musings

On growing older - address by Brother Franco to senior monks

Age is a very elusive reality to engage realistically.  Flexibility and passion are two ingredients essential to keep life interesting and challenging.  We know that these necessary attributes begin to wane as you grow older. 

Lack of flexibility and long held comfort zones are the enemy.  It is hard to imagine what a grip these two personality traits have on your behavior until you confront the need to make your last years productive.  The good news is that having to deal with this reality is not new to us.  All of our life we have confronted the same issues in one form or the other.  What makes it different this time is that there is less time to do something about it. 

It is easier when you are younger.  In the earlier years the need to grow is thrust upon you in order to survive.  You have responsibilities and most of us try to meet them.  Conditions often force us to change if we are to meet out goals.  Necessity is the oil that lubricates the process.  Often there is not that much time to think about it.  This is the mechanism that begins to fail as you grow older. When you are younger you must meet the situation or fail and when you are young total failure is not an option. 

I say total failure is not an option because partial failure is.  Too often we settle for partial success since total success simply requires too much from us.  And for most of us partial success allows us to get by. Most of us will live our lives in the twilight zone of partial success – enough to get by, but always knowing that we never lived up to our potential. 

Eventually, our personal fulfillment will be determined by our choice for total or partial success. What then defines these two arenas?  What is the ingredient that defines the difference?  Is it defined genetically or is determined  by other causes such as home or school or some lack within the person’s self esteem that demands it be corrected by total success.  Or is the whole process simply an accident of nature? 

I have no answers.  I can only ask you to think of your life and where you are now.  While you still have time enter the cold reality of the truth about yourself and see how you react to it.  Good luck!

Brother Franco, Head of all Pizzaonian Monasteries

http://giovanniandfranco.com 

For years we confused craft and technique with artistic talent - that perspective no longer prevails.

    

As the years go by many things come to mind on how you view your supposed area of expertise.   

I have spent 40 years plus in photography and related image making. I have sixty-four years of being involved with the photographic process. Enough years have gone by for me to have experienced many technical changes on how a photograph is produced.  At least until today, none of these changes challenged the nature or the definition of what photography is. 

That is no longer true.  We stand at a technical crossroads, an evolutionary transformation that forces us to rethink the very nature of what is considered photography. 

You can find endless articles about the change technology is bringing to our medium. This is particularly true of how image making will be presented in the future.  Not enough is said, however, about the change in the distinguishing nature or character of what has for years defined the photograph. 

The power of the photograph has been the notion that it represents a captured moment in time that allowed you to preserve history.  We are fascinated by photos that are a portal to the past, to an event, a place - or that simply allow us to relive the shared experience of someone or someplace special to us.  The power of the photograph is the fact that we believed it to be true, an authentic representation of what no longer is. 

We could always manipulate the photograph.  However, these manipulations were acceptable because of the serious limitations the camera and the film process imposed upon us.  We recognized photography as a limited medium that occasionally needed tweaking to better represent the scene being photographed. 

For the most part, we were still stuck with what was there and whatever enhancements we applied strengthened that position.  We were always aware the photograph was a representation and not a literal image. Nevertheless, all of this was acceptable within the boundaries that created an authentic photo. This is no longer the case. 

For the doubters, simply show a magnificent landscape with all of it natural radiance to a younger person and the question will arise:  has that been photoshoped?  The immediate response from the viewer that the image may not be an authentic representation changes the perception of what a photograph is or was.  The question is does this make any difference?  For us I think it does since this change will redefine what a photographer is. 

The nature of the changes that the digital process has given us changes the perspective of photography as a limited medium.  The interpretive photograph has a new meaning and the new meaning requires fresh and better-honed creative skills.  

For years, we confused craft and technique with artistic talent.  Since the craft, for the most part is now done for us, that perspective no longer prevails.  The required skills will be the ability to tell a visual story, a keen sense of visual language that will include a fine sense of editing, use of symbols, color and design. 

A sense of the whole that brings universal and holistic meaning to each image will be essential to the new photography.  These will be the arenas that the professionals will use to separate themselves from the amateur.  

From a professional perspective, this becomes a matter of survival.  If we do not define who we are then the public and/or the technology will.  If so, it is the end of our profession as we know it. 

Is this good or bad?  I am not going to profess judgments here.  What I am professing is the change is upon us and is evolutionary in its significance.  Are we going to be ahead of the change and help define it, or will the change wash over us like a giant tsunami? 

And what will call the new photography?  That is still evolving.  I am sure the term photography will be preserved by the film process, but the new photo imaging that is now with us brings an exciting new dimension that is different and will be identified as such.

 

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So much time today is spent on “being all we can be.” Somewhere along the way serving others got lost on the road to greatness.

 

So much time today is spent on “being all we can be.”  Somewhere along the way serving others got lost on the road to greatness.  I often think that somewhere in the meaning of the words sacrifice and love we can rediscover what “being all we can be” is really about. 

To equate love with sacrifice is difficult since the word sacrifice carries deeply emotional feelings of suffering, and suffering is not a fun activity. 

The notion of life as sacrifice has very little appeal for most of us.  Yet, for those that love deeply, sacrifice is a way of life. 

Sacrifice can be the ultimate act of giving.  Whether the suffering is chosen or is afflicted upon us, when done or offered for others, you are giving the gift of life.  For most of us this is extreme and will not be part of our experience. 

But what about the small acts of sacrifice that we make everyday for others or for ourselves?  Whenever we put our own needs or wants aside to create a greater good, are we also not sacrificing? 

How many times a day do we serve others before ourselves?  This is a key question that when asked can tell us much about who we are, and who we are in the process of becoming.  

Not to be excluded in our thinking process is the need to sacrifice for our own good – the need to give up part of ourselves so we can grow to be more appreciative of the life we have. 

Sacrifice on this level become acts of love – love for yourself and for others.  This is a concept that cannot be assimilated easily.  Only those who have experienced it directly can emotionally understand its impact. 

When we serve others in a healthy and giving way we serve ourselves and the community we live in.  It is the life we all strive for because in our surrender to others and to ourselves, we find the meaning of our existence. 

This translates sacrifice into love and makes the two synonymous. 

 
Submitted by Brother Franco.  (In a note to Pizzaonian Novice Monks) July 20111 Pizzaonian beta world time 

http://giovanniandfranco.com         

http://giovanniandfranco.typepad.com/musings

This implicit hope is the “mother” of all procrastination.

 

We live in a time when the concept of faith has lost its luster. Faith by today’s rules is consigned often to the unsophisticated.  As a result when someone declares a belief or activity as “a matter of faith” it is immediately suspect. 

This presents a major problem. If faith is suspect, than most of our assumptions must also be suspect since so much of what we believe is based on faith-like assumptions. 

A major assumption we make everyday is the world as we know it will continue to exist. This is an assumption based on faith. 

The odds may be with us, but nonetheless, we don’t know what’s going to happen in the next minute and must assume we will still be here. 

This obvious assumption should give us pause.  Our arrogant supposition regarding the stability of life keeps us from changing many things that need changing. 

The notion there will be a tomorrow may give us hope, but how many important things never get done because this assumed hope is part of our belief system.  This implicit hope is the “mother” of all procrastination. 

Be careful – the next time you find faith suspect - make sure you are not living most of your life based on assumptions rooted in faith.

Submitted by Sister Veronica  and Brother Franco for Pizzaonian News Service, PNS

http://giovanniandfranco.com

What's good for me is good for you. And that's how it starts

 
At the heart of most problems we create for ourselves and for others is when we conveniently become convinced that our vested interest is also in the interest of everyone else. 

It is why so much selfish behavior is practiced by “good people.”  Most of us wouldn’t think of doing harm. And how can we do harm when what we are doing for ourselves is also good for everyone else.

If what’s good for me is good for everyone else, who can find fault? 

So the next time you are convinced you are doing good – think again.  Make sure your not entertaining a convenient delusion to get what you want.

 

Submitted by the Pizzaonian Spelunker for the Pizzaonian News Service, PNS

What motivates the military more ---- Keeping the peace or fighting the war?

 
Is it possible that today’s soldier enjoys being at war more than keeping the peace?  If that is true, we see the reason why an all volunteer army is wrong. 

(Huffington Post    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/11/us-troops-fear-end-of-war_n_894675.html ) 

For years the pride of the military was maintaining the peace.  It was this strength of will and arms that kept the peace through many turbulent years. 

It’s hard to make keeping the peace a worthy goal if there is no peace to keep. Now that we are engaged in endless wars that have vague objectives and no end, it seems that being at war is what motivates our current military. 

So we find some soldiers lamenting that our current wars may end.  With out a conflict they will no longer face deployment in an actual war.  This apparently is coming from soldiers who have already been deployed before.  

Can you imagine our soldiers and marines who landed at Normandy or Iwo Jima lamenting the fact that they could no longer do that again. 

The scary part is that a military looking for a war will inevitably find one.

On abundance and its relevance to our daily lives

There is a general belief that abundance will always be available if you think and act positively.  This may be true, but often what is omitted from this platitude is there is no greater creator of bad karma then to waste or squander the abundance you have acquired. 

It is an easy jump to conclude this is now happening in our country.  The abuse of our country’s incredible recourses and environment to sustain our power, comfort and pleasure permeates our senses at every turn.  We could argue when this point was reached, but does anyone still believe we haven’t? 

This reality can be masked very easily by our concentration on the “have nots”, those people through no fault of their own who find themselves at the vagaries of life’s miseries.  By concentrating on our virtues and good intentions to help others, we allowed ourselves to go blind to our enormously wasteful lifestyles.   

This will seem offensive to those that believe we live in the “promised land” and abundance is our providential and given birth right.  Perhaps it is, but that still does not change what we see happening around us everyday.  Something is out of whack and we better figure it out soon. 

But in the meanwhile, the beat goes on.  We retreat to the islands we have created for ourselves and wait for the problem to be solved.  I suspect the only reason we haven’t disintegrated into space is because of the good works of the few saints that sustain us all with their good karma. Unfortunately, too many of us think we are those saints.

On being equal and its conflict with relevance

The most difficult concept to accept emotionally as a Christian is the need for relevance.  We live in a culture where we feel the constant need to make a difference, to be relevant and to find meaning.

 

As a Christian, certainly not one as often described from a secular church perspective, but more from the authentic vision of the itinerant carpenter that we choose to worship, we are as heirs to the kingdom, already as relevant as we need to be.

 

Now this is difficult to accept emotionally, from the perspective of self, and from the perspective of how we choose to see everyone else in the world.  Because if I am relevant simply by being, so is everyone else.  And by everyone, it means everyone, from the homeless beggar to the President.  Now where does that leave us?  I believe as equals regardless of position or station.  And this is where the trouble begins.

 

Most of us are agreeable to the notion that we are equals in a spiritual way.  But equally relevant in this world, I think not.    Judging from the state of Christianity today, I think somehow we have missed the central Christian point of equal relevance for all.

 

Which leads to another issue and that is the question of how important is Jesus in today’s world.  To paraphrase Andrew Greeley from his book, the Jesus Myth, if Jesus is not relevant to society at large today it is nothing new.  After all, Jesus was not very relevant to the society he lived in.  They did crucify him as a common criminal.

 

So somewhere along the way the notion of relevance and meaning, as defined from the original Christian perspective, became seriously perverted.  It has been said many times, the Good News is simply too good to believed. 

 

The idea that to love your God and to love your neighbor as yourself takes care of everything else, including making your life immediately relevant and meaningful, is simply too simplistic to be real.  Then again, how would we know?  Judging from the state of the world most of us have never tried it.

 

Faith and logic -- a contradiction?

Rationalization is the way we try to bring logic and conviction to faith.  Of course, if that were possible it would no longer be faith.

On Mentoring

Mentors would be better served if they concentrated more on the right questions rather than the right answers.