He was born Richard Francis Xavier Manning, born in 1934, passing away almost four years ago.
According to his widely publicized obituary…
“Brennan was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. After attending St. John’s University for two years, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, serving overseas as a sports writer for the U.S. Marine Corps newspaper. Upon his return, Brennan began a program in journalism at the University of Missouri. He departed after a semester, restlessly searching for something ‘more’ in life. ‘Maybe the something ‘more’ is God,’ an adviser suggested, triggering Brennan’s enrollment at Saint Francis Catholic seminary in Loretto, Pennsylvania.”
Manning — more commonly known as Brennan Manning to his loyal legions of followers and fans — seemed to find that “more.”
He left the Franciscans in the late sixties, joining the Little Brothers of Jesus of Charles de Foucauld, a religious order committed to an “uncloistered, meditative life among the poor.”
According to Wikipedia’s bio: “Manning transported water via donkey, worked as a mason’s assistant and a dishwasher in France, was imprisoned (by choice) in Switzerland, and spent six months in a remote cave somewhere in the Zaragoza desert. In the 1970s, Manning returned to the United States and began writing after confronting his alcoholism.”
By all accounts, Manning was a humbled, faithful man. He began writing… and writing.
He wrote many books, with his most popular being the bestselling The Ragamuffin Gospel, originally published in 1990.
There’s so much in The Ragamuffin Gospel that appealed to me then… and so much I find relevant still now…
“The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out…”
(… sometimes I indeed feel all of the above…)
“… In effect, Jesus says the kingdom of His Father is not a sub-division for the self-righteous nor for those who feel they possess the state secret of salvation. The kingdom is not an exclusive, well-trimmed suburb with snobbish rules about who can live there. No, it is for a larger, homelier, less self-conscious caste of people who understand they are sinners because they have experienced the yaw and pitch of moral struggle…”
(… sometimes it’s challenging to come to grips with the reality of our own moral struggles, much less anyone else’s…)
With all his wisdom, transparent sharing, and encouraging articulations, Color Green Films has actually made a movie about Manning’s life, entitled “Brennan.” The following quote is included; it’s also especially, seemingly relevant now…
“None of us has ever seen a motive. Therefore, we don’t know we can’t do anything more than suspect what inspires the action of another. For this good and valid reason, we’re told not to judge. Tragedy is that our attention centers on what people are not, rather than on what they are and who they might become.”
Read that again, friends…
… none of us has ever seen a motive…
… we can’t do anything more than suspect what inspires another…
… for this good and valid reason, we’re told not to judge.
And yet a lot of us these days — myself included — sometimes feel so capable.
Craving for more wisdom… recognizing the existence of ragamuffins…
Respectfully…
AR