struggling with the loss of their children. Chris, who has already died and gone to heaven, learns that Annie is in hell, a realm created by her own pain and despair. Determined to rescue her, Chris embarks on a perilous journey to hell, guided by his friend Albert.   

Chris's descent into hell is a an emotionally harrowing experience. He navigates through a dark and twisted landscape, confronting the manifestations of Annie's anguish. He eventually finds her in a catatonic state, trapped in her self-created prison of sorrow.

Despite the warnings that no one can leave hell, Chris refuses to give up. He uses his love and memories of their life together to try and reach Annie, to break through the walls of her despair. In a climactic moment, Chris makes a profound choice: he decides to stay with Annie in hell, accepting her fate, rather than live without her in heaven. This act of selfless love ultimately breaks through Annie's despair, allowing her to recognize Chris and escape hell with him.

I don't believe that the loving God I have come to know sends people who suicide to hell but I do believe that people who suicide are sometimes living in a kind of a hell and can't find their way out of it.

If when I die I discover she is in hell.  Then I will go there myself to rescue her and if I can't rescue her, I will stay with her.  Until then I remember, I pray, and I lean on the compassion and love of my God.

Saturday, November 28, 2020

The Beginning of Love

 


"The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image.  If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them." - Thomas Merton

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

I Want To Know What It's Like


I was so moved by this that I wanted to draw particular attention to it on To Love So Well The World.

This video is a reminder that we live in the Land of the Brave and the Home of the Mostly Free.

When will we determine that the rights observed for some should be observed for all?

Writing Rock Talk

Writing Rock Talk

By Brian Ernest Brown
6 June 1991


The wind rocks
the trees to talk
as I sit on the rock
colored with chalk
of loves crock
now we talk...

She offers,
“let us write
of our plight
of what’s wrong and right
in a poets sight tonight.”

I think,
I can’t write
on command
putting together words that band
like pearls in a strand
that rhyme and make sense!

The Not Quite Dead Yet Poet’s Society
will eventually come to notoriety
some may call this piety
I call it Writing Rock Talk!

Friday, April 13, 2018

Charter For Compassion


Compassion is in short supply these days and is sorely needed in every aspect of our lives. Sadly it is often lacking most in our churches and seldom expressed through our faith. Please join me in signing the Charter for Compassion and during this new year let compassion be a clear expression in your life while also reflecting it in the lives of those around you.

 If you do nothing else today, please visit the Charter For Compassion.

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Betrayal: That Cold-Hearted Kiss


I had written this several years ago after Holy Week and Easter. And I thought it appropriate to post it here at this time. I hope you find it as illuminating reading it as I did writing it. Blessings upon your head, your heart, your home, and your own loved ones!

“Jesus was still speaking, when Judas the betrayer came up. He was one of the twelve disciples, and a large mob armed with swords and clubs was with him. They had been sent by the chief priests and the nation’s leaders. Judas had told them ahead of time, “Arrest the man I greet with a kiss.” Judas walked right up to Jesus and said, “Hello, teacher.” Then Judas kissed him.” -Matthew 26:47-49

Betrayal, ah that cold-hearted kiss.

This time of the year, Lent, Holy Week, and Easter, always makes us take a look at our lives or at least it does with me. I usually get somewhat introspective and hopefully a little intuitive during Lent often bringing home the message during Holy Week and Easter.

I often ask myself, “what has God been trying to teach me or show me this last year?” Sometimes I can recognize his hand at work in my life and get it but as likely sometimes I simply get in the way of myself and of God and I miss the point all together. The good news is that God is patient, the bad news is that God is patient and, as it were, when I don’t get it, I get to experience the lesson all over again, sometimes from the very start.

Such has been the case with betrayal, one of the more darker lessons we’ll learn in our life. As I read the Passion narrative the other day on Palm Sunday I was slapped in the face with the betrayal Jesus experienced at the hand of one whom he loved dearly, no, at the hands of many he loved dearly. You see, while Judas was the one we think of most, there were more. The Passion Narrative is rift with betrayal, complete in heart break, and seemingly adrift in hopelessness, that is at least until the bitter-sweet end.

As I read aloud the story, the deeper I went into it the harder is was to continue. When the priest had asked me to please read it for the service I thought to myself, oh dear Father, you have no idea what you’re asking nor how hard I’ll sob before the task is finished. But he asked and dutifully I read…and sniffled…and wept…and snorted…and sobbed.

There are so many issues one could deal with in this passage, so much truth, beauty, and love which is echoed by pain, sadness, deceit, and betrayal but it’s betrayal, that bitter, bitter cup of tea that we all must sip from, that God has been working with me on. And so it was the utter betrayal of our Lord Jesus that struck me that morning. How his dearest and closest friends betrayed him and how we are still betraying him today with our actions or in-actions.

The thought that Jesus WILLINGLY allowed himself to be in that position, WILLINGLY loved enough to be betrayed, and was WILLINGLY faithful to his betrayers to the bitter end and beyond is what blows my mind. I’m sure there are better theological ways of explaining it but mind blowing is a phrase that fits what I felt, what I feel. What is even more mind blowing is what Jesus did after the whole crucifixion! What is even more mind blowing is how much Jesus still loved his betrayers and how much he still loves us in spite of our own betrayal of him and one another! Wow!

Here’s the question though… Here’s the hard part… He calls us to follow his example! He calls us to love enough to be betrayed and then he asks us, no he really commands us to LOVE AGAIN ANYWAY. How on earth?! Well exactly, “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven!”

This is the lesson God has been working with me on over the last several years. Betrayal after betrayal and still I must love, and still I must forgive (and be forgiven I might add) and still I must risk it all again for Love’s sake, for Christ’s sake!

Overwhelmed by love once I sent an email to my mentor, the priest who first offered me Holy Communion and really taught me what it meant to be a Christian. I had been so moved by the love in my life at that time that I confessed to him in an email that I found myself waiting for “the other shoe to drop.” He told me then that if I spent all my time waiting for that other shoe to fall I would miss out on the gift that had been given in the present, the PRESENT OF LOVE if you will, and he reminded me that love always requires that we take the chance of getting hurt!

I think of the love in my life, my family, my friends, my church and many other fleeting instances of love too numerous to mention and I have to count myself loved abundantly, generously and overwhelmingly. It is precisely in these loving relationships, person to person, that we can begin to experience, get into touch with, and make real God’s love for us. It is in being open to and loving one another that God’s love becomes real to our understanding and we can run into this broken world safe in the knowledge and experience of true love.

You see, the betrayed loved enough to be betrayed and so it is the betrayer who is the ultimate victim, it is the betrayer who ultimately loses out, it is the betrayer who has rejected love to his or her own detriment. The betrayer has ultimately betrayed him or herself. It is their heart which is broken and it is they who must live with the loneliness and humility of what they have done. It is they who deserve our pity and our prayers.

I feel sorry for Judas. The very short amount of life he had left was no doubt spent in misery, loneliness and regret. He betrayed Jesus for his own agenda, not understanding or wishing to force change upon the Messiah’s ministry. It is Judas who went into that “dark night of the soul” and who may have never emerged from that self-consigned hell.

We pray for the lonely during the canon of our liturgy and so too we pray for those who have betrayed us, just like Jesus prayed for us and prays for us even still. Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.