1st St. Johnstide 2018, Tailor Your Robe

Mark 1, 1-13

This is the beginning of the new word from the realm of the angels, sounding forth through Jesus Christ. Fulfilled is the word of the prophet Isaiah:

Tamara Rigishvili

Behold, I send my angel before your face.
He is to prepare your way.
Hear the voice of one calling in the loneliness of the human soul
Prepare the way for the Lord within the soul,
Make his paths straight, so that he may find entrance into Man’s innermost being!

Thus did John the Baptist appear in the loneliness of the desert. He proclaimed Baptism, the way of a change of heart and mind, for the acknowledgment of sin. And they went out to him from all of Judea and Jerusalem and received baptism from him in the river Jordan and recognized and confessed their failings.

John wore a garment of camel’s hair and a leather belt around his waist. Fruits and wild honey were his food. And he proclaimed: ‘After me comes one who is mightier than I. I am not even worthy to bend down before Him and to undo the straps of His sandals. I have baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the fire of the Holy [healing] Spirit.’

In those days it happened: Jesus of Nazareth came to Galilee and was baptized in the Jordan by John.
And at the same time, as he rose up again out of the water, he beheld how the spheres of the heavens were torn open, and the spirit of God descended upon him like a dove.

And a voice sounded from the world of the spirit: ‘You are my son, the beloved —in you is my revelation.’ [‘Today I have conceived (begotten) you.’ Luke 3:22]

1^st St. Johnstide
June 24, 2018
Mark 1: 1-11
 
“Behold, I send my angel before your face. He is to prepare your way. Hear the voice of one crying in the loneliness of the human soul.” Mark 1:1, 2

These words, of course, refer to John the Baptizer, and his role in preparing the way for Christ Jesus. At the same time, we can certainly resonate with the mood of these words; for many of us, this desert loneliness of the human soul is how modern life feels. We all feel like John.

At the same time, we each also

Klocek

have an angel that walks before us. This angel helps us make straight our own soul paths so that Christ can find entrance into the depths of our hearts.

We are hovering at the solstice. The year is turning. As the outer light diminishes, it will turn into warmth. Now is the time to begin again; to turn around, to change our hearts and minds. It is time to begin to turn inward, to warm our hearts. As the poet says:

This is now.  Now is,
all there is.  Don't wait for Then;
strike the spark, light the fire.
….
The green earth
is your cloth;
tailor your robe
with dignity and grace.*

*Rumi, “Begin”, (adapted by Jose Orez from a version by Coleman Barks in The Soul of Rumi).  

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4th June Trinity 2018, Waters of Life

Additional June Trinity
John 7: 33-44

Jesus said, ‘Only a short time shall I still be with you; then I go to Him who sent me. You will seek and not find me. Where I am you cannot come.’
And the Jews said to one another, ‘Where could he go that we would not be able to find him? Perhaps he intends to go to the Jews in the Greek lands and teach the Greeks himself. What does he mean by those words: You will seek and not find me: where I am you cannot come?’
On the last, the great day of the festival, Jesus stood there and called out loudly: ‘Whoever thirsts, let him come to me and drink! Whoever fills himself with my power through faith, from his body shall flow streams of life-bearing water, as scripture says.’
He said this to indicate the spirit which those were to receive who unite with him in faith. But this Spirit was not yet working, for Jesus had not yet revealed his spirit-form.
Some of the people who heard these words said, “He is the Christ. Still others said, “How can the Christ come from Galilee?  Does not scripture say that Christ is to come from the seed of David and from Bethlehem, the town of David?” And so there was a division about him among the crowd. Some wanted to seize him, but no one laid hands on him.

4^th June Trinity
June 17, 2018
John 7: 33-44

Human culture has created many ways to send water to where it is needed. Essentially they all involve some form of capture, in a vessel or a pipe or canal. And somewhere at the other end, there is a place of release for the water to flow out. For the whole point of capturing water is to let it go again so that it can support life.

In this reading, Christ likens Himself to a giver of water. He gathers the Father’s life-giving spirit waters. He makes Himself the conduit for these waters of the spirit. At the end, he will pour out the water of life. He pours His Life first into wine and bread at the Last Supper. In so doing he creates another extension of the channel, a conduit that reaches through time into the present day. Then he pours His blood and water from the cross, re-enlivening the dying earth. And finally, He ascends to the clouds, to inhabit the life sphere of the whole earth, to pour the waters of life, both spiritual and physical, onto the earth. This is what He means when He says: “Then I go to Him who sent me. You will look for me and not find me. Where I am going you cannot follow.” John 7:34  We cannot yet follow Him in all His ways, into the biosphere, for we have not yet ascended. So He pours out his life as He rains down on us from the clouds.

Yet this process involves not only Him; we are also included, for He says: “Whoever fills himself with my power through faith, from his body shall flow streams of life-bearing water.” John 7: 38 For Christ’s life-giving spiritual-physical power flows not only in rain, in the wine, in His blood; His waters of life flow now through the blood that flows through every human heart. The poet says:

There are different wells within your heart
Some fill with each good rain.
Others are too deep for that.
In one well
You have just a few precious cups of water.
That “love” is literally something of yourself.*

Christ’s waters of life now flow through the blood that flows through the heart of everyone who drinks from the well of His being. We become the conduits of His streaming life. From human hearts can flow the streams of His life-bearing waters. We receive His waters of life in order to let them go again, to pour out the water of life, of love, wherever it is needed.

* Hafiz, “Some Fill with Each Good Rain”, in The Gift, by Daniel Ladinsky, p. 76.

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3rd June Trinity 2018, Providence

3rd June Trinity
June 10, 2018
John 6: 53 – 69

Jesus answered, ‘Yes I tell you, if you do not eat the earthly body of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my body and drinks my blood has life beyond the cycles of time, and I give him the power of resurrection at the end of time. For my flesh is the true sustenance, and my blood is the true draught. Whoever truly eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. As the life-bearing Father sent me, and as I bear the life of the world by the will of the Father, so also he who makes me his sustenance will have life within him through me. This is the bread which descends from heaven. It will no longer be as it was with the fathers who ate of it and died. Whoever eats this bread will live through the whole cycle of time.’ He said this in his teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
Many of his disciples who heard this said, ‘These are hard and difficult words; who can bear to hear them?’ Jesus was aware that his disciples could not come to terms with this and he said to them, ‘Do you take offence at this? What will you say when you see the Son of Man ascending again to where he was before? It is the Spirit that gives life; the physical by itself is of no avail. The words that I spoke to you are spirit and are life. But there are some among you who have no faith.’ For Jesus knew from the beginning who would betray him. And he went on: ‘This is why I said to you: No one can find the way to me unless it is given him by the Father’.

3rd June Trinity
June 10, 2018
John 6: 53 – 69

The story of the creation of the world makes evident that the Creator provides. Step by step and with foresight, the world was created until everything was in place to receive and nourish His final creation: the human being.

We count on this providence, this foresight of God, even today. We know that we must plant in order to harvest, for that is how God made the world; that we must care for the animals in order to have the food and other things they produce and to maintain the balance God created in nature.

In today’s reading, Christ talks about another level of providence. He is speaking

Arild Rosenkrantz

ahead of time about nourishing and sustaining, not physical bodies, but human spirits. At His Last Supper, He gave of Himself as food for our spirits. He poured His soul, His love, His life into bread and wine. He turned bread and wine into His body and blood. And he gave to his disciples, and to all who will come to Him and learn from Him in future ages, the power to do the same, to concentrate his essence, his life and love into bread and wine. His body as bread heals our ills; his blood as wine gives us the strength to clean up our messes, and to deal with what is coming in the future. In His providence, he created something that makes it possible for our spirits to be healed, nourished and strengthened even today.

Out of our mindful remembrance of His deed and through our hearts’ connection with Him, His healing essence is concentrated in bread and wine, even today.  For as a poet said:

….The Four Kingdoms of Earth
Prepare the Way-Bread for healing.
Let us now harvest and press,
Let us grind and bake
And consecrate everything that needs it.

Then Man the Consecrated approaches the Grave-Table,
And with him the folk and the circle
Experience creating the Open Secret
That He gives to them time upon time. *

* Sebastian Lorenz, „Menschen-Weihe“ in Die Christengemeinschaft 10_06, pg 507. Translated by C. Hindes.

2nd June Trinity 2018, Waking Up

June Trinity

John 3: 1-17

There was a man in the circle of the Pharisees, whose name was Nicodemus; he held high rank among the Jews. He came to Jesus in the night and said, “Master, we know that you are a high teacher of mankind, come to us from God, for no one can do such signs of the Spirit as you do unless God himself is working together with him in his deeds.”

Jesus answered and said to him, “The truth out of the spirit I say to you: whoever is not born anew from above cannot behold the kingdom of God.”

Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born again when he is old? Can he return to his mother’s womb to be born again a second time?

Jesus answered, “the truth out of the spirit I say to you: whoever remains as he is, and does not come to a new birth out of the formative power of the water and out of the breath of the spirit [or, …and is not born anew out of the spiritual power of eternal becoming and out of being touched by the might of the spirit world] cannot enter into the kingdom of God. What is born out of earthly elements is of earthly nature. But what is born out of the breath of the spirit, is itself spirit. Do not wonder that I said to you that you must be born anew from above. The spirit wind blows where it will; you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from, or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born anew out of the breath of the spirit.

Moses Lifting Serpent, Tissot

Nicodemus replied and said to him, “How can one attain this?” Jesus answered, “You are a teacher of Israel and do not know? Amen, the truth I say to you: we speak of what we know, and we bear witness to what we have seen in the spirit, but none of you accepts our testimony. When I speak to you of earthly things and you do not believe them, how shall you believe when I want to speak to you of heavenly things? No one has ascended to the spiritual world who has not previously descended out of the spiritual world, that is, the Son of Man.

Just as Moses once lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who finds his power in their hearts can win a share in the higher life beyond time. God has so loved the world that he has given his only begotten Son. From now on, no one who fills himself with his power shall perish, for he will share in timeless, higher life. God did not send the Son into the world to condemn it, but in order that the world be saved [healed] through him, and not fall prey to ruin.”

2^nd June Trinity

June 3, 2018

John 3:1-17

We are approaching the longest day, the

pollen cloud

shortest night of the year. The plants have grown enthusiastically. Their flowering has released clouds of pollen. Carried up by the wind and thermals, it will be kissed by the life-giving power of the sun. When it returns to the plants, it will bring them the potential to create the seeds of new life.

We too have our times when we expand out into the universe. Mostly we do so unconsciously, in sleep. When we return to our bodies in the morning, blessed and strengthened by an encounter with our angel, we are refreshed and ready for the new life in a new day.

Nicodemus comes to Christ in the realm of night. And Christ tries to make clear to him that it is now necessary to become aware, to consciously work with these spiritual forces of new birth from above with our day-waking consciousness. The spirit breath, the spirit wind carries with it words of creation, the potential for the next step in the evolution of humankind. The spirit gives us the impulses for the new—a new way, a new direction, a new paradigm. For the old is falling away. But the spirit needs our voluntary cooperation.

As we approach the zenith of the year, it is time to open ourselves. It is time to receive the blessing and strength from the spirit, for what is coming. We may not know where exactly which direction the impulse for the new is coming from; we may not know where it will lead us.

It will most certainly at first lead us through the death of the old way, just as following Christ led Nicodemus through the events of Christ’s death and resurrection. For we hear of him helping to prepare Christ’s body for the tomb. John 19:39 Nevertheless, we can listen for the sound of the spirit wind, and rise to hear the words of becoming, sounding on the breath of the spirit. As we do so, we will begin to share in Christ’s timeless, higher life. John 3:16

As poet said:

Beyond living and dreaming

there is something more important:

waking up.*

  

*Antonio Machado, The Winged Energy of Delight, translations by Robert Bly

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