We gather

We gather
to give thanks for my 25 years.

Monday, September 13, 2021

It is all an Illusion

 

Life is an illusion.  Illusion is defined as when something "is likely to be wrongly perceived or interprted by the senses".  So one holds a false idea or belief.  

Plato reflected upon the nature of reality using the scene of looking into a cave, within which a group of people was gathered around a fire.  He could see the shadows of the group upon the wall of the cave but, from the shadows, he asked if  he could he tell the reality of that group within the cave.  Thus he used this to pose the question - What is real?  

The same philosophical question remains ever with us. 

Our present age seems to be full of illusions.  We live under changing conditions within an ongoing pandemic and present lockdown, but what does that mean in reality for us?  Where is this time leading us in society and church?  Many questions arise and remain. We are entering a new era but what will it look like?  I have no definite answers.  Who does?  No one, really.  We all just have many questions. 

We have just remembered the 20th anniversary of 9/11.  We know what followed.  Now with the withdrawal of western forces from Afghanistan, we see part of the outcome of the western response to 9/11.  The same still question arises - what is real?  

I feel assured of one reality.  9/11 saw many heroes arise from its ashes and from among ordinary citizens.  I never knew at the time, that when with the Franciscans in 1999 in New York, I had met one hero among many of 9/11, Fr Mychal Judge.   A message is that any of us can be a hero when facing the challenges of the true reality, not the illusion, before us.   

Lord, take me where You want me to go;                                                                                                  Let me meet who You want me to meet;                                                                                                           Tell me what you want me to say, and                                                                                                              Keep me out of your way.                                                                                                                                         (Mychal Judge, Franciscan priest and New York Fire Department chaplain who died at                                   World Trade Center on 9/11, while anointing a dying fireman.)

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