Keep Your Eye On All Of Creation!
Sunday, March 17, 2013
HELLO, BROTHER FRANCIS! By Francis William Bessler Laramie, Wyoming 3/17/2013 Pope Francis, let me begin this letter by congratulating you on being chosen the pope - or principal leader - of your church. When I decided to write you this letter, originally, it started HELLO, POPE FRANCIS - but I changed my mind after beginning it and changed it to what you see above - HELLO, BROTHER FRANCIS. I decided on this change because you are not my “pope,” but you are my “brother” - human wise. So, for others, you are their “pope.” For me, you are only my “brother.” Thus, I start as I have. Brother Francis, I am also a Francis. In a way, that says it all. You are now Francis - and have chosen the name of Francis - and I have always been a Francis. In a way, you are just “catching up to me.” You are only “becoming Francis” after a life of being Jorge - or probably as we would call you in English, George. But be you a George of the past or a Francis of the present, in real terms, you are no different now than you have ever been before; but I am not telling you anything new. Am I? In a way, you have always been a Francis - like I have always been a George. The truth is - regardless of name, we are really the same. Brother Francis, we have a common love - or loves. We both love God - and we both love Jesus; though our impressions of both are quite different. You have followed a trail of Jesus that has Jesus admiring authority and making the value of life dependent upon authority - or perhaps, better put, hierarchy. I have followed a trail of Jesus that allows me to relate to Jesus - and to our other common love, God - without any need of going through authority. You have believed that a Peter was right in claiming a right to “organize Christianity” according to strict dogma and doctrine. I have - for the most part in life - believed that a Peter was never a right course for Christianity because Jesus never emphasized authority while he lived. As I see Jesus, Brother Francis, I see a man who taught that organization and law and rules are not important in life. In fact, it was his claiming that no one needs law or some social order to be saved that got him killed - by a crowd of Jews who depended on law and order to exist. It was “law and order” that Jesus actually opposed - and that which also got him executed. Yet it was another “law and order” instituted by Peter that carried on Christianity after Jesus died. So, we see Jesus quite differently - you and I, Brother Francis; but I guess that’s ok - as long as we both embrace the REAL TEACHING of Jesus - which seems to be two-fold: to love God with all our hearts and minds and souls and to love one another as if each of us is God. I think that is what Jesus was all about - regardless of how we get there to say it. You can say it from a pulpit - and I can say it from just being Francis; but now that you are a Francis too - or realize it - then maybe you can somehow de-emphasize law and order and just go right to the heart of the matter - and be yourself without need for any social trappings. When I awake in the morning, Brother Francis, I am first aware of one thing - a thing I think of as “Creation.” I look out my window and see trees and clouds and mountains and rabbits and squirrels - and I see “Creation.” There is no evidence of any social order - or law - in any of that - “Creation”; and I do believe that the key to really loving life is simply to by step all of “human creativity” and focus on being part of “Natural Creativity.” I think it is doing that - just emphasizing Creation in general - that allows us to rid ourselves of any boogey men or devils - or Satans. In my opinion, Brother Francis, devils and Satans are really a product of the minds of souls (in and out of bodies) that are intent on trying to control things; and so they “create divisions” to make control possible. But those divisions cannot exist if we see Creation without looking for anything else. It is our looking at created things as if they are separate from Creation that allows some among us to “divide created things” into good and evil things; but if we look at ourselves as only part of CREATION, then we could not so easily be misled. Creation, as a Whole, must be Good because it must be of God; and each member of Creation has to be Good because it is part of a Good Creation. How simple can it be? As we probably both realize, Brother Francis, no thing in life is “all of Creation,” though every thing in Creation reflects All of Creation! It is one of the Great Wonders of Time - and Eternity. At least, that has been my focus in life - to try and know CREATION and my being part of CREATION, not my being some isolated “created thing” as if the GOOD CREATION of which I am a part does not exist. You know, Brother Francis, speaking of “good,” it is good I am writing this letter now because it reminds me of a paper I wrote on CREATION way back in the mid ‘60s or so. I have written quite a bit in life, for what it’s worth, and one of the things I wrote while a student of philosophy at St.Thomas Seminary in Denver, Colorado in 1965 or so was an essay work I called THE THEORY OF CONSTANT CREATION. Sadly, this work is one of many writings that I have lost throughout the years - and in a moment, I will explain why this one was lost - but my idea then was that it is unlikely that Creation could have ever been completed because the evidence is that it is something “going on” - not having been completed. The gist of my “theory of constant creation” as I can try to recall it now, Brother Francis, is that it is unlikely the story of GENESIS in the BIBLE has creation right. In that story, God “creates” the world in 6 days - and IT IS DONE! But the truth is, IT IS NOT DONE. The guy who wrote that story looked at Creation as something that was over - not going on - but the evidence is just the opposite. As I saw it back when I wrote my initial paper on Creation, Brother Francis, Creation could not have been a “done deal” or “done deed” back in the alleged time of Adam & Eve. Of course not! Creation has to be an ONGOING thing. The very idea that God “created the world” and then stepped back and said IT IS DONE has to be nonsense. How obvious can it be? I was not “created” back when Adam & Eve were “created.” Am I not a member of Creation? You were not created when Adam & Eve were created, Brother Francis. Are you not a member of Creation? That should tell us in an instant that God could not have “created the world” and that was the end of that. Anyway, that was the gist of my THEORY OF CONSTANT CREATION. I must admit, though, that there was more to my paper than that. In it, I also theorized that matter itself is being constantly created - not just life forms within matter. I do not remember now the details of my thought, but I do remember that in my paper I argued that it is likely that matter itself is constantly being created; but because I have no record now of my thought, sad to say, that thought is lost. I remember being so proud of that paper, Brother Francis, and in my joy to share it with my philosophy professor, Father Connolly, I took my only copy of it to him. I asked him if he would review it - and I thought he would be as proud of me as a student of his for writing it as I was in writing it; but he shocked me and told me I AM NOT INTERESTED IN YOUR THEORY and closed his door on me. In one of the single most immature moments of my life, Brother Francis, I retreated to my living quarters and tore up the only copy I had of my work and threw it into the waste basket. I guess you could say I was really angry that a philosophy professor could so easily and rudely discount a “philosophical treatise” of a student. In my anger and frustration, I just erratically tore up my paper and threw it away. How idiotic that was - in retrospect! It was very unwise of me for doing that, of course, Brother Francis. I should not have cared what anyone else might have thought of my work. I should have taken my essay and given it away - not destroyed it as I did. But I did learn from that, Brother Francis, to try and ignore objection and get on with living my life as I think it should be lived. I have often wondered what student, Francis, wrote in that paper he so ruefully destroyed, Brother Francis; but I have never lost sight of my reason for thinking about it and writing it - a TREMENDOUS LOVE FOR CREATION. That love has allowed me to see past so many divisions that so many see in life; and it is that kind of love that I urge everyone to pursue - just a love for CREATION as if nothing else matters; and in the end, Brother Francis, that is probably true. Nothing else really does matter. Does it? Hey, Brother Francis, I could say a lot more - and I really planned on saying a lot more when I sat down to write this - but I think I will leave it at that. I will leave you, though, with a definition that you might find quite interesting. You probably already know it, having chosen the name, but the definition of “Francis” is “Free.” Maybe it is partly because of being named Francis by a loving family that I have actually been “free” most of my life - and perhaps it is partly because of being Francis that I have been “free” to act in reality as I have in my dreams. It is quite a heritage, you know, Brother Francis, to be a Francis. I urge you to simply be that as you go forward in your everyday activities as pope - and my guess is, if you do that, the lights will come on for so many in your audiences and life can become as our fellow hero, Jesus, really imagined it to be - ONE BIG BROTHERHOOD OF CREATION! Good Luck, Brother Francis, Good Luck!