What I said at the opening of the Maitreya Loving Kindness Toiur

10/17

Pastor Brashear at the Maitrya Loving Kindness Tour

It is a joy and honor to be with you here this evening for this exhibit and tour, this night, dedicated to loving kindness.

It is pretty generally known that in my tradition, when Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment, he responded, 

 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment ^. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

But I have two other passages I would like to share with you this evening. The first is one that is extremely important to me in my own life:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
    and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
    and to walk humbly with your God?

This tells us first of all that justice and mercy are inextricable from one another, They must always go together. And as Thomas Aquinas reminded us, mercy without justice is powerless but justice without mercy is cruelty. We must always hold the two together.

The walking humbly is also an essential  part. As we understand ourselves as creatures, part of creation, we can only be humble. It leads to what Jonathan Edwards called benevolence to all being. And as we walk humbly in relation to creation, justice and mercy are easier expressions of that humility.

Finally, another bottom line verse from the first letter of John 4:7:

 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

For all of us, the ultimate truth is behind a door. Occasionally that door opens and we get glimpses, but we see is only that and nothing more. We use our own languages to describe what we have seen and build our institutional structures based on that language.

The error is when we mistake our expressions of what we have seen as the whole and exclusive truth, superior to others. The fact of the matter is, we need to share with one another our own particular insights in order to even begin to come closer to the whole vision. And as we are human, it will always be partial.

So we must walk humbly with one another and out of that humility learn to love one another.

The deepest purpose of this tour and this evening is the opportunity to further the experience, the reality of loving kindness in the world we share.

And for the opportunity to share these thoughts with you this evening, and in this experience, I am profoundly thankful.

While riding on a train goin west...

10/10

Nick Lantigua

Jamie drops by to go over some business details. And then we head to lunch. Haven’t had a chance to catch up and talk for a while.

When I get back, Carman Moore and Lotte’s daughter Evie and her boyfriend Viktor, fresh in from Denmark, come in to visit.  Carman is on his way to Austin, Texas to do advance work for an upcoming performance with Lotte there of her Girl from Diamond Mountain. Money needs to be raised. He gives them a full tour of the building and I give them  angelitos from Angelo .

Lauren C from the Shantideva Meditation Center comes in to talk with me about my being part of the opening ceremonies for the Maitreya Loving Kindness tour next week at the Tibetan Buddhist Center. Apparently this is a tour of some very special relics and I’m to be a representative from the Christian faith. When we talk, she tells me that she invited me because she had been a long time friend of Arthur Cafiero. She knew him when he still had an apartment and worked for the Metroplitan Opera. She said that he had many times spoken of my kindness and inviting him in to sing. She was surprised when I told her that after he died, we had taken him to the West - Park cemetery at Woodlawn in the Bronx. Buried with the pastors and other long time members of the church. (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/30/nyregion/church-pays-tribute-to-a-man-whose-home-was-its-steps.html)

Representatives of  a prospective tenant are looking for Pat for another visit and conversation. Pat spends some time with them and then meets with me on my progress on the congregation revitalization side. I am very frustrated. I want walls of whiteboards to fill up.  With Pat’s mind map program all laid out to see on a wall. I keep alternatively losing forests or trees. And even though we’re moving forward, sometimes feel my head swimming. I need to keep focusing in on the coherent strategy, one step at a time.

Anna’s friend Eddie is ready to look for permanent housing. But he’s lost his housing ID number. I call Marc G of the Interfaith Assembly, but I get voicemail. Check out the Assembly Street Sheets(http://streetsheets.re-configure.org/) and make and few other calls. No luck. Eddie is discouraged and ready to leave. I ask him to stay. Tell him we’ll get this. And I think of my friend and Assembly Vice Chair Dennis. Was once homeless himself. I call. He’s there. Put Eddie on the line with Dennis. Success.

Thomas R,, a young man from Brooklyn  from a sheltered workshop, felt drawn here to volunteer. He has a an eagerness to help, a determination and a heart of gold. He can help us fold brochures for the Open House New York weekend ahead. He gets to it with real seriousness, carefully folding  each accordion brochure.

Finally time for Open Mic. Nick’s family  has come to hear him play, which is really cool. David L’s girlfriend has come along with Brandy (like the drink, she says) and Jared, newly arrived from Austin. Jared is a player for an Austin rock band called Broken Teeth. And is an engineer on the road with Creedence Clearwater Revival. Victoire and Henri back again. And Pat O takes me aside for some unexpected that will take some digesting. 

Joel Gold

The word from Dion

Jeremy

Jeremy (the young one) does a clean an earnest Bob Dylan complete with harmonica. And Victoire plays Blowin in the Wind, along with her originals.

Victoire

RL had opened with Bob Dylan’s Dream. And I took my first go at A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall. (That song is , after 50 years, hauntingly appropriate to Climate Change and Ferguson and out continued flirting with apocalypse. And it is damned  hard to do well…)Pat voices a quiet concern that we don’t want to bring any evil eye’s on to Dylan with all this channeling. There are several non-playing stayers as well…A great night.

We close with Victoire and then Miriam doing her best old English ballads styling like an early Baez folk album.

Miriam

And then, of course, RL and all joining in.

Later, at the Gate, I sit back and look at the table of mainly young musicians from France and Texas and New York, newly met with old guys  me and Pat thrown in, heavy into intense conversation, and I feel a moment of something like happiness. One more reason we’re here.