Theos-Talk Archives (February 2001 Message tt00011)

Here is a few words on St. Francis:
"FRANCIS WAS NOT a gentle man; being cumbersome in build, seasoned by
several small wars, content to be a soldier and travel abroad, content also
as a labourer whose coarse hands could hold a bird.

This is to be mentioned because the familiar and the true may speak with a
sense to all: a common sense which does teach us of the manner to which we
may begin at the outset to ponder the reality of any truth.

Quite often it is that an advancing man becomes so capable of abstractions
and specifications that he mistakes the familiar as to be a commonalty which
is so well comprehended afore time, that as a fruit sucked dry, shall offer
nothing more.
Great art speaks to us from the two points intersecting:

Inspirational (downward pointing triangle)

Familiar (upward pointing triangle)

For we are marveled not by Heaven alone, but that she should enter into our
World and all we know there!

If one pictured St. Francis to be a bony man, lithe and feeble, they should
mistake the great relevance he personally saw out by his commanding
relationship to all - bird, beast and man - who did know him.

Great organisers are rarely, if ever, feeble about their task. The men and
women who were inspired by his constancy, were awed by his
purposefulness, forthright and decisive.

That portion of his day he spent given to his Lord and Master was no less
determined in its demands. How bold to ask! And though nine-parts humble,
how presumptuous (and rightly so) that a man goes to God with the complete
expectation of winning audience! But bold as it is, this is the way it's to
be.

It happens that so many fall to severe and uneasy fortunes, and in those
periods of desperate frustration a man may more readily pray with intensity.
Cutting to the quick he may begin to really ask determinedly. For so often
the boat drifts and steers hither and thither - as the saying goes - where
the wind blows the sails, and all the time the man concerned is inwardly
disorientated, regretting the journey. However, come the time when
circumstance persuades his fiery will to ignite self-action, he may once
again regain his necessary ego-qualification.

It is of tremendous sadness to approach a soul who is devastated beyond
'spark and spirit'. Some are but temporarily ruined and shall return to
their rightful place in true manhood; and then there are those within a
lifetime that have 'forgotten' themselves - the stray lambs - who have begun
to revert back into the other kingdoms in subjugation.
To be blatantly wilful is not, on its own, commendable. We are empowered to
instigate great and marvelous happenings. All men are equipped to apply
their virtue actively, and yet the ideas expire before their execution.
Progressively however, our expectations heighten and as long as we are
unabashed by short-term failure we do successfully implore the powers with
exacting definition and artistry.

No man truly deserves sorrow and hardship. No man truly deserves to take
his place closer to God than another, and yet it is that in both there is
truth that it is, deservedly or not.

Although abrupt and demanding, Francis did not come to the spiritual
realities of the essential characters he bore relation to, by demanding or
commanding or designing this be so: that his way be their way. He came to
each and every one in love through the overgrown path and the little gate of
their familiar habitats. To the birds he became as bird, to the doe he
became as fawn; and masterfully so."
The Familiar & the Divine



-Bruce

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