3rd St. Johnstide 2017, Loving Embrace

St. Johnstide

John 3: 22-36

John in Prison

After this, Jesus and his disciples came to the land of Judea. There he stayed with them and baptized. John also baptized; he was at Aenon near Salim, because there was much water there, and people came to him and were baptized. For John had not yet been imprisoned.

Then a dispute arose between the disciples of John and the Jews about the path of purification. And they came to John and said to him, “Master, he who came to you beyond the Jordan, to whom you bore witness – here he is, baptizing, and everyone is going to him.”

John answered, “No human being can grasp spiritual power for himself that is not given to him from the higher worlds. You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’

“He who has the bride, he is the bridegroom. But the friend of the bridegroom, who stands by and listens to him, he is filled with joy at the bridegroom’s voice. This joy of mine is now full. He must increase, but I must decrease.

He who descends from above, out of the spiritual world, is elevated above all beings of the earth. Whoever is only of the earth, whose being arises from the earthly, his word is also earthbound.

He who comes from the heavens is elevated above all who have arisen from the earthly. What he has seen and heard in the world of the spirit, to that he can bear direct witness, but no one accepts his testimony.

But whoever accepts his testimony, sets his seal to this: that God is true [truth] [that there is no higher truth than the reality of God]. Whoever God has sent, his words are filled with the power of divine thought, for God gives the spirit to human beings not according to human rules, but according to the creative power that he awakens in man.

The Father holds the Son surrounded in his love, and has given everything into his hands. Whoever trusts in the power of the Son within himself, he grows out of the earthly into timeless life.

Whoever cannot trust in the power of the Son within will not behold the world of life; rather the working might of the spirit world must one day burn him like a fire that will consume him.”

3^rd St. Johnstide

July 9, 2017

John 3: 22-36

The plant grounds its roots in the earth; it rises and spreads its leaves into the air. And then it holds up the chalice of its blossom to the sun. It sends its fragrance and pollen heavenward, where they will be enriched (and inseminated) by the sun's life-giving rays. Into its chalice-blossom the plant receives new life, which will form in its seeds.

Without the sun, none of this would happen. The plant and its processes have their reality. But the underlying, pre-existing reality rests in the sun.

But the most real reality, the real antecedent truth behind the existence of everything, even of the sun, is God. God is the highest, the truest, the most real of all levels of reality. Far in the future, nature and all its forms will have disappeared. But God will still be, holding all in His loving embrace.

He gave us, gives us His Son, whose presence abides with us, in us, on earth. With His Son, God has given us the power to awaken His own creative potential, His divinity, within us.

As we raise the chalice of our heart, as we send the fragrance of our self-offering toward the Christ-Sun, He, humanity's bridegroom, in turn sends His life-giving grace to fill our hearts, to make fertile the seeds of divinity within us. He sends into us the highest reality of God, as seed of a new life.

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2nd St. Johnstide 2017, Heal the World

Ghirlandaio

St. Johnstide

Luke 3: 7-18

John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You are sons of the serpent yet! Who led you to believe that you can avoid the decline of the old ways of the soul? Produce true fruits in keeping with a change of heart and mind. And do not begin excusing yourselves by saying, “We have Abraham as our father.” For I tell you that God can raise up sons for Abraham out of these stones. The ax is already poised at the root of the trees, so every tree that does not produce good fruit is felled and thrown into the fire.”

“What should we do then?” the crowd asked.

John answered, “Let the man with two tunics share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.”

Tax collectors also came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?”

“Do not collect any more than you are authorized to do,” he told them.

               

Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”

He replied, “Do not intimidate and do not accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.”

The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Christ, the Messiah.

John answered them all, “I wash you with water. But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will wash you with the breath of the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, while he burns up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

And with many and various exhortations John preached the good news to the people.

2^nd St. Johnstide

feldspar

July 2, 2017

Luke 3: 7-18

Although there is a constant invisible core, living things change. They continually change and evolve their outer form. Only stones remain inert.

John the Baptist encourages us to change, that is, to remain alive. He wants our hearts not to be backward looking, stuck in the past. Otherwise, our hearts turn to stone. Rather, we are to be open to renewal and change. When asked, he encourages us to find new ways to help others, to take no more than our fair share. We are to avoid suppressing others or lying. We are to be content, reconciled with our karma and our place in life.

These practices purify the soul of its egocentricity. They prepare the soul for its great moment, for its Baptism in fire. This fire is fanned with the healing breath of the Holy Spirit of love. This breath of the Spirit is the love that enables us to change and evolve. This is the love that will ultimately heal the world. 

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1st St. Johnstide 2017, Speaking Light

St. John’s

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:

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]

St. John’s

June 24, 25, 2017

Mark 1, 1-13

We stand at a still point, at the solstice, at this midpoint of the year. The entire past stands behind us. And the entire future leads away from this moment. What can happen in the now, in this moment of stillness, is that the soul opens in gratitude.

We give thanks and praise for all that has gone before – for those no longer with us on earth; for those divine beings who guide us; for the elemental beings whose work supports us on earth.

We give thanks and praise for all the events that have brought us here, to this place and time. We give thanks for all who have made this moment, this 'now', possible for us. And we are grateful for the fact that there is a future. We give thanks for all who are coming toward us from the future; for all future guidance, for all the future support. We know that we will be given the strength and love to meet it. In the words of Adam Bittleston, our hearts pray:

For the speaking light of the senses

Which bears into our souls

The world's abundance,

We thank the powers of heaven.

For the health that is in our bodies,

Even in illness and need,

Sustaining, renewing, refreshing,

We thank the will of Christ.

For the wonders of human friendship,

Which bless the life of earth

With the hope of eternal being,

We thank the Father's love.*

*Adam Bittleston, "Thanksgiving", in Meditative Prayers for Today, p. 50

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2nd June Trinity 2017, Truth Is Here

June Trinity

John 4, 1-26

Tissot

At this time, the Lord became aware that it was rumored among the Pharisees that Jesus was finding and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, though his disciples did.) Therefore, he left Judea and went back again to Galilee.

Now he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the plot of land Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was also there. Jesus was weary with the journey, and he sat down by the well. It was about midday, the sixth hour.

Then a Samaritan woman came to draw water. And Jesus said to her, “Give me to drink.” For his disciples had gone into town to buy bread.

Then the Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a Samaritan woman?” For the Jews avoided all contact with the Samaritans.

Jesus answered her, “If you knew how the divine world now draws near to men, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me to drink’, you would ask him, and he would give you the water of life [the living water].

“Sir,” the woman said to him, “you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. From where will you draw the living water? Are you greater than our Father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his flocks and herds?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water that I will give him, his thirst will be quenched for all time. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up as true life for eternity.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may never be thirsty again, and need never come here again to draw.”

He said to her, “Go call your husband and show him to me.”

“I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You have well said that you have no husband. Five husbands you have had, and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.”

Rosenkrantz

“Sir,” the woman said, “I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews say that only in Jerusalem is the place where one should worship.”

Jesus answered, “Believe me, o woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship a being you do not know; we worship what we do know. That is why salvation had to be prepared for among the Jews. But the hour is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father with the power of the spirit and in awareness [knowledge] of the truth.”

Then the woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming who is called Christ. When he comes, he will teach us all things.”

Jesus said to her, “I AM he who stands before you and speaks to you.”

2^nd June Trinity

June 18, 2017

John 4, 1-26

Canmore

Human beings have always visited sacred places in order to honor the divine. At first, they were simple stone memorials at a place where a great spiritual event or visitation had occurred. Then gradually temples were built as gathering places for honoring the divine with story, song and ritual.

Christ meets the Samaritan woman at Jacob's 2,000-year-old well. She asks him about places of worship. Should humankind worship on a mountain top, or in a temple? Christ answers that the sacred space will be within the human heart and mind. "the hour will come, and it has come, when the true worshippers of God will worship the Father," He says, "with the power of the Spirit and in knowing awareness of the truth." John 4: 23

Cologne Cathedral

We can imagine that a kind of soul altar exists within each human heart. And when a group of human beings come together to enact a ritual of offering, the walls of each heart expand. They fill the room, so that hearts work among hearts, within hearts. Together they form a greater heart, the common heart of the community. Hearts offer themselves in a common spirit, out of a communal truth. As e.e. cummings said,

seeker of truth

follow no path

all paths lead where

truth is here*

* e. e. cummings, in Complete Poems 1904-1962 p. 775.

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1st June Trinity 2017, Nuptials of the Soul

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.

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.”

1^st June Trinity

June 11, 2017

John 3: 1-17

Pine Pollen

Clouds of pollen rise into the upper atmosphere, to be inoculated with the living powers of the sunlight. The virgin queens of new hives ascend into the heights for their nuptials. When the pollen and the bees descend, they bring with them the possibility of new life.

Our lives, too, require an ascent. We offer the fragrance of our heart's prayers, our love, the purity of our thoughts, to Christ, the Sun-God, and His Father.

Our ascending heart offerings make it possible for the grace of a new kind of life to descend and to be born in us. This new life is born out of Christ's eternal capacity for becoming, developing, evolving. It is born out of the nuptials of the soul with humanity's Bridegroom. It is grace.

As Hafiz says,

…Now is the time for the world to know

hat every thought and action is sacred.

That this is the time

For you to compute the impossibility

That there is anything

But Grace.

Now is the season to know

That everything you do

Is sacred.*

*Hafiz ,"Now is the Time", in The Gift, by Daniel Ladinsky, p. 160.

Whit-Tuesday 2017, At Peace

Pentecost

John 14: 23-31

Jesus replied, “He who truly loves me reveals my Spirit, and my Father will love him and we will come to him and prepare with him a dwelling in the everlasting [an eternal dwelling]. He who does not love me cannot reveal my Spirit. And the spirit power of the word that you hear is not from me; it is the speaking of the Father who sent me.

I have said this to you while I am still with you. But he who is called down, the health-bringing Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you everything and will awaken within you all that I have said to you.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid [have no fear].

You have heard how I said to you, ‘I am going away, and yet I am coming to you’. If you loved me you would rejoice because I am going to the Father[ly Ground of the World], for the Father is mightier than I am.

I have told you now before it happens, so that when it happens you may find trust. I no longer have much to say to you, for soon the prince of this world is coming. Yet over me, he has no power.

But the world shall see in this how I love the Father [Ground of the World] and how I act in accordance with the Father’s purpose, as it was entrusted to me. Arise, let us go on from here. [let us be on our way.]

Pentecost

Whit-Tuesday, June 7, 2017

John 14: 23-31

The state of the world is troubling. We are learning that the outer world cannot give us the sense of safety and protection it once did. The very cultural ground on which we base our lives seems to be shifting. We often lack a sense of peace.

Perhaps this is because we are looking for peace in the wrong places. In the Act of Consecration, the Communion service, we hear Christ say, 'I stand at peace with the world.' Astonishing! How can He, when so much seems so wrong? This is because He does not derive His peace from the state of the world itself. He derives it from His union with the Father's love. He has united Himself, His will and purpose, with the Father's will for the karma of the world.

The Father's will for the whole world is larger and far more complex than we can even begin to imagine. But we can trust that He has our best interests at heart. We can quell our sense of fear and anxiety by realizing that we will be given what we need in order to cope with what comes. We can remain open to the lessons by not expecting to have everything go the way our little ego wants. We can receive Christ's peace because we know that the decision has already been made about the prince of this world. (John 16:11)

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Whit-Monday 2017, You Know Him

Luca Rosetti da Orta

Whitsun

John 14: 15 -26

“If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of Truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day, you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”

Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, “But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?”

Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.

 “All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

Whitsun II

Monday, June 5, 2017

John 14: 15 -26

Every day of our lives, the sun has risen. Its timing may drift over the course of the year. But we trust, we know that the sun will rise tomorrow. Experience has taught us this.

Our experience has also given us other knowledge. We have learned to trust, in whatever degree we can, in others. We have learned how much we can (or cannot) rely on outer circumstances.

There is One in whom we can trust absolutely. God, the Father, His Son and His healing Spirit, love us unconditionally. They are always offering us strength, encouragement, and hope. Just beyond our seeing, they wait for us to open to them. They clearly differentiate between what is ours to deal with, especially outwardly, and what they can rightly arrange for us. They are always willing to strengthen the capacities we need to cope with circumstances.

We can always ask for the strength to fulfill what the Divine Will has in mind for us. We can ask for the light that reveals our purpose on earth. We can ask for peace in fulfilling the destiny we have brought with us to earth. And we will be answered, for as Christ says:

"I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Comforter, the giver of spirit-courage, to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of Truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know Him, for He guides you as a higher being above you and He will enter your innermost heart." John 14: 16-17 (Madsen)