Sunday, November 9, 2014

2nd November Trinity 2014, Sky Bridge


2nd Trinity November
Tiffany Stained Glass,
Angel of Sardis
Rev. 3, 1-6, (Sardis)

And to the angel who penetrates the congregation of Sardis write:
Thus speaks he who has power over the seven creating spirits of God and over the seven stars: I know the consequences of your deeds, for one says of you that you live, and yet are dead. Awaken, and strengthen what remains in you, that is otherwise about to die, for I have not found that your works possess reality before my God.

Remember how you were once receptive for all the workings of the spirit, and for all words which came from the spirit. Care for them in your soul in inner loyalty. Change your heart and mind.

If however you do not awaken, I will come over you suddenly like a thief, and you will not know at which hour I will come over you.

But you have some names in Sardis whose souls have not been darkened by illusion and addiction to the senses. They will walk with me in white garments, for they are worthy of them.

He who overcomes, he shall be clothed with white garments, and I will not wipe out his name from the Book of Life. I will speak out his name and acknowledge him before my Father and his Angels. He who has ears to hear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches.



2nd November Trinity
November 9, 2014
Revelations 3: 1 – 6

This letter is from the Son of Man. It is written to the angel of the community of Sardis. It can be heard as a letter to an entire community, ‘a community whose members feel the Christ within themselves’.

It is natural that a community tends to drift away from its original receptive gesture of soul. After all, things change. Habits form. And over time, a community’s relationship to the spirit may become dull. This letter stresses being open to the words and workings of the spirit. Christ encourages us to revive our original prayerful openness, in loyal dedication to Him.

Sky Walk, Grand Canyon
Such openness helps us to overcome illusion through the Truth of Christ’s Being. It helps us overcome our need to see, hear, touch a physical God. The poet Czeslaw Milosz was asked about praying to a God one could not perceive:

You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word 'is'
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
We will walk that aerial bridge all the same.[1]





[1]  Czeslaw Milosz, “On Prayer” in New and Collected Poems, 1931-2001, trans. Robert Hass



No comments:

Post a Comment