8th September Trinity
Luke 17: 20-37
At that time the Pharisees asked him, “When will the
Kingdom of God come?” And he answered,
“The Kingdom of God [The human Kingdom of the Spirit, permeated by God], does
not come in a form which is outwardly perceptible. Nor does it come in such a
way that one can say: Look, here it is, or there. Behold—the Kingdom of the
Spirit will arise in your own hearts.
And he said to his disciples, “There will come
times when you will long to experience even one of the days of the Son of Man,
and you will not experience it. Then they will say to you: Look—there! or
Look—here! Do not follow this call; do
not go on their spirit paths. For the Son of Man in his day will be like the
lightning which flashes up in one part of the sky and yet instantly pours out
its bright light over the whole firmament. But first he must suffer great agony and be rejected by this present earthly
humanity. As it was in the days of Noah, so will it again be in the day when
the Son of Man will reveal himself: they ate and drank, they came together in
marriage as man and wife, until the day when Noah entered the Ark and the great
flood destroyed everything. It was the same in the days of Lot: they ate and
drank, bought, sold, planted, built, until Lot left Sodom, and fire and sulfur
rained from heaven and everything perished. It will be like that, too, in the
days when the Son of Man will reveal himself.
When that time comes, let him who is on the roof of
his house, having left his goods in the house, not go down to fetch them. And
let him who is out in the open field not go back to what he has left behind.
Remember Lot’s wife! For whoever tries to preserve his soul unchanged will lose
it, and whoever is prepared to give it, will in truth awaken in himself a
higher life. I tell you; then there will be two sleeping at night in one bed;
when the power of the spirit comes, one is gripped by it, the other is left
empty-handed. Two women will be grinding at one mill; one is deeply stirred,
the other is left empty-handed.
And they said to him, “Where shall we turn our
gaze, Lord? And he answered, “Become aware of your life body, and you will see
the eagles that are gathering. [or, Where the formative forces in the human
being begin to work in freedom, there the Spirit of the World reveals himself.]
[or, Where there is descent and disintegration, there also is revelation.]
8th August Trinity
Luke 17:20
-37
We are once again in a rapidly changing season. The days are
shortening more quickly; times and outer conditions begin to disintegrate as
the old forms crumble.
The gospel reading warns us not to become too dependent on
the outer, for the kingdom
of God 17:24
He is not confined to one place, one person, one guru ‘over there’. He is
accessible through our own inner landscape. He appears when the time for us is
ripe.
When the disciples ask, ‘Where shall we turn our gaze?’ He
gives a mysterious, cryptic answer: ‘Become aware of your living body and you
will see the eagles gathering.’ Luke 17:37
[1]
Birds have always been symbols of thought, symbols of spiritual
activity. He points us inward to the capacity of our life forces to create
thoughts, to create inner pictures and images, memory pictures. This creative
forming force in the human being exists right next to the place where the
breaking down of substance in the body occurs. [2]
This creative forming force, working on the ash-heap, can begin to work in
freedom, freed from the necessities of the body (what shall we eat? What shall
we wear? Matthew 6:25). When this freedom
of thought begins to happen, into that free space between body and eagle, there
arises the capacity to perceive the revelation of God, the lightning flash of
His being. Even from the place of earthly descent, here where change means
disintegration, He can be perceived. And so in the words of the poet:
…when we come to search for God,
Let us first be robed in night, …
To feel the rush of light
Spread slowly inside
The color and stillness
[1]
The usual translation is "Where there is a dead body, there the vultures
will gather." But the Greek uses the word ‘soma’, a word for a living body, not ‘sarx’, corpse. And ‘aetoi’ are
eagles.
[2]
So ‘corpse’ and ‘vulture’ are also not entirely inappropriate.
[3]
John O'Donohue, “For Light”, in To Bless the Space Between Us, pg. 15
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